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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from Newsday Studios in the Rockefeller Center. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Nastasia? I'm good.
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+[0:22] You're good? You're good? Calling all of your qu well, if you're listening live because you're a Patreon subscriber, calling your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Joined as usual with our dueling engineers.
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+[0:35] We got Joe Hazen here here at Rock Center. How are you doing, Joe? I'm doing great. How are you? All right, and we got Jack Insley, Jackie Molecules over there in the California booth.
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+[0:43] What's up? It's hot here. I'm doing great, though. Yeah. Got that.
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+[0:46] Well, you know, I feel so bad for you. I'm in LA with all the nice plants and trees. I just got a portable air conditioner today, though, so life will get better. I don't know if you know this. Uh, they do make your life better intensely inefficient.
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+[1:01] They're intensely inefficient. Yeah. It's basically like, you know, you're spending, I guess, a little less money now, but you're burning money and throwing it out the window in terms of your electric bill. Unless you're not paying electric. If it's all like folded into your Airbnb, then portable away.
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+[1:17] You know what I mean? Uh but anyway, so we'll talk about that. All right. So uh we got Nastasia Manning the uh phone, should anything come in. Uh Jack, you're gonna man any new Patreon andor uh what's it called, uh like chat room questions.
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+[1:33] Uh but and hopefully we get some good ones because today in studio, and this is this is our first studio guest, like like not part of the cooking issues team guest. Here, is it? Anyway, yeah. Uh, we have with us today, friend of the show, uh Matt Sartwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters. Everybody who knows anything's favorite bookstore.
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+[2:00] How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So the when last we had you on the show, you've been on, I think, tw twice?
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+[2:06] Twice before this, I think, yeah. So I think the first time was when you guys were doing your your GoFundMe, right? Which was successful. It was. It was a huge success.
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+[2:14] We were stunned. No. Well, it's because people uh love you guys. Well, thank you. I uh people really demonstrated that.
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+[2:21] They put their money uh where their heart is. So for those of those who are new listeners, you want to just I mean, do you want to give the pitch for the store or should I give you the pitch for this store so you don't have to give it yourself? I'd love to hear your pitch for the store. So my pitch for the store, and I've told I told this the last time, so apologize for those who've listened uh before, but uh uh the the I found Kitchen Arts and Letters because at the very beginning of when you could search for everything on the internet. This is prior to uh well, you'll know when it was because it was whenever when the breadbuilders book came out.
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+[2:51] Okay. So what was that, like 98, something like that? Might even be a little earlier than that, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I was looking for it in like 1998.
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+[2:58] Bread Builder's what was at the time like the book. Like there was no other book like it at the time. It's still pretty important. And and we've talked about it uh uh on air. Great book.
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+[3:07] Uh I think one of them died, right? Alan Wing, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's I'm I'm getting that wrong.
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+[3:12] But yeah, one of them died. The the builder. Yeah, the build. So it's a builder and a bread person. And one of the one of them was a former bio chem guy, right?
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+[3:20] I mean, it was it's an amazing book, and it was all about uh, and it was before the it was before the amazing bread resurgence, back when the only person who was making no offense to everybody, but the person who was making the decent bread there was there was basically Jim when he when he was still at Sullivan Street, like way downtown, and a couple other people making decent bread, but it wasn't like it wasn't like today. No, there was nothing like the the frequency with which you're gonna find great bread. Yeah. And I had found on the street an old like 1930s uh oven with no thermostats in it. And uh I brought it up to my illegal loft, I plumbed it into the gas line and filled the sucker with bricks, and then started using it fundamentally as a retained heat masonry oven fired by gas in the middle of my apartment in in New York City and needed some guidance on making bread.
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+[4:12] And I don't know how this book came to my attention, but this is like I say, early, like when Amazon was just selling books. Amazon was just a bookseller at the time, before they had uh done what they did to us and many other small businesses, right, Stas? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Uh which we won't get into.
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+[4:28] We're not anti-Amazon anymore for for this moment, simply because they're now selling the Sears all again. So uh it's kind of like, you know, uh we're back in that abusive relationship with them. Anyway, so um I digress. So I find this book on Amazon, uh, the bread builders, and I'm like, I don't have the money to buy it. It was not an expensive book, but I had no money.
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+[4:53] No, zero. So I was like, I don't have the money to buy this unless I know it's gonna be good. Like the way I used to be with with records. You wouldn't buy a record unless you could hear it beforehand. Because if the record's bad and you spent the money.
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+[5:05] Right, and records were a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you didn't have a lot of it, you know, and and and the odds that somebody who made a record you liked last year that you like the next record is like less even than a book, right? I mean, like the odds that you like the second book.
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+[5:20] It it makes a big difference, yeah. Uh records could blow your mind what the second, the sophomore effort was. Yeah, and you're like, oh, geez, oh, now I'm out, the money. Anyway, so I was like, I gotta go, I gotta go see this book in the real life before I buy it. And I found I found out, you know, about your store, which is on what is it, 90?
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+[5:41] I always forget the exact cross street, 90 93rd and 94th. 93rd and Lex. And you, you do you bike? I do, although I don't bike up there. But you have the you have the it's not that bad, but you have the only real hill in all of Manhattan is right at your store.
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+[5:57] You know what I mean? There are worse ones. Are there? Seriously, yeah. Washington Heights?
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+[6:03] Oh, yeah, I don't bike up there. Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh actually that is true, but not okay. In Washington Heights, if you go into the parks over by the river where they go down, there are some serious hills in the park.
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+[6:16] But I'm talking like actual city street. Is there a bigger hill than yours where you're actually driving with cars? If you're coming up from like second avenue, it's probably hard to top that. That stretch from 2nd Avenue to Lexington in the in the low 90s is killer. Yeah.
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+[6:30] Do knuckleboard skateboard, uh, knucklehead skateboarders like bust up their domes all the time there or what? I don't think so. It must have a really bad reputation. I don't see those, I don't see skateboarders there. Huh.
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+[6:40] Anyways, so uh so I I, you know, I make the is it the trek over there. And my intention was to buy the to look at the book, sneak out, and buy it on Amazon for cheaper. That was my mental intent. And then I I couldn't, I had to buy it from you guys because A, I was like, oh my God, this resource, I need to come here uh a lot, but I can't because I'll spend all my money. So I was like forbodent.
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+[7:04] Like I wasn't allowed to go to Kitchen Arts and Letters, unlike my brother-in-law Wiley, who, you know, I think he just transferred a large chunk of your bookshop to his apartment. There was there was a glorious period when Wiley had uh some construction problems and he was spending a lot of time in the store to compensate. It was it was great for us. Yeah. So Wiley, like Wiley, I used to go to the store and you would have like a section that Wiley was gonna come pick up almost.
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+[7:32] His book. And Wiley's bookshelves, by the way, I mean, just nuts. Anyways, again I digress. So I was like, you know, look at you, you know, this has to be uh supported, but again, I'm I wasn't allowed to go. Same JB Prince, also I wasn't allowed to go to JB Prince.
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+[7:47] Dangerous place, exciting place. Yeah, so both Kitchen Arts and Letters and JB Prince, I I want to support them, but they're kind of, it's kind of like a drug. I can't go too often. I I hear what you're saying, yes. It's uh I feel that way when I go into Calustians.
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+[8:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's the problem with Calusteans is I love Calustians. I love it. Some of the some of the stuff, they won't do what we want them to.
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+[8:12] Like Wiley and I have argued with them, and we both love them. But like, for instance, transglutaminase, meat glue, you have to you have to keep it in the freezer, and they just won't. I don't know why they won't do it. Hmm. I I don't know why they won't do it.
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+[8:23] But there's no place like it on earth that I've been. Yeah, it's I mean, it it keeps getting bigger and better, and I I love going in there. And I always leave with five times as many things as I expected to bring home. Oh, true, true. I bought some stuff there.
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+[8:36] Uh yeah, have you used the uh the boot knees fermented tea? No. I haven't either. I bought it there though, but I haven't used it because like uh my wife doesn't like to consume too much caffeine at night. Stas, are you okay with caffeine at night?
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+[8:49] Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah. So, like, I don't want to serve her this salad made with fermented tea leaves at night and get her all buzzed up. But then on the other hand, I'm not gonna make a fermented tea leaf salad in the morning for breakfast. Anyway, I don't know.
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+[9:02] I don't know what to do with it. All right. Uh so that's my pitch for the store. Uh, and even nowadays when so much stuff is online, I think the the level of curation and knowledge and care and thought that as you will, you know, witness in the in the rest of the show, that's brought um to kind of your job. It's kind of like you, the people at the store are as important as the books themselves.
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+[9:29] And you don't get that. Uh you can't get that from Amazon. You're not gonna get that by reading, you know, uh those idiot reviewers who are like, um the page was creased when it got mailed to me. One star for the book. One star.
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+[9:43] You know what I mean? Or like uh, you know, um, and a lot of people who write reviews on Amazon are, you know, some of them are are good, but uh a lot of them have like uh just wrong access to grind. You can't really trust them. And I guarantee you they're not written by someone who has spent the majority of their professional career learning what makes a good cookbook, meeting the authors, going to the fairs and all of these other things. Uh so anyway, that's the pitch.
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+[10:08] Go to Kitchen Arts and Letters. And you're now have a large, relatively large online presence as well, right? We do. We're working on expanding it all the time, but um it's uh it's a big part of our efforts now, and we're always trying to highlight the books that are harder to find elsewhere. Right.
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+[10:21] And so you also get, for instance, rare out of print, and you will find books for people if they can't sometimes find them. You'll keep your eye out for them. Yeah, my uh my business partner who founded the store, Knock Waxman, specializes in that now. It's it's pretty much what he dedicates himself to. And uh we do have a free service that finds out-of-print books for people, and we also periodically uh send out a newsletter that highlights some unusual things they find or he's found.
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+[10:48] So it could be uh uh a first edition of uh of a famous cookbook. It could be um recently we had uh some really interesting reprints of cocktail books from the 1930s. Um it's always sort of a a bit of a grab bag, what he's offering in those newsletters, but it's gonna be stuff you're just not gonna really learn about elsewhere. You got any got any really really whacked out stuff recently that anything that comes to shoots to mind? Um most of that stuff vanishes pretty quickly.
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+[11:20] So um it finds it's it finds its home. But we did have uh a reprint of Jerry Thomas's uh original book that was done in the 1930s. It was done, it was slip-cased, uh, very uh high quality edition, and that was like a $1,200 book. Like the 30s reprint. Was it $1,200 book?
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+[11:41] Yeah, it was a really fine high-quality special limited edition. And it it found a home really fast. But I mean, as often as anything, it it can be like uh uh a church cookbook from the 1880s that is uh really sort of very much about a little place like a little village in Vermont, and there'll be a picture of a church on the front cover and recipes from people who have been dead for a hundred years, but they're uh they're there on the page, and that's a big part of what finding those older books is about. Right. So when you find a book like that, or when your partner finds a book like that, what is it?
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+[12:18] Is it the is it the community you're looking at, the recipes you're looking at, both? Like what, like what's the main value? What's the main value in something like that? I would say that the the community that's revealed is the more interesting thing. Um the uh you can see sometimes transitions to the way in which people are writing recipes.
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+[12:40] Uh in the later part of the 19th century, uh recipe standardization was coming to the fore. People like Fannie Farmer were insisting on precise measurements. They chose the wrong ones though, but yeah. Well, but that water under the bridge. Uh blood under the bridge.
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+[12:55] But the uh uh just even the whole format of having the ingredients laid out in a chart before the text, all of that is is sort of happening. And so you can see how much these people are paying attention to, say, the wider community around them. Um, and you'll see what kind of foods they present as exotic and what kind of foods they present as as staple items. And it can be sometimes just small clues um in the name of the recipe. Uh and and the ingredients that they adapt to, and and it's interesting just to see what was what was commonplace enough that they could call for it.
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+[13:31] Um so yeah, you want something that really reflects its place. They're often not books that are were produced with particularly high quality uh paper and and so forth. So you they're delicate, they don't tend to be really expensive. Um, but they are a really real piece of American. And do you look for like ingredients that are one step removed from an old ingredient or the actual old ingredient?
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+[13:55] Like so whenever I see like uh we have an old recipe in my in my family that asks for soured milk. And so, like, I know that that recipe probably goes back to when to a pre-refrigeration time when they wanted to use old older milk. Is like that the kind of thing that you're looking for? They're like, if it's not sour, add some lemon to it. They don't, it doesn't call for buttermilk because that wasn't something that they don't usually provide that level of instruction.
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+[14:19] The assumption is that you knew pretty much, they're not giving you the detailed kind of instruction that you might expect from a contemporary American cookbook. They assume that you have been around um a kitchen all your life and watch people cook so that there are a lot of basic processes that aren't explained. They don't tell you how to uh trust a chicken or how to cut one up and you know how to uh come up with individual pieces. So they're basically giving you a process and some ingredients with some possibly rough amounts, and assuming that you have the the know at all to complete it from that fairly spare set of instructions. You like trusting chickens?
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+[14:59] I don't trust chickens. I don't trust chickens myself, no. I like the chicken to be free, open up and be free to roast itself with its arms or its legs, I guess, held out. Um so here's a question for a uh a set of cookbooks like that, and uh I want to kind of buy a couple, and this is weird because I have no relationship to it, but Nastasia's dad worked for ATT for a long time, right? Works.
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+[15:25] Well, but is it still called AT? No, he worked for Bell back when it was Bell and it became ATT. What about these telephone operator cookbooks? Worth buying, not worth buying? I haven't seen any recently.
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+[15:36] Um But like they're all over the country. Some of them are worth a lot of money and some of them are worth no money. I don't know what what's reflected in that kind of pricing. There were a lot of uh sort of uh career fraternal organization cookbooks. Um there were a lot of cookbooks by flight attendants.
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+[15:54] Oh, are they good? Um it really depends on the on the individual books. Um That's a whole genre. Enough that I don't want to tell a tale out of too much out of school. There was someone who came to us because his mother had written a recipe that was in one of these books, and his mother had sent subsequently passed away.
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+[16:13] Um and he wanted to find that book with the recipe of his mother's because he'd never seen it. And uh he wanted it uh when he uh was proposing to the woman he wanted to marry. He thought it was a way of sort of inviting her into the family. And we were able to find that one, the the specific book. Um you remember what the recipe was?
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+[16:34] I don't remember what the recipe was. I think it was a dessert, but I can't be more specific than that. But it was at that point that we realized how many books of this type there were. And even he knew which airline it was from, and it turned out there were like five books from flight attendants from this airline. Huh.
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+[16:53] Uh, published within a span of maybe 15 years. So it had a real vogue. Was that the height of when like flying was the coolest? Uh yeah, this was like the late 60s, early, you know, into the 70s. Yeah, yeah.
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+[17:07] Back when like pilots were just like the stuff and everyone looked everyone looked real on point and everything. Hey, speaking of which, did you know that they turned the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy into a fancy hotel? Yes. I'm gonna go to the fancy hotel.
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+[17:21] I didn't I didn't know. I don't know anything. Until my wife's like, we're gonna we were gonna go glamping at uh so Governor's Island. For those of you that don't know, Governor's Island is a small island off the off the tip of Manhattan. Used to be a uh a Coast Guard base.
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+[17:35] I actually got to stay on it when it was a Coast Guard base in a Motel 6 that like the it was the Motel Six, the lawn, and then the Statue of Liberty. It was crazy at a Motel Six. Anyways, so I stayed there when it was a base, but now they have little cabins and you can glamp on them, which is glam glamours camping. But it is in it's $700 a night. Wow.
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+[17:52] It's $700 a night. Two night minimum. Well two night minimum. Two night minimum. So we were gonna do it, and I was like, I was like, I live here.
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+[18:01] I'm not spending $1,400 to sleep in my own city. You know what I mean? I mean, like, what am I? What am I nuts? Plus at JFK, I think the bar's in that Lockheed constellation.
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+[18:11] Oh, sick. Oh man. Oh yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna get all sauced up. The one thing that kind of well, it doesn't irritate me because I don't like pools, and neither does Nastasia.
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+[18:23] But you have to pay extra to use the pool. What's that all about? I don't know. Would you like it if you had to pay extra? Would it keep out the Yeah, yeah.
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+[18:30] I still wouldn't get in, but yeah. But you you'd appreciate it more, but you still wouldn't get in. Yeah, yeah. It's the human filth that you don't enjoy, right? Yeah.
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+[18:37] Yeah. Did I ever talk to you about the pool that my children had to learn? No. It was in the basement of a building as pools often are. And uh it was humid.
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+[18:48] So humid. Like, like, makes Miami look dry. Humid. And there was always a layer of human grease bubbles on the top of the pool. And I could not touch my kids after they got out until they had completely defiled themselves.
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+[19:06] All right, let's look at some Patreon questions. Oh, by the way, for those of you that don't know, whenever uh whenever Matt is here, the whole episode is Classics in the field, yeah. This is the first time we're doing classics in the field. Uh at the at the new in the new digs. Uh oh, just a little um also bookkeeping uh Jack, we're gonna have our RSS, our RSS is now a real thing, and it's gonna get populated to iTunes and all that soon, right?
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+[19:32] It is up, yes. It is up, it's submitted to the platforms. You've if uh you actually the link to the RSS is for anybody because it's free for everyone on Friday. So even if you're not a Patreon yet, you can go to the Patreon page and see that RSS feed link, and you can add it to your favorite player and for people that will discover us through other platforms. That should be any moment now.
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+[19:55] So cool. Thanks for your patience on that, everyone. Yeah, I mean, like uh, yeah, and so don't send me any more tweets on why the the show you can't find it, because it's gonna be on a regular RSS feed. And for those of you that don't know what an RSS feed, you go, you click it once, and then it will magically appear in your in your box every Friday. All right, here we got some questions.
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+[20:17] Uh oh, this is not a uh I mean let me get book related questions. Uh I have a questions for uh this week's show. Only after your memorial show did I realize most of my favorite books were edited by Maria Guarnicelli. She clearly knew how to make amazing cookbooks happen. I would love to find a complete list of books she has edited so that I can expand my collection.
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+[20:36] I haven't been able to find much information on the internet. The editor name is rarely listed with most book titles. Uh, I was wondering if anyone at cooking issues um or Kitchen Arts and Letters or the booklet had a list of all of her books or had any advice on how I might track one down uh from Zachary. Any idea on how to track down like a list of what someone has edited? Wow, that would be pretty uh impressive, particularly for a career as long as Maria's.
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+[21:01] She didn't only do cookbooks, she did like Matthew Kw Quamen and Right. She had, I mean, there was there was a lot more going on there. Sorry, David Kwan. But um I would assume that Alex would be the person who would be most likely to her daughter Alex Grant Shelley, but whether Alex has tackled something like that yet, uh I have no idea. Right, because she also worked at at least two and maybe three major publishing houses for a long time.
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+[21:24] Uh yeah, three major houses, but also before I mean she was a she was a Harper, she was at uh William Morrow, she was at uh Scribner's and she was at WW Norton. And I I heard a story while she was still alive. I was uh at a book launch party. Um I was at a book launch party, and the literary agent David Black was there, right? And so uh he's not my agent, but you know, I was talking to him because as you do when you're at a fabulous party.
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+[21:54] Yeah. And Nastasia was late, so uh I couldn't just like hang out with her and make fun of all the people around. It was raining. Remember that day? Remember, we were at that party and the wrong book showed up.
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+[22:03] It was like it they they it was a book on like hair care or something like this instead of the cookbook. It was Chris Shepherd's book. No, I don't remember. Anyways, so like uh and that yeah, they shipped the wrong book to the book party. So like he, you know, he was there and then we were all it was raining cats and dogs, and he was gonna cook this meal and like give us all a copy of the book and talk about the book.
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+[22:21] And then it was like a book on there's nothing wrong with hair care books. I think it was a hair, it's just not what you were there for. Not what I was there for, and frankly, not something that I personally care about. You know what I mean? It's that yeah, yeah.
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+[22:33] And and as you, well, you gotta you know keep it, keep it crisp. You gotta keep it nice and anyways. Uh so he was like, he his dad was in publishing. Uh, you know, blacks and and he was he told a story about when he was a kid, he was at his dad's office, and like a young whirlwind just blasts into his dad's office and just completely like rips him a new one, which apparently no one did back in the day, and he was like, That was Maria Guarnicelli. So it's like she her whole life was like this, you know.
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+[23:04] She she was uh she was not a figure to be taken lightly. Uh and I mean and there are some people who are powerful forces, but behind it there's really sort of nothing else but but sort of anger and hot air, but Maria backed it up with intelligence. And so when she decided she was gonna have a strong word with you, it was worth paying attention. Yeah, yeah. When she was biting, she was funny.
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+[23:30] She c she was smart and tough, and yeah, you were happier if you were not on her bad side. Yeah, and that's uh, you know, like I say, like my perpetual fear of being on her bad side. Although Stas, this is the Nastasia believes that now that she is gone, I will never finish my book. That's what she believes. No, I think you'll finish it.
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+[23:48] I just feel sad that she never got to see it. I've now she just wants me to feel guilty, but I've probably should feel guilty. Uh-huh. I've I have at this point, I have actual set of words. If if if a book is a set of words, I have a portion of it written, actually written, but I wouldn't call it, you know, no full chapters done yet.
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+[24:09] Yeah. Interesting stuff. Not to you though, Stas. You will hate it. Yeah.
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+[24:13] Um, I'm gonna try to keep it. I'm gonna try to keep this book pretty much at the same exact length and size, because I know you've already lost your copy of Liquid Intelligence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I want to make it roughly the same size because I know that as we come out of the pandemic, you'll have more and more parties to go to, and you'll need you'll need that perfect that perfect size book to separate the hot and the cold stuff in your potluck. Yeah, for that potluck.
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+[24:38] Yeah. That's what that's all she ever used it for. You know what I could do? I could just I could get you an exact liquid intelligence sized block of uh foam. No foam.
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+[24:50] Like they make this foam for prototyping that's real tough. It's like green, and you can sand it so I can make it look exactly like a liquid intelligence. But it'll be like a tenth the weight. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
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+[25:01] Yeah. But then if you have the liquid intelligence in between the hot casserole and the cold salad, then if you forgot to give a different gift to someone, you could be like, take this book. Right? Yeah. Because the odds they have it.
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+[25:12] Low. Low. Uh all right. Uh okay. Uh this is a pork chop question, trying to get to okay, question from Brady Vickers.
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+[25:20] Uh, there are a lot of crappy, I'm I'm editing for the family show aspect. There's a lot of crappy cookbooks out there. So, how do you curate a cookbook collection? In other words, what qualities make a cookbook a classic in the field from Brady Vickers in North Dakota? Well, it's a huge question because uh it depends on how you use the books.
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+[25:38] And um, if you're cooking from them exactly, you're gonna want a different set of uh criteria than if you're the kind of person who reads a book and shuts it and uh and goes into the kitchen uh and cooks without the book. So uh you have to begin from sort of sorting it that way. There are books that like the uh original London River Cafe book that was published here as Rogers and Gray Italian Country Cooking. Famous for having not been well translated to a U.S. edition, quantities are wonky.
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+[26:10] But if you open the book up and say, look what they did there, that's great, the way those flavors go together, and you close the book and you go into the kitchen, and you can be really happy with it on that basis. Um that kind of thing aside, does the book do what it promises you it's gonna do? Does it do it uh conscientiously, or is it sort of offering you the same 55 things that you're gonna find in any other book that's written on the subject? Um in some areas you really only have one book to choose from, and so something had become a classic just by uh being the one book that somebody bothered to spend the time to write. Uh and books like that have flaws in them.
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+[26:54] I'm all books have flaws, but uh, but they endure and they become important just for uh the the fact that one person wrote. But uh well, how much on those kind of books do you like the individual quirky Well, I mean, a lot of individual quirky uh stuff is like that. It has it has flaws, and you go into it knowing that there are going to be flaws. Um, and you have to, I mean, anytime you come to a book, you can't just trust the book as if you know God touched the brain of the author and and communicated all this information. You constantly have to be asking yourself, who is this person?
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+[27:34] Why are they saying this? What is their background? What are their prejudices? And you're it's up to you to be filtering that all the time. And if you're not, um, you're gonna find yourself uh disappointed a lot.
+
+[27:49] Um you earlier in an email exchange with me, you mentioned somebody like Waverly Root. Yeah, yeah. Great writer. Waverly Root is a brilliant writer on food. He uh he's a great storyteller, he has a beautiful turn of phrase, but he was a raconteur more than he was an investigator.
+
+[28:09] It's a French word for liar, right? Storyteller. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Storyteller. It's I mean, he he loved a good story.
+
+[28:15] And if somebody told him a good story about a dish or a place, he was gonna pass that along because he believed that that kind of story was part of the culture of the food. And he didn't really care whether it was true because the truth of the story wasn't important to him so much as the fact that it was a story that that everybody was telling. And if you know that about Waverly Root, when you go to read him, you don't say, oh, well, Waverly Root says that this dish is called this because you know uh Catherine de Medici, you know, wanted it to be called that when she came from uh from Florence to Paris. You know, that's probably not true. It's just a great story.
+
+[28:59] And so you don't you don't stop your research ever with Waverly Root. But it can be a place to begin. If you enjoy reading, it's a good writing. Beautiful writing, yeah. I mean, I I wish I could write that way.
+
+[29:11] But you just, you know, you know when you're reading it that it's not the last place to go. Well, and so speaking also, because uh when did he die in the 80s? I think it was like 79. Right. Uh when you're reading that kind of stuff with kind of a modern, with like modern eyes, especially someone who's just starting to read older books, like how do you kind of uh tell people to adjust in their mind the fact that people just were like more openly terrible about a lot of things back in the day?
+
+[29:39] Well, I mean, it's not just in the matter of food. I mean, you you know, every book reflects the time in which it's written and published. And um that's just part of the the entire endeavor of of reading, yeah, is to pay attention. But I mean, the thing about a cookbook though, right, is that you want to side with the person who's writing, you want them, it's almost like with a cookbook, it's like you imagine that they're with you in your house cooking with you, and you don't want your racist Uncle Larry. I mean, maybe you do.
+
+[30:11] I love Uncle Larry, if you're you're never gonna hear this. I'm I'm not I don't mean this against you. You know what I mean? But it's like, you know what I'm saying? It's like yeah, I mean, you can you can you modern life is about compartmentalizing things.
+
+[30:27] And sometimes you have to realize that the only source you have is gonna be flawed, and you have to know that the information that you're presented with has flaws in it. And it's up to you to decide that the inquiry is not complete, that it has begun, and that you have a partial viewpoint, and that viewpoint is not everything it can be. Now, sometimes when it comes to something really simple, like you know, to choose a really basic recipe like simple syrup, there aren't going to be that many variations on how I wrote I I wrote a lot about simple syrup, but but there will be some people who have something very strong to say about it. But there are other things. I mean, you know, if you go in and you start looking at uh at a lot of regional cuisines and things like that, you know, people you're gonna find a thousand different perspectives, and what you should be taking away from that is that there is no definitive version.
+
+[31:25] There are versions that are that are typical, which is different than definitive, and um, and you can uh try to understand what it is that makes for the differences in those in those regional variations, and being engaged and alert is sometimes intellectually more draining than you want, but ultimately it gets you to a richer place. And to the um listener's question, um if you're gonna start curating your own collection, you're actually on the board of a group of people who are actually doing this, making a classics in the field, but not called that, but a classics in the field thing. Yeah, I work with the um International Association of Culinary Professionals, the IACP, which uh each year selects uh books that have been published. Uh I believe our criterion is now um basically 20 years earlier or or more, uh, and highlights them, books that have perhaps started to fall a little bit out of the public eye, or books which just deserve to be called to people's attention. Uh and it's a really interesting discussion each year when we sit down now, mostly by Zoom, uh, and start trying to work out what it is that we want to call attention to.
+
+[32:40] But um, there's still a lot of great books out there that need um that need to have light shown on them. And you know, but it never comes down to, oh my God, this is the best book ever written on this subject. It's more a matter of this book did something that advanced the field that it's in, that it took the inquiry in a fresh direction, or it revealed that there was an aspect to it that had been passed over before. And um, and that's often what the best books do. Um, so uh we're always looking for things like that, and we keep a pretty big list of stuff that we talk about year after year and sort of try and sift together a collection of things that represent a variety of of disciplines and and viewpoints so that it's not all like you know, cake books one year.
+
+[33:31] So that'd be a good place for for them to go and look and see these kind of books. That's a great place, yeah. And the IACP website has a list of uh culinary classics. Um other sites have them uh around too. I think eat your books.com uh has a list of the IACP culinary classics winners of.
+
+[33:49] All right, now there's a question that came in uh, and I'm gonna bend it towards a cookbook question, even though it is not. Okay. Uh Nate wrote in Curious about the best home mills for hard varieties of wheat. Any recommendations? Well, the only home wheat, the only home mills that I really use are the mock mill and the um uh I've used the mock mill uh and the um the one I have now, the coma, which are similar style.
+
+[34:13] Get the stone ones. I haven't used any of the uh bigger ones. Uh I had the one from Kitchen Aid is a nightmare, it's terrible, and I wouldn't use a micronizing one. I get a stone grinder, it's gonna get you the results closer to what you want. That said, I hear that a bunch of grain cookbooks.
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+[34:28] So Adam Leonte's book came out a year a couple years ago, and it was about kind of home milling and milling. But I hear that like uh post-pandemic, we're about to get a wave of grain and grinding books coming out. Is that true? Um I've seen only one, and I'm gonna blank on the author's name, a book called Southern Ground, just came out uh representing a woman who has a mill in North Carolina, and I feel really badly that I'm forgetting her name. Because it's an interesting book, and she's highlighting local bakers who are using local flowers and grinding, doing a lot of their grinding their own.
+
+[34:58] Um there's nothing that I'm aware of that's on the horizon between now and the end of the year. I think those books are still a little further away, given the time that talented people sometimes need to write a good book. Uh, it may not happen instantly. Yeah, I caught the tweet from a s person in publishing. So it's probably stuff that like the pitches have been accepted and they're in process and haven't fully handed the manual.
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+[35:14] No blads have been. So a blad is when you hand in the whole thing, like a year before they're gonna make the book, they make this mock-up of the design called a blad. Does anyone know what that stands for? No, uh we've investigated, but I hate to tell you this. They don't do blads anymore?
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+[35:34] Blads are like dying. They're uh the in the pandemic, they've just sort of blad of the past. Blads are are a thing of the past, yeah. Oh man. That sucks.
+
+[35:43] No more blads. Anyways, uh so like the first time other people who weren't in the thing would know about something was about a year in advance. It was this thing called the blad. What do they do now? They just tell you what they're it's all online.
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+[35:54] It's all online. They they send you an electronic catalog and they send you page mock-ups. Boring. I could spend hours talking about what a bad job they do about choosing those page mock-ups. But well, you know, I mean, I know when they did ours, uh, the book hadn't been laid out yet, so they had to just make some crap up.
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+[36:11] And they just pick pick some images they think is gonna are gonna sell to you, and then uh, you know, anyway. Um It's worse than that, but really I could spend a lot of time talking about that. Yeah. All right. If you're if you're an author, you should have a conversation with your editor very early on about what's gonna end up in the catalog, because it's often just terrible.
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+[36:31] And how much do you think that changes the what the initial buy is from places like uh I'll I mean, I will like take a book from a 25 to a two. If I feel like they don't understand if the choice of the images in the catalog suggests that the publisher doesn't understand what the appeal of the book is, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go strong on it. Huh. Yeah. It's I mean, it's it's big because I'm like, how are you telling me about this book?
+
+[36:58] What do you think is important for me to know? If you're not nailing that, if those images aren't consistent with everything else they're telling me, I I feel like they they don't know what they're doing. Ah, all right. All right, now uh you have brought some newer and some uh older classics. So let's just start uh why don't we do your your classics in the field?
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+[37:19] What do you which one of these books do you want to talk about first? Um let's start with uh cookbooks of the Jews of Greece. Oh, nice. So um this is a book that originally appeared in Greece, not surprisingly, in 1986. And it is a uh record of the food of a community of uh rich community of Jews that uh lived in Thessalonike uh in Greece up until the Second World War, at which point um the community was pretty much destroyed, they were dispersed, those who survived.
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+[37:54] And um in the in the 1980s, a man named Nicholas Stavrolakis began searching out and recording information about the food of these people. And um the book starts out with a really nice history of uh of the community and of Jews in that part of the world to to begin with. And every recipe is really well fleshed out with stories about who was making it, when they were making it, uh, whether the recipe he has is typical of, say, the people who had come to Thessaloniki from Crete or the ones who would come from from Spain. So it's a it's a really poignant document that's also been really well solidly edited so that it's very cookable if you're buying it to cook from it. Um it's the kind of passion project cooking that helps keep a sense of community going and a and a cultural uh level for groups of people that might otherwise be dispersed, cookbooks like this keep those people connected because the grandmothers who might have come to the United States and were cooking this food have probably passed away by now, but their uh kids and grandkids can keep using it.
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+[39:13] And is it still in print? It is still in print. It's a small press uh called Lake Abidas, which is based in Athens. Uh a guy named John Chappell runs it. He's uh he's serious and intrepid, and uh he's kept the book going since 1986.
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+[39:28] And you said he is an artist as well, so he illustrated it. I believe he did his own illustration, Stever Lakis did, yeah. He was uh he did exhibit in galleries and paintings and so forth. But there are photographs in here as well. So this is just like an all-around, like cool document.
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+[39:45] It is. It's it's it's about a community that is gone, and it's a way of getting back into that community, um, stepping back into uh another world. Did any of the recipes get absorbed by the non-Jewish community that remained, and then like they're just kind of orphans and nobody knows about it? I think it's probably more true that they were, I mean, that was happening all the time. I mean, things don't develop in a vacuum, and uh they were cross-pollinating each other down through the centuries.
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+[40:16] So some of these recipes you might find somebody who'd grown up in Thessaloniki who who wasn't Jewish who would be, oh yeah, we ate that too. Um it would be uh bizarre if if that hadn't happened, but I don't know enough to say exactly which ones. All right, cool. All right, but uh what do you want to do next? Um Creole Feast.
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+[40:36] Oh man, we could spend the whole we can spend the whole time on Creole Feast. You want to talk about this book? Well, this is a book that first appeared back in 1978. Uh it was just re-released uh last year by University of New Orleans Press. And it is recipes with profiles of 15 chefs, black chefs, uh, from New Orleans restaurants of the time.
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+[41:00] I would say five of them are women, which was relatively unusual for professional chef books of that time. But um you get to see, you know, sometimes there'll be three or four different recipes for basically the same dish, each of them attributed to a different chef, and you can see the individual variations in there, but also the profiles of the chefs and what they had to say about themselves, what they thought was important about what they did in their community is really interesting. Some of them are really emphasizing their professional accomplishments, some of them are emphasizing the people that they've worked with who have gone on to do things on their own. And it's a way of uh of saying of showing pride and profession that was still in the late 1970s really not happening for a lot of African Americans. Or really even chefs in like American chefs in general, yeah, individual chefs.
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+[41:52] I mean, there were famous people writing, right? But that we hadn't had the apotheosis of the chef yet, right? So African American voices not often heard, women not often heard professionally, and but also like individual chefs, not really either. Yes. This was been, you know, the the things that Andrew Friedman talks about in uh Chef's Drugs and Rock and Roll, the whole uh mystique developing around the the chef as sort of uh as a as a rock icon.
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+[42:21] This was before that. And these were people who had um a lot of them started out with the most basic kitchen jobs. They started out as dishwashers, and they ended up running restaurants that were famous not only in New Orleans but throughout the country. Right. And uh some of them, some of them were owners, some of them owner chefs, some of them were were chefs.
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+[42:40] The co-author, uh Burton, right, who is featured, he's on the cover of the original. Why didn't they use the original cover when they did the re-release? They decided it was, I'm I'm sure some art department somewhere thought, oh, we need something fresh and new. Why? The original cover of the book is like this classic like 70s writing creole feast, brown on the outside with like white piping and like the like the the chef with his with his you know outfit on, right?
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+[43:07] And this and he may have his token. I think he's standing like outside of a restaurant with uh filigree balcony in the background. Yeah, look at looking like badass New Orleans chef. You know what I mean? It's like, well, why would you why would you throw away something like that?
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+[43:22] What is this? What is that, a potato on it? What is this? Are they mushrooms? Rice?
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+[43:26] Garlic. Garlic, what is this? Maybe it's a rice. Rice. What is this?
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+[43:33] It's no offense to the art department, but come on, offense. It it doesn't really characterize the content of the book the way the other one did. But and you say though that they didn't butcher the inside of it. No, I I think that they were really true to it. They um uh they were fortunate enough to get an introduction from Leah Chase uh before she passed away.
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+[43:54] Um, in the reprint. In the reprint, yeah. So I think that's a nice, uh a nice addition to it. Uh she loom's large in the in the book. She's I think the third chef profiled.
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+[44:03] Yeah, she's definitely in there. She's significant. And she's talking about, you know, about her early career. It's it's I mean, it's a great way of looking at how people made their way in the world. And uh the what I what I like about it is, as you say, there's a short bio of the of the chefs, or it's not always a straight bio.
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+[44:23] Like, like a lot of them are like um I have to do it from memory though, uh, because the uh museum has my copy of the book, but the it was like uh they're just talking about like where they learned from what you know, kind of the people they grew up with, other other uh cooks that they admire and like you know what they were what they were good at, you know, like, oh that guy knew how to cook eggs. That guy could cook eggs better than anybody. You know what I mean? Like they're paying tribute to the people who came before them. Yeah, yeah, right.
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+[44:53] And so it's just like it's a great read. I will say, however, that like uh I you know I went to Duke Chase's and I've said this on the air before. I had the shrimp clementsau. I also had uh Willie May Scotch house chicken and uh Dookie Chase chicken on the same day within an hour and a half of each other, which is kind of an interesting side by a rare sideby. Uh but the shrimp clements so was the real money maker for me at Dukey uh Chase's.
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+[45:17] There are three recipes. I looked them up right before we started God on air in here, one of which is Leah Chase's, and I've seen her recipe published elsewhere because I think she used to make it whenever she would do the circuit of whatever she would do. And that recipe does not make the product that they that they serve. The product that they the recipe that is printed will not make something with the taste of the product that they serve at the restaurant. They have reserved some special secret something that turns the butter that they cook the shrimp and the potatoes and the mushroom and the peas into some sort of drug that requires like you must eat it all.
+
+[45:57] You have to keep asking for bread to eat it until it is done and you'll pour it over anything. Like and uh the the recipe, unless it unless it's miracle shrimp that they're getting out of the gulf there, which let's be honest, the Gulf shrimp are fine. They're fine. There's nothing wrong with the Gulf shrimp. Gulf hoisters.
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+[46:14] Uh no. Crap on them. That's why they have to be cooked. Gulf oysters are trash oysters. Like gulf shrimp are fine, right?
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+[46:21] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't like golf oysters, though, do you? I'm not a strong oyster eater, so my opinion there is weak.
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+[46:29] Uh anyways. Uh so yeah, check out that book. That's a definite uh classic in the field and easy to get now because it's been reprinted. Although look for the old field copy. If you come across an old copy, you'll understand exactly why Dave is so partial to it.
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+[46:42] Yeah. The recover is has impact. It's also, I mean, again, I wasn't able to put my hands on it, but um, for those of you who are of a certain age, it it is it has a good form factor. So it is the pages are relatively um, they're they're thin but they're thin but stout. They don't feel flimsy, but it's thin enough such that the but the covers are a relatively wide thickness relative to the thickness of the of the book as a whole, considering how many pages it's.
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+[47:16] I'm not being clear, but it's good a good object. The book itself feels like a good object in your hand, but it's not big. It's got a good book form factor, I think. You know, I have I'll have to go. We have a copy back in the store.
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+[47:29] I'll have to go back and my memory is it's only about yay thick, but it's got decent boards. Oh yeah, you can see on the air, right? It's not like the the new one with the kind of this like fluffy paper that everyone uses now is a good bit thicker than the original, but also smaller, right? The original one has a it's just more book like the original form. Well, hardcover I think is always more satisfying.
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+[47:53] Yeah, unless you're traveling, then you know I I like if I'm gonna fly with a book, it's a paperback. Yeah. Or if I don't care and I just need to absorb the information, paperback. But yeah, hardcover, hardcover all the way. Do you cook out of books or do you leave your books pristine?
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+[48:08] I cook out of books. My books are noticeably cooked from. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm I at one point I felt that I had some obligation to uh to preserve them.
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+[48:19] But then I just realized I was getting so distracted from the cooking that uh uh I really was not enjoying myself. So I mean, there are plenty of things that I I now make off the top of my head. But when I'm work cooking for something from the first time, when I'm really sort of getting down with the book and getting to know it, I'm gonna have it open and I'm gonna be reading the instructions and evaluating them. And yeah, it's gonna get me messy. There will be splashes and stains and nice.
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+[48:47] Uh Jack, did you say we had another Patreon question that was regarding uh books? There, the last one we got here is yes. So the question was are there any sorbet-focused cookbooks that go into heavy technique? Jeff has a half a page which mostly describes what sorbet is. And I just read through Hello, my name is Ice Cream, which is wonderful, but as I should have known, has nothing in the way of sorbet.
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+[49:13] I use.3% Cremodin 64. And target a bricks of 25 to 30, but find that my results are wildly inconsistent, with some sorbets being scoopable directly from the freezer and others being a bit icy even when tempered to negative 10 Celsius serving temperature. I'm reviewing churning techniques and even just purchased a home blast chiller to optimize the process, but would really like a resource with good recipes, blueprint ratios, and a discussion of more obscure additives like sugar, alcohol. It's such a resource exists. All the best, Andrew.
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+[49:44] Who makes a home blast freezer? I want one. I don't have space for it. Um I mean, is there one specifically on sorbet? Is that I mean, obviously, this is more technical.
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+[49:54] R buckle was redone by the University of Guelph people, right? Yeah, I haven't seen it though. Can't um do you like the original R buckle? Did that go into Sorbet? It's been a long time.
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+[50:05] I don't recall that it had a great deal about it, but it's been 15 years since I had a copy in my hand. Um I would go to Magoya's Frozen Desserts uh looking for that information. I don't absolutely know that it's there, but it would be a place I would check. And then there's a book by um Carolyn Liddell and Robin Weir that's been published both as frozen desserts and um ice cream sorbets and gelato. Um they have sorbet scattered through the book, but a good reference section at the back about bricks and sugar ratios and things like that.
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+[50:46] Um it's not the uh, it's not targeted at a professional situation the way the Magoya is, but uh Test and Blue Month all says it was the book that got him interested in making ice cream. So when was the Magoya when did the Magoya book come out? Wow. Um off the top of my set head, I would say 2005, but it hasn't been re re up because like a lot has happened. Like um, like unfortunately, like um, you know, t technology knowledge goes forward so fast now that old books sometimes are great documents, but on the technical side, they can seem they can seem like they need a rebuff, you know what I mean?
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+[51:28] Yeah, I mean, I I would also think that maybe Angelo Corvito's uh Secretos del Alado or Secrets of Ice Cream has sorbs in it, but it's also going to be about 15 years old. Um that's bilingual, it's really focused on using a Paco Jet. Is it Montagued? It is. Uh is it as poorly translated as uh as the Roca books was were, or no?
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+[51:52] Um it's about the same. Yeah. So great books, but they don't as much care. Oh, look, uh again, talking out of school, like you were saying earlier, they don't as much care about the English. So, like, you know, uh there was the the one that really caught me on the the first sous vide book in English was the Rokas book translated by Montague Press.
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+[52:12] Beautiful, great from El Clark Tenroca before they got their three stars. Great, very influential book, hated by Bruno Gusot, and uh they translate um dried cod as cod. And so all these people were trying to cook fresh cod at like 104 degrees Fahrenheit or whatever it was, and that's that's an abomination. That's a horror show. Yeah, we we've had words, and I should correct myself, it was not uh the Corpito book is actually from Bilbo, which is another Barcelona publisher specializing in professional books, but similar problems with translations.
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+[52:44] Yeah. Yeah, is it just that they is it cost too much or that they just don't care about us? I also I mean, my suspicion, and nobody will verify this for me, is that I think sometimes somebody says, Oh, yeah, my cousin was an exchange student in Indiana and for uh for a year, and so I'll get my cousin to do it. And they just don't bring people in who have uh equivalent technical expertise in English to do the translation. Yeah, I mean, how do you translate bacalau as cod without adding the word salt?
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+[53:18] I mean it it could be just sort of uh one of those things that is taken for granted that you know the difference. But yeah, it would be it would be helpful if if it were reviewed by somebody who who had experience in the kitchen. Speaking of the uh R buckle ice cream book, and I know you said you're not like you know so with the R buckle ice cream book. What do you think about this thing where people will take a reference that people have used for decades and then you know, do a new edition, and if the author's been dead more than X number of years, just remove the name. What do you think about that whole thing?
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+[53:55] Uh I think that's pretty low. Um sometimes it's it's done by publishers for whom the original work was a work for hire, and the publisher owns the work and they can you know hire whoever they want to do an update. But I mean, to be honest, the book wouldn't have its standing in the field if that original person hadn't been involved and they should be credited, even if somebody else's name now comes first. Right. They should keep it on there.
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+[54:20] I I think the R buckle was redone by one of the better-known people from the University of Guelph who has like an amazing dairy program, but again, I don't think they're gonna focus as much on Sorbet because they're so heavily dairy focused. But they're fantastically knowledgeable about dairy. No, no, no. Yeah. All right, what's your next uh what's your next book you got here?
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+[54:41] Um so I think I would like to call some attention to uh speaking of technical sourdough panettone and vianoiserie. Uh this is a recent publication, a book that came out in 2020 by Thomas Teffrey Chambellade, who is a French baker and instructor who is fascinated by the qualities of wheat. Um and this is the most detailed book I have ever seen in my life on the creation of Panettone, uh, which is something of uh an elusive subject for for bakers. These specialty enriched uh dough uh have incredible keeping qualities. They're culturally important, they're significant for holidays, and this is the first thing that I've seen dedicated to it.
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+[55:33] And unlike those cases where sometimes they you sort of have to make do with the only book because it is the only book. This is a a book that uh I think really delivers the kind of incredible technical detail you would want if you were setting out to create your own panettone program. Right, program. In other words, like this is not at all at all like dumbed down so that like, you know, one at home can knock out a passable panettone for themselves and be like, look what I made. It's not that at all.
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+[56:09] No, yeah, this is this is production quantities. Uh this is uh this assumes you have a sheeter. It's you know, it's you're you're you're in there at a at a really high level. I like the flow charts. It has incredible information on uh which yeasts are most commonly found in uh in sourdoughs in Italy, uh, which uh bacterias are are commonly found, how to encourage them.
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+[56:39] Uh it talks about processes that I have not seen documented anywhere else uh like refreshing or following the refresh of a dough, you'll you'll bathe it in a sugar water solution for 30 to 40 minutes uh to reduce the acidification. Um it's and it combines recipes from seven, I believe, uh leading practitioners in uh in Italy and France and one American. So another thing about Kitchen Arts and Letters, which I'm not gonna make you call people, I mean you probably wouldn't want to, so I'm not gonna ask you to call people out on on air, but another thing you get if you go there in person is uh they sell books like this to all of the to the professionals in New York and around the world who ask for this kind of book from them, and they also get feedback. So, for instance, I don't know if this is new, so I don't know if you've had it yet, but like often I would ask you, well, I know that people have been buying this book. What feedback have you been getting from people who've taken these books back to their kitchens or read them?
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+[57:42] What kind of feedback are you getting? Have you been getting any feedback uh from the community on this yet? The most direct feedback we've had on this is that uh that bakeries that have bought one have come back for come back for more. Um so I usually take that as a pretty good sign that somebody feels that the book has advanced their game. Uh I have not had an over-the-counter conversation with somebody who's used it.
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+[57:59] Uh I'm waiting for that day. I'd love that to happen, but I don't have that kind of feedback yet. Yeah, yeah. But in general, I think that's another benefit you get from dealing with real people is, you know, they can say, well, you know, as you're the again, they're not gonna call up, but I've had these conversations with you before where you're like, oh, I sold that to X, Y, and Z and they didn't get that much out of it. Or, you know, but they did get something out of this and blah, blah, blah.
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+[58:28] So it's useful information to have. Yeah, I mean, and we we absolutely welcome that. I mean, you know, whether it's uh by email or phone call, I mean, uh people call up and they say, hey, I need some new books, and I bought this last time, and you know, it didn't quite do what I needed it to do. And maybe it's a failure on our part, and we're learning about how to talk to people about the books. But sometimes you learn that some books are prettier than they are useful.
+
+[58:53] Oh, you want to call one out? No. Uh no. What about one that's really ugly but is really awesome? Oh God, that's um I'm sure, you know, I I've I've completely blanked on that.
+
+[59:07] But I mean, there are, I mean, that's sort of true of a lot of classic cookbooks, that they're they're not beautiful things. I mean, I can't get people to buy Marcella Hazan because it doesn't have photographs. Really? Breaks my heart. Really?
+
+[59:18] I have pounded my head on the desk after conversations with people because Marcella Hazan doesn't have photographs. Huh. Huh. People still just need the photos, huh? They I mean it's more than ever.
+
+[59:30] Instagram has changed the world. All right, well, what's the what's the last book you what's the last book you bought? Um I brought up a book called Curries and Bugles. Uh it's a cookbook of the British Raj by Jennifer Brennan. Uh she grew up in a third generation family.
+
+[59:45] Uh her grandparents had come to Britain or to India uh at the height of the British power, and she's documenting a way of life that pretty much vanished um in the 1940s there. Um it's it's this bizarre mix, fascinatingly bizarre mix of things like discussions of the difficulty of obtaining ham for a proper uh English breakfast to uh traditional Indian recipes that became a part of everyday life there. Um there are stories about life at the club, and it's just uh it's a time and a place that's that's gone. It probably deserves to be gone. I mean, I don't think anybody wants it to come back, but um it's a told without a lot of sentiment.
+
+[1:00:31] Uh she's not asking for it to be returned, but it's um how how old is she? When was it when did this come out? Book came out uh in 1990. Jennifer's got to be in her late 80s at this point. Okay, so she was uh she was a like a teenager when all this was going down.
+
+[1:00:49] Yeah, it's probably born, I would guess, mid-1930s. Yeah. But she's you know, she's got the stories from her parents and her grandparents. And all right. Now I do have to do this.
+
+[1:01:00] Uh Travis Hawkins asked what brand of ski kitchen scale I use. It doesn't have a brand. I bought it on eBay because it was cheap and it was being sold as an off-brand unit, but I'll I'll put it on Patreon. I'll find the eBay link that I did and we'll put it on a Patreon for you. Uh I just want to say Nesta Nastasia is gonna get a chance to make fun of me on Friday.
+
+[1:01:19] We went to go see the premiere of Fry's the movie, and Nastasia had to watch me on the air uh on the on the movie screen, and literally, like Eric McPear was there, like a bunch of people were there. And every time I came on, Nastasia would loudly go, boo, so that everyone in the audience could hear. That sounds like a checks out, Jack. Yeah. Or I'd say, this guy again.
+
+[1:01:49] Yeah, yeah. This guy again. And we were all in our pod. It was uh, it was uh, let's see, who is with us? It was uh Ariel.
+
+[1:01:56] Our friend Nick Golem. Who's gonna come on the show? Yes. So do you like olive oil? I like olive oil.
+
+[1:02:03] So this guy, this guy, uh Nick, he he goes around the world chasing the harvest. So he doesn't grow his own trees or even like produce, but he calls himself an ole, what does he call himself? An oleogenist? What does he call himself? He doesn't want to call himself anything anymore.
+
+[1:02:17] It's oh, so he needs new cards then. No, he just wants to be the guy that knows olive oil. The guy that knows olive oil. So we're gonna have him on and do like a multi-olive oil tasting. He's gonna bring, get this people, you ready to get excited?
+
+[1:02:29] Southern hemisphere new crop oils, which are just coming out now, which I've never even had someone ship me a southern uh a new crop Southern Oil. No experience, you know. No, no experience. Yeah. And uh next week, and this you gotta get this guy's book in your store.
+
+[1:02:41] Uh, next week on the show, send in your questions about knives. We are gonna have on uh for I was you know researching for the book uh sharpening books, and I'd always used old, outdated um a book called uh The Razor's Ed's Guide to Sharpening, which is a paperback that a lot of people bought because the guy can shave, the guy used to sharpen axes and then shave with them. That was his his thing. Uh and I was never much for the kind of super hardcore, you know, pristine Japanese whetstone kind of thing of a jig. So I was researching um, you know, oh, what's the current state of knives?
+
+[1:03:17] Knives and knife sharpening. And it was one of those things that, like coffee, if you haven't paid attention to it in the past 10 years, it's just shot way beyond your knowledge. Like it's just, it's just way beyond anything that you could imagine. And so this guy has a blog, uh, Larry Thomas does, called Knife Steel Nerds. And on it, he just debunks a lot of old myths on knife steel, but he has a lot to say about sharpening.
+
+[1:03:42] He has a boat ton of research. He wrote a self-published book called Knife Engineering. It's self-published, and I think you should get it at the store. I should have brought my copy of it to see whether you'd be interested in it. But you check it out, uh, check out the thing on it because right now it's only on Amazon, but I know that you probably have a lot of chefs who are interested in knives.
+
+[1:04:01] And this is very in the weeds. It's not about how to choose your favorite chef knife. It's more about what is the actual effect of edge angle on cutting ability. I want that. Yeah, what is the difference between powder metal powder metallurgy steel and knot, between the stainless and knot, new style, old style, Wootz uh Damascus, all the things like and full of micrographs of the steel and and how uh different treatments and steel sizes have different carbides, how that leads to like blade chip-out at the end, like just very in-depth technical.
+
+[1:04:36] And he is a steel, he is an automotive steel metallurgist by trade, but his dad is a well-known Damascus blade maker and has been for years, and his passion is uh knife steals. And so we can all so send in your questions for Patreon uh or you know, uh via Instagram or Twitter uh to cooking issues uh on uh anything you want to know about knives. So we're cutting geometry. You he has he has a lot to say about whether single blade uh bevels are gonna cut more at a particular angle than uh double will, and it's not what I thought necessarily, although I'm gonna have to have words with him about uh exactly what that means. Um initiating a cut versus not, serrated versus not, micro serrated versus not, what grit the sharpen with.
+
+[1:05:22] So it's fascinating stuff if you really want to get in the weeds on knives, which a lot of cooks do. Yeah. Uh so yeah, send us questions on that, and and I'll you know, I'll shoot you his info. You gotta check out his book. You should have it.
+
+[1:05:33] I absolutely yeah. Uh well, uh so we're we're we're done. I thought you were gonna make you gonna make more fun of me for the fries. We're over time. Well, I thought we should have our new Patreon before we leave too.
+
+[1:05:45] What do we got? Ready? Let's see if I botch these names. Uh by the way, do you know Harold McGee is one of our Patreon subscribers? Oh, isn't that nice?
+
+[1:05:55] Yeah, yeah. The Harold McGee. The McGee. Timothy Helmuth, Ross Brown, Ted Anderson, Ben Pasquale, Schmidt and Bender, Matthew Murphy, David Jensen, Adam Squadowitz. Oh, that's I didn't get that one.
+
+[1:06:10] Andrew Monks, Inconceivablist, Howard Mintz, Alex Cheshire, Benjamin Dweck, Dirk Doe, and Matt Sporer, who subscribed during the show. Oh, nice. Thanks. We appreciate it. Thanks, guys.
+
+[1:06:22] Thanks for helping us out. Uh, spread the word that we're here now at New Sand Studio, uh, New Stand Studios at Rockefeller Center. And uh they knew RSS is gonna be on your iTunes slash Spotify slash stitching or whatever in the heck people do now is stuff. Good news. It is, it is now, Dave.
+
+[1:06:38] So we're live. So tell tell your buddies. I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear any more about oh, cooking issues. Did you stop recording? No, we're here.
+
+[1:06:44] Joe, are we here? We're here. There you go. All right. Uh Mac, thanks so much for coming on as usual.
+
+[1:06:52] Uh I appreciate it. Uh hopefully we'll have you have you on again sometime. Thank you. All right. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave, our only host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stan Studios of Rockefeller Center. Joined as usual with Joe Hazen, the engineer in the booth. How you doing? Hey, I'm doing great.
+
+[0:23] How are you? We got Jackie Molecules out there in California. Jack, you're doing it. Hey, I'm doing great. Yeah, good.
+
+[0:29] Yeah, I'm here. Yeah. I just made it before the rain. I was biking like a demon. So it feels like it's rained on me because I'm sweating so hard.
+
+[0:36] And for those of you that pay for the Patreon video, like you'll be able to see that I'm dressed like a picnic table, right, Joe? I'm dressed like a picnic table. Yeah. So uh Nastasia forgot all of, you know, during the pandemic, what it's like to try to drive into New York City, like at any time of day. It's a crab shoot.
+
+[0:53] So she's gonna be here in a couple of minutes because uh she got caught in the never-ending nightmare of traffic that is I-95, the worst corridor in the east. Am I wrong about this? Anyone? Anyone gonna defend I-95? You're cursed.
+
+[1:07] No way. No, no defense for I-95. Even down in South Florida. The whole thing's trash. Like it's like Eisenhower's rolling over in his grave.
+
+[1:16] This is what we this is what we ended up with, you know. Like, God forbid we do have some sort of like domestic emergency that requires moving a bo a boatload of stuff up and down the coast. And what we have is I-95. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, uh not only it's not just that it's a bad road.
+
+[1:32] I'm sorry, it's the last thing I say about it, because we have a lot to get to today. It's not just that it's a crappy road, but like literally, like you feel punked by it. They'll like strip a lane off for no reason so that the traffic gets clogged, and then at it again, like literally a hundred yards down the road. You know what I'm saying? It's just garbage.
+
+[1:50] It's filth. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Uh, and by the way, if you are listening live, if you're a Patreon member listening in live, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917 410 1507. Oh, before this, we are now, by the way, on the iTunes.
+
+[2:05] What are the other things, Jack, that people get their podcasts from? Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, basically anywhere you can find podcasts. Right. So if you're hearing me, you need to resubscribe to us on the new RSS. Don't ask why.
+
+[2:21] Don't ask why. Who cares why? Right? Someone got on my on the Twitter and was like, hey Dave, can you go on the old feed and just make like a 20 second podcast and say to join the new feed so that the old people can get it? And I was like, dude, I wish.
+
+[2:37] I wish I could do that. I can't, and I don't want to talk about it. Just join the new feed. Joe, it's like pushing one button, right? Yeah, if you want to do that.
+
+[2:47] And for everybody that is has already subscribed, um, you know, rate put a rating on there. Rate, review, subscribe, as they say. Yeah, because our old our old ratings. Our old ratings, they don't propagate. I can't, we can't get the 11 years of work and we can't propagate the reviews.
+
+[3:04] Am I wrong about this, Jack? We cannot transfer the reviews, but we can get new reviews. We can get new reviews. So if you like us, leave a review. And if not, maybe you can forget.
+
+[3:14] You know what I'm saying? If you like us, leave a good review. If not, maybe you could forget. Okay, so today we have live from Pittsburgh, special guest, first time on the show. Uh the reason is Dr.
+
+[3:24] Laron Thomas. How you doing? Good. How are you guys? Doing well.
+
+[3:29] So, first of all, Pittsburgh. Uh, do you have any what what's uh I've only been to Pittsburgh once uh and also to uh outside to the steel area when we're talking about steel Braddock once. Love the Joe Majorac sculpture. Do you like that sculpture? Uh yeah.
+
+[3:45] Big steel bending. Do you know you're familiar obviously you're familiar with the Joe Majorak legend, right? No. Really? No, okay.
+
+[3:53] So tell me. So uh I I don't ask again, don't ask why, but like, you know, years ago I went through kind of an American folklore rabbit hole, and there's all of these uh in the after the industrialization of America, uh there was a series of legends, like John Henry being the most famous of kind of humans versus machines, right? So like kind of the like the the human spirit as it goes through industrialization. But uh Joe Majorak, which is typically built around, you know, an Eastern European, uh most accurately probably Hungarian, kind of a uh uh a model of a of a kind of like hardworking uh immigrant in the steel mills, is kind of the opposite of John Henry. Like they're gonna, I think the legend goes, they're gonna shut down the steel plant, and they're doing one last uh melt.
+
+[4:42] And Joe Majorak, who's like the strongest steel man, you know, anywhere, jumps into the melt and becomes part of the steel. And that is the greatest melt that had ever been produced up to that time, made the best steel. And so, like that was the steel that made like that, like I guess that plant or that whatever great. And so Joe Majorak is like the human that's literally part of the steel. So it's basically saying, you know, steel workers are literally part of this like incredibly strong material that built the country.
+
+[5:18] So it's kind of the it's turning the human versus machine kind of it's on on its head. It's like human as part of the machine. So it's kind of cool. And that's why that giant, there's that giant dude bending that girder in the uh out there in Braddock. So yeah.
+
+[5:29] Yeah. I don't know if that's a happy story or not. Uh uh humans are are uh carbon-based, and we need carbon for steel. Yeah, I guess that was his contribution. Well, you know, it's also like we all gotta go, right?
+
+[5:49] We all gotta go. Like, you know, when I'm done, I'm done. Joe Majrak, you know, he's part of whatever, whatever the you know, coolest steel thing at the time was anyway. Uh so what caught my eye, uh, the reason you're on the show, and I've mentioned this is uh I was writing my own book, not on knives on cooking, and I thought, okay, well, you know, uh everyone who writes a cookbook has to say something about knives, right? And so I you know, I I hadn't researched the topic in years, years, you know, maybe a decade or better.
+
+[6:18] And I was like, well, let me see what the current state of knowledge of knives is, thinking that it would be a little more than I had uh looked up like, you know, 10, 12 years ago. And it turns out that much like coffee or baking bread or any one of these other kind of uh, you know, things that seems relatively simple, you know, if you're not inside the thing, a lot has happened, a lot of knowledge has been gained, and a lot of people have been studying it quite furiously. And so uh, long story short, it turns out I didn't know uh a damn thing about it. And then uh I came across your blog and your book, Knife Engineering, which by the way, I know you sell primarily on Amazon, but you should think about putting it in this one store called Kitchen Arts and Letters in New York that cooks uh go to. Now, your book is not for cooks, it's for literally knife engineers or anyone who cares about how a knife works.
+
+[7:12] So, like, have you had a lot of cooks coming to you and and asking you questions or not? Uh well, my dad, uh Devin Thomas, he makes custom kitchen knives. So, I mean, at the very least, I talk to him almost every day. Uh I also go to uh a forum called Kitchen Knife Forums, which has a bunch of uh super geeked out uh kitchen knife guys that love buying expensive knives and and cooking things with them, sharpening them, you know. So I I'm familiar with with those groups.
+
+[7:43] Uh when I first started getting into knives as a teenager through my dad, those were some of the first places I went where um there's an old dead forum called Knife or in the kitchen on knifeforums.com, which completely doesn't exist. And then some of those people uh went to Kitchen Knife Forums. So uh I've I've been in that that group for a while, and sometimes I pay more attention than other times. I mean, there's so many new brands and and things. But yeah, I've heard from a lot of those guys, kitchen knife makers and and the guys that buy too many expensive kitchen knives.
+
+[8:16] Well, that's an interesting question. So um, so for those that don't know, yeah, you say your your dad is a well-regarded maker of uh of uh pattern welded Damascus uh knives, right? And so and you're also uh like uh a PhD metallurgist by trade. So you're not just like another internet joker. Yeah, well, I am, but I also have a PhD in metallurgy.
+
+[8:41] Right, right, right, right. So so uh right, but you're you're an automotive metallurgist, right? Yeah, I work for U.S. Steel Research, uh, and I I developed new sheet steels for cars. And so there's a lot of uh competition there, like aluminum is loom looming as an alternative and those kind of things.
+
+[8:59] And there's uh constant uh desires for higher gas mileage, better safety and things. And so the the automotive companies are really big on stronger materials, more ductile materials, more formable materials, and they want it to still be weldable in the same way, which is difficult or impossible to achieve. So it's an exciting area for development. Well, i uh aluminum, huh? What's old is new again.
+
+[9:24] Uh you know, for those of you that you know, all of the old like hand a lot of the old handcrafted like old rolls and stuff were all aluminum back in the in the 30s and 20s, right? But in this context, I think we can all agree that aluminum is a terrible material for a knife. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But wait with the wait just to go back to your automotive stuff, because I can't because I'm curious. Sorry about this.
+
+[9:46] But like is it coming back just because of computerized tig welding that it like that they don't need to worry about not being able to weld it well anymore or or or because there's is welding so much easier for them now that they can bring aluminum back. I believe that in the Ford F one fifty, so its outer body is aluminum, not the not the like the inner structure of the car that handles crash loads and things, but I believe that is epoxy. So they basically just glue it all together. Huh. Uh but the the current automotive infrastructure is all designed for spot welding.
+
+[10:19] So uh that that is a big advantage for the current steel industry. But the the desire to use aluminum is because of its density advantage. Um and we can use thinner steel for lighter weight, and we do that by making the steel stronger. So the the challenge is making the steel stronger, but still be able to form it into complex shapes while being very strong, uh, because those two things contradict each other. Uh so I think we can stay ahead of aluminum.
+
+[10:44] Plus, aluminum requires a lot of energy to produce and a recycle. And so with the full life cycle of a vehicle, steel is is comparable or in some cases a little bit better. So I think steel's here to stay, or at least that's what uh that's what my CEO tells me. Right. That's what US Steel says.
+
+[11:04] That's such a surprise. Yeah. Hey, look, everyone in terms of knives, though, I guess yeah, we can all agree. Well, that's actually not the not everyone doesn't agree. Someone asked, uh someone asked, in fact, uh Capri Sun, one of our longtime listeners said, uh, what makes one knife steel easier to sharpen?
+
+[11:21] We'll get to that later. But are ceramic knives a better choice for a non-enthusiast home cook. Well, the the advantage of ceramic is that it's extremely wear resistant. And so when it comes to wearing a knife edge, it will last a really long time. Uh on the flip side, it's very brittle.
+
+[11:39] And so it's prone to chipping. Uh, it's very difficult to sharpen effectively. You need at least diamond abrasives, and even with those, it's difficult to get a sharp edge on it. It does not like to be sharpened. Uh, and that's not just removing material, but just getting it to take a fine edge because it's so brittle.
+
+[11:57] So uh my take on ceramic is don't buy them generally. Uh steel is is much more durable, and uh you can have knives that that last a long time in between sharpenings with steel. Uh and I I think wear uh of the edge is not even the dominant mechanism all the time of of dulling your edge. So I think going just for more wear resistance is not the direction I would go. I think a more balanced set of properties is more desirable.
+
+[12:27] So I would prefer steel. Right. I know a lot of people who go for really the like this new generation of really cheap ceramics, and then just when they're when they're done, pitch them, which is not necessarily a sustainable way to live. But um I don't know. Yeah.
+
+[12:42] So uh and when you but when you obviously I think we all know, or maybe we don't, that the harder something is, typically it's it's more brittle, but the the it's ceramics aren't on the same curve as steel, right? So are they even more brittle for their specific hardness than steel is or no? Uh ceramics are almost always very high in hardness, usually a bit beyond where we typically take steel to. Um, I mean, we could go harder on steel than what we do now, but we don't, uh, you know, for several reasons, among them it being too brittle. Uh, but ceramics is very hard, very wear resistant, and very brittle.
+
+[13:24] So I I mean I think some enterprising ceramic companies have have made some ceramic knives that have done well, but I still think steel is the preferred material. All right, now let's let's talk about steel uh for a minute. Uh maybe go through like the because we don't want to get too into the weeds because our average listener, while they like a lot of technical information, isn't specifically a steel person. So you want to just go through, you know, uh kind of the the different phases of steel and you know how they relate to the knife, like the the one minute pitch of how you know knife steel is is is done, like what a carbide is, et cetera. Yeah, I don't know exactly how in depth we should go.
+
+[14:07] Uh you were talking to me about austenite before the show. Austenite is uh a phase of steel that's non-magnetic, so austenitic stainless steel is more common in in like cookware, pots and pans and sinks and things. Right. So that's your 304, your 316, like all the stuff that we're accustomed to have all of our pans be made out of, right? Yeah, so knives are are almost always uh a phase called martensites, which is the hardest phase of steel generally.
+
+[14:37] So when they when they heat it up hot, it actually transforms to austenite first at high temperature. And then they quench it in oil. If you've seen that show forest and fire, you've seen them quench knives in oil. And that that is to lock in carbon. And when you lock in the carbon into the steel it becomes very hard and it's a phase called martensite.
+
+[14:57] Right, right. Uh then carbides are you've heard carbide before probably like with tooling and things, which is just a hard particle formed between carbon and another element in steel a lot of times is carbon or you can form vanadium carbides if you add vanadium to the steel for example. And so those are hard particles in the steel and they they give you higher wear resistance but also decrease your toughness. So in a lot of steels we try to uh with knives anyway, you want it the right proportion of carbide and the right type of carbide to get the right balance of of toughness uh which is resistance to to chipping and wear resistance the resistance to wear. So I mean we can be much more specific on the hardness and the level of wear resistance and things than we could with a ceramic for example.
+
+[15:44] Right, right. So you go through this, you go through the whole process. I think pretty simply, you know, it explained it pretty well in the book. So I mean, see whether this is right for for the listener, because I think it's helpful to think about how how the knife works, right? So the important thing in gent for for most like you know, lower you know, normal steels, right?
+
+[16:03] Car carbon, right, is not soluble in this, you know, to a high extent in the steel normally, right? So you heat it up, it all becomes what's the how do you pronounce it again? Austin Austenite. Austenite? Austin, I say it again.
+
+[16:16] Mm-hmm. Yeah, it becomes austenite. Because as you heat it, right, the crystal structure of the of the iron itself changes such that the iron the the carbon can go into solution, right? So now you have this thing, right? Now in a 304, they add crap to it, or 316, like the kitchen stainless steel non-magnetic, they add stuff to it so that even after it cools down, it stays in that Austin Austin.
+
+[16:37] Say it again. I can't can't get it right. My mind won't be. I think I think Steve Austin, the six million dollar man, and I can't think of anything else. Austinite.
+
+[16:44] Yeah, we we can say uh Austin or Austin, Texas, and then you just add ice. All right, there's the end. There you go. So like it they add a bunch of stuff so that when it cools, it stays in that form, and that's why it's non-magnetic, but that stuff also is not hard, right? Right.
+
+[17:00] So that's correct. That's right. So like that's why if it's not magnetic, it's not gonna make a good knife, right? For steel. If it's not magnetic, it c like it b just because it's it is magnetic doesn't mean it's gonna be good, but you know that if it's not magnetic, it's not gonna be a good knife steel, right?
+
+[17:16] Yeah, I mean, maybe we could make some funky steel that would be non-magnetic and still be good in a knife. I'm not aware of any. Right. So most knives are not non-magnetic anyway. I mean the the non-magnetic steels like the 304 and 316, they have to add a bunch of nickel to them, some of them have an elybodenum.
+
+[17:33] So it's more expensive. It's cheaper for them not to use those steels anyway. Right. All right. So you have this hot steel the in Austenite with all of the carbon in it.
+
+[17:41] Then you quench it real fast and it forms this like weird thing, martensite, which is hard as hell, right? But even harder still, the excess elements and carbon form these things called carbides, right? And then that's the super hard stuff that forms the little almost sand grains inside of these matrix of uh steel grains. Is this pretty much accurate? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[18:04] You've got a bunch of little like spherical particles in the steel called carbides, and those resist wear. Like you said, there so like if we have soft steel, it uh relatively, then we've got these hard particles, then they help to resist the wear of the edge. Right. And a carbon carbide is what exactly? It's it's it's a a metal complex with carbon.
+
+[18:29] Yeah, so the most basic is an iron carbide, also called cementite. Um so in a simple carbon steel, you'd have cementite particles in there. And it's just uh the the composition is Fe3C, three iron atoms for every carbon atom. So just you you put iron and carbon together and it makes an iron carbide. And that's the softest of all of the carbides, right?
+
+[18:55] Yeah, yeah, at least for uh for carbides that you normally find in in steel. Um the hardest would be like a vanadium carbide or a tungsten carbide. So some of the the really high wear resistant steels will have high percentages of vanadium added to them. Okay. So now when you're talking about just carbon steels where it's just uh cementite, which is the iron carbide and martensite, is that that's what?
+
+[19:20] Is that my like my 1950s like uh four-star sabotier? Is that what that stuff is? Yeah, exactly. And even uh some kitchen knives in in carbon steels today are using something similar. Um or like the Japanese uh kitchen knives made in uh white number one or shirogami number one.
+
+[19:42] That's just a high carbon, simple steel. All right. Now uh I happen to love those knives. Is that like what do you think? In the kitchen, I I love them because they're so easy to sharpen.
+
+[19:54] And you know, I touch them up every time I every time I use them, I touch them up. And so, you know, my carbon steel Yanagi makes real fast work of fish. And my, you know, my sabotier is when I'm slicing steak, I always go for my sabatier. Is that am I making a mistake there? Or is that a decent like what what am I giving up there?
+
+[20:17] Well, you're talking about the broader question of just carbon versus stainless, and a lot of the information out there is not that useful because the category of carbon steel is a really big wide open set of steels, and so is stainless. And so you can have non-stainless steels that behave very similarly to a stainless steel, apart from they will rust pretty easily. And you can have stainless steels that have some of the characteristics of the simple carbon steels. So uh when we talk about the very general differences, if you read an article saying carbon versus stainless steel, it'll talk about carbon steels with low wear resistance that are easy to sharpen. Uh they might say that it's higher in hardness, uh, versus a stainless steel which has a coarser structure, it's more difficult to sharpen to a really fine edge, uh, but it's stain resistant.
+
+[21:10] Uh but there are our series of stainless steels, uh, sometimes called like a stainless or a stainless razor blade steel or um a sweetish stainless steel that can have very fine microstructure with characteristics that are pretty similar to uh a simple carbon steel uh with a little bit higher wear resistance just because it's chromium carbides instead of iron carbides. Uh but then carbon steel is uh too generic of a term. So I use non-stainless instead. Uh because a carbon steel refers to something specific and we use it generally. Uh so a carbon steel is just iron carbon and some trace like manganese silicon.
+
+[21:50] Non-stainless encompasses everything that we call a carbon steel. And some of those with high like vanadium contents, chromium contents, and things, they behave like those stainless steels that some people like and some don't. Um so yeah, uh trying not to get uh too in the weeds. But you can have stainless steels that are like carbon steels and carbon seals that are like stainless steels. And so talking about one versus the other doesn't always make sense.
+
+[22:13] Right. Now with these simple carbon steels, if they're they're perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with them. If you enjoy sharpening them, uh then that's great. But I would also recommend trying some of those uh very fine microstructure stainless steels and get the benefits of stain resistance at the same time.
+
+[22:28] That are that are just as easy to sharp sharpen. Yeah, yeah, just as easy to sharpen. They take just as good of an edge and they resist rust. So let me uh let me we'll get back into specific steels in a second. So here we have if it if it's just carbon and it it drops out.
+
+[22:45] But if you have other like alloying elements in there, the carbides precipitate out if that's the correct term, as whatever they are. Like you said, vanadium, tungsten, chromium, all of all of these other things, right? So what I thought was really interesting, and I think our crew might find interesting is in your book there's a whole boatload of micrographs that you paid to get shot of different steels. Uh oh no, not paid to get. I took all of them.
+
+[23:12] Oh, really? Oh. I polished all of the steel, I etched it all in acid, and I imaged them all under a microscope. Yeah, even fancier. Yeah, nice.
+
+[23:21] Anyway, but I should have paid someone to do it. It was a lot of work. It looks like a lot of it looks like a lot of work. But something that I think I hadn't considered before, because uh something if you read about steels a lot, you hear about powder steel, powder steel versus uh, you know, you know, older style uh steels. And I didn't realize what a difference it makes in terms of what's happening where the cutting is happening.
+
+[23:44] What like the size of the carbide and the distribution of the carbide, what a big kind of deal that can be in terms of how strong that when I say strong, I mean how resistant to being effed up that that knife edge is and like how like the bigger carbides can literally just tear out of the of the edge of the of the of the blade or prevent you from sharpening down to a sharp edge in the first place. You want to talk about that? Yeah, well, if you imagine your your knife edge, you know, it's coming down at a tiny triangle at the end. We'll call it the tip of your edge. The radius of that tip is gonna be about a micron uh in diameter.
+
+[24:23] So if you you think about a little tiny circle at the tip of your triangle, um, if it's dull, that's gonna be very rounded, and if it's sharp, that's gonna be very triangular. Uh and and it can get down to a micron or even finer. And so a lot of steels have have carbides that are much larger than a micron. And so that makes it more difficult to sharpen them. And they'll tend to wear down to kind of the average size of the carbide pretty quickly.
+
+[24:44] And so your maximum sharpness then is limited by the carbide size. Yeah, to some extent, though with the sharpening skill, you can get most any steel sharp. It'll just be more difficult because you kind of have to get those carbides out of the edge to get it really sharp. But so powder metallurgy is made to keep the carbide size small. Now, a carbon steel is pretty easy to keep the carbide small because they will dissolve at relatively low temperature.
+
+[25:22] So you dissolve them while you're forging and then uh get them to reprecipitate at a lower temperature. You did use that term correctly earlier. Um if we precipitate them at a lower temperature, then they're nice and small, just because the diffusion rate is lower. But as we're getting into higher alloy steels, like adding in vanadium or chromium for a stainless steel or a highly wear-resistant steel, those carbides will form in the liquid and they grow to be quite large. And then you can't really break them up very effectively during foraging.
+
+[25:52] So uh in a normal steel production, they've got the liquid steel and they pour it into a mold and then it just cools very slowly, you know, a multi-ton ingot of steel. And with it cooling so slowly, those carbides can grow and get really large and undesirably large. So with powder metallurgy, they pass liquid steel through a nozzle that gets sprayed by nitrogen gas. And uh, as it gets sprayed by the gas, it solidifies little droplets of the steel. So it becomes a a powder of steel.
+
+[26:22] So each of those droplets gets instantly solidified, uh, kind of like each one is a tiny little ingot. And then they put the powder in a in a can, they call it, and they hip it, hot isostatic pressing to get it all to solidify together. Now they don't melt it, it's just a high temperature where they bond to each other. And then it becomes a solid ingot of steel. And so that gives you a combination of the high alloying for uh high wear resistance and other things that we want, but also with the fine microstructure that we want for high toughness resistance to chipping and uh fine edges in knives.
+
+[26:58] Right, because the the the ability to stay tough at much higher hardnesses, uh looking at your charts, radically better for some of these powder steels, right? Yeah, it's greatly controlled by the carbide structure. If you've got a lot of carbide, large carbides, those are all bad for toughness. Because if you've got a this hard brittle particle, it's easy to initiate a crack in steel. So they they really will want to start uh a chip there because it just the stress required to to crack it is much lower than if we've got this fine distribution of little carbides interspersed in the steel.
+
+[27:33] Now, are there any of these powder steel, powder steels that are actually read readily available in kitchen knives? I mean, uh w what are people pushing now that is in this kind of range? You know what I mean? Like you hear uh the c what are the common kitchen knife stuff? VG 10, um the uh AUS series 8 and 10, uh the and then in US, what but it's 440 C is common, but these aren't powder, right?
+
+[27:59] Are any of those powder? No, those are all conventionally produced steel. Uh some of the more common powder metallurgy steels are uh SG2, also called Supergold II, also sold as R2. Those are in Japan. Shun uses those, right?
+
+[28:16] Sorry, who? Shun uses those, don't they? I think some of the Shun's commercially available knives. I haven't used one. Yeah.
+
+[28:23] Yeah, I'm sure. And a lot of the uh a lot of other higher end Japanese produced kitchen knives. So some that aren't uh inordinately expensive, at least compared to how expensive they can get. Uh a little bit less common in Japan are steel ZDP 189 and Cal REX. In the US, uh we have uh S35 VN.
+
+[28:47] You love that one, right? That that shows up well in your ratings. Yeah, it does, though it's been beaten out by another steel I designed that is not readily available in kitchen knives yet. Oh, hold up, hold up. Wait, what's this new steel?
+
+[29:02] Uh the new steel is CPM Magna Cut. So that's a steel that I designed. Uh and the the big thing that it does is with stainless steels, even powder metallurgy ones, they have a coarser structure than non-stainless powder metallurgy steels because the chromium carbides tend to be larger, even with powder metallurgy. And so the best steels in terms of toughness and wear resistance edge retention are non-stainless powder metallurgy steel. Uh but what I did is I took a new approach where we balance the chromium and carbon correctly, where we removed the chromium carbide from the the structure and only have the hard small carbides that we want for the best combination of properties.
+
+[29:45] So magna cut. After it was powdered, you removed it. No, so we there's still there's still chromium in the steel, but you can dissolve all of the chromium carbide and keep the chromium in solution, it's called, so that it only is contributing to corrosion resistance and not to carbide. Because chromium carbide sucks, right? It's like it's the isn't it like it's it's not a good, it's not a hard carbide, right?
+
+[30:09] You don't want chromium carbide, correct? Well well, it it's harder than iron carbide, but for for the very best combination of properties, you want a small volume of really hard carbides as opposed to more of softer carbide. Right, right. Uh because if you have more soft carbides, they're still very brittle and make the steel brittle. Where if you have a small amount of very hard carbide, it gives you the wear resistance just from the hardness of the carbide, but they're small and you have a small amount of them.
+
+[30:37] So the seal still has high toughness and resistance at shipping. So do you think this CPM magna cut is going to be inexpensive enough for a kitchen knife or no? It will show up in kitchen knives, but uh it will show up in in American custom made kitchen knives. It will show up in in higher end um production kitchen knives. So some of these are made in the United States, but they're they're usually more in like the three, four hundred dollar range.
+
+[31:03] So not the hundred dollar stuff that that you'll find at your kitchen supply store. Well, um it will definitely be in those knives. Right. So what are you getting like from a practical standpoint? Because a lot of people are gonna wonder just from a practical standpoint, like what like what am I getting between, let's say, you know, a a $65.
+
+[31:25] We'll talk about geometry of blades in in a minute, but like a $65 uh German made, whether it's made in traditional German style with the fat bolster and all that, whatever, but like a German style knife, like, you know, Mercer, Wurstov, Henkel, like from the low to the higher price, to like um, you know, I think a lot of our crew is probably paying like the hundred and change dollar for like decent end Japanese Western knives, right? And then the next jump up maybe like the higher end uh kind of Japanese chef knives and then like custom uh Americans or anyway. I would s cause I would say like our average listener probably is buying like Masono US U UX tens or Max or or thing things like this. So like if that's the kind of quality that they're used to, right? Like what are they gonna get by moving to a super steel from a custom knife obviously they're gonna get the fact that it's custom, the fact that it's awesome, that a human being made it, that it's you know, it's got all that tactile niceness of being made by a human.
+
+[32:27] Um but what are they gonna get in terms of making like it more fun to slice a tomato. Yeah. Well that y you've covered a lot of ground in your question. We'll try to hit some of those things. So one is that traditionally the the German made kitchen knives have been considered high end or the best.
+
+[32:47] If if you read an an article in these old magazines or books about how to pick out a knife, they'll talk about the forged bolster and the full tang and other things that don't actually matter at all. Um and then a lot of those German knives have very thick edges on them and they just don't cut well. So the the number one factor for how well a knife cuts is just it being thin. And of course you've got to keep it sharp. Uh so the the old European made knives are are simply too thick to cut things.
+
+[33:17] And you'll see that some of them are trying to make uh thinner knives, and that's good. I'm glad we're pushing them in that direction. They also will use uh relatively low-end stainless steel that is not very hard. And uh when when steel is soft, it's hard to sharpen because it's kind of mushy and it doesn't hold an edge very well. Uh then we have the wave of Japanese kitchen knives, which have become much more popular over the past 20, 30 years.
+
+[33:43] And like you said, they can be more in the 100, maybe 200 range, and they're usually thinner uh with harder steel, and they they will typically cut much better and cut longer than those European-made knives. And so that's probably the sweet spot for a lot of people in terms of cost. Um now, why would you go to anything higher end? Uh I mean, that that's always hard to say. There's there's always a you're getting less for your dollar the higher you go up in price.
+
+[34:12] You know, when you're getting a $2,000 kitchen knife, it's not going to cut $1,800 better than your $200 knife. But will it cut like $100 better for an extra $1,000? That's the question. Yeah, yeah. And it won't, it won't do that.
+
+[34:29] Now, there are some knives in in between, like even higher-end Japanese-made kitchen knives or uh what are sometimes called mid-tech knives in the US, or just where it's uh kind of a semi-custom product where instead of you know making the handle slabs and then gluing them to the seal, where there's always going to be like some gap, or it's a it's not exactly perfect, you know what I mean? Uh instead they they glue on the handles and then they then they shape it all together so that it's perfectly flush with the tang. Um they round the spine. They they round the choil of the of the knife so that everything is smooth and and nicer and better. And so some of those are are more in the $300 to $500 range.
+
+[35:14] Uh so in terms of pure performance, no, there's not much reason to go even higher than that. But I am friends and and family with a lot of custom knife makers. So I can't I can't make them too angry. Yeah. Well, well, but I I guess my my thing is also let's look at and by the way, Nastasia is uh has joined us.
+
+[35:32] Hi. How are you done? Um done. So Jack, so uh and Jack, since I don't like I don't have the on my list of questions that the Patreon people wrote in, I don't have their names. Maybe you should read them so we can get their their their names.
+
+[35:45] Uh but uh sure. Yeah, why don't you read some of those uh oh I had one we'll go through the Patreon first and then I'll because I could ask questions forever. Sure. So let's go with Monty, who asks any experimentation with cryogenic hardening. They do it with wood plane blades, but I'm not sure if it would be applicable to knives.
+
+[36:05] Kitchen knives. Yeah, cryogenic processing is definitely done on knives, especially in mid-range, higher end knives. Um it usually advertised if they're doing it, though not always. Uh I don't know if I can give a really short explanation for what happens, but uh we talked about quenching the steel to transform it to the hard martensite. Uh the the conversion to marten site is controlled by temperature.
+
+[36:33] So if you get below a certain temperature, then it has fully transformed. If it does not fully transform, like we stopped the quenching at some temperature like 300 degrees, then it would be martensite plus the soft austenite that we don't want. Uh when we add other alloying elements to steel, the temperature of that transformation goes down, just like in the austenitic stainless pots and pans, where they they alloy it up so that that transformation is so low that we never get to it at room temperature. The same thing can happen with knife steels. When we add high carbon or high chromium, uh the transformation uh is shifted down where it's not complete at room temperature.
+
+[37:10] And so if we go into dry ice or liquid nitrogen or some other freeze treatment, then we can more completely transform that to make sure that it's a nice hard structure and doesn't have any of that soft, undesirable austenite in it. Uh now it gets bigger than that because there's a cryogenic industry that wants to tell you that they double, triple, quadruple the wear resistance just by using cryogenic processing. Uh in my experiments that I've done, I've never seen that. It it affects it in conversion to martensite, and that's what it does. So it is useful in certain scenarios.
+
+[37:43] If they're advertising it, it means that they're doing an extra step, which costs them money, which means they are trying to make a better product, but it's not going to take it from good steel to ultra steel. Yeah, my uh my old bass strings, they used to advertise that they cryoed them. Why would they do that on a on a base guitar string? Yeah, it probably doesn't do anything useful. Yeah.
+
+[38:02] Sounded good though. When I was like 19, I was like, oh yeah, cryo, yeah. You know what I mean? Which sounds like cryo. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[38:11] What uh right? You know, like when you're like slapping your base and they're like, it's brighter, it's cryo. You're like, yeah, and the package is blue. You know what I mean? It's like it reminds me of like tube amps that people go nuts over.
+
+[38:24] You know, it doesn't matter what the tube is what it does. All right, listen, listen, Jack, listen. I it's true. I hate I d I detest any sort of loving something just for the sake of loving it if it's garbage, right? And I used to poo-poo it, right?
+
+[38:38] Because my, you know, my dad was one of the last uh like generations of double E to like learn totally analog but become a totally digital guy. So like I grew up in kind of like uh a world that under you know where my you know my dad was always about analog and and tubes and like solid state, and he's like solid state amplifiers are fantastic, you know what I mean? And then once I plugged into an like a uh an amazing Aguilar tube amp, and I just hit my base once, not with cryogenic strings, not with cryogenic strings. And it was like bump and it blew my chest in, and I was like, damn, that is the best ever. So it just so happens that my favorite base amp of all time is a tube amp.
+
+[39:20] Not that it couldn't have been solid state, because I love it as style of state technology. I'm just saying, all right, back to food, back to food. Uh so uh let's let's take a like a little opportunity here on when we're talking about temperature and about marketing stuff. Two things. One interesting point you bring up is a lot of people, if they sharpen with power equipment, even if they don't think they're heating their edge up, the edge is so small that they could actually be heating their edge up and ruining the temper on their blade, true?
+
+[39:47] That's what one of the things I got out of your book. Yeah, that could definitely happen. I'm not a proponent in general of power sharpening. Now, if you're afraid of learning to sharpen by hand, I mean there are guided systems, uh, things like the Edge Pro or the uh Spider Co. Sharpmaker, and those can help certain people.
+
+[40:07] Now, what those do best is just to hold the angle for you so that you don't have to worry about that part of it. Um, but some people think if you buy one of those guided systems that hold the angle for you, that then the learning curve is gone. Uh, but you need to embrace the learning curve because the learning curve isn't removed by a guided system, it's just different. You're you're learning different aspects of how to sharpen. Um so I think uh the best thing to do is just embrace it.
+
+[40:35] Um, you know, use a less expensive knife if you're afraid of scuffing it up and just practice. Uh sometimes local kitchen knife stores will have little classes that you can take where they'll say, Oh no, don't hold it like that. You know, hold it like this. Um or you're you're going off angle at the tip here. Let me show you how to how to do that.
+
+[40:54] Uh so you know, a little practice makes perfect. Uh if if you're afraid of sharpening, you're never gonna be be good at it. You're always gonna be cutting everything with a dull knife. Um, so just learn how to sharpen. And where do people where do people's sharpening skills typically uh show up the worst?
+
+[41:09] At the tip. Uh they mostly show up in people not sharpening, I would say. Uh if if you're bothering to try to sharpen at all, it's gonna be a lot sharper than the uh thousands of housewives with dull knives that have never been sharp. So uh I mean don't be afraid of having a tip that's a little bit dull. But yeah, the the tip is is a tricky part.
+
+[41:32] You know, you've got 90% of a blade that uh is kind of one shape to it, and then the the tip is is a little bit different than the rest. So so yeah, probably. Yeah, I spent the last I don't know, like uh, you know, uh basically forever hand hand doing my knives. And I've used a DM, I've used a 10-inch interrupted DMT diamond stone for about you know 12 years, something and it's stayed flat that whole time. So it makes it very easy for me to touch the knife, touch my knives up, right?
+
+[42:05] And so consequently, I I do I touch them up all the time. Uh but in preparation for this show, I pulled out, because I have an edge pro, I pulled it out and re-sharpened all of my knives to a um you know a uh more exact, not hand done uh bevel. And it's amazing how much better you can see the bevel when it's exactly one angle all across it. Uh but does that mean it's necessarily better or no? It doesn't feel it doesn't feel like it's holding its sharpness better.
+
+[42:38] It feels like uh look, like based on the book, I was like, all right, I'm gonna take everything and when you when you specify your sharpness, you specify angle per side because everyone's confusing, right? Some people give you the total included angle of the blade, i.e. both sides, but you you draw a line of symmetry down the middle of the knife and and give the angle on both sides as the angle you're talking about, right? Can we be clear clear on that? Yeah, that that's that's useful when you're talking to sharpening people because when you're sharpening, you're not setting it to 30 degrees total.
+
+[43:12] You're picking an angle on each side of your knife. You're sharpening one side at an angle of 15 degrees, and then you flip it over and you sharpen the other side at 15 degrees. So that that's usually how you talk about things. Right when you're sharpening. And go ahead.
+
+[43:26] When you're sharpening at home, you the biggest effect you can have on the performance of the knife is that angle. So if you go shallow, you know, like 10, 12, 15 degrees per side, uh, it will cut very well. But you're gonna reach some point where it's too shallow where it will it will chip or roll easily. Uh now if you go more obtuse, like 20 degrees per side, then it's now very strong and durable, but it it doesn't cut as well and uh it doesn't cut as long. And so for home sharpening, that's really your your biggest difference, not necessarily how high in polish you go.
+
+[43:59] Right. So you don't you're not a big believer in that micro serration or it doesn't really what what's the what's the finest grit you think is useful for a home kitchen or for even a pre professional kitchen. Yeah, that's a controversial area. I mean, going higher in grit, it's uh it makes it smoother, it makes it better at push-cutting. Uh coarser is better for slicing, it will slice forever if it's coarse.
+
+[44:29] I mean, it you basically have a saw instead of like a fine edge. And so it depends on how much time you want to spend sharpening, because if you want to keep moving up in your grit progression, you have six different stones. Some people enjoy doing that. They're just into sharpening. They'd love to just sit down for two hours and and sharpen one knife.
+
+[44:46] And if you're into that, that's totally cool. I won't I won't criticize you. Uh, but if you want to do quick sharpening, then just pick like a coarse or medium stone, like uh, you know, 600 grit, a thousand grit, and just finish it at that grit. Um the the other downside is the coarser it is, the more difficult it is to deburr, which might be too big of an area to get into right now. But when when you sharpen on one side, you're you're slowly creating this burr that hangs over.
+
+[45:11] And you can feel it sometimes with your fingernail. If you move your finger up up the blade towards the edge and up past it, you'll feel uh a little piece of steel that's hanging off to one side. Where if it's perfectly triangular, you feel nothing. You know, you can move your finger uh away from the edge and you don't feel anything. But a major part of sharpening is just removing that burr so that you have nothing but the triangle of the edge left.
+
+[45:35] And when you sharpen on a coarse stone, those burrs get very large and they're hard to get off sometimes. I was always taught to sharpen on one side until you could feel that burr all the way down the blade, then flip it, do the same on the other side, and then go finer to knock the burr off. Is that wrong? Is that too much too much of too much abrasion? No, no, that's a good way of doing it.
+
+[45:56] If you've created the burr, then you know that you've sharpened enough on that side. Um, but when you've got a coarse stone, you've got a big, nasty burr uh that's hard to get off. And there's a lot of of mystery around burr removal and a lot of ritual involved in it. But yeah, usually you just go uh at a little bit higher angle um back on the edge to to remove the burr. Um but yeah, it it it's too much to discuss for for this show, probably.
+
+[46:28] Yeah, and you are you a believer in taking the last couple of swipes at a higher angle to like put a slight bevel on the on the edge to make it tougher, or do you hate that? Uh I don't hate it. I don't it's not how I personally sharpen, but not because I dislike that method in any way. I I haven't experimented with that specifically. The the goal, like you said, is one thing it just it makes burr removal very easy to finish it at a little bit higher angle, just right at the very end with a few few passes.
+
+[46:57] Um and the other thing is that it it's supposed to give a combination of durability from the higher angle at the very edge, um, in combination with uh a lower angle on the rest of it. So you're supposed to get a combination of good cutting behavior with a little bit more durability. And I can't I can't really confirm or deny that that is true, but it does make burr removal easier. And burr removal is the biggest pain in sharpening, in my opinion. Right.
+
+[47:23] Now, you so like I took a bunch of my knives, like I said, over this last week in to the to 15 degrees on a side. So 30 degrees in total angle. And they, you know, they all went through paper like lunatics when I was, you know, I took, you know, I'm a typing paper, go straight through, make sure it doesn't tear. Great, right? But they didn't feel like my blades lasted as long as they did when I was going to a slightly higher angle, but it could just be that the steel couldn't handle the 15 degrees on a side.
+
+[47:54] Like maybe I should have done 17 or 18. Is that could it be just like that, you know, and I'm it's like a combination of like, you know, mid-range Japanese knives and um uh you know like like hankles and stuff like that. Is it is 15 just too aggressive for that kind of like those kind of knives? Would you would you think like 17's better or no? 18 uh I think 15 is definitely doable especially for certain knives and certain uses.
+
+[48:21] You know you want to make sure your kids aren't using the knives. Yeah they are don't let them bang. Okay. Well that that explains everything already. Yeah.
+
+[48:31] Make sure it's not banging around a sink. Uh cut on a wooden cutting board. Don't cut on glass or or metal. And you know if you're trying to go go nice and thin and high cutting performance then as long as you're cutting vegetables and meat and things you're gonna be fine. If you're you're hitting bones or other hard materials then you're gonna be pushing the limits of that edge.
+
+[48:50] I mean I do eat I do eat animals so I go through things with bones. Yeah I mean but you're supposed to go around the bones. You're not supposed to cut through the bones. So uh but yeah, so 15 degrees, it it can work for a lot of knives. It depends on the person and how you're using it.
+
+[49:06] And to some extent, yes, the the hardness and toughness of the seal, because it needs to be hard to avoid rolling or deformation. It needs to be tough to avoid chipping. Uh, but so that can be a fun thing to experiment. It's just what what kind of edge angle works for me? How thin can I go before I start to see issues to keep it thin for really high, high cutting, but not so obtuse that it doesn't cut well.
+
+[49:25] So you are a huge proponent in the book of very thin knives and also kind of come out against double uh single bevel blades, like like classic traditional Japanese stuff, because you say for a given angle, a double bevel blade is like 30% or whatever, forget the percentage, but better at cutting, right? But the my experience is, and I want you to kind of like reconcile this, is that my single my single bevel thick spine Japanese Yanagi slices fish like none of my other knives do. Like I just the fish looks at the knife, gets scared and gets cut into perfect slices. Why like what where's the disconnect there? Uh in the book I don't ever say not to use single bevel.
+
+[50:12] I know, but you kind of imply that the single bevel is not enough. No, that is not what I was implying. So maybe I can write the book better in in the second edition. But uh it was just it's surprising that in testing of cutting behavior that for the same total edge angle that the single bevel knives uh cut worse with the same angle. But this there's an easy solution to that, and that's just make the single bevel knife uh a couple degrees smaller.
+
+[50:37] And uh then it'll cut the same. So but the the use of the the single bevel or an asymmetric bevel is for specific cutting behavior, not necessarily to make it cut better. So I mean you've got you have to have left-handed and right-handed knives because they'll they cut very directionally. So you don't pick a single bevel knife for better cutting performance. You you pick it for its cutting behavior.
+
+[51:02] I also think they're fantastically easier to sharp, but we have a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave. How are you doing? This is uh Devin the Post control.
+
+[51:11] How are you guys doing? Hey, doing all right, doing all right. What's going on? Nothing much. I just heard um I came a little late, but um, I'm wondering if you answered the question, what's better for a patina or corrosion on the blade?
+
+[51:25] Like if I were to if I were to put a patina on the on the blade versus if I were to just keep it polished, would that be better for the blade? So like on a on a carbon knife, you're saying, like on a carbon knife. Like all right. What what do you think? What do you think, Doc?
+
+[51:43] Yeah, so a patina is just a natural reaction. Uh it's a different type of rust, sometimes called black rust. Uh, but a patina can also have some regular orange rust mixed in. And it's just a natural thing that's gonna happen. It's difficult or impossible to keep it polished if you're going to be using it.
+
+[52:01] So it's better just to embrace the patina and let it form. Uh the the patina will also help prevent further corrosion to some extent. So uh some people just like the patina. They'll even uh use different techniques to force the patina on there in the first place so they can get a certain pattern to it that they want. Um yeah, embrace the patina.
+
+[52:23] Yeah, well, I you know, I have um I have these little square sandpapers, and I have like uh the dust from my uh giramono. So I put a really um a pretty pretty decent polish on it, and then I go over with the Giramono. And so I just have this um um sandpaper that I can just polish up really quickly. And it doesn't take too long as I keep the blade dry. So I was just wondering, or I do a uh uh I take deli meat and I put deli meat on it, and it puts a really quick patina.
+
+[52:55] And so I was thinking which one was better. Deli meat. That's like that's like shades of crunching a blade in your uh in your enemies. That's crazy. Deli meat.
+
+[53:05] Right, but deli meat actually works really well, and some people say using uh uh cover your ears if you're sensitive, but using blood or like cutting into meat. But uh I find that putting deli meat puts a really nice patina on it super quick, uh, and it's that nice blue, and then it gets like all rainbowy. It's really it's really something else. You know what I do because I'm lazy? I s I spray my knives with Pam when I'm done with them and then wipe the excess.
+
+[53:34] I know you're gonna say that. Yeah. That is that's classic tape. Yeah, because you know what I have right next to me? Pam.
+
+[53:41] You know what I mean? It's like it's like people hate on Pam. My problem with Pam is the lecithin, it gets gummy. You know what I mean? Like pammed knives can get gummy.
+
+[53:49] But uh, well, Doc, what do you think about using uh Pam as your spray on? Is it just an anathema to you? Should I have be having some sort of mineral oil next to my cutting boards? No, I mean any kind of oil is gonna do it for you. So whatever is most convenient.
+
+[54:04] Pam does get gummy, but it is right there and it sprays, it's so convenient. I love Pam. Uh I don't use Pam the brand, by the way, but whatever. Stas, do you like Pam? I don't have any.
+
+[54:14] You know, do you you never use a spray stuff? I use it all the time also because um like when I'm going on the grill, I mean again, people are gonna say, uh blah blah blah, but like you want that fast oil reaction, but you don't want to waste a lot of oil. Bang, bang, bang, and you can get that fast thing. Or like when I was doing Tandoor in between my tandoor dips, bang, bang, bang. You know what I mean?
+
+[54:35] Anyway, but um I I'm happy to be a low quality individual. Hey, you got five minutes. Hold on. All right, so uh so so Jack, let's get to the other Patreon questions before it's too late. Yeah, let's let's let's sneak this one in.
+
+[54:46] So uh from Jonathan Oberhaus, what are your thoughts on the prolifer proliferation of white labeled Chinese knives from Yangxiang, Dahlstrong, Kamikoto, Khan, Kang Shen, etc. Yeah, for me it's a complicated area because there's a lot of uh thoughts on just importing knives in general or importing knives from China or from developing countries, lower labor costs being undercut from uh developed countries production. Uh so uh yeah, that there's a lot of strong opinions in that area. Uh there's no reason why Chinese produce knives can't be high end, and they have been getting much nicer in recent years. Um in some cases, there's still some questionable business practices.
+
+[55:31] I know a decade or two ago, uh Spyderco, they started making some folders in in China, and they were told that the steel was a given grade called 440 C. Then they discovered it was not 440C at all. It was completely different stainless grade. So uh there's still cases of of questionable business practices. Of course, there's labor issues and other things, but the knives can be nice and also inexpensive to go with it.
+
+[55:55] Yeah. Well we got any more uh Patreon questions, Jack. Um yeah, from Schmidt and Bender. What will Dave change about the way he chooses, buys, uses, maintains cutlery as a result of his learnings here today? I don't know.
+
+[56:12] I don't know. Gate, well, ask me that right as we're leaving. Ask me that right as we're leaving. We we had one on uh on the there was one more in the there was one more in the chat um earlier from Sargon. Why not plastic H D PE?
+
+[56:26] For what? For the handles? Yeah, like yeah. HTPE is slippery for handles is one problem with it. Or me or for cutting boards.
+
+[56:37] For cutting boards. Yeah, it's gotta be for cutting boards. But what do you what do you think about HTPE as a as a cutting board material? Uh I mean, plastic is is better than than metal or or glass, just because it's softer. But I mean, if you prefer the easy to clean, uh, you know, swap out a plastic cutting board, then you know you can do it.
+
+[56:58] It's fine. And we had a question, I don't know who sent it, but uh, how do you prefer to do your maintenance to your knives between sharpenings? Like uh they found a ceramic rod that they like uh that works well on hard steels. Do you have thoughts on uh honing or or like touch-ups in betwe in between? Yeah, I prefer a ceramic rod to a steel, um, just because the the steel just kind of burnishes everything, it doesn't sharpen anything.
+
+[57:23] It uh hypothetically it's supposed to be for straightening the edge, but that that really only happens with soft knives anyway. So if you've got a nicer knife in in hard steel, then it'd be better to use a ceramic rod. So you're saying the old school steels are built for old school knives, like my like my post-war sabatier, which is a soft steel that has to be sharpened every time I use it. Yeah, even if I was using a simple carbon steel knife, I would prefer it was harder. So hard steel means that it it can take a thin edge.
+
+[57:51] Um and hard steel, sometimes people say that it's harder to sharpen, but it really isn't, especially in something with so little wear resistance like a simple carbon steel. So I prefer knives with high hardness steel in it. Now, speaking of sharpening, uh I recommend quite often uh diamond to because uh you know, these diamond components they they stay flat, they don't, you know. So I've never been, you know, one of these like mystical whetstone people where I'm like sourcing then like having to flatten my own stuff and keeping them wet, blah blah. Am I wrong?
+
+[58:21] Is is this a bad way? Is the DMT diamond stone not a good sharpening implement? Well, the benefits of the diamond plates like DMT are that they stay flat and also diamond is ridiculously hard, of course. So it will sharpen anything, even something with very hard carbides in it. So those are the advantages.
+
+[58:40] The disadvantages is above a certain grit level, uh, diamond plates are not the best way of making something super polished. So if you like really polished edges, DMT plates are not the way to go. Uh, there are a new generation of diamond and CBN stones where they have a a binder or matrix of softer ceramic that that makes it so they can give a polished edge also. But though those are are rarer and much more expensive. So for a general audience like this, I'd say a DMT stone or or a simple ceramic stone uh works perfectly fine in in most cases.
+
+[59:16] Uh anything else you'd uh recommend uh to uh a cook, or you want to just go through some some knife steels and you can tell me what you think about them real quick on while we're on our way out. Uh sure, we can do whatever you want. So ask away. All right, VG VG 10. Good steel, not a good steel for the price.
+
+[59:36] Uh it's good for the price. It it's similar to American steels like 440 C and 154 CM, but the steel is ubiquitous. If it's heat treated well, it works perfectly fine. It's not too difficult to sharpen. It's got good corrosion resistance and average to above average wear resistance.
+
+[59:53] So it works perfectly fine. There's no reason to not buy a knife just because it has VG10. And our mo well, I think for most of us that's considered like a good ski steal because we're not in the super high-end knife business, right? So like for like the massive knife. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:00:09] Yeah. So if if you see BG10, you can usually buy with with confidence, I would say. Now, is uh is the SG2 worth the 30% more the knife costs? Uh it'll have about 30% better wear resistance. Um it might be a little bit more difficult to sharpen because of the wear resistance, but it will also uh hold an edge longer.
+
+[1:00:33] So uh I think if you're into knives, some of them are also at higher hardness than the VG10. So it it might be a good upgrade for 30% more if you want to try out something a little bit higher in hardness and and wear resistance and and see what you think. Okay, so so you might pay for the SG2. You want a thinner, you want a thinner knife, you want it hardened. Well, do most of the manufacturers now do a decent job of like straight up hardening or not?
+
+[1:00:59] Yeah, that's a good question. So even in Japan where the quality can be pretty high, they can take shortcuts in certain areas, and heat treating is is one of them. So a lot of the heat treatments are pretty decent. I have heard quite a few people say that they don't like the Shun heat treatment, but I can't say I have personal experience seeing it be poor. So I think in general, the heat treatment is probably good enough most of the time in the the Japanese produce knives.
+
+[1:01:25] So once you're at that SG2 level and you're paying $150 dollars for your Santoku or whatever, you're saying that for the average person to spend $500 to get an L Max knife from, you know, a local producer, unless you just love the look and feel of it, it's not gonna cut twice as well. No, it won't cut twice as well. There there might be certain elements to it. Maybe the the handles are a little smoother, maybe things are a little more rounded and more comfortable. Uh maybe you like the idea of uh American made products buying American.
+
+[1:02:01] Um those are all reasons to to look at one of those. And like it's like if like a lot of us, I think just like the idea of having a high technology steel in the knife, even if it's not actually gonna make the tomato slice better. You know what I mean? It just is L Max a good steal or no. Yeah, L Max is in a similar category to like SG2 um or S35 VN.
+
+[1:02:25] Um so any of those powder metallurgy steals, those three are in a similar performance category. Um it'd probably be difficult to differentiate them in a blinded test. All right. Now the average person should touch up their knives every how often. Uh however often you want.
+
+[1:02:43] I mean, like the average person doesn't even know their knife is dull. Are you familiar with the I forget what it's called, but the the the because your knife is getting incrementally crappier, right? You don't know that it's garbage until you pick up a good knife or until you sharpen, you're like, oh, I was an idiot. It was garbage, right? So like uh I think the average person probably never sharpens their knives.
+
+[1:03:03] And then the second most aver they just hit it maybe on their like little steel every once in a while. The second average person maybe does it like once a year, right? And then like, you know, but like w what do you think? Like once a month, once a week. Well, like I was saying earlier, don't be afraid of being bad at sharpening, or like, oh, I'll never get the tip right or something.
+
+[1:03:22] Uh, because those people are are afraid of sharpening, and so they might just send it to someone to be sharpened once a year, or they do it once a year. Uh but so yeah, I mean, once a day is could be unreasonable depending on who you are. Once a year, it's gonna be dull for three quarters of the year. Um, so uh i if you are able to sharpen, then just do it as often as you want. If that's once a month, that's probably okay.
+
+[1:03:48] But if you're doing any sharpening, you'll see that once a month when you're touching it up, like, oh, you know, it it's it's way sharper now. This is way better. Why am I not doing this more often? There's some in-between uh options, like where you might use a ceramic rod to keep it touched up, and then every couple of weeks or a month or so, then you you do more of a fresh sharpening. And the wheel sharpeners, do you think they ruin knives?
+
+[1:04:12] Are they garbage? Are they trash trash can machines? Uh like a toromec or something, you know. I don't remember the names of them, but the the the wheel ones have always like hollowed out the edge of my knife and turned it into one big burr. That's why I stopped using them like 20 years ago.
+
+[1:04:26] Are they better now? Yeah, you well, you need to be careful. Uh the Tormec and other similar ones are water cooled, which helps. But yes, it adds a hollow and they can remove material very rapidly. So, you know, if you don't mean the powder.
+
+[1:04:40] I don't mean that. I mean like the old school, it's in my kitchen drawer, it's got literally two little wheels on it or three, and you pull like like the carbide wheel, yeah. Yeah, don't use those. Don't ever use those, right? That's they're trash can machines made for trash can people, right?
+
+[1:04:54] Yeah, throw throw them in the garbage. Right. You don't need it. Right, okay. And um the so don't be afraid.
+
+[1:05:00] Uh sharpen off. This is why like I recommend see what you think is his correct, is like uh get something that is easy for you to actually do so that you actually do it versus not, right? Yeah, for people that are are afraid to learn to sharpen by hand. Uh I would say try the Spider Co. Sharp maker.
+
+[1:05:18] It's just a regular, uh it's just like two ceramic rods that are held in a V. Uh, but it it's well made for what it is. And so you just hold the knife straight up and down and you put it on one side of the V and then the other side. And uh buy a couple of stones at the same time so that when you're less afraid after using that thing a little bit, uh see how simple it is to put the edge on, then you can move to to sharpening by hand just because it it's fast. So the the sharp maker I like because there's less of a learning curve to it.
+
+[1:05:48] Um it's also small and and portable, and so it it's kind of easy to show someone how to sharpen that way. Cool. All right. We've been speaking to uh Dr. Laren Thomas.
+
+[1:05:58] Thanks so much. The uh the the maker of Nice Steel Nerds, uh uh the uh blog. What do you call it? What do they call it? They still call them blogs now?
+
+[1:06:08] Blogs, I don't know. Yeah, I mean nobody reads blogs, but that's essentially what it is. So my website's knifesteal nerds.com. Yeah, it's very in-depth. And the book, which I highly recommend uh, is uh knife engineering, steel, heat treating, and geometry.
+
+[1:06:22] Uh you can buy it on Amazon. Hopefully, someday you get it at Kitchen Arts and Letters. I think uh, you know, it'd be a good place to go. Uh Jack, you want to do our Patreon shout outs? Yes.
+
+[1:06:32] And Aaron from Oklahoma will get your question next week uh about BTU burners. So shout out to the new Patreon subscribers. James Files, Lucas Dilbreck, Braden Williams, Edward Pilotowitz, James Coughlin, Nate, Neil Herzl, Lucas Lima, John Rodriguez, Chris Wood, Peter Hallmer, Matt Stark Sartwell, James Hegerty, Kevin Cronin, Ryan, Jeff Costi, Nolan Piercer, Brett Rosin, Rosen, Rosen, Rosen, Fred Meyer, Fikus Kirkpatrick, Rob Pond, and Sean Andrews, all new Patreon subscribers since last week's show. So thank you very much to all of you. Yeah, thanks, folks.
+
+[1:07:08] And listen, um, we're still working out how the Patreon works and all this other stuff. So if we have missed your question on Patreon, please just let us know. I just don't want any of uh you folks to fall through the cracks. Uh Dr. Thomas, thanks so much for coming on.
+
+[1:07:21] Had a good time. Uh, you know, uh maybe you know, maybe someday I'll pepper you with more knife questions. Yeah, someday. You should come on for longer next time. Well, we only do one hour.
+
+[1:07:32] Thanks for having me on. That's just great. All right, cool. All right, Doctor uh cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave, our only host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stand Studios at Rockefeller Center, joined as usual with Nastasia. Good. Yeah, we got Joe Hazen here in the booth with us. How are you doing?
+
+[0:24] I'm doing great. How are you? Alrighty. And we have uh also as usual, uh, our trusted associate, John. How you doing?
+
+[0:30] Doing great, thanks. Back uh, you know, uh, did we didn't do we have we done an episode since you were back? We did the special MRE episode. We'll talk about that in a minute. And we don't have uh Jackie Molecules on the air today, but he is streaming it out to you live.
+
+[0:44] So if you have any live questions and you're a follower of our Patreon, uh call in to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh, and um other note about our Patreon. Uh we weren't here uh last week, but uh hold on second, we're getting a little bit of an echo. Is it do you have the live feed up on that computer at the same time, John?
+
+[1:08] Oh, I do. Yeah. Sorry, I was trying to be in the chat room. Hey, for any of you who remember what it used to be like to listen to live radio, Nastasia is the only thing the only person on earth who still listens to live radio. Is that true, Nastasia?
+
+[1:19] Me and musicians and rock stars, so what's the difference between a musician and a rock star? Well, I'm like, well, you can be amazing. You mean classical musicians? Rockstar. So, what classical musicians do you know who listen to live music?
+
+[1:30] Classical musicians? Well, in other words, like what's a musician who's not a rock star? You're talking about your friend Pat. You're talking about our favorite aren't rock stars. So Pat listens to live music?
+
+[1:38] Yes. Friend of the show, Pat. Our favorite didgeridooist. Mm-hmm. And uh what were we gonna make him a t-shirt that says?
+
+[1:45] I don't know. Didgered don't. Did you readon't. Don't do it. Although I have have you ever heard him play the Digi-Redo?
+
+[1:53] Yeah. Isn't he good? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if we're going to be able to do that.
+
+[1:57] As good as you can be for I don't mean to insult a whole culture's music. It's a terrible idea. I take it all back. Speaking of insulting a whole culture's music, I was listening on my bike ride up. I'll do my weekly bike ride recap.
+
+[2:09] Uh Boston. Nastasi and I love listening to Boston. Is that not true? We love listening to Boston. I'm not gonna bring up the whole Delp thing, but I also like listening.
+
+[2:18] So for those of you who think that all of Boston is crappy, there is Crappy Boston and Great Boston. And I I I like both crappy Boston and Great Boston. I was listening to that song, Stas, you remember it? Rock and Roll Band? Mm-hmm.
+
+[2:29] Just another band out of Hyannis. And for those of you that don't know, Schultz, who's the guitarist, right? And I think they were all freakishly tall, and Delp was normal hype, but he looked short on the album cover because everyone else was tall. Anyway, Schultz, who made all of his own effects. Uh so Joe, did he invent like a chorus effect?
+
+[2:46] Because like, you know, Delp's got this kind of high voice, but in the rock and roll band is about them going out to Hyannis on Cape Cod. For those of you that don't know the East Coast, like if you're from the Boston, even New York area, like everyone kind of empties onto Cape Cod. It's kind of a thing in the in the summer. And so when he he has the thing about these record people coming and he says, sign the record company contract. Can you hear that in your in your head, Stas?
+
+[3:07] When he goes, but it's like it's like three delps at once. Did they invent a chorus effect just to have because I don't think that was like common at the time, right? Do you know anything about that, Joe? I'm not sure. Anyway, I want I want to always have it all comes from that uh what is it, the the jazz chorus uh amplifier, usually, the really good chorus.
+
+[3:26] Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you know Schultz had only the best, only the best chorus effects, which he probably built in his mom's basement, which is how he did all that stuff. Anyway, so like I wish I could have like uh do you remember the movie I'm gonna get you, sucker? I've never seen it, but yeah, I know what it is. All right.
+
+[3:41] So in that movie, one of the best things is is they actually had musicians following the people around playing the theme songs. So Fishbone actually was walking behind the pimp character playing the stuff. I kind of wish I had like a miniature like ghost of Delp floating behind me, just like screaming Boston lyrics at all times. Wouldn't that be amazing? Yeah.
+
+[4:02] That'd be great. That'd be great. Uh all right. So uh for those of you that are members of our Patreon. Oh, and Jack's not here.
+
+[4:09] He has the Patreon list for the shout-out. Do we have it? Can we get the this week's Patreon list for the end of the show? Um last week we didn't do a show, but to keep you guys not hanging for Patreon only people, we have uh we we did a tasting of Chinese MREs versus we have Chinese MREs versus uh American MREs, and I have to say, you'll have to join to listen to it. The Chinese MREs kicked our behinds.
+
+[4:34] Right, guys? Yeah. I mean, shockingly good. I mean, really like quite good. Like, I would eat that stuff.
+
+[4:41] Back me up on this people. Yeah, completely. Yeah. Tasted like really delicious. Yeah.
+
+[4:45] And the American MREs, I have to say, they were a little bit expired. Didn't even really heat that much. Didn't heat that much. Yeah. I mean, I wanted to like the American MREs.
+
+[4:55] All right, listen, I hear we have a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hmm. Hmm. Hey, there you go.
+
+[5:04] What's up? Hey, everybody. Uh Josh from Norfolk here. Hey, how are you doing? You got to turn down your background a little bit.
+
+[5:11] Oh, sorry. It sounds like you're listening to experimental music, which I like. Are you like a John Cage fan? Yeah, we're I'm in the in the restaurant office right now. Oh, nice, beautiful.
+
+[5:24] All right, cool. Awesome. What's up? Uh so we want to make candied peanuts with like Coca-Cola as the base. Um we're running into like a slight issue getting the coverage right.
+
+[5:37] We want like kind of a uh like a you know, thin candy shell on uh on them. We got access to everything, um including like induction and stuff like that. So I'm just looking for uh, you know, some advice on the best method best methods to make these nuts. Oh, you you you want me to these nuts? You knew they had to do it.
+
+[5:59] You knew it had to happen. You did that on purpose. In fact, you're not even making Coca-Cola covered peanuts. You just wanted to have that happen. Oh, that's fine, that's fine.
+
+[6:07] Uh so I promise it's both. Listen, so are you having a problem with it not getting hard versus other uh recipes that you're using? Is that the problem? Because if that is, I think I have the solution. That is exactly the problem.
+
+[6:20] Here is the problem I believe you're having. You are you in order to get a crispy shell on the outside, you need to have uh the sugar not invert, right? So if the sugar inverts too much, what's gonna happen is you're going to it's never gonna harden. Now, first of all, the high fructose corn syrup that's in Coca-Cola is like it's gonna make it soft as heck from the beginning. In fact, that's the kind of stuff that I would add to uh things to keep them from crystallizing, right?
+
+[6:48] So that's gonna i inhibit you right there. But if you add sugar, so Coca-Cola is roughly 10% sugar, let's say, give or take. So if you're gonna reduce that all the way down to get it, or even if you start with a syrup, right? It's also very high acid. And the phosphoric acid that's in the Coca-Cola is gonna invert whatever sucrose you add and gonna make it a lot softer and harder to get it to crystallize.
+
+[7:10] So I wanna say, I'm like, I don't know if you can just buy the flavors of Coca-Cola without the acid and add the acid at the last minute, or or else like do your candy syrup, take it all the way down, and then add the coke-flavored syrup at the last minute, or just completely dehydrate the coke down to dust, right? And then after you dehydrate the coke down to dust, like maybe add some solids to it, like maltodextrin or something, so that there's some solids for the stuff to dehydrate onto so it doesn't scorch down, right? Then make your standard candy coating and then as it's setting, toss it in the coke dust. And because you might not want it to get that much sweeter, you could add a little bit of hard, non-uh sweet sugars to it, like maybe some isomalt or something like this, or something that's gonna reduce the sweetness, or maybe just the fact that you've added a maltodextrin carrier is gonna be enough. But I think that's gonna get around your problem.
+
+[8:03] I think it's the fact that you have the HFCS and the fact that you have uh a lot of acid during your boil that's causing it not to set up. Does that sound like it might be the answer? Yeah, definitely. We uh we figured the high fructose was the problem. And then uh you save us the step of tracking down Mexican coke by letting us know, you know, a couple episodes ago that it's always condense up.
+
+[8:27] Well, okay, so uh what what what the CEO of Coca-Cola said when he told me that it all tastes the same, is that yes, they do sometimes use sucrose, but like they've they organize it to all taste the same and that no one can really tell the difference anyway. Your mileage may may vary. Uh I believe that there is Mexican Coke with sugar in it, although I have to say I've never looked at the ingredient label because I don't drink sugarful non-alcoholic beverages. I'm either drinking an alcoholic beverage or I'm drinking seltzer, and there is no other beverages for me. Those are the only two things.
+
+[9:01] All right, let us know how it works out. Send us uh send us a what's it called. Joe, you got another call? Caller, you're on the air. Hello?
+
+[9:09] Hey, how you doing? Dave? Yeah. Oh, awesome. Is that an inside bird or an outside bird that you have going there?
+
+[9:17] I hear a bird and Nastasia, whenever she has birds in the background on calls, it's like some like vicious seagull that's trying to like murder her. But like is that an inside? No, it's uh it's it's w uh um a couple woodpeckers but uh oh my God listen I hate woodpeckers. Do you like woodpeckers? Oh my God.
+
+[9:36] My I mean my nephew likes them. He's like they have honor of them God woodpeckers. Are they like little sap suckers that are gonna put like a zillion holes in all your trees or are they those nasty piliated suckers that are like pop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop that like put children it it's the the y I have a yellow belly yellow bellied sapsucker I think. You know is there is there any worse thing to call someone than a yellow bellied sap sucker. And of course they're so puny they're just sitting there just knocking all these holes in your tree.
+
+[10:04] I don't get it. Like I don't get it. But considering it's a uh family program. Yeah all right there you go there you go all right so what's uh what's your uh what's your cooking issue so okay so COVID has messed up a lot of people and the like and I and I remember you had an episode where you were speaking to a friend of yours who studied this very very intensely like a gozmia, uh um perigusmia, anosmia, et cetera. Mm-hmm.
+
+[10:35] And I have an idea that I think might might actually help a lot of people. I just wanted to know your uh your take on it, which is um uh so gymnemic acid and miracleberry. My idea is microdosing on those to try to kind of like kick start, you know, your brain reconnoitering how it um uh assesses smell and taste. Do you think that that's a a worthy endeavor? Well, I uh I mean have uh first of all, I would never recommend that anybody take gymnemic acid other than so for those of you that don't know or you know haven't heard us talk about it before, gymnemic acid is a compound uh that is developed from leaves.
+
+[11:19] So you actually you buy a leaf powder, you eat it, it tastes like the bottom of a rabbit's cage. And uh it's disgusting stuff. It like, oh my God, so gross. But what it does is for about 20, 30 minutes, like literally erases your ability to taste sweet things. Right?
+
+[11:37] Literally eras erases your ability to taste sweet things. So much so as opposed to miracle berry. Sorry, sorry, go on. Yeah, but nobody likes it. So like in other words, like I remember like uh in classes I used to teach, we used to give the genemic acid to people so that they could mentally understand what it was like to not have the the be able to taste sweet, which is useful in terms of texture analysis and stuff like that.
+
+[11:59] But you know, occasionally we would have people like cry. They'd be like, I'm not gonna be this way forever. This is I'm ruined, I'm disgraced. Like with honey, honey and whatnot. Yeah, it's just nuts.
+
+[12:09] So but the Miracleberry might think more people know about the Miracleberry, um, you know, i i what it does is it tricks you into thinking that you know, things that are sour are sweet. I don't really know. Um I I haven't studied it. I have to talk to, you know, the people that we had uh on that day. I think we had we had Harold, we had Bob, uh, and we had Ariel on, I think.
+
+[12:32] Um, Bob Data from Harvard. And uh I'd have to ask him, but you know, you know, I know that like um I know that a lot of people had kind of more you know drug-induced mystical experiences with miracle berry kind of parties than I ever did. I was always more kind of cold analytical thinking about it, but I don't know how to do it. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
+
+[12:58] I mean I'll ask you. I mean, it's just just for me, like it's it's I mean, I'm I'm you know, I'm a professional cook and it it's so much so that like 90% of the time I really can't taste anything or it tastes like garbage. And um I I know that there's certain programs that people use where like they buy like um like infused oils and whatnot to try to like you know, re re you know, trick their brain back into it. Yeah and I looked into it. The problem is I'm I'm not a professor, and so I'm barred from you know, all the the other scientific literature.
+
+[13:38] Okay, well, first of all, I like I'm not gonna tell you to do this. I'm not gonna tell you to do this. So don't I'm not recommending that you look up S C I dash H U B. Don't go look up Sci-Hub. Okay.
+
+[13:52] And then assuming you haven't gone to look up Sci Hub, right? Then don't go to Google Scholar and search for anything that you want that's behind a paywall. Definitely don't find what's called the DOI, the DOI number. Definitely don't copy and paste the entire DOI string into the Sci-Hub page that you haven't opened and hit go. Don't do that because you might accidentally download uh scientific literature that was formerly behind a paywall.
+
+[14:23] Don't worry, I wasn't listening to anything you just said. Um if oh okay, so thank you. And is there any way do you do you have the contact table of Ariel or or uh Dr. Bob such that I could maybe reach out to them? Reach out to John uh on our uh customer service line after the show and we'll we'll see what we can do.
+
+[14:44] All righty? Thank you so much. All right, thank you so much for calling in. All right. So uh where was it?
+
+[14:52] Back to Patreons. We haven't even started, we haven't even answered any any questions yet. I actually want to give a shout out. Uh who are you guys Spanish cooking fans, by the way? You like you like you like Spanish?
+
+[15:03] So my mom, for some reason, my mom during pandemic, so like right before the pandemic, we got rid of the house in that I used to have in Connecticut. So all of my outdoor cooking gear, I just dropped onto my mom's deck right before the pandemic. So my mom now went from having almost no outdoor cooking game, she went ape during the pandemic. I mean, crazy. Like, so now she not she not only has my tandoor on her deck, right?
+
+[15:27] She's got not one, ready for it, two paella cookers. Have you guys seen these outdoor paella cookers? No. They are nuts. They are crazy, dude.
+
+[15:38] And my mom's always like, oh, do you think that this like you know? My mom is like more mellow. She has a regular human being stove, right? A regular human being hood, like regular human being, everything. And then she's like, Did you?
+
+[15:49] I got this paella cooker. So I'm assuming it's gonna be some I mean, no offense, Ma. Sack of garbage, right? But I go out there, and the the ring burner on it is the size of a professional paella pan. It's like, how big is that, John?
+
+[16:03] Is that like 20 inches across? 20, it's like a 20 inches. It's like a carwheel. Yeah. It's like it's like a carwheel size burner.
+
+[16:09] She cranks it and it's all jets all the way across it, right? And then she whips out a giant, this is the first time, giant paella pan, right? This is right before the pandemic. I just had dinner with her the second time, the first time since the pandemic was over. And even though it was only just like my my sister and you know, her husband and my brother and fiance and us, she brought two paella rigs, two full-size paella rigs.
+
+[16:37] And I have to say, my mom has turned into this like this Spanish monster cooked, like with these paella pans over the over the pandemic, which is bananas. But she made something that I actually hadn't had before. Strangely, you know that so not paella, which she made one of delicious, of course, you know, with the soccer rot on the bottom, all you soccerat's the crunch. You know, everyone's got their own kind of crunchy rice business. You like the crunchy rice business, people?
+
+[16:59] Yep. I like the crunchy rice. I like anyone's form of crunchy rice. I like Iranian crunchy rice, I like Korean crunchy rice, I like uh I do Americans have do we have our own traditional crunchy rice? No, not really.
+
+[17:12] No? Uh maybe? I think you can get that crispy. Yeah, there are old American recipes, uh, like rice casserole recipes, where if they're cooked in a certain way, you can get a kind of crunchy layer on the bottom. Um I have to do more research on that, whether we have, because I feel like we're, you know, we're leaving a lot on the table if we don't have our own crispy rice at the bottom of the pan stitch.
+
+[17:33] You know what I'm saying? I feel like we're, I feel like we could up our game there as a as a nation. Um, anyways, so but she made this other. Have you ever had this paella-like pasta dish called uh uh fide, I don't know if I could pronounce it right. Fit fidea fidea fidehua.
+
+[17:44] You ever had this one? Feijoara? Is that how you pronounce it? Is it Brazilian? I'm sorry.
+
+[17:55] Well, this one's this one is Valencian, but I'm sure they had the same thing. So it's it's in a paella pan, and you you you use these like tiny, what look like like tiny pieces of vermicelli, like, but instead of it, like you know, you know how vermicelli means like like little worms, right? Yeah, right. So, like this is oh, we're getting fishbowled. I love it.
+
+[18:11] This is our first fish bowl. We're getting fishbowled people. Anyway, so you know, like verm there's no worm that's the size of a vermicelli that's as long as a piece of vermicelli, it just doesn't happen, right? So these are actually worm size, which is kind of gross. But get this.
+
+[18:22] You toast them off like with oil, right? Just like you would toast off like rice before you were gonna do like a risotto or something. You add the stock and all the other nonsense to it, and you cook it pretty much like a like a like a paella. She did it with squid ink. But get this, as it boils off, right?
+
+[18:37] You stop stirring it, you don't stir it after a while because you want to make that kind of crispy crap at the bottom. But Nastasi, you might enjoy this. The the pasta stands straight up in the air. Looks like grass, looks like grass growing out of this giant paella pan. And my mom brings it to the table.
+
+[18:53] I'm like, mom, what the hell are you doing? This is beautiful. What the hell's wrong with you? Like, I just don't expect this out of my mom. You know what I mean?
+
+[18:59] It's like, it's like these little things standing up, you know what I mean? And then and then you you scrape it and it comes up in one chunk because of the crunchy stuff at the bottom, like a piece of astroturf. And then you're eating this astroturf, you know. I was like, damn, my mom's got the pandemic game. Sounds like it.
+
+[19:15] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of my mom, one more shout out. Apologize.
+
+[19:19] So my mom's retiring this year. In fact, she's retiring this month. So a little shout out uh to my mom. My mom, uh, I've I've said this on the air before, but um, my mom had me when she was 20 years old. She was at Stanford at the time.
+
+[19:33] Uh she was 20. She took a year off from school. Her parents told her she was never gonna follow her dreams, nothing was ever gonna happen in her life. She was gonna get, you know, that's it. She was done.
+
+[19:43] Went back, finished, went to medical school at Columbia when I was three, moved out here, started the pediatric heart transplant program at uh Columbia University in 1984, where she was the cardiologist on the first successful pediatric transplant that had been done, has run the pediatric heart transplant program ever since. And I know that like it's very fashionable and correct now to think that uh, you know, uh big data is a lot better than human judgment, which I think in the average is true, but when my mom retires, the world is losing like an amazing clinician. I'll give you just a couple of things that that she's done. So, for those of you that are in the medical uh industry now, right? Uh, you know, there's a huge reaction over the past maybe say 20 years to kind of what's known as heroic actions, trying to take heroic actions to save people's lives.
+
+[20:32] You know, you're you're not supposed to play God or you're supposed to let people die now, is what a lot of doctors think. But my mom, especially because she's dealing with kids, kind of never had that attitude. So uh she has this crazy sense of how the human body works as a system and what's wrong on an entire like kind of system level basis. So she once ran uh a code. So when someone uh has a cardiac arrest, they they do what's called they run a code, right?
+
+[20:56] Where they, you know, they try to, you know, get their heart working again. And she once ran a code for two hours on a kid who uh was in need of a heart transplant. Uh and everyone else was like, You gotta quit, doc, you gotta quit, you gotta quit. Ran a code on him for that long. Why?
+
+[21:12] Because she was looking at all of the numbers, and the numbers didn't indicate that the kid should be dead, right? So it's like, it's like, you know, everyone's like, oh, well, no one, no one lasts this long in a code. And mom was like, well, it's because no one runs codes this long. Kid lived. She uh once had a kid on a table who uh died coded on the table while they were waiting for a transplant.
+
+[21:34] My mom jumped on the gurney and and did chest compressions to get that kid while they wheeled my mom, giving the kid compressions all the way to the operating room in a different building. Kid lived. They lived through that. I mean, I don't know if they eventually made it, right? Uh my mom also would transplant.
+
+[21:54] So uh here's another little secret fact. That those of you that have gone any medical procedure, not all medical procedures are guaranteed to you, even if you have money. Like some doctors won't take you on if they think you're gonna lower their percentages, right? In the old days when um it was very kind of you know rare to be able to get a transplant and not a lot of people were on the list, you were shunted off of the list because, well, the that heart had to go to someone who was healthier because you had to put it into whoever had the best chance of survival, right? But uh my mom, because that's not, I guess at the time, not the way that uh kid heart transplant worked, because you have to get a heart that exactly matches the person, she would transplant people that no one else would take because no one else wanted to have their numbers go down.
+
+[22:37] Everyone wanted their survival rates to be high. So they'll be like, no, we can't do you. Uh, we don't think it's gonna work out. My mom would do it. My mom has given people two transplants when the first one failed because she realized that it wasn't that it was a failing proposition uh all the way through, but that because uh of some other things.
+
+[22:55] So my mom always treated people like individuals and had kind of an amazing clinical sense. There was someone who was slated to get a transplant once, and my mom was like, you don't need a hard transplant. She had was on somebody else's transplant list. Get this on somebody else's transplant list. My mom was like, you know what?
+
+[23:11] Looked again, looked at the numbers, looked at the patient, was like, you know what? I think actually uh you have this kind of extremely rare condition. Turns out vitamin deficiency. The kid had a vitamin deficiency, gave the kid supplements, kid didn't need a heart transplant. Anyway, and you know, I know everyone gives credit to the surgeons, right?
+
+[23:31] And I no offense, surgeons are great, but you know, my mom's the one who was there at the beginning. My mom was the one who stayed with them for years. My mom was the one who, you know, they were always sad when they had to get handed off to the adult transplant. So I'm happy that my mom's retiring, but it's worse for anyone that needs a heart transplant here in here in uh, at least in this country. Anyway, uh enough about my family.
+
+[23:55] Uh let's do some uh questions. Oh, you guys cook anything, by the way? Anything good? No. I cook something good.
+
+[24:03] See what you think. So John and I, so John, you know, every morning, John and I have a call where we're supposed to be talking about what I do for the day. Supposed to, yeah. But instead, we end up talking about Connecticut foodstuffs quite often, right? So we're talking about Connecticut food stuffs.
+
+[24:17] I've never been to Super Duper Weenie, never been Saza. You been to Super Duper Wini? No. How far is Fairfield from you? Like 20 minutes?
+
+[24:23] Mm-hmm. Why don't you go to Super Duper Wini? No, I will. Do you like hot dogs? Yeah.
+
+[24:27] What's your recommendation of Super Duper Weenie, John? The New Englander. It's uh spicy relish, kind of like the Connecticut style spicy relish, then bacon, sauerkraut, and mustard. It's quite good. Oh, I like that.
+
+[24:38] Yeah, I like it. Anyway, so anyone that's heard me talk about Connecticut food knows I'm a fan of steaming cheese, steamed cheeseburger. Get this. So here's what I did. Since I can't really get my family on board with the steamed cheeseburger, but I can get Dax on board with the chopped cheese.
+
+[24:52] You ready for this? Here's where I'm going with this. Here's where I'm going. It's not a chopped steamed cheese, although now that you say it, that would be great. Anyway, here's what it is.
+
+[25:00] I did a uh I just did a braised short rib, right? But not with too much sauce. Beer braised short rib, standard, beer beer braised short rib. Then uh I took that, let it cool all the way down, reabsorbed all of its juices, right? Then put that in a hoagie, put like put that in the steamer, put a piece of the of the of the rib in the steamer, put the cheese on top.
+
+[25:22] Let the whole thing, instead of reheating the rib, reheat by steaming the whole thing into one steaming pile of short rib and steamed cheese. Put it in a hoagie roll, put it in a hoagie roll. You know what it was? Real good. It was real good.
+
+[25:36] I wanted some sauerkraut on it because I think it needs some acid. Dax didn't. Dax just, you know, ketchup didn't, whatever the house kids do. But real good. It's a try, people.
+
+[25:45] That's a that's a give it a try. Also, you know what I did? Chicken bullion on the French fries. Now, apparently in Australia, and I know Nastasia has her issues with the Australians, but apparently they have this thing called chicken salt, which is meant to be put onto rotisserie chicken, but also sometimes includes chicken bullion. So that's a good reason to visit uh Australia because chicken bullion on french fries is a good.
+
+[26:08] Very good. It's a real good. I I you know, I'm gonna everyone's like, Have you tried beef powder? I'm like, not yet. I'm gonna put I'm gonna go get every bullion flavor and put that on my French fries from now on.
+
+[26:17] Cause why why not? What about with those mushrooms from the M RE? Oh my God. So again, you can't watch it unless you're a Patreon uh viewer. But they had this dehydrated chunk.
+
+[26:27] This like, it's like imagine um like a sponge candy, but instead of sugar, mushroom. Right? And it was so awesome. I would buy it. If any of you like are a manufacturer of Chinese MREs and know where to get this freeze-dried mushroom block, even Nastasia liked the freeze-dried mushroom bra crunchies.
+
+[26:48] Yeah. That was good. That was a good. Yeah, really good. Real good.
+
+[26:51] Really, really good. You know what Nastasia kept saying the entire time we were doing the MREs? Anytime something looked terrible, she'd be like, those that's your MRE, Dave. If we're in a survival situation, that's your MRE. No, yours was just the American one.
+
+[27:04] Yeah, anything that looked bad. But if it had been the Chinese one, you would have had me have that one. I noticed that when we opened the American one and it had a Skittle pack in, we didn't even get to inventory it because you were already picking out the color that you liked. Which is your which is the Lopez color? Red.
+
+[27:19] Red's the first color. Yeah. Second color? Uh green, I guess. And all others garbage?
+
+[27:24] Yeah. Huh. Have you I know you're not a you're not a Pez person. No, but I did bring these Sour Patch kids because there's this new flavor that's a secret. And pass it to Dave.
+
+[27:37] Oh, but Nastasia's gonna be able to tell because she can tell. No, I can't. And you win $50,000. Oh, geez. Oh, geez.
+
+[27:46] You know what we should all do, people? And we should all pool our knowledge. It's really hard. I was gonna give one to Arielle because just do the GCM. Well, no, I just want to see if her nose her nose is forget the nose.
+
+[27:56] Just do GC mass spec on it. Figure out what that's cheating. That's that like what are you, Willy Wonka? That would be cheating. I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of Sour Patch.
+
+[28:14] Tastes like vaguely artificial, vaguely tropical, real sour stuff. I feel like I've had that flavor before. It's a specific flavor. And there's lots of clues that they give you. But I see you also brought though one of my favorite sour flavors.
+
+[28:30] Sumac. Yeah. Sumac. People, I saw when I was driving up uh a couple of weeks ago, the sumac's starting to ripen. Is that one ripe yet?
+
+[28:39] I think this one is. Taste, taste. Oh, give me a taste. Yeah, well, give it a taste. So, sumac, for those of you that don't know, sumac is delicious.
+
+[28:50] Now listen, here's how you know if it's the sumac that you can eat. Is it red? If it's red, you can eat it. If it's white, don't. Oh, that's good, Stas.
+
+[29:02] I mean, that's real good. Yeah. So what you do is if you live where sumac grows, in our neighborhood, the majority of sumac is what's known as staghorn sumac. It's kind of hairy, right? So you you you just rip, cut the whole sumac thing off.
+
+[29:16] Let it get ripened. Taste it first. If it doesn't have a lot of flavor, it's not ripe. If you wait too long, it loses its flavor. So the one nostasi got here is real good.
+
+[29:26] Then what you're gonna want to do, you can just freeze them as is if you don't have time to uh what's it called? Process them right now, boil them in water, and then it's the best soda. It's so good. There's something about sumac that when you drink it, you have to drink more. You have to just drink a little bit more.
+
+[29:43] You drink a little bit and you're like, oh, that's good. I want more. And then you have a little more, and you're like, oh, that was good, but you know, I'm done. Uh more. More.
+
+[29:50] Anyway. Uh, so all right, enough about our cooking. Let's get to other people's cooking issues. That's delicious. Thanks for bringing in that.
+
+[29:57] Thanks for sharing. Mm-hmm. I appreciate it. Uh, Zach Ross wrote in, uh, I've been making watermelon aqua fresca this summer. It's good, but it's about a hundred times better than that's a lot of times, Zach.
+
+[30:09] A hundred times is a lot better. In other words, I don't know that there's anything where the best version of it I've ever had, if it was a hundred times worth, I would even put it in my mouth. What about you guys? Like, do you believe that there's a factor of a hundred between something that is edible and something that is super fantastic? That's two orders of magnitude, Joe.
+
+[30:30] That's huge. I know that's a big number. Yeah, yeah. For those of you that like don't think in terms of orders of magnitude, go watch the Eames's Powers of Ten film. Amazing.
+
+[30:40] Classic. Amazing. Classic. Um that said, I will just assume, Zach, that we're just being a little hyperbolic and that we're okay. It's about a hundred times better the next day.
+
+[30:51] Why is this? It seems too simple to just have the flavors meld overnight and be so better. Maybe that's it, but I'm curious if there's something more happening here. Well, uh, I have a note in to uh Harold McGee to ask him, see whether he had any ideas, but he hasn't gotten back to me yet. If I had to guess, what I'd say is this, because I was thinking, well, is it the sugar somehow, something?
+
+[31:10] But weep, I did some like some preliminary Google Scholar searching on whether or not watermelon, like what changes happened in watermelon juice over the course of a day. I wasn't able to find anything, but here's what I think. If I had to guess, I would say there's some volatile aroma in uh in the watermelon, right, that is being liberated and flashing off, and that you like the product a lot better after that flash is off, right? So I would say it's probably not a chemical reaction or some sort of like reaction within the product itself. It's just a losing of volatiles.
+
+[31:41] Now it could be that if you're adding the lime that you like the line, the age lime flavor, it could be that there's some reaction with the increased acidity because watermelon's not that high of an acid, it's causing something to precipitate out. It could be that it's auto-clarifying overnight and you're just drinking the top and you like the stuff that the top tastes better. But here's how you test. Take the stuff, if you have a vacuum machine, if you don't have a vacuum machine, you're SOL, and just run a vacuum on it, and that'll distill, it'll flash off some of those top-end volatiles without heating it or boiling it. And if you're getting a similar result by doing that, then I'm guessing it's a loss of volatile.
+
+[32:17] Is that a good uh decent answer? Doing all right? Yeah. Uh oh, got a shout-out. Uh Erica Lash wants to give a birthday shout-out to uh our uh Patreon follower, Christopher Tompkins titch.
+
+[32:31] Oh, sorry, sorry to botch your name, Christopher, especially on your birthday. Uh couldn't figure out a better way to get in touch uh without breaking into my husband's Patreon account. I like that she doesn't break into her husband's Patreon account. That's strong, right? Yeah.
+
+[32:44] Yeah. Uh so I'm gonna give you, is it so? So Christopher is turning uh 33 on uh the 19th. What day is it today? 13th.
+
+[32:54] So, so he would be turned 33 before. So 33. Let me see. What was I doing when I was 33? So he's a PhD student at the at the Harvard right now, right?
+
+[33:06] And he was formerly a TA at the at the Harvard class that we that we teach. By the way, we're doing that again this year, Stas. Cool. Yeah, Harvard, live this year. Uh, what was I doing when I was 33?
+
+[33:17] 33. Huh. I don't know. I think I uh I had Booker already. What was I doing?
+
+[33:24] Who knows? It was a good year. You're in for a good year, and this is your uh this is your birthday shout-out. Uh so what else what else do we say in a shout-out? We should kind of have a Joe, we gotta have some sort of like birthday shout-out.
+
+[33:34] Like at the bar, we would always play uh in the club. You know what I mean? I mean, I know it's kind of like trite, but I tell you what, when you're in a bar and 50 cent comes on in the club and people are drinking, people enjoy it. All right. I'll look for that.
+
+[33:47] Yeah? I'll look for something. You look for something? I'll look for something. All right.
+
+[33:51] All right. Note. Make note. And then and then, you know, we can we'll retroactively somehow, Christopher, give you the uh the, you know, go shorty, it's your birthday. Whatever, whatever, whatever Joe's version of go shorty, it's your birthday.
+
+[34:06] Uh Aaron from Oklahoma wrote in, hey cooking issues gang. I have a propane grill with a weak fact, so weak that it's it's W E A K with dashes. Weak sideburner. Uh, I use a sideburner mostly for deep frying in a pot. Is it feasible to upgrade this to a bigger, higher BTU burner?
+
+[34:24] I don't often use a side burner at the same time as my main uh burners and in the grill, if that matters. Thanks. Um well, yeah. But what I would say you should do is don't like upgrade. Here's the issue, right?
+
+[34:38] Side burners are weak because they're small and they're expecting you to, I don't know what, keep a pot of butter going or something on the on the side, right? We mean like uh do that fancy grill that you have access to. No, John has access to a kalamazoo grill. Kalamazoo grills are built entirely by hand in the United States and signed by the makers. They cost $12,000.
+
+[34:59] Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, so John has access to one of these, and yet he still hasn't found our our monocles. I think I can't wait for us all to do this uh program with our monocles in.
+
+[35:11] You know what I'm saying? Anyway, so do you use a monocle when you use the Kalamazoo group? I haven't used it yet. That house is being renovated at the moment. But you looked at it.
+
+[35:18] You touched it. I've looked at it, I touched it. Yeah. Looked really nice. Really, really nice.
+
+[35:22] Did it run off tanks like chumps, or did they plumb that sucker? Plumbed it. Yeah. Damn. Imagine.
+
+[35:27] But you can dual fuel that, right? You could throw wood into your calamazoo. Yes, you can. Yeah. Or charcoal.
+
+[35:33] Or charcoal. Yeah. Yeah. I always w thought more people should have the the dual fuel situation. So they could just because as much as everyone likes a chimney starter, right?
+
+[35:46] Wouldn't you like to just dump a bunch of coal on top of where your gas flame is and go and then walk away and then have it be coal instead of. Weber has that. Yeah? Yeah, my dad used to get that one. Is it good?
+
+[35:56] Took a little while for it to get started, but you don't have to like do the chimney. You just throw it in there, get it going, and then I don't know, for 20, 30 minutes, it was good to go. And I'm sure it's easier to add more on top. Because you know how like when you add more on top, you wait too long, it doesn't catch right and it's uneven. This one you're like, hey, yo.
+
+[36:11] Yeah. Nice. Anyway, so you have to report back to us on what that's like. I'm sure that sideburner's not weak. No, probably not.
+
+[36:17] No. No, yeah. When you're spending $12,000 on a grill your side burner, it better not be weak. Also, like, what does it mean by weak? I've just been looking at uh at you know what?
+
+[36:25] It's so weird that you asked this question now because I was just doing a lot of really boring research on uh powers of uh different burners and ovens, which I won't get into now because Nastasia is already checked out and on her phone. She would really punch me in the face if I just started talking about BTUs and lots of talking to what? I think. All right. Uh so anyways, so uh yeah, you can replace it, but I think a better thing is to just get an entirely separate unit to go on the side, or just remove the side burner and put the equivalent of a candy stove.
+
+[36:58] It depends on what you want. You can buy outdoor walk burners, which you know, that's like hi, I'm gonna go crazy, right? Or you could buy like my mom's paella burner, but again, that's a real big flame. Or they make uh kind of dual ring burners where you can have just the inner ring on and just the outer ring. And a lot of people make outdoor, very professional units because professional people cook outdoors.
+
+[37:22] I wouldn't necessarily go for like the Home Depot or Low style turkey fryer because they're a little low because they're meant to cook low. They're not meant to be operating on a grill and they're a little bit unstable. Even candy stoves, professional candy stoves, which are awesome. You ever use a candy stove, John? Nope.
+
+[37:36] You know what I'm talking about though, right? Those like in when you're in the kitchen, you would use them for stock. They're low. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, call candy stoves because they need the super high BTUs for doing uh candy and stuff.
+
+[37:47] But you can put legs on those and lift them up high and just have a ripping burners on the side. So yeah, I would just get a standalone commercial side burner and then, you know, just kind of saw off the old one and put that next to it. You might have to upgrade your um, you might have to upgrade your regulator. And you also have to realize that there are at least two different pressures that uh outdoor propane gear runs on, kind of like a very like a lower pressure one and a more of a medium pressure. So just make sure uh that your pressures match and uh I will not, and I'm being serious here, will not recommend that you do your own gas stuff work.
+
+[38:24] Just, you know, buy real equipment and don't blow yourself up too much, you know. Um, anonymous wrote in. Anonymous. Hmm. Uh new Patreon subscriber here, longtime listener.
+
+[38:41] Love the work. I'm from Australia, and we're planning an American themed dinner party next weekend. We've been planning it for a while, but COVID has gotten into the way. It's worked out well being 4th of July. Oh, so we must have missed this when we were in the 4th of July.
+
+[38:53] Oh crap. I'm planning on. Oh man, I forgot to look up Pie Marches on re. I was gonna that's what I was gonna do this morning. Look up the pie marches on recipe.
+
+[39:01] John, you have the pie marches on recipe. I'm planning on making pumpkin pie. I have a can of Libby's. That's standard. Nastasi, you like pumpkin pie?
+
+[39:08] What do you like better? Sweet potato or pumpkin? Uh me too. Joe. You like neither?
+
+[39:14] You have a neither look on your face. Yeah, I'm not into I'm not really into pies. Is that weird? No, a lot of people don't like pie. A lot of people don't like sweets.
+
+[39:22] Do you like sweets? I like I love sweets. I the only pie I really like is uh a key lime pie. Ooh. Yeah, but any other kind of cooked cooked fruit I'm not into.
+
+[39:33] There's a lot of people, my stepmom doesn't like cooked fruit. I like fruit on its own, but not a cooked fruit, like an apple pie. No, no. What about jelly? Like uh like a British jelly, like a mint?
+
+[39:46] No, no, no, like peanut butter and jelly. Oh, um, yes, I do. I love apricot jelly. You know why? Because it tastes great.
+
+[39:54] I have an apricot in the in the fridge there if you want. Uh do you uh do you like dru uh I got from the farmer's market got some apricots. Do you like uh I like that your apricot? That's another good question to ask people. Apricot, apricot.
+
+[40:04] Apricot. Hmm. Stubbs. Apricot. Wow, and from California, so I'm gonna have to take that, John.
+
+[40:10] Apricot or apricot? Apric. Hmm. Fight. Uh I don't know.
+
+[40:16] I don't have a dog in this fight. That's like uh I was trying to start a fight over uh last week at an event that Nastasi and I went to over Fudgy versus non-fudgy brownies. Fudgy versus cakey. Well, my my wife is British, so everything, yeah. I'm learning to speak the language properly.
+
+[40:32] Oh, please. Shalots. Oh, come on. Like, you know that like I love working with you and everything, but if you say aluminium, it's over. No, no, no.
+
+[40:48] We're out of here. There's no schedule for L. No, jeez. Oh, God. You know, I'm not even gonna not even get into it.
+
+[40:56] Not even gonna get into it. All right. Dave, five metro recipe. Oh, uh, so how does what kind of crust, first of all, does first of all, you need to go online, look up Boston Monroe Strauss. What's a PDF of it on the Haiti Babel Haiti Trust?
+
+[41:11] Everything everything that comes out of that person's pen off that person's typewriter was genius. Uh, what kind of crust does he use? Sifted pastry flour, shortening water, salt, powdered skimmed milk, and corn syrup. For the crust? Yep.
+
+[41:27] Special crust for pumpkin pie. Wow. Huh. Here's the thing I'm gonna tell you. Uh here's the thing I'm gonna tell you.
+
+[41:35] I'm gonna get back to your question in a minute. We have a because we have a caller. But I would just go on that. Because if he says that he made a special crust just for pumpkin pie, I'd listen. I would listen.
+
+[41:45] And he uh my memory serves me. You can look it up while I'm doing this caller, John. Memory serves me. He tells you how to make your your own mix, but he says that you're probably better off starting with uh pre-canned, I believe is the is the truth. So uh, and figure out what his recipe for that is.
+
+[42:00] Don't follow Libby. What do they know? I mean, they know everything because they make it, but come on. All right. So it's the correct brand, though.
+
+[42:05] Caller, you're on the air. Oh, hey Dave. Hey. Hey, Jordana. Hey, how are you doing, Jordana?
+
+[42:12] How's it going? How's it all right? How's it? Where are you? You up in Hudson?
+
+[42:17] I'm near Hudson. I'm near Hudson. What's it like? Is it humid? Is it hu humid there like it is here?
+
+[42:22] Is it just not too hot, but just kind of gross, that way that only New York gets gross? You know what? It's thick. It's spongy. It's unpleasant.
+
+[42:31] Yeah. And it's not inspiring, I would say. Oh, you've just you just described my high school life. Yeah. I know that about you.
+
+[42:41] Um, but we did just visit a friend's garden and we got such beautiful stuff. And so, yeah, I don't know. I'm feeling all right about the world. Nice. How about you?
+
+[42:50] Uh I'm glad you're feeling great. Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Dean, do you know why I'm calling? I I do not.
+
+[43:00] You know how Nastasia uh doesn't like to tell me anything. So if she knows, she hasn't told me anything. Oh, well, I so we did it, Jordana. He didn't really care. That was the uh what?
+
+[43:09] He didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't care. What didn't I care about?
+
+[43:13] The flavor of the mystery sour pas. It's not that I don't care. I don't know what it is. Do you have any theories? Well, did you did you even do it in a scientific way?
+
+[43:22] No, he said it all tastes the same. I didn't say it all. That's not what I said. Anyone who's listening, it said it I said it tastes like kind of sour, fruity, vaguely tropical. Like, I mean, like, you know, berries and tropical stuff.
+
+[43:37] I mean, what what did you get out of it? Stoff, stop. Can you do me a favor? Um hold his nose. No, I can't.
+
+[43:43] I'm on the other side of the night. He can do it. He can do it. You can hand me another one. I'll hold my nose.
+
+[43:47] I don't care. Place place the candy in the mouth. Hold the nose. Are you doing it? Or else I get the hose again?
+
+[43:54] Hold a second. I'm gonna follow your instructions. All right, ready? I'm following. Okay, so I'm gonna pinch my nose.
+
+[43:58] I'm now pinching my nose. Now what? Okay, put the candy in your mouth and bite it. Chew it a little bit. Hold candy.
+
+[44:06] Hold candy, put it in your mouth, chew it a little, and now release your release your nose. What do you experience? What are you feeling? Yeah, I know that. I know that flavor, but you know it.
+
+[44:20] Yeah. Suddenly, suddenly someone's infected. No, but it's some sort of like tropical plus banana plus like some sort of estery thing. I don't know. I don't know what it is.
+
+[44:30] What are you guys getting out of it? Okay. Here's what I got out of it. All right. But strawberry banana.
+
+[44:37] Yeah, but it's got also got some strawberry. It's like a strawberry banana situation. The hammer, the hammer got strawberry. I got banana. And then at one point I got a little bit of cherry.
+
+[44:47] But stuff, did you go over the clues with him? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh, cherries because it has that cough syrup hit at the end. That little dime tap energy.
+
+[44:54] That's right. Did I have I ever made you one of my uh my my flaming mo Sazerax with the cough syrup? He doesn't know what it is. Okay, so should we read the clues? Stoff, do you have them up?
+
+[45:07] I don't have them up. No. Okay, okay. I'm sure we can get people on the Patreon to like like hit us up on this, but go ahead. Give me some clues.
+
+[45:14] Okay. Okay, ready? Okay. Okay. Yeah, here we go.
+
+[45:21] Ready? Yes. Okay. Born ready, Georgia. Okay, and this is okay.
+
+[45:25] Clue number one. It gives laugh and can be a riot. Because when it flies, nobody's silent. Because when it's what? When it flies, nobody's silent.
+
+[45:38] Wait. Can give a rise. It gives laughs and can be a riot, because when it flies, nobody's silent. It's it's far flavored. Fart flavored.
+
+[45:50] Okay. Cool, cool, cool. All right. Moving on to clue two. But it could be a banana peel.
+
+[45:54] Back in the case. Do you know Nastasia's favorite banana peel story? You know, you know her favorite banana peel story, right? No, I don't. We were uh at Harvard, maybe I don't know, ten years ago, so no, no, like seven years ago.
+
+[46:05] Yeah. You're supposed to say we were in Cambridge. Yeah. We were on the square, Jordana. We were on the square.
+
+[46:12] So we were at Harvard. We're walking with uh, you know, eminent food author, Harold McGee. Who's a distinct he's a distinguished looking gentleman? He's a distinguished looking gentleman. He is.
+
+[46:24] And he he came within what, like millimeters, right, Stas, of doing the full like three stooges banana peel fly, like and Nastasia for ever since then, like every once in a while when she's looking off in the distance, she's either thinking of Peter Kim coming in in the bathroom with me, or she's thinking of Harold McGee almost slipping and dying on a banana peel. Yeah. Godfather of science. Can I add one more to the mix? Sure.
+
+[46:52] Okay. So last year I decided I was gonna learn how to be a gardener. Okay. Spoiler alert, did not go well. Did not go well at all.
+
+[47:00] Why did did is your soil no good or is your is it just a that you just hate plants? I got shitty soil, excuse me. Yeah. And I didn't build a fence. And so it just got and then at one point I I got infested with tomato hornworms, which are the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.
+
+[47:17] Anyway, I was I was really feeling myself uh for a bit, and I was sort of gallivanting around calling myself an outside gal, which you can imagine. And I just wanted recognition for my wife, you know, and I was just like, I'm an outside gal. Look at all these amazing things that I do. Went outside, stepped on a rake, and it smashed me in the face, and I got a black eye. Oh that's my that's a God.
+
+[47:42] Oh my God, please tell me you have surveillance footage. No, I absolutely do not, and I would never share it with you because you're not trustworthy, but it did happen. What? How am I not trustworthy? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
+
+[47:54] How am I not trustworthy? I gave you the surveillance footage of me literally prat falling with a rake to the dome, you would put it on your Instagram or something. You would hold it over me for my entire life. That you're you're maybe you're thinking of your friend Nastasia. Maybe you're thinking of your good friend Nastasia, because maybe she would do that, but I would keep it to myself higher dossier and just look at it, you know, every now and again when I needed a little mental encouragement.
+
+[48:21] Because the idea, not only that it has happened in the real life, but happened to someone that I know. I'm just picturing it in my head. Maybe that's even better. Wham. I can't imagine it.
+
+[48:32] It's like because it rakes people, like you see it in the cartoon, but rakes are long. I mean, Jordan is like, you know, you're you're a you're a normal height person. It's not like you're like one foot high. Yeah. Well, there's nothing you should have seen it coming, but like think of how long it takes the tip of that rake to fly up and hit you right in the face.
+
+[48:49] You know what I'm saying? It's also, it's also just the level of sort of bravado that I was bringing to the moment, you know. I was like, I'm an outside gal, and then literally smash myself in the face with the floor. Yeah, it's got sh it's got shades of Afro Ninja. It's not like it's not like Grape Stomp lady who deserved it because she was cheating.
+
+[49:08] You weren't cheating, but that that little bit of a for those of you that can mentally see what I'm about to do. That's the Afro Ninja hit. Right before, right before he does the flip. And you that's a your equivalent, like the outside like gal thing. You give that little head bop with a and then you step on the rake and boom.
+
+[49:26] Yeah. So I would just say pride, pride goes before the fall. And that's sort of the primary lesson. Hey, well, you know, thank thank God. Thank God that you weren't doing some sort of mamas and papa's 70s garbage and were barefoot or that rake would have gone right through your foot.
+
+[49:43] That's true. I did a lot of that garbage as well. Yeah. And but you know what? Did you did after that, did you move away from the old school hard timed rake to kind of the more modern plasticky, more malleable rakes that uh don't have the ability to fly up and whack you in the head?
+
+[50:01] No, because those are really more for leaf piles, Dave. Well, yeah. That's really more for a leaf pile. And I I was looking to do some serious gardening. I was an outside gal.
+
+[50:10] You've forgotten. You've forgotten the thesis. Hey, do you know what you you know, you know what you're gonna like? You know what, you know what I have a feeling. You want to know what's a good stress relieving tool?
+
+[50:19] Go get you, go get you a scythe. A scythe? A scythe, yeah. Like a like a grim, uh like a grim reaper. Oh, oh yeah, oh yeah.
+
+[50:30] They're not cheap. They're not cheap. I think I have one I can loan you, but you have to go to Lyme, Connecticut and get it. But like uh, I have like I have like a couple like hundred or you know, eight, fifty, sixty-year-old scythes that like came with the house that I got before. And I was like, Was there like a a golden, a golden year of scything?
+
+[50:48] I don't know the modern scythe really. I took down a half acre. I took down a half acre of tall grass in like 40 minutes with a scythe. First of all, you sharpen it and then you get the swing of it, and then you're like, I'm gonna get you grass, and then you're just like whoof, whoof, whoop, whoof, and it's faster than a weed whacker. It's nuts.
+
+[51:08] Makes the only noise is the noise of you going shunk, shwunk, shwunk with the weed whacker through the you would love it. You personally would love it. And then that's some serious outdoor gal stuff. Yeah. That is some that is.
+
+[51:21] I do have a baby now, and I fear the message that I would be sending. But I cut grass. I'm aggressive. Not aggressive. My outdoor gal needs.
+
+[51:33] Listen, if you have aggression, which we all do, and I know you do, Jordanna, right? Take it out on the grass. I don't know. Take it out on the grass. I'll tell you what, if you want to see the scythe in action, the literally the very first Instagram post I ever put up like five years ago or something, is the day that I was like, oh my god, the scythe is the greatest thing.
+
+[51:53] The very first Instagram post. Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna hit the back wall. There you go of your Instagram, and then I'll and then I'll make the decision. All right, yeah, please do.
+
+[52:01] I think you will enjoy it. I'm just telling you, I think you will enjoy it. Uh well, actually, I do think that you know me pretty well with regards to the things that I need to do to release my aggression. So you know, because you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna take you at your word.
+
+[52:15] As much as I like a two stroke motor, I think that like I hope that I'm the last generation of people that uses a two stroke motor. They're just so loud. Like anyone who's out, like, you know, and about and like he like all of a sudden whips out the two stroke motor, it's like it destroys the whole vibe, doesn't it? No, uh but hey, hey, hey, we're not going there. But you know what I'm talking about.
+
+[52:38] Like they burn oil, they make that smell, they're loud. Anyway. Disgusting. Yeah. There's a guy staring at us who I think is gonna kill us.
+
+[52:46] Oh my god. This story, this guy's gonna kill us, right? What I'm here to say is that I think it's a banana. Yeah. And I would I would like your support of this.
+
+[52:54] Well, I mean, I mean, how do I how do you like how do I support you? I'll support you with anything, Jordana, but like, how do I give you my support? I think there's definitely some strawberry action in there, too. What are the other clues? We're gonna give Oh, okay.
+
+[53:08] We're gonna give it to Arielle, by the way, so she can also lay in because I think she's a she's a good one. Okay, other clues. Back in the 80s, it came by storm, but not the 80s you think of. Again, bananas, big boom in the 1880s. Oh, but that's real dark.
+
+[53:21] You think you think we really want me? It's so dark. You mean the stuff that we did, the stuff that the the United Fruit Company did, that's so dark. Imagine like being like, rah-rah, United Fruit. Imagine that?
+
+[53:34] Exactly. That's so dark. Exactly. So I think you could really write a sort of inverse history of the banana in concert with the Sour Patch Kids Company. Man.
+
+[53:45] Every time I every time I see, did they change their name from United Fruit to Chiquita just so that we wouldn't have all those terrible associations? Interesting that you should mention Chiquita, Dave. Clue number seven. A lady sings about this kid's flavor. It's on her mind in a couple of layers.
+
+[54:09] Okay. What lady sings about bananas? Carmen Miranda. She sings about bananas? I mean, I love I love Carmen Miranda, but she's wearing a whole freaking fruit basket on her head.
+
+[54:20] Oh, she was a Chiquita banana baby? Uh do you ever watch the old Carmen Miranda stuff? Carmen ran it, right? I yeah. I mean, she had a whole fruit basket on her head.
+
+[54:29] We are I I like some caramel. All right. Okay, Blake says it's just the Chiquita banana lady. Okay, finally, this is the only one I want to ask you about because I actually think you might have an idea. Actually, first I wanna um tell you that clue number four is a dough that twinkles had its origins here.
+
+[54:51] It's not a star and it tastes pretty near. And I'm very impressed with myself because I remembered that the original flavor of Twinkies was banana. That is true. Do you know they rewr they re-released it recently? And I couldn't get my kids to try it.
+
+[55:05] Yeah, I couldn't get my kids to try it. They're like, why do I want a banana twinkle? I was like, for history, for history. Why don't you just eat it? Just what I don't understand with my kids, and I hope that you don't have this happen with your kid.
+
+[55:13] I'm like, you don't have to like it. You just have to try it. Like, why do why do kids now think they have to like everything that they that they have? What the hell is that? Was there any expectation growing up, guys, that you would like uh necessarily everything that you were gonna eat?
+
+[55:26] Nope. No. No. No. No.
+
+[55:29] No. Kids are different now. I don't like it. Was there an expectation growing up that you had to like everything that you eat? Oh.
+
+[55:36] Oh, absolutely not. No. Okay, this is the clue I want to ask you about because this is not triggering anything for me. So I want to know from a bit through a banana lens, if you will. Through a banana lens.
+
+[55:48] Through a banana darkness. All right. Exactly. A flavor from north and south. Melting pot meets drooling mouth.
+
+[55:57] See, that's what I'm saying. I think it's gonna be a temperate fruit, like a strawberry, and a southern, more tropical fruit like a banana. That's what I'm saying. So you think it's strawberry banana? Like that is just what the flavor is.
+
+[56:09] There's definitely a berry flavor in there. And I know don't start with me that bananas are berries. Okay. Don't start with me. But like, because oh, and strawberries are really just multiple aches.
+
+[56:22] Multiple fruits. No, I don't want to hear it. Like, I would say that uh I think it's definitely a strawberry banana, which is a classic flavor anyway. It's a classic flavor, right? I don't necessarily think that there's any in life, strawberry banana is like a classic, it's like an all-time classic combo.
+
+[56:41] You know what I mean? And that would give you the kind of north and the south. Although, truth be told, like, because the United Fruit Corporation Chiquita, like, bananas became the most popular, I think, fruit to eat out of hand, like in the world. So everyone in the north eats bananas anyway, and they're all freaking cavendish. But I that's what I'm saying.
+
+[56:58] But they're all Cavendish. But I do think that perhaps we are overstating the sort of the intellectual project at hand with regards to the mystery flavor of the sour patch kids. I think there may be some strawberry in it. That's all I'm saying. There's something fruity in it that's not like banana fruity that is that I think is, but I mean I could be wrong.
+
+[57:20] I mean, if they're gonna stick entirely, but I don't think they're gonna stick entirely tropical because they mentioned the northern thing, so they wouldn't also have like, you know, pineapple or what in it. You know what I mean? It wouldn't be that, you know, but I like pineapple. You know, pineapple does not ripen once it comes off the uh once they once they cut it. You know that?
+
+[57:37] No. It's not what they call a climacteric fruit. It can change slightly, right? And they can hit so here here's the story with pineapples. If you look at a pineapple, you guys know how to pick a pineapple?
+
+[57:48] You take the leaf in the middle or something? Well, or the size. That doesn't really work. Yeah, you smell it, right? Does it smell like a pineapple?
+
+[57:54] Eh, it got a good chance. Because here's the thing. It's supposed to, it's supposed to go yellow. It starts going yellow at the bottom. If it's green all the way to the bottom and has no smell, it's underripe, right?
+
+[58:05] But if you live in a place, if you're lucky enough to live in a place where they grow pineapples, they can let them get what's called like three quarters ripe, three quarters where it's like yellow almost all the way to the top, right? But they just don't ship well. They don't last long. So they tend to pick them right when they get mature, but when they're still kind of shippable and they have a long shelf life. That's why most of the pine pineapples we get just aren't that great.
+
+[58:26] You know what I'm saying? Uh so you can look at the yellowness, but they can cheat the yellowest because they can ethylene gas the pineapples and they will go yellow, but they won't necessarily get that much better because again, they're not climacteric fruits. I also tried, which I don't think we've talked about on air because we haven't been on air, I try one of those pink pineapples. You try one of those, Jordana. Uh you know what?
+
+[58:45] I I actually thought about gifting one of those recently, the pink pineapple, but um they're like $40, and then I felt dirty. And so I I I skipped it. Well, uh, I don't think I I thought it was looked, I didn't pay $40, I paid $20. They had them at the Essex Market live. I was like, literally, I'd never heard of them before.
+
+[59:05] And I was like, pink pineapple. And then I was like, I went to, I was like, how much is this? She's like, $20. I was like, $20. And then like I went and looked it up.
+
+[59:14] I was like, oh, online, it's like $40 or $50. So I was like, all right, I'll buy it. So I bought it because I smelled it. It smelled good. Cut it open, beautiful, no acid.
+
+[59:23] I don't like, I don't, I I need acid in my pineapple. I'm an acid pineapple guy. I like acid in my pineapple. But as I said, if you like low acid fruit, maybe you would like it. Do you like low acid fruit, Jordano?
+
+[59:38] You know, the older I get, the lower, the lower acid I like my fruit. Really? I think I think high acid high acid fruits are a young gal's game. Really? You know?
+
+[59:51] So, like, I'll tell you, for me, I like uh I like my drinks drier, but I'm still an acid head. I still could, I still could take a lot of acid down. You know what? Can I say one terrible thing about acid? So Booker, my son Booker, which I, you know, I shouldn't talk smack about my kids on the air.
+
+[1:00:10] But Booker somehow, real late, like years late, has been gotten interested in that damn warhead challenge again. You guys know about that stupid thing? Oh, wow. The warhead challenge. Yeah, the warhead challenge.
+
+[1:00:25] So he sat there and he unwrapped a hundred warheads and he would just start eating them like crunching these warheads. He 36. Wow. 36. And you know, Booker, like, you know, he's not like a rough and tumble, like, I'm gonna have my mouth bleed kind of a guy.
+
+[1:00:42] Now, squid ink, he'll eat more squid ink than he'll he like he could you took him out to California when the Humboldt squids were taking over over there, and he would have taken down the entire population. He would have all of it, all the ink. He eats, like I swear to God, when my mom was making that, uh, that I was talking earlier, my mom was making this uh Spanish pasta, pael like pasta, and she made a squid ink for Booker, even though he left early to get on the train because you know how he is. Anyway, so like I had to buy the only container of squid ink that was available because my mom's like, I ran out of squid ink. Can you get it?
+
+[1:01:12] Was at Calustian's, and they had only the $50 size of squid ink. And the $50 size of squid ink is, you know, it's a good amount of squid ink. So she's like, take it home to Booker. I know how he likes squid ink. Every surface of my house now is covered in black filth from the squid ink, and that the the sink is just mayonnaise and squid ink.
+
+[1:01:31] Because what he does is he gets a jug of mayonnaise. I have to buy cheap mayonnaise. I can't even afford to buy helm's anymore because he just goes through like giant tubs. He'll just take mayonnaise and squid ink, mix them together with a little salt and sugar, and he'll just sit there and house it with chips. House it.
+
+[1:01:47] Just house it. Like and and so, like you want to hear something gross? Can I tell you something gross? You just did tell me something. Can I say something even grosser?
+
+[1:01:55] Can I tell you something even grosser? All right. Yeah, go for it. All right. He was like, it changed the color of my poop.
+
+[1:02:03] Because he ate only squid ink. He's like, Squid ink's healthy. I'm like, no one has ever eaten this much squid ink, Booker. No one knows, no one has ever subsisted entirely on squid ink and mayonnaise before in the history of humanity. So nobody knows what it does to your health to eat this much squid ink.
+
+[1:02:22] Because if no one's eaten this much squid ink, anyway. I don't know. I don't, I don't, I am speechless. It's good for you, bud. Yeah.
+
+[1:02:32] Good for you, bud. Yeah. That is that is quite a snack. Hey, listen, do you have any pumpkin pie recipe? Uh, do you have any pumpkin pie recommendations?
+
+[1:02:40] Because before we get cut off the air, John, John, did you have anything on pumpkin pie for his recipe? What do you put his filling? He gets canned filling. Yeah, he does. Yep.
+
+[1:02:48] And it's oh, trust him. Are you a can-filling uh please tell me you're not growing your own cucum bits and then boiling them down and making pumpkin pie, are you? That seems like a lot. I'm gonna be honest. I'm not like a pumpkin pie lover.
+
+[1:03:01] I find I find most desserts that are like heavy on the all-spice nutmeg cinnamon lobby to be a little a little much for me. Right. Right, right. Do you know do you like whipped cream? I love whipped cream.
+
+[1:03:18] I just want a pie that's made entirely of whipped cream, yeah. See, I like pumpkin pie with copious whipped cream. I don't like it without the copious whipped cream. Huh. I think that you don't like pumpkin pie.
+
+[1:03:31] I think you like a whipped cream. I think you like pie crust, and I think you tolerate the pumpkin filling. No, here's the thing, right? Uh what I would like is I would like to kind of invert the ratios. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[1:03:43] Like I I love that pumpkin flavor. And I even like the texture of it, but I would like the vast majority of what goes into my mouth to be whipped cream. Like pretty much all the time. Pretty much all the time, I would. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:03:56] I love whipped cream. So you you just have like a tiny little spoonful of pumpkin pie filling, just an absolute orgy of whipped cream while your son eats squid ink mixed with tubs of mayo and sugar. Have you been to my house for dinner? Because it's basically what it's like. Like people people joke because I go crazy.
+
+[1:04:18] I've I've made dinner in your in your kitchen. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I wasn't there. And and that's when Nastasia punked a pregnant lady into insulting my vacuum cleaner when I had let her stay for free in my house. Yeah.
+
+[1:04:35] Yeah, Cara. That was also when I almost died on the zip line, if everyone recalls. Oh, yeah. That video footage of my body going slack in the woods. Yeah.
+
+[1:04:44] I I made a very I made a nice zip line. Anyway, uh wait, so you can stand on if you like, but I gotta give this pumpkin pie recipe. What is it, John? Give me it. So it is.
+
+[1:04:53] It's on page 95 and pie march is on. And the recipe. So for the cr pumpkin filling, two pound sugar, one ounce salt, four-ounce pastry flour, one ounce cinnamon, quarter ounce nutmeg, quarter ounce ginger. Um that's why that's why uh Jordana's not a like all that nutmeg. You don't mind the ginger powder though, right?
+
+[1:05:18] Jordana's still there? We lose her. Oh, sorry, yes, I'm still here. I muted you so I could discuss my child's nap. But I I'm I'm I'm in it.
+
+[1:05:26] I'm in it. I love a candied ginger. Oh, really? So you like a more uh a hot ginger and not like the ginger powder that's in the in the stuff. Yeah, the the pie you're describing, John John, don't have me over.
+
+[1:05:38] It's not I'll be nice. I'll be nice about it at the dinner, but then I I will talk about it afterwards. Damn. Whoa! Yeah.
+
+[1:05:48] Whoa. Well, that's rough. Wow. Ouch. Jeez Louise.
+
+[1:05:52] All right. All right, we gotta get off. Yeah, and shout outs bye, Jordan. All right, hold on a second. I gotta I gotta do this one because I gotta get the Patreon question out.
+
+[1:05:59] Adam wrote in, uh, hey Nastasia, John, Matt, Dave, at least anyone who's not in Italy. Uh long time, first time, uh, Adam from Irvine, California. Where's Irvine again? Uh Bali. Okay.
+
+[1:06:09] You like Irvine? No. Go for the question. Uh 34. Uh wife puts up with cooking gadgets and projects as long as I don't make any more overcarbonated root beer geysers in the kitchen.
+
+[1:06:18] Oh, that's a nasty. And root beer also like it poisons all the lines. They smell like root beer forever. Well known fact. I'm setting up a small patio kitchen.
+
+[1:06:26] What are your thoughts on instead of a grill, getting an UNI 16-inch pizza oven? 70% of my use case is for grilled veggies, 20% for non, 10 for burger, uh, and fajita meat on cast iron pan in there. Basically, I don't actually uh barbecue, just grill. Second question. I'm also thinking of a portable induction burner for side dishes and maybe uh hot pot.
+
+[1:06:44] It looks like Ducks Top is the widely trusted brand, but New Wave Gold has better advertised temperature range uh and added infomercial allure. All the reviews I can find online seems sponsored on the slide. Thanks for all the answers, Rance, Raves, and Banter. Adam, this question is actually from a while ago, I think, and we just never got to it. Uh, I looked up those uh induction ranges, and um the temperature range of the one that had the wider temperature range, I think was wildly optimistic.
+
+[1:07:09] I think just I don't think it's gonna be uh any any better. They're all roughly the same unless they actually have accurate, uh accurate temperature control. Uh but I think you can't go wrong. I've never used the uh uni myself, but I'm a huge fan of get that and then also just get a grill so you can do grilling. I do almost all of my grilling over ridiculously high heat.
+
+[1:07:31] Uh I've redone all of my recipes fundamentally to have extremely high heat cooking. And in fact, uh two weeks ago, I just did a photo shoot for that section of my book. Uh and it's it's the section of the book is what I learned from cooking in a tandoor. What I learned from cooking in a in a tandoor, the miracle of moisture management. And uh next week on the show, uh we have we'll try to get to some of the questions maybe uh that you know weren't from the Patreon listeners, but next week, make sure you tune in.
+
+[1:08:02] We have Pierre Chom next week uh from uh Yolele Foods uh in his restaurants and Taranga here, uh, friend of the show, great guy. Uh, we're having him on ostensibly to talk about uh what it's uh what it's like to start a food business, especially one that does kind of import export. So bringing food uh from Senegal over here, the trials, the tribulations, and the rewards thereof. I had a dream. Did I tell you this, Stasia?
+
+[1:08:28] I had a dream where Pierre became a billionaire. Oh, yeah, you did. Selling frozen foods in supermarkets. And it was like, you know, like, you know how Paul Newman's face is on everything in the supermarket? It was Pierre's face on everything, and he was a billionaire off of his frozen food.
+
+[1:08:45] So we'll ask him next week. He's gonna be on. So send in any questions you have about Senegalese food. We were gonna do it before, but we were switching networks, and so we didn't want him to get like lost in the shuffle. So he's coming on uh next week.
+
+[1:08:56] Uh any questions about Fonio, starting a business, foods from Senegal, uh, you know, what it's like to be Pierre, send them to us. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the new standard radios Rockefeller setup. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Nastasia? Good.
+
+[0:23] You doing well? Mm-hmm. Yeah, you look well. Thanks. Yeah.
+
+[0:26] Yeah. Got uh got uh John. John in the booth with us. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:30] Yeah. Yeah. You in uh New York these days? Are you in uh back New York basically now full time again? I'll tell you something about New York right now.
+
+[0:36] Unpleasant. Yeah. Hot weather, hot weather, stinky garbage. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[0:41] Yeah. Stinky garbage. People just like wandering into the street like some sort of piece of livestock, like trying to get killed by my bike. Yeah. I gave him the jersey woe today, Stas.
+
+[0:51] He would have loved it. Lady walks. Okay, here's people. For those of you that don't know. By the way, we got Joe Hazen.
+
+[0:58] How you doing? Hey, I'm doing great. How are you? Doing right, and we got Jackie. We got a Jackie Molecules here.
+
+[1:03] Yeah, maybe. He's probably muting himself. We have a special guest. I'll introduce him one second. I'll say this one thing first.
+
+[1:08] So I'm going down, and as you know, on the bike lanes here in New York, they're green. And in the bike lane, you're supposed to go as fast as possible because I'm trying to get somewhere. This is commuting, and it's a bike lane, right? Even though there's signs everywhere saying, restaurant, slow down. Right?
+
+[1:21] You know what I'm saying? Anyway, but what you don't do is walk with your back to the oncoming bike traffic. If I see you do that, here's what I'm thinking. They're walking towards the cars, and then I'll pass them. Never turn back, never wander back into the bike lane.
+
+[1:37] So this person she wanders back into the bike lane and Stas, you know what I gave her. Right. Oh. Not like ding ding ding, because that wouldn't be sufficient. You know what I mean?
+
+[1:47] I gave her the full Oh man. I gave her the full the full experience. You know what I mean? Yeah. The New York, New Jersey, major metropolitan area experience.
+
+[1:58] Uh that doesn't include Connecticut, though. Well, Connecticut's not really a land of O's. No. Do you consider Really? What would they say?
+
+[2:05] Nothing. Nothing. The Connecticut that's right next to New York is like freaking Greenwich. Oh. Oh.
+
+[2:14] Oh. Excuse me. You know what I mean? Like, whereas like everywhere else, you go out to Long Island, you go out to Jersey, you go anywhere. You go to Oh, you know what I mean?
+
+[2:24] Like that's how we do it. Right? You know what I mean? Anyway. Uh good news is that uh we have today on the show a special guest who we were supposed to have uh earlier, but we had to cancel because we were moving networks, uh, and we didn't want him to get lost in the shuffle.
+
+[2:43] Pierre, Pierre Chong, welcome to the show. Hey Dave, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Well, it's been a long time coming.
+
+[2:51] We've known each other since when? Since like 2009, and you've never been on the show, I don't think, have you? I don't know. Actually, I have been on the show a very long time, a long time ago, briefly. You called uh we called, yeah.
+
+[3:05] Well, I wasn't a special guest, I was just talking about fermented stuff. I remember that, yeah, because I I love the show. Yeah, oh well, I appreciate it. Well, you know, uh, we're all big fans, obviously, of uh you. So let me give give you a little bit of like uh, I guess your background.
+
+[3:20] Um so Pierre, I knew I first met you, like I said, in 2009 when I was working at the French Culinary Institute. You were coming in and using uh our space, because I guess you know you didn't want to take over your restaurant at the time, because you were still had uh the Grand Tak uh Dakar at that time, I think. And um you were training for Iron Chef America, and that's kind of when uh I I met you. Is uh, you know, we had mutual friend, um, you know, um Hervé Malivaire, who was our, you know, your second on the on the show. And uh you came in and training, and we just kind of like you know became friends, and then you gave me a copy of your book, Yolele, which was the very first Senegalese cookbook in English, at least here in the United States.
+
+[4:06] It's the first one that I I know of. It was crazy. If you look back in 2009, there was nothing. You know what I'm saying? There's nothing.
+
+[4:14] Yeah, yeah, it was quite pioneering at the time. And um, you know, I it this whole thing began for me in the early 90s when I arrived in New York. And you know, New York was already calling itself the food capital of the world, but but Africa was missing. Africa wasn't part of that world. And I was like, I saw this as an opportunity.
+
+[4:33] Yeah. Because I know, I mean, I came from Senegal and the food is awesome there. I mean, you've been there. Yeah, you took me. I took you there, yeah.
+
+[4:42] Uh we had a great trip. So uh, you know, I was like, you know, I uh this is an opportunity. I'm going to make it a mission to introduce this food culture. And it I never stopped. And Yolele, that cookbook that you received was the very first one that was part of a broader mission of introducing a food culture.
+
+[4:59] Yeah, because there was uh at the time, right, in the 90s, there was like maybe one or two uh West African restaurants on the west side, and then I guess uh some up uh it like uh above 116th Street, right? Kind of in the middle of the island. And but well, where else was there, where else was there where else were they? Like what was going on? Well, they weren't part of my food scene at the time because I was pretty Manhattan-centric, like the idiot that I am.
+
+[5:24] No, actually, I I'm impressed that you knew about them. There were the those were the very, very first one. When we first arrived, I were at here in 89 actually. And when we first arrived, the only way we would have Senegalese food would be women would cook. We lived in a hotel, right?
+
+[5:40] There was a you know, quote unquote hotel on 50th Street. Remember what Times Square looked like back in the days? Oh, yeah. So that hotel was in the middle of Times Square. It was nothing like what you have right now.
+
+[5:51] But those women had set up kitchen in those hotel rooms, and they would cook like for immigrants, and we would just come and grab our food to go, and we would grab our chairwigan, our peanut sauce, our lamp stools, our okra stood, all those great things were cooked outside of hotel rooms. There was no restaurant. And then early 90s, the first restaurant started to come, you know, the ones you mentioned in the in the west side and one on 115th Street, and 116th Street became Little Senegal. Was uh that's really how it started. Was uh Shen Yanya Koti?
+
+[6:22] Was she Senegalese? She was Senegalese, yes. Shen Yanyanyakoti remembered her. She was in uh in uh around the meat, not meat packing, but um in the 40s behind the exactly, exactly right. I remember her.
+
+[6:37] I lived a block from that restaurant. I lived a block from that restaurant, and we used to go, and that was the first time like I had had any of that kind of food at all. And I was like, oh my god, what is this? You know what I mean? Like, what's going on?
+
+[6:50] And I was very fortunate because I don't know if you remember this, but right in that neighborhood, basically across the street from Shenanyanya Koti was the only place, I guess, south of uh Harlem in Manhattan where you could buy that kind of ingredient. But it was a it was a store for West African food run by Asians. By Koreans, that's right. I I remember that place. Wow, you're taking me back.
+
+[7:17] That was Health Kitchen. Yeah. It was in the Health Kitchen. And uh and yeah, those Koreans had all those funky flavors, you know, the the fermented conch, the the dried fish, you know, all those things were there. The the the locust beans, you know, the netetu, dawadawa, all those things that they you could find it in the Korean place.
+
+[7:36] It's a big Korean place, too. How did that? All the Africans would just go there. I don't know. I still don't know.
+
+[7:42] It's still a mystery. We talk about it between us immigrants, and we're like, wow, who was those guys and how, you know, but they just had a flare. They knew that, you know, there was a community, and that community needed to have access to that that those ingredients. You know, those ingredients were so important for me particularly and many of my peers to stay in New York, you know, to endure the cold and all that harshness of New York, we have to have the good food of home. And and that's why that's why we would go by uh by any means to to make that food happen.
+
+[8:14] And for me, it's really one of the reasons why I focused on on bringing that food culture to to my cuisine. You know, it's really for self-serving because I I miss those flavors. Thank God for those ingredients, those Koreans though. Well, let's uh think about that for a second. Let's go back to Yolele, the first book in in 2009, right?
+
+[8:35] So as opposed to then like your next book, at least the one that uh you know I know of uh is the uh the the big uh Senegal one, which was when was that in in uh 15 or something like this? 2016, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly 2015. So then, and then just you know, two years ago you had the the phonio cookbook. So that's right.
+
+[8:54] In the Yolele book, you pretty much say you're not going to get, and you know, I'd love for you to talk about like maybe like you know some of these amazing fermented ingredients like uh netutu like geg like yet so in Yolele you're like you're not gonna find it use fish sauce you know you know what I mean uh which in itself is interesting because you talk about the the Viet you know the group of Vietnamese culture that's in Senegal as well but um so it's kind of an interesting cross but uh now when you're writing recipes w like what in your mind has changed about writing a recipe for someone in the US in terms of what they can get well now I don't have to have all those stages for sourcing the ingredients because it's more accessible. I mean personally I've come up with I created a company that brings those ingredients and the goal is to be more accessible to have like someone in Kansas City or in Missouri come get the ingredients now just by going to to to our e-commerce platform. But those ingredients are more readily available even at Whole Foods now you get some of those ingredients. So it's it's really interesting how 10 years spam so much has changed and and Africa is is the is the new frontier you know people are more interested in those ingredients and the the the the great thing is those ingredients are not only really bringing exotic flavor to your cuisine but they're they're nutritious as well. So that's really um what what you get now the difference between Yolele my first cookbook and and my next cookbook actually I'm I'm working on a on a on a new cookbook with uh with with Clarkson and Product we just signed a new deal and uh and the cookbook is going to be really everyday cooking everyday African cooking but for for for American audience so so it's it's really a a different world now.
+
+[10:43] Yeah so that's that's uh that's really the the the the the the the fact well I know also like uh I don't know if you want to talk about it but I know that you know for years part of your mission has been to expose America and bring some of these uh flavors and the culture here to America but also to kind of reinvigorate the love of traditional foods back in your home right you want to talk about that at all or absolutely absolutely the the the fact um that we have this beautiful traditional cuisine that has been looked down upon by our own selves sometimes particularly when it comes to the ingredients and this is connected with colonia col colonization you know Senegal was colonized by the French and you know colonization is is was a business you know the French came with a a whole uh politics for our agriculture for instance you know and it's not only the French but the British and every part of of of the world that was colonized there was a a a system uh designed to to really enrich the colonizer so the the the agricultural system in Senegal according to the French to focus on on growing peanuts and for grow for us to grow peanuts we would have to uh to to make sure peanut became a cash crop for the farmers and the gr since you don't eat peanut as a subsistence we would have to import the grain and the French went to Vietnam because Vietnam was also part of their colonial past. And that would so bring the broken rice. And you know what broken rice is? Broken rice is the rice debris, the leftover of the rice. After the rice is processed, the leftover that the Vietnamese used to have for animal feed.
+
+[12:31] So the French brought it to Senegal and the Senegal embraced it. It became part of our national dish, you know, what we call Chebujin, which is like a really flavorful paya looking dish. And that's that's prepared with broken rice and imported broken rice at that. So we, you know, we have grains, we have our own rice, we have other amazing grains like fogno and millet and sorghum. But we prefer to bring that to to consume that broken rice.
+
+[13:00] Like we prefer to consume all the things that are that we're not producing because of that colonial mentality. You know, we prefer in Senegal, I don't know if you remember, but you can have baguette bread every every street corner of Dakar, there's like a uh Piotr that sells fresh baguettes, but we don't grow wheat. This is all part of the the French colonial system. So even 60 years after independence, we are still deep in it. So my what part of my mission was to make sure we recognize and and and just bring back those crops that are not only our traditional crops, but that are much more nutritious for for uh uh than the ones that we're importing.
+
+[13:38] The broken rice has not much nutrition in it, for instance. And in addition, in doing so, we we we're supporting our our economy, our farmers, our small farmers, we are supporting them because we are uh we are consuming what they are growing, and it's more adapted to our system. So this is part of the the mission is to really bring back those traditional crops and those traditional recipes. I mean because they they're great for you and because they're delicious. Also, like I remember like the first thing that struck me is that as opposed to here in America, like there's such a range of different kinds of aged and fermented products that aren't it's not like uh I think most of the time in America we either eat something that's all the way, you know, strongly fermented or aged or or or completely fresh and nothing in between.
+
+[14:28] And there's such a range. But I think you were telling me that a lot of those kind of cool, like uh, well, these are very aged, but or you know, very fermented, but like gegge or like uh netatou, which we can talk about, were being replaced by kind of more industrial plu products like uh like is it pronounced Maggie or Maggi the cube? I don't know. Mm Magie, Maggie, it depends what part of Senegal you are, but it's both both both pronunciations are right and and that abuse is so wrong. You know, Maggie has Maggie, whichever you want.
+
+[14:59] You know, because you say cube with the cube in French. The cube magie has replaced those those products, those amazing flavors, you know, those fermented netou and and geg. Because um, you know, those products they they're strong, you know. Sometimes people feel like, you know, it's the the the strong sunky flavor um is not really something they want to have in their kitchen or in their home. You know, they they just prefer Maggie because it's it it it doesn't smell like that.
+
+[15:28] But no, not realizing that you know the when you cook those flavors, the the the stench is is fading into wonderful flavor in addition to being very good for you, in addition to bringing so much umami to your cooking. Uh but the but the magi is like um you know being used and abused, you know, people are are using magic. I've seen people just crumbling magic cubes directly in their sauce on their sauce before right before eating. You know, it becomes you know, this uh the it's it's an addiction even you know and and it's unfortunate because those companies are coming with so much uh map a big marketing campaign you have big billboard in the car in all the streets of Senegal just promoting those cubes and saying this is better than you know it's it's more convenient than using you know fermented conch or dried gadget dried fish or yet or all those things. So so you know and that same mentality keeps going.
+
+[16:25] We think we we are like uh becoming modern by using those cubes that are you know manufactured rather than using those traditional natural fermented ingredients which are you know uh so much better in terms of cooking as a chef I know the difference when I cook with uh yet or when I cook with magic you know it's like it's it's like night and day, you know, yet or or native to brings so much flavor, so much more natural flavor. So you know so that's um that's that's the sad reality of modern times. People are just trying to cut corners and go fast and and and magic is like serving that. But uh but I'm I'm really trying to to to work with your LMI company in bringing those flavors, bringing Dawa Dawa for instance we figure out a way to dehydrate Dawa Dawa and you just sprinkle it so it doesn't even have the that that that strong funky smell when you bring it into your into into your kitchen, you know, because Dawadava is a locus bean, you know it's a locus bean from a tree of fruit the and the seed of that fruit is is fermented. So it's like it's it's it's it becomes wet and and we I mean it it has a strong smell.
+
+[17:36] That's for that's that's true. But if you dehydrate it, that smell tends to go away. So this is what we're doing. We're coming with ingenious way of like bringing the flavors without having the the inconvenience of of the smell of dawada. Well I have so do you so much better than cube.
+
+[17:52] So you you're selling it, you think more Americans are gonna know it? Uh because I only know it the way you taught me is netatu. But it's also Dawadawa and then also in night what's it in Nigeria? It's uh yeah, yeah, Iru and Dawadawa, both are Nigerians. Yeah.
+
+[18:06] And uh and and uh Sumbala in Mali and Guinea and Netetu in Senegal. So so since Nigerians are almost a quarter billion people on the planet, so Dawaadawa is the name that's more popular. Yeah, yeah. So I have some of the of your stuff here, and I don't have do you guys have you guys used it? The guys in the studio here, John and Nastasia and and Joe, have you used uh Netatu or Dawadowa before?
+
+[18:29] No, no. All right. So it is true. So like, you know, when Pierre first uh gave it to me, uh, you know, showed me in the markets in Senegal, it comes in like a ball, right, Pierre? Like in a it's like a yeah or or like or or little pucks or a ball chunks.
+
+[18:42] And so it's true that this dehydrated. So what I did was is I have his dehydrated powder here, and then I just put some in oil in uh in my uh kitchen and toasted it in the pan to and when you toast it very like in uh in oil, when you uh you fry it a little bit, you get all of these aromas of like uh meat and cheese uh and savory, but then it it it goes into like a much more mellow, I would say, nutty savory kind of a note. When you say, so here you guys are gonna smell the raw, and maybe if you like put a little water, you can smell what it smells like when it rehydrates. But that's not gonna, as Pierre says, not that I'm worried about my kitchen getting stunk up, but that's not gonna stink up your kitchen. Uh but then um smell this one once it's cooked, see the difference.
+
+[19:26] John is smelling them. Oh, that's really nice. Super nutty. Yeah, it gets very nutty. Nutty.
+
+[19:35] Do you even notice the slight chocolate flavor? Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's just an amazing product. And like amazing product.
+
+[19:45] In rices, in stews. And it doesn't have to be even in with African flavors. It works well with uh with American flavors, you know, like uh with with any t any tomato-based stew, right, Pierre? Like um, yep. Yep.
+
+[20:01] Can make a nice tomato sauce, like even a pasta sauce, and you you'll bring a whole other new dimension to your the layers of flavor that you will get. Something that you know you you cannot fail to notice, but it's pleasant. It's really really pleasant. Like I said, I mean I mean of course. I I've even used it in cream-based uh, I mean, uh you know, again, like I'm not a traditionalist in any sort of anywhere.
+
+[20:25] Uh, but it's like you know, like uh it's really good. But again, like when you put it in, it's gonna volatilize in your kitchen. Your kitchen's gonna fill with the aroma of netatou, but then as it's flashing off, your the dish itself is becoming more like I say, more savory and more nutty. And once you once you're used to cooking with it, the smell of it cooking is the is the indication that in the future you're gonna get that delicious taste. So then you also like the smell, right?
+
+[20:52] And it's you know, it's kind of like once you're used to cooking with fish sauce or something like this, you know. That's correct. That's correct. I I like how you describe it because you know this this is really true. You know, now I can walk by a home that's using dawa dawa when they're cooking it.
+
+[21:10] And I'm I'm like already starting to salivate. It's kind of like a like a reaction because I know the the small the taste that's going to come after, you know, just that smell in that kitchen can just trigger something in my in my uh in my taste buds. So I can I can see what's coming up. So is this one available yet? The Dawa Dawa or no?
+
+[21:30] The Dawadau is available soon, very very soon. It's actually at Woodlands right now. We found a sourcing. Uh we can bring in Dawadowa from Burkina Faso at the moment and from Ghana. So it will be available very soon.
+
+[21:43] Check out your lele.com and and uh that's one of our upcoming ingredients. But we already have it in one of in a couple of our products, you know, in in uh our fono pillar. We have dawa dawa, we have the afro funk, which is the name of one of our pillar afro funk because the funk aspect of dawadawa. And we also have our fonio chips now. I don't know if I told you we just launched chips in the market.
+
+[22:07] And uh, and one of them, yeah. We just launched four flavors of chips. You know, we have the salt chips, we have the green that have moringa in it, we have uh the the sea salt I mentioned, we have the afro funk with uh which is dawadawa in it. So it's a really nice and crispy, it has a nice crispy texture. You know, fonio has really an interesting texture when you make turn it into chips.
+
+[22:30] Um it tastes crisp, but it's sturdy enough that you can use it to dip a sauce or a salsa. And the one with dawadawa is just amazing. I make some nacho with it. I have a couple of nacho recipes in the F your lele.com. If you go to the the website, you'll see you know, you see the chips.
+
+[22:47] You can get the chips on the website. Soon you can get the chips at Whole Foods and and at Target as well. So it's um it's uh it's on the process, and that you can get the Dawadowa flavor in it. Yeah, don't go with just Whole Foods, you gotta diversify as we know we just got mutilated by not diversifying it's the worst. Well actually I'm glad you talked about this because the the reason we just we're like oh we need to get Pierre on isn't because you know I love your books and your and your cooking which I do it's because you started this business and a lot of our listeners are interested in starting a food business and I know it's really hard uh and you've been you were working on it for maybe even four or five years before you launched you were talking about Fonio back in 2013 you were already connecting with farmers and all this other stuff and then in in 2017 you started this business Yolele to bring these foods to the United States and that's gotta be an incredibly complicated thing.
+
+[23:44] And so we just wanted to have you on to kind of talk about that process for people that are interested yeah yeah like you you said you you were there when I started um being interested in bringing the ingredients it was even before 2013 you know earlier if you if you notice in my first cookbook I talk about phony already and I talk about those ingredients and that's you know it all happened organically really um again when I first arrived in New York City African food was missing and I saw it as an opportunity so I started the catering business that became my first restaurant my very first restaurant it was default back to the Grandka actually it was called Yolele. It was in Besta in an area where nothing existed really there was not rest no restaurants let alone a sit down African bistro. So that restaurant turned into another restaurant. And then I noticed as I was writing my cookbooks, I noticed another opportunity was the readers didn't have access to the ingredients. You know so I wanted it to be another way to bring those ingredients.
+
+[24:47] This is also another way to continue a broader mission of bringing this food culture. So I'm like, if I'm going to bring the ingredients to the readers, I should do it in a way that's not only sustainable, but that really supports the small farming communities that are growing those ingredients. Because those communities, they don't have markets for those ingredients. You know, like the Dawada, for instance, the market was very limited, but even worse for Fonio, because the grains like Fonio, the market was just for the subsistence of the farmers. It was just for the locals.
+
+[25:22] You know, you would go even to cities like Dhaka or Abidjan or Lagos, you would have problems finding Fonio. You know, you would find easily, like I mentioned, you would find wheat that we don't grow, you'd find baguette bread that we don't grow, you'd find, you know, imported broken rice and things of that sort. That our own grains didn't have markets. So the goal for me really was to figure out a way to bring markets to those small farming community in a way to bring economic prosperity, opportunities to those regions. Because if you go to those regions, you realize one thing is the poverty.
+
+[25:59] You know, the poverty in rural Africa is just so vast. One thing you notice is most of the men are gone. They're trying to, they're migrating, they're trying to get to Europe for looking for opportunities, looking for work. There's no work there, and they cannot make a dignified living from the farming that they're doing. So that's the reason for Yolele to figure out a way to bring economic opportunities by opening markets for their products because they have amazing products.
+
+[26:29] I mean, you take talk about fono. I told you so much about fonio, but fonio is this amazing grain. It's resilient. It's been around 5,000 years. It's gluten free.
+
+[26:42] It's very, very nutritious. But in addition to that, it's great for the environment. It's a grain that grows in poor soil and that restores the soil because it has deep roots that regenerates the soil, that adds nutrients to the soil. It's a grain that's drought resistant, which is very important. Now we're having a water crisis, you know, especially with the climate change that crisis that we are facing.
+
+[27:04] You know, it's important to think about grain crops like fonio. So that was the idea. For fonio for me was the grain that was checking all the boxes. Well, and so for those people who don't know, like fonio is a tiny, tiny, tiny millet. It's like a very special, very old, tiny millet.
+
+[27:23] You know, and is that we say it's accurate? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's so it's from the millet family, absolutely. It's uh it scores very low on the glycemic index. So it's recommended for people with diabetes back home.
+
+[27:36] That's what they give to people with diabetes. And it's the it's rich in two amino acids that are deficient in most major grains. Those are cysteine and methionine, you know, and they're very important for human growth. So there's so much going on for fono. It's very rich in fiber, for instance.
+
+[27:54] So so uh what I was thinking very naively, though, at the time, I was like, oh, I'm gonna turn this local unknown grain into a world class crop. It was like very naive. But no, but that really kept me uh seeing a bigger picture. It's like this grain can transform this rural Africa, this. This grain can really turn these farmers into importers, you know, like and and really have them just change the situation, the economic situation at least.
+
+[28:25] So that was really the ambition without knowing that there was going to be so many challenges. I had to create a chain of value that would go from the farmers all the way to the shelves of the supermarket in America, you know, and in Africa, obviously, you know, because the goal was really to turn it into a global crop back home in Africa, in America. Now we are even starting to distribute in Europe. So that was the goal. So, you know, it started with a dream, but you know, how do I do it now?
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+[28:54] That was the question I'm sure many of your audience uh are wondering. So, you know, I I thought the best way was to have the right team. You know, first thought first thing I did, I partnered with uh my my co-founder, actually. His name is Philip Tevreau, and he's also a veteran in the food industry. He's been around way back in the back in the days when they were starting to bring quinoa in America.
+
+[29:21] Like I'm talking about like 20 plus years ago. And you know, I I I liked his experience, and I also like the fact that we didn't want Fonio to be a quinoa story. You want to tell the story of why quinoa was problematic for those that weren't keeping up with the whole quinoa nightmare? Yes, yes. So quinoa, the quinoa became this grain that became quickly very popular.
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+[29:46] It's a quinoa that's that's it's a grain that's produced in Latin America in the Andes, you know, Chile, Peru, that area. And it was an ancient grain, just like Fonio, quinoa has been around 3,000 years. Fonio actually has been around 5,000 years. And for for a big part of those 3,000 years, it was just consumed by those people in those regions. And then it got discovered by by the consumers, global consumers, and it became there was a boom around quinoa.
+
+[30:14] And that was the problem. Because when there was a boom, the supply wasn't there, you know. So a boom is always followed by the bust. You know, that's really the law of the market, that's nature, right? Yeah.
+
+[30:27] And the locals couldn't afford to buy their own product anymore, right? You had people local. Exactly. Exactly. Because the because there was a boom, the demand, people were coming from all over to buy the quinoa, and the farmers were like, oh, okay, so you you want it so bad.
+
+[30:43] You know, the prices were going all over the place, and the locals couldn't afford it because you know there were dollars coming to buy it, so you know, the pesos couldn't compete with it. So this is what happened, and this is what we didn't want for Fonio. We didn't want a boom for Fonio. We wanted to make sure as your lele is growing and bringing Fonio and Fonio is becoming more popular. We wanted to make sure the supply is there.
+
+[31:06] We wanted to make sure we support the farmers. You know, it's important. You know, it has to be the design has to be to make sense, you know. And and it makes sense if you put the farmers and the environment as a priority, you know, and then you know, it the the chain goes all the way to the to the to the shelves of the supermarket. But the farmers have to be able to produce fonio.
+
+[31:30] So what we realized is by at the at the supply side, you know, like I said, Fonio grows in poor soil, you know. There's a nickname for Fonio, they call it the lazy farmers's crop. Why? Because it's so easy to grow. You know, all you need to do is to throw the seeds when the first rain comes, and you're guaranteed to have a harvest of fonio, regardless of how the season of rain comes or not.
+
+[31:54] You don't need to till the soil, you don't need to do much work, you don't need any uh fertilizers, you don't need any any pesticides or anything. Fonio is so sturdy and resilient. So we we thought we the challenge with fono though was in the processing. You know, like uh Dave, you mentioned it's a tiny, tiny type of millet, it's a tiny grain, and each grain is covered with a skin that's inedible. So you have to remove that skin before fono becomes food.
+
+[32:24] And the farmers who are spending so much time to process it, uh the first they were using a uh a pestle, you know, mother and pestle, which would take two hours just to process one kilo of fonio. So it was really, really uh long and tedious process. Then uh, shake her head saying she's not gonna do it. She's like, I'm not doing it. I'm not gonna do it.
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+[32:49] Nastasia, you don't have to do it anymore. You don't have to do it. You you you you you go to you go to you go to your lili.com and and the ponyo comes cleaned up for you. But but what what we realized, you know, is not only that process was taking so long, but the waste in that process, during that process, even when the the the processing started to become mechanized, you know, there was some uh machine that came up that was processing phonio locally, you know, but it still was a long and the waste was was uh was amazing. It was almost fifty percent of waste, which was crazy.
+
+[33:27] So we realized that we needed to focus into the processing aspect and into research as well. So we we worked with researchers, local researchers in Senegal, in Mali, in collaboration with um Cornell University here, and just to improve the agriculture of Fonio. And some something that we came up with was just growing, realize that just growing fonio in raw can almost double the production, the the yield of fonio. Because before, like I said, fonio was just this patch, which is just throw it when you grow it. You just throw the seeds and then anywhere on the field, then it's gonna grow.
+
+[34:06] But if you grow it in, plant it in row, you can have a higher yield, almost double. And another way is if you perfect, if you have a better way of processing it, which what we which is what we did. We're working with um local uh uh industrials to bring a mill that will process fonio at one ton at three tons per hour. So it's like we're gonna have uh close to a hundred tons a week of fonio now. That's good.
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+[34:35] And that's processed with and without without the waste, without the 50% waste. So the limit on growing was production is double. The limit on growing was the limit on processing, not the limit on the land. Exactly, exactly. The land is plentiful, you know.
+
+[34:50] You know where the land is, fonio grows in an area called the Sahel, which is south of the Sahara. There's plenty of land. You know, the land is like dry and arid, not much growth, but fonio can thrive in that area. So there's plenty of land. All the farmers need to focus on now is to keep growing fonio on that land.
+
+[35:10] And what they do, not only they grow fonio on that land, but we encourage them to do it the traditional way, which is growing in rotation. You know, they would grow fonio in one season and then they would grow another crop that's called bambara beans, which is also a crop that adds nitrogen to the soil and that allows the soil to be ready for the next fono uh season. So it's really the way a way to not only enrich the soil, respect the soil really, the environment, but it it it slows the advance of the desert. Because we want to do that in addition to planting certain types of trees. Those trees are called acacia.
+
+[35:47] That they also add they also add um nutrition to those nutrients to the soil. Do you plant the ones that you can get uh the gum out of or no? Yes, absolutely. Those are the ones, they're the local ones. So so you it's you you great question that you just asked.
+
+[36:04] So the communities, the local communities, they they have different ways of bringing uh income into their their their communities because the acacia you can get gums and can get income from the gum, the Arabic gum. It's a there's a is a big business out of that. And then you have the fonio, and then you have the the bambara beans. The bambarra beans is another interesting crop. It's an ancient crop that looks like like peanuts, it tastes like peanuts, but it doesn't have the allergies of peanuts.
+
+[36:35] And it got replaced by peanuts because peanuts were so much easier to process. And that's what happened, you know, with with modern time. We're looking for the the shortcuts and we and and those grains started to disappear. The bambarra beans started to disappear. You only see it locally.
+
+[36:49] So the goal with Yolele is to bring back that that that that that crop, bambera beans, and and open a market for that, just like what we did with Fonio. And in doing so, we're doing in West Africa. When they say groundnut, they mean peanut. They don't mean this other one, do they? Or do they mean this other one?
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+[37:05] Well, they well, it was this other one first, but now it's it became peanuts because peanuts is the one that you see everywhere now. But it was groundnut, it was bambera beans. That's what it was. Can you roast them the same way you roast a peanut? You can roast them, you can boil them, you can turn them into milk, you can, you know, you can do so much with the same thing you do with peanuts.
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+[37:28] The difference is the shell is harder. You have to crack the shell. I love it. I love the boiler. The way you do is boiled peanuts is the best.
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+[37:36] It's the best. I love boiled peanuts. I grew up eating my parents are from the south of Senegal, Kazamus. Over there, that's what how we eat peanuts, we boil it. And and then when I saw that they were boiling peanuts in Southern America, in in Southern food as well, I was like, wow, you know, you make the connections obviously, you know, there's middle passage.
+
+[37:55] There's so much food that came from from West Africa to to like New Orleans and Louisiana and Carolinas. So boiled peanuts land. That's why that's where you see it there. So it's it's coming from Cazamas. I love it.
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+[38:08] Well, I gotta get some questions in before we run out of time. Although I do it the one bad thing about switching to this new better production system that you have is you no longer have the motto, you throw it and you grow it. Which is a great motto to tell any farmer. Yes, you throw it and you grow it. That's it.
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+[38:23] You know what I mean? Anyway, uh yeah, no, it's that that model is still gonna stay, you know. It's just that there's there's gotta be making sure the the the production is increasing as the demand is increasing, otherwise, we have another quinoa story. And the sad thing, when you have another quinoa story, not only the locals cannot get the quinoa, but the quinoa is being grown in other parts of the world because the the demand has is is still increasing so now you have quinoa grown in ukraine in Texas in Montana and and this is something we're also trying to to to protect we want to protect the name Fonio on a regional level so that its appellation is going to be just for that region of origin. You know just like you we do they do in France with with champagne and and in Italy in with their wines and all that so that's what we're working on right now with DFAO.
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+[39:13] Well and I guess there's there's uh there's precedence for that with with different varieties of rice right like you can't grow can you right I don't know I think yeah yeah no absolutely absolutely um there's uh you know like uh the basmadi and and the they they they the in Indians at certain parts have their own but they're if you call it if you have it here you have to have a slightly different name but it's not the same rice you know you cannot call it that rice that's that variety there's a few a few other crops like that so you know we we have a model to use all right Darren asks Darren Van Groff asks is anyone making a phonio millet beer that is available in the US I've had uh some home brewed uh burkinabe version called Dolo but never seen anything like it in the US now I know that you were working with Brooklyn with Garrett uh and they did a couple of batches but did it ever uh is it is it ever gonna happen commercially or no absolutely absolutely it's gonna happen commercially that beer is absolutely delicious Garrett Oliver from uh Brooklyn Beer approached me when he knew about uh what I was doing is Fonio and uh you know he approached me in that same spirit. His idea was if you turn it into a beer, there's gonna be so much phonyl phono used for that, and that's going to support the small farming communities where the fonio is coming from. And we said absolutely. So it started with a good idea, and then he imported a few tons of fonio to do his testing, and then it turned out that Fonio beer was a amazing tasting beer. Garrett was so excited.
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+[40:49] He was like, Wow, you know, I mean, I thought I was just doing a good action, but it's like an amazing beer. And we tasted it and we started passing it around, and everyone at Brooklyn Brewery was so excited. And uh so we were launching it, you know. We had even a name, Taranga for the beer, and we were launching it in uh when when the pandemic hit. Yeah.
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+[41:11] So um the biggest the biggest distribution was in the bars and and and and restaurants. So we it put a stop on it, but they started they started distributing it even in Japan, because you know, Brooklyn Brewery is is uh owned by a bigger brewery, Japanese brewery. So it's like um it's it's distributed in Japan and this and he's very excited. We we recently got a big order of Fonio again from Brooklyn Brewery. The the it's going on, it's really going to happen.
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+[41:37] Yeah, I mean I've had I've had it, it's good. You uh we had it at the MoFad fundraiser once, right? That's right. Yes, there we go. That's right.
+
+[41:44] That's right. How'd you like it? I thought it was delicious. Um everyone liked it. Um now that's different from in your I forget which book, whether it's the Fonio book or the Senegal book.
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+[41:53] You have a recipe for Fonio beer, but that's more of like a a home a home beer where it's like sugar and fonio, not like what they're doing at Brooklyn. That's right, different. That's the one Darren is talking about. Uh, the the the the guy who asked the question. Yeah.
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+[42:08] Because he had it in Burkina Faso, you know, in Burkina Faso, it's dolo. They call it dolo, and we yeah, he's right, it's made with fonio for the most part. It's uh and you know, it's it's it's beer technically, but it's not the beer that you would have in you know in in the market here. You know, first of all, it's really usually drank at room temperature, very warm, and it knocks you out for real. It knocks you out.
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+[42:31] But it's it's uh it's a dolo. It's uh you know, you get you get addicted to it though. If you like it, you know it's uh it's a great it's a great beer. But you see it everywhere, not only in Burkina Faso, all the way to Zimbabwe. You have like the uh this kind of grain beer that's uh that are popular in Africa.
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+[42:46] Well, if you ever uh if we ever work out and get to go back, me you'll you'll get me to try some. I still does your guy is your is your coconut wine guy still alive or no? Which one? The co the coconut wine guy in Casamance. Is he still alive or is he dead?
+
+[43:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I uh it's a good question. I think he's still alive. He was in very good health. I haven't been.
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+[43:06] I was in Catalans recently, just uh last month actually, but just for a day. You know, I was in Dakar to change the menu at the Pullman Hotel that's um the signature chef there. And I went to Casamas for a brief visit. I didn't get to the village. No, I but I I think he's you know, he he looks great.
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+[43:24] So I think he's still alive. That guy has like uh uh a great shape and great diet, so I don't think uh I don't think COVID got to him. I mean he was climbing trees when he was eighty, you said, right? I mean he's a exactly. Yeah.
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+[43:38] Uh Yusuf Travel. I think he's still climbing trees. Well, I mean, let's hope. I mean, some uh like you know, one of these days I'm gonna get to go there in February and see the the rice harvest uh someday. Uh before I'm dead, maybe.
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+[43:51] We'll see. Uh Youssef Trevalli wrote in uh wants to know Pierre how you switched from math and physics to becoming a chef. Well and that's another that's a another story but um but yeah I studied as a math and physics student actually I was at Dakar University and uh and from Dakar University you know late 80s we were very political you know especially in Senegal there was a lot of student unrest and and I was part of that that uh that system the students we were on strike we went on on strike for so long that that year the government decided to shut down the school system because we had so many days of strike and we had to start all over and this is really how everything started for me. That's how I got a student visa to come to the US I was on my way to just finishing my degrees in physics and chemistry. I was on my way to Ohio out of all places you know and and and I stopped by New York because um you know I had a friend who lived in New York and and I I was like everyone wants to see New York at least once you know before you die so that was my thing.
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+[44:56] I'm like gonna stop by New York and be here for one week, two weeks and then go to Ohio and just uh stay there and do my studies. And when I arrived in New York, remember I mentioned Timesquare that's where we stayed Timesquare in that in the 80s Timesquare was like crack epidemic and and aid and it was it was crazy crazy and and all those and all that. Yeah watch watch the deuce it was it was really like that watch the deuce. I mean I started going in the seventies and went all through the eighties you know I was mugged in Timesquare whole nine the whole thing. You know I had the the legitimate experience Yeah, I was robbed three days after I arrived in New York.
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+[45:37] I was robbed. But I was, you know, that robbing was a blessing. I lost everything. It was crazy, crazy. But uh, that's when I realized, you know, I was stuck.
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+[45:43] I still had my return tickets, and I was very tempted to return to Senegal. This country was crazy. I'm like, well, I get robbed. These guys are like, I mean, I see zombies walking down the street. You know, I mean, it was like it was crazy.
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+[46:02] And nothing, you know what I expected, you know, because I, you know, before coming, you have an idea of the United States and New York and you know, the music, you know, the Jacksons and all that. So and then you hear and you have like, wow, you know, so I get robbed and I'm like, I'm returning to New York, to Senegal. But a friend of mine, he was working in a restaurant. I don't know if you remember, there was a restaurant in the West Village called Garvin's. So, you know, near near uh on Waverly Place.
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+[46:28] So, so so he was working at that restaurant, and he was like, Oh, they're looking for a bus boy. You know, you can come and make a little extra money, you know, before uh deciding returning to Senegal. At least you have some money or or whatever you want to do. And I and I got to that restaurant, and this is how you know I got only from busing, I had my first cultural shock, you know, in that kitchen. There were only guys in that kitchen, and I come from a culture where uh only women in the kitchen, and I'm like, wow, who are these guys?
+
+[46:55] What they're doing in the kitchen was a little funny. But the chef became a friend of mine because you know, he was he thought I was really into what he was doing, but I was just checking those guys out, cooking these amazing things, you know, that looked like my mom's cookbook. My mom had a uh collection of cookbooks and the pictures. I used to love them looking at those pictures, and now I'm like in this restaurant, and the pictures look like my mom's cookbooks. And I'm like, wow, this is amazing.
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+[47:20] This and they're guys, you know. So the chef, like the chef had studied in French, Billy, and he wanted to practice his French with me. And he's like, you know, you can take extra shifts since you want to make extra money. Take extra shifts and you come in the in the kitchen as a dishwasher. When you finish your busing shift, you know, and you come in as a dishwasher and you you learn gradually, you know, it's like that's how I learned, you know, you learn from the bottom up, and that's how I did.
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+[47:45] I learned from the bottom up. And you know, after you know, a few months of dishwashing, I was already peeling vegetables because the you know, prep guy didn't show up. So you they start it start to teach you how to peel vegetables and onions, and then gradually you learn your knife skills, and then next thing you know, you're in the garden station. And then you realize that, hey, this is all chemistry, you know, especially when you're in the garden station, and you see the the sauces, you know, the the vinaigrette is really an emulsion that you've learned in chemistry. It's like acid and lipid being an emulsion, you know, and and then if you pay more attention, every single thing in the kitchen is really a chemical reaction.
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+[48:22] Cooking is chemistry, really, and and a type of chemistry that I loved so much more than the one I had when I was doing math and physics and actually it was I was a student in physics and chemistry, not in math and physics, but uh but that's the kind of uh uh of of uh chemistry I like so much, you know, immediate gratification. You like you cook it, you taste it, you know. You go to that lab and you taste it, and it's delicious, and you can share it with other people. So I really got the bug, and I never looked back. I and started to read as much as I could, and and over the years work from that restaurant, climb my way up in that restaurant, and then went from that restaurant to working to Italian restaurant and then French bistro, open round clothes in Soho.
+
+[49:07] From there, I went on to open boom, you know, boom was another restaurant that really changed everything for me because that was focusing on global ethnic and the chef was bringing in inspirations from Southeast Asia and that's really when I was like wow these flavors you know fermentation and all that that kind of takes me back to Senegal you know because Senegal you know we have that the same fermentation culture and the grains were there plus we have this Vietnamese community which I was connected with already in Senegal through their food and that was you know when I thought you know why is not is there not any Senegalese food here and and that restaurant was so successful big boom that I got they opened a new place and I was promoted as a chef de cuisine in that place and I started to offer those flavors of my childhood it was really flavors from memory and and no and that's a long way to say you know to explain how I turned from physics and chemistry to to cooking but I I can go on and on but this is the whole story. That's so old school you never made it to Ohio you didn't go to Ohio never made never made it to Ohio and I heard I didn't miss much Ohio no offense. So let me just let me add uh me like ask a uh follow-up on that so then did you because you didn't cook growing up did you go back and then hang out with your family to get to get the like the Senegalese cooking or like what how did that work? Yeah I've absolutely it started with my mom first of all when I had to tell finally tell my parents that I was not actually going to school and all this time I've been in the kitchen. You know, that was the the the the thing I was so nervous telling them because first of all you know they they expected you to to get your degree and and become an engineer and now you're in the kitchen and I'm like in the kitchen they're probably never going to respect that because in Senegal the men men are not in the kitchen.
+
+[51:09] You know and and I was shocked my mom was so supportive and she started talking cooking with me you know immediately she was like on the phone you know like you know we would I would just get inspiration asking her for recipes from you know remembering recipes um food that I would eat from her and she would give me the recipe that would write them down and test them and adapting them to the the kitchen you know the the the the modern kitchen and and then you know I realized it was time for me to go on a pilgrimage and I went on a couple of pilgrimages and they I really wanted to spend time with the women because they are the ones who were the one who had the secret so I would spend time with my mom my aunt I would go all the way to the village the grandmas and the the distant cousins and stuff and if you see my first book Yolele you notice that there was every now and then there are pictures and portraits of women of my family those are the women I spent time with and I wanted the book to be a tribute to them and really through them to be a tribute to to women of Africa really because that's a continent where women are cooking and they are the ones who kept that tradition of from generation to generation just passing it on to their daughters who will pass them to pass it on to their daughters and and I'm the guy who who got here and and luckily you know I I got I got that knowledge through them and I took it to the international level, but that really was without them, none of this would happen. So I really wanted the book to be about that. And I I kept, you know, traveling to Africa, not only Senegal, but other parts of Africa. And I knew that I wanted to hang out with the women and go in their kitchen and go to the markets. The first thing I would do, go to the market, taste the food, and then you know, and then go to spend time with women.
+
+[52:54] And that's really my my formation. You know, it starts with the memory, the food that I loved eating as I was a kid, and then tracing it back and just having them reveal the secrets gradually. And those secrets I would write them down. And at the at some point I realized that I had so many recipes that I could produce a book, and that's that became my very first cookbook. All your cookbook photography is beautiful.
+
+[53:22] Adam Bartos is here, a photographer, does a great job. They look great. You know, and I mean all the books look great. Yeah, I've been very fortunate. I've worked with amazing photographers.
+
+[53:32] Adam Batos is a world-class photographer, and he he he jumped on the opportunity. I told him, you know, let's go to Senegal. And he he he came with me and we traveled around and he had the time of his life. Senegal too. I worked with Evan Song.
+
+[53:46] Evan Song, who's working on my next cookbook as well. So uh Evan Sung works on two cookbooks with me, and Adam Batos also worked on two cookbooks because he worked on the ponio cookbook a lot. Yeah, which by the way, at the at the end you have all the pictures of the producers, 75%, 80% are women. Exactly, exactly, because Fogno is a is a is a woman crop. They like to call it the women's crop.
+
+[54:08] You know, women played such a big role in in preserving our our tradition and our culture. And and and Fogno is one of them, you know. The cooking is definitely one of them. They passed it on and on and on, and that's how this the this food is uh accessible to us now. But without them, you know, without that that tradition of like just making sure your daughters know how to cook because she's gonna be cooking for her family and then she's gonna make sure her daughters know how to cook and what she learned is the thing that she has been this ancient ancient recipes that's been being passed on from generation to generation and that's how you see it certain recipes that you see here you see gumbo in in in in New Orleans it's because those women came here too and they knew how to cook it the same gumbo recipe you have it in Senegal it's the same okra seafood everything the rice the way we cook rice jollof rice you see it in all the form that becomes jambalaya you know that's just because those traditions were kept and passed on from generation so it transcends time and borders and and it's really the amazing food thing about food you know because you want to bring your food everywhere you go.
+
+[55:15] We're running out of time we've got a couple questions we got to get to for you that I don't want to miss uh Joshua Kuhn wrote in now Joshua Kuhn's a big uh hunter in like the western part of the US and the northwest not northwest like Oregon like northwest like Montana that kind of Dakotas that kind of thing he he asked despite the poaching and illegal trade problems has Senegal been able to hold on to a culture of subsistence hunting if so which animals and how are they traditionally prepared yes yes uh it's very very limited unfortunately because um um yeah the the poaching has been has been there and those animals are are disappearing but now you have you still have hunting and mostly is um um uh gazelles you see that in south Sun in south senegal, in Casamas, in uh and in in kadugu, that area. And so it's it's game, you know, like you most mostly gazelles, you have uh porcupines, you know, that's something that's also being hunted. You have um it's sadly, you know, but the the the last uh parts of of where you see lions have been you know they they've been disappearing because of the the hunting as well. So so that's that part is is is is is illegal but it's still happening. It seems to start happening for for different reasons.
+
+[56:36] But uh most of the things is gazelles, you know you have gazelles and and and you know it's kind of a deer like uh animal that you see in Senegal. And you have hugs as well. How do you prepare a porcupine? Well you have to make sure you you you you clean the skin well you take out the the the spikes and the and then usually it's a stew you know it's a stew like and it's it has a it's has a pleasant but very you know game uh tasting even smell when you cook it but it as too it's it's a delicacy people love it those people who if you're lucky to get onto on the on the porcupine you know it's a delicacy and you and and that's that yeah and you also have uh obviously the small ones too the the rabbits there's one uh they call it rapal mist and it's it's uh it's it's not a rat you know it's not a rat from like the one you see in New York it's a it's a bush rat you know and uh it's it's it it it's of it eats herbs and grass it's it's a vegetarian obviously and it's uh it's very popular in in certain parts of Senegal as well. Does it taste like squirrel being hunted.
+
+[57:44] It tastes like squirrel I guess no, I never had squirrel, but I guess it tastes like sort of it kind of looked like squirrel in size. Sometimes it can be a little bigger, even. But um, but it's also gaming. Uh and sometimes they smoke it, you know, before cooking it, so it's smoked like you know, wood fire, and then you have the smoke, and that's even before skinning it, and then you skin it, and then that you know the smoking pot allows it to travel, so it's it's it's it's dried up, it doesn't it doesn't rot anymore. So it's it you can travel long distances.
+
+[58:16] Wait, so they smoke it till it's dry and then rehydrate it in a stew? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, I think I've seen that before. Did they used to import any of that illegally into that store that I used to go to?
+
+[58:28] It yeah, probably. Probably that stone amazed me. They had like everything. I mean, really everything you may need for West African cooking, you would go to that Korean store. Yeah, I wish we were still there.
+
+[58:40] Thank God for them. They allowed us to stay alive, you know. Many of us would have left New York if we didn't have access to those that food. So they they were great. And had a random name, the International Grocery.
+
+[58:52] Anyway, uh that's right. Uh is a Josh, Josh Josh in the chat says he's eaten porcupine, praised it and would describe the taste as musty but good. Musty but good. So like must must he like beaver tail? Anyway.
+
+[59:09] Uh Isabella de Giulio wrote in uh hey, uh for Senegalese food, uh, what's Pierre's favorite way to use uh netatu slash uh Dawadawa and Phonio also? I've been making porridge from it and it's delicious. I want to ask about the ferments he's tried, or would like to try making it home from Senegal. So uh uh sh is she in Senegal, she said? Well no, no, no.
+
+[59:34] She's asked she's asking about like uh Senegalese things to do, that your favorite things to do with uh with those things, uh maybe like with a with an accent on fermented products. Oh, okay. So netetu what what what I like to do, and that's what we do traditionally, you know, you you can rehydrate it, right? The dried one by simply you know taking onions. You know, you you you you you you use the mortar and pesto.
+
+[1:00:00] You can if you don't have that, you can just blend it all together. The metetu and onions and garlic, you can add ginger if you want, and you blend it together and you add salt. Some people like to add chili, so you can add cayenne pepper, you can add a scotch bonnet if you really like it spicy, but you can even add the scotch bonnet without putting the seeds in it. And you blend it into a paste, and that paste becomes, you know, you can shape it into bowl, a bowl, right? And uh, you know, like a small bowl.
+
+[1:00:30] And one thing I really like, it's very simple. You know, when you cook your rice, you know, steam your rice, white rice plain, and then towards the end of cooking the rice, you dig a hole in the middle of the rice and you put that bowl inside that bowl of uh uh netu, right? You know, the bowl with like the onions and and the scotch bonnet and all that in the middle and you cover it with the rice and for the last minutes of steaming the rice, no, like the last 10 minutes or so. And then that rice will have like this amazing flavor. You know, you you serve the rice, you make sure you take the bowl out and you put the bowl on the side.
+
+[1:01:11] Traditionally, I don't know if you remember how we eat around the bowl, you know, we have the big bowl and the the rice is in in there, and uh, you know, you put whatever sauce you want and and and and meat and vegetables, but that rice has a nice, really subtle fermented flavor, just because the last minute there was this steamed um uh fermented bowl inside it. And that from time to time you take a piece of the nette too, you can add it to the rice and the sauce. It really uh adds uh you know, like a nice bunch of of uh of of nette to in your in your mouth food. So it's really uh uh a way I like to do it, but there's so many other ways to do it. You know, you can just simply sprinkle it into your sauce and and taste it and and add as you as you like until you get the flavor that you want in it.
+
+[1:02:01] You can put it in your tomato sauce, like you mentioned, it's great with the tomato sauce. You think that would work in a rice cooker? Yeah, yeah, it would work in a rice cooker. You do it, you cook the rice, and then when you're going to keep the rice warm, right? You open it and you and you put that bowl inside.
+
+[1:02:19] You you know, you shape the bowl with uh everything, the onions and everything, and you put it inside, you cover it with the rice, right? You put you dig a hole and you put the bowl, you cover it with the rice, and then you close your rice cooker and you allow it to you allow it to stay warm for however time you want, and you'll see the difference. I love it like that. It's it's really great. And with a simple sauce on top of it, it's like amazing.
+
+[1:02:42] It's amazing. I will try that. Uh John, you got a couple questions for Pierre, you gotta rip off? Uh, not for Pierre specifically. Oh, I thought you had some Pierre's though.
+
+[1:02:50] We gotta uh so one last thing on the way out because uh I'll get murdered if I don't. So let's talk uh Tbu Gen for a minute. Uh now all of so it's fish with it's fish and broken rice and vegetables and tomato and the fermented products like netted to geg yet, right? Uh and you stuff the fish with an herb mixture beforehand, right? And people can look it up.
+
+[1:03:18] That's not that's not what's important. But it's uh you'd say it's like culturally maybe the most important dish, right? Or no? Oh yeah. It's the national dish of Senegal.
+
+[1:03:28] Yeah. So it it it's I read a bunch of recipes for it, and what interests me about the recipes, at least the ones that seem kind of more serious, is that there's a very specific layering of food. Like put this in, take out, remove, and and rest while you cook the rest. Very, very specific, right? You know, the fit the fish goes in for this amount of time with the vegetables, the fish comes out, this vegetable comes out first, then this vegetable, then more liquids added, then rice, then at like it's all very and like you know, you put the netatu in at this point, you put the geg in at this point, you know what I mean?
+
+[1:04:07] So it's like very, very specific. So what is the difference, like how like it's clearly like culturally mediated, but also probably taste mediated. So what is the effect of like all of that time layering? Well, the effect is you'll you'll see it at the first bite. You know, the first time you put a spoonful or a handful, because we eat with our hands.
+
+[1:04:34] Remember that? Yeah, yeah. So first time you put a ha a handful of that rice into your mouth, you're going to taste if you pay really that good attention, you're gonna taste all those layers. You know, you'll taste the the the geg and the yet, which are the fermented part that's been added in that broth. Because there's there's level, right?
+
+[1:04:54] You do okay? Let's let's go back through the steps of cooking chewujan. You know, you start with the tomatoes and the onions and the oil, you cook it very slowly until the tomatoes have released all their sugar. And then you add the broth, right? Or the water, because the water is going to turn into broth.
+
+[1:05:12] And you add the water and then your vegetables. You take the vegetable first, the starchy vegetables that are going to take a little longer to cook, like cassava or carrots. You know, and the vegetables are optional, the one you're choosing, but you traditionally it's usually cafava carrots, you know, sometimes sweet potatoes. And then you cook them and you take them out. Then you add your cabbage, your eggplants, you know, you cook them and you take them out, you know.
+
+[1:05:33] And when you cook them until they get to that, you know, almost like, you know, it still has some bite to it, but it's very soft. And you take it out. But all those flavors have been in that broth now, right? Then you add your fish. That fish has been stuffed with that parsley mixture that we call rough.
+
+[1:05:50] You know, you that parsley has garlic, scotch bonnet, parsley in it, and salt and pepper, and you pound it well into a paste and you stuff the fish, and then you cook it. So that fish, usually it's a whole fish, or it's the fish that has a steak fish, you know, with the bones and all that. So you add another fish broth uh flavor that adds to the vegetable flavors, and you have added now the fermented, you know, fermented conch, uh dried fish. So that's also that fermented flavor that comes out. So all those layers come.
+
+[1:06:19] And the last part, you know, when you take all those things out, you have a broth. In that broth, you add the rice. The rice cooks and the rice comes out with all those flavors in it. But but with you, when you before you add the rice, you take some of that broth out, and in that broth that's gonna serve as a sauce, you add some tamarind too. You know, you add tamarind in that broth.
+
+[1:06:40] So you have the acidity of the tamarind and the fruitiness of it and the and the fermented and the the and and the vegetable stock and the fish stock and the spiciness from that the mixture that you use to do to stuff the fish. So it's so intense and so delicious. And that's why you know it it's kind of uh laughable when they compare Chewujan to paya, really, because it's so much more uh I mean, really, right? I was smoking like a true chauvinist, I love it. I love it.
+
+[1:07:11] I mean, um I am really telling the truth here, but it's like it's it's a pie with flavor, with so much flavor, you know. But no, the only uh the resemblance is that it's served the same way it's the it's the rice, that's red rice and and seafood and vegetables, whichever, you know, and it serves on a on a bowl, you know, like the the Spanish do. That's the only dish they serve on a bowl on a platter, you know. So that's how we do it. But that's the only difference.
+
+[1:07:41] The rest, you know, there's so much flavor in Chewigen. And those those the the those steps bring it in, yeah. Yeah, you're making me very hungry. Uh and also congratulations, you have a fairly young daughter. Uh I if you wanna pronounce her name, I don't want to butcher it.
+
+[1:07:55] It's a beautiful name now. Naya, Naya. So it's N-A Apostrophe I A. So it's Naya. Naya.
+
+[1:08:07] No, congratulations, Pierre. Thanks for coming on. And uh everyone needs to look out for uh the phonio products in Whole Foods and Target and look out for the phoneio beer. Is it gonna be called taranga or no? Teranga, yeah.
+
+[1:08:22] It's gonna be called teranga, and uh and there's gonna be drafts as well. And uh and there's other other ideas that uh Brooklyn Brewery is coming up with, but I let them announce it with the Fonio beer, so it's it's it's there. Oh and and you can get all those Fonio products at Yolele.com before going to Whole Foods. Go to Yolele.com. That's where it's uh that's that's where you really have an impact on uh on the communities that are growing it.
+
+[1:08:45] Yeah, go to the source first. Uh and I think Nastasia, correct or not correct? Today is the motto from today is they robbed me, they took everything I had, it was a blessing. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive on a newsfamera Rockefeller Center. Join as usual with Nastasia. Oh, the hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Nastasia?
+
+[0:22] Good. Good. You're good? Yeah. Are you are you alive?
+
+[0:27] I can look at you. I see you. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Nastasia, I don't think wants to talk about it, but she's had a uh It's still going.
+
+[0:33] I mean, it's in pieces. Having a banner week. I would say a banner week. Actually, well, we'll talk out. You and I will talk after.
+
+[0:40] Oh, there's the actual good news? I think it's good. It's work for you. It's the thing that I've been like, maybe you're gonna have to do work. But people will be excited.
+
+[0:52] Isn't that fantastic? Yeah. Uh joined as usual also with uh John. How you doing, John? I'm doing great.
+
+[0:58] Uh we got Joe Hazen. How you doing? Hey, how are you? Doing well. Anything good happened this week, Joe?
+
+[1:05] What's going on here? Uh well, studio's finally hitting its its peak, so I'm happy. And last but of course not least, back from Mexico, Jackie Molecules. Hey Jack. Hola.
+
+[1:19] Uh Aaron Polski's here, so not here. Well, no. Not here. In Manhattan or somewhere. Not in the studio.
+
+[1:26] He's afraid to come in because that have to be. Um, think about it. Merlot. Yeah, no, I I I know. I know what it means.
+
+[1:32] Well, then why do you say what does it mean? Oh, the answer is no. All right. For those of you that I don't know, for some reason are still listening, if it's the first episode you've ever listened to, which I can't imagine. Uh it's Nastasia, Nastasi and I have a dream of getting Aaron Polski, who used to run our favorite drug front bar in Los Angeles, uh, to wrestle in a jello, uh a jello wrestling match with Jackie Molecules in jello made of Merlot, cheap Merlot, specifically if we can get it yellowtail merlot wine because of a smackdown argument during COVID that Aaron and Jackie Molecules had regarding uh whether or not in the age of COVID, bringing the yellowtail Merlot to the first date was a no-go for future.
+
+[2:26] That was the that was the discussion, right? Yeah, and we were like just to be clear, yeah. I I was not bringing this wine. This is the date who brought the the bad wine. See how far Corey still is on it?
+
+[2:35] He's like, whoa, whoa, in case you ever meet me and I'm invited out, I'm not bringing the yellowtail. That's what you're saying. But you know, uh Nastasi and I just believed that the most honorable thing for you guys to do would just be to wrestle it out. I mean, right now the rink is under renovation, so we could use it. Imagine Joe, do you think we could do it in the Rock Center rink?
+
+[2:54] I have no idea. That's above my pay grade there. Would you do it if it was in the Rock Center rink? I mean, that seems like to be the ideal place. What if I can like what if what if I can be in like a lucha mask, you know, like uh that's totally fine.
+
+[3:10] That's fine. We were gonna have Claire Garden. Yeah, we might be I mean, if you're okay with the appropriation, it's fine with me. Oh wow. We need some kind of we need some kind of measurable goal for Patreon subscribers.
+
+[3:26] Ooh, okay. I like that, yes. Okay, you know, what do you want it to be? There has to be a what do you want it to be, and I'll lower it by half. What do you want it to be?
+
+[3:34] What do you like to be how lower by half? No. A million. I'll tell you. Come on.
+
+[3:42] That would pull our bits. I'll have to look, I'll have to look at the numbers. What are we at right now? How many people do we have right now? He's not gonna, he's not gonna he's not gonna commit right now.
+
+[3:52] Uh he's not gonna commit. Uh anyway, all right. Any of you guys uh do any good uh any good cooking over the uh last week? Eating, not cooking. But uh Mexico City is pretty damn good.
+
+[4:03] But by the way, if you are listening live, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh oh, and there we have a caller. So, John, we'll get back to what you were cooking and what Jack was eating later. Yeah, caller, you're on the air.
+
+[4:20] Hey yeah, hey, this is Dave. Yeah, how you doing? Hey, good, man. How are you? All right, all right.
+
+[4:27] Good, good. Hey, this is Jud over here in Kentucky. Wow. And uh where in Kentucky, you gotta Oh, you know our bowling green, bowling green area. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[4:38] Yeah, you eat you eat you eat ham? Ham, oh yeah, yeah. Shoulder, shoulder. You ever heard of shoulder? Yeah.
+
+[4:45] You need to you need to Oh, it's awesome. That's this Monroe County is the best place for shoulder. Vinegar sauce and all that. But let me ask you though, in terms of Kentucky country hams, do you have a favorite or do you not play favorites with Kentucky country hams? Well, I don't I'm not really.
+
+[5:03] I'm not a big huge country ham. It's too salty, some of it for me. But here's what I recommend. They they have it everywhere. Here's what I recommend.
+
+[5:11] And then I will answer your question. But I'm just saying, here's what I recommend. Get there's a bunch of great ones, obviously, in Kentucky. But uh have you tried 'em sliced thin like prosciutto, like like you eat it like prosciutto? Because it's not that salty that way with some bread, eat some bread and some ham that way, some nice uh you don't want to go too salty if you're gonna eat it with cheese.
+
+[5:29] Then that's too much salt. But have you tried have you tried it that way? Right, right. I haven't, no, no, I need to try it. You have to.
+
+[5:37] Anyway, all right. So what's your question? I'll I'll do it. Well, hey man, you got an awesome show. Um I like it.
+
+[5:43] I like you know, issues, um fixing issues and stuff, grilling and all that. But I was listening to your show the other day, the uh oh mystery of the sour patch kid uh name of the episode sounded like um and anyhow you're talking about the Kalamazoo grills, how how cool it'd be to have a have a grill that you could just dump charcoal in it and have a lighter and you know, it'd start the charcoal and and you wouldn't have to mess around with it. Mm-hmm. Um hey man, I've I've got that grill. I just thought I was gonna let you know, talk to you about it.
+
+[6:17] We we actually uh my partner and I have a patent pending grill that actually does that. We can you can dump dry charcoal in there, no lighter fluid, no um no match even. You just push the button in two to five minutes every single time we can have charcoal. I like that ready to cook. I like that.
+
+[6:37] And uh yeah, I thought maybe you'd be interested in checking it out, man. It's the coolest grill. I mean, we we it's all stainless stainless steel. Um you can clean it out real easy. Thing it has a ton of other accessories that we got that can go on it.
+
+[6:51] Like you can it's got the big old burner in the bottom, so we've got it where you can actually sit a fryer in there and fry fish or I like that or do a low country bowl or anything. What's your uh what's your name of it's target price light right? Light right. Like wait, what's it called? Light well I light?
+
+[7:07] Light right. Light right. Light right. Like light like light bright but right. Yeah, light right.
+
+[7:13] Yeah, we our slogan is don't fight it, just light right it. Yeah like I say charcoal in two to five minutes ready to cook. Actually I have a manufacturer there in uh Leola, Pennsylvania. We haven't we haven't went retail with it yet and released it, but we've got a guy that builds them there in Leola for us. So we're just starting kind of getting it started.
+
+[7:35] So yeah I'd like to uh if you want to see it sometime I'd I'd I'd love to show it to you. No you know I I love any sort of grilling equipment for sure. Well I think it's fixed a lot of raw issues. Charcoal issue that's the biggest thing I I I you have a green egg I tell you the biggest issue you know is it it has a few issues. I love a green egg but there is a few things with it that I wish it was a little different.
+
+[7:56] But chimney in there I don't I don't really like starting with the chimney. Yeah well the other thing about the green egg is uh uh yours is is uh it's not an insulated grill right so it's more for high heat or is it insulated like uh like it like yeah I don't I don't cook that way I don't like I don't I'm not a retained heat grilling guy or like a I'm uh I want like you know I want like a disco inferno you know what I'm saying like I've I've actually you know I've changed almost all of my recipes when I grill to be uh relatively not relative fast you know what I mean uh so I do I do almost all of my grilling such as I can grill now that I'm only living in Manhattan but uh the uh you know I I had converted all of my stuff to either like low temp and fast grill or to do almost uh tandoor in this in the sense of off on, off on. So I do almost all of my stuff. So I want like 'cause you know, uh I'm busy, man. I got kids and stuff.
+
+[8:56] What I want is I want the thing to become instantly hot as hell, and then I wanna do my work and then I wanna go inside and have have some have some uh beverages, you know? That's right, right, absolutely. So what's your what's your MSR print? That that's that that's what we ran into. It'll be around twelve hundred.
+
+[9:14] All right. So, like, you know, you know, so it's it's in the it's in the hey, I want something nice, but hey, I can't afford to spend twelve grand on my grill. It's in that range. Right. Oh yeah, it ain't no twelve grand.
+
+[9:25] No, we wanted to take an everyday grill and turn it into something that everybody could have, you know. And uh, you know, we the way it came about is I was lighting my chimney with newspaper and all that stuff trying to get it lit, and I called my friend and told him we need a burner in this chimney. And uh he said let's stick it in the grill. So we did, and we can have charcoal. That's the thing.
+
+[9:44] I come home from work and I need a grill. I want a grill, but you gotta wait and wait and wait. And yeah, I don't have that kind of time. Yeah, no nobody likes to work. That's how we came about it.
+
+[9:53] All right, well send us send us information. I'll take a look at it and try out some uh Kentucky country ham sliced thin uncooked. I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah, I will. What where do I send that to?
+
+[10:03] Uh the inform just uh send it to uh on the Patreon, I think, or John sent to uh uh info at Booker and Dacks? Yeah, yeah. Or on through Patreon. Yeah, through the Patreon messages would be great. Please.
+
+[10:16] Okay. All right. Hi man, it's been a pleasure talking to you. All right, good talking to you. I look forward to uh seeing that stuff.
+
+[10:22] I like any new grill technology. Cause you know what? Okay, man. Everybody likes to grill. I think.
+
+[10:27] Everybody does. Everybody likes everybody likes to grill. And and I'm hoping that the grill is moving away from being a gendered, a gendered implement. What do you guys think about it? Yeah, you can give that to me since you don't have uh country house.
+
+[10:41] I don't know that he's gonna give us a grill. I think he's gonna send us information. Yeah, that's what I think's gonna happen, Nastasia. But yeah. Uh and then you'll notice what?
+
+[10:44] Like leave it outside and let it rust and then be like, nah, I'm not gonna use it. Like a girl would. No, not like anastasi would. Nastasi is the only person who calls uh grown women girls in this quiz. That's not true.
+
+[11:01] And it doesn't. It's not because it's it's only for the reason that I am also a girl. Uh-huh. It's true. Uh-huh.
+
+[11:08] I never say I'm a woman. That's such a it's also an extra syllable. Maybe that's it. I was gonna say Nastasia transcends gender, but I'm a frat boy, according to Dave. My only frat boy friend.
+
+[11:21] And in general, I don't make friends with frat boys. And you know, I had to make an I'm a frat boy. Ew, really does. I have nothing against frat boys. Come on.
+
+[11:30] I mean, I just did they never liked me. The thing about frat boys is they never really liked me. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, I was that you ever go to like a uh you know how like, well at least at Yale, frat parties were in the basement, right? They're always like in the basement, and it was like at Yale, the frat most of the frat people were kind of football-y kind of people.
+
+[11:49] And so there was like the two and you know, college age. So there's the two girls who could tolerate being in that basement with all of those like dudes, and then like almost like a ring of football dudes like surrounding them, and then I'm just in the corner drinking the worst beer on earth when I have even at the time better skills and technology than you know, a frat boy, you know, basement full of like you know, a keg of knickerboard. Oh my god, I was at a frat party on Saturday night by accident. What? Yes, yes.
+
+[12:19] That shuts out. Oh my god, yeah, here in the city. Yeah. What? I know.
+
+[12:24] Okay. Dish. I went to the that subway bar that you met me at. That was not allowed to talk about it. Is it a secret?
+
+[12:31] No, it's not. All right. And then uh, and then with the two of my girlfriends, and then we went to another bar that's on it. You go through a five guys in five guys' burgers in Greenwich. Now you're upstairs.
+
+[12:45] Now you have dam damdrops going to Great Greenwich, Connecticut. No. And then uh, and then we were walking down the street, and these three guys were walking toward us, and one of one of the girls I was with said, uh, hey, where are you guys going? And they were like, We're gonna go pregame. You guys want to come?
+
+[13:00] And the other girl I was with said, Yeah. I mean, are these actual college age girls or are you people your age? They're my age. Women, grown ass women. All right.
+
+[13:09] And we go, and it is a frat party, and there's flip cup, and there's no wine. There's only what are they called? Uh beer. No, but no, the other beer is jello shots, Kool-Aid. No, the like ones everyone drinks right now.
+
+[13:26] What are they called? Oh, the white claws. Yeah, like only that. Yeah. It was and then they were like stuff makes barrels and james look good, dude.
+
+[13:35] They were like, How old are you guys? And I was like, We're 26. And they're like, well, that's old. Man. Oh, geez, Louise.
+
+[13:44] All right. Uh Joe's telling me uh that's priceless. Uh Joe's tell did you go home with anyone? Ew, no. Not tell me later.
+
+[13:52] Tell me later. Uh caller, you're on the air. Hey, um, I have a question about uh sugar syrups for cocktails in a home bar. Specifically, you know, recipes I've seen for them say, oh, you know, they're given the fridge for one to two weeks. Um, but in a home bar setting, you know, oftentimes I want to keep them longer, you know, months, etc.
+
+[14:12] And I guess my questions are twofold. One is even when I have kept them in the fridge for you know a couple months, seems like they don't grow anything or do anything that makes them look like they're gonna kill me or smell like they're gonna kill me. So is it safe? And the second thing is if there's something I could do to prolong the shelf life if the node the first one. You don't need to prolong honestly, you don't need to prolong the shelf life.
+
+[14:32] Like uh, so okay, so there's different syrups, syrups. Okay. Regular simple syrup is just water and sugar, and one-to-one ratio is gonna be in good in your fridge for a long time. A long time. Like a long time.
+
+[14:48] Yeah, it seems like I've almost never seen it grow anything. Right. Um, if it temperature cycles a lot, if it temperature cycles a lot, you can get some mold growth in it. And what will happen is is that, you know, especially like let's say you pick toilet off for a party and you leave it out overnight and then you put it back in, the mold that starts in it isn't gonna die. And so it'll eventually will grow.
+
+[15:08] And what you'll see is you'll eventually see, even in the fridge, you'll see like like almost like a wisp of like a gray cloud running through it. And because it's thick, where the mold is growing, it usually stays almost as like a almost like you drew like a smoky cloud through the syrup. And it's still ain't gonna kill you, but it's like not good. I wouldn't, I mean, I don't think that there's aflatoxin growing in it, but whatever, I wouldn't necessarily do it. You're you're gonna if if yeast starts growing in it, which it won't at those sugar levels, right?
+
+[15:38] You'll see puffing. So, like, because the yeast will make gas that'll puff it, right? So it'll puff the lid on it. Uh so if you see puffing, uh, you know, it's an issue that yeast is growing, but yeast is actually better than mold because yeast is a hundred percent pretty much safe. It's just gonna ferment it, but it's not gonna happen in what in a simple syrup like that.
+
+[15:55] And the mold, I mean, maybe it shouldn't, you shouldn't eat it with the mold on it. John's giving me the aflatoxin shake of the head over here. I I grew something black and blue on one of my simple syrups, and I just I don't know. No, don't do don't eat that. Don't eat that.
+
+[16:06] But I'm saying when it starts, but it and it generally it tastes bad at that point. So you'll notice. Like, have you ever had maple? So even maple syrup will grow mold, right? And when maple syrup grows mold, it is terrible, terrible.
+
+[16:19] Which is why you need the if you are the kind of person who doesn't use your maple syrup quickly, and this same thing goes for simple syrup, seal the bottle, put the bottle in a hot water bath, bring it up to above about 160 Fahrenheit or so around that range, and just hold it there until the entire thing is warm through. You will then wipe out all of the molds that are are there, maybe 180, I don't know, but you'll wipe out the molds. And then once it cools, you know, that's the only thing that's gonna grow in there. You're not gonna grow botulism, you're not gonna grow any of these. There are some bacteria that can survive those temperatures that theoretically could, but they're just not gonna happen.
+
+[16:59] You're gonna be fine, especially if you're in the fridge. So uh every once in a while on my large things of maple syrup, I will bottle them down into smaller bottles and pasteurize them and then you know, to kill the yeast, the molds and yeast and put them in the in the fridge, and then they're good basically for infinity. If you're using fruit-based syrups, the fruits can taste bad after a while, but that's more of a taste thing and less of a safety thing. All right. I wouldn't bother with like benzoating or any of that other nonsense because then you have to tell people you did it and bam meh, ma'am.
+
+[17:27] And some people can taste it and some people can't, and it's really just unnecessary for what? For like a for for like 80 cents worth of sugar, you're gonna go buy pans away? You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[17:37] All right, awesome. Alright, cool. Thanks a lot. All right. So, so John, you said you you said you made something good.
+
+[17:44] What'd you make? Yeah, no, so I did that um in air quotes Cape Cod style stuffed lobster. Oh, all right. So describe. Ooh.
+
+[17:53] So yeah, no, this was really good. So I made a Ritz cracker stuffing, uh lobster stock, one egg to bind, two sleeves of crackers, oh my god, it's garlic. One egg to bind. Is that your memoir? Yeah.
+
+[18:04] One egg to bind. I'm trying to figure out what it's about. It's like one egg to bind. It's almost like last week when Pierre was like, he took everything I owned. What a blessing.
+
+[18:15] Yes. Anyway, sorry, sorry. So Ritz crackers, and by the way, can you kind of interrupt you? Call for in the recipe, or this is just your favorite cracker. Favorite cracker.
+
+[18:26] Most of them are done with um like saltines. Saltines, premiums. Used to probably be with pilot crackers, which is kind of like the the last vestige of the hard tack biscuit that you could buy here in the U.S. All right, okay. So Ritz, because you like it a little more buttery.
+
+[18:39] Yeah. Ritz crackers are also just delicious. Yeah. What are your guys' thoughts on Ritz? What are you, writz people or not writz people?
+
+[18:44] No. What? I'm a Ritz cracker. Why? Stasi.
+
+[18:51] No, it's not. It again makes my teeth feel weird. Oh, you know what? Because of the well, let me ask you this. Do you like saltines?
+
+[18:57] Yeah, that's fair. Okay. So it's it's it's the it's I I kinda understand what you're saying. I kinda kind of get it. Okay, so ritz, one egg to bind.
+
+[19:07] And what else? Lobster stock, onions, garlic. Um pre-sweat or no pre-sweat on the onions. Um had to kind of like chop up the stuffing halfway through cooking because it started to brown quicker, because they're already brain. So wait, so wait, so wait, wait.
+
+[19:23] So you took the tail, you cut it, you sliced it, put the stuff in. Okay, no, no. So I did everything completely separately. So I took I took all the meat out of the lobster. Uh so I did lobster.
+
+[19:33] Dead raw or pre-steam to to kill. I started with fresh, killed it, blanched it. The knife killed it, then blanched it in shell. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[19:44] Tried to do the tie, you know, where you tie it to the nose of the tail to keep the toe. Oh my god. It's so embarrassing for them. Yeah. Well, didn't even work.
+
+[19:51] What do you mean? Why didn't it work? I they curled up. I guess I just like didn't do it firmly enough. Yeah.
+
+[19:56] Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You have to do it. Yeah.
+
+[19:58] Yeah. Have to get really, really rigid. Because it like what happens is that if it's not tight, they have to look ridiculous or it doesn't work. Like if it's just a little bit up, they can curl as they shrink and flap underneath and then they'll curl. You gotta make it like I'm doing the uh uh Buffalo Bill pose front right now from uh from Silence of the Lambs, and it need to be like that.
+
+[20:21] Like they're they need to be like this and going like that, and then like you like then you tie it, okay. When you tie people, when you're tying a lobster up like this, which I know it's all BDSM and I have other techniques that I I do now, but I've done so many lobsters this way. Tie the tail first, tie the tail first, and then uh leave yourself um enough extra. So there's two ways to do it. Did you do a one tie or did you tie did you tie as a loop, or did you do a loop around the tail and then a loop around the the nose?
+
+[20:52] That's the easiest way to do it, instead of trying to get it to be like a cat's cradle loop around them. That's what I tried to do. It's it's easier to tie like uh tie a figure eight and then pull down and throw a half hitch over the tail than because they're gonna start flapping if they get wind of what you're doing. So you just tie it around their tail when they don't know what's happening, like around that last thing, and then up and then like pull it around the the that point on the nose like you're hitching a ship to a cleat. And then you can throw a couple half hitches over the over the nose and lift them up and man is it indignant for them.
+
+[21:26] Man they stick their claws up they're like come on man and then little do they know into the pot. Exactly they also they're more dense that way though so you need to have a uh sorry less dense that way uh in terms of pot space so you need a decent amount of pot space. No I made sure that I had that before going into it. It's also a good handle to pick them up when you're done if you do it. Yeah you see that yeah because the the the the string never has enough thermal mass to burn you.
+
+[21:53] And so as soon as you wait for the steam to flash off like you don't have to be like oh my God with the tongs and then they slip and that that that noise shib bit shib bip shib you can just kind of go in grab the string pull them on out and then just go boop right into the ice water. Yeah. All right so go ahead. So you you you you you part and you whatever we call it blanched them to kill them. All right now what?
+
+[22:14] Yeah uh took the meat out then while everything was cooling down made a sherry cream sauce so some more garlic and onions. What kind of sherry? Like what style? Something from the coast of Portugal. Um like more of a dry or more of a dry dry like little briny little bit lemony.
+
+[22:35] It was good. You know as a 70s guy I always use Harvey's Bristol cream and everything. It was good. I ended up adding some sherry vinegar too to just give it a little bit more acidity and tang. Um and then added some uh Paul Purdum seafood spice seasoning.
+
+[22:51] Oh nice up a little bit, yeah. And how was it it? It was really good. Okay, and then so once that was ready and everything was uh the lobster was cool, cut up the lobster into little pieces. And so this wasn't really stuffed because once the curl the tail curled, I was just like, whatever.
+
+[23:07] It's not gonna look good. So I just took all the meat out, took the claws off, took the meat out of the claws, cooked everything in the pan, then shrimp, scallop, crab meat, cream sauce, and then that was that. Yeah, it was super tasty. All right, all right. We may have another caller, which I appreciate.
+
+[23:24] Caller, you're on the air. Hi. Um this is this is uh Anthony from Seattle calling in. I have a question around uh making takoyaki. Okay.
+
+[23:36] Uh so I was making the takoyaki and it just wasn't coming out uh you know quite as crispy as I would have liked. I'm wondering if it might be an issue with like the burner I was using, or maybe like the the batter I'm using is no good. Uh I'm using like uh kind of like this electric heater, um, you know uh electric griddle for the takoyaki. I'm wondering maybe if I should try to go for uh uh maybe like uh like uh those uh plates that you put on the gas grills or whether maybe it's an issue for the batter. Well, so well, okay, so let's go through this.
+
+[24:12] So what shape what shape is it? Uh oh, it's uh circular, uh the plate circular. It's a circular plate and it's it's the two it's two-sided or the one-sided. Um no, it's just it's just one-sided. So it's like uh so it's like uh like a I think it's cut probably like a nonstick plate that's like attached to uh an electric heater that you just plug in.
+
+[24:37] Right. So tell me the battery. I'm gonna I'm gonna look it up because I'm getting a little tired. Tell me the battery. Uh so I was I found a recipe called uh just one cookbook uh and then you just uh add tapiaki.
+
+[24:53] And uh Right, but but they're they're typically you'd make it aren't they almost made like in an able skever pan? Like very similar, right? I'm not familiar with that, no. Uh what is that? Uh you know that you know Abel Skever or Skyver, they're it's they it's the the Scandinavian, like Danish, and they sometimes put apples in them, but it's it's the same kind of batter, right?
+
+[25:14] So in Japan, they're also using a like typically a single sided that you have to flip during cooking, right? They're not they're not no one's doing it with a double sided pan, right? Right. No, no. I I I like that yeah, it's uh it's typically flipped.
+
+[25:28] So I think you you pour the uh the batter in and you let the bottom side sit or just set, and then you're supposed to flip it almost like immediately. I'm wondering maybe it's because I'm taking too long to add everything in that the bottom side's like setting too much and it's becoming like too thick and like well maybe that's is there is there is there any sort of uh I'm trying to remember because I I I went through an ableskiver phase which is very similar. Does the batter have whipped uh does the battery I can't remember whether a batter has whipped egg white in it or not? Does it? No, it's uh in this case it was just uh the one I'm using was just uh plain flour, um baking powder, some salts, two eggs, a little bit of uh dashi, and uh some soy sauce.
+
+[26:13] Okay, so uh and no no fat? Uh no fat. Right. So it's like pancake batter minus the fat. Okay.
+
+[26:22] Uh I mean, I would first of all to crisp it up, I would put a little I mean I'd put a little fat in. Um I mean, maybe it's not traditional. Like some butter or like I mean, I I like butter, but I don't know. I don't not if it's not traditional. Don't add it if it's not traditional.
+
+[26:36] But I would say maybe it's your pan, like uh uh I mean I'm assuming if you are you're using if you're using a Japanese pan, they also use uh the same low voltage that we are, so you're not running into a power issue. Like in other words, like if you are designed if if this is designed for a home in Japan, it would also work here because the only difference is the number of hertz of uh of the power and not the voltage. So the power output in a heater would be roughly the same, so it's not that's not gonna be an issue. Um that said, you can find a really nice cast iron ableskever pan that it rocks the house and you can make you could brown the hell out of them, right? Because any sort of batter like that that you're putting into a small unit is a relatively high thermal load because it's a wet, relatively wet.
+
+[27:19] So the higher your thermal load, the harder it's gonna be to get like a very good uh recovery on it. And if it's not crispy, you could go a little bit longer and put a little oil into the into the cups. In general, nonstick things are never gonna give you the kind of crisp usually crispiness because you're using less oil in them, and really that oil at the surface is gonna help you get that crisp because it's gonna help desiccate the outside of the surface uh and give you kind of you know nice good contact. So either add some oil to the batter, try using nonstick, um, you know, try a little more oil in the cuffs, but it can be difficult to oil a nonstick because the oil doesn't stick to the pan the way it would to like cast iron. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[27:59] I see. Okay. Right. Also, the aluminum in a nonstick is the aluminum in a nonstick, you know, it isn't gonna have as much retained energy in it, right? So the advantage of a cast iron pan is that because it's so heavy, right?
+
+[28:12] It's because it's like so much heavier than aluminum, it has more heat energy stored in it, even though uh, you know, even though the the thermal physics of it would make you think it is, and it's just so much heavier than the aluminum that it tends to store more. Okay, I see. And uh I the electric griddles I'm using right now, I know I think it's just uh some generic one I bought online. I'm not sure if it's actually a Japanese brand one. So uh yeah, I think maybe I'll look into the maybe getting a cast iron griddle and um seeing if that would help and adding some fat in.
+
+[28:46] Yeah, look up that look at those able skever pans, because they're able, they're available. Uh not that I want you to shop on Amazon Prime for anything other than Searsols because I know I I already have one. Yeah, yeah, all right, all right, yeah. So uh yeah, check it, check check out the uh check out the able skever pans and see see whether those are uh give you they're nice to have anyway, and then you know, you can also start experimenting with the with the scan dough with the scando ball-shaped pancakes, which are delicious. Start without the fruit fillings though, on the on the on the able skevers, because just get down the the aspect of flipping it.
+
+[29:17] In fact, I have an Instagram post from a year or so ago where I think I give the recipe that I use, but I'm not sure. And the recipe that I use does work. Yeah. Okay. Alrighty?
+
+[29:26] Awesome. Thank you. Goodness does. All right. Now, wacky Jackie molecules.
+
+[29:31] Oh you said you had a good eating experience in Mexico. Where in Mexico were you? Uh I was in Mexico City in Roma Norte mostly. Did you did you make it to uh to the uh Merced market and get those squash blossom tacos that I dream about every once in a while? Uh not this time, but I have been.
+
+[29:51] And though I haven't had the squash, blossom tacos, where? I mean, it's the Merced market is enormous and overwhelming. You go you go to this one entry. I have it on the if you would want it to go, I have her pinned. I have a photo of her exact location on a like GPS pinned.
+
+[30:06] I mean, assuming she's still there. This was like three or four years ago. But just, oh my God. Like, if you want to cry, tears of joy. See a woman making the tortillas, pressing them out, taking the masa ball, pressing it, putting it on the comal, then reaching with two hands into a trash bag full of squash blossoms.
+
+[30:29] A not a not like a kitchen trash bag, like a freaking contractor bag full of squash blossoms and pulling out the squash blossoms and just going on the comal with some freaking oil and then hack a hacka hacka with the knife, like, and then just like saute that, and then without even looking at her hands, shredding the freaking Oaxacin string cheese, and then melting that stuff into the squash blossoms and putting it onto the tortillas that she just cooked, just pressed, and you're like, Well, you're like, yes, yes, yes. You know what I mean? Like, we went, we it's one of those things where you're like, shouldn't you try a bunch of different places? And you're like, why? I've eaten a lot of things, right?
+
+[31:10] I've been alive 50 years, I've eaten a lot of things. If you find something like that that's that good, just keep going back. Nastasi, I know you're a little bit of a believer in that, right? Yeah, so Jack, what did you eat in Mexico? Uh, this place, the the best, the best meal um was at a place called Expendio de Mais.
+
+[31:28] Um wait, what does that mean? Like expensive, expensive, expensive corn? What is that? Wait, expensive. I think it means like sale of corn or like selling corn, you know.
+
+[31:37] Um but it's like an open air, it's like it's on the street, it's very unassuming, like an open stall kitchen kind of thing. Um kind of like mixed the mold, nixtimalization happening. I it's it's elevated dining in like a street food setting. Um and they kind of just like you show up and they'll keep bringing courses until you tell them to stop. Well, I like that.
+
+[32:01] So worth it. I like that. Like, do you have a little coin like yes, the yes no coin? No, you just yeah, the service was actually really great. Um, they're very communicative.
+
+[32:12] Do wait, John. Have you been? No, I haven't. Website now that looks or their Instagram, it looks really tasty. Oh yeah.
+
+[32:18] Do do they have like different varieties of corn like on any given day? Is it like the blue bottle coffee of corn that you like? You're like, I'll have the I will have this corn. I mean, good good question. I only made it once.
+
+[32:31] Um, but I mean everything I tasted was unbelievably delicious. I had my first poke there too, which I like. Um how was it? Yeah, like what was it flavored or was it straight to Pool K. It seemed flavored, but I have no point of reference.
+
+[32:46] So I don't know what plain pulquet would have tasted like compared to this. I have yet to go to a pulquet bar. I have yet to go. I need someone to take me to a pool bar, but where it's just pool c the kind of one where like where you you try to have one and then the person walks up behind you with their hand and forces you back into your seat and pours you another one, that kind of a place. Like where they're like, oh, you want the experiment?
+
+[33:07] You want the experience? You're gonna get the experience, like that. One of those places. I need to go to learn those places. But well, anyway, if anybody's ever in Mexico City, hit that place up.
+
+[33:16] It was amazing. And it's called Selling corn, but in Spanish. Or sale of corn. Expendio de mais. Corn sale.
+
+[33:26] Yeah. I should learn Spanish. I should really learn Spanish someday. Nice. All right.
+
+[33:33] Yeah. All right. So let's get to some uh Patreon questions. Uh Anthony. Oh, by the way, someone uh sent me on Twitter and I have no idea.
+
+[33:41] So I'm I'm calling out for someone to tweet uh to them on my Twitter, which is cooking issues in case you you needed it. Uh good places to go in uh Nashville, because I've never been to Nashville. I've never been to Nashville. The last time I was in Tennessee was for the 1980 Knoxville World's Fair. Yeah, I enjoyed the Knoxville World's Fair in 1980.
+
+[34:01] I was nine though. So what did I know about anything really? Yeah. Yeah. Uh Karsville's cool.
+
+[34:07] What World's Fair? Uh what was Nashville. Oh, Nashville's cool. Oh. The World's Fair, Knoxville.
+
+[34:13] I remember the kudzu on the drive-in. Do they still have kudzu everywhere? I hate kudzu. I don't know. Really?
+
+[34:19] Nastasi, you hate kudzu? Did they have it in California? No. Just the idea of it? Yeah.
+
+[34:24] The idea of this green monster invading your life, invading everything, growing over your car. Yeah. You're like, ooh, ooh, they I got a flat in the I got a flat in the uh in the Corolla. And so then the Corolla doesn't drive for a month and it's kudzoed. It's just covered in kudzu.
+
+[34:39] It's kind of creepy. So creepy. Kudzu. Uh Anthony Din writes in, what are your thoughts on using a carbon steel pan on an induction burner? I have the control freak, and I'm wondering if it's worth the effort.
+
+[34:51] Thanks. Also, uh, were I to get one, would you recommend getting a 10 or a 12 or both? So uh I've actually been using uh a carbon steel quite a bit recently from um uh JB Prince. So JB Prince has an uh a new carbon pan that they have out that's kind of cool. It's made by this uh dude in Australia, uh, but he's now making them for JV Prince in the U.S.
+
+[35:13] Uh and what's cool about this particular pan is it's no rivets. John, you'd like this uh from a professional kitchen standpoint, no rivets. So it's never going to, there's nothing to break on it. It's stamped out of one piece of metal, but they they they've made the handle like a curve in such a way that the handle doesn't get that hot. Uh because it, you know, one of the reasons people that the handle material is different from the pan is also to make a thermal break, not just be not just because it's hard to make it in one piece, but also theoretically, I guess it provides a thermal break.
+
+[35:44] But uh not that you're ever supposed to grab the handle of a pan in a professional kitchen anyway, but you know, we all do it sometimes, every once in a while. Although Wiley laughs at me whenever I do it. You know what I mean? Like the first thing they teach you in a professional kitchen is don't grab that handle. Don't grab that handle.
+
+[35:58] You know what I mean? Especially if you're you know in the habit of throwing your pans in and out of the oven, right? Never grab the handle of a pan. What are you an idiot? That's why you have the towel.
+
+[36:05] The reason you have the towel is to grab the handle of the pan. Anyway, uh, so I really like uh I haven't used me as in also has some uh uh pans now, some uh carbon steel pans that are uh they're relatively inexpensive. Uh I I actually really like them. You know what I mean? Like uh I use it quite a bit.
+
+[36:22] It's got the same nonstick properties as cast iron, roughly, but it's a lot lighter, right? So it's not gonna have the kind of I don't think heat retention uh uh as a as a cast iron. Uh so if you're doing something like, I don't know, baking in the in the oven cornbread, I'd probably still use the cast iron. I still use both my cast iron sizzles and the in and that pan. The issue on an induction with uh that it works great on induction, by the way.
+
+[36:47] Um, you know, the bigger the pan, it depends on what you're gonna use it for. Like the induction burner itself is only so big. So if you take a pan and put it on your control freak or any induction burner that you have, and then dust the bottom of it with flour and then turn it on to like 370 or something like this, 375. And then uh if it browns totally evenly all the way across at 375, then you're getting good enough heat conduction across it such that it makes you can have a larger pan and still use it kind of for fine for frying or for things like this where you need even. And then try it again where you just crank it as high as it'll go and see how much of a burn ring you get where the actual heating element of the induction unit is.
+
+[37:25] I use bigger, bigger, much bigger things on my um on my induction unit all the time, but typically then I'm doing larger things, like I'm doing like a batch of greens, where I'm either using a low temperature such that it can go across the the entire pan like I'm sweating onions and there's a lot of oil, and so you know, it doesn't matter that it's gonna be a little hotter in the center, or I'm putting a mess of greens in that I need it to cook down, in which case it doesn't matter that it's theoretically hotter because the the temperature of the steam from the water is keeping everything at roughly boiling point anyway. So it you know, don't expect a large pan to be even for something like frying eggs, right? Unless you have a lot of water in it. So I would get both of you could, because it's always, you know, having a pan that's too small is like it sucks. You know what I mean?
+
+[38:12] Like if you need to cook X amount of stuff and you have X minus something that you can fit in your pan, then all of a sudden now you're in two batch fill. You know what I mean, John? Yep. No one wants to be in two batch fill. No, definitely not.
+
+[38:23] But don't expect your induction burner to uh, you know, a whole section of my book, which is gonna be I'm trying to figure out which is gonna be the most boring section of my book. Uh right now, I think it's the thermal properties of water is gonna be the most boring section of the book, but since it's the miracle of moisture management, kind of have to deal with it. You know what I mean? Uh my wife, Jen, who's reading all the stuff, she's like, she's like, if your section on mushrooms is not the least boring section of your book, then it's gonna be, because I wrote the mushroom section already. She's like, I'm like, oh, don't worry.
+
+[38:54] The water section, real boring. But you need to know it to get it right. The other thing that's gonna be real boring is where I discuss how to relate the power output of your equipment to what you could actually accomplish with it, right? So, you know, it's the akin to don't try to put 10 pounds of poop into a five-pound sack, right? And you know, it's very simple math to figure out what you can get out of your wall socket, what you can get out of your microwave, what you can get out of your toaster oven, what you can get out of your standard oven, what you can get out of your burner.
+
+[39:25] And I have to get into it, but it's gonna be deep and boring. Right? Yeah. Nastasia, uh look, do you want it exactly the same size? Because I know you lost your copy of Liquid Intelligence.
+
+[39:35] Do you want this book to be exactly the same thickness? Yes. I'm shooting for it. I'm shooting, I'm just gonna try to make it exactly the same dimensions so that you know it fits exactly the way that the old one did. Today is the day I tell someone that they can't stay with me because they're not vaccinated.
+
+[39:51] Oh, well. So we're we're name nameless. Namelame, yeah. Oh my god, it's it's uh is that what's his name? The actor from uh he he got killed in in uh House of Cards.
+
+[40:03] He's the con who's the congressman in House of Cards who got carbon monoxided. Well, he's alive. You mean they don't kill him in the real life? Acting. Oh, speaking of acting, get this.
+
+[40:16] So uh I had a I had one of those uh Dustin Hoffman, Midnight Cowboy. I'm walking over here, I'm walking over here. I had that such a moment like that because I was trying to get here and I was a little bit late, and I was like, people, it must mean the tourists are back, especially in this neighborhood. I'm like, yo, yo, yo, I'm walking over here. You know what I mean?
+
+[40:36] Do you know that scene, which is fantastic? It's uh uh what's his name? Um uh Angelina Jolie's dad, uh uh John John Voigt and Dustin Hoffman, right? And they're both, you know, Dustin Hoffman's not hot, but Voigt is hot as hell in that movie. You know what I mean?
+
+[40:49] And he's like a J-Golo kind of guy. So they're they're walking around like kind of this neighborhood almost, more like Times Square. And they had uh, when they were filming it, they had they had roped off the entire area, and so he they're walking across the street without looking because they're shooting a movie. You know what I mean? And then classic New York style, a taxi driver just boom blows through the blows through the thing and almost hits Dustin Hoffman and he goes, I'm walking over here like that.
+
+[41:18] Like, and it's like it was totally unscripted, but how good acting is that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like completely unscripted. He doesn't break character, and then does his thing, yells at the taxi driver, and then continues walking and talking to Voigt.
+
+[41:33] Blocked off the streets. They did. Oh. I mean, are you familiar with us as a as a as a group of people? Well, that's true, yeah.
+
+[41:40] You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway. Oh my God. I've talked about the uh the what's it called, right?
+
+[41:45] The uh, oh my god, his name just went out of my head, Marathon Men. I don't think so. Who played oh my case is it is it uh is it uh I always forget, is it it's Lawrence Olivier, right, who plays the the Nazi doctor, isn't it? Anyway, I think it's Lawrence Olivier. He plays an he plays a Nazi doctor.
+
+[42:01] Yeah, so it's is you should see this movie. It doesn't, I don't know whether it's I loved it. Dustin Hoffman plays this like kind of young character who's who is being got like kind of he's kidnapped by this Nazi doctor who's trying to figure out what's going on. And he's drilling holes in his teeth and then putting like uh like he's just causing immense pain and he's just saying, is it safe? Is it safe?
+
+[42:26] And Dustin Hoffman's like, I don't know what you're talking, I don't know what you're talking about. You know what I mean? Because he has literally no idea what he's talking about. It's a great scene. So anyway, so to study for being in this immense pain where he's drilling his teeth out uh without anesthesia, Dustin Hoffman was in his like trailer and like icing his junk down, like sitting in a seat with just like his all of his like Frankenbeans covered in like ice, just completely iced down, like shivering or shivering, like and like Lawrence Olivier walks in.
+
+[42:53] So, the hell are you doing? He's like, Well, I'm trying to get in like a physical emotional space, you know, where I can really live the scene. He's like, just act, dude. Just act. You don't need the nice, you know, you don't need to ice your junk down.
+
+[43:05] Just act, man. Anyway. I mean, he hasn't talked like that because he's British, but whatever. Uh and they're all, he's dead now, so he doesn't talk like anything anymore. All right, let me see.
+
+[43:14] Next question. Uh from Alexander, and I believe it's pronounced tailguard, right? Isn't that correct? I think so, yes. Yeah.
+
+[43:21] Uh and I guess it's how it's written, too. It's not Talgard, right? It's Tilguard. Oh, yeah. I think so.
+
+[43:27] Anyway. Uh hey cooking issues, people. Uh, thanks for the answer on ginger. Uh, and no worries about being late. We were late, remember?
+
+[43:33] We were late. Yeah. Uh and uh likes our decision to go on Patreon. That's good news. Uh so got some of the ginger juice to clarify uh just by doing it with time, which is the only way to do it.
+
+[43:44] Uh, but it lost all of its ginger cake, so I ended up using a mix of heated uh ginger and just uh juice, giving s like giving up some of the carbonation, and it was excellent. Another thing you can do, by the way, is uh ginger is gonna lose its kick over time. And so what a lot of people do is try to find the most neutral um capsation note that you can get and add a little bit of capsation heat to the back, and it's not the same, but it pushes a lot of the same buttons. So uh, you know, if you don't mind uh the flavor being a little bit red, like something that's fairly neutral, like Italian crushed red pepper is a fairly neutral reddish heat. And like usually those kind of, I don't know if you you know what I mean red, right?
+
+[44:25] Yeah, yeah. Usually like those kind of red hot notes work with well with uh with ginger. They don't cloy because you're not adding, you don't necessarily want to add a vegetable note, you don't necessarily want a greenish hot note, and you probably don't want a vinegary hot note, um, or even floral, like a habanero style note. So I think you want like a, but red usually doesn't, that reddish, red, straight red pepper flavor doesn't tend to conflict very often with uh ginger. And so uh that's what I uh I typically use crushed red.
+
+[44:55] The only problem with crushed red is is that it's very um it's very finicky with steep time. So you want to just I I usually over add because I'm looking mainly for heat, and then I keep tasting until the heat's exactly where I want, and then I drain. I don't let it sit for a long time because uh like uh anyone who's ever eaten a pizza with me knows that I put stops. How much crushed red do I put on pizza? Tons.
+
+[45:19] Like tons. Yeah, I mean like it's red. Yeah, yeah. It's bright red. It's like and sandy, right?
+
+[45:24] So like if you make me, if you make me laugh when I'm eating pizza to the extent that I have to breathe in, like if I breathe in while I'm eating pizza through my mouth, if any air goes into my mouth, in to my mouth while I'm eating a pizza, it's like almost like a like a guaranteed trip to the hospital. Because I'm inhaling like a like a like a blanket of crushed red pepper into my mouth. But it doesn't actually make the pizza slice that hot because crushed red pepper is not hot until it gets hydrated, right? It's just not that hot until it gets hydrated. Take that same amount of crushed red pepper, put it in a sauce, or as they say in Boston, put it in the gravy, and then you heat it up and you're, you know, you're done.
+
+[46:03] Does anyone else call it gravy sauce gravy or just the Boston Italians? I'm watching the Sopranos and they call it gravy in that. Really? So Jersey Italians call it gravy too? Yeah.
+
+[46:12] At least based off the Sopranos. But yeah. All right. Yeah. It's gravy.
+
+[46:17] Long Island Italian sauce. Sauce? Huh. Per Long Island, yeah. What's the worst thing on earth that you can do in an Italian household if you're a cook.
+
+[46:32] Oh, definitely add ketchup to your uh to your linguini and clams. Oh, I didn't even think about that. That's like that's like you wouldn't even that's like uh as the as they say, you would be dead to me at that point. I mean, like the worst thing you can do and still be a member of the family. The only reason I say that, and it's so close to me because I had a friend come over for uh a birthday at my father uh for my father's birthday, and my mother makes my mother's sicilian, she makes an amazing linguinian clam sauce, and like my friend Harry, we're skaters in like high school, and he goes into the he literally leaves the kitchen table, goes to the refrigerator, brings back he actually brings his plate into the kitchen because we're sitting in the dining room and puts ketchup on the linguine, comes back to the dinner table.
+
+[47:13] My mother's like, get the f out. Like, get out. All right, this is the only cursing that's allowed because I appreciate that. Kicked your skater friend out, that's amazing. Oh man.
+
+[47:23] I got it. And rightfully so though. Rightfully so. I got laughed at at that restaurant in Rome when I asked for a wedge of lemon to go with my uh fried artichoke. Yeah, you said that uh server literally laughed at me and said no.
+
+[47:36] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. As uh Louie's lunch in New Haven says, This isn't Burger King, it's not how you want it. You know what I mean? But uh so I was gonna say, uh I'll just say this.
+
+[47:47] So like um my stepfather, he had three maiden aunts. They never married. They, you know, they lived together until they until they all died. It was crazy. And one of them is the bank rabbers?
+
+[47:59] No, but it's the same people. So like uh I told you, like, there was the the one who was kind of the kind of ruled the roost. Uh her name uh was uh Annette, and there was there was Annette, Auntie, and and Annie. Those were the three maiden aunts, right? And you know, Annie died first, then it was Annette and and um and Auntie.
+
+[48:19] But anyway, Auntie started like to go a little bit soft, but she was never the one that ruled the roost, right? It was always like it was always Annette that ruled the roost. And uh and Annette was one of those most closely related to Uncle Diamond, who's the guy who who had the safe deposit box. Anyways, so you know, everyone would say, Oh, oh Auntie. Oh, Annette, she thinks she's the boss.
+
+[48:40] She's the boss of the toilet, she's the boss of the toilet. So, like, whenever anyone says that they're the boss, I'm like, yeah, they're the boss, the boss of the toilet. But anyway, they were making the gravy. So the way that they used to do it is they'd make the gravy and then they the tomato, you know, they'd put it through the strainer thing, they'd get the stuff, they'd cook it down, and then they'd put all the meat in it. So they'd put the you know, the brijol, the sausage, the pork chops, everything into the gravy, cook it in the gravy, pull it out, cook the pasta, serve the pasta with the thing, the meat on the side.
+
+[49:05] That's the vote it was. And one time, I wasn't even alive yet. It was like in like the it was in like the 60s. Annette burned the gravy. And tried to serve it.
+
+[49:15] So she scorched the bottom. The entire pot then is tinged with the burnt tomato. And it was one of those things where literally 30 years later, you know what I mean? Like in the 80s or 90s, they were like, There was that time Annette burned the gravy. And we're all like, it was like in the entire table, because I got, you know, the whole thing I used to do family dinner every Sunday.
+
+[49:40] And it came really from Gerard's family. Had the family dinner would be like the aunts were there, his dad, his grandpa, like a whole thing. And yeah, every once in a while, if he's like, burn the gravy. And then like Gerard's dad would just go, like it wasn't like, oh, it's okay. Don't worry about it.
+
+[50:01] It was just like remembering and sucking in. Yeah. Uh, gracious. Uh all right. Andrew Kay wrote in question.
+
+[50:10] Uh I'm making You didn't even get to Alexandra's question. Oh, I didn't? Oh, shoot. You went off a tangent. All right, all right.
+
+[50:15] Tangent. Okay. Uh these without tangents because you're going to be able to do that. Oh, yeah, yeah. Now to my question.
+
+[50:20] I'm trying to recreate a cocktail version of Dalgona coffee. Now that's that one where you whip instant coffee, right? You whip instant coffee and then you serve it either hot or cook. Well, we've answered a similar one. I don't think we've answered.
+
+[50:33] Well, no, it's it's a it's a COVID thing. Can't be eight years ago. This was invented during COVID by someone who couldn't leave the house. I don't know. It's all the same.
+
+[50:41] I like how you're getting you you're not even close as old to me, and still your entire life is blurring together into one big mess. Don't let it happen yet. Keep your dates separate for at least another 10 years. All right. Uh I'm trying to recreate a cocktail version of Dalgona coffee.
+
+[50:55] Dalgona's kind of a good word. Is that why it's popular? Because Dalgona's. I don't know, but answer the question. Wow.
+
+[51:01] Jesus. Man. I want it to actually taste like coffee and not instant crap. I'm using a mocha pot and an EC Whipper. I've tried using foam magic, which is a maltodextrin, uh, methylcellulose and Xanthan gum from Modernist Pantry as a foaming agent, and it worked okay, but the foam got that goopy texture from the Xanthan.
+
+[51:19] Is are there any other agents that would work better to give a lighter but still stable foam? I'm looking for a texture uh like egg white foam on a sour. Thanks, and keep up the good work. All right, so let's take a look at that. First of all, I really get bent when people um write in their ingredients, and they do it so that you can't copy the methyl cellulose, because there's a bunch of different methylcelluloses and cellulose derivatives that have different properties.
+
+[51:41] I'm guessing this is what I think that is. Maltodextrin is just a filler, right? It's just solids. So if you're using instant coffee, I tried to look up what's in instant coffee. Does instant coffee always have cream or crap added to it?
+
+[51:53] Or can you get black instant coffee? I think you can get black black, yeah. Yeah. Like, but the standard like taser's choice is black. I I couldn't find the ingredients for taster choice coffee on the web this morning for some reason.
+
+[52:04] Isn't that it like the most ironic name on earth, Taser's Choice? Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like they gave a bunch of crap to a bunch of tasters and the taster had to choose one, and that was the taster's choice. It's anyway.
+
+[52:15] Uh so the maltodextrin is there as solids. Also, you gotta remember in um in an instant coffee, it's all coffee solids, and coffee solids have good whipping ability. This is why uh coffee is such a nightmare to carbonate, because it foams up uh a lot, right? So the maltodextrin is there just for adding solids uh and and viscosity. The methylcellulose is the actual whipping agent, right?
+
+[52:40] So you need both that uh uh maltodextrin and the methylcellulose. The xanthan, but it's the methyl cell you need to use is called F50, F50. Just get methyl cell F50 straight, and then get some maltodextrin and use that and just nix the Xanthan gum. The Xanthan gum is a stabilizer, but you probably will not need a stabilizer because coffee is already foamy enough. So coffee plus methyl cell, uh methyl cell F50 plus maltodextrin will probably give you what you need without that snottiness.
+
+[53:12] And if not, it methylcel doesn't always work in milk-based systems. So if you're adding the milk before you whip the coffee, you might need to move to a versa whip. Versa whip is just whey protein. So it's uh, and there's two different there's a soy protein versa whip and a and a milk protein versa whip. So you could try versa whip, but versed whip takes a lot longer to whip up, or just try straight F50, the coffee and the um and maybe some maltodextrin if you need more solids content.
+
+[53:37] But try to make the coffee as strong as possible. Uh what do you think? Good, go. Good answer. Good.
+
+[53:43] All right, all right. Okay. Uh oh, and then see there's also a liquid nitrogen thing, John. Parse that out for me while I while I get Andrew Kay's question. All right.
+
+[53:52] Uh Andrew Kay writes in, I'm making a pyrolized banana. I'm making pyrolized bananas, which I guess means burnt. Oh, no, no, like uh black garlic. Yeah. That's what that means.
+
+[54:00] Yeah. Uh although it's not mean like it's not really the technical not like you know what I mean? Like I'm not gonna get into it. All right. Uh from the Aviary cocktail book, where you peel bananas, you vacuum seal them, you boil them for 10 minutes in the bag, and then you place them in a hundred and fifty-five degree Fahrenheit environment for four weeks.
+
+[54:17] I'm using a rice cooker on keep warm. Uh, one problem. After a week of cooking, I checked on the bananas and the bag had blown up. It was found to have a small hole uh in the side, not at the sealed end, which I suspect let in air that expanded in the bag. I sealed the hole, but a day later I found a new hole in the bag, possibly due to the temperature being higher than estimated and melting my cheek bags.
+
+[54:37] Uh the bag was minimally inflated this time. That was that's uh that was my nickname, minimally inflated, minimum minimum minimally inflated. Uh my main concern is botulism. Uh I am reading that 10 minutes of boiling can neutralize the toxin. Is this true?
+
+[54:50] Uh I know this would not include the spores, but if I were to uh boil the bananas for 10 minutes again after the four weeks of uh blackening, would it be reasonable to uh uh consume the product? It's just for myself, so I'm not particularly concerned about other food-borne illnesses, thanks in advance. Yeah, uh, you know, the botulism toxin is mainly heat labile, and boiling it should do it. Bananas are really fairly thin and they're high in uh moisture, so it should make it through. But also uh if your temperature is 155, botulism is not gonna grow there, right?
+
+[55:20] That's you know, that's well above the thermal death point for uh the vegetative uh stuff. So if it smells off off, you're getting some sort of thermally um there are thermoactive bacteria, right? That will tolerate living in those temperatures, and they're typically not pathenogenic, and it's not gonna be botulism. Botulism just won't grow. Uh I I would guess maybe that your temperature, I mean I would just be a concern that your temperature wasn't as high as you thought, right?
+
+[55:52] So just if you can guarantee that that temperature was at 155 the whole time and it smells good, it doesn't smell like like uh like it's gone bad, then I would say you're okay. I would consume it. Um and botulism wouldn't be a concern in that point, and especially if you're gonna reboil it. I think you're you're fine. What do you think, John?
+
+[56:09] Think that's accurate? Yeah, I think so. Uh all right, so was there more in that question you need to parse out where liquid nitrogen? He's looking to get Ellen for his bar and trying to convince the owners he needs to know the price, how much is used. Isn't that like on the blog somewhere?
+
+[56:22] Well, well, it's old. I don't even know if you can still get to the primer. But the the issue on price is just the price of liquid nitrogen varies widely depending on uh your locale. So just call up two or three local welding shops and figure it out, you know, what they what they're gonna charge you. Liquid nitrogen, it costs almost the same to fill a like 30-liter doer as it does to get a full 160 or 180 liter doer of liquid nitrogen.
+
+[56:48] Uh the issue with the liquid nitrogen doers, and if you're gonna use it in a bar, you really want to get the big containers is if you don't use it constantly, it boils off. So you have to use it all the time, or there's no point in having it. And if you get the big cylinders, um, you know, usually you have to put a deposit down of like, you know, a couple grand, and then uh when you cancel your account, you get the two grand back, and then they just swap the cylinders out and they'll typically charge you a delivery cost and the and the liquid nitrogen. We we went we had two at existing conditions and we had one at Booker Index, and it was like we spent on the order of like 150 dollars a week on it. Someone all in that order in that.
+
+[57:27] And to convince the owner, you got to do all your safety. You gotta do all the safety stuff. I mean, like, you know, uh, you know, maybe this re yeah, read the liquid nitrogen primer. Uh, you know, it's all about, you know, it i i if the people aren't gonna respect the safety, if they're not gonna listen to you, if they're gonna be kind of fast and loose with it and like let your guests ever touch it or get near it, then don't even bother. But if you're gonna follow the rules and like not let people take it home in their car, and you know, if you you know, you're not gonna like store it, you know, in a basement and you're not gonna like try to walk it down the stairs and you're not gonna do any of the stuff that's evil just read the read the blog post it's still current and even though it's like 10 years old it's still true.
+
+[58:08] Um yeah follow the rules right yep rules you have one minute uh all right so someone just uh someone just said basically they they want to know whether we want this is uh Dustin Meldrum wrote in has pawpaws in the Yonkers area right says during during season if not we can get some pawpaws aren't you're interested in that right John Yeah definitely uh also um is it as an engineer at the Domino Sugar Plant we've got to have some information we want about engineers and domino sugar plants um and a calcium chloride plant oh uh something somebody asked me once um and also says can get some good dogs because they're going to Michigan should we have a Michigan hot dog should we get in contact with Dustin and have a Michigan dog versus a Connecticut dog off where you cook them both John so that they're both done exactly the same way served in kind of a standard bun situation and we can do get in contact and we'll see we can figure out we can have a uh Nastasia you like hot dogs right if they're playing Joe you like hot dogs like you are you interested in a in a in a dog off and like a Michigan versus Connecticut dog off definitely all right but like no no adornment just mustard mustard kraut or do we have to have it with nothing? Nothing. Nothing I prefer mustard and kraut. You have 30 seconds mustard and kraut right okay uh someone wants asked me this, and so uh here it is. Salted butter is one salted butter can be a range of different uh uh salt contents, right?
+
+[59:38] But in case you're wondering how much extra salt you're adding when you add butter, uh the standard I looked at the one in my fridge, which it's a little bit off, right? Because they said, you know, according to the the decimal points don't go out far enough. The minimum fat content of butter is 80 and the maximum is 90 in the US, right? The rest is water, milk fats, non solid, and salt. Uh in the one in my house is 1.6% salt by weight.
+
+[1:00:02] 1.6% salt. Remember, people, when you read the sodium on the side, if you just have a sodium content in milligrams and you want to know salt, multiply by 2.5, 2.54 technically, right? So if there's if there's one milligram of salt, there's actually uh of sodium, then there's actually 2.54 milligrams of salt. Does that make sense to you? Yeah.
+
+[1:00:24] Okay. In a stick of butter, there is about 1.85 grams of salt. Okay? So when you're cooking with butter and you want to know I'm putting a stick of butter in, and you want to cut back on the salt, it's like 1.8 grams. All right.
+
+[1:00:37] All right. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues, coming to you live from Newstand Studios at Rockefeller Center, and now to hand it over to my guest announcer. Phil Bravo. And I'd like to welcome everyone here today with Dave Arnold, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, Joe Hazen, Jackie Molecules, John Nehoo, and again, special guest, Phil Bravo. Please. Phil Bravo!
+
+[0:38] How are you doing, Phil? I'm doing alright. How are you doing, dude? You're supposed to say, call in your questions too! 917-410-1507.
+
+[0:44] That's 917-410-1507. There are no chances. There are no chances. There's no stepping. It's just get this thing going.
+
+[0:52] Get it going. Wrap it up. See, people can't see us. Well, people on Patreon, if you if you're a member of Patreon, you can. If you really wanted to see us, you could.
+
+[1:00] Right? That's true. Did you announce Jackie Molecules? He did. I did, yeah.
+
+[1:03] Where are you, Jackie? How are you doing? How's uh how's California? Yeah? Yeah.
+
+[1:09] As uh delightful as ever. You sound you sound delighted. You sound like this is you. This is your droopy dog. Delightful as ever.
+
+[1:19] California. California got you down? You're doing a little bit of the Neil Diamond? You're gonna you're caught between two shores. LA's home, you know, LA's fine, but it ain't home.
+
+[1:30] New York's New York's home, but it ain't yours no more. Uh you're not a Neil Diamond fan. Oh my god. I'm not a Neil Diamond fan. We've been over this.
+
+[1:40] I'm I'm yeah. I just can't believe it. Maybe I block it out. Joe, you like Neil Diamond, right? Yeah, I like Neil Dabman.
+
+[1:46] Yeah. I mean, I don't understand. I understand how, like, I understand how, like, when you're a kid, I understand how like you're like 18 years old, you're 20 years old, you're like, I don't like Neil Diamond. That's like what my grandparents listen to. You know what I mean?
+
+[1:59] But then once you get to be like, you know, an old geezer like myself, you're like, that's what my grandparents used to listen to. Oh, yeah. And then you listen to it. You know what I mean? It's not like doo op music, which just is inherently bad.
+
+[2:11] You know what I mean? That's rough. Do up. Do up music is not inherently bad. Okay, do up music is good two songs at a time.
+
+[2:18] I'll give you a two songs at a time. A whole album of doo-wop, a whole show of doo-wop. I think you listened to bad doo-op. Okay, give me good do-op. I mean, now you're putting me on the spot.
+
+[2:29] Yes, I am. All right. Well, I'll buy by the end of the show. I'm gonna give you a playlist. All right, but a playlist where I want where a playlist where I'm like, I've already listened to eight doo-wop songs, and I'm like, I need a ninth.
+
+[2:40] I need a ninth doo-wop song. Like, do it to me. I'm gonna get I'm gonna give you the deep tracks. Are you? Are you?
+
+[2:46] Is it gonna be all hey Mr. Basseman? I mean, obviously. Yeah. So then I uh I was driving to uh the New Jersey.
+
+[2:53] By the way, for any of you who are in New Jersey, there's a shop in between like New York City and like the uh the the you know the tunnels and uh the Delaware water gap, where apparently all they sell is chocolate goats. Chocolate goats. And the store is called the Chocolate Goat Gift Shop. And I screamed in to the parking lot at like, it was a 30 mile an hour road. I must have been doing 60, and like, like, you know, drifted into the parking lot and like came to a stop next to like a grandma and a small child who are also trying to make it to the chocolate goat before apparently the hard clothes at 5 p.m.
+
+[3:32] on a Sunday. Missed it. I don't know if I'm ever gonna get a chocolate goat in my whole life. Not chocolate covered goats. Let's be clear.
+
+[3:40] These are molded chocolates in the form of goats in, to quote the website, various sizes. Right? I mean, that's kind of a win. I don't know. You can?
+
+[3:44] Oh. How do they look, John? I mean, like chocolate, like goats made out of chocolate. Oh, well, I want you people to know that they're multicolored goats, too. It's not just like it's a little bit of a milk chocolate goat, a little bit of a dark chocolate goat.
+
+[4:03] Oh we got the the different kinds of chocolate and the different sizes, seven, four, and one ounce. Okay, listen, I need I need different kinds. Oh, we just got fish bowl by uh by a tourist. Uh by a particularly angsty uh, you know, teen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[4:17] This kid, this kid like had an entire thing of hair gel in his hair to make it look like he had never combed it. He's like, but Ma, it looks like I combed it. Get me another jug of hair gel. Go buy it for me at the Dwayne Reed. You know what I mean?
+
+[4:32] Anyway, that's that's our life people. Anyways, so uh what are we talking about? Chocolate goats. Do they have different varieties of goat? That's what I want to know.
+
+[4:38] Like, can I get like a cashmere? Can I get like a can I get like, you know, uh name a different variety of goat? I'm not a goat, a goat aficionado. That's just the one goat. It's always the one goat in various sizes.
+
+[4:50] It looks like it, yeah. Anyway, so I went to go pick up Dax, and this is the this is the cooking thing. Let's start with the cooking thing. The pr the people he had been staying with, his dirtback buddy Nico, who we've talked about on the show before, uh, so he's at his dirtbag buddy's house in the, you know, over on the Delaware River, and uh the mom who wrote a cookbook on soup, soup among friends, they had a soup club, and they every week one of them would make soup. The four people.
+
+[5:17] One of them would make soup, and then they would distribute said soup to everyone of the four of the four families. This way, you only have to have that soup one night because you make enough soup because you don't make like no one makes like like you know, soup just for like one family. Who the heck makes that? Unless you're doing like dashi or something like that. You have to make a big old thing of soup.
+
+[5:39] Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. So they divvied up this soup in their soup club and then passed the soup out to all the people, and that way every week they got a soup. One out of four, they made the soup, and they didn't have the leftovers on the soup.
+
+[5:51] That's not a bad idea. No, it's pretty good. If you have four friends, which I don't, I'm kidding. Anyway, uh it's like a family plan, uh, you know, for soup. It's like it's like a soup CSA.
+
+[6:02] Yeah. You also get no say in what the other person cooks, right? So you're like, nah. I mean, but I don't know. I think apparently they were all good cooks.
+
+[6:11] You know, I don't know. Anyways, so she's no shade, but I joined that club with no dietary restrictions, you know. Ooh, who you throwing the shade on? You think like uh like who in particular? Just be explicit.
+
+[6:23] Everyone likes explicit shit. I know that it's not supposed to be explicit, it's supposed to be like you know, it's like some people have legit dietary restrictions. No, no. These aren't like randos. It's not like you're going online and you're playing like online poker and you click a window that says, Would you like to join a soup club?
+
+[6:40] And you get like randomly assigned somebody's soup. It's like these are your friends. I think I think I'm hearing some shade about Californian uh dietary restrictions. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[6:50] Yeah, you know what? You might be right. You might be right. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[6:54] Hey, uh, so, anyways, so she's growing, she grows a bunch of uh shiitakis, which she dries, and she dries those rishiri things, which I don't know what to do with because I never figured it out. But she also has all over her property wild chanterelles, and they were in spoopy-doopy McDoopy season. So she gave me this big thing of chanterelles, and I went bonkers. And it turns out that before I even knew I was about to get a bunch of chanterelles, I had picked up at DiPalos. Everyone knows Dipalo's other DePaulos.
+
+[7:22] They have the magic pork again. They had the magical pork with the injected fat in it. I put that thing, and this actually answers a question that somebody had. It was Wes Hendrickson wrote in from Patreon. It's like, why do you drop your temperature?
+
+[7:36] So here's how I cooked it on the Sunday that I went uh to go pick up deck. Getting fishbowled again. Different teenage angsty kid. LA, different L. No, he's not really from LA.
+
+[7:46] It's not from LA. Shaker. He's not from LA. Too new a hat. Yeah, not from LA.
+
+[7:51] Anyways, you have to watch the Patreon video to know what we're talking about. Uh so I took the magic pork and I I peppered it, but I didn't salt it because I knew I was going to cook it for a long time. And the reason not to salt meat if you're gonna cook it for a long time, is there's a chance, especially if you're ever gonna chill it again, that it'll get a little bit of a cured texture. It also depends on the texture of the meat. So fine textured meats like a ribeye or like uh delicious magic pork chop, uh, you know, it doesn't have a lot of connective tissue in it.
+
+[8:18] And so those are the ones that are more likely to get hardened by salt. Anyways, so choose your maximum temperature. In this case, for pork chops, in my family, they don't like them too pank. They don't like the pork chop to be too pank. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[8:31] Yeah, yeah. What about you, Stas? I mean, like when you don't mind? You like it anyway? Joe, how do you like how do you like the inside of your pork shop?
+
+[8:39] Medium rare pank. Pank pank, yeah. But you don't like it like red. Some people like, I remember the first time everyone's like, you don't need to cook your pork that much because the trichinosis isn't a thing anymore. And then so like you would get these like hard, rare that almost look like raw chicken on the inside, pork chops, and you're just like, and you're like, you know, the point is that like not appetizing.
+
+[8:59] It's just not appetizing to me. Uh, if you're gonna do that with like the super rare pork, you gotta go thin on the pork. So there's just the the finest of that like like chicken-y looking pork on the inside, and then like a bunch of overcooked crap on the outside to have the nice texture. I digress as usual. So I put it in, I chose 60, uh, which is a hundred and uh 140 for you, 100 and for your Fahrenheit heads out there.
+
+[9:22] That's the one magic number, by the way. Magic pork, magic number. You should all remember that 140 is 60. 140, 60, just remember that peg it. My son Booker, who is uh spends every waking moment now in Staten Island collecting Staten Island railroad cars.
+
+[9:39] There are 61 different cars on the Staten Island Railroad. He has collected as of yesterday afternoon, 34 of them. I think he likes it because the Staten Island Ferry is free, and for some reason, even though we pay for everything that he does, he still loves to hunt for bargains, except for with sushi. Strange. Anyway, so I put it in at 60 degrees uh Celsius, which is 140 Fahrenheit, and you want to put it in at the high temperature just enough to get up to the temperature it's cooking.
+
+[10:08] Now, here's the point, and I'm literally writing about this right now in in the book, which by the way, Stas, you'll be pleased to know. I handed in a chapter to the editor, and I started handing in photos to uh, so it's like it's real now. So we can go to Disneyland. Uh once is done, lunch is done. Once I hand in the whole McGill, and it's like a huge weight off of my shoulders, and I have a different weight piled on my shoulder, like you know.
+
+[10:31] Didn't Didny Land. Uh anyways, so you want it to cook just through to the temperature because the the duneness, the proper duneness texture that we're used to getting to off of a temperature happens very, very quickly after you reach a temperature, right? The problem with proteins uh in meats is that as they ride at that temperature, they get firmer and firmer, right? So what happens is if you leave it at your final cook temp for infinity, right? It will get the texture of like maybe a degree or two higher as it cooks for hours.
+
+[11:04] So in general, I try to aim so that I just attain the internal temperature that I want. Just, right? And then I drop it by at least, at least three degrees. So if I'm doing a steak, I usually want it to hit just at like 54 or 55, which is what is that? That's 120 something, you know what I mean?
+
+[11:25] Like just hit 54, 55, and then I'll immediately drop it to 52, which is about the minimum you can hold. Listen, do not start cooking anything at 52 degrees Celsius. It's not hot enough and it's not fast enough to guarantee you're gonna kill everything in a timely fashion. So I think that's what happens when a lot of people get blow off bags and stuff like that. But if you're starting it, it's actually optimal to start at 57 or 55, and then immediately after you put it in, before it can cook through, drop the temperature down to your internals just to get a little bit of a a jump start on killing the crap on the outside.
+
+[12:00] Anyway, again I digress. So you have it drop down. So in the case of this pork, I dropped it down to uh 54 degrees, because that's entirely safe, entirely good. I dropped it from 60 to 54 after an hour, and then I let it ride for like seven hours while I was going to pick up DAX and do all my other stuff. And then uh I got back, threw a couple ice cubes in, which is the fastest way to drop a circulator temperature, just throw some ice cubes in.
+
+[12:26] Actually, like put the brakes on it. Because what what we're gonna do is drop the temperature of the pork chop to 50 Celsius now. And the reason we're doing that is so that we don't get any overcook on the um on the sear as it comes out, right? Uh and in fact, uh it's interesting if you look at um physics modeling of what happens with meat, if you have even just if you if you plunge it into something cold or drop the temperature even a little bit below what you want, it'll lower the temperature on the inside a lot faster. So I threw some ice cubes into the bucket, took it down to about 45, let the circulator come back up to 50, equilibrate at 50, sear it off.
+
+[13:03] Can I even say what I use to sear it off? Or not? I can't write stuff. No, I don't want to hear it. You don't?
+
+[13:11] No. Why? Why can't we talk about it? Because then we're gonna get all our nerds that are like, okay. I seared it off in fine style.
+
+[13:21] And it was uh d delicious. It was uh so yeah, magic pork and chanterelles. You mean it's hard to beat that. So, Dave, would you say that the summation of that last five minute story was simply drop it like it's hot? Drop it like it's hot.
+
+[13:34] Yeah, well, you know, when the when when the yeah, yeah, when the texture's getting a little too firm, drop it like it's hot. And also just to bring it back to the beginning, uh apparently the Chanterelles are a uh doo open out of New Orleans. That's true. Yeah. That's true.
+
+[13:48] Yeah. Chanterelle, uh, John and I were talking about this yesterday. So in the Pantheon of Tasty Mushrooms, I think Chanterelles are like right up there. I think they really are. You know what I mean?
+
+[14:00] I'm writing a mushroom section, but I'm not even gonna write a recipes for chanterelles. You know why? Because you should just cook them. You should just cook them as simply as possible and eat them. Because unless you're you know, intensely rich, you should just someone hands you a bunch of uh chanterelles, and you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna cook those and eat them to highlight the chanterelle taste.
+
+[14:19] I'm not gonna stuff it inside of something else and then stuff that into something else and then pour goop all over it. I just want to taste the chanterelles. And we were talking, let's go around the room. Chanterelles or morels? What's what's what which which you choose one?
+
+[14:33] Which one's reigned supreme between chanterelle and morelle around the room? I'm going Chanterelle. Yeah. Chanterelle. Chanterelle, Joe.
+
+[14:40] Chanterelle. Really? Yeah. John and I had the same feeling yesterday. And what about you, Jackie?
+
+[14:45] You're not a mushroom head? What are you? You silent over there? You got some little Mr. No Dietary Restriction, doesn't have an opinion on Chanterelle versus Morel?
+
+[14:52] Anyway, I think Morel. I said chanterelle. I like a Morel, but uh yeah, I would always choose Chanterelle. Now here's the one. Chanterelle, fresh porcini.
+
+[15:03] I don't cook a lot with fresh porcinese because again, I am not constructed out of gold bricks. But like, what are your what are your feelings? Still chanterelle for me. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[15:14] I'm switching to porcini. Ooh, porcini. Is that the Italian uh section you still? Yeah. What if you have to sit with an Italian who talks about food while you eat the porcinis?
+
+[15:23] No, the chanterelle. No. All right. All right. Joe, you uh you got it, you got an opinion on this guy.
+
+[15:30] What about hen of the woods? Hen of the woods, great mushroom, a little like it's a great mushroom. Yeah, a great mushroom. I just I mean, like, of the I was also talking to John about this yesterday. It's like I find that it is a great mushroom.
+
+[15:43] I think it's a good value because it's not as expensive. Although, you know, John tells me that they're almost expensive as as expensive now as uh as a chanterella's. I don't know. You know what I like about a hen? Hen of the woods, in order for a hen of the woods to live, a tree's gotta be dying.
+
+[15:57] I love that. So what's the difference between the hen of the woods and the chicken of the woods? Oh. You know, they're different. They are different.
+
+[16:04] Yeah. I don't know. I know chicken to the sea. Right. Yeah.
+
+[16:10] Sunkist? Starkist. Uh Starkist, yeah. Stark uh is it Starkest? Yeah.
+
+[16:15] Starkest. Starkest. With Charlie the tuna? That is correct. You look kind of like Charlie the tuna, Phil.
+
+[16:21] You're welcome. It's the glasses. It's the glasses, I think. If you have a large smile. And my radiant smile.
+
+[16:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You look a lot like Charlie the tuna. Joe, what do you think? Charlie the tuna over here? Definitely Charlie the tuna.
+
+[16:34] Yeah. He needs that little. Doesn't Charlie Tuna have something red? Yeah, red camana or capital. Yeah.
+
+[16:40] Yeah, yeah. He's kind of like a like a beatnik, right? He's kind of like a beatnik tuna. He's got the glasses, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[16:46] In my memory, he does. My memory too. He's from South Korea. Charlie the tuna is from South Korea? What?
+
+[16:53] For real? Like the character of Charlie the tuna. The backstory of Charlie the tuna is that he's from South Korea. I mean, you gotta understand. He's a beatnik.
+
+[17:03] Dude lives in the ocean. So it's kind of hard to say. Like I'm pretty sure he lives in the international waters. So like how do you where exactly in South Korea is Charlie the tuna chillin'? You know, like looking at that hook and being like, nah.
+
+[17:15] Sarkist is South Korean. I mean, it's currently owned by a South Korean conglomerate. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, he he look, he plays for South Korea in the Olympics, for sure. You know what I mean?
+
+[17:30] But like, yeah, yeah. I would say he's from Chicago. The guy who made him is from uh Leo Burnett Worldwide, which is an ad company in Chicago. Catch uh catch a catch a lot of big catch a lot of big tuna in Lake Michigan, do you? Do you?
+
+[17:43] Anyway. I'm talking about the character's backstory. Uh the character's backstory. Speaking of Olympics, you guys watch any of this stuff? Yeah, I hate the Olympics.
+
+[17:52] That doesn't mean it's who hates the Olympics. Nastasia. Nastasia, because people care about it. But people don't care about it anymore, so you can like it now. That's not why I hate it.
+
+[18:00] Are you upset about nationalism? Okay, listen, listen. Uh did I tell it, did I talk about this last week or did I forget? Well, oh, I like how you can't even remember. Well, I don't know what you're gonna talk about, but probably did we talk about the Olympics last week?
+
+[18:11] Uh yeah. We didn't. You just made that up. He's like, what was I texting about? What was I texting?
+
+[18:16] What was I texting? Anyway, the um remember people can see you now. Anyway, the the whole point is Jen's uh Jen's employees, like boyfriend is an Olympic fencer, right? So now fencing, as you probably know, divides into foil, where you you you stab him, right? It has to be stabbed in the main chest area.
+
+[18:37] Epe, which is a stiffer blade, and you can just hit him anywhere, right? And Saber, where I think where you just beat the crap out of people, right? Isn't that how it works basically? It's waist-up, but you can hit them, but yeah, you it's like more slashing too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[18:49] Anyway, I did not know this, but in fencing, men's and women's, you are encouraged to scream at the top of your lungs, but not while it's happening. So you'll sit there and it's like silent tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tick, tink, tink, tink, tick, tick, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, ting, and then like their helmets will light up. There'll be a like two second pause, and then someone will do like anastasia Lopez anger class primal scream. Like, ah, and then back to composed. Ting, tink, ting, ding, ding, ting, ting, ding, ding, ting.
+
+[19:25] It's the weirdest like oral thing I've heard in a long time. So I recommend looking at it, and I recommend looking at the trampoline because it's bananas. Have you seen these trampoliners? No. They go like 30 feet high.
+
+[19:39] They're like jumping on trampolines 30 feet high. It's bananas. Anyways, that's all for the Olympics. Let's get to some cooking. All right.
+
+[19:47] So uh Wes Hendrickson had uh another question. Uh he said something we should do on the show is an is a dish to cook this week. So we should come up with an idea. What do you guys think of this? We come up with an idea, and then we challenge, I think this is what he means.
+
+[20:01] We challenge our cooking issues listeners to make it, and then they can come back and maybe tell us how it worked out. What do you think? Yeah, I don't know. It also sounds like he's just asking for what you do on the week on the weekly basis. I have a bone to pick with last summer.
+
+[20:18] So what's the bone to pick? I'm not gonna bring it up again. Again? Mm-hmm. Okay.
+
+[20:24] You actually just did bring it up. I know. But I will not I will not participate in this because of the phone. You literally caused it. Oh, uh, oh, but but this is for the whole everyone.
+
+[20:33] This is an idea that everyone can participate in, not just Wes that apparently you have a bone to pick with. All right. Wait, John, did you get your six-flower walk-up? No, thankfully. Wow, Style's just pulling out the paint.
+
+[20:46] Stas is like, Stas is like, I brought something up. I wish I hadn't, because then like it was uncomfortable. So I'm gonna make John feel uncomfortable. Like it's not uncomfortable. Yeah.
+
+[20:56] John was looking at getting an apartment here in New York City. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of shopping around in quotes for a New York City apartment. No offense to the brokers out there. I don't really understand why you still have to pay brokers' fees in Manhattan because all the apartments are online. John's like, I'm looking at an apartment.
+
+[21:14] It's a six-story walk-up. So I didn't even think that was possible. It's I thought it was against code. It is illegal for new construction. Ah.
+
+[21:23] Yeah. Yeah. It's a lovely pre-war building. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
+
+[21:27] Well, do you know what's funny is quaint. What's funny about New York codes, by the way, is that like literally architects are like, what code are we gonna file this under? You know what I mean? They're like, well, there's no way we're gonna get up to the current code. So we're gonna file it under the 1933 code.
+
+[21:40] You know what I mean? So they file under these old codes because buildings are like grandfathered in. So anyway, so I'm like, John, Nastasi and I the entire time stood about two steps behind John. We made John carry, he's carrying all this crap. I don't even know what crap you had, but it looked like he was carrying like Andy didn't want us near him and he wouldn't let us go up with him.
+
+[21:59] But we dogged him the entire way. We dogged him and we were like just cracking wise. We're like, we're like, John, maybe you should go have a couple of beers first and then walk up. And then we're like, hey, hand me your credit card, hand me your keys, walk all the way up. Remember you forgot them, come back, and then go back up again.
+
+[22:15] Because the six-floor walk-up is just brutal. Like seeing a six-floor walk-up, seeing a six-floor walk-up at like 1 p.m. on a Tuesday does not indicate what it's like to live in a six-floor walk-up. We're like, why listen, why don't you go to the grocery store, John, get like all your groceries, have them like have them either have the roll-y cart and be like or just carry like all six bags in your arms and be like, ah, have people try to get past you on the stairs, have the milk drug go b, bop, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup all the way down the stairs. Because that's what it's like.
+
+[22:46] Keeping in mind, when I met Nastasia, she was in a fifth-floor walk-up. So this is all just self-loading. Yeah, and I think that it was Dave and I that had to get like, can you get this asbestos fireplace? Oh, that's gigantic up the stairs that doesn't fit? This is all just you know.
+
+[22:59] Oh my god, Nastasia was the queen of incur by the way, and you're just messed up. Like we weren't even really friends yet. I was her boss. I was her boss. No, I think we bonded through, you know, shared pain.
+
+[23:13] She okay, here's another thing about Nastasia Lopez. She'll get you to move her crap out of her fifth story walk up, and she does not have the common human decency to take the drawers out of her dressers before you move them, or to take the clothing. She put extra she put extra things in the drawers because she's like, I just want to make it less of a trip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it was it was like I've moved her several times.
+
+[23:36] Was that the one that also Cliff was in on? I think so. Yeah. Oh my god. Uh don't you you haven't lived until you see me mad in a move, by the way.
+
+[23:43] Uh caller, you're on the air. Hey, yeah. Hey guys. I got a question of if you guys are interested in moving into the infomercial space now that Ron Popeel has departed. Well, he died when he parted the planet.
+
+[23:57] When did he die? Last week. Oh my god, Ron Popeel. Yeah. Huh.
+
+[24:03] Yeah. So I think moment of silence. Were there well the the interesting thing, the rotorbroil is was was not Popeel. It was Leon Klinghofer, who that Leon Klinghoffer, the one that was thrown off the cruise ship. So every everything else, I think, is is is Popeel, but you know.
+
+[24:25] But that one is actually Klinghoffer. Bizarrely enough. That's uh I thought it was it was might be noteworthy to note uh Popeil's passing and just curious when there's gonna be some uh infomercials issued on on behalf of Booker and Dax. The thing about infomercials is this we need to have products. Like we have products.
+
+[24:44] Like the thing is is that we we actually have products. It's just trying to get them made. Look, we have to do serious sales pitches, but I'm not uh I'm not opposed to us doing like dumb infomercials as well. I know Nastasia likes a dumb infomercial. I just want to see you.
+
+[25:02] Can you like can you sponsor uh like knives, but just like you'll get this nine foot katana blade and also this, you know. Only if we reenact the Odell, we're gonna need emergency s surgery in the studio. Oh, that got me. Oh, that got me real good. Uh oh, that's so good.
+
+[25:21] I think we're gonna need some. Well, I think that there's there's there's clearly a cooking issues, Tim and Eric uh collaboration for this that I think would would would would be really, really, really excellent and insane. Well, I don't know, I don't know whether we could get uh Tim on. I don't know if he's a food guy, but Eric's a food guy. Maybe we can get Eric on these days.
+
+[25:41] Yeah. Food and wine, food and beverage person. Yeah. I I at the very least we should uh I was gonna say at the very least, Dave, we should commit to cutting one of these uh infomercials for the podcast. That's something I can put together.
+
+[25:54] Well we okay, we did an infomercial for and someone actually wrote in. They they tried it. We did an infomercial for a beverage uh called uh muñeca. Oh yeah. Muneca!
+
+[26:05] And uh sorry, a little about the saturating the mic uh there, Joe. But uh Clayton Patterson wrote in. So the idea of Muneca was it was close to the beginning of the pandemic when we hadn't yet been accustomed to mask breath, to tasting ourselves on our masks. And uh so the idea is is that you're supposed to walk around, yeah, you're supposed to walk on he just did a uh a spinal tap, sniff the mask. Uh the you're supposed to walk around with airline bottles of uh rumpel mints and uh and lime wedges.
+
+[26:35] And so what happens is when you get home, you peel off the mask, you pound the airline bottle of rumpel mints, and then to wash the rumpel mints out, you chew up a whole lime wedge, including the peel, and the oils will wipe out your sense of taste for a good 20 minutes. I can tell you this for sure, because this is what I used to do at the bar all the time. But your mouth is clean. Clean. Why don't you just brush your teeth, Dave?
+
+[26:57] Brush your teeth. I gotta walk all the way to the back of the house. Uh, you know, I got one of those sonic characters. I got the rumplement right here. Yeah, and plus, you know, like like like today, they turned my water off.
+
+[27:09] Today my water got turned off. What are you gonna do? Right? What are you gonna do? So it's uh, you know, muñeca.
+
+[27:14] Muneca! And so like you just have it. So that's what you did this morning. Muneca! Yeah, made the bike ride real fun.
+
+[27:22] So, like, what you do is you have like, you have a coat, and then you have like, you know, one of those like, you know how like uh people used to sell watches? You just have your muñeca shots lined up in the inside of your coat and uh and you're good. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Muneca, Bronco product actually, actually good.
+
+[27:39] Yes. I think that's yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't I don't buy that kind of stuff, but I think, I mean, like Was Ronco the like the dehydrator, like that was that, or was that somebody else? Ronpa Peel did a bunch of stuff, not just in the kitchen space, just like a bunch of like, you know, gadgets that you may or may not ever need. You know what I mean?
+
+[28:00] But like, I didn't know he died. So, like his passing is like on the order of Billy May's passing. You know, Billy May is God rest his soul, like, blew up his head with cocaine. You know what I mean? But like, there is like, I mean, isn't that what happened?
+
+[28:13] Didn't his head explode because he took too much cocaine and his heart burst a blood vessel in his head and and wasn't that what happened? In absence of any other data, I have to just trust you that that's exactly what happened. I mean, he was one of the greatest pitch people ever, right? Billy Mays for Mighty Putty. I mean, like that man could sell Mighty Putty.
+
+[28:32] Like, I don't even need Python. Okay, here's my question. It's not a cooking related question, but let's go around here. Flex seal guy or Billy Mays. Flexel.
+
+[28:42] You're a flex seal lady. I have to go Billy Mays because I don't have Flexiel in my head. There's a lot of useless information in there and a lot of late night TV. Flexel, do you I can't really do a good Pennsylvania accent. And so he's like, he's got like a hardcore, like, like Pennsylvania, you know, water kind of accent.
+
+[29:00] He's like, you know, uh, he'll he takes a cannon, fires a cannon through like a flat bottom like a Johnny boat, and then he seals it, and I forget how why he says it, but he says something about water, and he's like, and he's like sealed up on flex seal, or he'll like take a flex seal patch and like have a giant fish tank with a hole cut in it, and then just like slap some f flex seal on the side of the on the side of the fish tank. Oh, this is the guy who does the roofing stuff. He'll seal anything, Joe, with flex seal. Anything, man. Anything.
+
+[29:31] He's like in a boat with a boat with like, you know, a screen door on it, right? Sitting on the flex seal. Dude, dude, dude took, I think, like a car. I'm wanna say he took a car, coated the entire underside of it with flex seal, and then just like floated it in some random sorry, some random creek in like in uh in in in in Pennsylvania. Oh yeah.
+
+[29:55] Flex seal. I mean, gets a lot of negative reviews on the internet, flex seal, but I mean, um, Billy Mays, though, didn't just have Mighty Putty. Billy Mays was the original OxyClean pitch. I'm just saying. I'm just saying.
+
+[30:08] I'm still just I I like the idea that uh the Flex deal commercials was where Kate Winslit did her like uh you know accent study for Meredith Town. Is that really true? Uh in absence of any other data, I'm gonna say yes. She is she is she is great in that. That is a great show.
+
+[30:24] You do not, you know. Oh, don't sleep on that show. First episode, eh, very sad, but then who's gonna be able to do that? I have not found a show that I love that I love the first episode of. Most shows take a like a while to get into, except for Girls Five Eva, which is good from the jump.
+
+[30:39] You guys gotta watch Girls Five Eva. Girls Five Eva. Girls Five Eva, if you have any relation to like kind of it's like New York scene, but like it's about like a girl band that had one hit in the 90s and then gets brought back because a rapper samples their song and then like they try to get back together. It's like Is this a British show? No, it's uh the exec producer is uh Tina Faye.
+
+[31:06] Oh, all right. And um what's her name? Something Scardino is the showrunner. Yeah, it's good. It's got Paula Pell.
+
+[31:14] Everyone loves Paula Pell. Who doesn't? Yeah. Uh it's good business. You should watch that stuff, you know?
+
+[31:20] Because I can't watch, because Dax is not around, so I can't watch the second season of Ted Lasso yet, which is Is it out? Yes. Is it out? Where do you live? I'm don't they have the internet in California?
+
+[31:29] I've been in a camp with a hundred like teenagers for two weeks. Oh my god. Eating cafeteria food. This is why Phil was coming on to talk about cafeteria food. And are you teaching them recorder in the real life?
+
+[31:39] It was it was real instruments. It was good, good old-fashioned vinyl. You admit that the recorder is not a real instrument. The Dutch are gonna be very upset with you. The Dutch, they're so tall.
+
+[31:44] They don't even get oxygen to their brains because they're so tall. You know what I mean? What do they know? You know? Well, we have nice houses and we're tall.
+
+[31:56] Small amount of oxygen, so they have to play these little roots. We're an attractive people. Here's a recorder. You know what I mean? So uh what are you here to talk about before I uh do the next Patreon question?
+
+[32:05] I said sloppy joe's uh cafeteria food and using the Bank of Idaho code for your Hertz deals. Oh, those are my bull, those are my bullet points. All right, so here's my question on sloppy joes. Let's go around the room before we start. Who here grew up eating sloppy joes?
+
+[32:20] I'm raising my hand. Yeah, yeah. I grew up eating sloppy joe. Yeah. Uh Jackie, Vacky Molecules.
+
+[32:24] Of course. Yes, yes, of course. Of course. I didn't. Joe, nice.
+
+[32:28] Did not. Okay. So is it that they didn't serve them at your school or did you shun them? Uh I didn't. We didn't, yeah, the school.
+
+[32:37] I can't remember if we remember. I brought my lunch every day. Really? Yeah. Huh.
+
+[32:43] I don't think I brought my lunch once in like 12 years of school. Every day. I think I don't think I had a sloppy Joe until I was probably in high school. That's too late. Yeah, it was very late.
+
+[32:53] Because if the thing is, if you have a sloppy Joe that late in your life, you realize that it's not a good idea. You know what I mean? Tell my my mom, I past self that. Let me ask you a question. So, so who here thinks that they're like I have a uh uh I like it like it's a soft, crappy bun.
+
+[33:11] For those of you that don't know, it's like instead of chili ketchup. Like ground meat, it's like it's like a cross between a meatloaf and a chili. But it's like a hamburger helper, right? Like it's like. Oh my god, don't get that song in my head, Phil.
+
+[33:27] Here to help. Ah. We're gonna help her make a great meal. Anyway, like the worst, the worst jingle. Because it's the most sexist and dumb and crazy.
+
+[33:40] And like she's just waiting for this hand to pop out of the box and help her. Was there a jingle for Man Witch? Because I feel like that might be worse. Oh my God. Someone out there, please write us the man witch jingle.
+
+[33:52] Man witch being the brand name of Sloppy Joe, because apparently like the jello sloppy Joes. Apparently, women are too smart to eat this stuff. And so, like, you know. So, but here's my so Dave, this is the thing I noticed in in two weeks of cafeteria food. So there's sloppy Joe in like one of the early days.
+
+[34:12] How are the kids eating it? Um like a chump, or are they knife and forking this thing like Bill de Blasio's? It can't be picked up. Yeah. Look, I've I've never said anything nice about Bill de Blasio in my life.
+
+[34:24] Go knife and fork on the on the sloppy Joe. Just go knife and fork on a sloppy Joe. But do you know, like, do you remember like in elementary school when you learn about like precipitation and then it and then the rain evaporates, and then there's the cycle, like the water cycle. Watching the sloppy Joe go from like day one with sloppy joes, day two was like chili cheese dogs. And then day three, just the pasta sauce suddenly got a little thicker.
+
+[34:47] And it's like all of these, it is like a life cycle of uh ground beef over like five days. It's the circle of beef. Yeah, so uh the uh by the way, I didn't mean to get political there. I have nothing against Bill de Blasio. It's just everyone in New York knows he's a clown.
+
+[35:02] That's all I'm gonna say. Right? Guys, New Yorkers, it's not that we're against him, it's just clown, right? No. Clown.
+
+[35:09] Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Took too well to find the topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's fine, it's fine, whatever.
+
+[35:14] You know, it's it's fine. It's good. It's all good. Anyway. Uh my favorite part of leaving New York is I don't have to have an opinion on Bill de Blasio.
+
+[35:22] Amazing. Yeah, yeah, but did everyone has the same opinion. Did you vote for him? Yep. What do you think about him?
+
+[35:27] Clown. Like everyone has the same exact opinion. Anyway. He just announced the best clown now. Plans to require proof of vaccination for indoor dining.
+
+[35:34] Oh, good. And we'll see how it works. We'll see how it shakes down. Uh I'll tell you a quick story about that, uh, about your uh circle of beef. So I am related by marriage to Lizzie Borden, the lady what took an axe and gave her father 40 wax, and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.
+
+[35:52] How I just like where we're going from a uh little girl with an axe to sloppy Joe's. Sloppy Jew. So the the oh my god. But how? I know why.
+
+[36:01] Because you didn't like Sloppy Joe's Joe because your name was Joe, and you're like, I'm not sloppy, because you're not a sloppy guy. That's what happened. Oh, I didn't didn't think about that. I thought I thought Sloppy Joe was a hormel. Or is that different?
+
+[36:12] Well, uh Hormel might make the man which I don't know. Which is which is everybody's brand name of choice for Sloppy Joes. Anyway. Wait, how are you related to her? So the oldest, the oldest person that I ever is that true.
+
+[36:28] Yes. The oldest person I've ever met, he was born in the early 1880s. I met him when he was 100, was my great great uncle Mark. He stayed alive just because I said, Grandma, I wish I could meet Uncle Mark before he dies. And because he was about to, I didn't talk like that because I was a small child.
+
+[36:48] Anyway, and then uh, and you know, whatever, whatever. I lived in Jersey. Anyway, point is he like stayed alive. You know how people do that? He's like, he was like, they were like, he's gonna die any day now.
+
+[36:58] And my grandma and grandpa were like, oh, Dave's coming up, he's gonna, you know, he'll be up here in like a month. He lived a month so I could go see him and then died. Anyway, he married Lizzie Borden's uh cousin, and he had met Lizzie Borden. Whoa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[37:15] And so he was there, like totally semi-zoned out, right? You know, a hundred, like laying in a bed. This is like, you know, 19, like, you know, 82 or something like this. And I'm like, Uncle Mark, Lizzie Borden. He just goes, she totally did it.
+
+[37:35] But the bastard deserved it. Wow. And that was it. Because, and this is where I get back to Sloppy Joe's. That was the last those were the last words.
+
+[37:43] He had the courtesy to stay alive while I was in the room. The story was is that one of the things that he would do is this guy was Borden, was from Borden, Borden family. He was rich, but he was so cheap that he would make them eat the same lamb and were tying it back to soup, the same lamb soup every day for like a week, it would get moldy on the top. He would make them scrape the mold off of it and eat the the the moldy lamb soup. That plus the I think I don't know whether her original mom died, but there was a there was a kind of a stepmom situation going on with the moldy lamb soup.
+
+[38:17] The guy was a apparently hated skinflint. And uh, so uh yeah, he was like, She did that, she did that stuff. If only he had uh gotten together four families to eat soup on one weekend. Could have all been avoided. Could have been avoided.
+
+[38:31] If only, you know, Lizzie Borden's dad, whose name escapes me, had been smart enough to start a soup club in I where is it, Fall River or Fort River, Massachusetts, wherever they were. Like, if if he'd only been smart enough to start a soup club, he might have died only a long time ago instead of a long, long time ago. Yeah. At this point, they'd all be dead anyway. Doesn't really matter.
+
+[38:52] And this has been your commercial for Man Witch. Man witch. Oh my God. We should do a Lizzie Borden Man witch. Man, this is gruesome.
+
+[39:00] What you're looking at the Lizzie Borden pictures? No, not the pictures, just the Were there pictures? I don't think they were. It's the dad on the couch. It's gross.
+
+[39:10] It's one of those things. If you grew up in the 80s, right? If you grew up in the 80s, c cable. No, you didn't. Yes, I did.
+
+[39:16] You were younger. You were too young. My age. Okay. I'm not your age, but like they they they needed to fill cable.
+
+[39:23] So they had like 18,000, they hadn't figured out everything yet. So there's 18,000 documentaries on things like Lizzie Borden, and it's all with the same three public domain photos, and then like a bunch of like imagine if Ken Burns really sucked. It's like all of that kind of documentary with like and and they hadn't even yet figured out the Ken Burns that you can like pan on the photo. So it's just like a still image of like real grainy picture that they took off of a newspaper of like dead boring dude. So basically like 90% of the history channel, uh you know the history channel when it started was only Hitler films.
+
+[39:59] Yeah, and we used to call it the Hitler Channel, and it was only like, yeah, it was just newsreels of like Hitler, you know, invading and and getting beaten back and winning. That's all it was, Hitler channel. Basically the entire documentary section of Netflix. Really? Yeah.
+
+[40:15] It's all yeah, yeah. It's true. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, we've taken a left turn here.
+
+[40:19] Okay. But you know what I used to watch? The documentaries I used to watch were the uh World War One documentaries. Uh I'm not gonna get into it. No.
+
+[40:28] Not gonna get into it. No. Not gonna get into it. Uh so John, what we're gonna say to uh to so Dustin Meldrum has this this idea of getting Michigan dogs and then doing uh Connecticut Michigan dog off. But the the thing is we're gonna have to do maybe like a cookout at Nastasia's at some point.
+
+[40:45] Then we're gonna talk about this after the show. We'll talk about whether we could do it for the show after the show, and I wasn't bringing that up or putting Joe on the spot, but you can because you just did. But the uh anyway, so like uh we'll we'll John Dustin Dustin, John will be uh in touch with you and you're gonna be. We totally want the the pawpause though, because I've never I've never had one. Neither have I.
+
+[41:08] I hear that you know what's coming out, guys? I think you actually you guys missed it. The May apple. If any of you have may apples growing in your gardens, they have a very distinctive leaf. They are poisonous, right?
+
+[41:21] But you'll in the it's I think we missed them already. I think it we're about a month late. But for next year, think about it. They there's these little green balls that grow on them. And then those green balls, they go from like over the course of a couple of days, they go from green to yellow.
+
+[41:35] And when they go yellow and start getting soft, they taste tropical, even though, oh, by the way, the seeds are poisonous. And the entire plant other than the ripe fruit is poisonous. Like poison poison, like not cool to eat, like poisonous. And the other problem is that when you harvest, if you don't if you wait for them to turn yellow, you're not the only person looking for them. Every rodent that lives outside, every vole, every chipmunk, every squirrel is like that tastes delicious.
+
+[42:02] And so they eat them instantly. So you have to pick them. A little little green, right, little green, take them inside. They are a climacteric fruit, so they will ripen on your counter. Let them ripen up, press the fruit out.
+
+[42:15] Don't eat the seeds. Although I hear the seeds aren't as poisonous and riper. But anyway, that makes a delicious jelly. I'm maybe too late for this year, and I apologize, but for next year, if you live in a temperate zone and you want a tropical flavor, get you some may apples. I like that your go-to rodent is a vole.
+
+[42:33] That's where you started. Started with vole? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you gotta go in reverse alphabetical order, right?
+
+[42:38] Always. As a guy whose name starts with A, I mean, you you you're pretty early with a B. A B. Yeah. It's like sometimes we want the alphabet to go the other way.
+
+[42:46] That's true, especially in terms of rodents. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Although what's a what's an A rodent? Hmm.
+
+[42:53] Hmm. Uh all right. John Dunn wrote in. Hey, cooking issues people. I recently purchased a spedini maker.
+
+[43:01] Speedini is a fun word. No? Speedini. Did you? Yeah.
+
+[43:06] Right? Right? It acts like I'm with you. Um sorry, it's just very near and dear to me. Spadini is like something that my uh it was a it was like a family dish.
+
+[43:15] I mean, Spadini doesn't really mean a dish, but that's what my grandma called this thing she made. So I had a reaction there to the word Spadini, I'm sorry. I like that. I appreciate that. I really do.
+
+[43:25] I think I think we all do. Anyway, so uh John purchased a spidini maker from Concilio's Kitchenware. All right. Consiglio's Kitchenware. Uh it's 109 dollars, by the way.
+
+[43:38] I looked it up. So let me tell you what happens to it. Here's what it is. First of all, it is a freaking I watched the video. I watched the the lady make the make the meat.
+
+[43:47] So for those of you that don't know, these are those like these like long, like Italian kebabs that are cut as squares, but instead of it just being a long square of meat, it's like layers of meat, but the entire meat is cut into squares so it's kind of like having your own little mini Al pastore unit you know what I'm saying it's like flap of meat like with the with a skewer through all right and then you cook them on those uh what are those what are those grilly things called that you cook them on styles you remember I don't remember anyway Mark had one yeah but they they're they're they're they cook really quickly because they're they're only like you know uh they're like less than a half an inch on a side they're like you know 10 10 millimeters on a side anyways so this thing makes a hundred of them so you have to be like I don't want like five or six I want like a hundred so the video is this lady pounding out the meat then layering the meat into this giant meat cube it's a huge meat cube right then putting a like a like a a lid on the meat cube and the lid has a hundred holes in it then she has to take a metal skewer and jam it into each one of the hundred holes then take the wooden skewers that she soaked for an hour and she has a special like Speedini soaking bucket and then like places them in then takes her special Speedini knife because it's got like it's got like slots cut in the side so it's like can you imagine can you see what I'm saying the side of the cube has like slots so you could jam the spediti knife through it you with me on this so she jams the knife through and then cuts it so now you have an entirely speedinified meat flap Megilla and then another thing to like plunger it off. So the video was like a minute and a half I'm sure that took like an hour and a half I'm sure it took like an hour and a half. We had one how long did it take you to fill it? Long time. Like an hour and a half?
+
+[45:33] No. Like an hour? Forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes? Did you enjoy it?
+
+[45:37] Mm-hmm. Did you ever put any non-standard things into it? No. Okay. That sounds about right.
+
+[45:44] Okay, because uh anyway, so like if you have a hundred, how many of those do you think any average person eats? Five? Yeah. Right. So you need twenty people to come over.
+
+[45:53] Right? Or I guess you could freeze them. I guess you can freeze them. Yeah. Uh so that's what that's what happened.
+
+[45:59] Oh, there you go. It's basically a metal cube you fill with layered meat. Traditionally, goat. I love goat. I like to eat goat.
+
+[46:05] You guys like to eat goat? Not really. Really? Why not? Why do you not like to eat goat?
+
+[46:09] Mentally? No. Just the smell of goat is not. So the smell of a live goat i imprints your mind so that when you have the meat, you don't want it? No, the smell of the meat.
+
+[46:18] It's it's gamey, but it's tasty. It's no chocolate goat. Yeah, so good. No chocolate goat. I I must I I will say again, that store does not sell chocolate covered goat.
+
+[46:28] It sells chocolate in the shape of goats. Um I like goat meat, but goat meat used to be really cheap. It's not cheap anymore. It used to be so cheap. I used to, you know, I told you, I used to do racks of goat.
+
+[46:40] You know, like rack a goat. If you have a butcher that was that used to do whole goat, like do whole goat stuff, most of the meat was just cut up into stew meat, and you could get a rack of goat for almost nothing back in the in the nineties, you know? Back in the nineties, rack of goat was what you got. And by the way, just flannel and goat. Yeah, that's it.
+
+[47:01] Yeah. Yeah. We're all listening to Fugazi and you know, frying racks of goat, you know? You deep fry a rack of goat, right? So you do like a quick low temp and then you throw, you throw the entire rack into a deep fryer, right?
+
+[47:16] And then you you you wash off the l the small layer of uh fry oil with like a stock or even like it doesn't even have to be stock to be honest. You could cheat. You could do like you could do water. I've done tests. So, um Tim Robinson, you know, season two, okay, has a skit called sloppy steaks, where they go, they're they they grease their hair back and they go to restaurants and they order steak and then they pour water all over the steak at the table.
+
+[47:45] He doesn't know it's actually a good cooking technique because if you deep fry something like a rack or a rib roast, you get an amazing crust around the outside. But you get a little bit of that oil flavor from the fryer that doesn't taste like meat oil, it tastes like fry oil. It's off putting. You just rinse that stuff off, you go sloppy steak on that thing, and oh my goodness, it is genius. And you get a real nice crust around it.
+
+[48:08] Just saying. That was a secret, just between me and anyone else listening. All right. So, uh traditionally with goat. I've done it with lamb with great results.
+
+[48:17] Well, because lamb is like lamb is like goat's less evil cousin. Like a lamb is like my eyeballs, like my pupils don't go the wrong way, so I'm not evil. So so goats are just a more evil lamb? Uh yeah. Like the pupil in a goat, it was designed by the devil.
+
+[48:36] There's a reason why, like, like the goat and the devil are linked, like in, you know, symbolism. It's the gamey flavor. I mean, if you look in a goat's eye and you're not afraid, there is something wrong with you. Goats are frightening, I mean, they're not like geese, they're not like inherently mean. The only animal that ever headbutted, the only animal, which I hate to say it, on its way to slaughter, that my you know, my stepfather's father was a butcher, that okay, so he used to go get the animals for butchery, like in New Hampshire, take them down into Boston where they would slaughter them for the butcher shop.
+
+[49:13] People don't get bent at me. This is what happens when you eat meat, the animal has to get slaughtered. Somebody has to do it, right? You know, you you can't pretend that that's not what's happening with your meat, so I don't want to hear about it. So they would get the the the you know the stuff.
+
+[49:23] And so my stepfather shows up is like, oh, a goat. And the goat goes, and just like headbutts him and like sends him flying. Like I imagine like you know, my stepfather's small boy, just being like, and to this day, he raised me knowing that goats were the devil. With those little, with those little horns that are curved just enough to like pow to get you like, you know, get you going. You know what I mean?
+
+[49:52] I mean, in the goat's defense, he was about to be slaughtered. Yeah. I mean, he kind of had a point. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I'm not sure.
+
+[50:00] Just take it, goat. Is the Yeah. I mean, uh I mean, like, I don't know. I don't know. This is first of all, it's not like this wasn't like assembly line slaughter.
+
+[50:07] Like they would go with their canvas truck, like pick out some, you know, this was like 19, you know, late 50s, like early 60s, like old school butchery. So, like, you know, it wasn't like, you know, rin dick, you know, heads off, like, you know, or like, you know, Bart Simpson, knife goes in, guts come out, knife goes in, guts come out. It wasn't like that. Yeah, yeah. Uh all right, so back to this question.
+
+[50:32] Sorry. Uh I've done it with Lamb with great results and was trying to come up with other things I could speedinize, speedinize or speedinize, speed speedy speediniate. What do you guys think? Spadinize. Spadiniize?
+
+[50:46] Yeah. Spadinify. Spadinia tait. Hmm. One idea I had was Spadiniate.
+
+[50:54] Spadiniate. Spadiniate sounds like uh Spadiniate sounds like something a lawyer would do in a courtroom. Um idea I had was Al Pastor using layers of marinated pork interspersed with layers of pineapple. The flavor came out. Oh, so you actually did it.
+
+[51:12] It wasn't just an idea, it was actually executed. He's just bragging. Wow, Stas is so rough on people, man. You know what? I hope you guys enjoy it because this is like our lives all the time.
+
+[51:23] All right. Am I right, guys? Yeah. Anyway. Well, you gotta yuck his yum.
+
+[51:27] Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Well, is there a question? I mean, we make his yum.
+
+[51:31] We make his yum. Is there an actual question? Wow. The uh flavor came out great, but I had an issue with the pineapple falling off the skewers while cooking. I think this is due to the small size of the pineapple at one by one centimeter.
+
+[51:43] Do you have any idea on how I might make the pineapple layer that I could use that will hold up the grilling? I'd like to maintain some of the pineapple texture, so I don't want to have uh something that would be like a totally smooth gels. Any other idea of what I could use this for? Thanks, and good luck on the Patreon, John in Denver. Yeah, you know what the problem is is that like in general, things that have to be like cut into layers like that, that's why, for instance, the pepper strip in the middle of an olive is a nasty gel.
+
+[52:09] It's because the only way they can guarantee that it's not gonna shatter or break along, you know, its inherent, you know, lines of breaking and force is uh by turning it into a dag nasty uh heat-proof alginate gel. And pineapple in particular, because of its structure, if you if you mentally picture a pineapple, right, it has rays going through it. And they even you know, if they're unripe, you can see they they break along those rays. But a ripe one, you know, is compliant enough that if you stick a skewer through it, it will stay, but they lose their structure rather radically when they're cooked, and then it will just instantly fall apart along those rays. So, you know, it's almost like it would be like trying to keep a braised uh a one centimeter cube of braised short rib on.
+
+[52:52] If you did it low temperature, you you could get it to work because you know the structure would be maintained, right? But you know, once it's been turned into a friable thing, it's kind of no no luck. So you could put chunks of it in a gel, I guess, but it's still gonna be a gel none that none none nonetheless. I mean, you might be able to get something with the flavor of pineapple. Um but yeah, I don't think you're gonna get cubes of pineapple to stick together uh that way.
+
+[53:20] You guys have any ideas you think there's any anything. You should make an alginate. They're gross. He knows they're gross. You know they're gross.
+
+[53:26] That's why you have a like that look on your face. By the way, if you are gonna make a nasty alginate gel, I will tell you this. You gotta make it, then you gotta wait a day. You make it, then you wait a day. If you don't wait, it'll be too brittle.
+
+[53:41] It'll get a little more compliant, but it's not gonna taste any better. It's still gonna taste dag nasty, but it will get a little more compliant. So you have to age them before the machine goes p-pow and shoves those little fake peppers into uh into the olives. Who here is a fan of the fake pepper? No.
+
+[53:58] No fan? Huge fan. Huge fan of it. Cuban food. I love my like the yeah, I'm a big fan.
+
+[54:03] Yeah. Not kidding. Yeah. You should make a cookbook called Flowers for Al Algernet. F flowers for Allergenate?
+
+[54:10] That's great. I like that. Flowers. What was this theory of that one? Is that the one with that uh That's the mouse that gets super smart, but then the guy it was Charlie was the movie.
+
+[54:18] Oh, right. Ernest Borgnine? Yeah. He's crazy like psychedelic scene at the end. Are you a Borgnine fan?
+
+[54:23] Who's not? This is an accurate statement. For those of you that don't know who Ernest Borgnine is, look it up. Um else we got here. Uh Miguel Kunz wrote in.
+
+[54:33] Hey, in past week's episode, you briefly mentioned how oil works to desiccate the surface of something that's being sauteed, and therefore assists in achieving a crispy texture. I'd love to hear how you uh you get into the weeds uh more on the mechanism of crispiness. I guess this will take up a large part of the miracle of moisture management. I promise to buy the book, even if you discuss it on the radio beforehand. Thanks and bone epit.
+
+[54:54] I don't remember what I was talking about. Does anyone I know Nastasia doesn't remember what I was talking about? No, next time figure out exactly what it is I said, and I'll try to only go into the weeds on like one specific thing because otherwise I'll have to hear about it later from Nastasia. Okay. I know all the other things.
+
+[55:12] No, just has to go look for the section. Yes, Staz. You know. Geez. Doesn't make it more fun, but yeah.
+
+[55:19] Dave calls John and is like, where's the radio show? I forget what address and what streets and John's. That's not the case. Not in this space. Yeah, in the other one.
+
+[55:30] So instead of for the first couple of times. Oh, first of all, Nastasia, instead of Googling what? Rockefeller Center, go for it. You can't find an You can't find anything in Rockefeller Center. I love Rockefeller Center, but it's like yesterday I was like, you just have to say go next to the Victoria's Secret.
+
+[55:48] Because Victoria's Secret has the big sign. We're talking about the the other space. The other one. The other one, it was just confusing as to which because the building is also through. Yep.
+
+[55:57] And so sometimes we would be like, we're going on from this street, sometimes we'd go on this street, ba beep, ba-boop. And you know, Nastasia just likes me to flail around. So she just doesn't even think. Does anything be making me fail in? Like that was such a weird.
+
+[56:12] Oh, you know what? Tell me, tell me where it is. Yeah, it's so weird. So weird. Weird.
+
+[56:18] John, do you agree? A little. It took a couple of times, but it's okay. Okay. You figured it out.
+
+[56:23] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that was. We're all here.
+
+[56:27] Cool story, bro. Nastasia brought it up. Oh, she's the bro. Okay, okay. You looked at me when he said that.
+
+[56:36] All right. Well, all right. Uh Punch Ruck Glove on Instagram wrote in, uh, we don't have any more Patreon questions, right? Yep. All right.
+
+[56:43] Uh later this month I'm doing it's probably too late now. I'm doing a fried chicken pop-up. Um, I'm going to a sue Suz VD. I'm going to sous vide the chicken and let them dry in the fridge for a couple of hours. I was wondering if you had any tips that might help me achieve the best uh sous vide fried chicken flour type, deep fryer setting, et cetera.
+
+[56:59] Well, got good news for you, punch drunk. Uh the good news about sous videing the chicken beforehand is the fryer temperature can be whatever you want, because you've already cooked the inside of the chicken. The problem is going to be this you need to let that chicken come up to temperature. I made the mistake once of uh going direct from fridge to fryer, and then you need to get the center of the chicken warm before you're before you know you you you're you're doing anything, and that negates a lot of the uh uh the benefits of going uh sous vide beforehand, right? So I think like the worst offense you can do with uh finishing a sous vide product is to do a cook chill and then give somebody a product that's cold in the middle, right?
+
+[57:38] We've all had that happen. It's nasty. But you the how long you cook it is completely dependent on the on the breading system you use. I can't stress this enough. There is no one single breading system that works because it's all about the exact moisture content and the exact type of starch and whatnot you use, whether you use leavening, whether there's a base in it, whether there's an acid in it, all of that's gonna affect both adhesion and crust color.
+
+[58:06] What I do when I do sous vide chicken, I do uh I go into flour. I I I first of all you unbag them hot so that they can flash off on the skin and some of the excess moisture on the skin will flash off. So you don't let them cool in the bag, you unbag them hot. Uh and then I do flour and then I do a buttermilk, egg, soda, and powder. The soda will make it brown more.
+
+[58:29] So if you're having a problem with it coming out too brown, omit or reduce the soda up to powder a little bit to get leavening. The powder is there to create leavening. If you don't leaven your batter slightly, and this is actually why people use things like uh beer or seltzer or something that creates bubbles, if you don't slightly leaven your batter, it's good for all frying, or cause it to be leavened, uh what happens is is that the violent water boiling out of the meat as you as you fry it tend to blow the crust off. So if you're having crust blow-off problems, it's actually a lot of times has to do either with poor adhesion, and you're gonna help your adhesion by, like I say, predusting with flour, not using a liquid-based batter and letting it flash off hot. Uh, but also your leavening isn't quite right, and so you're getting massive bubbles that are just blasting the crust off of the chicken.
+
+[59:16] Is that a good answer? Am I done? Good answer. Drink mixed craft via Instagram. Uh I was reading up on some of your old stuff on clarification, was hoping you could clarify, no pun intended, but you did intend it, because you wrote it.
+
+[59:26] Uh I believe you mentioned that milk milk washing would make the cocktail have an extremely long shelf life. Is that specific to milk washing? Uh, or uh does it apply to centrifuges, agar, et cetera.? No, milk washing won't increase the lifespan. Uh in fact, if you're gonna use milk washing for shaking something, uh, it only lasts a week, like whether it's refrigerated or not, and then it loses its shaking powder power.
+
+[59:44] What is true is that milkwash stuff doesn't spoil. So it will, it has an infinite shelf life. So you're not using milk washing to extend the shelf life. It's just you needn't worry when you milkwash something that it's going to go bad on. You're gonna spoil.
+
+[1:00:00] Is that an okay okay answer? Good answer. Time to go. What? It's time.
+
+[1:00:07] All right. So uh I will get to uh it's 2 a.m. and Kevin Steadmeyer's questions next week. Phil Bravo, you got any stuff for us on the way uh on the way out? I think uh just thank you, everyone.
+
+[1:00:19] This has been Dave Arnold, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, Joe Hazen, Jackie Molecules, Jean Nihul. Close enough. I know. I tried. I looked at it and I get snuck up on me.
+
+[1:00:32] Bravo. Thanks, Dave. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arlon, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on Newsstand Studios from Rockefeller Center. Calling your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Joined as usual in the studio with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
+
+[0:27] How you doing? Good. Yeah? Yeah. We got John over here.
+
+[0:29] How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. We got uh Jackie Molecules over in California. What's up? I'm in Vegas, baby.
+
+[0:36] Vegas? Vegas. We'll come back to that in a second. And in our local booth here at Rockefeller Center, Joe Hazen, how you doing? I'm doing great.
+
+[0:46] How are you guys? I'm doing all right. You know what? I have to say, uh, for as muggy as it is outside, and those of you that have joined the Patreon and can see the video, I am sopping in a pool of my own sweat. This shirt is actually three shades lighter than what it appears to be.
+
+[1:00] Uh, and unfortunately, Joe had to move my helmet. Uh, and uh, how was that? It was fine. I actually touched the mask by accident that was inside it. Uh that was like, yeah.
+
+[1:13] Uh quick disinfectant. Um, so uh so Senior Molecules, uh, what are you doing in Vegas? And are you having a good time? Are you uh filming the second season of Hacks? That would be amazing.
+
+[1:29] I'm definitely not doing that. Um, I'm having a fine time. It's it's a long story that has to do with basketball and NFTs, but I don't want to waste too much showtime going into that. Wait, are you one of these NFTs? Are you one of these NFT people?
+
+[1:42] I mean, what does that mean? That's a generalization. I mean, are you selling like a like a a picture of your own nose hair for like 8 billion Bitcoin or something? Isn't that what it is, basically? Isn't that what an NFT is?
+
+[1:52] You sell a picture of your nose hair for a lot of Bitcoin? I mean, the NBA has its own uh project where they they make moments of games so they kind of make these videos of plays it's it's a long long story but uh I am involved in that and I'm here for that explain this to an old codger like myself so someone I don't even know who's playing because I don't follow sports as Nastasia knows and hates about me is or she does uh so someone does some sort of sweet like reverse slam dunk and then I somehow now own that slam dunk yeah instead of a trading card think of it as a video of the play but it also acts as a token of your fanship so if you have a certain amount of these or certain plays then you get perks in the arena because they say oh you have this and you're this threshold level of collector it's pretty nascent and new do you feel like we're living in end times Jack do you feel like we're living in end times yeah okay oh yeah I mean I'm in Vegas so every day feels like the end so are the uh are the buffets open I don't know what do you mean you don't know actually I've never been to Vegas you gotta go to the buffets the buffets are an experience yeah I mean I mean it's you know COVID times I don't know I don't know about going there I've never been to Vegas but the only reason I would go is to experience the buffets I don't gamble I don't go to in general shows you know uh so like I mean what else is there? I think it's a very different Vegas I don't know I'm like off strip I went to some great tiki bars went to a good Thai restaurant. That's kind of like what I do when I'm here. Wait, so you're telling me that you live in Los Angeles, California.
+
+[3:38] And you go to Vegas for Thai food. I'm just trying to clear this up. That's why I come, but I happen to be here, there's a good Thai restaurant that I like. Okay. All right.
+
+[3:50] Because it just seems a little bit ridiculous to go from LA to Vegas for Thai food. I'm just saying. Like, if you're like, I'm going to Las Vegas because they got a buffet where for no apparent reason every single piece of meat is A5 Wagyu. I'll be like, that sounds like Vegas. I go to that.
+
+[4:06] It does sound like Vegas. You know what I mean? Or like, you know, uh, you know, every single dish is brought to you by someone on clown stilts and they have to get it down to the table without taking the stilts off. I'd be like, that sounds like Vegas. I would want to see that.
+
+[4:19] You know what I mean? But like, go to a Thai restaurant off the strip. Does not sound uh like it's up to your uh standards there, Jack. That's fair. Well, you know, I don't I don't have clown stilt dinner money yet, you know, maybe one day.
+
+[4:33] You pounding uh you pound in the bottles at Cheap Merlot while you're out there, are you? No, I'm not. Yeah, definitely not. Don't you have that NBA money? What do they drink?
+
+[4:41] Are they all uh popping bottles like it's a champion chip game out there? What's happening? Um, beers, I guess. I don't know. This is not the Vegas I'm imagining.
+
+[4:51] You like I know. I'm sorry to disappoint you. Yeah, you really are disappointing. Me, of course, it's very easy to disappoint me right now. I am in a rancid mood.
+
+[4:59] And I'll tell you why. I have not slept in like three days. I don't know what it and my dreams that when I do fall asleep have been terrible. And of course, Nastasi, you're in one of them. Okay.
+
+[5:09] We're doing a demo. Listen to this. We're doing a demo. We're having some sort of wretched, wretched meal together where we're discussing the demo at a crappy diner. So far, checks out, right?
+
+[5:20] Mm-hmm. We go outside to load up for the demo, right? And it's it's John's there, you're there, I'm there. Uh I think there's a fourth. There's a fourth person.
+
+[5:29] There's four people that need to make it to the demo. We, like the jerks that we are, have giant coolers full of stuff, right? And nothing is working right. So far, checks out? Mm-hmm.
+
+[5:41] Okay. The car that you have rented, oh, that's right. Someone I don't remember who is driving the car, and the three of us are waiting outside. Pulls up. Now, it's not a real car.
+
+[5:50] Imagine, if you will, a miniaturized, like clown car, kitty car version of like a Citroen DS. So there's like no room. It's like almost like three wheels almost, and there's no room for anyone but the driver. Our cooler doesn't even really fit in the back. And I'm like, Nastasia, four of us and all of our stuff need to get to this demo right now.
+
+[6:14] Why did you rent this useless thing? I mean, maybe it's cute, but why did you rent this useless thing? And then, and here's what makes it the most Nastasia like, and Nastasi, you'll appreciate this, I think, right? It drives off without us. And I'm like, where the hell did it go?
+
+[6:28] And Nastasi goes, well, he had to go over to the hotel to pick up my stuff. I'm like, there's your stuff too. I was like, so bent. I was so bent. So bent.
+
+[6:37] I mean, we can still get an Uber. But we had we'd spent all this money on this obviously like fancy but ridiculous tiny car. He doesn't that check out. Yeah. And only we only do that in LA.
+
+[6:50] Only. I don't remember what we're doing. We go like hardcore crappy here. Oh, we're CNC music. Well, well, it's not.
+
+[6:56] It's called, for those of you that have never rented a car in New York, right? Like if you don't have a lot of money, and if you've ever known anyone in film or production, you only rent from CNC rentals, right? Maybe Art2. Art2? Do they do that?
+
+[7:11] No, they need a fancier truck. Art people need a fancier truck. Yeah. So CNC rental, you show up and it's like they don't ask for any ID, right, Sas? Uh no, they don't.
+
+[7:14] I don't. Yeah. You can rent, you rent these giant trucks. They don't, they don't ask you whether you've ever driven a truck of this size before. No.
+
+[7:29] They just hand you this giant truck that may or may not work. And you drive around, but it's so much cheaper than the evil U-Haul people. I'll never, I I try to never rent U-Haul, and I try to tell people never to rent U-Haul. If anyone out there works for U-Haul and wants to convince me differently, please tell me. But as far as I know, they're the worst, they're the worst rental company I have ever dealt with in my life.
+
+[7:49] And let me tell you this. If you're going down the street, if you've never moved before, I mean I don't know who you are or where you live, if you've never moved before, but if you've never moved before and you see the sign that says like 1995, no. No. A U-Haul costs minimum a hundred bucks. Um a U-Haul costs a minimum of, I'm gonna say it again, a hundred bucks, at least here in New York, because they're like, well, if uh if you don't get the insurance, uh, and there's even one thing on it, you pay for the I'm gonna I'm gonna renovate the whole damn truck and you're gonna pay for it.
+
+[8:23] They're like, oh god. So you pay for the insurance, it's 50 cents a mile, but by the time you're done, it's a hundred bucks. Anyone have a uh uh an alternate experience with them? That's pretty accurate. Yeah.
+
+[8:32] And I did I say on the air once that one time I I went to go rent there, I was moving my entire apartment. Now, for those of you that have never had the pleasure of moving an apartment in New York, you pull a truck up to your apartment, and no one can easily get past you. So immediately the horns start going. You have the flashers, you have someone waiting down because you're gonna get a billion tickets. It's a freaking nightmare in general, right?
+
+[8:57] Yeah. Right. And and you only have the truck because you can't afford to have the truck for two days because even though it's only a hundred dollars, that's that's all you had. You gave all the money to the person so that you could have your deposit. Am I right?
+
+[9:09] Mm-hmm. Okay. Show up to the U-Haul, not open. Line out the door. What the hell?
+
+[9:16] About an hour and a half, two hours after I was supposed to have the truck, they open up and the line now is like all the way down the block. And the reason every single person who was supposed to work in the U-Haul that morning was in jail. Get this. Separate incidents. Separate incidents.
+
+[9:33] Then the manager who they rousted out of bed to come open the U-Haul now. She's pissed at all of us as though it's our fault that her staff is in jail. Which one was this? 12 uh 125th in Broadway, 127th or whatever it is. The one that's above 125th Street on Broadway, right?
+
+[9:52] Right next to the overhead tracks. It's a big lot. They have a bunch of U-Hauls there. It's a good, I mean, theoretically, it's a good place to get a U-Haul. It's as big as the one over in Chelsea, you know?
+
+[10:02] Anyways. So then, you know, finally, so I'm I'm four hours late for moving, right? And again, my window is tight, right? I pull the truck up, I move all of my stuff down. John, you'll appreciate this from a fourth floor walk up.
+
+[10:16] Oof. Yeah. Right? Get it into the truck, get it to the new place, put the key in to go return the truck, turn the key in the door. What happens?
+
+[10:26] Snaps. Snaps. Snaps. U-Haul is in the middle of the street. U-Haul is in the middle of the middle of 106th street, right?
+
+[10:36] Snaps. I'm like. What the hell? With all your stuff in it or no? Empty.
+
+[10:41] I don't remember. It was this was a long time ago. So I call up the U-Haul, and I'm like, yo, you need to come get your truck. I think it was done. I think it was over because I said you need to come get your truck.
+
+[10:53] The key broke off in the lock. I don't know what to do. You know what they said to me? You ready for it? Even though I bought all the insurance, you ready?
+
+[10:59] Call a locksmith. Call a locksmith. What? What? What?
+
+[11:06] I was like, no. I was like, no. I think I eventually did have to call a freaking locksmith to get the freaking door open to return their truck. It was, I mean, the the worst, just don't rent from them. And every other occasion when you rent from them, you want the small truck, right?
+
+[11:23] Because you always want the small one. My grandma's attic in it. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[11:28] And my grandma's attic was a real attic, people. My grandma had an attic, not some like weird little actually, that's not true. My grandparents had a motorhome with that little thing over it, and that's what I had to sleep in that time that Taffy wouldn't let me pee, which is why I hated that dog. But I will not go into that story again. So uh they always then give you a giant truck you don't need, which then takes, you know, a billion times more gas.
+
+[11:49] Nightmare. Do not rent from them. Rent from anybody else. Now again, if any of you out there work for the U-Haul Corporation and want to convince me that somehow a I have maybe it's only every single U Haul I've ever been to that is terrible. Maybe it's just New York ones.
+
+[12:07] Maybe. Maybe. Let me know. Let us know on uh at Cooking Issues, and I'm willing to have you on the air to discuss it, and I will retract anything negative I've said about the U-Haul Corporation, if in fact I'm wrong. Oh, and the reason I'm in such a rancid mood and couldn't sleep is because this weekend I was cooking, I was doing an outdoor cooking thing for the book.
+
+[12:28] By the way, I found a new grill. You ready for it? It weighs two and a half pounds. Ready for this? It's kind of a Sears all light technology.
+
+[12:38] I really appreciate the way it works. It's you know how like um those aluminum folding chairs, right? So it's imagine like thin versions of those like aluminum folding chair tubes that fold into like a like a like a square, and you open it and it's got like four posts sticking up, right? Can you picture it so far? Like with X's in between the posts?
+
+[12:55] Okay. Then it's got uh four angle pieces of aluminum angle, real light that almost look like like window frame angle or like you know, like the bottom of a blackboard, like that. And you slip them over the posts. All right, you with me now? Okay.
+
+[13:09] So now you have the four posts with these four angle brackets, and then they have a stainless steel mesh square, almost like a handkerchief, right? With grommets, and you push that over the tubes, and that's it. And the that mesh like lets air up through to make the coals hot or the wood or whatever, but because air is going up the whole time, it doesn't get hot enough to melt. And then last but not least, they give you a little reflective uh piece of like uh reflective stuff to put on the bottom so that you don't light whatever you have it on on fire. And I was like, okay, I'll see what it can do, right?
+
+[13:45] And so I filled that sucker with with lump hardwood charcoal, and there's a little folding grill that fits on top of it so you can grill. It's kind of a little bit of a monster. Like you could go to the beach with that thing, uh, you know, and it's and it's a lot cleaner and easier than lugging around uh Nastasia's old favorite, the Smoky Joe. Remember the Smoky Joe? Yeah.
+
+[14:04] The Smoky Joe is the miniature Weber. Do you remember when we lit that thing off inside the French Culinary Institute? Oh, jeez. We we were like, uh, we're like, I'm gonna grill these burgers for real, even though we're inside the French Culinary Institute. They're like, Dave, we can't do it.
+
+[14:17] I was like, don't sweat it. And I brought the smoky smoky Joe in and put the smoke the chimney starter right under the hood. Oh man, I can't believe I didn't get fired from that place. All's forgotten now because the school closed down. So, anyways, so I'm cooking outside.
+
+[14:30] Also, I cook some more miracle pork. We gotta talk about, by the way, people, I know I've discussed the miracle pork several times, which is theoretically injected by with duck fat by the Sam Wechsel Corporation. I've done some more research. This weekend, when I cooked my last batch of miracle pork, I could see the fat injection. So someone tweeted in and said, I don't believe that it is injected with fat.
+
+[14:48] It is injected with fat. I can see the fat injection sites uh at certain places when I cut into it. I am going to start figuring out a recipe for the optimum injection of duck fat. And I thought I think they also inject it with like MSG, because it's so damn good. You know what I mean?
+
+[15:07] Like, like that, like we ate that. I served it to everyone. I served it to Wiley, you know, Wiley, my sister-in-law Miley, so that's you know, chef, editor and you know, chief founder of the food uh network magazine, and like, you know, the rest of the family. And they were all like, what the hell is this? What the hell is this?
+
+[15:25] This pork's a miracle. So I gotta figure out how to make it out of because Sam Wexel is completely unuh what's it called? Un unreliable. I you know, we waited like months. Remember, John, we waited months to get the the the miracle pork.
+
+[15:37] And now, yeah. Speaking of waiting months, you know what's coming up? I had my first real tomatoes of the season. It's gonna be, it's gonna be Aunt Ruby's time soon. And uh, I'll talk to you about them after I have.
+
+[15:49] I'm gonna shoot that for the book. So anyway, so I'm outside, and as anyone who knows me knows, I was completely covered from head to foot, right? I have my sneakers, I have my darn tough wool socks on, long sleeve shirt, a uh leather uh sorry, a fur felt uh hat, right? Broad brim. I was out there because I was cooking outside.
+
+[16:08] The next day, I have the worst bug bites I have had in decades. Okay, now listen, again again, for people who don't know me, I am usually covered head to toe in DEET. I believe in DEET. DEET is a miracle. DEET, D E E T is God's gift to humans.
+
+[16:26] I love DEET. I like used people used to joke around, my family would joke around that my cologne is DEET. Like I was just made of DEET, 100% DEET, DEET everywhere. Right? Yeah, DEET.
+
+[16:37] Right. Problem is this. It used to be that I only wore natural fiber clothes. But now that I have more of these kind of technical, uh, you know, synthetic clothes, DEET will eat straight through them. Like if you spray DEET on like, you know, sneakers, or if you spray DEET on like uh uh synthetic pants, it'll just chew a hole straight through them.
+
+[16:55] Same with like a lot of raincoats and whatnot. So I've moved to Picardin, right? But I didn't have the extra thing of Picardin because I packed it for Dax because he was going to camp. So I forgot to put on bug spray, and I went out early in the day and cooked all the way through till nighttime. But here's the weird thing.
+
+[17:10] See if you guys, anyone out there is a bug specialist. I only got bit on my feet and my knuckles, not on my legs. I mean my hat is 100% DEET at this point after years of spraying it with DEET. So I'm sure nothing bit me in the head. What only bites you in the feet when you're wearing shoes and socks?
+
+[17:27] What is that? What is that? Or on the knuckles. So I haven't been able to sleep because it just itches so much. Feels like poison ivy is the worst.
+
+[17:35] So that's why I'm in a terrible mood. I don't think mosquitoes are gonna get through your socks and your shoes. I know. So what is it? Maybe while you were sleeping?
+
+[17:42] No, because then they would have gotten more of me. Like, because I I got nothing on my on my arms, and I was, you know, I'm wearing a t-shirt and sleeping chonies when I was sleeping, they would have gotten my legs. I don't know. It's a mystery. It's a mystery.
+
+[17:55] I would it if we were further south, I would guess chiggers. But I don't think we have those up here. I don't even know what a trigger is. It's a small spider-related mite. That that is nasty and makes terrible, terrible bites.
+
+[18:11] All right. Miguel Kunz says, uh, and this is a follow-up from last week. In a in a couple weeks ago, you briefly mentioned how oil works to desiccate the surface of something that is being sauteed and therefore assists in achieving a crispy texture. On that note, crispy, always good, right? Always good, crispy.
+
+[18:28] Have you ever used crispy to mean something bad? No, right? No. Always good. All right.
+
+[18:33] What about golden brown? Golden brown. Always good, right? Yeah, when could that be bad? When could that be bad?
+
+[18:41] I wrote the words golden brown in the book, and as I wrote them, I was like, this is never bad. Like golden brown is like always good. Like there's rich and golden brown. It just sounds, you know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[19:00] Yeah. Uh maybe I should call the book something like how to make something crispy and golden brown instead of the miracle of moisture management. My editor was like, I don't know about this moisture thing. I mean, she doesn't talk like that. But you know, oh, by the way, people, I got some not safe for radio stories uh relating to my old editor, Maria Guarna Shelley.
+
+[19:22] Amazing. Right, Styles? We can't talk about them, but uh man what a tease. Uh I know. That's me.
+
+[19:28] That's me, big T's. Wow. Uh all right. I'd love to hear uh you get into the weeds more on the mechanism of a crispiness. I'm guessing this will take up a large part of the miracle of moisture management.
+
+[19:38] That's true, because it's not just keeping moisture in, it's also getting the moisture out. Therefore, you can create the crispiness on the outside of things. Now, John, uh, or Joe or Nastasia or Jack, uh, why don't you guys talk to me about crunchy versus crispy? Crispy is more fried chicken, crunchy is more Kellogg's frosted flakes. Huh.
+
+[20:00] Huh, huh, huh? Hmm. Well, crunch continues, right? I think of crisp. I think of like the first bite of a crispy exterior, but crunch is kind of like that make sense.
+
+[20:14] In what what Joe, what do you got? I'm not sure. Yeah. It's kind of hard. Sorry, I'm not sure.
+
+[20:20] Um crunch versus crisp. I mean, like uh like a potato chip's got crunch and crisp. Right. I don't eat fried chicken, so I don't really in general, or just you don't do chicken. I don't like chicken on a bone.
+
+[20:37] Oh, you know what? Neither is my wife. Do you know all of my chicken is boneless, including the legs? I make something called a leg ball. Wow.
+
+[20:43] So here's how the leg ball works, people. I'm gonna give you this secret, and uh hopefully you'll enjoy it. So what you do is is uh I do uh the standard eight part chicken. All right. Eight part chicken means legs, thighs.
+
+[20:56] That's four breast breast breasts, wing wing. Eight, eight part chicken. And then the back is not considered one of the parts, right? Well, they usually keep the back in or if if they're gonna do it on the bone. So I do two boneless breasts.
+
+[21:09] I typically don't take off the tenderloins unless I'm doing some, unless I'm doing a turkey where the tender loins are huge, and then I also cut the breasts in half, all right. Okay, I leave the wings in the bone, but when I take off the thigh, you take off the thigh leg pieces at the same time, you then slice directly uh through the joint between the thigh and the leg. That's the most satisfying part of chicken butchery, by the way. Like the most satisfying part of chicken butchery. I mean, like, I mean, I don't mind like we so we when you when you do the first slice on uh when you're taking the leg off, right?
+
+[21:43] So you you bend the leg away from where the breast is, and then you you nick the skin closer to the leg. So you want to keep a lot of skin on the breast, right? And you push in, and then when the whole thigh peels away from that from the body and you flip it over and go pop and then cut that oyster out of the back, also satisfying moment in chicken butchery. But when you just lay that thigh leg down on the table, and you just take that knife and it just goes foosh, and just goes right down to the cutting board, right through that knuckle joint because you hit the cartilage just right. Most satisfying portion of uh chicken butchery.
+
+[22:20] All right, so uh, so then what you do is you take the uh take the get get you get you your kitchen shears, all right? Take the kitchen shears, grab the uh, grab the um the leg, right? Point the point the the bone part that you just cut, right? The part that attaches to the thigh, point it at you and grab it like uh like what am I grabbing it like? Like uh like a like some kind of a like a juice cup, right?
+
+[22:45] Grab it like like fist it, you know? Then take the shears and then go in and push the shears along the along the top of the bone along the meat and go snip and do a snip. Like, like push into where the tendons attach and go snip. And then do four snips. Snip, snip, snip, snip in a circle around the bone.
+
+[23:07] Turn it around so that the little ball, right, that you would normally hold it by is there. Pull the skin down, you know, so that it's taut, and then snip the entire end of the bone off, right? And then, you know, make sure no bone flex get in there. Turn it around. Now, hold the thing.
+
+[23:26] What is this like? Holding it like, hold it like you're holding a tennis ball in your hand, where you hold all the meat back and all that's coming through like your hand is the fat end of the bone where you did the snips. Then grab the bone with the other hand, twist and rip it out. Where key you try to like your one hand holding the meat is holding as much of the meat back as possible. And you rip that bone out, right?
+
+[23:49] And now you have a boneless leg ball. And when you when you batter and fry the boneless leg ball, it turns almost into a perfect sphere. Especially if you brine it, it gets all nice and salt because the brine gets into where you rip the bone out. The entire thing is this salty, delicious, perfect sphere of chicken hood. That let me tell you something.
+
+[24:09] If you've never had a chicken ball, you're in for a treat. You're in for a treat. My recipe for Food and Wine magazine on fried chicken, right? Which has, I don't know, like a lot of good reviews on it. I gave them explicit directions on how to do the full boning, including the leg balls.
+
+[24:24] And they're like, too complicated, too complicated for our readers. And they omitted it. So like if you follow that recipe, which is real old school, that's like a 20. I've been making that recipe for like 25 years. So I'm sure, like, you know, I'm probably have changed it.
+
+[24:35] I gotta go look at that recipe again. But uh leg balls, I've been making for a long time. They're delicious. Okay. Are you gonna try that tonight, Joe?
+
+[24:43] I might. That's a great idea. Yeah. I might have to like go through this video again and kind of watch the way his hand movements were. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[24:52] It's gonna be in the book by the moisture management book. So Nastasia, I noticed that you somehow uh didn't chime in with your crispy versus crunchy. What do you what do you feel the differences? No, crispy, uh yeah, crispy is like fried chicken and crunchy is like um, I don't know, like like frosted flakes. I agree with you.
+
+[25:09] Wait, wait, wait, crispy as frosted flakes? Crunchy. Crunchy is frosty flakes, crispy as chicken. See, for me, it's like I think crunchy, for especially like a kettle chip, Joe, like on potato chips, I think those are crunchy, right? Do we all agree that like a kettle chip is crunchy?
+
+[25:24] And like for me, crisp is like almost like what a cracker does. You know what I mean? Like it's hard, but when it breaks up, it doesn't break into sharpness, maybe. But I could be wrong. Anyway, uh I still have not answered your question, uh, Miguel.
+
+[25:40] Um as regards oil and advancing uh crispiness. Um if I'm talking, I was talking about sauteing, it's probably just the fact that uh it's very difficult to get good contact between uh a dry pan and a um you know, and and a food stuff. And in order to make something crispy, you need to desiccate it. And you need a moisture, you need a um something that can conform to the surface of the product that you're trying to saute, and at the same time can get to high enough temperatures that it can boil away uh all of the water at the surface and also uh transfer heat to it at the same time. So oil is the only real thing that can do that.
+
+[26:18] You think that's what the I was talking about? Is that an answer? Yeah, that's an answer. It's but you don't have seem like well, I think it was so you know, I went back and listened to the episodes, which was a lot of fun. Uh-huh.
+
+[26:29] Um the two things that I think you could have been talking about were either the Abel Skever and the that one listener was referring to like the blanking on the the name the Japanese term for those little little balls. Um the uh yeah, the uh the takoyaki thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, or or that old fried chicken. What you well the fried chicken, obviously, it's like like the like oil conforms, oil has the ability to both conform to the surface and desiccate at the same time, and nothing else does.
+
+[26:56] This is why frying is the greatest thing that's ever happened. You know, I mean, like I I just love frying. Yeah. Um, if I didn't answer that, they'll come back. Come back, Miguel.
+
+[27:08] If I didn't answer that, come back with like a very pointed question. I'll try to give you a pointed answer. Uh Josh Sieberg wrote in, I recently tried to make a milk punch in the spinzall, and although the curves were separated, the drink itself was still quite opaque. By the way, I've been told that I say opaque wrong. How do you guys say it?
+
+[27:25] Opaque. Opaque. And what do I say? What do you say, Joe? Opaque.
+
+[27:30] What do I say? Opaque. Yeah, opaque. So you guys can hear something different from what I'm saying and what you're saying. Slightly.
+
+[27:38] Because I can't hear it. I've been told by many people that I say it wrong. Did you put an eye in it? What are you doing? I don't know.
+
+[27:44] I also freaking say coupon. I mean like albums. I say that too. I I say album. What do you say?
+
+[27:51] No, you don't. What do I say? You say album. It's really weird. It's really weird.
+
+[27:59] Wow. All right. What else do I say? Weird. I think that's it.
+
+[28:03] Uh I will occasionally bust out the nuclear. Oh yeah. Because as a result of nuking, right? It's nuking, nuke, and then Euler. You know what I mean?
+
+[28:14] Nuke. I know it's nuclear people, but I said I I definitely are you guys coupon or coupon people? Coupon. Coupon. Coupon.
+
+[28:26] Gosh. Coupon. Coupon. Oh yeah, finally. Someone.
+
+[28:30] Yeah, Jackson coupon. Uh Long Island baby. Yeah. Listen, I need to get. Have we discussed this on air that the we we've discussed a million times the uh steam cheese, so I won't bring that up because it'll make Nastasia even more angry.
+
+[28:44] But have we discussed the flying nun cheese? Don't know. So you've been, John, to this restaurant, right? The one that makes the flying nun cheese in uh Manchester, Connecticut. Connecticut is such a treasure trove of weird little weirdnesses, right?
+
+[29:01] So there's this restaurant called Shady Glen Creamery in Connecticut. I've never been, but now I'm dying to go. Here's what they do they have a like a chrome flat top. By the way, for those of you that are never cooked on a chrome griddle, do you know why chrome griddles are so nice? Anyone?
+
+[29:16] Anyone? Anyone? No. Emissivity. So what happens when you're uh, especially a very large surface, it's kept at a hot temperature, it radiates a lot of heat at you.
+
+[29:27] Surprising amount of heat, right? Especially if you're keeping it up at like 375, 400. It's just spraying heat out at you. And radiant heat on a griddle is useless because rate because griddles are a hundred percent contact cooking, conductive cooking, right? So any radiant heat that's lost, not only burns you, but it's also wasted energy that you could use it to get in the griddle hodl.
+
+[29:49] So chrome griddles for anyone that has one or used one, everyone knows that they're awesome as long as you keep them clean and don't dent them with uh, you know, like uh implements that you smack them too hard. So I think in Shady Glen, I think they have a chrome griddle, but I'm not sure. Uh John's been, maybe he looked at it. So then you you you I they press the burger not too flat, not fat flat uh smash burger style. That after they flip it, they take out not one, not two, not three, four slices of whatever special blend American cheese they have, and they layer it like like tic-tac-toe, four pieces, right, touching in the center, right?
+
+[30:25] So that so that over half of the of each slice of cheese is on the griddle, right? Then it like freak goes up. It like gets all crispity, crispity, melted-y around the outside onto the to the to the griddle. Then uh the person takes their spatula and just goes shoop, shoop, shoop, shoop, and list them all four up into like a nun's habit shape. Like like the flying nun, and then takes it off the griddle, puts it on the bun, and it stays up in the air like like uh like a cross between the flying nun and and the feed me, the feed me plant from uh little shop of horse.
+
+[31:01] And apparently everybody loves this dang cheeseburger who has it, but it's in Manchester, and who the heck has the time to drive an hour away from anything that you've ever gone to to go to Manchester. And you've been there. What do you think about this burger? I liked it a lot. They also have very good ice cream.
+
+[31:16] Yeah. Yeah. As good as the as the Yukon Dairy Store's ice cream? The dairy bar, no. It's another central Connecticut thing I've never done.
+
+[31:24] Apparently, UConn has a really great act department, and they have the cows, and then like, you know, like a couple feet away from the cows, they have the the ice cream store where they take the milk from the cows and make the ice cream right there. Yep. And uh from all accounts, on point. Very good ice cream, yep. On point.
+
+[31:41] Well, the people at Shady Glen took the ice cream course at stores. Did they really? Yeah. Oh. Okay.
+
+[31:48] I would like to have, if anyone out there, I would like to have an ice cream off between graduates of the Penn State ice cream program and the Yukon ice cream program in like like a like an ice cream like ag school smackdown. Now, my grandpa, of course, old school Penn State, so I'm a little bit rooting for Penn State in this. I've never been to either of their ice cream stores, but I've been to Cornell's ice cream store. It's pretty good. All right.
+
+[32:15] Enough on ice cream stores. Uh wait. I didn't answer Josh Sheeberg's question. All right. I recently made milk punch in the spinzall, and all the curves were separated, the drink itself was still quite opaque.
+
+[32:26] That's how we got off of this. The word opaque. I assume this has to do uh not with it being filtered through a mat of proteins, like I like it would be presumably if you were doing it through the super bag. Is there a workaround for this, or am I bound uh to old school drip process milk punching? Milk punching, uh well, in a spin's all on uh absolutely clear milk punches are better done in batch mode.
+
+[32:52] The good news is is that batches are extremely fast. So you you only have to spin a milk punch in a spinzall for like four to five minutes, turn it off and pour out that 500 mils and then go again. And so that's how I'm gonna do it. And then if I need to do large amounts like gallons, then I will, you know, you can do it on a on a super bag or do it do a double spin. Does that answer the question, John?
+
+[33:20] Yep. Okay. Uh Daniel Glover wrote in, uh, presumably a different Daniel Glover. Yes. Yeah.
+
+[33:30] Yeah. I mean, or you're not. You're you're the other one's a different Daniel Glover. I'm apologize. You're your own Daniel Glover.
+
+[33:36] Anyway. I had a question about uh the lime quinine cordial from the cocktail class you did a while ago. So lime quinine cordial is where you take clarified lime juice, put peels into it, sugar, uh, you boil it, then uh strain, then you know, get the rid of the peels, then you add enough extra acid to it to uh take it up to the acidity of lime juice, then because remember the sugar has diluted it, and then you add quinine so it can be used in things like tonic syrups and whatnot as a tonic syrup, I should say. Um, I had another thing about that. Did you know I was running some tests, and that if you have a different sugar that you're going to add to a product and you're gonna bottle it and you want stabilized cordial flavor, you can boil the lime juice without the sugar and then add it to your batch and it gets that stabilized cordial flavor even with peel, even though you haven't boiled it with the sugar.
+
+[34:32] I just ran that test a couple of uh weeks ago. So you're welcome if that was an issue for you. Um I'm getting married on September 5th and have to come up with a signature cocktail. I was wondering if it is possible for me to order this cordial somewhere. Thanks, Daniel.
+
+[34:46] Yes, and congratulations on uh on the marriage. Hopefully the Delta variant doesn't hose you guys down and you have a fantastic wedding. Go to uh gush.com. That's g-us-h dot com. And they I know for a fact that they just made a new batch of quinine lime cordial, and it should be on sale, if not now, tomorrow, or email them and you can get it there.
+
+[35:09] And I'm sure they made enough for the whole wedding. Oh wow. Andrew Cuomo just resigned. Really? Well, well, at least I know you were looking up news on your phone while we were busy doing our jobs.
+
+[35:20] But uh did it uh I didn't think he was gonna resign. Me neither. I mean, this is not a political show, but I just didn't think he was gonna resign. Yeah, Joe? Same.
+
+[35:30] Staying out of it. I'm not saying whether you're for or against it. Did you think he would resign, Joe? You don't want to get into even that? He's not he's not even shaking his head.
+
+[35:37] Yeah. Uh I didn't think he would. I don't think he I thought he was gonna hang on to the last, you know. Yeah, man. Thought he was gonna s like keep his fingernails in the desk and they were gonna have to pull him away.
+
+[35:48] Wow, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, his brother was at Yale in my residential college the year above me. Mm-hmm.
+
+[35:58] I only met him once. He was trying to find a friend of mine. So when I started going out with my wife, I uh I still lived in the dorms and I wanted to be able so I had like a a decent Macintosh at the time and it had all of the games on it that people wanted. So this friend of mine named John Morning lived in the in the in the room next to me through our fire doors. We all had fire doors, right?
+
+[36:22] And so I you know, I needed to move the bed because, you know, my you know, the person who's now my wife was coming over to my room and I you know, but I wanted John Morning to still be able to like come into the room to play in my Macintosh because you know, I didn't want to like bogard my computer because he had gotten used to being able to use my computer. So I took a circular saw and I cut my fire door in half like a Dutch doors, right? And added like a little extra support bottom hinge so that you could just leave the bottom section shut. And I left the doorknob on the top section and it swung right over my bed. So like you would just open the fire door over my bed, walk over my bed, and go use my computer.
+
+[37:01] And so the only time I met uh Chris Cuomo was when he knocked on, flung my the the Dutch door open, was like, morning in here. I'm like, nah, dude, John's not here right now. I was like, all right, and that was it. It's my only Cuomo. There we go.
+
+[37:15] It's my only Cuomo. Um, all right. Will Robinson wrote in. Hey, uh, Dave, Stas, John, Jackie M, and Joe. Uh, in the post-pandemic world, I work uh prep at a farmer's food market in the Midwest for small pasture raised meat farm.
+
+[37:31] Uh as such, I'm always looking to cook the underused cuts for the market. Our current contender is lamb fries. Uh, you guys know what lamb fries are, right? No. D's nuts.
+
+[37:43] Yeah, it's uh it's lamb balls. Lamb balls. That's one of those euphemisms. Lamb fries. I think Will knew this and just wanted me to go say do some D's nuts.
+
+[37:56] Wow. I like what he says next, too. We have a veritable sack full of them in the freezer. Gosh. Oh man, this is good.
+
+[38:06] I have a copy of McLaughlin's book. I don't have that. Look, John, look up that book. Uh, and found her applications delicious, but not particularly marketable. Any recommendations?
+
+[38:16] So, my question here, first of all, I'll have to say that uh the only time I've ever cooked balls of any sort, I completely ruined them. Like uh how many times, Stas, are you an old Val Kilmer fan? No. Did you watch this thing? Is that why you're talking about it?
+
+[38:31] No. Uh, but do you remember the movie Top Secret? No. Oh. Anyone here?
+
+[38:36] Joe's got some top secrets. Joe never. Yeah, of course. Yeah. There's like a few of the top secrets.
+
+[38:40] Really? Well, the original one with uh, you know, uh the the, you know, the French resistant guys, chocolate chocolate mousse and then and uh surf Nazis must die. I mean, like, you know, it's classic. And it's early Val early Val Kilmer. I'm sure it hasn't aged well, but you know, anyway.
+
+[38:56] So he's in this restaurant uh and he doesn't understand, I forget whether it was French or German, this restaurant. He doesn't understand what's ordering. So he orders hog balls, and it it comes to a platter, the platter comes with a bunch of flaming hogballs on it. So I saw that, and I was like, I'm gonna cook some hogballs. And so, like when I did a medieval feast, I like there was a recipe, one of the medieval feasts I did with my mom, there was a recipe for hogballs, but I completely ruined them because there was no internet.
+
+[39:21] This was in the early 90s. I mean, there was an internet, but there wasn't like internet recipe for hogballs. It was easily searchable on Excite. You know what I mean? Which is what you were using at the time.
+
+[39:31] And so I didn't know to peel the outer membrane off of the nuts. And so you have to, you have to take the the nuts and you have to slice the top and the bottom, remove the outer membrane and the epididymis, and then you have the the gland in there, right? And then that you're supposed to then soak that sucker in like, well, depending, like uh to get rid of kind of if you if you don't want that more livery flavor, soak it in water or milk for a while to kind of leach out some of the leach out some of the gaminess, right? And and then you slice it, and I think you're not supposed to cook it for too long, or it's gonna get real tough, right? So typical recipes are fried, right?
+
+[40:12] So you salt it first, you know, you know, Brian it gets some flavor into it, are are um fried, sliced and fried, or skewered and kebobbed, right? But definitely not like boiling them. They were the chewyest nuts. They were like chewy, nasty nuts, and we were all like, okay, thank God I had a lot of other good food. Thank God.
+
+[40:33] So again, I was so traumatized by the one time I cooked hogballs that uh the other one that you can buy in uh Chinatown all the time that I could not get to taste good was uh this is how it's marketed. So I'll I will write, I will say exactly what it says on the package. Beef pizzle. Beef pizzle. No.
+
+[40:53] Beef pizzle. Uh I was not able to make it taste good. I try. In fact, you, Stas, you took it to a party once as an F U. That's true.
+
+[41:02] Yeah. How was it? I don't think it was good. You like for some reason Nastasi is going to a raw meat potluck. Remember this?
+
+[41:15] Someone someone threw a potluck where they're like, bring something to put on the grill. Yeah. And you were like, okay. And you brought a styro-packed thing of beef pizzle. I remember we walked over to the to the market, the one on uh Hester and uh and um uh what's that?
+
+[41:34] Hester and uh Elizabeth, right? Uh it's changed its name since then. And you walk over to the case and you're like, that's it. And you grab the beef pizzle and you think you put it in your bag. I wonder whose party.
+
+[41:46] It was in Long Island because you were like, it was sitting on the train for like hours in my bag. Whoa. Oh. Oh. Beef pizzle, beef, beef, beep, pizzle.
+
+[41:56] So back to these nuts. Um listen, I mean, you if you're not able to sell them fried, first of all, like there's a whole cultural shift here, right? So, like a lot of like, I think a lot of women don't care, right? But like men are like, oh, I can't eat nuts. But then like a lot of other men, like depends on your culture, right?
+
+[42:14] Or like, if I eat the nuts of something that I think is strong, my nuts will become strong. You know what I mean? So like they they like it's all depends on what kind of culture you're in. Um but you know, people eat a lot of Rocky Mountain oysters in the uh in the in, you know, over in Denver. They even sell them apparently at the at their uh what's what's that thing stadium.
+
+[42:35] You know what I mean? And those are breaded and fried. If you can't sell that, what about you grind it up and just make it into like a lamb scrapple? Like make a lamb scrapple and just grind up the nuts into them, and then along with other pieces of meat that you have left over, some sage, some rosemary in that sucker, some uh cornmeal. I mean, you don't have to say nuts on it if you're making a scrapple.
+
+[42:56] And everybody loves scrapple. I mean, isn't that what um what the um the beverage uh Red Bull is? It's taurine, so it's like, isn't it bull semen or bull balls that are I don't know, man. I had no idea. If you look up taurine, I believe that's what it is.
+
+[43:15] Yeah? Yeah, that's a good question. I think I think the fact checked on that comes back saying the opposite, but I do remember hearing that. Red Bull gives you nuts. Now we're getting saved to the colour.
+
+[43:29] Of bile, huh? Yeah, and animals. Oh my god. How many of you guys custom? How many of you guys have butchered a fish and you accidentally pop the bile sack and that green, yellow, nasty, bitter stuff leaks all over the meat on the oh my god.
+
+[43:44] Oh my god. I just want to add one thing for Will. Uh maybe check out Fergus Henderson's cookbooks as well for lamb fries recipes. I think he has some. I ate one of his restaurants.
+
+[43:55] It was very good, and he is also a great speaker. Yeah, I've eaten at St. John's in London. It was one of the best meals I've ever had. The best tripe I've ever had.
+
+[44:04] It was so delicious. Really? Yeah. Did I ever tell you the problem I have with tripe growing up? No.
+
+[44:10] So as I've said on the show many times, my stepfather's father and his father's father and his father's father and all their uncles, all butchers, going back for like as many generations as they can count. All butchers. My stepfather, of course, shrink. Mind butcher. Just kidding people.
+
+[44:27] I love it. Anyway, so the when my when my, you know, when when my butch, my you know, my grandpa's the butcher, right? Gerard's Gerard's dad comes. Gerard's like, you know what? Let's take let's take the old man because he'd retired like 15 years earlier.
+
+[44:42] Let's take the old man to a slaughterhouse. He'll love it. So we go to this slaughterhouse, and slaughterhouses have a particular kind of smell to them. You know what I mean? Like the blood where it's drained, the cleaning, everything has a and so then we bought a whole bunch of tripe that had like you know, just been like taken out.
+
+[45:03] And when we ate it that night in the tomato sauce, right? So it's the in the tomato sauce to get rid of the, yeah, it gets rid of some of the odor and all of that. And it had been cleaned and everything, but it just something in it still reminded me of the smell of the slaughterhouse. And I could not remove the mental conjunction of the smell of the slaughterhouse and the tripe. And it took me years.
+
+[45:23] Took me years to get back on tripe, and still to this day, I don't cook it because of that. In that in that weird. Well, interesting, yeah. Yeah. Hey, I have to just clear up something from the Red Bull for Joe.
+
+[45:35] Um, taurine was originally isolated from bull semen and is now produced synthetically. Uh okay, got it. I guess wait. Some truth to it. Synthetic bull semen.
+
+[45:46] That's a lot. That's a lot of bulls to be like. Sorry, told you on the body. The touring and red bull. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
+
+[45:53] I mean, I don't I don't know. That's a lot of Red Bull there's telling. Okay, we're getting a little, we're getting a little risque here, but have you guys seen the documentaries on how they collect the product, let's say, from bulls for uh when they're studying them out to uh to raise cattle. To go inside. There's uh there's a person.
+
+[46:14] There used to be, I don't know, and there's videos of this online, so I encourage you. There's a person who sits in a fake cow butt and is the receiver. I am not they referenced that in uh Malcolm in the Middle in one of the episodes. I'm not making this up. I don't know if that's still the way they do it, but some guys like, all right, I'm ready.
+
+[46:34] And they're inside of this like this like furry cow behind, and the bull like runs up there with the cow. Booker index. Oh zing. Oh man. That's strong.
+
+[46:56] So good. Oh man. Were you you didn't go with me to Panama? Did you go with me to Panama? In Panama, when they wanted to get me the liquid nitrogen doer, they literally got me one from a bull semen storage unit.
+
+[47:10] And it still had the bull semen storage tubes. Nasty. The drinks were good. Okay. Uh Strong on Six wrote in via Instagram.
+
+[47:22] Hey Dave, uh, I know uh, by the way, one more thing on synthetics. So your Red Bull may now be synthetic bull semen, which maybe is disappointed to you, maybe it's a relief. I don't know. Uh, but a lot of people think that quinine that you get in tonic water is synthetic. It's not, and I'll tell you why.
+
+[47:42] It is very expensive to make synthetic quinine. It is much easier to just chop down kinchona trees and get it that way. So if that matters to you, rest at ease. Your quinine's not synthetic. Um strung on six via Instagram.
+
+[47:57] Strung on six also sounds like some sort of like thing that you're buying, right? Strung on six? What is it? What is it? What kind of a product would Strung on Six be?
+
+[48:08] Oh. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. And before I get to medicinal.
+
+[48:13] Medicinal? Yeah. Well, yeah, I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like some sort of eucalyptus is in it somehow.
+
+[48:18] Yeah. Maybe it maybe it uh alleviates the some of the bug bites. Oh, I could use that. I'm like I said, such a rancid mood. Oh, talk about the Lego shoes.
+
+[48:28] So I will after I ask you this semi-related question. Everybody knows that Nastasia Lopez was displeased when Skittles changed their recipe and the green got changed to Apple. So a couple of months ago, I'm gonna try to locate a pack for you because they they're already sold. They did all lime. Yes, uh.
+
+[48:45] What do you think? Whoa. It's not that I love lime. It's just that when you're eating Skittles, to get lime is good, and the apple just messed up the what okay. How about that?
+
+[48:58] Let me ask you this. What if John and I how many, how many colors are there in Skittle? Five? I think so. Okay.
+
+[49:03] What if John and I bought five, four bags of Skittles and a bag of all lime, and then we removed all of the offensive apples and then reshuffled it with the all lime so that it was OG Skittle. Also, it is our anniversary this month, Dave. Oh, yeah? Eight million years? Eight million years.
+
+[49:21] That means you have to go to rates. How long have you guys been working together? The answer is always what? Too long! Oh, geez.
+
+[49:30] All right. So uh, oh Legos, yeah. So, like, right next to where we shoot here at Rockefeller Center, uh, there's a Lego store, right? And so they did a how do the kids pronounce collaboration now? Collab or collab?
+
+[49:45] What do they collab? Collab. So Legos and uh, or Lego, I don't know how they style themselves. And Adidas, which as we all know, the Germans used to call it Adidas, right? Until Run DMC smacked them in the face and was like, my Adidas.
+
+[50:01] Anyway, so they did a collab together where there are Lego Adidas. So Nastasi and I are like, awesome. If Dave can wear Dutch shoes around that are hard, then you know, I, Nastasia, can wear Lego Adidas. So we go in there and all of the boxes, there's no sizes listed on them. They don't come in sizes.
+
+[50:21] You just buy a Lego Adidas. And Stas is like, yo. And we walk in and they just try to shuffle you in, like, right? Because they're like, assume that 99999 is either a tourist or you work there, right? And we're like, can you wear the Adidas?
+
+[50:35] And the lady was like, yes, yes, yes. And so we walk in, and then we ask someone else, we're like, hey, you don't have any of them out here on the floor. They're all around the neck of this mannequin in the window. Can we get it off the mannequin the neck? Nastasi wants to try them on.
+
+[50:47] She wants to see if they fit. She's not gonna buy the Lego Adidas unless they fit. And what'd they say to you? They're like, looked at you like you had said that you can't wear them. They're not to wear.
+
+[50:58] So the lady at the front totally lied to us to get us in the store. And then guess what? They won because John bought something anyway. John got suckered by the lady. That's not good enough though, John.
+
+[51:08] What did I get? I bought nothing. You bought, didn't you buy something for like your brother or something like this? I bought nothing. Camper van.
+
+[51:14] Didn't you buy a camper van? No. Those have a little bit of Lego on the tip. Yeah, that's not that's not good enough. That's not good enough.
+
+[51:21] I want like the mashup, I want Dutch shoe hard. Dutch wooden shoe hard. With like a soft soul though. Sure. Yeah.
+
+[51:29] Corey. Well, a Dutch wouldn't shoot a navasas. We're gonna have to glue that sucker together so that it doesn't pop apart. How embarrassing would that be? You're running to get an Uber and the entire soul pops off and you have just the top of the anyway.
+
+[51:39] All right. Strung own six. Uh I know reusable sous vide bags have been an elusive item, uh, but I just came across this item on Kickstarter. Let me know your thoughts. So, what it is, people is this is the craziest thing ever.
+
+[51:53] Uh, and I don't know how I feel about this. If if you're the maker of it, then call us and say that you're the maker of it, and I'll talk to you about it. But it's a little mini vacuum pump that uses the USB power from your iPhone. Now, your iPhone, I don't think has enough power to suck a decent vacuum. So you have pictures of these people like pulling their iPhone out of their pocket and being like trying to suck a vacuum on on like food.
+
+[52:20] So, like, you know, for someone like like Nastasi and I, like, I mean, I could imagine once in my life being at a restaurant and someone would be like, if I could only suck a vacuum, and then you pull out your iPhone and we're like but I just feel like you know, at home, most of the time you have a plug, you know, or like, you know, you want something more powerful. Even like I have a cordless blower. I actually have a cordless, like little vacuum that wearing makes for sucking a vacuum, but it like charges via USB and it's big enough to have the power. So I'm a little, I'm uh what's the word? I'm skeptical.
+
+[52:54] Is that fair? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nastasia, how much would you what would you do to me if I actually pulled something out of the red? Well, the thing is, is that it's not, it's like we rarely get to go out, you know.
+
+[53:07] And so we try not to go places where we know people, because then they suck your time. And so that's why. Well, you just don't want to be embarrassed either. No, I know. No, I don't care about that.
+
+[53:21] Well, my favorite Nastasia moment at the now defunct box was when we were getting forced out. Us reopened. I don't know. And Nastasia, as we're being escorted out, I hate this place! They stopped us from dancing.
+
+[53:34] I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know. Anyway. Uh all right.
+
+[53:40] Uh it's 2 a.m. via Instagram. Hey, I'm curious to know if freezing the rehydrated onion and garlic and your everything bagel seasoning would prevent slash reduce burning. I imagine this will also make them easier to incorporate into your seasoning mix. Hope you're having a good day.
+
+[53:54] Well, I'm not, but it's not your fault. Um, I don't know. I could try it sometime. I stopped thinking about that problem and just started omitting it from the from my bagels, but I'll think about it. I just had to think about what are you guys' feelings on small bagels, union bagel size, the three ounce bagel?
+
+[54:11] The mini-bagel? Well, it's not a mini-bagel, it's the original bagel. Oh. The the the bagel that we all eat is the is the 1970s like largified bagel. The original bagel was a three ounce.
+
+[54:22] It was a union bagel. You couldn't just make bagels. You had to be a part of the bagel makers union. And in order to become a part of the bagel makers union, you had to have relatives in the bagel makers union. It was like a thing.
+
+[54:29] I didn't know that. Yeah, and it was all like most of it was concentrated like down near where I live on Hester, like by Hester and Rivington downtown. It was like a real thing. Um yeah. Look for the Union bagel.
+
+[54:46] What do you think about that small bagel size? Is it like some more size like a Jerusalem bagel? I've never been to Jerusalem. They're much thinner and smaller. Hmm.
+
+[54:56] But not like it's like the you got like a pack of like Thomas bagels or something like that size. Uh I will yeah, lenders. Lender size. I will never buy a Thomas's bagel. Hi, who made your bagel?
+
+[55:10] The Thomas's Corporation. No thanks. That's like uh yesterday. I saw at Trader Joe's and I put it on my Twitter. Uh Trader Joe's made a pretzel bagel that A was not fully pretzeled.
+
+[55:23] It was like this like light brown color, so they didn't use enough uh base and whatever they were boiling it in. And B didn't boil it enough. They just looked like wrinkled pieces of roll bread in a bagel shape. God, people, why can't you learn what a bagel is? It's not the water people.
+
+[55:39] Anyone can make a New York bagel. All you need to do is follow the recipe. It's low hydration. You you you boil the sucker and and you make it, you eat it. You know what I mean?
+
+[55:51] Don't you hate a bad bagel? Yes. Hate a bag. Yeah. What was it that De Blasio not to talk more crap about him, but what what do you say his favorite bagel was?
+
+[56:01] We talked about this yesterday. Wasn't it whole wheat with extra cream cheese? Toaster. Whole wheat extra cream cheese. Toasted with extra cream cheese.
+
+[56:11] Clown. Well, Cynthia Nixon's was like a cinnamon raisin with wax and uh it was like something insane. You know what though? It's like I've never liked cinnamon raisin, but I know plenty of people from New York who actually like cinnamon raisin bagels. I like them.
+
+[56:29] Yeah? Mm-hmm with cream cheese? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you know, interesting maybe fact, that the everything bagel is a relatively recent invention, that it was not popularized until the 80s.
+
+[56:42] Did you know this? So a guy, I forget his name, Gusin or something in Queens, claimed to have invented the uh everything bagel in 1980 at a place in Queens when he was working there at a summer job. His story, and these stories are never true, by the way. His story was that I was sweeping all the seeds and stuff out of the oven at the end, I uh I put them all in a book. I was like, yo, you can make new bagels with this.
+
+[57:06] We'll call them everything bagels, right? That's his story. But I hope, I hope, still friend of the show, Seth Godin, which by the way, we need to have him on for this reason alone. Not just this thing I'm about to say, but remember for those of you that listened back on the old network, we had Seth on, and he says that he knows the person ready for it, who invented Fudgy the Whale. Oh yeah.
+
+[57:31] What? Carvel? Yeah. Wow. Carvel ice cream.
+
+[57:36] Yeah. Anyway, so like Fudgy the Whale. For those of you that have ever like spent appreciable time as a child in New York or the area, you got your cookie puss and you got your fudgy the whale. And if you got those, you knew that your parents loved you. You know what I mean?
+
+[57:50] Yeah. Yeah. They're like, they do love me. They got me fudgy, or they got me. I never got fudgy.
+
+[57:56] Yes, you did. What if you got it for your 40 years? I meant when I was growing up. They loved me, but I did not get it growing up. We would get Carvel though.
+
+[58:04] I love Carvel. Yeah, we Carvel crazy. Yeah. I mean, Carvel, I love Carvel. But so, like, anyway, Seth claims to know the person who invented Fudgy the Whale.
+
+[58:14] And then he was quoted in the articles I was reading on the Everything Bagel as saying, no offense to Mr. Gusson. However, I was working at a bagel shop in 1977, three years prior to Mr. Gusson's claimed invention of the everything bagel and was making everything bagel. So I think we need to have Seth on to talk about this.
+
+[58:33] Right? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, Stas? We can try.
+
+[58:38] All right. Kevin Stadmeyer wrote in via Instagram. Uh, man, this is old school. Oh, yeah, yeah. They just have it hasn't caught up yet because they're still calling out uh indie rock, uh Indie Jesus.
+
+[58:51] Still calling out Indie Jesus. Wow. Awesome. Hey, Nastasia Dave, maybe Jack. So you're back in the picture, Jack, which is nice.
+
+[58:59] Carlos and in and Indy Jesus. Wow. Carlos. Yeah. Shout out to Carlos.
+
+[59:05] Wow, wow. For those of you that haven't listened to the old uh episodes, there was um there was a couple of servers at Roberta's who had very specific looks. So one of them was was Indie Jesus. So he was um um he was if some if Jesus Christ was alive today and an indie rocker with a little bit of like, you know, the eyelids at half mast because he just can't deal with the situation around him because we, you know, we just aren't following his teachings enough. Like that was the server at the thing.
+
+[59:40] And so we're sitting in uh the Robertus fish bowl one day, and Stas goes, check it out, indie Jesus. And then like that was it. But then it was the other one. Well, what do we end up calling? So there was a guy's little Santa's little helper.
+
+[59:54] No, it was Hitler's little helper. Because he's got the He looked like a combination Santa's Elf and Hitler Youth. Like that was his outfit vibe. That was what it that was what it was. You know what I mean?
+
+[1:00:05] Like we gotta go to the North Pole, like like a Berlin club at the North Pole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like real specific.
+
+[1:00:14] So anyway, uh I recently discovered cooking issues because I'm an idiot. Being that you discovered it or that you haven't discovered it earlier. I'm gonna go with the former that you're an idiot because you have discovered it. Uh but it's basically right up my alley. I'm working my way through all the past issues and have listened to episode uh 54, where you got a long way to go, my friend.
+
+[1:00:31] Uh wow. And Dave made a series of 10 years predictions. That episode aired a little less than 10 years ago, and I thought you uh would be pleased to be reminded that the tenure prediction that circulators become much cheaper and more ubiquitous seems to have come true. Eh, well, I know something. Uh if only we can make money off what I know, right, Stas?
+
+[1:00:48] Yeah. Uh nice work predicting the future because I'm 10 years behind. If you talk about this on air, I'll hear it sometime next year. Keep on being awesome. Also, that's why I don't know if uh the others in the salutation are still involved.
+
+[1:00:58] Stas. All right, nice. Uh all right, look at that. All right, so we have uh we have some more Instagram, we have a lot more Instagram questions. We have more questions.
+
+[1:01:08] That's crazy. Next week we have special guests on. Wait, so we're not gonna get to so when are we gonna do something to just take care of, but they're not uh Patreon, so we can't even do it on a Patreon thing. Nope. We'll just have to stop going on tangents.
+
+[1:01:25] But without the tangents, it won't be a cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Earl, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on New Stam Studios from Rockefeller Center here in Midtown, New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good.
+
+[0:23] Doing well? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got uh John. We got John over here.
+
+[0:26] How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah? Yeah. We got Jackie Molecules over in California.
+
+[0:32] Hello. What's up? Hey, how you doing? And of course, as always, our Rockefeller Center booth magnet, Joe Hazen. How you doing?
+
+[0:41] I'm doing great. How are you guys? Doing great, doing great. I have we have two, we have two special guests today. One's coming on uh later in the show.
+
+[0:51] Uh should we announce them later when he comes on? We'll tell him now, right? Because you can call in your questions live if you're a Patreon subscriber too. 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
+
+[1:04] Uh we have today, I think. And um man, you've been you've been like a friend of the show since like the beginning, kinda. Yeah, since super early. Yeah, since like original Jackie Molecules days. I think so.
+
+[1:23] Yeah. I even wrote your intro song about it. What's up, man? Yeah. Hey, what's up, man?
+
+[1:28] Yeah, Nastasia would can't do the metal shit. Yeah. So I like that. What the metal? The metal the metal version.
+
+[1:36] Wait, well, we we you resurrected. We'll play it once. If you have it, you can can you play it just for like old time's sake. Oh man, I don't know. It would have to be some probably on an old hard drive at this point.
+
+[1:48] That was a long time ago. But we had a good good run of shows. Good run of shows with that theme sound. Yeah. Cooking issues.
+
+[1:55] Go! That's how it went pretty much, right? That was pretty much it. That's uh that's my my memory of it. Uh so a little bit of a technical issue uh here today, John.
+
+[2:07] For some reason it didn't update to my drive. I'll sorry, I'll f I'll find the questions, or you can find the questions and read them to me. How about that? Uh even better. And you know what?
+
+[2:17] Do you know what? If you read the questions, then I can't go off on tangents in the middle of the question. I don't believe that for a second. It's like me trying to tell you your things in the morning. You still go off on tangents when I do this.
+
+[2:28] Okay. Well, you know, it's important. We were discussing healthcare. That's true. That was just this morning.
+
+[2:33] Yeah. Wait, options for you? Yeah, I'm shopping around for healthcare right now. Yeah, well, no, but it's not that. It's like uh because like he's technically the only employee.
+
+[2:42] I don't know what the rules are now because you know it changes from week to week, administration to administration. But here in New York, it is not possible for us to buy no matter how much money we want to spend, it's not possible for us to buy health insurance. What? Well, you can get really crappy plans. Well, no, but that's just you personally.
+
+[2:59] Yes. Okay, yeah, yeah, true, true, true. But like you're right, you're right, you're right. Yeah, because of the fact that like I had to go on my wife's health care, then you need a certain number of people in a company who are going to for a plan to work. You can't just hire someone and be like, I would like to get you health insurance.
+
+[3:16] Right, right, right, right. No matter how much money you have for it. It's banana llamas. It's crazy it's it's nuts. Yeah, Connecticut's like age-based.
+
+[3:22] I don't know what it's like here, but you know, it doesn't matter what your income is. The health care premium is based off of your age. So if you have an older employee, the cost is super high. Well, you know what, I guess it's so hilarious because uh I guess it's like that we don't all plan or hope to get older. We're all betting on dying young.
+
+[3:41] We're all like, I'm gonna die tomorrow. In which case, why do you need to save your money? Just spend it on the healthcare then, right? I mean, if you're not gonna live to be, if you're not gonna live in order to need the healthcare later, right, then why bother saving the money now? Let somebody else use it, because you're gonna be gone, you know.
+
+[3:58] Sure, yeah. You know? If that's what your plan is, if your plan is not being dead, you know what I mean? Yeah. Oops.
+
+[4:04] Uh all right. So uh on to uh more uh so wait. So what brings you to New York today, Joel? And why don't you talk about your new projects? And we've discussed, you know, we've discussed many times on the show, your restaurant.
+
+[4:16] I think, you know, no offense to other people in the Chester area, but I think your restaurant, probably clearly the the you know, the destination restaurant for that entire chunk of the Connecticut River. Am I right? Um now that you said it, yes. Yeah. I mean, what do you think, John?
+
+[4:30] Yeah, agreed. I think John said it's the best pasta he's ever had. It's true. So that many times. Oh my god.
+
+[4:35] You're gonna you're everyone's triggering Nastasi here. Better than Italy, huh? You know you're not gonna be able to do it. Oh, geez Louise on a freaking stick. So we we let's just have this argument now so it can be out in the open.
+
+[4:51] I don't want to I'm not arguing. No, I'm not arguing with you. Yeah, yeah. No, but you prefer I'm not getting into it at all today. You don't want to you don't want to discuss pasta.
+
+[5:00] No, you can discuss your pasta. But I'm not allowed to discuss it with you. No. I'm not allowed to, even though you I I have learned that our listeners are very sensitive men, and I don't want to say anything that pisses them off, especially Patreon uh subscribers. Oh yeah, that was that was very unloaded way of saying that, Nastasia.
+
+[5:17] I I mean, like, okay, whatever. Please. You're getting a glimpse, people. You're getting a glimpse. Uh, all right, so you have the restaurant, and one you know, you you're, you know, of the of the ilk where you like to at least try to make everything at least once or twice.
+
+[5:33] And if you don't feel like you can do a good job, you let somebody else do it. Like you, we were talking, someone asks an ice cream question because later on we have Quinn who has a new gelato book out. He's gonna come on and talk about it. I was asking you if you had an ice cream machine. And you said, no, the people across the street make great ice cream.
+
+[5:45] Who across the street from you makes great ice cream? It's Honey Cone, and they do a fantastic job, and we can collaborate on flavors and all that kind of stuff. You must be relatively new, yeah. Yeah, within a year. Uh you still have that fancy handmade leather person up the block from you, or do you think that's a good thing?
+
+[5:59] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he's he's super cool, Drew. Yeah. There's a so Chester, Connecticut.
+
+[6:04] The last time when I had to move out of Chester, unfortunately, uh person had been hired. So Chester is a small town. It used to, it has like a stream running through it that they used to run mills off of. What was it? Textile?
+
+[6:16] What were they doing there? Guns? Guns and Colt lived there for a while, right? So like they had guns and they had like, I guess, other sort of industrial stuff, like all of Connecticut. That neighborhood actually was where all so like all the people who were kind of like killed by the ivory trade and all the elephants that were killed by the ivory trade, a huge chunk of that ivory, which was really based on the misery and death of both humans and animals, ended up getting shipped to that little part of Connecticut to get turned into piano keys.
+
+[6:45] And so, like, literally, it's like Chester, Deep River, and Ivoryton, you'll have places, you'll have like a little statue of an elephant. You're like, oh, isn't that cute? No. No, it's not. And then they're like, they they have a uh a place called like the keyboard factory.
+
+[6:58] Yeah, keyboard where it works. Yeah, yeah. You know what it was built on? Tears and death. Entire neighborhood built on tears and death.
+
+[7:06] And yet another one of those situations where we in the north are like, well, you know, our hands are relatively clean. No, no. I mean, like, not even a little bit. Not even a little bit. But yes, it's a nice place.
+
+[7:18] And uh do people in Chester still make fun of the Deep River people? Oh, of course. Yeah. So it's a slumminant in Deep River. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[7:24] Deep River, uh, who's the famous person from uh is it Gretchen Malls from Deep River? Anyway, someone like this is from Deep River. Um, and uh, you know, yeah, so the people in Chester, which is literally like a block away from Deep River, like do nothing but poke fun at uh uh you know, the Chester people poke fun. But the Deep River people, I don't think make fun of the Chester people, right? I don't think so.
+
+[7:44] I think they probably have a little bit more, you know, class. Yeah in that in that regard. I think they're more respectful. All right. I don't even know how we got on this.
+
+[7:51] So it's more of a blue collar, you know. Yeah. So like right up the block from him, uh, this this person opened right as we we left. Oh, I don't remember what it was. This lady was going around shooting a video for the town of Chester, being like, Chester's a walking town.
+
+[8:05] I was like, what? I'm like, walking from where to where? That the the middle of Chester is like a block and a half long, right? And it's lovely, and you should go. But yeah, you're walking that block and a half.
+
+[8:18] You walk further in an old school suburban mall than you walk in Chester to go from one side of it to the other. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Uh hey, sorry, sorry, sorry, inside baseball people. Have you ever gone to the snack shack on Cedar River?
+
+[8:31] Cedar Lake Cedar Lake. You mentioned their the laps. I want to know whether it's just me. And for the price, I'm also one of these guys that when the price is right, I'm like, I could believe the food the price. I don't have lobster on my menu right now because it's so darn expensive.
+
+[8:44] Oh, I haven't been this year to the place, but obviously I haven't been checking out. Yeah. But um, but either way, yeah. So uh the restaurant is insanely busy, which is awesome. Yeah.
+
+[8:52] Um, we even had a record sales day on Saturday, so that'll give you some perspective. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um lots of parties. Uh, but we're opening up two new businesses this year. Of course, the dried pasta I talked a little bit about.
+
+[9:03] Uh that's a little family business. Um, like how many pounds a day are you like how how do you measure what you're doing? How like what are the metrics? Yeah. So uh we're starting small.
+
+[9:13] So we're doing about 400 pounds a day. Um, and we're still in RD, so we haven't released a product yet. But we have the you know the boxes done and you know, the barcode stuff, and getting the state approval is kind of all made. It sucks, right? Yeah, it's a lot of it's a lot of money.
+
+[9:27] Yeah. It's a lot of money. So, like, what percentage I think people will be, I don't if you don't want to talk about it, you don't want to talk about it. What percentage of the money is the box of your cost? Not of what I'm paying, but of your cost.
+
+[9:41] What percentage is the box? Yeah, it's it's more than half. Bing ding. That's like a lot of liquor. The bottle is actually you know, the bottle is what you're paying for.
+
+[9:51] The liquid, I'll never forget. Uh I'm not gonna say who it was, but I was at a uh I happened to be at a meeting where a bunch of execs from uh a big liquor company, big one, big, right? And they were talking about this new liquor, and they were like, Well, we don't know how much it's gonna cost yet. I'm like, yeah, but don't I don't understand? It's like, you know, you know how much it costs to to make it.
+
+[10:13] They're like, oh, the the the liquid? Uh doesn't matter. It's free. You know what I mean? Compared to like the marketing and all the other hoo-ha that they're going.
+
+[10:22] I was like, damn. You know what I mean? It was just like a real eye opener, especially on the liquor side, how that some of that stuff works. I mean, some of the stuff is scarcity price, but a lot of it they get to choose. Yeah.
+
+[10:31] But for you, the box is like, you know, flour ain't that expensive. Flour and water is not that expensive. So are you buying a boatload of Durham or like, yeah. So so here's here's what we started with. Um, I tried to work with a, I'm not gonna name the company, with uh an Italian mill that's based in uh somewhere in the Midwest.
+
+[10:44] Okay. And they have their an Italian name in an Italian company. And uh we got their flour in, and it was complete garbage. And um the pasta was like tasteless. And I was like, well, I bought two pallets of this.
+
+[11:03] So for people to know how many pounds, how many, how many 50-pound sacks in a palette? Is it 50 pound sacks? 60, yeah, it's 50 pounds. I think it's 60 bags. Yeah.
+
+[11:11] Um but anyway, so we're gonna go just go back to standard General Mills for the majority of it. And you can't dump that much flour in Chester Creek. It's not that big. No. But we're gonna continue the drying testing with that flour because it, you know, it's not gonna change the the dryer itself, the process isn't gonna change much.
+
+[11:27] It's more of a flavor thing. So my impression is all the wheat, no matter where it's milled, comes from the uh the United States anyway. So presumably it's the milling that they've messed up. I don't know. Uh it's flavorless.
+
+[11:37] I mean, if you did a side by side, it's like clear as day. Yeah, but is is a hydration different? Uh yeah. Actually, this this one that said made for pasta, and that's how they talk me into it. Oh, everyone uses this.
+
+[11:47] I'm like, You didn't buy one bag first? I did, and then so I did. Yeah, I don't want to talk about that. So then I did. It's gonna get better when I get two pallets on it.
+
+[12:01] Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be way better. Yeah, but anyway, uh, so we're gonna switch to General Mills, uh, which is a consistent, fantastic product. Um, and then we're gonna start to mill in um some fresh mill product like rye and all the things we like to do. Well, it like the I'm trying to decide what the most boring part of my book is gonna be. Nastasia, you'll how many words?
+
+[12:18] Okay, okay. How many words do you think I'm shooting for for the book? Oh, I don't I can't, I don't know how to liquid intelligence with 127,000 words. Oh god, it double? No.
+
+[12:26] What am I, Kenji? No. This is like uh I'm uh I'm shooting for the same length of book. All right. Now okay.
+
+[12:34] I've written so far, the only section that's complete. You ready for how boring this is gonna be? Mushrooms. Mushrooms. Mushrooms.
+
+[12:44] I'm still missing a couple of recipes, a couple of TKs and the mushrooms. Mushrooms already clocking at about 12,000 words. It's a lot of mushroom writing. Considering that this book is not about like, it's not a lot about recipes. I'm not like, here's how to take a mushroom and turn it, you know, it's not that.
+
+[13:02] It's more just like, let's think about mushrooms. Here's some very simple tasting recipes, and let's think about the mushroom. You know what I mean? Like a lot of that. I yesterday wrote 3,500 words on BLT sandwiches.
+
+[13:19] Because they're delicious. Right? Wow. Now, forget all that. What's gonna be the most boring part?
+
+[13:25] It's gonna be this starch damage part. However, I think it's the most, it's one of the more important parts. I don't think people think about starch damage. What I, you know, what I'm guessing happened to you, like a good pasta flour, right, is a Durham semolina. Semolina is gonna have lar relatively large ish chunks, uh, and not a lot of hardcore starch damage, and definitely not a I mean, some enough, and definitely not like a lot of uh a lot of protein, but not a lot of gluten forming ability so that it actually forms right.
+
+[13:55] So was it that they had too much starch damage and it was taking in too much water, and that's why it was flavorless? You know, um we we tested both in the side by side. We kept the same hydrations for both General Mills and this other unmentionable flour. Right. Um and we extruded, and they almost looked the same when they came out.
+
+[14:12] However, when they dried, the color deepened a little bit with the general mills. And the grain was a little bit coarser with the semolina number one. So the grain was a little bit coarser. But we kept the same hydration, the tests. And the other one, the one that you hated, still extruded properly at the same hydration.
+
+[14:28] Extruded properly at the same hydration. However, the texture on the general mills was better, um, just in terms of chew, um, with the same cook time. So we actually we t we did side-by-side tests for both. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[14:41] And we just literally like everything about it. Taste, color, uh, structure, the noodle. Also, the more starch damage, the more uh enzymatic crap you're gonna have before the stuff dries out on you. You know before it dries. Yeah, and well, the the machine is actually taking a lot of tweaking to get right.
+
+[14:57] Um so it's uh it's we we run uh glycol through the collar to manage the temperature, and it's uh it has to be perfect around 90 degrees, 290 and 100 degrees to extrude properly. Well, it's southern Italian temperature. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but but basically um getting it out the dye, you're probably wasting 20 pounds to get it to the right um the right length and to come out of the dye evenly because the the way that it comes through the uh the auger, it's gonna come out of the path of lose resistance, which is the the the uh coarse in the middle, and the ones on the outside take a little bit longer.
+
+[15:33] So um you're kind of like burning a lot, and you can throw it back in, I guess, and re-extrude it, but I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think it's gonna help with cool. You know, you should sell factory seconds to to chumps. That's a great idea. Yeah, there you go.
+
+[15:45] You say, hey, chumps, you like factory seconds? Because you know I would buy that. Uh and so d do you mind talking about what kind of hydration you're shooting for? Or yeah, yeah. So right now it's way lower than I thought it would be.
+
+[15:57] Um we're about 24 or 25%. Um and I didn't think it would be that low. We at the restaurant extrude at 30%. Uh, you don't have as much force behind it, right? You know, and and for the drying purposes, this does help.
+
+[16:13] What we found is that when you tick up the hydration, it does help with the color. And I the only reason we care about the color, of course, is it's gonna go in a box with a window. And if your pasta looks all ashy and kind of white looking, people compare that to, you know, if you're gonna be in a box next to Barilla, you know, it's it's like dark, that darker yellow golden color. So that's the only thing that we're a little bit concerned about from the marketability perspective. And you never you never cheat, you never hit it with some alkali or something to yellow it up.
+
+[16:41] Should I? No. I'm just asking, like, like, you know, one of the ways to manipulate color is to cheat. You can add you can add things to it, you know, you can mess with the you can mess with the uh with the water slightly. I don't I don't even think it needs to go hyperalkaline.
+
+[16:54] I'm not talking about like yellow alkaline noodle yellow. I'm just talking like a little bit of a shift towards the basic will uh probably pop the color on it. Well, I mean, we're running the water for a filter. I mean, it's just a standard uh just standard water filter, like drinking food. Water over there is soft though, real soft.
+
+[17:10] So our water was. You know, and we we thought that could be a a a problem was the water, so we ran it through a filter and there was no flavor change and no texture change when we did that. So it to us it just kind of determined like, okay, how fast are you extruding? Because you can crank that machine up to eleven. It does go up to eleven.
+
+[17:25] Which is only for real? Yeah. Sweet. Spinal tap machine. Exactly.
+
+[17:28] So uh we found that keeping it super low at around four for the speed, you know, relative, whatever, is uh a comfortable uh kind of like rate to come out and cut. If you go too fast, I think it does it does ruin the pasta structure um a little bit, and uh it's not gonna cut properly, it turns into a mess. So you can't speed up production that fast, at least for rigatoni. It's first shape we're tasting. It's gonna be like, you know, the the flagship, you know, shape.
+
+[17:54] Yeah, Lieutani. And then we're gonna do orchiette and casterecche. Oh, orchietti, what a heartache orchetti is. But it's not gonna be the classic hand formed one, it's just it's gonna be the extruded version, which is kind of a cheat. But I told, I think I've said this on the air, I never order it ever, and I I won't allow anyone at the table to order it with me because I know it's gonna be a heartache.
+
+[18:12] I just know it's gonna be a heartache. I've had it happen to me before. It's gonna come out. It look, I love orchetti, and when it's good, it's great. But when they mess it up and they go too far on the Al Dante side and it's freaking raw in the middle, it's happened to us.
+
+[18:31] There's a restaurant, I will never go back to it. The chef is very nice. I like him. And it's been maybe 15 years since this happened, maybe 12. And you're still you're still feeling it.
+
+[18:42] I'm still feeling it. And Jen ordered the orchetti. And as soon as she ordered it, I was like, and it came, and they had like everyone else in the world, par cooked their orchetti, and then they didn't do it long enough on their finish, and it was raw. So this was hand-formed orchiette, like classic. I don't, that's it's been 12 years.
+
+[19:06] All I remember is I was like, and I was like, you know, obviously, you don't second if your wife doesn't like it, she doesn't like it, she doesn't want it, right? But I was like, let me try one. And so, you know, not double second guessing her, but straight up, she was straight up right. Stuff was wrong. And uh, and then I was like, and I had to get the server over, and then they argued with us.
+
+[19:29] Oh no. Yeah. Bad move. Yeah. You don't know, yeah, that's them telling you you you're right.
+
+[19:29] Yeah. Who cares even? Who cares? Turn it to freaking mush. Because if she took it back to the to whoever was cooking, right, they would have tasted it because they'd be angry at us.
+
+[19:45] They would have tasted it. It was pre-COVID. And then and then, like, you know, they would have been like, oh, my bad. Oh, snap. You know what I mean?
+
+[19:55] All of our servers at the restaurant can are more than welcome to come back and throw food in my face. More than welcome. I mean, I don't know. Well, so what we're gonna do at we're also opening up a gigantic market in Old Saybrook. So we leased the space on Main Street in Old Saybrook.
+
+[20:11] Um, and uh we're gonna do an Italian-style market, prepared food, all that all that fun stuff. Um, and then we're gonna have like a live pasta making situation for people to come in and view. What's real excited about? So with that, you know You're not gonna use a guitar though. I know you hate the guitar.
+
+[20:27] We might. You hate the guitar. You've told me you hated the guitar. We might, but listen, the only reason I don't like the the guitar is that because it does make a really thick dense noodle, depending on on your life. I've been called that many times.
+
+[20:41] A thick dense noodle. Yeah, you know, in my family, there is a it there's a a saying that I can't find in English. He's a macaroni with no hole. Okay. That's like an insult.
+
+[20:52] It's like the opp it's like it's like the opposite of like he's a long drink of water. It's like he's a macaroni with no hole. Don't understand it. It's like it's up there with boss of the toilet. Nobody knows really where it came from.
+
+[21:05] Well, I've never heard of that. She's the boss. She's the boss of the toilet. That's what that like does that mean you occupy it longer? No, it just means that she's not the boss of anything.
+
+[21:14] She's what? She's the boss of the toilet. Oh, I'm not sure. You know what I mean? I get it.
+
+[21:18] Oh. Yeah. All right. I don't think I'll use that anytime soon. But Macaroni with no hole you should.
+
+[21:23] Well, the one you should use. This can if I'm using a direct quote, uh, can I use the sugar honey ice T word? You're the one that has the issue with the curse word. So you t are you asking? You can bleed me.
+
+[21:36] You bleep me. Ready? You can bleep me. So in my family, any sort of thing like if himself like that. And like, and it took me a while to say what that what does that mean?
+
+[21:47] It means the eh, if if if if if this if that's if this is pfft, you know what I mean? Just do it. You know what I'm saying? That sounds family friendly, though. It's a good way to do it.
+
+[21:56] Sayings from my the Boston boss the Boston Boston Italian side of my family. Anyway, Macaroni with no. Yeah, if it's a family saying, it doesn't count as a curse. Is that true? Those are the rules.
+
+[22:08] Those are the rules. I just made it up, but those are the rules. All right. So uh all right, so you're gonna do some live pasta. Wait, where are you building, where are you making all this dang stuff?
+
+[22:16] There's no room in Chester. Old Saybrook. Oh, your factory is an old Saybrook. No, that's in Guilford. Guilford, jeez.
+
+[22:23] Yeah, we're opening up two businesses this year. What are you taking over from Guilford is a town like on the other side of the highway. So you got like you have a highway, and on one side you have like Madison and the fancy weasels, and on the other side you have Guilford and the Guilford folk. And what Guilford has is Bishop's Orchard Orchards, which is like an old school pick your own joint. Uh are you taking over from then?
+
+[22:44] Do you chop down a bunch of apple trees and uh put your pasta there? No, we just we leased a little warehouse just for the manufacturing. But eventually we'll move it to a bigger space. So it was kind of just our get going kind of thing. But the the yeah, the big it's I'm right on Main Street on um in Old Saybrook.
+
+[22:58] So 7,000 square feet. No, cool. Uh and uh what about your experiments with uh drying? How's that been? That sounds like a pain in the butt.
+
+[22:59] Oh god. Uh not so much the process, the process is fun. The dryer itself has been a pain in the ass. So what size? Like you're not you don't have like a travel year size like no, it's it holds 50 trays, which it the max on it is supposed to be 500 pounds um of product.
+
+[23:22] Um but that's what it says the max is per month. And what's your cycle time per batch on that? You know, uh if you do 10 trays, it's eight hours. If you do the full bit, it takes 12 hours, maybe 15. It depends on the shape, it depends how fast you want to dry it.
+
+[23:37] Um slower drying does help. You dry too fast, your noodle cracks. We figured that out pretty quick. So you almost have to run full batches to get the machine to work correctly, um, which is why it takes so much flour and waste and throwing it out and all that stuff. Yeah, hard to do in small uh it can.
+
+[23:52] You need to do the real thing every single time. Yeah. So but uh, but yeah, so we basically have to get a moisture meter um and then take you crack it up in this little dealydo thing, it grinds it for you, and then you take the moisture meters from 15 to 20 percent you're shooting for. And what we found was that um when you when you go for the the dry, it goes through cycles and it has to be programmed. You know, it's on and off the the direction of the fan changes and events only when the humidity, the relative humidity gets to a certain point, and it goes in these stages, and it won't go to the next phase until the the humidity goes down.
+
+[24:25] So the heaters kick on, all this kind of stuff. The problem that we ran into was of no fault of our own. Um, but uh basically it wasn't uh wired correctly. They put a transformer on it that shouldn't have been there, and the thing blew up and almost got on fire. So that was cool.
+
+[24:39] Uh so then we had to be shipped new fans, installed, and poor Emilio had to deal with a bunch of yelling over the phone to Italy of why did you do this? All that kind of stuff. So, but now we're good. Now we're operational. Uh all right, listen, Quinn who wrote an ice cream book, Q Dragon, is gonna call in in a couple of minutes.
+
+[24:57] So let's, John, why don't you read some some questions there? All right. First, we got Jake, excuse me, Jake Nancaro. Hi, Dave and crew. I really enjoyed your YouTube video of the carbonation setup, especially interesting aspects of your kitchen.
+
+[25:10] You're the only one. I loved it. I'm an architect and I've designed plenty of kitchens, but mostly focused on aesthetics rather than pure function. I'm looking at redoing my own kitchen and wondering if you have j any general suggestions, tips, and tricks. Well, it's interesting that an architect uh asked because everything that I want, every architect would hate.
+
+[25:27] Like, in order to make a kitchen truly functional, and even like the the issue is this you want as many things out in the open as possible because you want things to be fast. And like, so I want I have my pants hanging in close proximity to my range. I have a bunch of stainless steel bowls, they're stacked. I have like my implements are on the counter because I don't want to go into a closet to get my kitchen aid to bring it out, to put it, to use it. So every one of those basic moves is complete anathema to most uh architects.
+
+[26:07] Um but I find that if something isn't to hand, then you just don't end up using it in a home environment. And a restaurant's a little bit different because you can just tell someone they have to use it and put it away, right? I mean, like that's because it's it's a job. But at home, that's just not the way it works. If it's not out, you know, it's not easy, you're not you're not gonna use it.
+
+[26:28] Some things I think that people could get from restaurants at home, speed rack. Oh my God. Having a speed rack at home, like a half, a half uh like a like a full sheet tray, half height rack under counter. I mean, it's not the prettiest thing, but I mean, oh my God, when you're doing like Christmas cookies and whatnot, or whatever your equivalent of Christmas cookies is, and you're like, and you can cool them off and then like throw them in the oven. You can like stage them out, money.
+
+[26:53] Also, like if you need to in a pinch, you can spread stack your sheets so that you have a big empty space and you can just dump your dirties in as they come in while you're cycling through your dishwasher. But I didn't say you should do that. But you can. Can I tell a quick dishwasher story? Sure.
+
+[27:07] So actually put in a commercial dishwasher in my new house. Oh my goodness. Terrible idea. Because it takes so much electricity? No.
+
+[27:14] Why? Uh, because well, the tank's got to heat up every single time you turn it on. But I bought a bar one. My wife is not happy. Um in fact uh named it the LPS, the little piece of shit.
+
+[27:24] Wow. Um she hates it. So it's it's a good party story now. Well, my dream, which doesn't exist. Oh, you got Queen Call of the Hugo.
+
+[27:31] My dream, which doesn't exist is the is a home machine, a home washing machine with a uh with a supplemental boiler so that you could flip it into I need this cooked, I need this done fast mode. Because you know what I mean? So you like, so you could be like, yes, I'll do my two hour Bosch silent blah blah blah blah blah blah, you know, eco friendly thing, or I need these things done in the next five minutes. Because we don't need two two and a half minute or one and a half minute cycles at home. We don't need that.
+
+[28:00] But like a five or 10 minute cycle, even like a 15-minute cycle that was real on your home uh dishwasher would be free game, game changing. Well, well, that's that was the intention. I saw I sold it to her. I said, How would you like to wash dishes in two minutes? And she goes, Why?
+
+[28:16] I just load the thing up, and then when it's full, I hit on and then I walk away. I said, But you know, what if we have like company over? Don't you just want to be able to bang out a bunch of dishes and do this? And she says, No, you're gonna do the dishes. Wow.
+
+[28:29] So I lost. So now we're going to buy a brand new dishwasher. I lost. Yeah. So I don't know.
+
+[28:34] Now I have a bar dishwasher. I don't know what I'm gonna do. When you're installing a dishwasher, people, do not uh do not, do not not, do not not pay attention to the drain line recommendations. If you push your drain line further than they tell you you're supposed to, especially those just stupid crinkly things that come out. Ruin the pump, and you're gonna get backed up, and then it's just what a heartache.
+
+[29:00] You're constantly gonna be going in there and like just you know what? Just design your kitchen so that you did the dishwasher can drain properly. That's that's a piece of advice from me to you, and also, of course, foot pedals. I mean, duh, foot pedals and good ventilation. Foot pedals, good ventilation.
+
+[29:15] Uh, anyone who's ever had the foot pedals is like, they'd be like, I don't need a foot pedal. Then they come and they use the foot pedal, they're like, I need a foot pedal. Same with the Japanese toilet seat. Everyone who's used it, everyone's like, I don't know who needs it. Who wants to get sprayed in the butt with it?
+
+[29:29] And then they use it like I want to get sprayed in the butt. Everyone. Everyone. Quinn, welcome. Can you hear me?
+
+[29:37] Yes, hello. Hey, good to hear your voice. Long time. How's it going? I saw I uh thank you.
+
+[29:42] So now, uh, so Quinn, you have a new uh you have a new gelato book out. Give me the title again. Uh Gelato Obsession. There's a gelato obsession. And by the way, I appreciate on the cover, there's a Searsol on the cover.
+
+[29:55] I appreciate the uh I appreciate the push out. That's very nice. And it's people, you download it. It's only, I think it was five bucks, right? What was it?
+
+[30:06] Yeah, five dollars. Five dollars. That's the price. Yeah, five dollars. Uh and uh where do they get it?
+
+[30:13] Uh they can go to gelatoobsession.com. That's all one word, and that will redirect you to the uh purchase page on my website. All right, yeah, and it's it's a five dollar investment. And I I read it uh and I very, very highly researched, some but some interesting. So, first of all, like uh, you know, typically when you read uh a gelato or an ice cream book, at least old ones, right?
+
+[30:40] I mean, because remember I came up with the R Buckle, which was like R Buckle Ice Cream, which is now uh I forget who does that book now, but it's uh uh the it's currently being by that famous dairy person out of the University of Guelph. Uh is that how you pronounce that? Guelph? Is that Guelph? Is that right?
+
+[30:55] Is that how you pronounce that Canadian town? Yeah, yeah, Guelph. Yep, uh, yep. Uh Queen Quinn, what's the name of that book uh the book? What is that called now?
+
+[31:01] Is it still just called ice cream that book? Uh I'm not sure about that. Uh I think so. Anyway, but what's interesting is is that uh you've done a like a it's a very highly technical book. However, it is focused on using home equipment and is focused on using uh you you you did all the recipes to be dipped directly out of a minus 20 slash minus four Fahrenheit freezer.
+
+[31:33] So to have it be at dipping temperature directly out of a home freezer. And to me, that was like the biggest, like, what? And so, like, why don't you talk a little bit about that choice to not temper the ice cream? And two, I'm curious whether or not you're having issues with um with meltdown rate. Does it melt more quickly?
+
+[31:50] I mean, it's it's gelato, it's not ice cream, so it's very highly stabilized. And does that mean that it's fine to have something that is uh meant to be served directly out of the freezer? Why don't you why don't you tell me your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I would say, I mean, I I hope it like timed it, it probably does melt a little faster. But obviously, I think the ideal for most gelato, anyways, is you serve a small portion to you know whoever's having it, and then you eat it quickly, and then if you want more, you go get more.
+
+[32:25] But I just thought, you know, how many people are going to put the gelato on the counter or maybe in the fridge, forget about it, and the top layer melts, and they try and serve it, and they put it back in the freezer, and then you get degradation really quickly. No, good point. I figure let's let's let's try and make it again. Some of the recipes do need like a little bit of tempering, but I tried to minimize it as much as possible. Yeah, and and so by and large, they're they're all fairly highly stabilized.
+
+[33:05] It looks like it you you mo a lot of them or most of them contain LBG Xanthan as the base as the base uh thickening units. Um that's gotta also help with the meltdown, though, right? Yeah, I guess a little bit. Again, some of them also, like the fruit based ones, anything with a high sort of additional water containing ingredient, I also hit it with a little bit of uh gelatin. Yeah, and with your acidic ones, you hit them with a little bit of citrate, and that really helps a lot with the anti-curdling, or is it I mean, I noticed you said that you don't mind a little bit of micro curdling in your in your recipes, and but the one you said that you seem to get the most problems out of was the grapefruit, right?
+
+[33:45] Yeah, again, the grapefruit one has the most straight up citrus juice. Um, and again, I think when I tested it, it did again sort of micro curdle. I was remembering uh your explanation of micro curdling from the milk syrup and a liquid intelligence. And so again, when I did the final blend with the citrate as well, it came out, you know, totally smooth. Let me ask you a question about because I've never added the citrate to try to fix it.
+
+[34:19] But um one of the problems that I've had with uh citrus based, like a lemon uh ice cream. I've never tried it with the gelato, but with like an ice cream base is that you churn it and it's fine, but then if you try to hold it for a day or two, it starts getting real kind of grainy sandy. Did you have that problem with that? Or does the citrate really help with that too? Again, I didn't notice that.
+
+[34:42] And again, when I'm using strong citrus, like lemon lime, uh that recipe within the book is way more about the zest flavor, and then there's only a little bit of juice. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and the zest isn't gonna cause any uh any kind of those uh curdling issues. Do you have any with this?
+
+[35:03] The other thing I was a question with the stabilization is that you're a big fan, as you know, uh a lot of people are, of uh milk powder, right? You're using it both for the lactose as a as a s sweetening thing, and I guess also to just uh bulk up the solids content. But do you have you had any problems with the the old technical literature said if your lactose level goes too high, it comes out of solution during freezing and becomes sandy. Did the and they they call it sandiness, right? So did you have any issues with that with the milk powder or does the stabilization also help with that?
+
+[35:34] Uh I've only had issues with that in the recipes where I incorporated um toasted milk powder. I have a few the brown and butter recipe, the caramel recipe, and the apple pie. If you sort of so the technique involves pressure cooking milk powder in a jar to toast it. And if you go too far it can stay a little sandy. Um but with regular milk powder, again I would say I use it somewhat conservatively for some recipes.
+
+[36:13] So I I never found too much uh texture issues with that. Yeah the uh the other thing that was fun about it is that for you know you never see this for you know uh a a book intended to be for home. By the way the ice cream machine you use is a typical like you freeze the bowl in the freezer and you do it. So you're talking about probably for like really I was thinking was sixty dollars like eight years ago. Yeah you said that's what you said in the book 60 bucks.
+
+[36:42] I mean the issue with those always for me is that they have a long batch time like 30 minutes, but I would guess the stabilizers are kind of helpful so that you don't get giant crystals, even though your batch time is so long, right? Is that the theory? Is that one of the reasons why you did gelato? That's no, that's definitely I also pretty chill. I I bring all the bases to close to zero Celsius before the churn.
+
+[37:07] So how fast? What are your batch times looking like on that machine? Uh 1520. Oh, that's that's not bad. I mean, it's better than 2030.
+
+[37:15] 1520 is a lot better than 2030. Yeah. Now now listen, which somebody should do is donate to you like a countertop professional machine so that you can test it in the in the in the other things. In fact, we have a question. You want to talk about your ice cream question there, John?
+
+[37:33] Yeah, from Brady, excuse me, from Brady Vickers. Are there any worthy worthy alternatives to the Carpaggiani LB100 that run on 120 volt power or maybe other approaches in a home environment that could result in pro-level product? It depends on how much money you have. I mean, all those professional level machines are over four grand, right? A Carpajani LB100, which I thought was 120, but at looking it up, I guess it was 220 back.
+
+[37:57] We had 220 plugs at the school back when I used it. We used to use Taylors and we used uh the Carpagani LB100, which I think they re-released. I think they stopped making it for a while and they re-released it. Fantastic machines. Uh four quarts, I think, right?
+
+[38:09] And four, something like that, four quarts. And uh they're great. They're nine grand. So, like, you know, if you're if you're rich, you know, if you have nothing but money bleeding out of your ears, then yeah, go get one. And Carpagiani makes a 500 mil batch called freeze and go, which sounds like really pleasant because it's a little, it's a countertop machine.
+
+[38:31] It's got a like an eight or nine minute batch time, and you know, it's awesome, vertical, which is nice. It's four and a half grand. You know what I mean? So it's like, how much money do you have? You can get Emery Thompson, which is the American one that's been around since 1909.
+
+[38:44] Some people love it. I've never used one for like four grand, you can get a vertical countertop two-quart that plugs into a 110 is air cooled. You know, but uh it's a many thousand dollar problem. And you know, to get the same batch time as what Quinn's getting, the only alternative really that some semi pro people use in professional restaurants is the is the is the musso or the lello, which you're talking about like a uh $700 problem. You can get it from like JB Prince, and that's like eight levels above the like standalone compressor thing that like Queas and Art would come out with, but it's still not like Carpegani level, right?
+
+[39:21] I mean, let's you gotta be clear with yourself that that's not gonna happen, right? The the energetics are kind of unfavorable, they have very good compressors, and they're they're heavy. Like the the carpet, the LB100 weighs, I think 250, 300 pounds. You know what I mean? And like uh even like the smaller two-quart Emery Thompson, and Taylor also does make a 110 unit that is just almost the size of the LB 100.
+
+[39:45] But again, none of the chefs I know who've used both Taylor and Carpagani. Taylor's fine, but they don't like it as much. And if you're gonna be spending four grand, do you really want to spend something on something that's you don't like quite as much, you know? Uh problematic. Uh, but anyway, I think someone, you know, Quinn should get you just one of these kind of machines so that you can test the difference and just be like, you know, because you've done all this work with with uh, you know, a certain kind of machine.
+
+[40:09] Wouldn't it be fun to have, you know, the uh the hyper fancy machine just to see how the recipe differs or how the texture is different? I mean it yeah, it would definitely be fun. I would worry about having that kind of machine permanently, because I mean I'm still developing new flavors and new recipes. And I mean, I would never want a recipe that only works on those really fancy machines. That's fair.
+
+[40:39] And also if you're if you're if your goal is to write smaller batch recipes, you actually are probably, and Carpigani makes one, uh Coldolite makes one, uh Taylor maybe Emory Thompson definitely makes one. Uh the smaller batch machines, even though they're commercial quality in terms of their speed, they're much smaller batch sizes. For a restaurant, the LB 100 was you know, for for like a 60, 70 seat restaurant, the LB100 was great because it was, you know, you you'd you'd spin a flavor and it's and it's you know, that's the right amount. You're not having to put like 8,000 batches of each flavor through the thing. Like, like that's the reason if I don't know if you've ever had a Paco Jetter equivalent, Quinn, but like the Paco Jet, you know, people would have like a bunch of Paco Jet containers, and then uh Neemox, an Italian, I think it was Nemox, Italian version of it made an even smaller one, and they were tiny and you had to sit there spinning all day, and it was kind of a nightmare.
+
+[41:30] So the LB 100 is a sweet spot for restaurants, but it's real overkill for home. Real overkill. You know what you can do at home, people rent a real soft surf machine. Just I'm s I'm serious. Rent a soft surf machine.
+
+[41:43] Uh you need uh 220 plug and uh it's gonna be water cooled. So what you need to do is you need to hook a garden hose up to it. Put it outside, hook a garden hose. This is what I did. I hooked a garden hose up, I found one on the street, and I wheeled it home.
+
+[41:58] It's nine nine hundred pounds, and I hooked a garden hose up to it into my bathtub to do the water cooling. And that is quite a party. A soft surf party is a party, a real party. And and I messed uh this is one of the first ice cream things I'd ever done. It was before I was working at the French culinary.
+
+[42:17] And uh I I had never made that much creme en glaze in my life. I'd never tried to make five gallons of creme en glaze. And you know what you should never ever do? Go from only ever having made uh uh like a quart of creme en glaze to then trying to make gallons in one shot because what you're gonna see is just cooked eggs, just float right to the top of your creme en glaze. And you can't uncook those eggs.
+
+[42:45] And I'm no Heston Blumenthal. So I wasn't like, I meant to do that. You know what I mean? With his scrambled egg ice cream that he's famous for. Uh, it sucked.
+
+[42:54] So I ended up driving to the Bronx, driving to the Mr. Softy uh warehouse and just walking up like I was a Mr. Softy truck. What are you doing? Who who are you?
+
+[43:06] I'm like, I have a soft serve machine, I just want to throw a potty, Mr. Softy, I love Mr. Softy. Can I buy it? He's like, I'm okay.
+
+[43:13] And he sold me like a couple of crates of Mr. Softy. What a party. That's a good way to do a party. But you know, if you don't have thousands of dollars and a lot of countertop space, I you know what's really fun?
+
+[43:23] And Quinn, I'm surprised that you didn't uh try this. The old ice uh and salt machines are fantastic. And in thrift stores, if you can get someone to go search for it for it, um find them, you can find rival. So, like the the the classic uh homemade ice cream machine is White Mountain. White Mountain has wooden dashers on it, and it's old and classic, and I I like it, the hand crank.
+
+[43:46] The Rival from like the 80s has like a much better fitting plastic dasher system. And so I found that the ice cream I got out of my $2 thrift store rival with the uh with the motor on it, uh, ice and salt, because you can you can cheat and add more salt than you're supposed to and get very fast batch times. And if the dasher's just right, you can get extraordinary ice cream out of one of uh those things, but they are messy. I do in fact know a restaurant that actually does that because when I was a pastry cook, I don't know, f uh uh 12 years ago, that's how I made ice cream. In the in uh in the restaurant.
+
+[44:22] Yeah, in a ri in one of those salt and ice rival things. Yeah. What a pain in the ass. They worked though. Those old rivals.
+
+[44:28] I liked it better than the White Mountain. The White Mountain is the is the marquee brand, and I thought the rival was much better ice cream. Yeah. He still uses it 12 years later. You know what you do with the rival, right?
+
+[44:38] The it's so funny. The way that the the I love this kind of design slash hate, right? So the the way it runs is they're like, uh it's done when the motor stalls. You're like, what? It's like you keep putting stuff in, and then you're supposed to wait for the motor to be like and then you stop, right?
+
+[44:57] Crazy. I could never get it at the front, because we'd be doing it in August, you know. No. And like you put it in the sink in the kitchen and just sweating everywhere. It's just you would get half ice cream out of it.
+
+[45:06] I think he's he's dialed it in by now. But I remember I remember struggling with it. It's such a mess. And then you and then you're supposed to pull the motor off and then pack more salt and ice on it and then like cover it with a whole bunch of towels and let it harden in the in the Well, what happened is you get like you put the ice in with the salt, and then that layer between the, you know, the the the bucket and where the salt and the ice is, it starts to melt. So you don't get full contact with it.
+
+[45:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's never like enough. So I don't know. Well that's why you're supposed to crack it, but who's got the energy to sit there and beat all of that ice and your hands are freezing? I enjoy it.
+
+[45:38] I I honestly I miss that rival. I wish I had never gotten rid of it. I wish I had never bought the White Mountain. But Quinn, but you could play with those. Those are fun.
+
+[45:45] Uh I to do a couple times. It sounds awful, to be honest. But like you can get a fast freeze time out of it. I'm just saying. When I need an ice machine or lots of bags of ice.
+
+[45:57] Oh, yeah. No, it's a definitely like a two five-pound bag of ice situation. You know what I mean? Um, anyways. So what's your what's your what's your favorite recipe?
+
+[46:05] Why don't you choose one of the recipes that you want to uh focus on and and uh Quinn and let us let us know. I know it's like choosing it's like choosing uh which one is most instructive for people for you to talk about, not your favorite. Which one do you think is most instructive to uh discuss with people? How about that? That's a better way to put it.
+
+[46:22] Okay, I well, or I'm gonna, I'm gonna say two. Okay. I think the berries and yogurt is I think it's my favorite from a technique perspective, because the recipe is 50% fresh fruit. And I mean, I don't know how many other fruit-based you know, ice cream recipe are gonna pack in that much fruit content, but then still achieve a good texture. Um and just to be clear before you say like in the book, you're very clear that this recipe is not a frozen yogurt, it is a gelato that contains some yogurt.
+
+[47:07] Yes. And perhaps sugar than standard uh frozen desserts, and this is not that. Yeah. So and uh so how do you so what does the yogurt do to help you achieve the texture and allow you to have the high fruit uh base? We're gonna call for a Greek yogurt, so it's strained.
+
+[47:35] I make my own, of course, because I'm like that. Um again, that is incorporating a lot of protein without you know having to worry about dissolving a bunch of milk powder. Right. And do you have a lot of things? You have do you have a lot of problems with the milk powder dissolving?
+
+[47:56] Is that why you like you often preheat half of your I I mean, I know you're preheating half of it because you're using LBG, which needs to be heated to to get in, but is that also help with the milk powder? Well, again, most of the recipes you heat the entire thing, specifically with the fruit flavor. I keep half of it real because I want half to taste raw of the fruit, uh, specifically. So again, there's a pretty small amount of like actual liquid that you're cooking. So I just didn't want to risk you know, the milk powder not dissolving, but in general it's fine.
+
+[48:38] And uh that flavor in particular. Right. What's the what what's the uh what's the other recipe you wanted to highlight? I would say that the first recipe, which is the dark chocolate. Yeah, now you gotta refresh me.
+
+[48:51] It's zero cream, all the extra fat comes from the chocolate, and presumably that's to not mask as much of the chocolate flavor, correct? Yeah, and again, I think I I you know, I just it play was the most iterations to get the flavor dialed in. And I'm just you know, really happy with it. I like that you know, there's a full tenable or you know, different percentages of dark chocolate. I think it demonstrates balancing flavor well.
+
+[49:28] And you know, I'm just really happy with how it turns out. Like speaking of chocolate, maximizing chocolate flavor. I know it's not part of the book because you didn't do this, but I love chocolate sorbet, like super intensely chocolate sorbet. Remember? Well, I I would say I would say that, you know, my recipe is basically a chocolate sorbet.
+
+[49:46] I mean, again, the base liquid is milk, but like you don't taste milk. Let me tell you. Is it is it quin, is it kind of like fudshickle flavor? No, it's dark chocolate. Oh, that's good because I hate fudge chickle flavor.
+
+[50:02] I mean you hate cocoa, but yeah, cocoa powder like flavors. No, it's chocolate. Yeah, he's awesome. I don't I I don't I don't use any chocolate powder in the book. Yeah, plus the texture of do you also hate brownies that are mixed half chocolate, half cocoa powder?
+
+[50:17] No. You just don't like it in an ice cream situation. No, because I just have I don't know, I don't like fudgeles. All right. You're allowed to hit a fudgical Joe, it's fine.
+
+[50:25] It's fine, man. I just I was just curious. Ain't nobody judging you except for I Joe's judging over there. I just I don't know what Joe's fudgical. That's good.
+
+[50:34] Well, I want to try that now. Yeah. Well, you know what? The book's only five bucks. I'm gonna get it.
+
+[50:39] Yeah. Uh the oh yeah, I have another question. Oh, the other interesting thing about the book is that it's uh a lot of it's tabulated, which I appreciate. You want to talk about uh uh anti-freeze power, and so like all of his you know, all of your recipes, Quinn, you're like, you're just you're you're basically saying this ingredient has this much anti-freeze power, this much anti-freeze power, and then you tally it and you're shooting for a specific number because that's what's gonna give you your the right texture out of the freezer, right? So you're like, this many units of alcohol has this much anti-freeze power, this many units of lactose, you know, uh, you know, you talk you also interesting is that you know, back when I was hanging out with pastry chefs all the time, it was all syrups and trimaline and invert and stuff like this.
+
+[51:21] And you're like, to hell with that, it's easier just to use the straight dextrose powder, which interesting. I never even thought about that way, but it's true. If you want a whole bunch of monosaccharide that's not that sweet, why not just buy the powder? You want to talk about AFP and uh dextrose? Yeah, I mean, I think it's that's the real key.
+
+[51:38] Like again, even if you were prepping this for a professional setting where it's going to be served warmer, you still need a lot of extra anti-freezing power compared to using um, you know, just plain sucrose. And I think it's really easy to get, it's really cheap. Um, I sort of introduced it a little bit in chapter two, but then I would say if you go to the end of the book, chapter 13 and the appendix, that is sort of the culmination of explaining how the different types of sugar can interact when making a recipe. And I just think it's you know, it's the key ingredient, sort of for making you know a very serviceable frozen dessert. Uh is uh has anyone else like uh has anyone else just like tabulated their recipes with like this kind of additive like AFP anti-freezing properties?
+
+[52:42] Or is that is that is that your innovation or actually I uh no I thought that in uh really old school uh gelato senza grata by Angelo Carvito, which is a pretty old school but relatively you know influential gelato book. Yeah. Cool. And they they tabulated that. Well, some of their numbers, like I say, are crazy.
+
+[53:09] Well, like uh like what what what do they get wrong most? Well, they they they say honey one for one has the same properties as a dry dextrose. Yeah, that's not that's that's incorrect. Uh for those for those of you that don't know kind of what we're talking about, I'll give you the I'll give you some shorthand, right? So sucrose is a uh is a disaccharide.
+
+[53:38] It's got two monosaccharides in it. You got your glucose and and your fructose linked up into a sucrose, right? Now, uh glucose, if you break it up glucose, uh less sweet than sucrose on a gram per gram basis. Fructose, the sweetness is dependent on the temperature which it served, but it's higher than than it. Now here's here on a gram per gram, gram per gram basis.
+
+[54:00] But here's the thing. Remember, sucrose weighs roughly twice on a on a molecule basis. It weighs roughly twice what either dextrose or fructose weigh, right? And colligative properties, if you guys remember from chemistry, your colligative properties, right? The temperature, the freezing point depression depends not on how many grams of something you put into solution.
+
+[54:25] It's how many molecules you put into solution. So if you're using uh dextrose, which has roughly twice as many molecules in it per uh gram as sucrose does, and yet is less sweet, right? You get a lot of freezing point depression without making a lot sweeter. Quinn, am I uh am I on the right track there? Yeah, and I would say one more thing that I would like to point out in the book that uh I'm quite proud of and took a lot of time, is that for all natural sources of sugar, so honey, all the fruits, um, both in the recipe and at the back of the book, I do give a estimated, calculated sweetness and AFP based on average composition of sucrose, glucose, and fructose.
+
+[55:20] I mean, average is the best, average is the best you can do. It's the best you can do. All right, let's uh let's uh let's keep all of our brains together here. And John, do we have any more questions we have to get to today? Because we're we're about to run out.
+
+[55:31] Nope, not from Pitrium. No? Anything else that's apropos from the uh other list? And while we're waiting, I'm looking out here at the hot dog cart that's outside of our of our window. What is this cheese pretzel?
+
+[55:43] When did this happen? That's not a thing. Cheese pretzel? What is that? It's like instead of a pretzel, it's like a New York pretzel, but someone who didn't understand what a pretzel was looked at it and was like, hey, how about we take the salt off of it and just put some garbage cheese on it?
+
+[55:57] I feel like I've seen that in restaurant depot in the freezer section. Really? Yeah. Doesn't look like a good one. Well, it finally caught on.
+
+[56:04] Yeah? All right. So you have no more questions. We can just get, we can just have uh these guys say that they're their last pitches for the uh for the thing. Yep.
+
+[56:13] All right. Who's gonna go first? Quinn, you want to get give them the pitch for the book. It's only five dollars, people. Self-published.
+
+[56:14] Yeah, it's uh five dollars. You have 27 flavors. Uh, but within that, there's probably more recipes or variations, uh, as well as two chapters of information and one chapter on how to make your own flavor. Well, it's definitely, it's definitely five dollars worth of, it's more than five dollars. It's definitely worth the five dollars in terms of the information and the research uh that you uh put into it.
+
+[56:49] And kudos to anyone who's gonna put the time in to go do uh a self self published thing. So uh and uh they're gonna they're supposed to go to gelato uh obsession.com, and uh that's where they it links off to to to get it and it it comes in a in a in a PDF format, right? Yep, it's just you get a brief you purchase it and you get a an email to download it. It's all DRM free, so it's just uh a simple PDF once you buy it. But yeah.
+
+[57:18] There you go. See, he's not even he's not even trying to beat you over the head and not let you use it across all your platforms. And no trees were murdered in the making of this book. So there you go. You know what I mean?
+
+[57:27] Although, although there is there is a print version on the way. Well, you know. Well, that'll come. You know, kill kill a tree, save a tree farmer. You know what I mean?
+
+[57:35] Uh all right. Well, uh, Quinn, thanks so much for uh for coming on. Joel, what do you got for us? What's your what's your last licks? So um soon to hit store shelves.
+
+[57:44] I don't know where, but maybe maybe just Connecticut to start. Gargano Pasta, the family brand, family owned, family operator. Yeah. It's gonna have so it's gonna be family owned. Oh, yeah, it's gonna be one of those.
+
+[57:54] But it's gonna say it on it. Oh, yeah. All that stuff? Uh on the bottom, it's gonna say the Gargano family. Gargano, hey.
+
+[58:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, which I've never heard you say, which would be funny if you started. By the way, you're so old school. I know you were here a lot, but you're so old school, like Connecticut. Like you worked, didn't you used to work?
+
+[58:12] Where did you work in New Haven? It wasn't Leon's, right? Way back in the house. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I worked at like a corporate corporate kitchen in New Haven.
+
+[58:19] But my family owned a bakery in Brantford. And we made all the cannolis and the and the like. Yeah. Nice. Yeah.
+
+[58:24] Nice. Old school. Old school Connecticut. All righty. Uh Quinn, Joel, thanks.
+
+[58:29] See you guys next week. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from News Fan Studios at Rockefeller Center. Call in all of your questions live. If you're listening on Patreon to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
+
+[0:27] Joined in the usual, as usual in the studio with uh Anastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good. We got John. Hello.
+
+[0:34] Yeah? Yeah? Hi. We got here in our New York booth, we got Joe Hazen. What's up?
+
+[0:38] Hey, how are you guys? And for the first time, we're live from Mexico City. We got Jackie Molecules in Mexico City. How you doing? Yeah, what's up?
+
+[0:48] You sound like you're in Mexico City. Do I really? You sound like you're in. You sound like sound like you're in uh the uh container in the back of a bird is actually. Maybe the chair things are not so similar.
+
+[1:06] What it sounds like is it sounds like you're locked in a bathroom is what it sounds like. No, I'm not in the bathroom. I'm actually on a balcony right now in Roma, North Bird. That's where Claire lives. Yeah.
+
+[1:18] Yeah. For those of you that uh don't know, uh haven't listened to the entire oppressive back catalog of cooking issues. Claire, you might remember her as uh the wedding officiant from a couple of seasons back, and uh also uh the first person who called in a question to the show about working her vegetti. Oh my god, wow. Remember?
+
+[1:46] She did. The Vigetti Chronicles. Uh that went on and on. Yeah. Now, now for the again, uh I'm not talking out of turn here.
+
+[1:55] She legitimately called in, and I don't know why. She was interested in spiralizing all of her vegetables. Spiralizing wasn't a term yet at that time. So everything, everybody referred to that, you know, style of zucchini string as uh uh the by the brand name, Vegetti. And so she legitimately called and asked what kinds of things she could stick into her vegetti, and of course hilarity ensued.
+
+[2:19] Now, Nastasia did she actually not know what she was doing. No, no, she didn't. She didn't. Yeah. I don't buy that.
+
+[2:28] You'll you'll ask her in person. We gotta do that. You know, we since since we've downloaded the entire back catalog, we should just do like a we should just do like all like the the vegetti chronicles as like a little thing for the Patreon people, just like you know, gather the vegetti chronicles into one. We should just gather all of the clair into one thing. We should just take people's guests like favorite punching bag Peter Kim moments.
+
+[2:51] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll have like we'll have like uh like guest reels for the people that came on, you know, more than once and had kind of ongoing thingamajigs. Done. Yeah.
+
+[3:01] Nastasia's sister only came on once, and I was like she was so uh, what's it called, traumatized by uh she remember she was supposed Nastasia's sister was supposed to do dump meals, right? She was supposed to make a dump meal from that dump meal book. That was another thing we used to talk about, people, these dump meals, because the idea of a dump meal just as a as a verbal thing, it just doesn't sound good. You know what I mean? Yeah, horrible, horrible, horrible, huh?
+
+[3:24] Dump. Hey, you know, you that's what you do like way after the meal. You have the meal, then later on you do the dump. You know what I mean? It's like it's like if you look.
+
+[3:35] Hey, one pot meal. Sounds great, right? That's like everyone, oh, Instapot. It happens instantly, which it does not, right? All that stuff sounds great.
+
+[3:42] Dump meal, dump. Anyway. I want to listen to the wine, the wine episode. I want to see how progressively drunk we got. I've never I didn't listen to it.
+
+[3:51] And of course, it made some people angry. Yeah, and it made some people happy. So I really want to know. Yeah, I think really. Wow.
+
+[4:01] Yeah. So again, sorry, a little inside baseball. What happened was uh they can listen to it. Well, we have to we have to give them a teaser of what of what's going on. So what happened was uh Nastasi and I decided that we were going to do uh wines made by rock stars.
+
+[4:20] And so we had a Sommelier slash blue man group uh exile, right? A former blue man groupist, and a uh rock and roll writer, right? Jordana Rothman, right? Oh, that's another one we gotta do a compilation of the the Rothman Chronicles. Uh and then we were there and we had, I think, uh a a wine by Dave Matthews, a wine by none other than Les Claypool.
+
+[4:46] By the way, Les Claypool's wines, good. Good. Uh later Primus. Later Primus, meh, meh. Not my thing.
+
+[4:56] I mean, like he's one of those uh musicians that somehow, like as he got older, got less commercial. You know what I'm saying? It's like he got weirder. It's true. He got more esoteric.
+
+[5:07] That's true. Yeah, I mean, like so esoteric that it's like like the intro to any like recent Primus song is longer than any normal album. For like like an hour, and then the song started. I don't know. Whatever.
+
+[5:21] Anyway. I love Primus, don't get me wrong. They're touring right now, you know. They're touring and they're playing basically rush songs, I think. Oh my god.
+
+[5:29] Yeah. That's gotta be something. Anywho, uh, I forget who else's wines uh we had like White Snake. It was a wine not made by White Snake, but like named after the White Snake guy. We didn't have the tool wine, which is why Nastasia wants to do it again, right?
+
+[5:41] Yeah. Yeah. She's Nastasia's all about that tool wine. Yeah. All tool all the time.
+
+[5:46] Anyways, so we didn't realize how much wine there was, and I forget who was running the booth. Was it Dave at the time? I think so. No one stopped us. Joe, so it's obviously like imagine you're sitting there, the engineer, we start the show at noon.
+
+[6:02] Mm-hmm. Like 4 p.m., we're still going. Yeah. And no one says, hey, stop. And and they're just popping bottles.
+
+[6:13] It was bad. Sounds bad. Sounds like ruckus. It was, it was something. It was something.
+
+[6:21] Did you turn it off, John? Or did you listen to it? Yeah, no, I didn't finish the whole file. So, and this, by the way, people, just so you know, like this is again more inside baseball for you. But yeah, we'd like to hear from people.
+
+[6:31] So Nastasi and I are like, listen, basically, if you meet us in the real life, we're kind of like, we're always the same people. Like the people you hear, like here, like we're kind of like this, like similar to this in the real life, right? Yeah. Similar. Yep.
+
+[6:45] Yeah. I mean, not dissimilar, right? But like we don't necessarily talk about the same things, and our humor might go in a different way. Like, like we don't always talk about food and food tangents. Sometimes our tangents are about other things.
+
+[7:00] We never talk about food. Well, because you hate talking about food. When I talk to John, I talk about food. Yeah, we talk about food a lot. Yeah.
+
+[7:07] See, John and I talk about food. But Nastasia doesn't actually enjoy talking about food. True. Like that. Yeah, that's that's the issue, right?
+
+[7:14] So uh I forget where I was going. Oh, so we're like, hey, listen, we're moving to a new uh network. I don't know if you know this, you're listening to this on a new network. We're uh we're at uh New Stand Studios now, live from Rockefeller Center, and if you had you know a phone call, you could call into 917410 1507. So we're on this new studio, and we're like, well, we could change it up a little bit.
+
+[7:34] And we and then Nastasia is like, well, if we if we talk more about the stuff that we would actually talk about in the real life to people that we would be talking to in the real life, none of our hardcore listeners would listen to us, we'd lose them all, and we wouldn't gain any new people, and she's like, look at the wine episode. And that's what that's basically the argument. The argument is that is there some sort of cutting the baby in half situation where you can cut the baby in half, but the baby doesn't die. No, you know what I'm saying? Well, I know that Nastasia is the the the queen of the negative thinking.
+
+[8:08] I would love it, but I I know the truth. What's I feel like uh that our core group would not be happy. I'm not happy with you. That's the uh fun house. Brings us back to maybe a 10-year-old idea, which is the companion podcast called Issues.
+
+[8:28] Issues. I had a someone had an idea for uh for a video series for the Patreon. You want to hear what it's called? Not here. Where we like people send us stuff and we just void the warranty as fast as possible in the most outlandish way.
+
+[8:48] Wow, absolutely. It's voiding the warranty. Like that, you have to do it like that. Yeah. You know what?
+
+[8:58] You know what I need more of in my life? I need like less thinking and more people just handing me things to be like a pitch idiot for. I wish I could just be a pitch monkey. You know what I mean? Like, listen, people, anyone's listening to the sound of my voice.
+
+[9:13] If I like your product, I I am a good pitch monkey. I but my problem is it's hard for me to be a pitch monkey for something I think sucks. Speaking of which something sucks, I do have a semi-food related thing that sucks that happened. Ready? Ready.
+
+[9:26] All right. So for those of you, Joe, you grew up, no, wait, you grew up around here. Yeah. No, right? No, I grew up in South Florida.
+
+[9:32] South Florida. Farge. All right. So if you grew up in this area or were in New York in the 80s and 90s, there was a commercial all the time for a banquet hall, right? It was called the called the Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn, right?
+
+[9:47] It was built in 1899 as kind of a later version of kind of those grand old halls where people used to go have big parties, you know, in in the kind of the Gilded Age kind of era thing. Big old, big old banquet hall. And it was a husband-wife that owned it for decades. And they would have this commercial where it was like this like some some idiot's wedding. And then they would have like these this like old couple, and they go, The Grand Prospect Hall.
+
+[10:15] But your dream is a reality. Like that. You know, we make oh, we make your dreams come true. Like that. Like it was the husband said one line and the wife said the other.
+
+[10:25] The Grand Prospect Hall, we make your dreams come true. Like this. It was crazy. And they're I don't forget where they were from or whatever, but like my whole life, I'm like, I'm gonna do an event at the Grand Prospect Hall. I'm gonna do it.
+
+[10:34] My dream's gonna become a reality. And then, like, you know, we like, you know, my wife and I would be like, Grand Prospect Hall, where your nightmares are fantasy. Like, we just kept on like like changing up the words at the end. And the last owner died during uh pandemic, COVID-19, got sold to the developer, and they're gonna knock it down. They're gonna knock down the Grand Prospect Hall.
+
+[10:56] It's it's get this, it's on the register of historic places, but it's not landmarked. What? Yes, it's right on that border. It's like everyone's like, yeah, it's cool. We probably should do something.
+
+[11:09] And then they're like, but you know, nah. You know what I'm saying? Nah. Not cool enough. Not cool enough.
+
+[11:15] Not cool enough. And uh, you know, that's just yet another one of those things, like seeing Neil Diamond in concert that I'll never do. I'll never have a party at the Grand Prospect Hall. I'll definitely never see Neil Diamond at the Grand Prospect Hall. You know what I mean?
+
+[11:28] Never. Sad. If any of you who hear this have ever been to the Grand Prospect Hall, oh my God. Remember, I told you guys they had a party every year, some sort of festival that was related to the the whatever culture the owners were from. I forget where it was, but it's an amazing like three-four three-floor party that they would have every year.
+
+[11:51] And then we were slated to go to it. I forget what it was, and then the pandemic happened. Never. Remember the library party, Dave? How not cool that would be now?
+
+[11:59] Oh, yeah. So, like uh Manhattan Cocktail Classic back in the day, they would take over the entire New York public library and basically just cover it with a thin film of human fluids of all kinds. Yeah, yeah. It was the parties were inappropriate. And so, like, I remember like one year, Nastasia and I we're like, they're like, hey, you want to make some cock, you wanna do some work at the party?
+
+[12:25] We're like, okay. And so, like, we do it, and then they're like, You're doing the non-alc. I'm like, okay. They're like, you're doing steampunk. I'm like, what?
+
+[12:31] And then like I ended up having to carry two five gallon. I I bought, for those of you that aren't familiar with old style American uh military backpacks, the Vietnam era backpack was called an uh like uh Alice pack with a frame on it, right? So it's a steel frame and you could buy a shelf. So we bought this steel Alice pack frame, bought two five-gallon Cornelius kegs, and we uh ratchet tied the two five-gallon kegs to the backpack, and then then zip tied a five-gallon CO2 tank, a five-pound CO2 tank to it. And then uh we put ice into the into the thing, right, Stas?
+
+[13:12] Wasn't it ice into the cornies so that we didn't have to uh have a cold plate, or did I have a cold plate on my belt? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then I had two soda guns, right, pressurized with this tank on my back, and I carried 10 gallons plus the cornies, plus the guns, plus the CO2 on my back, like an idiot dressed in moronic steampunk avi. Remember, it was like aviator or whatever, like stuff, all night going, and people were like, What do you got?
+
+[13:39] I'm like, What uh and they're like, no thanks. Because it's it's wasn't that kind of party, right? Yeah, you know what I mean? But it was so inappropriate the the things they had going on there that it wouldn't fly today. Yeah, that's also true.
+
+[13:53] My back hurts so much. Totally true. The most inappropriate party though, the one where like God literally told us not to do it during the party was that vodka launch we did. I don't remember that. Was that before your time?
+
+[14:07] Maybe. So I took a uh so poly science used to make or they still make these uh chillers, right? Like the one we used, the one we used for the rotovap styles. Remember that chiller? Mm-hmm.
+
+[14:15] Right. And so uh the way these circulators, it works like an immersion circulator, but instead of using a heater, it's got like a little motor, and then it's got uh evaporator coils like wrapped around basically like a like a tall hotel pan. You can you picture me? Yep. Yep.
+
+[14:30] All right. So then you fill that with whatever you want to chill, and it circulates and chills it instead of instead of uh heating it. And then on the back, you could tap into the motor so that you could like push cold liquid out and put it back in. So I modified that and filled it with vodka and ran the ran the pump at minus uh 20, minus 20 degrees Celsius. So I was pulling minus 20, fresh minus 20 shots into shot glasses that we were also keeping like hyper chilled and like handing them out to people.
+
+[15:00] And that's the file that under something never to do again. Don't ever do that at a party. It was gross. Like all of the first of all, vodka launches, no offense to vodka uh people, but like at vodka launches, all they do is they hire the youngest, most attractive people they can to hang around and make everyone else feel like they look that way when they're having the vodka, which they don't, right? But the the other thing is that they just got completely hosed and the people were falling on the ground.
+
+[15:29] And at one point, this is where God came in. It wasn't supposed to storm that night, and all of a sudden it started gusting outside like 40, 50 mile an hour winds, and it blew these doors open on the on the floor of the ballroom, and like just a huge bunch of like leaves and wind and rain came in, and it was like whoosh. And I just looked out and I was like, oh, I'm doing something bad. And there's like, you know, people stumbling around, like falling over. It was just a just a nightmare.
+
+[16:01] And then one of the interns who was working with me picks up as as though I I hadn't gotten enough notice that I was doing something bad, picks up a bottle of vodka, and it just literally she's holding the neck, and the bottle just goes tink and just falls in shatters. She's still holding the bottle. Like God literally broke the bottle so that we would not serve any more vodka. Crazy. Caller, you're on the air.
+
+[16:23] Hey Dave, it's Matt from Mystic. Hey, how you doing? How's it going in Mystic? How do you uh how'd you survive the uh the hurricane that didn't happen to you? Uh yeah, it was pretty uh it was a pretty easy ride.
+
+[16:34] Yeah, when you're on Masons or you're on in Mystic Proper. No, yeah, I'm uh I'm closer to the drawbridge. So for those of you that don't know, Mystic Mystic Connecticut has this cute little they call it what do you call it? The bascule bridge. What the heck's a bascule?
+
+[16:48] Uh the French word for that style of bridge, I think. I mean, they mean like it couldn't it's not like bascule like trips off the tongue. You think they could have just called it something else, like a mystic style drawbridge. Yeah, I mean, no one here calls it bascule, everyone here just calls it the bridge. Alright.
+
+[17:07] Uh you don't want to get stuck by the bridge. No, no, because then you gotta go all the way around or just wait the 35 seconds it takes for the boat to go through and then uh go back down again. Right. Yeah. So what do you got for us?
+
+[17:19] Um, so last I just wanted to follow up on last week. The person who was asking about the best ice cream technology at home. Okay. And uh I think the dry ice technique that Chef Steph uh has a video on, which you can just Google like Chef Step's dry ice ice cream is the best at home, just for in terms of like equipment, you need just a sand mixer and um and dry ice. And pulverize it and spin it.
+
+[17:47] Now, how do they make sure how do they make sure that uh you just gotta let it sit long enough to make sure that nothing happens? That's exactly right. Yeah. Um yeah, and they you know they recommend pulverizing it very small, basically to like a fine powder, um, so that you don't have any big chunks in there. But yeah, they uh I think it's also like if you let it um you basically let it settle and off gas for um a couple hours.
+
+[18:12] Off gas, that was my nickname. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you gotta let it off. Um did uh did I ever uh tell on air you would remember, did I ever tell on air what I used to like to do to Nastasia whenever we had dry ice? No.
+
+[18:24] You put it in you put it in the metal thing? Yeah, you put a sheet pan on the counter and uh you know, like a hotel pan, and then you put the dry ice in. Remember that Sus? Bad. Bad.
+
+[18:38] Real bad. Real bad. Yeah. Well, nice. So you like that technique?
+
+[18:41] It's useful. I think so. Um it's just in terms of like eat like I've you know, I've used the salt and the ice machine. I love that. Um, which uh also it's a very good result.
+
+[18:53] Um but you know, if you have a sand mixer and you can get dry ice, that's to me is the um the best, you know. I've used it on a number of different uh style of bases and it works great for for anything. So cool. Awesome. Well I appreciate it.
+
+[19:12] By the way, uh Chris Young, uh, we gotta coordinate. He wants to do a ninja thing. We're gonna do the new new fake the Faco Jet. Ninja has a Faco Jet. John, you're gonna try to get a hold of the Faco Jet?
+
+[19:21] Correct, yeah. All right. Well, I saw that. That looks good. That looks good too, because uh I'd be curious to see how that thing performs.
+
+[19:28] Yeah, me too. Uh you know, I've I've used the paco, I've used the fake Italian one, uh I'll use the fake uh ninja. Yeah. Cool. Um, so the one the one thing I we I did, I lost a walnut tree during the hurricane.
+
+[19:43] Ooh. Have you ever uh have you ever like used uh walnuts, like a black walnut tree in infusions or anything? I know you're a no, I mean you're a nut guy. Yeah, I I I I work with walnut all the time. If you are gonna use the wood, just uh be careful.
+
+[19:59] Sometimes it tears out. You should just live edge it. If you if it's a is if it's a big walnut tree, you know, you can go to Harbor Freight and you can get a uh you can get a sawmill delivered to your house, like a band saw mill, and then you can just live live slab that sucker and then have it sitting out there on uh like you know, you you you you you lift it in between and you put little things so that they can dry out. You gotta lift the slabs off of each other. And then uh, yeah, I mean, like I mean that that's what I would do.
+
+[20:27] If I still had a place in Connecticut, I would uh have a ban uh uh what's it called? A sawmill, a bandsaw sawmill. That's what I would do. Yeah. Because walnut, you know, walnut, I don't know I've never heard of anyone you John, you ever heard of anyone doing anything with it?
+
+[20:42] No, I haven't, no. No, yeah. Yeah. I would people make like Nochino with it, which is like the walnut liqueur. Yeah, but not with the wood.
+
+[20:49] They make that with the with the immature walnuts. Yeah. No, but this this thing was this thing was full of the green walnut. Oh, yeah. Then make yeah, then make an infusion.
+
+[20:57] Yeah, it's a little late in the season. That stuff's very early. Like the this the Southern French from they like pick it very early in the season when they're still soft, and that's how they do those things. Uh right now they should be almost ripe. You know what I mean?
+
+[21:11] So, like maybe you're gonna go to the ripe, yeah. So yeah, maybe you can harvest some doing infusion. I thought you meant the wood. No, no, I meant the actual uh fruit, the fruit don't let some idiot come chum that wood up. That's valuable wood if it's a big tree.
+
+[21:23] Okay. They show up, eh, we'll chum it. Jerks. I hate IT. I hate you guys, but this is a different show.
+
+[21:29] Yeah, all right. All right, that's part of our tree guy show. All right, thanks. Uh talk to you soon, I hope. Caller, you're on the air.
+
+[21:37] Hey David. David from California here. What's up? How are you doing? Doing all right.
+
+[21:42] Hey, uh coming to New York City. It's been a long time. So just need some restaurant recommendations. A handful. Well, I'm gonna have to have John do that.
+
+[21:53] I don't go, I don't I don't really go. I look I had I didn't go out that much during the pandemic, like not at all. In fact, I went only where's the one place I went, the famous place. I went to Keynes. Keynes, yeah.
+
+[22:03] I went to Keynes to have their the lamb the mutton shop. Good. Good. Yeah. Uh Nastasia took me to uh for Chet here over uh in uh the Rockefeller Center because she loves everything, Rockefeller Center.
+
+[22:18] And then that's about all that I've gone out to since the pandemic. You've have you have any of you guys uh been to some good places since the pandemic? Coats. I was there two Fridays ago. Really, really delicious.
+
+[22:29] Really great Korean barbecue with American steakhouse kind of merch to it. I don't know, it was it was really great. Loved it. Really good food. You say American Steakhouse merch?
+
+[22:38] Merged. Oh merged. Yeah, yeah. Like they're like, we we do Korean food, but we have steakhouse merch in the back. Um where do we go downtown?
+
+[22:47] Racine, but they've closed. Oh. Yeah. Too bad. Yeah, that's that's the tough thing.
+
+[22:52] So the last time I was in New York, we went to WD 50, we went to Booker and Dax. Nah. Also, it's been a long time. So go go to uh go to one of Jeremiah and Fabulous places. Go to the Wild Air Contra, like go check that kind of stuff out.
+
+[23:07] Um, you know, uh, you know, if you haven't been if you haven't been in a long time, go see Stu Pac's place up there, the you know, uh the the uptown stew pack joint and uh just just go to Chosa in Mexico City. Okay, I'm sorry, I can't. Oh yeah. Hey, by the way, Jackie Molecules. If you're in Mexico City, if you don't find the uh squash blossom quesadilla like lady, you are persona non grata.
+
+[23:38] Look, you know who she is because she's got a trash bag full of freaking squash blossoms. I'm gonna do it. Like a contractor bag. Go to Merced, you go in the entrance where they sell all the pinatas. There's the pinata entrance.
+
+[23:50] Go in there, hook a right, keep walking, keep walking, keep walking till you get to where they're selling food. She's on the left, kind of near the end. You'll see a trash bag. Oh, right at the pinata stand. Well, not the stand, the pinata area.
+
+[24:08] The area, okay. Although, hey, a pinata business hit real hard by the pandemic. I don't know what it's like right now down there. I read an article that the pinata. I'm not kidding.
+
+[24:16] The pinata business got completely obliterated by uh because no one was going to parties. Well, so that that brings up an interesting wrinkle. Uh I I will have my seven year old with me. So the restaurant can't be too frou fru-fru. It does it does need to be somewhat kid friendly.
+
+[24:37] Somewhat. Well, that's the question. It all depends on your seven-year old. When I was seven-year old, I was like, a hell when I was not in a restaurant, but at a restaurant, I was like, more food, please. And I would eat it all without saying anything because I loved eating all my whole life.
+
+[24:52] You know what I mean? Whereas if I took, you know, uh my kids, they'd be like, Can I go now? Can I go? You know what I mean? So it that's gonna depend on your kid.
+
+[25:00] I mean, most uh most restaurant people here well bars don't work, but if it's a restaurant, restaurant, as long as like the kids into it, I think you know the the servers should be fine with it. And even if you're a little iffy about it, there's so many places that are doing outdoor dining right now. Oh, good. Cause the streets of New York area. Yeah, we're the we're the par we're the Paris of New York now.
+
+[25:24] We're like, you know, it it's true. You know how like in Paris, they're like, no sweat it, just sit outside. Who cares? Yeah. You know, Paris, like, hey, you can even eat here with your dog now.
+
+[25:32] Yeah, because you can sit outside. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[25:36] Not your dog, John. Whoa. Hey, hey, hey. Whoa. So so yeah, so your dog is not ill-behaved, John.
+
+[25:46] She's been acting up the past couple weeks. She chewed through my airpods the other week, which was very I mean, that's like two bites. Yeah, but still, it's like $140. It's like a men, it's like a it's like a men it is, but it's like a mentos. It's like a little it's like one bite.
+
+[26:00] You say chew through like she was sitting working at it for hours. Picked it apart. Oh. She picked the headphones apart, ripped the middle out of the the way. How the hell do you do that?
+
+[26:08] She doesn't have opposable thumbs. She likes to be able to do that. I think this is a genius dog. I think this is a genius dog. Maybe.
+
+[26:14] Yeah. Yeah. So now I have to create her every time I leave. I don't trust her anymore. She's done a couple other things too to be really bad.
+
+[26:20] Wow. Yeah. You're a s you're a stern dog father. Yeah, I guess. Yeah.
+
+[26:26] Right, Stas? Yeah. Yeah. Real stern. Stern.
+
+[26:30] All right. Did we answer? We're we're good, right? We answered? We answered?
+
+[26:35] Yeah. Yes. Thanks, Dave. That gives me some ideas. All right, cool.
+
+[26:39] Okay. All right. Uh Kenneth Wu wrote in. Uh, speaking of small grills, uh, and by that, because we were talking before about that portable grill that uh portable grill that I had. By the way, also, I appreciate I got some uh tweets from people from the last week's episode that went and bought uh Quinn's book, and so far the people who have bought the book, you know what they said?
+
+[27:01] Good things. Worth five worth five bucks. You know what I'm saying? Anyway. Uh so we're talking about this like portable two-pound grill that I had because I went to go shoot something and I needed a portable grill.
+
+[27:12] Speaking of small grills, does the cooking issues crew have any thoughts or tips on Conroe grills? After listening to Oh my god, 470 plus episodes. I don't remember uh you guys talking about Bintraton or Yaki Tori. Yakitori is a great word. Uh Nastasia, remember when we went to the Yaki Tori joint in um and we were like, we're gonna go get the chicken.
+
+[27:34] They call it a sashimi, but it's not sashimi, right? It's like they take the chicken, they they they tubify it, they make little tubes, I pr probably out of the tenderloin, right? Out of the breast. Maybe it was thigh, I don't remember. And then they they they just roll it over the so Yachi Tori grills are real hot, and then they you you you put stuff very quickly on them and just color the outside, right?
+
+[27:53] Or you can't you can do whatever you want, but that's what they did. And then remember they took the three pieces that were kind of just white on the outside and raw on the inside, and they smashed it into like a triangle shape, like a almost like a triskelon, like that, whatever that like three armed thing is. They those little weird shapes. And my feeling on the chicken sashimi was fine. Yeah.
+
+[28:12] I wasn't like, oh my God. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I was like, fine. Yeah.
+
+[28:19] Yeah. Uh we were to the best bar ever. Oh yeah, my God. We've talked about that on air, haven't we? Probably.
+
+[28:25] I think it will be. We'll never be able to find it. It was somebody's house. I think it was somebody's house. Imagine this.
+
+[28:30] Imagine that you're in New York City, because Tokyo's like much bigger than New York City. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like imagine if it was like LA but dense. It's crazy, right? So it's like like like New York dense, but like LA big, nuts, right?
+
+[28:46] Nastasia, imagine like okay, so in New York, right? Imagine somebody shows up at your door, ding dong, and two people are there with kind of a smile on their face. That would be Nastasi and myself. No handle on your language at all. These people who ring your doorbell, they cannot communicate with you at all, and yet they expect a drink.
+
+[29:10] We thought it was a bar. We thought it was a bar. In retrospect, it was not. Everyone looked amazingly confused. There were a lot of people there.
+
+[29:19] Conversation stopped. They took us upstairs. To the attic. Well, to like a an outdoor balcony thing, like a sec like a second or third floor porch. Like a sunroom.
+
+[29:30] Like you know, you know how like some people have like on their second or third floor, they have like a little mini porch with like plants on it and like a couch. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. And then they gave us a bell.
+
+[29:39] They gave us a bell. And then they they just kind of shrugged and walked downstairs. And we were like, ding. And then they brought us a drink. Best bar ever.
+
+[29:50] It wasn't a bar. Why did you guys even stay? Whoa. We were like, we didn't know. Like, once you're in, you're like, just keep playing.
+
+[29:59] Yeah, the sense of obligation on that was definitely. Where this is, but what is what is this bell gonna bring me? Yeah, yeah. Well, we're all trying to like, we're all trying to do some social dance and none of us know the footwork. Yeah.
+
+[30:14] You know what I mean? And like, we're trying to not be rude. They're obviously trying to not be rude. You know what I mean? Uh and for us it was a good experience.
+
+[30:24] Because guess what it wasn't? Our house. Oh man. What a trip. We gotta get someone to uh take us back to Japan.
+
+[30:33] Uh so about those uh Conroe grills. So what we're talking about, people, you've probably seen them in a restaurant where they can't afford or they don't have the license to have like a real grill, real wood fire. So what they do is they they get these little things that imagine it's made out of like fire brick material, so it's that kind of yellowish beige color, and it's uh, oh, I don't know, like uh smaller than a microwave, bigger than a loaf of bread, uh, but that kind of a shape. And uh it's surrounded by metal, and then it's got like holes in it for air, and then a grill goes a grate goes over it, and you're supposed to put a small amount of like charcoal in it. Specifically, you're supposed to use Japanese bingotan charcoal.
+
+[31:16] Binton charcoal is just very fancy charcoal that theoretically smokes less so that you can cook with it inside. Because you gotta remember, it you know, in Japan, they're coming from a culture where they're cooking, they cooking in coal inside like all the time. You know what I mean? Like, so uh it's very fancy. Uh uh I think Andy Ricker sells some Thai Bintra Tan style things that are like a lot, a lot less.
+
+[31:39] Uh I never used it. I mean, like a lot of chefs used it because they had to, it was always kind of expensive, and I just like lit regular lump hardwood charcoal inside and just said smoked be damned. You know what I mean? Um and that's always kind of been my attitude. Of course, you know who hates smoke?
+
+[31:56] My family in the house. Why is it, by the way? Can I ask? How many of you of the f of the four people that are here, how many of you don't care when it's smoking in the kitchen? I don't care.
+
+[32:06] Yeah, I don't care either. Wow. I don't care. Wow. Joe?
+
+[32:12] Sorry, I don't care either. Huh. As long as I have an exhaust, it's gonna suck it out, which I do. A lot of people have a ve real like visceral reaction to smoke in the kitchen. I'm surprised because it's it's usually more than half the people are freaked out by smoke.
+
+[32:28] And all is is this why we're working together? Because we can all tolerate smoke in the kitchen? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's it.
+
+[32:35] Definitely. Anyway. Uh anyways. So uh how much do you say these uh these grills cost? So the medium size one on coron, which measures twenty-one point three in length by nine wide by eight high.
+
+[32:48] Yeah. Is two hundred and eighty dollars and out of stock ETA four months. So you gotta get on the pre-order. Yeah. I look I it it doesn't have that much retained heat, so I don't know how much retained heat, although it's true if you're using small amounts of charcoal, if you're using kind of the portable thing that uh I had, which was extremely lightweight, it won't store any heat energy at all.
+
+[33:09] In fact, it's built to do the exact opposite. So the nice thing about them is they will retain some heat and then they direct almost all of it up. So it's good for yaku too. I'm gonna say it's good. Is it necessarily worth that kind of money, especially if you have access to another grill?
+
+[33:21] Although I do like tabletop grills. Don't you like a tabletop grill? Yeah. If you if you have a a situation where you can go like outside and have a tabletop grill, Nastasia, you're a fondue fan. Yeah.
+
+[33:28] What do you think about tabletop grill as like not in place of fondue, but like as like an also fun table thing? Yeah. Now, as someone who actually used to go to Switzerland a lot, what do you think of oil based fondues? I don't really like them. Because they're scary or because you don't like them?
+
+[33:49] Oh, I just don't like 'em. So cheese and chocolate only or just cheese? Just cheese. You don't like the chocolate either? I don't care.
+
+[33:55] Not a not a fan? No. Hmm. Did you used to like it? Was ruined for you by the chocolate fountain or what?
+
+[34:00] No. What chocolate fountain? The chocolate fountain as a phenomenon. Oh, no. I just don't like it.
+
+[34:08] Okay. I like the boiling oil one, but it's real dangerous. Oh, yeah. Real dangerous. So dangerous.
+
+[34:15] What do you guys think of the uh stinky banny cautious? You like a banyacota? Yeah. Yeah. Would you ever have you ever made it?
+
+[34:22] No. Yes. Yeah? Long time ago. Oil and butter?
+
+[34:26] Just oil? Just butter? What do you think? Just oil. Just oil?
+
+[34:29] I like a 50-50 split. Does that make me a bad man? You know it tastes good? Anchovies, butter, oil, and carrots. Yeah.
+
+[34:35] Yeah. True. Uh all right. So is that enough on the grill if I mentioned what I think or not? That works, yes.
+
+[34:42] Okay. Uh sad to say, uh, Bend a Table uh is going out or is going out of business, but they would like uh they're gonna sell you know, they we worked with them at the at the old radio station. Uh good people, good people. And so their sh their shtick was uh that you know, Ben would go around and find like, you know, nice products like Anson Mills or Geechee Boy or uh what else did they used to sell? Like Spanish preserves, like uh what's the one that you like?
+
+[35:11] Didn't he have the one you like, the conservas? No, he didn't have those, the Ruhula ones, but he has really I don't know, we got some good spices, we got some good Harisa. By the way, by the way, by the way. Well, I'll finish this. Remind me on those conservas.
+
+[35:26] All right. So anyway, uh yet another victim of the pandemic. Uh so he's doing warehouse clearance boxes, which uh he says is basically a hodgepodge of remnant inventory for insanely good prices. In other words, if anyone else grew up in New York area, Crazy Eddie was a an electronic salesperson. And uh he would like put a Santa hat on and scream about how Crazy Eddie, where prices are insane.
+
+[35:54] Like and he got arrested. Yeah, tax evasion, I think. Uh anyway. Oh wow, that's sad. Yeah.
+
+[36:00] Well, I mean, you know, he made a lot of money, Crazy Eddie. He's crazy. Yeah. So, you know, it's like uh Crazy Eddie, a lot of people have evaded taxes and gone to jail for it. Uh Wesley Snipes, for instance.
+
+[36:11] You know, um Wesley Snipes and Crazy Eddy in good company. Uh okay. So uh insanely good price. So for instance, um for $65, you get $110 worth of stuff plus another 20% off if you call in. Why don't you tell him what what's going on?
+
+[36:26] There's a c there's a code clearance. Yeah, when you check out, use the word use the word clearance, uh, all lowercase, and that should get you 20% off of what you are ordering. But it's already been reduced, right? It's like 20% off the already reduced price if you type if you type clearance. And he's got some good stuff.
+
+[36:44] Yeah. My God, remember Anastasia when we got the boxes, and then we were like, okay, my favorite thing that we we used to have to do, right? Is that um we used to have to, when I say favorite, I mean not. They would send us products and they would give Nastasia some products and and they would give me some products, and then Nastasia had to say that she had cooked with the product. So she would just like make something up on the spot, and it would be just like, and then like it would be completely random.
+
+[37:15] She's like, I made a cold faro salad. And we're like, I'm like, what? She's like, and then I'm like, well, did you and she's like, I chopped up tomatoes, and then I put it into the far. I was like, did you wait for the far to cool? Did you chill it?
+
+[37:32] Was there oil? She's like, I just mixed it all together. Yeah. But like, like, it was so funny. Like, it was brutal.
+
+[37:42] It was brutal. It was brutal. It was brutal. It's brutal. But you love Faro, so you could have said a month.
+
+[37:47] But I think this was during, this was during quarantine, and they were like, what fun things are you making with your family? And I was like, I'm alone in a lighthouse. So nothing. I'm alone in a lighthouse. It's like there's a song there somewhere, right?
+
+[38:04] There's there's a song somewhere. Someone write, I'm alone in a light. Don't don't don't don't write. Nastasia will get mad at me if I if I actually if if an I'm alone in a lighthouse song shows up. Do you know that my son Dax believes that he is a reincarnated lighthouse keeper?
+
+[38:19] Awesome. When he was very young, he came up to us apropos of nothing and said, I used to be a lighthouse keeper. That's so spooky. When he was like five, four or five. I used to be a lighthouse keeper.
+
+[38:36] And then walked away, and we're all like, whoa. That's strong. So that some uh one more one more strong Dax thing for those that can see the video. So Dax, you know, Dax like wouldn't understand when people were messing with him when he was really when he was really young. So like some guy goes to some kid shows up at our house and is like, uh, I know where you live.
+
+[39:02] I in a threatening way. And Dax goes, where? And the kid's like, uh, what do you mean? He's like, well, I want you to know exactly where I live. And then he goes, like, he reaches up, no one knows why he did this, puts his finger under his eye, pulls his eye down.
+
+[39:19] And that's it. And we're all like, whoa, man. Dax is some hardcore dude. Just goes, I want you to know exactly where I live. And pulls his like lower eyelid down.
+
+[39:31] We're all like, don't mess with that kid. Don't mess with that kid. He'll take you out. Uh, all right. Uh oh, I know what.
+
+[39:38] So look, there's this thing, this conserve us, right? So so John got obsessed at the beginning of the pandemic with with the what's it called? La bruhula. La brujula. Conservas, which are like good but absurdly expensive tins of seafood, right?
+
+[39:54] And uh, so he bought some, he gave me one, very nice, and then I saw a can that they had never had in the United States before, baby eels. Now, a can of baby eels. Joe, two bites, two bites, this can of baby eels would be would be done. Two bites. I'm going to the store, I called John.
+
+[40:15] Hey, John, you ever had the baby eels? He goes, No. I've never had the baby eels. Oh, hey, maybe I'll get a baby, you know, I'll get one for Booker. He likes canned fish.
+
+[40:24] Maybe I'll pick up one for John too. Hey, how much? How much for the baby eel? $50. $50 a can?
+
+[40:28] Fifty dollars a can. Like how big a can? I'm talking like a tuna fish can? Yes. Get out of here.
+
+[40:36] And you know what? Most of it's filled with not baby eels. Water. Water. Water.
+
+[40:42] Water. As the uh as the flex seal guy calls it. Water. Uh yeah, crazy. So for any of you out there that have had the baby eels and can tell us why it costs so much, just let us know.
+
+[40:55] Uh Matt Ronan wrote in via Instagram. Hey, Mr. Arnold, have a question about agar clarification. I attempted to make tequila por miamante with Jeffrey Morgenthaler's recipe. So this is like a strawberry tequila infusion thing of majig.
+
+[41:09] The finished product was a beautiful shimmering red. Are you guys familiar with sh uh do you do you pronounce it shimmera or chimera? Chimera. Chimera? What are you?
+
+[41:19] Chimera. Chimera stash, what do you? Kind of a shimmer. You're a shimmera? I think I am too.
+
+[41:24] I think I'm also a shimra. I like that we have an even split. Fight! Anyway. So uh I'm gonna call it shimerical.
+
+[41:31] Are we okay with that? Because I don't like the word chimerical. Okay? I'm gonna call it chimerical. Are you guys familiar with uh Shimerical colors?
+
+[41:40] All right, you know how we have, you know how we have three different uh like color sensors, three different cone, right? Red R G B, right? Okay. So this is awesome. So the way that you're what you do is is you stare at one color.
+
+[41:57] So for instance, cyan, right, which is blue. You stare at it, stare at it for uh like 30 seconds. Don't do anything else, stare at it. What it does is it fatigues those that cone, just knocks it out, right? It fatigues it.
+
+[42:14] Then you instantly look over and you stare at an orange background. And what happens is is where you fatigued out your cyan, right? You now have a more saturated orange than is possible for you to see. It's an impossibly saturated orange because you've actually reduced like the way your body senses orange is this like combination. It's always being knocked down by this sensor.
+
+[42:38] But because you knock that sensor down, you can see more orange. It's called hyperbolic orange. How sick is that? Hyperbolic orange. Got one more for you.
+
+[42:46] I forget what you stare at. You stare at something, and then you probably yellow. Then you stare over at black, and you see a blue circle that is blue but as dark as the black. It's blue as dark as black, stygium blue. How sick is this?
+
+[43:04] Very cool. Very cool. Uh caller, you're on the air. Hi. Um I have some tomatillo and peach uh kind of salsa, and I was hoping to be able to preserve that.
+
+[43:17] Um and I was wondering if uh that's something that's safe to can and if it would be shelf stable if I did so. Well, if you can it for sure. When you say can, do you mean like pressure can? I mean, you're gonna kill the texture. You're gonna need to hit it with a little calcium chloride before you uh try to can it uh so that it doesn't break down.
+
+[43:38] I'm I'm assuming the calcium chloride will help it preserve its texture, but you don't want to add too much calcium chloride. It's puree aid, so it's kind of more like a soft. Oh, yeah. Can't so I'm not really worried about that. What I would do is take a little bit.
+
+[43:49] Take a little bit. Oh, you don't have a pressure cooker? No, I I I do I have like an instapot, but I shouldn't generally just do canning, like boiling it on a stove. So is is that not enough? It depends on the acid level, honestly.
+
+[44:05] It depends on the acid level in your uh in your product and in the airspace and how much uh how long you processed it. You can boiling water can anything that's high enough acid. Now, tomatillos are high in acid and peaches are high in acid, and by the way, John wants to talk about peaches in a minute. Uh but so the odds are it's high enough acid, and it's definitely if you if you store it in the fridge, I'm sure it it'll be fine. But I'm I hesitate to say that you know it's also probably got a pretty high sugar dose to it as well.
+
+[44:39] Um, so but again, what I forget what the number is. You can look up the pH and just test a pH of it. Or do you know what you really should do? You should get a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers are awesome.
+
+[44:50] You know? Uh I don't think an Instapot is rated. No one has this is why I don't know why they don't make the Instapot just go that little bit of temperature higher. Actually do know why, but they they could get around it if they wanted to. Um But yeah, I mean, like how long do you want to keep it?
+
+[45:06] How many containers do you have? Uh I have like probably like half a liter of uh sauce. Just like to be able to not, you know, to be able to use like during the winter or something like that. Um and not have to keep it in my refrigerator until Are you a suburban person or a modern? Are you suburban person or urban person?
+
+[45:30] Urban person, San Francisco, small apartment, small refrigerator. There you go. That was the other thing I was gonna say. Like if I was living my suburban life, chess freezer baby. Everything's in a chest freezer.
+
+[45:41] Uh uh I mean, is it high acid? I I I haven't tested it, so I don't actually know. But it's um it was kind of like three pounds tomatillas that are roasted and then added uh two peaches to. I mean, look, look up the pH of a tomatillo and see what it is. Uh most tomatillas that I have are pretty acid.
+
+[46:11] I just look, I might feel fine with it, especially like I might instapot it and just give you that little bit of extra oomph out of it, even though it's not technically good. But I just hesitate on air to tell you that it's okay because the consequences of it are bad if it's not high enough acid and something grows in it. You know what I'm saying? That's all. Yeah.
+
+[46:30] Um, and would a wec jar be okay in an Instapot? Yeah. Versus a ball jar. I think so. Aren't they designed to can?
+
+[46:38] Yeah. Yeah. And they're fine. Sure. Yeah, they're good.
+
+[46:41] Okay. Yeah. Thank you for the help. In instant in Instapot, in any time you're going to try to use something, even though it doesn't actually get hot enough to sterilize, you want to make sure to vent out steam. Uh if you have any trapped air that's not steam related inside of a pressure cooker, it uh drastically affects your cooking time and sterilization.
+
+[46:59] So just take a look at that and see if there's any. I've never looked up uh sterili trying to do canning with an Instapot. I'm sure there's all sorts of things over the internet telling you not to, but I haven't actually looked at it. Okay, thank you for the help. Appreciate it.
+
+[47:12] Now good luck. All right. So uh back to a beautiful shimmering red on this uh strawberry tequila. So Matt had the idea to Matt Ronin had the idea to increase uh his yield by blending the strawberry fruit uh uh along with the liquid and then straining, which left me with a large amount of very cloudy strawberry tequila. Uh and then you want to agar clarify it?
+
+[47:35] Listen, do not agar clarified tequila. Don't do it. Don't do it. Do not do that. Why?
+
+[47:42] Uh well, because first of all, you need to you can't get tequila hot enough without boiling it off to hydrate the agar uh because the agar needs to be boiled in order to hydrate. So then you're adding water to it, and then it's gonna strip a lot of the flavor of the tequila and this stuff out. I've tried it, in other words. I've tried doing strawberry uh strawberry, I forget what booze I used, uh agar clarification, and I was like, no, this needs to be done with a centrifuge. What you should do is hit it with uh Pectanex uh ultra SPL and then put it into a round uh container that is tall, and then just let it sit for like three days and then gently pick it up and just go pour the clear crap off the top and do that three or four times and and get progressively narrower cylinders until you know you can get the last little bit out and then cook with the last piece.
+
+[48:38] That's what you should do. Yeah? Yep. Yeah. Uh well.
+
+[48:42] Real quick before you go into that, your tails of the cocktail. You should plug that 10 minutes. So do it. All right. So everybody.
+
+[48:49] On September 23rd at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Dave along with uh Derek Brown, Ivy Mix, and Shannon Mustafer are gonna be uh have together speaking on a panel called Rules of the Creative Road, Finding Your Own Voice. Um This is an idea that Dave had a couple months ago, and we've applied for it and got it successfully in. We got some really great speakers. And Dave, you want to give a little pitch just to what you're gonna be talking about?
+
+[49:13] Yeah, so the idea is is that there's very few semi I've been to a million seminars, given a bunch of seminars, the Tales of the Cocktail, and um a lot a lot of times one of the subjects that comes up is uh how do you come up with new ideas or how do you stay creative or how how do you you know how how do you be creative in in this industry? And I realized that it's kind of impossible thing to talk about because you just talk about your own process and then somebody then what are they gonna what are they gonna do with that? So my idea was well, let's get like four very different people together who have very different approaches to creative process and try to figure out what the commonality is between those four people. So it's gonna be four people, so you know, shannon and Ivy and you know Derek and I all completely different in how we approach um cocktails, writing books, um opening a bar program, developing a menu. And so, but we you know, we had a pre-call that to discuss it, and we all do share a lot of kind of core commonalities.
+
+[50:17] And so the idea is trying to help you not necessarily try to become the next Shannon or the next Ivy, but how to be the best you possible. That's the idea. Is that a good pitch? It's a great pitch. So go to tales of the cocktail.org and you can sign up for the conference.
+
+[50:34] Yeah. It's virtual again this year. Yep. Yeah. A lot of other great speakers, John DeBerry, AK, a couple other people we know.
+
+[50:40] Yeah. Yeah. Not at the same time, I hope. Not at AK and John de not at the same time as ours. AK and John DeBerry are on a panel together.
+
+[50:47] That's great. Yeah. Yeah, but not at the same time. That would suck. Yeah, that would suck.
+
+[50:50] Parasitizing on each other. Yeah. Uh from old fashioned villain, my name is Paul. Uh huge fan of your work. I'm doing my best to try and bring your style of cocktail to California, particularly the Ventura County area.
+
+[51:01] Nastasia, talk to me about Ventura. It's nice. What is it? Like, where is it? Uh it's like a valley upper, like upper valley, like behind Malibu.
+
+[51:11] So close to the water? No. Behind Malibu. Malibu's on the water. Well, it extends into the canyons, and then there's Ventura.
+
+[51:23] So it's like on the other side of Topanga. Yeah. On the other side of the mountain. Yeah. So you can't see the water.
+
+[51:28] No. You're in a bowl. Mm-hmm. Valley. So, like where the valley girls are from.
+
+[51:33] Yeah, but I'm also from the valley, which is on the east. A lot of valleys in California. But not the Central Valley. Oh. Alright.
+
+[51:42] I have a would you think this kind of cocktail would work in Ventura? You're the one that knows everything about California and what's going on with the bar scene over there. No, I don't. I didn't do anything when I was there. You're the one where I said, should if someone opened a bar there?
+
+[51:53] You're like, no, it's a terrible place to open a bar. Uh remember? Uh remember. Uh I have a question and was wondering if you had uh infused caviar into a spirit before and how you'll go about doing it. And the second question was, uh, what if you want to infuse Uni into a spirit without a rotary event?
+
+[52:11] No, no. Next question. Well, what's that? That's so stupid. Why is that stupid?
+
+[52:17] The guy wants to put uh look. Whatever. I would say that uh you I mean, like I I don't have any special technique. I would just soak it and see whether or not it tastes good. Honestly, like Uni needs to be so fresh that I think your best option would probably be to just do it the way that we used to do uh oyster w what what those called, those oyster shots.
+
+[52:40] It's like a bloody merry with an oyster. What were those called? I can't remember. Remember those? Uh do it like that, just because none of those fish flavors are stable.
+
+[52:44] You know what I mean? So, like maybe if you did it in a freezer, you could get it to last for a little while, but I think it's just not gonna be stable. And I would just do old old school. None of the none of the new techniques are gonna help you get that stuff in there faster, I don't think. That's not that's my feeling anyway.
+
+[53:05] Um Sculvin Distiller, uh dedicated listener, uh still interested in talking about uh consulting wanted to discuss well, that's not for that's not for the thing. So question was what makes watermelon taste fake? I've centrifuged it, concentrated in the rotive app, and it always tastes fake. Uh is that what concentrated water uh melon juice just tastes like, or is there some sort of black magic or other dark forces that it's at work here? I wanna make a wow, holy crap, that's watermelon cerebral drink, but I'm just failing and failing.
+
+[53:33] Uh yeah, well, the thing about a lot of things like when they are clarified, lose their characteristicness, their stuff, because a lot of the the stuff is in like the flavor is in the in the pulp. And watermelon juice is just one of those things. So like when you like you just have to like the flavor of clarified watermelon juice, which is entirely different, and frankly, more melon-like. So I don't like clarified watermelon juice that much because to me it tastes more like a melon, and I don't like water uh melon. I like watermelon, but not like melon.
+
+[54:03] Like I don't like cantaloupe, I don't like honeydew. I don't like musk melon. Uh it's the one thing that I'm like, I don't really like that. I can tolerate it. What?
+
+[54:13] You hate beets, and you and I both hate a particular beet preparation. People, people. Don't serve a giant undercooked beet that's gonna skitter around on the plate and stain everything that we own. Right, Sus? Yeah.
+
+[54:31] Yeah. Did you know there's an American girl shop across the street? Well, that's it. If I you know what? If I had known, if Joe, if we had been here a year ago before Amazon hosed our business, right?
+
+[54:44] Like, I would just walk over to the American Girl shop. Well, what I'm investing in American girl. Oh, what? You mean you're gonna buy stock? No, no, the dolls.
+
+[54:51] And take them out of the boxes, you say. I'm gonna take them out of the box. I gotta take it out of the box. Gotta show that's love, Stas. Yeah.
+
+[55:01] It's a child's play thing, Stas. Anyway. Uh, yeah, that was the old joke that I was just gonna take my life savings and dump it into American Girl dolls. Aren't they made up like by 125th Street? I don't know.
+
+[55:15] I have no idea. I don't have no idea either. I thought you were going somewhere completely different with that. Oh, where was I gonna go? Something with the Sears All and the American doll.
+
+[55:23] And I'm like, wow, that's it. Well, I'm glad you brought it up, Joe. Are we talking about this? Listen. We said we were going to.
+
+[55:30] All right, listen, people, people. This is Patreon, Patreon people only. We need to whip, we need to whip people into a into a frothy lather on this. We are it's no secret to anyone that's listened to our show before that Amazon took away a half year or more of our business, and we're in dire straits now at Booker and Dax.com. And in order to get out of it, we are going to do, much to Nastasia's chagrin, another crowdfunding uh situation very soon, like within a month.
+
+[56:03] And what we're gonna make is a Sears All Pro. Sears all Pro. And what this Sears All Pro is gonna do is it's gonna have a 50% bigger front face, right? So 50% more searing area. And it's but it's the same size.
+
+[56:21] So it's the same height, doesn't make it any more tippy. You can go on your old torch. The reason we haven't released it already is we're also trying to make our own torch in the same amount of time, one that's got the adapter on it that can't spin around. And also, should I tell them what we're working on that we'll know in the next week? We'll know by next week.
+
+[56:40] Get ready for this, people. We're going to make it work on map gas. Now, everyone's like, can I use map gas on the Sears All? Answer no. So Searsol, for those of you that you know aren't privy to the other things in our life, it turns a torch into a handheld broiler.
+
+[56:56] It's been knocked off by a million people. Like it makes me so angry. Uh it makes me so angry. Anyway, so propane is the gas that it was built for. And if you use map gas, not only does it just burn a hole straight through the Searsol, but the size of the Searsol is such that it can't even tolerate that extra heat.
+
+[57:14] It just throws it away. It doesn't like actually put that extra heat onto your food, right? It's kind of like the Glengarry leads. It's just like throwing them away using that extra heat. So uh, but in the Sears All Pro with a 50% bigger searing area, it can use it.
+
+[57:31] And we've designed it to actually be more even than the Sears All uh 1.0, even though the Pro has a bigger front face, 50% bigger. So I've used a prototype and it screams. It screams. Screams. So uh we're gonna be doing a Kickstarter, not a Kickstarter, an Indiegogo.
+
+[57:55] Indie Go Go. Uh, in a couple of weeks, but we're supposed to be um, you know, like I say, whipping you folks into a frothy lather about it. Uh, and delivered uh hopefully before the Christmas time. Right? And that's it.
+
+[58:09] Wait, are we out of time? Yep. Uh, I have 58 seconds left, by the way. Uh hold on a second. Adam, Adam and Whiskey Vi Instagram wrote in in your book, you write about blender muddling uh cocktail with herbs.
+
+[58:21] If I want to make basil infused vodka, can I use this same blender method to blend the basil in the vodka and strain and store for later versus using a sous vide method? No. If you blender muddle and store basil anything longer than about 45 minutes to an hour and a half, it's gonna start tasting swampy. Adam, drain the swamp, cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking is just coming to you alive from Rockefeller Center on News Stand Studios. Join not with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez because she is in a big fat airplane flying from here to Los Angeles. But we do have in the studios with John. How are you doing, John?
+
+[0:27] Doing great, thanks. Joe Hazen. Hey, how are you guys? Doing well and live from Mexico City, Jackie Molecules. What's up?
+
+[0:35] Hola. Hello. Now, I want to know. I gave, I gave Mr. Mob, by the way, calling your if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507.
+
+[0:46] That's 917-410-1507. And if you'd someday like to listen live, you can just join our Patreon. It's not that much money. And we're still gonna give you the stuff for free on Friday. But if you join it, like it helps us to be alive, right?
+
+[1:00] Right, John? Very true. Yeah. And uh where do they go for that? Where do they go for that Patreon?
+
+[1:05] Patreon.com and then look up cooking issues in the search bar at the top of the page. There you have it. There you have it. Can I just say, well, first of all, I'm gonna I'm gonna shame Jackie Molecules a little bit. He's in Mexico City right now, and he's not, I think, that far from the one of what I think is one of the finest markets in the world.
+
+[1:26] One of the finest ones that I've ever been to is uh the Merced in Mexico City. Now, if you like food, the Merced is a great, it's a great market. Am I lying about this? Anyone who's been to the Mercedes gonna call me a liar? It's amazing.
+
+[1:41] I have not. No, it's amazing. Yeah. You know what? Like everyone goes uh ape crap over what's that?
+
+[1:46] I forget the name just shot out of my head. The Barcelona market. Oh. Famous. Yes, blank on that as well.
+
+[1:52] Listen, I've been to a lot of markets. I think the Merced, I like it a lot because it's not just food. Like I said, they have cut-rate pinata dealers. At least they used to. And I don't, I don't know where I can go get some of the best fruits around, amazing freaking uh, you know, uh tortilla game and pinatas.
+
+[2:12] It's a good mix. So I told him about one of my all-time favorite people, which is the squash blossom lady in the Merced, who is like fresh pressure. She's got she's got like the big ball of masa, and this is the best thing about down there. You got the big ball of fresh masa, and I didn't ask her, I was like, Are you using masaka or do you actually have someone do the next molezi? Come on, man.
+
+[2:34] I'm not, I mean, I'm a bad person, but I'm not like a it well, it's not that I'm not a terrible person, it's just I don't like embarrassment like when I'm out. Like I save my embarrassment for my private life, or maybe for the radio here, you know what I mean? Anyway, but her fresh press uh masa game is on point. So, like most people who in the US were used to like the kind of roundish tortilla press. You know, you guys know what I'm talking about?
+
+[3:00] The roundish tortilla press. Which by the way, they're all garbage. Do you ever notice, guys, how the spacing in a tortilla press sucks, how it sucks. It's like it's not spaced right. You know what I mean?
+
+[3:14] So they always come out like too thick, and you can't adjust. I don't know how they in Mexico they're using, I think the same thing a lot of people, but somehow I think they're made in Colombia. I think the Victoria stuff's all cast in Colombia, which is what a lot of us use. Anyway, I digress. She has a bunch of people have these what look like long presses, right?
+
+[3:34] They're longer presses with a piece of freaking like inch pipe as the pull handle. And so she can make like longer things. Like they're still thin, like a like a regular tortilla. So it's not like a telecoyos press or something like this. You know what I mean?
+
+[3:44] It's like pretty thin. But she just goes, takes the ball, goes, and she's got like the big, like like the big disc that she's using for this for these uh squash blossom quesadillas, which are still corn, by the way. She's making it corn. We call them casey, I don't know what she called them. I just ordered them anyway.
+
+[4:03] And the big giant, as I've said many times, I'll continue to say it, contractor bag full of squash blossoms, which if I had to buy that here at the Union Square Green Market, I just don't have enough cash left in my bank account to do it. You know what I mean? I just don't have it. And then just imagine trash bags. And then I remember I had with me someone who's uh uh Venezuelans native Spanish speaker, and I was like, yo, uh, I need you to ask her if this is like, did we just happen to hit this at like prime squash blossom season?
+
+[4:34] Is this like the freaking like cicadas coming out? And that's why I can have so many freaking squash blossoms. And he talked to her and she goes, We have it like this all year round. And I was like, Oh my god. And I have to get back on an airplane to this stink pit.
+
+[4:54] Anyway, so saying all this, Jack has had a week to go find her. Not only has he not found her, he attempted yesterday because he knew I was gonna shame him not going to the squash blossom lady, and you got turned back by a rainstorm. I did. Yep. A rainstorm.
+
+[5:13] Yep. And you're absolutely right. It was Monday, and I was like, oh, uh, the show is tomorrow. I have to go, and I got rained on. Yeah, man, yeah.
+
+[5:22] I know I you know, I knew I knew what you would try to do. All right, there you go. I'm gonna go right after the show. Yeah, you're gonna I'm gonna take a video or a picture and I'll put it on the Patreon. Now I have to say, I only went to her.
+
+[5:32] You please do. That would be amazing. Uh I have to say, I I I'm gonna go look. At some point someone asked me to, uh I don't think it's in my phone anymore. Someone asked me to find her, and I geotagged her on an image once for somebody.
+
+[5:44] So I got maybe I I'll look for it if you can't find her. But uh I I don't remember how late she operates. You've never been to Mark of your set, it's like enormous. It's the size of a labyrinth. It's it's the size of the town I grew up in.
+
+[5:57] It's the size of Mount Cusco, basically. You know what I mean? Um and like I say, like it's it's like uh for for those of you like New York isn't what it used to be, but it's still a little bit like this. Growing up in New York City, Joe, you well, you know, but whoever, whoever, John, you people have been around here, right? New York used to be much more so than today, divided into specific neighborhoods.
+
+[6:20] You know what I mean? There wasn't just a flower district, there was the artificial flower district. There was the district where you could, you know, where all of the floral trimmings were, right? In our area in the garment district, there was the area where all of the fabric jobbers were, and then there was the area where like the trimmings and the buttons people were, right? There used to be an area where leather crap was.
+
+[6:41] It's like everything had an area because back in the day, without the internet and without shipping, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? You're gonna drive all over this freaking city trying to pick up if you know you know what you need to go, you go to that neighborhood. And it was kind of to say it was kind of cool. It was kind of cool.
+
+[6:58] That big marine, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like uh, you know, over near where the nomad uh bar used to be, that was uh for a long time the uh illegal wholesale district. That's where like uh, you know, like a lot of the uh stuff was sold out. It's amazing.
+
+[7:12] And like also, like so it wasn't just uh ethnic enclave neighborhoods for things like restaurants and people like Lidl Lee, Chinatown and whatnot, which by the way, like I need I I'm so out of date on New York City's Chinatowns. They I'm so out of date. I need to learn more about my own city. And this one more gripe before I get into it. A lot of people say that Los Angeles has uh like more interesting or more diverse restaurants than New York does, right?
+
+[7:42] You've heard people say this, right, John? Yep. Yeah. You know why? It's because they're looking at they're looking at Manhattan.
+
+[7:48] You know, they're looking at Manhattan. There's this place called Queens. You know what I mean? Like, which is the most diverse place on earth, Queens. You know what I mean?
+
+[7:59] It really is. So I don't know. And I shamefully, shamefully shame. It's yeah, I haven't been eating out since the since the the COVID, since the pandemic. So shamefully, I know very little about my own city.
+
+[8:11] I've never been to the Sri Lankan neighborhood on Staten Island to have the food over there. I've never uh Yeah, I know. It's because I'm an idiot, and guess what? I love Sri Lankan food, right? But it's like it's just I don't know.
+
+[8:24] It's so weird. We're so weird here in the city, like we think we know so much, and we don't even know our own city, half of us. You know what I mean? Eater says there are nine Chinatowns in New York City, like throughout the boroughs. Right.
+
+[8:34] And so but the other interesting thing about that, because I drove I biked through a uh a Chinatown I'd never been to before. Uh not the one that's in Sunset Park, but the one right next to Sunset Park. And what's interesting about each one of them is that they're all different. They're all you know, they're all focused on a different thing, and I just know nothing about it. So I need to take, you know, after we get our business straight, John, I need to take some time and reacquaint myself with the food ways of my own city.
+
+[9:00] You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah. Um anyway, uh, oh, so I have another thing to food shame you about, uh, Jack. It's not a shame, but uh so Don Lee, you know, my partner at existing conditions, we were down years ago uh in Mexico City for uh Tales of the Cocktail Mexico City.
+
+[9:17] And by the way, is there still a chance to sign up for uh the Tales of the Cocktail thing I'm doing? Yes, there certainly is. Push that out there, uh so on Thursday, September 23rd at 1 p.m. Eastern Central Time, Dave, along with Derek Brown, Shannon Mustafer, and Ivy Mix will be speaking about creativity and cocktails, and it's gonna be great. So go to tales of the cocktail.org to get your tickets.
+
+[9:37] Yeah. So again, the pitch is different people, all you know, called creative by other people. What do they share in common? How do you find your own creative voice? Blah, blah, yakity shmackity, right?
+
+[9:49] Pretty much Exactly. Oh, speaking of blah, blah, yakity schmackity. Before I get into this thing, I need to tell Jackie Molecules about. Next week, I will not be here because I'll be doing uh teaching at Harvard, and it's live again this year. So I'll I'll be in Boston.
+
+[10:04] Um we gotta figure out for you, Patreon people, let us know what we can do to make it up for you missing the show. Uh let us know what we can do, and we'll try to do something fun for you. Right? Yep. Yeah.
+
+[10:15] Nastasia wanted to do a pop-up in uh in Boston, but it was just it's just too too too much too fast because like it's uh it's it's hard for me to just walk in and do something like that because it makes me real nervous. You know what I mean, John? You know me. Yeah. Yes, yes, I do.
+
+[10:30] Yeah. Speaking of real nervous, a little bit of a teaser. We're uh we were shooting some of this video for this this product launch. We're doing. It's not, by the way, it's not the big, it's not a it's a it's a it's a Sears all related product.
+
+[10:42] I'll just tell you that right now. It's not the V8. I don't want to hear about it. It's not the V8. Um So we're shooting the video for it, and I have to edit it because we don't have the we don't have the ability to hire someone else to edit it.
+
+[10:55] Is there anything worse than editing your own voice? Even just listening to the podcast and hearing my own voice. I had to do that the other week to get to a back question. It was brutal. Not fun.
+
+[11:06] Yeah, I mean, I'm no I'm no Adam Driver. I'm not gonna storm out hearing my own voice, but like that's a hilarious. What was that? Was that MPR he stormed out of? Yep.
+
+[11:15] Yep, fresh air, I think, with Terry Gross, yeah. So because no one storms out on Terry Gross, dude. Nope. I think that was it at least. I'm butt and then he just leaves?
+
+[11:24] Yep. It's amazing. He didn't even say anything, right? She during the clip, he just dropped the earphones and walked out. Yep.
+
+[11:31] Intense. Intense. You know what he needs? He needs uh uh that uh what's his name? Vince Vaughn with earmuffs from uh from Wedding Crashers.
+
+[11:40] Yeah, or no, no, uh old school. Whatever it was. All right, so here I am on the next thing to shame you on, Jack. So Don Lee and I were down there and uh we found this place that was within walking distance of our hotel uh Alameda and the uh and the Zocolo, so like it triangulate that way, right? And it was a place that Don called only Meat Bucket.
+
+[12:03] And I think it's now like listed on like, you know, the things to do in Mexico City when you're there. And I'll just describe Meat Bucket. So imagine uh for those of you that ever you know again, in New York, if you would in the old days, like carved out of the sides of buildings were like little like notches, right? Almost like a closet, but inside would be somebody selling something, like umbrellas or like shoe parts, or like you guys familiar with what I'm talking about, like those little notches carved out of the side of a building, hole in the wall, let's say, but you couldn't even go into it. So this was a hole in the wall.
+
+[12:39] Like could have been an entryway, but they blocked it off and someone was serving meat there. And they had a giant steel kettle, black steel kettle, filled with like bubbling. I'm gonna wanna say oil, maybe broth, maybe broth plus oil, would that be broil? Off oith. Anyway, some mixture.
+
+[13:07] It couldn't have been straight oil because it was bubbling, right? So it's some mixture of meat, juice, and and and fat. Big, and in that cauldron was every kind of meat. I'm not talking like one kind of meat, name a meat. Lamb.
+
+[13:29] Oh, uh, it's mainly beef and pork. Name a part of the animal. Oh, there you go, yeah. I mean, the whole thing, sure. Yes.
+
+[13:40] Probably the head was in there. Yeah, tripe. I think all of it. Everything. All of it.
+
+[13:46] And so what you would do is is they had like a board and they would write down all the the meat parts, and you would just be like pop. And then they would take the after they had the uh the tortilla, they would dip, they would dip the tortilla in the meat bucket, put it on the thing, and then get the meat of choice, pull it out of the cauldron, whack it a wag it whack it over with the cleavers, and then throw it into the tortilla and hand it to you. And then outside of the thing was just like the little thing of sauce and and the and the little bucket of like, you know, like little lime wedges. That's amazing. How do they keep track of where all the meat is in such a cauldron if it's all the you know?
+
+[14:23] I mean it was impressive. It was uh the size of the cauldron in my mind was uh maybe slightly bigger across in a 55 gallon bucket. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[14:35] Like large walk size, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like you could kind of hug it. You know what I mean? You could kinda hug on to it, but like not really, you know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[14:46] Oh, amazing. So you gotta go find yourself the meat bucket. How am I gonna find the meat bucket? That is impossible. Needle in the haystack.
+
+[14:54] It's a meat bucket in a haystack. But it will be uh it will be a reward. I mean, like, how could you refuse finding a place called meat bucket? So I just walk around. This is not in Merced.
+
+[15:06] You're saying this is somewhere not in Merced. So, like our hotel was like on that park, like Alameda, and like it's within a block and a half of that, and then like towards the Zocolo, or how are you pronounced that? The main square. Just ask the locals, you know, where can I find the meat bucket? Yeah.
+
+[15:23] They'll be good to go, Jack. Yeah, that'll work. Meat bucket. I don't know how to say bucket in Spanish. Does anyone know how to say bucket?
+
+[15:30] No. Give me meat bucket in French, John. So or de viande, so is bucket, yeah. Yeah. But wouldn't it cubeta?
+
+[15:40] Really? Do you prefer uh the viande or do you prefer like other words, like when you're when you're going, do you go to places when you're in France and specifically go to like uh I used to go to this place when I had to go to Paris uh a gibier only does like poultry and stuff like that, and like and like well, gibier is even more like game like rabbits, things like that. But like, yeah, they the GBA would have like the pheasant and the rabbit. We don't have that in the U.S. No, it's really unfortunate.
+
+[16:10] Yeah. My dad loves pheasant and rabbit and all that other stuff. Yeah. Wish there was I wish it was more of a thing here. Yeah, there's not even it's not a category that I know of, a Gibier.
+
+[16:21] No, I mean game, but like not no. Yeah. Like definitely New York doesn't have. We're going the way of Paris with our outdoor dining, although, you know, we need to up our now that we're gonna do it permanently, we should, you know, some of this stuff needs a little buffing. You know what I mean?
+
+[16:34] Absolutely. A little buff and a polish. Yeah, yeah. But you know, next next major tragedy we have here in this city, uh, maybe we'll get GBAs. I don't know how that would happen.
+
+[16:43] I don't either, but be amazing. Yeah. Um got this in from Jacob Pope on the Patreon. Hey Dave, I'm trying to make oat milk in quotes uh at home, and I was wondering if there are any methods to emulsify a liquid fat into it that does not involve an expensive homogenizer or sonicator or even blending it where it will eventually precipitate out. I find that using a blender also introduces a lot of air and drastically changes the texture.
+
+[17:09] Uh that is true. However, the texture will settle over time. By the way, this is in general, um okay, I'm gonna finish your question and then I'm gonna should I tangent first and then finish? What do you think? Sure.
+
+[17:22] Which tangent first? Yeah, because yeah, I don't circle you back to the question. So blending and texture is a big thing that people don't understand. When you're making uh syrups or you're making purees, right? Um the texture is a lot more air than you necessarily think gets whipped into your product.
+
+[17:40] Now, this can be a problem from a flavor standpoint in terms of oxidation, right? Uh, but for most things, it's actually a problem in terms of one color. Uh, two, uh, the viscosity changes a little bit. That's not really important. Uh, three, it makes measurement more difficult because uh if you're measuring especially something like for a cocktail, it uh it can become problematic.
+
+[18:03] Most things will settle out over time and go back. So if you if you only had to blend it at the beginning to emulsify it, but didn't have to blend it before use, you'd probably be okay, right? However, uh, here's an interesting experiment. If you use a blender on something uh and then put it into a vacuum machine, you can immediately suck all the air out of it. So we used to show this uh all the time.
+
+[18:25] We would take and blend uh tomatoes, canned tomatoes. And y'all know how when you blend canned tomatoes or tomatoes in general, they go pink, right? They go real pink because you're whipping all that air into it. You put it in a vacuum machine, cover it a little bit because it's gonna spatter, it's gonna be real ugly. Uh, but then when you suck all the air out of it and boom, it goes down, it goes back to dark red again.
+
+[18:47] So that that's one way to de-erate anything that can be boiled. This is one of the reasons why after things are blended, a lot of recipes will specify to bring stuff up to the boil. The boil will actually boil the air out and cause the color to drop back down to where it was and and the texture. Uh that wasn't what you were asking, but I'll just add that anyway. Uh, no one has ever made, I think, inexpensively, the the uh vacuum blending uh rigs, right, that the dentists use.
+
+[19:16] People keep threatening to make them available, and there's some people that have relatively inexpensive, relatively crappy vacuum mixers. But vacuum mixing, I once back in the day tried to hook a vacuum machine up to uh vacuum pump up to a vita prep. Now, I did it with a vitapep in this was 2004, right? And the Vitapep bearings at that time were not good enough. So I was for those of you that never used a Vitamix or a Vitapep, uh, if if you're in a real kitchen, there's oil and grease that have seeped down around the base of the Vitapep.
+
+[19:50] There just is, believe me. And so I sucked the vacuum and the bearings weren't vacuum tight back in the day, and I was sucking bearing grease up through my Vitapep container into the into what I was mixing. And I was like, nope, bad idea, not gonna do that again. But I've been told that the bearings are better now and that that that won't happen, and that they actually make also pictures that are designed for a vacuum. So vacuum blending is a very interesting technology.
+
+[20:15] I don't care about it for its theoretical health uh implications. But uh it would be interesting actually to do a light vacuum whip for something like nitro muddling, right? So instead of nitrile muddling, which you're doing blending, uh blender muddling, I would like to try vacuum uh on that, and it would be good for blending things that you don't want to whip air into. Okay, again I digress. Uh yeah, no, I would just use an emulsifier and blend it uh and then let it settle out.
+
+[20:41] Uh, what you can do is you can um if you're adding other flavors to it, like you you could just blend a portion of it and emulsify it in. If you use a I would use a stabilizer, so Xanthan gum is a stabilizer. Uh, it's gonna also make the stuff a little bit snotty, so you don't want to use very much of it. Uh uh good stabilizer for beverage systems that is not so good for commercial use because it's quite expensive, but good for uh us is uh gum arabic. And the the stuff that I recommend in liquid intelligence is uh a mixture of gum Arabic and Xanthan gum, and that does a great job and it's relatively stable and it's it's good enough that once it's in solution, you know, every day or so, you don't need to reblend it to get it back together.
+
+[21:26] You can just kind of toss it back and forth like you would a chocolate milk when you were a kid. You guys remember when you were a kid taking a chocolate milk and going like this, Wapa Wapa Whoppa, like that, without whipping a lot of air into it. So, yeah, right? Whoppa whoppa. And then you get that chocolate milk back.
+
+[21:39] Or were you guys the kids that drank it so that you would have all the light chocolate milk on the top and then suck all the chocolate down at the bottom? Nope. You know that kid though. Actually, no. Yeah, I do know that kid.
+
+[21:49] Yeah, I know that kid. Have any of you ever met someone who successfully done the gallon milk challenge? No. Okay. Yeah, it didn't end well.
+
+[22:00] It's doing the rounds, yeah. So uh my friend who did it in high school, he it he got it all down, jug hit the table, and then it all came back up. Like he got it all down, jug hit the table, all came back up. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[22:16] Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of, I'm not gonna talk about this. I was told by Dax, I was like, I was I was at the TWA Hotel this uh weekend, which was kind of cool at JFK, TWAA airport hotel. And uh they allow you to bring dogs.
+
+[22:30] Oh. Yeah. They should not. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[22:34] Yeah. Uh so Erosaren, who the architect who died roughly my age, 51, uh operation uh from an operation to get rid of a brain tumor. Anyways, again I digress. So he designed it and he wanted the flow to work in a certain way. So there's not a lot of ways in and out of the of the hotel.
+
+[22:55] So if you're designing a hotel, if any of you are out there are hotel people, if you're designing a hotel and you're going to allow dogs, right, then you have to make there be an easy way for people to punch out of the building with their dogs. You with me? Yep. Yes. I want to punch out of that building.
+
+[23:16] Now, if you have a hotel that is part of a landmark structure and you're required to keep 200 feet of red, bright red carpet that you have to walk down to get from the main lobby to the area where the elevators are for your hotel, you have to make sure that there's not I'm just gonna put it this way. The way dogs work is dogs uh trained dogs, dogs that are trained, right? That aren't sick, right? A sick dog, people you can't blame a sick dog. If a dog is sick, you can't blame the dog, it's sick, right?
+
+[23:52] But dogs in general aren't gonna go inside unless they sense that it is a place where dogs are supposed to go to the bathroom. And how do they sense this? Other dogs pee. So if there's a bunch of other dogs that have already peed in an area and you haven't natured the miracles the hell out of it, right, then what your dog smells is a message that says, Hey, I was here. Would you like to add a message?
+
+[24:21] And then your dog adds a message, and so on and so on. So this 20-year-old landmarked carpet is about 99% dog pee at this point. That's unfortunate. Did you bring your dogs there? I did.
+
+[24:33] And so like I had to do the short leash and run. Short leash and run, short leash and run, right? Hopefully the butt can't settle down in the time it takes you to run across that carpet. Anyway. The perils of the perils of hotel design.
+
+[24:47] All right. Uh did I answer the question on emulsification with ticaloid? The mixture that I used, I forget what it is. Uh, John, see if you can look it up and put it out on our on our Patreon. Uh I suggested once a mix because Ticoloid 210 or 310s became harder and harder to find.
+
+[25:02] It's mostly gum arabic with a very little bit of xanthan. You're gonna want your final xanthan percentage to be I would say a quarter of a percent or less. Quarter of a percent or less. Okay. Uh and your uh your gum arabic, the nice thing about the ticaloid is that it it dissolves cold no problem.
+
+[25:22] You know what I mean? Uh we're gonna want to dissolve the the ticaloid into your water base first, or the the gum arabic and the xanthan into your water base first, and then um and then add your oil to it to emulsify it in. The reason gum arabic is good is because it dilutes well. I'm assuming you're not necessarily drinking the oat milk straight, you're pouring it into coffee. Gum arabic is a great emulsifier for those kind of a situations.
+
+[25:44] Uh gum acacia is the other word. If you find gum Arabic to be an offensive word, I'm told that gum acacia is what we should call it now. Um anyway, so I believe uh if you keep it it's something like four parts Arabic to one part or four parts acacia to one part uh xanthan or something in that range, but uh give it a shot. You really can't add too much of the acacia, it's not gonna cause a problem. But please don't buy like the big yellow chunks.
+
+[26:08] Buy a nice, you know, powderized good one. And it's not even really the hydrocolloid in the acacia that that helps you, it's the protein in it. They've uh done studies where they've removed the protein fraction from gum acacia and it no longer has its amazing emulsifying properties. What about uh 210S special blend of gum arabic and santhan? That works.
+
+[26:26] Okay, yeah, that's on Modernist Pantry. Oh, modernistpantry.com. By the way, I I have to apologize if you do end up watching the video where we're trying to sell the new product that I'm working on. Uh we're all working on. Uh I kind of went into pitch guy voice while I was doing it.
+
+[26:44] I couldn't. I couldn't. Not full pitch voice, not like not full mighty putty, not full built uh Billy Mays, you know? Yeah. But close.
+
+[26:55] And I was like, oh man, I was doing my pitch man voice this whole time. Oh well. Uh all right. Uh Anthony Chan wrote in. What is the recommended alcohol content if I have to make a b boozy ice cream?
+
+[27:08] I put three ba three ounces of Bailey's into my ice cream mix. When you were guys with kids, you ever you ever do the uh the the Bailey's milkshakes where you just like fill your blender with uh ice cream and then dunk the Bailey's? Not kids, but you know what I mean. Like no, never did that. You never did a Bailey shake?
+
+[27:23] No? Nope. I have to say I have to say I'm not a Bailey's guy, but that tastes real good. Okay, you know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, I mean, it's not gonna i i if you're if you're in business trying to get all crunked up, it ain't gonna crunk you up because you're not dumping that much baileys in and Bailey's not that much of a high alcohol product anyway, but it tastes real good.
+
+[27:43] Yeah, yeah. Uh you guys, uh when uh when you guys were coming of drinking age, were they still making those like disgusting Bailey shots where they would pour an acidic ingredient into Bailey's? They used to have different names like Bloody Brain, uh uh Cement Mixer. No? Did not see that, thankfully.
+
+[28:01] No, I didn't see that either. So they used to they used to be a thing that people thought was a fun thing to do, where it was a shot with Bailey's plus something that congeals Bailey's. Yeah, it's terrible. I'm glad that's no longer a thing. That's garbage.
+
+[28:14] It's garbage, trash can thing. All right. I put three ounces of Bailey's into my ice cream mix, uh, one pint total volume. Anthony, Anthony, you're screwing with me on with with pints. Pints a pound the world around.
+
+[28:28] I love it, right? 16 ounces. When was the last time you thought, John, what's the last time you had a recipe that you thought of in ounces and pints? Oh, you're French though. You're Belgian.
+
+[28:36] Yeah, ever. You know what's so weird, dude? Like you're Belgian, but you don't get all Hercule Poireau offended when someone calls you French. No, yeah. I mean, my friends have been doing that for a very, very long time.
+
+[28:45] So I'm just kind of made peace with it. Your boy Hercule hates that though. Yes. Belgique. Uh and he was, but he was French Belgian too, right?
+
+[28:55] He wasn't like Flemish. He wasn't getting all bent because he was like Flemish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, French Belgian.
+
+[29:01] Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right. Uh I put three ounces of Bailey's into my one pint of uh one pint total volume of uh ice cream mix, and it seems like it can never get to the right consistency. It seems to be too watery.
+
+[29:14] Uh same mix without alcohol. I got the correct consistency without issue. Thanks so much and have a nice day. Well, uh, I mean, you're already Patreon supporters, so I appreciate it. So I don't want you to spend another five bucks, but you should go to uh Quinn Fusile's uh book, Gelato Obsession, and get a hold of his where he has a very simple explanation.
+
+[29:33] We had him on the show a couple weeks back of um the uh uh AFP, which is the uh the anti-freezing potential that uh a lot of other people in the industry use basically the same number, just divided by 100, called the PAC, which is uh some sort of Italian thing that means the same thing, like like uh how much it it it's frozen. So I uh using uh Quinn's math. So Quinn's math is that uh every gram of alcohol is uh the equivalent anti-freezing power of nine grams of sugar. All right? All right, you with me, people?
+
+[30:09] Okay. Now, uh Quinn is for for uh something that is in your range. So let's just let's just pretend that your mix was a thousand uh grams instead of a pint. Let's just mix, let's just say it was a kilo, right? So uh Quinn would want the equivalent of 340 to 380 anti-freezing units or sugar units of anti-freezing power in in in the ice cream to get the right texture.
+
+[30:34] Because remember, Quinn, a little bit crazy on this one, wants to have it be scooping temperature right out of the freezer. You remember that? Right out of an American, not well, he's Canadian, but you know what I'm saying, right out of like a standard freezer, not a dipping cabinet. Uh most people who are uh shooting for gelato at gelato dipping temperatures are shooting for about 240 to 280. Now, if you remember back from that show, what Quinn does is he doesn't want his stuff to be that sweet, so he's adding things like dextrose and other things that have lower sweetening for the amount of anti-freeze power they have.
+
+[31:07] All right, you with me? You with me so far? All right. So alcohol is a much more potent antifreeze. So as soon as you start adding alcohol, it's you're either gonna have to r drastically reduce the amount of sugar, right?
+
+[31:18] Or or do something else, like boil off the water. Now I looked at what you added. You added, you had a recipe which I'm just gonna assume was 454 uh grams, about a pint, right? And to that you added uh 85 roughly milliliters of Bailey's. Now, in that Bailey's, which is 17% alcohol, there is 14.5 uh grams or milliliters of pure ethanol.
+
+[31:42] But that is the equivalent of 130 grams of sugar. That is the equivalent of 130 grams of sugar in terms of how much it's going to reduce your uh freezing potential. Now, Bailey's is also very sugary. So Bailey's is probably somewhere in the area of 250 to 300 grams of sugar in a liter, right? Somewhere in that range.
+
+[32:02] So you're also adding somewhere between 50 and 52 grams of sugar sugar in the form of Bailey's. So you have added the sugar equivalent, right? You've added the sugar equivalent of I say 50? I didn't mean to say that. Uh 20, 21 to 25 grams of sugar, right?
+
+[32:24] So in your 85 grams of uh 85 milliliters of Bailey's is roughly 14 and a half uh milliliters of ethanol, which is the equivalent of 130 grams of sugar, plus an additional actual 21 to 26 grams of sugar, right? Right? Sorry for that correction. Sorry, loud numbers, loud numbers. Which means that your total sugar equivalent that you're adding to your 450 grams is 151 grams of sugar.
+
+[32:50] AKA a lot. That's a lot, right? You're adding uh say every milliliter of Bailey's that you add is the equivalent of adding 1.8 milliliters of or grams of straight sugar, right? So it's a lot. Uh so all I'm saying is is that even if you added no additional sugar to your recipe.
+
+[33:15] If the recipe had zero sugar and the only thing you had was 369 grams of base and 85 grams of Bailey's, right? Then you right then would be just at the correct level for uh Quinn stuff. So on the soft side for regular folk, right? Uh so you got no wiggle room in your recipe. So what's the answer?
+
+[33:36] Boil off the alcohol. That's the answer. Or use less. Every uh every ounce of Baileys that you add is the equivalent of adding 50 52 grams of sugar to your recipe. All right.
+
+[33:50] And Anthony, in case you were wondering where to get gelato obsession, go to cooking with q dot ca. Q the letter Q. And he didn't he also buy gelato obsession.com? Or did that not do that not working? It's five bucks, people.
+
+[34:05] Yep, that works. It's five dollars. Come on, man. Oh no, wait, I can't break it. Just go to cooking with Q.com and you can definitely get it there.
+
+[34:11] All right. From Prashant Ganesh. Hey David uh crew, this is Prashant from Florida. Uh I've been making yogurt at home for the past 18 months using a yogurt culture from my family. Now here's the key from his family.
+
+[34:23] So the issue is wants to preserve this culture. That's the issue. By the way, I'm gonna say this yoga culture. Uh we I don't know him personally. I would love to get Sandor Cats on this show.
+
+[34:34] He has a new book that just came out. We can probably make that happen. We know somebody who knows him. Jeremy and him are good, really good friends. Yeah?
+
+[34:42] Yeah. I mean, I was in my new book that I'm writing right now, like I had to write something about fermentation. And I was like, you know what? Crap on it. Just go buy anything by Sandor Cats.
+
+[34:53] You know what I mean? Yep. Why reinvent the wheel? Wheels are already round. The art of fermentation, his book on it is extensive, thorough, and really, really great.
+
+[35:01] I haven't read the new book yet. I haven't read the new one either. Yeah, that's from a couple years ago, the big fat orange one. Yeah, yeah, I have that one. Yeah.
+
+[35:07] Yeah. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Wheel rolls.
+
+[35:10] You know what I mean? Yep. Don't need a new wheel. Anyway. Uh yeah.
+
+[35:13] Anyway. So what we should do is if he does come on, we should revisit. Can you flag this question? I'm going to talk about it now, but can you flag this question and we can revisit it if we ever do get him on? Yep.
+
+[35:24] All right. Um Prashant's been making yogurt at home with a family culture. Uh I was unable to make yogurt for two months and would now like to know uh how to restart it. When I started making it again, the taste seems off in all four attempts. One, it's extremely sour, and two, it has a weird taste that I don't really know how to describe.
+
+[35:44] I'm wondering if you had any suggestions for how to revive the uh my yogurt and make it taste better. I was also wondering if you had suggestions on how to best preserve the culture when I'm not able to make it for an extended period of time. Thanks, Prashant. All right, now here's the thing about cultures, right? So they change.
+
+[36:02] Right. First of all, assuming you're storing so remember, yogurt is cultured at uh, you know, warm temperature. For any of you that were alive in the 70s, the Salt Incorporation used to make a little yogurt machine where you'd put little cups in and it would keep uh like like individual serving sizes of yogurt at exactly yogurt culturing temperature, and you would put it in the night before, and every day you would have yogurt and people would buy it and they would do it for about a day and a half and then they would throw it into their closet. You ever seen this thing? Little mini individual yogurt cup thing from the Salt Incorporation?
+
+[36:33] Yep. Yeah, yeah. They were also the purveyors of the first really crappy home American cappuccino machines that did not work at all at all. The the espresso from them was garbage. But what do we know?
+
+[36:48] The average American had ever been to Italy. Anyway, uh so I digress again. Uh so what what I I'm assuming you've stored it in the fridge. Now remember, the fridge is not the best place for the those yogurt cultures to survive. So I'm guessing what's happened in the long time that you've uh had it uh being stored is that other bacteria have uh colonized it, and it is now no longer primarily the same culture that you uh were using before.
+
+[37:20] And I can't remember, I couldn't remember and I couldn't do a quick search on it, which is why we should ask a fermentation expert. But I believe that long-term refrigerator storage will skew towards more of the acid-producing bacteria, which is why what happens is is that you have to spend several weeks like pitching and tossing, pitching and tossing, pissing, pitching and tossing, pitching and tossing to get the bacteria level back close to where where you were. So, you know, you you use a small amount of inoculum and you culture it at the correct yogurt temperatures, dump it, do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again, and you should get back into a yogurt zone. Now, is it gonna be the exact same stuff that you had before? Maybe not, because a lot of times, and there's a lot of uh science types who are who kind of poo-poo uh preserving cultures for a long time simply because they're not static.
+
+[38:11] You know, like different things fly in from around uh, you know, the place. So like you you get a company that whose job it is, like Hansen or something like this, to do cultures or like a yeast company like Y East or one of these things or White Labs, and you know, they're analyzing and specifically getting, you know, uh albeit mainly monocultures or what's a what's like a is there a word for several things, not a mono, but like you know, two or three strains, you know what I mean? Is there like an oleo culture? Not that I know of. Anyway, but you know what I'm saying, right?
+
+[38:39] It's like like a relatively narrow band of things. Yeah, you know, versus wild fermentations. But those wild fermentations that you keep going forever, they're just not static. They just really aren't. Um, they're living organisms.
+
+[38:44] They evolve. Yeah, well, they're not even environment that they're in. They're like cities of living organisms, right? And so, like somebody, you know, you you you take you take New York City, and then you know, you you lift it up and then you take it to uh, you know, I don't know, Keokook, Iowa, right? And then other people move into town.
+
+[39:09] You know what I mean? And so it's like it becomes a different place. You know what I mean? It's not static. Um so you know, you can probably get it back into good yogurt feather by, like I say, pitching and dumping a bunch to try to restabilize it.
+
+[39:23] I mean, I'm not an expert in yogurt, but I'm thinking that would work. Or get a new uh a new batch from your family, I think is ideal. Uh yogurt, so bacteria will be debilitated but not killed by freezing. I would guess that you could probably ice cube freeze culture for a good amount of time as long as you've excluded air from it. Uh, you know, so that it doesn't get all desiccated and freezer burned.
+
+[39:48] And then um I'll freeze it as rapidly as possible. And then uh alternatively, some people dry the culture, but you know, I don't really know how they survive that on account of the fact that they're not spore forming. Lactobactobacillus are not spore-forming bacteria, so I don't really know how they survive the drying or uh, but people say that that I mean, obviously they sell dried cultures, so that obviously works, but I don't I don't understand the mechanism of it, right? Girt, right? Isn't that what it's called?
+
+[40:14] Tried yogurt balls? Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got again, scientifically, I don't understand the mechanism of why they survived that. You know?
+
+[40:23] Yeah. That it works, I have no doubt. How it works, I do not know. You know? Yep.
+
+[40:29] Again, pick up any book by Sandor Katz. Um or Zilber or or you know, Ariel Johnson or you know, Ariel Johnson's fermentation book didn't get enough press because she wasn't uh as well known when that book came out as uh she is now. Go check out her fermentation book. She wrote that while she was, I think, still at the food lab. Oh wow.
+
+[40:52] Interesting. Has she submitted her new book yet? Not that I know of, but I haven't spoken to her in a couple months. So yeah, I don't know. And I get her back on these airways.
+
+[40:59] Everyone loves everyone loves an uh an Ariel Johnson uh episode where they get to ask their real hardcore, not their knucklehead science questions that you know we can answer, but like their real hardcore science questions. Speaking of, I'm gonna be with uh at the Harvard, I'm gonna be with Harold McGee again. So if you had if you guys on Patreon have anything you want me to ask him for the show, let me know. I'll ask him. You know, if you don't have the you can just ask me directly.
+
+[41:27] This is a secret. People don't know what a sweet guy he is. You know what I mean? That's it's that's also open to the public, right? The Harvard Lecture?
+
+[41:35] If you are in Boston, the Harvard lecture is open to the public. Yeah. You can come check it out. Next Tuesday at noon? No, that is a student lecture, and you have to pay a hundred thousand dollars a year to see that.
+
+[41:44] Gotcha. Okay. But uh the the public lecture is on the Monday. Yeah. And does not require a hundred thousand dollars.
+
+[41:52] However, I'm sure that's what it costs to like even rent a modest apartment in Boston now that it's gone all biotech crazy. You know what I mean? That town is like not the way it used to be. No, it's not. It's changed a lot.
+
+[42:02] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, probably in some ways for the better, but I don't know. I gotta figure out where I'm gonna eat when I'm up there. Anyway, uh, I'm gonna be there with the family.
+
+[42:11] Going to the Museum of Science, great museum. Great, great, great museum. The electricity show at the Museum of Science. First of all, you've all heard of the Vandagraaff generator, right? Yeah.
+
+[42:23] Guess who built the generator that they have at the Museum of Science? A guy by the name of Vandagraf, the actual Vandagraph generator. But this son of a gun has a like, like, you know how like uh, you know how like uh in school you were like, that's like two salad bowls sat. You know what I mean? The little ball, the Vandagraph generator.
+
+[42:43] This one is like, this one, it it's like the size of the ball they drop at Times Square on on freaking New Year's Eve. It's big. And like it's so powerful that they they have uh the the belts that they use to run it because that's how Vanegraph generators work. They go like two stories up to the top of the thing and then down into the sub basement and they spin up and it shoots lightning bolts like like 15 feet. Thing is bananas.
+
+[43:12] And then the guys at uh MIT who figured out how to make musical Tesla coils. And if you guys don't know musical Tesla coils, ooh, ooh, look up a musical Tesla coil, but they have musical Tesla coils. So the Tesla coil, it shoots out uh like these these lightning bolts, right? But uh it's frequency driven. So they can change the sound of the lightning based on the frequency they pulse it with.
+
+[43:36] So they have several of them, so it's polyphonic, and then they play songs on the musical Tesla coils in polyphonic notes. They have like I think three notes or something or more, big and loud. So I swear to God, I was there, I don't know, five years ago, and they played, they played some classic stuff, you know, classic music, whatever, you know, whatever Bach or something, you know, you know, you know, Tacot and Fugue, Organy stuff, right? You know, that kind of stuff. And then I then after the show was over, I went to go talk to the guys like, okay, okay.
+
+[44:07] But they l-thunderstruck. Oh my God. They played Thunderstruck on with lightning. Pretty cool. Hearing Thunderstruck with lightning was like Yeah, pretty amazing.
+
+[44:21] Museum of Science. There's a lot of little uh if you're in Boston, you go to the Museum of Science. Uh there's a lot of like hidden gems, at least there used to be. I haven't been a number of years. In one of like the basements or the lower levels near the elevator, you go around the corner and it's just a wall of mechanisms.
+
+[44:39] Have you seen that? No. It's just like a wall of um, so I don't know if they still do this. My kids never did it, so I don't know whether anyone else's kids still do it, but there used to be these things called dioramas where you took a shoebox and you cut a hole in the shoebox, and then you built like a little world inside of the shoebox, and then you would look into the shoebox, right? I don't know that kids do that anymore.
+
+[44:59] Diorama. I love a diorama. But it's like that sort of scale, but just a whole wall of mechanisms where you stare in and they're like actually moving, like linkages, linkages. Speaking of linkages, I need to add uh Feltman's to our hot dog off. Yes, you're mentioning that the other day.
+
+[45:17] Yeah. So we're gonna have a Michigan, we're gonna have a uh uh Coneys, and we're gonna have uh we're gonna have your your hum, your uh what they call Hummel, yep. Hummel from from Connecticut. And then we'll maybe we'll try to get a Feltman's here from New York. Feltman's claims that the actual obviously the Frankfurter is from Frankfurt, that the name is built right in, right?
+
+[45:37] But that I didn't realize this until I was researching the Feltmans, is that the claim of Coney Island is that they were the first group. This guy, Feltman, was the first person, this is in the 1800s, to throw the Frankfurter, because he was from Frankfurt, you know, I'm Maine, and uh I'm mine, uh, and uh he was the first person to be like, you know what you should do? You should cook a long bun and put the Frankfurter on the bun so that you could eat it on the go. That apparently is what was invented, and that was in Coney Island. He did that in Coney Island, which would explain why the Detroit hot dogs are called Coneys.
+
+[46:16] Yeah, right? Not just that, not just that, you know, someone on their way to Detroit passed through Coney Island was like, hey, Coneys. It's like that that they had the idea of the bun. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, because I don't believe any food history stories. They're all 99% trash.
+
+[46:34] 99% of them are garbage. For real. Histories, like, I don't know. I've seen so many of them rewritten. Do you what are you what are your feelings, John?
+
+[46:43] You're a uh art historian, art art, you know, professor. What do you think about food histories? I love them. I don't necessarily believe them, but I love knowing all the different stories about how something could have come come to be. Yeah?
+
+[46:55] Yeah. It's fun. I don't know. Yeah, I don't believe like more than half either. Yeah.
+
+[46:59] I don't believe any of them. They're all fun. I don't know. It's fun to know. It just adds like some more history and like mystique, and I don't know, demystifies and I don't know.
+
+[47:06] It's kind of fun. My look, there was a there's an interesting book, for instance, uh uh what was it called? The Language of Food Jurosky. Yeah, Jorovsky, yeah. Uh his editor was also Maria Guarnashelli, so I I met him.
+
+[47:20] Yeah. Um Standerovsky, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so, like, you know, it's some interesting. I think like linguistic movement is interesting.
+
+[47:28] So like he had this thing, how like this, you know, dish that uh came from the Middle East, Seek Bodge, like turned it somehow into fishing chips, right? So, like as an exercise in like language change, but the idea that a particular dish was invented that is ubiquitous, a ubiquitous dish is invented by one particular person makes very little sense to me. Like ex Benedict and Delmonico's. Yeah, what was the story? That one's almost certainly false too, right?
+
+[47:57] Yeah. It's got yeah, well, I mean, especially because there are two or three other stories for it too. There's the Waldorf Delmonico's, and then I'm blanking on the third one. But yeah, basically somebody came in one day, hung over and like asked the chef to come up with this dish, and boom, ex Benedict concocted. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[48:11] This is just all garbage. Especially because, like, okay, listen, here's something that every restaurant does. You know what we do? We poach eggs. What's another thing that all restaurants of that era would have?
+
+[48:22] Mother sauces. Yeah, yeah. Holidays, right? Yeah. Comes up, dude.
+
+[48:28] People have eggs in the morning and stuff. It comes up. You know, it's like uh here's the way I I like to think of it. It's like uh here's another thing. I you know how like someone was like, it wasn't Sikorsky.
+
+[48:42] My great-grandpa actually invented the helicopter. Leonardo da Vinci invented the helicopter. No, he did not. No, he did not. Sikorsky invented the freaking helicopter, right?
+
+[48:51] Just because someone thinks that waving something over their head is gonna make them fly, doesn't mean they figured out how to move the propellers in such a way that the you know that the helicopter takes off of the ground, right? Right. Right. So like it's not like did somebody in, you know, 1312 make a cookie that was with black and white on it. They invented the black and white.
+
+[49:14] No. No. That's not important. It's not that someone ever did it. That somebody did something once in their basement a billion years ago doesn't make them the inventor of something.
+
+[49:24] It's who popularized a thing. Yep. Right? Yep. So, like, was Arnold Palmer the first person on the planet to mix iced tea and lemonade?
+
+[49:36] No. No. You know what people had a lot of around? Hey, how many times when you were kids, did you ever just be like, I'm gonna mix this with this? This is almost mixed.
+
+[49:46] Right. Every day. Every day. I used to open my fridge every day and just mix little bits of craft together and see what happened. We used to call it cootie juice and throw it on people.
+
+[49:57] Did you guys also use am I the only one who we always had the jar of the pepperoncini in the fridge in the fridge? You always had that little jar of pepperoncini? I did not. Yeah, yeah, we did too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[50:07] So it was like a lot of that juice and then like other spices and stuff, and that was like that, that was the cootie juice. And we would either drink it or throw it on each other. Yeah, yeah. I don't feel people have those jars of pepperoncini around anymore. Yeah.
+
+[50:21] You know what they make in Connecticut that's delicious? The Norpro Corporation? They're not high quality. I love, I mean, they are, but I love them, but uh everybody else I give them to, they they hate them. Is that is the um the Italian like stuffed cherry peppers, they're either stuffed with the Provloon or or or Provloon wrapped with prosciutto, or sometimes you can get them with like with tuna in them.
+
+[50:44] And I love those damn things. And they come in like jars with handles on them, and you can, I love those things. And and I've I'm told that they're not good, but I just love them. They're made in Connecticut, another Connecticut thing. Yeah, the Norpro Corporation.
+
+[50:57] All right, yeah. Um we said before, sadly, Ben De Table, who uh we worked with at the previous network. Uh they uh are going out of business and they still have some warehouse clearing boxes, which are basically just a hodgepodge of remnant inventory for insanely good price. Started at $65, now doing 25% off that with cowork clearance for well over $110 worth of stuff. Uh just go to this site and uh, you know, help help clear out his warehouse.
+
+[51:28] Uh they have high quality stuff. I got a box recently, a lot of good uh rancho gordo. Uh you like the rancho gordo beans? I love rancho gordo. Rancho gordo.
+
+[51:36] Get uh yeah, they're good beans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really great.
+
+[51:41] Yeah, got some good uh got some good spices. Uh actually some really good fragrant fennel. And I was like, Well, good's the fennel gonna be. I opened it up. That was good.
+
+[51:50] I I love fennel though. You don't like fennel? Not I know. I love fennel. Really?
+
+[51:55] I like fennel. Yeah, fennel's great. I love fennel too. I love fennel. I like that licoricey anisey flavor.
+
+[52:01] Like uh the um the uh like the the candy, the Indian candy coated fennel. I love that. I love fennel sausage. I love fennel sweet sausage. I also love the the the the cured fennel sausage.
+
+[52:15] The oh, speaking of cured sausage, you guys hear about the quote unquote Italian style meats. I sent you that, yeah. Yeah. But so get this, people. The CDC, I I don't even know how they get away with saying like this.
+
+[52:27] Stay away from Italian style meats. Ding. Yeah. I'm like, first of all, I'm gonna take a little bit of a fit. Stay away from Italian style meats.
+
+[52:41] You don't have to stay away from them. You can just cook them to really high temperatures, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They're like, a bunch of people got sick eatery eating off of antipasto or charcuterie plates.
+
+[52:52] Hold up, let me read that. Italian style meats. They figured out what it was, though. So you don't have to stay away from Italian style meats anymore. Outbreak alert until specific Italian style meat products are identified.
+
+[53:02] Reheat all Italian style meats to 165 degrees Fahrenheit or until steaming hot before eating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[53:10] They discovered what it was. It was pre-made. First of all, I I get it. Sometimes you're, you're, you're, sometimes you're lazy, but it was it was pre-made antipasto trays. So like in case you can't slice up the cheese and the meat and like lay it on a plate.
+
+[53:28] It comes in a pre-packed plastic thing. So what am I supposed to do? Like rip the plastic off the top, be like, here you go, fancy. Because that stuff's not cheap. You know what I mean?
+
+[53:39] Anyway, by uh uh Fritel Fratelli Baretta was that was the company. And I looked it up and they recalled it all. So they're they're good, right? They recalled it all. Um it's 200, I think it's 280.
+
+[53:55] Look it up. 280,000 pounds of meat they had you recall. Look up the number. It's something crazy like that. What was the name?
+
+[54:02] Fratelli? Fratelli, uh f Fritelli Bar uh Bretti, I think. Not Beretta Boretti. Not like the gun, like or yeah, yeah, Beretta. Or the or the 547,666 vacuum sealed 24 ounce trays have been recalled.
+
+[54:20] Oh my god, 24 ounces. So that's two pounds. That's uh not too, it's a pound and a half of each. Yeah, it's a pound and a half. Oh my God.
+
+[54:28] That's so 862,000 pounds according to the USDA. Yeah. That's so much meat. Yeah. That's so much meat.
+
+[54:36] Oh, interestingly, look this one up because I forget the name of it. But there's another one. I don't even know how this happened. There's a food, it's not a recall. Get this.
+
+[54:43] The FDA, this is this week, specifically said, don't buy cured fish from this company. Figure out what it is. But they didn't issue a recall. They're like, yo, this fish is not safe. Don't eat it.
+
+[54:58] But they didn't issue a like, they didn't force the company to do a recall, and the company is like, nah, I'm gonna sell it. What is it? Like Norwegian salmon? It is like salmon. Seafood Felix Northwest.
+
+[55:11] Felix Pepper smoked while mixed salmon jerky. What'd you call it? Canned salmons. Yeah, Listeria. Yeah.
+
+[55:19] But but the company refused to do a recall. I've never heard of this. Well, they're disputing the fact. Right. So the FDA said don't eat it.
+
+[55:28] But they're not mandating them to take it off the I've never heard of this. Have you heard of this? No, never. Here make a loud, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[55:39] Uh John, make another mental note. It's not mental because here I am talking about it. But uh pretty soon I'm gonna have to, like very soon, I'm gonna have to write the uh food safety section of uh the book. And so maybe we should have a food safety uh expert. There's a couple on uh Twitter that um people have said we should have them on the show anyway.
+
+[55:58] Let's have them on and I can ask them some questions, make sure I don't want to kill anybody. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, get me a name of a food. Yeah, I don't want to kill anybody.
+
+[56:07] Uh you know, uh, you Patreon people, uh, let us know what you think. So, what do you guys think about this thing? This report about um eating hot dogs takes 36 minutes off of your life expectancy. How do you call it? I can eat a hot dog so much faster than 36 minutes.
+
+[56:22] You're saying I'm wasting 36 minutes of my life eating the hot dogs. Well, apparently Joey China is a scientific, it's they're saying literally taking it off your life. Taking it off your life. Like one hot dog you eat is minus 36 minutes off what you were expected. So Joey Chestnut apparently has like a year and a half taken off his life because of all the hot dogs he's eaten.
+
+[56:39] But if you eat other certain fruits or vegetables, you can add six minutes to your life by doing that. Yeah, but if that if that fruit or vegetable takes less than six minutes to eat, then you live forever. You just sit on the toilet pounding that fruit or vegetable and you just keep adding six minutes, it's like it doesn't work. First of all, none of this stuff works. I'm reminded of uh I had a health teacher in junior high, and he was like they say that smoking cigarettes takes five years off your life, but they don't tell you which five years you could die young.
+
+[57:12] I'm like, that doesn't that's not how that works, dude. Taking five years off means you take five years off. You don't get to like stop my life now, and then I resume the after it doesn't work that way. You know what I mean? Yeah, uh these studies are uh what's the word I'm looking for?
+
+[57:25] Without meaning. You know what I mean? It's like what they're doing is is that they're they're aggregating eight million people or whatever. They're aggregating some huge number of people. They're figuring out like how many hot dogs they eat, and then they're figuring out how, you know, over the course of their life, and then they're figuring out you know how what that difference in life potential is, and then they're just doing a straight division between number of hot dogs and number of minutes.
+
+[57:47] Relatively zero, relatively low meaning. That's like there's another thing where people are like uh there's a huge study that came out of uh uh China recently on substituting uh potassium-based uh potassium-based salt replacer, so potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride. And it being China, they can do this kind of thing where where we can't, right? They're like they gave an entire cohort only this potassium chloride to work with with their cooking, and another one the regular sodium chloride. And they traced the the difference, and there was excess mortality due to things like stroke, things that you would you know associate with hypertension in the salt cohort.
+
+[58:28] However, right, no one is arguing, no one is arguing. Are there some people who should limit their salt? Yes, there are some people who should limit their salt. Does that mean that you, Joe? I mean, I don't know your blood pressure, but does that mean that you should lower your salt?
+
+[58:43] That's a different question. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. There's one more Patreon question that we should get to.
+
+[58:48] Do it. I thought I got them all. No, Rob Pasco. Oh, what do you got? Hi, question for the show.
+
+[58:52] Is it worth taking the time to grind slash sandback a new lodge cast iron skillet until smooth? Uh sandback, loot of maker skull crack, what? Okay. Uh the uh is it worth the time. Here's the thing.
+
+[59:10] Uh I love my old cast iron pans that uh were sanded. I love them. I don't know how long, like if you have a four and a half inch angle grinder with a with and you get a flap, a flap disc on it, it shouldn't take you that long at all. What you want to make sure you don't do is gouge the pan at all. Don't gouge the pan.
+
+[59:30] Like that's important, right? So if you have the ability to do it without gouging it, I would say go for it, right? Um, I would say go for it. I don't know. Has anyone done it by hand, just hand sanding it?
+
+[59:40] I don't know how long that would take. I have no, I feel like that would take it. I would say go for it. I would say go for it and report back to us. Report back and then you can't.
+
+[59:44] Yeah. I mean, like, look, I have some lodge, the the you know, the unfinished lodge that are like 20 something years old now, and they're plenty non stick, but my old griswall that was polished on the bottom is so so sweet. Uh I had someone else actually write in, I don't know about their uh, I don't know where it is, uh somewhere down here about um their Elizabeth Wells, uh about pans. I'm used to almost everything uh on non stick, uh, don't judge. I have a question about blue steel pans.
+
+[1:00:19] I now have two high quality blue steel pans. I can get a decent initial seasoning on them using serious eats method, which I didn't get a chance to go look at. And basic soy uh vegetable oil. By the way, uh soy soy oil will smell especially bad when you are seasoning your pans. I'm not saying it's gonna make your food taste bad, but uh soy soy oil uh has a particularly disgusting fishy smell when it's uh overheated because of the not linolaic, linolenic acid, right?
+
+[1:00:52] Linolinic acid. Um, but they never get fully non stick. No way I could cook an egg in them without serious sticking. It seems every time I use and need to clean them using soap and soft side of a dish bun, the seasoning comes off. What am I doing wrong?
+
+[1:01:05] Cleaning them with kosher salt alone seems to help, but it's still a huge pain to have essentially reseason every time I use them. Am I using the wrong oil or the wrong seasoning method? Does it just take a while to fully break them in? And will someone with a soyology have a reaction if I use soy oil to season with? I don't think so.
+
+[1:01:19] Please help me uh with these gorgeous pants. Just use them. Just keep using them. Just keep using them. Like the seasoning is just gonna get better and better.
+
+[1:01:26] Uh, anything that comes off is not really fully seasoned anyway. Like the full season, like pro polymerized stuff that that bakes to the pan just takes a little while to build up. Uh so I have from JB Prince, they have a really cool what one that I have, a blue, uh, you know, a black steel pan. Uh and you know, I've had it for a couple of months. I haven't talked about it yet because I really like to break them in for a couple of months.
+
+[1:01:48] So just stick with it. It's just gonna get uh it's just gonna get better and better, right? Right. Oh, I'm being told that we're uh we're out of time. So the rest of the email and social media questions I have, uh, I will get to them.
+
+[1:02:03] Don't worry, we have not forgotten. None of them are uh none of them are time sensitive, right, John? No, but we'll try and do maybe do a power hour episode next week or in the coming weeks and bang them out. Power hour? Yeah.
+
+[1:02:13] Joe, what do you think about that? Power hour or like just straight questions like blah blah blah blah blah. Bingo. All right. Next time.
+
+[1:02:20] We're not here next week. Remember, I'm at the Harvard. We'll try to figure out something for Patreon people, and after that, power hour. Cooking issues.
\ No newline at end of file
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Newstand Studios in Rockefeller Center, joined as usual with Nastasia. The Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good.
+
+[0:19] Back from uh wherever you were last time. Was it last week you were away? No, you were away. Oh, I was at Harvard doing the Harvard thing. Yeah.
+
+[0:27] Well, I don't know. If it comes up, it comes up. Joined as usual in the studio with Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing great.
+
+[0:34] How are you? Doing all right. Uh we got Jackie Molecules still in Mexico. What's up? Still in Mexico, recovering from uh my meat bucket meal.
+
+[0:42] Oh, yeah. So uh a couple of weeks ago I told uh Jack that he needed to go. What's the actual name of the meat bucket place? Oh, I can't pronounce it off to look it up, but we should just continue to call it meat bucket. We'll call it meat bucket, but we gotta you you put it on the Patreon uh like exactly where it is, right?
+
+[0:59] You geotagged it. So it's this place in Mexico City. Yeah, we'll do that. Where and where they have this like uh like a giant, like uh, I guess, what is it? What is that?
+
+[1:08] A rondo? Big, but bigger, big, large, right? Uh full of some bubbling meat liquid, which is it's unclear. Uh what percentage oil and what percentage uh water-based liquid would you say that is, Jack? It had to be more on the oil side.
+
+[1:24] Yeah. And then just like uh uh all the meat. Like all the meats. All of them. Like just sitting there.
+
+[1:32] You know, well, there had to be some broth in it because it did bubble, right? So we know it wasn't strictly speaking, oil because it also wasn't hot enough to dehydrate it. So it wasn't like uh you remember back in the day, Nastasia uh used to spend her summers in oh, I uh I'm talking to someone. I haven't introduced him yet. Our special guest today on the show is Dorothy Calens, who is the founder of uh Savore magazine way back uh in uh the what was that, 1993 or four, 1994, which was an and and all then after Savore went to Newsweek for a while, and as you put it, uh saw that uh through uh what was it, 911 and two wars, decided to get back to food, and uh since has become a uh a producer of cookbooks, which we'll talk about, but is here today to talk about her new book, which is actually I read somewhere which is kind of unbelievable.
+
+[2:22] Is this really the first book that you've done under just yourself with with no one else or no? Very first. And it may be the last. Yeah, writing books does suck. Uh The Kitchen Whisperers, cooking with the wisdom of uh our friends.
+
+[2:37] All right, so uh, and it by the way, so uh if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions uh for Dorothy to 917 uh 410 1507. That's 9174101507, but back to meat buckets. So uh it's this it's this like bubbling cauldron with all these kinds of meats in it, but then you just order what type of meat and they pull it all out of the chunk out. Correct. Yeah, hack it up, and then they they dip their tort now, their tortilla game is not the best tortilla game in town.
+
+[3:07] I mean, come on, because it's Mexico. That's true. Please. But again, you know, uh not everyone can have all the skills, right? And so then they they they dip the tortilla into into the bubbling liquid and then put your your your uh hashed meat onto it.
+
+[3:21] Uh yeah, so was it uh was it everything you'd hope for? I had my first tacos de ojo eye eyeball tacos. Oh oh god, that sounds unpleasant. Was it? Why would you go for the I don't just go for the delicious?
+
+[3:36] Don't go for the freak meat. I tried most of them. I tried most of them, you know. You know, I'm a conclusionist. Dorothy, you ever had any freak meat that you like, or do you or no?
+
+[3:44] I mean, I like awful, right? You like you? Yeah, yeah, sure. But like sweetbreads? Yeah.
+
+[3:48] Oh, those are great. You know, when done well. Do you like them when they're super gooey, or do you like a little crunch on the outside of your sweet bread? Oh, I like crunch. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[3:55] Always crunch. Yeah. I've never been huge on like just straight braised sweetbread things, just pile of goo. Not my thing. Texture-wise.
+
+[4:03] Although brains are pretty good. Do you still eat? They have brain taco at this meat bucket place you can get it. And someone handled it. It's not in the pot with the rest of the stuff.
+
+[4:12] I don't know what they do with it. I don't know. Uh but that's correct. That's correct. It's not on the pot with the rest of the brains.
+
+[4:17] They pull that separately. I don't eat brains anymore. Ever since the Mad Cow, do you still eat brains? Rarely, but I wouldn't turn it down in a good place. Now, do you eat brains?
+
+[4:27] Do you like your brains like like egg-style like cooked in with eggs? Or do you like just like I believe in the tacos? The ones I had, it was just like like a like a like a tranche, like brain. It's like uh eat the texture is yeah, the texture has to be played off against something better, crispier. Yeah.
+
+[4:47] But so like so it in in in in a game of marrow versus brains, what do you go for? Oh, you know, there's something fabulous about a roasted marrow bone. Yes, that is delicious. Great. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[5:00] Haven't had that in in years. You have to you have to ask your butcher to slice them in half and then season them and broil them in. Oh man. I've never you ever used to eat the marrow stuff, Sashi? What about you, Joe?
+
+[5:14] You a marrow guy? No. Come on. What about like uh you're you're you're Italian? Did you did your family?
+
+[5:20] Did you grow up with asubuco? Oh, we did Osabuku, yeah, of course. Did you pop the marrow out of the asabubuco? That's what your pinky was made for. I have done it a few times.
+
+[5:28] Don't love it. The other side of my family's Jewish. We don't eat innards. Don't eat brains. Don't eat any bone, anything like that.
+
+[5:37] No. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up, you know, you chew the ends off the chicken bones, you pop the marrow out of the asabuko. But for some reason, my mom, maybe once or twice, she did.
+
+[5:47] She never made, she never, we never did the split marrow bone with the with like the parsley on top and all of that. That's the one to do. Yeah. I had I remember the first time I was served super fancy, where the like uh uh at a Michelin three-star where in France where my wife and I couldn't afford it, but we went there anyway. Yeah, you ever been to uh Pre Catalan in the Bois de Bologne?
+
+[6:10] No, but I know of it. Yeah, yeah. So like, you know, whatever, we didn't know. We were real young. It was like super stuffy at the time.
+
+[6:15] We didn't have the money, and we didn't realize that this is like where the hookers go to hang out, right? The Bois de Bologna. So like, and we didn't have money, there was no cell phones, and there was no uh no taxis, and we didn't speak French. And so we got lost in the Bois de Bologne, and we were super late for for dinner and sweaty because we were running around trying to find it, asking all of these French hookers in broken French how to get to this three-star Michelin restaurant. It's quite an experience.
+
+[6:41] Great meal though. Great meal. They had all the uh do you appreciate goofy, goofy French like serving clothing, like all of the weird like special clothing that all those? Yeah, yeah, whatever, and the the dish towels tucked into the waist. Yeah.
+
+[6:57] You like that stuff? I do. I do too. Yeah. Do you prefer French service or Italian service?
+
+[7:04] At this moment, I would take any kind of service. Uh all right, all right. So, how about this? Nastasia, since well, we we'll do the questions later on. Like we'll bang them all out.
+
+[7:15] So and you know, we'll get Dorothy to weigh in and once, you know, she's more used to the tangents that we're gonna I'm inevit inevitably gonna go on uh throughout this thing. Okay. So let's go back to the book, the new book, The Kitchen Whisperers. So it's it's interesting because and the and again the uh what is this called again? A slug line?
+
+[7:33] Is that slug? What what do you call that thing afterwards? It's kind of a it's a subtitle. Subtitle. Yeah.
+
+[7:38] So it's cooking with the wisdom of uh our friends. So not necessarily, by the way, like a lot of people talk about you know the wisdom of of your ancestors, and while there are some people from you know your parents' generation, your grandparents' generation, it's really a lot about like friends, like people who are, you know, your age, younger than you, older than you, but not it's not about necessarily handed down wisdom, it's about shared wisdom, right? That's that's right. And actually the the subtitle I wanted on the book was Cooking with the Voices on Our Heads, because that's really the experience that I have, which is when I'm alone in the kitchen, I hear people telling me to do things or suggesting or whatever. But the publisher thought that that might sound like I was a crazy person.
+
+[8:25] So we had to we did cooking with the wisdom of our friends. But basically, I think that we all, when we are in the kitchen, are listening to where where do we go next? Where do we take this ingredient next? How do we do this thing now? You know, what what what what you know?
+
+[8:42] And I have a constant dialogue, and I'm so lucky that I've got a lot of people who are whispering to me. Well, that's well, yeah, I mean, you've known quite a few kind of amazing, amazing cooks. And so the the thing about it is it's it's not chronologically oriented or chronologically um organized, I should say, but it's uh you it it does end up reading somewhat like a memoir because you can trace the kind of history of what you were doing through the people you choose and the stories that you tell about them. That's exactly right. Right.
+
+[9:19] So it's and so it's an interesting story. Let's just talk about let's talk about this uh story. So Savour, and and even though this is not in the book, I I can't help myself. So for those of you, I would guess most of our listeners, how old would you say they are? Uh they're between 25 and 45.
+
+[9:38] Okay, so they don't know necessarily what it was like to be a cook coming of age in the early 90s. And uh so that's my like you you hit my prime sweet spot. I'm 50 now, right? And so um for for the people who grew up and kind of were, you know, in the basement reading the, you know, in my case, my mom's cookbooks, you know what I mean, uh, in the 70s and 80s. Uh, you know, then in the in the 90s, you know, in the early, early 90s, late 80s, early 90s, you just had this kind of breakthrough.
+
+[10:14] Uh food was don't let anyone tell you different food was bad in the U.S. I mean, it really was. It was not good. You know what I mean? There were good great cooks.
+
+[10:23] Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Great cooks. There were there were great cooks, there were old style cooks, French trained, Italian trained, whatever, classically trained. But there were also beginning to be a new generation of American cooks.
+
+[10:41] And that was the thing that we were excited about, um, even at Met Home, which I was the editor of before we did Sever, we traced that burgeoning American cook. Think about Alice Waters, think about Jonathan Waxman, think about Larry Forgion, Wolfgang Puck, all those people. I mean, Wolf was not American originally, but basically they were interested in dealing with American ingredients, American traditions. Let's not try to be the French chefs. Let's not try to be the Italian.
+
+[11:17] Let's make our food. Yeah, exactly. And I think someone now can't possibly imagine how focused Americans were on other people's food instead of our own. They can't imagine it. Perfectly said.
+
+[11:34] Yeah. By the way, uh going back to that time, so just before, maybe maybe, I forget exactly what year it was. Do you remember when Julia Child did uh cooking with master chefs, where she got a bunch of young, like, and then she put them all on her television show? That was kind of that was an early, I think for me, you know, an East Coast uh kind of sign that, oh, there's this whole group of other people. Now, a lot of them were doing French E-style stuff, but some of them weren't like Emerald, and you know, who was first made famous in that.
+
+[12:03] But so 1993 and 94, within that span of two years, two very different publications came out that both like incredibly altered the landscape of food thought. Yours and uh Cooks Illustrated. And uh I just, you know, they seem so diametrically opposed in their mental attitude about um kind of what's going on. They seem so like kind of diametrically opposed about uh what what's going on but over the years have you found that the two attitudes have both woven their their way in a kind of an interesting way into kind of American food culture? I think so.
+
+[12:49] That's a that it's a very good thing. I mean the Cooks Illustrated was a real book, a real magazine about cooking and techniques and recipes and it wasn't filtered down through an Italian chef or a French cook or or even a a Mexican one. It was really what what do American people, what are they gonna cook? And that was that was a good magazine then. And as for Sevur, our our point of view was there's so much fakery going on in food.
+
+[13:28] There's you know our great example was low fat casuale. Well who wants to have low fat casserole? If you're gonna do it, do it once and do it right. So you honor the place, the ingredients, the the the the experience and we we one of the great surprises for me when we we launched that magazine was how many chefs loved Sever. And they loved it because they they told me there were holes in their practical knowledge and their restaurant experience that didn't tell them, for example, where where does saffron come from?
+
+[14:08] How how do, you know, how do those little the wait? They're the the center of the steeples of of crocuses. Nobody knew that. And and that's was interesting to us. I'm not saying nobody knew that.
+
+[14:22] Remember, there's no internet either. Right. There's no there was, I mean, there was only you'd have you'd have to book read a book. Yeah, you or you'd have to go to a library and get a book. Which is the again, people don't people can't possibly imagine how it was like in those old days.
+
+[14:37] Yeah, like I still when I I can still smell the library. Like when I like and I think about it like the smell of those musty books. I love it. You know what I mean? But that's gone forever.
+
+[14:50] And you know, the internet's fantastic. I love it. I use it all the time. But like I I love the I love the library. Yeah, so there was not a way for someone to know, but so you were pointing people towards these things that in truth were completely lost here on most, on most people, right?
+
+[15:04] 99% of people, unless you could travel a lot. And my God, reading this, you guys traveled a lot. How did you get the budget to do this stuff? Well, we we it was hooker by crook. We didn't, we had a very small staff, and we paid very mid-level wages, and we, it was the experience of working there that mattered to all of us.
+
+[15:28] And we managed, we managed to travel because we traveled very light. There was only sometimes there was only a writer and a photographer to produce a story. And the stories could be eight or ten or twelve pages long because they went deep into something and they gave you the experience of being there and understanding it. I mean, we really believed profoundly that where you grew up, wherever in the world it was, you used those ingredients for a reason, and that cuisine came out of those ingredients and the practices. And we need we wanted to know it.
+
+[16:04] We were starving for it. We were hungry for it. But you know, you couldn't do that magazine now. We've all agreed that the my co-founders and I, you couldn't do stuff because there's so much going on in the world and there's so much, everybody knows, everybody knows everything now. And you can or they think they do.
+
+[16:23] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, everyone knows a tiny bit about a lot. Yeah. Which, of course, that was my whole skill set growing up.
+
+[16:29] Knowing a tiny bit about a lot. I was that guy. I knew a tiny bit about a lot. Now that everyone does, I, you know, I'm just I'm no one anymore, right, Sus. It's over.
+
+[16:37] It's over. It's gone. Um so an interesting one of the interesting things you you bring up here, um again, you it's now very uh fun to go and look at old food photography, magazine food photography, because of the weird stilted imagery and the way everything looks. And you you talk about having to, because you were in magazines. You didn't just start Sevur one day.
+
+[16:59] You were you you were working uh as an editor at uh Methome. You start you started that one, right? I started it, and I was editor for for 11 years. Right, yeah. And then and what where were you before that?
+
+[17:11] I was a freelance journalist. Yeah. So, in other words, like you're well steeped in this kind of like 80s, like 80s food journalism, uh, you know, and photography. And you're saying that they were shooting everything on eight tens. Well, by the way, people don't know it.
+
+[17:26] Describe this thing. You don't even know what it is. Yeah, yeah. So I it it it's it's it's a person. It's big as a person.
+
+[17:34] It has a head that's bigger than any of ours, or all three of ours put together. And it you had to look upside down under a black cloth at the food that was set up on a table. That was how I came into food photography. And anything we could do to run as fast as we could away from that kind of because what it does is it it makes it fake. Yeah.
+
+[18:01] It's not real. And and it and part of the problem of food in America was that it was all so twirled up, so painted and propped and messed with, and it never looked like anything you cooked. Yeah. So the first thing we did when we started Sever was we had a kitchen. We were lucky enough to have o offices in Soho.
+
+[18:27] And we had a big table and a the kitchen was right next door, and we would come out and it was a big room full of lots and lots of available light, and that's how we shot our food. Just cooked, available light. And in the in the early 90s, they said this wasn't, that wasn't a thing. You know, I I uh I remember even in late 90s, like after, you know, you you kind of made this style uh more popular, it was still, you know, uh the food and wine did a shoot at at my uh loft and uh they were uh for uh fried chicken because uh every every Sunday we would have family dinner and I would cook a bunch of fried chicken and all this stuff. And um years, years.
+
+[19:11] I still make fried chicken. The um and they were like, oh, we're gonna get uh we're gonna get a photographer who likes to work with natural light. I was like, ooh. Ooh. Brain surgery.
+
+[19:22] Yeah. Well, I only once I used to have to, you know, everyone has to make money. I'm not very particularly good at it, but I did a couple of food styling jobs back in the day. And I once had to do one for one of those old school cameras. Very famous photographer.
+
+[19:33] Not I can never remember which is which, which is the movie maker and which one is the uh photographer, but Penn. They're both dead now, I think. Was it Arthur Penn was the photographer? Arthur Penn was the movie. So his brother Irving Pennsylvania.
+
+[19:45] Irving was the was the photographer and Irving Penn, everything about his his pictures was was predetermined. Oh yeah. All day, one shot. You were not allowed to speak to him. And it was a giant.
+
+[19:58] I want to know how you make your your fried chicken. Uh well, that's an interesting question. So uh my fried chicken fried chicken is all about how you know kind of what you're trying to achieve. I don't believe in perfection. Uh I I have, you know, I believe that there is a particular goal that you're looking for.
+
+[20:16] Um I do I brine mine, uh I brine it actually in milk, not in buttermilk. Not in buttermilk. Well, the reason is is um I think it the the acidity and look, if you're gonna cook it really hard, then uh buttermilk is good because the the acid will kind of uh soften the chicken flesh. But if you're not going to take the extra step of overcooking the chicken, I find that buttermilk soak can make it a little bit soft. Um yeah, yeah.
+
+[20:47] So I I do, and I don't even know if water would be the same as milk. I just I've always used milk for 30 years, I've 40 years, you know, whatever I've used milk, so I I use milk, salt, milk salt sugar, sugar basically as the as the soak. And then uh overnight, Brian? Uh well, so if I if I need to make it faster, I will just increase the salt and sugar content and cheat a little bit. Uh but yeah, then uh again, I haven't tested it because this is the way I grew up, like old school, dry them out on racks, you know, uh for a couple of hours.
+
+[21:20] Then I do flour, then uh buttermilk, egg, uh soda, buttermilk, buttermilk, egg, salt, pepper, soda powder, then you know, back into the flour again and then and then fry. That's it. The reason it the reason I do dry wet is because I I don't like to work with uh batter-based chicken just because it's too complicated. It's not bulletproof. If you don't get the viscosity of a batter just right, it either slips off, I think it's too thick.
+
+[21:52] Oh, yeah, that's an awful thing when it slips off into the pan and you think Oh my God. Oh my god. So uh you're familiar with um uh uh um Willie May Scotch House in New York. No, absolutely. So I had the great pleasure a couple of years ago back when uh, you know, traveling was a thing of eating at Dookie Chases and Willie May's in one day.
+
+[22:12] One day. I had both their fried chickens one day. Fabulous. Uh and so you know, Willie May Scotch House is uh an all-batter situation with no pre-dust. Now I've got some people on the air, some friends of mine, I won't call them out, who I I had researching this because it's incredibly difficult if you don't make uh chicken every day to to to get an all-batter um recipe to work, especially with no pre-dust.
+
+[22:42] It's just very hard. To get it to stick. To get it to stick. The viscosity has to be dead on every time. So like one of the theories is, and I've seen videos of them doing it, they never got the recipe, of course, right?
+
+[22:53] I think they're using a um, they're using a high acid, I think, marinade uh just to stop. So like, you know, one of the things that I I do that's odd in mine, and I saw you raise your eyebrows a little bit, I put soda in. So buttermilk is good in a in a in an outside batter because um if your batter or your breading is slightly acidic, it won't brown as much in the long cooking of uh of frying as if you added baking soda. But I don't know, I just always put baking soda in. And but if I'm gonna do a super long fry, sometimes I'll scale it back so that it's still slightly acidic.
+
+[23:25] Anyway. So you're always feeling the fingertips are at work. Yeah. Yeah, but anyway, I can't get that. And so I'm writing a book now, which you know, late.
+
+[23:33] And in my fry thing, I'm gonna be like, listen, I've worked a lot on trying to figure out this batter only thing, but I just don't think it's it's worth it. Because if you're not gonna fry every day, you're not gonna get that in your bones. It's you're just not gonna get it in your bones. So great. I I love that.
+
+[23:48] I love that's exactly the way cooking should be, is that you feel it in your bones if you're lucky enough. Yeah, oh, speaking of somebody uh text me, I haven't had a chance to look at the video yet. Made the leg balls. I'm gonna look at your video uh and we'll talk about it uh next next week. Uh so I I do my uh I uh I have it here in in the thing.
+
+[24:08] Uh so like uh people in my family, I won't call them out because they get mad when I call them out. Uh don't like to eat meat on bones. Well, by the way, uh interesting. In your book, you mentioned bring the rabbit back. You have a like a little couple paragraphs, a couple graphs on bringing the rabbit back.
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+[24:24] Yes. I think so you you speculate, or maybe it's the person you're talking with, I can't remember, speculates that uh rabbits are pets and that's why we don't eat them. I think it's the tiny bones. Oh, you do? I mean, maybe it's a combination of the of the of the bones and the Yeah, I don't think people have the experience of eating it.
+
+[24:42] And that and that's the barrier to entry. That was David Tannis. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, is a great rabbit cook. Never had his food.
+
+[24:52] Oh. Best. Because he's he's a chef, but he's not a chef. He's a cook. So rabbit, you don't you think it's just a kind of what do you guys think?
+
+[25:02] Pet or bones, some combination, just we don't eat it? What bones? Bones? Joe, what is your feeling? I I think it has to do with the bones as well.
+
+[25:13] But I love a rabbit ragoo. Yeah? Love it. Hmm. A lot of good Italian rabbit dishes.
+
+[25:19] Yeah. Wonderful. You know what my issue also, uh like uh rabbits dry out when you overcook them. They really, really do. Now, if you're gonna shred it and have like a sauce, then who cares whether you've overcooked it?
+
+[25:33] Yeah. But like, you know, I don't know, like the the again, as as someone who uh my age, right? I'm in that that kind of demographic where we all were aspiring to serve kind of these unadorned kind of like there we there was an anti-sauce period. You know what I mean? That's right.
+
+[25:57] There was a a purist. Well, it was that I think much of the French and Italian cooking that we knew as as really cooking was sauce-based. Right, right, right. So we wanted to do the opposite. Yeah.
+
+[26:10] Right. And so, you know, and so then you know, those kinds of meats are hard to do unadorned, I would say. Yes. You know, because if you're just gnawing on the It's not a throw a rabbit on the grill kind of thing. Yeah.
+
+[26:22] Right. Right. You have to you have to really work with it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[26:28] Uh hey, speaking of sauces, do you remember when uh Peterson's sauce book came out? Was it Peterson, right? Was that his name? His name just went out of my head. Oh my God.
+
+[26:38] I was just thinking about how we were anti-sauce for a while and then this magnificent sauce book from 1990? 1990. Anyway, I'll get to it. I'll get to it. Okay.
+
+[26:47] I'll get to it later. My brain will come back. Okay, so let's talk about what do you want to what do you what do you want to talk about? Here's what I want to ask you about. Okay.
+
+[26:54] Uh after you left uh Sever, um, and then you went to Newsweek for a while and talked about that a little bit then you started doing what you call in the book and even in your thing on the back producing cookbooks. Now it's an interesting way to think about it. The production of and your you know your husband as you mentioned here is a filmmaker so you seem like you know production in the blood here. So you know what it really was treating the work of a chef like I was making a magazine about it. What size was this book?
+
+[27:28] What was the feel that I wanted readers to get from it? How much of how much how to could you put into it? How much how helpful should it be and how beautiful should it be and it's always the balance the balance of those things. So for me producing a cookbook was just like producing a magazine. You decided on the size of it you decided on who the the photographer would be you'd work with the with the photographer on and the chef the cook with every thing that there was every every chapter every idea and then and I wrote them with the with the person who was the with the chef and so it was a it was like a magazine.
+
+[28:11] But when you're gonna And I did the layout with um I was I'm so lucky to have a wonderful art director who I've worked with actually on Met Home and we've we've produced books together and often he's on the shoot with with me and we're deciding oh that could be a great spread so all of a sudden which is a means a picture that goes across two pages you're you're you're controlling it from the very beginning right but that's got to be a huge investment for you to choose someone to do that with yeah so how do you find the people that you're going to do this kind of thing with and and and they a lot of them show up in in the book obviously I've been a very lucky girl I've been uh I've been able to after I left magazines and I don't ever feel like I want to leave magazines because magazines are dear to my heart you picked a good time to leave magazines the the um I I was put together um with Michael Anthony for example who's the sh the executive chef at grammarcy tavern and by the way just a sweetheart the couldn't be um a finer person and I said to Michael well this is we sold that book I have a uh wonderful agent David Black who just sees the potential in things that guy's wonderful he he is a lovely human being I owe a lot to David um if you want to go get her if you if you're if you're a cookbook writer and you want someone to eviscerate the uh the publisher to get the advance, he's a good guy, right? Well, it's not it's not really that because that that publisher is gonna pretty much know have a range that they're gonna give the advance to. But at any rate, so so the so when I did the grammar Seed Tavern book, um the first thing I knew people would want was the f was to be able to cook the recipes. So we uh immediately eliminated everything that demanded a stratospheric skill in the kitchen because there it's just ridiculous to try to even put that in a cookbook. Now there's some some things, there are things that recipes that vary in in skill necessity, but we explained everything.
+
+[30:28] We explained how to do pickles. Well, you bring that up in your book, actually. I love that. I mean, Michael taught me that it it was uh it was an it opened doors for me. But it was also I mean, again, and I don't know how much people who don't live in this world will understand this, but you um you when you write about it, you seem almost surprised yourself that here is something that he was actually doing in the restaurant that also works well for a different reason for a home cook.
+
+[31:00] And so I could see almost a light bulb going off in your head as I'm reading you, like talking about that, because there are and I'm going through that with my book that I'm writing now. There are there are certain things that strangely work for both, not necessarily for the same reason. And so it seemed to kind of jump out at me with that when reading that thing. Is that did you do you feel those kind of moments when you're working? Absolutely.
+
+[31:21] I'm for the reader, and I think that's what an editor really has to be. I'm I also for Michael and and the other wonderful chefs I I get to work with, and I want to make sure that their ideas are clearly and um importantly transported to to a reader, but uh basically, no, no, you're not gonna ask a a home cook to do a certain number of things. That's why you go to a restaurant like Grammarcy, for example. So, and I knew Grammarcy needed to have the the Grammarcy Tavern book needed to have a lot of the glory that is the space of that restaurant. And I interviewed the architect.
+
+[32:03] Right, you talk about that. And and how he, you know, how he thought that through and how he and Danny Meyer decided that it was going to be like um Italian country inns inside, even though it was an American restaurant, because it wanted to have some intimacy. It you know, it was it was you know, kind of before the knock them dead walk into a room and gasp school of restaurant design. Danny Meyer must have had a budget because as you say in the book, Stasi would have liked this. He sent them to Italy to go eat at a bunch of nice looking restaurants.
+
+[32:35] Yeah. Well, they were they were going to Italy on their honeymoon. And he just sent them to the places. No, he didn't say it. Okay.
+
+[32:44] All right, all right. Uh so uh Anastasi and I actually uh had um so you know, we were working on the Museum of Food and Drink. We hit we uh we did a fundraiser. We had Michael Anthony do it. Remember what we gave him?
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+[32:54] No. TV dinners. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And he knocked it out of the park. Well, because you know what, he's a dad.
+
+[33:01] And he ha has had to grow cook for his kids. He but he bought a bunch of those, you know, those like Swanson style. Again, I think Swanson might be the name might be back in in business. Uh but for those of you that you know weren't alive back then, uh you they literally had these things. Do they st Joe, do they still have these things?
+
+[33:22] Do you know? Does anyone know? Jack, you're yeah, I've seen them in the store. But they don't have the that it was called literally the Swanson Hungry Man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[33:29] I saw them in the store the other. And it was uh uh it was like a a triangle shape pressed into aluminum foil. Right. And that's exactly what it was like some sort of like space program, like uh the potatoes were wet and dry at the same time. That's a wonderful description.
+
+[33:48] Yeah, it was just like and the the overcooked uh quote unquote Salisbury steak, uh they were an abomination. Anyway, so he bought the uh did uh you know um got amazing produce and did something very but but served them in those trays and it was uh that's great. Yeah that's perfect. It was uh it was kind of cool. Oh, another thing.
+
+[34:08] So you uh when you're talking about him, there's a couple of ingredients that weave their way in and out of the book a couple of times. So I'm gonna bring them up. One of which Jack uh in Mexico City has something to say about squash blossoms make several appearances in in the book. And uh last week I sent uh Jack to my favorite squash blossom experience of all times. How was the squash blossom lady?
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+[34:32] So good. And it was uh it was a scavenger hunt to get it, and you were so kind as to send me the exact coordinates from the photo you had taken. And you were able to find it? There she was. Yeah.
+
+[34:41] Yeah. And where was this? So just so describe where and where in the Merced it is, Jack, because uh my memory is old. Go. I mean, just as you enter, basically, there's a whole row of sort of, you know, people preparing fresh hot foods.
+
+[34:56] And it's it's hard to miss. If you but if you're if you're looking at a map on Patreon. If you're looking at a map of the Merced market, it's the at the Merced market in Mexico City. If you're looking at a map of the Merced and North is Which is enormous. Right.
+
+[35:09] But if i i if if north is up on your map, you enter from the lower left side of the market, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. So you enter from the lower left side of the market, and is are there still pinata dealers at that entrance?
+
+[35:23] No. There were not pinata dealers at that entrance. Probably beach balls. Something. There were still pinadas.
+
+[35:29] You had you had said there were no pinadas, but there were. Well no, what I said was is that the pandemic was very tough on the pinata business. Yeah. You know. Okay.
+
+[35:37] And it's in and people have been making piñatas for generations. It's tough on it. I'm not just talking about the garbage pinatas like the idiot pinata. I'm talking about like real like clay pot pinadas. Nice pinatas.
+
+[35:46] Anyway. I see. I see. So you go in and then you hook a right and you go down and she's on the left. That's still accurate.
+
+[35:53] Yep. Does she still have a contractor's trash bag full of squash blossoms? No. There was not a contractor's bag. They were just sort of there with the rest of the ingredients.
+
+[36:05] Although maybe when she replenishes, she breaks out the contract. I don't know. But there was there was it was copious amounts, right? That Munificent. That's gorgeous.
+
+[36:16] What an image. And uh I was saying, so sorry if you know you heard me say this a couple of weeks ago, but I had someone translate for me as like, is this just like am I just hitting this peak season? And she's like, no, we have this all the time. And I was like, oh my God. And did she the same way she just lightly hacks them up on the Kamal, cooks them, shreds the, shreds the cheese, and puts them on the tortilla?
+
+[36:37] And then that is it, is there anything better than that? Did you have any that have you had anything better than that recently? It was pretty good. It was pretty impressive. It made me question a lot of the street meet at the meeting.
+
+[36:48] It's like, well, squash blossoms cockets are this good. How much before I do anything else? How much did it cost? Like nothing. It's an abomination.
+
+[36:56] Like 60 cents, 60 cents each or something. It's ridiculous. I mean, I mean, how much does a one clamshell of squash blossoms cost at the at the market nowadays? Yeah, f four or five dollars. It's ridiculous.
+
+[37:07] It's it's half a dozen or yeah, ten of them. Yeah, she would have put m more than that into one serving. It's just like uh the other story I tell a lot, so sorry, Anastasia, is uh when I went to uh uh Dakar and uh gooseneck barnacles are free there. And so you're just like crazy. Anyway, uh all right, all right, so squash blossoms.
+
+[37:29] So let's talk about the squash blossoms because it comes up several different times in in the book. You grew them because you were also uh I had a I had a little garden. Yeah, which I because I was editor of garden design, but that wasn't why I grew them. It's just because I love them. And uh Christopher Hirschheimer, who I talk about in the book, who runs Canal House Station, which is a wonderful restaurant in Milford, New Jersey.
+
+[37:53] Um was she was at my house and we we were she we just went out and picked up squash blossoms and she told me the oar batter, which is simply half a cup of flour and half a cup of soda water. Oh, wait, was that but then someone else you said did a wine a wine and flour batter. Was that not for squash blossoms? Was that for something else? Like a half.
+
+[38:19] Well, maybe she did that, maybe it was half white wine. Half white wine and half fine uh flour. Yeah. I've never had I I I read an Italian book recently. I can't, the name escapes me.
+
+[38:33] Old. And they had some uh fried fried foods where the the batter was liquid was predominantly wine. I've never tried it. With w well, it's just perfect. And I do sage leaves like that.
+
+[38:44] I just I do, you know, you can I do uh wild mushrooms like that. It's it and a and in a little pot. That was the other thing that she taught me. That's why she's one of my key kitchen whisperers. Not, you know, you'd think, oh well, let's do a frying pan so we can keep it shallow.
+
+[39:06] No, keep it deep. A small saucepan with enough oil to dip the the blossoms in and they'll cook all at once. And it's perfect. Nastasia loves squash blossoms. You grow them.
+
+[39:22] You used to out of your window. You know what's weird? Which do you do you I uh not all squash blossoms taste as good as the others? For instance, like the blossoms on pumpkins don't taste They don't they're not as sweet as zucchini blossoms. So the ones that the ones that they do they have specific varieties that are better for the fruit that that I find basically worthless?
+
+[39:44] Or do they or or do they uh are all zucchini blossoms equally good or are there varieties whose blossoms are oh I think there's probably not very much difference but uh among zucchini squash blossoms. Yeah, pumpkin blossoms are not good. Yeah, they're they're it's a different animal. Yeah, yeah. I remember when uh right after my parents got divorced, my dad uh moved into somebody's um uh house.
+
+[40:09] He lived in their attic, you know what I mean? Well, it was an apartment. I mean, I mean he didn't like live in somebody. Anyway, the the the mom there, she grew squash blossoms, and when I was a kid, that was the first time, and she would do it in in the batter and fry them, but because I was an American, she let me put syrup on them. So I so I grew up with fried squash blossoms, uh like maple syrup, like pancakes.
+
+[40:32] She's like, uh, it's American case. You know what I mean? But like, yeah, that's where I learned. But I think most Americans, it's just too expensive for us to grow up liking them unless you grow them. Right.
+
+[40:41] And then you have them in such abundance. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, squash blossoms. All right.
+
+[40:48] The other one is that I feel like you when you were younger, hated on rutabagas and only learned to like them later. I get that feeling. Yeah. And that was another Michael Anthony. It was that they're just big clunkers.
+
+[41:02] And then you realize, I mean, he there's a recipe in the book we s we did after Grammarcy called Via's for Vegetables, and he's just a vegetable head. He just loves vegetables. And he slices these things like silk thin, little thin. It never occurred to me to treat something as as beautiful as that. I mean, and he made a gratin out of it, which of course we did with potatoes, and I've done it with parsnips, and I've done it with um celery root.
+
+[41:37] But but rutabaga, well, it's lovely. I mean, I love rutabaga. Of course, I worked for years with a Swedes, so you know, uh I love I love rutabaga. I can't make myself love parsnips. Parsnips are our now, David Tanas loves parsnips, and he taught me about those, and he said, Do you have to remove the hardcore center of them?
+
+[42:00] I'll try it. So, like quarter and then lop out the middle middle section. Yep. Like you would a pineapple. Yep.
+
+[42:06] Exactly. And because that they're they're they're chewy and not very flavorful. Yeah, I mean, I always think of a parsnip as a trash can carrot. No, they they have there's a sweetness of them. I mean I'm look, I try to tell my kids, I'm like, uh, you know, try keep trying everything.
+
+[42:23] Maybe the other one that you you learn to like is persimmon. It took you a while, right? Yes. I still have not. I don't care about them.
+
+[42:30] I don't hate them. I just don't care about them. You now care about them. I do. I do care about them.
+
+[42:35] And I welcome them because when tomatoes are gone, it's almost half my my food vocabulary is l is when when the tomato season is over, I can't get myself to use. I use canned tomatoes, but I don't use tomatoes from the from the store. Right. Because they're trash. Yeah.
+
+[42:52] Uh garbage, filth. Uh did you although I have you learned to like the Kampari tomatoes that have come out in the past 15 years? I've tried. It's the only one I use. I'll roast them when I, you know, when I'm getting desperate about April or March or April, and I just can't stand not having tomatoes anymore.
+
+[43:07] I I put little I put herbs and garlic in them and roast them in the oven, and that's that gives give gives them a little some flavor. All right. So another tomato thing. You mentioned uh and I've read it so many times in my life, and I've never done it because it just seems horrific to me. Taking a a tomato, a ripe tomato to a box grater.
+
+[43:26] Like, what the heck is it? So that's catalon. Yeah, but what Coleman taught me that. And what what what you do with it is you get this rich um puree of uh flavorful tomatoes and you throw the skins away. Oh, so it allows you to keep the skin on your side of the so it's absolutely so it's a cheap way.
+
+[43:45] So if you don't want to buy a tomato strainer, if you're not make making the sauce, do you have a tomato strainer in the house, Joe, growing up? Uh yes, I did. Yeah. I mean, they're actually tomato strainers, people are not that expensive. They really aren't.
+
+[43:57] If you own a Kitchen aid, I know you're you're kind of anti-equipment. In the I mean, not anti-equipment. I'm learning my way around them. Yeah, I mean, the impression I get is that you feel that, you know, if you need all that equipment, maybe you should have just spent more time learning to cook. Yeah.
+
+[44:12] That's exactly it. That's exactly it. But I am a gearhead, I've always been a gearhead. I like equipment. But uh tomato strainer, because this again, I I can't remember whether I said this on the air or whether this is what I'm writing in the book now, but like tomato skins taste bad.
+
+[44:28] Yeah. They taste bad. Uh and so that what you're left with is a pile of grated tomato and the skin in your hand, you throw the sh skin away or in a compost. See, this I never understood. Yeah.
+
+[44:39] So now I now I understand the reason. Because I'm thinking all those catalons. Yeah. Yeah. Because by the way, seeds don't taste bad, they just have no flavor.
+
+[44:47] Skin tastes bad, actively bad. You know what I mean? Uh all right. Well, they they and you know, they the the Spanish just rub that tomato paste on on bread or toast, and it's just all you need is breakfast. Yeah, the bread with tomato.
+
+[45:00] I mean, I like it. I'm never like again, I've I've had it, I've had it in Barcelona several times. It's good, it's it doesn't, it doesn't take me to a child, it doesn't take me to a place. No, a memory place. Well, also their bread isn't like the bread that we love in other parts of Italy and France.
+
+[45:18] Yeah, although do you hate Tuscan bread as much as we do? I I don't it has no salt. Yeah. How can he eat anything without salt? Okay, okay.
+
+[45:25] So uh you know you know Jim Leahy from Sullivan's, yeah. So we've had him on the show a couple of times. He's great. Yeah, he's always good for a laugh. Uh he'll he'll say insane things.
+
+[45:36] Every time we have him on, we install Tuscan bread, right, Stuz? Yeah. And every time, what does he say? He likes Tuscan bread. No, and then what does he say?
+
+[45:43] No salt. No. What does he say? I don't know. He'll make us Tuscan bread with no salt, and we're gonna like it.
+
+[45:49] Yeah. Has he ever done it? You can go buy it at his place. He sells Tuscan bread without salt? Yeah.
+
+[45:54] No way. Yeah, he does. All right. You I don't have any money. I'm sure he will give you a loaf of it.
+
+[46:02] He's never really there. I mean I see him at the farm. I see him in Meeting Square, yeah. Ask him when you see him then. I don't think you think he actually made it's for instance, like, okay, Montreal bagels have no salt.
+
+[46:13] When Montreal bagels came to New York, you know what they added to them? Salt. Salt. Because we know better. Right.
+
+[46:19] Now I mean I don't want to put it that way, but it's No, I I know what you mean. I totally agree with you. Yeah, anyway. All right. Uh you bring up uh another person who we worked with at the museum, uh, Anita Lowe.
+
+[46:29] Did you do have you done a book a book with her? I never have. She's my neighbor and she's my friend. And I love Nita. Hold on.
+
+[46:36] We got a call. We'll talk about her in a minute. Caller, you're on the air. Hi. This is Jacob calling from Des Moines, Iowa.
+
+[46:43] Oh, I I lived in Des Moines, Iowa. When did you live in Des Moines? That's another story. Go ahead. Sure, sure.
+
+[46:51] And I I apologize in advance for asking a question because I know you guys are uh sounds like you're having such a lovely conversation, and unfortunately, uh due to uh my own uh what's the word? Uh not not being on the ball about this. I it's time sensitive, so I just want to make sure I get this right. Let's do it. Uh so I'm doing a drag queen dinner this Saturday, and because it's drag queen themed, I wanted to incorporate uh cocaine.
+
+[47:18] Uh not literally, but taking a cue from take taking a cue from Philip Voss uh of L Ideas in Chicago. He does the the coconut lime powder. I want to do a coriander lemon powder and kind of basically make it taste like lemonade to uh act as a palate cleanser between the main and dessert course. But like uh people aren't gonna sniff it though, right? No, I'm gonna I'm gonna get some boba straws and cut them into like little things so that they can slurp it up kind of like a pixie stick.
+
+[47:46] Okay, okay. So what are the what's the flavor base? Uh lemon and coriander powder. And so the the reason I'm calling is because I want to make my own lemon oil, and I heard you mention in episodes past about making lemon-infused oil using an ISI. And I was curious if you had a particular uh method slash recipe for that.
+
+[48:05] And then I also wanted to confirm that you know, if I'm gonna be mixing powdered sugar, coriander powder, uh, and uh lemon acid powder into this, it's not gonna kind of like mess up the texture too badly. Well, okay. So I I sat down with the drag queens for some reference points because I want this to look like a drag queen, you know, inspired menu, and they uh eventually mentioned, yeah, cocaine's a big thing, apparently. So cocaine, hell of a drug. Yeah.
+
+[48:33] Uh we're doing okay okay, okay. So so let me see if I got the parameters. Uh the the the coriander, we're talking seed, right? And I'll probably grind grind it finely. Yeah, I mean the problem.
+
+[48:48] The problem with grinding coriander finely is the husks, the husks on coriander. So you you're gonna have to get some sort of uh very fine strainer and then just take whatever dustings make it through the strainer. Fortunately for you, cori coriander is very inexpensive, so save the save the rest for your shaksuka. You like coriander in your shaksuka, right, Dorothy? I mean, who doesn't?
+
+[49:09] Coriander and cumin, right? Need that. And you're a lover of pimentone, which we could talk about. That's been my kitchen crutch for the past, for the pandemic, I've been leaning very heavily on pimentong. Anyway, okay.
+
+[49:19] So uh coriander, and then the lemon, instead of doing like an oleo sacrum, you're I'm assuming you're using um uh endsorbit tapioca maltodextrin. It sounds like you're gonna powderize an oil. Is that am I correct? That's correct. Okay.
+
+[49:32] Uh so the the way that works is it's an extremely fluffy um, it's an extremely fluffy starch and the oil complexes, and then if there's minute amounts of liquid involved, then that will kind of pasteify it a little bit, but you can just add more to get over it. Uh I think you might be better off making like uh an oleo sacrum and then uh like decanting, pressing that stuff off and adding the tapioca maltodextrin to that rather than trying to get once you have a uh a lemon oil, it's never going to be as pronounced as um as it would be if you just use the straight peels to make an oleo. Uh right. And that's that's why I was gonna I was gonna dope it. I mean, are you talking straight lemon flavor or are you talking like if I want my my end result to be basically like lemonade?
+
+[50:23] Um I was planning on adjusting all of the flavor of it with like powdered sugar and citric acid malic acid. Right. Um well lemon if it's lemon, it won't have malic, it'll just have the citric. But the the other the issue is is that um um citric acid crystals are that the ones that you buy um are um not powdery enough to go in with the rest of the stuff that you're doing. So you're gonna need to blitz them.
+
+[50:51] Right. Just be aware that um that it then becomes you use a scale to measure it. Powders are very I'll tell you a quick story. I wanted to make uh popcorn salt for you know my kids and I, you know, just threw uh a bunch of salt in my blender and walked away and made it into a powder and then I tried to use my normal cook cook's hand on it and it uh oh my inedibly salty ineditably salty you know yeah yeah and I I've I've got I've got digital scales and micro digital scales so like if you've got specific uh per per percentages to throw at me like I'm all about percentages and metric and stuff like that. So I mean it's weird I've never I mean if you want it to literally be you have to figure out like you know just remember lemon juice is about six percent acidity.
+
+[51:39] So if you're thinking about it in terms of like how much quote unquote lemon juice should I be consuming for this amount of powder then you can kind of just do the math that way. Does that make sense? Yeah. Is this helpful? It is uh and I just want to confirm because I've only messed with uh tap malt and sorbit once um and it was is it we did it um oil into powder so we were making like a pork powder we would just take rendered lard uh throw it in the food processor zip it up and then drizzle in the fat and they would use equal parts by weight so if it was a hundred grams of powder it was a hundred grams of fat that would go into it and then season it is that the approximate uh it's been so long and it also depends on it depends on exactly the texture you want you can get anywhere from like a runny paste to a fluffy powder.
+
+[52:29] Uh this is one of those things that you're just gonna want to do, as we say by eye until it's the texture you want. Yeah, that's pretty much what I was planning on doing. Um but you said polio saccharum would probably be a better bet in terms of extracting lemon flavor. I would try it. Otherwise, otherwise, zest, you know, as many lemons as you can get a hold of and then put them into the oil and hit it in the ISI, let it infuse, and you'll get it, but it's never gonna be as strong.
+
+[52:53] I think you could do, and you could just cheat and add a little bit of lemon oil to it. A little bit, a little bit. I had I I have some of that. I have some of that as well. I think it's like a lemon infused oil that I got from one of those, you know, spice stores, so they have all the infused olive oils and stuff like that.
+
+[53:06] Oh, one of the Italian ones, those are actually pretty decent, but they taste a lot like olive oil. And yeah, you know, you're not gonna want it to taste like olive oil. Most of those, you know, I forget the name of the brand. There's like an old guy holding fruit on the front uh that I get at Depal's. But uh they do an orange, they do a lemon, they uh but yeah.
+
+[53:22] I don't know, that's not that's not lemonade, that's olive oil. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cool. All right, well, good luck.
+
+[53:28] Let's know how it goes. Hey, listen, make sure no one as a joke snorts that seriously. Yeah, no, I'm I I no, I'm I'm gonna make a I specifically mentioned to the hosts of the party, like, hey, I'm gonna have a couple of minutes on the microphone to talk about this, right? Because I don't even think that they've they've put the uh the palate cleanser like on the menu. That's gonna be a surprise thing.
+
+[53:46] And so I'm gonna be sure to like walk people through it. But yeah, Philip, Philip Foss has gone on record and saying you'd be amazed at what some people have done. Like take it pol politicians in there rubbing it on their gums and stuff like that. It's just like that's all fine, but it's just uh it's a especially if when the powders are that fine and they're I mean inhaling like a very fine powder into your nose that's not soluble, like an acid, like you can have someone have a very violent reaction to it. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[54:17] Yeah, no. Yeah, yeah. No, I plan on being very, very clear about that. This isn't actually cocaine, this isn't meant to be snorted. Use your mouth.
+
+[54:23] This is a dinner. Yeah, rub it, rub it, rubber. Rub it into your teeth. This is the cocaine that's left over when you're done. Right on.
+
+[54:30] Yeah. All right. Good luck. Let us know how it goes. Yeah, tweet me and let me know how it goes.
+
+[54:34] We'll do that. All right, cool. So uh Anita is your neighbor. Yeah. All right.
+
+[54:38] And you are doing so we want to talk about this farmer? Because I don't really know about this farmer. Okay. The farmer is named Patty Gentry. And she has a farm in uh in Belport, Long Island.
+
+[54:51] She farms three acres of Isabella Rossellini's land, and she's an organic farmer, and she's an extraordinary person, and she's taught us a lot about things and what the Anita and she have our old friends because Patty used to be chef, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so I guess I talk about uh a dinner that Anita made, a benefit dinner for Early Girl Farm, and how um, you know, how fussy I thought um Anita was being about her oysters. Uh she was serving a first course of Great Gun oysters, which are grown right out uh in in uh Maritch's Bay, which is pretty pretty great, and they're wonderful. And so she had she had all these helpers, and I was one of them, and one of them, one of us was dropping little tiny um lemon curd, and another one was was dropping little shizo leaves, and another one was dropping little pickled um shallots and whatever. And I thought, you know, I thought this is really and then I ate the soup.
+
+[56:00] I ate them. I was fortunate enough to sit down and eat this this Vichy Soise with the oysters in it, and I realized that Anita was cooking right down to the very second of presentation, that that bite of the oyster was so extraordinary. Yeah, it's so uh it's funny, like um reading that section. Uh by the way, she's also great. She's another one of those like people that's just a great person.
+
+[56:25] But uh I've worked with her at the you know at the muse at the museum on on these kind of events. And remember when we used to do events all the time, Stas? Yeah. And what I like, one of the things I like is that where, and by the way, I should add for people who are gonna read the read the book, it's one and another one of the threads that weaves through it is uh whether you think in terms of platters or plates. Uh and uh so when you're serving a bunch of people and you're not gonna do family-style service, there's this moment where you line up all of the plates, and then everybody has a different thing, and they all have to be assembled in a very short amount of time.
+
+[57:05] And it's one of those things where you get to see chefs, everyone's kind of busting each other's chops, everyone's kind of like, but everyone's very focused and fast. You know what I mean? Super focused. Everybody chips in, and like everyone kind of like if you don't chip in, people are like, Who's that idiot? Who's that jerk?
+
+[57:21] You know what I mean? And I really, I don't know, it just I have such fond memories. So I don't even think about it, it wouldn't even come to my mind for it being like fussy, because in my mind, it's like obviously every plate has to look the same because everyone's paid the same amount to be at this event. You know what I mean? And it's just like doot doot do doot.
+
+[57:39] And then when you get at the end and you're like, I'm running out of child. Because like they all, yeah, yeah, no. It's so like it's uh it's like uh that's the one that's one of the things I miss about um those kind of uh those kind of things. All right, I'm being told that we have very little time. Uh so also a lot of Marcella Hazano, I never met her.
+
+[58:00] She really smoked a lot, huh? You think you talk a lot about her like a smoker's voice. She did a lot of smoking. She did. She did.
+
+[58:06] Was she really as good a cook as uh as uh we uh you know, she was a home cook. She was a home cook. She just made the food, and it always was delicious. She was not a show off. She was simply she went in the kitchen, she knew her ingredients because she was so smart.
+
+[58:26] She had two advanced degrees. She her mind was going all the time. And she wanted people to understand about flavor and about presentation. And one of the things I learned when I was doing research is is how much Marcella herself had to learn growing up on the Adriatic. Well, she didn't know Roman food.
+
+[58:50] She didn't know Venetian food. She didn't know N the food of Naples. She she had to learn all that. She went to Milan and lived there with her husband, and she learned about this great market there called Peck. I mean, she's like, Oh, Peck is amazing.
+
+[59:06] She had to learn the things kind of the way we did, and she says that Italy is simply a series of different cuisines based on the ingredients, and uh that that those are the things you have reverence toward. And and she was no nonsense. Yeah, and I didn't realize that her husband was like a a promoter for her. It's kind of like a it's an inverse of the trope that we're used to, which is I thought was kind of cool. Like her husband.
+
+[59:38] Well, he he was a Harvard educated Italian American, and he would write her books from her Italian that she wrote on uh legal pads. Well, you said her yeah, her books in Italian, she wrote straight. She wrote straight, and then Victor would kind of have his way with them. So they're a little fussier in print than they then Marcella would have had them. Because she says things like, well, if you cut you chop too much, you brown it a little more.
+
+[1:00:08] If you chopped a little, you brown it a little less. Yeah, she seems salty in a good way in the book. Yeah. I wonder, like, uh, well, so I'm out of time. Can I get listen?
+
+[1:00:19] Bill with Bill has a shag bar hickory question. Don't bake the shag bar, don't bake the uh don't bake the bark. I don't care what anyone on YouTube says, you're gonna boil the boil the bark, don't bake it. Shag bark hickory uh bark, it it's wood. It's already been baked.
+
+[1:00:36] You're not gonna toast it to make it toasted. It's not vanilla. Please don't don't bake it. Just wash it. If you have a vacuum machine, infuse liquid into it, uh in the vacu, you know, pressure infuse into it just to make your life easy.
+
+[1:00:48] If not, don't don't don't sweat it. Make the pieces small. That's the best thing. Make the pieces of the bark small, shoot for a 50 brick syrup. Miguel, you're have you seen these new graphite cord uh all-clad pans?
+
+[1:01:00] Yeah, all c are they any good? Yeah, I don't I haven't used one. I've seen them. Listen, Miguel, I'm sure they're great. People like them.
+
+[1:01:06] Don't believe anyone who compares them to cast iron. That's not a valid uh thing because cast iron's not about fast heat conduction, and it's the heaviest pan. It's it's not apples to apples. Uh, most people don't need a pan that is the greatest conductor of all time. Aluminum is a good enough conductor of heat for 99-9% of all the stuff that we do.
+
+[1:01:25] If you like fancy pans and or if weight is a primary concern, then I'd say go for the the graphite. If weight is not a primary concern and you don't need to have the fanciest new pans, I wouldn't bother. If you're a neat freak, here's the thing people don't worry about. The rivets, that's the part of the pan that's gonna piss you off is the rivets because you can't get them clean. Am I right about this?
+
+[1:01:45] Absolutely. Rivets, baby. Uh Alexander, we're still working on the spinz all. We don't know when we're gonna get it. Okay, uh one last thing.
+
+[1:01:54] I know I know we're late. Sorry, Joe. Uh Micah wants to think Micah's gonna go camping, right? Uh and so Micah wants to know, and I thought maybe Dorothy, since you know you've dealt with people who've done a lot of strain, including you do a lobster bake in uh Long Island. Yeah.
+
+[1:02:07] Hard to get right, right? You say, aren't people buttheads when they're at your like they're making comments that, oh, should we order pizza? People are such jerks. People are such jerks. Okay, this is what uh he writes.
+
+[1:02:19] I don't think I'll have time to call on, but I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on large format meats to cook at a campsite with minimal equipment. Uh, pig roasting setup is a bit too uh much overhead, unfortunately. How about burying? Well, how about burying though? Yeah.
+
+[1:02:30] Do you like burying? Have you ever had a good like uh earthen roasted pig? What do you control though? I mean, the the question is do you make it about that experience? And if you do, then you better research it and figure it out and and and and do it right.
+
+[1:02:47] Yeah. Well, you know, let me let me let me just I'll leave with this because I know we're gonna uh if you make it about the experience, then it doesn't really matter if it's the best piece of the phone. That's exactly right. Yeah. All right, all right.
+
+[1:03:00] All right. Uh so Dorothy, thanks so much for uh coming on. I had a great time. The book, which you should go buy is The Kitchen Whispers. It came out this week.
+
+[1:03:09] Yeah. This week, congratulations. Uh, you know, and like you say, it's maybe the last one you do on your own because man, doesn't it suck to write a book? Not fun. It is it's fun when it's over.
+
+[1:03:19] Yes, it is. Uh all right, thanks so much. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on New Stand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer. Lopez, how you doing? Good. Doing well?
+
+[0:21] Mm-hmm. Yeah. We got uh over here in our uh in-house booth, Joe Hazen. What's up? Hey, how are you guys?
+
+[0:27] Good morning. Morning. Doing all right, doing all right. And back from Mexico in Long Island. We don't know why, because he does not live there.
+
+[0:33] Jackie Molecules. How you doing? My mom lives here. Oh, yeah? Hello.
+
+[0:38] Yeah. I forgot. I forgot. Where I'm from? Long Island.
+
+[0:43] My hometown. All right. Which which uh hometown is your hometown in Long Island? You want to call it out? West Babylon.
+
+[0:48] West Babylon. So what percentage of cars growing up in West Babylon was Camaro's? Oh my god, I don't know. Like 50% or like 80%? Is that like Camaro?
+
+[1:02] Is that Camaro Long Island or is that BMW Long Island? More Camaro, Long Island. I had a Buick growing up at a Buick Skylark, you know, like from my cousin Vinny. Oh, Buick Skylark. Yeah.
+
+[1:16] That's that's pretty strong. I like that. I just went to the uh Automania show at uh at the MOMA. If you like cars, European cars, but you don't want to see a lot of cars. If you want to see like an art museum's interpretation of what's interesting about cars, it's worth going to.
+
+[1:32] Yeah. They're not very big on American cars there. They only have one American car and it's c in their collection, and it's a Jeep. Really? Yeah.
+
+[1:40] I like Jeeps, though. Jeeps are nice. They have a freaking smart car. No Skylark. How about that?
+
+[1:47] Crazy. Yeah. How old? How far does it go back? Uh, well, that's the thing.
+
+[1:52] It's not like, so. If you're a car lover, it's not like going to a car museum, right? So it's it's basically it's kind of more about uh mid century modern design, mid last century modern design. So it's like, you know, um little sports job guys, like a like a really pretty jag, like a Citroen Deus. Uh what about like those uh the what's it the Corvair?
+
+[2:13] Remember this Corvair? No, you know my my freaking yeah, so the Court Vare, well known for being uh blowing up blowing up, right? That was what Ralph Nader kind of made his bones on, right? Wasn't it? Wasn't it the one of the early Yep, exactly?
+
+[2:24] It was like the Pinto of its day. My grandpa owned one, and I remember do you remember the Pinto was the car where like you just touch the bumper and it explodes? You remember that? I do remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[2:37] And uh the movie I referenced about three three or four shows ago with Val Kilmer called Top Gun, one of the gags in it, not Top Gun, um Top Secret. One of the gags was like all these guys are in a pinto, and then like someone like pulls up behind them and just goes, Tink, and it the whole thing just explodes. So I like I think of that. I I I I believe it was that movie. I love 80s, like stupid 80s gags.
+
+[3:02] Like I love them. I love them. Uh Nastasia and I can talk about uh my favorite Gregory Hines gag uh later if we want, but right now we have a caller, caller you're on the air. Oh, no, you don't. We lost our call.
+
+[3:13] We lost our collar. Well, if you want to call back or if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917 410 1507. Uh so anyway, Gregory Hines is in a movie with Chevy Chase called Deal the S. Oh, we got the caller back.
+
+[3:28] Caller, you're on the air. Hey, what's up? Hi, Dave. How are you? Well, good.
+
+[3:39] Uh so I have a kind of a weird cure syndrome that I was hoping you could help me with. Uh my oven is broken, and I'm taking it apart and trying to fix it. But in the meantime, I don't have like a toaster oven. I have my burners, I have my I have a couple inductions, I have a couple sears all, I have a microwave. But how do I like properly heat something without the use of that convection?
+
+[4:06] You know, barring like lighting my grill, you know? Well, how long it how wait so you're saying the convection on your oven is broken, but the oven itself still operates? No, sorry. J just the range. Just the just the burners operate.
+
+[4:21] The oven itself, like I don't get lights on, which means it's probably something early on, and like there's some wire loose that I have to find. But in the meantime, I don't have that, nor do I have a toaster. And so but yeah, barring like, you know, like firing up my grill, which I love to do. Right. How do I properly like reheat or cook or toast something, you know, without an oven.
+
+[4:46] Well, I'm contractually obliged to tell you the search all can do all of those things, right, Nastasia? I'm obliged to tell you that. Yeah. But um Which I've done. Which I've done, uh but it it's kind of a travail to you know, take something from cold to cook.
+
+[5:00] Right. So your oven is electric, right? Correct. Right. So uh and the range is the range is gas.
+
+[5:07] Oh nice. Um listen, I i you you could go around and do like a uh a bunch of crazy nonsense, like you could get like uh a Dutch oven, put a rack on it, and then build it into an oven by insulating the top and putting it on a ring. You could do all of this nonsense. That was yeah, that was my thought. Yeah, or just get yourself like a brevel smart air like uh toaster oven, and here's here's why I'm gonna say that uh the large oven is great to have it's awesome that sucker is like uh probably on the order of uh somewhere between somewhere around five kilowatts of power going into that thing right so it's kind of an energy hog and it's heating up like a large block.
+
+[5:48] Now as we go into the winter it's not going to be such a big deal that you're heating up your place but it's just a lot more energy efficient to use a smaller oven uh like a like a toaster oven right so the the the ANOVA is like a little bit big right the like the brevel smart air is big for a toaster oven but what's nice about it is is that when you are cooking when you get your oven fixed it can operate like a normal oven and it can take like a full chicken. You know what I mean? And it has a very it has a very fast convection. So like they I hesitate to use the word because I hate it because it doesn't exist but the air fry setting on it has a pretty high right it's not real has it has a high convection rate and so it's really good for doing things like dehydrating uh you know not dehydrate it does dehydrate as well so you can use it as a dehydrate does it go low enough to like dehydrate it works great as a dehydrator the only issue with it is is that it you know it doesn't have as many racks as an X caliber but as soon as I got that I moved my X caliber into storage because I don't have room for an excaliber and it's also great as like a it's like a warming oven as well and you can broil and you have the bagels. Okay.
+
+[6:57] It can proof yeah all right I'm gonna look into one of those it can proof. And so then for for sub 200 bucks, you have a a backup there, right? And it's, I mean, I find it useful when I had to move it out for a while because you know, I was doing a lot of tests with the uh um with the steam oven with the ANOVA steam oven, but you know, and I love the A Nova, but it's just not as nimble. So my family was like, bring the toaster oven back. And I have a giant oven and it worked fine, you know what I mean?
+
+[7:24] They don't talk that way, but yeah. For sure. Well, you know, um, so sorry, just one last thing. Does it does it have a steam setting? Because I also dehydrate, I also proof, but okay, so there's no, but I could just you know, throw some cubes in a tray.
+
+[7:38] Yeah, and when I when I uh when I when I proof, I I I prove covered in it. I prove always proof covered in it. Right, okay, great. Well, thank you very much for the advice. I appreciate it.
+
+[7:48] Hope you all are staying safe. All right, and be careful when you fix your oven, don't zap yourself. Nastasia Lopez. I already did. Oh my god.
+
+[7:55] Nastasia Lopez is deathly afraid of LR of electricity, such that like I could be whole, I could be holding up like I I could be holding a pin and attached to that pin is 500 pounds, it's gonna crush me. And I'm like, Nastasia, hand me the pliers, I'm gonna die. She's like, Will the pliers shock me? Will they shock me? Right or wrong.
+
+[8:14] Yes, yes. Why are you so afraid of getting shocked? I really hate the feeling. I hate the feeling. But you're more than hated.
+
+[8:20] There's lots of things that you hate that you do daily, like talk to me. Yeah, but like, why is it what is it about electricity? I don't know. I don't know. I really hate the feeling.
+
+[8:28] All right, so people, I'm gonna go on a slight. And you used to threaten me with the uh I didn't threaten you. I said, come on. I wasn't a threat. I was saying, come on.
+
+[8:37] No, you said I'm gonna shock you. I didn't say I'm going to shock you. I said, why don't you let me shock? There's a big difference between threatening you, but you would never agree to do it. No.
+
+[8:47] All right, so here's what we're talking about, people. All right here here's the thing. So uh Ikijime is the uh Japanese fish killing technique. And I'm proud to say that in the United States, we were some of the first people who were researching that crap. Am I right about that, Staz?
+
+[9:01] We were some of the first people way back in the day researching uh Japanese fish killing techniques in in here in the US, trying to read as much of the Japanese material as we could, talk to his made Japanese chefs. But the the basic concept of it is well, I'm just fish killing, but the the the sh the the um I believe the term is Shinkanuki, but it's a long time, the spinal ablation technique where you run a rod uh through the uh spinal cord of a fish and zap its spinal cord as a way to improve the uh quality of the of the of the meat of the flesh. We did a lot of work on it, so such that a company sent us a muscle tester. So for those of you that took high school biology, you when you dissect the you you euthanize the frog and and you get the muscle, the gastrochnemius or whatever you pronounce it, gas, you know, the the the leg muscle out of the frog, and then you put you zap it with electricity. Joe, you done this?
+
+[9:51] Jack, you done this? Anyone? No, I've never done that. No, all right. So you so you zap the frog muscle and it goes and it and it like pulsates when you put the electricity on it because you're exciting the muscle.
+
+[10:01] And so uh, you know, one of the claims was with the you know, the ikijime that we were doing with the spinal ablation is is that the muscles retain their ability to to jump more, they take their they keep their potential longer. So they sent us this little muscle shockometer that's like a let you're supposed to stick on to the fish and see whether the fish contracts at all when you know the dead fish contracts at all when you put it on the muscle. All right. So I would shock myself with it. Because what else am I gonna do?
+
+[10:26] You know what I mean? And and I and uh Nastasia never agreed to let herself get shocked with it. No. Not one time. No.
+
+[10:32] I I used to work in the the garage with my dad, like on stuff, and he would do a lot of our electric work. And I remember being He's trained, by the way. He he's not a you know, he's uh an alignment. Yeah, yeah. But like electrical is different.
+
+[10:44] He won't do hardcore electrical, you know. Well, what's hardcore? Doesn't he climb telephone poles? Yeah, like how much more hardcore does it get? That's real hardcore.
+
+[10:56] But yeah, I remember being shocked on like oof things. I really hated it. Shocked with what? With one twenty. In this house I grew up in, um, there's a it in our garage, maybe we have a refrigerator, like an extra refrigerator, and growing up every single time I would go to turn the light on in the garage, it would shock me.
+
+[11:14] And it's like I would never learn my never learn my lesson. But then it came to kind of like not enjoy it, but it was like it was just light enough to be like, oh, that's kind of cool. I don't enjoy the taste in my mouth after you get shocked. No, I hate that too. Oh no, yeah, that is weird.
+
+[11:29] So I'll tell you two two shock stories that I had because it really is dangerous. You can get there was a kid killed. Did we talk about this like uh a couple weeks ago with lightning? A whole like a group of kindergartners got hit with lightning, and one of them died. Really?
+
+[11:41] Yeah, so um so couple couple of times I got shocked, memorable times I got shocked. When I was a kid, I used to uh find and disassemble oscilloscopes, so like old oscilloscopes from like the the you know the 50s, like the that look like you know, those 50s movies. I had storage oscilloscopes, I had all sorts of really cool. So I I don't know how do you describe an oscilloscope to someone who doesn't know an oscilloscope is um it's good question. It's like when you look at the screen, there's a line like radar, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[12:12] It's cool, it's clean. It's cool, yeah, it's green, yeah, shows you uh frequency waves. Yeah, yeah. So when I was a kid, they used to watch this thing called Marvin and the Magic Movie Machine, where the computer was an oscilloscope, right? And you in you and it makes that like line that you know anyway.
+
+[12:29] So I used to play with them. And uh I remember they they had these ones from the 60s with modular units in them, and I was completely unattended. Nobody was paying attention. I don't know what the heck my parents were doing. My mom was being a doctor, you know, hoping I didn't kill myself.
+
+[12:44] My dad was being an engineer. I know, whatever. So I pulled, I pulled them open and I put my finger right up against uh like a 400 volt terminal in the back of the oscilloscope. It's like BLAM! And I got blown across the button kill me.
+
+[12:58] I guess it wasn't very much current, it just hurt like hell. Like 400 volts hurts like hell. The other, the other shock one I used to love was uh you guys uh you know, Joe and uh Jack have been you know done been around music people, right? So when I was in uh college, obviously I had no money, so I bought uh an old, so I was in college in the in the 90s, right? And I was buying uh equipment from the 70s used and used equipment was free back then, no one wanted old equipment, especially unless it was like some special tube crap.
+
+[13:30] So I bought this thing called uh custom with a K amplifier that was have you guys seen these? They're vinyl. Yeah, of course. It has the uh the soft the soft uh padding on the outside. Yeah, yeah, it looks like Eddie Munster's car great base amplifiers.
+
+[13:42] That's what I had. I had a custom with a K bass amplifier, a head, and I had uh twin fifteen EV cabs that I was running. I was loud as you know I mean, I was loud, dude. Anyway, uh of course the problem with being a bass person is you have to lug all that freaking equipment everywhere. So anyway, so I got my custom with a K amplifier for like $110 at a youth shop in Hartford, uh, Connecticut.
+
+[14:05] But that sucker was not grounded at all. So every time I touched the cabinet, I got blown back. Every single time that I had my bass and I went to go flick the metal switch on the front of the custom, I would get blown back. Worth it though, because who had the money to buy a properly grounded uh amplifier? You know what I mean?
+
+[14:22] Yeah, they do the same thing when you're like, you're using like a laptop and you go to touch the laptop and you're like, you're done. You're like, you're gonna fry something. Yeah, well, well, again, because nowadays you're worried about the equipment. Back then they were just worried about you. Well, I mean, no one was really worried about me.
+
+[14:35] No one was really worried about me. Especially Randy Scott, the jerk who became a math professor who uh stuck a drumstick on purpose through our speakers because he chose to live in the housing unit right above the music practice room. It was a known thing. You know what I mean? It's like the idiot who moves in above a bar and complains.
+
+[14:54] Don't you hate that guy? I hate that guy. I hate that guy. The bar is here. You moved above the bar.
+
+[15:01] That's your problem. Yeah. Yep. I still don't forgive him. Randy Scott is a psychopath.
+
+[15:07] For any of you that have Randy Scott as a professor, he's the one person on earth I will just call out here right now as a psychopath. And I don't think you can change, right? I mean, you can change, right? You could change. You can get better, you can get worse.
+
+[15:19] If inside you're at your core, if you're a good human being, you can change if you're presented with things, right? But if if if your core is that you're a psychopath, right? You can't change that, I don't think, right? You're not gonna grow. If you didn't have a conscience in college, you're not gonna grow one.
+
+[15:36] Apparently, very good mathematician, though, very smart guy. You know? Just goes to show. But what happened to that? What happened to your speaker academy?
+
+[15:43] You put a drumstick through it. I mean, that does change the sound in a cool way. I mean, yeah, but I mean, I'm not freaking, you know, Nervana, I'm not doing this stuff on purpose, you know. I put duct tape on the cones. I didn't have the money to recone those things.
+
+[15:56] Uh but you know what? Like, my equipment, I played so loud, everything was so distorted anyway. And then anytime we would play in a in a club, back then, nobody cared about the bassist at all. They would talk to the guitarist. Oh, what do you want?
+
+[16:10] We're gonna mic, you're gonna mic ramp, all this stuff. Bassist, put it through the direct box. For those of you that okay, so the direct box is something you plug your bass into the direct box and it goes right to the board where the sound guy who universally had a mullet back then, so much so mullet wasn't a term that people used for that kind of haircut back in the 80s and 90s. So we just called it the sound man haircut. You know what I mean?
+
+[16:31] Anyway, I digress as usual. Uh again, uh, we didn't talk about it that much last week because uh, you know, uh Dorothy Calens was on. But Alexander asked, when we're gonna make spinzalls again. Alexander, I do not know. I do not know.
+
+[16:46] If we do it, it will be with a um a Kickstarter because we don't have the money to pay for a whole round to bring in, and it's months out. We do not have any word from the factory. You would not believe how hard it is to get something like that um produced once the factory stops making it, right, Stas? Yep. We would like to.
+
+[17:03] We would like to. And uh, okay, I spoke about Miguel with his graphite pans a little bit, right? I spoke about that. Yeah. Uh if you have any more questions.
+
+[17:11] I also talked uh about a little bit about Bill's Shag Bar Kickory problem, but I'll go more into detail. So the Shag Bark Hickory is uh a fantastic hickory tree. Uh I believe it's karia ovata, I think. And uh you can recognize a shag bar kickory because the bark on it, hence its name, Shag Bark, looks like it's peeling off in like long strips, right? It looks like it's coming off in long strips.
+
+[17:36] Um, and it also happens to have other hickories have very good nuts, but the the Shag Bar Kickory is considered the uh it is the royalty of northern nuts, right? So, like I, you know, we don't really grow pecans here. So pecans and shag bar kickeries are close cousins, right? The the difference is is the pecan is relatively easy to shell, and a hickory is incredibly difficult to shell. And so the hickory, therefore never became, and they're also they they they take a long time before they become uh nut bearing age, and then you have to fight with the freaking squirrels.
+
+[18:10] They're tall trees, so you have to, it's uh it's a whole thing. So hickory nuts are expensive, uh but delicious. Um but the shag bark hickories, which grow a lot around here, and in fact, uh, I don't know how far south they grow. They go, I know they grow all the way down to southern Pennsylvania and probably even further down. Uh, and then they grow all the way west.
+
+[18:31] I think I know they go all the way through to Ohio. They might go all the way through uh the plains up north, all the way over to the Rockies, for all I know. And uh when you peel the bark off, the outer bark is sloughing off, right? So the stuff it's peeling off, it's not gonna hurt the tree. Don't peel it all the way down, just like peel some of it off the outside, break it into tiny pieces.
+
+[18:51] If you have a vacuum, rinse it with cold water. If you have a vacuum machine, uh, you know, break up the little pieces and do a vacuum infusion just to get the water into it quickly, then uh use like you know, a bunch of water, bring it up to the boil, and then let it steep. And then if you, you know, once you remove the wood, if you find that it's not concentrated enough for your flavor, well, hell, you can just reduce it because why not? Right? Reduce it to the flavor you want and then take it to 50 bricks and you're done.
+
+[19:19] Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Uh all right. Um, okay.
+
+[19:26] We also talked a little bit about what Micah should do for his large format, uh meets, then we said it's gonna be tough and no one really cares what it tastes like, so just make it fun. I would like some, you know, I've never done an underground cook. You ever been in an underground cook, Nastasi? No. Joe?
+
+[19:39] Or Jack, you been in one of those underground cooks? I have never even done an underground, like in the earth seaweed clam bake. You ever done that? Was it good or was it just fun? Just fun.
+
+[19:52] Yeah, right. Yeah. Not good, but fun. Yeah. And then like because everything was viciously over or viciously under?
+
+[19:58] Under. Oh, so you didn't build enough of a retained heat, huh? So then, yeah, and then Ariel had to fix it all by building an actual fire. And then yeah. Yeah.
+
+[20:08] Yeah. That's the classic thing. Look, uh, sometime it's it's since I don't have an outdoor, like I, you know, I'm not uh, you know, I don't do this, but some someone has to just do the calculations on how much energy you need to dump into the earth in order to use the entire earth as a retained heat masonry oven. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[20:28] And then, you know, then you would know. Yeah. Yep. You know, because like I feel like if you did this like four times, by the third time you'd be good at it. Then the fourth time would be good the fifth time, then you wouldn't do it for 10 years and you'd forget and you'd come back and you'd be bad at it again.
+
+[20:43] You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, it's like, you know, no one, no one uh no no one is great at bowling when they first start. You have to bowl some first. I'm terrible at bowling. I hate bowling.
+
+[20:54] Why? I don't like sports where you have to wait your turn. Golf, bowling. So what's a sport where you don't have to wait your turn? Like a like a flag football, you know.
+
+[21:04] You're allowed to do it. But then if no one throws to you though, then you're just usually waiting. Yeah, but you're still there's a chance you could get the ball. But if you're playing soccer, oh, so you just want the chance. Yeah, you don't need to have it.
+
+[21:15] So if you're that person just standing there and no one's passing you the ball, you're fine with it because theoretically you're in it to win it. Yeah. I like tennis because the ball. Well, tennis, I mean. Yeah.
+
+[21:25] Yeah, tennis. I mean, you're always playing. What about Batman? That's a good game. Yeah, I like that.
+
+[21:30] You know what's a great game? You know, you know what I would like to you up on sometime? Ping pong. Let's go. Dude, haven't we done that?
+
+[21:38] My place? Yeah. I mean, like, just so you know, I'm sure you can all imagine this. Nastasi and I get real aggressive. Things like ping pong.
+
+[21:46] You know what I mean? Yeah. You know what we should do? We should do engineers versus uh versus us. We should have Jackie Molecules and Joe on one side and doubles.
+
+[21:57] We would suck at doubles. We would we would like we would be the worst doubles. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[22:04] No, we have to know whether our desire to F with each other would be stronger or weaker than our desire to win. We our desire to win we'd win. All right. You hear that? You guys are on notice.
+
+[22:16] You're on notice. All right. They don't care. Okay. All right.
+
+[22:19] Uh, did we talk about uh did we talk about this question that Zachary had? I don't know. Uh we talked a little bit because they uh we we so listen, I'm gonna get in touch with uh they they want a list of Maria Guarnicelli's books. I'm gonna try to get in touch with uh my uh editor, uh which I owe her more work, uh, Melanie at Norton and see whether or not we can get uh a person on. Oh, but also there's an author I want to have on, but there's no reason for me to have her on.
+
+[22:46] So is I need someone to make up a reason for me to have her on. I will. Who is it? Uh Mary Roach just came out with a new book. She's like one of my favorite science writers.
+
+[22:53] She wrote Gulp. She wrote Stiff, and she has a new book called Fuzz that's about like animal human run-ins where the animals are doing things that are technically illegal, like monkeys stealing things from people. And she has a story where monkeys pull out people's IVs and then suck on the suck on the solution. Strong, right? Then how do you respond to that?
+
+[23:13] You know, you know what the answer is? They hire a bigger, meaner monkey to pee all over the property of so like if you're rich and you have a macaque problem, you can hire someone to bring their langers in to pee all over your property so that the macaques were like, I ain't going where the langer pee is. Anyway. So I need an excuse because it's not a food book. I mean, it's interesting.
+
+[23:43] We can do like, I don't know. Well, like there's that tree ring scientist, Valerie Thule. I want to get on because I love dendrochronology, but I can't think of a food-related reason to have a dendrochronologist on the show. Trees produce food. Yeah, all right.
+
+[23:56] Anyway, somebody think about it. So uh also uh Zachary said, I don't know if I talked about this. Uh Kenji uh Lopez Alt suggested removing the cap from a household gas range to get a more focused flame on a walk. Does this deliver more heat and is this dangerous at all? Well, uh, I'm trying to think.
+
+[24:12] When the I mean, I have a serious, we're getting fishbowled. I have a serious uh burner at my house that doesn't have a cap. So it's been a long time. Do either of you have the thing with the cap on it? No?
+
+[24:27] I had one with a cap on once. When you pulled it off, it didn't change the flame at all. Anything that you could do to change the flame, it's not gonna be uh it's not gonna be dangerous. If you can remove the cap, it's not gonna be dangerous. Um I don't know how much it's gonna help.
+
+[24:40] I think the thing that you can do most to help with a with a crappy home range is to uh you know make a ring to keep the flame inside if it's coming out. The other thing you can do is just go buy a walk burner. They're amazing. You can get a standalone outdoor if you have outdoor space. You can get a standalone walk burner, and they are ridiculous.
+
+[25:00] They're so awesome. Do that. Uh all right. Uh wait, did you say we don't have a caller, right? You didn't say all right.
+
+[25:08] Uh now. Gotta figure out which questions we haven't answered yet. Okay. Uh Stefan Razil called in uh by Instagram. Howdy, I have a question about cocktail preparation using my Hatsuyuki ice shaver.
+
+[25:19] My plan is to pour the cocktail over shaved ice in a coop glass. Should I dry shake all my ingredients before I pour over the ice? Or should I just measure out the ingredients and pour them without shaking? How did you do it at Booker and Dax in existing conditions? Thanks.
+
+[25:31] All right. It's a good question. By the way, uh I need to get my ice shaver back out. Now now that it's gonna get cold, right? Jerk.
+
+[25:39] What a dummy. I have mine in storage. I love my eye shaver. Anyway, I have two now. Ridiculous.
+
+[25:45] Um here's the problem. So you guys like uh do you like what are your guys' feelings on shave ice in general? Love. Yeah? Which style of shave ice do you like?
+
+[25:55] Soft. But I mean, like uh, do you like it with like the the uh coconut milk and like uh condensed syrup? Or you like it like you like like the Spanish guy with the blue with the giant block and the scraper and then like the things uh like juice? The things of juice? Yeah.
+
+[26:09] What about you, Joe? You a shave ice guy? I love shaved ice. Yeah, what style? That style, like with the little block on the on the street, that guy?
+
+[26:17] Love those. They're kind of crunchy, too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like those guys.
+
+[26:20] Uh about you. What where are you sitting with that, Jack? Where are you where where's your shave ice head at? No, Jack right now. Oh no, we lost Jack.
+
+[26:27] Oh, that's what that was. We lost Jack. Jack went from uh he's in Long Island. They don't have the internet in Long Island yet. It hasn't made it all the way out to uh to Babylon where he is in uh in the Long Island.
+
+[26:37] Anyway, so the shave ice that we're talking about is uh is a Japanese shave ice machine. There are some inexpensive versions of the Hatsuyuki that you can buy now for like like a quarter of the price. Um there's a company in Hawaii, because that's where it's the most popular that ships them out, and they're I've I have one of the cheaper ones, and I have the real Hatsuyuki. So I will tell you this. Uh the cheaper one is not as nice.
+
+[27:03] It will make shaved ice fine. So if you're rich, buy the good one, which Nastasi and I found it, and I carried it on my back while we were lost in Tokyo and kept on. We had a we were in Tokyo, we went to the chef's district. Remember this, Nastasia? And I found the and it came in a flat thing, it's heavy as hell, and I had it like on my back, and then you just kept showing the business card of the hotel to anyone on the street who had tried it, and we were just asking them to point us in the direction of the hotel.
+
+[27:32] I remember Mark was with us, and he's like, You guys like doing this kind of stuff. We're like, we hate it. We hate it. And also, Nastasi and I are so cheap that we didn't turn on data. So we had no way to find because this was back before you could just pay like $10 a day and get data, and they were like, if you even look at your phone, it's like a hundred dollars a day.
+
+[27:53] We took the bus eventually with it. Yeah, that's how we got it. And we had no idea. We were just looking for the hotel out of the bus windows. It's kind of a nightmare.
+
+[28:01] Anyway, uh, so I got a very good deal on it, which is why I got it, but they're much more expensive here. Anyway, I digress as usual. The problem with um shave ice and cocktails is alcohol is an incredibly powerful ice melting uh thing. So if you listen back to the episode when Quinn came on to talk about his uh gelato obsession book, you'll remember that alcohol uh has a huge amount of uh anti-freezing power. And so in cocktails, it melts ice tremendously quickly.
+
+[28:32] So what you need to do, what we used to do at Booker and Dax, uh, is uh we would put half of the cocktail, we would pre-mix it, we would put half of the cocktail into the coop glass, then we would shave ice directly into the coop uh glass and it would start melting and create a slush, and then we would make a giant mound of it. Uh so it would come looking like a mountain out of the out of the ice shaver. Look real pretty. And then you can change whether you like it crunchier or softer on the ice, like Nastasi likes it, depending on, you know, you got you, we got your Joe who likes the crunchy, we got your Nastasi who likes the soft. And then you bring it to the table, and then you pour the rest of the cocktail over the top, and it instantly melts all the ice down and drops it right to the flush line on the um on the drink.
+
+[29:18] If you want to have substantially more um ice left over, then you're gonna need something bigger than a coupe glass. You're gonna need like a bowl, and it's gonna get real slushy and soupy. Um, but just experiment. That's how we used to do it. That good enough answer, Sas?
+
+[29:33] Yep. All right. Uh Seagrade wrote in, uh, please explain the science of stirring. Uh, in other words, why does stirring help prevent my sugary barbecue sauce from spilling over the lip of the pot when bringing my sauce to a hard simmer? Hard simmer, what do you think about that as a phrase?
+
+[29:49] Fine. Uh hard simmer. I was reading uh so I every once in a while there's words that I wonder whether Nastasi is gonna hate them. Close your ears, earmuffs, earmuffs, spores. I was reading about spore prints the other day, and these people are making uh like t-shirts where they they walk around, these are mycological-minded folks, and they put mushrooms on their back and they make spore print t-shirts and they walk around with these spore prints.
+
+[30:12] And as soon as I saw it, I was like, Nastasi would hate that. She would hate that. Wait, they grow mushrooms on their back? No, no, no, no. Oh, I mean, that'd be awesome.
+
+[30:20] No, what they do is is like they're walking around the forest, they find an interesting mushroom, they take off their their shirt, they put it down, and they put the gills of the mushroom down and they let it do the spore print thing, and then they put their shirt back on and it develops into like it looks almost like like a like a like a like like they got sucked on by space leeches. You know what I mean through their shirt. That's something that freaks me out, the leech. I don't like the leech. Uh here's this here's the science.
+
+[30:47] Here's the science for you. Uh, and it's an interesting point because uh I was actually dealing with uh this topic in my book recently. Um so when something is thick, right? Uh what happens is it is it gets kind of superheated at the bottom, right? And uh as it does, it's forming all of these bubbles, but they can't readily make it to the top to disperse.
+
+[31:08] So you get these kind of large bubbles, and you also have like a much thicker, more viscous solution, and so it has the ability to hold bubbles more. And so they build up and they have no way to get out until they build up kind of violently, and then they woof up and poof out over. That makes sense. So when you stir it, what you're doing is you're allowing that gas that's building up into those big bubbles, you're breaking those bubbles and letting them get to the surface. You're also uh preventing their so in in a thick sauce, right?
+
+[31:36] In a thick sauce, in water, you have maybe not even like like most one or two degrees difference between the top and the bottom because convection works, right? In a thick thing, like a barbecue sauce, convection doesn't work anymore because uh, you know, the natural convection that happens isn't enough to actually circulate it. It's not moving around. So that means the bottom can like actually build up a little bit of pressure. It gets all the way up to the boiling and sometimes even beyond, which is how you scorch the bottom of the sauce on the pan.
+
+[32:04] And then all of a sudden, when the bubble gets big enough to make it through the sauce, boom, it comes up. And so it when you stir it, you're getting the entire barbecue sauce to the same temperature. And when you get the entire thing to the same temperature, it can boil more gently and you can uh ventilate it. Was this a decent answer? Did this make sense?
+
+[32:21] Yeah. All right. Um Nick Robertson writes in what do you truly sacrifice when subbing citric malic and/or tartaric acid solution for true lemon or lime? Is it mouthfeel aromatics uh more? Is it reduce the is it worth the reduced uh cost per uh per item?
+
+[32:41] Um I mean you lose a lot. It's like it's the difference between, you know, like a real fruit and like uh acid. I mean, look, it it's like fruit is not just acid, it's also flavor, right? So if you look at like one of my favorite techniques, acid adjusting, you take a fruit that doesn't have enough acid and you add acid to it to you know bring up the flavor of the fruit, right? So you can use it as an acidified fruit.
+
+[33:08] But there's always that fruit flavor there. The flavor of orange is something other than just uh, you know, citric acid. The flavor of a lemon isn't just citric acid. Now, lemons are so high in citric acid that sometimes all you perceive is acitric acid, but there's other flavors there. Lime, especially has a lot of flavor, like in the oils and the in in the fruits.
+
+[33:29] Um, and you can taste uh remember those uh sweet lemons that we were tasting, Sas at the at the place, and you're like, nah, not as interesting, right? Because it's just lemon, I'm sorry, lemons. Lemons just aren't that interesting as a fruit flavor, you know what I mean, compared to like, let's say, mandarins. But uh they definitely do have a flavor. So you're you're you're losing that real citrus uh note.
+
+[33:52] The other thing you're losing, of course, is that the pulp that's in there, if you're gonna use it for like a shaken cocktail, you need real, like uh acids have no um no kind of uh uh surface active property. So they don't help a drink stay foamy or make a nice uh texture on it on a shaking cocktail. So that's why, you know, when you're shaking a cocktail, you never want to use clarified or just acid-based things because you're not gonna have the right texture, right? And stir drink, it's uh not as as big a deal on that, but you're still not gonna have um the kind of the depth of flavor. Now, if you like it, you like it, right?
+
+[34:27] But uh in general, I try to only use acids to augment real uh real fruits or real base flavors. Um, you know, look, uh taste is not in dispute. If you like the flavor of it, I'd say who said that that's dumb. Of course you can dispute somebody's idea of what tastes good, right? It's ridiculous.
+
+[34:46] It goes to this non-discipline. What's that? What's that phrase? Do you guys remember it? I don't know.
+
+[34:51] Anyway, it's ridiculous. Of course you can you can whatever. Um Brian wrote in, I'm trying to get around Nastasia's rule of one question per person, but what are all of Dave's French fry recipes? What do you? I mean, Brian, that is a long like I could sp like go on the blog.
+
+[35:10] Well, the blog Watch the movie. Oh, yeah. You should watch the French Fry movie, which is what's that on now? They just released it on something. I don't know.
+
+[35:18] I don't agree with some of the, like, one of the people in there says that McDonald's French fries are still good, which they're not. They're not. I mean, they're they're they're good hot. They taste like cardboard when they're cold. Right?
+
+[35:32] I haven't had McDonald's friends. You don't like French fries, I forgot. I haven't eaten at McDonald's in a very long time. Really? Like years, decades, maybe.
+
+[35:39] Really? Mm-hmm. You know when's the last time you you eat there a lot? Uh the kids like it. So, like they would like on the drive-thru, they'll ask to go through, but no, I mean, I basically have a milkshake.
+
+[35:48] I love fake shakes. You know, did we talk about Grimace already on the air? Yes. Um, when I graduated from college, though, I was that guy that went to McDonald's, ordered the cheeseburger, and then individually asked for all the toppings to be put on it, so they were huge, but they cost the same amount. So if you go to McDonald's and you're like, I want a cheeseburger, but I want tomato and I want lettuce and I want onion and I want pickles and I want and like you can ask for all this stuff and they'll completely trick out the cheeseburger for you.
+
+[36:21] Same cost. Same cost. Like, I was also that guy at Roy Rogers who completely, completely just ran roughshod over their free fixance bar. You know what I mean? They still is Roy Rogers still a thing?
+
+[36:34] I don't know. I don't know. Uh so anyway, the issue uh with French fries, I'll I'll give you some hints. As Nastasia says, read the read the blog post. Um, you have to choose what size French fry you want to make.
+
+[36:50] The the recipe is radically different, and different people like different things. Do you want a half inch fry? The answer's the the only things that are valid to me, I like half inch fries, I like three-eighths inch fries. Okay. I don't really like the style of the thinner style of fry.
+
+[36:59] They're much easier to make. The thinner the French fry, the much easier it is to make and have it stay crispy. That's just the truth, right? You're gonna want to use a high gravity potato. Do you have to use russets?
+
+[37:15] No. Anything high gravity. So if you like something like a Yukon, a Yukon is relatively high gravity. What does that mean? It means that it has uh uh it's not as high in water, it's higher in in starch than a low gravity potato.
+
+[37:31] Low gravity potatoes are great for making potato salad. All right. Now the question is how do you make it crispy? You're gonna have to cook it twice, period, right? If you like anyone who believes that they can like just throw something in cold oil and then bring it up and then all of a sudden they're gonna get a delicious french fry, it's possible for it to happen, but it's very unlikely because there's too many variables.
+
+[37:51] You need to cook it at least twice. My recipe on the blog is cooked three times, blanched in water, then oil fried and oil fried again. It is possible some of the best French fries I've ever had ever in Belgium, in fact, uh, they don't do a water blanch. They just go directly into uh oil. Now, if you want to do it that way, you just have to use the oil at a very much lower temperature and cook it for a lot longer.
+
+[38:16] And they also use a lower temperature on their finished fry and cook it for longer. And what you're balancing is how much liquid you're getting rid of versus uh the color of the fry. So I'm gonna have some recipes in the book that are that are coming up, but you really have to, there's no such thing as there's how to achieve the French fry you want with the with the equipment you have. Uh and for American style restaurants, you know, uh I thought it was easier to do a water blanch and then two oil fries, but you know, the Belgians, like I say, who are the best at it, only just do two oil blanches. That is that enough to stash or right.
+
+[38:54] Uh Jonathan Mame wrote in any tips for flavoring a keg of seltzer? Am I better off using a slice of lemon for each glass rather than attempting to flavor the whole batch? Are there options that would hold up over a weekend versus up to a month? Thanks. Well, I'm that guy that thinks that all flavored seltzers taste like poison.
+
+[39:10] I just like I would rather, I would always rather have a uh fresh uh squeeze of fresh uh stuff in my in my seltzer, even if it's unclarified. That said, um you want to use something that's not gonna uh it's not just that it's not gonna go bad, but it's that it's not gonna ruin the bubble. So anything you add to it has to be clarified. This is why that all these flavored seltzers use kind of poisonous tasting um uh, you know, flavoring things because they also don't want to have sugar. So they have to make something that tastes roughly like a fruit, but doesn't have sugar and maintains that flavor even though it's incredibly diluted, which is a tough thing to do, which is why I think they taste poisonous.
+
+[39:48] But um, the least poisonous tasting are like lemon and and lime. Uh and for those, you know, you could add a mixture of acids or you could add some cordial and a mixture of acids and get something approaching it. But I would just say squeeze something fresh. What do you think, Stuz? Yes.
+
+[40:04] Yeah. Uh Elizabeth Wells writes in uh enjoy the podcast, keep up the work. Um, question about blue steel pans. Uh, I'm used to cooking almost everything on nonstick. Do we do this one already?
+
+[40:15] No. No? I'm used to uh cooking almost everything on nonstick. Please don't judge. But I now have two uh high quality blue steel pans.
+
+[40:23] Uh I can get decent initial seasoning on them using the serious eats method and basic uh soy vegetable oil, but I have no clue how to maintain it. By the way, don't use soy oil uh for frying. Don't use soy oil for frying. Going back to the French fry thing, I think a huge mistake people make soy oil has uh a lot of uh a specific um uh fatty acid in it called linolinic. Linolinic, not linolaic.
+
+[40:52] I don't want to hear people saying that linoleic is that I said linolaic is bad, linolinic. And that is the reason why. And so here's a little secret. When they make oil, right? They they have it's called um uh deodorized, uh bleached, like reduced, like you know, they do all this stuff to oil to make it as neutral as possible.
+
+[41:12] But then it starts going bad, right? And one of the things that goes bad is with linolinic acid is that you get these kind of like terrible fishy aromas, right? You guys have all Stas, you hate that, right? When someone overheats like a soy oil and you get that kind of like gross fish aroma. Yeah.
+
+[41:32] Even the thought of it makes me kind of right. And that's because soy oil sucks for frying. It's fine, like neutral. Now you're gonna say, but Dave, Dave, some of the best fry oils are soy oils. Yeah, well, industrial fry oils have all of their linolinic acid removed from them.
+
+[41:50] They also add special antioxidants to those oils and anti foaming things to make them specifically good for frying. Those oils are so heavily tweaked that it doesn't matter what the original ingredients that they made them uh out of are because they're just they're they're basically like frankin oils. You know what I mean? Yes. So uh don't use soy.
+
+[42:09] Uh you know what? Like for frying, I like, and I know peanuts great if you like peanut. Corn oil is cheap and it doesn't taste like corn oil when it's heated up. So corn oil is one of those oils that tastes like corn when it's raw. And so you're like, why would I use this for frying?
+
+[42:27] It makes a bad salad oil, right? Corn oil makes a bad salad oil. Yes. Uh but corn oil is good for frying and it's cheap as hell, right? And by the way, just as you know, uh, if it just says vegetable oil, it's probably some mixture of like canola and soy.
+
+[42:43] And canola I have my problems with too on stinking when it gets uh uh overfried if it's not done right. Remember, uh, you guys probably don't, but like early canola oil smelled real bad. Anyway, uh, so don't judge uh a fry oil by how it tastes if it hasn't been um how it hasn't been cooked. You gotta worry about two things. Like I say, uh is it gonna make those disgusting fishy aromas?
+
+[43:04] Is it gonna get what's called reversion flavors where it all of a sudden starts tasting like the crap they made it out of? That happens, but not with corn. Anyway, uh but back to your question. Uh I use a soy oil and the serious uh soy oil and the serious seeds method, but I have no clue how to maintain it. My pans never get truly non-stick.
+
+[43:21] No way I could cook an egg in them without serious sticking. It seems that every time I use and need to clean them using soap and the soft side of a dish sponge, the seasoning comes off. What am I doing wrong? Cleaning them with kosher salt alone seems to help, but it's still a huge pain to have to essentially re-season every time I use them. Am I using the wrong oil?
+
+[43:38] Am I using the wrong seasoning method? Does it just take a while to fully break them in? And will someone with a soy allergy have a reaction if I use soy all the season? I don't think so. Uh please uh help me use these gorgeous pans.
+
+[43:48] Thanks. So uh all right, so on Instagram right now, you can go look, Mizen, who is uh one of the companies and they sell some of these blue steel pans, has a really cool graphic up now where they show like a brand new pan, and then like in various stages of seasoning, and you know, it's actually a pretty cool graphic. I think what you need to do is just don't worry about it. It's just gonna take a long time to season. Like, I don't even think about calling one of these things non stick for like a couple months after I keep using it a lot.
+
+[44:22] Um they should season at roughly the same rate as uh cast iron. The one thing you have to be careful is that because the steel is so much thinner and lighter than cast iron, uh just be careful when you're seasoning it not to like it can quickly overheat, right? Whereas the cast iron, uh it's got so much more mass that it doesn't kind of overheat as f and it doesn't conduct heat as quickly as the steel does. So it's easier to overheat the blue uh steel when you're when you're seasoning it. But I I wouldn't worry about it.
+
+[44:50] I would just like let it do it, let it do its thing. And as long as you, you know, make sure that no, you know, weird crusty bits get caught on it, it's eventually just gonna get better and better and better and better and better with time. As long as your son doesn't throw it on the burner, walk away and burn the seasoning off, which happened with one of my cast iron. I was so bent. I was so bent.
+
+[45:08] The other thing is Booker, Stas, Booker has been making freaking been using my cast irons now. I I have all these cast iron sizzle platters at home. You see my sizzle platters, right? So he's been using these freaking things, Stas, to make his salmon. So he he I I I joke, he's like a he's like a bear.
+
+[45:26] He eats only salmon. He fires up the the ANOVA, low temp cooks his uh his salmon every day and then finishes it in a in a pan. He now puts so much flour on the bottom of these fish because like he wants to basically just eat like a roux, so he might he just floods the pan with flour and but and then he doesn't adequately clean them, so my seasoning is getting gloppy on them. I've had these pants for over 20 years. I've been seasoning them, and it just takes one knucklehead son like going salmon after salmon after salmon to start building up that weird crusty on the coating.
+
+[45:58] What am I gonna do? Tell him to get in warm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh Patrick wrote in via Instagram.
+
+[46:08] What springs in Saratoga do you recommend trying? Well, what I recommend you do is uh look, most of the ones that are so Saratoga Springs, if you go to Saratoga Springs, in town there's a couple of springs. And for that one, like Hathorne is nice, but just go to this, go to the park. Go to the uh the Saratoga Springs, the park uh that's right next to SPAC where apparently like everyone there says Dave Matthews plays every year in the entire town waits for Dave Matthews to come play. Are you a Dave Matthews fan any of you guys?
+
+[46:36] It's okay. Styles, I thought you were. No. No. It's not my style.
+
+[46:42] It's not my style of music. That's not my thing. No, I don't, I'm not really a fan. My favorite thing about him was his tour bus dropped all that poop over the bridge. Remember that?
+
+[46:51] No. His tour bus driver. You told this story twice on a year already. All right. Anyway, dropped.
+
+[46:59] Well, apparently Jack wasn't listening. Yeah, all right. Dropped a bunch of poop on people. I love that. My favorite thing.
+
+[47:03] Caller, you're on the air. Hi, how's it going? Doing all right. What's up? But I have a question about uh carbonating fruits.
+
+[47:13] Okay. So I've been experimenting with the dry ice in a cooler. And I was curious if it there's a faster way to do it. Yeah, the issue with dry ice and a cooler is it's never gonna really build up pressure. And to get uh to really carbonate something, you're gonna need to get uh pressure in.
+
+[47:29] The one thing I'll say about uh carbonated fruit is that, you know, this was something that um you know a lot of people were working on in the early 2000s. Homaru Kantu, I think, even you know, back then tried to make a piece of equipment so that people could uh carbonate fruit. The issue with it is is that um highly carbonated fruit or carbonated fruit tastes like it started to ferment. So what so you have to just bear in mind that like that what's gonna happen is is that you're gonna get something that's tasting kind of like it's fermenting because that's what your mind tells you has happened to fruit that's carbonating. But I would just I would just put it into it look this another reason is people you yeah, you have to use relatively um uh high water fruit and like it's hard to get the CO2 to diffuse all the way in because it's not a liquid, so it takes a long time for the CO2 to diffuse in.
+
+[48:28] So like I know people were putting things into into EC whippers and then like uh pressurizing them with CO2 and then letting them s like sit in their fridge for like a day or two. You know what I'm saying? To try to get the carbonation in. So I would try that, and it's not gonna help you on larger fruit, but larger fruit is not gonna thing you can do is not gonna suck it in. Not gonna soak it in.
+
+[48:49] So like things that are like high in water, things that you can get to like watermelon, like that's one of the people used to do berries and they used to do watermelon, right? Uh all all kinds of all kinds of melon. And well, a watermelon tastes pretty good carbonated. But I I would try it in an EC just because if you don't build up that pressure, it's never gonna get super duper carbonated. But I would be very careful of using dry ice in a sealed container unless it's got a pressure vent.
+
+[49:13] Yep, yep. Yeah. Well, perfect. That kind of answers my question then. All right.
+
+[49:18] Let us know. Uh tweet me back and let me know how it works. So uh, Patrick, go to the park. You got to try them all. Um, here's the issue.
+
+[49:27] State seal is the kind of the water that most people locals get, and it's basically rainwater. It's runoff water. But you're gonna need, if you're drinking a lot of the funkier waters, it's very high in salt. I've never had as bad a hangover as when I go to Saratoga and taste waters just because it there's so high in salt. Uh Hathorne 3 is the one that you're gonna want to take for cocktail work because it's so strong that you can use just a little bit of it.
+
+[49:54] It's great in mezcal drinks. Uh, we did, you know, the Saratoga Paloma we did with Hathorne 3. That's right by the entrance to the park. That is the funkiest of all the waters. Um, but I like one of the new springs they have, shots.
+
+[50:08] You just need to taste them all. You need to taste them all and realize that the sulfur that's in them will flash off. So don't uh don't judge a water by the sulfur. The sulfur goes away very quickly. That answer the question.
+
+[50:19] Yeah. Um Nick Robertson wrote in Um the company I'm working for is a beer has a uh beer and wine license at the moment. They're afraid that adding a cocktail program will spoil the golden goose of a restaurant, as they believe cocktails will spoil the table's turn times. Uh, how can I ease their concerns? Obviously, there's value in having a robust program beyond dollars and cents, but I'd like for the acquisition of the cocktail program not to be an uphill battle.
+
+[50:43] However, uh uh there is skill and craft and therefore labor costs into serving cocktails. What are your thoughts? Um I find that uh look, cocktail program is is usually driven by bar, which is considered the front of the house kind of people, and they're often pushback from the back of the house on programs that are seen to kind of mess with the back of house kind of vibe. Um I mean, look, your your margins are very high. I I don't I don't think you're gonna increase the I mean look, here's what I would do.
+
+[51:21] I would say, why don't you try it? If your check average goes up, then hey, your check average just went up and you can see whether or not you turn the tables more. It's not it's the kind of thing that you can test out without it being like a big gambit, you know what I mean? You don't have to like, you don't have to freaking change the world to try it out. Um I don't know anyone who you know put cocktails in and then all of a sudden started losing money while they were making money before.
+
+[51:45] You know what I mean? I know just try it next. Wow. Guy's got a real problem. He's trying to convince you.
+
+[51:52] Because he has to, he's having a problem because the chef and the and the sh it's I guarantee you it's the chef. And the chef is like, I don't want this messing with the we want, you know, we're we're pump and dump. We want to get the people in and out. You know what I mean? I don't think people linger over over cocktails.
+
+[52:07] It's not like you're at a bar where they are lingering over cocktails. When you're at a table and you want a cocktail, they order it with the thing. I don't think it's a problem. I mean, I mean, I think if they don't want to share creative, I I I mean, I would look, if if the battle is is that they don't want to share creative input with uh the bartender and they want to have full creative control over everything that puts people put in their mouths, then you've lost that battle before it started, and you're not gonna win. You know what I mean?
+
+[52:35] If that's what the true problem is. Um I don't know. I don't know what to say. What Anastasi doesn't want me to say anything, so you know. Uh there's no harm in trying something, and then if you're not gonna do it.
+
+[52:47] Well, there is, they're saying that they won't let him try. Oh, if he's gonna get fired, then don't try. They're in between roads. He's asking for advice on how to convince them that it's a good idea. Here's a here's why, because you can make something that costs you $2 and you can sell it for $15 or $16.
+
+[53:06] You know what I mean? It's like it i the the poor cost on a cocktail is very low compared to food costs. And the labor cost of making the cocktail is usually covered by someone who is getting paid front of house wages and gets most of their work on tips anyway, right? So the actual true cost of a cocktail is a lot lower than let's say adding another app to the menu, right? And you know, but uh again, it's like you know, if maybe bring the chef in to like have a creative session on the ideas, get them interested in it, but you know, the margins on cocktails are great, you know.
+
+[53:43] And anyway. Um Mass Preacher uh 5019 wrote in uh I really okay, good afternoon, sir. This must have come in. John just got this off uh Instagram. I hope you are the author of Liquid Intelligence.
+
+[53:58] Uh in one section, I am. Uh in one section, you mentioned the surface area of ice is directly proportional to the melting area, and hence there would be more dilution. I think there's getting confused here. A few pages later, it's also mentioned that smaller ice uh with respect to volume provides more dilution. These two theories seem to be contradictory.
+
+[54:18] I'd be grateful if you could spare a moment and explain this if I got it wrong somewhere. You did get it wrong somewhere. Here's how it works. Um surface area is a function of the uh square of the of the size, whereas the volume goes as the cube, right? So a big, big chunk of ice has much less surface area for how much ice is there for the mass of ice than does uh a smaller amount.
+
+[54:47] And I'll prove it to you real fast. Take a cube of ice, right? Now, if you cut that cube of ice in half, right? It has all of the surface area it used to have, plus the two new faces where you cut it in half. So you have the same amount of ice, but now you have more surface area because you've created two more planes that weren't there before.
+
+[55:09] Cut it again, you increase the surface area again. Every time you take a large block and you break it into smaller pieces, you're increasing the surface area. Melting happens at the surface. Therefore, if you uh increase the surface area and it's actively melting, you will increase the dilution. So smaller ice favors more dilution in a given amount of time, right?
+
+[55:32] Assuming that you're not at equilibrium, right? Large ice has a large ice has less surface area per volume and therefore will dilute less, right? So I don't know like whether you missed something in the in what what I wrote, right? But that that's what it is. Did I explain that accurately, Stas?
+
+[55:49] Does that make any sense? All right. Uh from Lightbox Digital Studio. Um, I continue to learn uh from liquid intelligence. Thanks.
+
+[55:58] Uh, I need your advice on something. Do you have a trick to remove the wax from fruits, particularly citrus, prior to using for garnish? Uh cooks say pouring boiling water over the fruits remove the wax, but it seems to kill the essential oils. I'm looking for thanks. Thanks for the book.
+
+[56:14] I've just never worried about the any wax or or oil coating. I've just never worried about it. I'll have to ask uh, and I don't know if we'll ever talk to David Carp again. Because I don't know, like he doesn't mean like he's not part of maybe you'll talk to him. You're the kind of person that talks to people stuff.
+
+[56:32] Maybe you'll talk to him. I'll ask him or ask Harold the next time I talk to him, but I've never really thought about it because I've never seen it as a problem, right? So when I'm using a cocktail, look, take your fruit, your citrus, you peel it, right? And then if you squeeze it, it's squeeze so you know you squeeze the peel. If you see that spray, that awesome spray of juice coming out, uh not juice, oils coming out, then that must mean that the wax wasn't enough to stop that from happening.
+
+[57:00] So I don't like the the wax that they put on on fruits, I don't even know if they wax them all anymore, isn't poisonous. So I don't know that you're helping yourself by getting rid of it, right? Yeah. And online it says pour boiling water on it. So yeah, but if you pour boiling water on it, you will be able to.
+
+[57:15] Yeah, I know. So I understand why you're saying I don't understand why you would need to do it. I don't understand like what's the reason you hate the wax so much. Maybe he thinks it's poisonous. It's not poisonous.
+
+[57:25] I know. So then there's no reason to because you were talking about the spray. Using the spray. So if like if if the wax prevents the spray from coming out, that would be a problem. But I've never noticed that being a problem.
+
+[57:40] Another thing, you know what I can't figure out? So, like, you know how oils uh you know how um eggs uh they're porous, right? Mm-hmm. Right. That's why uh did I tell you what I did the other day?
+
+[57:51] Oh my god. So you know the pressure cooked eggs that we do all the time? So uh remember years ago at the SCI, I put a bunch of eggs as a test. I put them in the oven. Yeah.
+
+[57:59] And they they got the brown spots on the pores, and then they turned kind of hameen in in the in the thing. So I did that again in my oven. They exploded. Weird. Like exploded.
+
+[58:18] And I don't know whether or not the eggs had somehow been sealed or whether or not they just put self-plugged the holes up because they dried out because they had a really high convection on. Now I did it in a convection oven at the FCI too, right? But they sprayed like when an egg explodes, I I'd only ever before exploded an egg in a microwave. Have you ever done that? Yeah.
+
+[58:40] Yeah. It's ugly. It smells real bad. I used to, like, I once did it at somebody else's house. It was terrible at a party.
+
+[58:48] Someone was like, hey, what are fun things to do in a microwave? Hey, I threw a bunch of eggs in and you turned it on. And with it, when you throw an egg in the microwave, it's it's not guaranteed that the thing's gonna blow up. You're not guaranteed it's gonna blow up. But when it does, oh my god, is it smelly?
+
+[59:04] Oh my god, does it smell bad? And I had to clean that all out of my toaster the other day. And it's just like it looks like alien because it it it had already gone hamine, it had gone brown, right? Yeah, and it had just it it's like you know when they when the alien came out of the chest? It was like that.
+
+[59:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Boom! Yeah. I was like, oh my God. All right, you got one minute to wrap it up with something interesting.
+
+[59:29] Well, I I mean, I don't have anything interesting. There's I've I've never had anything interesting. Jack, what do you got that's interesting in Long Island? No Daniel Jack remember. I thought he came back.
+
+[59:40] I heard it, I heard it like he came back. Uh I have I'm doing a grill out on Saturday and Dave won't come. Are you inviting everyone to the grill? Zero people are allowed to come. But you are invited.
+
+[59:51] We're invited, basically. And you always say, I never invite you, but that's not true. You just never you're inviting me to something that's in Connecticut. You go to Connecticut all the time because you're in-laws and your sister-in-law lives there. So I don't know.
+
+[1:00:06] So Connecticut is not a problem. Dax has a uh Dax has a meat. I don't know when it is. Okay. Alright, we'll see.
+
+[1:00:14] We'll see. Are you gonna do a uh are you gonna do a a I'm gonna do uh a uh underground cook. You are? Yes. You're lying.
+
+[1:00:22] I swear to God, actually when I was like gonna say that, and then I was like, Oh, he's gonna think I made it up. Now I don't know whether you're lying to me. I swear to you. I swear to you. It's so hard to n it like I after all these years, Nastasia, I can't tell whether you're lying to me or not.
+
+[1:00:35] I promise you. Promise you. What are you gonna cook underground? Ariel's figuring that out. Now you know it's real, because Ariel.
+
+[1:00:44] No, oh now. We gotta get Ariel back on the show. All right. All right, all right. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New State Studios at Rockefeller Center. Joined as usual with Nastasi the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good.
+
+[0:21] Yeah? Got uh with us back again. John in the booth, how you doing? Doing good, thanks. And both of our like a Maestro engineering team, we have Jackie Molecules.
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+[0:30] Hey, what's up? In the studio. Which I appreciate. And Joe Hazen. As usual, what's up?
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+[0:36] Hey, how are you doing? Doing all right. Hey, uh uh Jack, you got the nice woe hop shirt on. I'm appreciated. Yeah, man.
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+[0:42] I wear that for you guys. Yeah, I appreciate that. I like the wo hop. I've never been there. No?
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+[0:45] What? Oh. Well, let me ask you this. It's a separate question. Do you appreciate his shirt?
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+[0:50] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you're with what are you, Queen of the Queens of the Stone Age? Yeah.
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+[0:54] Is that an actual concert tee? Yeah. Oh no, I didn't get it at a concert. Oh. Oh.
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+[0:58] Yeah. Okay, let me ask you guys questions. Questions. When you go to a concert, at what age? I saw Billy Eilish on Friday.
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+[1:07] How was uh how was she? How was she? Uh good. I mean, I'm not not a fan, but I'm not a fan either. I wouldn't take you for a Billy Eilish fan.
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+[1:15] The tickets are really cheap. It was part of the governor's ball. And uh I was like Is that on Randall's Island? No, it was at uh City Field. Oh.
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+[1:24] But outside in the parking lot. It was weird. In the parking lot? You have a whole stadium right there, and they put you in the park at the listen, we got this stadium. We're not doing anything with it, but uh okay.
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+[1:33] How about the parking lot? She was in a parking lot. The nice thing about a parking lot is that uh you can't see very well if you're in the back. Yeah, that was no crappy. No sloping.
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+[1:41] Yeah. But it was actually pretty small. There's probably like 400 people there. Really? Wow.
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+[1:46] Yeah. So you basically saw her at a small club that just had been knocked over by a tornado so that there was no walls. Yeah, yeah. The sound was bad, but she was cool. Is there anything worse than guys?
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+[1:55] Is there anything worse than an outdoor sound uh without a like a nice setup stage with like an enclosure to put it out towards the audience? Like what sound could be worse than that? Terrible, right? Bad. Bad.
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+[2:05] Uh all right. So, but was there for you guys a certain age where so when you're young, you're like, I can't afford that concert shirt, but I really want to wear it to school the next day, right? So you you you bought it, right? And then you you you you're like, please give me some of the money back, mom and dad. But they didn't, right?
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+[2:24] So there's that. And then there's a certain age where you're like, I don't need this concert tea. Oh, yeah. I don't need this, right? What age is that?
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+[2:31] Skip the merch. Um maybe like 22. 22, Joe. No, you know. See, but then the older I got, then then it returns.
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+[2:41] Right. Then you want it again. Then you go back to the bottom. Oh, my goodness, yeah. Now, Nastasia, who used to be, we won't discuss it in full, but the queen of the backstage sly moves, right?
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+[2:56] Did you used to steal merch or just get it? Like, did you somehow snake free merch? I would know. I would take their cigarettes, like cigarette butts, and take like random, like their water bottles, uh-oh. And like run my tongue around, like, oh my god.
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+[3:12] I know. Wow. I got a water bottle once that Gwen Stefani threw off the stage. Uh it's one of my first concerts, Tragic Kingdom tour. Oh, wow, that's cool.
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+[3:20] That was a good one. That was the water. I mean, there's no water in it. It was just like a crushed bottle. Let me tell you something.
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+[3:25] When you're on stage and you're working, there's no way you finish every last drop of that water. As someone who has not in on stage, but as someone who has quickly drank and then crushed and thrown things for fun a lot. Like a lot. I can always tell you that there is some stuff left at the bottom of the bottle, unless you are being extremely careful and you turn it all the way upside down as you throw it to make sure that you eject everything, which you can, but it's very hard to do that on the sly. Well, there's the rock star move of spraying, like kind of just like tossing the rest of the water out.
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+[3:56] I mean like out and then yeah, there's that point where like the people in the audience are like, we're not sweaty yet. What are you doing? You know what I mean? Especially if you're not if you're famous, they don't care. You could do whatever you want.
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+[4:04] You know what I mean? Like if you're public image limited or something like that, you can spit on the audience and they're happy. That's right. Yeah. In fact, if you don't get spit on, it's it's an insult.
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+[4:13] Anyway. What about you, John? You a concert T-man? Not really. I only have one t-shirt from one concert I ever went to, and even then there was I don't know, Bonaroo, so not like one concert, but which t-shirt did you buy?
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+[4:24] Oh, you bought the overall shirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The overall like everyone listed on the back and all that stuff. Yeah. That's respectable.
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+[4:30] Yeah, it was neat. I know it's like very boneroo-ish, like super tie-dye and just like tribute letters, all that stuff. So I don't really wear it, but yeah. When you were young, did you make tie-dyes? When I was in like camp around six or seven, I think so.
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+[4:43] But then I did it on my own. I never did it with a group of people because I was had no friends. I was lonely. That's right. Only shot lonely boy.
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+[4:51] Who here, other than John, who here did not tie-dye? I've never tie-dye in my life. Yeah. Come on. Joe.
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+[5:00] I've tie-dyed. Yeah. When I was a kid, they used to have uh uh this dye that they took off the market when I was a child because it was like so poisonous and um but it was so bright and it was so color fast, and it didn't you didn't need to have an industrial strength dryer to set it, you know what I mean? And so those tie-dyes lasted until like, you know, until the shirt was more holes than I was that kid with a lot of holes and all my stuff, not for fashion reasons, just because I had holes in all my stuff, and not because my mom couldn't buy me new clothes, it's just I'm like, these pants work, what's wrong with you? Right.
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+[5:38] You liked keeping the same pair of pants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The checks. Yeah.
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+[5:44] Yeah. We saw Booker. Oh, yeah. I was gonna talk about that. So we uh we had uh Nastasia has this uh so Nastasia's obviously an intr interesting person.
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+[5:54] So she has this friend that she went to high school with in Covina, Landon Goodburger, Land of Goodburger, and so it's kind of you know how like um you you'll create like an electron and an anti-electron, right? And they're opposite. Well, the you know, Nastasia and Shannon, this her friend who's a New York Times science writer, are opposites in that way on Elon Musk. So Nastasia loves Elon Musk, right? Regardless of whether he is an alien or a terrible person or whatever else, right?
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+[6:26] Loves the concept of Elon Musk, right? You don't know him personally, he is a concept. You've met the brother, Musk Melon, yeah. But yeah, but anyway, so but Shannon, not only does she hate Elon Musk, but here's the here's the real he hates her, like personally. He has her his Twitter people go attack her.
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+[6:45] Yeah, yeah. Wow. And like that's kind of cool. Like if you can get that's really cool, if you can get like now registered space alien, Elon Musk to personally hate on you. I mean, that's uh impressive.
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+[6:59] Yeah, yeah. So now Nastasia, and this is why this is important for the show. So we had Booker, Booker came up, and you know. Booker hates leaving New York City, so it was a big accomplishment. You know how much he must like Nastasia if he leaves New York City.
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+[7:11] She asked for it. Uh so Nastasia, a friend of hers had cooked these chickens by suspending the chickens over a flame and then pretending that they got cooked. Okay, no, it it was a famous chef. It was not my friend. Okay.
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+[7:27] But whatever. Now listen, I just want to say something for the record. I looked at the setup Nastasia. Nastasia has a fire pit on and this is not a blame for Nastasia. Literally, she was going off of some famous chef's Instagram photo.
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+[7:38] This is another reason why Instagrams are terrible at it. Uh so listen, people, it is true that it is an old, old, old school technique. Vertical, vertical roasting. I'm a huge proponent of vertical roasting. Has you know, has anyone heard me talk about the tandoor?
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+[7:52] I was vertical grilling life for a long time, right? Old school spit roasting, vertical spit roasting, was done with a uh a vertical flame. So you built a very hot, radiant wall of heat, and then spun the thing, hung it, hung it whatever, pig, a small animal, chicken, you hung it and you rotate it in front of a flame, much like an Al Pastor situation. Right. Or or a hero situation or something like this, a shawarma situation, right?
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+[8:22] That works. Building a fire on the ground and suspending an animal over the top of the fire so that its butt faces the sky ain't gonna cook the animal. It's just not gonna work. It's just not gonna happen, right? Unless you're sitting there and you're like, I'm gonna spin the bottom until the bottom is done, then I'm gonna turn it around, I'm gonna I'm gonna spin the top until the top is done.
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+[8:42] It's just not the way it works. This was Chef Negro Piotoni's technique, or what he tried. Well, I didn't see his picture, but did he did he have a fire on the side? Yeah, sure, Dave. I can't.
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+[8:54] I mean, you know I need to. John, you you parse this image for me. I mean. Not no, this isn't really what Dave's talking about. Though this is like the more popular way that people do it now.
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+[9:04] It's like the way Francis Francis Mallman does it in his on his TV. He cooks on a TV? On the TV shows on Chef's table. Anyways. Listen, listen.
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+[9:15] If you look at people who do things for a long time, like like uh, like let's say you don't want to build a big fire, you want to build a fire that's just over this. Do like they do in uh in South America where you you you turn the you basically splay it, spatchcock it out, you put it on a grate, and then you lean the grate over the fire and then you flip it every once in a while. To me, this makes sense. To me, this makes sense. You know what I mean?
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+[9:35] Like, like trying to do something in an in kind of a it in an old school way. So anyway, so I took one look at it, I was like, I'm not getting involved. I also have five fire pits in the shape of the constellation of cancer on my lawn. That's true. What?
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+[9:48] It's true. It's true. I've seen I've I've seen it. No, my friend the guy did it. I tried to.
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+[9:55] Does that make sense? And she has a flock of mean uh uh geese that I tried to run down when I when I showed you. I don't know, Dave. So anyway, so it took like I don't know, she started cooking the chicken, I left like three hours later, they weren't done yet. Did uh did they ever get done?
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+[10:10] Here's my theory. Yes. It doesn't actually matter. And that here, this is why I think people are gonna get mad at me. When you're hanging out with your friends and you're doing something that feels kind of cool, like having a bunch of hot rocks with a chicken like slung over it, and it gets mildly brown, whether it's overcooked or a little undercooked, you're just gonna skip the undercooked parts, you're gonna salt the hell out of it anyway.
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+[10:30] You have a couple of bottles of rose, you're getting a little bit hammered. It doesn't really matter. And I think people need to realize this. Like, when you're gonna do something crazy, just accept like crazy, like bury a whole animal for the first time. Or this goes back to a question we had a couple of weeks ago about what kind of big camp meat should you do.
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+[10:46] And we said it like, you know, at the time, the same way. Just and I I I'm saying this kind of as self-help. I'm doing a little self-diagnosis as well. Like I get all like bent internally bent and therefore probably at my family externally bent, uh, about like you know, is the quality gonna be great? And you know what?
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+[11:03] It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You finally think that, huh? Well, no, it matters to think about it beforehand. Like, I still, for me, it's the it's the it's the plan of attack, it's the game plan.
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+[11:12] Trying to get the plan of attack such that you have the best possible thing. But, you know, on the other hand, there's also that, you know, people gotta eat. People gotta eat. And uh so for i i i if you are a guest where someone has some sort of crazy plan of attack and it's taking longer than they expected, don't be a butthead. Don't give them crap about it.
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+[11:30] You gave her a little bit of crap. Who? Ariel. I didn't give Ariel crap. Really?
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+[11:35] None at all. Not even one bit. Okay. Because it wasn't a good thing. You said to her, you said, you don't have to do this, Ariel.
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+[11:40] You don't have to do this. Before she started, I was like, don't feel obliged to follow Nastasia's Instagram dream. If you if you I didn't even post it. It wasn't even like I was like, I want to show the world. I just was like, You like saw this and you wanted it.
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+[11:54] That makes it your Instagram dream. Okay. Anyway. I think that's fair. Yeah.
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+[11:57] So like my point was to her, and and then this, then people are like, oh, well, you know, go, I'm like, I'm not gonna help. Look, Ariel's a hundred, we're gonna have back on the show soon, I hope. Ariel, 100% capable. And like you don't want two cooks with opinions working on the same problem. You just don't want that.
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+[12:15] So I was like, listen, I'll be scut work, I'll do scut work if you want scut work done. And if you don't, I'm just gonna leave you the hell alone. You know what I mean? And I think that's the way to deal with it. Um but anyway, I noted that by the time I had left, the chicken was not done.
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+[12:29] Yeah, it was done like an hour after you left. Yeah, but it was really good. But an hour after I left. Hilarious. So listen, the great thing about Anastasia, though, is she had a giant table full of crap that people gave.
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+[12:43] Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. I knew that chicken wasn't gonna be done. Yeah, yeah. So people, I want all of you out there, because I know that the kind of people, uh uh uh a chunk of the people that listen to this show are the kind of people who like me get all bent out of shape and do all like jump through all kinds of hoops to get something done.
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+[13:00] And I love that about people. I love I don't mind that about myself, but just you gotta learn to let go, and it doesn't really matter whether the stuff that comes out is the best thing since sliced bread, right? Just happened to me this weekend at the bachelor party I was at. I did a sous- vide carnitas, and it was like, oh I have to wait the full eight hours. And then they're like, we're not gonna wait till 11 p.m.
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+[13:21] to eat these tacos. And I'm like, okay, we'll finish them a different way. Can I tell you something about Carnitas and specifically? Yeah. Uh so me after many, many years teaching Sous vide and low temperature, um, I actually if you do a side-by-side taste test of uh, we'll call it like low temperature sous vide, whatever you want to call it, um, meats that we are used to eating cooked at a high temperature, they're very different.
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+[13:50] Okay. And it turns out that side by side for, and I'll tell you what I've tested on this. I've tested, well, mainly short ribs. Okay. Right.
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+[13:58] Mainly I've tested short ribs, but I've also tested um confit de canard. Uh uh like it turns out that um while it's true that confie is viciously overcooked from a technical standpoint, right? The meat itself is you know horrendously hammered, if you know, if it were a chicken, let's say. Although you can also confirm, whatever. Uh and uh a short rib is also viciously overcooked from a from a steak perspective, right?
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+[14:27] Yeah. That most people actually prefer the traditional product. And uh and so I've come to realize that most of the time uh on stuff that people want high cooked, I just cook it high. You know what I'm saying? Now, do I love the special effect of a low-temps short rib cut into a perfect cube and seared off as an appetizer and some sort of fancy restaurant sitch?
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+[14:53] Yeah, but it's not gonna be like you know, a stick-to-your rib situation, like you know, with you know, you get your short ribs, you get some sort of you guys like gravy on polenta. I really like gravy on polenta. I like gravy on plenty. I know it's not what you're supposed to like. No, it's but it's good.
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+[15:05] Imagine short ribs, polenta gravy. What could what's wrong with this? What's wrong with that? Nothing, nothing's wrong with that. Uh asebuco, uh, likewise.
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+[15:12] I prefer my asebuco cooked like my mom used to cook the asebuco, not because I don't know how to cook it a different way, but that's just how I prefer it. So I actually so on things like uh carnitas, I'm a huge fan of the pressure cooker. Uh huh. Because sucker is done super fast. And if you do a side-by-side, if you use a non-venting pressure cooker, you do a side by side, um, you will notice that it actually has an even deeper meaty flavor.
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+[15:40] You know what the problem with pressure cooking is, is that there is no reduction inside of a pressure cooking. And so you have to alter the recipe of pressure cooked uh products to um to deal with that. And in fact, I have a chapter in my new book on how to manage moisture inside of a pressure cooker. And uh uh I'm not gonna tell you 100% because my publisher will kill me, but uh I learned this uh my current version of the technique when I went to Belgium right before the uh pandemic. Uh John sent me to have one of his favorites, Carbonade.
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+[16:14] Yep. And the people who have figured out how to make a delicious Carbonade have also figured out, even though they didn't know it, the problem with the pressure cooker. Got a caller? Caller, you're on the air. Hey, this is Jacob calling uh from Des Moines with uh a follow-up, uh, another question and a potential Patreon thought.
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+[16:34] Oh, cool. I called back uh a couple weeks ago about doing uh lemon powder for drag queens. Oh yeah, how'd that go? Uh did anyone die? It turned nobody died.
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+[16:44] Before you go, I have an Iowa State question, by the way. Go ahead. Okay, great. Um I'm happy to report that uh I gave many notices, many warnings, and I don't think as far as I know, nobody did it. So um as far as the actual product itself, I don't know if I had some issues with humidity, um, but it wasn't as light and fluffy as I had wanted.
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+[17:03] Um I definitely nailed the flavor of it. It ended up being what did I do? Um I I measured the weight of the powder and the oil and then did 20% of that as powdered sugar, and then kind of hit tear in my mind and then did two percent of that as citric acid, and that was pretty spot on as far as uh flavor and acidity for palate cleanser and whatnot. I wish I could hit tear in my mind and just go to zero in my brain. Can you imagine?
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+[17:30] Your brain has all this shit stuff in it, you're just like you hit tear and your brain goes to zero. Oh my god, that's my new that's my new thing now. I'm gonna hit mental tear. Boop! Mental tear nice at night.
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+[17:42] I I'd buy I'd I'd buy that t-shirt if you guys put that on a t-shirt. Yeah, cooking issues, mental tear. Mental tear. Uh so yeah, it all went well. Uh but uh but um but it wasn't as light and powdery as I wanted.
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+[17:55] It it served its function, but I don't know if it was a humidity thing or what the deal was, but it was still kind of clumpy. Yeah, yeah, that stuff's vicious with humidity, but uh you just need to add more of that maltodextrin. But the problem then is you you reduce the flavor. That's why it's very hard to get a good balance between flavor. So you so like the the the way that you do it is you the way that you'd either you have to use extremely concentrated flavors, or you'd have to like o like like like uh lemon oil, right?
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+[18:21] Or um right, you know, or add an excess of the uh and zorb it, in which case you're gonna reduce the uh flavor delivery. So there's not like like most things in life, uh not losing is the new winning. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, pretty much. And that I that's kind of the point that I got to too, and I mentioned my my procrastination with the whole thing.
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+[18:38] So I actually ended up using the lemon-infused olive oil from down the street from the you know, the spice shop and the colour. But we talked about this. It tastes gonna taste like olives. It didn't. It didn't though.
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+[18:48] Once you had the citric acid and the sugar in there, it was it wasn't it probably wasn't like you know, three Michelin star level lemon quarry underpowder or whatever, but it served its purpose. I think once the citric acid and the sugar was in there, it kind of gave the lemon flavor more context and it all worked out. I was really happy with it. Everybody that reported back that it was freaking delicious. They were speaking of uh speaking of lemon olive oil, speaking of lemon envelope, we're gonna have uh Nick, what's Nick's last name again?
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+[19:13] Um really? Yeah. What's his company? Um Grove and Vine. Anyway, Grove and Vine, we're gonna have Nick on who's an olive oil.
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+[19:24] Well, he's like, he's like an olive oil hunter. He goes around the world hunting olive oils. Dave chased him around with the bottle. Yes. What's it called?
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+[19:31] Okay, so there was a so he has all of this like super fancy, like he knows the farmer, like he's he's chases the harvester. Yeah, he's like he's pet the trees that came from, you know, like all over the world. And so he shows up, and Nastasi, of course, being Nastasia, has a giant bottle of colour on a picnic table that she's using to work with. And so I pick up the cola vita and I run after him like it's a dead fish on the beach. And he's like, and he goes, ah!
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+[19:59] He started running away with me. All right, so here's my Iowa State question. Uh Isla State, uh, there was uh there are two people, uh Louise Pete and uh and uh Belle Lowe, or yeah, Belle Lowe, who were like the uh home ek professors in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s who did all of the amazing original kind of like science uh cooking work in the US, like five leagues above uh like uh Fanny Farmer and all of that stuff. Uh and so if you know anyone out there at at Iowa State, like uh I'd love I I I'm now currently buying all of the editions of all of their books from like the 30s up to uh you know 1970 to see kind of how it changes because these people not only uh did they uh kind of like pioneer this like hard science version of of kind of what we do, right? And kind of what McGee you know has done, not only that, but uh they modified their editions over the course of like 30 or 40 years, and so they went from an era where at the beginning they're telling you how to run a coal stove up until like microwaves are common in the kitchen, and so it's just this breadth.
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+[21:13] And so like I'm interested in getting in touch with anyone at the Iowa State who uh I don't know, is interested or scholars or knew these people back in the day. So leave you. Give me what what are those what are those names again? I I might be able to connect you with somebody. Louise Pete.
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+[21:26] What are the names again? Louise Pete and uh there's a murderer named Louise Pete, not her. They're not related. And uh uh Belle uh with an E and Lowe with an E. All right.
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+[21:39] Yeah, like the German. Okay. Cool. But not Nerva Low. I think my mind goes to world of tanks.
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+[21:48] There's a tank called the Lova or whatever. Anyway, um, so my question now. Uh oh wait, that wasn't the question? All right, what's up? Yeah.
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+[21:56] That was a follow-up. That was a follow-up. So my question is um I do a monthly event where we make pizzas, and um I have the dough dialed in pretty pretty tight, and I usually make it in an uh industrial kitchen, obviously. Um, but the mixer that we're using is one of those giant, like six foot tall, probably sixty quart band mixers. Like a hobart.
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+[22:18] Yeah, yeah, with like the turning the wheel that you have to turn to like lift the bulb, right? Things among things think the thing could rip a wheel off of a freaking freight train. Nice, nice um yeah. Um and so when I do that, it's usually 15 to 20 pounds of dough. I have no problems.
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+[22:34] The dough comes out exactly as it should. Um when I try to make it at home in my kitchen aid, I cannot get the dough the same. It doesn't, it's it in fact the dough itself almost looks like a broken emulsion, like it doesn't get smooth. What which kitchen aid are you using? What size kitchen aid are you using?
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+[22:52] Just the the the four and a half core one. Oh, the the tilt head? The smallest, yeah, the smallest one you can get. And how big is the uh how big a uh bread uh dough batch are you making I mean the one that I made yesterday was twelve hundred grams. Yeah that's a lot for that small guy.
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+[23:09] Is it do you think if I did 1200 grams of 1200 grams total total. What's the high what's the hydration? 65%. I should be able to do it. But like the look at that little hook.
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+[23:23] I borrowed someone's small kitchen aid uh the other day because I needed to do some experiments on uh on small loaves because my big the big kitchen aid let's just be honest I I've used KitchenAid my whole life my I I grew up my mom had one from like when I was born before I was born must have been given to her when she got married it was that weird yellow almond color you know I'm saying and like tilt head and I used that thing my whole life growing up when I got me married I was like I'm getting a kitchen aid in fact I think I got one beforehand maybe for graduation right like you know I had it I moved up the new kitchen aids blow you know what I mean like I know people love them but like the the really big kitchen aids that the dough hook doesn't touch the bottom of the freaking bowl. And so like it it doesn't like doesn't work. When I do the piece when I when I do this pizza dough I like when I do it in the big one I can throw I do it uh it's a pooler style so I feed it fermented overnight and then put some more flour in and let it mix for like 20 minutes. So and that thing incorporates the flour into that uh preferment in like a minute. This one when I do it at home, I have to like take the bowl out, lift like mess around a little bit with a spatula to try to get the whole thing to absorb because the very the very first time I tried to do it at home, it just didn't absorb.
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+[24:41] So there was like this like hard packed layer of flour on the bottom, and then the ratio of the flour wasn't right in the dough, and it was just like ended up being this whole freaking mess. Anyway, so my question is uh I guess what this question is boiling down to is there any are you do you have any sort of uh connection with anybody that knows anything about scaling things up or down as far as like mixing times and because I I know it's the there's a lot that's a lot of things to consider because it's all like a physics thing, right? Like how well it works. But uh yeah, just like general guidelines for how you know Well, other than the next time we have Leahy on, right? Uh and the next time we have Leahy on, we can do that, or I can ask Wiley, I guess.
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+[25:21] You know, Wiley's been doing uh his pizza, he's been testing his stuff on he's been testing it on a kitchen aid, but he has that even bigger giant one, that seven liter one. Let me ask you a question. Why do I have why should I have to pick the bowl up, lift it off of its pins and jack it back just so that I can make dough? It's ridiculous. Those guys put their bowls on washers on the pins to lift it up.
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+[25:41] Why can't they just make it freaking work? It the kitchen aid is supposed to have an adjustment. People listen, listen. If you take the bowl off, there's a little screw behind on the kitchen aid on the column where it goes up and down. This is supposed to be an adjustment so that you can adjust where the bowl sits when it goes up and down.
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+[25:57] But guess what? It doesn't work. You know what I mean? It it doesn't it doesn't work. Look, I'm a machine guy.
+
+[26:04] I like machines far more than I like people, and I can't get it to do what I want to do. Uh it's it's uh I had snare tint. But I like to do that. That's kind of that's that's the that's kind of related to this. So when I was younger, before I had my first Vitamix and I had my tax return, I was like, all right, I'm gonna get either get a tattoo, a Vitamix, or a KitchenAid.
+
+[26:25] What do you guys think? I asked the kitchen uh crew that I was working with, and I got I think the best response I could have gotten from the pastry chef. She said, A Vitamix, there's nothing that you can do to replace the Vitamix. Right. Ballpoint pen, you can give yourself a tattoo.
+
+[26:40] Yeah, yeah, exactly. She said, A kitchen aid is really more of a convenience thing. Kitchen aids do what they do, they don't necessarily do it as well as you were to do it if you were to like do it by hand, but it's something that just makes it a little bit more convenient, a little bit less work for you. And I was like, Oh, that's a that's a perfect answer. I got the Vitamix, of course.
+
+[26:58] Uh yeah. Yeah, well, that was a good call. Uh hit me back once you figure that up. Thanks for calling in. And by the way, I got I got one more thing.
+
+[27:07] One more one stash is gonna murder you. Uh I know. Make it quick. Suggestion for the suggestion for the Patreon. Okay.
+
+[27:15] Yeah. Jersey Bible. Uh well, we know that we want before the Patreon do the Jersey Bible. Do the dude something. Dude.
+
+[27:23] Something. Dude, Noah with his sons is not understandable unless you do it in Jersey. Like the fact that like they looked at the dad naked and that somehow caused all those problems, and one of them got like what did they say? What was the response? I gotta look at it.
+
+[27:39] I gotta look at it. Like one of them one of them backs up. Oh backs up. Oh. Oh.
+
+[27:47] And then they back up and they put it over. You looked at me didn't if you pr it Yeah. If you printed a version of that Bible, I would buy that. Like and I I fell off the the church wagon many years ago, but I would buy that and keep that like in prominent display in my in my apartment if you printed a Jersey version of the bike call. I mean, the the trick is to just do it like it's real.
+
+[28:08] Like that's like, you know, not like it's not about like changing the story or like, you know, poking fun at the story. It's just like, what if it was all folks from Jersey? You know what I mean? Yeah, you know, Staten Island counts too. We can get up to the island.
+
+[28:22] I mean, we'll get it. Maybe, you know. You know, it's like, you know, it's you got all the way like Israel, you got the Sinai, you got like all these different areas. I think it stretches from like Long Island down, I don't know, like uh, I don't know. How far down do you think we go, like uh Kearney?
+
+[28:38] Yeah. Yeah. That seems like a good place. Yeah, we don't go like Southern Jersey, though. No, no, no, no.
+
+[28:43] That's different. Southern Jersey is Philly. I'm not the one, no one's showing up and saying water. There's no that's North Philly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[28:50] None of that. No Camden Town stuff. All right. All right. Well, uh thanks.
+
+[28:55] Uh oh, little note of clarification for those people uh who listen to this that have the ANOVA steam oven. I had a little bit of a Twitter flurry last night with someone asking a question about holding chicken. And uh Scott, who no longer, you know, a Seattle food geek, who no longer works for ANOVA but still answers people's questions because he's a kindly fellow, uh, said this piece of information, which is actually not that easy to find on the internet. Uh when you have uh the steam oven set to sous vide mode. Are you with me, people?
+
+[29:24] And you set it uh uh at a temperature in sous vide mode below the boiling point of water, right? You are actually setting the wet bulb temperature. Do you understand what I'm saying? You understand what I'm saying? Yes.
+
+[29:38] The wet bulb. So you're setting basically what the internal temperature of the meat or food is going is going to get to, the wet bulb temperature. Got it. And then the percentage, right, uh uh of steam isn't actually doing the percentage of steam. What it's doing is just driving the what the the dry bulb temperature up as high as it can get without messing with the wet bulb.
+
+[29:59] That is how it actually works. So, like if you had fried chicken, which is what the poster was asking about, right? You set the you set it to sous vide mode, then you set it to the temperature you want to hold the meat at. And you know, he said 63, but I would recommend 60 because you know, don't actually set it at the temperature it's cooked to because it'll keep moving, you don't want it to keep moving. That's not what you want.
+
+[30:19] You want it to be stationary, whatever. So I would say 60, and then set the humidity level as low uh as you need to to maintain the crispiness on the outside, and that's what it's actually doing, which is unclear. It's unclear labeling. Or as it's uh said in the fan f was it fantastic, Mr. Fox, that's bad songwriting, PD.
+
+[30:39] Uh here's the thing. So Booker, we're talking about two things on Booker. Booker is extremely nervous that a lot of people are harvesting mushrooms right now, right? Because it's wet and falls coming, a lot of people harvest mushrooms. So whenever anyone sends me something saying, Oh, I've harvested all these amazing hen of the woods, which I know uh I know our man Joe loves over here.
+
+[30:59] I do. Yeah. Uh so I got someone who was like uh a friend of mine from Connecticut who's like, look at this, I got pounds and pounds of this crap. And I was like, Oh, nice. I'm gonna show up.
+
+[31:07] And Booker goes, What if you accidentally get a destroying angel, which is uh ammonita, which is an ammonita species that will kill you? And I'm like, Booker, they look nothing alike, but here's the thing that I want to talk about. Apparently, they are an incredibly delicious mushroom. So you can eat once you started eating an ammonita, you're gonna need a liver transplant anyway, or you're gonna die. So uh you might as well eat a bunch because apparently they are delicious.
+
+[31:31] They're just delicious. Yeah. Good for me. You imagine if someone eats one and they know they're gonna die, and and someone goes, yo, uh, yo, how's it taste? What was it good?
+
+[31:43] God's like, are you for real? Get me a transplant. What's wrong with you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was it worth it.
+
+[31:44] Was it what did you use butter? You know what I mean? Garlic. You know what I mean? It's like I'm trying to imagine having the the stones to ask someone how it tasted when they had given themselves a desk.
+
+[32:03] It's also unpleasant because you have a couple of days of being a hundred percent fine. Anyway, whatever. Uh, but that wasn't what I was gonna talk about. So Booker, I wanna go around the room. What's a strawberry shortcake to you, John?
+
+[32:15] John, what's a strawberry shortcake to you? I guess like angel food cakes, a macerated strawberries whipped cream kind of a thing. Okay. Yeah, huh. Stas?
+
+[32:25] Those little like cup angel food cup things. Oh, the ones that you used to get in the store? Yeah. That have that weird shape. Mm-hmm.
+
+[32:31] Huh. Okay. That's exactly what I thought of. So that's you. First thing that came to mind.
+
+[32:35] Yep. Yo. I'm not a fan of angel uh uh strawberry shortcake. Huh. See, to me, strawberry shortcake is basically biscuits, whipped cream, and strawberries.
+
+[32:44] Like maybe with like some sauce on it, but like old school, old school. So I remember in the 70s those things being so sold as shortcake things, and I did like them, those orange weird spongy sh things. Um but at some point it's I think kind of almost lost its meaning with a lot of people. No one even remembers this biscuit thing anymore. Like shortcake is like biscuit dough, uh maybe slightly sweetened biscuit dough with cream and strawberry.
+
+[33:10] It's a very lightly sweet dessert. Anyway, so Booker has become obsessed with the what he believes is an Italian bakery phenomenon of the strawberry shortcake that looks like a standard cake. Looks like a standard cake. It's basically a light, like cross between whipped cream and and buttercream, and like a genoi base, right? That's not a full angel, it's not a full sponge, it's somewhere in the middle.
+
+[33:36] This is the weakest of all cakes. And it's got like glazed strawberries on top. And Booker travels around the five burrows on the subway, going to various bakeries to sample their version of this strawberry shortcake. And he will come home after a day's rail fanning with a whole cake, throw away anything that's important in the fridge, stick it in the fridge, and then proceed to eat it fundamentally on his own over the course of a day. Wow.
+
+[34:06] All right. So I need anyone out there, first of all, to tell me the on point strawberry, this type type of strawberry shortcake in the five boroughs that he can go visit. So I was like, you know, Booker, a lot of people love Veneiro's. Venero's is a widely loved bakery down here near Gramercy. It's been around since the 20s.
+
+[34:25] Uh, I haven't been there in many years, but they used to have an amazing box wrapping. Have you guys seen the box wrapper? Yeah. I have. I love it, right?
+
+[34:32] Yeah. So they they they put the cake or the pastries in the box, they put the box down and the box goes, whoa blah blah blah. And it like ties it in a bow without and you know. Yeah, I love it. Although I do appreciate uh seeing someone who can who can tie a pastry box wicked fast.
+
+[34:46] You know what I mean, with with the string that comes down from the ceiling. And then they they sit there and they somehow they go whip whip whip around their fingers and they break it, but they never cut their fingers. Yep. That's sick. It's a good skill.
+
+[34:56] Like whenever I try to do that, I like pull too slowly and it cuts into my fingers, and I'm like, oh, and then like you can't stop. And then when you pull it, you have that like line around it. And meanwhile, there's like this like 70-year old person who's just like shoot, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, pow. And then they hand you your box. There's skill in that.
+
+[35:12] Yeah. It's a good skill. Anyway, uh, so I was like, yo, what about veneros? And he's like, he goes online. They don't glaze their strawberries.
+
+[35:22] Oh, wow. And I was like, wow, hating on the I was like, Booker, maybe it's because they sell them so fast that they don't need to glaze them because they don't need to be preserved away. Does anyone, by the way, like those pastries? It's custard, sliced fruit, and goop on top. No, nobody likes it.
+
+[35:40] You are just in Brussels last week with my brother, we were outside of a pastry shop and they had those, and we're like, oh my god, we want to eat all of them. Oh, yeah. So you're who they've been built for. Yes, exactly. Because like whenever they show up, I'm like, well, they look good, but who's gonna eat these things?
+
+[35:58] And now I know like it's you. Yeah, it's usually, yeah. In my house, it's difficult to share. Yeah, don't want to share. Love those.
+
+[36:05] I don't know. What about like when they've been sitting too? Do they need to be maybe if they're hyper fresh, I would like them. Yeah, I mean, you still want I don't know, like good to be crunchy crust on the bottom and all that stuff, but yeah, I don't know. It's love it.
+
+[36:16] Okay, yeah. Okay. Interesting. You learn something new about people every day. Every day.
+
+[36:22] Speaking of Belgium, you have some Belgian products here. You want to talk about them? I do, yeah. So I got you at the checkout because it was in your own, I figured why not get it for you. It's uh Siro de Liège, so it's a like fruit butter from Liège.
+
+[36:35] It's really I don't know, typical kind of thing. It's got uh made of apples, dates, and pears. And is it is it like like an American fruit butter, like apple butter? Yeah, but I love apple butter, I grew up on apple butter. It's delicious.
+
+[36:47] This is really good too. But this also in Liege, you can find it's a local specialty. It's called boulet liégeous, so it's a big meatball that's braised in a sauce that's based on this and served over French fries with all the gravy and everything. It's really delicious. Wait, so like a like a fruity meatball?
+
+[36:58] Kind of, yeah. Like a little sweet. I like a sweet meatball. Yeah, no, no, it's it's delicious. And then I got you the mustard from Tiranten.
+
+[37:06] Fabulous mustard. Yeah. So, like, for those of you that don't know, if you're ever in Ghent, you gotta go to the mustard lady or her son's. She will not answer any of your questions. She will get surly if you attempt to continue to ask questions about how she makes the mustard.
+
+[37:21] It's piped up from the basement, and then she serves it with a big ladle into your buckets. And it is, I believe, uh, John, you said it is uh unparalleled. Yeah. Yeah. Which it is.
+
+[37:31] Yeah, no, I mean it's it's the best. They've been making it since 1790. They now have four or five other products too that they make, but this is the one core of it. I I had their like mustard pickles. They're fine.
+
+[37:41] Yeah. Uh this is let me ask you a separate question. Uh, have you had the so the name of it? Can you pronounce it for me in Tiranten? Like Varenne.
+
+[37:50] What is it? Tiranten Verlon. Right. Now, there is another mustard from Belgium with a very similar name that is made and sold in places other than that one store. And so they're kind of like riding on the name.
+
+[38:04] Yeah. Is it bunk or is it just not as good? I don't know. I've never had it. Because why would you?
+
+[38:11] Yeah, that's where my my dad was from and everything. So yeah, just went and it's what we'd always get. Yeah. Yeah, the Gentish, the Gentish mustard. Yeah.
+
+[38:17] What's the name of the nasty little Ghent pyramid-shaped candies? Oh, I had one of those. They're nasty. Yeah, they're not great. They taste super medicinal.
+
+[38:25] It's like an out diabetes and a bite, essentially. It's so sweet, but it's like a hard outer, not hard, gummy, hard outer shell thing with like the sweet syrupy kind of filming. Yeah. Cooperton. That's what's yeah.
+
+[38:37] It's like the shit's Dutch for the shape of Pinocchio's nose. Which also, it's like an early Pinocchio before he tells lies because it's not that big of a pyramid. It's true. You know what I mean? It's just an unpleasant thing.
+
+[38:49] Listen, if you're going to Belgium, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. If you're going to Belgium, they have many, many, many good things. Yes, the waffles are that good. Yes, the fries are that good.
+
+[38:57] Yes, they just are. Okay. Like a bad fry in Belgium is better than a good fry here. That's just the truth. I'm sorry.
+
+[39:05] You know what I mean? Look, you want to get someone, you want to choose one of the waffle places that's making it fresh, not people who sandbag them, right? But even so, even a sandbagged Belgian actual Liege style waffle is better than a fresh-made one here. Absolutely. It just is.
+
+[39:28] It's all true. But this thing sucks. You know what I mean? They're allowed to have they're allowed to have one complete fail. Yes.
+
+[39:39] Yeah. You know what I mean? Yep. Yeah. Never been to Liege.
+
+[39:43] I would go back to Belgium in a heartbeat, though. I like it there. Yeah, Liege is really nice. Yeah. Uh so who do we have as upcoming guests?
+
+[39:50] Because I want people to get ready. Oh, and by the way, let me give the telephone number because I realize I didn't do it. If you have questions, you're listening live on the Patreon. Call them in to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
+
+[40:01] And if you're listening to this uh later, because uh you're not a Patreon member, if you want to call in or listen live, you can join us at uh what is it? What's our website for that? Oh blanking. Sorry, it's been two weeks. Gag, what is it there?
+
+[40:14] Patreon. What's our Patreon website? Patreon, do you just search cooking issues on Patreon. I don't even know if it's a dedicated We're good at this. Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
+
+[40:24] Slash cooking issues. There you go. Yeah, yeah. We're good. Uh okay.
+
+[40:30] Uh so who do we got coming up? Okay. Next week we've got Seth Godin. Oh, do you guys remember Seth Godin? Seth Godin uh wrote like a bunch of books on like how would you how would you describe these books, Nastasia?
+
+[40:43] They're marketing, they're B books for for marketing and uh yeah. Right, but they're like they're not like uh they're not like normal books. They have like all kinds of like graphics and like all kinds, it's like they're kind of like they're their own thing. Yeah, they're their own thing. Yeah, but he's also a food guy and claims to have had claims to have worked at a bagel shop that produced the everything bagel prior to prior to the uh person who claims on the internet to have invented the everything bagel uh during a high school job by just sweeping up all the crap that was left over and dumping it on a bagel, right?
+
+[41:21] So he's gonna come and talk about that and remember is he bringing his friend in? Yes, yeah, really Kathy, yep. Oh my god, people. Listen, you need to get you need to join so you can listen live and call in because you're gonna have the rare treat of being able to speak live to the person who invented Fudgy the Whale, someone who personally knew Tom Carvel, someone who really knows the meaning of Wednesdays and Sundays at Carvel. All right.
+
+[41:48] Now, for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, too bad you didn't live on the East Coast back in the day because Carvel Ice Cream. Carvel ice cream, Carvel Ice Cream is the truth, right? Now, I'm okay. Uh again, sorry, apologies to everyone who doesn't live in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Major Metropolitan area. Mr.
+
+[42:09] Softy doesn't taste terrible. I like Mr. Softy. I love the fake vanilla flavor. They're chocolate, man, but the fake, eh, maybe it's not even fake.
+
+[42:18] I don't know. Mr. Softy, I have good feelings. That weird dude, the Mr. Softy dude with the bow tie on the styro cup, right?
+
+[42:26] Oh, yeah. But Carvel ice cream is just good. I just like it. It's always been high quality. I haven't had it in a while, but I still love it.
+
+[42:35] What do you guys think about the car? Yeah, I grew up on it. Yeah. From Long Island. Yeah.
+
+[42:39] Yeah. Enjoyed. Yeah. Love it. Yeah.
+
+[42:41] Yeah. You know what other ice cream's from New York? Hagadath. I didn't know that. Not Scandinavian.
+
+[42:47] From the Bronx, right? Yeah. Uh, something like that. Yeah. You know, uh, and so like they were sitting around there like, uh, it's gotta sound foreign or ain't no one gonna buy it.
+
+[42:54] They've worked. Yeah. Yep. It's like, oh, it sounds fancy. Yes, hog like it has like eight A's and like three umlauts.
+
+[42:59] What's in that thing? Two A's, one with an umlaut on it. Yeah, that's just a ridiculous. Yeah. Ridiculous.
+
+[43:05] That was the uh talenty of the 70s, right? Like uh, but uh anyway. Where's Talenty made? I don't know. That's also gotta be something like that.
+
+[43:15] Hoboken. Uh well. Then also uh we have uh your well, somebody who you reached out to, Dave, Don Schaefer. Oh, Shaffner, sorry. Yeah.
+
+[43:26] Uh coming on to discuss uh food safety. Right. So listen, you're gonna want to get your stuff in, think about it, get into the Patreon beforehand. If you ask a question that is best for an upcoming guest, we're gonna save it for that upcoming guest. All right.
+
+[43:39] So like start sending in your food safety questions. And unless you say, I'm about to poison my family this week, we'll save it for when the uh appropriate guest comes on, right? Yep. Yeah. Then we have Eric Werheim coming on to discuss Foodheim's new book.
+
+[43:55] Right. Now really exciting. Uh he can't do it during our normal time, but I don't know whether or not we're going to be able to have the Patreon people listen live or not. We haven't figured it out yet, right? Right.
+
+[43:59] Still working on that, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's still get it early.
+
+[44:09] Patreon will always get it early. Yes. Yes. And maybe we can even give out a phone number so they can call with related questions if they have one. Yeah.
+
+[44:18] Okay, then after that, hopefully, I think we are having on uh Michelle Zauner from Crying in H Mart. Nice. Still being finalized. Um we've got Sandor Katz coming in. We have uh Chef Virgilio Martinez from uh Central down in Peru to come talk about his new cookbook, and then in December, we will also be having Amanda Cohen joining us.
+
+[44:41] Nice from Dirt Candy. Yep. Nice. And to go back to Patreon questions. Uh Rob Pascoe's follow-up on question from before.
+
+[44:49] Hey, reporting back. Sorry, my question wasn't queer uh clear. The original question is is it worth taking the time to grind slash sand back a new lodge cast iron skillet until smooth? Uh what I was trying to understand was if sanding a skillet back would result in a better product. Needless to say, I got the grinder norble sander and took about 30 minutes to get it down.
+
+[45:06] I used uh 40 and 80 grit grit flap discs. Flap disks sounds like flapjacks, huh? Yeah. Yeah. You like do you do you like calling a pancake a flapjack?
+
+[45:16] I I do. I should do it more. Yeah. Never think about it. Can I tell you uh pancake?
+
+[45:21] Can I tell you pancake thing? Please. Okay. So uh pancakes originally were done with um weaker flowers, right? Like lower protein flowers, right?
+
+[45:34] Uh so if you're gonna use uh a high like a relatively high protein AP, like you have like uh um what's it called? Uh what's that with with the with the night? King Arthur or you have uh like uh Heckers or one of these guys uh like a good way to get the lower protein and also like add some flavor is just toss some random garbage into it. So like I always toss like what you do is you toss the random garbage into the liquid base right so uh wheat germ is good random garbage tastes good uh oats good random garbage tossed up not the not the steel cuts please come on don't be an idiot like just toss it in there right low protein items things that aren't gonna do a lot of protein so pancakes are the perfect vehicle for just tossing random random garbage into so just if you're gonna use AP flour one good way to dilute the protein random garbage it's helpful if it's starchy random garbage I know that wheat germ is not starchy where should you store your wheat germ people freezer oh or fridge fridge at least fridge right because it kind of yeah and uh you know unless you use it a lot don't buy I mean I don't buy weed germ anymore because I grind all my whole wheat oh my god I've been doing so many tests on on uh hydration levels and whole wheat we'll see if we have any time to get into it. Okay so oh my god I lost my point my place in the question where was I very beginning 40 and 80 grit flap discs on the grinder.
+
+[46:57] Flap jacks. Um all right then uh 120 through 400 on the orbital sander with a bit of 800 through 1200 but geez Louise that's a lot uh you rightly point out that uh you should not start with 40 grit 40 grit 40 grit is like uh is like your driveway you know what I mean? Like, unless you're one of those places where you come where they have concrete driveways. Where I come from, we have like black top driveways where when your bike flies off of it, like you lose like half your arm. You know, you have any of these things?
+
+[47:27] Yeah. Yeah. So like that's like 40 grit. Like 40 grit is like hardcore. Although, like, do you guys, when you're asleep and you get like uh an itch, do you have dreams of taking extremely coarse sandpaper to it and just going chunk chunk chunk?
+
+[47:43] No. No, absolutely not. I'm the only one. I think I've had one like that. Yeah.
+
+[47:47] Yeah. Well, I know Nastasia and I are alike in this. Like when when you have like a like an itch, I love burning the hell out of the shower. Like dry skin in the winter. Oh my God.
+
+[48:00] Burn the hell out of it with a shower. That feeling when the hot water just where you can stand it, where you feel like James Brown, like you're like, ah, like that, like that feeling. Yeah. Oh yeah. But doesn't a really hot shower like that make you itchier later?
+
+[48:16] Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't matter. Okay. The feeling at the time is so satisfying. But no one else will cop to this but Nastasia and myself.
+
+[48:24] No one will cop to it. It's true. I will do this. Even like if you have, let's say you have a uh let's say you have like a like a like a real bad itch, like a bug bite or a dry patch on your arm and you're in the kitchen, you're telling me you don't turn the faucet on super hot and then just go right on that thing? No.
+
+[48:41] Come on, man. Come on. I'll try it. All right. Uh yeah.
+
+[48:46] One tip that he passes on is don't start with the 40 grit. It created a few scratches that were difficult to sand out. Yeah, listen, if the grit that you're using is bigger than the marks you're trying to take away, you've made a mistake. All right. And also, you don't really need to take away everything on a cast iron.
+
+[49:03] You just need to knock away a lot of the high spots, right? Uh it's okay to leave a a little bit uh in there. It's gonna get filled in by the oil anyway. All right. Uh interestingly, with the surface being materially smoother, I've had some difficulty getting the seasoning to stick.
+
+[49:16] Any tips here? Uh love your work. Yeah. Uh you just go thinner, right? So, like those gloopy things, they take up like a lot of seasoning, but they tend to be uneven.
+
+[49:24] It's just going to take you a little bit longer to uh to season it. That's all. Um, yeah. And yeah, I mean, I I think the original ones that they did it, uh, I don't know that there's a I would assume there's not a porosity difference between uh modern cast iron and old cast iron. I don't know.
+
+[49:42] Uh but I would just say keep at it and it's gonna take a little bit longer to uh to season it. I don't know whether that they so the the folks at Misin are selling this uh seasoning wax, which is like a solid oil for seasoning, but I have no experience with it, and like I've never had a problem just waiting around for my because I always have a bunch of pans. So when I get something new that needs to be seasoned, I just put it into the rotation and eventually it gets seasoned, and like I just deal with the fact that like, you know, like kids. You know how kids they're like like you get them and you're super excited, and then they go through this period where you're like ah, and then they get seasoned and they're good again. You know what I mean?
+
+[50:17] Anyway, like that. Um, NFK wrote in. Uh I have an orange glow watermelon, which I can't read as anything other than orangelo, which is like some sort of orange yellow thing. But have you guys looked up this orange glow watermelon? It is purdy.
+
+[50:33] It is an orange, it looks like a creamsicle orange color. It's real pretty. But it's one of those things, it's like uh it's it apparently, according to NFK, it is a watermelon built for the Instagram. It really is. Yeah.
+
+[50:46] Uh while beautiful, it's not as intense in flavor as some other heirlooms I've had. Bradford is still the king in my book, says NFK. And apparently the Bradford is a delicious watermelon. I've never had it. I haven't either, but I've heard amazing things.
+
+[51:00] I see. It's like a longer one. Yeah. Well, it's just, you know, the apparently the taste of the flavor. So where where are we, by the way, in the room on watermelons?
+
+[50:59] Love. Great. Yeah. Okay. So so.
+
+[51:09] So so? Yeah. Why? I don't know. Because bad watermelon is really disappointing.
+
+[51:14] Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I think, most of my memories with watermelon. What makes it bad? Uh no flavor.
+
+[51:20] Right. But to me, I don't like when the texture gets hyper mealy in the middle. Oh, that too, yeah. Yeah. Or when it's too firm, also.
+
+[51:29] See, I'm gonna say something perverse. I really like the lower flavor parts of the watermelon near the rind because I love the texture of it so much. That's fair. Okay. You do you, yeah.
+
+[51:43] Yeah. Stas, what are your thoughts on the on the watermelon? I like it. When it's perfect, it's perfect. Do you like your watermelon room temperature or cold as ice?
+
+[51:50] Room temperature. Really? Mm-hmm. I love it cold. I mean, watermelon cold as ice.
+
+[51:55] It's willing to sacrifice my love. That song goes. Yeah. So NFK is planning to process uh this orange glow watermelon uh into a cocktail and could use suggestions. In the past, they've made a drink with Singani, which is the uh the booze that's being hawked by uh the uh traffic director.
+
+[52:14] Uh what's it come on? How about it? Oh, um Michael Mann? No, no, no, no. Oh no, no, no, no.
+
+[52:19] Oh, what's his name? Famous. Now he does the iPhone sports things. Come on, come on. Soderbergh.
+
+[52:23] Yeah, yeah. Michael Mann. Uh which I've never really worked with it. Everyone seems to like it. It's a product, but I've never worked with it.
+
+[52:30] It's it's okay. You had it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[52:33] All right. Uh and a co apparently, which I appreciate about it, he went down wherever he was shooting. Someone poured him. He's like, I like it. I'm gonna start selling this stuff.
+
+[52:43] Which yeah, I appreciate. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't like, I'm gonna become the face of it. He wasn't like, and I love him too, but he wasn't like on Clooney, like taking a moped around this city being like, drink Singhani, you know what I mean? It was just like, I'm gonna be a part of this thing.
+
+[52:56] All love for the colonium. No, no, it's not an anti-cloony rant. Anyway. Uh in the past I made a drink with Sangani and a cold processed watermelon syrup and then jacked it with lime acid and salt at uh out of balance without too much flavor, but I'd like to switch it up for this one NFK. Well, one problem you're gonna have when if if you're gonna clarify it, right?
+
+[53:16] So if you're gonna clarify the juice, um, I'm pretty sure that the colors in watermelon are very kind of lycopene based, and a lot of those lycopeney colors, when you clarify them, stay with the pulp. And so it's probably gonna come out, if you clarify, it's probably gonna come out kind of yellow. You know what I mean? Which isn't necessarily gonna be, you know, it's not gonna give you that orange glow love. You know, the color's probably probably gonna change.
+
+[53:42] That said, uh, I mean, I I have a tough time. I've had water other people's watermelon cocktails that I've really liked, but I've never made a watermelon cocktail that I thought tasted better than a watermelon. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That makes sense.
+
+[53:59] Yeah. Um the closest I've come is carbonating, right? So that in that case you're using like a lot of watermelon juice and you're keeping it fresh, like a zero heat situation, so like not a syrup, like just a lot of watermelon juice. And then you want I typically uh I stay with a very light flavored alcohol, like I'm almost even like vodka as a base, and then just try to be about the lightness. You know, it's about the lightness.
+
+[54:24] Other people obviously, you know, freeze cubes of watermelon and use them for ice cubes and your frozen drinks. Sure. Works. You know what I mean? A lot of pulp.
+
+[54:31] So, like, you know, Nastasia does not mind pulp in her drink. Why don't you talk about why don't you talk about your your uh pulpenstein's monster drinks that you were making over the weekend, Stas? Holy passion fruit and not a puree, by the way. No, it's just like uh I don't eat it's just the seeds. So yeah, it's just seeds and pulp.
+
+[54:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we usually we put it in orange juice, but this weekend we did it in Prosecco, I think. Yeah, sounds great. It's good. It's cut like alien eyeball seeds floating around.
+
+[55:00] And I was like, Dave, do you want or you want it plain? And I was like, what am I saying? And yeah. Yeah, I was like, uh, yes, Daz, uh, you know I can't do goop in my drink. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[55:12] Quickly from the live chat, we have a lot of support for the Bradford. Uh Clayton says it's next level melon. And then someone says Moon and Stars is worth finding also. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[55:22] What so where's the name? Is it is a dark colored watermelon? Um, it looks like the uh outside is kind of see. Is it like no, but the inside is it is it purple? Like why moon and stars?
+
+[55:33] No, it's got like yellow spots on the outside. Uh oh, yeah, that would explain it. Oh, all right. Well, you know. Looking right at that in my missed melon season this year, so we're hosed until next time.
+
+[55:45] Just like I missed the freaking mushroom festival at Kenneth Square because I was doing other work. All the mushrooms. I think you were doing cocktails for a wedding. All the mushrooms in California are in a bank in Beverly Hills. No, they're in they're in they're in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
+
+[56:00] They're all grown right around Kenneth Square in somebody else's name. And not just button mushrooms. They grow all them, all the mushrooms. They grow them all. And there's every year in September, there's a freaking mushroom festival.
+
+[56:13] They have a fried mushroom eating contest. They have sick t-shirts. Right? You can talk to the mushroom growers. They sit there.
+
+[56:14] They have like a whole bunch of mycelium that they bring with the stuff coming up. And you get to hang around. They have bad local talent, I'm sure. I mean, maybe great. Maybe great.
+
+[56:28] No offense, Kenneth Square. Wow. You know what I mean? And like, uh, and like, I was like, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go.
+
+[56:33] Because they didn't have it during the first wave of the pandemic, but they had it this year. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. And then I couldn't go.
+
+[56:40] Sounds awesome. People text me, they're like, how was the mushroom festival? I could out eat those sons of I could I could take that. If I was still in my prime, if I was just even three years younger. I'm still in my prime.
+
+[56:54] If I was still in my prime, I'm breaking out of you for mushrooms any day of the week. Any day of the week. Uh baby of three minutes to use them lines. Nick Robertson uh had a question about cocktails and turn times, and Nastasia's answer was shut up and just try it. Yes.
+
+[57:10] Yeah. Well, uh Braden Williams uh sent in a more helpful follow-up to that. Uh at Cooking Issues, pro tip for the question on cocktails and turn times. Look at the change in uh RevPash revenue per available seat hour. Good papers are available from at Cornell School of Uh Hospitality and something at Cornell SHA on what it is, why it matters, and how to calculate it.
+
+[57:32] We'll try to dig up later tonight. Well, Braden didn't dig it up for me, but uh he did give you that little piece of uh uh advice. Uh Dakbod wrote in hey, uh been kegging Moscow mules and gin and tonics, blitzers and corny cakes for a while now, all using CO2. Generally, we've had an entire separate regulator and tank to set to a much higher pressure to uh carbonate the drink, and then we hook it up to our beer PSI to push it at 12 to 14 PSI. Uh, I'm really wanting to do a great margarita and mezcal margarita on tap for a new concept.
+
+[57:59] Should I use nitrogen? Yes. Okay. Uh yeah. Yeah, you don't want to carbonate your margarita.
+
+[58:06] A carbonated margarita is entirely different spec. I've made them and they're good. But you have to lower the tequila usually unless you unless you use a very light tequila. You would never do it with mezcal. Uh, and you have to change the specs quite quite dramatically.
+
+[58:19] If you want to push a standard margarita out, yeah, you're gonna use uh nitrogen. Uh, but I would do it at a very high pressure so that you get some aeration as it comes out of the nozzle. You don't want it to just you don't want listen, a margarita is a shake and drink. So you don't here's what you don't want. Light margarita with the texture of a stirred drink coming out.
+
+[58:39] Please! Trash, garbage, filth! You need to have high pressure and a lot of aeration. Come on. Let's go high quality.
+
+[58:48] Uh from SN Gray 17 via Instagram. Now, I've never heard of this before, Staz. Get ready for it. I'm struggling to figure out how to make dog beers. Right?
+
+[58:59] Let me say this again. Hey, Dave, I'm struggling to figure out how to make dog beers. Now, what you may ask, is it dog beer? Answer? I had no idea.
+
+[59:09] I had to look it up. I think what uh SN Gray 17, and I'm just gonna go ahead and say that this is probably a guy. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that. I don't know. Fair assumption.
+
+[59:19] I don't know, but I'm just gonna say this is a guy thing. I hope it's a woman. I hope so too. Uh, but it's broth. So basically, what this person wants to do is they want to make canned broth for your dog so that you can pop open uh uh a mycalobe, pound it.
+
+[59:36] Do they still sell micelobin cans? You want to pound your mycalobe, and then you want somehow your dog is also gonna drink out of a can next to you, I think. Or you get to have the a feeling with your dog of like pouring it into their bowl, right? So it's broth in a can. Uh so I'm struggling to figure out how to make dog beers slash broth sell shelf stable in beer bottles or cans.
+
+[59:55] I know pressure canning is a safe slash obvious option, but mason jars are not exactly the marketing strategy I'm looking for. What are your thoughts? Any resources you could recommend to help me solve this problem? Thanks for your time. Yeah, you can just retort, you can just retort.
+
+[1:00:07] Look, the reason that you can't retort carbonated things like beer, don't carbonate the broth. That's crazy, right? The reason that you can't retort something like a beer is because the pressure on the inside of the can when you heat it to that temperature is gonna be a tremendous, right? And it's gonna like rupture the suckers. But if it's not carbonated, then you can just send it through a standard retort, like a like a canning facility that does like, I don't know, soup, right?
+
+[1:00:32] And then just put it into a can and those same things because there's not a lot of pressure, you could just put it through a normal canning procedure like you would have for a beer, and then just send it to be uh retorted, right? Make sense, time's up, Dave. All right. I think that's actually all the questions. I didn't get to talk about, I didn't get to talk about uh my failed bread experiments that I spent three months working on.
+
+[1:00:55] Uh we could talk about it next time and the advantages and why people, why you shouldn't listen to anyone who's only run an experiment one time. Yeah? Yeah. Cooking issues.
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+[0:09] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I gotta keep it a little bit on the down low to keep with the mellowness of the Carvel ice cream. And uh for anyone who grew up on the East Coast United States uh like I did, nothing makes your mouth uh water more than knowing on a hot summer's day that you can go to Carvel and get some of America's freshest ice cream. Especially if you happen to be able to go on a Wednesday, when as everybody knew, Wednesday is Sunday, buy one get one free. Yeah, Wednesday, Sunday.
+
+[0:38] Uh welcome to Cooking Issues. Uh have some special guests. First, I'll go through we got a full house of right with us. We got Jackie Molecules to my right. How you doing?
+
+[0:47] Great. We got John to my left. What's up? Not a whole lot. As usual, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
+
+[0:52] Yeah, yeah. And Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How are you? Yeah, I'm doing great. Uh you can call your questions if you're a Patreon listener.
+
+[0:59] You can call your questions too, 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. But special, there are two special guests. One, okay, first is Seth God. I'll just let you know.
+
+[1:11] Um, longtime friend of the show, uh, you know, blogger extraordinaire, uh, author whose most recent book is The Practice Shipping Creative Work in 2020. Uh bestseller available, you know, wherever fine books are sold. I hesitate to mention the A word because crap on them. A big poo on their on their flaming poo on their porch. Uh but uh so you know the so the the the fundamentals uh of like of most of the uh books of yours that I've uh read is kind of like uh they they are kind of in short chunks trying to get people into kind of a more kind of uh creative uh zone.
+
+[1:46] Would you say that's accurate? Yes, it's much better than being called a marketing specialist. Yeah, yeah. Well, uh, it's so funny. Like, hopefully, we'll get a chance to talk about it later, but I just uh did a seminar for Tales of the Cocktail, which we should put up uh a link to it on our on our thing, John.
+
+[2:01] Already done, Dave? Oh wow. To the video? Oh, aren't you the best? Lincoln Bio, yeah.
+
+[2:06] Yeah, yeah. Oh, Lincoln Bio. It's like Lincoln Park, but better. Uh the uh so uh on like tr uh how to maintain creativity, and you know, one of the through things in your in your book is you just have to work at it, right? You just have to work and do some work, right?
+
+[2:22] Exactly. And uh my friend Kathy, who's here, which you're gonna introduce in a second, is a prime example of this, and I learn from her every day because she shows up and she does the work. All right. So also ostensibly, we are calling you because you have some things to say about the everything bagel. We'll get to that.
+
+[2:38] But when you were first on the program back when we were at that other network, and uh you said, I happen to know the person. I don't know how Carvel came up, because it does, as as it does, because it it it really is a delicious product. Uh you you said, I know the person who invented Fudgy the Whale. I was like, shut up. I was like, first of all, like Fudge Fudgy the Whale, like I'm pretty sure came down the mountain with the tablets.
+
+[3:05] You know what I mean? It's like it's like you know not quite. Yeah, not quite. And you said, no, no, I really I know her. I know the person.
+
+[3:14] I was like, I was like, come on. I was like, you gotta get her back on the show, and lo and behold, this many years later, she is here, Kathy Dumas, the inventor. Uh I let me see if I got the year right. 1977. Nine 40 years ago.
+
+[3:29] 40 years ago. 40 years ago last year. Oh, last year. So it was later. It was 70, it was a like uh well, eighty, nineteen eighty.
+
+[3:36] I remember it very well as a child. Which came first. Okay, let's just explain. Explain Carvel Ice Cream for those of people who don't have the good fortune of having grown up uh on our coast. Carvel Ice Cream was a um soft surf, still is uh soft surf franchise, um, which later developed into not just doing something for nine months, but doing something year round.
+
+[4:02] And Mr. Carvel decided to make um novelties and cake and everything so that his store would operate year round. Um wonderful ice cream, as healthy as it could be at the time, um ingredients, and he was a m a man who basically lived and died by this product. It it also it had it had a relatively low overrun, right? It was relatively dense compared to other soft serves.
+
+[4:33] I'm not gonna say that Mr. Softy has a lot of overrun in it, but Carvel is a relatively low overrun product, right? Thirty thirty-five percent at the time, yes. Yeah. Which which actually is the amount of air that goes into a product.
+
+[4:47] Norm there are a lot of the companies are almost a hundred percent, so it's uh, you know, fifty percent air, fifty percent product. But um no, Carvel was very, very low. And the reason that being the less air, of course, the smoother the product, the smoother it is when it freezes. So for every for every kilo for every kilo of base you're putting in uh for for every for every liter of base you're putting in three three hundred and fifty milliliters only of air instead of another whole liter there. Correct.
+
+[5:15] Yeah. Correct. Uh and but his claim at the time, I remember very distinctly that uh Tom Carvel, whose voice is iconic, the man did his own spots because it was a franchise it was a fran he sold franchises, right? But correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, he used to go out of his way to try to help all of his franchisees make money, right?
+
+[5:37] If they made money, he made money. Right. Uh his his tagline his ta before Ben and Jerry's and all of that uh stuff when people became aware of overrun and density, his tagline wasn't the low overrun, it was America's freshest ice cream. Correct. Yeah.
+
+[5:54] Correct. Because it was we were manufacturing every day in the store. It wasn't being sent in. We were actually making every flavor in the store. Every flavor started out a soft serve.
+
+[6:06] And then later could be scooped. All of it made every day in the store. And the dairy would deliver, of course, mixed to you two, three, four or five times a week. Now the there was no product sitting anywhere. It was never nothing was ever delivered frozen.
+
+[6:22] Everything came in refrigerated and and fresh, yes, at the time. Also, Westchester's own baby, Carvell from Westchester. Westchester shout out. It's not a Long Island thing. I mean they have Carvel on Long Island, but it is not a Long Island thing.
+
+[6:35] This is a Westchester situation. Yeah. Uh now, uh so I had heard now i you just said earlier that it was uh a way to extend into the winter months to business, but I also heard that it was uh a way to use the leftover soft serve at the end of the night, you would put them into the cake molds and then they wouldn't get wasted, right? Correct. Absolutely correct.
+
+[6:58] Mr. Carvel always said it's kind of like Italian food, yeah. It's always cherry syrup, ice cream, crunch, crunch, syrup, cherry, ice cream, whatever way the novelty can be manipulated to make it look like something different, taste like something different, use all your ingredients. You know, he he was an immigrant and he firmly believed that everybody had the right to make a good life. And the best way to do it was to absolutely maximize everything that you had with a minimal amount of cost.
+
+[7:31] Now and uh and that's what you tried to do. Now a couple of things. One, was he a nice guy or not? Not that it matters because his ice cream is it was was on point. Was he a was he a a a a a good guy or not a good guy?
+
+[7:43] I mean I loved his voice growing up even though it's bizarre. I loved him. Uh he was for me he was like a grandfather figure. I met Mr Carbell I was seventeen. He was sixty five.
+
+[7:55] Um so it was a different relationship than let's say the executives already working for the company uh most of his franchisees liked him because they knew he put in the work he was a hard worker they had to work hard he understood what they were going through um but he was tough. He could be extremely tough if you were five minutes late in the morning he'd look at that watch and say, you know, good evening literally I was getting married and we were on the phone and I'm going, T C can I just go get married and we could finish this conversation a little bit later. He was like all right kid go ahead go get married conversation before really that's but he always called me kid um because we met I met young and um a really interesting man. You you liked him or you didn't. You had to understand you had to be a hard worker.
+
+[8:53] You had to work hard. You had to believe in the product to have to do things right. There was no shortcuts ever, anywhere. How could you not believe in the product? Yeah.
+
+[9:03] You know, it's very I've had three bosses in my life, and three of them, I mean, I've had others, but these three that and the boss that I have now, obviously, too, very much the same. Um hardcore, believe in their product, believe in truthfully the people that work for them, and um they will do anything that they can as long as you are giving your part too. So to me, Mr. Carvel, Helene, and someone else named Joanne Schoenfeld is not here with us anymore. Perfect people, great people to work for, because they love the product they're making.
+
+[9:41] Nice. Now, no other way to say it. For those who can't picture Tom Carvel, he first of all, you have to listen to his voice. He looks like a 1960s era comedic actor. He looks kind of like a buddy hackett with a mustache, right?
+
+[9:55] I mean, he's got yeah. I mean, I just the guy has character written all over his face. Anyway, uh so enough of that. We're here to talk about a specific Carvel item, Fudgy the Whale. Give us first of all, what came first?
+
+[10:08] First of all, sorry. A lot for people, a lot to unpack for people who aren't Carvel people. So there's two main cakes in the in in the Carvel universe, right? There's Cookie Puss and there's Fudgy the Whale, right? Now just so you know, Cookie Puss looks like Tom Carvell.
+
+[10:29] Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. That's true. Uh-huh. But Fudgy the Whale is also Santa Claus P. S.
+
+[10:36] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now were you Fudgy the whale for me? Were you also the reason that were you like, we could turn this into Santa too? Was that you or is that somebody else?
+
+[10:46] We had a group. We're a group together, and every mold that we made, um, and there were several just like think of the pumpkin mold, like Dumpy the Pumpkin became, you know, Mother's Day basket and became cut cookie puss and just crazy stuff. I never I never I never asked for a pumpkin. Fudgy I asked for. Cookie puss I asked for.
+
+[11:06] You had to because there was only a limited amount of space in the store. You had to max out every mold that you had and you only had so much real estate to keep this inventory in. So you had to invent a lot of things to do. We had a great art team, and um you had to make sure that and it wasn't once the mold was developed. It was wasn't the mold was not developed to be this, this and this.
+
+[11:32] It was developed to be one thing, and after that, then it was okay, now what else can we do with it? How else can we use it? True. Now you know the only time he actually he changed Fudgy the Whale, um was because he had a problem with the first mold and the tail kept falling off, and that's why he became fudgy. Because originally he was done like a regular Carvel cake, but it couldn't get the tail to stop breaking.
+
+[11:57] It was just so narrow at one end that it was like a nightmare. Every time I make the cake, the tail would fall off. And finally we talked and I said, you know, TZ, can't do this anymore. I I d we have to cover this. We have to do this somehow.
+
+[12:10] Okay, kid, go downstairs, do something, you know. And we I had fudge out on the out on the container and covered the tail with fudge, it held it together, it held up for photography, and that's how he became fudgy. Huh. All right, so why a whale? 'Cause Mr.
+
+[12:27] Carvel wanted a whale. It was a Father's Day for a mo. He wanted a fish and we're all looking at him like he lost his mind. Said TC, fish and ice cream. This is not a go.
+
+[12:38] And he insisted insistent. And he kept saying we brought him goldfish and salmon and I mean it was crazy the amount of fish that these people were drawing and doing and no it's not good enough. No I want more character into it. No, it's gotta be child related. Uh no I don't want it to be off of any other character in the world and little by little by little and then he said to me he says a whale you know why?
+
+[13:04] Because it's a whale of a dad. I want it to be big. It has to be in practice and that's why it became a whale. Not just going out fishing but you caught a whale. So it wasn't it wasn't like it wasn't like uh I want a fish and you're like how about a sea mammal?
+
+[13:20] It wasn't like that. He eventually was like no he wanted that he wanted that fish. That's that was it. Yeah. He said get no more ties.
+
+[13:29] I don't want to look at ties, hats, golf bags, bob putt I want something unique for Father's day. Yeah. And it actually became the biggest Father's day selling item we ever had. They used to run out of fudge. When I was a kid like you couldn't just was he of I don't remember I was a kid.
+
+[13:49] I didn't pay for anything but like I want to say nine ninety five no come on really Yeah yeah. You would go into the store and you'd be like, we're out of fudgy. And you're like, we're out of fudgy. Okay, here's the other thing about Carvel, right? Again, no offense to the Baskin Robbins Corporation, but like Carvel, to use a uh the phrase was the Cadillac of ice cream cakes.
+
+[14:16] You know what I mean? Back back in and still to this day. They now have them in in grocery store freezer cases. I don't know where they're made because they're not part of a Carvel franchise. I mean, I don't I don't even really know how it works anymore.
+
+[14:25] But for those of you that don't have, I believe Carvel invented that weird cookie crumble that goes in the middle of an ice cream cake. Is that true? Yes, he did. You know why? Because cake molded.
+
+[14:35] There was no way you could keep cake fresh and put it in into cake. It was really hard. We were cutting round circles, we were cutting squares, you were losing too much, it was wasted. Some people it would mold, and he said, No, no, no. I want fresh product.
+
+[14:52] I want fresh something. And they said, All right, TC, bake it. Bake it, see if you can make it hard and crumble. And he said, No, that's not enough. And how are we gonna preserve it?
+
+[15:01] How are we gonna hold it? So we have this product called brown bonnet, which is what a cone was dipped into and it hardened on the shell on the outside, which was basically uh a chocolate shell enhanced with uh coconut oil, which helped it stay hard and durable. And after baking cake, and we were making flying saucers at the time, and flying saucer crackers always had breakage. And he and he looked at me and he goes, Here it is, this is it. All this breakage from these flying saucer crackers we're gonna make, throw some bonnet in it, kid.
+
+[15:38] We throw some brown, this chocolate bonnet makes it even crunchier, holds it delicious in the ice cream, and from then on, there you go. That that crumbly stuff makes my mouth water. For those of you that don't know, flying saucer is the Carvel ice cream sandwich. It's kind of like a a what do you call it? A the cookie, a daisy-shaped cookie with a swirl, but you gotta get the swirl as you as you put the ice cream onto the lower cookie, you gotta s give it a little bit of a twist, right?
+
+[16:03] You know, what if you went to work for Carvel, you were first tested to see how you could work in an ice cream machine, and you had to make flying saucers. And you have to do the two and a half swirls, get the right weight. And if you pass the test and you made your flying saucers correctly, then you got the job. So my sister-in-law, Miley Carpenter, who uh started and runs the Food Network magazine, one of her early jobs, like a lot of people's first job was McDonald's, and she ran their ice cream machine for exactly one day because she used to just sit there trying to figure out how tall she could make the cone. You know, that it's that's not easy.
+
+[16:42] Trying and the worst thing is trying to make a cone for a television commercial or a photo shoot and have it stand up and have it not melt before the shoot is done, really was a nightmare. But you guys And it had to be the exact weight. You you guys didn't like the hyper tight swirls, right? You were kind of like a a mid-range swirl. Like you never did this straight up and down, but a mid-range, like a like a graceful, a graceful swirl.
+
+[17:05] It had to because we turned three quarters of them upside down. Remember, it had to be compacted, had to be turned in, had to stick well because we were turning them in to cones that were dipped all the time. Alright, so one last secret, maybe you can divulge. I uh go ahead for people who like know me with cakes, with the exception of like uh I like uh I like the icing on uh carrot cake. I like a like a that kind of a cream cheese icing.
+
+[17:27] I'm not a buttercream man. Carvel's ice uh icing on the Carvel cakes on point. I love to eat that stuff. Like like that weird texture, that like frozen fatty but not too buttery. Like what is that icing on the Carvel cake?
+
+[17:41] So Mr. Carvel's brother actually um helped invent that. And we made that. It was a whip topping powder that his his brother had made and we mixed that with Carvel ice cream mix and made our own whip topping in house to decorate cakes with. Wait, so it's like a it's like a base it's like a mix of ice cream base and cool whips.
+
+[18:06] Yes, I know. But the Yeah. Oh man. Now wait I mean it was w just for for Cookie Puss was before fudgy? Cookie Puss was after Fudgy.
+
+[18:21] After Fudgy. Were you involved in the cookie puss or no? All of them. All of them Oh my God, all of them. After Fudgy, were you like I mean how much swagger did you have in your step after Fudgy came out?
+
+[18:32] You know what, to tell you the truth, none of us had swagger. None of us realized the importance of fudgy until many years later. Yeah I mean so you didn't truthfully you didn't really think like there's all of these kids who are Jones and after this uh after this ice cream? No. Really really no it was only until people started to really kind of laugh with Tom over commercials and what he did and it just was you just didn't realize it at the time really w most of us didn't even believe that this would even work the first time.
+
+[19:04] We were like, oh this Father's Day is gonna be a disaster. Even some of the franchisees were everybody was so hesitant, thought it was so out of the box and it was incredible when it worked. And then it just took off. Then it was like, okay, let's make it into this. Let's make it into that.
+
+[19:21] Let's do it with this and it's a whole different ball game completely. So when you're slicing a fudgy the whale. Wait, wait, wait. Seth yeah S Seth, do you have like a is this the phenomenon like do you have a way to explain what happened since this is your I w I think it was just so different, so unique and such a novelty and it had ice cream and fudge and what else did you want? It wasn't round, it didn't look like a birthday cake.
+
+[19:50] It was perfect for Father's Day and then people just wanted it after that for every occasion. So we stopped making it just one time of year. It it kind of continued to go all year round. Maybe that's why it was always out because you guys only brought it out on certain days and my kid brain didn't know that. I was like, I want the whale.
+
+[20:08] I want the whale So uh Nastasia, what I s what I think we're seeing here is a phenomenon which is it was the first celebrity cake. Uh that Tom's incessant radio advertising made the cake famous. And that's one of the reasons why it was even more delicious than even say cookie puss, because it's like, you know, comparing uh Tom Cruise to a uh a second tier star in the firmament. You felt like you were in the presence of something important. Uh-huh.
+
+[20:45] Uhhuh. Yeah. Abs absolutely 100% true. Very true. Very true.
+
+[20:51] Are you are you a cut through the head lady or are you a cut through the tail lady? That's what I need to know. Trust me, I had so many problems with that tail I thought. Always tail. I never wanted to make that cake again, really.
+
+[21:05] I must have made fifty for the first commercial. Easily. 'Cause we make we made all the commercials in house, you know, and um, oh my god. Yes. No.
+
+[21:14] Easily fifty of them. When Fudgy becomes Santa, what happens to the other part of the tail? How do you decorate that? I I can't picture him as Santa. Yeah, you turn him upside down.
+
+[21:25] You kind of stand him. So the tail is up in the air. All right. And it becomes part of his hat. It's a red hat and then it's got a little ball on the other part of the tail.
+
+[21:35] Oh yeah. A white a white little um little fuzzy little ball there. Yeah. It's legit. Jack showing us a picture.
+
+[21:46] And you put a Santa face on it and you're done. Yeah. And it's whole home. All right. I ha I had a question in from a listener who wants to know uh how you trained all the franchisees to have such neat handwriting.
+
+[22:01] It was part of the training course. We had trained we had the trainees for 14 days for two weeks straight. They came to stay with us in Westchester and uh they worked there was of course there was schooling, but they actually worked in the stores. They worked side by side with us and they went through cake decorating courses, cake handwriting courses. What was harder, the handwriting or piping the perfect shells on the outside of the uh thing?
+
+[22:29] I'd say a handwriting, the shelves you could get. The handwriting is difficult. I think it's spacing because you never know what you're writing. You know, people ask for happy birthday Tom, you know, and then somebody will come along and say, No, I need congratulations on your anniversary, Aristotle and you know Penelope or something. So it it's I think it's harder to do the writing.
+
+[22:51] Yeah, Aristotle and Penelope, that would be a difficult that's a lot of writing. It's a lot of writing for in cake. You know. Now I know what to do to really kind of uh freak out uh a franchisee. I'll just show up and ask for a very long uh statement, yeah.
+
+[23:08] Yeah. Uh so w what what are the fa what like what fail I didn't even remember the pumpkin. That's how little of a that's how little of a of a of a impact it made on me compared to Fudgy and Cookie Puss, which, you know, I legitimately think of a lot. Like what what what were your main failures? Uh what were your main failures there?
+
+[23:26] Because everyone likes to hear uh uh the failure that helped you do something else better. Well, Fudgy was a failure originally, only because we couldn't get him to stick together. But eventually it worked. And um I think some of the other failures maybe were John and Priscilla the Philbrums. You missed Sam somewhere.
+
+[23:50] Um, we we also had Tom the Turkey. Um I th wait do I do I remember that? When was that? What year was that? Oh the years I don't remember.
+
+[23:59] But um they came after Dumpy the Pumpkin. And um it's so funny to say these names now. Dumpy the pumpkin. I mean the thing is like like uh I mean, like look, Nastasi and I appreciate self-deprecating humor. Love it.
+
+[24:16] But like, you know, you know, dumpy? I mean like when I was a kid you know, we had the great pumpkin, right? Linus was like the great pumpkin. You know what I mean? Like that's it.
+
+[24:26] You're like, hey, what's your pumpkin's name? Dumpy. Dumpy. I want to see John into the case. I mean, there were a lot of other names, which I'm not even gonna go through, but there were it it's if it clicked to him and it made him laugh and he thought it was funny, then it went with it.
+
+[24:44] Nice. Uh and for those of you that are that don't live here but you come out here, like I still legitimately believe Carvel ice cream is a great product. I'm for it. I'm a hundred percent for it. Um I haven't had it in a couple of years, but I s oh you know what's really sad?
+
+[24:58] Uh I heard that in uh two thousand and eight the original in Hartsdale closed down. Why would they do that? Why didn't they why didn't they landmark that? I never understood I I have no idea why they did. They just knocked the whole thing in it's like an Andy says or something.
+
+[25:12] It's really upsetting that that happened. Yeah, I mean so recent, you know what I mean? And yeah, you would have thought the corporate, at least corporate, because Carvel sold the he sold the business um just before he died, and um sold it and then got sold again. I think it's on its third owner now, and um it the importance loses. I think the for some reason when the owner has the business, it's so different than when investors come in or corporate comes in or hedge fund comes in, you lose so much.
+
+[25:50] You it's just it's lost. Yeah, and I want hedge fund I don't want hedge fund Carvel. I don't want my hedge. I don't want hedge fund Carvel. You know, or like that guy from Billions who b bought that pizza joint and eviscerated it.
+
+[26:02] Yeah, don't want that. Uh that's what happened. So now we're entering the section of the program where we talk about uh not just invention of f uh fudgy. Carvell is sometimes credited as popularizing and by some people inventing the whole soft serve business in in the the United States. And the uh so there that's a competing claim, right?
+
+[26:21] And the other competing claim claim that we have Seth on to talk about is uh the everything bagel. So I don't know which one you want to tackle first. I mean uh I mean I think by all accounts, I mean, in for my opinion on the soft serve debate, it's like whether or not there was another human being who made a soft ice cream, because all s all as Tom Carvel said in many interviews, all ice cream is soft when you make it. He said this many times back back when he was alive. Absolutely.
+
+[26:45] Absolutely. And can't make it hard. Right. And and so like and so like uh regardless of you know this was accidental, you know, it was truthfully an accident. Yeah, you said his he said his truck broke down, right?
+
+[27:00] His truck broke down, he was scooping at the time, and um he it it product became soft and he tried to hold it together as much as he could to keep it something to sell. And um he said people were liking this very much, and he said, Oh no, no, no, I think I have to keep this in a machine. All the machinery he did. All of that, um it wasn't like he went out and bought an ice cream machine, he developed it in the in the plant. And um he borrowed the money, obviously from his wife Agnes to uh do all of this, and um it's a true story, it's absolutely true story.
+
+[27:40] And uh he just wanted to make sure that the ice cream could sit in this machine for the length of time, keep its consistency, and be served always at the same temperature and always have the same product. Yeah, so you guys weren't using tailors or electrofreezes or anything like that. Uh no, we were actually in some in the original, there were some Taylor machines in and out of the plants, but most of the uh most of the machinery was still at um Neverhead Avenue in Yonkers. Wow. At Cardinal Corps.
+
+[28:12] You don't think of Yonkers as being like an ice cream machine capital, but now I now I will. Now I will. And and for those of you will those of you that don't know it's attached to the carpet shop. You know what it's attached to all of that is part of all of that. Like soft serve ice cream is actually a difficult problem because you don't know when you're gonna draw it, and so it can't over whip, but you have to get the right amount of overrun and it has to draw and the texture has to be the same.
+
+[28:36] Not an easy problem. No, but you do it with a bunch of controls and ti you know, time and temp controls, how many times it's gonna move within that circulating cylinder, how cold it's gonna get, how it shuts on and off. Yeah, all these complicated little I was he actually let me going through school. I worked probably in every part of the corporation. I've fixed machines, I have worked in legal, I have worked in uh contract, worked in training, you know, worked in stores, worked on the field.
+
+[29:09] But it's amazing how much you learn and how much you he did himself to make sure that everything was done. So working in the plant in the manufacturing part of machinery, I was able to see how all of this is put together, and it's a pretty pretty unique way to make sure that that product is consistent. Nice. So now for a second, let's talk everything bagel. So I uh here's another thing people might not know.
+
+[29:43] That i unless you're like roughly my age or older, right? You grew up where an everything bagel was always a thing, right? But in the 70s, it wasn't a thing necessarily. Like I don't remember everything bagels. When I was a kid, it's like, what do you want?
+
+[30:01] I want a poppy. I want, I want uh salt bagel. Sesame. I want sesame. I want a plane.
+
+[30:00] Right. At some point, you know, uh, all of a sudden, everything bagel was everywhere, and then all of a sudden people started taking credit for quote unquote inventing it, right? And uh, I forget the name of the person who claimed to have invented first claimed to invented some guy named Gusson, uh, David Gusson, who, like a classic thing claims as like a a high school student to have swept up a bunch of stuff off of uh off the floor of the oven, thrown it onto a bagel, and been like, I invented the everything bagel. Unlikely story. But Seth, unlikely, especially skipping it off the field.
+
+[30:41] Yeah, right. I mean, come on. For anyone who's baked anything, uh the stuff burns. The stuff that falls off is burnt, it's burnt. You know what I mean?
+
+[30:47] It burns. That's what the deck, the bottom of a deck oven does, whatever, it doesn't matter. Uh but Seth, you're like, I worked in a bagel shop prior to this 1980, and we were making an everything bagel. Explain. Okay, I did not invent the everything bagel.
+
+[31:03] This needs to be made clear to my progeny and to anyone else in the world. Yeah, yeah. I didn't say you claimed to invent it, you just claimed to say that you knew that before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
+
+[31:11] Other people have claimed that I claimed, but I did not. What I did in my blog post, I wrote a blog post in 2008 in which I said, if this person invented the everything bagel, then I must have invented it. Because I was in 1976, a 16 year old teenager. I had gotten a job at the local bagel place in Buffalo, New York, by walking in and saying, I have 10 years of experience eating bagels. And for whatever reason, they hired me.
+
+[31:38] And in the first week, it was a new place. They didn't have a policy about employees eating the food. And my coworkers and I ate hundreds of dollars worth of bagels and locks. Checks out. Um and they made a new policy, but they didn't fire me.
+
+[31:51] And then my job was to clean the mixer. And the mixer is uh big enough to hold a couple people. And uh as I was cleaning it, it's all dried hard dough. Uh I would turn it on and off to see if I'd missed a spot, and I missed a spot, and I put my hand in to slow the blade down, and it started pulling me into the mixer a certain day. Was this a spiral mixer?
+
+[32:17] So I had to decide it was like a big dough mixer, yeah. Like a spiral or like a whole. I had to decide. Yeah, bigger than a whole bart. And I had to decide should I break my finger by pulling it out or should I die?
+
+[32:29] So I pulled I broke my finger on the bagel mixer. And the bagel the bagel guy screamed and yelled at me, the owner. So I didn't last very long in the job. But my thesis is this. For something to actually be an invention, it almost always happens when the people around you say that'll never work.
+
+[32:52] That inventions occur when someone has the boldness to lean into something that that a lot of other people are saying, that doesn't make any sense. And if you've ever made bagels in a bagel store and you've got the four bins of toppings, it is obvious that you're gonna make an everything bagel. It is not a leap of thing. So I did not invent the everything bagel, but I definitely sold everything bagels in nineteen seventy-six. So which finger did you break and was it ever the same?
+
+[33:26] Well, my body is a little bit of a battlefield c considering how lucky I was growing up, but uh I believe it was the uh ring finger on my right hand and it ruined my billiards game. But other than that, I've been fine. Wow, wow. And uh another question that a you know inquiring people are gonna want to know. While Buffalo is part of New York State, it is not in any way related to New York City.
+
+[33:50] So does the Buffalo bagel, of which I've never had, Buffalo famous for many food things. You got your beef on Wec, you got your wings, you got that sea foam can all that stuff, right? Great. Uh now, a Buffalo bagel, is it more beholden to a New York bagel or is it more beholden to a Canadian Montreal style bagel? Uh so the guy who started the thing was from New York.
+
+[34:10] Buffalo, you are correct, is four hundred miles away. It is more culturally aligned with Cleveland than it is with New York. But I did not taste the Montreal bagel until ten years after. Uh it there was no sugar in them, no malt in them. They were classic boiled New York City bagels.
+
+[34:29] So you think you you you're standing by, you're saying it was a it was a good quality bagel. I'm sure it was a good quality bagel. Yeah. Nice, nice. Uh yeah.
+
+[34:40] All right. And and the proof is they went out of business. So why is that why is that the proof? I like that. Well, because if you look at lenders and you look at the whole idea of the frozen bagel and you look at the idea that uh, you know, for bagels to become popular, they had to become unbagels.
+
+[35:00] The real bagels, the kind that are still hard to find in New York City, most people don't go out of their way for them because they're special. And um I think it's better to make something special than to make something popular. I mean speaking of Cleveland, wasn't Cleveland the place where that person posted that thing where they cut the bagel the wrong way and they were like, what? What's wrong with this? And then someone was like, there's a wrong way to cut a bagel.
+
+[35:25] Of course there's a wrong way to cut a bagel. It's like, you know, when when when uh when my kids, we know we're like, oh, you I need to juice some citrus cut and they cut the citrus the wrong way. I'm like, there's a way to cut it. You know what I mean? It's like a b what what am I gonna do with this?
+
+[35:38] Bagel. You know what I mean? That you've you've done it like it's listen, people, it's okay to slice a bagel properly and then to cut that half of the bagel into a quarter. This is fine. You can do this.
+
+[35:49] You know what I mean? But like just handing somebody a bagel that you've I don't get it. St. Louis. It was St.
+
+[35:56] Louis. Well, that means look at this. This person like put it into an egg slicer. What the hell is wrong with them? You have to wait for it to go stale and do that and turn it into bagel chips, which bagel chips are fine.
+
+[36:09] There's no there's no dishonor in a bagel chip. A bagel chip is a fine thing. Uh you gotta use the bagels that are left over. Oh my god, but Lenders is such a sad story. Bagel chips are the fudgy the whale of the bagel world.
+
+[36:22] Wow, wow. Uh all right. Uh so in uh in your I learned some things uh from your book uh The Practice. One is that you're not a fan of Gilligan's Island. Do you think it's bad television?
+
+[36:34] Well, everyone knows that Gilligan's Island is bad television. It's just famous television back to this idea that it w there were only three shows on at a time. So the networks all got a third as a given. That's table stakes. And when you, you know, if the professor is so smart, why can't he build a radio?
+
+[36:55] All right. Well, let me let me uh as someone okay, so Gilligan's Island, I believe, uh started in 1963. And here's the amazing thing about Gilligan's Island. It only ran for three years. Gilligan's Island only ran for three years.
+
+[37:07] Only two of those were in color. The vast majority of the ones they showed when I was a kid were the color ones, right? Uh after Bob Denver, who was Gilligan, pitched a fit and said that he wasn't gonna do uh the show unless they added Professor and Marianne to the theme song. God bless. I re I learned that reason recently that And you love the show.
+
+[37:27] Well, again, you gotta understand for those that grew up in New York, uh, which lady do you like the most? Marianne, everyone's a Marianne man. Marianne. Everyone's a Marianne show. Uh I mean, come on.
+
+[37:39] Anyone who's a ginger man is is lying, or it's like whatever. Everyone's a Marianne man. Wow. Uh I mean it's just true. Uh someone contradict me.
+
+[37:49] Okay. Uh the thing about Gilligan's Island is that uh they played it the same time every day, right? And uh because there was only two seasons in color that they played a lot, you saw the same episodes every so it was the YouTube kind of of my generation. We didn't have VCRs. We couldn't re-watch things all the time, but like because there was this like small number of Gilligan's Islands that were relatively small, you know, short episodes, you could kind of reabsorb them and they became kind of like like kind of old friends to you.
+
+[38:25] You know what I mean? Like the cosmonauts, like the uh exactly, yeah. You know, they uh the the uh they whatever it was it was Carmen, what was it? It was uh it was uh they did to the tune of Carmen, they did Shakespeare to the tune of Carmen, and then somehow the producer got rescued, but they didn't, and then he became a Broadway hit because they had a radio they could listen to, but not they could not talk back out. I mean, like stuff is genius.
+
+[38:50] I mean, you know, uh, but I understand how you know you were you're a couple years older than me, you're a little more of a jaundice view of Gilligan's Island as good TV. And yes, I mean, I guess from a what's it, what's it, from a more objective criticism point, the Sopranos is better TV than Gilligan's Island, I'm sure. But you know all agree on that. I guess. I guess.
+
+[39:13] Uh so uh one uh like are you interested in maybe I mean I don't want to like you know force you to you know give out like your your secrets here for free on our show, but do you want to talk a little bit about um because I think a lot of the people who listen to the show are interested in how to maintain the drive to be creative, both in in in making new menu ideas or maybe even new concepts uh for their place or um just how to stay mentally fresh because to me the hardest part that the thing that makes you m me most nervous is always wondering whether I'm still gonna be interested enough to stay fresh tomorrow. You know what I mean? Like it's like, am I going to still feel like what what I'm gonna do? I always feel okay when I'm just working. It's when somebody asks me what I'm gonna do that I get nervous because then I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, I'm just gonna work.
+
+[40:06] You know what I mean? Do you uh like what do you think? Well you one of the reasons that you are a hero to s to me and to a lot of people is because of your unbridled enthusiasm for better. And I wouldn't like to not be known as someone who didn't like Gilligan's Island or as the person who invented the everything bagel, but I would like to be known as somebody who is not an enemy of quality. And what is going on in cooking, and there are so many reasons this show should be called cooking issues.
+
+[40:42] But one of the issues is this there's a tension between the regular kind, between doing it the same way, between getting your mise en place correct and making it reliable, and the tension that comes from doing something that might not work. And a whole bunch of the molecular gastronomy stuff, a whole bunch of the things that you know you were doing with cocktails at the bar, all of these things are on the frontier. And we can't have a frontier if we don't have the place where we started. And that's why I thought Kathy would be such a great connection for the show, because Kathy has lived on the frontier, but also been a defender of quality throughout her whole career, including where she bakes now. And the same thing is true for the way you approach cooking, because you know what came before.
+
+[41:36] You've done the reading. And so for people who are interested in the kind of cooking you are describing, it's I know how to make it the way they made it in 1950 or 1990, but I'm also gutsy enough to imagine changing something and aware enough to listen to what happens after I change it to see if I did the right thing or not. Yeah, you have to be willing to be worried. And we go into that bakery, and it's always a a new challenge, Helene will say, Well, why don't you do this? You know, and I'll look at her, and it's a completely new way for me to bake anyway, because I'm used to butter sugar cream.
+
+[42:18] I'm not used to sorghum and brown rice, white rice, and all of this stuff. And she'll say, just let's try. Whatever happens, happens. Let's do it. Let's experiment with it.
+
+[42:31] Just go with it. Well, let's let's back up a little bit. We haven't that way. We haven't described the bakery yet. Let's talk I presume this is the link between this is the link between I assume the link between uh you, Kathy, and Seth is the bakery, by the way bakery, which is known as and and it's been an it was I think relatively early in in being like a a a like a a gluten a gluten free bakery.
+
+[42:55] Uh and how many locations do you have now? We have four locations and we also do a lot of baking for Hofoots and for a lot of other people. All right, so now we've introduced now we've introduced the bakery. Why don't now now please go go go ahead. And every day, if we're not experimenting or we're not challenging, yes, we can make a muffin, but can you make a muffin that does this, this, and this?
+
+[43:25] I think that's the only it's it's the only way to grow. It's the only way to keep fresh, it's the only way to stay ahead of the curve. And it also makes work a lot more fun. It it's enjoyable. Uh the same old, same old gets gets tiring, gets bland, and I think that's what happens to people if they're not willing to take the chance or take the risk.
+
+[43:50] And that's what we do every day. We take the chance and we take the risk. What do you what I think that's why it's successful. What are your thoughts on the kind of explosion of people who are working in that space in the gluten-free space now who are interested in the way things taste rather than in like you know some sort of just bizarre idea of what health is. Because you know when I was growing up as soon as you went into any and as soon as you went into any one niche away from mainstream, you in order to try to capture as much of that market, you would do all of the things.
+
+[44:26] You'd be like, well I'm not going to use any sugar and I'm not going to do this and I'm not going to do that. You know what I mean? Which is kind of a nightmare. That's why a lot of that stuff tasted so so bad. But there's such an explosion now like just in the past five, six years.
+
+[44:39] What do what what are your thoughts on that? I think it's it's funny that you say that because Helene will always say to me if we'll make something do you like it? And she's and she does that because she knows I come from a different a different ingredient place. And I'll say, you know Helene, this is incredible. It's it's actually not only what the customer needs, but it tastes good.
+
+[45:07] And this is how and this works and that's what we strive to do every single day. Not only make it because somebody can't have it it's allergy free it works with this diet but it also tastes good. I mean there's a lot of baked goods where frankly the gluten is just getting in the way. You know what I mean? I mean it's just getting in the way like a I don't know I don't know.
+
+[45:31] Um, but I do have a gluten-free question from one of our Patreon uh members. And so maybe as uh both of you, you know, being uh experts in this field and also Jack just coming back from Mexico, we have someone who's going to Mexico City on their honeymoon uh, you know, later on later on this year, but uh one of them is uh can't can't do can't do gluten and wants to know whether anyone has uh recommendations for that in Mexico. Anything? Have you guys have you guys been to I I have I have not been to Mexico City with an eye towards not having gluten. I mean there were a ton.
+
+[46:06] It seemed like most places had ice. I haven't eaten gluten in thirty years, unrelated to the bakery, because I hurt my shoulders a long time ago, not in a bagel accident. And um and there are the the the two words that are so magical are corn tortillas. Yeah, yeah. Because corn tortillas are gluten-free.
+
+[46:27] I found two or three extraordinary restaurants, they're not hard to find on Yelp. Some of the the the cutting edge uh regional cuisine in Mexico City is off the charts. And I haven't been there in five years, but it it's worth seeking out. Yeah, Rosetta's a great bakery team and they had a ton of gluten. Yeah.
+
+[46:50] I I think corn has taken on a lot. I think they've also known how to incorporate they have a different sugar, they use a pill and sell, they use different flavorings. Um he's going to be fine. It's and he's going to enjoy the food in Mexico for sure. Yeah, their tortilla game really is on point.
+
+[47:08] New York City's getting a little bit better, but I mean, uh there are some places that are making decent Nix to mall, but like, you know, I mean again, I haven't been in five years either. The the the correct answer is I need to go back to Mexico. Yep. You know, I haven't really been I haven't been anywhere. I haven't tried I haven't done I haven't traveled since the since the COVID.
+
+[47:25] I haven't been on uh on an airplane since the COVID. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right. So I mean just get I mean we have a um I apologize, guys.
+
+[47:36] We have a uh some Patreon questions, and since now we are, you know, that's what we do for a living now. We have to we're we're it's not Alexander. I'm not saying that your question's not valid. I'm just saying I'm you know, I'm going outside of the realm of what Seth and Kathy are talking about. Anyway, here's this.
+
+[47:49] Hope you guys are doing fine. I'm trying to make a drink that I have previously made for a competition doable for sale. The problem is it requires a large amount of clarified juice from Cloudberries. You can tell we're dealing with Scandinavian here, red currents and hops and a hops cordial. Uh when I originally did it, I clarified the uh puree using uh the technique from liquid intelligence and a four by one hundred milliliter centrifuge.
+
+[48:11] Gosh, this person's a glutton for punishment, Alexander. Jeez, Louise, 100 mils. I will never forget being trapped in a basement in Bogota with one of those tiny centrifuges having to make enough product for like 500 people. Everyone else is hanging out in Bogota, everyone else is, you know, drinking Aguardiende and going to the top of the mountain and hanging out, doing all that stuff, and I'm in a basement, you know, uh you know, with the with uh whatever. Anyway, uh as you can imagine, that takes uh uh a a lot of uh problem.
+
+[48:39] Um so uh my plan was to get a spinzall, the version 2.0, but that's not realistic this year, uh, it seems, well, because we haven't made it. Well look, we're trying, Alexander. Jeez Luis, you do not know, mean maybe you do, how hard it is to get a factory to restart production once they've sold it and they and the all the people who made it before have quit. It's very difficult. All right.
+
+[49:00] Get to his question. Especially wait, especially because get this. Get this. I've never, I think, said the the actual problem. So listen, listen carefully.
+
+[49:08] This is how stupid the world is. Our original agent in China is a motor manufacturer. That motor manufacturer decided they wanted to be agents for people, so they hooked us up with the company who made this the actual factory that made the spinzall. Now, the motor company sells motors to that factory, which is how we got in touch with them. We are now trying to make the spinzall without that agent, because that agent turned out to be less than useful.
+
+[49:37] What's the less than useful? Opposite of useful, anti-useful, a hindrance to making it. But then now the problem is that they can't get the motor from those people anymore because those people won't sell them the motor because they're not our agent on that anymore. Nanny nanny poo-poo. Then we can't we can't get a new motor without changing all of the certifications that we have, etc.
+
+[50:00] etc. Yada yada. Then the company got sold in the meantime, night mayor. All we want to do, we for over a year and a half, we were saying push the button, make another run, make another run, do it, do it, do it. And we can't.
+
+[50:12] That's what's happening. Anyway, uh Alexander wants to know would Agar Agar work for this. The Cloudberries, especially I'm worried about seeing uh is where they are paying uh even with the centrifuge thanks and hope everything ends up working out with Booker and Dax. Yes, do Agar, don't do quick agar though. If you have the time and the CloudBries, all this stuff that you're listing here will last.
+
+[50:30] Do good old-fashioned freeze thaw. Your yield is gonna be higher. And uh, you know, it's a pain in the butt, but I'm assuming that if you're in Scandinavia, you got freezer space, just put it outside. I'm just kidding, I'm just messing with you. But like, you know, freeze it solid, do like, you know, uh two grams per liter of uh agar.
+
+[50:48] The trick, oh one thing I'll I would test, I would just test the currents with Agar to make sure it sets because Cassis sometimes very heavy tannin skin stuff, sometimes can interfere with Agar Agar settings, so you might need to up the percentage uh uh uh a wee bit, but just do some tests on on the freestyle. Uh anyways, uh how is that? Was that alright? Was that a good answer? Come on.
+
+[51:11] That's it. That was those are the only two questions. We got we got the Mexico question, and now we can go back. We've answered all of the the Patreon questions, as as far as I as far as I know. Oh, if that Patreon listener is in the Discord, they can hit me up directly for that Mexico City recommendations.
+
+[51:23] So, what is Discord? It's like uh it's right here. Look, why do they call it Discord? Why would they name it after after after something contentious? Well, I I think that context is far enough removed, probably.
+
+[51:36] I don't know. Really? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's a good question. Why is it called Discord?
+
+[51:40] All right. Anyway, it's a chat platform and we have a Discord, so you should join if you're a listener. Now, Seth, something else that you brought to my attention in your book, and I'm gonna get her name wrong, but her hat, I looked her up on on the on the internet. Her hats were amazing. I grew up, I went to art school.
+
+[51:56] Some some people will know this, uh, grad school for art, and um we used to learn uh about uh Duchamp all the time and the fountain sculpture, which very famous uh upside down urinal, which was put, I believe that was into the armory show sometime in the in the nine in the 19 teens. 1917. Yeah, yeah. Uh and and it was signed the the the the reason you knew it was art, two reasons you knew it was art. One, it was in an art show.
+
+[52:25] That's one. Two, it was signed R Mutt, R Mutt. Uh and the famous picture, and it's one of those classic things that when you're an art student, they teach you because you're like, is it art? You're like, well, of course it's art because we're having this discourse about it right now. If we were, you know, come on.
+
+[52:42] Uh not really Duchamp's work. It's this other person. You want to talk about that? I had no idea. You brought this to my attention.
+
+[52:44] I I could talk about this all day. Baroness Elsa von Fiteg Loringholfen. So here's the deal. She's the original punk, the original downtown New York City punk. And she finds this urinal at a factory in uh Lower East Side, buys it, and starts treating it like a piece of art.
+
+[53:11] Her neighbor down the hall is the photographer, Arthur Penn. He takes a picture, and Duchamp, trying to be, you know, the helpful uncle, decides to put it out there, and it becomes a sensation. And in his early descriptions of it, he says, My neighbor made this. But over the years, as he confronted artist block, he took more and more credit for it. And by the end of his career, he said it was his.
+
+[54:25] Totally checks out with all of his other weird, like he's kind of the Andy Couchman of the art world, right? Rose Sela V, all of these things. You know what I mean? So like my neighbor did it would be a classic of him thinking foisting something off, but in reality, he was just taking from somebody, which is mind-boggling. And at the time, like so freaking typical.
+
+[54:44] I think of like, you know, uh Charlotte Perrion and Corbus, like all of these kind of like toxic, uh toxic famous dudes taking from uh women at the time, designers and artists, but I just had no idea that Duchamp was part of that Duchamp was part of that that thing. That's kind of depressing. Right? Yeah, no, the pa the patriarchy runs deep. And um my mom was the first woman on the board of the art museum in Buffalo.
+
+[55:09] So I grew up with modern art. And when they shut the Albright Knox a couple years ago for renovations, they had me come back and I did a tour uh to sort of take people through this arc. And I worked on it for weeks, and that it was gonna end at a Duchamp uh Cornell box, which was a little Dadaist thing that he did. And I I land, I race the to the museum, I do one run-through before all the people arrive, and the Duchamp's not there, it's in storage. And so like it takes away the whole punchline of the the arc and the story.
+
+[55:46] But I said to the curator, look, from now on, when you got priceless works of art you want to put in storage, just leave them in my house. Hey, you speak about price priceless works of art. Uh, for those of you that are young enough to still have it be a goal to become the president of Yale University. If you become the president of Yale University, you get to choose any work of art that the UAG owns and put it up like in your office and like where and like in your in your like the house where you live. Can you imagine their art collection is so sick.
+
+[56:20] Their art collection is amazing. That would be Yeah, the president's house better be climate control does. All I have to say if they're getting really nice. So Seth, John is a John comes from uh uh art history, he was an art art history professor at UConn. So uh yeah, so he's getting mad about the fact that like you know, you know what?
+
+[56:38] There's one work of art that I would steal from Yale. It's a small, it's it's uh Max Max Reichlich is the artist. It's called the Jester. And I feel like my whole life is based around this picture and around uh Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Those two works, uh like I think my whole life is based around it's a jester with this look on his face, eating a soft boiled egg, it's dripping down his chin, and he's got a weird jester scepter, and then like a small animal over his shoulder.
+
+[57:07] Love it. I'll find it, I'll find it, I'll put it up on the uh You've done it before. I mean, it's it's my classic face. It's my it's it's you know, and it's like it's like that beautiful color on board, you know, work. Anyway, you know, German weirdness back from the whatever it was, 14, 1500s, whenever.
+
+[57:23] Um can you say her name again? Because I need people to look up the hat that she was wearing on the on the Wikipedia page. Who? The the name of the Elsa? Yeah.
+
+[57:32] E L S A Elsa von Freitag Loringhoven. L-O-R-I-N. Loringhoven. I mean, that's what a great name. Uh all right.
+
+[57:43] So uh I'm being told, yes, that I'm officially out of time. Seth, thanks uh so much for coming on and bringing Kathy. The uh the stories that you have told me about Carvel have just completely reinvigorated my love for Carvel ice cream. I might go out and get some right now. I've I've made my kids love Carvel Ice Cream.
+
+[58:03] I mean, Carvel Ice Cream, again, for those of you that are, I don't know, not in this country or not East Coast people, it's a thing. Carvel ice cream, it's a thing. Am I right about this? Sure. You're right.
+
+[58:16] 100%. All right, guys, thanks so much for coming on. What a pleasure. All right. Cooking issues.
+
+[58:21] Your participating Carvel Ice Cream Store wants to thank you for being their customer. So every Wednesday is Sunday at your participating Carvel Ice Cream Store. That means buy one, get one free. Naughty Royals impact porto box. Buy a box, get one free.
+
+[58:39] Or the new Sunday dinner, the Wild Cherry Sunday dinner. Buy one, get one free. That's what you're participating in Carvel Ice Cream Store. Look for the Wednesday Sunday sign. Thank you.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stand Studios, the Rockefeller Center. Joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good.
+
+[0:20] We got uh John. John in the booth. How are you doing? Doing great. We got uh where Jackie Molecules, where are you?
+
+[0:26] Where are you right now? I'm in DC now. DC. Jeez, man. What's up, Globe Hopper?
+
+[0:31] You're just like everywhere. You're like a like a like globe hot trucking trotting engineer. Yeah. And of course. Yeah.
+
+[0:38] And of course, working the panels, Joe Hazen. How are you doing? How are you doing? Doing all right. Uh, and for those of you who are listening live on Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507.
+
+[0:50] That's 917-410-1507. And I anticipate you might get some calls in because today we have a very special guest, uh, Professor Don Shaffner, who is the extension specialist in food science and distinguished professor at Rutgers, uh, host of the podcast. The podcast is called Risky or Not, correct? That is correct. Risky or not, which is a good, which is like a good thing because it's not like completely safe or not.
+
+[1:17] It's risky or not. In other words, like, eh, should I do this or should I not do this, right? Exactly. That's the premise of the show. Yeah.
+
+[1:25] Uh and we'll get into that in in a in in a little bit. And uh on the uh Twitters, you go as Bug Counter. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you legitimately like sit around and do counts all day? No, I have graduate students for that.
+
+[1:43] So you're more like bug counter overlord. Well, so so here's the thing. So I I describe myself as a quantitative food microbiologist, and I ascribe uh to the the uh adage when you can count. And so I do I do like quantitative data, and so we work with microorganisms, and so uh bug counter became my my name on Twitter. I do want to say for the record, um I don't count uh nobody in my lab counts insect parts, and and so I'm using bug there in the colloquial, you know, as microbiologists refer to the organisms we study as bugs, but not actual literal entomological bugs.
+
+[2:21] So you're not at all worried about like number of cockroach legs in my in my flower, for instance. Well, I I'm you know, cockroach legs won't hurt you. Uh it's the it's the microorganisms on the cockroach legs that will hurt you. And so uh yeah, it's gross, it's disgusting to have cockroach legs in your flower, but uh but the cockroach legs, you know, they're not they're not big enough to actually stick in your throat and hurt you. I mean, that seems a little bit like uh guns don't kill people kind of an argument.
+
+[2:49] Is not the cockroach legs per se. It's the fact that they walked through poop before they showed up in your food. Well, let's see, like to not to stretch the gun analogy, but if you had a gun without bullets, I guess you could throw some throw it at somebody, right? Uh, you know, so I mean it's it if you have it's sterile cockroach legs, you know, it's gross, but sterile cockroach legs uh don't kill you. It's it's uh it's the microorganisms.
+
+[3:12] All right, but before I get into the why I actually had you on, I'm curious about this. You know how back in the um in the early 1900s, right, when uh people were going through their first wave of getting really, really worried about kind of germs and insects and whatnot. And everyone was like, oh my god, flies, fly, oh my god, right? But flies legitimately do land in filth and then land on your food, right? I want to make a t-shirt for flies that says, My last, you know, my last uh resting place was poop.
+
+[3:39] You know what I mean? So they can wear so when they land on your food, they can wear a t-shirt, I was just in poo. Right? I mean, like, that's kind of true, right? But there's how much actual spread is there via fly?
+
+[3:49] Well, this is a really good question. And it's actually a topic that that has come up before on risky or not. And and the so when you think about it, again, as a quantitative microbiologist, uh, you know, uh and and as somebody who does risk assessment, there's a expression in toxicology. The dose makes the poison, and and the same sort of thing applies to microbiology as well. And so, yes, flies can theoretically spread germs, but uh the what you have to say, you have to consider is well, where was the fly last?
+
+[4:20] Okay, did they walk on poop? Did they get some let's say salmonella on their feet? And then did those salmonella then transfer to the food? And were the levels sufficiently high such that you have a reasonable probability of illness? Or or or is would would any salmonella transfer?
+
+[4:38] And so, you know, certainly I don't advocate eating food on which flies have walked, but the actual risk from a single fly landing once on your food before you you brush it away, that's probably a pretty small risk based on all of the available scientific information, which admittedly is not is not a lot. So you're cool with it. Well, here's the thing the name of the show is not cool with it or not, right? The name of the show is risky or not. So uh it's gross.
+
+[5:11] Uh I don't advocate, again, I don't advocate flies walking on food. I certainly, if I have a choice to have flies not walk on my food, I will definitely choose that. But uh, but from from a risk perspective, again, the the chance of illness from a single fly landing on a food once, I'm gonna say that's a pretty small risk. So but but that's that's different from I'm cool with it. All right, all right.
+
+[5:33] So in other words, you're like, would rather it not happen, but you're still gonna eat it. Uh well, uh, you know, that's a good question. I mean, I don't I don't have a uh I don't have a food in front of me that a fly has just landed on to be able to definitively say whether I would or not. Um yeah, I don't yeah, it's it's and that's a different question. Like, would Don eat it or not?
+
+[5:53] That's again, that's yet another different podcast. And we gotta start that show. We gotta get that show. Like uh Nastasi and I will create various levels of gross and hand them to you and be like, did he eat it? Well, just you don't even have to say anything.
+
+[6:06] It's just we have the camera on you, and then like an hour later we'll look. And if you took a bite out of it, it was fine. You know what I mean? Or you decided to eat it. Uh just an idea for you.
+
+[6:17] You don't have to do it with us. That that that idea is yours. Yeah. And well, and here's the thing, we should also have like a revisiting, like come back 24, 48, 72 hours and see if I had any consequences from eating it, right? Because that's the important, that's the important thing.
+
+[6:31] Oh, you know what? Before we even get into what I want to, let's talk about this because this is a big deal for all human beings everywhere. It is my feeling, and you tell me because I'm happy to be wrong about this, that nine times out of ten, people have no idea where they got their food poisoning from, but they think they do. And so they blame X, Y, or Z thing, but they're very often wrong because they don't really have the incubation periods right. You want to talk about this at all, whether I'm wrong or whether what you think about it.
+
+[6:56] No, no, I think you you you actually I really appreciate you raising this this point. So very often people will think it's the last food they ate, um, which for certain types of of uh foodborne disease might be true, but for many types of foodborne disease, it's absolutely not true. And it's more likely something that you ate 24 hours ago, 48 hours ago, even as much as you know, uh uh 72 hours ago, three days ago. And so yeah, people will very often get that wrong for sure. Yeah, and is it the salad that kill you nine times out of ten?
+
+[7:27] Is it the salad? Oh, it depends. It really depends. I mean, we we are in we are in the risky salad season. If you look historically at when people get sick from eating leafy greens, uh often it is around this time of year.
+
+[7:41] And so it is uh there is some some potential risk. But it might be salad, it might be, it might be you know, meat that was cross-contaminated, it might be undercooked meat, it might be food that was left out of temperature control for too long. But the problem, the problem with microorganisms, you know, when it comes to food is that they're they're so diverse and there's so many different ways they can cause illness. So it's it's difficult to generalize and say, oh, yeah, yeah, it's the salad, because sometimes it might be the salad, but sometimes it might not be. I did not know that there was a risky salad season, but now I'm kind of grooving on the idea of a risky salad season.
+
+[8:16] When is Dr. Don, when is the risky salad season? Well, it's roughly this time of year. So it's it's roughly in the in the in the fall, like I would say September, October, um, uh, you know, that time frame. But but again, that doesn't mean that other it's like it's like when you eat shellfish, right?
+
+[8:35] In in months, uh months you're only supposed to eat shellfish in months with an R, right? Uh but but it's so it's not it's not it's not a definitive indication of risk. But if you if you look at the uh outbreaks and you look at big outbreaks linked to leafy greens in particular, it they do tend to happen around this time of year. But again, that's not it's again like so many scientific things in in life, it's it's there's it's not hard and fast. It's only uh uh you know a general a general statement.
+
+[8:59] Is that just a known correlation or is there a theoretical is there a positive cause for that? Well, we you know, in many cases we we cannot trace the the uh the cause back to a specific incident. We what we do know, and again, this is talking specifically about leafy greens in this country. And so the leafy green industry, the way that it works is they they start in California and then uh as the as the season progresses, they move gradually south uh and and and end the season in in uh Yuma, Arizona. And so we are in that period now where we're in transition from California to Arizona, and we don't know we don't know what it is about that transition period that might lead to uh that might lead to outbreaks, but it but it is something that a number of people have observed, but we still haven't quite figured it out.
+
+[9:49] Obviously, if we figured it out, the industry would be fixing that problem and and we wouldn't we wouldn't have this. But so for now it's only uh it's only uh you know a general idea, like I said. First of all, I feel like you're calling out Arizona. I just feel like I feel like you're like throwing some serious shade on Arizona right now. Well, it well, it might it might not be, it might not be arriving in Arizona, it might be aspects of leaving California, right?
+
+[10:13] It might be aspects of packing up the operations, you know, uh and leaving California. And so let's let's not let's let's let's let's throw equal shade on on uh both Terrizones. Well, you're saying everybody will be bad. That's not that Arizona is bad, it's just California has some salubrious effect on the on the greens to get rid of the what what's the what's the pathogen of interest here? Are you first of all, are we talking about Romaine?
+
+[10:35] Because it's always romaine that they that they they they burn, right? That they they sweep off of the shelves, at least here in New York, and then burn. Is that what we're talking about it it is it is often romaine but again one one point that I want to make is that part of the reason why romaine may cause a lot of outbreaks is we just eat a lot of romaine right and so it it may it may not be that romaine per se is risky it may just be that that that's just the predominant leafy green that we eat right and we do we do know uh that that it it may well be that these packaged salads are riskier just because of the way that they are uh prepared you know the the the lettuce is harvested the the lettuce is chopped up it's washed um and so you're if you have contamination that may spread the contamination over multiple servings and then also when you when you chop off that lettuce uh that may lead to places where the harborage points for the bacteria whereas if you leave the lettuce whole as as head lettuce the contamination may be confined to a single head and potentially there's less cut edges of the leafy greens to allow the bacteria to attach and and and maybe to grow. Now once you get your your uh your your whatever pathogen of interest into your lettuce it can no longer be washed off the surface right like once it's been hacked up and it's grown into the lettuce like pretty much that's it right you you may be able to wash some of it off but it's certainly the best thing to do is prevention right the best thing to do is keep it from getting there in the first place. Because once it's there, yes, you're right it's it's very difficult to to remove and again this part of part of what we're trying to do here when we're washing is we're using sanitizers in that washwater so that if you do get uh let's say some pathogens that are on one leaf uh they don't go into the washwater and then cross contaminate to another leaf like by using sanitizers in that wash water you stop that you stop that spread but if it does if it does spread then yeah you you it it's gonna be really tough to do anything about that.
+
+[12:36] What are your thoughts on uh you get the bag and they say it's pre-washed but uh it's already turning into its own filth inside of the bag and like clearly like slimy and garbage and your son is like it's that's just already washed and I'm like no either you wash it and it like or you throw it away this is filth. No? I mean this idea that you can wash it once and forget it is crazy right well my my my sons have been trained not to have that conversation they they don't live with me but uh they're they're grown they're grown young men but no what I will say so if there's a there's a scientific report out there that says that basically in the opinion of experts once the lettuce is been triple washed and it's placed in a bag there's very little additional washing that the consumer is going to be able to do to have any positive benefit. And in fact it might you might actually increase the risk if you don't have good sanitary practices in your kitchen. And so um the the general advice is you don't need to wash pre-washed lettuce because the the either the risk is not there and you're gonna be fine or uh the risk is there and there's not much you can do about it.
+
+[13:42] But now the other point that you made about things looking gross or slimy or being past their their their best buy date I'm I'm pretty particular about and we do buy bagged lettuce in in my house and I'm pretty particular about how it looks and and so if I do start to see I'll pick out the slimy pieces and if it starts to look too slimy, I'll just I'll just pitch it and say we just need to go to the store and and get more. Because I mean again, it's not the slime that makes you sick, but that slime is an indication that maybe that lettuce has been mishandled or temperature abused or or just you know physically you know beat up to the to the extent that it allows heartridge points for the bacteria in places where they can grow. It's always it's always the arugula, it's always the arugula, it goes slimy and smells like an aquarium. Terrible. You know, that's that's funny.
+
+[14:30] I've I find the opposite. I find that arugula for whatever reason is is pretty is pretty robust. Whereas the uh the romaine and the spinach, uh at least in my house that tend to go so bad uh before the arugula. But uh, you know, but that's just my experience. The spinach started bad.
+
+[14:47] That's the problem. The spinach started out as bad. You should be cooking that. You know what I mean? Like uh you know, yeah, I I'm not a I'm not a fan of raw raw spinach.
+
+[14:56] Yeah, that's a good point. They're like, but if the spinach is real, real tiny, you can eat it raw. Okay, or you could just let the spinach get big, hack it up, cook it with like in a cream sauce, make sure you squeeze out all the nasty like filth water, not because it's unsafe, it's just because it's filth water. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, I look, I don't know what happened.
+
+[15:15] At some point in my in my 30s, everyone started eating all of these formerly cooked greens raw. And I'm like, why? Like, why would I ever eat kale raw? Why why would I do that? Well, I mean, I'm I'm old enough to remember that what what you bought kale for was to put on the salad bar over the ice, right?
+
+[15:38] It was decorative. You nobody ate it. Yeah, nobody. I mean, I had a rabbit. Rabbit would eat it.
+
+[15:44] You know what I mean? But like, or you know, kale makes a decent cooked green. I mean, it's no charred. It's no uh, you know, it's it's no collared, you know what I mean? It's not even at the level of an escarole.
+
+[15:55] You know what I mean? But it's uh, you know, I mean, I shouldn't say that escrow's great. I don't know why, I don't know why I suddenly put Escarole next to kale. Escarole is delicious. I grew up eating cooked escarol, you know what I mean?
+
+[15:59] Um anyway, all right. Uh what about this? What about people before I get off these uh bagged greens? What about people who believe, and this is also meats and veg, uh, who believe that by somehow buying and you alluded to this by saying, you know, if I'm chumming up, you know, eight tons of romaine and putting them into a giant vat, and then I F up somehow and put them in a bag, now I have eight tons of romaine that have been effed up by one bad head, right? That you kind of intimated that, right?
+
+[16:30] It's the same argument. Yeah, I don't think the industry calls it chumming, but that's a good word. Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's the same argument with ground beef, right? Like you you take uh you take uh infinity cows, you grind them all together, and if one of those cows was bad, now the whole batch is like, you know, it's the one rotten apple kind of a situation, right?
+
+[16:48] And well, I I think with I think with ground beef it's a little bit different, but we can come back to that. Right. Well, so now people have taken that argument and then they believe somehow that they are safer buying uh quote unquote farmers market or organic products, even though in a supermarket organic product has been there for eight billion years just because of turnover is so slow, at least it used to be, you know, if you're not shopping at a specifically place that only sells organic stuff. Uh so what do you think what what what do you think about people who believe that they're uh trying to dodge a uh a safety bullet by going that way? Well, you know, there's there's not a ton of research on organic versus conventionally grown food, but the research that's out there shows that either the risk is equivalent or that the risk might actually be higher with organic, just because of some of the growing practices, you know, increased use of manure, you know, things, you know, things like that.
+
+[17:42] And so uh but but it's but the again, that there's very limited research, and so it's by no means definitive. But but I think if you're if you're buying organic because you think it is safer with respect to bacteria, that's probably not a true true assumption. Now, you know, and again, the tests for pesticides on our organic versus conventional show that overwhelmingly um, you know, the food that we eat in this country is is free of pesticides. And so there's there's very little difference there as well. So if you're I mean, I think a lot of people buy organic just like a as a feel-good thing.
+
+[18:14] And certainly farmers can charge a higher price. And so if you want to give the farmers more money, I'm I'm all in favor of you know, paying paying farmers more. So that that's a good thing. But the I think that the the effect of organic versus conventional on risk is equivocal at best. All right.
+
+[18:29] Uh and you know, well, we'll take the pushback later on that. We'll just take the pushback later. We'll leave it and we'll take the pushback later. Uh so another reason I really wanted to have you on is because you know, your particular attitude, which I've noticed on Twitter, which uh which I enjoy, and wanted maybe to talk a little bit about the adversarial relationship that kind of develops between cooks and food safety people. Uh and you know, I think it's it's real.
+
+[18:55] I know you're not like people who I know who have uh been involved in writing some of the codes who I've talked to over the years, like meat scientists and you know safety scientists, they're really into kind of bulletproofing everything. And I know that a lot of chefs feel hamstrung by a lot of the rules that we we have uh to cook by that we know are inherently inaccurate, that are that are basically overkill, right? So I'm specifically talking about certain classic fermentation practices that weren't you uh uh available to us in restaurants for a long time, you know, we would get shut down or certain low temperature practices uh which you know were not available to us because they didn't meet the old quote unquote food code and this kind of big adversarial relationship has developed. I wonder whether you want to talk about that. Yeah so it's it's a I guess is one of my favorite topics to talk about and so it's it's tough right because on the one hand you have the chefs that really pretty much want to do anything.
+
+[19:53] You have the code which is written um by well it's written by scientists and lawyers and the and because what what we have to do in a code is we have to create bright lines that say thou shalt not cross this line right and then you have scientists like me who are like well it's really more of a fuzzy line and it's complicated and it depends and there's levels of risk. And so yeah it ends up being a really interesting conversation. But what one thing I am really interested in doing is pushing back on regulatory types who say no, thou shalt not cross this line and then having the debate about well okay so tell me tell me exactly how you decided to draw that line and why did you draw it there and what are the factors that you considered and what are what are some other mitigating factors that we could that we could use to maybe draw that line in a different place or hey you know the logic that you used to use to draw this line means that we should also draw this other line over here and try to use that logic and argument in a way that maybe gives the the chefs some more freedom or or figure out is that line even in the right place, right? Is the science that that that line is based on uh is that science outdated, or could we could we take a different approach to try to give chefs more flexibility in terms of what they do? And and then also realize, I mean, there's already flexibility, right?
+
+[21:12] You can already go and eat uh sushi. You can already go and eat, you know, this there's jokes, there's jokes going back years and years about sunny side up eggs in in New Jersey, right? Um, you know, because we and you can you can have them. You can you can you can have sunny side up eggs, even though there is a risk from that. And so I'm I'm more about like let's talk about the risk, let's let's inform people about the risk.
+
+[21:34] And again, I I know chefs don't like to have stuff like things on the menu that says if you order your if you order a sushi, you you might get food poisoning. I know that's that's probably not good, you know, marketing, but but from a uh education perspective, maybe that's the right that's the right solution. But yeah, I'm I'm what I yeah, I would I would like us to all be able to play nicely and have discussions about these things in in a logical way. It gives people choice. Consumers' choice gives chefs choice uh and and still tries to perfect public health as well.
+
+[22:04] I mean, the sushi thing is interesting because we all know that there's no way that a sushi restaurant in the real life can pass health code because they don't wear gloves. And I don't want them to wear gloves. You know what I mean? And and and and they don't wear gloves. Uh and so, you know, they have the the those things sitting out, they wipe down with the top.
+
+[22:22] I mean, there's not one thing that they do. You know, uh they have rice that's hardcore in the danger zone that that the health department has no way of testing the acidity of, right? You know, it clearly doesn't grow. By the way, do you also call it is it is it be serious? Because I always just call it like be serious, be serious!
+
+[22:42] Like what is it actually? Yeah, I make that same joke. Yeah, the full name of the organism is bacillus serious cereal. Right. And that's what's gonna happen.
+
+[22:51] If you leave rice out that hasn't been vinegared or sugared, right? You you have a a decent chance of probably not dying, although kids have died, right, from B serious growing in that thing, right? Right? Yeah, that that that's exactly right. It's again, not every bit of rice is contaminated, but I I like the way you phrase it.
+
+[23:10] You have a reasonable probability. We know uh that if you cook rice and then you leave it at room temperature or you cool it too slowly. Actually, I was just hearing about an outbreak where they cooled the rice too slowly, and actually somebody, an elderly person can die. So yeah, the silly cereus is generally not the kind of disease that that kills you. But guess what?
+
+[23:28] If you're in a weakened state, it for sure can can kill you. And that's why uh that's why we don't want to leave rice at room temperature for a long period of time. Except for, let's look at a sushi restaurant where that's their whole job. That's the whole business model. And so it's like these these folks aren't using gloves.
+
+[23:42] They're wiping things down with wet towels constantly, then like which you know, and you know that's not Sani's solution. And then uh they're uh they have room temperature rice sitting out for the whole service. So it's like, you know, and I I know that that there are things in place to make that safe, but it's not in the code. And there's no way that because there's it's not just the difference between you, the scientist, and the chef to the user, there's the code enforcement people as well. There's the there's you, then there's the code writer, then there's the code enforcer who has to have the knowledge, then the person who cooks, then the consumer.
+
+[24:19] It's like crazy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely right. The person that writes the code is not the same person that enforces the code. But with sushi rice, uh that rice should, as you mentioned, it should be acidified, and that acidification process will allow you to keep at root keep it at room temperature and should uh prevent the the growth of bacillus cereal if it's been properly acidified.
+
+[24:39] Right. But then you know, have there been cases where people have tried to go more modern and cut down the acid uh to an extent where it's actually become unsafe? That's a good question. I don't know if that's the case. I know that we do we do continue to have food morning disease outbreaks from rice, but it is more the situation where it's a it's typically a Chinese restaurant um or or an Asian restaurant, and they prepare a big batch of rice and they just they just you know either cool it improperly or leave it at room temperature for long periods of time to make fried rice out of it.
+
+[25:10] And and and and the the nature of the bacillus food poisoning, there's one kind of bacillus food poisoning that comes from a toxin. And once that toxin is in the rice, no amount of frying or cooking will get rid of that molecule, that toxin molecule, which is what causes the uh the vomiting symptoms. And so uh, but I don't I don't know of any cases of improperly acidified sushi rice causing illness. Not that it doesn't happen, I just can't think of any examples of you know that that have that have come across my radar. So you know who's never going to poison anyone?
+
+[25:40] Jiro, he puts way too much freaking vinegar in his rice. I am sorry, those things are like crazy. But like, so you're saying it's probably doesn't take that much vinegar to actually do the trick. Plus there's sugar as well. So it's like it just doesn't take that much of a shift towards acid or towards a reduction of the water activity to have it not grow.
+
+[26:01] Well, and I'm not sure it's reduction of water activity, although it's interesting that you mentioned sugar. Um, I think it's more um, it's more the pH that's that's that's doing it, right? Uh, and it's the acidity and the and the pH. But but exactly how much you have to add and where that cut point is where you're because here's the thing: like you have a certain amount of acidity that will stop bacillus from growing, but then with a little bit less acidity, you might slow the growth. And so, yeah, I haven't I haven't really dug into the like the risk analysis of that to kind of figure out like where exactly how risky it is and where you can where you maybe you can you can edge a little closer to risk but still be quote unquote safe.
+
+[26:37] Yeah. Well remember, it's not is it safe? Is it's is it risky? Different question. Different question.
+
+[26:43] Uh life is risky. You know, me biking here today, I almost got killed. So there you go. Uh the there you go, yeah. You know what I mean?
+
+[26:49] Uh okay. So you bring us to an interesting point when you say that uh you know that there's this place where the B serious, and I can't call it anything but that, uh, where it's not that you are killing it, but it ain't growing. And I think the vast majority, a lot of the people who listen to this uh show do kind of sous vide low temperature work. And I think this is where this is where the safety rubber meets the food poisoning road, right? It's that there's all of this work that we do where it is true we're not necessarily causing something that started out life unsafe to be safe all of a sudden, but we are also not making it worse, right?
+
+[27:34] And I think that's where the majority of our low temperature work is actually taking place. I mean, the majority of us aren't actually pasteurizing the food that we're cooking. What do you think? Well, but I think we need to draw a distinction between the pathogen of choice or the the pathogen that's likely to be in rice versus in in meat, right? Bacillus or Plus Ridium botulinum, we want to control the growth because when they grow, they make toxin.
+
+[28:02] That and the levels of growth, at least with respect to bacillus, the levels of growth of multiplication of bacteria that you need to see before you get sufficient toxin formation to cause illness, that's different than salmonella, which is an infectious organism and which doesn't um doesn't have to grow to cause illness. Now, granted, I'd rather eat a single salmonella cell than a million salmonella cells, but realize that even the injection of a single salmonella cell has a probability of illness, right? So if I could, um, if you believe the math and the science, if I could get 300 people to volunteer today to eat one salmonella cell, chances are in 24 to 48 hours, one of those people, just due to the billiard ball luck of the salmonella cascading through their intestine, one of those people is going to be unlucky enough to be infected and maybe even develop symptoms and become sick. And so the the way that we're managing risk with rice is different than the way that we're managing risk with with let's say soupy cooking. But again, there's a lot more subtlety we can get into with cooking because it's really about time and temperature, and it's about assumptions about you know the dose needed and then the starting concentration that you might have in the meat to begin with and all of that.
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+[29:19] Right. Well, I mean, that that's kind of though, I think where a lot of our people kind of want to go mentally, right? Is to that level. And so then we're talking about, okay, I mean, bot the botulism is the one everyone worries about, right? But I mean, listeria, I'm worried about a lot.
+
+[29:35] Um, especially if you're gonna chill it afterwards and store it, right? Um I just had a a real good friend of the family almost die from uh listeria. Uh so it's uh w what do we do about peep when we're cooking in the zone where because it happens all the time, let's say on fish, right? Especially fish. Like red meats, I can cook a red meat.
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+[29:58] Most red meats I can cook above 54, 55 Celsius uh Celsius. In that range, I am killing stuff. I'm actively killing. Now, am I gonna cook it long enough to get enough you know reductions of of uh levels that that we could talk about, but I'm actively killing stuff, right? When I'm doing fish, right, I'm lower, often lower.
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+[30:21] I'm often in the low 50s, like 50, 52, 53. It's not, and you're not cooking it for a long time. So you're clearly not killing all of the pathogens of interest. And uh some pathogens of interest, right, don't even really necessarily on paper anyway, uh, start dying until you hit 55, right? I mean, I mean, uh, I just think people like see all these numbers and they get weirded out.
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+[30:45] So what about these zones where I'm cooking uh a salmon? Let's let's be specific. I'm cooking a salmon, I'm gonna cook it to 52 uh Celsius, right? Let's say uh let's say the salmon is in a tube shaped, and for the center to come up to that, it takes an hour or 45 minutes. I now chill it and eat it.
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+[31:06] What am I doing to myself? What is actually happening, right? Because once it gets up into 50, you know, 52, is am I in stasis? Am I growing? Is it the same as if it I had just eaten it raw out of the fridge?
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+[31:21] Worse, better? Where are we? Yeah, so you you there's a lot to unpack here. And and also uh there's actually I need to kind of get the numbers up in front of me and work through, work through some stuff because I don't want to mislead people. But I do want to come back to something that you said.
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+[31:37] You mentioned listeria. And I would put, although Listeria is an infectious organism, uh, it is not, I don't put it in the same bucket as salmonella and pathogenic E. coli. We know from dose response studies with Listeria, although it is an infectious organism, it tends to be a high dose organism. And so, as I mentioned before, the probability of illness from a single salmonella cell is on the order of one in a hundred or one in two hundred or one in three hundred.
+
+[32:04] The probability of illness from a single Listeria cell, even for somebody who's immunocompromised, is much more in the ballpark of one in a million or even lower risk. And so generally speaking, the foods where Listeria pose a risk are foods where, because of that extended refrigerated storage you mentioned, the any surviving organisms have managed to grow to high levels such that there's a reasonable probability of illness. So they grow best at about 37 degrees C, which is about 98 uh.6 uh degrees F. And as you move above that, they grow more slowly, but then at some point it switches over from slower and slower growth to starting to get some thermal inactivation. And yeah, and then fish for like you said, fish is for sure a challenge because it's it's really easy to uh to overcook it.
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+[33:24] 120, and I haven't really sat here and done the math carefully, 125 degrees Fahrenheit or 52 degrees C, that seems like an awfully low temperature. And again, I know we had some correspondence before the before the the this call about that. I need to get those numbers up in front of me and sort of figure out what we know about where where does salmonella because it's one thing to say, okay, salmonella is not growing. Um and certainly if you're if you're quote unquote cooking it in the temperature where you're actually growing salmonella, that's not a best practice, but figuring out where that dividing line is between where growth stops and inactivation begins. That's that's that's that's the sweet spot, right?
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+[34:02] And and that's where we want to be, we want to be above that that temperature. Right. Well, in the early 2000s, a lot of chefs were you know fabricating their fish under kind of sushi grade uh conditions, right? So the concept was you can eat this raw. They would vacuum pack it and then they would store it as though they were storing stuff that would be served raw, sushi style, right?
+
+[34:25] Then they would put it and they would uh cook it to the in Celsius. You ready for this? They would cook it in the forties, right? Like like 50 was high. They would cook it in the 40s, but they would only do it for like 20 minutes, basically warming it.
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+[34:39] And you would get this kind of jewel-toned, uh kind of fudgy, and nine out of ten, well, well, about half the people hate it and about half the people love it, which is why you don't see it that often in restaurants anymore, just because so many people are actually turned off by it, right? Uh but the people who loved it loved it, and it definitely looks amazing. Um sometimes it can get really fishy, which is the problem with it. But my argument for why that was okay was because it just wasn't, it wasn't being cooked long enough to have anything bad happen, right? So Bruno Gusot, the you know, grandpa of of uh Juscatans, he calls it, you know, precise temperature cooking, uh, you know, he was like, but it can grow, it it can cause histamines.
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+[35:18] I was like, okay, okay, Bruno, whatever, man. But you know what I'm saying is like I didn't feel like people were making it too unsafe. It's when you it's when you're gonna cook something for an extended period of time and then chill it and then serve it later that I start getting worried, no. Well, yeah, so certainly if you are well, I'll have to use air quotes here. If you're cooking something at 40 degrees C, which is 104 degrees Fahrenheit, you're not really cooking it.
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+[35:42] You really are incubating it. And that is definitely within the temperature range where where salmonella can grow. Now, if you're quote unquote cooking it for an hour or two, you're not gonna get much salmonella growth in that hour or two. If you're gonna cook it, if you're gonna incubate it till I cook it for 10 or 12 hours or overnight, well, now you're you're you're really just making an incubator there. And then and then if you refrigerate it properly, well, then now you're not getting any salmonella growth.
+
+[36:08] But if you had some listeria, you're not gonna kill the listeria at 40 degrees C. And then if you do extended refrigerated storage, no, well now Listeria is going to start to multiply. Um, and then you could be amplifying the risk there. Yeah, no, no one I think was no one ever argued that like th those ones when they came back, you couldn't doggy bag that stuff. It had to be eaten or pitched.
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+[36:27] You know what I mean? Like no one was I mean, like anyone who doggy bag that let people take it home that that you know, that's like poison in a cup right there. That's no good. Uh but why don't dogs get sick from this stuff? Why can't a dog arrive?
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+[36:40] Well, the the organisms that they're slight. Some here's the thing some organisms make dogs sick, don't make us sick. Some that make us sick don't make dogs sick, and some some don't make either of us sick, and some will make both of us sick. So you really can't be, you really you really can't. It's not it's not uh definitive.
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+[36:56] All right. But so let's let's say I'm cooking in the 50s now. Like I'm not I'm I'm up at like 50, 52, right? What I'm interested in is the shape of the bacterial growth curve, right? Where it starts up in this exponential thing where it gets real fast, as you say, up towards, you know, it's it's real low at the fridge level, and then it ramps way the heck up towards body temperature.
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+[37:16] It peaks out somewhere, right? And then after that peak, it kind of crashes precipitously, right? So it's like there are these zones that aren't in the kill zone, but they're pretty much in the same zone as refrigeration in terms of growth, right? Right, and you're absolutely right. That that they they drop off precipitously, and that's also part of the reason why our knowledge in this area is a bit fuzzy.
+
+[37:40] It's it's challenging to do those experiments, right? It's relatively easy to study from room temperature down to refrigeration because the the change in the growth kinetics of the organism is more gradual. Above the optimum, um, up to the maximum, like you said, it's a precipitous drop. So again, I'm just looking at the limit uh to growth when other conditions are near the optimum for salmonella, and the maximum temperature recorded here is 46.2. So that's a so you're talking about 50.
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+[38:09] So so if you're if you're quote unquote cooking at 50, which is 122 Fahrenheit, you're outside the range for Salmonella growth. So Salmonella concentration is not going up. Um you're outside the range for Listeria, so Listeria concentration is not going up. The extent to which it's going down, that we have to I'd have to go look at some some different numbers. Now I will point out, we talked about Bacillus series before.
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+[38:32] Bacillus series, apparently, um, according to the source I'm looking at right now, can grow up to 55. Now, again, do we have Bacillus serious in fish? Well, not uh not a lot, but you know what? You might have uh it's a see, Bacillus is a spore former. And so those spores can be anywhere.
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+[38:51] And so could you have bacillus spores on fish? Yeah, absolutely. You could. Could you could you be encouraging their growth at 50 degrees? Yeah, you might be.
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+[39:00] Uh it's probably not growing super fast, but but it could. But again, again, it's all it's about time and temperature. Right, because I just don't think the majority of us are cooking long enough to pasteurize, and I'm also not that worried about it when I cook for my family. I mean, maybe in a restaurant situation, I would have to probably pasteurize it because that's the way the rules are written, but anyway. Let me get to some Patreon questions because I will get I will get my head torn off uh otherwise.
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+[39:24] Uh John Denton wrote in, I recently bought a freeze dryer, and I'm curious whether or not the freeze-drying process kills harmful microorganisms or just renders them dormant. I'd guess that removing 100% of their water content would kill at least some, but perhaps not all. Thanks for the show. Yeah, great, great question. And I we could answer freeze drying and freezing at the same at the same time.
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+[39:44] Both freezing and freeze drying will kill some of the bacteria, but it's not a reliable way to kill to kill bacteria. And so, yeah, and then you take the water out and you might stress the cells a little bit more. But actually, when we want to store bacterial cultures for long periods of time, we actually freeze dry them. And so it's an excellent way to preserve bacteria for a long time. So so, yes, you might get some kill, you might get, you know, 90% kill, but you still got you still potentially have have more there.
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+[40:14] And you might not even get 90% kill. So for sure, it's not a definitive kill step. Let me ask you this question. Not a kill step, but let's say I eat it in the freeze-dried state and I don't rehydrate it. What's the risk?
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+[40:25] In other words, will they rehydrate and become undormant inside my gut? Entirely possible, yes. Because you know that they're basically uh and and yeah, so they're they're basically going to be rehe rehydrating as they move through your body. And so they're not you're not pooping out freeze-dried particles, right? So they're they're getting hydrated at some point.
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+[40:45] And yes there is a potential risk there. Speak for yourself. All right. Uh Dustin I'm just kidding. Dustin Melldrum wrote in uh what does your home dishwashing and or kitchen cleaning routine look like?
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+[40:56] I'm less concerned about things going into and coming out of the dishwasher unless I should be but I suspect I'm overwashing some items while creating potential risks elsewhere. If I'm being honest, I'm really after bare minimum standard operating procedure, but we've all witnessed friends and family clean in ways that have made us feel sad, mad, or glad. What is the best practice? Well you know it depends upon the context. We did an episode of Risky or Not recently where we talked about our rather uh haphazard procedures that we have for cleaning our various coffee making apparatuses right and so I use an aerobress uh which gets a rinse off in cold water and that's it it doesn't get put in the dishwasher it doesn't get washed with soap because you know coffee coffee residue black coffee residue it's not gonna it's not gonna do much there.
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+[41:41] On the other hand the cup in which I make uh my coffee uh you know gets put in the dishwasher at least if it's not the fancy electronic one that keeps my coffee warm that would probably fry it if I put that in the dishwasher so um so it you know it it depends certainly when I think about risk in the kitchen I think about you know if if I'm if I if if I have uh uh raw meat and I'm cutting raw meat on a cutting board that cutting board is going in the dishwasher probably on the sanitized cycle um you know the that's it it's probably a good idea to to run all of your dishes through the dishwasher on a regular basis just just in case but again really think about where the risk is coming from and then and then practice that practice that risk management accordingly and again part of this is risk management but part of it is grossness I mean who who wants to eat on a plate that didn't get cleaned or like we're we're still optimizing our new dishwasher and occasionally uh we find uh food residue on some of the silverware well that's that's that's gross right I'm not gonna eat I'm not gonna eat off that use that silverware that has dry food that's that's stuck on I'm gonna put that back in the sink and wash it by hand and then maybe wash it in the dishwasher again. So some of it is aesthetics right and and uh and some of it is safety but again when it comes to safety really think about like where's the contamination coming from right um and then of course you know if you if you do a good job of cleaning it you're gonna you know clean the food debris away then that's going to make it a lot easier um for you know to to not have uh to not have bacteria there because it's visibly clean again not that not that you can't have bacteria there but but you know getting things visibly clean goes a long way towards making things uh more safe so in a restaurant we use sani what percentage of people use a sandy solution when they're wiping stuff down at home or is like the home like spray bottle cleaner like effective enough what about like salting your boards if they're wood all this kind of stuff yeah well the general expert recommendation is uh wooden cutting boards should not be used for meat. Now there was there was some controversy some some years ago my my friend and and now dearly departed uh Dean Cliver uh did some research showing that actually there might be natural oils in the wood that actually kill pathogens, but other people publish data saying, well, no, they just they just harbor the bacteria, they go into the wood. So we'll we'll set that aside. But again, the general uh expert recommendation from people like me is don't use wooden cutting boards for for raw meat, use plastic cutting boards for that.
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+[44:04] Um and then yeah, I think the the sanitary practices vary from from home to home. Um I know in my house, uh my wife has a uh a mild sanitizer, and then we have the Clorox sanitizer that we break out when we know that we've been working with raw meat and there's a potential for for issues there. And so uh and then when we talk, you know, one of the things that people love to talk about too when we talk about kitchen hygiene and safety is like what's the what's the dirtiest spot in the house? And uh research has shown, not research I've done, but research done by my colleagues have shown that uh the sink drain is very dirty. Why uh very has high levels of bacteria.
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+[44:40] Why? Well, it's always wet because it's where the water goes when it leaves the leaves the sink, and it tends to have food particles, and if you add food and water together, that's a recipe for growing bacteria. And then the other the other risky site in the kitchen is the sponge for much the same reason, right? The sponge holds water and also uh can hold food particles, and that's a recipe for growing uh growing microorganisms, which is which is not a good thing. Sponge in the in the dishwasher on sanitize takes it back to zero or fills machine pitch.
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+[45:11] Uh I would say certainly putting it in the dishwasher on the sanitized cycle is a great practice. That's something that we do. If you don't have an automatic dishwasher, you can microwave your sponges. Be sure to add some water uh when you microwave them and don't over-microwave them because if you microwave a dry sponge, you will start a fire in your microwave. Oh, I like this.
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+[45:32] Which is not a good thing. I'm totally doing this. I'm totally doing this. And then I what I will also say. Can you microwave Scotch price?
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+[45:41] Please, please uh do so at your own risk. Yeah. Um and then what I'll what I will also say with uh with respect to um uh sponges and dishwashers is is if you run through the sanitized cycle and it still smells funky, that's probably a good time to get a new sponge, right? Because uh there may be stuff that that sanitizcle doesn't take care of. Sponge is a weird word, Stas.
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+[46:04] What do you think of the word sponge? Fine. Fine. Sponge. Sponge.
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+[46:09] Uh all right. Um, by the way, what do you what do you recommend for a mild sandy? Because a lot of people don't like the smell of bleach getting wiped all over their stuff. Do you have uh something that you uh recommend? Oh I I don't know.
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+[46:20] My my confidentially she'll never hear this. My wife makes something that is very mild and doesn't really work in my opinion. So I don't I don't have a strong opinion. I'll make sure to send this somehow. Uh uh Yeah.
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+[46:32] The I have to be honest, I'm gonna cut, I'm gonna cut on wood because I hate cutting on plastic. God do I hate cutting on plastic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let me ask you a question.
+
+[46:41] So when you if you're cutting raw meat on wood, um, what is your practice for how you're gonna render that uh clean and sanitized? Uh I usually scrub it with soap and the hottest water with uh with like a a scotch bright pad, and then I I I don't know why, but this is what I leave it wet and I sprinkle coarse salt all over it. I rub the salt in, I walk away for an hour, and then I come and I rinse it off again. That's what I do. But but I should probably create well, wow, but that's gonna mess up the wood, right?
+
+[47:12] I you know, I love I love the fact that you have this defined process. I I wonder if anybody's actually studied that process in the literature. Because I've got to imagine cleaning and scale. So like a lot, you know, a big part of what soap does is remove bacteria, it doesn't necessarily kill bacteria, and then the physical action of scrubbing is also going to help. The salt probably has some benefits.
+
+[47:29] So I'm very cute. Obviously, it's not going to be the same as as sanitizing, but I really wonder what the what the practice might be. And then the other thing that I've heard people recommend too with the wooden cutting board is um, yeah, you can you can um uh wash it with soap and water um and then pour like boil some water in a kettle and then pour boiling water over it. That's gonna have some benefit as well. But I don't know, again, I don't know what that'll do to the wood.
+
+[47:55] I mean, the salt thing I learned from a butcher because they can't move their giant butcher blocks, right? So they would just scrape scrape salt into it with those, you know, those brushes that look like like a like a billion knives, you know what I'm talking about? Those brushes that look like a billion knives. It was like they would scrape the salt in with that, and that's why all it wasn't necessarily from the hacking, it was from the is from the the salting that the butcher blocks would get that super uh con. Well, I guess it depends on how you think about it, the divot in the middle, yeah.
+
+[48:24] Uh Slim Joe writes in question for the show Can someone be immune or develop resistance to the common food board uh foodborne pathogens slash toxins? Because I've eaten a lot of questionable food over the years and have never gotten sick. So cast iron stomach from Slim Joe wants to know if it's because he takes risks all the time that he's a little more bulletproof. That's a that's a good question. I would love to get him in for a challenge study where we feed him some things that they're really on purpose.
+
+[48:51] I don't do that kind of research in my lab, but it would be very interesting to study him. But um, so you know, people often ask this question when they talk about like safety of drinking the water in you know developed countries with a developing economy. It's like, well, well, why don't we just do what they do? And it's like, well, yeah, but you know what they have is they have uh infant death from uh from from diarrhea, right? And so yeah, we could raise a population that was more resistant to these things if we expose people.
+
+[49:17] Uh and so um I would say that that you know there is there in I'm I don't want to, you know, I mean sli Slim Joe's experience is his experience, but um there's not clear evidence, and this uh this would only work for some organisms, it wouldn't work for others' organisms. We know with norovirus, for example, the or the virus uh mutates over time, and just because you've been sick with that with norovirus in the past doesn't mean that a new norovirus might not make you sick. And so I certainly wouldn't recommend what what Slim Joe is advocating for the general public because here's the thing you know, it it it might make you immune, but it might also kill you. And so uh, you know, we've been we've made a decision. Like we do this with a lot of a lot of diseases, I guess, including uh SARS-CoV-2 now, is we have vaccines for people, um, or we just try to keep the those those uh organisms out of the food supply.
+
+[50:09] So, what about the flip side of the Slim Joe question? Do you think we're all gonna get sicker now that we're coming out of the pandemic and we've been kind of uh in a bubble for a long time? It's really interesting. You know, there is some evidence that recently came out, I think it was uh something uh from from CDC that show that reported foodborne disease outbreaks are down. Now, notice I said reported.
+
+[50:31] Now that might be because the reporting has been compromised because people have been drawn, people that are involved in public health have been drawn away from food to work on the pandemic. And so that may that may play a role in that lack of reporting. You know, people have hypothesized, well, because we're all cleaning and sanitizing everything, and we're you know, we're not we're not eating in restaurants, we're eating at home, you know. It's like, well, but you know, when you make yourself sick with food poisoning at home, you don't necessarily report that to the health department. So I'm not sure that we're that the pandemic has really made a difference either way I don't think it's created a situation where because of lack of exposure to food worn pathogens we're more likely to get sick.
+
+[51:08] I just I don't think that's that I don't think it's a reasonable hypothesis. I would have guessed that the average restaurant is safer than the average home you think I'm wrong. Well the problem is it's hard to know but yeah I mean certainly restaurants are following the food code they have people that have been trained. But again if a restaurant screws up they make a lot of people sick same with a with a big food processor right if a big food processor screws up they're gonna make a lot of people sick if you screw up in your home uh you don't make that many people sick but but that so I I I guess I would say I think what you propose is reasonable but I don't know of any evidence that that where anybody has really studied and nor how would you study uh home foods I guess no people like my my podcast partner Ben do big bring people into his catch his test kitchen and ask them to prepare foods as they would in the home and so I guess to that extent we can figure out what they do and and for sure they they screw things up um we'll get Slim Joe in we'll get Slim Joe in and test it out. Jordan wrote in uh food safety question do you have any advice for chefs that produce fermented foods in their restaurants and struggle with providing uh proving to health inspectors that it's safe in particular Koji based ferments that may take months to finish at ambient temperature and that may not have a final pH below 4.6 and as a as a coded to that I will say and I'm sure you are aware of this that uh people are doing um dry aging of uh meats at temperatures like this with Koji on the outside now.
+
+[52:34] So it's not just uh vegetables. Uh comments. Yeah, it's it's tricky, and there's not a lot of research base out there. I mean, we do know uh that with respect to dry aging of meats, uh it really depends upon the temperature and it depends upon the environmental humidity, right? And so, you know, the the relative humidity in the environment, that can that can play a role.
+
+[52:59] Um, yeah, and with fermentations, it's all about the starting materials. It's it may be about the the um the salt, the starting salt concentration. Um yeah, it I would say to answer that question definitively, we have to dig into the literature and find out like are there, you know, who studied this and what do the pathogens do when they when they follow uh procedures like the ones being suggested here. Yeah, I think Jeremy's actually doing the challenge studies now, right? He is, and in the back of their book too, there's some uh sample HACC plans that are meant to just kind of be like general guidance as to how to do that.
+
+[53:32] Yeah, but yeah, but nothing has meaning until the challenge studies have been done, right? I mean, for those for those of you that we're talking about, yeah, like it's like we can all have our theories about this and we can control our environment, but until we've proven that a particular set of controls is in fact safe, we haven't proved it. Yeah. I know Jeremy says like when he pickles, you know, salt pickles things, he really only uses like the master sauerkraut thing. And then when the health inspector comes in, he tries to, you know, show them that it's really just doing the same thing, just with a different vegetable, but the same salt content and that kind of stuff.
+
+[54:04] Yeah, but on the other hand, isn't it possible that it takes X amount more time for the salt to penetrate into Y vegetable than it does to penetrate into cabbage, which is basically just a tube? Anyway. Uh Devin Patel writes in I I'm for it. I'm just saying, like I I'll eat the stuff. I'm just saying from an actual proof standpoint, it's a little more dicey.
+
+[54:22] Wouldn't you say, Doc? Yeah, you're and I think you put your finger on it, right? Like the salt penetration, just like when you're making acidified food, the acid penetration, if you have a big piece of vegetable versus a a small, uh small thin sliver, that penetration is going to be different. So yeah, and like you said, the challenge studies are the way to go because that's going to show in the most definitive way possible, assuming you've done the study correctly, uh, that this is in fact an acceptable practice. Does it make you as mad as it makes me when you see a recipe for a brine and they just and they just talk about the brine versus the liquid and they don't take into in consideration the entire weight of the of the product that they're working with?
+
+[55:01] Does it make you as mad as it makes me? Probably not as mad, but I get your point. I hate it. I hate it. It's it's salt for the entire freaking thing, people.
+
+[55:13] It's how much salt do you have in the entire thing? Yeah. Okay. As I like to say, the denominator matters, you know, in whatever you're talking about. If you don't tell me the denominator, I don't care what the numerator is, right?
+
+[55:26] Tell me the total denominator. It's because people the reason I think it got that way is because people aren't thinking about equilibriums, right? So they're they're in general basing their salt content on like short-term brining, like if you're doing a turkey or something, and they're not thinking about equilibrium brine concentration. Whatever, I can't get into it. I don't have time because I gotta get to these questions.
+
+[55:45] Devin Patel writes in Does high pressure sterilization affect the flavor of drinks? Is it a good solution for RTD beverages? Do you have any uh knowledge on that? Yeah, so we've done some research on high pressure processing. Um, and it it it is it's good for killing vegetative organisms.
+
+[56:01] It's not it's not very good for killing spore-forming organisms. And so for that reason, um, it you can't really use it to control Clostridium botulinum. And so for acidified drinks for things that have a low pH, it works pretty well. It tends to be less, it has tends to have less effect on the flavor uh than it than thermal processing than using heat. And so, yeah, it's uh it's an expensive process.
+
+[56:25] The equipment is very expensive, and uh it's kind of dangerous too. You don't want to be next to one of these things when the seals fail, uh, you know, because it can kill you. Um so yeah, but it's it's an interesting technology, it's an expensive technology, uh, but it has some clear benefits overheat. Will it kill yeasts and other things like that? Because that's what most of our spoilage is in a higher acid thing.
+
+[56:44] It's not yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeast are relatively easy to kill, like bacteria, they don't they don't form spores. Um, so yeah, it should be should be good for controlling yeast. Uh Jennifer Mallon wrote in, I have a question about defrosting food.
+
+[56:58] They always say to defrost meat in the refrigerator, but whenever I do that, it does not defrost all the way. I eat half the meat is still frozen after 24 hours. How do I safely defrost meat while actually defrosting it? Yeah, that's a great question. This is one that we've also talked about on risky or not and and my other podcast, uh, food safety talk.
+
+[57:15] And so the key is you can't, although the expert, the quote unquote experts uh will tell you you cannot safely defrost at room temperature. I submit that you can. The trick is to keep the temperature of the food low because that's where the bacteria are, that's where they're going to grow, and then you want to let it have the outside the surface temperature stay cool while the inside thaws. And what one way you can do that is by putting the food in a paper bag. A paper bag traps the cold air from the thawing food and helps to keep the surface temperature low.
+
+[57:49] Now you can't let it go on and thaw so long that the surface temperature starts to rise because that's when you can start to get uh bacterial growth. But yeah, and and I would submit to you that you can thaw food in the refrigerator eventually, you just have to wait long enough. Because if you wait long enough, again, to equilibrium, the temperature will equilibrate and it should, and it should the inside will thaw eventually. But if your fridge is set really cold, um it's going to take longer. But yes, you can thaw safely at room temperature, just keep the surface temperature low by perhaps placing the food in the something like a paper bag.
+
+[58:21] I mean, the problem is thawed food is a much better insulator than frozen food. I mean, it's it's a huge pain in the butt. Uh, what about the what about Zimblock and running water? That also works for sure. You can you can you can do that as well.
+
+[58:33] If it's again, if it's raw meats, just be careful because the if you if the bag leaks, you're going to spread the meat juices all over your sink or wherever you happen to be doing the thaw. Uh Ahuva got Dina Road in. How do I explain clearly and simply to my busy overwhelmed followers, many of whom often host multi-course meals, that chicken soup you've left cooling on the stove overnight is not safe to serve, that no amount of boiling will change that. And this goes back to a huge argument that was, I know had with uh Ruleman and Harold McGee and a bunch of other people a couple years ago. But your comments, please.
+
+[59:05] Yeah, so again, think back to the earlier part of the conversation and Bacillus serious, right? Bacillus spores will survive the cooking process of the soup. Um, if the spores are there, they can germinate and grow. They will make a heat stable toxin. And so no amount of boiling will get rid of that.
+
+[59:22] Staphylococcus aureus also makes a heat-stable toxin, so it can be there. Um, and so for sure, it's not a best practice. It's not safe. You may get you may skate by if you're lucky enough to avoid uh contamination with bacillus, but someday your luck will run out and you will give somebody food poisoning. Now, if you if I pressure cook something and then I don't take the lid off the pressure cooker and let it cool, that's okay, right?
+
+[59:44] Because the inside's not getting recontaminated. Um if you pressure cooked it, like what you're talking about, like home canning, kind of pressure cooking? No, like let's say you're making, let's say you're doing a stew and you pressure cook it and then you turn it off and then you go to bed, you know, put it away, but you haven't opened it yet. It's fine, isn't it? Well, but well, but there might still be spores in that in the ingredients, right?
+
+[1:00:11] Uh, which will have survived the cooking process. So that will that will eliminate the Staphococcus aureus risk, but it won't eliminate the Bacillus serious risk or the Clostridian perfringance risk. Even at pressure cooking temperatures. I I think so. Again, the devils and the details with respect to the temperatures involved, but these spores are incredibly heat resistant.
+
+[1:00:31] Nastasia hates spores. And that's all the time. Jared Johnson said, uh, can you please talk about well you you already talked about perpetual stew? Um is the real danger in the practice of refreezing food that has been defrosted, is that you can forget how many times you have done this, it wouldn't know how long the food has been cumulative cumulatively defrosted. And I know you probably you saw this on Twitter, but do you have any comments?
+
+[1:00:55] Yeah, I so it was too complicated. I didn't have time on Twitter, but basically the idea is the big thing I worry about with repeated freeze thaw cycles, and you know this as a chef, is the quality is gonna go to hell, right? Like so the quality won't be good. Now, theoretically, if you're taking the organism up into the danger zone and then back down, you might be getting some bacterial growth over time. But again, depending upon the temperatures and the times and the cycles, I'm really just mostly worried about quality because you know, if you freeze thaw food multiple times, it just destroys the texture.
+
+[1:01:27] And so it's just not gonna, it's just not gonna be good for that reason, not because of safety. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And is Capri San wants to know are you really worried about aflatoxins or not?
+
+[1:01:36] Like do you wake up and like afotoxin? No, I try to avoid eating moldy food. I I do as a kid, I ate a lot of peanut butter, and I do continue to eat peanut butter to this day. And so I do worry about maybe low levels of apletoxin over time. But you know, uh I I tend again if I was eating a lot of moldy foods, I would worry about it, but I I don't eat, I don't eat you know, moldy bread, and so I think that's pretty pretty good risk management there.
+
+[1:02:00] Pitch any moldy bread. Yeah, for sure I would. Don't throw away the moldy slice, pitch the whole thing. Well, again, it's it's all the in the details, right? Like it depends on how moldy it is.
+
+[1:02:11] Uh I've actually got a uh an assignment to do for a consulting assignment to do to do a deep dive on moldy bread to come up with some definitive recommendations. So it really depends upon the amount of mold. It's just one small spot of mold on one slice, you can get rid of that. But you know, I find also that moldy bread can be surprising. Like I pulled away a moldy slice and then later on discovered that actually the mold had penetrated further than I thought.
+
+[1:02:33] And so, you know, molds are sneaky, so be be uh be alert. Uh yeah, be careful with moldy bread. Yeah. And last, uh Steve Lister wants to know do water bottles really expire and he uh has been using his container of miso paste forever. Is it fine as long as it's not furry?
+
+[1:02:49] Even miso, maybe if it is. Yeah, I would I would say miso paste again, I don't have the definitive uh pH and water activity in front of me, but if as long as there's no visible mold and it tastes okay, it's probably okay to use. Um, and then with respect to the dates on water bottles, yeah, that date is probably for not probably that date is for freshness and for quality, it's not for um microbiology. And so the the the water was good at day zero when it was sealed into the bottle. It's gonna be good um forever, basically, because there aren't any pathogens there.
+
+[1:03:21] If if there were, they they wouldn't they wouldn't grow in in water. All right. Well, uh, you know, we could go on this uh like this uh forever, but uh we would get in trouble if we did that. So uh Dr. Don, thanks for uh thanks for coming on.
+
+[1:03:35] And uh hopefully, you know, people who listen to this, they should oh John, what do you want to say about the Patreon? They should follow you, bug counter on uh the Twitter. And I'm I see you as answer people's questions there all the time. We get somehow sucked into the same Twitter storm sometimes. So uh Yeah, but for all our listeners, uh you guys should sign up for our Patreon if you haven't done so yet.
+
+[1:03:54] Uh it gives you access to the call and number, free or you know, this uh whole chat room feature that Jackie Molecules has set up on Discord, uh advanced notice about upcoming guests where you can ask questions. Your questions will always get answered on air. Um, just a whole lot of perks. So check out patreon.com slash cooking issues and sign up. Who do we have next week?
+
+[1:04:10] Eric Wareheim. Eric Wareheim with his new book Foodheim. Foodheim. Uh and uh thanks, Professor. On the way out, I would just like to, on a sad note, uh we mourn the passing this week of Ann Saxelby uh from Saxobe Cheesemongers.
+
+[1:04:25] Uh so our hearts go out to her whole family, uh Patrick Martins and uh Heritage Food people. Uh cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive in Newstand Studio, the Rockefeller Center. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good.
+
+[0:21] Yeah? Do everything's good? Things are fantastic. Yeah, we know it's not. I love it.
+
+[0:25] It's a good lie, though. It's strong. It's a gets a good move. It's very nice. We got uh John here.
+
+[0:29] How are you doing? Doing great. Yeah, we have Joe Hazen rocking the booth over here. Hey, how are you doing? Yeah, we have our uh we have our man from California in Mexico City again.
+
+[0:40] We got uh Jackie Molecules. How are you doing, Jack? I'm great. Yeah. And by the way, if you're listening, uh if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507.
+
+[0:52] That's 917-410-1507. And if you're not listening live on Patreon, why don't you go to Patreon and figure out how you can rectify that in the future? Uh today's special guest is a very good guet for us, Eric Werheim, whose new book is Foodheim, a Culinary Adventure. How are you doing, Eric? Great.
+
+[1:11] Yeah. I'm very excited, big fan. Uh huh. Uh, you might uh also know him as part of the uh comedy team of uh Tim and Eric, whose most recent thing, and I hear you're working on a season two, is uh Beef House. Beef House is kind of like it's like beef house.
+
+[1:28] I'm just gonna say prune shortage. Yeah. It really ties in with the culinary scene on that episode for sure. And health. Yeah, it's uh it's all about health and wellness and hot tubs and and uh I would say, you know, I'm working on a book myself, actually, called The Miracle of Moisture Management.
+
+[1:49] And I'd say most of that beef house section of uh storyline is about uh fluid management. Would you say? I would absolutely say that's right on the money. Yeah, fluid management problems. So uh, you know, I can't really discuss it on the air, but you should uh you should uh check it out.
+
+[2:07] Um and uh I first actually became aware of your kind of foodness uh because I didn't realize how real that whole kind of character with you and is uh Aziz Anzari was in master of none, but you know yeah, you know, both of you really do that kind of stuff, right? Yeah, I mean we shot in Italy on season two because we're like pasta freaks and we wanted to be in an amazing environment. And you know, like if you're gonna work, you might as well work in a place where you can get an amazing dinner afterwards. So that's why we did it. Yeah, uh just so you know, she might not say anything about it because she hates being called out on it, even though I'm about to call her out, but Nastasia gets triggered with pasta conversations because she used to own a pasta company with uh Mark Ladner.
+
+[2:48] Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think so. It was good. Pasta was very good.
+
+[2:54] It was pasta that they had pre-styles. You want to describe as pasta that you had parcooked? Parcooked and frozen, a secret um process. And then we closed because nobody liked it. Amazing.
+
+[3:05] It's not because no one liked it. You were in a crap tank location. And no one liked it. What do you mean no one liked it? Everyone liked it.
+
+[3:11] Well, you were serving Italian style pasta with the little with the little pellet in the middle to American schlubs. Yeah. Is what happened. That's you know, that's kind of what happened. Yeah.
+
+[3:21] Anyway. Uh I've put a little oh, there's a little Mark Ladner in my book. I saw that. As an homage to my favorite pastas ever. There's not a hundred layers in that lasagna.
+
+[3:31] It's a lie. You know, I've counted it, right? Uh yeah, I've tried to. Yeah, it's not. But you just you just go with it.
+
+[3:37] You just go, you just like let him say a hundred. By the way, uh before before we start, so I read uh there, you know, you you have like a little glossary of things in it. And one of the things that, you know, I've been around chefs a long time. You say, Chef's kiss, this book has already penetrated the zeitgeist because I have not heard people say this. I read it in the book.
+
+[3:56] Today I'm biking over here on NPR, and I hear the the the host talk about a chef's kiss to someone. I was like, what the hell? You've already permeated freaking NPR? What the hell is this? It's just a food heim is just a global sensation in every single word.
+
+[4:12] Yeah. Chef kiss, dankadin, gorgeousness, all that stuff is is what you're gonna be hearing now. Now, let me ask you a question about a chef's kiss. Is it do you because I could see it one of two ways, and I don't remember whether you describe it in the book. Is it like an American, like like a southern, like an open hand, mwah?
+
+[4:31] Or is it like you make the kikatso fi hand and say, Although none of you have actually kissed a chef, and I was with one for six years, and I can tell you it tastes like alcohol. Oh zing. Um that was wrong. All right, but which one of those two non-actual kisses was it? Is it?
+
+[4:58] It's the second one. You take your hand, and you do you don't you don't want to do anything sloppy, you know. Uh um, this is a delicate thing. You could do a chef's kiss to your food, do it too someone else that's doing something great in the kitchen, to it to your family, but doing something right. The fingers are together though.
+
+[5:14] Fingers are together, yeah. Okay. Absolutely. All right. Uh also, you uh are a winemaker, and I I have a uh question to ask you about it.
+
+[5:22] So uh he has a bubbly style, so we gotta talk about it because he does it a little bit differently. Uh Las Harris Wines, and here's what it says on your website, and this is what I gotta ask you about. It says it's the first good celebrity wine. And so my question to you is this Do you think that Les Claypool is not a celebrity, or do you hate his wine? I have not tried his wine, but I have tried some others, and I I I in the book there's a little secret area where I list some celebrity wine that I may or may not like.
+
+[5:53] Well, according to your website, you don't like any of them. Which is weird because your boy from Poison has a wine, but he didn't make it. Yeah. I mean, jump on Jovi's got one, you know, a lot of people have them. New Jersey not known for its wine.
+
+[6:07] New Jersey not known for its wine. It's just, you know, cut like what you're coming from comedy, coming from beef house, where I do prune shortage jokes. It's a it was a hard transition to making uh natural wine and some fine wines that we're making right now. So it was like just trying to get the word out there that I actually love this stuff. And we we this is uh is very hard to make good wine, and and we tried to get that message across, and I think we did.
+
+[6:36] Well, I mean it's it's uh really nice on your website because you go into extreme detail on how each uh wine is produced. It's almost like like if you had the grapes, you give the recipe. Like you're straight up, you're like, you know, uh this many NTUs when I when we when we fill, you know, as we filtered it, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. I mean, which is I think is a very strong move because it's kind of like look, this is how it's made, which I think appeals to, you know, uh it appeals to like kind of like the wine nerds, not in the kind of old school, like I have more money than you, wine nerd way, but the people who like to know how things are made, you know. Yeah.
+
+[7:14] Um, yeah, we just it the whole world of like winemaking, also natural winemaking, it's so dorky. You know, people are like, well, you add too much sulfur, so you're not, you know, labeled this or that. And we're just like, all that. We're gonna literally be the most transparent winemakers out there and and list what we do, and then you can decide whatever you want to call it and what uh, you know, whatever uh classification you want to put in. But you know, Joel, my partner, winemaker, is just he's a scientist, and he's he's he's just doing crazy things in California that no one else is doing to make like the best, you know, I think one of the best natural wines, low intervention wines out there.
+
+[7:59] So it's I I love that how in depth we do and we we also have like a system of notes, you know. We have we share notes and we have this diary when he's working up there. So I I want to know too. I'm so fascinated by all like the technical stuff of what we're trying with different kind of aging vessels and different kind of fermenters and all that stuff. It's really cool.
+
+[8:17] So so your sparkling, I'm gonna ask you in particular on this. You call it uh a method untraditionnel. You say you're Frenchly French, John. Say, say say say give it to me in the full French. Give me the full French.
+
+[8:27] What method method uh non tradition, untraditional. Method non traditionnel. There you go. All right. And it's like so you you do the you do the the full like age in the sucker on the leaves, do the disgorging, but then no dosage.
+
+[8:40] You want to talk about that? Yeah, it's just you know, we originally came out of the gates calling it a pet mat, and we got you know, a little backlash from some people saying it's actually not a pet mat. It's more of a champagne style, you know, a method and sestral, but it's actually a slightly different that, you know, we don't put add sugar to it. We just do it our way of making kind of a almost pet mat, but you know, very low uh RS. So it's just it tastes like a super dry champagne.
+
+[9:12] That's kind of and we're just like owning that because we love it. We don't really care about the classification of pet nut or not. We just want to make an insane sparking wine. If you try it, you'll be like, oh yeah, this doesn't taste like any of the flabby pet gnats that are out there. It's like it's super high acid and elegant.
+
+[9:30] I like you had to change the name because people were like it's actually not pet mats. Yeah, I know. It was yeah, it's it was interesting going into the natural wine world, like, oh my god, this is a real crazy nerdy scene, but also has so much soul, and I that's what I was I was very into the natty world at first because the passion of people making these things, especially in Europe, it was so cool. But then you realize you find you gotta find your own lane. And Joel, my my partner kind of has been teaching me that throughout the whole process.
+
+[10:01] It's really cool. Yeah. So uh as a guy who kind of grew up drinking you know traditional wine, wine, you know, wines. Like it now, when I go to a place that's known for its natural wines. Who didn't we have a whole natural wine thing with Fabulous and Jeremiah once a couple years ago?
+
+[10:17] That's before my time. Anyways, uh I was like, you know, my standard thing now when I go out is like, give me something that's funky, but not like too overtly flawed. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's that's a great it's the the idea of the the these natural wine bars are everywhere.
+
+[10:35] I'm in New York, it's insane. I was just there for a couple weeks. I couldn't believe it. There's more natural wine bars than cocktail bars nowadays. And that's a I think it's a huge problem that th they're celebrating a lot of these wines that are I call them funk a dunks.
+
+[10:49] But just like, you know, they're not just funky, but they're f up and flawed. And a lot of people have you know, a lot of people have the reason they mess up. It's too gay or too much bread or whatever. They'll just go with it because or s or smoke tink, which is a huge problem in California, they'll have to release it just so they can pay their mortgage. You know, I I get it.
+
+[11:13] I get it. But I'm with you. I've I've I just try to lean into wines that are made a little bit more in the clean style, and you can have kind of that amazing natural expression without that funk a dunk that makes you want to bomb. You uh you uh had me a taint. Yeah.
+
+[11:31] Um All right. So Lynn, let's talk about the book a little bit. Uh first of all, uh I read and I'm only asking you this because I want my son to get a job there because he's memorized everything there is to know about the subway sandwich uh uh you know, the the entire France you worked at a subway. Yes. I worked at a subway in high school only because there was this goth girl in high school that I was in love with named Raven and I was and I just was very into like skinny puppy, Susanna Banshees.
+
+[12:01] Oh skinny puppy. I got a job there. Yeah, I was like ver my first show was skinny puppy at the Trocadero. That's crazy. That's not normal.
+
+[12:10] It's not. I was like on the Vivisector? That was when I was transitioning to punk probably the big skinny puppy, like a big, very serious industrial moment. So I had like really dorky, like a ski jacket, but then I had combat boots. So I was like trying to make that awkward high school transition.
+
+[12:28] But um I don't know. Oh, anyways, yeah. So Raven worked there. I got a job there, and I was like, I would do anything just to make her happy. I would mop the floors, you know, really, really make my subway sandwiches the best they could be.
+
+[12:43] And then when Raven would compliment me, it was like, you know, you it was like the highest high a 16-year-old could have at that moment. And uh with Skinny Puppy mixed in, is Skinny Puppy the reason you became a vegetarian? They're all vegetarians. You were vegetarian for a couple of years. Are they?
+
+[12:57] Yeah, well, that whole album is is is anti-vivisection. That whole section of stuff that Ogil V was doing was all anti-vivisection stuff, right? V V I V I sect was anti-vivisection. Oh, that's cr uh yeah, I totally forgot about that part of it. I think it was more just him using decapitated heads on a tree.
+
+[13:18] I love it. You know, you know who didn't like skinny puppy? Everyone else in my college dorm. No one, no one appreciated it. No one appreciated the loud skinny puppy in the college dorm.
+
+[13:27] People don't like it. Oh, people like it, obviously. We liked it, you know, and whatever. Yeah. Uh so another thing, uh, I want to just have this out now.
+
+[13:36] You say that you went to uh sushi Sawada in Tokyo. Now Nastasia Lopez and I, we got to go to Jiro, and the man puts wh so much vinegar in in his rice, and Nastasia is still to this day angry at me because I ate my pea so quickly that we were out in under 20 minutes, right, Stas? We're out in under 20 minutes. And the next day, her boyfriend at the time, Mark Ladner, goes to Sawada and says it's the best sushi ever had in his life, and then says for the dessert, they gave him a freaking eggplant as a freaking dessert on its own, eggplant, and then won't tell us any more information about it. Didn't bother asking what kind of eggplant did we just walked out and just dropped that bomb on us while Nastasi and I were slaving away on the inside of like a hotel, like in the bowels of a hotel.
+
+[14:20] So did you did you have the eggplant for the dessert or what? What happened? No, he he gave us one of those Japanese gooseberries, like with the beautiful like leaves. Maybe it's not a gooseberry, but it's a um it had like the leaves on it, you kind of peeled back, and you had this just like burst of like citrus. It was amazing.
+
+[14:36] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No one's ever gonna pay for us to go back to uh Japan, Nastasia, so we'll probably I don't think I can ever go back to Sawada because I had a scrapers, I had a I had a scrapers incident.
+
+[14:50] If you'd like to hear about it, it's pretty amazing. What's that? What's this what's a scrapers incident? We call it a scraper. It was very it's very traumatizing to talk.
+
+[14:58] It's um, you know, it's very hard to get a reservation there. We did. I brought a friend that was not an sushi expert, and I tried to explain many times this is like a temple. Like you just don't talk, don't even look at anyone, you know, that that kind of thing. You're gonna eat a lot of stuff.
+
+[15:15] Are you okay with all these things? Uni and like uh red clam, like the textural things. And she was like, Yeah, and we get there, and and for that day we had four courses of uni, you know, which is a lot for even an Uni lover from all over Hokkaido and everywhere. And she just couldn't do it. And eventually she started scraping the uni behind my water glass.
+
+[15:38] And I was like, What are you doing? Do not scrape your uni. First of all, don't scrape your uni and don't put it next to me. Now I have to eat it. And he's Sawada times just watching me being like, You will never return.
+
+[15:50] You will never be welcome back here. And I was like, So who knows if I could ever go by it? I mean, that's the issue where uh you go to a place, it's all uh they all hyperlocalize when we went everything was freaking uh that uh pike that you know that long that long fish with with all the bones what do they call that you know I mean because it was springtime and I was like I get it it's in season now okay you know what I mean like I don't need to have everything be that you know what I mean yeah yeah I I I agree I don't like it when it's over over the top of one kind of thing but still the experience I didn't get to go to Jiro I wish I I went to his son spot which was beautiful but I never got to go to the um the the dad's place. Does his son also love to have a highly vinegared rice you know I didn't I didn't feel like it was too out of whack. I felt like it was pretty it was pretty good.
+
+[16:40] It was more casual but you know that was um I remember it being beautiful. I mean how the heck much less casual more casual you know then 20 minutes in and out 300 a pop can you get then giro I mean like I know I mean there's a vinegar if you guys come to LA you have to try have you heard of uh Morihiru Jeff Mori's new place he has a place it's like on the east it's it's on the east side in Atwater which is crazy to have a 400 like omakate on the east side of LA but he's a vinegar freak and it's really interesting it's very polarizing. People love it people don't like it. Uh I'm still in the I I got a takeout for the pandemic so I I can't judge it yet I have to be there of course can't judge on a takeout I appreciate that you can't judge on a takeout we got a caller for you caller on the air what's up you're on the air yeah, this I uh know that Booker and Dex has these great products and so does Cinco Corporation. Like the uh the urinal shower and the in the pasta bear.
+
+[17:41] I'm just thinking that there's an opportunity for for it for for Dave to do a commercial for the Cinco Corporation or vice versa. This seems like the the ultimate possible collaboration in the universe, I think. If if I had to pick one collaboration, it would actually not be one of the things that I've worked on. It would be one of the things Nastasia has worked on, the wine Santa, I think you fing hate. Uh yes, but uh I still think that there's something there.
+
+[18:08] Like for a comedy potential, for an actual item, I think it's a rancid idea. But for like a comedy potential, or like, you know, for a one-off at a party, I mean I think it's fundamentally so Eric, just so you don't call her if you in case you know. So the idea is is that you get a uh like a like a a supermarket Santa animatronic figure complete with polyester white beard. You with me? Yeah.
+
+[18:33] Yeah. Preferably one that dances. You still with me. It's got like little wired legs and it dances like a hula style dance. Except it's Santa size.
+
+[18:41] Full size. Come on, please. And then you you put a punch bowl in its arms and then it vomits wine out of its mouth into It's like a fountain. It's like a wine fountain, but it's Santa. She's also done wine zombie.
+
+[18:56] Actually, wine zombie was first before Santa, right? Wasn't wine zombie the first? Wine zombie was first for high. You had a wine rabbi? No, but somebody requested that.
+
+[19:05] Oh, and you said no? You said you wouldn't build it. I didn't say I wouldn't build it. John, do you imagine? I don't know if that's true.
+
+[19:12] Eric, here's how this works. She loves this thing, and then she makes me build it. And then I said to her, I was like, listen, I was like, listen, we work it with people in Shenzhen, which is where they make all those animatronic figures anyway. I was like, get in touch with someone. I did, and you said, Why are you bothering about it?
+
+[19:26] I did not know no. You asked our agent who hasn't even successfully built the freaking products for us yet. You asked her to, I was like, you find the pl whatever. Do some costing. Eric, how much would you pay for some?
+
+[19:38] Here's the other thing, right? Let's say you have this wine Santa. Someone overserves themselves, like, you know, walks out in front of a truck and gets pancaked. You know? Get overserved at any bar.
+
+[19:48] And it would have to, what are you gonna fill it with? Chocolate, so it's constantly aerated. Some sort of it only serves chocolate. Anyway. I'm very into that product idea.
+
+[20:00] Even in my book, I I talk about making ice luges for parties, which I've done in honor of many, many ice loges. Sometimes it was body parts. Sometimes it's offensive, but also um exciting. So I'm I'm very into this idea. Great, Eric.
+
+[20:16] Let's do it together. You guys, you guys, you guys do it. And like, you know, I'll help. I'll help. No, no.
+
+[20:22] I'll help. Listen. No, thank you. By the way, I mean no thank you. You've never been able to build one.
+
+[20:26] You always ask me to do it. I always do it. Wine Grammy. Remember Wine Grammy? Anyway, uh it's the Victoria, it's the it's the dog with the listening to its uh it's the Grammy where the it I forget.
+
+[20:37] Does the dog spit into the phonograph? Or does the phonograph spit into the dog? Dog's you just said dog. The dog spits. Yes.
+
+[20:46] Uh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um the problem with luge is listen, people, let me tell you, if any of you I I the worst I've ever been overserved was on a luge in uh in Sweden at an ice hotel. Isn't that your problem though?
+
+[21:04] Like, shouldn't you? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, I'm about to say, of course it's your problem. I'm about to tell people the answer. I wasn't the one who caused us to have a $30,000 bill because I peed on an irreplaceable ice block that had to be chainsawed out of the ice hotel and replaced.
+
+[21:14] That was not me. But I did get viciously overserved. Do not, if someone's pouring an ice luge for you, do not feel obligated to take the whole pour. Whenever you're done, just close your mouth. Just close your mouth.
+
+[21:35] Like, like at this point in my life, I'm old enough. Like, look, I had enough to drink in my life. I'm fine. If I want to close my mouth and have the rest hit my face, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. And I recommend that to other people as well.
+
+[21:48] I'm just gonna say that. You know? Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. Because it because it you always get someone who has uh what's it called?
+
+[21:55] Uh you have someone who who, you know, with uh bad intentions at the top of the luge. You know what I mean? They're not metering in with the luge. They get the speed pour, they pick some sort of filth at some sort of like blue-colored filth, and then they just like dump it down that luge. That's a mistake.
+
+[22:12] You know? You can have a little bit of it, anyways. Uh all right. Also, uh growing up, spent some time in Baltimore, talk to me about Old Bay. I mean, old Bay is an essential nostalgic spice, you know, doing the blue crab boils or steaming them, actually, you know, paper towel.
+
+[22:33] It's like something about the uh newspaper and the old spice, you know, licking it off your fingers. It's just it's it's perfect. Yeah, my dad's family's from around there. I appreciated that in your crab cake uh recipe, you just said lump crab and didn't call out like in your next crab recipe where you said preferably dungness because you knew you would get smacked around by your Baltimore friends if you specify you would just get totally punched in the face by them if you did that. So yeah.
+
+[22:59] Why old what the Bay, by the way, people, is Chesapeake Bay, not bay leaf. Chesapeake Bay season. Old Chesapeake Bay. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.
+
+[23:11] Yeah, I mean, I put like capers in that recipe, and uh, but then I put uh my one of my best friends from Baltimore who does who will who wants to fight over that, you know, the idea of like owning that. Even my grandmom would turn over in her grave if she knew that I put capers in there. But you gotta take a little liberty. Yeah, but you have we have a picture of your buddy pushing it away in the in the book. Yeah.
+
+[23:36] Just to show like, you know, I mean it's not everyone knows what it is to be like from Baltimore or Philly, and that's that is that attitude of like you love what you grew up with and you will die with that. And I just love that that energy is amazing. Speaking of pushing away, you called out as one of your favorite ingredients, and I was almost like, oh my god. But then I looked at the recipe where you used it. Caper berries, and I was like, holy crap.
+
+[23:57] He's gonna put like some giant freaking caper berries on it, but you slice them very thin, in which case I was like, fine. Yeah. Fine. Yeah. It's more of a a visual, you know, it's a visual thing.
+
+[24:08] It looks like little mini pepperoni. Yeah. So it's it's if I never have someone expect me to eat a whole salt balm caper berry again in my life too soon. If if no one ever hands me a full Seshuan button in my cocktail and thinks it's going to be a pleasant experience for me, also too soon. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[24:27] It's like a whole Sesuan button's just not pleasant. I like Sichuan peppercorn. I know you have uh I forget which one of your recipes you do the uh the m the the mala ribs. Yeah, yeah. Oh hey, the ribs, by the way.
+
+[24:36] So in your ribs, this is it. I like I like that you have a lot, you you have not do not have a fear in the book of putting recipes out where people will fight you for it, right? So in your ribs you're you're a foil the whole way kind of a fella, right? So it's like it's like uh crutch and flash, you know, I if you were you're gonna use Texas parlance. So you do the whole freaking thing in the foil, then undo baste and flash to to dry them off on the outside.
+
+[25:04] And I have to say, yeah, I kind of agree with you. Like, what's the point of letting them dry out? It's not sexy. I've tried these in everything in smokers, I've tried boiling them. I've you know, I like every recipe in this book, I really test it.
+
+[25:19] But to me, I want uh I and I also watch so many like Texas championship barbecue videos. I got a sex with it. These like big boys that you know they like it, they like it a little more firm down there, but it it you know, this is just how I do it. I I take them a little farther, almost falling off the bone. You can still kind of hold them up.
+
+[25:38] But I don't know, I think they're just the juiciest that way. It's like you know, and making the sauce with some of the the fat that drips off. I'm just like, okay, this is how I do it. You know, I I also think because I started in comedy, I have a little bit of freedom here. No one's gonna come after me and be like, how dare you?
+
+[25:55] Well, I mean, I am. No, I'm kidding. Uh but the the thing about it is I think that you know, if you're serving a blank rib, everyone gets obsessed with the smoke ring, which needs to be done dry and you know. Who cares? I don't care.
+
+[26:09] You know what I mean? Like, I mean, i if you're do if you're doing a blank rib, if you're doing a blank rib, I get it. You know what I mean? But like like you know, like why would I want to sit around all day trying to figure out exactly how to tweak my my uh you know, my cooker to get exactly this thing when I could just wrap this up. Yeah, you know?
+
+[26:28] I it I so agree. It's I also feel it's like there's certain places in the world that are so special, like Japan, like Texas, like Franklin's and Austin, where you're like, you know, when I when I'm there, I will taste that smoke that has been going all night with that special kind of oak, you know, all that stuff. I it makes it more special, but that that's where it happens, and when I'm at home, I'm actually doing it how I want it, you know. And it's it's a lot easier too. That's a big part of it.
+
+[26:56] Well, so you but okay. So some of the recipes that you do, you bend some of the recipes you do it the way you like it, and some you bend a little bit to traditional. I'll give you an example. So you you you did you did your your Florida style fried fish uh sandwich, right with panko, right? So it's it's panko coat.
+
+[27:14] Yeah. Right. And I was like, Yeah. Florida panko? Oh, okay.
+
+[27:18] And then I was like, oh my god, he's gonna I was like, he's gonna do a crab cake recipe, he's gonna put panko on it. And and you did cracker meal. I was like, fine, fine. You know what I mean? And then, you know, when you did your grandma schnitzel, you did breadcrumbs.
+
+[27:30] But then for your for the parm, you went back to panko. It's like what the heck? I was like, I couldn't figure out crazy. I couldn't figure out. I couldn't figure it out like when it was okay to be when you were like, you know what?
+
+[27:42] I want that crunch. I need that panko, versus like you're like, I can't do that because my buddy in the car will actually punch me in the face instead of just Yeah, well, I mean, to me, I'm more afraid of people from Baltimore than I am afraid of people from um uh Sascarilla, Florida. You know, um, you know, I think, you know, it's yeah, with the fish free, yeah. First of all, I just love crisp. I like the whole book is like an honor to crispy thing.
+
+[28:09] So when we do parm, I just love it with you know, I just I douse it with sauce, so I feel like just the extra level of Christmas will let it last even hours, even to the night when you're doing round two of chicken parm, that panko will hold up. So yeah, I do respect tradition, but I also it's it's just what I do at home. I've tested it with every I test it with corn flakes, that's pretty fun too, but um you know, all that kind of stuff. You ever you ever go to uh a lot of the time. You ever go down a panko hole and research how they make panko?
+
+[28:39] It's a good hole. No, I I haven't. It's a good hole. It's like they're baked, they're baked between these elect i it it basically they make like a almost like a capacitor, and then they shove the bread dough in and they bake it electrically so there's no crust and it just like shoots up and makes those long lines because they bake it between these two metal plates that's crustless, and then they they dry it to a very specific level and they shred it in a very specific way and grade it depending on it's uh it's a whole thing. You wouldn't I I think you would enjoy the panko hole.
+
+[29:12] Yeah, I'll look that up. I need to get a I love getting those holes. Yeah. Speaking of holes two videos. Uh circles.
+
+[29:18] So uh have you ever met uh there's a whole ch the first chapter of your book, really the first two chapters, right? If you count pizza as a separate chapter, right? No circles. But yeah, pizza's a circle food, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[29:30] So but it's not its own chapter, because it's a whole section on it. I don't know how you've considered. I yeah. Anyway, so talk to me about circles. Have you ever met Nils Norin?
+
+[29:40] No, I haven't. Nils Norrin, you need to meet him. He uh he was the guy uh who, you know, was working with Marcus and did the menu at Akkavit back when they got their their three star, and then he came to run the French culinary, which was where I met him. The man can turn any food and taught me how to turn any food into a circle. The man used more meat glue than any anybody else on earth, and he would convert everything into circles.
+
+[30:06] You name it, he would make it into a circle. First a tube, and then he would slice the tube into perfect circles. Like constantly. I spent years just making tubes and circles. But what is he what is your love of the circle?
+
+[30:18] I mean, I I got into a moment of just like when I when I got into ring molds and cooking eggs in a ring mold to get that perfect or kind of like McDonald's circle. You know, it all goes back to this like fast food visual thing from my childhood that I love. I'm also like somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to things. So like when I'm eating ceviche, like piling it up in this nice presentation versus it just being like sloppy out there. It's just it's a presentational thing that I love.
+
+[30:49] It's also just ridiculous to have a whole chapter on circle foods, and that's why I do it as well. You gotta get with Nils, man. Nils Nils used to Nils Nils' thing was is that if you turn everything into a perfect tube, it will cook perfectly evenly, right? And every portion will be exactly the same. So uh he'll he would take a salmon, a side of salmon, and he would, you know, skin it, take off the the bloodline in the middle, then he would cut it all the way down, and then flip so two very thin triangles, right?
+
+[31:19] And then he would flip them end for end, meat glue them together, roll them into a tube, and he's like, Look, now every piece of salmon is perfect. I was like, all right, Nils. All right, you have me sold. So we chicken tubes, salmon tubes, fish tubes, uh mean uh sorry, shrimp tubes. He would take shrimp, the big ones, and he would like end for endometrium, so it had two tails and turn the shrimps into tubes.
+
+[31:41] Lamb tubes, any kind of food, tubes. We would do uh we would do turduccin tubes, we would do all kinds of tubes. Doz remember the tubes? I love it. Yeah.
+
+[31:53] So uh I was well you you gotta meet. You gotta meet. Tell you. Yeah, I we've got to set it up. Also, in your uh list of equipment, you say people should own a rice cooker, and I agree.
+
+[32:02] Do you have a recommendation where I use Zojirushi man? What are you? Yeah, I just use the standard one that I've I have for many, many years. It's still crushing it, and it's you know, I use it every other day. I'm really into like doing a lot of stir, I'm like stir-fry freak right now.
+
+[32:20] Um, so the rice is always going. It's so it's such it takes so much of the headache and the uh the time away from getting good rice. My Zoji Rushi is 18 or 19 years old now, 18 years old, and it once died, and then I unplugged it for a week and plugged it back in, it came back to life. I don't know what the hell happened to it. Uh but I committed a crime against it a couple of days ago.
+
+[32:44] People, I want to see this is this is the PSA for the for the episode. If you're going to do grits in your rice cooker, that's fine. Remember, if you put milk in your grits, because you're gonna do like a shrimp and grits kind of a situation, it's gonna boil over like a mother. You cannot put you cannot put large quantities of milk into your rice cooker and think that it won't extrude grits all up through that thing. I thought I'd lost it.
+
+[33:10] I thought I had lost it. I thought I had lost a cooker, but uh it came back. So I was glad you gotta go induction, I think, on the on the Zoji Rushi rice cooker. The induction is like a game change because then the pan is induction friendly, so you can use the pan on your induction, and it's just so freaking even. It's just so even.
+
+[33:27] Yeah. Yeah, it's it's beautiful. Even down to just the the um the tones that you hear, the Japanese cones that you started it, and when your rice is finished, it just fills your whole house with this magical melody. I had to uh my my son uh is uh uh has autism, so he hated it. So I had to, and he would never let me cook rice.
+
+[33:49] Yeah. So I had to take it apart the very first week I I or you know I had to take it apart and snip the snip the wires to the speaker. So I have a I have a deathly silent Zoji Rushi. Yeah. Yeah, so it's like that's amazing.
+
+[34:05] Yeah, he wouldn't uh yeah, you never know. Uh so listen, we have a question in on uh from uh uh what's with the Patreon that I thought might be uh good because you have a whole pizza section. And so we'll have your answer and my answer. We'll talk about it. Uh by the way, your pizza section, what's in uh interesting about it is you you write it from perspective of you're gonna use a home oven, right?
+
+[34:27] So that's like you're gonna use a home oven. And just before I get to to uh Frank's question here, I will say for the record, uh first of all, you put brown sugar in your standard pizza dough. What's up with that? I mean, it's just the way that I t I was taught, and I just love the flavor. Um, and it just works.
+
+[34:46] It's just I think it adds a little bit to the coloring also uh for ovens that are don't get hotter than 450 degrees. You know, we've tested it without and it's not as like caramel-y. Um, so it's it just works. I forgot are you I forget. Are you a light brown or a dark brown?
+
+[35:04] In terms of like the blistering? No, the sugar. I don't remember which one you use, whether you use light brown sugar or dark sugar. Um I use light brown sugar. I don't know what's in this.
+
+[35:13] Um, let me look at the red packed brown sugar. Yeah, I do light brown. Yeah. So uh so for the record, uh go buy the book, but for the record it's two percent your standard recipe is two percent salt, five percent of this baker's percentage, obviously, people. Come on, get with it.
+
+[35:27] Three percent brown sugar, although Wiley hates baker's percentage, and uh 65% hydration uh with AP. And uh you do uh uh do people pronounce it? Because I don't I don't really talk to bread people. Oh, is it auto-lease or auto lice? I would say lice, auto lights.
+
+[35:41] So you do an auto lice, right? Then you knead it, then you rest, you do a 2X stretch and fold on it, and then you retard it in the fridge before cooking it, right? That's your standard dough. Yeah. All right.
+
+[35:51] I think it's a good thing. Yeah, we do yeah, we added a couple extra like kind of bread making steps in there that I thought were really fun, but also like I don't know, it just makes the dough really beautiful versus a lot of the traditional recipes. And your need is for four minutes, I think. Remember, you're it's not just a straight four minute need because you you do the the two stretching folds. I'm just giving a shorthand to people because a lot of our listeners, you know, they can understand the shorthand.
+
+[36:15] Now, from Frank Mosca, Frank Mosca writes in, hey, my dough is he'd so he goes Caputo, right? He's going uh Italian on here. Hundred uh he does the double zero uh hundred percent caputo. He's at seventy five percent. He's going for Neapolitan.
+
+[36:29] He's going for Neapolitan. I forgot to mention this. All right. 75% water, he's a two percent salt, uh, a quarter percent yeast, so he's doing an overnight, a quarter of one percent. So he's go going overnight on it, right?
+
+[36:39] And he does uh in an outdoor oven, it's seven hundred uh Fahrenheit. So it's like kind of an in betweener. It's not like fully, you know, maples hot, but it's eh hot. You know what I mean? He says, I generally like the results, except for the texture of the crust.
+
+[36:53] Not long after I remove the baked pizza, the crust goes spongy, especially the bottom. How can I get my crust to stay crisper for longer? Is this a matter of manipulating the ingredients? Dot dot dot handling of dough before baking dot dot dot or moisture management after the bake. Thanks.
+
+[37:09] I mean, I'm gonna get your take on it. My take is that Neapolitan pizza just does that. Don't you if you want it crispy, don't eat Neapolitan pizza. What's your take on it? Yeah.
+
+[37:18] I mean, I I recently, it's so funny I wrote this book, and then all I make now is Neapolitan dough because I got one of those uh big propane ovens outside, and it's just like so fun to use. But I still I I still take it a little, I I take the pizza cook a little further, and then I'm a big fan of you know those w uh wire racks on, you know, and just kind of keeping the pizza elevated to stay crispy instead of you know making contact with the pizza that the your plate or whatever. And I it's uh my pizza stays firm all night, you know. I just I just but I I I make sure the your you gotta make sure your pizza stone is is really hot to to get that effect. And a lot of Neapolitan people just don't want to that sounded real dirty, Eric.
+
+[38:06] My pizza stays firm all night. Yeah, it's firm. It's very firm. I'm not against re-crisping either. Are you against re crisping?
+
+[38:14] No, I mean that whole cast iron thing is is awesome. Um you mean like recrisping in the same night? Yeah. So like in other words, like tossing it back in. Yeah, like so like you know, you you put it in for however long, so it's 700.
+
+[38:28] It he's he's gotta be doing like three minutes, right? Something like that, somewhere in that range. So, like, because he's not doing a 90-second pie at 700, right? So like he's doing something like three minutes. Uh pull it out, you know, let it let it sit for for a little while.
+
+[38:41] It'll sog up. Maybe if you if you need to, you can illuminum foil the top. If the top's real brown at that point, throw it back in for a couple of seconds and blast the water out of the bottom, no? Yeah, I I think that would be an easy fix. Yeah.
+
+[38:56] Now uh yeah, I don't have you read the modernist pizza. The new one. Have you read the new modernist pizza? Uh no, I didn't. I haven't read it.
+
+[39:03] Yeah. So they crap on uh on the New Haven style pizza in it quite quite heavily. Quite a big crap they take on the on the New Haven style pizza. You call out the Peppies and the clam pie, which by the way, it's a good pie. I I I think that the issue is is it's not you know, if you've had all of like the modern, like amazing, you know, pies and you know, they they also travel the world eating pizza, you know, because they got like nothing but money.
+
+[39:28] And uh, you know, they they're crapping on it, I think, because I think they were expecting it to change their life in a way. I think it's just it is what it is. Why should it be something else? Yeah. I don't yeah, I totally agree.
+
+[39:42] I I mean I had a pretty revolutionary moment when I first had it, but I've been so many times now. And like it's just a particular style, and I I think it's like very different than anything else. It's really, really an interesting experience. And it's in that I don't know. I love everything about the the vibe and the way the pizza tastes.
+
+[40:01] So I'm like a big fan. But I also like I also like I said before, I don't really do favorites. I just love that style. I love Chicago Deep Dish. I love pizza in Naples.
+
+[40:12] Like I you know, I love pizza in Japan. It's they're all fucking great. I've had some I've had some that I've had some nasty pizza in Shenzhen. Uh like this durian pizza. I was like, I was so psyched to have durian pizza.
+
+[40:25] Oh no. I was so psyched. I was like, oh yeah. 'Cause I I'm not that guy that h and you don't hate sweet pizza because you got a honey on yeah, one of your pizzas has honey on it. Yeah.
+
+[40:34] And uh and I was like, you know, a lot of people like John, you hate a sweet pizza, right? You hate it, you hate a a Hawaiian pizza. Weren't you one of the or is it Nastasia? Nastasia hates it. You both like it?
+
+[40:43] Someone else, someone else that I know then. Joe, are you the hater of the Hawaiian pizza? One of you hates it. Anyway. I you know I don't know so much.
+
+[40:52] Yeah. Joe, Joe, Joe will fess up to hating it. My point is I was like, the durian pizza, I wasn't expecting it to be that sweet and for the crust to be that bad. If you're gonna do durian pizza, I think you have to get good at pizza first and then tackle the durian pizza. You know what I mean?
+
+[41:10] You have to have some certain baseline above like what every American school kid grows up with in the cafeteria at school. Once you make your crust past cafeteria crust, then you can put the durian on it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[41:25] It's uh I totally agree. You gotta have that base foundation. Eric, let me ask you. Yeah. Let me ask you a question.
+
+[41:32] There is a place in Yukon. I don't think I've talked about this on air yet. The place is called Pizza Mike's Pizzeria. I've never been, okay? Pizza m you with me?
+
+[41:42] Pizza Mike's Pizzeria. Now, my feeling is is that if your title is pizza, right? You you are pizza Mike. Right. So it's not like you can't cause your pizza mic.
+
+[41:53] Can there be anyone else with that title? Can you be like could you be like cause Dax was like, now I kinda wanna become pizza dax, but I don't think you can have both a pizza mic and a pizza dax. I think it's like like Highlander. I think there can only be one. What do you think?
+
+[42:08] I mean, I don't know. I think you I think it's open season for anybody. The more pizza, the better, in my in my opinion. I would go for it. Dax is going to take pizza mic down.
+
+[42:14] Dax needs to be a reviewer. Dax, we were so we were sent a book the other day, and it was a certain kind of thing, right? He's one of those books where it's like blah, blah, blah, A to Z recipes. Huge book. He picks it a thousand recipes.
+
+[42:30] He picks it up, he goes, not in alphabetical order, throws it down. He goes, That's not right. Walks away. I was like, hey, you should be, you should be a critic. Um all right, back to your pizza.
+
+[42:40] Pizza Hut, you call out Pizza Hut as being the first pizza that you liked. I, of course, grew up, and you make a personal pan pizza in it. Uh, you know, my my high school band wrote a song about personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[42:54] It was a it it's a good thing, Pizza Hut. Back then. It's great. I mean, it yeah. I don't know if it was just I was uh a young tot and I just loved anything pizza, but I do feel that you know, that 30 years ago, if it was it was coming out a little bit better than they're doing it now, using a little bit more real stuff in there.
+
+[43:14] And uh I just I mean it was I still can remember it, and I just workshopped my personal pan to kind of have that that feeling. And it's it's pretty good. It's not that hard either. Well, I think, you know, in life you have to ask yourself, did I change or did it change? I think in this case, maybe you changed.
+
+[43:29] I don't know that Pizza Hut's changed that much. I think maybe you changed a little bit. I mean, but okay. Your pizza your personal pan pizza is like, because I was kind of surprised you didn't do it, Detroit. I gotta be honest, I was kind of surprised you didn't do it Detroit.
+
+[43:44] But on your on your and you don't, you you use the normal order on your on your Pizza Hut one, and you do the par bake. So like all standard Pizza Hut kind of tricks, like the oiling, the dimpling, the par bake, the sauce, the cheese. But you do freak out the edge. Is that a tip of the hat to Detroit? Because that is not a Pizza Hut situation.
+
+[44:03] That is not a that is not pizza. That's kind of just visual and except there's a place called Apollonia's in LA that does it really well. It's like it's that's a Detroit kind of square pie, which I make all the time. Like I I love it. But there's something about the circleness of the pan pizza that I wanted to like present in this book.
+
+[44:24] And also like that lace is just like that's just amazing to look at. I can't remember. Do you use a black pan for that? Do you use like uh because I think Pizza Hut uses black pans, don't they? I think I used to use like a um like a non stick cake pan that I I found.
+
+[44:41] Um I'm sure you know the company, I can't remember them now. It's a Detroit thing. It's the same kind of pants I use for Detroit pizza, too. Yeah, yeah. It's not like cast it's not like cast iron or anything like that.
+
+[44:51] No, it's that stamp steel stuff, right? That thin, the thin stuff that's got that glossy. That's just great. I think the classic mistake people make is you try to do a pizza like that in a regular, like shiny aluminum s a sheet pan, and the uh the emissivity of the aluminum is uh too low, and so your crust never browns up uh properly like it would if i in a dark metal uh pan. I think it's a classic mistake people make.
+
+[45:16] Yeah. You know? Yeah, I I d I I agree. I was making it. I was buying the unseasoned pans and I was seasoning it myself, taking like a whole day to season these pans and it it never came out properly.
+
+[45:27] It would stick or just not cook properly. So I I switched to their pre-seasoned ones and I'm like, oh, this is a game changer. You gotta get that gotta get that emissivity up to catch that radiation from your oven, my man. Yeah. I know.
+
+[45:40] Back on pizza. One last question. Lemon anchovy. Now, this is kind of a strange pizza because you put thinly sliced like uh raw lemons on the on the pizza along with the anchovies. Talk about it.
+
+[45:50] So I mean, first you gotta find those the sweetest, you know, youngest lemons you can. You can't put those big, gnarly, thick skinned guys on there and really get it super thin and then it's amazing. It becomes kind of like the sweet and sour thing that I've had many times in Italy, specifically like Campagna. So I try to replicate that for the and also get get some good anchovies and just it's always like that's the the winner. When I I do pizza nights like every week, that's always the one people are like, holy never had that.
+
+[46:22] That's insane. I love it. So it's um it's good. And you tell people to buy good anchovies, but you don't make them get the salts. I like oil pack.
+
+[46:31] I like oil pack and I like regular and I like Boca Ronis. I like them all like, you know, I like them all. Yeah. It's a yeah, the the the the you know, to the the salt ones are beautiful, but it takes that extra step. And I I try to make this book accessible.
+
+[46:48] There's some complicated things, but that was one thing that those oil packed ones are so amazing nowadays. If you find the right ones, it's crazy. All right, so let's move to the grandma section. Now the the the hard thing about this book is that you know, to t to interview someone about is that it's like the theme is just like kind of like all the stuff that you like and you like a lot of stuff. So it's like, you know you know, the through line is what you like, right?
+
+[47:13] So then but in the grandma section, I want to call out the uh the the roulade, the uh I forget the title you had for it. Ruladen. Yeah, with the with the egg in the middle. What's g talk t tell people about this? Vem a roll.
+
+[47:25] Yeah. Yeah, there's I mean, I made it it's so good. It's it's it's uh called Roladen, you know, it's a German recipe from my mom's my family's like village outside of Munich. I made a video online if anyone wants to watch it, like it's called Heime's House, and I cook it because it's it's kind of a somewhat complicated thing. You gotta pound out your meat really thin, you make a roll with with eggs and relish and bacon, and then you make this beautiful brown sauce.
+
+[47:51] It's like to me, uh even when I go home to my parents now, I asked for this dish. It just reminds me of growing up and being with my family in Germany. So, like grandma foods is all about that. Like going to gr grandma's house on Sundays, her house smells like brisket. You you pound some of those chalky mints while you're waiting because you're so hungry because you smell that you know r red cabbage going.
+
+[48:15] So yeah, you like red. You're you're you're uh you uh you on your kraut you call out red, you're a red man. Yeah, I love that rote kraut. I mean, I love the just the jar stuff from the Germany, it's really still holds up. It's great.
+
+[48:30] I mean, I try Yeah. But I I know I know many people are red crowd people. I know many people are a red crowd people. I don't know. Yeah, I think it's it as with this dish, I think it works also visually, you know, with the if you have Schwetzla and green cabbage, it's kind of like just it looks like a mushy thing, but having a little pop of red, I think is is nice.
+
+[48:50] Well, here's the thing about the spetzel. I was like, I was like, oh, he's gonna give a I was like he's gonna give a recipe, and then you're like, you know what? No. And you're like, no, you have to get my mom's, you literally, I believe, say you have to get my mom's phone number to get this recipe. Here's the thing.
+
+[49:05] Here's I I was trying to think, and you put the you put the picture in, they're there. You know what I mean? You tell people they could buy it in the supermarket, which of course they should not, right? Uh but then I was like, I was uh on my bike ride over here. I was thinking about it.
+
+[49:14] I was like, why, why? Why didn't he give the recipe? And he here's what I think. Tell me if I'm right. Because you didn't want to be that guy and lie and say that you could do it with a colander because you can't.
+
+[49:29] You freaking can't. Is that why? I mean, that is absolutely true because you need one of those special, like you just need a special tool to do it that we have, but it's uh it's also kind of difficult. It's also, you know, making a cookbook is there are certain prep parameters. I didn't want another page of you know uh recipes without photos, all that kind of stuff.
+
+[49:52] I thought if you could just get this, and even in my um in the sh uh uh in the video that I make it, I do like uh Papa Jelly, and that like that really works as well. So I think let's take it in steps here. Maybe the next book will do that. Yeah, you should special recipe. Because people, the Spenzels only, the special machine's only like 10 bucks.
+
+[50:11] It's like 10 or 12 dollars. You know what I mean? It's not even a lot of money for a normal size one. When the French culinary went out of business, John and uh John and I went and got like the full size one, the one that you can put over the giant stock pots that sit on the candy stoves, the one where you could like spazalize a cow-sized chunk of uh batter. And I was like, but I haven't had a reason to use it yet, but I'm super jacked for someday being able to use the giant, giant thing.
+
+[50:35] Yeah, and I've never tried to do board cut because a lot of the like old old school German style folks, they do this kind of board cut spetzel, which I don't really know how to make. It's a it's a stiffer dough, and they're like cutting it into the and it's on a floured board. I've never done it that way. I've never seen it that I've always I've never seen that either. Yeah, and you know what?
+
+[50:52] Crap crap on it. I I you get the machine, it's cheap, whatever. It's it's actually fairly forgiving. Uh I'm I'm very, very, very pro. Uh now, uh, another one of your uh things, you have like a beef bourguignon recipe in there, and I just wanted to get you into you.
+
+[51:07] So John, he is a Francophile, right? And a francophone. Yeah. But he's actually more of a of a Belgian, right? What?
+
+[51:15] I am Belgian. Yeah, but you you're I lived in France, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. You lived in France, but you're you're Belgian, right? But you're connected to the French people.
+
+[51:22] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right? Yep.
+
+[51:25] Okay. Now, you bring out the uh beef bourguignon recipe. And so, you know, for those of you, you know, everyone knows what beef bourguignol, the carbonade is the Belgian beer-based stew with the fancy mustard and and the bread that's baked in. Now, I'm gonna say that when beef bourguignon grows up, it becomes carbonade. You two fight.
+
+[51:41] Yeah, I don't know, Eric. Have you ever had beef carbonade? It's delicious. I haven't. I it sounds amazing.
+
+[51:48] Cooked in a really nice heavy Belgian beer with some really good mustard. It hits hits all the spots. Served over French fries. I mean, what other what better way to get up all that gravy? It's delicious.
+
+[51:56] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. No, yeah, I've got no pesky vegetables.
+
+[52:01] Yeah. True. Yeah. Yeah. I we did we I like my friends and I started doing beef bourguignon is all based on the like Julia Child's recipe.
+
+[52:09] And then we kind of tweaked it to to make it even I think better in some ways. But it was all about like drinking French wine. I think it was like we're very into like doing a night, like we're doing German stuff and we'll drink reason or you know, so beef bourguignon was very particular to my my thinking at this time, which is fun to like put the same wine that you're putting in the in the stew. And you drink it later and you drink it together and you talk about it. But I'm definitely into the the French fries scene.
+
+[52:37] Yeah, yeah. I don't want to get into the the Korean stews are like really exciting me right now. I I haven't done one yet, like a kimchi pork shoulder situation. I'm super stoked to try. Speaking of pork, I was looking for it, didn't see it.
+
+[52:44] I don't know if I missed it. Did your grandma make the Schweinhoxen? No, I don't know that one. That's the where you take the the pork shank and you just cook it forever and then you like either fry it or oven roast it, it gets real crispy. Maybe that's more noisy.
+
+[53:04] Oh wow. Anyway. I gotta try that. Yeah, yeah. Oh my god, it's like it's it's also a great name.
+
+[53:10] Schweinhaxen. Yeah, it is a good it is a good name. It really is. I first had it when I was in uh Berlin. A friend of mine took me to this place and he's like, You gotta get this is the only thing to get.
+
+[53:19] I'm like, okay. And I was like, yes. Uh all right. One more thing. I'm gonna I'm gonna agree with you on this one.
+
+[53:25] So I feel like I've been like, you know, like you finally gonna agree with you. The best I mean, grilled. First of all, first of all, uh, I like your call out to 1990s restaurants strong, not like by name, but just like as the 1990s. And the best, the best use for the filet mignon, because everyone's like, there is no use for it. Steak a poiv, good use.
+
+[53:45] Yes, absolutely. Yes. Good use. In fact, I have to shoot a video with that. I'm gonna do that.
+
+[53:51] Maybe I'll make your recipe, Eric. What do you think about that? Oh my god. I would be honored, honored if you did. I mean, it's to me, it's like I I didn't even know that this the the this quality of um fillets were out there, you know.
+
+[54:04] And then then once you start really like looking into it, you can get this beautiful piece of meat that's it works. It's not flavorless, it has tons of flavor, it's amazing. Especially with an appoiv sauce. Yeah, I mean, yeah, jack it up with that, of course. But it's also that's how you cook it, you know.
+
+[54:20] You know, I think I think my recipe kind of nails it, and it's not all steamy and gross, like a lot of restaurants do. But yeah, I mean, 90s stuff. We would have succession nights with on when the first season aired, and we would just like get down and make shrimp cocktail and use a lot of ring molds, martinis, that kind of thing. But wedge salads. Now you have a green smoothie recipe.
+
+[54:44] I've never actually had one in my life. I refuse to. Do you actually like the no, no, no. Do you like the flavor of it? Here's why I like the recipe.
+
+[54:52] You call for a knob of ginger. And anything that calls for a knob, I'm okay. I'm okay. I was like, oh hey, he's he used the word knob in a recipe. It's okay.
+
+[55:00] You know what I mean? But like spinach and kale blended up with berries, no. Nah. But everyone loves it. I'm the guy.
+
+[55:06] This is me. This is my problem, not your problem. Yeah, I think the secret is is good coconut water, to be honest. You know, a lot of people do it with without the sugar. They don't want it sugary.
+
+[55:17] But to me, it's like let's make it as as yummy as possible because you need these nutrients after you do what we do if we travel and and go crazy. I feel like it's um it's like a meal replacement. I just wanted to put it in there because it's my homage to um California in a way. But you can make it good. It's yummy.
+
+[55:36] Speaking of uh homage, the homage you have to your grandpa is this salad that you said was famous. You called it on the introduction. I looked at it and the recipes. Yeah. And it's interesting about it, very high.
+
+[55:47] It's like an inverted vinegar ratio off of like a normal vinaigrette. It's two vinegars to one oil. Yeah. Talk you want to talk about that? Super, I mean, yeah, I mean, I also call out that I'm like this I'm an acid freak lately.
+
+[55:59] The older I get, the more even with wines, I'm drinking crazy things that are like just like feel very intense to me. But he that it was blown mind blowing when you when you eat like a braised, like when you're eating that Rolade with that braised meat, you really need something high acid. I think the salad is just such a perfect partner for it. And just the memories of him going out in his garden, like they had a very tiny little apartment and they had this beautiful garden with like buttered lettuces, and he picked the herbs. And when I was a kid, I was like, uh, this is boring.
+
+[56:30] And then as an older person going out to restaurants, you remember those little moments and how powerful that was and how much better it tasted than what used sometimes in the restaurant. So that's that's why I kind of put it put it in there. Nice. We have a question in f uh from the Patreon for you specifically from Miss Place Enthusiasm, who asks you a question and then calls himself out for being a hack. Let's do it.
+
+[56:50] Uh, who's the best cook of the comedians or actors that you know? And this is kind of a terrible question because it seems like something a hack interviewer would ask, but I'm still interested in your opinion. Can great food uh be funny, or is uh humor too conscious and emotion for the feelings we get when eating something spectacular? So I guess two questions the comedians, actors, and yeah, two part or I'll take the first one. I would say in Aziz and Sari is the the number one comedian cook that I know, and a lot of this book is inspired by us working in Italy and learning tortellini from Nona's and all that kind of stuff.
+
+[57:24] Like he's he's always like a year ahead of me in his cooking, and I like it's amazing. And in terms of comedy, you know, I think I've done I've done it. I've I've I uh this book is proof. There's a there's a sandwich called a pork dork sando in here. Um I think that's pretty funny.
+
+[57:41] And it's also very del very delicious. So, you know, and round, very round can be done. Very circular. I think there's, you know, there's there's a a point, a level to it where it needs to be delicious and needs to be functional. But yeah, I'm all about circle foods and having fun.
+
+[57:58] We have uh we have two more questions that John's gonna read because I don't have them. So we got one from yes, Cesra. My question for Eric Where's my chippy? But seriously, I'd love to know Eric's thoughts about chips potato, tortilla, naked sauce. Does he make chips?
+
+[58:11] Does he eat chips? What are the best chips? American American chips, not fries, because there is a fry recipe in there. So chips. All right.
+
+[58:17] And he and he has a tortilla recipe. He has a tortilla recipe in there. He says to fry the tortillas in between making okay, but go sorry, go ahead. Yeah. They've already answered.
+
+[58:26] Um yeah, making tortilla chips was like a revolution when you first try that. I mean, it took me a while. Even in living in LA, I just didn't do it myself. And once you do it, you're like, holy sh moly. You know, it's amazing.
+
+[58:40] And not difficult. I'm a chip person. I do no. I've done some, you know, some potato chips, really thin sliced, different kinds of potatoes to try it out. It's really fun as well.
+
+[58:50] But um it's not it's not in my normal rotation. Homemade French fries, definitely. But um and tortilla chips, definitely. Yeah, commercial potato chips are really good. I've done a lot of work for the book on on potato chips, and I've achieved as good as the chips you can buy.
+
+[59:05] You know what I mean? Which is like okay. What's it what's the next question, John? All right. Next question is from Quinn.
+
+[59:12] Are there any cookbooks that particularly inspired Eric? Does he prefer things more technical or based on storytelling? Bigger books that cover a lot of different topics or ones that are more specific. Um I mean, visually, some of the Salvador Dolly books were like a huge inspiration, especially in someone like the the crazy things. Like I have some party sections where I do like the shrimp towers, like very insane French things that I I love just to look at.
+
+[59:41] But it's also it's yeah, I'm I I would say I'm it's um very inspired by a lot of visual cookbooks that I wanted every almost every dish to be photographed and powerful. So you're like, holy moly I gotta make that and then but the story part is really interesting. So this is the first time in my in my career I've kind of told my story about my family and what inspired me. So I look at this book as like it's a little bit more than just a cookbook. It's like somewhat biographical because most of I've never done any real interviews up to this point.
+
+[1:00:12] Anytime I've done late night shows it's been a crazy bit. 'Cause it's the mystery was was the best to me for me. But now that uh I mean this this a food and wine world it's I think it's important to kind of tell your story and also to kind of be like I'm not just an actor. You know, I think that's my main thing. It's like the integrity of this book is important.
+
+[1:00:33] So I go into like detail of where every recipe is inspired from and how my family works into it, all that stuff. Do you like do you like doing these I mean not this particular one. Not not us, but I mean like in general do you like the the food style interviews? Are you enjoying it or no? I'm loving it.
+
+[1:00:50] Yeah. It's it's awesome. It's it's be it's just because it's uh it's something I would literally talk about all night, you know, anyways with my wife and I are food freed and all of my friends are food and wine people. So it's really interesting to bring it into kind of a more formal thing where I'm just like this is actually really fun. Comedy talking about comedy is really hard.
+
+[1:01:12] It's a different kind of thing. Um but food is just there's so much more like love and passion and in a more positive sometimes positive, sometimes negative. But um more it's way for me it's way more soulful and positive. I love it. Well we uh w I'm being told that we're we've zoomed through our hour.
+
+[1:01:30] I didn't get a chance to fight with you over whether or not you should put leavening in your uh flour with the fried chicken. There's uh I was gonna I could I we could have done a half an hour just on fried chicken because you have like a bunch of different fried chicken recipes, so you know, maybe someday uh, you know also there's a small horse chapter. It is a small chapter on small horses, but you need to have the small horse chapter. Uh and if you like pictures of very tall and very small people, you're gonna love the book. I'm just saying.
+
+[1:02:00] And there's also a very long section on Sabrage, which I appreciate. And yeah and oh most of the recipes where where it makes sense come with recommendations of what you might want to drink with it and you don't push like only like yourself and your friends. You uh tell people a good range of stuff, which I thought was uh I thought was very nice. And last thing I wish I had talked about 'cause Nastasia would have loved this. If you like the idea of a roclet party, you should get the book.
+
+[1:02:24] If you don't know what a rollet party is, you should get the book and find out. You used in your photos the same set I bought my mom for Christmas a couple of years ago. Oh amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[1:02:34] That that's one of the funnest ways to e I love it. Yeah, roclette good. Cheese good. Wine, good. Was that also an excuse just to just a to choose the drinks?
+
+[1:02:43] I mean I don't know. I know I I mean raclette is just I really do it all the time. It's a so fun for the whole for your whole friend group. So I had to include it. Yeah.
+
+[1:02:55] Fig leaf fish also. You gotta l you gotta check out that fig leaf fish. How's that really taste? Yeah. How's that figly fish taste?
+
+[1:03:01] It's amazing. Yeah. I mean, it's it's awesome. Like it depends on the figs you get, but we get 'em just like our neighbor's house. You know, you just kinda sneak in, grab 'em and if they're super nice.
+
+[1:03:11] Um also, you know, a good steamed fish is something good steamed with some embers, some of the smokiness. It's I I was like blown. That's why I put it in there. Of how much flavor you get out of it versus just kind of um barbecuing it. Looks real good too.
+
+[1:03:27] Uh if you know what? We had this conversation last week. Was it last week, Stas, where we're like, if something like something that looks like that much fun at a large gathering is kinda w it's kind of like already it's been worth it, no? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[1:03:42] All right. Well, uh, I'm gonna have uh Nastasi and you are gonna get rich off of wine Santa and I'm just gonna, you know, uh continue living in this uh in this uh flaming sack of uh poop on the porch that New York City is. I love it though, it's my flaming sack of poop on the porch. Uh anyway, thanks so much for uh coming on. I hope you I hope this was okay for you.
+
+[1:04:03] Yeah. Yeah. This is awesome. It was so good to talk to everybody. Yeah, well thanks for having it.
+
+[1:04:07] And uh yeah, please, any time. This has been cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live at News Dance Studios from Rockefeller Center here in Midtown, New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia De Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good.
+
+[0:22] Yeah? What's going on over there? What do you what do you what's good today? What do you look at? Nothing's good today.
+
+[0:26] Nothing's good today? No. It's John's birthday. Ah, see? Yeah, something good today.
+
+[0:31] Yeah, John, how you doing? Doing great. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Jack.
+
+[0:35] Do you like being called out uh for your birthday or dislike it? Happy birthday. Thanks, Joe. Uh indifferent? Indifferent?
+
+[0:43] Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. What is your favorite? Okay, first of all, we got Joe Hazen.
+
+[0:49] How are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you guys? Doing well. And our roving correspondent, Jackie Molecules, is in Mexico again.
+
+[0:56] I think. Yes, I am. Hello. All right, now back to the birthday question. Are you a c are you a birthday cake person?
+
+[1:04] No, not really. I mean, I'll eat it, but I'm not, I don't think I'm having any tonight. No. No. Yeah.
+
+[1:11] Hmm. Stas, you like a birthday cake, right? Yeah. Because you like the ritual or because you like the cake? A ritual, I think, yeah.
+
+[1:19] Booker is obsessed for some reason. He's been asking for the past like four months. He wants me, he wanted to buy the milk bar birthday cake. He's obsessed with it. He's like, Dad, are you ever gonna talk to Christina Toesy again?
+
+[1:31] I'm like, I'm like, I don't know. Life's never guaranteed, son. I never know what's gonna happen. You know what I mean? I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and then I will never talk to her again.
+
+[1:40] He's like, why don't you make me the so now he'd been pestering me, he pestered me maybe once a week about making him this milk bar birthday cake. And I I gotta say, I'd rather just buy it. It's very expensive. What are you, booker? It's really expensive.
+
+[1:52] It's his birthday cake. So I gotta go buy acid cake. Yes, but this is part of his complex of things. He's he's he thinks constantly about it. He thinks constantly, but he I think he wants me to I don't know what he.
+
+[1:59] I don't know, man. What about what about you, Joe? Are you a cake person on your birthday? Yeah, I love Carvel cake. Oh, yeah.
+
+[2:13] I grew up as a Carville. Oh yeah. I was all about that interview. Yeah, man. Carvel, I have to say, for those of you people who never had the Carvel, I'm sorry for you, man.
+
+[2:22] Because here's the other thing. If you grew up in the in in uh on the eastern area where we had it, the difference between the Carvel cake, which is the frozen hard Carvel, and Carvel out of the machine. I always love that kind of like that uh counterpoint between the two. What about you, Mr. Molecules?
+
+[2:40] What are where are you on the birthday cake continuum? I'm the kind of guy that's like, no, I don't want a cake, but then if someone brings me one, I'm very happy about it, you know. Well, is it how far does that go? Are you like, don't bring me a cake, but then if they don't bring you a cake, you're like, no cake. Okay.
+
+[2:56] No, no, no. No, no, no. Are you one of those guys that asks for people to not bring you presents, but then when they don't, you're mad? That's what I'm trying to find out. Are you one of the people?
+
+[3:05] He's okay with Merlot. Oh, it was Polski who was okay with Merlot. Oh, come on now. Come on, stop. I'm not okay with Merlot.
+
+[3:13] Right. Barefoot Merlot. No relation to the barefoot Contessa, different people. Hey, listen. Like real, like well-made real Merlot.
+
+[3:24] I'm gonna like let's like let's not poo-poo. Merlot the grape is a fine grape. And there are a lot of fantastic. That's true, yeah. Fantastic, you know, uh single, you know, varietal Merlot wines.
+
+[3:37] Many like that, you know, well above what I could afford to pay for them and worth the money that they cost. However, the swimming pool made Merlots, right? The ones that you, you know, the ones that you know are distilled into uh sandy wipes for use during the pandemic, those are trash. Right? I think we can all.
+
+[3:58] Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, man. Man, this shows how long you haven't lived in New York City to think you can go buy a Merlot and a bodega. Listen, for all of you like not New York people who come to New York City, go to a supermarket, stay away from that bottle of quote unquote wine in the supermarket. That is not wine.
+
+[4:22] I don't know what the hell it is, but that is not wine. Here in New York, you are not allowed to sell wine in a grocery store. All you Californians, all you know, come here and you want to go to Nastasia's like house or whomever's house, and you go to the grocery store and you're like Chateau Diane. I've never had it, but I will buy it. And then you buy the has anyone ever come to your house with the Chateau Diane?
+
+[4:45] Thankfully, no. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Did you did you even taste it before you broke it over their head?
+
+[4:49] No, no. I mean, they were from France. They had no idea. You Americans with your wine, Chateau Diane is garbage. And then, like, and then like they think that that's how what we think wine is.
+
+[5:00] Yeah. Instead of like, that's just the laws. Did you bring out the laughing cow cheese slice? Yeah, you remember that? Who remembers the laughing cow?
+
+[5:08] It's like, it's like processed cheese in a foil bag, the shape of a of a wedge of cheese. Yeah, we used to eat that all the time in Paris. So that's a Parisian thing? Yeah. Definitely.
+
+[5:19] As a kid in middle school ate that all the time. So that's the American version of I'm sorry, the French version of American cheese. I guess. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[5:27] Yeah. I mean, it's wipable. Certainly is. Yeah, very spider map. I'm sure it'd be fine on a burger.
+
+[5:32] I I enjoy it. It's a good cheese. What's your favorite trash can cheese? Palio cheese sticks. Ooh.
+
+[5:39] Yeah, you like the string cheese. Do you know the Palios family related to, not because of the name thing, DiPalos? They were like cousins. Like a lot of those uh like little Italy, because Palio, the that family was originally like, you know, the downtown little Italy here in Manhattan. Yeah, like they're cousins.
+
+[5:54] Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's wild. Yeah. So you like a Palio string cheese, huh? Yeah.
+
+[5:58] But how much do you like like a Oaxaca and string cheese? I don't know if I've ever I've had Oaxacan cheese. I don't like a big, you know, ball of it that I grated up, but I don't think I've just got it. You never done the shred? You never shredded it?
+
+[6:10] Oh my god. Yeah. Oh my God. You need to get yourself a ball of Oaxaca and string cheese and start shredding that stuff. First of all, it's very uh, it's very cathartic, just because it's so much longer because you unwind the ball, and it's like imagine like the people at Palio were like, let's not let's not ever cut this off.
+
+[6:28] Let's never pinch off the log. You know what I mean? It's like long. How long would you say one of those things is, uh, guys, the the Oaxaca and string cheese balls? Feet, right?
+
+[6:37] Isn't there like an Armenian rolled string cheese kind of thing that you can get at the supermarkets? I think it's Armenian. Not at my supermarkets. There's a Turkish string cheese, which is freaking fantastic. Several Turkish string cheeses that are fantastic.
+
+[6:50] I think we can all agree that a string cheese is a fun thing. Yes. Yes. And delicious. Yeah.
+
+[6:54] Yeah. I love I like a string cheese. And anyone who's gonna poo-poo it, I mean, I think it's that's more on you. Speaking of on the Twitter. Well, we'll talk about it later.
+
+[7:02] Uh, what about my favorite uh like 1970s style garbage American cheese, boursin? Love Borson. Love it, right? I love it. It's so good.
+
+[7:12] Yeah. What about what about you guys? Where are you guys on the boursan? You ever had that? It comes in a in a I don't think I've had it.
+
+[7:14] Joe, you had that stuff? Pour so. It's like imagine like amped up cream cheese with like all kind of like herbs and garlic and some herbs. Yeah, I don't think I've ever had it. And it comes in like a foil muffin cup kind of thing.
+
+[7:31] Yeah. And the power move, the power move, this is what I used to do when I was a kid. So when uh after my parents got divorced, when I would go to visit my dad on the weekends, uh I would always want the same kind of appetizer plate, and it was this. It was super craft used to make a hyper sharp cheddar in a black package, right? So it was that breadsticks, sesame, duh, like the the breadsticks with the sesame.
+
+[8:00] Am I right, guys? Yeah. Sesame on the breadstick. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
+
+[8:04] Sardines, undrained, but like so I would have the sardines separate and then the oil, right? And then the boursant. And what you do is you would take the, you would take the breadstick, you would dip it in the in the in the boursant, then you would dip that in the sardine oil, then you would put on a thin slice of cheddar and then the sardine on top of that and pop that. That was that's the Dave Arnold childhood appetizer right there. That's the money.
+
+[8:31] Pikafine dining right there, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know who else really likes Kansas Sardines or did when he was alive? The Leatherman. The Leatherman.
+
+[8:38] Someone sent me that there's a Leatherman podcast. Yeah, yeah. Uh for those of you who, I don't know, this is maybe this is the first time you're hearing of this show. It's actually difficult to search for information on the Leatherman because the the multi-tool comes up quite often. But he is the vagabond that I wish that I could uh be.
+
+[8:57] His his leather clothing weighed 60 pounds. Do you know his bag still exists? As does a single mitten and a couple of his tin pipes. The Connecticut Historical Society has them squirreled away somewhere in Hartford. We should go find them.
+
+[9:12] Tell us about who this leather man is, because I I mean, first thing that comes to my mind is Texas Chaw Massacre. Yeah, no, this guy didn't murder people. What he I mean, that we know of, like he like people liked him. So he he uh, first of all, he looks like he's eight million years old, even though he died like in his 50s, they think, right? That's the estimation.
+
+[9:30] And he used to just walk like a several hundred mile loop around Westchester and like Fairfield and like New Haven counties. Uh, and every 34 days, he would make this loop on foot, and he would sleep in these kind of talus rock, they call them caves, but they're not, they're just kind of like jumbles of rocks. And he would stitch together a la leather man, but instead of humans, he would take like discarded pieces of boots and whatnot, and he would stitch them into clothes and a hat and a bag, and uh, you know, he would never talk. He would just people he would show up at your house, you would give him some food, he would eat the food and he would leave. And he liked sardines.
+
+[10:10] Incredible. Yeah, that is crazy. Incredible Halloween costume. I'm looking at it now. I'm posting these pictures in the Discord live chat.
+
+[10:16] And I emailed you at Wikipedia line. It would be so expensive. A couple of people have made the we need to find some sort of culinary reason, some sort of cooking issues reason for us to make the pilgrimage to the Connecticut Historical Society and have them actually drag Leatherman's bag out of storage so we can look at Leatherman's bag. I'm not gonna put my hand in his mitten. That's gross.
+
+[10:40] But I want to say, I mean, like, I'll look at the mitten. I'm not gonna let you put your hand in his mitten. Yeah. Well, I mean, true. Fact.
+
+[10:51] The most famous picture of the Leatherman looks like like uh it's like Nastasia's uh what are you talking about face? And it's because he didn't like having his picture taken. So they hid the camera underneath like a uh a picnic cloth and then gave him some food. He sat down on a stump to eat the food, and they were like, surprise! And they lifted off the thing and took his picture.
+
+[11:13] So that's why he's like, you know, he's like, you know that look? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's got that. He's got like he's got like food in his mouth, and he has this like, he wasn't a menacing character, but in that photo, he looks menacing because he, you know, didn't like having his picture taken so much.
+
+[11:29] Yeah, that's the look. That's the that's the what the heck are you doing there? Look. Love it. Love it.
+
+[11:36] And every part, and the reason that we talk about it all the time, people, I apologize, is that every place where I have lived or have relatives is on the Leatherman loop, right? So like I like, I feel like my whole life, I just keep kind of traveling around the Leatherman loop, but not living the Leatherman life. And for those of you that have been to this area of Connecticut Westchester in your life, it's all kind of scrubby second growth forest at this point, right? Yeah. In the 1870s and 80s, when he was doing his his leathermanning, uh, it was more recently cleared.
+
+[12:10] It had more recently been farmland, and so it would have been a different walk than it than it is now. So, like you can't, you can't relive the leather man walk just by, you know, donning some leather clothes and you know, hiking around, you know, along I-95 and down the Connecticut River. It doesn't work like that because it's just it's a whole different landscape than it used to be. Oh boy, the leather man. Uh so we have a new feature that I was forcing Jack to do, and that is he's now our roving correspondent.
+
+[12:40] What do you have for us in Food News in Mexico, Jack? Hey, can I first give us a plug and shout out for being the top 15 podcast in Apple Food rankings? That's a great accomplishment since we have the second RSS food that's pretty a struggle to get to the top of the search results. So wow, that's great. I didn't even know that was humanly possible, considering that every day I get like five tweets saying, Where'd you go?
+
+[13:05] Why'd you stop doing podcasts? And I have to say 15 on Apple surgery. I have to say, Jack, it is freaking irritating because uh somehow you have to actually go in and type a you have to go into your podcast thing and type cooking issues out full to get it. Like Google still hasn't like gotten hip to the fact yet. You know what I mean?
+
+[13:30] But copying machine and apple is a good sign. So hopefully that. So anyway, I had um my my Mexico food reports here. I may have mentioned this place once before, but I had a much fuller meal here at a place called Expendio de Nice. Um they do like a kind of street omakase thing where you just sit down and they'll keep bringing you dishes until you say stop.
+
+[13:51] Do they have the coin coined? Do they have the the the red green like the the Argentinian coin? I love those things. No, no, no. It's it's kind of elevated.
+
+[14:01] Like if it were inside, it would, it would, you know, it's like modernist in its approach. Um, however, they they have polka there, right? So it had a lot of polka. And I'm curious if you know why. How much?
+
+[14:13] I don't know, two glasses. Oh, okay. Not a little bit. A lot. They were adamant though about me not having it with beer.
+
+[14:21] They're like, no, no, you can't do that. I was like, what? No, you can't do that. Like they react. Really?
+
+[14:28] And it didn't make sense to me. Well, what what is that? I don't think that makes any physiological sense, Jack. I think it's just they wanted you to stick on poke. I think like once once you're in the pool came thing, they want you to keep doing pool cake.
+
+[14:39] I don't think I ever got into this on there. They said you could have mezcal and polque, but beer and polka. Well, that's all agave-based. Ah. Oh, we have a you have a poke story here?
+
+[14:51] Well, not a poke story, but uh similar being told what I can't do at a restaurant. I don't think I ever mentioned this. I told you when I was in Italy, you know, over the summer I went to Rome and I went to this uh this great restaurant that two of the listeners recommended and got the fried artichoke and asked for it to go with a a wedge of lemon and I was refused. They said, No, you cannot do that. Yeah.
+
+[15:12] Oh yeah, you told me about that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then everyone started laughing and it was uh and you're like, no, really bring me the line. Yeah, and then she didn't bring it. I didn't get the wedge of lemon.
+
+[15:21] Wow. Yeah, just adamantly refused to to get me the lemon. And uh, you know, it's like they did to me, yeah. I'm okay with them being like, Can you try without a lemon? Just try it and then I'll bring you a lemon.
+
+[15:34] You know what I mean? Yeah, no, but no, that wasn't even an option. Yeah. Yeah, no lemon, only option. People uh people are the worst.
+
+[15:40] People suck. Yeah. I don't think I think it's just uh they didn't want I don't know, it's like some sort of thing. They didn't want to mix. A lot of people are like that.
+
+[15:47] Have you ever heard my uh the the way I remember what you can do? Have you heard? Have you ever have I told you one? No. It goes like this: beer than wine, fine, liquor than wine, fine.
+
+[15:59] Liquor than beer, fine. Beer than liquor, fine. Beer then wine, fine, wine then beer, fine. Did I did I miss any combinations? Yeah.
+
+[16:12] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a polka wasn't on the list. You know what I mean? So it's like, but that's that's how I try to remember which combinations are okay.
+
+[16:24] Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean, look, I I think the the the where that uh all those, what's it called? All those uh, you know, I don't want to say superstitions, but all of those like things come from the idea that if you get yourself liquored up on something lowproof and then switch to hard, you no longer have your uh full uh ability to judge what you're doing in packed, and then you go way over the edge, is probably where it is. But as long as you maintain your ability to judge this drink is a drink, this is how much alcohol I am consuming, then it doesn't matter what order you do it.
+
+[17:01] I can also eat my dinner in reverse. Can you guys eat your dinner in reverse? What do you mean start with dessert? Yeah, you don't like you can't do a reverse dinner, Joe? I have no problem doing a reverse dinner.
+
+[17:11] Yeah. You know what else I like? I like breakfast for dinner. Yeah, don't I don't do that enough. I don't know if I'd be able to do dessert, then a salad, and then the second chorus thing would have to literally be the uh the dolce, then the second, then the primi, then the antipaste.
+
+[17:28] Do you know what I appreciate a lot about what you just said, Joe? Is that is that by you're saying you can't do the full reversal, you have your salad at the end. Do you hate the American custom of the salad coming out first? Do you like your salad after the meal? I like a salad after the meal before.
+
+[17:41] I love a salad after a meal. Yeah. I love it. We never always did it, but we did occasionally do it. Well, it's like uh we never did it.
+
+[17:50] Salad was always with the meal for regular days, but on like holidays and like you know, celebration days, you'd have your main thing, then the salad would kind of like mellow your stomach out before the cheese and the and the desserts and whatnot came. My mother always did because she was like she was amazing at making this the the linguinia of angular, and then our salad came after linguine of angole. There you go. So you're like, I could have a cake when I start, but no, no, no. Not cake than salad.
+
+[18:17] I won't do that. What is it that you uh what is it that we won't do, Stas? Can't say it, right? Yeah, only when it's uh male comedian. That was all bleep, Stas.
+
+[18:26] Was it really? Yes. We bleeped again? But I don't know why you don't know. Jack did.
+
+[18:32] You did, Jack? No, no one bleeped anywhere. No one bleeped in. Jack said he was gonna bleep it out. This is the problem with doing interviews when the person's not with you.
+
+[18:39] I can't be like, it's hard when you're when you're over a thing, but somehow Nastasia somehow is bending this into me being a bad person. I don't really know how. Maybe she'll explain it to me later. Or now I don't know how this makes me a bad guy, but you know, whatever. Whatever.
+
+[18:56] Uh so uh, so how was the pool case? Delicious. The meal is incredible too. They had this this dish where they served. I don't know what kind of bug it was, because my Spanish is horrible.
+
+[19:07] I knew there are bugs. They kind of look like the roly poly, like they're kind of circular, like I don't know if those are beetles or what they are. I mean, they look like like a like a potato bug? Maybe they're like dark, small oval shaped, like kind of smooth, if that makes sense. And they were actually good, not just crunchy.
+
+[19:29] No, they were good. They added this kind of like earthiness to the dish, and they're they were crunchy. It wasn't like the like I didn't feel good, Nicky like bugs just for the sake of it. I was like, oh, it's definitely added a new flavor. I mean like honestly, I would always rather have a potato chip than a grasshopper because potato chips don't get caught between my teeth.
+
+[19:47] Like the legs that potatoes don't have don't get caught between my teeth. You know what I'm saying? I mean, do you love grasshoppers? I mean I eat them here. But do you love grasshoppers?
+
+[19:57] Are you like, oh my god, that's what I'm gonna buy a pack of? No. Yeah, I mean. Yeah. And and when someone's like, you know what?
+
+[20:07] This energy bar, it's even better because we've chummed up a bunch of grasshoppers and put it in. Are you like, oh yeah, I need that one? No. No. Yeah.
+
+[20:17] Uh but these roly pulleys, you'd be like, I want to sprinkle those on my salad again. No, I don't think I would trust myself to know how what application to use them for, but whatever dish this was, it made sense in the context of the dish. But I wouldn't be like, nah, get a big bag of those. Yeah. I had the uh the ant eggs.
+
+[20:36] Those were good, but they're kind of pricey. Yeah, those are good and pricey. Real pricey. Why are they so big? Ants aren't that big.
+
+[20:43] Why are they so big, those ant eggs? Great question. It's like, you know, you're like, oh my god, the egg, well, what's gonna come out? Ant. You know what I mean?
+
+[20:52] It's like it doesn't make sense. They're so much bigger than you'd think. How big are we talking about? Like the size of like a ro like a like row? Uh they look like a like like a small white bean.
+
+[21:02] That's big. Yeah. Yeah. Like oval shaped. Yeah.
+
+[21:06] Yeah. And uh the one time I had the ants, like the ones that are like kind of dried, they're supposedly real good. By the way, people, if you go get the ants, get them real fresh. Cause by the time that remember we tasted them on air, didn't we, Stas? Didn't we have Paul Adams over from uh from Popular Science?
+
+[21:23] And we ate, I'd saved those ants from when I was in Mexico and we ate them, and he was the only person that could eat them, not just because they were bugs, but because they're, I guess, real fatty. But I don't know. I think the fat goes rancid very, very quickly. They tasted like just straight rancid grease, like freaking grease trap. Like if you've ever worked with rancid grease in the past, you know what I'm talking about, right?
+
+[21:49] It's like, you know what I'm talking about when they don't clean out the grease crap and you got that smell, and you're expected to somehow like do prep in that room. Yep. And and people are like, oh, the guests can't smell it. The guests can't, the guests can smell it. They can smell that.
+
+[22:03] I don't know. I I mean Paul on again. We haven't seen him in a while. It was his birthday last weekend. Yeah.
+
+[22:10] Um, by the way, if you were listening live on Patreon, call your questions in too. 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh, so you're not gonna have a cake tonight for your birthday, huh? I don't know.
+
+[22:24] Maybe. What's your what's your favorite uh what's your favorite birthday dessert? I don't know. No, no real favorite dessert. I don't know.
+
+[22:34] I'm gonna go to Ernesto's tonight's or whatever they have on the dessert menu. Yeah, in my neighborhood. I know, yeah. Right across the street, basically. Yeah, you can work on a Kickstarter.
+
+[22:40] Ernie's Ernie's Ernie's toes. Ernie's toes. Yeah. Uh or I call it sometimes I call it Burton Ernesto's, sometimes I call it Ernie's Toes. Okay.
+
+[22:47] Uh by the way, big shout out to those people at Ernesto's, which is a fine dining uh establishment uh on the corner of Samuel Dixtein Plaza. Well, I forgot the name of what they actually, but that's the actual plaza, and East Broadway, not Broadway. East Broadway. East Broadway. You know how many times a tourist shows up at like right outside my house and is like, this is Broadway?
+
+[23:13] And I'm like, uh, no, this is East Broadway. Have you seen Mr. Robot? More like that. You know what I mean?
+
+[23:19] Like, not like, yeah, not Broadway. Uh so big shout out to them. They know why. Uh, but their service was super on point when I was there last time. Life savers.
+
+[23:33] And if any of them ever listened to this program, they know why. Thank you, Ernesto's. Uh right. Yeah. And our uh our good friend, uh, what day of the week is it?
+
+[23:42] Tuesday. Oh. I don't think uh we have a good friend who uh works bar there. Oh. A artisanal dice maker, Robert Saxey.
+
+[23:50] Oh. Yeah. Is he doing that with Karen? Yes, Karen Stanley and Robert Saxe. You can look them up.
+
+[23:56] Does anyone know the name of their company, their artisanal dice corporation? Death Rattle. Death Rattle is a good name for an artisanal Dungeons and Dragons dice menu. And uh Robert Saxey is uh always kind of the most confounding person for Nastasia Lopez to deal with because he he can. So we haven't talked about it in a while, so I feel like it's okay.
+
+[24:21] Nastasia Lopez likes bananograms. She likes bananograms. And by the way, so do I. It is a good game. Bananagrams, bananograms is like less boring scrabble.
+
+[24:33] Would you say that's accurate? Because it's fast, it's all it's over pretty quick. Nastasia has certain uh rules about it. For instance, uh, what do you hate in bananograms, Tess? Two that are words uh with Q.
+
+[24:46] Like key. Yeah. You hate that. Oh, yeah. Hates it.
+
+[24:50] She hates all two-letter words, in fact. No, that's not true. If someone pulls an or an atweak, yeah, right. Sometimes it's neat. But you don't, but you will not allow a two-letter Q word.
+
+[24:59] Yeah. There's another specific one you hate too, right? I forget. I forget what it is. No, I can't think of it.
+
+[25:06] But Robert was at my house last weekend and we played on the lawn, like the lawn bananograms. He won. So, yes, of course he did. He always beats you. He always beats everybody.
+
+[25:15] But the thing that pisses Nastasia off the most about it. Cheating. Well, no. Well, like we have a different friend who cheated, and was it you that flipped the table or he flipped the table? I flipped the table.
+
+[25:25] Yeah. Nastasia actually flipped the table on this table. What's his name? Um I'm not gonna call someone out that you flip the table on. Why?
+
+[25:33] I will. All right. Daniel Krieger. Yeah. You know, food photographer.
+
+[25:36] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This he would did he do a two-letter against the rule or did he. He was throwing letters underneath the table that he didn't like.
+
+[25:45] And he just flipped the table. Drop one, pick three, people. Drop one, pick three. Them's the rules. Yeah.
+
+[25:53] Uh anyways, but the reason Nastasia gets perturbed by Robert is Robert has developed this ability to be completely placid as he is working. And Nastasia is much more used to people like me who are loud and like we yell at each other back and forth when we're bananogramming. You know what I mean? You're in my area, you're in my space! Like, like like Nastasia is the queen of building her bananogram, like like letters, like encroaching on the other thing.
+
+[26:23] Oh my gosh, do you know what we have next Friday? Are you gonna be able to go to the whole thing? Wait, I only know about the one thing. Billy Joel? It's rich girl.
+
+[26:29] No, sorry, that thing we're all knows. Yeah, my brain just went off for a second. But yeah, we're gonna go see Billy Joel, right? What's the rest of it? Well, are you able to stay for the whole concert?
+
+[26:42] How do you stay for half of a Billy Joel concert? Your Dave Arnold. You gotta cook dinner. I mean, like Billy Joel is Billy Joel. Okay.
+
+[26:52] Oh, I know what we'll do. Instead, let's get a job working at a non-alcoholic vegan juice shop. Yeah, no, let's do it. Because that's what we did last time when we were supposed to see Billy Joel. No, and then we were supposed to see him last year, remember?
+
+[27:05] Or why we were planning on it and then COVID. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[27:10] Like that's the worst thing that happened because of the pandemic, right? Yeah. Uh all right. Let's do some questions, people. Uh Bra wait, dude.
+
+[27:19] Do you have any more on your corn table? Wait, one of the tickets is water got waterlogged, so I don't know if it works. Well, I mean, it's not a machine. The barcode is off. Oh, geez, Louise.
+
+[27:30] We're gonna have some issues. You know what? This totally checks out. If listen, if anyone who can hear my voice in the next week works at the garden, right? If any of you work at the garden and can help us with our barcode issues, let reach out to John and see whether or not somebody out here knows how to be like, that's a legit ticket.
+
+[27:58] That's legit. It got sunfaded and then like toilet water dripped on it from the toilet water. There was enough for that's what we're dealing with, Dave. Why is this not surprising? This is the worst.
+
+[28:20] This is the worst. Listen, listen, people. You can tweet a photo of it. Listen, listen to me, people. If the toilet is clogged, wait, don't immediately flush again.
+
+[28:35] No, no, no. It did it overnight. Like it overflowed overnight while I was sleeping. Oh, it's a rear tank. Yeah.
+
+[28:40] Oh, that's slightly less gross than it's a rear tank overflow is, you know, not user error. Although it's not never supposed to flow that fast because the overflow tube must have gotten uh you know that house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[28:58] I wonder. Oh never mind. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna think anymore, but I'm just thankful. Uh my roommate in college once did what we called pooping through the ceiling, where you know when you go to somebody's house and you clog up their toilet, right? And for whatever reason, they don't have a plunger right there.
+
+[29:18] You want to take care of it right away. This is why in your house, you should always in your guest bathroom have a visible plunger and brush. Listen to me, people. You want to be a good host. You think it's making sure that you have enough wine, have that too.
+
+[29:31] But in the bathroom, make sure there is a brush so they don't have to leave streaks on your toilet and be embarrassed, and make sure there's a plunger there. Agree with me? Yep, definitely. Yeah. So he he clogs Yeah, right?
+
+[29:42] So he clogs the toilet, and then he he can't find the plunger. And so he doesn't wait long enough for the drop-down before he hits the second flush. It goes out of the toilet and then threw a light fixture on the first floor. So it's dripping filth toilet water through this person's light fixture onto their dining room table in that, like, and we call that pooping through the ceiling. And I think of Lionel Richie whenever I, whenever I it's what a feeling when you're pooping through the ceiling.
+
+[30:18] That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, Joe, did you have a story relating to that? I heard someone say something.
+
+[30:23] No, no, no. I just kept thinking about the upper decker, but I've never actually fully seen one happen. Yeah, I don't find that like, I don't find that to be a good joke. I don't think you should do if if anyone does that in my house, I will never speak to you again. And I don't have the power to kind of like harm people's career in any way, but if I could, I would.
+
+[30:39] To me, like upper decking me is like, don't ever do that. Joe, Joe, did you do you know about the Dave's vacuum? No, I don't know. Tell us about your vacuum, please. Short, short version.
+
+[30:50] Go. But we told that on the on that other network. Just do it. This short version. So I have a robot vacuum.
+
+[31:01] Her name is Xiaomi. Is it the Rumba? No, no, no, no. Come on, man. Like Rumba is like three times the price for the So you buy this one from China, Xiaomi, and it's got all the same features, but it doesn't work unless you tell it.
+
+[31:14] You gotta tell Xiaomi that you live in mainland China, but speak English, and then it works. If you try to tell it that you live in America, it's like I'm not an American vacuum. I can't work here. Sorry. But if you tell it, yes, I do live in mainland China, I just only speak English.
+
+[31:30] Then it works fine. So I have this, like, and the reason I like it is that like the super expensive Roomba has LIDAR. You guys know what LIDAR is, right? It's the laser radar thing that it's the you know, yeah. It's like in the new iPhones, it's it's fantastic.
+
+[31:42] Anyway, so I like it because it has LIDAR and it like measures your room. It's not like room, the old roombas are all random. They're just like, ah, did I vacuum here? I don't know. I'm stupid.
+
+[31:50] And then it just keeps going over everything. Anyway, turns out that a vacuum cleaner that knows where it's going is actually irritating because it knows it hasn't vacuumed a spot where your foot is. And when you're trying to cook in the kitchen, it keeps on going, bang, bang, bang, bang, right into your foot because it's like I haven't cleaned under your foot yet. It's like just get the programming a little better and make it make okay. Anyway, here's the thing: the light are a little too high to see dog poop.
+
+[32:18] So what happens is my son Booker, who walks the small dog because small dog Watson, right? It's easier to control. So Dax is controlling my big dog major. They go out, and Booker, like basically, basically drags Watson like he's a crumpled up piece of aluminum foil, just drags him around the block and brings him back into the house, and he hasn't pooped yet. I'm like, Booker did Watson poop, yep, and then that's it.
+
+[32:41] He goes in his room, shuts his door. Watson, meanwhile, small dog, he can't hold it in forever. He's a small dog. So he poops on the floor, and uh and peas, because who can who can poop without pin? In the bathroom, right?
+
+[32:54] In in the bathroom, in the bathroom. So thank you, Watson. Not on the carpet. Xiaomi is like, I haven't vacuumed in the uh, I haven't vacuumed in the in the bathroom yet. Boom!
+
+[33:10] Inhales all of the pee in the dog poop into the vacuum and then starts like spraying. No, I think Xiaomi. Didn't Xiaomi close the door in the bathroom too. So you walked it. And it's just like maybe.
+
+[33:23] I don't know. All I remember is like, what's that smell? What's that? What's that smell? And then you open the door and it's like, you know what I mean?
+
+[33:29] Because how do you fix that? I hear the new roombas have the technology to avoid that. They have the poop poop avoidance. Yes. They have a little, they have a little nose in front of them.
+
+[33:44] They're like, nah, I'm vacuuming that. Yeah. I don't do poop. I don't do poop. Well, real quick, while we're on the topic of bodily functions and all that, people want to know was your story last week about peeing in the ice hotel a true story or a hypothetical.
+
+[34:01] I did not pee in the ice hotel. I don't know, but was that did you experience that? I'll say this. That is not hypothetical. Okay, there we go.
+
+[34:07] Yeah, that is a true story. Yeah. It turns out that if you go to an ice hotel, even though the sucker is made of ice and ice is theoretically free. If you pee on one of their pre-sculpted blocks, they carve it out and they charge you for that. For the for the uh, you know, repair work on the on the ice hotel.
+
+[34:26] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. You casvari.
+
+[34:30] You casvari Sweden. Uh all right. So from Brady Vickers. Last weekend I did a pitchfork fondue for a crowd. I used strip steaks.
+
+[34:39] All right. Uh, what do you guys think? Thought think of about the strip steak. What's your feeling on the strip versus the rib? I'm not sure.
+
+[34:47] I'm not the biggest fan of the strips steak. I like a strip steak. If someone serves me a strip steak, I'm like, oh, I like strip steak. I'll take a skirt stick over a strip steak. Really?
+
+[34:56] Love skirt. You like them chewy, huh? I like the butt. What is it? The the the upper flank.
+
+[35:03] Hanger is my favorite cut. Really? So yeah. Give me give me the give me the French term. Isn't that the same as onglais?
+
+[35:09] Onglets, yeah, yeah. Onglets, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So save again. It sounds like it.
+
+[35:13] Onglets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stas, you're a you're you're a rib, right? You're not a strip, you're a rib. I don't know what I am.
+
+[35:18] I don't know. Really? Mm-hmm. I don't know. The pandemic's really like blunted your meat sense.
+
+[35:23] That's true. Used to be you put a steak in front of Anastasia, she dri dives into it like it, like it's a pool. She's like, ah, steak. And then the pandemic happens, and she's like, I don't even know what kind of steak I like anymore. I'm beyond steak.
+
+[35:37] What is steak? What is steak really? Like it's a chopped-up cow. What about you, Jack? What's your what's your steak?
+
+[35:45] Ribeye. Yeah, I'm a rib out of that. I like a ribeye. And it's poisoned my mind as to how to cook other cuts because all the cuts cook differently. So all the people that give recommendations based on their like extreme knowledge of one cut, kind of give bad advice when it comes to the other cuts.
+
+[36:02] This is uh whatever, I have to deal with that later. Okay. I use strip steaks. I vacuum bagged and cooked them low temperature at 54 degrees Celsius. Do the uh do the uh conversion for me there, uh John on the computer, for about two hours.
+
+[36:14] For service, they were dropped into a fryer for about two minutes, then plated and served with a ribbon fries. Guests started cutting into their steaks, and the steaks are gray from edge to edge. I know they will bloom to a nice red color, but the guest doesn't know that. When they first cut into the steak, they think it is massively overcooked. That would be a good band, massive overcooking.
+
+[36:31] Or is that an album? It's an album, right? Massive attack is what makes me think of it. Anyway, uh massively overcooked. Is there a way to avoid this when doing low temp for insurance like this?
+
+[36:42] Uh from Brady Brickers. Okay. 129. Okay. Uh, that's fine.
+
+[36:47] Skirts, uh, listen, strip steak, rather, has a tendency to uh has a tendency to kind of, I think, kind of go gray and like go a few shades lower, and you don't have time for it to, as you say, cherry up. What I would do for you is depending on how thick your steak is, I think you should do 45 minutes at at 54 and then drop it to like 52 and let it ride. That's gonna preserve the color a lot better on the myoglobin straight out of the bag. So something that's been cooked up to 54, make sure it gets you know up there because that's the texture that you want, and then drop and ridden at 52 Celsius, which that's can you look that up? I forget what that is.
+
+[37:26] Like that is gonna preserve that color on the inside uh even better. 125. 125. Also, um two minutes on a deep fry is a long time unless the steak is gone like almost all the way cold, right? So, like, and the difference between like a 45 second deep fry on something that's warm and like a two-minute deep fry on something that's warm is like a huge difference because like on a 45 second fry, you're maybe pushing the the center core temperature up of your of your one-inch steak like two, three degrees.
+
+[38:00] So you're taking it from 52 back to 54 without a lot of uh you know, color change. But if you're pulling it at 54 and then dropping it into that, you're you're pulling it up to like 57 in that range, and so it's gonna look greater. It still won't taste overcooked because you don't have enough time to drive the moisture out of it. So it's still gonna taste fine. But I think you decreasing your fry time unless it's cold or room temperature, in which case fine.
+
+[38:22] A two-minute fry is fine, right? But uh if you're if you're talking about one that is still almost at service temperature, that's a long time to fry. And I would the drop to 52 and then a drop to 50 before you do your fry, right? So I would drop it from 54 to to get to your temperature, 52 for the ride, that's gonna preserve color, and then drop it to 50 for the fry, and then edge your fry down to uh to like a little bit lower, like 45. Another trick, if you know you're gonna do a lot of them, is um you can, and this is gonna make you not reabsorb as much juice, but it will drive the temperature down.
+
+[39:00] If you really want that look of a two-minute fry, if you just throw them into water for the same amount of time that you fry them, they about equal each other out. So, and speaking of water, if you're gonna deep fry a steak, uh, I've spoken about this on air, but I actually did it again very recently. If you watch, uh I think you should leave season two, they have a thing called sloppy steaks where they pour water all over their steaks on the they cut them up, they get them, they pour water all over their steaks at the steak. Season two of what? I think you should leave.
+
+[39:27] Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, it's it's like Tim, he plays this character who says that he's like a big what used to be a big POS with slick back hair and like tight jeans and like sloppy steaks and like you know, all this other stuff. And so they make up this thing called sloppy steaks, which he says is ridiculous, where they order the steaks at a steakhouse, they then take the water from their water glasses and pour it all over their plates and like start eating it, right? But it turns out that when you're deep frying uh meats, uh those flavors that are characteristic of that high temperature uh fry oil in things with batters and breadings or French fries, where we associate that with kind of goodness, you don't associate that with goodness when it comes to a steak.
+
+[40:10] So you associate it with tasting fried because of that thin layer of fry oil that's on the outside. Whereas the, it's actually a a great way to do it from a crust perspective. So listen to this. This is gonna sound horrible, but it really, really works. Just rinse them off.
+
+[40:26] Fry it, rinse them off, slice them, salt them, oil them, or butter them and out. If you really, if this really makes you nervous, then rinse them with beef broth. You know, just like ladle some beef beef broth over it. You just want to get that thin layer of fry oil off. I haven't done a side-by-side ever on rinsing it with beef versus rinsing with water.
+
+[40:47] I've done both and they they both work. You don't want to do it like a long time, but like literally just like drag it through water to get that oil off the surface, pat it dry, slice it, salt it. Uh you know, I'm an olive oil on steak. Are you guys butter on steak or olive oil on steak? Either.
+
+[41:03] Depends, I guess. Yeah, same. So I so I made I did sloppy steaks over the weekend, and I uh I for the first time I had some pesto left over. I've never served, I always do chimichuri style stuff. I'd never done pesto.
+
+[41:20] I'm not a fan of all of the of all of the uh the parmigiano and the pesto with the with the steak. Not a fan. The rest of the family was okay with it. What do you guys think? Pesto with steak.
+
+[41:32] Doesn't work, right? Chimichuri great, pesto not so great, right? Yeah. Okay, fine. It just wasn't what I wanted.
+
+[41:38] Yeah. I was like, oh, it looks like chimichuri. I'm gonna be so happy. And then I wasn't. Yeah.
+
+[41:43] Uh speaking of over the weekend and deep frying, I did sloppy steaks. And the other thing I did was so every day when I'm walking down Canal Street, or most days, I pass by. For those of you that don't live in New York, we have all of these uh like these delis and bodegas that have signs with just like giant white block letters saying the names of foods. You guys know what I'm talking about? It'll say like pizza, bagel.
+
+[42:07] So, like when I lived when I lived uptown, there was one that said ice cream donut. There's never any punctuation. They just have like lists of words, right? So I was like, ice cream donut. And so, like the very first, one of the very first things I made when I got my first professional deep fryer 20 something years ago, whatever in the 90s, was uh so well more than 20 years ago now, was uh ice cream donut where I made the fried the donuts and then I jammed them full of ice cream.
+
+[42:35] And it was because of this sign that I constantly pass. So there's this other sign that I pass, and it and it says, it says, pizza fried chicken. I'm like, pizza fried chicken. Ooh, what does that mean? Pizza fried chicken.
+
+[42:49] I was like, you can't, there's no such thing as pizza fried. There's chicken fried. So I was like, maybe they just got it backwards, and it's supposed to be chicken fried pizza. And then so I was imagining taking a slice of pizza and battering it and frying it, like you know, Mo did in, you know, in the Simpsons. But then I was like, yeah, it wouldn't work so much.
+
+[43:05] I don't think I would like that very much. But I was like, but what's fried? Panzerati's, you know, and some calzones are fried. What if I chicken fried that sucker? And so on Sunday I made chicken fried calzone, and it was um wah, it was a delicious.
+
+[43:22] It was so good. It was so good. But I'm wondering whether I should go buy me some meat glue and instead of doing calzone, do actual chicken skin or adhere chicken skin to the outside of the calzone and have all three layers, right? So if you go to my Instagram, it's the last thing I posted was the chicken fried uh calzone. The one thing I would change over what I did was I would lower the oil temperature a little bit and cook it a little bit longer.
+
+[43:49] Slight, slight bit of doughess in between the layer of the cheese and the uh and the and the and the and the bread. Uh anyway. Okay. This is from uh Kim Yardi Ferrer. Uh I want to do a mid-sized turkey slow roasted in a tightly sealed bag to falling off the bone tenderness.
+
+[44:10] What temperature and how many hours do you recommend to achieve this result? My guess is 12 hours at 90 degrees Celsius, but this is just a guess. I also plan to brine at 3% and sear uh before and after roasting uh with my Searzal. Okay, listen. If you're in a bag, I'm trying to figure out exactly what you mean by roasting.
+
+[44:26] You mean like in an oven in like a bag bag? Is that like are we talking like low temperature, low temperature sous v? I'm not sure what we're talking about, right? Well you can give her both. Well, so here's the issue, right?
+
+[44:42] So, like turkey legs, confit are great. Turkey leg confit is great. Any of you guys any of you guys ever do the mock asabuko with the turkey legs? No. No.
+
+[44:54] Oh, it's real good, real cheap. So, like uh, like you get the the the turkey legs and they they cross-slice them, you know, get someone to do it for you on a uh, what's it called? Bandsaw, and you use the big pieces, right? And then you uh braise them as though they're asabucos. So you, you know, you flash them off and then you do the braise, and then you pull the tendons out after they're cooked, which makes your life like a whole heck of a lot easier.
+
+[45:17] I grew up eating ase, like asebuka is one of my favorites. So then when I when I, you know, was out of college and we had no money, I couldn't afford because the price of the veal shanks had already gone like kind of through the roof at that point. This is like 30 years ago. And so we started doing it with turkey legs. And so we always had this kind of mock asabuko with uh with turkey legs.
+
+[45:36] But turkey legs respond very well to kind of long cooking. So you wouldn't need nine, that's what I'm trying to think. Like I would never, I've never done oven roasting of anything at that low of a of a temperature. I don't know. I don't even know what that would do, right?
+
+[45:52] So if you're talking like in an I just don't even know what that would do. Like if you're talking about bagging it, 12 hours is a long, long, long, long time to be cooking the breast meat of a of a bird. Now, if you want the the breast to be the breast will get fibery, right? So the turkey breast wants to be cooked somewhere between 62 and 63 or 4 Celsius. That's where the turkey breast wants to be in that range between 60 and 64.
+
+[46:26] The longer you cook it, the lower the temperature wants to be. Okay. And what happens is is that it just gets fibry. So you chew it and it's not dry, but it just has this kind of fibery kind of texture. Um the leg wants to be at about 55 to 56.
+
+[46:43] But if you cook it at that low temperature, it's always going to be kind of red, almost kind of no matter how long you cook it, even for several hours. So you're kind of in between a rock and a hard place there. So a lot of people will inject the breast with brine, which is helpful, right? Uh, but it's hard to get the leg exactly where you want it and the breast exactly where you want it. So at if you did it low temperature, you could get the legs tenderized, but at 90 Celsius, that turkey breast is going to be hammered.
+
+[47:15] Hammered. Uh maybe someone in the Discord can uh maybe someone in the Discord has done this style before. I haven't done it exactly like this. Also check the cookingissues.com for old turkey cooking practices. Yeah, but that's all I mean.
+
+[47:28] Yeah, no, no, no. No one does the robotic. No, no, but it's still a good idea to get times and temperatures and things like that. It's a good starting point. We do have an interesting question in the Discord, Dave from Slim Joe.
+
+[47:38] Okay. What's up with the new Searsol? Well, uh, that's a good question. So get ready, people for the Sears All Pro. Yeah, we're gonna release in a in uh in a week or two.
+
+[47:52] Uh we're gonna do a crowdfund. Uh which platform we're using, John? Indiegogo. Indiegogo. Uh, because apparently it's better for things like this.
+
+[48:01] Correct than Kickstarter, yes. Yeah. So you gotta tell here's what here's what it does. Here's what it does. So one of the things uh that you know a lot of people were like, I like the Sears all, but it's a little bit small, right?
+
+[48:11] And I like the Sears all, but like I'm gonna use map gas and it burns out, right? So what we did was we made a Sears all with 50% more surface area on the front, right? So 50% more searing area. Now, if you use that with your with on propane, right? Like the the regular Searzol, one of the reasons not to use map gas on a Searsol 1.0 is it'll completely burn it.
+
+[48:35] The other reason not to use map gas on a Searsol uh one is that it just overfires the Searsol, and you're actually throwing away all that extra heat. This the Sears All Pro can take advantage of map gas, and it's hotter than the Sears All one and also more even because we have this, we completely redesigned it. It's got a cone-shaped screen on the inside, and that cone-shaped screen spreads the heat out evenly, even though this unit is actually sh like more squat. It's it's actually a smaller cone, right, than the Searsol one. And the reason we did that is because it's no higher, it's no higher off of the ground than the old one is.
+
+[49:14] I didn't want to increase the tipping hazard of it. So it's the same weight as the old Searsol, it's the same height as the old Sears all, but it's just a lot shorter with 50% more searing area, and it uses map gas and it screams. And do you have to pre-season it? You do not have to pre-season it, John, because we're pre-baking all the insulation, and you can use it straight out of the box. So you use it straight out of the box, no pre-seasoning.
+
+[49:38] You can put it directly on your old torch. We recommend using map gas with it or map pro just because to take advantage of that extra surface area, you you know, you want to move up to map. If you use propane on it, it sears at a it's bigger, but it sears at about the same rate as the as the Gen 1 Searsole. But when you put the map on that thing, it screams. It's so baller when you're when you're using it.
+
+[50:03] We also changed the front face angle of it slightly, so it's a little bit easier on your wrist. We're gonna be selling our own torches so that you won't have to give the burn somatic money just to give us money. Uh um, and and we're working on it. We're almost 100% sure. For those of you that are listening in Europe or Asia, we're gonna do an isopro version.
+
+[50:23] Uh so you know, that's camping gas for those who don't know what isopro is. It's not the not the propane camping gas, but the ones that like jet boil uses, and that's a much easier tank to source worldwide than the map gas and propane cylinders uh that that we use. Uh anything else I'm leaving out on that uh Sears All Pro? No, that's it. I think that covers it all.
+
+[50:44] Yeah. Sears All Pro. And it really just like, I was like, how much better can it be? And then like, you know, with map, right? Oh, yeah.
+
+[50:51] I mean, yeah. If you go on Booker and Dax's uh Instagram account, you could take a look. There's a of uh infrared, and John didn't really say much about it on the on the account, but you can see an IR image of the pro versus the regular, and it's like it's just like a lot more a lot more, yeah, a lot more even, a lot more, a lot more heat coming out out of the front of that thing, which just means it's also uh I think John, you like this fact, it's the same size as most burger patties. That's true. It's great.
+
+[51:22] Yeah, yeah. Melt your cheese in one go. Yeah. Perfect. Yep.
+
+[51:25] And it's just so much faster. It is, yeah. It really is just so much faster. Uh so anyway, keep your eye out for that because when we launch that sucker, we need people to buy it so that other people are like, we need people who know us to buy it, because then people who don't know us will be like, well, this other person bought it, so maybe I should buy it. Exactly.
+
+[51:45] Yeah, all your friends have get everyone excited. Because what happens if uh people don't buy it, Sas? We won't make it. Here's the thing if you don't buy it, we don't exist anymore. Yeah, I mean, we we're not gonna Well, the show will exist.
+
+[51:58] Well, no, who knows? Who knows? Dire times, dire times, not dire wolves, not dire straight, not dire straits. Do I like dire straits? Yeah, yeah, you know the new John Mayer album.
+
+[52:13] Yeah, sounds a lot like Dire Straits. Really? Like Brothers in Arms era? Money for nothing, shakes for free. I like dire straits.
+
+[52:21] A lot of people my age hate on the dire straits. Weird. I don't know what it is. They're like, you're like, oh, did you like dire straits? They're like, nah, nah.
+
+[52:28] What? Do you like them, Joe down. Harsh traits? Yeah. Um, I don't love all their tracks.
+
+[52:35] I love that song Lions. I don't know it. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[52:40] Yeah. But not a big fan. No? You don't like his uh guitar style. He's not a Knopfler fan.
+
+[52:46] Mark Knopfler. Noodley. Oh, you hate the noodle? I don't love the noodle so much. Wow.
+
+[52:52] Yeah. I do like the noodle, but I don't love his style of noodle. Not his particular noodling. Okay. I'd take like a Jerry Garcia noodle over Mark Knopfler's noodle.
+
+[53:04] Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah, me neither. I was like, the thing about Knopfler is like he seems like he's like a little bit of a jerk in his the way he sings, which I kind of like that a little bit. Like not like pavement level jerky, although he wasn't a jerk to me in real life. Uh Malcolm?
+
+[53:19] Yeah. He was actually quite nice to me in real life. I used to listen to him and be like, I love this. I bet he's a jerk. You know what I mean?
+
+[53:26] I always got a little bit of that. Like the whole like the whole like anti-consumerism, money, you know, the custom kitchen delivery. I was like, he's a little bit of a dick, probably, Knopfler. Yeah. But I like that stuff.
+
+[53:40] Anyway. By the way, I'm gonna take something back I've been saying for years. I'm not gonna take it back, but I'm gonna moderate what I've been saying for years. For years, like decades, for 30 years, more than 30 years. I have said to anyone that listens that Michael Stipe is a butthead.
+
+[53:58] Like I've said it to anyone who listened to me. I'm like, Michael Stipe, butthead. I'm gonna go ahead and take it back. He might have been having a bad day the time I met him. He might have been having a bad day.
+
+[54:07] Heard an interview with him, and I know you can sound nice on an interview, but he seemed, and maybe it's just because he's older, and you know, when I met him, he was still, you know, like 30 or you know, whatever. You know what I mean? Maybe I judged him too harshly. Is he more? Is you think more or less of a dick than Moby?
+
+[54:26] I mean, isn't I've never met Moby, isn't he just sanctimonious? He's just hungry. It's like this is the new Stas thing. Just like it was like all out of nowhere, just be like, BAM! He's vegan.
+
+[54:41] Yeah, I know why. Yeah, yeah. But I'm like, but it's like that's like the new Stas thing. So it's like out of nowhere, one zing per show. I like it.
+
+[54:53] Yeah. Yeah, I think that's accurate, right? He's just like, I used to listen to some Moby tracks though. Everyone listened to some. There was that era in like in like 2000.
+
+[55:04] 2000. When everyone was like, I want to listen to Moby now. You know what I mean? That was a good album. Because he got it here.
+
+[55:12] He got all his rights because of the, you know, the Jason Bourne soundtrack. Oh, I don't remember. I didn't have it in that. Oh, God, that's a terrible song. Wow.
+
+[55:20] I forget the one I used to listen to, but it was the time, everyone was like, it was like the entire world was just Moby and Sade. Everything in the world was Moby and Sade. And and right, you remember this, Stas? Is this when you were at MTV? Yeah.
+
+[55:34] Maybe it was just my Napster. That was what it was filled with. Oh my God. I feel so bad. Oh, well, I don't.
+
+[55:42] No, what am I stupid? No. I I wish, I hope everyone in their life has the feeling that people my age had when Napster happened. Because it was like, I don't know what it would be the equivalent of, but imagine scrimping and saving to try to buy new music all the time and like having it be so much work to get new music and like never having all of these, like access to these songs that you used to have when you were a kid. And then all of a sudden someone's like, it's all free.
+
+[56:11] It's all free. It's all there. It's all free. It's all free right now. You can have it right now.
+
+[56:15] And I was like what I stayed in front of my and when we used to dial up the internet you used to have this thing called modem which was like an actual telephone and it would go when you would be downloading and then you get a call and then it would be Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah cut off. Yeah yeah yeah yeah and I I don't remember this but like at the end was there a way to turn off your call waiting so it wouldn't hose your modem did they have a house not in my house. So you're like yeah anyway so like we would download all these songs and it would take like like 20 minutes to download one song. By the way that was Spam Risk calling me our good friend Spam Risk. Uh so anyway so like the joy I know I was stealing but the joy of having all of that music at your fingertips is something I'll never forget ever.
+
+[57:02] Just like that that I mean wow uh right two minutes. This is from Tyler Hodges. Uh hey Dave Nastasia Jack John Joe and anyone else that's it that's all we are uh do you have any specific times and temperature recommendations for cooking a pheasant low temperature sous vide would it be similar enough to other poultry or significantly different because it is wild game. Thanks I've been listening for years and really enjoy the current version of the show. Tyler well thanks uh say pheasant in French for me I love that.
+
+[57:29] Pheasant yeah physant. Uh so pheasant is an interesting bird. Uh I guess it depends on whether you're shooting it. I think most people who shoot the pheasant when you actually pluck it you end up ruining the skin so the skin comes off and you don't have it with the skin. Pheasant is a delicious bird.
+
+[57:46] John, you like it. Yep. Love it. Yeah. The breast on a pheasant tends to be whiter than the than the breast on like a lot of other gamey birds.
+
+[57:55] And so most people, when they're low-temping pheasant, do it to a temperature closer to chicken, right? So the the whiter the breast is, the closer you shade towards chicken. And the uh the redder it is, that you shade even below duck, right? So the the order of temperatures that I would do for birds is I would do uh squab the lowest at like almost like 55, especially because when you crisp the skin up on a squab, it's gonna jack the temperature up. 55, 56.
+
+[58:28] Uh, duck, 57. Uh, then like I don't really do anything at like 58, 59. I've pheasant, I would probably do like 61, 62 around where chicken is. And turkey, I usually do it like 62, 63 for the breath for the breast. Now, the problem with pheasant legs is that they're always going to be kind of tough, right?
+
+[58:48] Have you ever had a pheasant leg that really rendered out? No. No. Pheasant leg's always going to be a little bit tough. So, you know, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll uh break down uh and I'll you'll you'll treat the the two parts of the animal differently.
+
+[59:03] And I know that that's not as nice as doing it, but the I think the ideal way to do that is to leave the breast as a double split, like press it open and take the legs off so that you have at least that kind of heart-shaped double breast flattened out in the bag. Take the hard bones off of the outside so they don't puncture the bag. And then the best way to do it really is to rip all of the bones out and then re- so you take those bones, roast the bones. Listen to me, roast the bones, then take whatever your standard kind of volai stock is that you have there, you know, your whatever your standard bird birdie stock is, and then reinforce that stock with the roasted bones from the pheasant. Hear me, you with me?
+
+[59:44] And the easiest way to do that again is in a bag because you don't need that much liquid. So you can put the the roasted bones in a bag. Be careful not to puncture it. You don't want to vacuum it, along with a small amount of stock and like whatever else you're you're you're adding to reinforce it, you know, berries, spices, whatever, and then poach that stock with the pheasant bones as a reinforcement and then low temp the breast and then go higher temp on the legs in a bag and then reassemble uh, you know, crisp off the skin and reassemble. And I think that's gonna make you happy, right?
+
+[1:00:14] Yep, sounds good. Gotta go. All right, we got one. Happy birthday done. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
+
+[1:00:18] Oh, well, James Stewart, uh James Stewart wrote in, I gotta get this because he's Patreon stuff. Gotta do it. Uh, you mentioned a week ago on the podcast that you were having trouble cooking grits in your rice cooker with milk. I agree that grits should be done with milk, and I found a good way to do it with my Zoji Rushi. He has the pressure three though.
+
+[1:00:33] I want man, I want the you know what? Jen was like, what are you guys' thoughts on on using the Teflon pan after the Teflon starts coming off? Does it make you nervous? Doesn't make me nervous, but it makes Jen nervous. Doesn't make me nervous.
+
+[1:00:44] It makes Jen nervous. She's like, You should get a new bowl. I'm like, Jen, a new bowl is a hundred dollars. Maybe I should get a new Zoji Rushi. But there's I have a certain honor in the fact that my Zoji Rushi is so old and it's still working, but I do want the pressure.
+
+[1:00:54] Anyway, uh I use Anson Mill uh Mill's yellow grits. I prefer the flavor. I use white when cooking bacon rack wrapped shrimp and grits with red eye gravy. I rinse the rinse the normal way, uh, and then I cook with water and a little salt on the 66 minute steel-cut oatmeal setting. Otherwise, yeah, the milk explodes.
+
+[1:01:10] Um, so anyway, so like that's the trick. I don't have an oatmeal setting on my Zoji Rushi because maybe it's 20 years old that they didn't they didn't have it. Uh, and then he says, Whose grits uh do you use or prefer? Uh and Jamie just moved back to uh, oh, from Brooklyn to Ohio. That's Nastasia's favorite place, Ohio.
+
+[1:01:28] Uh, I like the um it's now called uh Marsh Marsh Hen, right? That mill. I love a Gitchy boy. Yeah, I like their Jimmy Red uh a lot. I like Anson Mills.
+
+[1:01:38] In fact, the one that exploded what was Anson Mills uh white. I had Anson Mills white and it exploded. Uh and another thing I've been grinding my own. If you can go buy Bloody Butcher, oh my goodness, if you want to grind your own grits, uh, what you do is you do a coarse grind and then you sift it out and let all the fines go through and just keep the coarse stuff, and you can make your own grits if you have uh a grain mill. Cooking issues.
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@@ -0,0 +1,477 @@
+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to live on the Newstand Studios from Rockefeller Center in New York City. Nastasia Lopez is favorite place on the planet Earth. Join with Nastasia Lopez. How are you doing?
+
+[0:22] Good. Why didn't we use this song for our kickster? Uh I don't think it's uh I don't think it's first of all it's indiegogo. Don't use the don't use the K-word. Don't use the K-word.
+
+[0:34] By the way, if you're listening live on the Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Joined as usual with uh John from the customer service department. And now also our social media engagement crowdfunding Indiegogo. Maven, how you doing, John?
+
+[0:54] Doing great. Former professor. Former art history professor. Yeah, yeah. Creator of the Connecticut State Art Museum.
+
+[1:01] Yeah. Now he's answering your questions about tiny chunks of metal. Do you have any questions about tiny chunks of metal? Because John's your guy now. I'll answer them.
+
+[1:11] All of them. You know, this is John's fault, actually, because he got interested, he got interested in in uh food qua or or food qua art, right? Like, yeah. So like I never remember which way the quads go, right? You gotta get interested in food qua art.
+
+[1:27] And uh then that kind of drug you into this whole like uh poop smear of a of a world, right? Into your poops mirror of a world, I guess. Did bring me to the museum and that brought me closer to you and then ultimately to here, yeah. So there we go. Nice, uh appreciate it.
+
+[1:45] Love a good zing. Although remember, Nastasia, you still have to have at least one series. We'll see, we'll see if it comes. We'll see if it comes. Speaking of Poosmere, it's like it's like building up and then boom touch comes out.
+
+[1:57] Yeah. Yeah. You gotta pull out the yeah, all right. And of course, we got our uh we got our roving uh Mexican correspond well, not Mexican correspondent, correspondent in Mexico. Appropriating corresponding.
+
+[2:08] What he's just living in Mexico. Wow. Got Jackie Molikos, how are you doing? How you doing? I'm good.
+
+[2:15] I'm good. I'm great. And of course, here in the uh Rock Center booth, we got Hey Joe. Hey, he's in what's up? Hey, how are you guys doing?
+
+[2:23] You look good. Huh? Yeah. Oh, thanks. Listen, Joe.
+
+[2:26] So let's tell him the new news. Now, this week was your last week to come fishbowl us next to the Victoria's Secret on 50th Street. Uh is this 50 or 51? I can never remember that. 51.
+
+[2:38] 51. It's your last chance. I remember it's we record next to the Victoria Street. Oh, yeah, across the street from the Victoria Secret, but you're currently missing the last chance to fish bowl us here. If you want to fish bowl us in the future, we're going back to our original uh newsstand uh location.
+
+[2:52] In an in a newsstand. In a newsstand, yeah, at one Rockefeller Plaza in the lobby. Yeah, but you can you you're allowed to go through the lobby and fishbowl us there, right? Yes, you can. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[3:02] Although it's not the same kind of people like like we don't get digital drool. No, we won't get any of that stuff over here. No drool, no uh I'm sure security would be quickly to uh to fix that. Oh, that'd be amazing. Although have we discussed this?
+
+[3:16] Where do they hire these Rock Center security people? They're too polite, they're not New Yorkers. What's wrong with those? I think it's Zoe, because I noticed at the Met Life Building, it's the same managing company, and they're super polite there too. I feel like um, you know how it when you go to Disney World, I don't know if you know this.
+
+[3:32] Have you been to Disney World? Uh yeah, I was well last time I was there was grad night, and I was on two hits of red ants, and they were what's what's a red ant? What drug is that? Do you know what? I've never taken, I've never taken any hallucinogenic drugs.
+
+[3:49] I've and they're the ones that interest me. Of all the drugs, they're the ones that interest me. I just feel like I might not come back. Yeah, I've done enough. I'm fine where I'm at now.
+
+[3:59] I do not need any more course change. Yeah, yeah. And also like, like uh, I feel that like uh inside, like I'm always like on this knife's edge of like just just keeping it together. You know what I mean? Like reality.
+
+[4:13] And so it's like if I if I took a hallucinogen, I feel like you know what I mean? Like it's only one way to find out. Like, you know, like I feel like I feel like I could take like something like a mushroom and end up like on PCP level nut nuttery. You know what I'm saying? That's what I feel.
+
+[4:31] I almost got uh I almost got killed in high school by a kid on PCP. Oh the strongest. Well, PCP's not much. Yeah, don't take that. Yeah.
+
+[4:39] The strongest kid in the high school was he's he's he wasn't like uh necessarily like a workout strong, he wasn't like an athlete, he didn't do any school sports, but he was one of those people that was just born like just a chunk of muscle. You know what I'm talking about? You know this kind of people? Like just one like thing of sinew, and like yeah, he was high, high, high on PCP, and four of his friends had to hold him down because he caught me out of the side of his eye, and like I was some sort of evil deal, and he almost and he he would have just sh shredded me to tiny pieces. I would have been, I definitely would have been carnet up.
+
+[5:15] He would have been like blah blah blah blah blah. You know what I mean? So and maybe that was why. Then I was like, oh, this stuff is weird. I might maybe I should stay away.
+
+[5:23] I don't know. Well, PCP. Yeah, but PCP looks completely different. Come on, come on. Who're doing that?
+
+[5:28] I don't know. I don't know. The one I never understood is uh is uh it because supposedly if you take ketamine, right? You don't remember what you did. Why would you take that?
+
+[5:39] Like why would you take something that literally is like I'm not even gonna remember that I did this? Unless it's like something can be said about alcohol when you get to a certain point. I don't think like no one's trying to get to that point. And you remember the stuff up to it. My point with the ketamine is is it is it one of these things?
+
+[5:54] I can't wait to open my presents on Christmas, so I'm gonna take some ketamine and forget everything from now till then. Is that how it is? I don't think that's how it is. No? I don't think so.
+
+[6:05] No. No. Yeah, I don't remember that. Zing. Zing.
+
+[6:13] Uh all right. So uh Mr. Molecules, what's uh what's the good word? Uh I saw you put some stuff on the on the social. What's the good word there uh in Mexico for eats over the past week?
+
+[6:24] Uh I had some Eskimole, which was delicious. Yeah. How did they prepare? How'd they prepare for it? Super buttery, super buttery.
+
+[6:33] Um and like with tortillas on the side. So it was just kind of a big pile of buttery Eskimole ant larva and some tortillas. They're delicious. No greenery, no herbs, no other sort of uh because I guess yeah, they're like a little bit of herbs in there, but not much. Not a lot.
+
+[6:48] What about acid? Did you acid that stuff? Did you squeeze any acid onto that sucker? Or was it like uh some lime on the side, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[6:55] Now for people who don't know, uh, we've discussed it on the show because uh Jack said he was gonna go get it, but the Eskimola are the ant larva, and they're bigger than you think. They're like the size of a small white bean. Yeah, they're huge. Yeah, I mean I don't know how big those ants are. I mean, they're huge for an ant egg, not huge for a bean.
+
+[7:15] Right. I mean, it's not like a you know, like a fava bean or something. By the way, does anybody I don't understand why anyone shells their own beans? Is there anything more depressing on earth than shelling beans? Really not fun.
+
+[7:31] It's the worst. Yeah. Yeah, it's not. I hate it. I hate it.
+
+[7:34] I remember once, like when I was really young, I went to the farmer's market, right? And I was like, ooh, I live in New York now. I'm going to a farmer's market. You know what I mean? I go to the farmer's market and I buy all of these fava beans, and I'm like, we're having favas for dinner.
+
+[7:49] And then once I busted those things down, favas, I think are the most depressing of all beans to because you take off the big old case and you're like, I still got beans, I still got beans, I still got beans, and then you take the envelope off from around the fava bean to get to the fava bean underneath, and it's even smaller than that. And like the pile of fava detritus fills your entire apartment, and then you have like like not even enough beans for you and your wife. It's not uh it's the worst. How did that even come to be a thing? I don't know.
+
+[8:20] Was it you, John, who said you don't like fresh limas? I like fresh limas. Someone I know said they don't like fresh limas, they're mistaken. Yes. I I will never I will never shuck them, but fresh limas, they're could they're quite delicious.
+
+[8:34] All right, so the Eskimoles, now the texture is also kind of similar, right? They're kind of soft. Yep, kind of soft and mushy. Yep. Yeah.
+
+[8:43] Now, so for this big old heap and helpin of ant eggs, uh, how much did you pay? It was like $14 US, which was expensive relatively. You know, it was like the most expensive thing on the menu. Right, but here I could buy like a standard taco for that. I know places I could go and get us for a standard taco and and pay that much money.
+
+[9:07] Yeah. Right, exactly. Yeah. So a bargain. A uh a a relative, a relative bargain.
+
+[9:15] Yeah. Yeah. So you you're uh you're eating you're eating a ri a rich man's ant eggs at uh at a reasonable price, which I which I appreciate. I had to carry my uh I had to carry my ant eggs around in a sack, uh a little plastic sack where they started to break down a little bit. So I don't feel like I've ever had them in peak condition, but even my temperature and time and physically abused ant eggs that I had were good.
+
+[9:38] So there you go. Did you ever figure out what kind of ant it is, like what they look like when they because you know there's many kinds of ants? Right. Um, no, I don't know, actually. I feel like this might be uh how long much longer are you in Mexico?
+
+[9:55] Um till Thanksgiving, basically. Well, well, why don't you f figure that figure that stuff out for us and uh you know we'll go from there? Figure out what kind of ant it is, or I could figure it out, I guess. Yeah. Um in the uh Booker and Dacks news today, we have we launched officially to our Patreon.
+
+[10:13] So if you're listening now, you you knew because we told you over the weekend, but we now have our Indiegogo campaign up for the the Sears All Pro. Get the professional version of the Sears All now running on map gas for a hotter, more even flame. Yeah. 50% more searing area, same weight though, John. Did you know that the Searzol Pro has the same weight, so it's no more of a tipping hazard than the original one was, and it heats up and cools off just as quickly?
+
+[10:37] But is it taller than the original one? No, no, no, no. Same height, same height, and yet 50% more searing area. Did you know that we have a patent pending uh conical inner screen, plate-coated inner screen that spreads the heat more evenly than ever before? It didn't.
+
+[10:53] That's pretty amazing. Yeah, yeah. And so that's why we can make the cone shorter than the original cone so that it's the same height and still increase the surface area. That's how that's how that works. That's pretty pretty neat there, Dave.
+
+[11:04] Somebody actually has a question about this. All right, go. Shoot. T Dubs says if it's not top secret, I'd be interested in the details of how the design, excuse me, cone mesh, et cetera, of the Sears All Pro progressed. Uh no, it's pet we're we have a patent out for it, so it's not a secret.
+
+[11:19] You can go look up the documents. Uh next. What? People are interested in how you do how they're. But why?
+
+[11:29] So part of the problem with the original Searsol, and this we this literally what happened is uh when we were developing the original one, is we put two pieces of pieces of mesh on a ring, and the ring was exposed, much like a uh mesh in lab, like when you're in high school and you have a Bunsen burner and you you have mesh and then the the beaker sits on top of it. So we did that, right? And we're like, ow. Oh, ow, that hurts. Because uh the Searsol, the mesh wouldn't just radiate forward towards the food, it would also radiate back on your hand.
+
+[12:07] And so you could only use it for a couple of seconds before your hand was just like it was a nightmare, really. So then the very first one we made that was encased, I made a round cylinder and and you know, welded a round cylinder, and it was real chunky. And it worked, right? Because we insulated it. So it first we didn't insulate it, and then the outside cylinder got too hot and was crazy.
+
+[12:30] Then we insulated it. And I still own somewhere the very original circular searzole. We should sell that. Yeah. Yeah, the very original Searzole with and the insulation on the inside's puffy.
+
+[12:42] And that's the one we used actually to figure out the safety. So uh I turned it on, let it get real hot, turned it upside down, and started dumping corn oil into it to see what would happen, whether or not we would get an explosion or some sort of horrible fire. Fine, turns out. I mean, made a bad smell, but it was fine. Uh so anyway, so then we started walking around the uh restaurant district in uh on the Bowery, and we found these, they're real goofy.
+
+[13:07] There was a time in the 90s when you could go to a like a like a mid-range, like uh a mid-range, I wouldn't say fast casual, but like a uh, you know, like a mom and pop Applebee's knockoff here in New York City, and you'd order a cocktail, and the cocktail would come in like you'd get the glass, and then you get a little mini shaker next to it. And you guys remember this phenomenon of the little mini shaker that comes with the glass. So you get that little bit extra, you get that little bit extra in the thing you can pour into your yeah. And uh, you know, it was they were gonna throw that away anyway, and so it's a way to make you think that you're getting more for your money, right? So I found some of these things.
+
+[13:43] And uh we took them back to our shop because we had a shop in on Eldridge Street at the time, and we used those as the cone. And so the original Searzole is literally built around the dimensions of a cocktail shaker, and it just so happened to work, right? Uh when we were experimenting on making the searzole front face bigger, what we noticed is is that uh as you increase the front, A, it got too big, but what happened is because the back of the uh cone was too large, uh, we got separation of the flame and we got a hot spot and we had some problems with turbulence on the inside. So we comp we it redesigned the inside to be more of a flame shaping um situation, and then we just burned through a whole bunch of different metals to try to figure out one that would work. We tried different kinds of cones.
+
+[14:30] The idea of the cone came because we're like, well, if we can impinge the flame earlier, we can make it spread in a cone shape out to the rest of the screen, and we can more evenly heat the rest as it combusts on the inside. And so the rest of it was just kind of figuring it out. The main problem with um the screen on the inside is that um on the inside of the searzole, it's what's called a reducing flame. Most people are used to thinking about oxidation, and we actually have the reverse problem. We have a reducing flame on the inside of the searsol, and so you get a phenomenon called metal dusting.
+
+[14:59] Uh anyway, so that was the procedure. Was that a sounds good? Yeah. Yep. I remember those days in the lab.
+
+[15:08] Um no one is allowed to multi-task. And then the fun with the suppliers too, where they sent us one model that was supposed, you know, worked. The suppliers are the worst. Suppliers are the worst. Here's what happens.
+
+[15:18] Get get this. Get this. So, like we send them the CADs, right? So all this stuff is done in CAD, which is computer aided design, right? So, like you were like, this is the way I want it to look.
+
+[15:30] Because I figured I calculated the exact front face angle I want, because the front face angle also is like a little easier on your wrist. I calculated the it was all about not making it any taller than the original. I I wanted exactly 50% or more searing area on the front, and I wanted it no taller. All the other dimensions followed from that, and then redesigning the back end of it for flame shaping in the screen. So we get one and they sent that we we they they hand built the prototype, they send it to us.
+
+[15:56] This is m what a almost a year ago, eight, eight, eight, nine months ago. No, yeah, no, longer than that. Longer almost. I think about a year, yeah. They sent it, yeah, we were gonna release it last year this time.
+
+[16:07] Yep. That's right. So we say to them, we love it. It's great. We let's order the tooling, we're good to go.
+
+[16:15] Although emailed this one. We were gonna do it right when uh right when they um right when Amazon turned off the tap, we were ready to sell that thing last year, right? When they turned off the tap. And uh they're like, oh, we can't build it the way we said we were that you you wanted it. We're gonna do this other thing.
+
+[16:33] And any minor change you make to a Searsol, any tiny minor change can be the difference between it working flawlessly and the screen instantly like like turning to dust on the inside. Which is crazy because it was a cocktail shake, a random cocktail shake. The original one. Yeah, the original was a random cocktail shake. Well, you remember the original Searzol also they made a change right at the end that converted everything to dust, and that's why we had to do pre-seasoning the first time.
+
+[17:02] The original original didn't have to be pre-seasoned, it still made a smell from the insulation. Oh, yeah, the new ones are pre-baked, so they don't also smell when you when you fire them for the first time. But you remember we had a whole load of seersols in, then we had to figure out how to stop them from and that's when we had to come up with the matchstick. I don't even want to think about that time. What color is the flame?
+
+[17:21] Uh at the front? Yep. Orn orange. Orange. Yeah.
+
+[17:26] Blue to white. It well, so the the flame, if you just have the naked torch, it's blue, it's too hot, makes a nasty torch taste, right? Whenever I see someone torching meats, I'm like, uh, you know, creme brulee, yeah, torch that thing. But like uh meat, I'm like, uh, you want it to, you know, not be so intense, you know what I mean? Yep.
+
+[17:44] Um I was searing some steak last night with the Sears All Pro. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Was it quick?
+
+[17:51] So fast. So fast. Um, all right. So uh uh Nastasia, I I I hear you say that there's an email. Yeah.
+
+[17:59] Awesome. And we both didn't really read it because it's 11 life. I don't know what that's 11 life. All right. 11 life, people.
+
+[18:06] All right. So visit us on uh And then our our first manufacturer was like, this is pretty useless. Yeah. So first of all, Charles, Charles uh at the company didn't like big dogs, so he came to my house, Nastasia was at my house, Charles was at my house for dinner, and my dog is there, and he's like, I don't like dogs. And then we're like, So what do you think about the Searsol?
+
+[18:30] He's like, nah, I don't see much use for it. Yeah. This is like the guy that we dealt with in China with our factory. Just the good news is the good news is is that if they don't see a use for if the factory that is making for you, they're not gonna copy it until they see that it sells a lot, and then that's what happened to us anyway. Zingy.
+
+[18:48] All right, what other questions you got for me, John? Other questions. Okay. In Patreon. All right, Brandon Byrd.
+
+[18:55] Hey gang. I know Dave has been putting the ANOVA precision oven through its paces recently, but he mentioned a few weeks back that his family wanted him to bring back their old countertopslash toaster oven. I've wanted the APO for a while, but I've been somewhat nervous about how user-friendly it might be to the less techie members of my household. What complaints did your family have? And did you ever manage to make decent toast with it?
+
+[19:14] All the best, Brandon Byrd. P.S. looking forward to your next book. Think you should consider offering a limited, special, limited special edition that comes with a waterproof silicone slip case. So that Nastasia can use it to separate wet foods from dry foods and not just cold from hot.
+
+[19:28] That's a good idea. The ultimate text on moisture management could itself be used as a tool for moisture management. Just a thought. Yeah. So I I think I'll probably have to make Nastasia a special silicone slip cover because I don't think you know Norton's gonna shell out for any fancy uh stuff.
+
+[19:43] And Nastasia will just ruin one and and then get another one from me, is how she'll do it. I've never gotten a second one. I left it at somebody's potluck and never got it back. What were you bringing? What were you bringing to my own?
+
+[19:57] Nothing hot that needed to be separated. I am the McDLT of authors. You know what? I'm so freaking dumb. I was I was writing the uh I was sitting there looking at the at the heat transfer section of my book, and I was just like, oh, why am I so stupid?
+
+[20:16] Why am I so dumb? I'm writing something. I have a mental block. I can't, I can't do hand waving. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[20:27] So like my wife, Jen, she reads this section, she's like, that's not clear. I was like, that's because I didn't want to have to bring this whole chunk of science into the freaking explanation. And then now it's all there. And I'm like, what the hell? So now I have to have all of these disclaimers.
+
+[20:40] First of all, it's not like hard, hard science, right? Like it's not, it's equation free, but it's just, you know, all the concepts are there. So now I have to have all of these TLDR freaking like uh uh disclaimers. I don't know. Um sorry to the dozens of you who will eventually read it.
+
+[20:56] Uh wait, but what was his question though? The question was about oh, the APO. The ANOVA precision oven. Okay, so Booker, my son Booker, uses the ANOVA every day. And he just turned uh in fact, I get I get uh what's it called?
+
+[21:13] I get uh notices from my phone constantly that he is cooking salmon in the ANOVA precision oven. And so more pounds of frozen salmon fillets have been prepared in that ANOVA than I think comes out of some rivers in Alaska on a yearly basis. Because all Booker does is use that sucker to make salmon fillets, uh, which he then finishes in a pan with way too much butter and way too much flour on the skin, when he then sits there with a spoon and eats the leftover quote unquote salmon roux, which is disgusting, uh while my wife and I are yelling at him that this is not a valid food stuff. So he finds it quite easy to use. Now, uh they all of them, all of them make toast in the Brevel.
+
+[22:01] All of them. I would say that if you have a family and you like to make toast, right, the Breville is very good at making toast, right? Also, like um, I mean, the the issue with the APO, like I've said before, is is power management. So it's it's um, you know, it it if if you ran it off 220 and it had like twice the power in it, I think it would uh it would just tear the roof off of it, but it's like running right at the minimum amount of power you need for an oven that size, because it's quite large. But what it's good at, it's really good at, right?
+
+[22:37] So now but nowadays, like I was doing most of my bread in the APO, but it has a problem kind of venting off all that moisture. So if you want to do good bread in the APO, you have to do a lot of like propping of the door with like a rag in it to flash off some of the extra moisture after you get your initial steam hit. So, you know, there is no, like uh, like most of life, there's no winning. There's no winning. There's only there's marginal winning.
+
+[23:00] You know what I mean? It's not that hard to use. I occasionally I get problems with the um with the the Wi-Fi dropping and then it being a thing. And of course, Booker wants it to be in Celsius, and everyone else in the family wants it to be in Fahrenheit. So there you have it.
+
+[23:13] But luckily, he can convert on the fly. So I'm always like, Booker, what are you know? I ask ask him the question, and then he just shouts out from his room because he's only ever either in his room or eating salmon. And not with the family. What do you guys think about this?
+
+[23:28] It makes me so bent. He who doesn't respect the fact that I want the family to eat together. And so he's like, I'm 19, I'm an adult. I don't have to do what you want me to. I was like, well, but don't you live in my house?
+
+[23:41] And so he'll just like rip through the salmon and then go back in his room. I just don't think that's cool. I don't think that's right. Yeah. Yeah, but he's an adult now.
+
+[23:49] Yeah. But he doesn't have his own apartment. But you don't want him to have his own apartment. I would love to. I mean, like, if you could have his own apartment, I would, but the thing is, is that he's like, I don't know, it's just like if like what happened to it's not an onerous rule to wait five minutes and not like when someone's cooking you your meal, how disrespectful is it to sit there and wolf it down before everyone sits?
+
+[24:11] It's it's horribly disrespectful. It's like I hate crunching. I hate like when when when I'm sitting there, like I'm cooking the thing, and someone walks up behind you while you're cooking the meal that they're supposed to be eating, and you hear listen, get first of all, don't snack. Second of all, get that mouth out of my freaking ear. You monster, you terrible, terrible sack of crap.
+
+[24:37] I am standing here in the kitchen making you your food. You know what I mean? Anyway. Did we answer the question? Yes.
+
+[24:48] Yes. All right, what do we got? All right. Are two can are two control freaks and an ANOVA oven a viable alternative for a range in a home kitchen? Okay.
+
+[25:00] So I have a control freak. Uh and uh what do they say on the on the Amazon reviews? Uh was uh was given to me in exchange for nothing. Whatever, anyway, they gave me one, right? So I didn't pay for it.
+
+[25:11] They're quite expensive. Uh they are relatively large, right? So they are not, it it is not a it's not a dense way to do it, right? So like it, you know, you're the density of a real stove top is gonna be a lot higher in terms of the number of pans you can accommodate. So you need to ask yourself, do I ever need to use more than two pans at a time?
+
+[25:35] And you know, some people don't. I do. The other thing you need to do is you need to have a lot of power right there. So if you don't have two separate, uh I mean it'll run in a 15, but you're better with a 20. If you don't have two separate uh because the problem with running a 15-amp circuit, something like that off a 15-amp circuit is you plug something else into it, someone fires up a blender on the same circuit and your toast.
+
+[25:58] You know what I mean? So it's like uh it's better to have 20s for that. Definitely 20. Definitely 20. Everything 20.
+
+[26:06] Everything 20, all 20s. All 20s. Yeah. Except your light. It's better to have your light circuits to be on 15s because you don't want to have you don't want to have that much juice.
+
+[26:16] You don't want it to have to have that much juice in your ceiling before it pops. Well, yeah, for sure. And if you have if if you have LED lights on faders, forget it. Really? Forget it.
+
+[26:26] They make ones now. The dim to fades and I mean the fade that whatever it's called. The fade is not strong on the on the on the low, on the low side of the fade. What do they call that? They go gray.
+
+[26:29] They like they suck. Sometimes they flicker. I hate the flicker. They don't have to. The thing with the LEDs is that okay, okay.
+
+[26:43] So you want to get into any LEDs. The expensive thing about so LEDs, they can turn off and on like that, right? So in fact, the way that we dim LEDs, so the way that if you're doing a like a an electronics project, the way you dim an LED with a microprocessor isn't to actually dim the voltage. It's to it's to just turn it on for a less percentage of the time. So you're flashing, you're always flashing it.
+
+[27:07] And if you're flashing it so it's always on, it's always on. And then it's like strobing it almost, but super fast. The problem with um the LEDs, most of the cheap ones is they strobe at the 60 cycle, they strobe at the 60 cycle mains rate. And so you can see flicker, especially when you get lower. I think it's what's happening is it's only flashing on half of the on half of the.
+
+[27:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why you don't see when you when you see like a like uh a cameras or um uh uh you're filming something and you go to over, you pan over to a computer screen. And it's like it's like it's constantly flickering. You just don't see it at that that fast of a rate. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[27:46] And so they do get real crappy as they dim. Or like when you're a rail fan or they take pictures of the front of subways and and uh the newer subways, like they all like have demented fronts because they're not like persistent images. Anywho, uh so I would say, look, if you have a lot of power, if you have two circuits, it would be great. I I having one there, there w is is great. I I would get if you're if you're gonna spend that kind of cash, so you're looking to spend three thousand dollars,000.
+
+[28:13] I would plus the ANOVA. Right, right. But if you're looking to spend three, that's more power. If you're looking to spend $3,000 and you have uh 200 volt uh 220, I would just get a real induction top. You know what I mean?
+
+[28:26] With that's like got four burners and the density. If what you're saying is you don't have the power, you don't have the 220, then you have to have the power of the different of at least three different circuits. You're gonna require three different 20 amp circuits in your kitchen to run those three pieces of equipment. You know, so just keep keep that in mind. Uh was that uh okay answer?
+
+[28:48] Great answer. You want another thing about what weird thing about the uh uh control freak is so the control freak uh has uh on the center of it like a little belly button, right? Which is by the way, for those of you don't know what it's an induction burner. It's about three times it's about ten times the price of a cheap induction burner and about uh twice the size of a cheap induction burner, right? That's at a I I do love it.
+
+[29:14] Uh but it's got a belly button in the center, and when you put a pan on, the the pan reads the belly button temperature, and that's how it's working. The control freak cannot operate in anything other than temperature control mode. I find this irritating. I can't just put a power level into it and say I want a power level. I find this irritating.
+
+[29:39] This is a firmware problem. They could fix this problem. Uh, but they won't. Here's another thing. You want to hear another thing I got mad at Booker about?
+
+[29:47] Yep. Yeah? All right. So as I said, Booker cooks all this freaking salmon in the uh APO. And by the way, again, who buys the salmon?
+
+[29:57] Okay. Listen. Why don't you why don't you go ahead and raise an autistic scene and then come back and talk to me about it? Come back and talk to me after you've done it. All right.
+
+[30:07] Come back. Deal with deal with deal with the picking and deal with the picking and about it if you're buying him the salmon. Yes, I can. Because he won't eat. He does not eat.
+
+[30:18] He only eats salmon. He is a bear. And he has autism. He is autistic. I cannot force him to eat things.
+
+[30:28] He is not you growing up who listened to what their parents said. You have no idea what you are talking about. Okay. Now, uh, so you get the APO, he's cooking this stuff at 52 Celsius, right? For like 30 minutes.
+
+[30:46] It's a thaw cook step in one. All right? Okay. Doesn't clean the thing out. Do you know what an APO smells like when it's never gone above 52 Celsius and it's above and it's at 100% humidity and all that it cooks is salmon?
+
+[31:00] Every once in a while I just fire that sucker up to a high temperature and just blast that thing clean. Because it just you open it and you're like, salmon. You know what I mean? And you put something else in it and you're like, salmon. Anyway.
+
+[31:10] So the first time I have all of these cast iron sizzle platters, right? Uh like the oblong ones, like steakhouse style, like fajita style thingamajs. Um I did a bunch of uh infrared images of these things on induction burners. And what happens is is remember I told you about the belly button in the middle of the thing? So the induction um induction burners have uh they make a round circle.
+
+[31:36] They're not much like a flame, how the flame coming up has an even round circle around it. They also make that circle, but cat and they they actually heat the metal. So the cast iron has a cold spot where the belly button is, and cast iron is actually not good at conducting heat. So if you look at an infrared camera, you'll see that if you set a uh um a pan, a cast iron pan up to, you know, 370 uh degrees Fahrenheit, it's actually getting up to like 450, like 500 degrees right where the induction burner is because it takes that long for the heat to make it to the center. So it is smoking to death, right?
+
+[32:11] So also remember I told you they're like fajita pans, they're real low. So Booker's been using these fajita pans, and remember I told you he uses all this butter and this flour. You can't, it's like butter and flour freaking everywhere because and it's like smoking. And and I said to him, I showed him I was like, look, here is uh here is an aluminum cord induction-friendly pan that's gonna be a real even heat. And then he won't use it though.
+
+[32:37] I'm like, look, it won't splash because it's got sides. He's like, he's like, the cast iron cooks faster. I'm like, it doesn't cook faster. It's just you're misreading the temperature because it's actually getting to be a hundred degrees higher than the temperature you're setting it to. But he just doesn't believe me.
+
+[32:51] I was like, Booker, listen, it's a it's a power situation. I only have the 1700 watts coming out of the freaking wall into the thing. There's only this much watts. That's all there is. So it's can't be faster or slower based on that.
+
+[33:04] You're just overheating the freaking pan. Anyway. Yeah. Okay. What do we got?
+
+[33:14] I'm going to splurge and get a coon Recon pressure cooker. Good move. What classic in the field cookbook should I pick up to best make use of it? Ugh. You know, I haven't looked at uh, you know who we should have on is the person who does the hip pressure cooking.
+
+[33:29] Like I know she has uh a lot of uh she has a huge like blog uh blogo bloggy bloggity blog. Lorna Sass is the original uh pressure cooker uh cookbook writer. Uh she has a number of them. But those books, I think Lorna Sass's last book that I have came out at some point in the mid-90s, I want to say. Um I don't know.
+
+[33:53] It's a good question. Um the Coon Recon is nice because it's actually a pretty well-made pan. It's got a very thick aluminum slug uh at the bottom of it. Uh and I've had uh pretty good luck with it, even though I've been very abusive towards it. Um yeah, I don't know of any good good books.
+
+[34:14] There's some, uh I've got to think on it. I mean, other than like I I don't actually have do I have the hip pressure cooking book? I'm not sure, but um and Lorna Sass obviously is there. The thing about pressure cooking, if you've never done it before, uh and and uh, you know, Capri Sun asked me, he's like, you know, where is there the information on why 15 PSI is better than uh than the lower PSI that the Instapot and all the electric pressure cookers make? And in fact, Nastasi and I once spoke to uh uh appliance engineer at Cuisinart, and he was like, Why do you want the 15 PSI when uh, you know, why do you want it?
+
+[34:55] And we're like, well, we've run the tests, and on the test that we ran, it tastes better. And we ran the tests, in fact, from uh zero uh from like five PSI all the way up to twenty-two PSI, which is a lot more than 15, which is what it runs. And the sweet spot was 15 PSI. Uh in terms of stock. We just it was a test on stock.
+
+[35:14] So results with other things may uh vary. Um who's got the good advice right now on pressure cookers? Go to the hip pressure cooker site and see what they see what they have to say. But the classic in the field is obviously anything by Lorna Sass because uh right? That's her name, right?
+
+[35:30] I think so. Yeah. Um, yeah. I've been doing a lot of pressure cook. I pressure cook constantly.
+
+[35:36] Are you guys pressure cook? Are you instapot any of you guys? Pressure cooker once in a while. Pressure cook. You pressure cook?
+
+[35:44] Yeah, my wife just actually pulled it out just this morning. Electric or gas or electric or regular? Uh electric. Yeah? Yep.
+
+[35:50] Which which would, if you mind me asking which one you have? Is it an Instapot style or one of the older, like pre-made only pressure cooked guys? Only pressure cook guys. Yeah, so like Queas and Art are similar. Um, you know, I want to say it was uh Keflon.
+
+[36:05] Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, the the nice thing about those is that they're really convenient. They shut themselves off. Um, I think the reason they don't go to a high pressure is just because uh they are thermostatic and not pressure static.
+
+[36:16] All of the ones that operate on um stove tops are pressure static, and I think they really want really, really want to make sure that they don't go above uh a specific pressure, and that's I think why all of those are at a slightly lower pressure, and plus none of the people who manufacture those things has run the tests on what actually make things taste better or not. They're just you know, filth machines, people in general. Did I answer that question? Yes. We got anything else?
+
+[36:45] Is it too early to talk about Christmas? Most impressive menu for the least effort/slash hassle. I'll be traveling to stay with family and have to do all the cooking, have a Nova circulators, and there will be a standard range cooker. Could maybe travel down with a cool box with some stuff prepped, but would rather not, as I'll be on a train. Wait.
+
+[37:04] So this person wants to start thinking about Christmas. They're thinking about Christmas. Where they're going, doesn't have anything. They don't want to bring the food. They just want to bring equipment and rock it out.
+
+[37:15] There's a range, standard range there. But this person has two ANOVAs. Yes. Or well, circulators plural. So yes, at least two.
+
+[37:23] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. What are they making? They wanted the way they want advice on what makes by the way, Stas, get this.
+
+[37:29] I was at Michael's craft yesterday because uh when the French Culinary Institute went out, right? I yoinked their anti-gridddle, right? Now originally I wanted an anti-griddle back when I had a bar because I wanted to make a uh a cloud chamber. You know what a cloud chamber is? Where you do it's where it's uh it's so what you do is is you put like an aquarium and you fill it with like an alcohol vapor, and it gets just at a point where when uh charged particles, like like cosmic rays and stuff, uh well, but no, but more like charged anyway.
+
+[38:02] Then when they fly through it, they create a vapor trail. And so you can actually see the vapor trail from subatomic particles going through. Sick. And most of them are done with dry ice, but I wanted to build a a like a permanent one with an anti-griddle. But anyway, it turns out I don't have it a bar anymore.
+
+[38:17] Did you know that? Turns out I don't have a bar anymore, people. Anyway, uh but I yunked the the anti-griddle anyway, and because Booker is obsessed with mini melts, which is I guess a bootleg dipping dot, right? So a mini melt is a bootleg dipping dot, okay. And at his in his like uh college, the what's it called?
+
+[38:37] The um a vending machine sells these bootleg dipping dots, but they just up the price from four to five dollars. And he's like, that's too much. I'm not paying five dollars for the dipping dot four dollars, four dollars. So he wants me to make the cotton candy flavored dipping dots. So he's like, Dad, he's been pestering me.
+
+[38:54] He's like, Dad, how do you make cotton candy flavors? Like, well, we caramelize sugar and then we and then I looked it up, and it's like, no, they just they just use this stuff called like ethyl maltol or ethyl molatol, which is like, you know, like a caramel like flavor that they use for fake cotton candy flavor, and that's what the kid wants. He wants fake cotton candy flavor, he doesn't want actual caramelized candy. So I had to go to Michael's craft where they sell the concentrated fake flavor that my son desires for his pseudo dipping dot. Now listen, I primed them.
+
+[39:23] Because remember when I had to make Wiley uh Dufrain, I had to make him a I had to make him a uh a co-extruder to put liquids inside of liquids back during the spherification days, and they came out shaped like tadpoles like paisleys. And I was like, Wiley, man, how about a paisley? Ain't nobody making paisleys. And he's like, has to be round. And I was like, but paisley, right?
+
+[39:46] Like, differentiate yourself with the paisley. He wasn't buying it. So I had to tell Booker, I was like, listen, they're not gonna be round. They're going to be kind of like flattish dipping dots on this. And I got the okay, so we're gonna do it, and I got it.
+
+[40:00] But when I was at Michael's, and this is where it brings me to Nastasia, I almost bought you something. I was up to the register with it. Oh my god. And then I realized you wouldn't like it. I thought it was a Rudolph Pez dispenser.
+
+[40:13] Yeah. I was so stoked. I was like, oh, I was like, do they have the other ones? No, they had some sort of like bull crap other, like they had some sort of bunk Santa that wasn't even the Santa from that show. And they they had uh they had frosty, and as much as I love Jimmy Duranty, because I do love Jimmy Durante, right?
+
+[40:32] That frosty cartoon is just a wreck. It's just a nightmare of a cartoon, it's just not a good cartoon. Uh so like, and I got up there, and then as I was about to buy it, I was like, it's not Pez, it's some it's some BS lollipop that she's gonna hate. And so I was like, I was like, I was like, what's better? The fact that it's Rudolph or there's this thing she's gonna hate.
+
+[40:53] I was like, I was like, I can't decide, so I didn't get it. I was like, I don't know whether I'm gonna be like whether this is worse than nothing. You know what I mean? Oh, we should say what we're doing Friday, right? Oh my god.
+
+[41:03] And then are we gonna do Instagram live? You can't Instagram live from a show, though. No, no, rip your head. Pre pre. Like since we're all gonna be together, we can see the colour.
+
+[41:12] From the garden somewhere. From the garden? I don't know, a bar around the garden? I have no idea. What do you think, John?
+
+[41:17] Uh we can go to the Holland, which was my but they have such crap drinks. It's not about the drink. That's the only bar I've been a regular at in my life. It's not really close to MSG, though. It's on the block where I used to live, and I used to be within walking distance of MSG.
+
+[41:35] All right. Uh whatever, man. I mean I mean, we should probably go support somebody that we know, maybe. Like the one where my picture is literally on the wall. Like 20 years ago.
+
+[41:47] Like, watch out for this guy or no, like it, like, you know how like bars like over the years will have like different things. Like, so like like my picture, my wife's picture, like we're all behind the bar, like with all the old with all the old crew. It's me from like it's me from like, you know, 2000. You know what I mean? Like 20, 20, 21 years ago, and they still have the pictures up.
+
+[42:05] And you know, that's where I learned that a fruit fly is a viable garnish for uh for a bourbon. You know what I mean? Because like everything was garnished for flu fruit flies. Love it. It was the only place I've ever been in my life that smelled uh worse after the smoking ban.
+
+[42:19] Plus, we need to eat something before we get you need to eat something. You know how I am. You're gonna wait to eat with your family at midnight. Are you divulging what's going on this Friday? Or are we just gonna so you don't know?
+
+[42:30] Because I'm like, listen, it's not gonna be. Something's going on this Friday. We might meet at the hall ends. It's not gonna, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen.
+
+[42:36] Because what's gonna happen is this. Nastasia Lopez for years was like, I'm gonna go see a Billy Joel concert. And by the way, and by the way, by the way, by the way, what was it they used to say uh at MTV, Tom Petty or Billy? What was it? What was the question?
+
+[42:49] It was always musician, Tom Petty, or who would you rather be Tom Petty or Billy Joel? And everyone picked Petty. Yeah. Everyone picked Petty. Yeah, anyway.
+
+[42:59] They had hair. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we guess again. Well, who got the last laugh?
+
+[43:04] Long Island boy. Long Island boy got the last laugh. Though he did yell at me, and I was out in the Hamptons visiting a friend, and I never go to the hands. I was trying to save a bird that got caught in his metal mesh fence, and the poor thing got like in between. It was very young, and I really tried to save the bird, but I couldn't.
+
+[43:23] It ended up being a bloody mess. And he's like, get out of my garden. He's like, That's my dinner. Probably, yeah. Oh my god.
+
+[43:30] Wow, that's awesome. I don't know. Wow. Wow. Did you tell them you were saving a bird?
+
+[43:35] He didn't want to hear it. He was in some weird robe. Is this before or after he gave up the sauce? No, this was just probably like maybe four or five months ago. Oh, so post sauce.
+
+[43:47] Yeah. Oh. It's bitter. I love that. I love that.
+
+[43:53] It makes for a better, I mean, it just makes for a better performance. Bitter Joel's the best Joel. You know what I mean? Sing me a song. Like real angry.
+
+[44:03] I wonder what he's gonna sing. This is his first time back at the garden since COVID. Really? Uh it's not gonna happen. Here's what's gonna happen.
+
+[44:10] Uh so like Nastasia had been wanting to go see. Well, we have the dirty toilet water ticket that we have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She had uh, and no one's helped out. Thanks, people.
+
+[44:19] Thanks, thanks, thanks, listeners. Uh so we were supposed to go, or no, Nastasi was supposed to go. She'd been wanting to go for years. She's like, I'm treating myself, and then forgets what day it is, because she used to do that kind of stuff, and we're working this like vegan uh juice event. And uh, and then she's like literally like three quarters of the way through the juice event, she's like, I was like, what?
+
+[44:46] And then in classic I have to give you credit on this one, you started to try to blame me somehow for it. And then you're like, you know what? No, it's me. You're like, no, you know what? It's me.
+
+[44:58] And then you go, uh we're gonna go for your 50th. I don't know what so then well, so then Nastasi's like, I'm never gonna see Billy Joel in my life because I don't deserve it. I don't deserve it. That's the Russian in her. Like, I don't deserve it.
+
+[45:10] I'm not gonna get it, right? And so then, and then finally I was like, you know what, Stas? You're you know, you made a mistake. We all make mistakes. You can, we can, we can do it.
+
+[45:20] I'll go with you. We'll go. It's fine. And we decided this last February. We decided it before the pandemic, right?
+
+[45:28] So we're like, okay, in March, you're turning uh actually that was my 49th, I think, right? We're gonna go for your or fifth, whatever it was. We're gonna go for your birthday, and then pandemic hit bang. Like you had we had tickets, right? And then the pandemic hit bang.
+
+[45:42] Because he used to play the garden every month, right? Once a month. Yeah, we were gonna go for your birthday in March. Yeah. And then uh, yeah, so now we're doing it, so it's not gonna happen.
+
+[45:50] So what's gonna happen? I'm sorry, Billy Joel fans, is he's gonna get hit by a bus between now and Friday. But he takes helicopters. And then his helicopter's gonna have a bird strike. It's just like there's just no way that we're making it to this concert.
+
+[46:05] You know what I mean? Oh man. I don't want it to happen. I'm not saying Well, if we do go, we are going to Instagram Live from somewhere. If his helicopter was going down, what song would he be humming to himself on the way down?
+
+[46:19] I don't know. Hmm, that's a good one. I don't know. Think about it. Whenever I think about musicians, I always think about like what song is going through their head during the worst time of their life.
+
+[46:31] Like I want to know, like when James Brown was in that pickup truck with a shotgun, going across state lines right before he got chucked in prison that time. What was on the radio? Or what was in his head? I always want to know this about musicians. Like that's the question I would always ask people.
+
+[46:44] Like, hey, well, what's the song? Well, what's the soundtrack to this part of your life? You know what I mean? But uh, yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[46:52] Did we ever finish the candy floss uh segment? Or uh excuse me, the candy floss. Um cotton candy? I think so. We did.
+
+[46:59] So I'm gonna uh uh he said I can make it flat. I'm gonna put this, I'm just gonna make a regular creme on glaze base. But the thing I didn't, I don't have liquid nitrogen anymore, right? So the question I had in my mind is is that when you're doing dipping dots, what you're supposed to do is get your like englaze base or whatever and and drop it into the liquid nitrogen, it forms a perfect sphere. Bop, you pull it out, you temper it, you eat it.
+
+[47:18] Uh is there any aeration in that? So I was trying to figure out whether I had to pre-aerate the Anglais base before I did it, and I don't think it's aerated. I think that's one of the reasons I don't like dipping dots, is because they're just solid little balls of like they're just not a dipping dot guy. Booker loves it and he's allowed to. That's his.
+
+[47:35] Do any of you guys like dipping dots? Okay. Yeah. So the whole, yeah, not for me. The whole reason that they they say, oh, they don't melt, right?
+
+[47:46] You ever heard of Oh, they don't melt as fast, right? Because they're basically like it's styrofoamed, right? You know? They self-insulate like that. But that's the reason why they also don't taste good.
+
+[47:58] That's the same reason. Like I want something to melt in a creamy, like I want like a large bolus of ice cream in my mouth that melts in a creamy fashion. You know? Not some pellets. You know?
+
+[48:13] Not a pellet, I'm not a pellet. Although an interesting idea, if it was aerated, would be, and I think people do this, is mix the dipping dots in with other ice cream bases as after it's frozen. That could be fun. That could look fun. Uh another thing, what are your what are your guys' feelings on the semifredo?
+
+[48:30] Other than I love the name. Semi Fredo? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[48:34] I do it. I feel like no one makes this is the home friendly ice cream. We still haven't gotten the ninja, right? But this is the home friendly ice cream style because you don't require a machine. It's not churned.
+
+[48:43] But I feel like no one talks about the semifredo. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. And Fredo, my favorite character from The Godfather.
+
+[48:52] I know. I'm smart. I love that. Whenever anyone does anything real dumb, or it's like, I'm smart. Anyway.
+
+[49:02] Oh, one more thing. I watched uh I watched an episode of this show. Uh, the only one I could watch for free, uh, with the the daughter from uh Shits Creek, the uh Kevin Kenneff himself show. You seen this? I know of the show.
+
+[49:14] So here's the thing about the show. It's it's difficult to watch because it puts you on edge, right? It's like it's like you're on edge the whole time. But they actually like m use a real town, Worcester Mass. And they portray Worcester Mass, I mean, some would say accurately, as a complete pile of garbage.
+
+[49:37] And I was like, I don't know that that's cool portraying a whole town like it's just one piece of filth. Like if you're gonna do it, base it on a town that you hate, and then call it like Buster or Nuster or Schuster. You know what I mean? Don't like call it, it's just not cool to like because people live there. Real people live there.
+
+[49:58] Yeah. Anyway, I don't know. What do you guys think? You're like, it's fine, make fun of them, crap on them. I mean, I get what you're saying.
+
+[50:07] On the other hand, I what moving to Worcester would is not on the top of the list. Definitely down on that list. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[50:16] It's like what's what's below Worcester? Oof. I don't know. I have to give that some thought, but yeah. Yeah.
+
+[50:24] No offense to Worcester, had, you know, a couple pleasant times there. But yeah. I I I mean, like. I guess I mean I can think about like because I'm from Florida, so like I mean, I love Florida, but it's just too bad about the Floridians. You know, it's just like they're just the worst.
+
+[50:38] So I mean Worcester's the equivalent of Central Florida. They're amazing. Yeah. Like Rollins College over there. That's fucking great.
+
+[50:47] Never been. Oh, beautiful. I mean, it's flat, but it's like Do you know what I've never experienced in Florida? I've never experienced uh a cloud of June bugs that will clog up your radiator. You ever experienced that?
+
+[50:59] June bugs. Is June bug like a palmetto? No. I don't know what a June bug is in. So like in North Central Florida, my grandparents used to say to me, I'd be like, hey, can we go blah?
+
+[51:11] And they're like, I won't drive across this, I won't drive across the state this time of year. Like where they lived, because they would just get clouds of these things that that my you know grandma used to call June bugs or love bugs. Love bugs. Yeah, oh yeah, sure. I don't know love bugs, of course.
+
+[51:25] Love bugs. That's what it is, love bugs. And they would clog your car. Oh, yeah. Like that's why you see everyone uh that's uh but 60 years and older have those plastic plexi pieces in the front of their hood just to keep the love bugs from smacking their window.
+
+[51:39] You ever you ever get caught in a love bug uh storm? A love bug fest, yes. How how nasty is it? Disgusting yeah, it's disgusting. You can't because the w the wipers just make a mess.
+
+[51:48] It's just murder. Yeah, literal bug murder. Bug murder. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
+
+[51:54] Yeah, no, I guess a june bug is a beetle. I don't know. So I've never seen one of these love bugs, but uh if it's anything as messy as hitting a big drag juicy dragonfly. No, they're not that big. They're about as big as fireflies.
+
+[52:05] They look very similar to fireflies too. Yeah. But do not have the phosphorescence. If anyone out there who can hear me, can anyone explain to me why fireflies, and I've said this on the air before, but why do fireflies uh west of the Mississippi not light up? Or is it west of the Rockies?
+
+[52:24] West of the Rockies. I didn't know that. Yeah, so like in where Nastasia grew up, fireflies didn't do diddly squat. They have them. I didn't know them that we had them.
+
+[52:32] Yeah, you have them. They just don't light up. That's why you don't know you have them. And pfft is like it has to be the humidity or something, right? I don't know.
+
+[52:39] Probably. It's one of the best parts about being like East Coast, we have Good Falls and we got fireflies. What else? Yeah, I didn't experience fireflies to looking up here. Oh, they don't have them down down south?
+
+[52:52] Mm-mm. I think it's with uh that's why they're called love bugs. You know, Mick Jagger only has two million followers. Uh wow. Wow.
+
+[53:05] Uh propos of nothing. Yeah, but you'd think he'd have more. Um I don't know. Maybe it's actually a fake account, and that's how many even this fake account gets. How many think Billy Joel has?
+
+[53:17] Well, let's see. I don't think he has an account actually. I just did. How many? How many minutes?
+
+[53:22] Instagram? Oh, uh Billy Joel's not much of an Instagram guy, I bet. More or less than 400,000. 400,000? That's it?
+
+[53:31] And all 400,000 of our Nastasia's bot accounts. That's crazy. Hey, you know what we should do? We should buy some of those bot. Why do people buy fake followers?
+
+[53:40] What does that what does that get you? Maybe because then you get uh like advertising, right? You can get like ads. But advertisers can't tell that they're fake followers. No cool.
+
+[53:50] Oh, yeah, that's that's stupid. It's just like yeah, yeah, yeah. Self-fluffery. Yeah, we're the opposite. Empirically, you have great numbers.
+
+[53:58] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You have like two posts and it's just you with that selfie with that selfie face. I gotta learn to make uh my wife hates my dumb face. And I'm like, people are used to my dumb face.
+
+[54:12] Which face is that? There's a lot of things. I have so many dumb faces. My wife hates all of my dumb faces. She's like, I don't understand why you have this ability.
+
+[54:22] Anytime someone points a camera at you, your face, just goes into dumb mode. I could do it instantly. If someone pulled a camera out outside, like this lady, I would be like, I would pull the dumb face. I could do it. I can hold it forever too.
+
+[54:34] You think you can point a camera at me and then wait for the dumb face to go away, but guess what? Dumb all the time. All dumb all the time. Oh, uh, so can I tell you guys something I want to build? Can I tell you?
+
+[54:47] Okay. I mean, I mean, I'm not giving you much more choice. But do you have another what? Do you have another? All right.
+
+[54:56] So uh here's the thing. You familiar with the pharynograph? No. All right. You ever look at uh technical baking literature and see like the thing with the squiggling lines that looks almost like a Richter, like a like a like an earthquake thing.
+
+[55:14] So what what it is is it's a measure of uh flour, uh the strength of flour. And you take a pre-measured amount of water and flour, and you put it into this little mixer, and the mixer is measuring the actual amount of force that it takes for the mixer to go around, and it's a measure of the strength of the dough and how long the dough lasts and all this. So I'm gonna try to convert, I'm gonna try it with a bunch of the parts that I have lying around my house to see whether I can build a bootleg uh pharynograph, see where I can get any accurate kind of information out of it. So uh it's all gonna be Arduino friendly. I'll keep you guys posted if uh if if anything comes of it.
+
+[55:52] Um I have all of this measuring equipment that I end up not using. I have the ability, I have the ability to shoot infrared pictures in my oven. I bought an infrared window that allows me to shoot infrared pictures inside of my oven, and then I realized just for the book, and I realized I no one cares. You know what I mean? So I built this whole system, it's that was like, I built all the equipment to do something, and then by the time I built the equipment to do something, I'm like, I no longer care about the problem.
+
+[56:21] That's the problem with doing things to do things instead of doing the thing itself. Right. That's why cooking is good. You do the thing itself, not the thing to do the thing. Yeah.
+
+[56:32] We got a question. Yeah. From Coleman. So the other day I had some leftover lemon/slash lime syrup, 50-50 juice, sugar heated together. Uh we call that cordial in the business.
+
+[56:43] Yes. I tried mixing it into some whipped cream I made, eight-ounce heavy cream with two to three uh tablespoons of the syrup. The texture was fine, but it tasted like spoiled milk. Why did this happen? Is there a way to make a citrus juice-flavored whipped cream?
+
+[56:56] Yes. Uh are you familiar with the group Suicidal Tendencies that then disbanded and then became infectious grooves for an album or two before they went back to being suicidal tendencies again? No. Are you familiar with the fact that my wife in Germany when she was there passed out into a men's bathroom at a suicidal tendencies concert? Kind of a good story.
+
+[57:29] Coleman wrote in, right? The answer for you, Coleman, is uh make make a fluid gel. So uh I don't know that you're gonna be able to do it with the syrup that you had, but in the future, uh make an agar fluid gel of your citrus, right? Uh, I would say in and around like a percent, like uh three quarters to one percent. Uh so you you make a hard gel with the stuff, then blend that gel into a fluid gel.
+
+[57:56] So you need at least enough to actively blend it in a in a blender. You don't want little shreds and flakes. If you mix that fluid gel in with the cream and then put that in with sugar in an EC whipper, the fluid gel sequesters the uh the acid enough such that the cream won't break and it's stable as and it won't. You're talking about a whipped cream, right? Not a liquid cream.
+
+[58:19] Yeah. It's super stable and doesn't taste grainy. That's what I would do. Nice. All right.
+
+[58:24] Well, with the limited time we have left. Everyone, please share the Sears All Pro campaign with all your friends, family, everyone, help get the word out there. We really need these sales. Even enemies. Even enemies, yeah.
+
+[58:35] Everyone should get a Searsol. So please spread the word, get the word out there. Yeah, because if we don't make our goal, we toast. We toast. Uh you know what I mean?
+
+[58:44] We need we need we need it. Plus, it's a good product. Anyway. All right. So you uh so next week we're not recording in our normal time, right?
+
+[58:52] We'll be on Friday at noon. Usual time. Thank you. Visual time with sand or cats. With sand or cats.
+
+[58:58] So this is your last week, people, to get in all of your fermentation questions. We're gonna have sand or cats, but it's on Friday because he can't record on the Tuesday. So we're gonna do it live for the Patreon people on Friday. All right. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from Newstand Studios, back in the actual newsstand again. Back change in studios from our Rockefeller Center here in whatever, I guess this area is called Rockefeller Center. That's the name in the neighborhood. Yeah.
+
+[0:26] It's not like you know Lower East Side. It's like we're in the place and it is the place. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[0:32] Uh joined as usual with uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Okay. I appreciate this about you, Nastasi. First of all, uh call in your questions live if you're listening on Patreon to 917-410-1507.
+
+[0:45] 917-410-1507. Uh, and if you don't know what uh the Patreon is and you want to call in live, just go to uh Patreon, what is it? What is it? Patreon.cooking issues dot net dot com dot slash doting issues and Patreon together. Hey, toss us a couple of books.
+
+[1:04] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you toss us a couple of books and we give you some stuff, you know, you get early access, you can call in, etc. etc. Uh here's why I appreciate before I we talk any more. So, Rockefeller Center, a little bit of a wag of the finger.
+
+[1:17] You already have your Christmas garbage out. Your Christmas garbage. You've already started to put your Christmas garbage out. Christmas garbage should not go out before Thanksgiving. This is just how it works.
+
+[1:26] We had a pretty bad call with them this morning. Uh I mean, I'm happy to talk about that. We shouldn't, yeah, we should, because I really want to poll our people. But let me just let me ask you a question first. Uh not question, but tip of the hat to you.
+
+[1:37] So I wagged the finger at Rock Center, and Nastasia Lopez is the owner of the world's greatest Christmas hat. Christmas hat. Yeah. Nastasia Lopez owns the world's greatest Christmas hat, but for as low a quality individuals as the two of us are, for as for as kind of like rancid bottom of the uh of the grease trap, we can be at times. Nastasi does not pull out her hat early.
+
+[2:00] No, it'll come out after Thanksgiving. That's true. As it should. As it should. Uh in the boothie booth, we got, of course, Joe Hazen.
+
+[2:09] What's up, Joe? Hey, how are you guys doing? Doing all right. Doing okay. Uh we haven't had a show since Billy Joel, so we gotta talk about that.
+
+[2:17] Uh we got uh John. Uh he's at home because he didn't want to get us sick. People, this is a is a good idea. John is he doesn't have the he doesn't have the COVID, as they say. Not don't mean to call you out, but he's uh calling in because he didn't want to get other people sick, which I think is honorable, right?
+
+[2:34] Yep. Yeah, thank you. And not fun, I've been sick for about a week or something. Yeah, nice, awesome, terrible. Uh if you're gonna be sick, be sick for like, you know, a a week, right, Stas?
+
+[2:44] Yeah. I I don't know. I don't uh like I what's the longest you've ever been sick, Stuz? Three days. Because your body's like, that's it.
+
+[2:51] Yeah, I'd have it down to three days. Down at three days, yeah. Yeah. Uh it either it gets you or you get it. That's it.
+
+[2:58] Yeah. And uh we got Jackie Molecules. Where are you today, Jackie? Oaxaca fella center. How about uh are you really in Oaxaca?
+
+[3:08] I am in Oaxaca, yes. I'm in like uh a Oaxacan version of a we work, I guess. It's pretty bare bones. But they have we work in Oaxaca. He said a version of it.
+
+[3:20] Yeah, bare bones. I'm trying to imagine, but I'm trying to imagine something more depressing than being in a place as beautiful as Oaxaca and then being in a we work. Yeah. I'm in a room with no windows. It looks a little bit like a prison cell.
+
+[3:34] There's a big whiteboard. Wow. But the internet's fast. Oh, there you go. There you go.
+
+[3:39] That's like uh, you know, like uh when I used to at the French culinary, they would ship us around from city to city and uh to do demos. And uh they're like, Oh, how was fill in city? I was like, the basement of the Sheridan was great. You know what I mean? It's like you know, I don't know.
+
+[3:57] What a poll, poll, poll people. Poll well, okay. Okay, so describe the situ Oh. Well, okay, listen, let me ask you a question. I I have a uh a theory that uh we had a an unpleasant phone call today.
+
+[4:12] This is a hospitality related question. So this is actually in the purview of our of our show. Oh, before we get into it though, I'm gonna apologize to all all you guys. We had a technical issue beyond anyone's control. Speaking of Rock Center.
+
+[4:25] Uh technical uh beyond any of our control, correct Joe? Beyond our control. Yeah, beyond our control. That was and um so at the last minute we had to cancel last Friday's uh special taping with Sandor Cats. But good news, he's gonna be back on the show when, John?
+
+[4:44] January fourth. Cool. January fourth. Uh January fourth. Why does that name mean something?
+
+[4:50] Tuesday, regular timing. Oh, it's the 14th that's important. That's the both of my boys' birthday. Yeah, not the fourth, 15th. Yeah.
+
+[4:58] I like to have all my children on the same day so that I only have to remember one date. Makes it makes it easy. I can't remember anyone else's birthday. Like I know Nastasia's birthday is close to mine, but I don't know when it is. I remember my wife's birthday, my mom's, and that's pretty much it.
+
+[5:11] That's it. And my kids, because I put them on the same day. Yeah, right. Uh it's true. They were born on the same day, but it wasn't my wasn't my doing.
+
+[5:18] So he's gonna come back and also uh remember folks, next week on Tuesday, we're gonna do a show, but that is get all of your Thanksgiving questions to us early, right? I want all your Thanksgiving questions early. Hey, can we do uh oh but shoot is if you're not a Patreon person, you're not gonna hear it until uh Black Friday, right? Yeah. So is that this Friday?
+
+[5:44] No, this Friday is next Friday. No, no, no, next Friday, but next Friday. But if you're not on the Patreon, you don't get it till Friday. I don't know what we're gonna look at. Even more incentive.
+
+[5:53] That's more incentive. Yeah. Yeah. Join. So if you're not a Patreon person and you ask us a Thanksgiving question, you can tune in after you've already messed up your meal to figure out how you could have done it right.
+
+[6:05] You could have just spent five dollars. Or you could have just spent five bucks. Yeah. Anyway. All right, so back to back to where we're going.
+
+[6:12] So I have this theory that uh you can do any concept at a restaurant or bar as long as it's what's coherent, right? Yeah. Coherent. So what describe the situation would describe the poll. What do you what information do you want to get out of our out of our I mean, I don't know.
+
+[6:29] Uh I don't know. You look you it's it's mind-boggling to me. You you you yeah. Listen. I mean, but it's not a question.
+
+[6:38] It's like everybody knows that the feeling of the place and the feeling of the menu and the price point and the location, they have to mesh. Yeah. Let me ask you people, let me ask you a question. First of all, if you're going to Rockefeller Center, just I mean, for those of you that have never been to New York City, Rockefeller Center is like it's a tourist joint. It's it but it's a work joint and a tourist joint, right?
+
+[7:06] So you see any Christmas movie you've seen it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Right.
+
+[7:11] Yeah. I mean, unless it's Miracle on 34th Street, because that takes place on 34th Street. But like, you know, here around Christmas time, you know, on Fifth Avenue near here, you need a machete to cut through the crowds. It's crazy. You know what I mean?
+
+[7:23] Uh, but it pretty much no one's here late night. I'm just put it that way. It's not a late night kind of a place, right? Right, guys? Not yet.
+
+[7:31] Not yet. Not a late night kind of a place. Um, anywho. So the the question is, what kind of establishment do you expect if someone's gonna have a bar? Let's say someone's gonna open a karaoke bar in Rockefeller Center.
+
+[7:44] Let's just say, right, S? Yeah. Karaoke bar. For sake of argument. For sake of argument, Jack.
+
+[7:50] Just for sake of argument. Let's say we're gonna you're gonna open a karaoke bar. How much is a drink at that bar? In Rockefeller Center. Yeah.
+
+[7:58] What drink? A cocktail? I don't care, don't care. Water. How much how much is a beer?
+
+[8:03] How much how much is a corona with a rancid slice of brown cut last week lime shoved into the room? And this is a street level bar. So it's not like underground, you know. Street-ish. And then you have to go into the center.
+
+[8:14] And it's across from the skating rink. Should it be, or what are we expecting it to be? What do you expect it? When you walk in, how much do you think you're paying for that beer? Crappy Corona.
+
+[8:25] Or that cocktail. $8. $8 for the corona. Really? Okay.
+
+[8:30] Have you bought a pretzel in this neighborhood? How is that Madison Square Garden? Interesting, you should talk about that. You know how much a pretzel cost outside of Madison Square Garden? A pretzel?
+
+[8:40] A pretzel. People, if you've never been to New York City before and you're like, oh, New York pretzels. They suck. They are terrible. Like New York pretzels used to be good in the 70s, or at least my taste was worse.
+
+[8:54] Whatever. They are rancid, stale, doughy pieces of garbage that can only be saved by copious, copious quantities of mustard. They are always both stale and doughy at the same time. It's a miracle. If you asked me how can I make something both doughy and stale at the same time and wrinkly and crappy, I would be like, I don't know how to do it, dude.
+
+[9:17] I have to do some research to be able to make something this garbage. Sallow, underbaked, horrible, mon freaking strocities, and yet we have a reputation for them. I digress. Six bucks. That's how much one of those things costs.
+
+[9:30] Six bucks. And you're telling me how much is a beer. Okay. I mean, they were 15 bucks when we were there at MSV. Well, that was in the garden.
+
+[9:41] That's in the garden. Yes, that's true. And it was a it was a big cup of watered down urine beer. You know what I mean? But it was it was a large cup.
+
+[9:49] And by the way, Billy Joel sounds like an angel. An angel. The man's voice is so on point. He, I guess now that he doesn't drink anymore, he focuses all of his rage into sounding good. 72 years old, hit all the notes.
+
+[10:03] All of them. I'm glad he didn't strain his voice yelling at you, Joe. That would have sucked. Imagine if he couldn't do his job because he's straining his voice yelling at you, trying to free that bird from his fence, you know? Um the actual venue, kind of a kind of a nightmare.
+
+[10:20] Oh, so Nastasia's ticket that had the poo water on it. Yeah. Uh she got in. She got in. Yeah.
+
+[10:27] Nastasia gets Nastasia can, yeah. We were in line for a long time. And there was a danger we were gonna miss the opening song. But John made John made it up before us. Yeah.
+
+[10:42] Run out of the bathroom. Oh, yeah, that's a good example. By the way, people, if you don't want to deal with the situation, run to the bathroom. And here's another wag of the finger. Here's another wag of the finger.
+
+[10:54] Uh they scan your ticket once, and then they don't let you rescan in. So, like, I had like the lady was like, this tick was already skin. I was like, by you, lady, by you when you made me leave to go in line so I can hang out with Nastasi while we waited to see what she got. You skimmed. So okay, okay, go, go, go.
+
+[11:11] Go go in, go in, go in. People were a little bit on edge. Imagine all of Long Island showing up to Matt. Imagine the entire Long Island is has pent up energy for two years waiting for Billy Joel to come back to the guard. They've they they've it's all bottled up.
+
+[11:27] What did that guy behind us call the the ticket people? Carpet baggers. Which I don't even understand. I don't even care. What does that mean?
+
+[11:38] Carpet baggers are northern people who go to the South after the Civil War and try to take political uh uh positions away from Southerners, right? Now they're both snowbirds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what the relevance that has to the people who are. Well, then the other part is or a person perceived as an unscrupulous opportunist.
+
+[11:57] Oh. Guy behind us. Oh, you all you guys carpet bag, not you. He points to Nastasia, he's like, you guys You're okay. You're okay.
+
+[12:06] We're like, okay. All right then. Sounds like you guys went to a Knicks game. I mean, like, I was I thought I was gonna miss the opening because Nastasia was like, the dude's gonna go on at eight. He's gonna play his tunes and get off.
+
+[12:18] It was eight or nine, whatever it was. It was like one or two minutes after we're in the line. You know how, like, uh, what's that? What's that character that like uh runs real fast? You know how he just vibrates?
+
+[12:28] He just can just vibrate, he can like heat things up. I I was vibrating like uh what is it the flash? Yeah, we were glass. Hey, but if John got the opening, that's all that matters. It's it's it's it's always important.
+
+[12:40] Oh, for those of you that are gonna pay to go see Billy Joel in concert. Don't worry that you're staring at the back of his head because his piano rotates. So everyone stares at the back of his head for a little while. For a little while. Okay, enough Joel.
+
+[12:54] Back to the uh thing. So wait, so how much did you say for a beer, Jack? I said eight, but I mean I've been in Mexico for three months. I'm skewed. How much for a cocktail?
+
+[13:04] Joe, how much for a cocktail? Here. Oh, a cocktail here? I would say at least 18. What does it look like?
+
+[13:12] What does the cocktail look like? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it in a plastic cup? Does it look like trash or does it look good? It's gonna be one of those like, you know, like it's those those fake pla it's the fake glass plastic, the kind of thing that we're next to the pool.
+
+[13:24] Yeah, yeah. You know, it might even have like a rock of uh excuse me, a like a uh a Radio City little stirring thing. Oh, you know plastic? You know, the lights up kind of so glass. Maybe a slice of orange, a slice of orange, no matter what cocktail you got.
+
+[13:40] And uh, and uh what what century was the orange sliced in? Like like last century? It's like a 19th century orange. Yeah. Uh so all right.
+
+[13:50] All right, but like what kind of ice is in that glass? Uh like I mean, definitely not good ice. Yeah, I know. It could be, I don't know. So it's eighteen dollars trash can ice served in glass stick with uh like with like a real sad slice of like orange where it's a little bit dark, so you're like, is that an orange or a lemon?
+
+[14:14] I can't tell because the color is so garbage. Like that? There you go. That's your where the seed is literally left in it, so you can still see the god dang seed and it's floating in the top of your drink. And that's 18 bucks.
+
+[14:26] Yep. And you're happy to pay that. You're happy to pay that. No. Well, whoever dragged you up here, you're unhappy with them.
+
+[14:35] Right. Uh I think you get our point. We're trying to figure out like we're trying to match price, expectation, and deliverables. No one wants to go. If you're go if you're going to a karaoke bar in Rock Center, my question is, do you care about the quality of the drink at all?
+
+[14:53] Or is it just tertiary? You're getting beers. Probably. Or like something bad, like a tequila soda, you know? Like whatever the well is like anything, anything but well, basically.
+
+[15:07] I mean, they could probably just even have the cocktails like in a uh like uh like a in this in a dispenser or even on a fountain. That's yeah, too complicated. And you know, you know, they're not gonna pay for that. Yeah, it turns out that those places that try to get good value by doing um because I've looked at concepts like that. I could do a really good one if if we someone had the money for it.
+
+[15:27] But in order to do really good cocktails uh on a tap system, you just need to invest in the tap system. So the tap system costs, but then after that your labor costs go down. Whatever. So so what I'm hearing is free pours, yeah. Uh what I think is it should be a fun, cool beer and shots thing where you can have good beer and shots.
+
+[15:48] You can have interesting, fun shots. Like, like I've never been to one, but apparently Texas has the best beer and shots places. Is this true? Anyone who's been to Texas? I don't know.
+
+[15:57] I mean, yeah, sure. They have good dives, good beer and shot spots. J in the Discord, by the way, we have a we have a Discord comment. Um, and he says the best karaoke bars are BYOB. Yeah, that is true.
+
+[16:10] That is true. But then you lose out on all the revenue and drinks. Yeah, I mean how the how the hell is it a bad business model, but I mean then you can just do it at your house. The best karaoke is in my garage. Go to Malchisco when my mom and my well, my they're always there now because of the COVID.
+
+[16:29] The COVID. Um anyway. Yeah. I mean, if you don't have a liquor license, you could do whatever you want. They won't know BYOB is not possible anymore here in New York.
+
+[16:37] Yeah, it is. What do you mean? When did they change that? I heard it's not when I talked to the if you don't have a liquor license, I'm allowed to bring whatever I want. If if you don't have a liquor license, I can bring whatever I want.
+
+[16:47] That's always been the rule. When did they change it? They changed it, yeah. After COVID. After COVID, they changed?
+
+[16:53] Yeah, because I asked about that because I was like, all right, well. You can't sell beer and let people bring beer. Right. Right. But I don't think.
+
+[17:03] Yeah, the FLA website says no, BYOB is generally not legal in New York State. Generally not. Generally. I want to know specifically. Okay, so you you open you open a bodega in front of the bar where you can buy your beer and then pretend you're bringing it in yourself.
+
+[17:19] That's how the cat joints work. Like they can't have cats that you pet and sell food. So they have to like have a separate area where the food is sold, and then if you bring the food into where the cat is, well, that's on you. That's your problem. You know what I mean?
+
+[17:36] All these weird rules. And it's like the same with the dog place. It's like you can't have the food delivered to where the dog is. You have to go. Like if that place like uh Boris and Horton where you you can bring your dog in, you go to a separate, like through a door to get the food, whatever.
+
+[17:51] Laws here are so we like arcane and dumb. When did they get rid of the BYO? John COVID. After COVID? I doesn't say, but yeah, that sounds about right.
+
+[18:04] Also, like leave it to New York. Generally. Yeah. What do you mean generally? They're like, if you are part of the mafia, it's okay.
+
+[18:12] Yeah, it's okay. All right. Tom Meadows. Uh hey cookies. A quick Discord question, very quick.
+
+[18:24] We want to encourage people to join the Discord, which is a live chat. He wants to know how you feel about nuts for nuts while we're on the subject. No, nuts for nuts. I mean I like the name, right? Nuts for nuts.
+
+[18:36] So for those of you that haven't been to New York, like we have these nut vendors called nuts for nuts that you go around the city and they serve you. You buy, like, you give them like a dollar or two. I haven't bought one in years, and they give you like like a nut sack. And in the nutsack, you can get you can get like they have peanuts, they have freaking. Do you like the coconut?
+
+[18:57] You like the nut-coated coconut? I can't stand the smell of nuts for nuts. I like I don't mind. You don't like caramelized sugar smaller smell. That specific smell.
+
+[19:06] Wait, so we have two, we have wait, John, you're against, and Jack and I are pro the smell. No, no, I'm I'm pro. Oh, you're pro smell. I enjoy the smell. Joe, where where are you on nuts for nuts?
+
+[19:15] I love them. Yeah. The person in Discord just wants me to say, D's nuts. But like, the fact of the matter is that I think they're fine. They the issue is sometimes they get burnt and sometimes they're a little over.
+
+[19:27] I really like the candy though. I grew up eating these things called um uh like boss Boston baked beans and then what the there's also like French burnt peanuts, I think is the other name of them, where they're like these like hard shell caramelized nuts. So I I'm a kind of a fan of that favor flavor, and I actually like the the coconut chunk sometimes. Anyone here a pro coconut chunk in the nuts for nuts? Yeah.
+
+[19:50] I'm into that. I think it's a little strange that that's all they freaking sell. It's like a weird thing to be like, because I'm not like a, you know, I'm um I'm a bit peckish. I would like a small sack of something. You know what I mean?
+
+[20:04] It's like it's never something where I'm like, that's really gonna do me. I just need a tiny sack of nuts to make it through the day. But they are rather filling with all the I mean, like it it studies show that if you if you don't go crazy and you just eat a small sack of nuts, that it can actually tide you over, but you have to give your body time to register the fact that you've eaten the nuts, right? So if you show up at somebody's cocktail party and you are bored out of your freaking skull, right, then you're gonna drink all the wine so that you don't have to open your mouth or talk to people just to have your mouth doing something. You're gonna eat all the nuts and all the cheese, then it's not like the nuts are gonna fill you up.
+
+[20:42] But if you're walking down the street and you just eat the little sack of nuts, you're like, oh, that was more filling than I thought. But I think my brain still hasn't my my heart still hasn't gotten to where my brain knows that that small sack of nuts is actually gonna tie me over. Does that make sense? Yep. That's good.
+
+[20:55] I'm feeling like nuts for nuts. But I think it is a it is a it is a a decent quality street food. New York City street food could be a lot better than it is. Our best thing is the halal carts. That's the high.
+
+[21:08] Stas is looking at me. I'm not gonna call anybody out. Let me ask you a question. You're about to go to a concert. You with me, Joe?
+
+[21:14] Yep. You're about to go to a concert and you stop by a halal cart, right? Now, for those of you that don't know, there's a wide range of things, but basically, you're either gonna get something that you can eat in your hand, right? Something that comes on a pita, or you're gonna get something that's in a tub. Right?
+
+[21:35] You with me so far? All right. So you're gonna get the same mix, whether it's lamb or chicken, uh, or or the mix. The mix is the answer, right? Everyone knows the mix is the answer.
+
+[21:45] It's always the mix, right? And you guys, and and they have two sauces. They have a white and a red. You gotta get both, I think. That's my opinion.
+
+[21:53] Anyone? Mm-hmm. Both. I'm just a white guy. I'm just a white guy?
+
+[21:56] Yep. I'm a both. I'm a both. I'm a both. Anyway.
+
+[22:01] You're rushing to make the show. You have a ticket that's covered in poop water. Yeah. Do you get the bucket or do you get the handhold on the bread? You also have how long of a walk to get to the ticket entrance?
+
+[22:16] Oh, well. We haven't said what do you get? You get the handhold or the bucket. Jack and Joe, what do you get? The handhold or the bucket?
+
+[22:23] The handhold. The handhold. But you can't get both. You can't get both. You don't get the bucket, man.
+
+[22:29] You don't get the bucket. You don't get the lamb over rice. Did I delay anyone getting in there with the five years? I'm just gonna say we almost missed that opening song. There would have been Oh please.
+
+[22:44] John, you had no worry. You were sitting up with the beer up in the uh nosebleeds. I was waiting in the house. I'm an old man. I needed to get my oxygen ready so that I could like be that high at that high altitude to watch Joel.
+
+[22:56] Anyway. Alright. Uh I think like I think everyone would pretty much agree that the best street food in New York at this point, the best commonly available street food is halal card. Like straight. You know what I mean?
+
+[23:08] It is, I mean, they are of varying qualities, but uh across the board, they serve a delicious product. And uh and if you have been at Nastasia's theoretical karaoke bar and you've had too much to drink of shots and beers, and your voice is a little hoarse because you you sang too much journey, right? Uh a halal cart is a good way to keep that. I call that a boat anchor, right? So a halal cart, and that's when you need the full bucket, John, although you're gonna peep it with it, is like late night, you need a boat anchor to like anchor all that stuff that you did to your stomach at the bar.
+
+[23:45] You know what I mean? And halal cart's great for that, I think. Yeah. Yep. Um, you know, we don't I don't know why like every city has their own street food that's good, like, and why when people try to bring it to other places it doesn't work.
+
+[23:58] People have tried doing crepes here, and it just never works. I don't know why. Is it because we don't care about crepes? Maybe. We don't give a crap.
+
+[24:08] Ah, I don't give a crepe. That's the name of our new place, guys. I don't give a creep. Crep. Uh wow.
+
+[24:15] Yeah, but uh, I mean, I love crepes. Crap. I love I love them. They're great. Um, if you go to like Jackson Heights, though, or Queens, then you get good street food from other places.
+
+[24:25] But you know what I'm saying? You're talking about like Manhattan street food. Right, but that's where the tourists are. Where the tourists are street food waits for me. But the point my point is that New York City spice is kind of a New York street food, even though it's not served in the street.
+
+[24:41] You eat it on the street, but they're mainly trash. They're only miraculous in their cheap price. Not the dollar pizza, not the dollar slices. Meaning, do you eat it in the store? No, no, no, no, no, no.
+
+[24:58] I just like don't qualify that as pizza. Oh, right. Right, but no, but that is a street food. Yeah, for sure. And the uh the average dollar slice is better than the average New York quote-unquote pretzel.
+
+[25:11] Yeah, uh, yes, I agree with you there. And also, no offense, we need to haven't done the hot dog off yet, but Sabrette needs to up its freaking game, dude. Sabrette is not a great hot dog. Sorry, their sauerkraut also, not a great crowd. You can get amazing crowd in this city.
+
+[25:27] Amazing crowd. I'm not a skinless wiener man myself. I mean, do any of you guys like uh a hot dog without a skin on it, or do you guys all pro-skin if you can get the skin? Pro skin. Pro skin.
+
+[25:44] Pro skin. Pro skin. Need to snap, yeah. Yeah, need to snap. Stas is just Stas is like, won't even, can't even I've done both.
+
+[25:54] Wow. I've done both. I don't know how to parse your answers, Dad. Get to some questions. Oh, geez, Louise.
+
+[26:05] Oh my god. I've done both. Equally repulsive. All right. Uh hey, what's the name of that place?
+
+[26:15] Wait, hold up before Yeah. No, no, no. Wait. Well, I just I thought you were getting into a question. Finish what you're saying, and then I'll say well, that's okay.
+
+[26:21] Uh, what was the name of that place where they uh they tried. Remember, there was the guy who quote unquote invented putting hot dogs in a bun and selling them as street food in Coney Island, and Nathan's work Nathan worked for him and started it was it Finnerman or something like that? Has anyone tried that hot dog? Oh and no, I haven't, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, the brand went out of existence and then it's come back it that someone's bringing it back and they're trying to make like a really high quality New York City hot dog again.
+
+[26:50] No offense to the Subbreck Court. Whenever you say no offense, it means offense, right? Yes. Now get to questions, Steve. Well, John was gonna say something before we do the questions.
+
+[26:58] Yeah, before questions, everybody, pre-order your Sears All Pro today. Go to indiegogo.com slash Sears All Pro. Get your Sears All Pro. We really need to get more people buying this thing. Share with your family, share it with your friends, put it on your social media, spread to the word.
+
+[27:14] We need more people to be buying this. So please help us out. We'll be really happy you did once you get the Sears All Pro. It's an awesome, awesome tool. Pre-order it today.
+
+[27:22] It really does kick the snot out of the original one. I mean, like the original one is is good, but like having been using just this prototype for the past couple of months, it just like using map gas and just the bigger head, it just is so much faster. I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. Same weight.
+
+[27:44] Uh did you release the uh Fabulous and Jeremiah uh video yet? I did yep, but it left us there. Yeah. I mean, weirdos. Uh the you know, the problem with it is is that I mean, to be honest, like we uh because of the whole Amazon thing, which for listeners of the show, like, you know, they turned off the the money tap for, you know, better part of a year.
+
+[28:09] And so we didn't have the money to run the campaign the way that we should have, which is you order 50 of them, and then you send like a bunch of them to like well-known people and have them actually use it. So you kind of have to take our uh what's it called? Uh our word for it. Uh, but because we just don't have the units to ship out to people uh or the time. But if, you know, um, you know, unless something else happens, we won't be able to make it unless the Kickstarter Indiegogo is successful, which uh, you know, right now we're uh what's it called?
+
+[28:42] We're behind as usual rest us. Yep. Yup. Thanksgiving. Questions.
+
+[28:50] Uh all right, Tom Meadows. Uh I discovered the show last year. Didn't I do this one? Didn't I do this one already? I did this one, didn't I?
+
+[29:00] This is a new one. All right. I discovered the show last year and I've been listening uh religiously ever since, slowly working my way uh through the back catalog. Now I've got working my way back to you, babe, in my head. Go on.
+
+[29:11] With a burning love inside. Go on. The happiness, it's don't let it slip away, Stas. All right. This is what happens when we have this is what cuts into the time.
+
+[29:24] Go on. Oh, this is not talking about theoretical karaoke bars that that may or may not be opening. Uh hospitality. Let me ask you a question, people. For real.
+
+[29:37] For real. Under what scenario is it I'm being deadly serious here. Under what scenario is a wine Santa a responsible thing to have in a bar environment where you're serving people that aren't your family that you can't like you know what I mean? Like, is it possible to actually have the wine Santa be a responsible item? Ray said if it were tabletop, if it were bar top.
+
+[30:10] And then a karaoke bar. Well, it's not a matter of that. It's a matter of people getting viciously overserved. And not look. Well, it's a karaoke bar, it's gonna happen anyway.
+
+[30:21] I mean I I don't want to contribute to people's life being unpleasant. You know what I mean? I mean, any more than we already do by doing this program. Uh well, if it's bar top, you can see if they go to it. I mean, look, I think people would like the the issue with the wine santa is it's a continuous fountain.
+
+[30:43] It's like the clam broth. It's like it's like clam broth, but with wine. So it could be clam broth Santa. That is gross. Sober people up or something, something that sobers people up, you know?
+
+[30:54] Water Santa. But I think also there's like the hygiene perspective of like people dropping their cup in there, then they have to fish it out, or like they don't hold the cup properly, and you know, whatever liquid runs down their fingers and mentor goes into the ball and then gets into the system. So you're saying more of a party situation? Yeah. Where you have to treat people?
+
+[31:13] Yeah. Wait, are you were you about to say that you don't use a punch bowl at a at your friend's house party because you find them to be too filthy as people? No, I mean, I would do that with people I know, but I don't just like you know, a bar random bar in Rockefeller Center where I don't know anyone else there, I'd be a little more on my guard, I said I would guess, I guess. Oh my god, I can't believe that the COVID conversation. Post COVID, would people use a wine Santa post COVID?
+
+[31:41] Like that is like that's where we've gone in the in the discourse, is that like, you know, it's from the absurd to the absurd, more absurd. You know what I mean? Jumping from one absurdity to the next. All right. Slowly working my way through the back catalog.
+
+[31:55] We're back to Tom Meadow's question, by the way. In case you were trying to keep track. Uh I think I've got about 200 hours under my belt. Jesus, that's a lot of this. Um Thanks for all that edutainment.
+
+[32:07] It's been a real comfort during lockdowns and the pandemic. Uh I have a general question about food preservation and pH. I don't see uh as much discussion of food preservation using high pH, i.e., alkaline environments. I know that lie is used in the preparation of, as Nils used to say, Lut fisk. Lut fisk.
+
+[32:25] That's you know, I used to call it Ludafisk because it sounds more like ludicrous, and I enjoy thinking of the song Rollout whenever I think of Lutfisk, right? Rollout's a good tune. Anyway. Uh, but I can't think of uh many other cases where significantly alkaline rather than acidic environments are used. Ah, uh there are.
+
+[32:44] Uh why is this? Uh why isn't there an alkaline version of lactofermentation? Why don't we have alkaline versions of vinegar in our kitchens? I have a couple of guesses. One, I'm gonna read your guesses.
+
+[32:54] Uh acidic environments are easier to create slash encounter, or at least have been historically, thanks to the uh ubiquitous presence of lactic acid and acetic acid uh bacteria. Uh acetobacter is a good word, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Even nostasi is okay with acetobacter.
+
+[33:11] Uh highly alkaline, too. Highly alkaline environments slash products create tastes that we more likely to dislike. This is the thing, is though, is that uh whether you like or dislike something, and this is why like I was interested in having Sandor cats, uh so so you should before he comes on in January 4th, take a look at his new book. What's it called? Fermentation diaries, journeys.
+
+[33:31] I can't remember the exact name, John. You're making journeys. Fermentation journeys. So what it is is it it's like uh, you know, if you want like the the encyclopedia of how to ferment things, get the you know, the the you know, the the big one. This is more just like um places he's gone and things he's tried.
+
+[33:49] And in the very beginning of the book, he says, I'm not here to crap on anyone's uh kind of flavors or tastes. And I was like, well, there goes half my questions. There goes half my questions. What do you hate? But a lot of I think it bridges down is to that we like what we like because we've had it, and anything that is edible can be something that we crave if you grew up eating it, right?
+
+[34:11] Uh so I don't think that we're I don't think it's valid to say that um we don't eat as many alkaline things because we don't like them. I think it would be easier to say we don't like the taste of many alkaline things because we don't eat a lot of them. Does that make sense? The difference. Uh anyway, um any thoughts or risks would be appreciated.
+
+[34:35] And for your demographic information, Nastasi, if you're still keeping it, uh he's a 25-year-old male. Uh and uh his boyfriend approves cooking as a hobby, and he's a linguist PhD student with uh interest in food. Um, so uh to the alkaline foods. So in terms of preservation, alkaline preservation, the I mean, there are not a lot of bacteria that create extremely alkaline environments as a byproduct of their being alive, right? So you do you do have a point there.
+
+[35:09] But uh classic alkaline preservation besides things like loot fisk are like century eggs, pedan in uh in like uh Asian cultures and also certain alkaline preserved kind of uh uh pickles and and vegetable, mainly i Asian, mainly in Asia. And then the other one mainly in Scandinavia. I'm not aware, are you guys aware of any other alkaline, um alkaline uh preservation in other cultures other than those two? No. No.
+
+[35:42] But uh there's a lot of use of alkaline. So for instance, the alkaline flavors that we all enjoy are tortilla chips, right? So nickstamalization is uh an alkaline cooking environment, and without that alkalinity, we don't really enjoy uh the taste. And then to go back to kind of a European boiling in alkali, like um uh what's it called? Uh boiling uh pretzels, right?
+
+[36:09] Like that is a a flavor that we all kind of appreciate, but uh if it gets too much, we think of it as being, you know, somewhat soapy, right? Um I don't know. Did I answer the answer the question or no? I mean also look remember uh alkali environments tend to break down proteins, so it's not just a flavor that gets weird, but things get kind of uh soapy, right? Because uh fats will kind of can start saponifying in alkali environments and the proteins get extremely weak.
+
+[36:41] So like loot fisk is almost like jelly-like, you know what I mean? Because it's it's gone undergone uh a highly alkaline uh environment. Uh that that a good good answer or not a good answer? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[36:55] All right. Uh all right. From uh Miguel Cuntz uh a few months ago uh I started a batch of uh Nochino with high proof brandy that was uh unsweetened right okay uh by the way Nochino is like you is like the walnut liqueur but you gotta make it with the green with the green walnuts right uh and I don't know it doesn't say where where Miguel is from but uh we have a different kind of typically I mean we grow European walnut trees here English walnut trees what kind of walnuts do they have in France are they the same as the English walnuts John I don't know down there in uh Grenoble as we would say uh I mean that's where that that's where that famous uh the green walnut preserves are from right down there anyway uh but American uh black walnuts are different from English walnuts right but presumably they could both be used for for nochino so you silk the the the green ones the immature ones which are worthless as nuts uh but be aware that any and I've never worked with European nuts off off the tree before but uh the green the green kind of uh outside of a green walnut as soon as you bruise it it stains the hell out of you. It stains. That's why nochino's black ish right?
+
+[38:34] Or you know, yellowish. In fact, uh, so you have i i in America, you have walnuts, all right. These are all, by the way, Juglandesi trees, right? So here are the relatives. You have you have your your your walnuts, you have your butternuts, right?
+
+[38:52] So a butternut is a close relative to a walnut. It's a little bit so butternut uh the shells of the outer rind of butternut the green was what provided the color for butternut the fabric. So like the Confederate soldiers weren't like they used as their main dye stuff butternut. So if you hear like butternut uh butternut fabric that is from this like close relative to the walnut slightly different leaves you can get them there people don't raise as many of them as it's not as well known as the walnut tree then the hickories are a close relative as are the pecans. So they're all closely related trees but uh the hickory the hickories don't have as much staining because they they they don't bruise and stain the same way that the walnuts and the and the butternuts will so it'll stain the ever loving snot out of you and the stain is not going to come out of your hand.
+
+[39:46] It's like not gonna come out of your hand. You gotta wait for your skin to wipe off for that stain to come out of your hand. Having made things with green walnuts and having tried to shell walnuts wear gloves. Wear gloves people wear gloves um but these are the tiny ones of green and you soak them in a high proof liquor. But that wasn't the question.
+
+[40:04] Let's get to the actual question now it is ready to be sweetened and I'm reading that alcohol is actually a poor solvent for sugar. What's your favorite way to sweeten alcohol and not dilute it too much. Well, it is true that alcohol, I mean, you you didn't give me the uh, Miguel, you didn't give me the proof of the brandy, but you know, unless it's absurdly high, right? It it is true that sugar is uh not uh as soluble in ethanol water mixtures as it is in water, right? And it's has a very, very, very low solubility in pure ethanol, right?
+
+[40:43] Having any water in there at all increases your solubility quite a bit. And I will also say that if you're looking up uh tables for how much uh, you know, what the solubility is, right? Uh most tables for solubility given the scientific literature are given in weight fractions of uh liquor. And weight fractions of liquor are very different from volume fractions. So just to give you an idea, something that is 40% alcohol uh by volume is only about 34 or 35% alcohol by weight, right?
+
+[41:21] And think about uh as your benchmark, take green chartreuse, right, as something that is high in alcohol, it's 55% uh alcohol by volume, right, which is about 49% uh or you know, about 50 50%, 49% alcohol by weight, right? And even at that point, regular sucrose, because green chartreuse is is sweetened with sucrose, I believe with with beet sugar, it's yellow sarcheuses to sweeten with honey, right? Even there, they're getting probably in the area of 250 grams per liter of finished product of sugar in there, which is quite sweet. So unless you want to sweeten it more than that, or unless your alcohol content is in excess of what green chartreuse would be at 55% alcohol, I don't think you're gonna have a problem. It's just gonna take a long time to dissolve, right?
+
+[42:11] And you might want to put it into a bottle, cap it, and then like s like warm it a little bit up to body temperature to help it speed up. It could take a long time, but it it'll get in. Now, if you like the flavor of something like honey, uh, you know, honey requires very little water to uh solvate to you know to to become not a crystal because as you probably know, it's already 82% sugar by weight and is still almost a liquid. So you could use honey as well, but I think you're gonna be able to use plain old uh sucrose. The in the old days, they would use a two to one sugar uh mix, right?
+
+[42:48] Uh and do it that way just because it's easier for them to deal with when you're compounding. But if you're only making batches for yourself at home, you don't need to worry about it. What I would do if you want to know what the final ABV is, is I would, if you know the ABV going in, right, is I would take a very accurate volumetric measurement of what you've done and then add the sugar, wait for it to dissolve. It could take days for it to fully dissolve, but wait for it to dissolve, and then take another volume measurement and then recalculate your ABV. Does that make sense?
+
+[43:20] Yep. And by the way, the reason alcohol by weight to alcohol by volume uh calculations are so complicated, and you can't trust the internet on this. You cannot trust the internet. On the internet, uh people will tell you, well, you just you just multiply uh you multiply by by 1.25 or some stupid thing like this because, right? Uh, or 1.8 or whatever because because alcohol, the density of pure alcohol is roughly like 0.79, the density of water is one.
+
+[43:49] And they doesn't work for spirits. It works for beer because beer is a very low alcohol content. But the more there's a there's what's called uh I don't know how I forget the technical term for it, but when you mix water and alcohol, if you if you mix a liter of alcohol and a liter of water, you don't get two liters of product. You get less than that. There's a there's a volume contraction uh happening because of the way that the alcohol and the water molecules pack together.
+
+[44:17] And so you can't just use straight density of the products on their own to figure out the difference between alcohol by volume and alcohol by uh weight. It's a very it's a complicated formula and it's not even a real formula. It's one of these empirical things where someone just measured it and then you know did a curve fit to it. If you're interested in uh the tables, I would look, it's available on the internet. It's also a good read uh good read.
+
+[44:43] That's putting it a little too far. Uh it's called A Treatise on the Manufacture and Distillation of Alcoholic Liqueurs by Pierre Duplay and uh Marcellus McKenney, 1871. It's available on the Google Books. In the back of it are a series, an exhaustive series of tables uh of uh alcohol by weight versus alcohol by by temperature, how how much water to add to a particular ABV to get a particular result. But even more important for what you're doing, somewhere in the you know, around page 400 or you know, 450 starts talking about making liqueurs and compounding them and how to compound them or at least how they were done in 1871.
+
+[45:24] Now, I would not trust the knockoff recipes. I have tried a bunch of knockoff recipes from the 1800s for people trying to knock off uh other people's recipes, and by and large, they don't taste like the original. So if you like uh there was a time you remember Stas years ago when we were trying to make fake mineral waters? Mm-hmm. And we were following uh Darcy O'Neill's fake mineral water recipes from the eighteen hundreds because that's what people used to do.
+
+[45:44] Yep. And so we're like, oh uh by the way what do you have a do you what's your favorite do you what's your favorite mineral water says none really none? Mm-hmm. Anyone here have a favorite mineral water? No?
+
+[45:58] I mean minerally what did I like but I can't remember something I hated. Well you hate what we used to call agua di boca. Yeah yeah but the mineral I think it was potassium. I can't remember. Well we well we did a bunch of side by side taste tests of just different minerals like magnesium chloride versus sodium chloride versus potassium chloride in small amounts and mixtures of them.
+
+[46:21] Uh and then we tried you know various sulfates and anyway I really like some of the hardcore German ones. Like I like Gero Steiner, I like Apolinaris, uh I like the saltier like I like uh uh Vichy catalan I like those things a lot. Cause it I either want it to just be the most ripping hard seltzer on earth or I want it to be like so funky that it it is something that's worth paying for. So like I go for the very mineral y ones but I was never able I you know we looked up like knock off a polynaris because that's been famous for a long time and we were not able with anyone's construction to get something that tasted to me like a polynaris, right? Stas, we did the side by side I would say they were universally non successful.
+
+[47:04] Yep. And by the way, it wasn't just me. It was like none of the interns could get stuff that looked right. I've never had a fake one that looks right. And so I'm just telling you if you're gonna follow these fake liquors.
+
+[47:15] There's there's a recipe in there for green chartreuse and there's a recipe in there for yellow chartreuse in the dupley book. I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you I guarantee you that's not gonna taste like chartreuse. It might taste fine. It might taste good but you know back in the eighteen hundreds you know uh if I gave you if if you were in New York City and I gave you something and said this is what chartreuse taste like you'd be like okay okay you know what I mean what are you gonna say what are you gonna say anyway it's like uh you know you could tell me hey Dave this is what Pool K is supposed to taste like and Jack is sitting next to me is like dude Dave this is not what pool cake tastes like I had the real stuff at the place this is not what it tastes like right yeah fair have you had any more pool K no not since the last call have you had anything interesting you're in one of the most interesting food countries in the world you you're not telling me any food stories um so the last time I got tacos at a another meat bucket not the meat bucket but another one the it was really late and the guy just gave me a cup of broth like on the house. From the bucket like birria no no from a side pot I think it was like birria broth.
+
+[48:27] It was amazing it's delicious. So late night you go for the side pot I guess I didn't really know what it was I couldn't understand what he was saying. I was like okay sure I kind of like late night a little bit of broth. I think it's a good cultural thing. Any of you guys down with the late night little bit of broth?
+
+[48:46] Yeah it was like a great nightcap any of you guys ever been to uh uh Andres Carni uh Andre Andres Carney de Rece in uh in Bogota it's like uh I've described it on the show but years ago. So it's like a it's like a village restaurant where they that the whole village is the restaurant and the whole village works there, right? And so like it's like they created like this place where you show up at like six PM and you start like with like whatever aguardiente and like you know like uh gooseberries, uh what do they call them? Achuva uh Uchuva on the table and you're eating them, right? Then you have dinner, there's like these stage shows that go around, then they clear it, then you start dancing and you keep dancing until like until like three, four in the morning, and then when you go outside, there's people playing on guitars and they're serving soup.
+
+[49:38] Nice. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, it it it it totally makes you uh feel like you're in some different era and that you're part of some different like class than what you are actually come from. Anyway.
+
+[50:02] How many questions are you? Only have one more. Okay. I'm gonna keep you on the book. Well, there's one in the Discord that we should try and get to too.
+
+[50:10] Oh, yeah. All right. Anyway, uh so I like soup. I like soup. Uh late n late night little bit of soup, I think is nice.
+
+[50:17] That's all I'm gonna say about that. Go on, John. I agree. Well, they have the other one in front of them. We'll see that and then we'll give me the Discord.
+
+[50:27] He's gonna want the discord the one that's in front of me, I can see. I'm gonna do it. I got eight minutes and forty two seconds. Come on. Always the live first.
+
+[50:33] Hold up and Jack, do you see the the spice question? So looking for is this the the book question? Wait, is this gonna be a Dune question? I heard you say spice. If this is a Dune question, Nastasia's gonna break the window.
+
+[50:48] She's not will not see Dune. What which is here we go. I like to cook dishes from many different places. But waste uh waste from spices going sale always makes me a bit of a sad panda for keeping spices fresh as long as possible. Would vacuum filling them using small mason jars provide a significant benefit?
+
+[51:11] So first of all, all pandas are sad because they're mean, right? They're mean, vicious creatures. Like they look cute. I'm not like here's some animals that like I would not want to be friends with. Pandas, red pandas are okay.
+
+[51:27] Red panda, fine. Uh koalas. I mean, I know that they're having big trouble now, koalas, so I feel bad saying negative things about them, but trash can animals. Okay. Um anyways.
+
+[51:44] Vacuuming them in a mason jar. Look, any time you're preventing uh oxidation, but I don't think oxidation is going to be is the main actual thing. I think most of it is just loss of volatiles. So I would say vacuuming them in um in bags, I would have even said, but I probably vacuuming them in a mason jar would help. It's just sealing the hell out of them, I think is the main thing.
+
+[52:09] I'm trying to think if oxidation is gonna be the main issue with them. I mean, some I guess oil, right? So there is oil, but I don't think most of the degradation is due to rancidity due to oils in the in the volatile oils. So I would say vacuuming is gonna help, but mainly just airtight and putting them in small uh containers and just getting rid of all of the air and all uh ability for stuff to uh evaporate off and leaving everything as whole as is possible for the longest period of time before you you break it up. I use very little pre ground stuff in my house.
+
+[52:44] The only stuff I have that's pre-ground really is cinnamon because what a pain, right? What a pain, guys, right? Uh and ginger, because also I don't keep big chunks of dry ginger. The other thing is uh that I'm gonna sound like a a huge piece of garbage here, but uh a lot of times, if it's the spice is not as fresh, you can just use a little more. Just use a little bit more.
+
+[53:09] You know? Just use a little bit more. It's like it it it this is why like I don't I this is why like when you're writing recipes, I hate giving people like uh uh, you know, I hate giving people an exact amount because you know, I go through I go through how much coriander do I have in my house, Nastasia? Tons. I just go through so much coriander.
+
+[53:28] You know why? Coriander is delicious. Coriander seeds are delicious. And there are people out there, if anyone who hears my voice and thinks they don't like coriander because they don't like cilantro, first of all, fix your dislike of cilantro, because even if it tastes like soap, it's still delicious. I'm telling you, there are many, many millions and millions of people out out there who also taste what you taste with cilantro but still like it.
+
+[53:48] I'm just gonna put that out there. Uh remember when Piper wanted to use actual soap and cocktails, the sodium laurel sulfate? That stuff tasted nasty. That's that's what soap tastes like. Anyways, uh, but cilantro, uh sorry, uh coriander seed doesn't really taste like cilantro at all.
+
+[54:06] It's got an amazing citrusy note. Use it, grind it fresh, buy the seeds, grind it fresh. Don't buy pre ground coriander, it's sad, sad, sad self. But anyway, I go through a lot of it. Uh so, but it's hard for me to write a recipe for people because they might have it sitting around for years.
+
+[54:21] And coriander, because it's so volatile and those citrusy notes tend to flash off, it's hard to say how much to use. You know what I'm saying, guys? Anyway. Yep. Yeah.
+
+[54:31] Yeah, pack them. Pack them, pack them small, vac them, vac 'em, pack them, freeze them. Vac them, pack them, freeze them. Uh Mongi Zukowski writes in uh I'm trying to cook a turkey thigh in a pressure cooker from a chef steps recipe. They said 20 minutes in their coon recon and to adjust up for an insta-pot.
+
+[54:47] So I did 25 minutes with a natural release. What that means natural release is let the pressure come down naturally, people. The meat is a bit chewy. How do you know if it's overcooked versus if it's undercooked? Thanks.
+
+[54:58] At 25 minutes, your thigh is not overcooked. You should have done 30. A lot of this just depends on the size of the meat. So remember, uh in a in a pressure cooker, you need to keep the pieces small enough that the temperature comes up uh in time. It overcooking in an Instapot, it's not gonna be kind of chewy.
+
+[55:20] It'll be stringy and dried out, and you'd have to do it for a significant period of time longer than that, unless it became not moist. If it dried out, that that that's one thing. But I would say I would try about 30 minutes. I would keep the make sure that the thigh pieces aren't too thick, right? Uh, you know, th that that's the main thing.
+
+[55:40] Is that a is that that answering the the question? Yeah. People? Anyone? John?
+
+[55:44] Yeah. All right. Steve Yoon wrote in, hey, uh, I have a friend who's allergic to alliums. Uh she can tolerate cooked onion, but can't have garlic. Cooked garlic, I'm sure, I guess is what you're saying.
+
+[55:55] I'm trying to make a pasta sauce for her. I'm wondering what substitute is there for garlic in a sauce. And now I have the song Substitute going through my head. Um, okay. Uh I'm getting it out of my head.
+
+[56:09] Give me a second, people. Give me one second. I'm getting the who out of my head. Hold on. Okay.
+
+[56:14] I was thinking about uh oh god, now it's back because I'm gonna say substitute for garlic. And uh the only thing I could think of is uh hang or assafetida. So, well, in general, so the Jains as a group of uh as a religious group don't eat alliums at all. They don't eat onions, they don't eat garlic, right? It's uh it's uh prescribed by their by their religion.
+
+[56:39] Uh but they do have a lot of those flavors by the uh judicious or really kind of like profligate use of this spice called either Hing or Asafetida, depending on kind of where you're you're coming from it. The ancient Romans uh used uh it and they called it laser. So it was is actually not exactly the same spice, but it's very close relative. And the only if you're making a uh a Roman recipe today, the only thing that you can uh substitute for laser is uh is assafetida or hing. You can get it at any place that sells uh Indian spices.
+
+[57:16] Now here's what it here's the thing I have to tell you about it. It smells weird and permeating and pungent when it's uh raw, right? So you it's it's it's uh it comes from uh I guess the corn of uh some you know like plant uh and it's compounded with starches and other things. There's two ways you can buy it. You can buy it pre-powdered, and they usually add some coloring to it and other things.
+
+[57:42] Uh the way I like to buy it is in rock form where it comes in these kind of rocks. It's harder to find. You gotta go to a place that really specializes in uh in uh Indian products to get the rock form of it. But that's how it's gonna maintain its flavor the best. You get a microplane, you get the rock, and you microplane it like you would nutmeg.
+
+[58:01] And when you cook it, it goes to a cooked allium flavor that's kind of midway between an onion and a garlic. So it's kind of like on that fence between an onion and a garlic and kind of got some shallity action to it. But you have to cook it, right? You can't judge the the flavor and the and the aroma of assafetida until you have cooked it. So please don't judge it based on what it smells like in the package.
+
+[58:27] My favorite thing to do with asapetida is to grate it over chicken before you cook it on a chicken skin over the chicken skin. Oh yeah. I had a recipe that I was gonna publish in the New York Times back when I was talking to them. Remember when I wrote that article about uh mana from Heaven stars? I was gonna do, I was gonna do assafetida, this recipe called Numidian chicken, which I don't think I've ever given anybody.
+
+[58:51] Great recipe, Numidian chicken, assafetida all over it. Uh it is a terrible sounding spice. It has a funky aroma if you're not used to it. Delicious. Delicious.
+
+[59:03] I have nine seconds, Nastasia. Wow. Buy Stassi's keep giving me the cane and the cutoff. They're waiting for us to work here because they're not done. So listen, get your Thanksgiving questions in.
+
+[59:13] Sandor Cat's coming back uh June, uh January uh 4th. Uh buy a Sears All Pro, otherwise we won't make it. We're gonna go out of business. Oh, one last thing on the way out, one last thing on the way out. Ready for this?
+
+[59:23] Uh I was going down the street biking here, and uh I had a guy road rage me, right? And the guy was yelled something out of the window that I can't repeat. Road rage. I figured out the best thing I can do, the best thing you can say to someone to really, really, really, really, really make them angry, but without giving them any reason to actually get out of the car and start hit you is when they say something, just go, woo! And that's what I did.
+
+[59:47] Cooking issues. Yeah.
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+[0:10] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on New Stan Studios from Rockefeller Center in New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer. Lopez, how are you doing? Good.
+
+[0:22] Yeah? Mm-hmm. Ah, nice. All right, sweet. I can't wait.
+
+[0:26] I can't wait. We got uh well, we'll go through who we got, and I'll tell you what I can't wait for. We got we got John, got John. He's uh we've we've switched position. Nastasi's in the John position, and because we didn't know Nastasia was gonna be here because we pushed till later in the in the thing.
+
+[0:40] Anyway, so we're glad to have both people. But how you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah? Yep.
+
+[0:44] Yeah. We got uh, of course, uh as usual on the controls, Joe Hazen. How you doing? Oh, doing great, guys. How are you?
+
+[0:50] And for the last time as our roving Mexican correspondent, we have Jackie Molecules live from where you where are you? Mexico City or Oaxaca again? Oaxaca, still in Mahaca. Last day in Mexico. Oh, last day in Mexico.
+
+[1:03] It's gonna run. Let me ask you a question. Oh, uh, if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh, before I ask you this, Jack, here's what I'm happy about.
+
+[1:17] The next time I see Nastasia Lopez, it'll be Christmas hat time. And I wait all year for the Lopez Christmas hat. It's true. And are you gonna are you gonna just be mean to me, withhold the Christmas hat this year? No.
+
+[1:35] Next Tuesday. It's it's more important for her to have the Christmas hat than it is to make me sad. I like that. That's strong. Didn't you get me the Christmas hat?
+
+[1:45] No, I'll remember I was gonna get No, I don't know. You had it and you lost it for like a month It was in a suitcase. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You lost it for a short period of time, and I saw it and I didn't know you had lost it, and I'll I sent you a picture of it, and I was like, and then you were like, Did you buy it? I was like, no, why?
+
+[2:01] I lost mine. Remember, I was like, we were all like, we were both super sad, and I went back and it was gone. They didn't have any more of them. And so maybe it was Mark's. I can't remember.
+
+[2:10] Yeah, it's the best hat. Doesn't light up, doesn't need to. No. What are your thoughts? What are your general thoughts on lit?
+
+[2:17] Literally lit, not like lit, like the kids say, like lighted sweaters. Like them. You like them? Mm-hmm. At the appropriate party, I think.
+
+[2:28] I.e. an ugly sweater party. Yeah. I don't go to I mean, I'm not invited to those kinds of people. No, you're invited to things, you just don't go.
+
+[2:35] What? You just never have anything, actually. That's not the case. Okay. This is your theory of May.
+
+[2:41] John. He did something last night. Oh really? What'd you do? Uh there was a I don't know what it's called, Friends.
+
+[2:48] Look, Montenegro. Friendsgiving. Okay. Uh Montenegro bought out uh pouring ribbons for the night. So I went there and got to see.
+
+[2:56] It's weird. I've it's like I've seen like a lot of bar people. There have been a bunch of bar events recently. So uh you know, I go out, I was like, wow, it feels like an actual community again. Strange.
+
+[3:04] Strange. Uh okay. Oh, you know who's who we might see is Nick Coleman, olive oil man. Oh yeah? Soon.
+
+[3:12] Uh sometime. On the show? Not well, I could have invited him on today, but then that would have been a wasted opportunity. What do you mean? To take oil home?
+
+[3:21] I'm he's giving me oil for Thanksgiving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[3:26] So uh if you guys are interested, uh Nastasi was like, we could get him on, and then I'm like, yeah, let's get him on. Because like the what this guy does is he travels around the world looking for awesome olives, right? Uh uh olive oils, then buys them all from particular producers and then distributes them under his own own brand. It's called Grove and Vine. And it comes in magnums and now in like boxed wine magnum.
+
+[3:53] I like a boxed wine. Well, it's not it boxed olive oil, whatever. But I love boxed oil. Boxed olive oil is though is is money in the bank, right? Because it never has to see anything.
+
+[4:01] It never gets expensive. Buy that as your Christmas gift for people because it's everyone loves olive oil. But just to give you an idea to go back to what Nastasi said earlier that I don't go out or do anything. Nastasia says we should get him on the show. And I'm like, yes, do it.
+
+[4:14] And then she'll be like, Dave, why don't you want him on the show? I'm like, I said yes, do it. I said let's get him on the show. Well, we're booked like through the year. So yeah, he's gonna come on.
+
+[4:24] Uh okay, so back to back to uh Jackie Molecules in Oaxaca. Have you in in anticipation of Thanksgiving time, have you had any delicious uh Wajalote turkey dishes while you're in Mexico? Yes, absolutely. Talk to us about them a little bit. Go go full waxalote on just like a big turkey leg in in a pool of mole.
+
+[4:49] That's basically the entire dish. I think they called it fiesta mole. And um, I guess it's like something that they serve at weddings and celebrations and stuff. And I was kind of expecting a pretty showy dish, right? You order something called fiesta mole, and I don't know.
+
+[5:04] That's what I was expecting. Yeah, the fiesta's in your mouth, man. Fiesta's in your mouth. That's right. Yeah, the fiestas and the flavors.
+
+[5:12] It's it's just a turkey leg in this in the middle of a plate in a pool of mole, and that's it. No garnishes, nothing else. When you were back at the in Mexico City at the Merced, did you go to the uh mole spice dealers? Oh my god, yeah. It's it's so intense.
+
+[5:28] There's you if you don't know what you're doing, it's just impossible. There's so many different pastes and powders and it's crazy. The paste game in Mexico is so on point. The paste game is out of this world because like you got it like they are the uh so like every culture has had a what's called quote unquote saddlestone grinding technology at one point, but obviously, like you know, Mexico and the rest of Mesoamerica, it was like where the matate mano became like the the the ultimate expression and like the food and this like grinding implement are are linked, right? So chocolate would be ground on a matate, masa would be ground on a matate, and the moles would be ground on it.
+
+[6:15] So now they're using different technology, of course, but you go to the Mercedes and you know, it's like Jack said, these like these paste dealers, it's just this rich, like reddish brown, like fragrant, crazy, and the density of these pastes, it's like I don't know how to describe it. It's like it's like I don't know, like somewhere in between like a peanut butter and a halva. You know what I mean? It's like got some fiber because of all the stuff in it. But yeah, but it's like, and they're just but they're not then it's not those colors.
+
+[6:45] There's like this dark richness to them, and they're just so good. There's a lot. You know what else I saw? I went to this awesome kind of more rural market outside of Oaxaca, and there were so many people selling like rocks of sodium bicarbonate, which was just really cool to see in an open market. Really?
+
+[7:02] Of bicarb? Yeah. Huh. Yeah. For the, you know, tortillas.
+
+[7:08] Well, that would be calci uh. Oh, I'm sorry. Calcium hydro. Yeah, calcium hydroxide. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[7:14] Yeah, cow. So originally, I'm I've, you know, I was looking into this because it takes a lot of uh takes a lot of heat to convert uh shells or mined um calcium carbonate to calcium hydroxide, right? So I've always thought that originally, and some people who do like old school uh nixalization, like the people at Macienda, like that originally maybe it was done with uh pot ash, right? So like like ashes from the fire soaked with uh you soak the those with water, let it sit for a long time, and then evaporate that down to a salt like pearl ash. Um I'm guessing the initial stuff before they figured out how to because that's an that's a relatively advanced technology.
+
+[7:55] So I'm guessing slake lime. So I'm guessing that like the first uh the first stuff was probably done with pearl ash, but I've never nicked my lized with pearl ash before. Someday. Someday I'll get back on the I'll get back on the Nixtamal uh uh train. Um turkey domesticated in Mexico.
+
+[8:13] Didn't know that. Interesting. Turkey domesticated in Mexico, taken. I just was talking about this on the I was did a uh interview on the NPR the other day. Uh West Coast NPR though.
+
+[8:23] KQED, yeah. Yeah. So like uh taken from Mexico back to Europe by the Spanish. Spanish were like, look at this, a new bird. And then I mean they don't talk like that.
+
+[8:35] And then uh reimported by the English who didn't understand that we already had turkeys here. Yeah. So the turkey that and then it was recrossed uh, you know, at some point um, probably in the in the 17 or 1800s, recrossed with native wild turkeys. So this Mexican goes to Spain, gets, you know, done in Europe, comes back, is then recrossed back with our wild turkeys from here, and that's where the American commercial kind of turkey breed started started coming from. Uh I love me some turkey.
+
+[9:12] I love turkey. I you know what I hate? Stoz, what are your feelings on turkey? Uh it's okay. I love it.
+
+[9:21] I uh when I was growing up, everyone was like, oh, oh, turkey, uh, it's not that good, but I have it on Thanksgiving. No, no, I love it. I love turkey. I love the smell of turkey. I love turkey gravy.
+
+[9:33] If someone tries to hand me some chicken gravy, and I'm like, yo, that's chicken gravy. I want turkey gravy. What are your thoughts, John? Yeah, I agree. Love turkey.
+
+[9:43] It's great. It should be around more than uh than just for Thanksgiving. Yeah, yeah. Turkey club, delicious sandwich. Oh, yeah.
+
+[9:49] Yeah. No, do you want a chicken club? No. No. No.
+
+[9:52] Turkey. Yeah. Joe, what's your feeling on the turkey? Turkey club all the way too. Meat.
+
+[9:56] Yeah. I can't wait. By the way, I don't eat the breast meat on Thanksgiving because I could give a rat's behind about hot breast meat. I eat the dark meat, the skin, the tail, right? Turkey tail is money in the bank.
+
+[10:10] Turkey, turkey tail, turkey tail. Uh, so like it's so funny. If you if you Google search turkey tail, all you hear about is American Samoa and Polynesian Islands, because when you hack up, first of all, I don't do you know how big commercial turkeys are, not the ones that they sell to us whole, but how big like a Tom turkey is an eight in 18 to 20 week. You ready for it? You ready?
+
+[10:35] 50 pounds. 50 pounds. Oh my god. It's a big bird. So the birds that we normally eat are females, right?
+
+[10:44] Because they're more in the market weight range. And even like a female at 18 weeks is still like on the bigger size. Like 18 to 20 weeks, a female turkey is like 27, 28 pounds. Of course, that's live weight. That's live weight.
+
+[10:58] All right. But like, yeah, so you get this like Tom turkey that's like 50 pounds and it's still really young. We don't see those birds in a supermarket. You know what I mean? Those are the ones that are busted up.
+
+[11:10] That's why when you look and you when you buy just the turkey breast, that double breast, and you're like, how the hell did you get this so big? You know what I mean? It's like uh it's because it's the it's it's that. But the tails, they don't sell here. And for a long time, they ship them all to uh Polynesian American smoke from like a U.S.
+
+[11:29] producers, and so got those folks addicted to them, and then the health people who believe that anything that tastes good is unhealthy, was like you're shipping them these things that are unhealthy for them, and there's a big, and you know, look, they're you shouldn't eat only turkey tails. They're very high in fat, there's a gland there. But like uh, so they got they turned into a stigma food. Like turkey tails turn into a stigma food. And to me, they are intensely delicious.
+
+[11:54] You like braise a turkey tail and then you deep fry it and cut it up. And the first time I ever had it this way, other than at Thanksgiving, eating it, right? The one that you get. And sometimes you don't even get them on your birds now. Sometimes they chop off the tail.
+
+[12:05] If you someone gives you a turkey and they've chopped off the tail beforehand, you just gotta like do something mean to them. Do something mean to that person to make up for the fact that they they've stolen the best part of the turkey from you. Anyways, uh, the only place I ever had them, and I've mentioned it on the show before, is in Juarez. I went to Juarez, and they have, you know, that's another thing that they eat only in in Juarez. It's like a local thing, Colita Ti Pavo, which is like turkey tail that they then shred up and put into a sandwich.
+
+[12:32] So like they'll braise it, roast it or fry it off, and then like hack it up and put it in. Oh my God. I tried to get it for XCON, and the chef was not able to source them for me because they're all shipped elsewhere. And it's like, it's one of those things where there's a stigma against it, uh, but it's tastes better than the stuff that we eat. Anyway, I don't eat the breast meat.
+
+[12:58] Uh, I try to save as much as I can for sandwiches because the answer is the leftover turkey sandwich to me. Do you at least like a leftover turkey sandwich and Sasha? Yeah, yeah. I do. What's your and how do you like yours?
+
+[13:09] Um my mom makes this like green cilantro sauce and then puts that on bread. Do you have that sauce also on the Thanksgiving or do you just for the leftovers? I appreciate making something for the leftovers. Yeah. I also like cilantro a lot.
+
+[13:25] I would try it, except for the fact that like I know exactly how I want it. I want it the mayonnaise, the lettuce, the turkey, the slightly toasted crappy white bread, and a slice of onion. And then I'm no stuffing or gravy on there? No, although listen, uh, I'm not gonna go hate on what anyone else wants. I also don't put cranberry sauce on my turkey sandwich.
+
+[13:47] My wife, Jen, appreciates the, you know, having the, you know, the other things on them, but no, I I want a sandwich and then I want a big old plate of the stuffing. I want a big plate of the stuffing. One year for Thanksgiving, I made all this extra stuffing, and my brother came over to Thanksgiving, and then he had to get up. He got up early in the morning, and he ate half the stuffing and took the other half home. And I was like I was like, yo, man.
+
+[14:13] I was like, yo, yo. I was like, it's not, I don't know why we don't make it all year, because we all love the stuffing we grew up with, right? All of us, pretty much. Even Nastasia. Do you like the stuff you grew up with?
+
+[14:29] No. Wow. Uh like it's so funny. I never know with you. It's like I grew up with it, I love it.
+
+[14:37] Or I grew up with it, therefore I hate it. And it's just like, it's just like everything falls into a bucket. There's like uh, it's like Nastasia's childhood is like a some sort of like like like mile-high butte, and you fall either into the pit of I love it or into the pit of I hate it. But nothing just stays on that butte. You know what I mean?
+
+[14:58] Mm-hmm. Yeah. What kind of stuffing do that does uh your mom make that you don't like? Uh I think it's just stofers. Yeah, same here stuff.
+
+[15:07] That's why I never really had any affinity for it. Oh, yeah. John, what was your stuffing? Nothing special. Stuffing uh breakfast sausage, a lot of sage, uh rehydrated cranberries, dice cranny Smith apple, onions, carrots, celery.
+
+[15:23] I think that's it, and then a mixture of like cornbread stuffing and then you know, regular pepperage farm pepper farm country. That sounds nice. Yeah, what about you? What about you, Joe? What do you got?
+
+[15:32] Um, I I we definitely had we had no sausage in it, which I really kind of fell in love with later in life. But you know, obviously, you know, the sage and the rosemary, different types of breads, never homemade breads. It was usually like a medley of like some type of peppered farm breading, crouton thing with another type of bread, but I love when the chestnuts are in there. Oh, we never used to do the chestnuts, huh? So for us, we uh I think this is a little bit different.
+
+[15:59] We only used um f fresh-ish bread. Like, you know, like not like super light wonder, but fresh bread, like loaf after loaf after loaf, right? And then when you say breakfast sausage, we would get like the like I think they were either 12 ounces or one pound, like in tubes, Jones brand, like you know, country sage sausage that you'd you'd par fry and break up. So a bunch of that, sauteed mushrooms, uh canned mandarin oranges broken up into into pieces, celery, eggs, eight buttloads of butter, poultry seasoning, uh Diaries say the sauteed onions. That's though that's the main components, you know, salt, pepper.
+
+[16:39] And you just toss all that together, and you gotta taste it when it's raw to you know make sure that it's got the right amount of everything, and everyone's gotta sit there and be like, ooh, more of this, more of that. You know what I mean? And then, yeah. Say it's so important to get the moisture level right on stuffing. When it's dry stuffing, it's miserable.
+
+[16:59] And when it's too wet, also miserable. Yeah, yeah. So you'd think you'd think it would be too wet to use the fresh bread, but we never have a problem, especially because we're not cooking, because I think a lot of people have to add stock to theirs. You know what I mean? To get it up to the right consistency, and we never do because I add some stock to mine.
+
+[17:15] Yeah. Yeah. I don't need to. Uh do we no, we don't add any stock to it. Uh, all right.
+
+[17:22] So should we answer some questions before we go back into our own things? Although I will say this, people. If you have the opportunity, buy some turkey bones. Like one of the nice things about uh partially deboning a turkey, like even taking the back out of it, or like I I bone, I bone it and then drape it over a hot stuffing plug. Like when I'm not cooking it this year, I'm going to my sister, she just had a baby, so I'm not cooking the turkey this year.
+
+[17:45] But like I typically rip all the bones out, and then starting with turkey stock is so much better than starting with a chicken stock or with a canned turkey stock and then reinforcing it with giblets. I grew up with giblet gravy because we didn't make a turkey stock beforehand. So the only real turkey that went in was the giblets. But in my opinion, if you have the opportunity to get some turkey bones and turkey backs and make an actual turkey stock, that it takes your gravy like to next level turkey dumb, which is like if you look, if you need to use turkey to reinforce it, but even if you start with a chicken stock, try to reinforce it with some actual turkey bones or turkey parts so that it actually tastes like turkey and not like slightly modified chicken, because I don't know if you know this, not the same animal. What are you doing with the neck?
+
+[18:35] That uh I roast it and then I usually throw it into the stock pot when I'm making the turkey stock, or if you were making the giblet gravy. But the problem is is that uh every year when I drain the stuff, it the neck meets there, and then I try to pull it out, but by the time it's gone through making stock, it's fundamentally useless. If you're not gonna make stock with it or the giblet gravy, I love to roast the neck and the skin gets crispy, and then you can eat it. And I I love picking all the little pieces apart, but I'm a little weird that way. But it's a very muscular part of the so what is it adding besides just the texture of the the skin on the neck?
+
+[19:12] I mean, you just Oh, for the for the to a stock? Yeah. Oh, it's got a lot. Well, that's the thing, it's got a lot of little meat in the in the crannies and stuff. So you're, you know, you're it's a good you know, backs and necks is the classic uh thing to make poultry stocks with just because there's not a lot of like salvageable plate-style meat for it, right?
+
+[19:29] So, you know, although if you've ever had stocks made from whole birds, they're freaking big. So, like if you so Danny Kay's old uh chicken recipe, which was then used by Jacques Papin and put into his 80s two-volume book in color, Jacques Papin's thing, he his old um chicken salad recipe was to put the whole bird in water, like you were almost making a chicken, old school hen style chicken soup. Bring it up, put the lid on it, and then let it ride. If you save that water and do that a couple of times, it gets really chicken-y from all the stuff. It's good, but it doesn't have as much body as like a a highly boiled like when I make chicken stock, I always I save all my bones.
+
+[20:10] Every every time I make chicken, I save I save all the bones in a ziploc in the freezer. And then once I have a couple of gallons of chicken bones saved up, I'll pressure cook stock. I'll do like a double pressure cook stock. I'll do like one round, second round. And that stuff is fantastic.
+
+[20:26] Are you ever dehydrating any of that stock and making like a bullion? Uh well, it's so concentrated at that point that you don't need to. I think the mistake, look, like even back when I used to teach at the FCI, they used a very, very high water to to uh to bone ratio and it's a very light stock, and so to get anything out of it, like you need to do a lot of reduction. When you're doing it at home, I think it's better to use like the minimum amount of water. Like I even have like some bone sticking up out of the water because I know it's gonna cook down a little bit.
+
+[20:56] And so it's like a very you get a more concentrated first stock, and then if you drain that and you do a double stock based on that, uh like use that same water twice for two levels of bones, you really don't need to do any reduction at all. It's almost ping pong ball hard at that point. You know what I mean? Once it once it cools and settles off. So I tend to use that stuff straight.
+
+[21:16] In fact, the stuff I make is so concentrated that certain dishes, if you use only that and you reduce it further, like uh, you know, my family was like, that's intense. That's like a lot of like meatiness in a small area. Which, you know, I was like, okay. Just don't eat as much of it then. Sounds delicious.
+
+[21:33] Yeah. It's good, it's good business. Uh what are you guys' feelings on cranberry? Yeah? The jelly from the canned kind.
+
+[21:39] From the can. Yeah. So you're not a skins in man. No. No?
+
+[21:43] Yeah. I like it. Yeah, skins or no skins? Skins. Oh, nice.
+
+[21:48] Uh, strong. For once. Skins. Joe, where are you? Skins, too.
+
+[21:53] Yep. So I like the acidity. So, John, so the for John, the sound of Thanksgiving is Love it. You know, when the thing's hitting the uh yeah. With the rings?
+
+[22:04] Yeah, with the three with the with the little bands ring. How is it that it can maintain that after it slides out? How is it that it maintains that? Yeah. Yeah, no idea.
+
+[22:12] Love it though. All right, here's the question. Here's the question. Orange, orange juice in the cranberries, yes or no. Yeah, we get a yes on Joe Stas.
+
+[22:21] Yeah. Yeah. Uh Jack, where are you on? Yep. Yeah.
+
+[22:24] Here's something that I don't bump there. Here's something I don't recommend, and yet I do it all the time anyway. I always look at it and I'm like, I'm making something that is sweet and tart. I want vanilla in it. And then I add vanilla, but it's a mistake, I think.
+
+[22:36] It's a mistake. It takes it in a different, it tastes great, but it takes it in a different direction that I don't think is really the right direction. Ditto adding liquor to it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna add a little little.
+
+[22:48] And you're like, you know what? No, it didn't want that. It didn't want that. I think a little orange is nice. I don't want to add zest though.
+
+[22:53] I don't want to add zest, just juice. Maybe I should add zyst. I don't know. I'm not making it this year. So don't have to worry about it.
+
+[23:01] Don't have to worry about it. I love the cranberry. Yeah. Yeah. You know who do you have to bring?
+
+[23:07] Dessert. Okay, sounds like you're really not happy about having somebody else cook Thanksgiving. I'm I'm I'm happy with it. Oh, okay. I'm happy with it.
+
+[23:17] It's just normally, you know, for our Thanksgiving show, we talk about what we're doing, and I I'm making I'm making pies. I'm making Parker House rolls. Everyone loves Parker House rolls. If you don't like a Parker House roll, I mean, Stuzz, you hate biscuits, but you like Parker House rolls, right? Mm-hmm.
+
+[23:32] Yeah, there you go. All right. Parker House rolls. I'm gonna make a loaf of normal bread because uh my my brother's fiance, Zoe is a cheesemonger. She's gonna bring a cheese thing up, so I'm making like some crusty cheese style bread, bread with which to eat cheese from starting early.
+
+[23:46] I'm gonna do the Parker House rolls and then like some pies. Three, you know, three pies, pies. Well, where are you getting your pie recipes from? Where well, that is interesting, John. Uh I am I am been reading, rereading, rereading, and reading again all of the Monroe Boston Strauss, Pie Marches on.
+
+[24:05] Like that book is just I mean, I know I've said it on the air before. That book is just crazy. You know what's interesting? I've been thinking about it a lot. He um, and remember, he wrote this book originally in the 30s, so it's very highly gendered.
+
+[24:21] It's super gendered. So his enemy, the person that he saw as his absolute enemy was uh the housewife. And he calls, so like not home people, not home cooks, housewives were his enemy. And so, you know, in his mind, he had uh, you know, he had lived through a period where you know, no one was baking bread at home really anymore in the 30s and 40s, right? This was something you've allowed commercial bakers to take over that.
+
+[24:50] Even cakes had been a lot been taken over by uh kind of commercial cake production, but pies. He was like, he's like, housewives still make pies at home, damn them. And he's like, their pies are garbage. And so he was out to shut down home pie making, which is why his recipes are only for commercial institutions. And I think why he's not more famous today, because all of his recipes were directed at commercial bakers.
+
+[25:15] And strangely, for his time, he believed that all bakers should band together and give each other good recipes just so that they could put the housewife out of the pie business. Anyway, uh so yes, I've been reading a lot of, and I'm gonna put this, I want to put this in your head, people. Uh you're probably hearing this too late unless you're on Patreon. But listen, uh we as a culture of pie making people, and we are a culture of pie-making people in the United States, right? We love pies in general.
+
+[25:45] We love pies. Uh, a specific kind of pie. We are obsessed with the flaky crust now. And boss uh Monroe Boston Strauss says, I think, very smartly, that the flaky crust is garbage. He's like, he's like the long flake crust, he's like, it can be good, right?
+
+[26:06] But he says, most of the time, when I and he used to just sit there and watch people eat pies for like days on end, he would just sit and watch people eat pies. And he's like, on the long flake crust, when your fork goes through the pie, people don't want to have to pick up a knife and be like, and cut through it, right? They want the fork to go through the pie down and hit the plate. And he's like, long flake crust, not very good for that. You know, and and and he was using pastry flour.
+
+[26:38] So he didn't even have the problem that we have that we're using AP flour for these things with its uh, you know, concomitant extra gluten, right? So he had an easier time of it, and still he believed that a shorter, uh shorter, like shortening, shorter crust that a fork would pass through was actually the superior crust. And he says, if you're gonna do long flake, which is what he called what what we all now call pie crust, he's like, just do it for the top crust. Have the bottom crust have be a shorter flake, and he made a difference, he made a mental difference between um mealy, which he didn't really think was good for most things, and short flake. So he's like, listen, it's not just is it mealy?
+
+[27:17] And we don't no one wants mealy because it sounds bad. Ooh, mealy, it sounds bad. Ooh, mealy, mealy crust, mealy apples gotta want it. But there's actually this kind of in between land of the short flake pie crust. He says, This is what most people actually want when they when they're actually putting a fork through a pie.
+
+[27:32] So there you go. Pie. I am making I am making only uh uh I'm also he originated rolling graham crackers into the crust. So now instead of doing graham cracker crust, I do rolling graham cracker crust. So two of the three pies I'm making uh will have rolled in uh graham cracker, uh a short flake, of course.
+
+[27:54] Come on. Although I am gonna make a standard apple pie. Should I do his thing and do long flake top and short flake bottom? Report back? Yeah, why not?
+
+[28:03] Do it, yeah, just do it all do it all the way. Yeah, why do it halfway? Exactly. Do it big. Yeah.
+
+[28:08] Yeah. What song is that? Do it big. What song is that? I have no idea.
+
+[28:12] Um the rest of it I cannot sing. It is not for me to sing. So from Tarek Rashdi, a question for the Turkey Day episode. I'd like to make individual Cornish hens for people to share instead of a turkey for Thanksgiving. What is the most foolproof method for roasting about five hens at the same time?
+
+[28:31] Also open to non-roasting methods. Thanks. Okay. So for all of you who don't know, like Cornish hens were like huge when I was a kid. Everyone was like, ooh, Cornish hens.
+
+[28:41] Cornish hen is just a small chicken, right? It's like literally the same genetics as a chicken, just smaller. So you can cook as for chicken. I'm going to put this out there though. You ready?
+
+[28:55] I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to give your chicken, I'm going to give your your Cornish game hens their time. But let me just say this. Then you can present the whole turkey and you already have one basically parted out and carved. Now, I've done chicken fried, chicken fried like cut-up turkey is great.
+
+[29:44] You cut the breast into like three or four pieces, and then you bread and fry them. And you know, you can debone the legs and all this other stuff. But uh, as an alternative to uh the one big bird, like my favorite new alternative is the small bird and then the hacked up bird, because then you can solve the leg problem and the breast problem separately, but still present the big bird, you know, the the whole bird. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[30:08] Yeah. Uh now, so Cornish game hens, I would just say cook as for chicken. And as for as for cooking that many, it really depends on the size of your oven. If you have a full sheet pan oven, right, then roasting off five hens is not going to be a problem. What uh the the thing that I like to do when I'm roasting birds, if you don't mind filling your house with smoke, uh, is to uh put the birds on a rack and then put the drip pan below the rack and then insulate the drip pan so that it doesn't get uh scorched.
+
+[30:42] Because it it really depends. Like some people's oven, the heat comes from the top and the bottom. If you're if if all of the heat from your oven is coming from the bottom, then unless the pan uh at the bottom cu has a lot of liquid added to it, it's gonna burn and smoke off, and then you're gonna lose all your drippings and whatnot. But if you suspend the birds a good distance above, and even if you just put a couple of cooling racks on your roasting pan and lift the birds up so that there's more radiant heat hitting the bottom of your birds. And you want to spread the birds out as much as possible so that they're not shielding themselves from the radiant heat from the side of your oven.
+
+[31:18] And I think that's gonna help you have all of the birds kind of look nice. If the if all if if the bird, if if if the Cornish game hen, if the skin on the side of one Cornish game hen is only seeing the skin of the of the Cornish game hen next to it, it's never gonna color up because you're you're only gonna be working with the convective uh heat. You're not gonna get any radiant heat on that thing at all because they're rough, they're basically the same temperature, those two pieces of skin. And so there's gonna be no net heat transfer. So you just want, assuming that you have a standard oven with kind of blackish walls where there's good radiation, or even if you have heating elements that provide radiation, if your bird can't see the dark wall or the heating elements, then it's not going to get brown there.
+
+[32:00] So that's, you know. Alternatively, you could low temp them all and then just roast them off like a mother uh uh at super high, super high uh heats. Remember this also. Um if they start to color too much, but they're not done on the inside yet, then just throw aluminum foil. There's no difference between shiny side and and dull side, okay?
+
+[32:23] Uh I hate to tell it, I hate look, the the infrared, which is where uh all of the radiant energy is that it that we're worried about in cooking, uh, is so big compared to visible light that both sides of that aluminum foil are polished as far as the aluminum foil is concerned. There is almost zero difference in the emissivity between the dull side and the shiny side. So stop worrying about it. Uh put the aluminum foil over the birds, but allow them to stay in. Uh, do that before they get so dark that you don't like it anymore, because what you're gonna want to do is that's gonna steam out your skin a little bit.
+
+[32:58] So you're gonna want to for the last five minutes yank that aluminum foil off so you can re uh crisp up the skin on the outside. You agree, you guys? Yeah. Agreed. Yeah.
+
+[33:06] One thing I will mention though, if you do have your Cornish hands stuck too close together, one way to fix that browning, Dave, you can buy a Searsol. You could buy a Searsol, and this leads me to my next point, which is uh John, we're extending the uh thing. Be why? Because you guys didn't buy enough of them. Not you personally.
+
+[33:23] I'm sure, like you that listen to this show, I'm sure if you have a need for a Sears All Pro, you've already purchased a Sears All Pro, but not enough other people have done it. So we have to extend because if we don't make the numbers, we can't literally can't afford to build it. Yep. Because that's where we are at this point in our lives. So there's that, people.
+
+[33:42] The Sears All Pro, I don't know if you know this, John. Stas, I don't know if you I know you're probably not aware of this. 50% more searing area. You don't say. Did you know that?
+
+[33:51] No. Oh, here, uh Stas, get this. Map gas now. Oh my God. Yeah.
+
+[33:57] Map gas. Revolutionary. Did you know that? And the thing about the map gas is is that uh that on the original Sears All, it'll burn out the screen. Yeah, but on the new one.
+
+[34:06] Do we have a China call tonight? No. Yeah, we do. We do? Not that I'm aware of.
+
+[34:13] Look, I'm gonna I'm getting my booster shot. And as far as I know, booster shot wrecks you. Like booster shot apparently is like, oh yeah, yeah. Booster shot, you're down like three days. If you if you were down one day, if you were down, this is this is what they I'm still getting it, whatever.
+
+[34:28] But if you were down one day on the second, then on the booster, you're down like three days. If in other words, if you still had good antibodies, right, they're injecting you with this stuff that makes your body think that you're being attacked, right? That's how it works, right? Like you're telling your body that you're being attacked, and so your body doesn't respond. Well, now, right, if you're if your immune system is still good, it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
+
+[34:55] And it makes you feel sick for even longer. Did you get sick with the first two shots at all? I got sick on the first shot I I I didn't get sick on the first shot. I felt like I mean I still worked, but I felt not good the second shot. Two shots.
+
+[35:07] Who gets two shots? Well, you got Jane. Oh, yeah, you got the you got the headbuster, the J and J. I don't know, I haven't met anyone who's gotten the J and J booster. I heard you can get whatever booster if you have the interchangeable now.
+
+[35:21] Yeah, but not by the state of New York. In the state of New York, you like they've opened it to all the adults to get the booster, but unless you're immunocompromised, they're still on the websites to make the uh what's it called? The appointment. You still need to tell them which one you got first, and they're like, it needs to be more than six months ago, which is fine. But they they're basically forcing me to get the same one.
+
+[35:44] Maybe not if you walk into a pharmacy, but if you're making it through the New York State find a vaccine thing, they're like, You gotta get the same one you got before. So I'm all I'm all Moderna all day. I'm all everyone thought Pfizer was the best, but now nobody knows. Yeah. Some people are saying J is the best if you get two, as long as your head doesn't explode, right, Sas?
+
+[36:04] I guess. I haven't gotten the booster yet. But you're right, you're right in the exploding head demographic. No. Nastasia is solidly in the middle of the exploding head demographic.
+
+[36:13] It's still a tiny group of people whose head explodes. Reining it back. I met somebody here. Uh I met a friend in Oaxaca, and uh I was like, Are you back? And she said, Yeah, uh in Oaxaca in Mexico.
+
+[36:23] And I asked her if she was vaccinated, and she said, Yeah, and I said, which one did you get? And she was like, Oh no, my grandma sent me to a shaman and I had the poison of a frog. Oh, well, I don't know if you know this, but like poison poison frogs can cure you of being alive, but they can't cure you from getting COVID. Yeah, I think that's I think that's true. American or not?
+
+[36:46] Oh no, Mexican, please. No. Definitely. She was very Oaxaca native. Yeah.
+
+[36:51] But like uh Nastasia has a friend on there that maybe you should uh get these two people to hook up and uh Nastasi's friend can go get the frog juice. Yeah. Go get the frog juice. Yeah. I John, what do you got for me?
+
+[37:04] I just want to say while we're before we get too far from the Sears All Pro. If you guys follow our Instagram and tag friends underneath the one of the most recent posts, we're doing a giveaway of the Sears All Pro package. So you get a sta uh base stand, you get the torch, and you get the Sears All Pro. Just have to follow us, submit as many times as you want, and we're gonna make that announcement on this Friday. Oh yeah?
+
+[37:26] Yeah. Well, I will be measuring that. There you go. Yeah, exactly. All right.
+
+[37:29] Yeah. Nastasia and I, even though we have something going, like, I have to say I'm not gonna talk to any of you guys on the Friday. Unless I have to. I mean, maybe I'll say how you doing? What's up?
+
+[37:38] Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. But I'm not gonna be business talking at you. That sounds great. I'm getting my tree on Friday. Yeah.
+
+[37:46] Yeah. Uh from Coleman, do you have any general tips for dealing with a lack of oven space on Thanksgiving Day? Uh we only have one oven. After the turkey is done, there are various items that will need to be baked fresh, like Parker house rolls, oh yeah, or reheated like sides cooked on prior days. I thought about using a gr uh gas grill as an oven, but I've never tried that.
+
+[38:06] You could, if you're gonna use a gas grill as an oven, uh what I would recommend is putting down a uh like a layer of aluminum foil directly over the grates. If you put a layer of aluminum foil over the grates, that's gonna stop the radiant heat from coming up from the coals. And then if you put a layer, if you put cooling racks on top of that, close it, and then look at the thermometer that's on your grill, you should be able to get a fairly accurate temperature read of going uh what's going on, but you're not gonna be getting that intense radiant heat from your burner elements. And so you should be able to keep it at a relatively normal uh thing. Also, good opportunity to buy yourself uh uh a countertop oven.
+
+[38:47] You know what I mean? Like a like uh like uh, you know, look, we don't make any money from them, but like the Breville Smart Air or equivalent, like they are great at the smart air is a good size for keeping a bunch of sides uh like warm. Another thing is uh they they might be sold out now, but go to a thrift store, and people used to have uh all of these like turkey ovens and like all of these other things, and they're really cheap, right? They look almost like slow cookers, but they're meant for cooking turkeys, but they also hold sides really well. And they're they're they're cheap when they're new, they're free at a thrift store.
+
+[39:23] You might find one because people don't know to just have them, and then you can just pull it out and have it. So that so now, if assuming you don't want to do any of that stuff, uh it's a real problem. The real problem is someone coming to Thanksgiving expecting you to have free oven space. Be a good guest, do not expect to have oven space. Do not expect to have oven space.
+
+[39:46] Your Parker House rolls, what I would do is unfortunately, yes, everyone knows their best right out of the oven, but I would cook them off earlier in the day, take them out, tent them, then put your turkey in, then you can refresh them uh when the other sides go in as the turkey is resting because you're gonna need to rest a turkey before you cut it anyway. Uh as for the other sides, like you got to tell everyone who comes with their sides, sorry, we're cooking at one temperature today, so everyone goes in at the same temperature, and you can multi-rack your oven. Even if your oven doesn't have multiple racks, if you have little half-cooling racks, you can, as long as you put two racks together so that you can space things out and air can get in between them, you can like multi-stack certain dishes for reheat to uh to keep them in. But yeah, I feel you. I feel your pain.
+
+[40:37] Have I given any good uh advice on this guys? I don't know. Do you guys have any tips for this? Not really. It's something I'm gonna be juggling as well this year, though.
+
+[40:45] I'm doing the turkey on the grill, so that's gonna help save oven space. Turkey on the grill, huh? Yeah, that's how my mom wants to do it. So I now have bullet in your head song, uh, the the song Bullet in Yad with Turkey on the grill. A turkey on the grill.
+
+[40:58] Like, you know, anyway. Um They say jump, you say how high. I was listening to uh yeah, I was listening to uh Rage Against the Machine yesterday as I was walking to the uh Friendsgiving event. And I believe that if you play Rage Against the Machine really loudly in your ears as you're walking around, that it's the equivalent of an extra two or three layers for warmth. I feel like the rage, you throw off so much internal heat that like I wouldn't say it was like Canada goose, but I was like, I was like wearing like a Patagonia puffer level of extra heat from just you know the the intense loudness of the bulls on parade as I was walking down the street.
+
+[41:42] But if you do walk down the streets of New York City listening to Rage Against the Machine or the functional equivalent, please be aware that you become more well, you, me, I become more physically angry when I'm listening to music that I grew up as like anger music listening to. And so you just gotta be careful not to walk in front of a car and get hit. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Good point.
+
+[42:07] Yeah. I mean, I remember once I was biking, and stuff, you know, like I'm I'm I'm a one-earphone listener in case calls come in, and sometimes if I have music playing, I'll leave it on, which I shouldn't while I'm biking because I think it's unsafe. But I was listening to like some particularly loud sound garden, and I realized I almost got myself killed because you become more aggressive when you're listening to super loud sound garden when you're biking around, I think. You know? Yeah.
+
+[42:31] You think it's amazing. Huh, really? I never thought about it. Maybe. Yeah.
+
+[42:40] So what you should now you're Manilo only when you're driving? Just Manilo. I don't know. No? Or if I'm in the city, maybe maybe it's safest to not blast it.
+
+[42:51] Yeah. Sometimes especially like the bot manual. Jack, what's your favorite Manilo song? I don't have a favorite Barry Manilo song. Why not?
+
+[42:59] You like them all? Can't I tell you the last time I listened to Barry Manilow? Oh. You don't like you don't like uh you don't like Mandy. I mean, I can see that, you know, I can see where you're like, I've heard uh what what's that?
+
+[43:16] What's that one? Uh uh at the Copa. I could I heard it too many times. I could he I could feel it, right? Well, he he does he his is he does uh can't take my eyes off for you or no?
+
+[43:25] Uh he wrote the songs cover that that makes the whole world sing. Did you know that? Oh no, I didn't know. He wrote the songs of love and special things. Did you know that?
+
+[43:36] Stas, you like Manilow, right? Uh he's okay. I saw him at the park. That uh Welcome Back New York event. He's had some unfortunate attempts to not not.
+
+[43:46] And he said when he was singing Mandy, he was like, everyone needs to evacuate. Why? Because that was the the hurricane night. Remember? In the middle of Mandy.
+
+[43:57] Oh wow. In the middle of Sandy became Mandy. No, no, no, no. The hurricane is in September or whatever that was. Remember the uh Henri.
+
+[44:09] Say give me some French Henri. Henri. Oh yeah. So it was like this is like, and you gave and you gave. And then he was like off.
+
+[44:19] In the middle of the song. Yeah, and then we're done. And then de Blasio came out and was like, don't listen to Barry. We're all safe. Stay.
+
+[44:26] And everyone's like, what? Yeah, cloud. What are we doing? Clown College. He's gonna run for governor.
+
+[44:31] Did you know that? No. And didn't know that. I'm not we don't talk politics. Anyway.
+
+[44:35] Again, yeah, I voted for him. What it doesn't matter. But I can't believe in the middle of a lyric, he's like, and we're done. Yeah. Was it in key?
+
+[44:44] No, it was a joke. And get out and get out. Imagine if you did it, like you're just like. Yeah. Well, because it was lightning.
+
+[44:53] You can't stay here. Get out. Like we just started like doing it, like the whole song. No. It was lightning and dangerous.
+
+[45:01] Back in the old days, musicians used to really worry about getting hit with lightning, right? That was a thing. Yeah, or their equipment shocking them. Yeah. Who was it that almost got killed?
+
+[45:09] Was it plant that almost got like electrocuted on stage? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know. Alright, what?
+
+[45:17] No questions. Let's keep moving. We got 15 minutes left. All right, all right. You want to do the question that you were gonna read from the thing, or do you want me to do that?
+
+[45:23] We can we can do that. I'll do these these came in first. I'll do this. Somebody also mentioned using a water bath to keep things warm, like mashed potatoes. Doesn't help with oven space though.
+
+[45:31] Oh no, but that's the the answer for mashed potatoes. Listen, if you're doing mashed potatoes, you can do your mashed potatoes like well in advance. Well in advance. When you put it into the Ziploc bags, just remember to keep it thin. Keep it thin.
+
+[45:43] And then they reheat almost instantly, right? It does don't let people see it, because when it slips out of the bag, it doesn't look very good. So you gotta slip it out of the bag, and then you gotta fluff it up a little bit, make it look good. Yeah, a little, yeah, yeah, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and then uh then it'll look okay. So don't let them see you do it.
+
+[46:01] Um but yeah, that's a fantastic idea, whoever whoever wrote that in. I do that all all the time. If you can have a little water bath, a lot of the sides, the only sides you can't do that for are the ones that like have like French fried onions on top or like marshmallows. Where are you guys with marshmallows on your sweet potatoes? Yes.
+
+[46:20] Yes, yeah. Nuts, no nuts. No nuts. No nuts, but marshmallows. Yeah.
+
+[46:25] Do you ever was it Unastasi or someone else? Put the little pineapples in. Yeah, my mom. Yeah. And you're you're pro, right?
+
+[46:33] Um from Star Craving Mad, I find myself making many varieties of meats and putting a decent amount of effort into making them marinade. You ever marinate is one of those words where I'm always like marinade. I always like like stupid it. I don't know why. I can't help myself.
+
+[46:48] Uh I tend to cook them out a bit uh and make them into a sauce of sorts, balancing them out uh with salts, acid, sugars, etc. as reduction, of course. Of course, most of the marinades that I I do are so salty and acidic already that if I reduced them. I was on a show, and this person said that she was brining her turkey. Get this.
+
+[47:06] See what you guys think. Maybe I'm wrong. She was brining her turkey in soy sauce. Now listen, I love soy. Pure soy sauce, not watered down or anything.
+
+[47:17] Well, I don't know. Okay. She didn't have that long to talk about it. Okay. She made it seem like it was pure soy sauce.
+
+[47:22] That's, as we say, intense. But the other problem with soy sauce is it burns really easily. So, like, if if I was to stick a turkey in with my normal procedure and it was completely soaked in soy sauce, so the outside had soy all over it, it would burn. I don't know. You guys weigh in, you tell me what you think.
+
+[47:41] Um, I'm sure she's was very smart and a food technologist. So I'm sure she knew her way around this, but I feel like if you just did that without knowing some extra secret that she wasn't telling you, that you would burn the skin. It will brown nicely if if your ch if your turkey comes out of the oven sallow and gross, then if you start with something that that's why I don't like put too much anyway, you don't whatever, I'm not gonna get into it. Okay. Uh I tend to cook them out.
+
+[48:10] Um the question is, can the spinzall assist in this process when we try uh try to create these savory sauces, particularly ones that contain grated onions and other large particulates uh that after a cook would not contribute additional flavor. Well, you could probably strain that stuff out, honestly. If you have a spinzall, the the problem with most of these marinades is that you're leaching protein out of the meat during the marinade section. And I and you s you you you address this here, you say uh because you also bag things, so you do bagging. So if you take sauce that something's been lightly cooked in, like in a bag, when you heat it, you get a kind of disgusting gray protein foam on the top of it.
+
+[48:49] So that's really what you're gonna want to get rid of. And you can strain it or yeah, the spinz all would be tough because usually you don't have that much of it, and the spinz all would be better if you were dealing with like 500 to like a thousand mLs of it, then you could spin it out. Sure, it would work. Hey, look, I'm for it. By the way, apparently uh we have another lead because the the old factory is being such punks that we have another lead on a manufacturer for the uh spinzole again.
+
+[49:14] All right. And secondly, what's the best way to address off gassing of bones in meat during low temperature cook like ribs, bone in pork shoulder, et cetera. Anytime I end up vacuum sealing these items, I usually have to pull the bag uh after about two hours, deflate it, reseal it, and return it to the bath and weigh it down for any additional off gassing that may occur. Uh thanks. So this is a big problem.
+
+[49:34] Listen, on your vacuum machine, right? You can usually it depends if you have a commercial or not commercial, but if your vacuum machine is set to seal the bag as soon as it reaches its temp uh its vacuum level, then you're gonna leave a lot of air in the bones. All bones are hollow. Bird bones, especially are hollow. But you any anyone who's cut a bone in half can see it's porous, right?
+
+[50:01] Because think of how much you would weigh if your bones were solid. I mean, it would be crazy. And then birds are hollow because even the ones that don't fly, they descended from things that flew. So their bones are hollow, hollow, hollow because they want to get it's just like a like like an iron pipe. An iron pipe, all of the strength or steel pipe, all of the strength of that pipe is on the outside.
+
+[50:22] It wouldn't be that much stronger if it was completely filled in. And your bones are the same way, right? Most of the strength of the bone comes from the diameter of the bone on the outside, and you need some strength in the middle to prevent crushing. But most of the actual like, like, is it gonna snap in half comes from the outside. So there's a lot of air on the inside of a bone.
+
+[50:40] Uh, you know, in a in a in a mammals and humans, we fill it with stuff that we need, like, you know, marrow and things that make, you know, but in general, that's not strong, and there's more air than than you would have in meat, let's say. So as soon as the vacuum hits its vacuum level, there's still a boat ton of air left. So what you need to do is set your vacuum machine to uh set your vacuum machine to uh suck a lot of extra time, as much as extra as you can. And then when it sucks down, then uh you know you will have gotten rid of a lot more air. So that can solve some of the problem.
+
+[51:16] Another problem with uh specifically some of these bone in things is bones can put, and I don't think you're having this problem, I don't think, but you can get micro punctures in your bag when the when the uh when it comes back down. So I used to shield uh I used to put like little like shielding, like little like either like wadded up like uh plastic wrap or something, like a little slice of onion or something over where the bone is sharpest, so that when the bag came down, I wasn't getting uh a puncture. And to wait you know for punctures, especially if you have a new vacuum machine and you're not used to using it yet, is uh don't vacuum and cook right away. Vacuum it, put it back in the fridge and inspect your bag after a half hour. Within a half hour, you should be able to see the telltale signs of micro leaks.
+
+[52:01] So you can get micro leaks in the seal area itself, those will become apparent. Uh, but especially around bones, if you see any lift away on little dots that are protruding out, so like you know, like uh if the butcher or you didn't properly scrape the bone surface after the after the meat was cut, you leave micro fragments there and they can do wonders to puncturing your bag. So just if you wait that half hour and look, and then if extra air has been seeping out then, now remember when you're cooking it, the air expands. And so if you've left air in the bag at all, right, then um it's gonna expand in the cooking. There's nothing you could do about that.
+
+[52:39] So get as much air out as you can, wait a half hour. Um if you want, you can even vacuum it again then, but then you don't know whether you've ruined it by letting it go and crushing it again. But but but try those things. It is a known problem. This is why also it's a lot, it's unless you need to have the bone on, a lot of times deboning something and then um deboning it and then uh using the bones for something else like stock when you're gonna use the bag is is a good is a good thing to do.
+
+[53:07] Usually also lower temperatures. If it was a if it was a problem with uh bacteria, it would be at the lower temperature, so you would know and it would also smell weird. So it's probably not that. It's probably just air leaking out of the bones. Things like poultry, I think it's a good idea to get rid of the bone anyway, because when you suck the vacuum on it, let's say you suck enough of a vacuum to actually get the bag to stay down, you're also pulling all of that red crap out of the middle of the poultry bones, and that stuff never turns uh cooked color.
+
+[53:36] And even I, who know very well that it's safe and cooked, I'm like, eh, it doesn't look so good. So, like that's me. So, like anyone else who who you know hasn't for years been telling people about persistent pinking and the fact is they just can't eat it. They don't want to eat it, they're just not attracted to it as a food stuff. So poultry, most of the time I bone it before I bag it.
+
+[53:57] Um do you want me to do this question, or you got your question? Uh do that question and then we'll go to mine. From Kim Ferrer, uh, I really want to do a yuzu sauce from my turkey, but I can't find fresh yuzu anywhere. Is it well, you just gotta spend more money. You know what I mean?
+
+[54:13] Uh I'm not saying it's worth it to spend the money. I'm just saying, you know, it's money money changes everything, as Cindy Lauper said very wisely. Uh is it possible to make something that tastes similar to Yuzu using fresh tangerine, citric acid, and malic acid? I wouldn't say Yuzu really tastes like a tangerine. Here's the problem with tangerines.
+
+[54:29] Um certain varieties of tangerines are delicious. You make a delicious marinade with tangerines. Problem with tangerines is some tangerines are uh they get bitter after they've been juiced, right? And unless you know that your specific variety of tangerine is juiceable and is not gonna go bitter, I would worry about it, right? Um I think since you're gonna make a marinade and it's gonna be cooked anyway, or you're making a sauce.
+
+[54:59] Since you're making a sauce, unless the sauce is not going to be cooked at all, just buy a high quality cartoned yuzu juice. So the, I forget the name of it, but the one we used to buy comes frozen in a lime green carton, kind of tall, kind of fancy. Uh, that's really good. Like, I would even use that in drinks. Uh, but even, you know, try to find a uh uh, you know, a yuzu that's been um bottled or cartoned with uh without salt, without too much salt, because that you know, when they're in the salt, they're really put in the preservative in it.
+
+[55:29] But if you're using it in a sauce anyway, I wouldn't worry, and you're gonna cook it. I wouldn't worry about the fact that it's not fresh if you what you want is the taste of yuzu. What do you guys think? Yeah, I agreed. What's your uh what's your uh what question there, John?
+
+[55:43] Alrighty. So can you please give me your take? This is from Ian. Can you please give me your take on my Thanksgiving plan? My challenge this year is traveling with a meal to serve to someone who's immunocompromised.
+
+[55:57] I'm gonna hold you to the safety part, but it's more of a would you be okay serving this if it were you for the dark meat? I'm doing a confite with a four-day cure, one and a half percent salts uh by weight, sealed in vac bags and fridge, then we'll open bags to add fat and revac for 24 hours sous vide at 65 Celsius. All right, let's take that like uh how long do they say again? Twelve hours? Twenty-four hours for the legs cook at 65.
+
+[56:22] Yeah. I mean, they'll cook. I look I am a fan of traditional comfy flavors. So like I've tested a bunch of comfy, mostly duck, of kind of lower temperature long time, and it seems fine. But like me personally, if I'm gonna go confie, I like like high temperature, like the three-hour high temperature traditional confid, just because that's the texture that I like.
+
+[56:45] But yeah, that seems fine from a safety standpoint. Yeah, you're you're fine. All right, next. White meat, porchetta style roulade. I had to prep it early because of the four days for the dark meat, so I reluctantly stuck it in the deep freeze.
+
+[56:55] It's a 10 centimeter cylinder. I want to sleep at some point. So my plan is to put it in the same 65 degree bath for 12 hours, even if that's a bit high. And so a sucker's frozen solid. Yeah.
+
+[57:06] Okay. I want to pull them from the bath at the same time Thursday morning and hold them hot for an hour drive. I figure a cooler filled with heating pads, then finish on the other end. I'm a bit concerned about the time I spent prepping, the long curing time, roulade freezing time, and time to get up to pasteurization temps and the travel time. Does this all seem risky as it now sounds writing this, or do you think it should work?
+
+[57:27] Would really appreciate your take. All right. So you're so assuming that when you made the roulade, that it was cold, relatively cold. You didn't like have it out there, you weren't like wrestling around with it in the mud for like an hour, right? So it it wasn't in the in the danger zone too long, and it was relatively cold throughout before you put it back into the freezer.
+
+[57:49] Right. So this is an assumption I'm making. The reason I'm saying this is that the bacteria didn't have a lot of time to grow as the roulade was being uh fabricated before you put it back, before you put it into the freezer, right? Now, it's frozen all the way through. Let's just assume it's frozen all the way through.
+
+[58:06] Now it's we did we crunched some numbers. I used my old poly science sous vide calculator program that I have on my uh on my phone, and I put I punched in a 10 cylinder, a 10 centimeter poultry cylinder. I told it that it was thawed but at one degree Celsius, and that you wanted to hit at least 62 degrees, which is kind of the right 62, 63 is where you're gonna want the tech for the texture of it, and that your water was at 65 degrees Celsius. That's what I've typed in. It takes nine hours for that to happen, right?
+
+[58:37] And so then the question is, uh, how long does it take to thaw? And I think you might actually, from a safety standpoint, be winning here because I think with the temperature delta of 65 to zero, that you're actually going your your the zone where it's not gonna be in a good place in terms of temperature is actually gonna be relatively small. And I think that at those things, I don't think your thaw time is gonna be longer than uh like three or four hours. I think you might actually end up winning. So if at the end of it you stuck your probe in and you had hit, you know, 62, 63, I'm gonna say that you're fine.
+
+[59:22] I would think you're fine because it takes a lot of energy to melt something versus heating it. And so the temperature gradient is gonna be pretty high and it's gonna heat into that zero point faster than it would if it was uh not. In other words, I think you might be okay. If you had taken a piece of meat that was at room temperature and tried to cook it, then the inside would be in uns at unsafe temperatures for a long time before it got up to pasteurization temperature. And I think that might actually have been more worrisome.
+
+[59:53] I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. Um, but I don't know. That's just uh my feeling on it.
+
+[59:58] Uh you could also just fill the cooler with uh 65 degree water in the hour long drive that you go over there, it'll only drop two or three degrees. Just keep it all in the bag, put it in that, you don't even need a heating pads. In an actual igloo, you'll get maybe five degrees drop, and it's not gonna make it below 60. So no one on earth is gonna make you hold stuff uh hotter than uh uh you know hotter than uh 140, which is 60. So you uh that's what I would do.
+
+[1:00:26] Yeah. Uh all right, uh wait. What? Question wise, that's it. Two little announcements though.
+
+[1:00:31] Okay. One, uh, for everyone, looks like we're gonna have Dave Chang and Chris Ying on next week's episode. So get your questions in. It's gonna be good, not confirmed, but looking very promising. And then also for any of you guys that have not subscribed to our Patreon yet.
+
+[1:00:44] We are going to have a nice little membership perk for everyone to be announced next week that I think is pretty neat. So you should um it's only gonna be available to Patreon members, so you should join. Go to patreon.com slash cooking issues and sign up. All right. Well, uh happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
+
+[1:00:58] And you know, uh, if you can look out for people that uh don't have enough of either fellowship or food. And uh yeah, happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, so Thanksgiving. Yeah, Jack, happy Thanksgiving, good trip back.
+
+[1:01:13] Happy Thanksgiving to YouTube. All righty, cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Earl, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Rockefeller Center and New Stan Studios. Call in your questions if you're listening on Patreon live to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
+
+[0:27] How are you doing, Stas? Good. We'll get into each other's mutual Thanksgivings in a minute. We also got uh John as usual. How are you doing?
+
+[0:33] Doing great, thanks. You uh back on the customer service train for Booker Index? Indeed, I am. Loving it, loving life. Loving it, loving the colour.
+
+[0:37] Great, great. We got as usual Joe Hazen in the booth. How you doing? Doing great. Oh, thanks.
+
+[0:43] Yeah, we know semi-arrested. Yeah. We got Hassan, who's also gonna be around in the future coming on uh as uh engineer sometimes. You know, just letting you guys know Joe's gonna have to take some time off in a little bit, you know, and we're gonna have Hassan instead. That's fine, right?
+
+[1:00] We got uh Jackie Molecules who left Mexico, but is taking the long road back to California, and we got a freaking hilo running in our studio. For those of you that don't know, a hilo is a machine that goes up and down from the floor to the ceiling, and every time it moves, it has to make a wretched beeping noise. Right? Has to make a horrible beeping noise. All right, he I think he's left the high low.
+
+[1:26] All right, so I can stop. No, no, no. Oh, son of a gun. And Jackie Molecules, is that you crumpling up paper in the background? No, no, sir.
+
+[1:37] That is not me. All right. Okay, okay. Jackie Molecules left Oaxaca. Did you drive?
+
+[1:46] Well how are you in Marfa, Texas? Where did you where did you enter reenter the country? He's spreading that in the crowd. Yeah. New York for Thanksgiving.
+
+[1:54] And then uh I'm I'm taking a scenic route back to LA. Um through Atlanta, New Orleans, Austin. El Paso tonight is where I hope to end up. How do you how do you pronounce that town? El Paso?
+
+[2:09] Yeah. Isn't it El Paso for us American folks? El Paso Pass. Paso, right? Or no?
+
+[2:15] Sure. All right. Well, but before we get too far into that, because I you have to have there's a turkey dish you have to have when you go through El Paso. Uh the best turkey dish you're ever gonna have, you're gonna have very close to El Paso. But before that, we have uh our two special guests, our post-Thanksgiving guests are Dave Chang and Chris Ying from uh the Dave uh Dave Chang podcast.
+
+[2:38] What do you call that? Dave Chang Show? Nice name, Dave. Yes. It doesn't really matter.
+
+[2:46] And yet, and yet you've only been doing it for like three days, but you already have 295 episodes or something crazy like this. You do it like eight times a week or something like this? Well what yeah, they're they're micro episodes, so that's how we can just pump them out. They're an hour long. They're an hour long.
+
+[3:04] Micro episodes. Uh all right, so all right, so let me get back to Jack so I don't forget this, and then we'll go through our various Thanksgivings, right? And then we got a bunch of questions that you guys have to answer. And if I don't get to it, people will drop us on Patreon, and then it's it's bad news for us. All right, so first, when you're going through El Paso, go across the border to Juarez, right?
+
+[3:25] Go to Ciudad Juarez and get Polito Ti Pavo turkey butts. First, buy a whole roast turkey butt and eat that so you get an idea for the what the here in the US we call them turkey tails, and then get the torta, get the turkey tail, the turkey butt sandwich, and tell me that's not the way that God intended turkeys to be eaten. This freaking high low. I'm gonna lose my mind. All right.
+
+[3:50] So uh have you has anyone else besides me had the turkey tail sandwich? The Colito di Pavo. Are you guys familiar with you guys familiar with the fact that uh okay? So turkeys, like a uh I am going to go out, Nastasia. Can you go out and punch that person in the face?
+
+[4:09] No. They're doing a very important art installation. They're not. They are though. They're not though.
+
+[4:16] It's not that important. I guarantee you, as soon as it's time for them to take their like allotted break, they will just like walk off the job, even if the art literally falls to the ground because they haven't installed the turnbuckle properly. Anyway. So a male turkey when it's slaughtered weighs between 40 and 50 pounds. All right, between 40 and 50 pounds.
+
+[4:41] So they have giant turkey tails on them, much bigger than the ones that you get, the you know, the the turkey butt that you get on a commercial turkey that we get in the in the supermarket. So nobody wants to buy these things. So what they do is what we do in America is we used to ship them all to American Samoa. And everyone in American Samoa and other places in uh in Micronesian Polynesia would just eat all of these things, and then they got a reputation for being unhealthy, and that's the same thing that happens in Mexico. They all get shipped to Juarez, where they're turned into turkey tail things, and so they're seen as kind of low class, something being foisted on to people, which is why it doesn't make it out of its region.
+
+[5:16] But the truth of the matter is it's the most delicious part of the turkey. I'm just gonna say that. Wow. All right. Yeah.
+
+[5:21] I'll have it. Dave Harnell, I have a question for you. All right, all right. Shoot. No, go ahead, King.
+
+[5:29] What do you got? Isn't isn't poultry butt, poultry ass the best part of the chicken anyway? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[5:39] I like that you've identified that the males have like specially especially thick butts though. Yeah. This is a wonderful revelation. Well it's like it's like everything it's it's it's like birds are the opposite of people. Like the male birds are like the are like the good looking birds and they got the best butts.
+
+[5:55] You know what I mean? It's like and like the the turkey Nicki Minaj would be a male turkey. Yes. Oh yeah for sure. For sure yeah sure sure sure yeah yeah yeah so if I've never been to El Paso Juarez border is like is that border so easily permeable that you can recommend to your friend if he's in El Paso he should popped into Juarez to get these turkey butts is it that is it is it a quick jaunt for a turkey butt or is it an all day affair?
+
+[6:22] Look I haven't gone post Trump but yeah you used to be able to walk across it. I I used to just walk across I mean it's like it's one city like Juarez and El Paso is one city that like a government split into two right and so there's people there's people that work on both sides. There's like really fun bars in Juarez like um I mean I had a great time there's some good cooking going on like in the desert outside of Juarez at least you know but I it was about it was pretty close to right before Trump when I went so I haven't it's been maybe five years five and a half years since I went but you know it was after a lot of the violence had died down, and so it was a relatively good time for an American to to go. But uh, you know, I don't I loved it. I thought it was I thought it was uh a great place, you know.
+
+[7:11] I would go back. I'll report back. Yeah, yeah. Uh all right. So what did uh Chris what did you have for Thanksgiving?
+
+[7:22] What did I have for Thanksgiving? Yeah, we had uh turkey leg stuff with sticky rice. We had all the normal stuff. Yeah, it's normal. In addition to the and then I had a uh fork shoulder that I roasted because we you know man cannot survive on turkey alone.
+
+[7:41] What did you do with the tendons in the turkey leg? You know, I sort of messily pulled them all out with a fairing knife after you cooked it or before you cooked it. Did you bone roll it? Before. So you boned it, you boned it in the middle.
+
+[7:55] No, I boned it out. I boned it, and then I was like, oh, maybe I can do this in like a neat way. Yeah. And then it turned into just like a real Frankenstein, just you know, butcher's twine to save my life. It held together okay.
+
+[8:07] Yeah. But sort of removing all those tendons with the uh I'm gonna I'm gonna make you really mad right now. You ready for it? Yeah, of course. Okay.
+
+[8:17] So uh when the turkey still has its foot attached, right? Like when they slaughter it, right? There is a machine that exists. There are patents, you can go look it up, right? Where what it what they do is is they they have like a U shape, and they put what you consider the end of the drumstick, that little bone, in one side, and then another thing grabs the leg and rips the leg off.
+
+[8:42] And if you rip the leg off that way while you hold the the the drumstick solid in this machine, it removes all the tendons and the groove prevents the meat from the drumstick from coming out. So they have a machine, and I've seen it, the videos of it. It's literally, it's literally a two a two and a half second operation. They do both legs at once, they throw the two legs into the machine, it goes boop, and it rips all the tendons out. They could make they could make every turkey leg insanely delicious instead of like uh like you the kid takes it and then like leaves that drumstick and like all the meat is attached to the tendon and it gets thrown away.
+
+[9:21] Instead of that, every turkey leg could be like insanely delicious, and yet they don't do it because people hate people hate humanity. The pe the people who know how to make the world better hate us. Yeah, yeah, because I would make millions of people happier, and I gotta say, I did not do a neat job. I got a lot of loss pulling the tendons out. I would have worked on turkey there.
+
+[9:45] Yeah, it's impossible. It's so hard to do that. Like, if you do like uh you ever do like the mock turkey asabuko, you ever cook that? No. Yeah.
+
+[9:55] So in the mock turkey asabuco, you you you slice the turkey on a band saw, but then you pull the tendons after it's cooked. So you do like the turkey like it's a subuco, and then you pull the tendons after it's one of you is boiling soup in a crowd. Uh David Channing is cooking. I imagine that's what it's like. What are you boiling, Dave?
+
+[10:13] What are you cooking? I I I can't I can't believe you can hear the boiling. Yeah. That's like supersonic hearing. Do you think you're being very quiet right now?
+
+[10:23] Do you think you're like sneaking around making food right now? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like I have got headphones on, and um I got my head over the donate that I decided to make my my uh turkey garbage. Yeah, and uh I can't believe that you can hear it. So apologies.
+
+[10:40] Well, let me uh let me let me let me ask you this: iPod Pros. Yeah uh iPod Pro, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those things. They magnify kitchen sounds like nobody's business. I can't wash my hands when I'm talking to someone on the phone.
+
+[10:55] Nastasi's like, what are you in a waterfall? What are you? What are you? And I'm like, I'm just washing my freaking hands. It's like something about the sound canceling.
+
+[11:03] They're so good at picking out the ambient noise around them so that they can cancel it out of your ears that they make it like impossibly clear for everybody else. It's kind of like a it's a it's a bug. It's a bug. Uh oh terrifying. Yeah.
+
+[11:18] I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everybody. Yeah, yeah. So Dave, uh, I know that you had 14 people apparently over for uh Thanksgiving and that you were trying, but unsuccessful in just buying everything. What ended up happening?
+
+[11:30] What was the what what do you end up doing? Well, I I had some guests that had never experienced Thanksgiving before. And uh it was not something I anticipated. I thought I was going to buy Thanksgiving and and cook nothing. That was my goal.
+
+[11:48] That's my philosophy in life at home in general, anyway. And then says the man who's cooking a turkey pie pie right now. Well, now because I have it and I was like, I don't want to, you know, I gotta do something with all this crap. Yeah, Dave Chang hates waste, by the way, people. Dave Chang hates waste.
+
+[12:04] I I do hate waste. And I uh I uh I also had somebody from Korea that had never experienced Thanksgiving. So it was like six of the wound up being 16 people have never had turkey for Thanksgiving. Have never had a proper Thanksgiving. So I had no choice.
+
+[12:23] And then my son, Hugo, who's you know, three in March, has only been asking about turkey. Yeah. Uh turkey and pumpkins. And I had no choice. So I I succumbed to being a good friend and parent, and I made a traditional Thanksgiving.
+
+[12:39] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You hate you made or purchased a pumpkin pie? No. Oh, he said he was asking about pumpkins. That did not happen.
+
+[12:51] No, no, I know, I know. I know. We even still will go to the park near in Pasadena where there are pumpkins, just so he can play with pumpkins, but there's no pumpkins being brought home. Okay. So for those of you that don't know, we're gonna get it, we're gonna get into this because I have questions about literally about pumpkin pie.
+
+[13:09] Chris and Dave did a four-part Pie Mageddon thing on their podcast. Now, Dave, Dave and I both always kind of think that we're right, and we almost never agree on anything ever. So, like some like there's I think he just he just threw something down in disgust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[13:33] Um, like uh Dave hates pumpkin pie. Chris, you like pumpkin pie, right? I like pumpkin pie just fine, yeah. All right, Dave detests it won't even say the words pumpkin pie. He won't he'll say the word pumpkin and he'll say the word pie, but he won't say pumpkin pie.
+
+[13:50] Correct. It's a spicy gourd, spicy sweet gourd pie. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so like first of all, I think one of your issues is is that you're just eating it completely wrong. Like pumpkin pie.
+
+[14:04] Oh pumpkin pie is a garnish for whipped cream. Oh. Yeah. The question just eat the just eat the whipped cream. No, no, no, no.
+
+[14:13] The question is does the pumpkin, does the small amount of pumpkin pie that you're gonna eat make the whipped cream taste better? And the answer is yes. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does.
+
+[14:25] It totally does. It totally does. No. There's no reason. There's so many other pies to eat than spicy sweet gourd pie.
+
+[14:34] Sweet spiced gourd pie, however you want to pronounce it. Sweet and spicy. There's many. The one correct thing you said is that sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie might as well be the same thing. If you don't like one, you're not gonna like the other.
+
+[14:48] You're not gonna like regardless. Somebody brought two pies. One was a buvet sweet potato pumpkin pie. It was a double mix. I I was so upset.
+
+[15:01] And a regular pumpkin pie. And to my complete, complete shock and dismay and horror. Guess which pie was consumed? The pumpkin out of like the five pies. The pumpkin.
+
+[15:13] God damn it. Yeah. Pumpkin. People like that stuff. Good.
+
+[15:17] Yeah. Here's the other thing Dave hates pecans, which are, by the way, God's nut. Like next to Hickory, which is actually God's nut, pecan is freaking God's nut, dude. It's like every once in a while. My favorite Drake song.
+
+[15:30] Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, yeah. Listen. Listen. Dave Chang, every once in a while he has a little sense of mental clarity, and he's like, listen, I realize other people like pecans and I don't, so I shouldn't be judging pecan pies.
+
+[15:44] Who picks the pecans off the top of the freaking pie and just eats the goop? Dave, I like nuts all the way through my pecan pie. And of course, he's like, I didn't like the pecan pie very much. I don't know, man. I I Dave's second favorite pie type of pie.
+
+[15:59] I've never had. I don't eat cream pies. I don't dislike cream pies. I don't dislike them. I just don't eat them.
+
+[16:08] I did like if I'm given a list of pies, I'm not going like, oh, I I want I want that cream pie. This doesn't happen to me. It just doesn't happen. I'm not saying it's bad, so I've never had a banafi pie. Ever.
+
+[16:23] Wow. Wow. Well, I don't know if we can speak anymore. And and Chris, this is this is like buzzard, right? This is very weird.
+
+[16:33] It's like we entered some multiverse and we got the the evil we got the evil, less intelligent Dave Arnold rather than the open-minded, highly intelligent, empathetic Dave Arnold. I think when we picked up this phone, we went down this multiverse and we got the evil, less intelligent Dave Arnold. What do you think about that? I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[17:01] Yeah. Listen. Right? He's like, oh, definitely the phone. We're like, are you sure?
+
+[17:06] All I'm saying is I'm not hating on cream pie. I just don't ever order it. If like if if someone said to me, you could have like all of these other pies. Here's a pie with acid in it. I'm gonna take that pie.
+
+[17:19] I like pie with acid in it. Okay, okay. Citrus citrus pie we've all decided is number one. Also, but apple pie should have acid. Apple pie should have acid in it.
+
+[17:27] Not like from the apples, right? All the fruit pies have acids in them. You know what I'm saying? All right. Pumpkin pie is the one pie that doesn't have acid.
+
+[17:34] Put your top category pie categories in order for us then one to five. I mean, uh apple pie, apple pies, apple pie is my favorite. Are you in trouble? Are you in trouble? Because you're not accidenting where you normally are in the high load there.
+
+[17:51] You know, I remember the safe word you told me many years ago. You can tell me this, and we'll get on the thought situation. Listen, listen, I've gone down such a pie hole in the past couple of months, not the way you guys have, just like consuming pies. I've been consuming the history of pies. And by the way, you guys missed in all of your delicit.
+
+[18:13] We have a question, uh, by the way, that we'll get to in a minute, but like the the place that pie became like super important in the in the in the early to mid 20th century is actually LA. LA is like the South has it. I love the South. The South hasn't done anything interesting with pies in 150 years. Okay.
+
+[18:36] Like the East hasn't done anything interesting with pies in the last 150 years. It's it's Los Angeles. And then spreading out from Los Angeles, one guy, one guy, Monroe Boston Strauss, who would have fallen completely off the radar if it wasn't for Shirley Corriher in Bakewise in 2008, like resurrecting his butt from the from the from the ashes, right? And now, you know, I don't even know, people don't even talk about Shirley Corhair anymore because she gets short triffed too. I don't know why.
+
+[19:03] I don't have no idea why. But that man invented here's a category that deserved its own the chiffon pie. Delicious style of pie. Delicious style. You could have a citrus chiffon pie.
+
+[19:15] Delicious. It's a lighter version of the key lime that you uh that you love so well, Dave. All I'm saying is is that you missed out on the man invented graham cracker crust, but he has such a next level graham cracker crust that you guys didn't get into, which is making a standard pie crust and then rolling that into gram crackers so that if there is a real pie crust with gram cracker, and sometimes he does it on the top, and sometimes he does it on the on the bottom. Here's another thing. Wow Boston Montreal Strauss owned a pie company before he became uh an like a national and international pie consultant, okay?
+
+[19:51] Uh and what he did was he would just watch people all day. He would he would wake up early, make eight bazillion pies, and then all he would do is watch people eat pies. And you know what he realized? He realized that people don't like to saw through their freaking pie when they get down to the plate. He's like, people like when their fork goes into the thing and then goes through it to the plate without having to fight with the pie, right?
+
+[20:15] And the mistake that everybody makes is making an overly flaky crust on the bottom that you then have to fight to cut through. He's like the average person actually wants to push the fork through the pie and eat the pie. So his solution, Dave, did you back at the French culinary when the when all of the Japanese chefs came for their kaiseki thing, did you come to that event with me? I'm sure I did, but I don't remember anything. Okay, there was a there was a there was a I forget his name, so it's I'm embarrassed, but he is a famous uh tempura chef from Kyoto.
+
+[20:48] And I don't like tempura, right? I think it's trash can food. Unless it's like served directly to you. Like the idea of an American like making tempura. What is how it's it's the worst fry.
+
+[20:59] So of all of the fries, of all of the fried foods, it's the worst. Come on. It has one good thing. It has a hot taste. There's one good thing to say about tempura, and that is it doesn't get your oil dirty because everything floats and you can skim it.
+
+[21:12] That's the one good thing you can say about preparing tempura. But like, if you go to Kyoto and you're seated in front of the person frying it, it's delicious. Any other presentation is garbage. Like anything else, other than direct service from the oil to you is trash can food. Soggy, blonde.
+
+[21:32] I mean, and you think my and you think my take on spicy gourd pies is bad? Yeah. What is happening, Wild? This is crazy, man. Let me ask you a question.
+
+[21:42] Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. Would you ever, if someone said to you, you can have tempura, pick pick, what's your favorite tempura stuff thing. What's your favorite thing to have done in the style of a tempura batter? Shrimp?
+
+[21:58] What is it? Shrimp? Some sort of like undercooked vegetable? What? Like, what's your favorite?
+
+[22:02] Undercooked vegetable, shrimp. What is it that you like the best? Yeah, I couldn't say that. Something of the gore, something of the gourd family, yes. Yeah.
+
+[22:11] Like a kabucha squash. I like the sweet potato. No, because you guys are very good. Yeah. You guys are human nightmares.
+
+[22:21] They're overly blonde, water, whatever. I don't want to get into that. That's not the important part. The important part is that this guy whose name I forget, but he looked exactly like Don Knott's and Mr. Limpet, so we just called him Fish Face, and that's why I can't remember his name, because we only called him Fish Face because he looked like Don Knott's from Mr.
+
+[22:36] Limpet. He did next level tempura, which I had to appreciate. He was doing uh sea eel, a nago, right? And he was like, you need a different batter for the skin side of the eel than you did from the flesh side. So he would draw it through on one side in one batter, the other side, the other batter, and then you know, do the tempura flourish into the oil.
+
+[22:59] I like the tempura flourish into the oil, by the way. That's a good move. The flourish into the oil, which is shockingly similar to a good fish and chips uh fish flourish because it's also like a batter phenomenon. Do you like a good you like seeing the person do the fish and chips flourish into the oil? I mean, you have to.
+
+[23:19] Well, that's probably one of the most over overrated foods of the United Kingdom. It's because the chips are bad. There's nothing wrong with it. You're you're just no, the worst food in the United Kingdom is cold eel pie. You can't make it.
+
+[23:33] You can't be like fish and chips is only bad because the chips are bad. That's 50% of the food. It's fish and chips. That's a fair assessment. But that's a fair assessment.
+
+[23:42] But did I say to you, did I say to you, I'm in awe of the way that they put a basket of freaking French fries in the thing? No. I said I like the way they put the fish into the batter. I like the flourish of the hand. Obviously, the fries are trash.
+
+[23:57] Anyway, they're the wrong dimensions. And they put vinegar on them like idiots. Like, why would I want to? Like, if you put vinegar on a fry, it's just proving that it was a bad fry because it's already so soggy and crappy that it doesn't matter that you've just soaked it with liquids. That's what you're saying to me.
+
+[24:14] With the vinegar. Anyway, I digress. Monroe Boston Strauss had the genius idea. He's like, if you want a flaky crust, make it the top crust. Use two different crusts, a different crust for the top and for the bottom.
+
+[24:26] So that's what I did for my apple pie this year. I did a flaky crust top and a short crust, short crust bottom. I have it on good authority that Monroe Boston's trust stole that idea from Taco Bell, a double decker taco, though. Yeah, that's uh that's uh what's the word going for the one for incorrect. Incorrect the man the man was a pie genius and he he hailed from the Los Angeles area.
+
+[24:51] Los Angeles is the nexus of modern American pie hegemony, right? And all the writers, and by the way, I say in that because making fun of them because uh on their podcast, uh you know, Dave and Dave and Chris have a uh had a pronunciation B, but they don't have what we have here. Look, they may be, you know, whatever, like, you know, you guys may be you all big and famous, blah, blah, blah, but you don't have what I have. Watch this. Okay, uh pronounce the word, I watch this.
+
+[25:20] John, pronounce the word sousang. Soupson. Supson. Yeah, there you go. See, I have a French spe a native French speaker on my on my thing.
+
+[25:29] So any French word that comes up, give him a word. Dave, give him a word. No, no, no, no. Well, no, what we're trying to ask about the pronunciation V is what it means about the person that tries to pronounce something properly in a room full of people that are not native speakers. That's the worst.
+
+[25:51] That was the worst thing about Alex Trebet. What? How do you pronounce croissant? Oh, it's it's uh it's it. I just say I did I don't say is that what you're trying to get me to say?
+
+[26:02] I say like croissant. Yeah, yeah. But here, John. Oh, croissant. Even still John, give it to me again.
+
+[26:09] That's very French. Yeah, but but like then you have like you gotta have the French guy doing it for you. Watch, John, say battery de cuisine. Batterie de cuisine, like the pronunciation monkey here. Yeah, see that?
+
+[26:19] You gotta have one of those guys. You know what I mean? I love they don't have that tank. That's insane. Dave, what what what about like what about words in Spanish?
+
+[26:29] How do you pronounce Barcelona? Oh, that's not even real Span. I can't stand that. Mexicans is the real Spanish. Everybody knows that.
+
+[26:37] And everyone in Barcelona would rather speak Catalan. Everyone in Barcelona would rather speak Catalan. And that that lispy thing, I like I can't stand it. Give me a Mexican, give me a Mexican or a Colombian speaking Spanish any day. Any day.
+
+[26:53] What about an individual, right? If you are like uh whatever, somebody asks you in your room with like four friends, do you speak Spanish? And it's like, I went to Barcelona, but someone else pronounces it Barcelona Barcelona. I wince. What do you think about that?
+
+[27:07] I wince. I wince? Yeah, that's bad. That's horrible. Yeah.
+
+[27:11] Unless they're Spanish. Yeah, yeah. What about the person that speaks that doesn't speak French? The only word that they pronounce in the proper pronunciation, like croissant, is like that's it. Like what?
+
+[27:26] Why do you why do you pronounce that properly? And nothing else properly. You know what I mean? It's like, what does it say about a person that thinks that they have to pronounce it like a real French person? Just say it's croissant.
+
+[27:40] Like every other dumb American. I don't know. I think people feel like they're doing like a good. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[27:45] I don't think people do it out of maliciousness, though. What do you do? You were at the page of the case, you're ordering it. You say croissant? No, I no.
+
+[27:54] I don't know what I just say. Give me that. I just say give me the give me the flaky buttery thing. Yeah, yeah. What about and here's the one?
+
+[28:02] Give me a crest. I don't know how to pronounce this. What? Uh uh fr French French uh bot on the other end, John. What yeah, what Coogan almonds.
+
+[28:11] That's how I pronounce it. Coogan almond. Queen amon. Wait, are you literally the voice of Google Translate? This cannot be real.
+
+[28:26] Cook and almond. Cook almond. Cook and almond. Amazing. I love it.
+
+[28:31] I love it. I love it. Alright. So uh Nastasia, what'd you have for Thanksgiving? I went to a friend's house.
+
+[28:38] And what'd they have? Oh, the usual stuff, but no mashed potatoes. No mashed potatoes? No. What?
+
+[28:43] What? Nope. Nope. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[28:48] They had beets. Oh! Nastasia, I think they hate you. I think they probably hate you. Nastasia, what were the dimensions of the beets?
+
+[29:01] Uh large baseball. Oh. What? Listen, people, after you roast the beet, you have to peel it and cut it into small pieces for it to even go into my mouth. Like, don't serve me a whole beat.
+
+[29:19] Were they just raw beef? No, no, they were roasted. They were roasted, but they still had like a hard middle, you know. Uh oh, yeah, look. Oh, God.
+
+[29:31] Listen, beets are one of those things, like until they're dried out, you can't overcook it. Just make it cooked. Make it cooked. Make it cooked. If you're worried about trying it out, wrap it.
+
+[29:43] Wrap it. Well, no, one better move than that. The better recipe is never cooked down. Don't eat beef. Yo.
+
+[29:51] Mike, Mike, Mike. Listen, listen. I've had I've had like three, three or four times in my life, someone's handed me a beat, and I was like, damn, that was good. Like Mike Sheeran at WD50's 10th anniversary made a beat dish where he did that par high par dehydrated where the beat got like real chewy. And I was like, I'm enjoying this.
+
+[30:13] I'm enjoying this. That's the end of the thing. Another WD50 dish. Paul Paul Carm Paul Carmichael had a good beet dish, you know, but but that's about it. Beets to me, Dave.
+
+[30:25] How do you I'm trying to find moments and places in life and world where we can now agree on where we will be sympathetic. What are your thoughts about the Australian disaster of putting beets and an egg on their burger? That's a huge mistake. First of all, having having a burger anywhere other than the United States is always a letdown. Yeah.
+
+[30:49] People don't get it. They just don't get it. Like they they do all this stuff to it. I'm like, don't do that. It's a burger.
+
+[30:55] You know what I mean? Like, just don't do all of those things. Why would you do those things? You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
+
+[31:01] Yeah. Like, what is the logic? It makes no sense. No, I'm gonna give you the logic. It's when other countries try to be like America and it gets the they don the American football pads, the cleats, the helmet, but they're carrying our lacrosse stick and they're playing lacrosse with football games.
+
+[31:17] That's what it's like when they try to make American burgers where they think they're making like American stuff, but it's just an embarrassment. Yeah, and they should stop being aware. I want I once for for Giggles got a hamburger in Germany, okay? And they they mixed spices in with the meat, like it was freaking meatloaf, dude. Meatloaf is a different food from burgers.
+
+[31:40] People are so dumb. People are really bad. Well, Dave, with your logic, they might as well put a uh pumpkin pie in between the bread. Come on, man. That would be good to you.
+
+[31:52] That would be good to you. Come on. Okay. With whipped cream. As long as the whipped cream, it accentuates the whipped cream.
+
+[31:57] I can't believe Nastas. First of all, I can't believe Nastasia had to have beets on Thanksgiving. I still, that's going through my head. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
+
+[32:06] Uh John, what do you have? Uh pretty good Thanksgiving. Grilled spatchcock turkey, some really good stuffing. Uh squash casserole with marshmallows on top, uh green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, lots of great real green beans or canned green beans. Real green beans.
+
+[32:22] Uh cream of mushroom soup or not cream and mushroom soup. Okay, so halfway. You're halfway. It's a halfsies. Yeah.
+
+[32:27] Okay. Prefer that to the mushy green beans. Um canned green beans are bad, but I had this discussion with people. There are some times when the worst product makes a dish better. When the product that is the worst product makes the dish better.
+
+[32:42] And the theory on this, I'm not saying I agree, is the crappy canned beans, the cream of mushroom soup, and the dirky fried onions. And that that combination of three things baked together is that dish. And that then to try to fancy it with beans that taste good is actually making the dish worse. I don't agree. I'm saying that's the argument.
+
+[33:00] I don't agree with that either. Yeah. Android my green beans, yeah. It sounds it sounds a little bit like moneyball. Those three things equal Jason Giambi.
+
+[33:08] Right. Right. I mean, like, you know, I don't understand sports references, so I'm just gonna have to agree with you. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[33:14] Yeah, yeah. Um decent giant jambi. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah.
+
+[33:18] Yeah. Uh Joe, what do you do? What do you have for your Thanksgiving? We want the pastis. What?
+
+[33:25] Yep. Really? Mm-hmm. My wife, you know, my wife's pretty far very pregnant. Yeah, we didn't want to have anyone over.
+
+[33:32] Didn't want to have to do the whole spiel of cleaning up, cleaning the house, cleaning up after people, having people over. So we want the pastis. We ate French food. Yeah. What do you have like steak frit?
+
+[33:43] I had a flamignon. She had a whole lobster. I had to start. Dang. Uh, yeah.
+
+[33:49] All right. Yo, uh, John John, give me some dandon. Dandon. Yeah, there you go. That's that you could have had a pastiste.
+
+[33:56] You could have had John with you. He could have gone dandon. Would have been awesome. Hazan, what do you what do you have? You have traditional Thanksgiving there or what?
+
+[34:02] No. No? Oh, he doesn't have a mic close enough to him. Uh, one of you now is in a fist fight with a bird. All right, there we go.
+
+[34:10] Uh, I'll tell you what I have for Thanksgiving. Thanks for asking. We know. Pie. That's it.
+
+[34:18] Thanksgiving, man. So I went to my sister's house, right? But here's the worst part. Ready for it? No leftovers.
+
+[34:26] They have a new baby, so I went to my sister's house. No leftovers. So on the way home, we stopped by Stu Leonard's. We got a Christmas tree. I ran in while Jen was picking out the Christmas tree with uh with uh Dax and I bought a turkey.
+
+[34:42] I went home, got home at 4 p.m. or 4 30, had an entire Thanksgiving on the table at nine. Turkey, turkey gravy. I cut the back off of it, broke my kitchen shears, cut the back out of it, made a turkey stock with uh uh pressure cooked turkey stock with the bones, spatchcock. I didn't have time to brine it properly, so I made a mixture of mayonnaise and salt and and broth and injected mayonnaise, salt, broth, and sugar into the breasts to get them all jacked up because I didn't have time to do it right.
+
+[35:14] And uh the mayonnaise injection actually wasn't so bad. It worked well. Yeah. I made uh cranberry sauce and I made Parker House rolls. I ground flour and made Parker house rolls.
+
+[35:25] All on the table by nine because I was just so mad that I didn't have leftovers. And the best meal I had was actually Saturday when I got to have my cold turkey sandwiches, which is the only reason to have Thanksgiving anyway, is the cold turkey sandwiches for me. I love a cold turkey sandwich. I don't like an open face sandwich. I don't mind that you like it.
+
+[35:44] I just don't like it. I don't want gravy, I don't want freaking cranberry sauce on my sandwiches. I just want turkey and mayonnaise and lettuce and mustard, white bread toasted one side. That's what I want. This is crazy, man.
+
+[35:59] Chris, I have two things. I know, I know, I know. And like thinking about we should be impressed. We should be impressed with what he did. Like, ooh, it's amazing.
+
+[36:10] Oh, yes. I love this. I love this. No, I I'm I'm gonna be like, why? Why would you do that?
+
+[36:20] Because I wanted the leftovers. Do you know who said why did you do that? My wife, Jen. She's like, why are you doing this? I'm like, I don't know.
+
+[36:27] Yeah. Exactly. Secondly, I mean, your pro-turkey-ness is a problem, I think for a lot of people, including myself. Yeah, but you're you're just wrong. Like, look, it's okay to be wrong, Dave.
+
+[36:42] It's okay to be dead wrong. Turkey is delicious. You know, I'll give you an equivalent. It's like, oh, I'm meeting somebody the first time. It's like, oh, they're pro-choice, they're they're feminine, they believe in all the good things in life, but you're like, you know, you don't believe in the First Amendment.
+
+[36:57] That's not like when you're telling me when you're like, I like turkey. I don't understand it. I don't know if we can be friends. I I don't know either, because turkey is delicious. Listen, the first fight, the first fight that Dave and I had, you ready for it?
+
+[37:09] It got ugly, really ugly. Wiley. Well, no, the very first fight was over tongs. Wiley and Chang are on team no tongue for any reason. And I'm like, you're incorrect.
+
+[37:22] Tongs are useful. And they're like, Tongs are not useful. Whatever. The second one, same night, like I can't believe I made it out of this, like unscathed. I was like, I know that it's a trash can thing made by trash can people for trash can people, but wasabi mashed potatoes taste good.
+
+[37:40] And you guys lost your minds. Oh my god. Oh my god. Well, again, oh my god. Look humans.
+
+[37:50] What is this? Look! Evolved and developed an opposable thumb, so we should never have to hold tongues. It's very clear. That's the main purpose for our thumb.
+
+[37:59] This is insane. To not hold tongs in a kitchen. Okay? Like that's just the truth. Just look it up.
+
+[38:06] Okay. Secondly, secondly, Wasabi mashed potatoes is one of the most horrific combinations ever invented. And the fact that you like it, I remember that, and I feel like I can't believe this guy's food opinions. Like, what a lot of people are. This is the same freaking argument we had like 15 years ago.
+
+[38:27] And listen, what I'm trying to tell you is that I understand all the reasons you hate it. It also happens to taste good. This is one of those situations that we're talking about. No, it's not true. You gotta give somebody, you gotta let somebody grow over time, you know.
+
+[38:42] 15 years, Chris. It's 15 years. Okay, listen, listen. It's 15 years, 15 years. I stand by it.
+
+[38:52] I have not made it, but if someone handed to me, I'd be like, as long as there's enough butter whipped into that sucker, I'd be like, that tastes good. I mean. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Explain explain to me why horse explain to me why horseradish potatoes are good and wasabi mashed potatoes are bad.
+
+[39:13] Go. Who says that? First of all, horse. I disagree with it. This is an legal trick review.
+
+[39:22] I I disagree with the pressure. You guys are the worst. Yeah. You guys are terrible. Why would you make the talk about it's a good one?
+
+[39:28] Do you like horseradish? Do you like horseradish? No, I don't. I like it fine. Oh my god.
+
+[39:36] You don't like horseradish? On a roast beef sandwich? What is it good at? You know what's better than horseradish? What?
+
+[39:44] Any kind of hot sauce? Oh, please. Anything else other than horse. Please, please. You know what's better than horseradish?
+
+[39:50] You know what's better than horseradish? Fresh wasabi. Oh, so now you want wasabi mashed potatoes, do you? All right, hold on. This is in from Bryce.
+
+[40:02] I'm gonna trigger you again. Uh because I know you and I agree on this. I don't like eggnog very much. Like, I can have one thimble full of it, but then I'm done. I'm good with it.
+
+[40:10] Uh Bryce writes in, I used to use Ruman's aged uh eggnog recipe. I've since stopped consuming alcohol. Jeffrey Morgenthaler offers a non-alcoholic eggnog recipe at the link provided. Is there a way to circulate a bagged up Morgenthaler non-alcoholic nog for a time in an attempt that will render the product safe for immunocompromised individuals? Sure.
+
+[40:28] Yeah. So like uh the problem with his um, so for those of you that are keeping track, it's uh two eggs, whole eggs though, not yolks. Uh so like that's gonna be the issue. The whole eggs are, but they're not gonna set because it's 120 mils of milk and 300 mils of heavy cream and some sugar. So yeah, so just bag that sucker, like just bag it, take it up to like 62 for like, you know, 15 minutes in a bag and you're done.
+
+[40:54] Or just pre-pasteurize the eggs. Just pasteurize the eggs at like 57 for an hour and 15 minutes and then use them uh pasteurized like that, and then don't worry about bagging the the whole thing. But you do I don't, but I I like I say, I don't really like eggnog that much. I don't know. Or Dave, the better recipe again is don't make it.
+
+[41:15] Don't drink it. It's an ice cream. Dave Chang, yes. Dave's on record saying that like all eggnog is better consumed as ice cream. I believe Chris, you rightly pointed out that alcohol in uh in uh ice cream can cause textural issues.
+
+[41:29] Uh I believe that's what happened. All right. Ready for another triggering question from Colton Johnson? Hey everybody, what it's about pies again. Pie Marches On.
+
+[41:36] Pie March is on, by the way, is the book we were talking about by uh Monroe Boston Strauss, the pie king of uh Los Angeles. Uh invented the chiffon pie when he was only 20 or 21 years old. Amazing, amazing man. Uh now dead. Uh Pie March is on has been one of the best classic cookbooks we've gotten, probably ever.
+
+[41:56] Oh, by the way, I should mention this. If you are a member of Patreon, I have scan, I went to the New York Public Library and scanned an extremely rare Monroe Boston Strauss cookbook. Him and a guy named Charles Glabau. You can look, read the Glabau just for fun. He was the technical director of Baker's Weekly from like 1911 to like 1933 for 1920 to whatever.
+
+[42:14] Anyway, so it's half Glabau and half Strauss, but you gotta you gotta read that section. I put the scan up on the for the Patreon people. Uh the pumpkin pie recipe of from Pie Marches On is hands down the best pumpkin pie my husband and I have ever had, and we'll be we will be making it every year. As for the short flake or mealy pie crust recipes, and this is where the question comes in, I can't seem to get it right. So, so Dave and Chris, for your because you haven't been tuning into this.
+
+[42:44] So that Boston Monroe, Monroe Boston Strauss has three different recipes. What's called the long flake recipe, which is what most 99% of people think pie crust should be, right? The short flake, which is the one that he uses almost all the time when you want the fork to actually go through and hit the plate, and what he calls mealy. And the mealy one, you almost really never want to use because it just kind of falls apart. It doesn't hold its structure.
+
+[43:08] Uh and so, so what they're what the thing is when I follow the recipes as they're written, it turns into more of a paste to shorten the mealy, and it's impossible to roll out. Have you had any trouble with this? Am I just over mixing uh slash overwatering? I've already rolled some all-butter long flake pie dough in the graham cracker crust and uh dust, and it's by far the best pie crust, but I want to get the full experience with his short flake recipes. Any insight is appreciated.
+
+[43:30] Love the show, happy holidays. Your problem is this. Boston, uh Monroe Boston Strauss was using commercial, this is one of your problems. He was using commercial pastry flour, right? Everybody now uses AP flour.
+
+[43:42] AP flour is not the ideal flour for a good pie crust. Everyone is using JV level flour in their recipes, and all cookbook writers write recipes for JV level flour because everybody doesn't want to tell you to go out and buy the right flour for the job at at hand. Myself included, as I'm writing these recipes, I'm trying to write stuff for AP flour. If you've ever gotten your hands on real decent, awesome pastry flour milled from really good soft wheat, soft winter wheat, like it is by far and away a better flour to use in a pastry crust. And this is one of the reasons why I'm sure a lot of your pie crusts you said when you were tasting them over the last month were like universally good is because all professional pie makers get real pie flour for pies.
+
+[44:28] You know what I'm saying? They're not buying, they're not, they're not going to the supermarket and expecting one kind of flour to make every baked good on earth, right? Because it's just not the way the world works. You know what I mean? Uh but if you want to take AP flour, I would say on a 150 gram basis, I would use about 25 grams of cornstarch and 125 grams of uh your regular AP.
+
+[44:50] And don't do that to imitate cake flour, because uh it's it's not gonna have a cake flour has been treated to hold water better. So that's a terrible substitution for cake flour, but it's a good substitution for uh pie flour. And I almost guarantee you that you're overworking the butter into the flour. So he says to work it in all the way, but you gotta remember he's writing this recipe uh for 1930, you know, five or six when they were mixing these things, like cutting the the the butter and shortening into giant vats, doing like 10 pounds at a time. And so you're almost certainly using something like a food processor or whatever and overworking the flour into it, and then probably uh if it's not holding together, then you need to add more water.
+
+[45:39] And if it's not holding, if it's if it's turned to a paste, you probably added too much. But his recipes, I've done them. Use the pastry uh flour substitution I gave you, and don't don't over overwork the uh the butter in. I would say like here's one. Everyone's like, work the butter into the work, work your butter into the the flour until it's the size of walnuts.
+
+[46:04] What the hell is that? That is a trash can recommend. That is that makes no sense to me. But anyway, I hope that helps. Was that a good answer, guys?
+
+[46:12] Great answer. Great answer. All right. Good job, Dave. Good job, Dave.
+
+[46:16] But I think the the the nut size is actually pecan because it's also a trash nut. I'll have you know, Dave. I'll have you know that they are all members of the Jiglin Day CE family, but the pecan and the hickory are more closely related. Walnut is a good nut. Walnut is a good nut.
+
+[46:36] They're all good nuts. You know what's a you know what's disagree? Okay, what is your favorite nut? Don't say peanut because you know it's not a nut. What's the best nut?
+
+[46:43] What's the best nut? Pistachio. Peanut's not a nut? No. Legume.
+
+[46:50] Yeah, come on, man. Of course I know that. Jesus. All right, so what's the best nut? What's the best nut?
+
+[46:57] Nut. I don't know. Nut. Best nut? I don't I'm not a fan.
+
+[47:04] I like black walnuts when they're fresh. But that's about it. Mm-hmm. That's about it. I'm not a big fan of nuts.
+
+[47:12] What about pistachios? Nastasia just busted out the pistachio nut. Too much work. Pretty good nut. It's a good nut.
+
+[47:19] Too much work. Too much work. Do you know what I don't like? Too much work. When you buy the number 10 cans of pistachios, there's always nasty ones in there.
+
+[47:25] So you have to go through them. That's what I hate. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's too much work to shell.
+
+[47:30] And honestly, you're fancy. You could buy those brantes. You could buy the brantes. You could probably have the entire island like send you all of their brantes, dude. Oh no, no, no, no.
+
+[47:41] It's important, it's important to buy to shell them because you get that extra bit of salt on your fingers, which makes it that much more delicious. I'm not saying pistachios are not delicious. I'm saying there's too much work for me to like them. That's just all. That's just me.
+
+[47:55] Macadamia. Macadamia. Too fatty. Huh. See, for me, it's like I don't really think they have that much flavor.
+
+[48:03] They're more of a texture food for me. Well, I mean, again, like maybe that's why it's always in that crappy box of chocolates that someone gets when they come back from Hawaii. And I don't like that either. You know what? You know what nut I don't really like.
+
+[48:17] You know what nut I don't like very much? Brazil nut. I'm never like, you know what I really want? Brazil nuts. And then when you get the mix in the Brazil nut, you're like, what?
+
+[48:24] The worst nut. Yeah, Brazil nuts, worse nut. And it kills people. But it takes up so much root, too. You know.
+
+[48:30] Yeah. They're big for no reason. There's a there's a look like rocks. What's the there's a there's a nut in Australia that's like eight, eighteen pounds of nut. That's not very good.
+
+[48:39] And then um, what was I gonna say about pistachios? The reason why I can't even get past pistachios, if you got me thinking about pistachios, Dave, you are a wealth of knowledge. What is the reason why pistachios were colored red lipstick from years upon years? Oh uh, I used to know this. I had to look it up once.
+
+[48:58] I forget the I forget the answer. It has to do with the fact that they couldn't be pro like they would turn to an uh an off-color on storage, and so they couldn't figure out a way to process them right. So, in order to have them not look unappetizing, they just dyed them all red. But I forget exactly what the reason was was. Was it was because they like were they couldn't control the color properly?
+
+[49:19] They're just like better off that they're all red. But no one who's younger than us even has seen a red pistachio. I always wonder. I I honestly, instead of I think a lot of people would say, like, well, that's the dumbest invention, culinary invention of all time. I think it's probably arguably one of the top three or four best culinary ideas of all time.
+
+[49:39] Oh coloring the pistachios. Yeah, well, it's just it's it's a huge fuck you to everybody that would eat pistachios. It's like for so many people, they didn't even know that pistachias were not colored red. They have no idea. So when they actually saw a pistachio that was not colored red, that's the one that freaked them out.
+
+[49:57] In the 70s move in the 70s, the first time I had non-red pistachios, I was like, what is this? What is wrong with these things? Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, because pistachios are red. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[50:07] All right, I gotta get some questions, you guys. I'm gonna get my head. All right, here we go. Zachary writes in uh question uh for you guys any chance of lucky pinch lucky pinch, lucky peach reprinting or release. It was my favorite food writing, but collecting old issues is getting expensive.
+
+[50:23] Any chance, guys? Um I probably not ever that I know of. I wouldn't even know where to find those files if I tried. Yeah, you gotta cut my man Zachary a rate, dude. All right, Zachary, send me your address, I'll ship you whatever issues you want, buddy.
+
+[50:42] There you go. Send you back in. There you go. But only if you're a Patreon, he is a Patreon member. There you go.
+
+[50:47] All right, uh all right. Oh, and only if you were announce pumpkin pie. All right, so Zach, Zachary, you need to write in renounce pumpkin pie on the Patreon, and you can get the issues you need. That's the that's the deal you have to make with the Oh, and you said pumpkin pie, you're totally busted. I love it.
+
+[51:08] Uh okay. So uh from uh JM Badger writes in for Chris, what's the craziest story you have from collaborating with others slash providing editorial direction either on books at Lucky Peach or your current major domo media projects? The craziest story I have from collaborating, I feel like the last 15 years has been one long crazy story collaborating with Mr. Chang here. It has not hopefully stopped yet, but it's been uh I mean I think the first time that Dave and I really hung out, he fell out of a second story window.
+
+[51:43] Ooh. That was pretty crazy. Like that's pretty good. Fell with with quotes around it, or like legit fell. No, like legit fell, but in his defense, if you must remember this, he fell, and I was outside of a bar.
+
+[51:59] He literally fell out of a second story window into like a little Olympic Simone Biles tuck and roll, and then just started tying his shoe as though he had meant to fall out and roll to tying his shoe, and that's how he always ties the shoe. So that's probably were you on the second floor or were you on the sidewalk? I was on the sidewalk below, and he was inside uh on the second floor and fell out. Again, like I'm not exaggerating. Fell out, and roll, tied his shoe, got up, dusted himself up and walked back inside.
+
+[52:34] He didn't give you a sub dude. He didn't give you sub, dude. What's up, dude? This is also important. This is also important to note.
+
+[52:42] It's also important to note that like the the the cultural zeitgeist at that moment in time in the Bay Area. We were on the uh Tony and I had just pissed off everybody in San Francisco by saying the figs on the play comment. Right. We're on the tour and they they canceled us. Every goddamn restaurant, every museum, every auditorium canceled us, so we still went there and we had host our event in a bar.
+
+[53:09] And and I bought I think 148 Miller Highlight ponies for the audience. And no one showed up except for Chris. And so not even exaggerated. And uh Chris, Chris, did you bring the figs and the goat cheese? No, man.
+
+[53:28] I was like, BY own figures, B-Y-O-F. BYOF. Bring your own figs to the Dave Chang event. Um I remember that. Yeah.
+
+[53:37] Uh all right. From Dakota. Uh Dave, what's the wildest thing that cooks better in a nuke? Wish y'all an incredible holiday season, Dakota. Better, better to nuke?
+
+[53:49] Yeah, better in a microwave. What's better in a microwave? Mashed potatoes. Mm-hmm. What do you mean what do you think about that, Dave Arnold?
+
+[53:58] Well, I don't know. I don't even understand what that means. I don't even understand what that means. Like, does the microwave mash them for you? Do you have some sort of like next level panasonic?
+
+[54:06] No, I'm just saying, like, cook the microwave and cook the potatoes in the microwave. The mashed potatoes. Like how many? Like in one of you in one of your bowls so that they steam or like individually so they're semi-baked. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be in the bowls, but certainly it does.
+
+[54:22] But if you just microwave potatoes, I think it's the best way. See, the thing about the bowls. The thing about the bowl that I like is that then you're developing steam and you're cooking them all. If they're not in a bowl and you're cooking more than one or two, you have to worry about the timing so much. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[54:38] Correct. Correct. But you can get the timing down if you get to know the water, the your power of your microwave and the you know idiosyncratic nature of everyone's microwave. And um I also believe that microwaving your Idaho potatoes is probably the best way to make gnocchi. Potato gnocchi.
+
+[54:57] Really? Why? Because you're not adding or subtracting that much moisture? Yeah. Without without anything.
+
+[55:05] Sand's bull, just you you it just it's just a great way to cook your potatoes, I think. I I'm a big fan of cooking potatoes in the microwave. What are your what are what are your theories on uh on the temperature of the potato into a gnocchi battery? It needs to be warm, but not cold. Right.
+
+[55:28] Right, not super hot yet. What's yours? Same. It's like this weird thing, it's hard to describe. I uh also like my my gnocchi is horribly inconsistent.
+
+[55:36] I don't want to talk about it. That's a trigger for me. I I I don't know why I haven't been able to dial it in. It's one of those things where like I just can't I can't get it right 100% of the time and it just pisses me off, and I haven't had the time to like dial dial it in. So it's it's making me irritated.
+
+[55:49] Let me ask you, Dave, uh uh on your potatoes, what kind of potatoes are you using and how developed are the starch crystals there? It might interest you to know, Dave, that the main difference between a waxy potato and what we call a starchy or mealy potato is literally just uh the density of the potato and not the the variety and all the genetics, that's all horse it. Like if you get a potato, like really it's all about the the density. It's you can base all of your potato recipes on the flavor of the potato itself and on its specific gravity. I but to answer your question, I use uh uh Idaho Russets whenever humanly possible.
+
+[56:25] Right. But can can I just say that that is the density actually matters in the cooking and the flavor because then it's about drying out your potatoes as much as possible. Yeah, and if you want those mealy things, like oh whatever, uh I have to get these questions or I'm gonna get I'm gonna get in trouble. Real quick, I'd like to remind you, it's a family show. No crazy.
+
+[56:43] You did. What'd I say? S H I T. Yeah. I said sugar honey iced tea.
+
+[56:48] No kids. Oh no. Sugar honey ice tea. All right. This is from Quinn.
+
+[56:56] Uh the premiere season of uh Mind of a Chef is one of my first big inspirations to get serious about cooking. If that show or something similar came back with Dave's involvement, who is a chef that Dave would choose to follow for a whole season. Oh, good question. Um I've probably right now, because I think he's doing really interesting things, is Matt Horn in West Oakland. Um because he's on the precipice of really expanding just as an entrepreneur as well.
+
+[57:26] He's got like a chicken thing going on, and just what he has with his barbecue operation in West Oakland is just uh there's so much happening there. Talk about noise. There's a like a junkyard, literally right behind the restaurant. So there's a lot going on, and I I would be I would watch a show that sort of sort of took a peek into his mind, not just for the culinary ideas, but just sort of like what it means to be a chef trying to open up multiple businesses right now. Speaking of Oakland, how did you not have don't they have bean pie over there?
+
+[58:02] How did you not get bean pie in your list? I don't even know what that is. What is that? Bean pie? Bean pie is like how can I how can I order something, Dave, when I don't even know what it is?
+
+[58:13] Bean pie was like it's like the story you're just making it up right now. Bean pie is the famous Nation of Islam pie. And like I would assume that you know, where the where the Black Panthers were invented, the cradle of the Black Panthers, they would have a decent bean pie somewhere. I've not any here actually. The Reverend Elijah Mohammed believed that the navy bean was a superior bean, and so didn't want people to be eating the sweet potato pie or the pumpkin pie, so the bean pie was developed, and it's a good pie.
+
+[58:40] It could be your alternative. It could be. But I wonder if it's like it was probably I imagine it was like a specialty of your black Muslim bakery, right? Yeah. In Oakland, that must have been sort of gone.
+
+[58:58] It might have gone away with them. Dave, it could be very similar, I would imagine, to a lot of the red bean desserts in in A T. It's not though I know what you're saying, but it's not okay, but question for uh Dave. What are your top three favorite pantry items uh beyond the existing line of products you recently launched that are great ways to increase umami, blow up flavor, and introduce a wow factor when aiming to create dishes inspired by Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, etc. eccentric hard-to-finder items uh are are acceptable.
+
+[59:27] Things you have to make are acceptable. I got three easy. One is um saywood joke, it's Korean salted krill, like very, very small shrimp. Um you almost need to like find a special container just to make sure the smells don't emanate into your house because it is extremely pungent, but a little bit goes a long way. Um the other one is red boat fish sauce.
+
+[59:55] I go through a tremendous amount in my cooking in everything from vinaigrette to you name it. I think I put red boat fish sauce in like 75% of all the dishes I make, uh regardless of the cuisine. And the third one would be any kind of Shiro Dashi. So which is a it's basically like dashi bouillon liquid. You're okay with the are you okay with the the granules or do you hate the granules?
+
+[1:00:21] No, I like I I I like Hondashi's fine, but like I this whole there's this I I would say the past 10 years there's been um you know even longer than that, a lot of American cooks understanding or utilizing Japanese ingredients a little bit more for a muzu, so on and so forth. I would say the past 36 months or maybe a little bit longer, the the the big thing has been the adoption of shirodashi into their cuisine, which is you know, like I don't know. Ying, how would you describe it in layman's terms? The shiradashi or the hondashi? Shira dashi.
+
+[1:00:57] I think that yeah, I mean I don't know how to describe it in layman's terms. It's like it's it's it's a little slightly smoky, slightly seaweedy umami. It's like dashi dashi dashi water, dashi sauce. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's flavored, dashi sauce.
+
+[1:01:13] And I I think a lot of cooks, professional cooks, are adding it to a lot of dishes themselves. Um, and those are three very, very highly potent umami things that you could add in your pantry. All right. Now, uh change right, Dave. You always talk about like if you it is it's like a delicious flavor the first time you eat it, but then after you, if you just try to use it constantly and you don't use it with sort of a two dishes hand, then you can get tired of it pretty quickly too.
+
+[1:01:41] Remember when everybody used ketchup manise and everything? Remember back then when everybody put ketchup my knees and everything? Yeah, that was when that was when every everybody that was a graduate, a less pronounced with the great coons, you know, for like a five-year period was put in ketchup men and saw and everything. Everything. Um we're dating ourselves, Dave, because nobody knows what the hell we're talking about.
+
+[1:02:02] Yeah. Uh all right, Chang, can you please help me identify the proper this is from Chris Grady. Uh the proper alkaline salts to buy for homemade ramen noodles. I get lost on the internet trying to understand. And are those uh how do you pronounce this?
+
+[1:02:14] Toy roll clay pots that show up in your videos, and uh what wheat berries to use if I want to grind f fresh flour for ramen. Thanks. Dude, I I I I can't answer any of that stuff anymore. I I've forgotten knowledge across the board. Do you buy the liquid conce or do you use salt?
+
+[1:02:35] Uh I don't I don't like the liquid conce in small batches. I think it works better in larger batches and it works better um um when you're making tofu a little bit, but I still don't even like it because it just tastes like crap. But I don't make nude ramen. There's certain things as a professional cook. Dave is clearly, I'm not even a professional cook anymore.
+
+[1:02:57] I just refuse to make at home. I don't make stuffed pop like pastas with farces in it. I don't make ramen noodles, I don't make soba. I don't do these things at home because I I never want them to be made in my home, ever. So yeah, Nastasia is great agrees with you.
+
+[1:03:15] She gets triggered by people making pasta. Chris, I'm gonna get to your I'll get your wheat berries next week, by the way. I'll I'll talk uh because I'll talk too long and Nastasia will take my my head off. What about your clay pots? What's your make?
+
+[1:03:25] Is it uh Toyro? Uh I don't know. This one is Japanese, but Toyro had uh the monopoly on all of the good ones. And I have the I've had the same one for like 10 years, and it's chipped up, but it's you know, I I don't you just need to have one that's not gonna crack on you and that has a deep well. That's what I think.
+
+[1:03:46] Yeah, the Toy Roll ones are really good. I just honestly I haven't bought anything other than the one I have. All right, Jason, I'm gonna get to your vacuum bagging question uh next week because I don't think Chang and you don't really care about vacuum tricks, right? You're not a vacuum trick guy. Not anymore.
+
+[1:04:03] Yeah. All right. So if two things we gotta do. One on the way out, uh, go buy the Sears All Pro. By the way, Dave, you haven't had a chance to actually use it yet.
+
+[1:04:13] This thing, it kicks the crap out of the old one. It's like we completely redesigned it. It's completely redesigned, and we're not gonna we're not gonna we're not gonna get to make it. Well, can I ask what what what what are what is everyone's problem? Do they not understand what what this is?
+
+[1:04:29] Like, do your listeners actually care about you? I think they do. It knows they understand that this is a good thing. I just want free information. I don't know, man.
+
+[1:04:36] Yeah, I don't know. But like the thing is because it's like it's legitimate. Even like it's an amazing, you cannot recreate this heat even in a professional kitchen. So I I I don't understand. Especially the new one.
+
+[1:04:47] It's it's nuts. It's it's nutty baggins. I mean, like, but like again, like the thing is like one guy was like, I'll just wait for it to come on Amazon. You're gonna wait a long time, dude. Yeah, if we don't make this indie go go, we don't make anything.
+
+[1:04:58] We don't exist. Yeah, there's a good chance that we just don't email John and ask, you know, where all this stuff is. Yeah. Hey hey Jace, this is not this is not my my clearly my my my my uh time to ask this, but why don't you just shame your audience right now? He doesn't like shaming he can't shame he can't shame these guys.
+
+[1:05:23] Yeah, but you can, S. No, because then you get mad and I don't wanna I don't want to deal. Oh yeah, I just say this so mad. Just give 'em, give 'em a give 'em. If you shame 'em.
+
+[1:05:32] If you shame them, they might care. Yeah. I feel like the people who listen to this probably have bought it. It's just you need you need a lot of people to buy it. We need a lot of people to buy it because we have to pay for the tooling and all that.
+
+[1:05:43] They're not doing their job. Yeah. They're not doing their job. If they listen to it, buy it, they're not doing their job because they need to be like starting like a religion right now. They need to have eight to twelve other people.
+
+[1:05:53] If you haven't convinced twelve other people to buy the Sears All Plus, you're not a real fan of the show. Yeah, get out of your um get out of your mom's basement and go until we no geez Louise. We should we should do this. We should do this, uh, what's it called? Uh the like uh Ponzi scheme style, whereas like if you bring in three friends, we give you a discount on the one you got.
+
+[1:06:15] No. That's a that's hell on earth for John to figure out. Yeah, you can talk about that kind of function. Like that works. Yeah, like like Tupperwares are like uh I saw one of those uh what was that?
+
+[1:06:25] Mary Kay, the Pink Cadillacs. I saw one of those on the street the other day. All right, we gotta we gotta. What? Nope.
+
+[1:06:32] And then also for our Patreon members, uh, holiday perk coming out, 10% off at Edwards Aged Meets. I'll post the uh discount code in the Patreon uh comments. Don't share it with anybody. Yeah, but check out Edwards Age Meets. Uh I'd like uh I follow them on Instagram, they do some fun stuff.
+
+[1:06:47] All right, so on the way out, let's leave it with this discussion. You ready? What this is from Pablo uh Pavlovsky. What are the fewest number of ingredients you need to consider something ramen? Goes over ramen.
+
+[1:07:04] It's a question from a user. What noodles and water? Two noodles. I mean, are are you already considered considering the noodles already cooked or not cooked? Do you get to choose, man?
+
+[1:07:16] I don't know. I don't know. Okay, how about this? You have brothers, broth and noodles. Broth and noodles come.
+
+[1:07:22] You have broth and noodles that you have. Now what? And what are the two ingredients? I think it's probably chives and egg? What?
+
+[1:07:28] Chives and egg. No, you need you don't need a broth because you can have a Buddha ramion with you can have some kind of like oil-based ramen. You need some a like flavoring agent and some something to sauce the noodles. So it would be on a on a macro level number, it would be three. If you wanted to like go deeper, I'm sure you could, you know, those three could be broken into like 25 ingredients.
+
+[1:07:54] So the minimum ramen is three. Yeah, but you don't I've seen ramen without any toppings. It doesn't have to have topping. Doesn't have to have chashi, doesn't have to have memma, it doesn't have to have a lot of things. I think it's the basic minimum is some kind of sauce and flavoring agent.
+
+[1:08:11] The flavoring agent really can't be the sauce itself. Could someone provide you that minimum ramen and ha and have you be happy? No, because I'd be like, What what are you what do you guys been doing all day? Okay, so what's the minimum number? What's the minimum number of ingredients?
+
+[1:08:30] What's the minimum number of ingredients where you don't walk out and say, what the hell is that? Are you saying ingredients? You're saying about components of a bowl of noodles. It's like noodles, broth, Chris, you choose, man. You choose.
+
+[1:08:44] I don't know. This is not my question. So you get to choose what the answer is. Okay, okay, noodles is one. Some kind of some kind of broth or liquid or fat is another, right?
+
+[1:08:56] You have the seasoning, the tare, you can't have ramen without tare, right? The the the salty umani flavoring liquid, which is like a double dip method created by uh Alba ramen shop uh many many years ago. So that's three, right? Then the minimal thing would be one topping. One topping, right?
+
+[1:09:15] And that could be, you know, uh a better one. It could be eggs, you could be neggy, you know. I think the most classic thing would might just be neggy, but you know, I I I think for me the bare minimum would just be one topping, like a meat, a vegetable, or something, fish cake, egg. Um that would be my idea. So Chris, what do you think?
+
+[1:09:40] Yeah. Yeah, I think that I think that tame, even without broth, you could just have tare and fat, noodles, and at the bare minimum, you need some sort of little alum. You need neggy on there, I think, would be the minimum. You don't need meat. Hey, did you just say aluminium?
+
+[1:09:59] No one says that. You need a tare and aluminium, so you can take your baking ramen for takeaway. Yeah. But listen, you don't that's the thing. Like, you need that little bit because you need something at least a little bit texturally different.
+
+[1:10:11] You need something a little crunchy on it, no? Need some textual variation. Yeah. What circumstances are we even being forced to live like that? I don't know.
+
+[1:10:14] I don't know. I'm being told that I'm being told that this the circumstance I'm living with is that we need to get off the air. That's the circumstance we need to. But uh Chris and Dave, thanks for coming on uh to the show. I I hope uh you enjoyed it.
+
+[1:10:32] Can I ask one question? Then you guys can cut us off. It's a real honor. What are your thoughts on Turkish delight, Dave Arnold? Okay.
+
+[1:10:39] Okay. Turkish delight. Here, okay. I thought you might ask something like this. There is a Dave Chang hates Turkish food.
+
+[1:10:47] I'm gonna say this. He hates Turkish delight. Turkish delight. I love Turkish food. I hate Turkish Delight.
+
+[1:10:53] Okay. There's a Turkish, there's a Turkish dessert where you cook, you poach a chicken breast, you beat it, and then you mix it with rice in a pudding form, you chill it, and you eat it. What are your thoughts? See? I'm I I'm trying.
+
+[1:11:10] I have to try it. All right. All right. I can't pronounce the name of that dish, and so I'm not gonna try to be that like American white guy who tries to pronounce the Turkish word. So I'm not gonna.
+
+[1:11:21] So I'm gonna go one further and call it locum. And even though I hate, I hate flour water as an ingredient in general, which is why I don't drink Ramos gin fizzes. It's like a triple hatred for you because it's a jelly, it's it's got nuts in it, and it's flavored with a flower water, right? So it's like all the hates. But the fact that it comes with powdered sugar on it in snake format that you then cut off of the snake, I think that's a win.
+
+[1:11:51] So I like it. No, no, no, no. It's the best name ever for a a food item with the actual worst flavor. Well, but the thing is if you call it if you called it locum, it would be easier for you to hate on. Yeah, but don't waste Turkish Delight on don't waste Turkish Delight on Turkish Delight.
+
+[1:12:14] It should be you know, what if like cabals were called Turkish Delight instead of kebabs or Turkey Delight? Let's make a campaign where to kebabs should be renamed Turkish Delight. Let's let's take that name back. Like when when like New Orleans wanted the jazz name back for the NBA team. Also, Chang hates Whoppers, so let's just put it there.
+
+[1:12:33] Chang thinks that Whoppers and Turkish Delight are the equivalent candy, which is incorrect. It's just not the correct opinion to have. Whatever. Uh is anyone here gonna back me up on Turkish light? Is anyone gonna say they like it?
+
+[1:12:50] Let's get off the air. Uh all right. All right. Thank you. All right, cooking issues.
+
+[1:12:54] Love you guys. Bye, Dave.
\ No newline at end of file
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New State Studios at Rockefeller Center here in the heart of New York City, joined as usual with Nastasia, the hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good. I'm a slightly disappointed because I forgot to mention that last week you wore your amazing Christmas hat, and this week it you think it's too cold for your amazing Christmas hat, so you're wearing a fine hat, but not the hat.
+
+[0:33] It is true, but I still have three weeks till Christmas. Three weeks till Christmas. Oh, uh, if we have time, which we probably won't, I gotta tell you, I already told you, but the the new theory about Rudolph, about the one voice mistake I thought was in Rudolph and the red nosed reindeer. We maybe we'll get to it. It depends on whether our special guest enjoys these programs or not.
+
+[0:54] All right. Uh which there's no reason to think that she does. Anyway, uh, as usual, also we got uh Jackie Molecules back in California. How you doing? I'm great.
+
+[1:04] Guess what I just did? What? Contributed to the Sears Old Pro Indiegogo, which all of our listeners should do as well. Oh, it's true. Because guess what, folks?
+
+[1:14] At this rate, we're not gonna make it. And if we don't make it, unless the U.S. government decides out of the blue to give us a big old loan, which by the way, Stas, we've been asking for that small business loan for how long? Since May. May?
+
+[1:26] Yeah. May. You mean so like May like a month ago? Yeah. No, no, May's like May's like nine months ago.
+
+[1:32] Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a month. Yeah, yeah. Do you know what's really hard to do?
+
+[1:38] See if you can guess. What do you think's really hard to do? Uh, I don't know. Uh make products without money. Yeah.
+
+[1:46] It turns out that uh factories in China, they don't like to just make you stuff and then you like pay them for it a long time later. It just doesn't work that way. Uh got uh John over here. How you doing? Doing great.
+
+[1:59] But just to quickly dovetail off that, go to indigo.com slash Sears All Pro and get pre-order your Sears all today. Do it. Yeah. No. Yep.
+
+[2:08] And he's just going, he's going for going for a little stuff he's gonna do. So next week we won't have him. We're very happy for the last time for a little bit. Having Joe Hazen in the booth. How you doing?
+
+[2:18] I'm doing great, guys. How are you? Well, well, thank you. You look really dapper. I just got off a train from Boston.
+
+[2:25] I was teaching at the Harvard University. Oh, the Harvard. The Harvard, yes. I was uh we could talk about that later if we have time, which we undoubtedly will not. Because today we have very oh, by the way, if you are a Patreon listener, you're listening live, call in your questions to 917-410-1507.
+
+[2:42] That's 917-410-1507. But today, I've talked about her and her restaurant many times on uh the podcast about how much uh I love it and I think it's great. But for some reason we've never had her on the podcast, which didn't make sense. So I'm super pleased to have Amanda Cohen from Dirt Candy on for the first time. I you've never been on here before, right?
+
+[3:02] No, I haven't. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, so psyched. So like I happen to be blessed in that I live fairly close to dirt candy, so it's not that far away from me. If you you know, if you're anywhere near the lower part of Manhattan, make a reservation to go to Dirt Candy.
+
+[3:18] It's one of my it's it's one of my favorite places. I don't go out. The reason I don't see you very often there is because I just don't go out very often, Amanda. It's just I just don't go out very often. But uh it is just a fantastic uh it's a fantastic place to eat, right?
+
+[3:31] And so like I'm just gonna for those of you that don't know the restaurant, right? It is a uh vegetarian, plant-based. Well, why don't you why don't you explain Dirt Candy the name to people who might not know you? Uh dirt candy is sort of like candy from the earth, which makes it sound like a much more hippie uh restaurant than it is. But that's what vegetables mean to me.
+
+[3:54] They are like candy from the earth. So we really think of ourselves uh mostly as a vegetable restaurant rather than vegetarian. And plant-based is such a weird sort of concept for me because it didn't exist when I opened. Like those words just didn't exist. It also I don't think plant-based sounds very delicious.
+
+[4:13] Plant-based. No. It it it doesn't. It would be like, well, I eat a meat-based like diet. I don't know.
+
+[4:20] Yeah. Plus meat. At the end of the day, it's all plant-based, right? I mean, really. Exactly.
+
+[4:26] You know, photos, photosynthesis are the they're the only producers. Every everything else, everything else, we're just, you know, living off of somebody else's energy at that point, you know? So it's all plant-based. But yeah. So well, and that's another thing I think people need to uh understand.
+
+[4:42] So you you first opened dirt candy in two thousand and eight. So at the time, right? So two thousand and eight, like what was the scene like for the kind of food and by the way, like you said, dirt candy sounds like it's gonna be a uh a hippie thing, and you know, I don't I don't know you that well, but you do not strike me like that at all. Like at all. And the food when you go there is not like that at all.
+
+[5:08] And unlike like other places that that uh you know, I have been that have uh let's say, let me put it I don't know how to put this in a so like there's some places that are vegetarian or vegetable based food that is because it's a cultural basis, right? Based on like where the food is from or uh, you know, a particular point of view about the world. And this is it's always seemed more like this is just kind of what you're interested. These are the problems you're interested in solving. This is the cooking you're interested in doing.
+
+[5:38] So it's all about nothing is like, oh, this would be great if it was something else. It's all about this is how this is great. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah, exactly. And I think sort of also there's a a difference between us and sort of many other vegetarian restaurants.
+
+[5:55] And there's nothing wrong with restaurants that are this, but like a lot of them are more ethos-based. So there's like a political reason for them, or like, you know, it's all about the environment or animal rights, all which are amazing things. Um I just happen to be all about vegetables. And so it sort of puts the food for uh it's the food is number one in any ethos that happens to happen is a very much so secondary. Well, I love that, especially because you are known for being out outspoken for you know, i issues that are w as you put it, ethos-based in the in the restaurant world, but like the core where the restaurant comes from, and maybe that's the reason I think it's so great, is that it's really just about like these delicious products.
+
+[6:36] I mean, I really think the food is is uh is really spot on. If you have not been go. You know what I'm saying? That's that's all I'm saying. And but I have not yet been to your uh to Lecca.
+
+[6:46] You want to talk about that? Yeah, so Leka's uh project I have uh with uh Andre Kirzner, who is the main investor, and uh it's a veggie burger uh place, uh burger shack, I don't know what to call it. Uh and it's sort of my response to all the um, you know, the more sort of uh uh lab burgers, which there is nothing wrong with those burgers. I think it's great. I think it's getting people to eat uh less meat uh which is a good thing but I also think that a good veggie burger uh can withhold its own against those burgers and and so this is our response to it and I really you know think that uh what makes it good is that it's pretty unique versus when you have all those sort of impossible burgers and beyond burgers they're all kind of the same just with different toppings uh no matter where you have them and and sort of in a different fun and here you have something that's uh actually made in a kitchen and it's cool because it's based on this 900 year old recipe from the Song dynasty.
+
+[7:49] I would love to claim that I invented it but uh certainly uh I didn't based on them but you want to talk about that um I'm interested I want to hear that I haven't heard this story before tell me the story tell me the story of the 900 year old recipe for the Song dynasty. Yeah so it was pretty cool. I had this uh opportunity to work with a food historian for a project that uh NYU was putting on and uh he was uh he's the uh who's food historian in like uh in Chinese culture and and food and uh it was sort of brilliant you know he was like look this is a recipe from the Song dynasty or the Ming dynasty and it would be like water hot green brook rock and I was like yeah and he's like so this is the recipe. This is for like spring onions, uh boiled in uh water and then charred over a rock and I was like wow you got something totally different out of those five words than I did. Um, but it was like, look, it's just completely fascinating how these recipes were written.
+
+[8:52] And most of them actually were uh the original recipes, most of them were vegetarian because it was the monks who are writing them down. Uh and the monks were vegetarian. Uh but sort of as an aside, he's like, Oh, I want to show you this really cool thing. And uh I was like, Yeah, okay. And he's like, This has nothing to do with the project.
+
+[9:11] And I was like, Okay. And he made this vegetarian lung uh dish, which sounds worse than it is. It was just sort of this uh uh bean dish. And I was like, let me just repeat vegetarian lung, correct? Vegetarian lung, as in like squishy, soft, squidgy lung with lung.
+
+[9:29] Yeah, basically. All right. Uh but you know, in that tradition of Buddhist uh temple cooking from China where uh they were really brilliant out of taking something and making it not necessarily uh be like meat as they were trying to like woo their uh potential donors who did eat meat, uh, but something as delicious uh and something to fool the eye. And uh he made it and I like I was blown away and and I didn't know what I was gonna do with it, but I was like, I will do something with this recipe. And I had never wanted really to have a I didn't really want to do veggie burgers and I had never done them before.
+
+[10:08] Uh the closest thing we had at the restaurant was our tiny little carrot burger uh made from a whole carrot. And when this opportunity came up, I was like, oh, this is why I've never wanted to do it before because I've never had a very good recipe. Uh and this recipe works perfectly for a veggie burger. It's firm, you can put it on the grill, you can flavor it any way you want. It's just brilliant.
+
+[10:32] So what's the basis of it? What's the basis of it? Beans, it's just how it's prepared. All right. Well, I'll have to go chill have to go check it out.
+
+[10:43] Yeah, it's pretty cool. I'm pretty proud of it. I will say that. All right. All right.
+
+[10:47] And are you playing it close to the close to the vest? I like that. You're not telling us exactly how it's made, but okay. All right. And you can buy those for nationwide shipping on Goldbelly, right?
+
+[10:56] Yeah, you can absolutely buy them on Gold Belly. All right. You know, I haven't started going on the gold belly thing of ordering things. Should I start doing that? You didn't do it at all during the pandemic?
+
+[11:06] No. I'm a terrible idiot. Come on. I mean, come on, man. I'm like in the I'm in the lower east side.
+
+[11:13] I, you know, I just I I just I've never ordered food. I've never ordered food to be shipped to me. I don't even really get takeout. I just cook every night. You know what I mean?
+
+[11:23] It's just kind of like, and I I've been on a sp like somewhat of a spending freeze, so I've just been at home cooking. So like you know what I mean? Um, to be fair, I didn't order gold belly during the pandemic. All right, all right. So now I don't feel so bad.
+
+[11:37] I don't feel so bad. But uh the good news about the gold belly, uh now how do you have you I'm sure you did, because it's kind of thing you would do. So have you bought like had it shipped to yourself or had it shipped to a friend in some far flung place and seen how it shows up on the other end? Yeah, we actually did it uh a number of times. Uh I shipped it to my mother-in-law and I shipped it to somebody I knew in California.
+
+[11:59] Uh, and then they would open up the box and take pictures and we would make sure it all looked okay. And we learned a lot with how to ship things and and how to pack things. It's really quite an art. It's how I felt about doing uh takeout and delivery uh over the pandemic, which we're no longer doing, but we did for uh a long time. Uh I was like, wow, people who do this on a regular basis and can get the food to your house hot and sort of in the right shape, they're brilliant.
+
+[12:24] Yeah, but they they that but they aren't because they can't. Because nobody can. Like the fact of the matter is is that none of that food was as good as it should have been and everyone just accepted it. You don't think that's true? It's true.
+
+[12:35] No, I I think it's I think it's true that it's always definitely better at a restaurant, but there are uh restaurants that are much better at it than others and I would not uh I would not say that was our our strong feeling. Right. I mean like you know unless you're ordering like I don't know like cold sesame noodles or something like that, everything's breaking down on that trip, you know? I mean I don't know. Everything.
+
+[12:55] I mean you watch the people and they work so hard the delivery guys, but you know their bags are a certain shape and your bags are a certain shape and you're like, well I guess that's all going in sideways now. Yeah yeah well now I'm gonna do a plug I'm gonna do a plug for myself. This is why you need to have liquid intelligence with you like Nastasia does to keep the hot foods separated from the cold food so that the stuff stays good longer, right, Stuff? Yeah you should sell it to Gold Billy. Oh jeez.
+
+[13:21] Okay. Uh all right so now uh I think maybe the f the first time I really kind of met you spoke to you you're doing an event at the Museum of Food and Drink around the launch of your book in like 2012 I think, right? When the when the book came out. Now let's talk about this let's talk about this book and then we can get into more more current stuff because that's 2012 it's not yet 10 years which seems like yesterday to me but I guess it's ages ago for most normal people. But when this book comes out like uh it's a graphic novel cookbook, right?
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+[13:53] So it's like I'm sure it's polarizing for some for some people, right? But what was the kind of response you got off of it? Um I think well I mean certainly some people hated it. They were like, we just want the recipe. Um, or that we want pictures.
+
+[14:07] It you know, they were like, we want one of those beautiful coffee table books with pictures, and uh but for the most part, uh actually the response was really good because we we started hitting differ different demograph graphics. We vegetarians bought it, people who knew us bought it, uh people who are interested in food, and then people who really like graphic novels bought it. So we sort of broke down this barrier, and we had this whole other group where we're buying the cookbook, and you know, to my surprise, although I still haven't actually uh made money on it yet, but uh we're in the like eight printing or something. Oh, awesome. Well, I mean, I'm sure it costs a lot to with all the art that had to be produced and everything.
+
+[14:47] But the um I mean what's interesting about the book is and what I what I what I like about the format is that it really allows you to be extraordinarily kind of personal and kind of funny and but all and in at times breezy. Like, for instance, for those of you that haven't looked at the book, there's an ongoing conversation between Amanda and her nine-year-old self who hates nine, I think, who hates vegetables, right? Right. So it's like and it's going throughout the book, and like, you know, you get to have fun because it's it is a graphic novel, so like the nine-year-old wants a monkey, so in the second chapter a monkey shows up and hits you on the head, right? I mean, so you get to do all this kind of stuff, and you you know, you get to do all of like the you know, superhero martial arts training stuff, you know, stuff.
+
+[15:32] You get to do that because of the format, but at the same time, the information's real and serious. It's like and and like, you know, there's and you don't have to like the book that I'm reading now, uh writing right now, to get the information out of it is gonna be like wading into like a lake full of muck with gators on, right? So the the information's there, but your legs are gonna be like whereas like here, you flip open, you see some pictures and it's like you know which which things should you uh blanch which things never to blanch a guy you know a person in the middle and it's like you know so I think it's a really kind of fun way to present what I in actuality are serious information serious recipes so I think it's kind of people who need the pictures why don't you get over what you need I got in I got in really big trouble I was in I mean I shouldn't even say Nastasi's gonna get mad if I even say say it I I'll say it one more time I don't understand why people like to just look at pictures of food that are like divorced from meaning right so it's like a picture of food plus meaning I love it. You know what I mean? But just a picture of food with no meaning I don't get it.
+
+[16:41] Do you get it? I I well I don't that's Instagram isn't it yeah and so like I'm like Nastasi's like you're a moron right Stas you're like I'm a moron. Well he said it to the editor of Eater so yeah yeah yeah well but hopefully they're providing some context some meaning right yeah in general they are one of the things with the the graphic novel that I think really were and what we wrote it this way for a number of different reasons. One is I just didn't want to write a boring cookbook. I was like but everybody like what's gonna make us stand out and a personality flaw of mine is I'm always like what can I do different from everybody else um and uh yeah and then I realized you know a lot of people get their recipes off the internet uh and then there are so many beautiful pictures of food on the internet, and there's coffee table books that were gonna be way more beautiful than mine.
+
+[17:36] I was like, So what's the point? Let's tell the story of the restaurant for everybody who can't come to the restaurant, let's really bring it to their living room and they can, you know, sort of fundamentally understand how crazy and chaotic this restaurant is. And the graphic novel format really works because you look at it and you take what information you want out the first time, and then you can go back, and there's like a whole secondary story happening there, and sometimes a third story happening in the little boxes in the pictures. And like even now, I go back and look at it, and I'm like, wow, I forgot we put that in there. That's really smart.
+
+[18:08] Yeah, and there's lots of like like ongoing keeping it real stories about like running a restaurant throughout it that are kind of funny, and like you don't even like you you paint yourself as ignoring somebody else when they're trying to tell you something. It's like pretty, you know, it's pretty funny, or like the fry, you know, uh it it I think it's a it's a it's a great book for an insight into a restaurant. Most like uh sometimes when you read somebody's uh cookbook where they talk about how the how the life is in in their restaurant, you have this like long several paragraphs or pages, and it just gets kind of ponderous. Where here it's kind of sprinkled throughout the book, and I think it's kind of a fun way to deal with it. I think so.
+
+[18:45] Um did you really get stuck in an elevator for 35 minutes after the Iron Shaft thing with Morimoto? I really, really did. We weren't stuck, we were riding up and down, and we couldn't like whatever it was always the wrong floor, the dwarfs were opening up on, and we still had like all this stuff we were taking back to the restaurant, and we were so jacksted and which is like all right, we'll just go up and down. That sucks so bad. That's so crappy.
+
+[19:11] Yeah. And you were doing broccoli, huh? I know and dynamically. Did Jeffrey did Jeffrey Steingarten really say, 'cause I haven't I've gone and rewatched, I don't remember. Does he did he really say that he doesn't like the flavor of broccoli?
+
+[19:24] 'Cause that's a straight lie. I haven't spoken to him in many years, but he he was the first person who came to me and said, You remember when um I forget uh who it was, maybe it was Marcella Hazan, I forget. Or s one one of those people like that was was uh re-putting out you know those old school Italian recipes where you cook the broccoli for freaking ever forever, you know what I mean? And you do that yeah. He called me one day years ago, back when I was still at the FCI, and he was telling me about this like peep like the flavor of long cooked broccoli and how this is a long lost thing.
+
+[19:57] And so when I read that in the book that he said he hates broccoli, I'm like, what is this? What? I can't believe he said Yeah. And then awkwardly I hadn't seen him for years and in I think in like two thousand and fourteen, maybe or uh right before we closed the smaller restaurant. He showed up and I was like, Oh, and he's like, Can I see the cookbook?
+
+[20:18] And I was like, This is really awkward now. You know, you're gonna see yourself in it. I'm sure he could take it. I'm sure he could take it. He was fine.
+
+[20:26] He was great actually. He was like, Oh yeah, I remember this. This is great. He's like, Oh I'd forgotten about that episode and he was like, Oh yeah, maybe it should have gone differently. Yeah, for those what I got my like iron chef come up and 'cause I went to Canada and uh was an iron chef and uh I am undefeated.
+
+[20:43] Ooh, undefeated. Undefeated. Like uh that's awesome. I like undefeated. It's better it's better than like winning most of the time.
+
+[20:53] I know. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I get to actually say I'm undefeated.
+
+[20:57] Undefeated. I hold that. I think we're the only team ever. So for those of you that have never been to an Iron Chef taping before, right? You're not gonna believe this.
+
+[21:06] 'Cause I I I actually I I've only have been to tapings back in the in the old Steingarden days. I went to um I went to see He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned, uh Batali versus Um uh Wiley, my brother in law Wiley Dufresne. Yeah. And I was like, and Jeffrey was, I think, one of the uh judges and um KB and I forget who the third judge was. And they actually make the judges sound nicer on the show than they are actually in the real life.
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+[21:36] If I know if you can imagine that. I was like, what? What? And and they also cut it to make the judges seem smarter. So when the judge says something that's intensely stupid, like deep down stupid, they don't want the judges to seem stupid.
+
+[21:53] So they like cut that back a little bit. Yeah, they also get uh fed lines. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[22:05] They all wear headsets. Uh I don't know. And there's also like, I don't know, it I mean, how nerve-wracking was it when you went for for the first time as a you know, because I I've I was talking to someone who is an iron chef uh here, you know, in the US, and they were like, we have such a huge home court advantage because we know the kitchen so well. Like, did you find that when it when you were home court like a huge, huge difference? Huge.
+
+[22:28] I actually to the competitors who win on these shows, who like aren't the iron chef, I think they are brilliant. Like they must be the best chefs in the world because it is such a difference. Even going the first time as the iron chef, you know, we got a tour of the kitchen, we could spend some time, we spent time with the producer. We had a a a pretty good idea of like how things were gonna work. Versus my first time when I was like terrified and I didn't know what was gonna happen, and it was all sort of like big eyes and bright light.
+
+[23:00] And then you go in again like two days later to fight another battle. So the kitchen is yours. It's like literally you're inviting a competitor to come over and fight in your like home. Yeah. Well, of course you're gonna win you know where the like sink is and the fridges.
+
+[23:14] You don't have to, you know, stand there for a minute and be like, oh, I don't know which one's the freezer, which one's the fridge, where am I supposed to go? Right, because nine times out of ten, it's a time management problem, right? Always. Yeah. Always.
+
+[23:27] The people we competed against were uh as good if not better. The only difference for me the second time around, and if I'd been smart enough for the first time around, and that the competition really plays to my strength because it's what we do at the restaurant. We take one ingredient and we figure out multiple ways to use it, and not that's not necessarily how every other chef cooks. So, you know, for us in in my battles in Canada, it was I don't know, our first one was cauliflower. Well, I can give you like 25 ways to cook cauliflower immediately.
+
+[24:00] Like it's not that's not scary to me. And putting cauliflower in a dessert, that's not bizarre, but certainly to the competitor, that is more bizarre. Yeah. Uh I was at a place the other day. I was in Boston.
+
+[24:11] Get this for a dessert. Have you ever had this before? Mustard ice cream. It was good. It wasn't in a dessert.
+
+[24:17] I can imagine. Yeah, it was good. It wasn't in a dessert. Uh all right. So since you brought up Canada, uh, in advance of you coming on the show, John pulled some uh of your old uh editorials.
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+[24:28] Uh because for the for those of you that don't know, for for some reason, you know, you are thankfully willing to speak out on you know, issues that are exasperating to to you and to hopefully that to to everybody, but uh I forget what year it was, but you said you you likened uh food journalism to a human centipede and you can you can say that right because that's a metaphor we can say that on a family show right human centipede stas we good I think yeah I mean I'm fine with it you're you're the one that has the issue I mean in other words like it's not it it okay so you basically I'm not gonna call the but you can call call out the the editor you know the he was so you know like uh like uh what do you call that nose to tail of of a human centipede in this world of journalism that couldn't get his head out of somebody else's behind long enough to like see what was going on but then here's what I thought it was like here's where and this is another thing if you read uh the cookbook that you'll get you have and I don't mean this you appear to have that that that sous of self-hatred that uh all great uh I think cooks and producers uh have that little bit of self-loathing so you say I was in a human centipede in Vancouver once uh and it was problematic I was like whoa I was like wow okay all right then but so uh I mean did you get a lot of response calling him a human centipede yeah I mean that certainly got retweeted a lot um yeah but I mean in general the the the article got a lot of good response because it was the appropriate article at the appropriate time it was you know in in response to a lot of the stuff that was happening and the gods of food. Right. Uh and uh, you know, you looked around and you're like, oh come on, even if even if they didn't think there was oh a female chef who was world class, which I would argue with. This is the Time magazine thing with the cover. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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+[26:36] From what 2020s are glued together. Yeah, jeez. All right. Um that that that image just lives in my brain rent free. Uh and uh anytime I want a good laugh.
+
+[26:49] It's more like you're paying rent. It's taking a toll on you. Charging you money. That's what's crazy. And I know.
+
+[26:56] Yeah. Um but the fact that they couldn't see that this was an issue to also be written about that they couldn't find uh a woman to really talk about in this entire issue. That's just such a blind spot that I you can't I mean it's not like it's like 1961 where I don't know I we're in 2000 in the teens. This is a huge problem if you don't think that there's as great women or female chefs as there are male chefs. And if you're not finding them then the the the onus is on you to actually find them and and to figure out why you don't think so.
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+[27:31] And that sort of um self-recognition never happened. Right. Well well here so here's a couple of things. I wasn't actually planning on on going this way but one of the reasons one of the reasons that I you know I think I was like hey John let's see if we can get uh Amanda on is because when we're not on the air every time somebody mentions uh and I'm not anti EMP I like EM uh 11 Madison Park you know Daniel Hum a a l great team great everything I'm not saying anything negative about them. This is not about them.
+
+[28:03] What I'm saying is is that the incredible amount of hoopla around that, like no one had done uh, you know, vegetable like only fine dining. And every time I was like, I was like, well, what? Like, hello, dirt candy, what? You know what I mean? And that's not even like talking about like vegetarian like monk cuisine or like, you know, the host of other more culturally oriented very uh you know, vegetable-based restaurants.
+
+[28:31] And I was like, that and that's actually the reason every time I hear something, I'm like, we should get a man or something like that. But like, I mean, uh, I don't even know if you want to talk about that or if that's something you just want to leave where I just left it, or whether you want to talk about it or what. No, I mean, it was uh it actually is pretty interesting because they came out and they said they were, you know, they were one of the first ones and this is their like new dining room and ten years ago, even if I had been open for 13 years as I am now, I never would have been mentioned in any of the articles or even other restaurants. I wasn't the only one. Um and to me actually it's a testament to how far we've come.
+
+[29:11] We haven't come far enough. Uh, but the media sort of really did uh open its eyes and they didn't just write about uh Daniel Hum. They they were like, okay, let's go get quotes from other people. The when this was announced, my phone was ringing off the hook from journalists asking my opinion about it. Uh and I ten years ago, that would not have happened.
+
+[29:31] Uh I was pretty surprised that they decided to go vegan. It's a pretty hard business run. I'm I'm actually more surprised that nobody came and asked me. Um, not because I know everything, but I know what it's like to run a high-end uh vegan restaurant. And and it's pretty tough.
+
+[29:47] You're you're dealing with a whole set of uh different um problems than you would in a normal restaurant. Namely, uh you your alcohol sales go way down. Ooh. Oh how's come? Uh well I think once you sort of uh uh pass through you know like people who just really are curious about what you're serving and uh those uh you know your regulars uh you end up with a crew of people who are younger they don't have as much money to spend so they might spend money on the food but they'd rather go to a cheap bar to spend money on alcohol or they're healthy.
+
+[30:25] Well I mean and then they don't drink. Uh our alcohol sales are notoriously less than most mainstream restaurants. So we have to figure out ways to make it up. Uh but also the best thing about 11 Madison Park going vegan is I'm getting the overflow. So we're busier than we've ever been.
+
+[30:46] Wow well pandemic style though. I mean that's gotta still is have you how have you fully bounced back? Are you fully back where you were yeah we're absolutely back. I think uh we're pretty fortunate. One, we only have 44 seats so to like a you know if we do 90 people in a night we turn the tables twice basically we're we're at our numbers and and we can't do more because we're a tasting menu.
+
+[31:12] It's it's very hard to sort of a hundreds are top when uh we rarely do less than 80, 85. So that's sort of uh our lowest and our highest the difference is is much smaller than I think a lot of restaurants because of our size. And uh we when we reopened uh after the pandemic, you know, we sort of were really honest about how we were reopening and why and what we wanted to do for our staff and how we're paying them. And so a lot of people are coming not because we're vegetarian and not because we're dirt candy, but because they really want to support us and what we're doing in the restaurant industry. What percentage of your crew were you able to get back?
+
+[31:56] Uh very few. I kept my manager I kept my managers on throughout the whole pandemic. And then uh and we offered jobs to everybody before uh who had worked for us beforehand, and then actually uh only about only two people really returned in the back of the house. None of my front of house returned. Almost everybody either left the industry or moved away.
+
+[32:21] And so what's that like having to retrain a whole new group of people? Um it's actually kind of nice starting fresh. We um, you know, when we reopened, we really focused on changing the culture of the restaurant. And even though I don't think that uh we have the worst culture, I it wasn't as employee focused as maybe as it uh should have been. And well, I mean, you provide good health insurance, correct?
+
+[32:50] I do now. We didn't pre-pandemic. Oh, but you were you so you were fair wage, but not with uh the the benefits prior to the pandemic. Yeah, we didn't really make any money pre-pandemic, to be honest. Uh post-pandemic, we're actually, I mean, I wouldn't say doing great, but uh we're we're finally making actually money.
+
+[33:09] Uh and that's because we went to this one tasting menu. The pre-pandemic, uh we had the two tasting menus and uh post-pandemic, which is something I learned throughout the pandemic when we only had one tasting menu every night, which we would change every two weeks. I was like, wow, my booth costs are really going down. Um and we decided to stick with that after the pandemic and we've sort of actually pre-pandemic our food costs were 25%. And now we're at 14%.
+
+[33:38] Wow. That's a huge difference. Yeah, that's a that for us is uh profit or you know hemorrhaging money. And we are able now to and we because we raised our prices. Right, but but people, people don't don't go don't go crunching those numbers like it's a normal because like th there's no tips.
+
+[33:55] So don't go crunching her food cost percentage like you would crunch a normal number. Am I accurate about that? Like you can't no actually absolutely um and uh now we're able to offer so much more than we were and still uh turn a profit uh which to me was also something that was really important that I sort of figured out during the pandemic which was I was kind of running dirt candy not quite like a charity but I wouldn't say like a business business and you know we listened to all these stories of the slim margins in the restaurant industry and how hard it was to run a restaurant and I certainly was one of the loudest complainers and I was like I have to figure this out. I I can't keep doing this going to bed every night terrified that if I don't do if I only do 70 people one night instead of like eighty that I'm gonna close and we have to figure out how to actually run this like a business and give everybody who works here a lot more financial security including me. Yeah well yeah please uh so let me ask you a couple of questions.
+
+[35:00] You were one of the early people to go uh non tip, right? And so one of the things I've always wondered is what are the what are the guests like when you're because you have to pass the cost on to them. That's the only way it works, right? Which you say you're you're doing now. But I've always wondered whether that could work in a bar, just because I know that my bar friends, you know, who run a no-tip program like under like kind of the Danny Meyer umbrella, like they've had problems retaining like the bartender.
+
+[35:25] So like the front of house on like a bar staff situation, and I know you say that you know the majority of your sales aren't through liquor, like it's a real tough time convincing them that they want to go that model. So what's the what are your just feelings on would it would it work in in most hospitality situations or only if everybody did it, or like what what do you think? Well, the the the bigger reality and all this, it's never gonna work until the federal government accepts it. And that's for a various dundary reasons. We can get to that in a second.
+
+[36:00] Um at the moment it's really hard to make it work in most uh establishments uh because you have this group of sort of old timers who are holding on to the idea that they should be making X number of dollars a night, but that always comes at a cost to the kitchen. So if you're only in a bar, I don't see you know, we're saying we're passing these costs on to the customer, but the customer already had these costs. It it's just a different way of looking at it. Uh dirt candy, let's say we charge a hundred dollars for the tasting menu. We don't, but the tip would then be twenty dollars.
+
+[36:36] The customer is gonna pay a hundred and twenty dollars. It's just actually it's it we're it's i it's magic. We're just fooling people into thinking that they're not paying $120. But but they are paying $120. And they were gonna pay that no matter what.
+
+[36:51] You're paying you with no tipping your bill would be $120. Right, but that that tomfoolery works. Like I was in a restaurant in Cambridge where at the very yesterday we're at the bottom of two days ago, at the bottom of it, they they're like, There's a there's a five percent fee. It's like so it's just like okay, it's really 105 plus plus tip for whatever it is. Like, and you know, maybe you and I are smart enough to be like, hey, it's a hundred and five, but like the average person's like, oh, it's only a hundred dollars.
+
+[37:18] I know, exactly. And you forget about that extra five percent. It's a whole act, there's been a huge study about this. You never remember the tip. But if somebody asks you how much it costs to eat at Derek Candy, let's say we didn't have tips, you'd be like a hundred dollars.
+
+[37:30] Uh, as opposed to no, actually it was a hundred and twenty, you just forgot that you did math at the end. Yeah, that's like uh you know who the worst at that is, and this is why I never shopped there, you haul. You haul. $19 for a truck. No, it's a hundred dollars for a truck, my friends.
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+[37:45] It's a hundred dollars to rent a truck at U-Haul. You know what I mean? But they do the that's the that's the restaurant trait. That's how they fool people into doing it. So you think there needs to be you you're advocating for like federal legislation to get rid of that tomfoolery or no?
+
+[37:59] Well, yes, because right now the system is sort of set up to punish people or restaurants that have gone uh non-tipping. The well you pay a lot more in payroll. Right. Um, so the government actually makes more money. Yeah.
+
+[38:16] Because but you pay so much more in payroll, and you also pay a lot more in insurance, like your limited liability and your workman's comp because it's all based on your revenue and tips aren't included in revenue. Yeah, listen, people, if you don't if anyone who's listening to this who works for like a big business and has like a like you know, just gets a W-2 and works for a big business, realize that like there are so many regulations. Everyone in this country says we're pro-small business. We are so anti-small business and so anti-small business and so anti-small business trying to do the right thing, right? It's like it it's maddening.
+
+[39:00] But I don't know if any of that stuff's ever gonna get I don't know if any of that any of that stuff's gonna get straightened out. Uh yeah, that's uh I'm now so depressed that I forgot the other thing that I was gonna ask you. So maybe I should just what were we gonna talk about? Now I'm just depressed. You're just depressed the hell out of me.
+
+[39:17] I'm sorry. If one day it'll change, I believe it. I don't think so. Oh, but here's another thing. Uh you're like, well, we're giving uh we're giving, you know, uh healthcare to people.
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+[39:26] Ah, here's one. Pre-pandemic, you uh were saying, and this is 100% true, we need uh decent childcare in this country of decent affordable child care. But here's the problem. Having tried to use decent affordable child care in my, you know, life, uh it doesn't work if you need to be somewhere, right? So like like you know, many people have jobs where they can be like, I can't come in today.
+
+[39:52] My kid's sick. But when your kid gets a running nose, the the freaking uh the freaking daycare center is like, your kid's got a runny nose, they can't stay here, and then you gotta, and then you one of you has to, you know, of the two, if there's two, hopefully, you know, you make your life easier, like has to go pick up the kid. And then they're not at work. And guess what that doesn't work for? Restaurants, right?
+
+[40:12] So it's like absolutely. So there I have that question about how daycare could ever work for a hospitality worker. And secondly, and I'm really curious because this is real life and it's already happening. Back in the day, it was you're sick, do you look sick? Do you look like are you dripping from your face so that you're gonna scare the the the guest?
+
+[40:33] Because if not, your butt better be here doing your job. You know what I mean? Because whereas now that's just not cool. You can't do that anymore. So how's that working out?
+
+[40:43] Um, well uh yeah, not great. Um really what we've done is we have an extra person on staff sort of who can cover uh when somebody calls out sick, so it's not that uh destructive. And we might have to put somebody on overtime to sort of cover it, but uh we have enough bodies at the moment to deal with this, especially now is you know, we're so terrified of somebody at the moment somebody thinks they're sick, we're like you have to get a PCR COVID test and don't come back until it's negative. Um so I don't know if we'll absolutely continue doing this, but we we basically have an extra person on staff, which is kind of the only way it would work with you know, somebody if you had a lot of parents on staff. Yeah.
+
+[41:29] Uh well you have to have an extra body who can who can fill in or who you know can really float between uh a number of different positions, so you're not totally screwed. Right, or they need to figure out a way to have daycare not work that way. I don't know. It is a huge problem. And like the reason why I had to stop using normal daycare was because for years, you know, I was flexible enough that I could do whatever, but then once I started having to be in a particular place at a particular time, and you know, you can't do it anymore.
+
+[42:02] It doesn't work. Yeah. Um I know. Yeah. But it's also part of a um problem is it's not just it it's so hard to come back into the industry after you've had kids.
+
+[42:14] Even if you had great child care, we're not ex exactly the most accepting industry. Yeah. Um, like it's sort of like once you're out, you're out. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[42:23] In a lot of ways we suck, uh as a group. Um all right. So I'm gonna do some questions because I don't want to miss them because we have questions specifically for you. Also, do you uh do you do a lot of work with uh vacuum machines? Do you like vacuum machines?
+
+[42:36] You got any current uh cool stuff? Because I got a question about vacuum machines, but I can hold it for later if you're not interested in talking about vacuum machines. We don't do anything here because we're too lazy to write up a plan. I mean, or I would put it that you have other things you're worried about. All right, Jason.
+
+[42:50] If we had time at the end, Jason, I'm not forgetting he's a Patreon uh listener, so I'm not uh ignoring his question. I just need to get to the ones that are for you. All right. Uh okay. This is I need to space this so I can panda to panda to Panda Tudaka.
+
+[43:07] Ah, there we go. Question from Panda Tadaka. Good morning. Uh I hope you had a great weekend. Uh I uh weekend.
+
+[43:15] It's not I mean, I don't know. Did you have a good weekend, Amanda? I worked most of the time, so sure. I don't know. No.
+
+[43:22] Good shift. Good shift, Amanda. Good shift. Um Chef Cohen, uh, thanks for your work making the restaurant industry and the world a better place. What is an underused ingredient that you think people should start using more?
+
+[43:36] Oh, that's a that's a good question. Um, you know, it's not necessarily an underused ingredient, but I think it's an underappreciated ingredient in all its forms. So I'm gonna say onions, because although it's sort of like the backbone of the kitchen egg, nobody ever says their favorite vegetable is a an onion. Um, but I really, really like uh raw onions, and I there's a whole sort of like uh segment of the world that hates them, and to me it's like it's almost like like a it's like another umami flavor, and it's almost like salt. Like I think it heightens every dish.
+
+[44:15] But also I love onions and desserts. There's so much sweetness there, and so much um there's like this this really nutty, amazing flavor that you don't think that would work in uh dessert. But to me, it's as natural as like peanut butter and chocolate, chocolate and onions is brilliant. All right. I've we used to make onion ice cream, but I've never tried chocolate and onions.
+
+[44:37] I gotta try it. Can I feel good? Can I tell you your trigger me a little bit because I also love raw onions, love them, and you know who hates them? My wife hates them. And like even like you know how like, you know how like if you are cutting a lot of onions, then you wash it, you're kind of okay.
+
+[44:58] But then if you eat onions, all of a sudden then your hands smell more again like onions like than they used to. There's all this weird crap with onions. And so she's like, Oh, you were cutting onions. Oh I'm like, I love onions, but she's okay with cooked onions, thank God. You know what I mean?
+
+[45:13] Because I add an unconscionable amount of onions to all of my stews, and I do a lot of pressure cooking, so I use preposterous amounts of onions whenever I pressure cook, like ridiculous amounts of onions. Uh do you what uh for raw, do you have a particular uh I mean are you super particular of like uh this just goes straight like supermarket, like like let's call them red, yellow, and white. Do you like go as particular feeling for particular dishes, or do you like like them all raw or what? I probably like red most raw. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[45:44] Except for like uh unlike tacos and stuff, I do like the white just because I see Rick Bayless punching me in the face if I use anything else. But yeah, uh the red's the call. They're also my favorite to flash pickle the reds. Oh, so good, I know. Yeah.
+
+[45:59] Thin slice flash pickle on the red. Mmm. I think I could maybe get my wife on board with if there's enough vinegar in it, maybe I could get her on board. You know? I don't know.
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+[46:09] Yeah, I mean, uh it's I mean, and that uh uh I love sort of the Middle Eastern, like eating raw onions with hummus, and you just sort of scoop it up, then all of a sudden like the whole there's this whole like flavor explosion in your mouth. It's brilliant. Do you know that at home when Jen's away? It's my wife, I can do whatever I want, right? Because you know, she's not gonna smell it.
+
+[46:29] But like whenever I have things like chili and whatnot, uh, or like when I have like uh like squash soup, right? I don't get to put onions on that on top. You believe that's there no, I mean I there is almost nothing I make at home that doesn't have running. It's like I'm pretty lazy cooked at home, and I often just have a bowl of like leftover rice from like whatever last Chinese state delivery we had. But I'm always like, Oh, I'm gonna make it more chefy and I add some raw dice onion.
+
+[46:58] And I'm like, oh, this is perfect. Well, there you go. Uh luckily Jen is not gonna listen to this, so she won't get mad that I'm throwing her under the bus. Uh from uh Omega 36 tilapia. So this person's clearly trolling me by doing the 3-6 mafia and tilapia in one word, but uh okay.
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+[47:15] Omega 36 tilapia. Uh will there in the future uh be a distinction between this is for you, uh Chef. Will there be a distinction between commodity and non-commodity meat analog products? In the same way there are differences between, for example, bulk ground beef and like wagyu whatever steaks. Subjectively, I wonder if plant-based restaurant, um plant based restaurants are less uh high end if they use meat analogs versus focusing on whole vegetables, wild mushrooms, et cetera.
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+[47:46] That's a that's a lot of questions in there. Um I mean yeah, I mean like you but I don't know, you heard you I don't need to rephrase it though, right? You got the whole all of the stuff. Yeah. I I I don't want to be too judgy and say they're less high end.
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+[48:01] I just think that it's a for me, I the the greatest restaurants that are high end is they're very creative. And it's hard to be creative with something that's already sort of pre-packaged for you. Uh and there's not much that you can do with it. And and so maybe one day these those types of um analogs you really will be able to like do whatever you want with them. Uh personally for me, I I think the more vegetables, and it doesn't have to be Whole Foods.
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+[48:29] That's I think that's a tricky uh sentiment, but uh the more vegetables do you use, you have to be more creative. And that's the kind of place where I'd be way more willing to spend a lot of money versus one that just used analogs, because I just think they all sort of taste the same. It's just, you know, it's just a something that with a sauce on it, though it tastes slightly different at each place, but it's basically the same. Right. But there is a line.
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+[48:53] It's interesting. The point there is a line, right? So, like for instance, take cocktail bar, right? I wouldn't ever have bought somebody else's flavored vodka, but I bought gin, right? And so it's like, you know, uh, do I expect every place is gonna make their own tofu, even though they could?
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+[49:08] No, because tofu is a thing. You know what I mean? It's like so there is a line somewhere, but it just hasn't reached that line yet. You know what I'm saying? It just is not at that place yet, I don't think.
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+[49:16] You know what I mean? No, it's not. And it's not like most restaurants are unless they're doing literally a burger, are going through scads of ground meat. You know what I mean? Like ground beef, like what?
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+[49:28] For maybe for sauces and whatnot, but they're not going through it for like, right? I mean, like, when was the last time you went to uh a fine dining restaurant and was like, here's the meatloaf? You know what I mean? Like, you know? No, I've I've never had fine dining meatloaf.
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+[49:44] Although I do. Oh no. Now I'm sort of interested. Yeah, I do like meatloaf. Uh Stas, you like meatloaf?
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+[49:50] Yeah? Ketchup, no ketchup? Ketchup. Okay. Uh, mix of meats.
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+[49:55] Do you care? I don't care. I like a triple mix. I like triple. I like I like I like all three.
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+[50:00] Anyway, uh from misplaced enthusiasm. What vegan foods, if any, do you think still need uh to improve? They still need improving to bring as much enjoyment as their non-vegan counterparts. Full disclosure, I work for a plant-based milk company, so this is research for me. So you're actually helping this uh person out.
+
+[50:20] Um I would say we're we're still a little bit law a long way off in the dairy department, specifically cheese. Oh and butter. Uh it I think uh we're not quite there yet. I think milks are great and baking and cooking with all the make milks, and they've come so far. Ice creams are like terrific.
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+[50:46] Realm of vegan world. I just we're just not there yet. Well, I mean, like I I I had this uh there's a you know, right near near you and near me is that uh is that giant vegan uh cheesery i at Essex Market. Yeah. And the my issue is um like I would rather it just be marketed as like some sort of nut paste.
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+[51:09] You know what I mean? Like I know. Yeah. Um because the other thing is is that like we expect cheese to do certain things, and the the nut paste is never gonna do all of those things. You know what I mean?
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+[51:20] It's never gonna be all of those different things. Um and if it is, it's not gonna be good at all of them, right? So if you want something to melt and be stretchy, get something that's melt melts and is stretchy. If you want something that tastes like I I don't know, I think it's it's an issue. Uh right.
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+[51:35] I've never had one where I was like, oh, I would eat I would eat that instead of Vachera. You know what I mean? It's like exactly. And it's so for to me, I I have no problem calling a veggie hot dog a hot dog. Like it's close enough.
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+[51:48] Yeah. And even the burgers are the same, and we're those the cheeses, they're some of them are really delicious nut paste. Like amazing. But I I don't see them as cheese yet. And they have come so far and there's so much like happening in them, and I think it will happen one day.
+
+[52:09] Uh I'm not sure it'll happen outside of the lab. Uh, but uh I know we're gonna get there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah.
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+[52:20] I've I've been so depressed every time I've tried one. I'm not gonna think about it anymore. Okay. Uh from Jacob P. Chef Cohen, what are some ways you think uh that consumers can help push towards a more equitable restaurant consumers now?
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+[52:33] Can help push towards a more equitable restaurant industry. Uh and uh as a less serious question, Jacob would like to know, uh, do you do a Canada Day menu every year at Dirt Candy? And do you have a favorite and least favorite stereotypical Canadian dish? And he's hoping it's poutine. I don't know whether it's your most favorite or at least.
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+[52:51] Yeah, which one? Yeah. Um, okay. I don't love butter tart, so that's just personal. Wait, what's a butter tart?
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+[53:01] It's like a specific Canadian like pie ish, but the the tart is sort of like it's it's not butter. I mean, it is butter, but it's like almost just like the the filling from a pecan pie, but without the pecan. Oh yeah. So it's it's just really, really sweet. Yeah, you know who said he likes that?
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+[53:20] Dave Chang, because he hates pecans, so he would rather eat the pecan pie without the pecan. This is a mistake. Pecans are delicious. That sounds a lot like uh tartasuc from Belgium. Oh, listen, listen, listen.
+
+[53:30] It has a funny texture too. It's not it's a little grainy. I it's just not my favorite thing. So it's not it's not eggy like an egg tart. It's not egggy like one of those.
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+[53:39] No, no, not at all. Okay. Um butter tart. And then uh that's a deep cut though. Us Americans don't even know about that.
+
+[53:48] Uh and then my favorite Canadian dish that's not poutine. That's a that's a tough one, because you know, poutine's pretty it's pretty good. I did, you know, I haven't eaten it in probably a good 30 years, but I really liked the chicken. I don't really eat chicken much anymore. Uh, but I like the chicken from Swiss Chalet and the sauce that went along with it.
+
+[54:15] And that's pretty Canadian iconic too. So, describe it. What's a what's their what's their chicken like? John is busily punching it in and he's like booking a flight to Toronto or whatever. Like, what is this Swiss chalet chicken of which you speak?
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+[54:29] I mean, I don't it's it was like a fast I mean fast duty restauranting place. Um and uh probably not even good. Yeah, I mean I haven't had it in a long time, so remember I probably ate it when I was like eight. Yeah. So memories are weird, but just with like just like salty and savory and the sauce had the perfect gravy consistency to it and it was always hot and you would dip the chicken into it.
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+[54:55] And you're you're you're from Vancouver? No, I'm from Toronto. It's Toronto. So you and you didn't choose pea meal? I love pea meal.
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+[55:02] You never ate that stuff? I love peat meal. Uh not so much. We weren't a big bacon family. So no.
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+[55:08] Yeah, love it. Um then the Canadian Day question. Okay. Yes. Every year we do something, if not exactly on Canadian Day, on Canadian Day, on uh uh July first, or we'll do something right around it to celebrate.
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+[55:25] So what kind of what kind of menu items bust out for uh is it's not Canada Day, it's Canadian Day? No, it's Canada Day. Canada, all right. All right. Um our birthday.
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+[55:37] Uh uh every year it changes, but usually there's cuisines and cheese curds and gravy and cheese curves. Uh we do something often uh there's a place in Toronto called Sneaky Bees. And they have the best nachos. So we'll do mini nachos for people and then uh off uh like uh maple broccoli, spicy maple broccoli. Can we get like normal food?
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+[56:03] Can we get like where where in Canada are the cheese curds the most on point? And can we get them to fight like Wisconsin? Can we have like a a curd battle? Uh they're pretty good, sort of in you have to be in the dairy belt, right? So and a true cheese herd uh is not good if you're eating it an out more than an hour away from where it was produced.
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+[56:26] Listen, I like that. Within like sort of like the same day. Uh and that's when you get the real squeak of it. Uh and so more than an hour away, it it's it's too late. Uh so for me, it's somewhere like in Quebec, and I grew up like before we moved to Toronto, I lived in uh Ottawa, which is just across the border from Quebec, and it's all in the dairy belt, and we had fresh cheese herds like whenever we wanted them.
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+[56:50] Where's Guelph? Where's University of Guelph? Uh it's outside of Toronto, about an hour. Yeah. They got they got the dairy department, they got the sick dairy department there.
+
+[56:59] Well, that's the nice thing about Toronto isn't so much a dairy producing area, that part of Ontario, but uh it's it's one of the like the bread belts, right? Like the produce that you bake we can produce in a short time that we can produce produce is pretty amazing. Yeah, you guys got some good berries over there, right? Ugh, the best. Yeah.
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+[57:19] Anyway, we gotta get this. I don't know anyone who can do this, but I I'm interested in eating the battle. We need to get within an hour of the two places and then meet in the middle. This is like I I have a dream, and here's my dream. Do you know how everyone uh everyone you know thinks that the sea urchins from the Pacific Coast, like, you know, off California, what is it?
+
+[57:40] Where is it? Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara sea urchins, that they're the best, right? There was like, oh, you know, best, best, right? Now, it is true that when you buy the the main uh sea urchins like in the store, they're not as good, right?
+
+[57:53] But if you like jump off of a rock at low tide in Maine with a glove, and you take the the urchin out and you take your your kitchen shears and like rap dap dap and go blap blap and then like eat it right there on the rock, that that is the way that God intended you to murder a sea urchin, right? And so uh but I don't know, like would if I could do that same thing in Santa Barbara, if I could jump off of a rock, pick a sea urchin up off of the uh off of the ground there, cut it open, eat it. Would I be like, oh my god. So what I need to do is get two people to harvest them simultaneously and we like me meeting Kentucky, right? Like get on airplanes, meeting Kentucky, you know, or whatever the middle of the whatever the geographic center of the country, wherever, like, you know, it's probably Kentucky, right?
+
+[58:44] Probably somewhere. Anyway, uh, I I digress. Listen, you can't taste this. Uh we have a question in? I have one more question.
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+[58:50] Okay, go. All right. What vegetable preparations do you think home cooks underuse and any tips for leveling up the vegetable game at home? Um well, my favorite vegetable preparation is smoking. And I think that uh people get pretty intimidated by it.
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+[59:09] But uh it, you know, you can open your windows, all it takes is some wood chips and some a pan and tinfoil, and you can really up your uh flavor game with vegetables uh more than doing really anything else. Uh it's an easy trick. And then also the other thing I really I really like for people to try at home at least, is uh figure out how to cut your vegetables differently. This is sort of uh my main thing these days, which is the shape uh of your vegetable uh really changes how you approach it and how you taste it. And so uh it's a lot of work, but as a really easy example, if you like ball cucumbers versus slicing them, you get a whole different sort of flavor uh explosion in your mouth.
+
+[1:00:01] And it it changes the vegetable. It's like all of a sudden become uh the more ways you can figure out to cut the vegetable, it that vegetable becomes more than just one vegetable. So we have like 10 different ways we can cut a cucumber here, let's say, and it's all of a sudden ten different cuc kinds of cucumbers. You just you're giving movie names after movie names. Ten ways to cut a cucumber, the shape of vegetables.
+
+[1:00:22] These are all Benicio Toro's next movies. Right. You know what I mean? Like you gotta gotta get him. Okay, so listen, I gotta do this test, right?
+
+[1:00:28] This is a uh I I wish you were here for it because I have one for you, but Joe's gonna eat yours. You eat things, Joe, right? You you you're an eater of things, no? I eat things. Yeah.
+
+[1:00:35] All right, I got to. Okay. So uh the okay, so this is uh we haven't had an instant uh uh a what's a a version of this in in a long time. This is McGee's magic nuts, right? So for all of you who are longtime listeners, you'll know that don't eat it yet, I'll tell you what it is.
+
+[1:00:51] For those of you that uh listen for a long time, you know that Harold McGee, every once in a while just has these magically delicious nuts, right? So for a long time ago we had these walnuts that had these uh very low tin in skins, and I'm at his house and I pick up the walnut and I'm like, This is just a walnut. And I was like, Oh, these nuts. I was like, oh my god, I went crazy. And I was like, what the hell?
+
+[1:01:11] He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. They the the walnut people, they know me, so they send me the good walnuts. He doesn't talk like that. Anyway, so I was with him uh last night, and he was like, Listen, Dave, I know I told you about the magic pistachios. You guys know about the magic pistachios?
+
+[1:01:24] No. Okay. Amanda, you're gonna appreciate this because we wish you were here to taste it. Listen, so in Turkey, right, they have this uh pistachio that's harvested uh younger than the average pistachio, and we think it's a different variety, but in Turkey, even in Turkey, it's an expensive pistachio and it's very highly regarded. Different from Bronte's, different whatever.
+
+[1:01:44] It's a special immature Turkish pistachio. Epistachio. And what happens is that uh it has an actual fruity note. So they make uh candies, uh, and what these guys are eating here are they're they're old, right? Because they're so they're stale, but you're just for flavor, not for texture.
+
+[1:02:03] Uh macaroons, macarons, uh macaron macaron. Uh, and they're uh these are made only with the pistachio, no fruit. And because they are related or they're related to mangoes, they're both anacardacies, these special pistachios have a fruity taste. Tastos. Tell me you don't get that m mango note out of them, which is crazy.
+
+[1:02:21] Crazy. Well, now I'm really fat, I'm not there. I know. Next time, next time you come in, you know, you never you never know when McGee's magic nuts are gonna show up. Um, right?
+
+[1:02:35] Can you get it when you breathe in, you get those fruit notes? Yeah. I'm so glad it's not a mango because I'm allergic to mangoes. Yeah, it's not even a man, it's not even a mango, so you're good. And now I want to find a source.
+
+[1:02:45] If anyone out here has the Turkish connection, some somewhere will find it. The Turkish connection, immature pistachios, and me. I will buy them. Just find those things. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[1:02:55] Yeah. Uh wait, I'm being told I'm at listen, do you want to, Amanda? Do you uh do didn't do you know anyone that watches all of the all of the crazy Christmas stuff that Nastasia and I watches? Like, for instance, have you ever seen the Rudolph and the Red Nose Reindeer ranking and bass thing ever? Do you know what I'm talking about?
+
+[1:03:11] Yeah, I mean, not for yeah, I haven't seen it for many years, but I think we should save it for the like the the before Christmas show, Dave. We're gonna we're gonna have another show before Christmas. All right, we'll do it, we'll talk about it. But there is a secret. I want anyone who does watch those things, rewatch the Rudolph.
+
+[1:03:25] There is what I've always thought is an error in it. An error. See if you can catch the error. And my son Dax has come up with I think the genius thing that's not an error. I was too stupid to see it.
+
+[1:03:39] See if you can find it, and we'll write us in. If you find it, we'll give him a prize. What are we gonna give him? Are we talking about the animation? The uh the the stick figure animation.
+
+[1:03:49] Claymation. Yeah, uh, with uh Yukon Cornelius, Rudolph, Hermy, the Head Elf, Santa, Mrs. Claus, um uh the abominable, uh, uh the uh Charlie in the box, uh King Moon Racer, uh Sally. Uh so anyway, uh oh, uh what what's the what's the what's the the little doe's name, Stas? What's her name again?
+
+[1:04:15] Uh Clarice, right? Clarice, yeah, not related to the Jodie Foster character. Um, so see if you can figure it out. We'll figure out something to send you. Uh you're gonna do some announcements before we go out?
+
+[1:04:28] Yes, real quick. Um obviously, serious all pro campaign, please uh pre-order yours. For our Patreon members, we are just a reminder doing 10% off at Ed's words age meets. You can find out more about that on the Patreon post, or you can send us a message here and we'll get back to you with that code. And lastly, we have uh Chef Virgilio Martinez joining us next week from Central in Peru to discuss his new cookbook that he edited, the Latin American cookbook.
+
+[1:04:51] More of an encyclopedia. Yes. Yeah, big yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right.
+
+[1:04:55] Uh, all right. Well, listen, uh, Chefy Chef, thanks for coming on. I hope you had a good time. Uh, next time, you know, come on, we'll get you some magic nuts, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely.
+
+[1:05:05] I'll be there. All right, thanks. Cooking issues.
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+[0:10] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the New Stand Studios from Rockefeller Center in Midtown, New York. John, it's uh it's midtown, right? Yep, midtown. Kind of midtown.
+
+[0:23] I mean, isn't Rockefeller Center its own kind of neighborhood? It's like right in the middle of Midtown, it's been midtown west of Midtown East, so midtown midtown. All right, all right. Uh not joined in the studio as usual with uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, she is having uh technical difficulties calling in, which means, cooking issues uh crowd, that if uh you are the kind of people that watch the Rankin and Bath Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer Christmas special, if you're one of the people that that watches those, you have one more week to find in that show what I have always thought is an error, a mistake made in the show, but in fact, my son Dax has proved to me is in fact genius. Is in fact genius.
+
+[1:03] Um Jackie Molecules also is not gonna be calling in. He's having issues, but he is gonna be on the Discord uh taking care of all of your stuff if you're a Patreon listener. And for the first time today in the booth, we have Hassan Moore on the on the what do you call that, the panel, on the mixing panel. How are you doing, Hassan? Thank you for having me.
+
+[1:23] Well, no, thanks for doing it. And uh Hassan's dealing with uh a bunch of issues because cooking issues, we bring the bad luck with us wherever we go. So uh, you know, they moved uh they moved uh Newstand Studios back into a studio while they were done or construction, and so they uh decided that we didn't need lights today. It's kind of fun. So he's working in the dark.
+
+[1:40] How do you like that, Hassan? It's intimate. I like it. Yeah. And uh the first time I have uh someone uh on, you know, officially doing this, I have to ask them some questions so that the listeners know something about you.
+
+[1:52] What do you like to eat? Um my girlfriend told me I have the palate of a five-year-old. So I would say Italian food, Chinese food, and burgers. Hmm. And do you do you cook it all or no?
+
+[2:07] You know, very minimal. I cook pancakes. My mother makes a salmon dish that I like, and I'm pretty good at cooking that. All right, well, let me ask you this about pancakes, and then I'll let you go off the hook. All right.
+
+[2:20] Okay. Okay. Uh, first of all, I'm gonna ask you several questions about pancakes. What size pancakes do you typically make? Bigger than silver dollar, but smaller than those 45-size pancakes.
+
+[2:33] Alrighty. And are you a buttermilk or a milk person? Milk person. Okay. And do you flip when the bubbles don't c re-collapse?
+
+[2:43] In other words, when the bubbles stay open on the top, or do you flip just when you start seeing bubbles? That's an interesting question. I think I wait a little while until I see a good amount of bubbles. The ones that don't kind of close up all the way, so it almost looks like it's gonna be a crumpet and then you flip it, like that kind of thing? Correct.
+
+[3:00] Because to me, John, right or wrong, that's kind of one of the main things. When do you flip the pancake? I've had like hour-long arguments about people when you flip the pancake. It's really more complicated than that because it really depends on how stiff the batter is and how thick the pancake's gonna be. But that's what people think about when they think about it.
+
+[3:13] All right, listen, before I give you the telephone number for live Patreon listeners, because I'm gonna want to tell you why you're gonna want to call in right now. We have, we're extremely honored to have with us special guest, like world famous. I've never met him actually, I don't think. Virgilio Martinez is on the phone. Uh, how are you doing, Chef?
+
+[3:33] Hi, how are you? Doing quite well. So great to be with you. So so listen, we're talking like uh the chef of uh Central in in in Lima in Peru. By the way, I'm chef, I'm embarrassed to say I have never been to Peru.
+
+[3:44] Everyone that I know who has gone to Peru. It's crazy I've never been it's like it's uh you know everyone tells me it's like the new food capital of the world Peru and I've not been isn't that stupid? Oh well just I mean to Lima suppose go to the Amazon it's there's so much uh biodiversity and and so many places to just not the restaurants uh just natural uh environments where you can enjoy food yeah very beautiful yeah but I mean yeah sure I've never been south of Colombia it's one of my great regrets the problem is I don't I've never like in the entire world I've never been south of Colombia I've made it just to the equator and no further well I want to Colombia Colombia is quite quite nice. Um the Amazon of Colombia is nice beautiful have you been there I have never been to the Amazon I've only been to uh I've only been to like Bogota and to like uh Cindido where the coffee plantations are and Cartagena but the beautiful yeah I like more the up in the mountains and we're gonna we're gonna talk about that in a minute. So call your questions uh for the chef into 917 410 1507 that's 917 410 1507 but I have to ask you this I I read in your bio that you worked at Lutes in New York.
+
+[5:10] Sure. That was amazing yeah one one of the um major things that I'm very I'm I'm actually very proud of of of being just part of that uh team long time ago. Yeah. When were you at Lutes? Uh we were like uh it was part of the last uh era of of Luther uh just uh when uh David Fern was the chef and and uh we were yeah we were close in the restaurant.
+
+[5:39] So actually it was after uh it was after I was still I was I was uh Miller after the German chef. After Andre Saltner had already I love Andre Soltner. Yeah and yeah Andre Sonia yeah he was he was still there but he wasn't able to I mean he wasn't he wasn't cooking because he was uh he was yeah uh he was too I think he was too old uh obviously but uh then uh we we we had uh a new generation of chefs uh taking over uh the the kitchen but uh it was tough times uh for you know for French uh uh food in New York uh you know the the Japanese were were coming in uh different uh topic cuisines uh were coming to New York so it wasn't all about uh Italian and French cuisine like uh fine dining so it was tough. Yeah. Uh now worked all over when did you open your restaurant Central which is always on like the on the top fifty list etc.
+
+[6:42] Two thousand eighteen. Sorry, two thousand eight yeah uh we opened in in Lima in in the district of uh Miraflores and then we we just moved uh uh uh about four years to Barranco which is another place in Lima and since then uh now we've uh yeah, we're quite happy about the place because uh we see a a bright uh future uh you know after all this uh disaster uh happening uh during this past uh model. Uh yeah uh so what what I want to talk about uh I guess at Central is the kind of famous idea of the tasting menus based on altitude. And I think you know, the one thing like I like I told you when I went to Colombia, what I what I kind of loved is you choose your kind of climate and you choose kind of the ingredients based on the altitude. And you have uh because the you know the mountains are so high and the temperature changes.
+
+[7:37] But what's so amazing is is that you have ingredients in these different places that can only grow in like there because they need a constant temperature or relatively constant temperature, like all the time, which you can only get in these kind of equatorial highlands. You want to talk about cooking based or not cooking, but uh ingredients based on altitude? Sure. And and actually we have another restaurant which is in at uh almost four thousand meters above the level, uh up in the mountains in the Andes of the Ruy Cusco, uh the place called Mill, where we were working with local communities and we just serve food just coming from that area. I mean, we don't have any any any food that we serve here in Central Lima, uh, where we are just in front of the sea.
+
+[8:19] Uh we don't have any any seafood and no no food coming from the episode, just food that grows in this specific attitude. So uh but there's different uh elevations even in the mountains in the Andes. So you can in some places you find that you see the quinoa, all these Andean grains, uh different varieties of quinoa because not only a few as many people uh believe that we uh we got the black one, the yellow one, uh the the white and the red. So that's uh there are many others. And then we have some other kind of ambient grains, and then we have another another another ecosystem the attitude where you find um uh different vegetable roots and different varieties of potatoes and we got uh we catalog uh I mean by the by the by what one institute uh 4700 varieties of potatoes in one region uh and uh this is quite a lot of ingredients and then uh there's another another place in in this uh in these mountains where you find different varieties of corn and then uh fruits uh then we have the surface valley I don't know if you if you if you have heard about this area uh near but in Cusco we're uh it's surrounded by by beautiful fruit and aromatic so uh most most of the food that that uh we we consume there is uh like uh there is more like vegetables uh I wouldn't say like everything is vegan uh there's also meat uh uh but uh yeah it's most about vegetables um cacao for instance coffee uh the cacao from the from the elevations is it's quite unique same with the the the coffee Cusco is so high how do you cook there is it very hard to do like like how hard is it to adapt to cooking that high up it's so high.
+
+[10:18] Oh yeah yeah first of all you you you got to adapt your your body to and your and your mind and and the space is is uh you you feel this it's uh kind of dishy when you get to Cusco uh the first day is quite uh difficult to because uh there's a lack of oxygen of course being in this uh high altitude. But uh then after two days uh you start to feel like actually like perfect uh as well and uh the energy there is fantastic is amazing so uh it it actually changed your your mood and then uh being in touch with this uh new ingredients because there is always something new to explore um uh so when we would when we do the foraging uh uh different uh herbs aromatic and vegetables uh so this this this uh such an amazing uh um um uh variety of of ingredients but yeah cooking the redients is different because it is difficult because uh you know uh the pressure that we we we we use in the coast uh at the sea level is it doesn't work in in the Andes uh the level of humidity uh is very very low so uh things work in a very different way so whatever will work uh any recipe that we prepare probably uh you are preparing or I am preparing in demand they don't work in in Cusco. Do you have to use a lot of pressure cookers or are you only adapt it to like uh things that want to be cooked at that high of an altitude no we prefer to cook with uh uh with fire like uh I mean I think the inspiration from from from the yes maybe you've seen that yeah we try to get most of the inspiration something from the doctor and the local the ones who who actually they've been doing this for years, uh thousands of years. So uh we we we try to to to adopt this this technique which in the end uh very good because uh this part of our learning process is as a school that we we have this tremendous curiosity to to understand new methods and and and new things because uh actually I'm I'm coming from the the from the old school from the you know from the uh from from a very French based uh um astronomy uh and then I I I I've done some uh cocina vanguardia espanola and I the Spanish cuisine you know the what what is what is what is called the molecular cucino so uh I I I've done this different techniques but after after you know coming to Peru uh and this past um let's say uh 15 years 20 years I've been doing this in closest with tracking uh a a change of of everything like now I'm I see I I actually feel I'm like I'm cooking um South American. Well I well we'll get into the the collection of all kind of like the actual medicinal stuff which uh is fascinating in in a minute but the pictures from from Meal are like amazing is that the prettiest restaurant view ever like ever?
+
+[13:38] It's so beautiful. Oh yeah that's the one that you yeah you see this terraces circular terraces that the the the and they were built uh since pre-In Kast time uh and uh that that was used as a as a as a as a um agricultural lab where uh people were were creating different ecosystems and different temperatures and different elevations and different um uh uh pieces of land where uh the pressures were were different. Uh so they were able to present uh different crops and uh they were able to uh uh more strength to to seeds. Uh so uh it was pretty much uh uh a useful place to to you know understand uh these uh mountains and this uh huge ecosystem which is uh which where where is Cusco and the and the Cordero Fundes. So uh we're just in front of that that place and this is the face of the of the I say the a football stadium, which is huge, and we have this in front of the restaurant.
+
+[14:53] So part of uh of being in the restaurant is that you you get you get this view, and then you also get the view of matter, which is our research and interpretation center because we gotta have an institution and and research center to to understand understand how to apply these different techniques and ingredients to our cooking. One more question about Cusco. How often does it happen that a tourist comes to Cusco, comes to the restaurant first day, first day, has a bottle of wine and falls over from the altitude. Just as like they don't understand, they can't drink that much of high altitude, and boom, they fall over. How often?
+
+[15:29] Like every day or like some days? Yeah, every two days. Yeah, I gotta say, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's like out of out of uh out of out of party people, I mean two people it's it's it's okay.
+
+[15:45] Uh uh we got oxygen and we we provide some, you know, some massages and whatever whatever is needed. So uh yeah, but but uh it's not that much. So go to the restaurant the second day, people. Go there, but go to the restaurant on the second day. The second day.
+
+[16:03] Uh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so uh I also want to ask you 'cause I think a lot of people are gonna find this uh very interesting. And this actually kinda harkens back to uh Sultner a little bit, who, you know, his business partner was uh was his wife forever.
+
+[16:18] Uh what's it like like ha being married to uh the chef de cuisine, uh Chef Chef uh P. Leon, that's gotta be kind of that's gotta be hard in such like a high powered restaurant you know that being actually married and working. Yeah, I've been asked this a lot and uh before I I used to I used to uh answer that uh it was you know of course it's difficult, you need you need in a way to ne negotiate uh uh things, the kitchen and uh then uh we try different uh strategies and techniques to to you know have different spaces uh and and then understand uh where we wanna be together, cooking together. Uh so but now it's uh it's quite cool because now she has a restaurant uh next to my restaurant. So uh she's working her in her place.
+
+[17:13] But the thing is that uh she's so much into Central that she's also the heads of the ground. So uh we are still working together. But the thing isn't that now uh she's uh more like into her restaurant. And uh uh I I gotta say that it's just uh uh it's very good for us because uh uh be being a cook, uh of course you know that it demands so much of your time. And uh you lose uh you know connection with family, people, uh friends, uh parties and stuff like this.
+
+[17:44] And then you gotta be in in your kitchen. Uh when I go to Cusco, I I gotta go with some some uh plans uh about everything is sometimes everything becomes everything, uh everything is is about astronomy or food, about uh our restaurant, our ingredients. So if I have a partner that is uh I mean that is enjoying this with me, uh I mean, what else I can I can ask. Um like I'm um I feel like uh we are in a in a in a uh in a wood uh we're living a good time here together. Well that's great, because it could go either way.
+
+[18:21] Right? I mean no, that's that's awesome. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. But but we we need we need this kind of news, you know what what she likes and what I like and where we we need the space that uh of course it's it's it's not everything is not that beautiful. I mean we we we we need sometimes to sometimes to deal with uh struggling about you know this this uh strength in the kitchen.
+
+[18:45] Uh but I think we we are uh uh at this point uh after ten years uh doing this together. I think that we know each other enough to understand you know where you know uh somebody has to has to be less uh alone kind of. That's amazing. And then what's interesting also you you partner with your sister, Malena, in the I'm gonna butcher the I gotta forgive me, I'm gonna butcher any pronunciation. Matter um uh iniquiativa.
+
+[19:15] Yes, yeah. Which is uh the uh talk about this kind of research program you guys have. Yeah, she's the one she's the one who's connecting to different disciplines. So we because we're working with different fields, uh from uh uh different different things are not not just astronomy. That's that's what amazed me is that uh I don't I don't see only only chefs and clubs and and and and and food.
+
+[19:40] So we we work with different people, anthropologists from from from historians to the world from the art and the culture. So uh so my lena, what she does is she is uh articulating all these different uh people to to create different uh programs and and uh studies. So that is giving us uh different uh views of uh you know how is gonna be our next uh menus, how's gonna be our next experiences and and what should we do? What should we be doing in the next uh few years uh from now? So um it's about uh this mobility is of course cataloging every sing every single thing that we find.
+
+[20:30] Uh of course uh matter as a uh research and uh interpretation center is is is providing this knowledge and ideas uh coming from different fields and uh from science and art and and you know the innovation is is is is very good and the creativity, the level of creativity that we can achieve in the kitchen sometimes is uh is beyond what we ex we were expecting. So originally you guys were cataloging like uh local and indigenous products from Peru, and I think one of the interesting things you said on your uh on the website there is that you you know you could live in Lima your whole life and you go up the mountain and all of a sudden you're a foreigner. That's how different the the ingredients are. But then you decided at some point to shift to not just Peru but to the range of products kind of all throughout the Andes and that kind of led to the the book that you just came out with which we're gonna I guess we should start talking about before we run out of time, right? Yeah well well but um you know what happened is that uh we started as uh as something very very small uh with Marlena like uh we started going we were going to the Andes to the mountains of Peru where we had to move like just like maybe a few hours from Lima from the coast.
+
+[21:51] We are just next to the sea. And then uh we started to go to the Amazon. So what happened what happens in Peru is that everything is quite close for being such a diverse uh for being in in in a way the land of uh biodiversity like let's put it in this way. So uh uh we were doing this and um little by little uh after maybe about six years we've been creating more and more uh programs and more more people have have been have becoming to to our ideas and our projects. So what what is happening now is that uh uh we wanna know more about what's going on in Latino America about uh because there's one thing that uh if we are through where we are close to the Amazon and and the Cordillero Los Andes and the and the Celtic areas and the coast and the sea uh we kind of see the same things happening in South America and Latin America.
+
+[22:48] So uh and the the the whole process of explore as being something that uh for us is something that we need. So nowadays that we wanna know more about it in America, uh we've got to go to these places. Uh so we wanna what I see beyond the the borders of Peru, which is it has been uh very good for for our our team. And then we came up with this this book of course where we were doing something quite expensive from from scratch because we are doing uh some of the cataloging some of the recipes that we we we decided that it would they were the they were one of the most uh emblematic or probably one of the most um uh I don't know the one authority we need to preserve in Bank but so the name of the book by the way is the for those of you who are uh I haven't I should have told you guys right away what the name of the book is I apologize it's uh the Latin American cookbook uh but it's not I mean it's not even just like a cookbook it's like uh it's an encyclopedia it's a it's interesting it harkens back to an an older style of book and you're doing all the way from like the very the very southern tip of South America all the way up to the Rio Grande all the way up to like you know Juarez all the way up to like the Rio Grande. So it's like uh and all the way over to the to the Caribbean right so it's I mean it's an incredibly physically large but also incredibly diverse region.
+
+[24:26] So you know f uh like I you know I I read what Fiden put out because it's one of Fiden things and they were like, well, this is the second in the series. We have, you know, we had um uh a book on the the cuisine of the north, like Scandinavia. It's like Scandinavia is like four countries with like two different kinds of people in it. No offense, Scandinavia. No offense.
+
+[24:43] You know what I mean? But it's like maybe three kinds of people in Scandinavia. Whereas like, you know, Latin America is like you can't even comprehend it. You know what I mean? And yet you still in the book you say that there is enough of a commonality that you feel like you can draw it all together into one book.
+
+[25:03] You want to talk about that? Yeah. Um there was one thing that uh we as uh coming from Latin America probably some people think that we are the same we are not. Uh uh people from Peru is very different to people uh from Mexico and Brazil and Argentina and Chile and Ecuador and Bolivia. So um uh and then uh still like people in my country uh we are so different.
+
+[25:28] I mean, I'm I'm from the coast, and then you find people from the from the mountains. You mentioned that people from the Andes that's very different to what we believe. Uh the way we see the world, our minds, uh the way we see the the world is different. And then the people in the Amazon is so different. So uh same is is happening in in Latin America.
+
+[25:50] Uh so uh but um if you if you compare with uh this uh Bible, I don't know how to call this uh we decided to do a a cookbook recipe, but then we started to see like you know, every single recipe has a has a beautiful story, and uh that uh we needed to to to share. Uh uh I I uh I mean the book could be like huge and and it it could it could take us uh uh uh maybe like uh more uh more years to finish. But I think uh uh we did uh we did a quite uh uh uh uh a great job uh just uh I mean like yeah you mentioned uh the Northern book is about I don't know four four different countries in this case we're we did twenty two we cover 22 uh countries and um we have a thousand recipes and then we we we we put it down to 600 recipes and about almost 200 photos of recipes which is is it is a lot uh but we need to do this way because uh um uh the level of complexity uh in the America is is huge as I was saying we we are not the same and every single uh uh country has uh has a different stories and and and different different things with different traditions. Uh you know the massive bots that happened in in in many countries are are just amazing uh uh you know Peru I think is is uh it's a is a very hot spot on on this because uh we've been uh we've been uh we are the result of of probably uh uh you know Japanese Chinese uh Spanish uh Portuguese Italian uh our inka legacy so same is happening in all these different countries uh so we're trying to put a bit of of this and uh and then uh you know with all these our differences with all our differences we want to do something that probably uh we could say like uh okay this is Latin America. Yeah, and you focus mainly on food that kind of either people cook or people eat in a kind of a normal, sometimes festive as well, but not like uh not necessarily like fine dining.
+
+[28:14] This is like food that like just people would eat, right? Sure. That's that was uh something important. Uh when when we decided to book uh uh had uh about 15 guys, 17 guys in the in the kitchen, and in the kitchen in in in the restaurant, in both restaurants and also in matter in the research area, where people were coming from different uh nationalities uh from from mostly from South America. So having like a 17 people, uh so they had different contacts.
+
+[28:47] So we we got in touch with different people from different different countries, uh food writers, journalists, anthropologists, historians. So we're able to understand, you know, a little bit of every uh every country, and and sadly we uh I know many chefs from from from a lot of colleagues that they were helping me to do this, and and uh this is the work of matter as a research area with all uh uh most of uh most of our friends' colleagues that they were contributing with with recipes. Uh then another food writer was helping us and Nicolas Chile, uh uh so he was he's he's a traveler, he's a journalist, and he's he was uh uh picking uh places and recipes and helping us to to, you know, uh combine everything into one thing coming from the America. Right, because it it's interesting, like uh, you know, you say that, you know, as you as you just said, that you you know, you're trying to first taste the dish or talk to someone like have it made by the hands who know what it's supposed to taste like or with the ingredients it's that it's supposed to taste like sometimes you even go to the places where they're made to have them in like the original locale but then you're in in one way adapting them by making them in your kitchen trying to make a recipe that's adaptable but on the other hand you're also telling people like real ingredients. So here's a book I can buy in America that has a recipe for Rhea eggs.
+
+[30:15] And for those of you that don't know Rhea is like a is like a small ostrich like bird from South America and we can't get the eggs here. You know what I mean? So it's a it's a very interesting um it's a very interesting combination of adapted but also not adapted right so it's like it's it's a very it's an interesting line to to kind of dance down. What do you think? Sure I uh that's what I call in the in the in the rules uh you know improvisation is what uh don't be a stress but something stressful about uh doing the recipe you know a hundred percent if you if you don't find ingredients uh just get into the creative process and and uh and uh do whatever you think is good and uh don't follow the recipe it doesn't mean that the recipes don't work I mean they recipe actually they do work and uh we'll destroy the recipes that you were saying like uh when we would do the recipes even when we're taking the photo we were imagining that we were this uh magic a beach in Cartagena or that we were in Venezuela uh you know in this kind of mountains or we're seeing you know nowadays like of course uh different books uh you two uh contact uh very helpful I thought uh uh I I think that uh making a book like this uh maybe ten years ago would be like very very very different but uh but uh nowadays um uh having this sense of place is very important and uh because of many people working with us uh uh having all these people uh helping us uh has been uh has been uh wonderful uh but yeah yeah I think uh uh having uh one of the biggest uh challenges was uh like having one piece of uh you know keeping Latin America and one book which is challenging if difficult.
+
+[32:16] Yeah I noticed you uh you left out uh Capibera one of my favorite meats from South America. You just don't I guess you don't like uh you know what do they call Capibera in Peru do they eat it there the the Chiquiro from Colombia? Oh yeah I would have that one because we uh we uh we focus on the camelinos, the Camel, South Morton Camel. Yeah yeah yeah. Uh we did a little bit of the Guinea peace.
+
+[32:41] Uh you know we have rabbits, we have Edison and uh of course uh those are the the native uh uh meats and and and then uh we were then uh you know the the the pork the the beef uh uh they came they came with uh with the Spanish and since then uh you know uh you know how much uh Brazil how much is is is producing meat and and and Argentina and Uruguay and Paraguay. So uh yeah, those are things that it's not about like uh doing uh everything like an our our native team. Uh uh we we did like 50 fifty like also some of of the things that we've been doing in the past uh past hundred years of of natural fusion. So I don't want to run out of time because we have some questions uh from our uh listeners for you. And actually uh this person uh stodged with you um in uh Bogota at uh Astrid Gaston.
+
+[33:50] This is uh Nicholas, if he's from Ecuador, he didn't give me his last name. Uh but he said he starged with you at uh Astrid Ego uh Igueston. Uh and so why do you think why do you think besides Mexico and Brazil, it has taken all uh other uh taken other Latin American countries such a long time to be recognized for their traditional cuisines, even though we all share similar products, ingredients and flavors. I think it's quite I I don't know if it's quite simple because uh I think Mexico and Brazil they they play a good role in the world scene uh because many other things, I don't know, because of uh what you call uh soccer, football, uh art uh uh different uh different participations in the world, uh I don't know, in economy, in in fashion, whatever is uh is uh in different trends. So uh the gastronomy were you know exposed before uh some other countries.
+
+[34:48] Um but this is moving very quickly. Now people is looking into something different, and uh I think it's always gonna be the time for for countries to uh post Ecuador and name a few, like some other countries. Well, Chef, let me ask you this to kind of piggyback on uh Nicholas's question. Um it seems like maybe the past 20, twenty-five years in South America, more people are getting in. There's a kind of two things, like people who kind of are like edge like more educated than maybe maybe 50 years ago or getting into food than you know nowadays, like people who are, you know, kind of uh like have a lot of education, which at the same time people are also all of a sudden interested in more local ingredients and it's caused kind of this explosion.
+
+[35:38] Do you think that's true or not? That's kind of what I noticed in Colombia and you know, from what I've read from other other places. Do you think that's true? Well, yeah, I I think I witnessed this because I I've never seen so many little coming to Peru just uh and asking going to to market or just going to Cusco and and probably don't don't don't uh looking uh people just not looking for for the normal stuff like uh, you know, going to the Incas and ruins uh archaeological sites, they want to go to market, they want to go to food in different uh in the market, uh they w they want to go to to see the street food vendors. So I think of course there's this uh uh uh an explosion.
+
+[36:19] I think it's it's something because um I don't know it's like uh uh the world the world's class uh changed into now people is more concerned about what what they're eating and and um what they are consuming, and I think nowadays the the reaching of of food is important. How how much credit i within South America do people give to uh Alex uh Atala? Because I remember years ago he came up to do a demonstration uh at uh in New York at Starchef's, and I was like, no one here had heard of like any of the ingredients that he had had dealt with, and this was before you know Noma was famous for these like low hyperlocal ingredients and I think he just kind of blew all of our heads off. We were just like what the hell is happening? Everyone wanted to go I've never been because I've again I've never been South Columbia.
+
+[37:10] But do people in South America still kind of give him credit because I feel like worldwide he helped kind of kick off an important movement. No? Well he he was one of the of the of the big names to to start this uh uh with pride of of of these at Megan Cucina worldwide uh yeah I I remember when he started to travel I I was still studying or was just I think uh maybe I was doing stages somewhere uh I remember he was uh he was coming with uh Amazonian ingredients uh and yeah of course ingredients are probably you uh you've uh never see before and uh yes he was uh he was uh working with ants little ants and and different aromatics and of course uh and again he was he was he's uh he came from from from from the classic French food and then of course he when he when he came back to when he went back to to Brazil he switched to to work with with uh local and makes Amazonian products and and that was quite interesting and the same happened here with Art Acurio in Peru where he uh started he he he was he was a chef in France and and he he came to Peru and he started to to discover uh not discussion, we discovered our traditions and and and made them more visible to the world. And uh on these local ingredients, here's something I think that a lot of people, I know like our listeners is here might be interested in. There's a it's not a problem.
+
+[38:48] Maybe it's a problem. There's a fine line, right? Between you you you bring these like very local ingredients to light that and in one way almost like save them from extinction because some of these places are getting wiped out, right? But on the other hand, if they get too popular, it's also a problem, right? Because then like they so how do you ride that line where it's like celebrating, like helping to survive without at the same time destroying by making it too popular?
+
+[39:16] It's very hard, right? Sure, that's why you you gotta you gotta have a team and that's why it's not about like just uh crazy cooks, uh discovering new ingredients and showing ingredients and impressing people, right? Uh we we need to to work on conservation or preservation of species, and and then we need to understand you know part of our traditions and and why why uh if we're working on innovation, we are working on uh and showing these ingredients and probably making them uh visible to the world and probably create new markets. We wanna wanna make sure, wanna ask, we wanna make sure when I study if that will help any community in our in very far areas. So uh we were learning from mistakes.
+
+[40:03] It happened with quinoa, it happened with mata, boots, it happened with different ingredients, but uh uh you know uh they were uh they were, you know, they became trendy and uh the producers they were not changing anything about uh that uh trend. So now we we are we are uh uh I think we are all empowered to to to create this atmosphere where uh you know uh fair trade things are coming to to our places and and we understand that if we do something that it's gonna create a quite like a a small trend or whatever uh a different different habit in in in our cuisine uh it has to it has to be very well studied before yeah uh opt one C writes in what are the best United States domestic chili pepper substitutes for Peruvian chili peppers I guess especially the the ajamarillo right if you could only grow three Peruvian chili peppers what would they be and what are the best practices for using frozen fish in Ceviche or should freshness be paramount that was from one of our listeners. Okay so about the chilies I mean you you you you got you got this uh not a fresh one but you had the dehydrated uh uh Mexican uh chili peps which are amazing smoky uh chili peppers um you got lots of of uh different chilies um uh from from from Mexico which is quite good. Uh if I have to choose one one to to grow in in in in the space which uh which I know it's uh you can find it you can find it there is the Aja Marillo the general chili pepper and there's another one called uh which is very popular here is called rocotto rocotto rocotto is like a looks like a real belt cutter uh it it is quite five few it is uh and then um about uh the the fish, right uh you mentioned about yeah they want to they want to know using frozen fish in Ceviche. Okay.
+
+[42:20] I think I you know I'm I'm not against I'm not against uh uh uh frozen fish uh it's just it just depends on on on how how you freeze the fish and how you how you how you uh serve the fish at the role after this so uh when when you are frozen the fish I mean how how what they need to use and uh you know you have to be covered you have to be you you you you get the the frozen fish uh fish in the fridge of a knife that's not a bad idea but uh you know the problem is when you work with frozen stuff that has been frozen many times and you have no control you have no traceability you have no no information about ingredients and sadly we know this up because of the price you know because if you know that you're buying uh frozen fish which is uh in the best example is the tuna tuna fish most most of the tuna fish I work with tuna is coming is coming uh frozen and uh the frozen uh in marketing in in in Japan and Korea China even in Peru Mexico so uh well the the thing is just like uh how what can you use to to to work with this frozen fish so and don't don't don't freeze the fish again that's that's that's something very particular. So Pablo writes in with another ceviche question, and while we're at it, uh like I know you mentioned uh in the book like the history of ceviche, you might want to go like a short thing on the kind of history of how Civice, you were you were talking about like maybe what it was like prior to you know when citrus fruits were available, if you want to talk about that. But what Pablo wants to know is does the lemon juice do something besides giving flavor in ceviche because it's usually used as an example of cooking with acidity, but they don't seem to be long uh together long enough to actually cook. When when I make it they they turn color. I mean they turn anyway.
+
+[44:19] But go ahead go ahead, Chef. What what do you think? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a good one, Pablo, because uh you know in a way like uh you you are you're not cooking the fish, it's uh it's something that happens, you know, once once uh we we we we in space we say like uh you you kind of attack uh the the fish with the with the lime. Well when the lime juice goes to the the fish, the fish turns uh white.
+
+[44:42] So that's why it looks uh of course uh cooked uh like uh by so it's uh uh the question is like uh w what do we call it uh cook what what does it mean it's cooking, you know, if it's uh unique eat or not. But uh if we were okay, let's pretend we're cooking the fish with uh with uh with the lemon juice, of course it would in a way like cue the fish, and the fish in in seconds it it changed the texture. So uh um we are at the acidity, of course. Uh we are uh cooking the fish, but also what change we're changing the texture of the fish. It becomes uh uh you know, like uh filmer.
+
+[45:26] Um it it becomes uh uh a whiter, and uh the thing is that uh because of like of of our Japanese influence, uh in the past uh thirty uh 20 years, we've been uh fasting the the fish uh we are we're adding the lime juice for just a few seconds before serving so we don't keep the the the the the lime juice you know uh we don't keep the fish absorbing this lime juice because otherwise you you obtain this uh very firm uh fish and uh in a way kind of you are not respecting the freshness of the fish so the one of the most uh beautiful things just to to get a fresh fish uh in seconds and uh use also uh uh cold uh fish add some salt before the lime juice uh to protect the meat and then add the lime juice and then serve it straight away which which in this case is the the lime juice uh we instead of using the lime juice we we prepare something which is in the recipe of the book which is called leche the tigre you are what makes the tigre which is the tiger's milk which is the the juice that we obtain uh when we're having civiche. I have I have to ask you this before okay John here will kill me if I don't you somehow smuggled piranha vacuum packed piranha. First of all first of all what is a piranha taste like what do they taste like uh it tastes uh uh you you are a you are a try Amazonian fish it it tastes so uh so Amazonian I I think uh this is the best some example of of of of the the texture is c is quite like a like a taste because uh uh it it it tastes like uh you know like uh like uh having this uh meat with crystals, you know, like a crunchy meat and uh it it provides a lot of flavor. And uh the thing is that the piranha meat is is very thin, so uh you gotta be very careful whenever you you you you do depone the piranha to get it. And uh uh yeah, what happened to me is that I brought this piranha for them.
+
+[47:47] They were like uh they were already already cooked and uh dehydrated, so uh they were not uh fresh fresh piranhas, so it was a big scandal for some people when they were they're all right, they're dehydrated. Yeah, okay that makes a little more sense. Yeah, they were dehydrated. Let me tell you something. Like this is LAX people.
+
+[48:09] So he's like he flies into LAX. And I don't know if any of you guys have dealt with US customs before, but it they're not exactly. I mean, nothing against them. They're not the friendliest bunch on earth. I can't imagine them looking at a package of vacuum-packed piranha and being like, okay.
+
+[48:27] Okay. And you just what it's a how the hell did you talk through that? Did you I mean you don't have to say this, but did you bribe them? You can't bribe you as customers of fish. Uh most of the time when I travel, uh uh we travel to cook.
+
+[48:43] And uh you mentioned uh Alex Hazard, like he went to to to I think it was in this in New York, right? Uh where he did uh chef's uh this presentation. So most of the time we we bring ingredients to to our cooking uh demonstrations. So in in my my case, I brought it with uh dehydrated uranium. The thing is that uh I mean most of the time we bring uh dehydrated fish, any kind of fish.
+
+[49:08] You can't bring uh uh even like uh a cure uh tivak, uh like uh or let's say like uh if somebody asks you what you have it there and you say like, okay, I'm having like a cure salmon. I'm having like smoked uh salmon, smoked uh cooperation small sea bugs. But you know, uh I I think I committed mistake because uh I I I I was poor asked when I say, okay, well what they ask they asked, uh what is that? I say I think Piranias, like uh dehydrated Prani. Yeah.
+
+[49:37] And they were like, what? And that was uh uh quite uh yeah, it's it took me it took me two hours too to to land uh well. Yeah, yeah, well I can't believe you got that through. You know the old trick people do with cheeses, because in the US you can't bring raw milk cheese younger than 60 days. So the people who lie just say it's uh it's older than sixty days, and then they're like, Okay.
+
+[50:04] They don't know. Customs doesn't really. Yeah. Cause c a customs person can't necessarily tell the difference between a salmon and a piranha, strangely. Uh but once they know it's a piranha chef, uh they're not too happy about it.
+
+[50:15] Uh uh, since I have you on the phone. No, no, no. No, no, no, they were they were they were very intrigued and so some of them were laughing at me. And uh anyway, uh uh but I uh I explained uh very mixed up uh you know Australia, uh when you go to the airport uh with food they they go really, really it was uh scary because uh they are they're protecting their land, uh oh yeah. And they're so willing to to take off all their food.
+
+[50:44] So uh yeah, where are we careful? I mean Australia, yeah, I mean they've been they've been hurt so many times. Honestly, uh honestly, that was the first and the last time I bring Piranias to the A US. That's it. Yeah.
+
+[50:56] So something Peruvian that I only tried to make once and it was so terrible that I need to know how to properly make it. Okay. The when I take when I made it, it tasted like I was sucking on uh on the bedding from a from a goat. It tasted like a like a barn. The chunio.
+
+[51:16] I now I know there's a white chunyo and a black chunyo. I bought the white one. I don't know the difference in flavor between the white one and the black one. And that's different from the the uh papa secus, the dried potatoes that you use in the dehydrated potato stew, right? Can you tell me the difference in flavor between those three ingredients and how to not make it taste terrible?
+
+[51:36] Yeah, yeah, the taste is when they like what uh the personal fermentation and and then uh the thing is that uh most of these uh this these are potatoes that they're fish rice and uh they they put uh sometimes in in uh soak in water from the rivers. And it is it's something very uh natural what what they do with you know people in the month they've been doing this for years. And uh so it's is this uh uh um I've got the unique of uh utilization, utilization uh where where you fish try things. But uh they were doing this uh thousands of years ago. So in this case with this this kind of potatoes, what they do is they they they ferment potatoes uh well for for long long time.
+
+[52:25] So uh the smell of of the of the of the uh uh sugas are uh quite uh yeah, cheesy and and uh funny funky. So uh yeah, and the and the black ones um you know and the ones that are not peeled so the black the the the black the black in the is the skin the white are peeled because uh the to do you preserve the the white and the and the uh the river and then the w uh the yeah the the water coming from the river so the river is peeling the the the the potatoes and uh they are they have you know what we do is uh they they smell yeah they smell a lot uh what what we do it in the kitchen uh because we we we don't use any any any any any texture or any any any any flower that we don't know who is coming from because here you you got like uh you know we I should the quinoa and I'd grains and different cigarettes so we're getting legumes so we're getting the the um the the kind of the flower coming from these legumes and uh uh the starch so you got the tapioca the yucca the cassava so we're using we're trying to use we're trying to use every single starch coming from this uh vegetable roots or different vegetables or or or legumes or even from the coca leaf uh we're using starch so what what is happening is that uh uh uh with uh the the potato what we do is uh whenever we when uh thicken some sauces we graze it and we obtain this powder of of of of potato so we use this uh thickener and it it thickens the sauces uh very nice uh and it provides a very beautiful texture. Alright, but is the black different to flower. Is the black one more mild? Should I try the black one?
+
+[54:22] Yeah, yeah, it's my best. Okay, I'll try the black one. I'll try the black one. I gotta do it again. And never once, Chef it's I always have to do something at least three times.
+
+[54:30] And this is why I need to come to Peru. I need to have it like I'm supposed to have it first, so I know what it's supposed to taste like. Otherwise, how do I know if I'm wrong? You know? How do I know?
+
+[54:38] I will never know unless I go. Sure. So uh so means go I want to like just go through some of the like recipes in here. For instance, you talk about this fish, uh tambaki, which is also the paku. You said it tastes like pork, this Amazonian fish tastes like pork.
+
+[55:01] Oh yeah, they smoke pork. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it appears that it's beautiful that features because when you see this fish going to the surface uh to eat uh fruit, it's just a beautiful scene.
+
+[55:14] So we do a it this year is a drawer where uh what we did within the restaurant is uh an interpretation of what we see in nature. So if we go to the Amazon and we see the fish uh just waiting for uh let's see tomatoes or different uh fruit, like mangoes uh coming down from the tree. You see the fish going to the surface uh for the food. So we do uh we do it uh uh a serving on this menu that uh the fish uh with the fruit that the fish is consuming. So you see this uh fish that tastes like uh a big it has deep picture of pork because it's more about the texture and with with um with fruit.
+
+[56:00] Yeah, I mean, look, this book, I like uh we're we're running out of time. The Latin American cookbook by uh Virgilio Martinez, it has got like I'll just go through some of the stuff real really quickly. Uh when I read the read the book, I thought what's interesting is is that I would just I would see something, and then I would have to go down an internet rabbit hole to look at it. Just like the cassava recipes alone, like the cassava liquid. I mean the the bread b so the bread baby, this like baby shaped bread from the Andes.
+
+[56:32] Is that taste good or is it more the way it looks, Chef? Well, I gotta taste more than look uh it tastes like uh yeah, it's it the breadfish look it's uh good. It's it's just that uh the the be the all these colors that they do uh it's it's so just an hour that uh it it looks uh you know, some basic, you know, things gotta look uh beautiful to be more uh I know uh same same way all the other preparations, folks. Yeah, people people walking around with uh bread shaped like babies with babies' faces on it. I mean, I kind of appreciate that.
+
+[57:07] We need to do that in this country. Imagine if everyone walked around in baby here, Chef, in the US now, people go with baby strollers. There's not even babies in there's tiny dogs in them. Instead they should have little bread-shaped, I mean uh baby shaped breads. But like even like the bread section alone of this book, there's like uh there's like a potato bread made with mashed potatoes and grated potatoes.
+
+[57:27] It's cooked on a stick and then spl over a fire, then split open and sprinkle with chicharron. You have uh this is an addition, you know, to all of the the kind of classic, obviously, you're gonna have the good Peruvian stuff in because it you know that's there. Uh but like uh banana flour recipes, like things that you wouldn't expect, like uh Chilean steak and green bean sandwiches. Does that taste good, shredded green beans on a steak sandwich? Sounds good.
+
+[57:49] Sounds good. Yeah, it sounds good. It's just it's just a it's something about like being up with mine and uh be being willing ready to try something something different. Uh uh there's some so probably so be starved for you, uh, because you've probably never seen this before. Uh you know, uh the way uh uh we serve uh avocado in Cervice in in soap, it's quite uh weird, you know.
+
+[58:15] Um I I keep seeing weird stuff uh going on in the Amazon and but uh in in in Brazil for instance. But I don't know I'm not that familiar with Brazilian food, but they are so many uh different regions and so many uh uses of of ingredients. When you when you mentioned the bread, uh you know uh we uh we didn't we didn't get uh wheat here uh it's uh the Spanish came. So we used to uh uh make uh this kind of dough and uh bread uh with uh different flowers coming from cataras, mojado, uh vegetable roots, legumes, uh different leaves, uh different aromatics. So we used to have more more of of flat bread like uh like tortilla kind of.
+
+[59:00] Oh yeah, the corn the corn and potato sections, I mean obviously corn and potatoes, please. Yeah, they uh but yeah, but the bread section is interesting because it's about this kind of conjunction of wheat, but then you have all these interesting wheat recipes, like you boil wheat f uh till it's soft, you mash it and then you cook it into uh into a cake that's served as uh I forget which one, what the name of that was. But I'll leave you a couple more because what John's telling me I'm I'm super late. Chilean hot dogs, John, this is what I was gonna say. Chilean hot dogs with the color of the Italian flag on it, where the green is green is m mashed avocado.
+
+[59:31] Oh, that sounds great. Avocado, mayonnaise, and like a tomato, like a concasse chef, or more like a ketchup. That's that's a ketchup. Uh yeah, it looks like uh the calian flax. If you if it's funny, yeah.
+
+[59:44] Uh but they're very well consumed in Chile. Well uh uh we don't see this in Peru. Uh we don't see this anywhere. I mean, just in Chile. And uh I I mean what when I got this in Chile, they they love sandwiches.
+
+[59:58] Like there's some there's some things that you you you keep seeing in different uh countries. Like in Chile, you see you see uh uh sandwiches, you see panadas, you see uh tamales, and those uh sandwiches and bananas and and tamales, uh you keep seeing in different countries, you see different ingredients. So that's something really, really interesting about the magazine that uh you keep repeating the same preparations, but with different ingredients. So you see the tamales with corn, combined with uh batabas, tamales with potatoes, combined with uh uh different uh vegetables, the legumes, and and different feelings. Same with the banana, uh different fittings and and uh sandwiches, yeah, of course.
+
+[1:00:42] Cicherron and avocados and and uh all kinds of stuff are added. But by the way, which avocados do you usually use in Peru, the fatty ones or the not fatty ones? The fatty ones. The fatty ones, yeah. Yeah, small ones.
+
+[1:00:55] Yeah. The uh okay, one last John's really getting mad at me here. So is Hassan. Uh like, but there's uh all kinds of random like stuff that you don't think about. Like if Paraguay, they they make these these ribs.
+
+[1:01:04] John, you're gonna like this. Ready this? Ready for it? All right. Pork ribs, and then after it's cooked, you take toasted corn flour and dust it.
+
+[1:01:12] So it looks like a dry, dusty corn powder. And now I'm like, what the hell does that taste like? I want to see what that tastes like. Yeah, that sounds really delicious. Yeah.
+
+[1:01:20] Yeah. We should do it. Yeah, we should do that. But are the are they are the ribs cooked soft or are they cook still like chewy? Yeah.
+
+[1:01:29] I'm definitely gonna try that. Yeah, we said we we we cook for a long period of time and they get uh very soft. And then we try to make them crispy. Um this is something that we we quite uh keep repeating in in deep friend regions where to uh quite again, not not overcooked, but you cook for for uh low temperature, uh a any kind of meat or any preparation, and then you you you you he you you warm up uh in uh whatever in uh nocy pan or with fire. Well, Chef, thank you so much.
+
+[1:02:08] I can't wait. Someday I will someday I will get to go to Peru. The book is the Latin American Cookbook by Virgilio Martinez. Uh I'm sorry to the Patreon people who wrote in other questions that weren't for Chef. I didn't get a chance to them.
+
+[1:02:19] Although Balloon Knot asked, how do you prevent whole crabs from turning black when they're chilled and stored? The answer is you've undercooked them, you haven't fully denatured the hemocyanin, which can then turn uh bluish or black after it's been stored. The rest of it, I'll get to the uh what John? Yeah, oh John wants to say something too. Uh for all you listeners out there, we are doing a special secret perk for Patreon.
+
+[1:02:40] You get five dollars off of Sears All Pro, but even better than that, you get a five to ten minute video of Dave talking about pies and making a pie, and you'll get an annotated recipe to go with that too. So just go to Booker and Dax.com and you will find the link right there as a pop-up. Thank you. When am I when do I have to have that done by, by the way, John? We got some time.
+
+[1:02:57] All right, because you know I'm going deep on Paul. Also, uh deep on pie in my pie hole. And Mr. Paul asked me about livery flavors in sous vide duck. Cook it lower, don't cook it as long.
+
+[1:03:07] I'll deal with it more in depth, but in case you have to cook a duck like soon, after it's cooked through, it's like 45 minutes on a or less, less even 30 minutes on a breast, drop the temperature and it will stop it from going to livery on the breast. But I'll deal with it more in depth later. Again, thank you, Chef, for coming on. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello, welcome to Cookie and Juices. This is Dave Ron Your Host of Cooking Choose coming to you alive! Not from New Stand Studios because we're shut down today. But I'm in the lower east side of New York City. We got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez in Stanford.
+
+[0:23] How you doing? Okay. We got we got John back in uh in uh you're you're chilling over there in Murray Hill now, right? Or is that Murray Hill what you call that place? Yeah.
+
+[0:37] Yeah, that's that's the neighborhood I know. We got uh we got uh Jackie Molecules. You won't be able to hear him because uh with the setup that we're working today, uh he has to uh he can't both run the setup and talk on the setup. So Jackie Molecules is here in spirit, and in fact, he's back on the board today, which is you know it's nice, it's always nice to have Jackie Molecules on the boards. And we have uh we were supposed to have uh Olive Oil Nick on.
+
+[1:06] I don't know his last name, so I call him Olive Oil Nick. Uh but because of uh what? Coleman, Nick Coleman. Nick Coleman. Because uh because the olive oil tasting kind of has to be live, uh, and we can't go live because of uh various uh quarantining issues with the um with the current state of the Omicron.
+
+[1:31] Uh we're gonna have him uh early in the new year, right, John? Have we already rescheduled that or no? Working on recycling, but probably uh so today instead we have as we usually, as we try to every year, we have Phil Bravo here to do his uh voiceover skills and his grinching. Uh by the way, Phil. Yes.
+
+[1:58] What's up, Dave? You still, you still are wasting your magic voice. You, Phil, you're a punk. Like, God has given you a gift that you waste on a consistent basis. So Phil has.
+
+[2:21] I teach the children. I want you guys to listen. Phil, you don't have a job right now, Phil. Oh, I know. It's so magical.
+
+[2:29] It's great. And unfortunately, because we're on Zencaster, and uh apparently Phil sounds like he's talking to a microphone that's across the street from where his body is. Uh you can't get the full effect of the kind of like, you know, the deep gravel uh in uh in the Phil Bravo voice, but he's given this gift. Uh it's not like he doesn't deal in kind of music or or recordings or things like this, but he has decided instead of taking his voice, which God gave him, instead of doing that, he's decided to make his life's work teaching people how to make the most irritating noise on earth, the recorder. So he teaches small children how to take the most irritating musical instrument on earth back to their houses so that their parents have to listen to the horrible one note whine that a recorder makes if they blessedly don't overblow that damn thing.
+
+[3:29] Is there anything worse, Phil, than an overblown recorder? Uh I think it's awesome, man. It's overtones. Come on. You just gotta, it's all about it's all about perspective.
+
+[3:42] So there's a perspective in which an overblown recorder. By the way, when I say overblown, I mean you blow on it too hard and it makes that horrible dying donkey cow noise thing. You know what I'm talking about? Uh anyway, it's a horror show, and uh you you you're an embarrassment. I love you, but you're you're an embarrassment for wasting your voice.
+
+[4:07] You know what I'm saying? Merry Christmas. See what I'm saying, people? You hear that voice? You hear that voice?
+
+[4:14] And also, uh, first time uh first time on the show. We uh have uh Joe, and I'm gonna I'm gonna work on your last name, Joe. Joe Gutisha. Did I get it right? Yeah, you got it.
+
+[4:25] Yeah. Serbian name, which I just found out uh today, Serbian name. Yeah, uh by the way, Joe is a poet, so maybe we'll get some poetry uh at some point in in this. I don't know whether everyone knows this. Joe, friend of Nastasia, uh Nastasia, Nastasia, poetry major back in the college.
+
+[4:45] I don't know if that's a actually. It's a first one first thing I ever learned about Nastasia was that she was a poetry major. Let me ask you this. Did she say that to you before or after you said that you were a poet? Because that'll be weird.
+
+[5:01] That's like for someone Nastassi's age to show up and be like, hi, I'm my name's Nastasia. I was a posing major in college. It was like that. You literally said it was the first fact, though. I'm not sure.
+
+[5:16] Well, who started? Was it me or you? I don't know. I mean, I'd have to look at I don't know. We'll have to look at the footage at the store.
+
+[5:27] Right. At the store. At the store. In line at the Dwayne Reed. No, no, anyone.
+
+[5:35] Anyone? Anyone. I was a poetry major. I was a poetry major. Joe's like, oh, I'm a poet.
+
+[5:42] I'm a poet. And then that's how that's how that happened. Is that right? Is that pretty much my clothes? Dwayne Reed.
+
+[5:47] Yeah. Dwayne Reed. Sorry. The hard rounds. I would say, like, uh, for those of you that uh aren't from New York, uh, how do you describe the Dwayne Reed?
+
+[6:00] Oh. Um, I don't know, Phil? John? I mean, it depends on where you're from. Like, if you're from Ohio, I would say it's like uh it's like a truck stop, but without the showers.
+
+[6:14] Wait, you know, it has it has everything you need, but you really don't want to be there. Right. It's like a CDS. Yeah, but it's not the same. If you go to a suburban drugstore, no, if you go to a suburban drugstore, right?
+
+[6:26] You're going to a suburban drugstore, you walk into the drugstore, you you do your stuff, and you leave. You're there's not like this, there's not like this like uh seething, like this seething thing between you and the people who run the store. It's not like a it's just not a thing, it's a different vibe. A suburban drugstore doesn't have the same vibe as Dwayne Reed. Yeah, Dwayne Reed is upset you're there.
+
+[6:50] Yeah. Dwayne Reed, Dwayne Reed is weird because they're selling you drugs, presumably to keep you alive, yet they wish you were dead. You know what I mean? It's a weird thing. I can't explain it.
+
+[7:03] If you're not like, I can't explain it. Imagine, like, uh, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's just like something that all New Yorkers, because it doesn't even matter whether it's actually a Dwayne Reed, right? It could be a CVS, could be a right aid.
+
+[7:16] They're all Dwayne Reed's to me here in New York. You know what I mean? Anyway. Uh so Joe, I found out today, uh, because I I asked him about his last name, is of Serbian descent, but has never been to Serbia. Yeah, what a shame.
+
+[7:32] It's a shit, right? Which, and the reason it's a shame is because I need a connection for the world's most expensive cheese, which is from Serbia. Is it really the world's most expensive? It is the world's most expensive cheese. I'm a little bit upset with it though.
+
+[7:48] They're right outside uh, you know, uh, right right in Serbia, there's a nature preserve, right? And on that nature preserve, they have a uh herd of Balkan donkeys. I'm not making this up. This is all true story, true facts. They have a Balkan donkeys.
+
+[8:09] And they're like, you know, as you do, you have these donkeys, you're like, hell am I gonna do with these donkeys? Right? So they have these donkeys, and they're like, let's milk the donkeys. And so they milk the donkeys, but it turns out donkey milk doesn't easily, first of all, you don't get that much milk out of a donkey. I don't know, like that's not like a phrase anyone uses, but you don't get that much milk out of a donkey.
+
+[8:34] And donkey milk doesn't make uh cheese very easily. In fact, there's an Italian group that's been working on because they also have some uh domesticated donkeys that get milked in Italy, in Italy, and uh, and I think also in no, that's camel milk, the other one. Anyway, so like donkeys don't produce that much milk, and it's hard to make a good cheese out of it. So these folks in Serbia mix the donkey milk with like 40% goat milk, right? Because the goat milk, you know, we all know goat milk makes a decent, a delicious cheese, right?
+
+[8:59] And everyone likes a mixed milk cheese. So they they basically they make a soft, almost goate chev thing that is 60 60% donkey and 40% goat. And it's called, I don't know how you would pronounce it, but it's P-U-L-E. I'm gonna call it puel. So this cheese is the most expensive cheese in the world.
+
+[9:25] They don't ship it. You have to go to the donkey preserve in Serbia to pick it up, right? And last I checked, which was a while ago, it runs about $600 a kilo. $600 a kilo. So that's that's it's an expensive cheese.
+
+[9:43] But you know, you're not buying a kilo. You're buying like, you know, like a like a little uh like uh John, what's your favorite uh tiny size French chev uh like form? What what would you what do you like? Like uh you know what I mean? Anyway, so I I know you mean so choose your favorite size like that, and uh it's like that.
+
+[10:04] And so that tiny thing only runs you back like you know, 60, 70 bucks or something like this. So you can, you know, all you and your buddies can get a taste of the world's most expensive cheese, you know, without breaking the bank. But I'm a little disappointed that you've never been over there. I feel if you did go there that you would taste the cheese for me. I don't need to taste it.
+
+[10:22] I need someone, I need to talk to someone who tastes it. Okay, yeah, I would gladly do that for you. Um I don't have any plans to go anytime soon. I'd love to, but doesn't look like it's more cards right now, but maybe it's a secret card. So the secret, the secret donkey cheese card.
+
+[10:43] Yeah. All right. Uh all right, John. You got anything? Uh you got anything for uh for the because this is the last show of the year, right?
+
+[10:44] This is it. This is the last show of the year. This is the this is it. This is the last show of the year. Uh first, I don't know if anyone's listening live, but I can't be in the Discord right now.
+
+[11:00] It messes with the audio, so sorry for that. Um okay, but other things. Remember I can be in it. I can go in it. Okay.
+
+[11:10] Oh, thanks. Um guys, we have eight, seven, eight days left on the Sears All Pro uh Indiegogo. We are so freaking close to uh crossing that finish line. So if you haven't bought it yet, help us get there. It would be awesome to you know meet this uh meet this goal and actually be able to come out with this product.
+
+[11:31] Or or alternatively, if you don't want to do that, photoshop an image of Nastasia's head, my head, and John's head flushing down a toilet and send that to us so that we can enjoy that uh that image, right guys? All they'd have to use is our Rockefeller Center Christmas card thing. Yeah, yeah, you like yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that flushing down the toilet, and that's that's the alternative, right, Sas? Yeah.
+
+[11:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Merry Christmas. Give me some Merry Christmas, Phil. Merry Christmas. See, what a waste.
+
+[12:01] What a waste. I know. That's the thing. I like Joe. Joe's introduction is he's a poet.
+
+[12:06] And let me tell you about his Serbian ancestry. It's mine is Phil, you're an offense to God. I mean, it's true though. I mean, that's true. What if let me ask you a question?
+
+[12:18] Let me ask you a question. What if, like, what if it turns out that you could like pull jump, like, you know, pole vault? What if what if you could pole vault like twice as high as anyone else on earth? But you're like, nah. Listen, I'm I'm 42.
+
+[12:36] What do you think all of those Olympic pole vaulters are doing when they're 42? They're not pole vaulting around Brooklyn. Yeah, but you never did it. And your voice is gonna last for at least another week and a half. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[12:46] It's like it's a big thing. Your you know, your voice may not last forever, Phil. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, you you know, lit listen to listen to uh, you know, listen to some old singers. Although they're using their voice all the time.
+
+[13:01] Is that why singers' voices kind of go because they use them all the time, or does it just happen as you get older? No, they theoretically they don't go. Male male singers, uh like opera singers, your voice doesn't really mature until you're 40. So I was just waiting to mature, Dave, like a fine donkey cheese. Well, remember, the donkey cheese is fresh.
+
+[13:19] Well, fair enough. I am not. Well, that's for sure. Uh but real quick, just to add one more thing about the Sears All Pro. Uh, so that means there's eight days left to claim the cooking issues secret perk.
+
+[13:33] If you go to Bookerandvax.com, it there's a pop-up for it, but you get five dollars off the Seals All Pro, and Dave is gonna make a pie marches on video kind of thing, five to ten minute video of him going through the prep work and making the pie, and you'll get an annotated recipe as well. So you can finally hear what Nastasia and I have been dealing with for the past couple months with all the. So uh, so fair fair notice. I'm not gonna get into I'm not gonna get into Pine Marches on, I'm not gonna get into Monroe, Boston Strauss, and you know, nobody in my in the business wants to hear about it. Nobody in my family wants to hear about it.
+
+[14:09] Like, no, like literally nobody. I went okay. No, Dave. I'll say this. John, John once set a timer.
+
+[14:14] I started talking about pie in one of our daily phone calls. Set a timer. 42 minutes later, still talking about pies. I had not stopped talking about pies at Pie Marches On. And John was just like, yo, yo, yo, yo, Dave, I gotta go.
+
+[14:33] And then he hung up the phone. Did we do last week when we went to Kitchen Arts and Letters Day? Yeah, yeah. I went to Kitchen Arts and Letters. I was talking to Matt.
+
+[14:41] Yeah. I was talking to Matt Sartwell at Kitchen Arts and Letters, who you should buy, you know, you should buy all of your Christmas cookbooks and whatnot or holiday, whatever. You should buy from them. So I went there, of course, to talk about what John. What was I talking about?
+
+[14:56] Pies. And you didn't clock that one, but it was forever. I I bored the pants off of a guy who only thinks about cookbooks 24-7. I was able to make him bored about pies. That is, you know, where, you know, that's that's my level of of interest in this particular in Monroe Boston Strauss and his his pie making.
+
+[15:23] All right, but that's I'm all I'm gonna say about it. I'm not gonna actually talk about it. I'm not gonna talk about it. Um so who do we have coming on next year for guests? Who do we have already in the in the pipeline there, John?
+
+[15:33] Boy, oh boy, do we have a lot of people? We're gonna kick off the new year with Sandor Katz. We're finally gonna have him on after um not being able to tap him in the studio. Then we're gonna have Masa Urishido on from Katana Kitten. Uh then we're gonna have with his new book, because he has a new book.
+
+[15:49] We're also uh we're gonna have uh Michael Anstending win him, uh the the uh the co-authors of the the book on Japanese cocktails. It should be good. Yep, it's gonna be great. And then at some point we're gonna have the Mofad curatorial team on, as well as uh Dr. Jessica Harris to separately, but they're gonna discuss the upcoming Mofad exhibition, which is an open is gonna be great.
+
+[16:10] Then we've got another one. We had an opening date. I know we announced it on air. It's been pushed a little bit because of this freaking Omicron. Yeah.
+
+[16:17] Uh but hopefully still opening in in February. But you know, stay tuned. We'll push that out. Uh the Mofad uh opening the the new date on our socials as soon as we have them. Yep.
+
+[16:29] And then uh we're gonna have Adam Di Martino joining us as well. And then talking about mushrooms. Yep. Mushrooms. Francisco.
+
+[16:37] Can I tell you something about mushrooms? Can I say something about mushrooms? No. I was at the I was at the New York Botanical Garden, the one in the Bronx, not the one in Brooklyn. And by the way, I gotta give Brooklyn their props.
+
+[16:48] They do a better job than New York in dealing with kind of food-based plants, like on a consistent level. They do a lot of talking about it, which I I appreciate. If you ever go to the New York Botanical Garden, right now they have the train show on, everyone's going bonkers. Everyone, every year everyone goes bonkers for the train show. But it when you you go into this giant conservatory and they get from one wing to the other, they have this underground tunnel that like looks like you're inside of a corrugated metal tube, almost like a mini quantitative hut tunnel that you're going through.
+
+[17:16] Almost like you're going into an underground bunker from like area 51, but you have to walk through it. No windows. They should do mushrooms there, don't you think? They should have a mushroom thing at the New York Botanical Garden. I think that would be nice.
+
+[17:28] I think it's a good idea. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that a lot of people are doing mushrooms at the New York Botanical Garden. Okay. Okay. That's uh that's fair.
+
+[17:40] That's fair. I mean, if you're gonna. I mean, I don't know. I I like am I the only guy that goes there for the plants? Is it just me?
+
+[17:48] Am I the only one? I like plants. I thought you like trees. I like trees. I'm getting to like plants more.
+
+[17:55] I am a tree guy, but I'm I'm beginning to think about plants more kind of generally. Whereas you hate trees, love flowers. Yeah. Right. But you don't you only started hating trees because I like them so much.
+
+[18:10] Is that true? That is true. You and Booker hate the fact that I like trees. Whatever. Yes.
+
+[18:17] It's alright. Whatever. Uh all right. And so who else we have? Yeah, you were about to say something else.
+
+[18:23] Francisco Magoya of Modernist Pizza and Modernist Breadfame. And then uh Nick from Grove and Vine is gonna come on as well. So talk about all the olive oils, yeah. Yeah. Uh so the the modernist get get all of your get all of your pizza questions ready for when uh John, can we do Nick on is there Val what day is Valentine's Day?
+
+[18:46] He will go on about using his oil as like aphrodisiac and massage and all that stuff. Valentine's Day is a Monday. Is that the December? No, that's the day. What?
+
+[18:54] No, the Valentine's Day is on a Monday on the 15th is when uh Francisco Magoya is coming on. Oh, and then when's Nick come on? Uh hopefully the following week on the 22nd. Oh, that's too bad. But if people are gonna get nasty with his olive oil, we need to do it the week before.
+
+[19:11] Yeah. I mean, but that that's just gross anyway. You know what I mean? Unless he wants to go back to the like Olympic era. You remember, like um, you ever remember reading about the old school Greeks they would put in the Olympics?
+
+[19:24] They would they would they would put olive oil all over their bodies and then they had these like weird scrapers and they would scrape the filth and the oil off with the scraper, like similar to the thing that you use on a tablecloth to scrape the uh to scrape the crumbs off the tablecloth. My favorite thing about that story is uh do you remember when we all used to read about the uh you know the Grecian athletes uh and their oil baths? You're saying you never read about that, Phil? I've never read about that. Where the hell did you oh went to school in Florida?
+
+[19:55] Sorry. Okay. That's true. Uh we have good plants, though. Yeah, yeah, you do have good plants.
+
+[19:59] You do have good plants. What it's Nastasi, you never you you don't remember this? No. John, anyone? I think I I think I remember something.
+
+[20:10] I wish I remembered something like this. My god, what did you guys learn about the Greeks? Like, what? Like Archimedes? Like, what were you learning?
+
+[20:19] You weren't learning about athletes and oil and scrapers? What the hell? I'm not even a sports guy. I don't know anything about sports, and I know how the ancient Greeks used to scrape the oil off their bodies. Come.
+
+[20:31] Why do you still remember this? I remember every dumb thing. I forget everybody's name, I forget everybody's face, and yet I can remember random stories about people and random facts from when I was a child. It's it's it's a curse, actually. It's a curse.
+
+[20:49] I'd be better off if I remembered people and like appointments, you know? Anyway. Uh from Jason, oh, you have anything else, or should I answer some of these questions? Answer the questions. All right.
+
+[21:00] From Jason, uh, I have a gear question. Finally, after 11 years of low temperature cooking, Jason, I know you've waited a long time for this answer, so here we go. And I I'm just gonna make it up. I I apologize in advance, Jason. I'm making this up off the top of my head.
+
+[21:13] Because I gotta admit, I didn't give it serious thought beforehand. Every week I'm like, I'm gonna answer it next week because we have a guest. This week I don't have a guest, and I still haven't thought about it, but I'm gonna give you some answers anyway. Finally, after 11 years of low-temp cooking, I ordered a chamber vacuum machine, the Vacmaster VP215, which a lot of people seem to like. I've never used it, right?
+
+[21:34] The VP215 is Vacmaster's, uh, I'm pretty sure that's their oil pump unit. Uh, aside from bagging stuff to cook, what are your favorite tricks or uses for it? All right, now uh the VP215, if it's the one I'm thinking of with the small, small bless you, small oil pump in it. I don't know how uh many, how much moisture, right, it can actually remove. So, you know, with the problem with removing uh moisture from something with an oil pump is that uh you you you swamp the oil and then you have to clean it.
+
+[22:09] But the most recent fun trick is the uh force cooling and like reinforcing the crust on uh breads. I will say uh so you take a hot bread, hot bread, and then you put it in the vac and you and you close it. If you put it in and you just run the vac, you're gonna blow the, you're gonna explode uh a soft crumb bread. Because when bread comes right out of the oven, the the starch hasn't really fully set up yet. It's too hot.
+
+[22:35] And so it's actually, even though the crust is firm, the inside's quite fragile. So if you uh run a hard vac on it, it'll blow off. So, like what I've been doing recently is putting like a, you know, like a like a cheesecloth uh around the bread so that this stuff doesn't get sucked into your pump. And then just like doing it for like a couple of seconds and then pausing, wiping down the inside of the machine and doing it until it cools down enough that you can suck a harder vacuum on it. You can make a bread 100% sliceable in under 15 minutes from coming out of the oven, which is pretty crazy, right?
+
+[23:10] Um, you have to do it in like short bursts, and afterwards you have to make sure you clean out the oil sufficiently. The other tricks I really like are obviously, you know, if you've if you've never had a vacuum machine, a real vacuum machine before, wow. I don't even know who that was, but you know, I hope you had a Kleenex nearby. Uh the uh if you've never had a uh a real vacuum machine before, you gotta do the old school trick where you put like fruit or vegetables. Uh like so, for instance, cucumbers work great, uh melons, even though I don't like the taste of them, they work great.
+
+[23:44] Uh apples and things that are harder, they don't go as translucent, but pears work quite well. So you slice things into chunks or pieces and you put like a flavorful liquid into the bag, you suck a hard vacuum on it, and then you know, you you force inject it in, and all the stuff looks amazing. Like all of a sudden fruits look like amazing pieces of jewelry uh and they're infused with flavor, or if you don't put a liquid in, they just get uh compressed down and they they're like denser. So that's like you know, the original watermelon trick was you didn't actually infuse anything into the watermelon. You just boom, smash the watermelon flat so it was a denser, prettier uh watermelon.
+
+[24:22] On that same idea, flash pickling in a vacuum machine works great for things like very thinly sliced onions, which I love. Red, go red, please come on. Red, red pickled onions are the pickled onions to beat. Am I wrong about this? Yeah, no, they're great.
+
+[24:36] Love them. Uh but you don't but you you like them once they're pickled, but so pickled ones don't give you nightmares. Yeah, right. Yeah, the raw give me nightmares. So pickling is enough.
+
+[24:48] Pickling is great, yes. That's enough. Okay. Uh good to know. And uh the other fun thing is things that uh have issues with them, cooking issues.
+
+[24:59] So things that are uh like that are like grease sponges. I'm looking at you zucchini, and I'm looking at you eggplant. So, like when you're gonna do uh an eggplant, um an eggplant fried eggplant like for for Parmajan or something, like I tend to squeeze the ever loving snot out of eggplant before I salt it and then I squeeze the the piss out of it before I uh before I bread it and fry it. Some people will pre-nuke their eggplant and they nuke it to kind of collapse the structure down so that the structure fills with water and won't absorb oil. But I saw Phil go off and I know what he's gonna say.
+
+[25:39] What? Something about squeezing the eggplant. Oh god. I absolutely was not. Oh.
+
+[25:49] No, God. I had a legitimate food question, but that's okay. Remember, remember, Phil, first you have to slice the eggplant. And then after you slice the eggplant, only then can you squeeze it. So it's a little, you know, it's a little bit like uh closing the barn door after the barn burns down.
+
+[26:05] Anyway, I know I'm mixing metaphors there. So you slice the eggplant, uh, you salt it, you put it in the bag, and you smash it, and it goes flat instantly. And then you can uh, you know, they're real thin and they fry up beautifully with like zero zero internal grease. Now you want some grease in the breading because come on, you know what I'm saying? But like you get very little grease in the eggplant when when you when you do it that way.
+
+[26:30] Is that a good list of uh tricks to do with the vaccines? Yeah, good job. All right, and good job. Oh, pat me on the back. Uh Phil, what was your food question?
+
+[26:39] Well, it was actually just like the you know, be in the dummy, right? Like, so what's the actual benefit from suit? Like those were all the things that weren't necessarily sous V, slow cooking. So, what's the actual benefit of vacuum sealing versus just my kind of like old school, you know, use the Ziploc bag and you know, is there an actual is is there a whole lot of uh benefits? It's funny that's it's funny that you call it uh old school because actually the vacuum machine came first and the ziploc was meant to imitate the vacuum machine once we weren't allowed to use vacuum machines in restaurants anymore.
+
+[27:18] So like the the ziploc technique was developed in direct uh in directly because of the New York City's uh ban on sous vide in restaurants directly. Like no one was doing that prior to that. So, like, you know, everyone was running around trying to figure out how to not use a vacuum machine, and only that caused uh the ziplocks. Ditto with uh rolling things in plastic wrap and all of that stuff. Everyone uh already had the vacuum machine.
+
+[27:48] It's so weird, right? Um, so the the vacuum machine for certain things, the the answer is no. 90% of the stuff that you want to do low temperature, you can do with a Ziploc. However, the vacuum machine is just more convenient for uh for certain things, especially if you don't want to have a lot of oil. You need a lot of liquid in the bag, like oil or otherwise to get the uh Ziploc trick to really work well.
+
+[28:14] Um, and certain things do certain things taste, I think worse in under a high vacuum. For instance, chicken breast, I think under a high vacuum, the texture kind of suffers, but um it's better for injecting flavors into things. So, like I don't particularly like low temperature um shrimp, but if you're would need to marinate shrimp, putting it in a vacuum bag injects the marinade into the shrimp. But for cooking itself, creme en glaze, uh, if you cook creme en glaze in uh a ziploc bag, it tends to still take on um kind of the sulfury egggy notes, whereas if it's vacuum packed, it doesn't. That's the one place where I'm really gonna say the vacuum is like a hundred percent necessary.
+
+[28:57] Um, other than that, certain flavors, like I say, have better penetration in a vacuum than they would in a ziploc. But no, there's you you you're you're fine, Phil. You're fine. Nastasia, did you want to make a joke about the penetration with the vacuum flavor? You guys gotta get you guys gotta get your head out of the freaking gunner's.
+
+[29:15] Jeez, Luis. This is you know the holiday show, people, holidays. Merry Christmas. Yeah, jeez. Uh from uh misplaced enthusiasm.
+
+[29:26] Does Dave have a good way of removing static from machinery? Uh for context, I have a flat burr coffee grinder that is a static monster ever since I removed the clump crusher. The clump crusher, in order to get a more consistent particle size and fewer fines. Uh, I've thought uh about possible solutions like having some stainless wire in the place of the clump crusher. I like that word.
+
+[29:47] You like that word? Clump crusher? It's okay. Yeah. Clump crusher.
+
+[29:53] Love the word. See? See, the poet knows. The poet knows. Someone, Stash, you don't even appreciate someone was sitting around one day and was like, what are you gonna call this thing?
+
+[30:05] Like uh this thing that like, you know, stops. So what is a clump crusher? First of all, right? I'm sure some of you are asking, what the hell is a clump crusher? Let me finish the question first.
+
+[30:15] Uh oh, and uh the grinder is mainly aluminum with some titanium coated burrs, if that helps at all. Oh, and I'm already doing a spritz of water on the coffee beans to tame it, but God help me when I forget to do that. All right. So a clump, let's say you have, by the way, back I haven't spent money on my espresso rig in a long, long time, right? So, like when I was buying stuff, they didn't have any clump crushers, right?
+
+[30:40] But nowadays, in the era of kind of zero retention uh grinders, a lot of people have grinders that grind directly from uh the burrs in through a chute into a porta filter, right? So the portafilter is the thing that you you know that that holds the coffee grounds when you're making espresso. It's the you know, the thing that with the handle. So a clump crusher is after the burrs. So, like after the burrs, if you don't have something right there, when things are grinding, they fly out of the burrs.
+
+[31:13] And as they fly out, right, they tend to kind of fly everywhere, and there's a lot of static electricity just because coffee tends to build up static electricity. So even if the machinery is all metal, if the coffee doesn't touch any of that metal on as it's spraying out of the burrs, it can have some static on it. So, and it can clump up where the static uh, you know, where the coffee particles clump together, they clump up and et cetera. And if they can spray everywhere. We've been having, by the way, static nightmares.
+
+[31:42] Uh, here. I've been having static nightmares with my with my flour, with my flour mill, and we had this issue. Get this, Stas, you're gonna like this. I won't say what I was making, but I had a graham cracker crust. I don't want to trigger you, nostasia.
+
+[31:56] Yes. All right. So I was because I was doing working with the book. I don't normally measure pie stuff or anything like this, but like because I'm working on the book, I'm trying to measure what's going on. So I had one of those SILPs, right?
+
+[32:09] And the SIPA, you know the SILPATs that have like the outlines with the with the diameters on them so that you can figure out how big your dough is. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Yeah. So SILPAS are non-conductive, right?
+
+[32:22] Because silicone is non-conductive. So anytime you're doing something that has like a lot of static or can develop a lot of static. So I have I have dough with hat, which has some like liquid in it, and I have SILPAT, and then I have a rolling pin, which is wood. So, and I'm not touching the dough, I'm just rolling it out. And so we were doing, I was doing graham cracker, the rolled in graham cracker crust.
+
+[32:43] So I had these finely particalized graham crackers, and I rolled it in, and then uh Jen, my wife, is who's helping me out, picks up the silpat and starts walking over because I was doing it on my on my table, not in the kitchen. I was doing it on the table so that I could like really gauge, you know, big. And so she picks it up, she starts walking over, and all of a sudden the graham crackers come alive and start flying up, but so much so that it was getting in her eyes. She's like, what the she didn't know what the hell was going on. I turn around, I see the graham crackers flying into her eyes, and the graham crackers like going everywhere.
+
+[33:19] It was the craziest, it was the craziest static experience I've ever seen in a kitchen is these graham crackers attacking my wife. It was nuts. It was nuts. Anyway, crazy. Nastasia was like, I just wish it was you, Dave.
+
+[33:32] I wish it had been you. I just wish it had been you. Yeah, she she got it in the eyes. All I got was, you know, is that then later, do you know the feeling? Do you know I hate sand, right?
+
+[33:44] You know I hate sand. Yes. Yeah. Does anyone else hate sand besides me on this on this uh? Yeah.
+
+[33:54] I don't mind sand. Yeah, I'm just great. Yeah. I think that I think the world cleanly divides. I don't think there's people who are like, yeah, Sand, I could take a take it or leave it.
+
+[34:04] You know what I mean? It's like sand is the worst. Phil, what do you what do you think? Well, I'm actually I can kind of take it or leave it. It depends.
+
+[34:11] I like sand on the beach. I don't like sand once I get home, you know? Contrarian. Always contrarian. Graham crackers on the ground.
+
+[34:19] Graham cracker particles on the ground is the same as stepping on sand. And so, like the stuff, it's hard to get it all up. You know what I mean? And then every time I step on a little particle of graham cracker, I'm like, it's not as bad as having a sticky floor. Nastasia hates movie theaters for a different reason.
+
+[34:36] The thing I don't like about movie theaters is the sticky Coca-Cola floor. The sticky floor, is there anything worse than lifting your shoe and having it stick to the floor at all? I also love that you're going through a list of all the things you hate, and you're like, you're such a contrarian. What? Oh, yeah, like you're not a contrarian.
+
+[34:55] You teach kids recorder. No, I find the middle ground, you know. Come on. What's the recording? Recorders are never in the middle ground.
+
+[35:02] You teach kids recorder because you hate parents. Admit it. All right. Back to misplaced enthusiasms question. So uh the clump crusher is there to do a number of things.
+
+[35:17] It's a it's a cool name, clump crusher, but really, if you don't have a little gate there, uh the grounds are gonna come flying out and they're gonna spray everywhere. And the ones that haven't hit a piece of metal that's that's grounded to the rest of the unit are gonna have their static on it, and they're just gonna be like a crazy wild hair flying everywhere, right? There's gonna be everywhere. So my question, uh so one of the issues that people have with the with the clump crushers is that um they retain grounds. So remember that the clump crusher is coming after the coffee has already been ground.
+
+[35:53] So I don't really understand why you would have a more consistent particle size, or in other words, why the clump crusher would affect. I mean, I could be could be wrong because again, like I'm behind the times when it comes to this kind of technology, but I don't understand why the particle size distribution in your ground coffee or the fines would be overly affected by the clump crusher. It seems to me, and for most people online, that the thing that they get really pissed off about is the retained grounds uh in it. And really, like in a zero retention situation, yeah, the clump crusher is gonna be a problem because anything that does have excess static is gonna stick. So fines will stick to the clump crusher more, right?
+
+[36:31] But then the next time you grind coffee, right? Uh it's already been saturated with fines. And so it like after your first grind, you know, you should be consistent. Now you're gonna get old, nasty coffee. That's a different situation.
+
+[36:45] Uh, but the answer is there's no good solution to what sorry, the answer is there's no good, uh there's no good solution. You could do like a double, uh you could do like a double baffle situation, but I don't I don't see a good solution. Maybe someone in the Discord or someone can get back to me with it with a good solution for it. Sorry, sorry about that. Was that an okay answer even though I didn't answer it?
+
+[36:59] Yeah, good. Uh from balloon knot. I know I answered this a little bit in case it was a direct problem you had to solve before, but balloon knot wants to know. First of all, are any of you guys decent at tying knots in balloons? Really good at it.
+
+[37:20] Really? Yeah. Is this one of those things where you say you're good at, or are you actually good at? No, I'm really fast and really good, whether it's balloons or water balloons or jelly balloons. Really?
+
+[37:34] Pick Nastasia first in the water balloon fight. Yeah. Pick her first. What do you think of do you know now Nastasi? Are you familiar with this new these new cheating ways of doing water balloons?
+
+[37:45] We should have thought about it. We should have thought of it. Are you okay with the cheat? Yeah. Really?
+
+[37:52] Yeah, it's genius. Uh uh, you don't think. Well, but the thing is is that like, you know, on certain things, you're like, no, you have to do it the right way, or you're a terrible person. Like you hate in bananograms, you hate the two-letter words. No, but the I just think that's a genius invention.
+
+[38:10] The only, I mean, it's not very, it's very kind of anti the earth, right? Because it's a lot of plastic you throw away to do it. Yes. But uh, I mean, to me, there's like some honor in like actually being able to wrap that sucker around your finger and like roll and pop it real quick without like getting you know, without popping them. So I mean I'm kind of happy.
+
+[38:30] This is a skill. After all these years. Here's something I didn't know about you that uh I've learned that you know in a water balloon fight summer, that's my that's true. That's true. Uh all right, so balloon one uh balloon knot wants to know uh how do you prevent cooked whole crabs from turning black when chilled and stored after cooking?
+
+[38:50] I I tease the answer uh a little bit, but um so crabs uh and other decapod crustaceans uh in their you know it's not blood, they don't have blood, they have like hemolith, which is kind of like because remember, they have an open circulatory system, they're not like uh not like mammals. Um they have more or less of these things called hemocyanids, right? So uh remember Nastasia, have we ever talked on air about horseshoe crabs? Somewhat, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[39:22] Does anyone know can you eat a horseshoe crab? Is there any meat in a horseshoe crab? We looked into this, Dave. We did look into it. And what do we find?
+
+[39:29] I don't remember. I will look while you're talking again. All right. Well, horseshoe crabs are horror shows. I mean, on that we can agree, right, Nastasia?
+
+[39:39] They're horrifying horrifying. I love them, but I hate them. You love the that they exist, but yeah. Joe picked up uh some mating ones once and held them up in the air, and they still clung on to each other. That's true, love uh when I was uh uh a small child, like eight or nine, I went to a sleepaway camp, probably too early, probably too early, probably shouldn't have gone, especially me.
+
+[40:07] And uh we it's in Cape Cod. So Cape Cod is uh is a cape, hence the name Cape Cod. And it it's you know off the coast of Massachusetts, and it looks like kind of like an arm. Anyone who knows what I'm talking about looks like it looks like a Rosie the Riveter arm thing, right? And on the elbow near a town called Chatham, there used to be uh it there was like a long like spit that came that came out, like a long like peninsula that came out, and and it wasn't connected to the ocean.
+
+[40:37] It wasn't a barrier island, it was actually connected to the Cape. The Cape, by the way, is just a big piece of rubble that was deposited uh in the ocean uh at the end of the last ice age. That's what that's what it actually is. It's actually very recent, it's not an old thing, anyway. I mean, old compared to us, but not old compared to the rest of the geographic crab we have.
+
+[40:56] So uh when I was a kid, that was still connected. And so there was a thing called Pleasant Bay in between the land on Cape Cod and this spit that was the you know the outer outer beach. And when I was a kid, we took a boat across that and we anchored uh right near the outer beach where there was nothing, and there was a horseshoe crab mating bonanza, and it was just you could not step without stepping on a horseshoe crab. And this was only a couple of years after the horrible, or maybe like a year after the horrible experience I had with the multiple brood cicadas that came out in New Jersey when I was a kid. Like, if you've ever been part of a multiple brood cicada thing where they sound like screaming triffids and they're they're falling everywhere, and you can't walk without stepping on cicadas.
+
+[41:42] You can't go anywhere without hearing cicadas. Like, if you've ever done that, imagine that with horseshoe crabs. I was kind of traumatized. And then only years later did I learn that they used horseshoe crab blood for medical things, and at the time it was very expensive. And I was like, I know where all the horseshoe crabs are.
+
+[41:56] We could go back, we could become millionaires on horseshoe crab blood because I wanted to kill them all anyway. And then I later found out that it was very rare that you have this like incredible, like huge group of mating horseshoe crabs. Anyway, uhcyanin. So that is the stuff in horseshoe crabs that they use. I don't really even know what they use it for.
+
+[42:19] Uh, but all crabs have more or less of it, and because it's copper-based, right? Uh, certain enzymes in that are there when they go bad can make it go like kind of either bluish or black. And so what's happening most likely with your crabs is they're not being cooked enough, right? So, like certain uh crabs that sustain damage or uh crustaceans that sustain damage when they're alive, you can get black spots on the shell, and I think that's kind of related. But if it dies and isn't cooked, right, it can go black, or if it's undercooked, uh like parcooked, undercooked, and then chilled, it's gonna go black because the enzymes haven't been uh deactivated.
+
+[42:58] So I would just say uh if you're gonna parcook and chill, you have to parcook, chill, and then fully cook quickly, or par cook longer, and you shouldn't have that problem. Is that a decent answer? Yeah, and they're not edible, they've only been used as bait and something about the COVID-19 vaccine. Really? Yeah, but I don't understand it.
+
+[43:20] So they're used as bait for what? What eats them? Eels. Eels eat them because my experience is is that they like you know how like when a regular crab washes up, maybe you see a claw, maybe you just see the the top part of the carapace, and something has eaten the rest of it, right? Horseshoe crab, when it walks up, it looks like a whole horseshoe crab, it's just dead.
+
+[43:41] Nothing's been eaten that thing, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh what?
+
+[43:49] You're gonna say something? Dave. From Dobrik, uh, hey Dave and the team. Uh, for some reason I moved uh out of the United States uh and many of my cookbooks uh bought in the United States call for insecure number one and number two. From what I understand, number one is 94% table salt and six percent nitrite.
+
+[44:11] Uh while number two is nitrite nitrate and uh 90% salt. In Poland, where I am now based, there is no readily available products with these ratios. Uh I can buy so-called salt pecklova, which is 99.3% table salt and 0.7% sodium nitrite. Uh the important thing, people is trite versus trait. Trite versus trait.
+
+[44:36] Uh undefeated, I realized I can buy pure nitrate uh and mix it myself with table salt. Now my source for all this information is Wikipedia. The increment information given there uh is given in unitless numbers, as in 6.25% of nitrite and uh 93 uh percent NACL, blah, blah, blah. This unit uh lessness is giving me pause. Is it in grams?
+
+[44:59] Is it mole number, or perhaps these are fluid ounces or or feet? Uh if this is in anything else than grams, what is a good source of these ratios of units in weight? I suspect it's a mole number. You know, you guys remember what moles are? Anyone?
+
+[45:12] Anyone, anyone? Okay. Yeah, in chemistry. Sweet. Sweet.
+
+[45:18] Appreciate that. Appreciate that. So like, so like every every every compound, right, has uh a number associated with it that is the weight of the atoms in it. And if you if you a mole of that weighs that weight in that atomic weight in grams. That was not a clear explanation, but in case you guys are wondering what a mole is, it's 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd.
+
+[45:44] I did I had a difficult time explaining this to you to Dax, right? So it's like it doesn't matter what it is. A mole of cars is 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd automobiles. There's not that many automobiles, but obviously, like a mole of anything is 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd of that thing. And it just so happens that uh, you know, grams to atomic units, that's the conversion ratio.
+
+[46:08] So anyway, uh back to the question. Also, in old books, I see people using uh potassium nitrate, aka salt, peter. Nah, I wouldn't do that. I don't really want to use uh that as I imagine night uh nitrite is preferred substitute. All right, this is the this is getting really in the weeds.
+
+[46:24] Is it getting really in the weeds, people? Uh all right. So Dobrik, don't use just use the uh the the stuff you were talking about that's got nitrite in it. Just use the nitrite unless you're curing ham, right? So the the only reason to have nitrate in a cure is because it's go it needs to provide a cure over a long period of time.
+
+[46:49] So most of the things that people are curing are uh ground products or things that where the the cure can penetrate rather quickly, in which case nitrite is what you want. So most all old recipes, unless you're doing hams or whole muscle cuts, really should be using nitrite instead of nitrate. I am gonna guess that ain't nobody writing cookbooks based on molar weights. That's just a guess. I haven't done the actual research, so I would bet that they're doing it uh based on uh gram percentages of uh sodium uh nitrate.
+
+[47:23] That's that's my guess. Um that's my guess. What do you think, Snaz? Uh I mean don't quote me on it. We'll I'll I'll ask Sandor Katz when he comes, although I don't know how much he knows about nitrate or or anyone in the Discord can uh chime in with their thoughts.
+
+[47:36] Was that good enough, Stas? Was that good? Yes. All right. Wait, wait, wait.
+
+[47:42] What many elements do we have left? We love to talk about Montreal. We have to have Phil sing. What do we have left? I don't know.
+
+[47:49] I'm just reading some questions. I mean, have we gotten through all page? You tell me when to stop. I'll I'll answer them quickly, all right? In five minutes.
+
+[47:55] Nikki. Phil, are you ready to sing in five minutes? Oh, I'm so ready, Stock. Is Phil is Phil taking us out of the year. Hey, Dave, what did you say?
+
+[48:05] Three potato sacks. Wait, what is it? Three potato I've said many things about potato sacks, but what what about three potato sacks over the head? Is what? What Phil sounds like.
+
+[48:17] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't I don't know. Uh the first thing I heard was I sounded great. Now I'm here and I sound terrible. I don't know what to tell.
+
+[48:25] I mean, Phil, the voice sounds great. It's just the the the sound quality, uh at least something to to be, you know. Phil has got like Phil is the thorough Ravencroft of today. Okay. Phil is today's thorough Ravencroft, not as tall as Thor Ravencroft.
+
+[48:42] A little disappointing, but you could be the new Tony the Tiger, Phil. Phil, give me some they're great. Great. Jesus. I love that you're like basically like, you know, not as tall.
+
+[48:54] Uh you don't want to look at him. You don't gotta fucking radio. I I listen, I did not, I did not say anything. I did say something about your physical appearance. Heights not physical appearance.
+
+[49:05] It's just you're not a one-to-one substitution for Thorough Ravencroft. You're also alive and he's dead. So how's that? There, you won on that one. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[49:12] I did. I'm like a I'm like a mole of thorough Ravencroft. Yeah. Although he did live to be 90 in change. He did lead to be 90.
+
+[49:20] And thorough, we always talk about Thoral every year when we have Phil on, because of course, Thorl, although Boris Karloff did the Boris Karloff did the narration of the Grinch in the in the original and only Grinch I will watch. Uh it was Thoral Ravencroft that sang the song. And so like that's you know, that's why that's why we'll Dave, Dave, get to the question. Oh, we didn't talk about it, that's what I'm saying. Talk about it.
+
+[49:45] Let me just answer this question. Hey Dave, this is from Nick Hill. Hey Dave, why do different uh gases affect water or liquid differently? I.e., why does CO2 in water versus nitrogen versus oxygen have such different textures? Well, first of all, nitrogen, oxygen, I don't know anyone that oxygenates stuff.
+
+[50:02] Oxygen's usually a problem in uh in in liquids. Uh nitrogen is being used because it's not very soluble, so you can use uh you can put a lot of pressure with nitrogen, and then when it when you release the pressure, you get tiny micro bubbles because it all comes out of solution very, very quickly. So that's why people are using nitrogen to like increase the head, uh for instance in things like Guinness or uh or in like uh these new like nitrogen cocktails where people are like foaming it out. CO2 is very highly soluble in um in in gases. So to me, the the big uh comparison is between carbon dioxide, which is very soluble, but has a very tastes like carbonation, and nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas, which is used in whipped cream, which is also very soluble uh in liquids, but provides a kind of sweet, uh creamy uh feeling.
+
+[50:52] As to why they have, I mean, your your tongue has certain uh receptors uh and enzyme uh pathways that allow us to taste CO2, and that's why we perceive CO2 the way that we do, as opposed to other uh things. And presumably that's so that we can taste, for instance, things that are fermenting or going bad, presumably, but who knows why we evolve that way. Um, nitrous is a little more interesting in that God knows why we perceive that as sweet. I have no idea. But so, like how we perceive the gases is gonna depend on how fast they're coming out, how how soluble it is, and then the specific nature of the gas.
+
+[51:28] Was that a good answer, Anastasia or no? Yes. Well, you seem like you even I think it was a good uh answer. Simon wrote in, hi, uh Simon Stark, is there any reason I shouldn't use food-grade essential citrus oils and cocktails in place of the traditional twist? I'm a home bartender, so I may zest one day, but I'm not using uh the juice for a week.
+
+[51:49] I got tired of flack from my family for the sad rose, scalp, citrus on the shelf. The essential oils seem to work well, and I only use lemon, orange, and grapefruit. Anything should uh I should know, or is this okay? The problem with essential oils is that they're very hard to dose unless you uh dilute them in alcohol and spray them over the top. You can do that.
+
+[52:06] I don't, I mean, I've never experimented with I've never done a side-by-side with uh with like diluted sprayed citrus oil versus actually doing a twist. If if you what I recommend that you do, Simon, is you're not gonna hurt anyone, so don't worry about that. But like I would do a side-by-side, do a triangle test, right? Three cocktails, like two one way, one the other. See if people can tell the difference on a repeated basis.
+
+[52:30] And if they can't tell the difference, then yeah, sure, do the thing that's easy. I mean, for me, like the uh the act of doing that, especially if you're gonna do a drop, right? So, like in a in a in an old fashioned where you're gonna drop the citrus peel, it's nice to have that there because it continues to add aroma and it's got that burst of color in an otherwise brown drink. Uh so there you go. Was that a decent answer there, Snow?
+
+[52:53] Yes, yes, yes. All right. Uh I get one I got one more, right? Then two uh two for the new year. I got two left from the new year I didn't get to from TPO.
+
+[53:04] LM. Uh hey Dave, I bought a CMB, that's Becker uh tap for Seltzer, and it's great, but when I put a soda or cocktail through it, it comes out only as foam. I've tried different pressures for dispensing, but to no avail. I forced carbonated keg at 40 psi for cocktail and 30 for soda. Do you have a tip from my issue?
+
+[53:21] Uh cocktail's gonna foam. Ain't nobody can actually do a good job dispensing a highly carbonated cocktail. I've never seen it done, right? You can torque the pressure. Yes, uh, but here's some hints.
+
+[53:34] Uh, you need a much longer dispensing line after your cold plate. So you need to put it through two cycles of your cold plate after it comes out of the keg, two, not one, two. And uh that should be enough of a line to slow it down so that it's coming out at a relatively uh low uh a low differential between the uh line and the head. You'll get some initial foaming, but it should calm down. And then the little, there's a little knob, little knob on the right hand side of that tap that you can adjust to uh tame it.
+
+[54:03] And if you tame the flow, put it through two things of cold plate, make sure it's really cold when it comes out. The soda should be fine. The cocktail, I mean, I think that sucker's always gonna foam, but that's me. Uh okay, was that decent? Now we're gonna we're we're we're on to on to Hermie and Chris and and Phil.
+
+[54:19] Hermie and Phil in Montreal. What do you want to start with? Alright, do to do this do Montreal, do Montreal. Go. We went to Montreal.
+
+[54:28] That was it. Yes. No, I mean greenhouse. We ate bagels, we stayed in a tree house. There was a grease fire, and uh we ate all right.
+
+[54:45] Let's go and re let's go in random order grease fire go. Uh fire. So this was at the end of our first we entered Montreal, I mean, entered Quebec, uh, ate dinner in Montreal at a really nice restaurant, and then moved farther north up to Montombon for our where we were gonna stay in a tree house. The Laurentians, oh nice, yeah. Yeah, and so we end up hike two miles in the dark to the tree house at 11 p.m.
+
+[55:19] Start a fire in the wood-burning stove. We accidentally put candles on top of the stove, the candles blew up with flames. Yeah, we doused it with water. We doused it. Well, it was on start heating up the place or just have anything whatsoever because we were struggling so hard to like get the fire going.
+
+[55:42] But then so we we got it going, and then we realized we hadn't moved the tea lights, so we hadn't like I got a spatula or something and tried to like move them off with the melten wax like spilled onto the furnace and the floor, and the third time that happened, it caught fire outside, and then stupidly so you tried to do this three times. And like that was the dumbest thing we could have done. We should have just done nothing, which is eventually what like re remedied the situation was nothing. Like we just stood there. I mean, you wanna the start they wanted this one to like run out, and we probably should have.
+
+[56:16] But the fire calmed itself and nothing was damaged. Surprising. That's that's that's nice. Have I ever told you my Montremblanc story? No, no.
+
+[56:28] I was a small relatively No. I was at uh we went to a a ski a ski lodge called I believe it's called like Grey Rocks or something like this. And uh I was a kid, right? So I wanted to do downhill because all kids wanted to do downhill, but we were doing cross country, right? And this is back before skating.
+
+[56:46] This is diagonal cross country, right? And so I was like, oh man, I really want to do downhill, but like, you know, they were like, no, we don't have downhill gear, we have cross-country gear, and furthermore, you don't have a lift ticket. So being the little idiot that I was, I cross-country skied up the downhill slope, and everyone on the lift was like, the hell's wrong with this kid. What is wrong with like people were yelling down from the from the from the chair lift, you're going the wrong way! You're going the wrong way!
+
+[57:17] And I was like going up the mountain, and then of course the the the cross-country skis, they suck going downhill, they don't have an edge on the sides. It's not a telemark ski. So I'm like, I'm just like snow plowing, like why snow plowing my way down like a freak show all the way down the mountain. That's my Montreblanc story. Wow.
+
+[57:35] Dave, your your your childhood sounds like some kind of mix between the Beverly Hillbillies and Succession. You're like the Gale grad who summers on the Cape. And then you're and then your cross-country. Oh, my cross-country skis weren't quite exactly what I was looking for. All right, Phil.
+
+[57:51] All right, all right. Uh now. Hey, listen. The other thing about the Laurentians at that time is that the cross-country trails that we went on, and it was butt cold. I remember that.
+
+[57:59] They were maintained by monks. And so they were there were monks wearing, I swear to swear to God, wearing the full-on monk habits on snowmobiles. And if you've never seen a monk wearing a habit, like grooming a ski trail in a snowmobile, you haven't lived. You haven't lived. My waiter's name was Sylvan.
+
+[58:23] I still remember him to this day. Sylvan was the waiter. Sylvan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right.
+
+[58:31] Sylvan. Sylvan. Yeah. Oh, all right. Yeah, he was Kevicrois.
+
+[58:35] Yeah. He was Kevicois. By the way, okay, no, wait a minute it was Grease Fire, Treehouse. That was the same thing. And uh bagels were not that good.
+
+[58:44] Bagels at St. Vietnam. You didn't like them? Not really. They weren't like they were hot.
+
+[58:50] I mean, Joe, your opinion on bagels is kind of meaningless here in California. Excuse me? No offense, California, but I mean, come on. I mean, maybe I had like higher expectations because I thought Montreal was I mean, okay. We had some bagels at one bagel shop in the entire city.
+
+[59:17] Maybe there's more than that. No, we went for there. Yeah. And also, people, Nastasia enjoys poutine. Even though it's got French fries in it.
+
+[59:30] Because they've gouged some stuff here. Right, Joe? Did you like it? I I liked it, yeah. I mean, it wasn't the traditional poutine.
+
+[59:38] They threw in some nanny nanny. They went to let's look. They did just say it. They went to Pied De Couchon, they had the foie gras uh poutine, and you don't need to put foie gras on a poutine. You don't need to do it.
+
+[59:44] We had the poutine, Dave. You did not have it at Pietro Couchon? I had Foie Gras there. But the poutine we had was at like some hole in the bar in a village right before Montemblanc. Yeah.
+
+[1:00:04] Yeah. Uh also before we get into Herm and Phil, I know we're gonna run a couple minutes over, but I apologize. I can't let this go. Uh so everybody knows that John, I think everybody knows, everybody knows that I can I can say this. John's girlfriend's family owns a kalamazoo grill.
+
+[1:00:24] Now, I've said on this air, Kalamazoo grill is the grill that costs more than an automobile. All right. The Kalamazoo grill, well, it costs more than a bad automobile. Like it's like it's like it's like a low to mid-price, it's like um it's like a Hyundai. It's like a it's like a sonata, right?
+
+[1:00:42] So like you could either have like a Hyundai sonata or you could have like this Kalamazoo grill. But uh the sonata, the people who built it don't sign the inside of it for you, right? So this grill is so grilly, right, that they s the workers sign the inside of the Kalamazoo grill, and we're all like, hey, hey, how good could it be? Now John, for the first time ever used it, go. It was really, really intense.
+
+[1:01:09] I've never worked with a piece of kitchen equipment that gets as hot as that did. I used it to finish steering off this prime room I made in the oven, and it was too intense for the prime rim. The amount of flare-ups, you know, just because of the high heat and the grease coming off of it, it was it was wild. But I mean, it would be really fun to, you know, get the flames more under control. I asked other people to get it started, so I think they went a little too crazy.
+
+[1:01:34] He's sweetie. Yeah, you're fake. Get close to the mic. I need to hear about the Kalamazoo. Were you running it on gas or are you running it on wood or coal?
+
+[1:01:42] On wood. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay.
+
+[1:01:45] Yeah, no, running it on wood, it was really intense. For those of you that don't know, for those of you that have never done wood fires, like wood fires, wood, not coal, wood fires go from zero to ah real quick. And so uh when you're cooking with wood, if you're not like used to cooking with wood, you end up putting like a lot of wood on, and then it's really hardcore. I love cooking that wood, by the way. If this, if the thermostat on the Kalamazoo is you know good and and true, it we maxed out at over a thousand degrees.
+
+[1:02:19] Yeah. Wouldn't keep going yet. It was screaming hot. All right. So for for for those of you that uh for those of you thinking looking forward to cooking on it again at some point.
+
+[1:02:29] Those of you to do some math at a thousand degrees, uh the radiant heat per square meter of uh cooking surface that is being released, guess in watts, guess per square meter, how many watts for a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know, Dave. Just say it. That's why I asked for a guess. I know you don't know.
+
+[1:02:50] I j I literally did this calculation yesterday. So like I know the answer. It's guess. Five hundred thousand. Oh, that's really high.
+
+[1:02:58] I'll give you a the sun is sixty-four million watts per square meter. So, how many watts is this thousand thousand degree grill per square meter? I don't know. 20,000. Very it's pretty close.
+
+[1:03:12] Anyone else? Anyone else? 30. It's 30. 30,000 watts per square meter.
+
+[1:03:14] That is insane. Insane, right? And when you take it down to only 500 degrees, right? It is like a lot, lot less. It's only like, you know, a couple thousand watts per square meter.
+
+[1:03:30] You know what I mean? Like five, six thousand watts per square meter. So like that that that extra, you know, push up there causes the radiant heat to just freaking skyrocket. Just freaking skyrocket. And so like stuff will just instantly catch fire, including you.
+
+[1:03:45] I'm I'm surprised the grill made it. The grill was fine. Grill was totally fine. Yeah. Really.
+
+[1:03:51] Yeah. It's it's an impressive piece of equipment. Nice. Did you look for the signatures on the inside? It was too dark and I was too busy cooking, so I did not.
+
+[1:03:58] But next time when it's light on, I'll take a closer look. Yeah. All right. All right. All right.
+
+[1:04:03] So we're on to the last two things of the year, right, Nastasia? Is there anything else? Did I miss anything? No, hurry. We're over time.
+
+[1:04:09] Okay, okay, okay. So everyone knows who listens to this show that Nastasi and I, they love the uh the Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer. Some idiot, by the way. Look, you might be a good person. I don't remember your name, but they wrote an article for the Atlantic saying how all of those like shows, including Rudolph, are bad, and then rehashed a bunch of like dumb old stuff about how all of the characters in the uh in Rudolph are problematic.
+
+[1:04:35] Yeah, no duh. No duh. Like, you know, no one's like, oh, Kramer versus Kramer sucked because like they weren't nice to each other. No, come on, man. It's like it's not about people being nice to each other, right?
+
+[1:04:46] It's just it's the show that you watch. Like, go look at that Atlantic article where they where they say that all of the shows are bad. Nothing interesting in that article. Nothing interesting. I am a fan of the Rudolph.
+
+[1:04:57] Right, Stas? Yes, we love it. We quote it. We love it. We quote it, we love it.
+
+[1:05:02] Now you had Joe watch to see if he could find the error and he couldn't find the error. Right. Yes. I couldn't find yeah, I couldn't find the error. I didn't know what I was looking for.
+
+[1:05:14] Once I found error, I was like, okay. But then your own son came up with a like logical explanation. Yeah, my own son is the genius. So here's here's the story. So for those of you that don't know, Rudolph is a is a reindeer with a red nose, okay?
+
+[1:05:28] And not just like he's a little bit drunk. By the way, you know what they almost didn't get to make the uh that whole thing because they were like, they was gonna think that the drunk reindeer. We can't have a drunk reindeer with kids because it used to be like everyone's like, oh, the red nose meant that someone was drunk. That was like an old meme before memes, right? And uh so somehow, like by making it that bright, I guess, like a light literal like light bulb, they were like, everyone was like, We're we're okay with it.
+
+[1:05:54] So anyway, so you have this they have this reindeer with a red nose, and everyone is shunning the reindeer. Santa is shunning the reindeer based on his looks, you know, like uh the reindeer are really mean, they don't let him play in the reindeer game. So you have uh, you know, you have like the who uh who is it doing the who is the teacher? Which which reindeer was the teacher? I forget.
+
+[1:06:12] Uh Blitzon, Don? I thought one of those, one of those. It's like, we're not gonna let Rudolph play in any reindeer games, right? Right. Anyway, the the best character in the whole thing, obviously, is Yukon Cornelius.
+
+[1:06:24] Everyone wants to be Yukon Cornelius. Yukon Cornelius, the guy that is the actor who played uh Yukon Cornelius uh last name is man, I forget his first name. He actually uh fought in World War II and was uh one of one of the people who uh helped liberate uh one of the concentration camps. Interesting character, Yukon Cornelius. But Yukon Cornelius, yeah, Yukon Cornelius.
+
+[1:06:44] I mean, everybody is there anyone that doesn't love Yukon Cornelius, Nastasia? No, no one I know. Yeah, no one that I no one that you respect doesn't like Yukon Cornelius. I mean, he's he's awesome. Everyone says everyone in that show is mad.
+
+[1:06:59] Look at Yukon Cornelius. Do you think he what do you think his lifestyle is like quickly in one sentence? Yukon Cornelius. Is he married? Does he have kids?
+
+[1:07:07] What's this deal? Go one sentence. Don't we say I think he's a furry. I think he's a furry. What?
+
+[1:07:14] I think he's a thing. I think I think he and the bumble are a little closer than they're letting on in the show. Uh that's what I think. And he can do whatever he wants. Look, Yukon Cornelius, Yukon Cornelius, like he's just very accepting, right?
+
+[1:07:28] So like he's like, he's you eat what you like, and I eat what I like. I mean, he's great. No matter what you do, like he is like, he's like, he's fine with it. You know what I mean? He's gonna save the day.
+
+[1:07:39] He's Yukon Cornelius, you know? Although he did have that one awesome line when he said to uh Rudolph and Hermy, even in a land of misfits, you're misfits. So he he did throw down on that. So anyway, so we used that with our loan officer yesterday. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:07:53] So we're like Nastasi and I are trying to get this business loan. It's it's months and months and all this stuff. And then like they like the the lady we were talking to is like, I've never seen something this effed up before. And I was like, even among misfits, you're misfits. Like that was doing the whole thing from the show.
+
+[1:08:09] I think she had seen the show, so she knew what was going on. So anyway, so you have this red nosed reindeer, and you have this uh elf who wants to be a dentist. We won't get into that, but he wants to be a dentist, doesn't like making toys. And uh his boss, it's all coming down to this. His boss in the show is uh I call him the head elf.
+
+[1:08:25] I don't know what he's actually called, but he has this kind of like round face and like like he has like a goatee. And he is mean, he's a mean guy. And he has this very, very gruff voice, right? And he's like, Why weren't you at elf practice? Like that's how he talks, right?
+
+[1:08:43] Like, literally, that's how he talks. And uh so Santa shows up, right? And they're and all the elves are together, right, at elf practice, and uh, you know, Hermie's off doing, you know, like pretending to do dental work on a on a doll. Uh, and later the head elf yells at him. He's like, We don't need any chewing dolls.
+
+[1:09:04] Like that's just yelling at him with that voice. And uh, and so when he introduces the music, because Santa is looking like a like a D-bag. I gotta be honest, Santa's a giant D-bag throughout the entire show, right? And so he's sitting in the chair and he's got his hand on it, he's got his head on his hand, he's like not paying attention, he's like looking around, he's doing anything. Mrs.
+
+[1:09:25] Claus is being a freaking gem. She's like paying attention to these freaking elves. These elves have been working hard on this song called We Are Santa's Elves. And the head elf gets up, and you see his face, you see him, you expect some sort of mean son of a gun. And he goes, and remember, it's for Santa and the one and a two-a-and and then they start doing the whole song.
+
+[1:09:46] And the first time I saw, I was like, What the hell? Where is that voice coming from? And then literally right after, Santa goes, needs work, I have to go. And he leaves, and then you know, Mrs. Claus is like, oh, don't pay any attention.
+
+[1:09:58] And then she leaves, and then he's like, He's right, that sounds terrible. He starts, goes back into his old voice. So I always thought this is a mistake, this is an error. They like for some reason, like maybe the head elf died, and they needed a voiceover, and so they did an entirely different voice. And it always stuck with me.
+
+[1:10:14] And I mentioned this to Dax this year, and he right off the bat goes, didn't miss a beep. That is his Santa suck-up voice. Yeah. And I was like, I was like, this whole my whole world like disintegrated, and I was like, oh my God, like I hadn't thought about this whole like elf hierarchy where this freaking elf has to code switch in front of Santa and act like one human being or one elf in front of Santa, and then is an entirely has an entirely different voice and language when he's talking to his other elves, and it's not, and it's like entirely mean. So he's like, he's a bully, he's like a toxic workplace guy on the elves, but then whenever he's talking to Santa, he has this entirely different persona.
+
+[1:11:02] This blue when I realized it wasn't a mistake, that just shows how deep that show is. That they built that into that show, that just shows how deep that show. Suck on that, Atlantic writer. You just don't watch closely enough. You like take other people's like dumb interpretations of like what's going on in that without actually looking at it.
+
+[1:11:20] For instance, Yukon Cornelius Nastasia, what does that man have on his waistbelt? Gun. A gun. Man carries a gun. And does he have does he have gunpowder for that gun?
+
+[1:11:32] Yes. Yeah, because what are the life-sustaining supplies? Guitar strings, ham hocks, and gunpowder. Yeah, and cornmeal. So we know that the man, we know that the man can make scrapple.
+
+[1:11:44] We know that the man can make scrapple because he's got ham hocks and cornmeal. All right. So the man knows how to make scrapple, and we know he's searching for a peppermint mine, so we know that he's gonna freshen up afterwards, and we know he has a gun, and we know he has gunpowder and guitar strings, although we never seen him play the guitar. Do we? He doesn't play the guitar at the end, does he?
+
+[1:12:01] He doesn't know. I think it's for the snowman. Yeah. Oh. See?
+
+[1:12:07] Anyway, so man, but he never he never he never fires a gun at the bumble or at anything else. He he he he's completely non semi-nonviolent solutions to these issues. I mean, he's an amazing guy, Yukon Cornelius. Anyway, uh leave you, I'll leave you with that on the way. Anything else to say to people before we uh Phil take it away with his uh with his uh yearly grinch?
+
+[1:12:29] No. John, Joe, Phil. Well, anything to promote? Buy this year's old bro. Buy this year's old.
+
+[1:12:38] Joe, you Joe, you you Joe, you push in any poetry, pushing any poetry. Um, no, I'm not gonna push it, but I'm I mean, yeah, I have a book in the works. Yeah, you gotta you gotta push things. You don't go on something unless you're pushing something. Come on, everyone's pushing something.
+
+[1:12:59] What? Yeah, once it's released. When's it released? Maybe I'll have when is it releasing? Probably like sometime next year.
+
+[1:13:08] We'll race. You and I are gonna race. Do it before Dave. Do it before Dave, please. Releasing the book.
+
+[1:13:16] Yeah, yeah, race to the books. Uh, Dave. Oh, come on. So I was like two years ago it was supposed to be released. Come on.
+
+[1:13:27] Dude, I want an answer. When is it? First of all, it's it's Rocktober, but I don't know. I was supposed to hand it in in October for a year's thing, so I don't know. I haven't spoken to uh my editor to figure out like a new time.
+
+[1:13:38] I need to get her this section on on heat transfer, which is why I happen to know exactly how much energy uh 170075 degree uh grill is going to be putting off per square meter. That's why I happen to exactly know that because I was working again on my heat transfer section of it. Uh Joe, get yours out before Dave. That was Okay, yeah, we should have an episode where we read from each other's books. I I like that.
+
+[1:14:02] I like that a lot. And uh what I appreciate most is that Nastasia only wants Joe to finish the book just to make me feel bad. So it's not to make Joe feel good. If she wants Joe's book to be done so that I feel bad. I want you guys to read sections of each other's books on air.
+
+[1:14:19] That'll be really fun. Yeah. That would be a lovely smashing time. Smashing. Smashing.
+
+[1:14:26] All right, all right. So hold second, hold a second. Patreon people, we appreciate you. Thanks for uh joining us for this first year that we're uh uh at the new stand studios at Rockefeller Center. We appreciate you.
+
+[1:14:40] And uh we have uh Phil Bravo. Uh and Dave, before I start, I have my one thing to push. If anyone is looking for a last minute Christmas gift, make a donation to Bloom Haiti, B L U M E, Building Leaders Music Using Music Education uh in Haiti, BloomHate.org. Amazing organization, and I promise Dave zero recorders. Uh okay, let me ask you a question.
+
+[1:15:04] Are you signed up for cameo? Can people go on cameo and have you do voice messages for them? I'm not, but I can do that now if you'd like, Dave. Yeah, go find Phil Bravo on Cameo. Phil.
+
+[1:15:15] Yeah, come on, man. Come on. This is I can't. Maybe this is why you get no work in voice and invoice, because you're doing it from like across the block. Is this better or worse?
+
+[1:15:23] Better. Better? Better than before, but not as good as it was when it's at its. Oh, yeah. Give me a little bit of fill before you say that.
+
+[1:15:29] Alright, right, right, right. Without further ado, Phil Bravo. These are some lyrics created for Dave. And let me tell you, when you ask Nastasia, do you have any mean lyrics about John? Uh she comes up with a lot of things that aren't able to be said on air.
+
+[1:15:50] Stay close to the mic. You're going in and out. I'm right here. Alright, we're going back to micro. Son of a gun.
+
+[1:15:59] Even even among misfits, you're misfits. Dave, give me the intro. I want that. Uh better da better da bomb. You're some mean ones, Dave and Stoss.
+
+[1:16:11] You really are some heels. You're as cuddly as a Rhodovap, as charming as Dave Chang, Dave and Stoss. Dave majored in philosophy, and somehow now all he does is talk about ties. That uh we had uh John has a PhD, but now it doesn't have to bite. Wait, what?
+
+[1:16:37] Phil, you you you left. I I heard pie, and then you left. He's walked out of the room talking about PhDs. What the hell? Dave, I'm back.
+
+[1:16:47] I'm here. My lit my my mic is out. My mic is out. Yeah. Listen, if you if you hire Phil on cameo, he promises to use like uh uh his iPhone.
+
+[1:17:00] You're not a green person, right? You're a blue person, aren't you? I'm a blue person. Alright. Do you have more?
+
+[1:17:07] But that was great, but I don't know because you faded out. I don't know you whether you were saying more or not. I think that my microphone clips, man, but you nauseate us, Stas and Dave. With a nauseous supernos. John has a PhD, but now just fetches city bikes for Stas and Dave.
+
+[1:17:27] Ouch. You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel that you put in the spinzall for about five minutes, then you press it through some cheesecloth, put it back in for another five minutes. And that's what I had. Dave, there's there's so much food stuff in here. You got cactus, peel, garlic in your skull, dead tomatoes with uh moldy purple spots.
+
+[1:17:48] You know, there's a lot of material in there. Yeah. Well, Phil, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks.
+
+[1:17:54] And ha happy holidays to everyone, and we'll see you next year on Cooking Issues.
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+[0:10] Hello, happy new year and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arrow, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on Newsman Studio, the Rockefeller Center, New York City. First show of 2022. Happy to be back. Here with, of course, with uh Nastasi de Hammer Lopez.
+
+[0:22] How are you doing? Feeling, feeling, feeling good, feeling, feeling ready for the new year? Yeah. Can't be worse. Could be.
+
+[0:29] Oh, wow. Wow. All right. I mean, from a business perspective. From all perspectives.
+
+[0:34] Yeah. All right. All right. Good. Uh, and we got uh John over here.
+
+[0:38] How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah? Yeah. Not gonna complain at least, so nice.
+
+[0:42] I like that. That's my new that's my new thing. When people say, uh, I'm not gonna say can't complain anymore, I'm gonna say won't. Won't complain. Yeah.
+
+[0:48] Exactly. Yeah, won't complain. Leaves him thinking a little bit, just a little bit. Uh we got Hassan in booth in the booth again. Hassan Moore, how you doing?
+
+[0:55] Very good, very good. How are you? Doing well, doing well. Uh how how was your New Year's uh New Year's is good. I stayed at home and uh watched the ball drop.
+
+[1:05] Oh, yeah? They still do that? On TV, yes. Who does it? Who but who does that now that uh Dick Clark is dead?
+
+[1:11] Um I was watching Miley Cyrus and Pete Davidson, so I'm not really sure. Uh so wait, so Pete Davidson's a new Dick Clark. It doesn't check out though. He's more like a sea cresty kind of guy. Right, but he was funny.
+
+[1:23] Yeah, yeah. Staten Island zone. Gotta love it. The only Democrat in all of Staten Island. Is that true?
+
+[1:27] Is he the only Democrat in Staten Island? Probably. Yeah. Uh and we got uh Jackie Molecules. Where are you, Jackie?
+
+[1:36] Back home in LA. LA, huh? You love LA. You love it. Have you ever met uh I live here.
+
+[1:42] I mean Have you met Randy Newman ever? He's still there, right? I haven't met him. I thought when you moved to LA, you got to meet Randy Newman. I thought that was part of the deal.
+
+[1:53] I didn't get that coupon in the mail. No? I love Randy Newman. I mean, who doesn't love Randy Newman? Randy Newman's the best.
+
+[2:01] But uh enough of that. I'm super excited. We have today a guest that we were supposed to have on prior to the new year. We had technical difficulties in the studio, had to had to shut it down. We have had.
+
+[2:11] I'm just gonna tell you what it is. First of all, I'm gonna tell you the telephone number. Get ready to write this down if you're a Patreon listener. Call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
+
+[2:22] And if you're listening to this and wish you could call in, join our Patreon. Very easy. Very simple. But we have today, long time waiting. I'm a huge fan, Sandor Katz.
+
+[2:30] How you doing? Hi. Hi, I'd say it's a pleasure. I wish we I wish we'd had you on when you were in New York City so that we could have you like live in the studio because I've always wanted to meet you. For those of you, for the three people hearing this who don't already know who you are, you are kind of like the uh I don't know, you're the the you're the Papasian of fermentation, the Harold McGee of fermentation.
+
+[2:53] In other words, like what Harold, what Papasian was to homebrewing, although I don't know that people read his book as much anymore. You are to fermentation, or what you know, Harold was to food or is to food science, you are to fermentation. You're like the person that everyone goes back to. We've I've had, I'm you know, really good friends with like Ariel Johnson and Rich Shee, who've written great books on fermentation with you know, uh Rich with Jeremy Umansky or and with I've had David Zilber on the show, but we've never had you, and I'm super psyched to have you. It's a huge honor.
+
+[3:18] Well, I'm so happy to be with you, and um you know, I'm flattered by the analogies, but I would just point out that homebrewing is fermentation. That's true. That's true, but very specific. So your first book on ferment, not your first book, but your first book on fermentation was wild fermentation, right? I I haven't read your first first book, the one that that uh punk group I think wrote a song uh for you about called uh The Revolution uh was it, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwave.
+
+[3:42] I've not read that one. Well, I okay, actually you've got my sequence a little bit wrong. Wild fermentation was my first book that came out in 2003. Um and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwave came out in 2006. I mean, it really was uh, you know, it it's a book about um grassroots food movements, you know, largely that I became aware of uh as a result of my wild fermentation book tour of you know, talking about fermentation with so many people in so many different kinds of venues.
+
+[4:14] Um, you know, and then the Art of Fermentation came out in 2012. That's when I first started reading your stuff. Then Fermentation is Metaphor came out last year, and then I have a brand new book that's been out for about two months that's called Fermentation Journeys. That's about uh fermented foods and beverages that I've learned about mostly in my travels. So before we get into the new book, I wanna, because uh I'm super I only have the uh original edition of Wild Fermentation, which I actually bought after I read The Art of Fermentation.
+
+[4:50] My first book of uh of yours that uh I read was the Art Art of Fermentation, and that's the one, you know, for the you know, since it came out fundamentally, whenever anyone asks me a question on fermentation on this show, because we've been doing this show for God knows how many years, I uh I just say, why don't you just go read the art of fermentation because they you know he you know, Cats has a section on it, and everyone's like, oh, you should have one to show. So anyway, so here we go. Uh but what's I I I don't have your your re-revision, but I read the the the intro to the new edition of Wild Fermentation uh online, and why don't you talk about the idea of revising? Because I think revising something like that, right, which is kind of a seminal book has got to be really really interesting. You said you updated a lot, but what did you change?
+
+[5:35] And more importantly, what about your your mental attitude? Because you learned so much between the two revisions. What about the your mental attitude changed? Like w how did you approach the revision? Well, I mean that that's that's an interesting question.
+
+[5:49] I mean, uh I I mean I I I tried to really leave the spirit of the book um, you know, uh uh uh you know as as it was. But um, you know, I would say that the main thing is that, you know, as a result of what began as a book tour for wild fermentation and sort of has evolved into a lifestyle as an itinerant fermentation educator, um, you know, I just got a lot more experienced at uh you know talking about fermentation to people and and and just sort of developed a you know clearer sense of conceptual progressions and you know what common misunderstandings were. And so y you know, really I feel like I was able to bring to bear on the revised edition of Wild Fermentation, you know, just sort of my um you know experience as a fermentation educator even more than my experience as a fermenter, although, you know, certainly certainly you know that that that played into it as well. But let me let me address this question of revival. Um, you know, really the perspective I have come to have is that you know fermented foods and beverages are an essential aspect of how people, you know, everywhere make effective use of whatever food resources are available to them.
+
+[7:11] And you know, fermentation is practiced everywhere, has been practiced everywhere. Um, and you know, prior to the uh you know, centralization of food production, um, you know, which really is mostly a phenomenon of the 20th century, um, you know, fermentation was, you know, sort of enmeshed in people's lives, if not in the life of every single household, you know, in the life of every community. So people at least would be aware of the process and what went into it. And you know, part of food centralization is you know, we just become less aware of the processes by which you know our food comes into being. And so, you know, fermentation has become um increasingly mysterious to people over the same period of time that um you know the field of microbiology emerged, we became aware of bacteria.
+
+[8:06] Initially we were afraid of bacteria because we thought of them primarily as um uh uh uh uh agents of disease. Um, but increasingly, really since the new millennium, we've been hearing the flip side of the story, how important bacteria and other microorganisms to you know our effective uh uh functioning, uh to the f effective functioning of the soil, to the health of plants and all kinds of organisms. Um, you know, the revival of fermentation is really people reclaiming this important process that is such an element of uh you know all of our culinary traditions, you know, the cultures that all of us come from, um, you know, and just uh you know, how to make effective use of food resources. Don't you think it's kind of like a it's interesting because it's a it's a there's a double whammy, right? If you read So certainly industrialization, uh the kind of uh pablomification of uh food, you know, is and was a real phenomenon, especially, you know, in this country and parts of Europe for sure.
+
+[9:11] But the assault on that kind of th stuff started much earlier, as you say with the kind of with the discovery of bacteria. You read all of the books from the you know, mid uh early mid mid-1800s, Sylvester Graham, even all of these people were were petrified of fermentation, right? You right you read uh this is like the era when baking, you know, baking powder uh was considered a more healthy uh thing to make bread with than yeast because of the the nasty bugs that might uh be involved, and with God forbid salt risen bread, which is also written about. So what do you think about that double whammy, like the the fear of science and and microbiology and then the industrialization? You think they're they're both to blame, or do you blame one more than the other?
+
+[9:49] Well, I mean, I would just say I I I mean I would say I would say both of them. I mean, uh the the thing is that the the products of fermentation have never you know gone out of popularity. The products of fermentation have enjoyed enduring popularity. You know, think about bread, cheese, chocolate, coffee, beer, wine, um uh you know, vinegar, soy sauce, fish sauce. The the products of fermentation have really just enjoyed enduring popularity.
+
+[10:20] So, you know, it's not as if you know, people stopped enjoying the products of fermentation because they became afraid of bacteria. You know, it's more that people got squeamish about the process. People started sort of projecting onto it. People started imagining that you need a laboratory with controlled conditions and you know, uh uh a microbiologist with a microscope in order to do it safely. So I mean, I don't think people ever became afraid of the products of fermentation.
+
+[10:51] I mean, it's more that people began to imagine that there was some, you know, sort of uh uh you know, science or something beyond their capabilities involved in the process. Right. Well, it's uh, you know, in that in that last you know, bit you were just saying, I think one of the nice things about your book is kind of uh a go try it attitude. You know what I mean? It's uh without being unsafe, without giving kind of unsafe advice, right?
+
+[11:20] Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend if I thought you were giving unsafe advice, I wouldn't recommend your book to people. But um you know, it's like the kind of go try it attitude, I think is one of the reasons why, especially the art of fermentation so successful. Like is that was that a stated was that was that a goal before you wrote it, or was that just a byproduct of who you are? Oh, I mean, you know, my goal from the very beginning, from you, you know, um um uh, you know, my initial experiences teaching about fermentation, which was a small grassroots event in 1998, uh the zine that I wrote prior to the book Wild Fermentation, all of my books, all the teaching I do. I mean, my objective is to demystify fermentation and and um uh you know, help people who are interested feel confident in in doing it themselves at home.
+
+[12:10] And you know, fermentation is very, very much a strategy for safety. Fermentation is not dangerous. Foods that are fermented are safer than the equivalent food not fermented. Um, you know, the process is very much a strategy for safety. There's nothing to be afraid of.
+
+[12:28] You know, that's not to say that it's not impossible in any ferment that anything could go wrong. But you know, what the practice of fermentation is all about is is um manipulating environmental conditions, which has the results of encouraging the growth of certain organisms and simultaneously discouraging the growth of other organisms. And you know, really what you need to know in order to ferment successfully and safely is what are the conditions you're trying to create. If you're fermenting sauerkraut, you're trying to get the vegetables submerged. That's the environmental manipulation.
+
+[13:01] If they're all ex if all the surfaces are exposed to air, it's going to become a big cloud of hairy mold. You prevent the aerobic uh uh uh mold spores that are always there from developing by getting them submerged and depriving them from a flow of oxygen. And in that condition, lactic acid bacteria will dominate every single time. And every fermented food or beverage is something like that. It's creating the conditions where the organisms that you want will be able to thrive.
+
+[13:33] Well, on that creating condition, by the way, uh you can't know this, but you just hyper-triggered nostasia with spores and mold. How are you doing, Stas? I'm doing okay. You're doing all right? Yeah.
+
+[13:42] I uh I used to, as a jest to be mean, send her text images of mold spores and then just call her and say, Spore, just to mess with her, but you know, yeah, I'll stop. Uh on that, what so one of the interesting things I think is like, and I'll go back to the McGee analogy, Harold McGee. So, you know, when he wrote his book on food and cooking, he was interested in in kind of showing the breadth of science, but there wasn't yet this kind of uh movement in kitchens to do all of these new things using scientific techniques, right? So then, but then he became kind of uh you know uh a totemic figure for for that group of people. You write this uh you know, a series of books, and then a couple years after that, maybe as a result, I don't know, I don't know whether you want to take credit for it or not, but there's a huge wave of new styles of fermentation, some that have never been seen before.
+
+[14:31] So, first of all, an explosion of traditional fermentation in the restaurant scene I'm talking about, because a lot of our listeners are restaurant people uh in in the restaurant scene, but then also an explosion of trying old techniques on new ingredients, kind of new environments, right? So what are your thoughts on that kind of explosion? I'm sure it's gratifying in some way that, you know, because I know that a lot of these people are looking up to you or looking at your at your work. But uh what are your thoughts about some of the products that are coming out of it? And then as a follow-up, uh, you know, some of these aren't traditional techniques.
+
+[15:03] So uh traditional techniques, obviously the safety is built into the fact that we've been doing it for zillions of years and and nobody died, right? The new techniques though, or applying it to a new situation. Do you ever worry about that stuff? Well, I mean, first of all, let uh uh well, okay. Let me say first of all that it is, you know, it's extremely gratifying um, you know, that that that you know my work has resonated and um um you know that it has been you know kind of part of this um you know broad revival of the fermentation arts and and and and that's really thrilling to me.
+
+[15:38] Um you know, I don't think I can, you know, take any credit for it really. I mean, I think I I I I had I had like supremely good luck in the timing of you know, sort of m my burgeoning interest and writing a book, because you know, I think that the the single factor that has made um uh people so receptive to fermentation, and as I said earlier, the products of fermentation have never ever waned in popularity. It's just that like people weren't doing it and people weren't thinking about the process. But you know, once we started reading about the human microbiome and you know, the complexity of the bacterial populations upon wheat which we are dependent for our well-being, you know, people started seeking out probiotic foods, bacteria-rich foods, um, you know, what but really with the objective of restoring biodiversity in the gut, because that's related to our digestion, our immune function, our mental health, and almost every other system in our bodies. And I think that, you know, once there was news about the microbiome, that was a natural progression for more and more people to get interested again in um uh uh in in fermented foods and in practicing fermentation in their kitchens, whether they're, you know, just cooking for themselves and their families or they're uh in a restaurant context.
+
+[17:01] Um I mean, in terms of the innovation, I mean, you know, I mean, it's exciting to me to see so much experimentation. But I would say like nobody has invented any completely new fermented foods and beverages for hundreds and possibly thousands of years. So all we're doing is remixing. Right. I mean, it's I'm like thinking of like uh for instance Jeremy.
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+[17:25] You know, personally I'm not I I mean I'm not especially, you know, I'm not especially worried about um um the remixing that that that the that people are doing. I you know, I hope that they're doing th in in in in thoughtful ways. But I you know, I haven't heard any stories of disasters. The biggest disasters I've heard of are, you know, people's exploding bottles of um kombucha and other homemade carbonated sugary beverages. Yeah, you know what my issue with kombucha is is that when people label kombucha, they uh they label the c kombucha but they like okay so someone gives you kombucha and they say it has X percent alcohol content, right?
+
+[18:01] And you taste it and you're like, okay, clearly a large percentage of this alc of the alcohol has been converted to acetic acid, right? But they haven't really m measured that and I'm fine with it either way by the way. As long as it so like I'm I'm on the kind of the opposite spectrum of from you and like um in the sense that I only care about taste. And I like that's that's just that's my job taste. Taste.
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+[18:25] That's all I care about is how does it taste. Okay. And culture. Taste and culture. Yeah yeah taste and culture.
+
+[18:31] Those are the only two things multifaceted and think about multiple things. Yeah and then I I can't uh I mentally don't have the bandwidth for it. But um you know how like so you you know y you take it on a and and you write it in in the in the introduction to wild fermentation and then again in the art of fermentation kind of you started coming to it from uh you know a as you said today from a more health uh not health but it like a a more holistic like whole body whole world microbiome kind of uh viewpoint but what do you you know how much of it for you is just this stuff delicious let me clarify that a little bit yeah because I mean really like y you know I I mean my draw to fermentation started as a kid because I loved pickles. So I mean, I actually would say that I mean as much as I've written about the other things, you know, flavor uh is the first thing that sort of drew my attention to fermentation. You know, then you know, when I was experimenting with macrobiotics in my 20s, um, you know, I started reading a little bit about probiotics and the health benefits, and and that, you know, was like I and that made me think, oh, these foods that I already love are good for me too.
+
+[19:39] I'm gonna really try to make sure I eat them every day. But I was still buying them in the store. The thing that motivated me to learn how to make sauerkraut to open up the joy of cooking and find a recipe for how to make my own sauerkraut was that in 1993 I moved from New York to rural Tennessee and I started keeping a garden. And um, you know, I was such a naive city kid that it had never occurred to me that in a garden all of the cabbage would be ready at about the same time. But that's what I encountered is this obvious reality of agricultural production, and I had a nice row of cabbage, and I I knew that sauerkraut had something to do with with preserving cabbage, so uh, you know, so so I made some sauerkraut and it was delicious, and I kept on making more and experimenting and trying other ferments, and you know, that was really my gateway into fermentation.
+
+[20:29] But I would say that you know, it was the practical value of preservation was what made me actually do it. I was definitely thinking about you know health and probiotics and digestion, but ultimately, you know, I love food and I was motivated by by by the flavors, and I think that you know, all of these things and more are true of fermented foods and beverages. And you know, these are the three of the main reasons that I hear from people about what what got them interested. The fourth is culture. You know, people who um you know have some memory of some practice that their grandparents used to do in annual fermentation that you know fell by the wayside that they're trying to recapture.
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+[21:11] So uh, you know, I I've I've talked to so many people who migrated from some other part of the world and you know miss some uh you know fermented food or beverage from home and are and are and are interested in in trying to figure out how to create recreate it. So, you know, I I mean for me one of the exciting things about fermentation is how multifaceted it is, and it's not reductionistic. It's not just about umami flavors, it's not just about probiotics, it's not just about preservation. I mean, you know, there's just so many practical benefits to fermentation. So uh cabbage, you made me think of cabbage.
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+[21:49] Do you have any tips for doing whole heads of cabbage so that I can have the whole leaf if I'm not gonna do like giant buckets of so that I can bury them in other in other chopped-up leaves. I can't I can't bury the whole heads. What do you what what do you do for that? Do you break the leaves off and then ferment them in a pile or what do you have any tips for that? Well, uh, you know, okay, so one one hybrid method.
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+[22:10] So I do just to just add a little bit of context, in in fermentation journeys, um, you know, I have some stories and some recipes from my time in Croatia, including the idea of um uh uh you know fermenting a bunch of whole heads of cabbage with the cores cut out in a brine and using the the the the leaves of the cabbage, the whole soured leaves as the stuffing for making stuffed cabbage sauce. It's the best ever, by the way. You know, a hybrid method that I've done a fair amount in a modest size croc, you know, let's say uh, you know, two three gallon size croc. You can't really do it in anything smaller than that, is you know, shred half of your cabbage and then leave, you know, one large or two very small heads whole with the cores cut out and just bury the whole heads of cabbage in the shredded cabbage. Yeah.
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+[23:05] For those of you that have never made stuffed cabbage leaves with fully fermented leaves, you are missing out. You are missing out. It is the best by right or wrong. By far and away the best way to make stuffed cabbage. Like without question.
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+[23:20] Like night and and in Southeastern Europe, uh you know, former Yugoslavia states, uh, you know, Croatia and its neighbors, um, you know, that's the typical way of fermenting cabbage is whole heads of cabbage, and then, you know, if they want to serve you sauerkraut, they'll take one of those fermented whole heads and shred it. But as you say, I mean they're used for these just extraordinarily delicious uh uh cabbage rolls, stuffed cabbage rolls. And if you live in New York City, you can go to the Ridgewood pork store and they sell whole like fermented leaves, but uh they're they're pasteurized so it's not the same. It's not they don't they no longer ferment their own the pasteurized stuff it's sour pasturized sauerkraut is so sad. Isn't it sad?
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+[24:01] Isn't it a sad thing? Tastewise. Well I don't know. I I mean personally I would say I have never met a sauerkraut I didn't like. And um you know my my early experiences of sauerkraut as a kid were, you know, what the hot dog vendors in New York are using, which, you know, I would say now is not the highest quality sauerkraut.
+
+[24:21] It's certainly not live sauerkraut. But um uh you know I have never met a kraut I didn't like and I love to cook with sauerkraut. I mean sometimes I talk to people who are scandalized that I would ever cook sauerkraut because um you know because of the probiotics. But um I don't know. I mean it's it's it's i i it's the basis of so many wonderful dishes.
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+[24:41] Oh my god, I love to make Hungarian sauerkraut soup. Uh sometimes I make sauerkraut pierogis. I love to make uh bigos, which is this uh Polish stew where you marinate the vegetables and kraut uh I'm sorry, the meat and kraut, and then you um, you know, and then you stew them right in the in the sauerkraut. You know, incredibly delicious. You want to make sure you eat a little bit of it raw to get the probiotics, but you know, it's it's fun to cook with sauerkraut.
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+[25:07] Oh no, I don't mind cooking it. It's just the stuff that they sell in the packages, they don't just pasteurize it, they jack it with benzowe, and it tastes bad and the texture is terrible. Like it's just you should come back to New York and try tr get the sauerkraut that comes in the plastic bag, you're gonna be sad. Don't you John, it's sad, right? You've had it.
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+[25:25] It is, yeah, it's not very good. It's a sad kraut. It's a sad kraut. Yeah, well, but you know, I mean, I I mean, I get it, you know, is people are used to paying nothing for their food. And and to get, you know, good quality uh good kraut from um, you know, organic vegetables.
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+[25:41] Um, you know, I mean, there's a lot of small regional brands out there now, but none of them are cheap. And um, you know, we're all we're we're we're all trained to just buy the cheapest thing we can. But what I will say is that the largest traditional sauerkraut m uh manufacturer in the United States, Great Lakes Kraut, you know, in the last couple of years, they've introduced a line of raw kraut because that's what people want. So let me get to your new book, because I got to get your new book and then I got it, we have questions from uh from our listeners uh I want to get to before we go. So on fermentation journeys, first of all I have to say when I was reading the introduction, like very early, you say that uh I'll paraphrase you're not gonna yuck anybody's yum.
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+[26:23] And so for those of you that have to what? Well, we say in my family, don't yuck, don't yuck somebody else's yum. In other words, you're not you're not out to poo-poo anybody else's food. Right. So you're not gonna you're never gonna come down negatively on a food stuff, right?
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+[26:37] Because that's just not your bag. That's just not how you so you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I mean I I would definitely I I would definitely never put anybody down for the you know, for the food that they for the the food that they'd like to eat, even if I don't, you know, even if I taste it and it doesn't appeal to me. Then I would, you know, I would just I would just think to myself, like, oh, I haven't learned to like that yet.
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+[26:59] So for those of you that don't know, the theory of the book, right, is is that you're it's uh you're writing it during the pandemic, but it's about all of these places that you visited over the years, uh, all over the world, meeting people, doing doing uh fermentation uh courses and lectures and going to um events and just all of the great fermented things you've tasted all over the world as a result of this journey that that you know being a fermentation guru has put you on, and you're kind of putting them in in in a book. So it's not a how to in the way it's not a direct how to in the way that uh you know the art of fermentation is, it's more as it says, fermentation journeys. So you have all these around the world. So I mean it is recipe, it is practical oriented. I mean it's recipes and you know how to make a lot of foods.
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+[27:42] Right, but the tenor of it is different. It's more like here's who I hung out with and here's the palm wine we made. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of stories, yeah and context. Right.
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+[27:51] And so instantly though, when you said you weren't gonna poo poo anything, I was like, oh man, there go half my questions. Because I want to know the stuff that we've never had. So for instance, I will tell the the listeners that you have tasted, you are the only living human I've ever spoken to who has tasted Kivyut. I don't even know whether I'm pronouncing it right because I've never met anyone who has ever had it. Uh am I pronouncing it correctly, Kivyot?
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+[28:13] No, no, that that section was by a Greenlander microbiologist friend of mine. Oh, you didn't write that section? You didn't taste Kvyat? Oh. I misreement.
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+[28:22] Sorry. I have not been to Greenland. Oh, man. But I would love to go there sometime. I just I just looked up the Kiwi and read the section.
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+[28:30] I think I will because I've become friendly with this um uh you know with this young Greenlander woman who is a microbiologist. So I mean and um, you know, she's studying the traditional fermented foods of of of her homeland. You want to tell people she's you know, she she's writing about them. Tell people about it. Do you want to describe the product?
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+[28:56] Uh describe the product to people so that they know what we're talking about, because it's like a fascinating ferment. Like it's crazy ferment. Sure. So so um um, you know, Kiviac is a traditional uh uh ferment from the northern part of Greenland. Um, you know, like, you know, literally among the most northern permanent human settlements that there are.
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+[29:25] Um and uh, you know, in in in in the far northern places all around the world, I mean, people are utterly dependent on fermentation. People never could have settled those regions if they didn't have some effective methods to preserve food resources from the summertime to get them through the winter time. Um and the winter is long. Um and so Kiviac is basically these little birds, uh uh generally they're birds called ox, which are very easy to catch at a certain point of the year. I mean, they'll they have these nets on long poles and they can catch dozens of them uh uh in each net full.
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+[30:05] They just sort of squeeze the birds with their fingers th you know, which stops their heart, and then they collect hundreds of these birds and stuff them in the skin of a seal. And then they sew it up and seal it with um uh some of the seal fat and then they just put it under rocks, um protecting it from the sun, and um, you know, sort of leave it in the um uh like you know near near the coast, um, you know, and and and really evaluate by smell when it's ready to eat. It's on my list. It's definitely on my list. I got it 'cause someday.
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+[30:44] I don't actually know what I will die without trying it. I know I'm gonna die without trying it, but it's on my list. I've tried I've tried many of the other ones. I I've done the surstroming. Do you like that one?
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+[30:53] No, you know, it's not exactly I uh you know it's not exactly an export food. It's a survival food that you know w you know, people you know, people who live in the northern communities in in Greenland uh uh uh uh uh eat. Um and you know, a lot of a lot of the ferments in the world are just do you know, just do not get shipped around the world. You know, they're just to sustain the people who are doing them. I know, but it's like uh d I again I don't get to travel that much to to places, but i there there are things that you read about that you just have no idea what they're gonna taste like, and so you just jones to taste them.
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+[31:29] You know what I mean? And so like that's one Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I I I I I I I understand that. Yeah, the uh the other one for me that I'm I know I'm never gonna get to do is um in the nineties, I think it was the FAO came out with a book called uh traditional fermented foods of Sudan or something. The title is very close to that.
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+[31:47] That's not the FAO. That's um Hamid Durar, a Sudanese anthropologist wrote that. Oh, and uh amazing. I I read that and I was like, oh my god, I'm never gonna get to taste these like eight billion different awesome ferments like that uh produced from you know the the products there, I'm never gonna get to t I have no I have no referent even to what they're gonna taste like. It's so uh you know, I guess it's good that you die with wanting more, right?
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+[32:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean one of the br brilliant things about that book, and I mean I really I I love that book. Um, you know, to me that is just one of the best books about fermentation that's ever been written.
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+[32:25] Um but I mean uh it's very, very detailed. I mean, I have made things uh based on descriptions in that book. Now, I've only made things out like I made I made a a style of sorghum beer uh from Sudan using his description and it worked really well and it was it was incredibly delicious. I wrote about it in Art of Fermentation. But um Yeah, you know, I mean certain of the foods just require specific plants that are from that region that you're not gonna be able to find in New York where you are or in Tennessee where I am, or you know, in most places that aren't Sudan.
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+[33:04] Yeah, yeah. Now again, it's fine to die wanting to try more things. Uh what to what what to you is the most challenging style of uh fur ferment, like uh for 'cause I think one of the things about, you know, here you know, standard like American western western palate, we do a lot of we're fine with most lacto stuff, right? Uh you know, over the past couple of you know, years we've all become you know more accustomed to uh you know to other styles of ferment, but we don't do that well a lot of us with uh with uh um perfings based stuff. Like some people can't do the salt risen bread or like redded cassava.
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+[33:43] Uh some people here have issues with uh things like uh stinky tofu, although I like it. You know what I mean. So like what do you find for kind of like standard, you know, mid American Western palate is the more or the more challenging styles? Natto, yeah. No, I was I was I was thinking I was thinking about Natto.
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+[34:04] That was that was the first thing that came to my mind. And uh, you know, NATO is this Japanese soybean ferment. Um I have a big section about Natto Um in fermentation journeys, and actually more than about Natto itself, about um uh uh NATO like foods found in other places. Um, you know, really in many places across Asia, let's see in um uh you know, China and Burma, um I've encountered them. Uh I met a woman from uh Naga land in the far eastern part of of of uh India, and uh uh they use something like Natto there, um all across West Africa.
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+[34:49] People use condiments that microbiologically are just like Natto, um, except they're made with different kinds of beans like African locust beans. Yeah, but they those things are I mean that's a that's a food that like I actually have come to find incredibly delicious and flavorful. Um but you know, my observation about how outside of Japan almost everybody is using it is instead of eating it wet, sticky, slimy, and I do think it's the texture more than the flavor that you know so many Westerners are squeamish about with Nato. But in most of the other traditions, it's dried. Yeah.
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+[35:29] And then it's ground up or pulverized and used as a seasoning that way. And I've been doing that at home, and uh, you know, I have yet to meet anybody who doesn't like it. You know, even people who are very squeamish about food, who I'm absolutely certain would not go for uh fresh, sticky natto, love the condiments that I've been making based on dried natto. So I think for a lot of people it's really the texture more than the flavor that they find kind of um you know scary. So if I dry natto, you think it's gonna taste or you you're telling me it's gonna taste similar to like uh netatu.
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+[36:07] What's the Nigerian word for netatoo? It just went out of my head. Oh my god. Uh um dawadala? Yeah, yeah, like parkia like fermented parquia big lobosa, yes.
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+[36:16] Uh like um, yeah. So the um I'm gonna tell you that that that that there's very similar, I mean, they're made from different beans, so there's a different flavor, but the flavor of the fermentation, the alkaline byproducts, the the whiff of ammonia is the same. Delicious. Um I have to ask these questions uh that are specifically for you, or I will get my uh head taken off by my crew. All right.
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+[36:47] From Prashank and Mesh. Uh this is Prashant from Florida. I've been making yogurt at home for the past eighteen months. Of course, this came in a while ago, so it's been a lot longer than 18 months now, Pashant. Sorry.
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+[36:56] Uh using yogurt culture from my family. I was unable to make yogurt for two months and would like to know how to restart making it. When I started making it again, the taste seems off in all four attempts. One, it was extremely sour. Two, it had a a weird taste that he doesn't know how to describe.
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+[37:12] And he was wondering if he had uh any suggestions for how to revive uh his family's yogurt starter and make it taste better. And I was also wondering if you had suggestions on how to best preserve the culture when I'm not able to make it for an extended period of time. So that's from Prashant. Yeah I mean I would tell say that I regularly go two months between batches of yogurt. That's about how frequently I make yogurt.
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+[37:33] Sometimes I'll go three or four months. The key is to always leave a full fresh jar to use as your starter. If you're using a jar that you've been slowly eating and um you know it's 90% empty what that empty space becomes occupied with is air. Air has oxygen that supports a whole other set of organisms being able to grow that will thrive in the presence of oxygen. So you know my observation is that uh you know a half empty jar of yogurt that sits around for several weeks gets this yeasty flavor.
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+[38:22] Its flavor is transformed by this sort of new group of organisms that are able to flourish as a result of the abundance of oxygen in the environment. So, you know, the way I've dealt with this is I just always keep uh you know uh uh um an unopened jar. I mean wh every every batch that I do, I I I I generally do it in pint size mason jars. And one jar I'll just pick out and I'll almost mummify it in masking tape. All right, starter do not eat.
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+[38:53] I'll bury it in the back of my fridge and um you know, use that as the starter. So it's an unopened batch that hasn't developed that that that kind of yeastiness. So that's my you know, that's my suggestion for how to avoid this problem. I wonder if a vacuum is. Now, as for how to bring back the you know, the starter that's gotten, you know, uh excessively sour and yeasty, I I I mean, I don't even know that you can.
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+[39:21] Um but you know, what I would do is try doing a couple of generations and see if it comes back. And um, you know, this is you know, this is one of the reasons. I mean, just because fermentations can go bad when you have a starter that's important to you, you know, it's really good to not be the only guardian of the starter. It's that's why it's that's one reason why it's really good to share these things and make sure, you know, other members of the family and you know, and friends of yours use it so that you know if you have a problem with yours, you know, there it's decentralized. There are there are backups around.
+
+[39:57] And this in from Tark Roshdy, uh I had some trouble with fermenting a hot sauce in my hot, humid New York apartment this past summer. Basically, keeping my jar outside the fridge made it ferment too fast, but inside the fridge it was too slow. Are there any hacks to achieving a happy medium in terms of temperature when I can't really control the ambient temperature in my kitchen very well? Thanks. Well, I mean, I definitely have the same issue.
+
+[40:22] I mean, I I would just never make hot sauce in the middle of the summer. You know, I I would always wait until you know, I mean, pepper plants start producing in the heat of the summer, but they keep on producing until it cools down. And when it's cooling down is the time to ferment them if you want to ferment them for any length of time. You know, definitely, you know, if it's in the, you know, if it's in the you know high 80s and 90s, uh, you know, if you try to ferment things at, you know, at ambient temperature, they're going to ferment super, super fast. I mean I would say the better option would be to put it in the fridge where it's going too slowly, wait for ambient temperatures to cool down and then ferment it at ambient temperatures.
+
+[41:01] Yeah. Also your kitchen's going to be the hottest place and also in your kitchen up high is going to be the hottest place and also anywhere near above your fridge because your fridge is putting out heat is going to be your hottest place. So the worst place in the world to keep that ferment is up high on a shelf somewhere near your fridge in the kitchen. Absolute worst place in your entire house to keep something if you want to keep it cold. Yeah.
+
+[41:24] From Monty Zikowski, uh are there any ferments involving oil? I remember a Chicago pizza place with pickled vegetables and olive oil as a condiment and it was oh so good. I assume they brine the veggies first then packed in oil always wondering what other fermented products involve oils. Thanks, Monty from Jacksonville, Oregon Well I mean there are lots of fermented products that involve oil um but the oil becomes a limiting factor in them. So sure I mean there's a lot of uh um oh my god I made this wonderful like um uh um um eggplant escabeche and an Arch Argentinian recipe.
+
+[42:02] Um and it was all an olive oil. It was so delicious, so delicious. But you know, it's not something that's designed to be preserved for um you know for six months or a year. It's something that like sits on the your counter for two weeks and then you want to eat it. So you know oil just becomes a bit of a limiting factor because of its potential for rancidity.
+
+[42:24] Like when I visited um the the Momofuku test kitchen years ago and and um uh Dan Felder was was running it and and he was showing me their process for making pistachio miso um you know they had to run the the pistachio mash through a centrifuge to remove the bulk of the oil in order to prevent it um um um you know getting go going rancid. So you know there's a lot of fermentation traditions that use either a little bit or a lot of oil but generally they're for you know shorter term preservation as a result of the oil. Yeah they used my centrifuge to do that. Pistachio oil intensely delicious by the way. But I'll tell you what making pistachio oil with a centrifuge pain in the behind.
+
+[43:10] Pain in the behind. Well what about though people who use uh very kind of uh rancidity resistant oil right like uh so like uh uh mustard oil and Indian oil based pickles but like what is the function of the oil yeah and also generally those are using very small proportions of oil. Right but what's the function of an oil and of the oil in an Indian oil pickle. That's interesting. I'm I'm I'm actually not I'm I'm actually not certain.
+
+[43:37] You know I mean I I I've always imagined that it was primarily um you know about flavor but I couldn't say. Yeah, me neither. I uh I love them and yet I have no idea why they they're made the way they are. But they're so delicious, right? Well, you know, you know, one of the things that I've just been learning over time is, you know, these things don't always have a totally rationalistic explanation.
+
+[44:04] You know, sometimes people just do them because that's how they were shown to do them. You know, people don't under always understand like why they're doing what they're doing. Um I mean I think that's just a reality. And there's there's a lot of you know, interesting folklore around, you know, fermentations that um, you know, I'm uh you know, I I I I don't think you need to do necessarily. Right.
+
+[44:33] Will Robinson writes in, I have a batch of soy sauce fermenting at the moment. It's approximately seven months old. Soybean and a bunch of what, I'm sorry? Uh soy sauce. Uh it's approximately seven months old, soybean and roasted barley.
+
+[44:44] I'm wondering what I should do with the leaves when I strain and bottle it. Are there any culinary uses aside from back slopping into a new batch or using it to kickstart some miso? I'm having a surprisingly hard time finding any applications. I'm assuming it's too high in salt for the compost pile, and I'd hate to waste it. Thanks.
+
+[45:00] Will from Chicago. Well, I mean I I mean I certainly wouldn't worry about putting it in the compost pile. You know, I mean that's all that salt will get distributed and and you know it's it it w will it will break down. But I mean it's flavorful. Like when I've done that, um uh you know, I've I've incorporated it.
+
+[45:21] I I mean I haven't found like a great use for a large amount of it, but it's full of flavor. Like, you know, you can mix it into stuff. You can use it as a seasoning. Can you dehydrate it? And powder it?
+
+[45:34] Yeah, I'm sure you could dehydrate it. Yeah, dehydrate and powder it and then it'll last forever. Dehydrate and powder everything if you can, right? If you have it. I dehydrate a lot of things.
+
+[45:42] I mean, I, you know, I I have uh you know, I dehydrate kraut. I have um I you know I have um you know crystals of brine salts, I have uh, you know, um um what I call eau de kraut, which is just you know kraut juice cooked down uh uh to uh uh uh a level of intensity. Um but yeah, I mean dehydration is a is a a great thing to do. The other thing is if you really, you know, if you use a press, you'll end up with, you know, shockingly little residue. So what kind of press do you recommend?
+
+[46:15] What kind of press do you recommend? Like uh I mean my I have a serious adjustment. You know, I just have a little press that I that I uh uh uh that I bought online. It's uh its capacity is probably like two quarts. It's it's very small.
+
+[46:30] Um uh it has uh um uh you know a uh a cylinder and then there's a uh a a top that fits inside the cylinder and then you just sort of screw it down and then there's a spigot at the bottom and it sort of forces it forces the liquid out that the the tighter you press it. Yeah, I used to uh so when I was at the bar we had uh we had a a a serious uh hydraulic press, you know, like from a a shop that I modified, but then we bought a bunch of super bag material that was really cheap to put in the press. Do you use what what kind of uh fabric do you use? Do you have a good source for that stuff? I just use like a nylon mesh bag.
+
+[47:06] Yeah. Oh like a like a like a re repurpose paint strainer kind of a situation? Uh no, I mean I th I I um I I bought it at a culinary supply place um you know th those are all repurpose paint strainers. What I use this mostly for is uh you know, I make a lot of uh sake, meju, different styles of rice alcohol, and then after the fermentation um you know I like to give it a good you know I I I I always use those bags to strain it and you those I'll typically just press with my hands but you know to get as much of the um you know fermented liquid out. Um and then I mean I love to I love to play with the kasu that's the Japanese name for the residue from making sake the you know decomposed rice along with all the organisms of it but it's beautiful flavor still has so much enzyme activity it still has so much yeast activity um you know it has just like incredibly varied applications and I have a little section of fermentation journeys about it.
+
+[48:06] Right. Ten years ago I thought sake leaves was going to become huge. Uh sake leaves was everywhere and then all of a sudden it's like almost like it was the same way that I thought fennel pollen was going to be the new it thing and it like it was about to become the new it thing and then it didn't I don't know what happened. Like uh people the thing is that you need sake. You you need to be making sake or mijo to have so to have uh uh uh kasu so I mean I don't really see how that's gonna become the next big thing unless sake becomes the next big thing.
+
+[48:34] People are working on that. And you know these things don't have to be the next big thing. You know it's it's it's fine for um you know it's fine for them to be um um you know obscure things that you know only the people who are playing with those ferments get to get to experiment with that's not a terrible thing. Yeah. Uh Miguel Miguel Kunz writes in uh kind of a basic question, but what are Sandor's top tips for avoiding calm yeast in lactoferments.
+
+[49:01] And so that's the white garbage that goes on the top. I just kind of ignore it. Am I wrong? Maybe that's me. I I just kind of take it off and then don't worry about it.
+
+[49:08] Am I wrong about that? But what are your top tips for avoiding? No. That's exactly what I do too. Um so I mean, you know, my observations are it gr it grows much more vigorously in a warm environment than a cool environment.
+
+[49:19] If you can keep it in a cooler spot, you'll have less issues with that. But you know, it's it's it's it's uh I mean it's nearly inevitable. Unless you have some sort of uh engineered system designed to protect the surface of your ferment from oxygen, you know, the surface is the place that has the interface with the oxygen rich air, and that's where aerobic life forms are going to uh be able to flourish. And you know, that's what calm yeast is. It's entirely um uh uh uh harmless.
+
+[49:50] In in China I watched the chef of a 500 seat restaurant just mix the calm yeast right back into the um uh uh uh crock of of pickled vegetables. Um typically I don't like to mix it in. I try to remove it as best I can, but if some of it dissipates in, I don't worry about it at all. Um uh there's a broad consensus that it's utterly harmless. Um, you know, if it really bothers you, I would say the thing to do is, you know, invest in one of these uh uh uh engineered systems designed to protect the system from uh the the the surface from oxygen.
+
+[50:27] Personally, I generally don't use those because you know, I am kind of compulsively interested in looking, smelling, tasting as they develop. And you know, if you have one of those specially designed systems, every time you open it to look, smell and taste, you're letting the oxygen in. You're defeating the purpose of your um uh cleverly engineered system. So I mean I just I just don't use that and I just don't worry about it. But if it really bothers you, there are there are several different kinds of systems for fermenting um uh in ways that protect the vegetables from you know any kind of exposure to oxygen.
+
+[51:06] Great. Will feed them writes in. Uh this is an exciting episode. Thanks for having Sandor on. I'd really love to know about tempeh with non-soy substrates.
+
+[51:14] Tips, techniques, and pointers. Uh and second question, if allowed, can we get any more details on techniques for exotic flavors from Koji and how to find the strains that create them? So, like non non-soytempe and then like exotic strains of uh of Koji. Okay, let me answer non-soytempe, and then you might have to remind me uh what part two is. So non soy tempeh, you know, you the the the tempeh uh uh spores, the rhizopus uh oligosporus are are actually very versatile.
+
+[51:50] And um, you know, you can grow them. I I mean I've used different kinds of beans. Generally I mix a grain component in with the beans. The key uh uh with the beans is not to cook them till they're soft. You know, when I eat beans, uh, you know, the other the other day I I hooked up some pinto beans.
+
+[52:13] Uh oh. Uh oh. They're gonna be able to do it. Wait, wait, wait, Sandor, we lost you. We last we lost you a pinto bean.
+
+[52:19] Start with pinto beans. You can't let that happen. You need to maintain the shape. So, you know, for soybeans, I'll use I'll split them because it can the the um uh the uh fungus can't grow through the hull, so you have to get the hulls off, and splitting them also gives them more surface area so they you know sort of lock more um densely. Um but soybeans, I only cook for half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, which you know barely is getting them cooked.
+
+[52:50] Um so the key is to just undercook things, cook things very lightly. If you're using something like split peas, which make a wonderful tempeh, you know, you're really talking about cooking it for like five minutes. You know, some things have a very, very short cooking time, just until they're soft enough to get your teeth through. You don't want them to be luxuriously soft. If I if I mix in grains, what I usually do is I I add less water than the grains need.
+
+[53:18] Um so I'll cook them roughly one part grain to one part water. So when they're when they've absorbed all that water, they're still thirsty for more water, and then I'll mix them with the um beans that have been cooked in water and are are are have wet surfaces, and the grain will absorb a lot of the excess water from the grains. Or uh the grains will absorb the excess water from the beans. So I mean, those are some tips you also can make. I mean, I've made I have a recipe in in fermentation journeys for potato tempeh, which I encountered in Switzerland.
+
+[53:52] Um so you definitely can can venture out, you know, beyond grains and beans. The tricky thing is you don't want things to be soft and falling apart, and you don't want things to be excessively moist. It like excessive moisture um you know will will support undesirable bacterial growth. So you you have to make sure whatever you're fermenting isn't too too wet. So those are the those are the major variables.
+
+[54:20] But you know, definitely, definitely experiment. I mean, you can make tempeh, you know, out of a uh a wide range of substrates. It does not have to be soybeans. Now, what was the second part of the question? Uh, second part of the question was uh any uh more details on techniques for getting exotic flavors from koji and where to find uh the strains that create them.
+
+[54:43] So like the citric acid koji and things like that. Well, okay, let me first of all say, like I I have not I I have not really grown out, you know, lots of different strains of Koji. I I've really only, you know, I've I've worked with the strains that um gem culture, so I've been buying um uh um my uh koji spores from for 25 years. Uh you know, they have like um um you know five different strains that are mostly about different substrates, and those are the ones that I've used. I am aware that as there's been more international interest in fermentation, some of the big Japanese koji spore houses have been exporting them.
+
+[55:23] And on my website, which is wildfermentation.com, I have a bunch of um uh you know uh links to fermentation-related resources, and I have a link to one of those Japanese um koji kin uh uh manufacturers where you can buy all of those different varieties, but I I have no personal experience um um you know with with these other uh uh varieties. Most of my experiences come with varying the substrates upon which I grow the koji. So like I have some chestnut trees outside of my house. I've been making for the last few years uh chestnut koji. Incredibly wonderful, the best shiokoji I've ever had.
+
+[56:05] You have American chestnut trees? So, you know, I think uh um um you know I I like to vary the flavors really more than anything by varying the substrate um and I haven't really experimented uh uh much at all with um you know uh uh some of the more um specialized strains of Koji Starter. Uh we have a we have a collar for you, but do you have American chestnut trees? No, no, no. You know, there those those those are uh I mean I I I mean I have um chestnut trees that are of you know Chinese or European origin um in my Tennessee uh yard.
+
+[56:45] Right, right, right. Uh we have a caller for you. Caller, speak up because he's having trouble hearing our connection, which I apologize for. Sander, uh this is Paul from Seattle. I um I was curious about uh if you had any tips on longer term storage of uh of Kasu of sake leaves.
+
+[57:04] Um I've got a pretty big tub in my fridge from uh um uh from uh recently getting into it, but I'm not sure about like how long it lasts or uh what the best storage conditions for it are. Well, okay. I I I mean I can just tell you what I've been doing is I've got mine in a ziploc bag in the fridge. And what I like about a Ziploc bag is you know, I can get rid of most of the air. Like the you know oxidation you know, and aerobic organisms are at the root of, you know, just so so so much food spoilage.
+
+[57:41] So I've just found it too, I mean, I've actually been just using the same quart-size bag for a year and a half. I just keep adding fresh kazu to it and taking kazu out to do things with it, and it's been fine. It smells great. Um, it tastes great, it's still enzymatically active. Um so I mean that that's sort of what I would recommend.
+
+[58:05] And I think that what's better about a Ziploc bag than a tub is you can eliminate the air space more easily. Okay. Um I've noticed with the um the little tub that I've got is it's that the um stuff that's probably oxidized closer to the surface seems maybe a little grayish and once you get below the surface it seems a little uh pinkish. Uh is that does that sound normal to you? Oh okay interesting.
+
+[58:33] No I've never seen mine turn pink. I've never seen that happen at all. Uh it's just really stayed a nice white color. But I would certainly remove anything that gets discolored uh pink. I would I would get I would get rid of that.
+
+[58:48] Sure thing. Um do you mind if I if I uh ask really quick um do you have any uh recommendations for um like maybe longer term um vegetable-based uh ferments with it. Um I've only used it for uh like as a marinade for like short cured meats before. Oh you're saying the kasu. Yeah.
+
+[59:12] Well sure I mean kasuzuke. I mean that's amazing. That that's just like basically vegetables pickled in kasu. So in my new book Fermentation Journeys um there is a section written by my friends uh Kevin Farley and Alex Hogan of the pickled uh of the cultured pickle shop in Berkeley. But um um, you know, one of the really interesting styles of pickles that they make are kasuzuke, and they shared their method for kasuzuke, and I've followed it and had wonderful, wonderful results.
+
+[59:44] Um but I mean m you know like roughly nine months for most vegetables is how long that would take. So that is definitely a longer term process. It's not just vegetables and kasu. You mix some sugar and some salt in with the kasu um and uh uh uh you know and and it takes some time and you can go much longer um uh um you know and especially with certain vegetables or smaller pieces of vegetables you could potentially go go shorter um but I mean that would be an excellent um like longer term vegetable uh uh uh pickle that you could you could use kasu for okay cool well yeah this is uh um just like you can use kasu to raise bread I mean I make bread all the time where I use kasu as the leavening oh really do you mix it with yeast no no it has yeast I mean because they you know what what what what fermented the yeast uh what fermented the the carbohydrates in the rice into the sake you know it's got yeast oh cool yeah so you just it's got it's got yeast it's got lactic bacteria it's got um um amylase enzymes I mean it's got it's got a lot going on but really you know my favorite everyday way that I use it I mean not every single day but frequently is a like a tablespoon of it in with a couple of scrambled eggs just gives the eggs such a beautiful flavor. Wow okay cool well this is a a lot of reasons to uh to get the book.
+
+[1:01:17] Thank you so much there obviously go by welcome. Uh and John, we have a couple of late coming questions in from Patreon. You want to go? Two quick ones, yeah. Um so this one is from Biff Dit.
+
+[1:01:28] Recently, my combo chat has gotten slimy and viscous. I pitched the mother and restarted using a store-bought bottle, but it seems to be happening again. What can I do? I'm just gonna say that's a terrible phrase. Pitch the mother is a terrible phrase.
+
+[1:01:39] But go ahead. Um I I I'm I'm I'm actually not sure. I mean, uh, before I would pitch the mother, I would always do a second batch and just see if it was just a one-off or you know, I I would do another small batch and just see before I pitch the mother. Okay. But I couldn't tell you what the cause of that is.
+
+[1:02:01] Sorry. No worries. And then this one is kind of a double pronged question, blackening and fermentation, touching on both the same things. So but uh sorry, how to wet? It's this one touches on two things.
+
+[1:02:11] So quickly blackening rather than fermentation, but I figured it's worth asking. Uh this one's from Payman J. I make so like black garlic. Yeah, but then wanting to make a balsamic out of it. So I want to make black garlic balsamic.
+
+[1:02:24] I was thinking of vacpacking garlic and putting in an insulated water bath at 60 centigrade for six to eight weeks following the NOMA uh guidelines. Any issues with doing it that way, anything which will kill me, and then any tips when it comes to making vinegar from that, or any tips when it comes to aging it in barrels, where to source them, what to source. Prefer not to wait quite a long time and end up with something awful. I have no experience with balsamic vinegars or barrel-aged vinegars. Um, you know, the vinegars that I've done have all been like sort of shorter shorter term, um, you know, countertop vinegars that are not, you know, um um aged and and uh uh uh concentrated like that.
+
+[1:03:06] So um I'm sorry, I I I I I I'm afraid that I don't really have um you know much to offer you. From a safety perspective, if you can reliably keep the product at 60 degrees centigrade, centigrade, which is 140, you you could keep it there for the rest of your life and it's not gonna damage you from a bacteriological ain't nothing growing at that temperature that is going to damage you. So it's 100% safe. As to how it's gonna taste, who knows? Who knows?
+
+[1:03:33] Uh I never had it before. It's like I tell my son when he eats uh more uh squid ink than any human being has ever eaten before. It's like nobody knows the health impacts because nobody's done it. Try it, right? Um Yeah, it's true.
+
+[1:03:47] I mean, I've you know some people who I've talked to, like what they like about you know the this method of speeding things up by keeping, you know, keeping keeping them at uh uh 140 degrees Fahrenheit, 60 degrees Celsius, so that the um you know Koji enzymes can optimize and do their thing, you know, really quickly. Um what some people like about it is that you know, sort of, you know, most bacteria can't grow at that temperature. Um, you know, on the other hand, m most cannot, but some can, and some of the ones that won't be growing because the temperature is so high are the acidifying bacteria, which are the things that would typically protect a food from you know, from other kinds of bacteria. So you really the you know the the answer is I don't know. Um you know the fact that we haven't heard of any problems like suggests that it's probably not a problem, but but but but I um uh you know definitely could not say for sure that um um uh you know you could keep something at that temperature indefinitely without any uh uh uh uh uh uh concerns.
+
+[1:04:59] Uh one last quick troubleshooting question. This one from me. Uh I have a lot of uh this is personal real. Uh I have a lot of bran in my house, like just a lot of brand, like a lot. And so like uh I was doing brand pickles, um, but wheat brand, not rice brand.
+
+[1:05:14] And they are are delicious for about a month and then all of a sudden something turns in them and they're not delicious anymore, and I know I'm supposed to be able to keep it forever. Do you have any any experience with that your brand pickles just turning bad all of a sudden? Well, yeah. I mean, for me it was called summertime. Yeah, maybe it's just too hot in my kitchen.
+
+[1:05:33] I live in a place that just gets really hot. And what I learned in Japan is that like a lot of people just but rest their nukah in the fridge for the summertime. So I don't know, you know, without knowing about what time of year, like I mean the most obvious thing to me is the thing that changes the weather. Well, I mean I live in an old school New York City apartment. But that would be my first guess.
+
+[1:05:58] Yeah, my my my kitchen's eighty to ninety a hundred percent of the time 'cause I'm in a New York City apartment. Like a hundred percent of the time it's eighty to ninety degrees. Well the thing is you can't necessarily do every ferment in every environment. I mean mm you know, it's uh you cannot maintain a nuka uh uh you know, nuka with uh um uh you know with a delicious flavor. I mean y um um uh you know, necessarily in every environment.
+
+[1:06:24] Like maybe it needs a cooler environment. Yeah. All right. I'll try to find a cooler place in my house a as the as the other as the other uh uh listener questioned earlier in the day. Well listen, I I really appreciate uh you coming on.
+
+[1:06:38] I'm sorry we had the technical stuff and you can't really hear uh too well what we're saying. But if you you know you have a permanent invite whenever you're in New York, come in, say howdy to us. It's been a real honor having you on. Okay, great. Well, I would love to do it in person uh uh uh uh next time, but it's been a pleasure speaking with you.
+
+[1:06:55] Um, you know, thanks so much for um uh having me on and for your excellent questions. And um I look forward to uh speaking again sometime. All right, well thank you. And the book again is Fermentation Journeys Out Now. Uh Sandor Katz.
+
+[1:07:09] Thanks so much. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave. Got uh John in the studio. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:27] Yeah? Yeah, we got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez in her heidi hole up there in uh uh on the on the sound. It's the Long Island sound. People want to pretend it's the ocean, but it's not. It's a little more sheltered, which is nice.
+
+[0:38] How you doing? I'm okay. Yeah? Strong. Strong.
+
+[0:43] Like uh, you know, like uh I'm not I'm not dead, but on the other hand, uh it could be better. I could be better. I don't know. I got I got I got sick again yesterday, and I don't know what it is, and it's really strange. Well, we know you're not rocking the cron.
+
+[0:56] There's no way you could get it I don't know because it's like night sweats and fever. So I'm like, what is it? First of all, night sweats should be a Bee Gees song. I'm imagining Actually, what it is is it's it's like it's exactly in between. It came out in the 90s, right in between the Bee Gees and the Scissor Sisters was Night Sweats.
+
+[1:15] I'm and I can hear it in my head. We'll write it, we'll get someone to record Night Sweats for us. I freaking love the Scissor Sisters. Does anyone else like the Scissors Sisters? No?
+
+[1:24] Yeah. You don't, John, you know? I can't think of any songs off the top of my head. I haven't said that you're with us today, Hassan. What are your feelings on the Scissor Sisters?
+
+[1:31] I don't think I have any. No? What are your feelings on the Bee Gees? What are your feelings on like high voice singing stuff? Oh, I love the Bee Gees.
+
+[1:38] They had a documentary on HBO and it explained where he got the uh high-pitched singing from. Yeah? Where is it? Where'd it come from? Um, groups like the main ingredient or the soul groups at the time singing in a falsetto.
+
+[1:52] Um, he was imitating that and it kind of became their own thing. Main ingredients, good stuff. I like that stuff. You know what I don't appreciate? Oh, I got yeah, we also got Jackie Molecules over here, so I didn't introduce them, but of course the Sammore and Jackie Molecules in California.
+
+[2:05] I feel that the what I what I appreciate is that style of falsetto to me is so much more interesting. No offense. I can't even believe he's still alive. Frankie Valley. That kind of stuff just doesn't hit me the same way.
+
+[2:16] You know what I mean? It's like not the same kind of McGillakutty. You know what I mean? Yep. Yep, yep.
+
+[2:23] Yeah. Uh what do you guys think about the screen like like high like not falsetto, but like screaming falsetto, like like Chris Cornell. Fantastic, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, come on.
+
+[2:34] All right, now, okay. Ready for it? Now, this is not a cooking question. By the way, uh, you should call in your your cooking related or what, whatever question. 917-410-1507.
+
+[2:43] 917-410-1507. And that's for the Patreon uh listeners who uh can listen to us live. And if you'd like to listen to us live and call in, well then go to uh what is it, www.patreon forward slash cooking issues or patreon.com slash cooking issues. Go there and join up and for a very small monthly fee. We'll throw you some fun stuff.
+
+[3:03] I have some fun stuff coming your way also. Uh just like weird documents, like there's a there's some weird PDFs on there, and we're gonna put more on that aren't available to other people. Go check it out. Go check it out. Uh so back to this.
+
+[3:15] So, Robert Plant or Chris Cornell. One one's voice has to be erased. I'm not saying the quality of the music, I'm not saying, oh no, Liz Zeppelin's so important. I don't care about that. What I'm saying is the voice erased.
+
+[3:28] What do you guys think? Uh I'm gonna go with Cornell, which is crazy, but oh my god. My gut, my gut, my t my gut tells me that. It was such a it was more unique, I think. What?
+
+[3:41] Okay, okay? I know it's a weird answer, but is anyone gonna come out and erase plant? Let Cornell stay, let the voice stay. Anyone? Hassan, where are you on this?
+
+[3:52] To me, the sound guard, Chris Cornell's sound in Soundgarden and the fact that he can go so low and so high and the growl and the scream. I mean, come on. I mean, I love Plant, but like Plant's got that one kind of plant thing going. I mean, like Chris Cornell, he's all over the map. That's all I'm gonna say about that.
+
+[4:09] I mean, Chris Cornell, man. Not very many people better. Uh all right. Okay. Uh how the heck do you know?
+
+[4:19] Oh, night sweats. Night sweats. And I guess the reason Scissors Sisters came to my mind and then the Bee Gees is because of night moves, their album. Right? That must be why it happened.
+
+[4:29] But I can imagine it in the falsetto voice. Night sweats, but I'm picturing the Bee Gees doing the doing the dance with those with those white pants that are. What do you guys think about the pants that are super sticky around your thighs, but like loose on the bottom? No. That's not I would never want to wear that.
+
+[4:43] No, no. Couldn't be me. No. It looked good on them though. Look good on them.
+
+[4:48] Love it. What'd you say, Stas? Love it. Love those pants. Love anything tight around that area.
+
+[4:54] Tight around the thigh. That's this that's Nastasia's memoir. Tight around the thigh. Uh so Stas though, you like it on modern people or just on the old ones? Um, only people with the right bodies.
+
+[5:07] So what about like what about like people who were that way in the 70s but now have the big old pot belly and the streaming hair on both sides with the giant ball patch up top? You know how I feel about that, Dave. We got in a huge argument last week about it. I thought you I thought you liked those guys, but you didn't like you don't like hot old guy. You don't like ripped old man.
+
+[5:27] Nastasi doesn't enjoy a ripped old man. I don't enjoy old men. Old man, period. I thought you I thought you liked uh like a like a well-aged old guy. What about that guy Gunn?
+
+[5:40] He's he's good looking about Pierce Brosnan. He's a good looking older dude. No, I do not find him attractive at all. And yet you find Paul McCartney attractive. This makes no sense at all.
+
+[5:53] No, I don't. He's not ideal, but he's Paul McCartney, you know. That's the only old guy I could do. I tell you what. From the day he from the day he like, you know, went through the change until the day he died, Paul Newman, hot man.
+
+[6:07] The same didn't say that. Go ahead go ahead and say that. Uh all right, should we do some cooking related stuff? Probably. Yeah.
+
+[6:14] All right. Uh first of all, we were supposed to have uh Michael Anstendig and Masa from uh their new uh book on Japanese cocktails. But there's a little bit of a scheduling snafu. Uh we're gonna get him back when, John? We don't know yet.
+
+[6:27] TBD, but probably in March. Probably soon. So we're we apologize. We uh deeply apologize for that, but save up all of your uh Japanese uh cocktail questions for that. We had a a bunch, right?
+
+[6:37] But we can we can get some we can get some more questions in on that. So don't you know, don't save them. If you send the questions in now, John will uh will will keep them and then and then bring them back up uh for later. But in case you didn't have any questions, think about uh this about 10 years ago, maybe a little more now, uh there was a huge movement in uh the US uh basically, I don't know what the word, just like really, really, really loving the idea of Japanese cocktails without any knowledge of it at all. So it's all just about uh, I don't know, what's what's a good word for fawning admiration?
+
+[7:14] My my synonym creator in my head is uh is is gone, but without knowledge. It's just they wanted to grab onto it, use aspects of it to kind of push themselves here in the States without any without really connecting to actual Japanese cocktail uh culture. Whereas Masa is legit a Japanese bartender who lives in the in the States now. So it's gonna be uh kind of interesting. And of course, we've learned a lot as a country over the past 10 years.
+
+[7:43] Remember when we went to uh Tokyo Nastasia and we went to the bars and it was like so 100% different to the way that they worked over here. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And like crazy. And we were like, you know, like we had literally been flown over there to like show our skills off and like our techniques. And we went into the bars and we were just like, what are they doing?
+
+[8:04] You know what I mean? And so it's like, what the hell? I'll never forget. Uh remember we went in and there was that bartender, and she she starts rinsing the ice off, and we're like, what the hell is going on? And then like, but the fun the the funny thing was is that you know, when we were going out, we wouldn't have any translators, so we also couldn't ask.
+
+[8:23] Like we were ordering basically, basically by pointing at things, right? I mean, it was just kind of like uh not like they would have answered us if we had asked them in Japanese either. I don't know. But uh anyway, so it should be fun when we get them uh back on. I think the book is doing quite well, so save up your save up your questions.
+
+[8:38] Who else we got coming up soon, John? Well, who's next week? Uh Dave Wondrich. Oh, speaking of cocktails, indeed. Yeah, we have the new uh Oxford is was it a compendium or is it an encyclopedia?
+
+[8:49] Compan that sounds more like a one-rich project, right? Compendium. Well, I think it's companion, isn't it? Co companion? Let's see.
+
+[8:56] Companion. Oxford companion. So in other words, it could be about anything, right? But you read it while you're drinking. So it's the Oxford.
+
+[8:59] Companion to spirits. So like may or may not have anything to do with cocktails and spirits. I've read it. It does actually have something to do uh with that. But it's uh it's a weird title, right?
+
+[9:15] Companion? What do you guys think about that? What does that even mean in this case? Like a dog is a companion to a person, right? Not a person.
+
+[9:23] I wouldn't want to learn about people by talking to a dog. Maybe I would. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's also the Oxford companion to beer. Let's just think there's a That's pretzels.
+
+[9:34] The Oxford That's pretzels. That's a book entirely about pretzels. And I have to say, uh, you know, normally before I go, because we don't have a guest, right? So uh we can talk about things for a while. I've been working a lot on pretzels, but before I go into a pretzel hole, which you know my pretzel hole is deep and boring, right?
+
+[9:52] You know this. Yeah. Deep and boring pretzel hole. Before I go into that, uh anyone else have any interesting food experiences in the past week? Uh this is your time.
+
+[10:03] You could have thought about it before you showed up at the show today. Oh, yeah. Nothing. You made John, you made nothing interesting. Soup?
+
+[10:11] What kind of soup? Using Broto, like Marco Kenora's Broto broth. Rebecca sent me some a while ago. Rebecca the the uh the boondoggler, yeah. Now in Philadelphia, no longer brotoing it up.
+
+[10:24] I will say that's a great product. Yeah. The broth, yeah. It's really, really good. So describe their broth versus the knockoff bone broth.
+
+[10:31] And is there a difference between just is it just like they boil it longer and it's got more gelatin? What's the fundamental difference here? Yeah, it's got more gelatin for sure. You know what I do to my stocks if I don't like the gelatin? Add sheets of gelatin?
+
+[10:43] That is correct, my friend. I add gelatin to them. Yeah, why not? Yeah. So like it's a good tip for you.
+
+[10:48] Here's a cooking related tip in the middle of John's story. If you have to use bullion cubes uh or any sort of other fake broth, right, in uh gravies or in uh like if you're making like chili, because I use stock and chili along with beer and other things, or uh, and you know you're not gonna build up enough gelatin with the with the meat base you have other stuff, just put some gelatin in that son of a gun. I have gelatin sheets. You know why I use gelatin sheets, John? Why?
+
+[11:14] Because they're so easy to add to things. Yeah, you just soak them for in cold water for a little bit of time and they dissolve boom with no clumping, right? Whereas with powder, you gotta worry, is it gonna dissolve right? Mm-hmm, me me nanny, nanny nanny, right? So like the sheets are nice to have around.
+
+[11:28] They're also super easy to dose because you dose it by the sheet. It takes more sheets than you think, actually. That's the one thing people are like, oh, I'll add a sheet. Nah, it's like it's always like six or eight sheets that you need to add. But it's incredibly convenient.
+
+[11:40] And it's uh that's the way. And I I don't recommend buying anything above uh like uh silver gold. Don't bother with the platinum. It's a no, don't bother. Anyway, my point is great way to add body to uh a broth if the body's just not there.
+
+[11:55] Don't add so much that you get that. Does you know what that noise means, John? That's that feeling that uh sauce gets when it's overreduced. Yeah. Do you hate that?
+
+[12:03] Yeah, it's not good. It's execrable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[12:07] All right, so continue. Soup you made with Broto. So you use Broto as the base for the soup. Yeah. What's up, fancy pants?
+
+[12:12] How much more does that cost than uh garbage broth? I I know you didn't buy it, but how much more does it cost? Uh it's like I think if you get a six pack, it's sixty-five dollars plus shipping. So six quartz, I think, maybe more than a quart. That ain't cheap, man.
+
+[12:26] No, it's not. No, no, yeah, but it's good product, and yeah. So thoughts from the crew. So Marco Cenora, basically, single handedly single-handedly, I had never heard of the term bone broth, and I had never considered using any sort of Italian word for broth up until when he starts pushing this stuff. Anyone else?
+
+[12:44] Anyone else think of this before Kenora? What? Yeah, I was first I'd heard of it right, right. Stas, you? No, the first, I think.
+
+[12:54] Yeah. So he pushes this stuff, makes it famous, puts a, you know, health, quote unquote health. Everyone who listens to me knows I don't believe in health is related to food. Healthy food is the food that makes you happy and reduces your stress in life and doesn't like add more problems to your life. That's what's gonna make you live longer, in my opinion.
+
+[13:11] Uh wide variety of things, low mental stress equals equals uh long life. Anyways, he adds this health, tags this health thing onto it, takes off like wildfire, and then other people just rip off his his uh they're just coasting on his business. Kind of like people who knock off the Searzol, weasels. Yeah. Weasels.
+
+[13:29] The man should be rich. Whether or not you like the product, whether or not you like believe in any health stuff, like the fact that he convinced all these people to like take a shot of broth or somehow substitute broth for coffee, that is a knuckleheaded idea, people. If what you want is coffee, drink coffee. Cause because uh I don't care how long they simmer those bones, uh Brodo's not gonna get your motor running, right? And and coffee get your motor running in more than one way.
+
+[13:56] Now, for those of you out there who don't have a gastrointestinal uh intestinal response to coffee, for those of you whose peristalsis works the same whether or not you consume coffee, maybe you don't know this. But for those of us who, when we drink a couple espresso, all of a sudden our insides start working at a much quicker pace. Broto ain't gonna fix that. You know what I'm saying? Truth.
+
+[14:16] No. Yeah. But anyway. I was telling you guys about the street broth that I had in Mexico City, where they were just like they had the deria broth there and like a sipping cup. I guess that's been a thing.
+
+[14:29] Yeah, I mean, that's because the bur Broto was the first time I'd like to sipped on broth, really, like in that context. Uh I mean, hot broth on a cold morning. Hot broth on a cold morning is a good thing. You know what I mean? Like, a lot of cultures know this.
+
+[14:43] I mean, maybe Americans didn't know this, but a lot of cultures know this. Not a replacement for coffee. Anyway, he should be a billionaire. Yeah. Like, that's the problem with coming up with an idea that other people can easily draft on and like take take your stuff from.
+
+[14:56] He should be a billionaire because he created this market whether it was not. True. Whether, you know, here's another thing. Do you guys notice that now it's becoming so popular for people to give up caffeine? Have you noticed this?
+
+[15:08] No, not really. No. Oh my God. It's it's the new thing. Yeah, I'm guilty of it, Dave.
+
+[15:12] I did it for I did it for a few months. Yeah, you went back. I don't know. Listen, I went back. Here let me let me tell you a uh a little, and I'm not a I'm not a psychologist by trade, although I have shrinks in my family.
+
+[15:24] Now I see when someone says something like that, what that means is they're about to tell you some garbage that has no data behind it. If they if someone else, again, talking about drafting, if I'm drafting on my stepfather's uh, you know, uh doctor degree and being a psych psychiatrist, then obviously I'm about to tell you a load of horse crap. And that's true. I I have no proof for this. However, it is my strong feeling that when you give up something for health-related reasons, you are bound to feel better because you have done something you didn't want to do to try to improve your health.
+
+[15:52] It's called placebo, right? So, like everyone who gives up something, they all of a sudden they feel fantastic. Ask any raw food person, that's also if you go raw, you feel better because you're also going slightly insane because your body is starving itself. And you feel that if you're going on the toilet that much, that something interesting must be happening to your insides. I think that's what happens why people think they feel good when they go raw food.
+
+[16:12] But I don't know. I don't understand giving up caffeine. Moderate. Moderate your caffeine intake. Is that where you are now, Jack?
+
+[16:18] Yeah, totally. Moderate. No more like no more. I try not to do afternoon coffees because uh trouble. Yeah.
+
+[16:26] Like what time in the afternoon? My wife has a hard 3 pm. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I think 3 p.m.
+
+[16:33] is smart. I think like anytime after that, you start getting into danger zone. Now you have that song going through my head. Highway to the danger zone. That's not a good song to have my head.
+
+[16:43] What? That's my idea for uh for a department of health timer. Oh my god. Tell the idea. Tell the idea.
+
+[16:51] Yeah, it plays that song how you do the danger zone as soon as like your time temp stuff uh it needs to be changed out. But like does genius. I don't remember how it works, but like, okay, so like so you have the timer, it goes, it goes on the hotel pan. Oh, it but it's also it's attached to a thermometer, right? Mm-hmm.
+
+[17:09] So what it should do is it should calculate the cooling curve, right? And then like the the the amount of volume that the song plays at is like dependent on how close how far you are down the highway. So like you know, like like when you're only like one hour into the cooling cycle and it's like, I don't know if you're gonna make it on time, it's like you know what I mean? Yeah, and then, like, you know, like 30 minutes before it's like, ha wait too. It's it's going crazy so that you can't ignore it anymore, and then you have to spread it out real thin and cool it like that.
+
+[17:42] For that, John? Yeah, what do you think, John? Great idea. Brilliant. You've used that, right?
+
+[17:46] I know. I patented it already. Yeah, she patented it. And uh, does it come with a free pair of uh those pizza vomit chef pants? Remember those?
+
+[17:57] Yeah, with uh the Tasmanian devil on it. Yeah, yeah, like Tasmanian Devil and all sorts of things that no matter how much food you drop on the pants, they don't look stained. You know what I'm talking about, guys? Yeah. They're kind of like great grayish black with like all kind of like bull crap on it.
+
+[18:13] You could you could you could step into a vat of bologna sauce and step out of that thing and look the same. Pizza vomit pants. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, uh that is a good idea.
+
+[18:26] I don't know how we got onto that, but that is a strong, that is a strong idea. So you still haven't finished your soup, so you started with Broto and ended with what? Oh, uh mushrooms, leeks, and then some faro. Stacey. What's up, Frenchie French?
+
+[18:40] You know, I never cook with leeks, you know why? Why? I hate cleaning leeks and I hate sand. Yeah. Oh my god, do I hate sand?
+
+[18:46] I hate sand as much as it's I also don't cook with shallots because man, they're tiny and I hate doing that. Yeah. How depressing is it, people, when you get a shallot and you're like, I finally I picked a shallot that's only one bulb on the inside, right? Then you cut off just a little bit of the root so that there's no sand, but it's gonna stay together while you chop it, right? And you're like, you're like, I'm gonna sizzle this thing like a wheel, like it's gonna go crazy.
+
+[19:11] I'm gonna have tiny shallot pieces. And then you you cut the tip of the paper off, you pull the two bulbs, two bulbs, and then you have to peel another layer off. Yeah. That's happened to me one too many times. You know what I mean?
+
+[19:26] What are your feelings? I haven't seen them in years, but they used to make this thing called a shallon. Have you seen these? No. They look like they're called a shallon.
+
+[19:34] They're bigger. They're like, they're like bigger round. They're like uh like an inch and a half around or so bigger, and they're long. They look like uh Cindy Lou Who's head or something like this. But they uh they're always single bulb, they're bigger, and they but they have a more of a shallot taste than an onion taste.
+
+[19:52] And fairway, like no other market. Did you know that? Because they're closed now, that's why they're like no other market that exists. They're not allowed by fairway. Yeah.
+
+[20:00] Uh well, the ones that closed are like no other market. Anyways, in the 90s, they used to sell uh they used to sell those things all the time. And I was like, ooh, that's a good idea. Maybe I'll use some shallot flavor. But since then I've just uh erased the shallot from my from my repertoire.
+
+[20:15] As I have the leek, even though when other people cook them, I love them because they are delicious. Uh yeah. Anyways, oh my god, Stas, you would get so mad. Yesterday, I made chili and I sliced all the raw onions, and I was like, you know what? Uh you know, I nothing's gonna happen tonight, you know, for me.
+
+[20:35] And so I'm just gonna eat a whole bunch of raw onions because I never get to eat raw onions because my wife doesn't like raw onions, doesn't like them in the house, so I sh I I chopped them right before we had the chili. But correct me if I'm wrong, people, raw onion people. Chili without a raw onion, sad. You want the you want the raw onion on top of the chili for people who like raw onion, right? 100%.
+
+[20:54] Yeah. So I was like, and then she was like, I'm in the mood, and you were like, No, come on. No, no, no, no. Come on. Come on.
+
+[21:03] I gauge myself right. I gauge myself right, Studs. Come on. But like the problem is is that I haven't eaten raw onions in so long because I don't like I'm not really allowed to have them in my house that I forgot what it's like to go to bed, have your hand come up by your nose and smell the onion coming out of your skin up to your nose right after you eat it. And I was like, oh yeah, it does suck.
+
+[21:28] You know what I mean? It's worth it though. Totally worth it. Totally worth it. Yeah.
+
+[21:33] 100% worth it. They should make a pill. Here's the money. Here's some money, chemistry people. Make a pill.
+
+[21:40] Forget Bino. Although I've done a lot of tests with Bino recently. You guys remember Bino? Yeah. That's the anti, the anti-tuting, the anti-tooting uh enzyme.
+
+[21:48] What if they could make an enzyme that you ate it after you ate the raw onion and it prevented that? That would be amazing. No? Sure. Yeah.
+
+[21:59] I would love it. Yeah, because Nastasia likes the flavor, just doesn't like the aftermath. Maybe it's the smell coming out of your skin, is what gives you nightmares. You know, it's definitely, and I think I have what Jen has where it's like it, I it it's a weird reaction in my in everything. Yeah.
+
+[22:14] My mouth, everything. Jen's like, Jen doesn't like being at the table when it happens. So like I literally chop the onion, put it on top of my chili. We did the Fritos with the chili. What are your thoughts?
+
+[22:24] Fritos? Yeah. Yeah. Good call. Fritos.
+
+[22:26] Frito God snack chip for real. Come on. I mean, like, I I love a traditional tortilla, but in terms of like modern things, Frito is straight up great. Anyway, uh so I dumped the onion and then immediately covered it with like cheese and lettuce and the all stuff to kind of keep tamp down the aroma of the onion. Because if I even have it sitting on the table, when Jen comes up to the table, she's like, damn it, what the hell?
+
+[22:52] Who has the onions? She hasn't talked like that at all. For those of you that know her, she hasn't talked like that at all. But that's kind of what that's what her mind is saying. Anyway.
+
+[23:03] So, uh, we still have not finished your soup, John. What's going on here? You got the No, I pureeed the onions and the mushrooms and leeks. And leeks, yes. Yeah.
+
+[23:13] Uh, and then cooked the grains and the broth and then. Oh, wait, which grains? You didn't mention grains. Oh. Yeah.
+
+[23:21] Oh, Stas likes that. It's something she actually enjoys. Well, it's delicious, yeah. Um. Yeah, and then that was it.
+
+[23:27] How uh how pearled was the faro that you used? How much bran was on the outside? Were they white or were they brown? Uh pretty white. Pretty white?
+
+[23:34] But but still enough that they didn't burst or did they burst? They didn't burst. Which was nice. What are your feelings when they burst? A little sad.
+
+[23:41] Yeah? Yeah. But how much starch flew off to thicken up the broth? Enough? But you pureeed it anyway.
+
+[23:46] You pured it and then added the grain. Do you puree everything together? So only a small amount of grain? Sweat the leeks and the mushrooms, pureeed them, then cooked the grains and the broth and then added the puree. Have you talked on the air about your sweat tests?
+
+[24:00] What sweat test? Your sweat tests, your broth sweat tests. Remember? Like a year ago, I was like, does it really make a difference whether you sweat the sweat the mirror beforehand? Oh, right, right, right, right.
+
+[24:11] Yeah. Oh man, what were the results of that? Um I think it did make a bit of a difference. It did. You said it made a difference.
+
+[24:15] It did, yeah. We didn't know what the difference was because you weren't, for all you that don't know, John like is uh, you know, he's a little bit of a uh a francophile. You know what I'm saying? Like, not just a francophone, as I say, but a francophile. So when he sweats his uh veg, he doesn't let it brown.
+
+[24:31] He goes, he goes Frenchy French, make make don't let it brown. You know what I mean? Yep. Which I think is kind of trash can. I like a little bit of brown on my on my onions, especially if I'm gonna brothify them.
+
+[24:41] You know? Yeah. Do you sweat them long enough for them to go brown like caramelized brown or no? You don't sweat them. It's just a slight sweat.
+
+[24:47] Yeah. But even though even though night sweat. The night sweat. Uh yeah. So right.
+
+[24:51] So you said it did make a difference. It made the broth different. Yeah. But we can't figure out why. I think it was a little bit sweeter.
+
+[24:58] Um that's possible. But that's probably only an onion phenomenon. Like, what's the point in sweating the celery, for instance? Yeah, I don't know. I have to redo it and then just do each individual each ingredient individually.
+
+[25:10] I'm doing a demo tomorrow at my old uh arch nemesis uh ice, because uh the French culinary, we were arch nemesis's sisters with uh ice, but now that the FCI was bought by ice, I guess I can go. So I'm going to do a demo tomorrow with uh Chef Hervé Malavere, my old friend from the FCI, and we're gonna do the old onion ice cream. Speaking of onions that uh Nils and I used to do at the French culinary, and that one we pressure cook the onions, and the onions go. You should not pressure cook onions for um for caramelized onions because it erases almost all of the onion flavors, too much, right? The high temperatures erase like too much of it.
+
+[25:51] But it's great for onion ice cream. And by the way, I don't know if I've said this on air. If you are making things like uh, I do a lot of, I don't do beef chili in the like well anyway. If you're gonna do things like pork or big things and you're gonna braise them or like a carbonade with big pieces of beef in a pressure cooker, you need to like triple your onion load because uh the flavor of the onion drops down so hard, but then you also need to slightly reduce the sugar load because it's gonna be a little bit sweeter. I always add a little bit of sugar to those things.
+
+[26:19] So you guys? Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. A little bit.
+
+[26:23] A little bit. Uh, you know, don't be afraid of adding a little bit of sugar. By the way, you probably already know this if you're listening to us anyway, but don't be afraid to add a little sugar. I'm shocked. Like when Dak, when I'm teaching Dax how to how to finish food, right?
+
+[26:38] Uh like, you know, soups and stews and things like this. He's like, oh, this doesn't taste right. I'm like, add a little bit of salt and add a little bit of sugar. And because, you know, like it's very hard for him to work his mind around the difference between something being bad and just, oh, it needs a little bit of sugar to like bring it together to knock down the bitterness a little bit and just you know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[26:59] And it needs salt to punch up all the flavors. He just it it astounds me how you can't get that into your head unless you do it. You know what I mean? Uh, this is why Thai food's so awesome, man. Because like, you know, like fish sauce and sugar at the table.
+
+[27:12] You can do you can do it. You can all the adjustments you make there are awesome. Thai food is hard delicious, am I right? It's so delicious. Hard delicious.
+
+[27:20] It's so delicious. Yeah. That's what I made last night was uh pasta. Wait, wait, Bangkok what? It's called Bangkok mall pasta from the from the uh night market book.
+
+[27:33] So it's like it's spaghetti and it's like stir fried with um garlic, anchovy, chili, as sort of like the holy trinity, and then red pepper and oyster sauce, Thai seasoning. Just kind of I like that. In big scare quotes, Thai seasoning. Thai seasoning. Yeah.
+
+[27:55] And then and and green brine green peppercorns, which is really the only thing I use them for, but I always keep them around. The dry greens or the pickled greens? No, the pickled. Bryan, yeah. Oh, Brian.
+
+[28:07] Bryant. I thought you said grine, yeah. Yeah, I never keep them around in my house. Should I start keeping them around in my house? I don't know.
+
+[28:14] I don't use them for anything else. Do you do you like when they're draped over in that viney weird form? Or is that just too much? It's too much for you. Actually, sometimes I do it that way, yeah.
+
+[28:24] Fun little visual. Here's a product that I don't like unless they're gr blended caper berries. Too salty. Too salty to eat on their own. Sliced.
+
+[28:36] Wedges. Yeah. Wedges. Fine. Too salty.
+
+[28:41] Okay. For those of you that listen here, you you've heard me many times rail against the session button because who wants to have your f your taste buds erased? Oh, we have a caller? All right. Remind me of that, John.
+
+[28:52] We'll get back. Caller, you're on the air. What's up? Hi. I just wanted to call.
+
+[28:57] Uh last week there was a conversation about intergenerational relationships. And uh you know, I just think the word gross got used, and that's not very nice. You shouldn't be criticizing people, how people fall in love. A lot of people can learn things from people of different generations, and I think call how people follow them up gross is pretty gross itself. Yeah, I don't have any recollection of what you're talking about at all.
+
+[29:26] Oh. But I'm I'll tell you what. When you said that people uh that especially for me or to me more, that's who you brought up. To me more and Ashton Kutcher. Wait, what were we even talking about?
+
+[29:40] How that was how how uh to date within your own range. What I'm saying, what I okay, it's coming back to me slightly. It's coming back to me slightly. My recollection was is that I disagree with you, Dave. Yeah.
+
+[29:56] Okay. Well, we'll wait. We'll see what happens when you we'll see what happens, Nastasia. Nastasia, I'm gonna zing you because you're zinging me. We'll see what happens when you actually date someone.
+
+[30:05] What age it is. Yeah. Uh all I'm saying is, look, oh man. I'm not I'm not hard. I'm not hard one way or the other.
+
+[30:24] Like I I think I've told the story of my brother-in-law, whom I whom I love, right? I I thought there's no Tom. I thought there was no way that he should go out with my sister because now remember, he was in high school and he was a senior and she was a freshman. I'm like, nope. I was like, nope, not gonna work.
+
+[30:43] He's he's just trying to like go out with someone much less experienced, and it's it's it's a nightmare. He's doing some sort of power trip. I was wrong in that case. Right. Individual relationships are individual relationships, right?
+
+[30:54] That's a hundred percent the truth. I said, Yeah, but then you say something like they're gross, and that's not okay. Wait, which which one's who's gross? Your comment on the colour. And so what?
+
+[31:08] They like each other. A lot of people have intergenerable like that work out well. You can't put a number on maturity. Individual relationships are individual relationships, specifically Demi Moore and Ashley Kusher, that's gross. Because it was a weird.
+
+[31:22] They never look like I disagree. I disagree. That's the whole point of being a human, Nastasia, is that you get to have your own judgment and I get to have my own judgment. Yeah, yeah. They never looked like a statement that how people fall in love is gross.
+
+[31:37] I didn't say how they fall in love is gross. I said that couple was gross. They don't look like they go together. They never look like they go together. Look, she's hot.
+
+[31:44] I mean, I'm not it's not thinking against her. Demi Moore, very attractive woman, right? I just I felt that as a couple, they look gross together. What do you want out of me? Well, it's not the age necessarily art.
+
+[31:56] What about the president? The president. What? You're talking about Mac Cron now? Yeah.
+
+[32:04] I mean, I haven't seen them together. I've just saw the pic. I you just brought to my attention the age gap that they have there. Well, that's also not a good example, because wasn't she his teacher at some point? Like that's a little bit that's gross.
+
+[32:16] That's gross. Uh I was like, hot for teacher, that's gross. Listen, teachers out there, do not mine your students for sex. I mean, that's very easy. Don't mind your students for sex.
+
+[32:30] That's all. I my opinion. Individual relationships may vary. That's my opinion. You should like in general, you should not do that.
+
+[32:40] Well, that's not a rule that I would follow from you or anyone else. But I'm glad that you have an opinion. Oh, speaking of Macron, though, the reason Macron came up, Nastasia, is that when he was gonna shut down, was he was gonna shut down for Omicron, right? And we were like, if Macron was here, or if they had the post in France, the headline would have been like, oh, Macron, right? Like Omicron, I didn't get that until I got that.
+
+[33:04] That's how that came that came up. Uh but anyway, uh, I'm gonna go ahead and uh stand by what I'm saying is that in the majority of the time, right? I feel like you're probably gonna have, and again, peep everyone's different. For okay, how about this? Just for me, I'm glad that I'm that I'm married to someone who has similar life experience.
+
+[33:27] Me, your results may vary. You can do what you want. I'll stand by my Aston Kutcher or Demi Moore. And PS, they're not together anymore. Why?
+
+[33:33] Because that relationship did not work out for whatever reason. Did that relationship work out? Wait, are they married? Wait. Is our Ashley Kusher and Demi Moore married?
+
+[33:43] Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Mila Clunch. Nice. John, nice.
+
+[33:46] That's a good thing. John. John, tell your your thing. So I got so angry when this happened. So my mom came to pick me up in the city a couple weeks ago to go back out to Connecticut.
+
+[33:59] And I was walking out of my building with my dog. And this freaking lady is walking by, you know, pushing her kidner stroller. And she looks at my dog and she's like, oh, is is that your girlfriend? And I was just like, oh, whatever. Hold up.
+
+[34:14] And I was just like, oh, she's, you know, just being cute. It's a cute dog, you know. Thanks. Appreciate it. I was like, oh, maybe.
+
+[34:19] And then she looks at me and she's like, you shouldn't reevaluate your life decisions. And then I realized she was looking at my mom, who was outside of the car, right outside the building, picking me up. And I was just, I was confused and like speechless. And I was like, what is this lady talking about? And then after she walked away, I pieced it together that she was talking about my mom.
+
+[34:39] And I was like, one F you. Like that's that's its own thing. But what about props to your mom? You didn't think that? Sure, props to my mom.
+
+[34:49] But you know what? Mainly, mind your own business, lady. What if that is my girlfriend? So what uh I ended up getting a speeding ticket. You can't let that stuff get to you, man.
+
+[34:58] Uh it's true though, people saying things to you on the street, like burns. Yeah, well, it's just like mind your own business. This is New York City. Nobody wants to talk to you. Don't talk to me.
+
+[35:06] Like, just stay around the way we usually do. Okay, so let me ask you a question. So, for the for those of you that have never driven out of New York, now I know you LA people are like, you don't know from traffic in New York. Fine. Or DC people.
+
+[35:17] But like nothing really is less pleasant than trying to fight your way out of Manhattan, up the east side of Manhattan, up the 95 corridor into Connecticut after a certain period of time during the day. It is soul crushing, right? I would say that's almost worse than LA traffic in a way. That is the worst, what you just described. Well, since I don't, you know, you would know better than I because you've done both.
+
+[35:40] You know what I mean? I've never really done uh the LA traffic thing. Um and also the LA traffic, at least you're like, oh, I've seen a million movies about LA traffic. No one like no one films a movie like on I-95. Yeah.
+
+[35:55] Yeah. So when you're driving on I-95 people, uh, if you if there's any people who make movies, right? When when you make the movie of the person who's caught in traffic on I-95, the joke to make is as you're driving up through my anus, which is an actual sign that you see on I-95, like near Stanford, it's a place, my anus. It's pronounced Miyanus, I think. We always call it Myanus.
+
+[36:17] You're supposed to turn to whoever's next. No, I think it's my anus, dude. It's my anus. You do? You think it's your anus.
+
+[36:22] So listen, the joke to make when you're driving past this sign every time, it never never gets old, is heavy traffic through my anus. And then that's it. That's all you gotta say. You know what I mean? Or slow going through my anus.
+
+[36:38] I wish I could call the show that this week. That'd be a great title. Well, if you spell it mean this, you can do that. You know what I mean? Anyway, uh yeah.
+
+[36:47] Wait, so wait. So we're still on wait, how like so? Here's the thing. Here's the problem. I'm sure this would happen.
+
+[36:52] So you're on that I 95 corridor. Yep. So it should take 40, 45 minutes to fight like up to Stanford. It takes probably an hour and a half, two hours, something like this. From here in the city?
+
+[37:05] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So and you're going further north than that. You're going past New Haven. Nightmare.
+
+[37:10] Anyway. Yeah. The problem with that is you're sitting there and you're probably thinking of comebacks. Doing stuff. And thinking of comebacks that you should have said.
+
+[37:17] Oh, so many things I wish I did differently after that. So, what are the comebacks that you should have used? No real comebacks. I just wanted to like go back and just yell at her and tell her to mind her own business. We should have used.
+
+[37:32] Yeah, for me it wasn't comebacks, just like how I should have reacted to the situation. Oh yeah. And you can tell me. I mean, but good for your mom, right? I don't know.
+
+[37:40] Great for my mom. I'll go back to props to props to your mom. You know what you should have said? She was my teacher. I'm a little confused.
+
+[37:52] So your mother looks young. I mean I don't know. She's 65, 66. You're asking John to think about her mom in this way. That's pretty hardcore.
+
+[38:03] No, I just don't understand why this lady would want to say that. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. People are dumb. Look, yeah.
+
+[38:09] Also, some people are just high too. Who knows what she sees out of her mind? Yeah. Baby and a stroller. Uh uh, oh, all of a sudden, people stop baking out because they have kids.
+
+[38:21] That's not been my experience. Baking out. Anyway. Speaking of, uh, this might be interesting. Uh it's not really food related, but apparently there is a major new study out on uh psilocybin and it's uh effects on long-term cognition.
+
+[38:40] Apparently, it's fine. Fine. I've never tried it. Makes me nervous. Makes me nervous.
+
+[38:46] Yeah. Um that's great. Okay. So who else do we have coming up after Dave Londridge? Who don't we have coming up?
+
+[38:54] We have uh I believe we have uh Nasli and Catherine from MoFad, and then we have Dr. Jessica Harris. Also from Mo Fed, but from from everything. Yep. Then Adam DiMartino, one of somebody in the Sasia put us in touch with.
+
+[39:10] And we got Francisco McGoya, then Nick from Grove and Vine, and working on getting Kenji on to discuss his new book as well. Walk. Yep, walk. Walk. All right, listen.
+
+[39:21] When Nick, Nick is Nastasia's olive oil friend, right? So wait, Dave, can we do a blind tasting? I really want to do a blind tasting. I like with all of the crap versions from like stop and shop, like, and then his. You know what I mean?
+
+[39:36] It would be really interesting on air. Uh yeah, that'd be cool. Okay. Here's my issue with that. Yeah.
+
+[39:44] In general, like I think blind tastings are an opportunity to make people feel bad about themselves. You know what I'm saying? It's like they're like kind of like gotcha moments. It's kind of like the the it's I just uh I there's so many things you evaluate in a blind like triangle tastings are interesting to just test the difference between different things, like but like especially cereal blind tastings in kind of a weird atmosphere for especially when panelists aren't trained to taste a particular thing. I mean, I think it's I don't know, it's just an opportunity.
+
+[40:20] That's like um whenever we It's like the Reese's peanut butter thing, you know. I don't know. Well, because remember like um when we would do um uh demonstrations at the at the French culinary all the time, like one of the things that I would always try to not do is make people feel bad about the choices that they were making when we would give them like three different samples, like try to make them feel bad about it. You know what I mean? I mean, some people can reliably choose garbage.
+
+[40:49] Like my my grandpa, you know, the the kind of one who was kind of a bit of a nightmare, could reliably taste jug wine uh when presented with jug wine and like 82 Bordeaux and reliably chose the jug wine, not just out of a out of a group, but as his favorite. You know what I mean? So like some bad rules. Yeah, well, kind of. And uh my feeling is is that he did it just to be a dick.
+
+[41:16] Like, in other words, like he, you know, it's more important for him to be a dick than it is for him to have something that's enjoyable. I really feel that that was what was going on in grand grandpa's head. But uh, you know, who knows? I can't ask him anymore because he's dead. Uh but when uh Nick comes on, uh Nick, the olive oil guy, maybe we can do a blind taste.
+
+[41:39] We should we're definitely gonna do a tasting people. Don't forget about and and uh Hassan, maybe we can pre-record some mouth noises to freak out some of our uh Oh god, no. So I did the 23andMe thing, and uh it says that I'm genetically less likely to be bothered by chewing noises. Completely wrong. Completely wrong.
+
+[42:01] Nastasi and I have had this discussion. I think we've even had it on air. When someone is cooking you dinner or lunch, or if somebody is working, do not get a crunchy snack and sit behind them making crunching noises into their freaking ears. Am I right, Sas? Yeah.
+
+[42:19] Or like Peter Kim when his wife was in the birthing tub in their home birth, he just pulled out a sandwich from a wrapper and was eating a sandwich next to her while she's like pushing. Like that was rude. That's that A, that's rude. And B, that's a hardcore thing to call out on the radio from somebody else's uh birth experience. That's uh I think he'd be okay with it.
+
+[42:42] Well, I mean, that's kind of his story to tell on that one right there. And like uh, so uh Peter Kim, you know, formerly Museum of Food and Drink, now has a a show. Uh you know, we had him on the air. He used to be known as Cooking Issue's favorite punching bag. But one thing we know about Peter Kim, habitual line stepper.
+
+[43:00] Man loves to step over a line. And that that is a line step right there. Well, but I'm saying you just are now the Peter Kim of today because you have stepped over a line by bringing up him eating a sandwich while uh during the you know childbirth situation. You have done the line step. Peter Kim is the kind of guy, is he's not dead.
+
+[43:16] Peter Kim is the kind of guy who you'll like you'll take something just up to the limit of acceptability, which we do how often? Constantly? Yeah. We're always like right at trying to stay right on that line, a little bit over. You take Peter right up to that line, he'll step way over and be like, Oh, I didn't see the line there.
+
+[43:32] I'm sorry. He's like way over the line. Habitual line stepper. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[43:36] But I feel that like maybe talking about him, and also the man only will always eat a sandwich. The man stressed sandwich eats. Clearly, yes. You you know, the house would catch on fire, the smoke alarm would be going off, and he would open up his fridge to make a sandwich for the for the walk out because the man stress eats sandwiches and only sandwiches. Uh anyway, wow, hardcore.
+
+[44:02] What do you got, John? How about these last 10 minutes we get to some questions? Oh, wait, okay. So you don't want to hear about pretzels? We'll talk about pretzels at the end.
+
+[44:09] We are surely gonna talk about pretzels again. Yeah. The flour I bought for pretzels, amazing. Snavely, Snavely's Mill flour. You mentioned it last week on the show, yeah.
+
+[44:18] From but I I finally got my pretzel recipe dialed in. Fantastic. The reason it's good, soft flour, non cake. So should we some point somebody ask me a question about flour, and then I can go crazy on um why you should at least at once in your life buy soft wheat flour. Good one, not bleached, right?
+
+[44:43] And don't try to use it for cake, because that's not what it's for. In order to make a proper American high ratio cake, you need to have chlorinated or treated flour or add xanthan to it to increase the water holding capacity. Because the reason this flour is so good for pretzels is it's soft flour, has much less starch damage in it, not just lower protein, which means less bite on it when it goes in, but it also has uh um much less damaged starch, which means that in order to make a dough, you use much less water. So you're working with like 50, 52% hydration to make a pretzel dough with this soft flour, and you get a very good machining, i.e. rollable dough at very low hydrations, and then when it's baked out, um the texture is good for rising, it rises when it's baked out.
+
+[45:28] It doesn't have too much protein bite, so it just makes the best hard pretzel. It's also good for pies. Uh I could talk more about it, but that's that's all I'm gonna say. Uh uh is that is that it's okay, John? That's sufficient.
+
+[45:38] Yep. It's okay. Yep, we're good. Snavely's so cheap, so good. $12, $25 pounds.
+
+[45:43] Another $12 dollars to deliver it. Still under a dollar a pound. That is that's the way to go. Okay. Uh Jacob Minkus writes in.
+
+[45:50] Hey, hope y'all are gearing up to have a nice and relaxing holiday in New Year. Too late. Uh was yours relaxing? Anyone relaxing? Here and there.
+
+[46:00] A little bit. No? Not entirely. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[46:03] All right. Uh, I was curious if Dave has any classics in the field recommendations. We gotta start classics in the field again. I'll get in touch with Matt. Yeah, but we you want to do it, we can do it old style with with the call in, bring it like you know, with with the little classics in the field scream out.
+
+[46:17] Yeah. Yeah. We should do it again. Uh recommendations for butchery, specifically the breakdown, boning out uh of various animals. Breakdown and boning out.
+
+[46:25] That should be another song. As we have so many song titles in this uh in this episode um of various animals. Looking for something that I can reference while in the kitchen. Thanks much, and can't wait for my Sears All Pro Best Jacob. Okay, so I'm not an expert uh in um butchery.
+
+[46:42] In fact, the only real butchery books uh I own are the Adam Danforth books, which uh uh butchering poultry, rabbit, uh lamb, goat, and pork. Uh and uh his other one, butchering beef, and he has a new one out that came out. Those were all maybe eight, nine years ago, uh maybe even ten years ago now. And then he has a new one that came out a year or two ago on uh slaughtering and and and butchering chickens. His all go from kind of slaughter to breakdown.
+
+[47:08] Uh and you know, I I enjoy them, they're good books, but I I don't have the opportunity to slaughter uh pigs, so I can't say whether or not, you know, his suggestions for slaughtering a pig are good. And I think you're more interested in kind of butchery. Another weird thing is anytime I have butchers on, I kind of ask them about specific books, and butchers in general that I've spoken to get a little bit hinky about recommending books for some reason. Like you know what I'm saying? Have you noticed that, John?
+
+[47:35] It's like they're like, maybe it's because they rightly believe that you know you gotta go do a lot of cutting and apprenticing to kind of get it right. And I think that's probably accurate, but that doesn't mean that at home you don't want to just kind of read something, learn about it, and try it. Not that you're gonna become a great butcher. I know Nastasia hates it when someone tries to take over somebody else's job. Uh yeah, you hate that.
+
+[47:56] One book that I don't own that uh some people uh like is uh that's not I think about slaughter, but it's more about just straight butchery on beef only, is Carrie Underly's book, um, The Art of Beef Cutting, but I don't own it. So I don't I don't know. Uh do you own that, John? No, I don't. I will add uh River Cottage Meat Book.
+
+[48:14] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hugh Fernsley Whittinghall. Yeah. What a name.
+
+[48:19] Yeah. Oh, he's British? Whoa, I couldn't guess that from the name. You know. Uh his name could be like Pip Pip Cheerio.
+
+[48:27] He could not have a more British name. Someone is saying the hog book by Jesse Griffiths is great, focuses on huntering and butchering wild pigs, but translates well to domestic. Yeah. Really? Okay, good.
+
+[48:37] The uh the Bull Moose cookbooks, aside from being like crazy misogynist and racist, but crazy in a very interesting mid-century way, has a lot of butchering stuff, but 90% of the stuff that I can verify by based on my own knowledge in that book is false. It's more of just like it's like the National Inquirer of cookbooks. You've read those, right, John? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[49:00] Uh one book that I'm gonna say it's not about butchery, but I look at it again and again and again all the time. I'll just sit down in bed as I'm going to sleep and read it. Uh and don't get the Kindle version. I looked at the Kindle version online. It is garbage is the meat buyer's guide.
+
+[49:15] Uh and it covers beef, lamb, veal, pork, uh, and poultry, and it's put out by NAMP, the North American meat processors. What a what a thing, NAMP. Can you imagine? North American meat. You've seen this book, right, John?
+
+[49:27] It comes in a spiral. It it's like it's plasticized so that you can dip it in in uh in pig blood and it's still fine, so it's like great, and it's like spiral bound. And what it has in it is all of the retail cuts and where those retail cuts come from on animals. And uh I don't think it has a lot on on the trimming, but still just like looking at those retail cuts and where they come from and how they're graded. I'm just sorry, I'm pausing.
+
+[49:53] I'm thinking about the book in my head. And then when this morning when I went on Twitter, uh it's not on Twitter, on Amazon and did the look inside on our Kindle, I was like, oh, what a disappointment. What a sad, sorry disappointment. From Alexander Talgard, uh is it it's tailguard, isn't it? I forget.
+
+[50:08] Yeah. Yeah. Uh I have a little Christmas curiosity, too late. Uh, that I don't understand. In Norway, a traditional dinner is I'm gonna get this wrong.
+
+[50:16] Pinic pin pinajut. Pin pinicot? Pinnacot. What do you think? It's got a lot of slashes through O's and K's and J's together.
+
+[50:24] I don't know. But the translation is stick meat. Stick meat. Uh what's your favorite stick meat, John? Corn dog is pretty great.
+
+[50:33] Oh, I was thinking corn dog. What about you guys? So you guys corn dog people or more setay people or more shishkibob people? I mean, they're all delicious. Say for me.
+
+[50:41] Say you're sayate? I like that raw chicken we had. They the the the quote unquote sashimi that was done uh on the on the Tepanyaki thing. Was it really? Or are you just saying that to be ornery?
+
+[50:52] No, I I do. It is the one, like when I think of favorite stick meat, like something I can't do, that was like that took yeah. I you didn't like it? Yeah, I did. I mean, but I was still I think I prefer cooked chicken.
+
+[50:59] Yeah. I liked it. I enjoyed being there and having it. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[51:10] Hasan, you got a favorite. More memory. Yeah, chicken memory. Sign, you got a stick meat for me? Um I don't know.
+
+[51:21] Like the call, damn thing. Siskebabs? Yeah, they're delicious. By the way, if anyone can help me out, in in Turkey, there's a kebab called testy kebab. It's not on a stick.
+
+[51:34] It's from Cappadocia. They load the meat and all the stuff into like this little, it's like a clay vase, and then they cap it with like aluminum foil and um and dough, and then they cook it inside the clay, and the clay's got a line around it. And then after it cooks, they bring it out and they almost like sabering, they go clack, clack, clack with a big old knife, and the top, the entire top shatters off like you're savoring a bottle of champagne, and then they boop, they pour it all out onto the plate and you eat it with like some sort of flatbread. I don't think you can get it here. Anyone finds a place you can get it, I will have it.
+
+[52:09] Uh okay. In this case, the stick meat doesn't mean that the meat is on the stick. What happens? I had to look it up because I'd never heard of this. Well, here's what Alexander says.
+
+[52:16] Individual lamb ribs are usually steamed traditionally over birch sticks in a big pot. So for f here's what they put water in the pot. You with me? Then they put sticks in the pot, birch, because I guess I got a lot of birch. And then on top of that goes the meat on top of the sticks in the pot, so that the that the meat is suspended above the water to steam by the sticks.
+
+[52:37] You with me? All right. So that's a stick meat uh for two and a half hours. A trick that is becoming more normal, especially amongst chefs in later years, is to use non-peeled almond potatoes. Now I had to look up an almond potato, but they're also known as mandal potatoes, which I guess mandel kind of sounds like almond, right?
+
+[52:53] Uh they're a small potato, not almond flavored, they're small. Uh to use almond potatoes instead of birch sticks, partially cover the potatoes in water. But no one seems to understand, and my question is why do these potatoes survive without this turning into mushy burst mess? According to some chefs, this works with any potato, but I have yet to hear any explanation for why it works. Uh also congratulations on the Indiegogo goal.
+
+[53:14] Okay. Uh so I had to look up, I said this potato because we don't have this potato in the US. Uh, but what's interesting is that according to uh the internets, the these potatoes are what's known as the flowery type, uh aka mealy type. So if you were to bake it and then push on it, it would fluff out like a like an Idaho russet does. And that shocks me because uh any potato that does that should burst when you cook it for too long.
+
+[53:42] Uh the main difference, and here's what I know about the science of this is that the the main difference uh between um potato varieties that has to do with genetics. So certain, you know, but it also has to do with how they're watered, uh you know, especially right before storage storage and how they're um stored, is the dry matter content. And the dry matter content of a potato can range anywhere from 16 to 25 percent. And the majority of stuff, obviously that's not dry matter, is water. So a potato that has a lot more water in it has a lot more space in between the starch granules.
+
+[54:14] The way that this is particular uh usually measured by people, people. People don't measure dry uh matter. They measure the specific gravity. So the specific gravity, potatoes with a very high specific gravity tend to be flowery, they tend to mash uh well, they tend to have much higher yield when you make potato chips. So pe French fries, potato chips are all made with very high specific gravity potatoes.
+
+[54:29] So the specific gravity of 1.08 or higher, right? And sometimes even up to 1.1, which is uh a dense potato. Uh boiling potatoes, right, have a lower specific gravity, like down uh 1.06 uh and below is a good boiling potato. And really the main difference is the size of the starch granules in them and how much they're packed. Because when you heat a potato, the starch is going to expand as uh water is sucked into it and they will uh puff up.
+
+[55:00] Potato starch especially tends to puff as it more than any other starch, uh absorbs and puffs out, and then also is very fragile as starches go, which is why when you overmash potatoes, they turn gluey, which is why uh they can burst and leak out into soups and stuff like this. In a boiling potato, a low gravity potato, you can boil it for a long time because as the starch uh expands out, it doesn't expand enough to rupture because there's more room around the starch granules for expansion. Does that make sense? Yeah. So in a low gravity boiling potato, uh, the structure of the potato itself is maintained over long boiling periods, even though um, you know, just be just by dint of the fact that they stay structurally sound, they don't self-rupture.
+
+[55:43] Uh so one thing that might be happening is if you put the potatoes into cold and you steam it up gently, it's possible that you're strengthening um the pectin in the potato uh by bringing it up slowly. Uh and a small potato would um tend to temper through to the same temperature. Maybe it gets more protected. There could be something going on there, but but I'd be interested if you write back to me if you can tell me whether or not they're a waxy-style potato or a uh flowery-style potato. He says they're delicious, perfectly cooked, and not mushy or bursted.
+
+[56:12] But I mean, in general, are those potatoes a waxy potato or are they a flowery potato? I'm sure he'll let me know in a second. Uh from from Coleman. What? Last question.
+
+[56:21] I can bust this out. Okay. Yeah, that's the last question. Well, uh, I made Dave Chang's bosom recipe for Christmas. It was delicious today of, but not so great leftover.
+
+[56:31] Definitely had that warmed over flavor. Any tips for avoiding this when using pork shoulder leftovers? So uh warmed over flavor is an oxidation phenomenon. And so uh you can either vacpack, if you don't have a vac pack, another way to do it is uh if your meat is sauced and it's like stored in sauce. This is why, like um pork dishes that are in like gravies or pork dishes like uh like like pork chili or stored in a liquid, they can last a long time, right?
+
+[56:59] Or stored in fat, they can last a long time. It's when not like rettes stay good forever, right? Because oxygen's not getting to them. So the problem with your bosom it most likely is that you wrapped just the pork piece and it wasn't covered, oxygen got to it, and uh on rewarming it was a warmed over uh effect. Um they're more mealy than waxy, the potatoes.
+
+[57:20] So perhaps it's an intermediate variety, because there are intermediate varieties. Uh you know, so maybe it's a combination of waxiness. I mean, if you start cold, maybe it's a combination of waxiness and the size of the potatoes allows the um there to be a little bit of enzyme action before I don't know if there's a rate uh like a rate reaction of how fast they're they're brought up. I have to think about it. Do do uh I have to think about it uh some more.
+
+[57:41] Um I'm just gonna put this out there for people to respond to us, okay? So I'm not answering these questions. Quinn, who we had on the show uh with his ice cream book, he wants to know now that Bend to Table is gone. Uh send us in what you guys think are interesting sources for shelf-stable food products, especially interesting heirloom grams for milling into flour. I mean, Bredtopia and other places like that are good for that.
+
+[58:03] Looking for United States because uh, well, that looking for United States. Uh also curious about American-based sellers of single origin cocoa beans. So uh I only know the old, you know, chocolate alchemists supply, which is still a place that I would look at for that. But guys, send in your stuff for that. Maybe we'll make a list on Patreon of interesting sources for people uh to go and put it up there.
+
+[58:22] And uh last uh Sargon wrote in uh and he wants to know about good vegetarian or vegan cookbooks if they take into account modernist techniques for vegetable preparation even better. Uh well, Nastasi and I always recommend anything by Michael Natkin. True or false, Nastasia. Love, love, yeah. Also, you should check out Amanda Cohen's dirt candy book.
+
+[58:42] We had her on uh the other day. And it I could not find it in the uh in the United States. But uh Eddie Shepard has like uh a micro or I don't know how what happened during the pandemic, uh, called the Wall Garden Restaurant and does exclusively not exclusive, but modernist uh uh plant-based uh food. And he has a cookbook. You can go to his website, uh Eddie D D I E uh uh Shepherd, but I was not able to find it in uh in the US.
+
+[59:13] I'll also add on uh Brooks Hudley's superiority cookbook. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yep. On vegetables.
+
+[59:21] Yep. Jeremy Fox. Yeah. Not on vegetables by Peterson. No.
+
+[59:25] Which I have I read that one? His sauce cookbook, Peterson's sauce cookbook, is like I mean, like Classic in the field. Classic in the field. Uh, did we even did we do that as a classics in the field once? Not since I've been here.
+
+[59:38] The original one. The remake is great, whatever, but like the original one back in the day when he was like basically nowadays we just reduce cream down we just we do we reduce cream that's what we do now and then people I guess stop doing that so that the reup of it doesn't have all those reduced cream sauces you know what reduced cream sauces are delicious yeah the delicious uh all right so apparently uh John's telling me that's all I have time for uh so we'll get to the non who wait we have David Wonderich on please send in cocktail stuff uh I'll try to get to some of these other questions John has suggested we'll see what the Patreon people think that I should reserve a section uh a small section of time we have to figure out the beginning or the end when we have guests on maybe we knock out a couple of questions when we have guests on then go into our normal stuff just like hit the questions and then go in what do you think or do we save it for the end? Tell the guests to get lost and get them at the end. Or the guests can start in at like 15 right or something. Yeah that's true.
+
+[1:00:40] Like 1215 right but then we have to get out of I I we I have to get out of my habit of going on like infinity pre-tangents like we won't we won't be able to have this conversation about uh Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore anymore. Or Robert Plant and Chris Cornell. Robert Plant and Chris Cornell yeah I I am shocked that no one here came out for Chris Cornell by the way what I can say Cornell that was like 10 seconds. All right okay yeah soundgarten so good cooking issues
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+[0:10] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arthur, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Rockefeller Center at New Stance Studios, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? I'm good. Behind me, uh, which is unusual, so I can't see what you are doing, what kind of faces you're making, makes me a little bit nervous.
+
+[0:26] Should I be nervous? No. Uh mm-hmm. Got uh John also chilling behind me. How are you doing, John?
+
+[0:33] Doing great thanks. How's uh the great state of Connecticut treating you? Uh it was good, but I'm back in back in New York now. Oh, nice. Back here for yeah, a little like two weeks ago.
+
+[0:40] We're not gonna have time, but uh I I guess I shouldn't ask you about your so John for a while, before I go further into the amazing show we have, John for a while cooked for tennis uh superstar uh Djokovic, or as I call him Naga Jolokovich. And uh interesting in the news, I kinda wanna get your read, but then you might not ever get to work for him again if I got your read, so probably you don't want to talk about it, am I right? I don't know if I'll ever get to work for him again, anyways, based on some other things. Not with him personally, but with that family. You lit him on you lit him on fire or you lit the child on fire.
+
+[1:13] He doesn't have a child, but the family he stayed with has a child. Did you light the child on fire? Was it your fault? Was it your fault that the burger had the secret sauce on it instead of on the side that caused the meltdown that almost burnt the house down? Yes.
+
+[1:26] John, if I've told you once, I've told you a million times, you gotta pay it you gotta get more front of the house in you and pay attention to what sauces are ordered on the burger. Not gonna go through the Shake Shack, you know, order for 20 people and look through each individually wrapped burger to see what, you know, make sure there's the one that doesn't have the sauce on it. Yeah, but the kid of the host is the one that has to be right. Yeah. I mean, in the you're you're correct.
+
+[1:52] In the real life, you're correct. Everyone's important. Yeah. But in the business world, it's that one kid, that one trash can kid that's important. Hey, uh, not that not that you're a trash can kid, not that you listen.
+
+[1:59] Uh all people are are have some decency in them somewhere, I guess. Uh in California, we got Jackie Molecules. How you doing in our California booth? I'm good. I'm very good.
+
+[2:14] Oh, yeah? You sound like unusually. What is happening? Well, I just uh sorry, I have a little feedback here. Um I just got back from New York, actually.
+
+[2:23] I did I did like a crazy 24-hour trip to New York to see my niece for her birthday. So nice travel fatigue. So when someone who lives in California gets back from New York, do they double down on the California like, yo? No, I'm not I'm still in New Yorker. Come on.
+
+[2:39] I'm still a United Coast guy. Okay, sure. Okay. And we have Hassan Moore in the booth. Uh back again.
+
+[2:45] We thought we were gonna have Joe back, but Hassan, because Joe's uh Joe's didn't make it back yet. So how you doing? I'm good. Yeah? Yes.
+
+[2:52] I hear you here. I hear you're excited for today's uh show. Hasan, are you an enjoyer of spirits and cocktails? I am. Did you know that on today's program we have as our special guest, uh actually you he was on the show once before, uh uh probably a decade ago, right after we started.
+
+[3:10] Famed cocktail writer and historian Dave Wondrich. Dave, how are you doing? I'm doing good. How are you? I'm I'm all right.
+
+[3:15] I'm all right. Yeah, I think last time we had you on the show was about 10 years ago. Yeah, it was in another century, it seems like. And uh you know, maybe uh overseas somewhere. Did we just have you on because we wanted to, or were you was it after one of your books like Punch or one of these things?
+
+[3:31] It was probably after one of these books because uh, you know, they come out of every every once in a while, every 10 years or so. Well, you gotta keep writing books, otherwise, otherwise the world like forgets if you don't keep writing things, it's crazy. Yeah, it's true. But on the other hand uh if the world forgets is that the worst thing in the world uh as long as the world keeps paying you they can forget the best of all exactly so royalties the best of all scenarios is that everybody forgets but the money keeps coming yeah and then you can just go and you know sit in a cafe somewhere with one of those little tiny dogs and a beret and uh and and drink pastise all morning. That's like those 80s stars and you're like oh they haven't done anything since the 80s but then you look up their net worth and they're worth like a zillion dollars you're like that's the way yeah they're wearing very expensive t shirts.
+
+[4:15] Yeah yeah yeah very good very good all right so let's let's get into this for those like for the again couple of people who might not know kind of uh where you're from I was talking to my wife actually uh last week when I said you were coming on next week and uh I was like you know like the cocktail historian Dave Wonder she's look well that means there's there's been others right and I was like well no I was like there there there are people that I mean look there are people who are your contemporaries that were interested kind of in specific ingredients like or or recipes or lost recipes like uh Ted Hay and all those other people uh and you know there also were people who wrote uh in the 20s 30s 40s uh that included kind of quick you know back of the envelope histories of cocktails but no one kind of took it seriously as an historical pursuit with the exception of i being interested in specific ingredients right before you like that was it well there there were there were a couple there were a couple of people like William Grimes who wrote a very nice scholarly history, The Cocktail. After that, that was later. Then he quit and gave away all of his cocktail books. So wait, wait. Can you speak a little closer to the mic?
+
+[5:28] Oh yeah. Okay, yeah. Uh so I thought his book came out after. No, it was well, it was uh one of my inspirations. It came out in the early 90s.
+
+[5:37] And uh it was like, whoa, this is really cool. Well I was in grad school, I read the book like a dutiful uh academic, you know. If you're interested in something, read a book on it. And so I did. Tip of the hat to Grimy Grimes.
+
+[5:49] Yeah, he was he was good, but but he you know, he could have he could have kept up with it, but uh he was too smart for that. But didn't he then go to politics before he came back to do food? Yeah, he did a bunch of stuff. And uh, you know, his he's he's he's an interesting person. I used to go and test restaurants with him when he was uh uh food critic.
+
+[6:09] And he's an interesting person to talk to. He has a PhD in Complet, uh specializing in Russian novels. So and he's a Russian novel character. Huh. So what is it about the combination of liking to go to bars, like uh depressing Russian literature and kind of politics that kind of fits so well together?
+
+[6:30] Well, there's a strong thread of heavy drinking that goes through all of that. I mean, just you know, back of the envelope calculations today. Yeah, yeah. All right. Okay.
+
+[6:42] Uh I mean, politicians, ooh, they mop up the sauce. Yeah, yeah. All right. So uh also I should uh oh, call in your questions should you have questions uh if you're a Patreon listener. Two 917-410-1507.
+
+[6:55] That's nine one uh nine one seven four one oh fifteen oh seven. Uh so a couple of the things I promised we would uh talk about. Uh one, you are uh you have a family compound. It's undisclosed location in Pennsylvania. Yeah, it's a secure location.
+
+[7:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's large enough that you can create uh kind of potato guns and test potato cannons, uh, kind of more acceptable terminology for them. And uh you can launch them in such a way that you can shoot them farther than is reasonable and still have them take off and land on your property, and you can see the the effects. Oh, yeah, we could we could get a good 400 yards uh range out of these things uh if done just exactly right. And uh we've got a lake that we can shoot them into, so that's uh that's kind of nice.
+
+[7:43] Now, I want you to describe for me the not so jet now uh speaking of drinking, like I'm sure you're familiar with the Highland games and the caber toss and all kinds of strange feats of idiocy that people do in cultures that uh also have a lot of drinking. I want you to describe to me the uh sport of potato catching that you invented with one of your buddies at your family compound. Yeah, this was uh this was a number of years ago when our kids who are now grown and out of college were small, and uh we uh had a fungi bat, you know, one of those uh big wide plastic bats. And uh we were kind of new to the waves of the potato cannon. And uh my friend Mike uh runs to the end of the field with the fungy bat and goes, okay, point it right at me.
+
+[8:33] Uh we'd been drinking Geneva Punch the first time I ever made that. I found a bottle of old Geneva in a uh liquor store upstate, which was it was gone from New York City at that point. Uh and so I was really excited, and I drank maybe a little bit too much, and so did Mike. And uh so uh he goes, you know, all right, let's let's see if we could do this. And I shoot the potato out of the potato can, and you know, you fill the back with hairspray, there's a chamber, and you flick a little coleman lighter, bang, uh, and uh it goes boom and shoots the potato.
+
+[9:03] And if you're standing there shooting the thing, it looks like it's moving fairly slowly. But uh Mike's standing there with the bat and it whizzes right by him. Uh I was shooting, you know, a bit to the left of him, uh, or rather to the uh to his right, let's say, uh, because uh I I really didn't want to hit him. Uh and then uh second shot, it's even further to the to the right. And then he goes, Okay, okay, point it right at me.
+
+[9:32] Not a problem. So I point it right at him, I shoot it. He goes, ass over T Kelly as a bruise the size of a dinner plate on his upper chest. And this is this is one of my profoundest regrets is we did we weren't videotaping this because uh that would have been an absolute winner on the late Bob Saggett's America's Funniest Home videos. I mean, it was just so predictable.
+
+[9:59] Oh my god. And the perfection of it uh was was it was just uh such a vignette. You're so lucky no serious damage was done to him. Yeah, I know. If I'd hit him in the head, it would have been really bad.
+
+[10:09] Well, uh the the thing about compressed gas is that like unless you do a lot of calculations, it's really hard to kind of and also even if you do the calculations. Um I think I told you once I made a a chicken gun uh out of a big chicken cannon. That is a big cannon, yes, huge. And you need a lot of gas for that thing. Yeah, it was uh the the bore was six inches.
+
+[10:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I and it's heavy artillery. And then I I built the uh the gas container, I think out of eight or ten inch like pipe, like uh, and then like uh you know, fully filled it with compressed air. And then and I was like, oh, this half inch thick polycarbonate is like polycarbonate's not gonna break, it's strong. So I I got that as the target to shoot at.
+
+[10:44] Yeah. And then you know, loaded the chicken in. Do you use you don't need a sabot with a potato because it seals. No, we don't use potatoes, we use limes actually because they're much more ballistic. And you're a cocktail man.
+
+[11:01] Yeah, and also we can get them in in uh Brooklyn for cheap. So we bring them up with us. By the way, for those of you that don't live in the New York area, some areas of the country, limes are inexpensive. And in New York, if you're paying more than 25 cents for a lime, it's like what? Yeah, yeah, especially in Brooklyn.
+
+[11:16] You can get sometimes uh when they're at season, you can get 10 for for for a dollar, uh, which is amazing. Yeah, up in uh Monaco land where John's from in in Connecticut, limes are like a dollar a piece. Like oh with lime. Yeah. I would it's still worth it.
+
+[11:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except for that time of year when they when they're hard as rocks and have no juice. Well, they fly out of a potato gun really well. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I guess they don't need to be good.
+
+[11:41] But then do you have to sabote them or you just make sure they stick real close? You just gauge them to your barrel. I gauge them to the barrel, and you know, I might do a little work with a peeler if they're too big. Uh smart, smart. We have a rifled barrel.
+
+[11:52] We've got one on a carriage with a rifle barrel. No, I bought it actually. Uh I I wish I had done it myself because I would have done a better job. And you hit your buddy with a rifle. No, that was early.
+
+[12:03] All right. Well, that was the smoothbore muzzle loader. Anyway, uh chickens are not as conformable or uh as you know easy to mess with as limes. So I sabbated it with uh uh styrofoam, and it does when something that big is flying away from you, it looks like it's going slow. Yeah.
+
+[12:19] Yeah. It's not. Anyway, yeah, it completely shattered the uh well, the amount of mass there, I mean, that's a heavy projectile. Oh my god. Oh my god.
+
+[12:30] For those of you so like mine also, though, compressed air makes I think a different kind of noise. I've never fired one of the hairspray ones, but it's got to make like a pop or like a Yeah, it makes a good good, nice size bang. Yeah, the compressed air ones just make this kind of like frightening fun, though. Yeah, it is kind of cool. Uh you should do you should uh but I don't do compressed air stuff anymore just because Nastasi and I were supposed to do a video of remember this to us?
+
+[12:55] Yeah. And we didn't do it because I told you there was a small but non-zero chance that the aged PVC pipe could shatter. Yeah. And that uh that would almost certainly kill me if that happened. Yeah.
+
+[13:07] And you were like, this is some bullcrap, Dave. And I'm like, well, I didn't have the money to build it out of ABS, something that shatters in a less violent way than PVC. Well, you know, you can just wrap the whole thing in duct tape. That's what we do. I mean, that's the thing.
+
+[13:19] I think the like once you get up to the like large bores, yeah, yeah. Like each individual piece of plastic. Did I ever tell you the story about how I was doing a demonstration on liquid nitrogen safety on what not to do? And I put liquid nitrogen into a two-liter bottle and sealed it. And then put okay, so cocktail people, you know what I'm talking about, the 23-liter cambro.
+
+[13:39] For those of you that don't do the the Home Depot bucket to do your big batch stuff, like the 23-liter square cambro is a standard 23 quart square cambro is a standard thing. So I was like, oh, I'll stick this thin two-liter soda bottle inside of the cambro, and it's not gonna break the cam bro. Loudest thing. Oh, I'll bet. Second or third loudest thing I've ever done.
+
+[13:59] And it completely obliterated the cambro and sent shards. Just, you know, again, lucky that I can still I was wearing glasses, thankfully, but yeah, nitr look liquid nitrogen is is a beast. I do love it though. I love it. I really do.
+
+[14:14] It is well, uh the thing about liquid nitrogen is that it's just one of those things it's mesmerizing. Like like as a material. Yeah, like fire. Yeah, like uh well, we could talk fire. Well, we'll we'll we'll talk fire uh because you are also a big proponent of fire.
+
+[14:31] I like fire. Yeah, like fire. But none of this is why you're here today. You are here today because uh after many, many years of work, uh you've just recently come out with the Oxford Companion to Spirits uh and Cocktails, uh along with your co-editor Noah Rothbaum. And how many years was this in the making?
+
+[14:50] You want to talk a little bit about this project? Yeah, this was uh uh I signed the contract for it in uh 2012. So it came out last November. That's how long it was in the making. And uh it was one of those projects that uh I was skeptical about, but I got talked into it and uh it turned out to be just exactly as hairy as I thought it was gonna be.
+
+[15:16] And uh I mean it's it's uh it's basically an encyclopedia of spirits and cocktails, uh eight hundred and sixty pages long, eleven hundred and fifty entries, a hundred and fifty contributors plus, and uh it covers as much stuff as we could possibly jam in there. Up to two thousand and four. Uh roughly. We don't have individual entries for people uh who whose careers took off after two thousand and four, because if we ha if we did that, we'd have an infinity book. An infinity book.
+
+[15:52] Yeah. Because so many people took off in the cocktail, you know, revolution. We c we talk about them d in the book, you know, it's not like we don't uh uh like it's not like we're saying they don't exist it's just we can't write individual entries on them and those things are they're they're usually pretty googleable also yeah uh so for those of you that are looking at it and like why is my favorite why is it not there like just read it's always a good idea to read the introduction of a book beforehand to get the tenor of the book the other uh interesting thing about uh the thing is is one you say listen we're actually going to try to do spirits of the world and not just spirits from the coasts of uh that are drunk on the coasts of uh the United States it's not just what you can get in duty free right right that's literally the quote out of the introduction and um the other thing you say kind of right off the bat is that it's not a social what's the word what's the exact wording you use it's not that you realize that spirits can be problematic yeah in many ways in their production and in their consumption and in their trade uh but that's not what this book is about. No, I mean if you want to read about that there's a a great book I don't always agree with it but it just came out by one of our contributors Mark Shredd called Breaking the Liquor Machine about uh global temperance movements. And uh it's fascinating uh but uh we don't really cover that.
+
+[17:21] Well so it it's a it's a good book. Yeah it's interesting. I don't agree with some of his premises but he's got a lot of evidence and he's a good arguer and uh some someday I'll I'll I'll I'll sit down with him and and hash it out. My my favorite book on uh the temperance movement in the United States is the Furnace book from yeah, mine too. Yeah.
+
+[17:40] That's a great book. Yeah, JC Furnace. Uh beautiful writer. I mean, just beautifully. Makes you want to read it.
+
+[17:46] Yeah. I own his other book, but haven't read it. I forget what it's called. Yeah, I I I haven't read it either. But that that uh his book uh was it called like Prohibition or something like that?
+
+[17:56] Or Demon Demon Rum. Oh Demon Rum, yeah. Demon Rum came out in the early 60s. Great book. Uh uh, I'm happy to meet another fan, you know, because that's a book that more people should know.
+
+[18:05] That's the best book uh written on American prohibition. Right. And I think maybe he was one of the early people, so like uh, you know, the the older you get, the more you see how history is warped by the no offense by the people who write it. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, and so I think he was one of the early people to tie the success of the temper temperance movement.
+
+[18:25] It was well known, but back to Graham. So Graham was kind of a Sylvester Graham was kind of a fringe figure prior to his kind of rehabilitation is the wrong word because no one thinks he's not a lunatic. But I mean, he's kind of reinforced. I mean, but who among us, right? Right, right, right.
+
+[18:40] But uh his reimportance as a as a uh important figure in American culture. It's like Furnace and a couple other people uh from the 60s to the 80s, because I think no one was talking about Graham in the in the 40s and 30s. No, not so much. You know, he was he was uh his time had come and gone and they moved on to other things. But he was dyspeptic and a bad writer, among other things.
+
+[19:03] I mean, uh not a very uh compelling character. No, and yet he had enough charisma to like found all kinds of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Gramite's the worst. Uh look, if someone doesn't like liquor, fine.
+
+[19:16] You don't like liquor and you don't like sex. I mean Well, it or exertion or physical exercise. I mean, choose one of these things to hate. You're not gonna really uh life is gonna be hard for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[19:33] It's not, it's not okay. So back to the book. Yeah. Uh another interesting thing before we uh how how did you get an interesting choice? Marcus Samuelson, chef to write the forward.
+
+[19:43] What was the impetus behind that? Uh Noah and I know and admire Marcus. And we wanted a we wanted a chef because uh we wanted people to realize that this is part of like the culinary world, you know? It's not just uh for bartenders. It's a this book is uh, I mean, we've got like uh blurbs also on the back by all a pretty diverse group of people, including uh Lars from from uh Metallica and uh and uh Dan Aykroyd and you know people we we've we've met uh uh uh over the years.
+
+[20:19] Uh and it it's we really just want to show that you know this is like a huge part of of our lived experience in the world, uh impinges on this in some way. I have never had Dan Aykroyd's uh vodka vodka that is filtered through Herkimer Diamonds, which PS is quartz from Utica. Yeah, uh like uh well it's actually it's it's pretty good. And it was I uh I do Noah and I have our Life Behind Bars podcast, and we had him on, and we spent a lot of time talking about technical stuff. He he was like really into it.
+
+[20:55] He was weirdly into into the the technical side of distilling, and I thought that was cool, actually. I appreciated that. But like, what's the purpose of the quartz? Just a thing, it's just a little bit more. Well, quartz filtering, they they've been doing, you know, quartz filtering goes goes back, and it's uh part of Soviet uh vodka technology.
+
+[21:12] The Soviets spent so much time studying vodka. It's shouldn't come as a surprise. It does not. But they but they did. And uh they learned things like precious metals filtering.
+
+[21:22] Uh platinum works, silver works, gold doesn't. Um quartz works, you know, some things do in the and it's basically a matter of ionization of the uh of the uh uh of the alcohol molecules, uh, because there's really not much else in there. And uh it somehow you get different ions. I've tasted against each other at a distillery in in Kyrgyzstan, uh where which was the former Soviet distillery for Central Asia. I've tasted uh silver filtered, charcoal filtered, and quartz filtered vodkas, and they all taste different.
+
+[21:58] What was that grapey stuff that you got back from there? Oh yeah, that was that was that was their samogon. Yeah, yeah, but their their vodka was the real treasure at that place. Their vodka was exquisite. I mean, it sounds a little bit like what Nastasi and I used to do with the French culinary.
+
+[22:13] We're like, I don't know, pour it through this, see what happens. Yeah, exactly. Uh but but it but then they got like uh you know, people with PhDs in chemistry to to to walk the cat back and and see like why it happened so that they could do it again. I mean, we used to stash remember remember when we used to filter, we used to buy the cheapest worst vodka for distillation, and then we would like we would just keep filtering it till it didn't taste like poison anymore. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[22:39] Yeah, I mean uh you know, vodka's pitiless, and uh anything you'll taste, and anything that's in there you'll taste. We uh we the school wouldn't give us the money to buy filters, real filters. Uh-huh. So we went across the street to the Dwayne Reed. T-shirts?
+
+[22:55] Uh oh no, but we bought just the refills for Britta's. Oh, there you go. And then melted quart containers and smashed the filters through and then just like held them there for hours like idiots. Well, okay. But a t-shirt set it worked.
+
+[23:08] It worked really well. I mean it it it it removed all the character, which is fine because we were gonna redistill it anyway. We were adding our own character to it. We wanted complete neutral. Do you like neutral vodkas or do you like vodkas with character?
+
+[23:18] I like them with a little bit of character, actually. Yeah. And you know, I mean, if I'm mixing drinks, I really don't care. I mean, any vodka is is is practically practically any vodka is fine. But uh I like I like it drunk Russian style when you pull it out of the freezer and uh, you know, it's the wine of the north.
+
+[23:37] Yeah, I mean the freezer tamps down on some of that kind of hospital nose. I don't like a hospital nosy vodka, one that smells like uh like uh I'm about to be disinfected. Yeah, you'll get some of the that, certainly in the eastern European ones, but uh, you know, they're not completely neutral and they're not sweet. I mean, they don't have uh that sweet, sweet corn nose. Do dislike when they jacket with glycerin.
+
+[24:01] Yes. Do you do the the hand wiping test? I try not to because uh I don't care that much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just you know, it's volume.
+
+[24:09] That's the smart thing. Yeah, not care that much, except for how it tastes and how you're I mean, if I'm judging it for a spirits competition, then I care very much. And I try to like come up with a fair evaluation, and then you know, I kind of look on that a little ascance. But I mean Stolitchnaya was always my benchmark back in the day, and that was lightly sweetened and might have had a little glycerin in it, but it was certainly lightly sweetened. And uh, you know, and that's that goes back to the origins of Stolitchnaya in the late 40s, mid-40s.
+
+[24:40] By the way, uh, in the book, there's a picture of an old Smyrnoff bottle, and it says that's in your collection, and it says pre pre-revolutionary. And I was like, I was like, oh, wait, we're not the only country with a revolution. He means the Russian revolution. Yeah. I was like, Yeah, I mean the Russian Revolution.
+
+[24:56] I mean the Russian Revolution. Hey, uh Nastasia, has anyone ever referred to us as lightly sweetened? No. Uh okay. Uh now, uh question.
+
+[25:09] Uh some things what was interesting in the book, is how many different contributors? A zillion, three zillions? About 150. 150. So some of the contributors write in kind of more of a classic encyclopedia style, and some write giving kind of more color commentary and opinion.
+
+[25:31] And it's interesting how they mix, like, was that a choice to not impose encyclopedic style on everyone's uh contributions or I didn't want to impose it too heavily. You know, if if the person was a lively writer, as long as it uh uh the information was there, I I made sure to keep some of that. Uh some people needed to be reined in, some uh other people, you know, needed to be a little less encyclopedia style. But uh but uh in general, it was uh, you know, it's not an anthology of writing, it's everything has to kind of pull together. So I spent a lot of time harmonizing entries and making sure that they didn't really contradict each other fundamentally, because that's the problem if you're writing a reference book is like where does this book stand on this?
+
+[26:24] But uh I I left uh I left some of people's little jokes and things in there. Yeah. Well I mean because that's kind of the way you write. So I was wondering whether it was more difficult to to kind of deal with writers who wrote in a style that was completely foreign to you as opposed to someone who was like allowed themselves a little bit of leeway. In term not a leeway in terms of facts.
+
+[26:47] I don't mean that way. No, but just yeah to to to make it a little more conversational. Right, right. You know I couldn't make it too conversational. So some people I definitely had to uh had to uh uh pull back a little bit to into or into the orbit.
+
+[27:00] But you know there's a spectrum. Uh it's a it's a big book and it contains a lot of different people's voices. Uh sometimes muted but they're still there. Right, because when you write normally I mean your voice is kind of always there. That's one I think the hallmarks of your writing is that you like there to be a voice.
+
+[27:18] And it's kind of makes sense for someone who's doing a bar history because bars are all about talking to people. At least I think it's always been my uh my uh I guess my s my style guide is always uh write like you're talking to an intelligent friend preferably sitting at a bar. Yeah. But you know it's like you can I I came out of academia where that was anathema, you know, and and uh the some of the writing was so bad and so unreadable and I I I kind of went in the other direction. Maybe a little too far, but that's always been how I've done it.
+
+[27:51] So people people seem to enjoy the work so I mean that's one of the reasons they got me for the book. So it was part of my mandate was to make it readable. So a couple other questions that I want to know. So you had to farm you farmed out uh not fine. That's a bad way to put it, but you gave you you found people who were experts in particular things and let so quite a number of them, yeah.
+
+[28:11] Right. So when someone writes something on something that you don't know a lot about, are you like, you have to get me some of that to taste? Or you have to get me like like some of the different spirits or like most of the spirits I've tasted. Uh however, uh I did have to uh I had to write the uh one of the articles on West Africa and uh on uh palm spirits there, and I finally broke down and uh talked to my friend uh Colin Appia, who's uh uh Ghanaian, and he got some some uh Akpa Tache from his uh from his uncle in in in Ghana, and uh which is this beautiful palm spirit, or can be beautiful. And uh I still have a little bit of that.
+
+[28:55] He I just got this, he got me this tiny little bottle of it, which was amazing of him. So what it tastes like. Uh it's uh it tastes like palm wine, you know. It's it's got uh it's a little bit lactic, a little bit uh acidic, uh clean and fresh, and uh really, really quite nice. Uh not so heavily flavored.
+
+[29:18] Uh it's it's palm spirits can be fairly neutral, uh, which is interesting, kind of like grape spirits. Yeah. I guess yeah, they run the gamut, depends on how they're yeah. Uh another thing, I noticed that some of the things I thought would be in here aren't necessarily and uh like for instance, I was not able I searched through it to find a reference on dive bars or that style of thing. That that category of different categories of bars isn't necessarily.
+
+[29:43] Yeah, because it's it's spirits and cocktails, it's not a uh bar, it's not the Oxford Companion to Bars. Now that would be a book. I would I would want to be the dive bar editor on that one. Well, I mean, I know that you're a huge proponent of dive bars, and I was I was like hoping to find, you know, kind of your history of the dive bar in there. Yeah, it just it wasn't in my uh my brief as the uh yeah as the people at Oxford would say.
+
+[30:09] I mean, you I I I always assume that you would prefer to be at a dive bar than a not at a dive bar. I I like dive bars quite a bit. Yeah. Now it's I mean, you know, I like a nice cocktail bar too, but I really like dive bars. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[30:23] I like a dive bar. I like a dive bar. You know, I like a comfortable dive bar. I I it doesn't I like I like uh dive bars in the afternoon when it's quiet and uh it's you and the bartender. Yeah.
+
+[30:34] I always think of I I I was in DC once and I walked uh uh I was uh doing uh a bar crawl for Esquire, and I thought I'd start at the Raven Inn uh up in kind of kind of north of uh of downtown. And uh I had to walk a mile in the snow to get there. And I go in and there's only one person sitting at the bar. It's the middle of the afternoon. And within 10 minutes, me, the bartender, and this one person were discussing like how people raise kids like crap these days, uh what the Japanese aims were in the Central Pacific during World War II.
+
+[31:09] Um what kind of tires work best in snow and about 20 other things. And we were just having the greatest time, you know. You know, I love an old I love an old uh dive bar. Nastasi and I went to my old dive bar and we had an okay time, right, Sas? We went before the Billy Joel concert too.
+
+[31:27] There was the bar fight that broke out while we were there. That's true. Which bar was this? Holland. Oh yeah.
+
+[31:32] And then we went to uh before we had gone to like to Nastasia's old dive bar, and someone there tried to order me. What the what the hell did that guy try to do? It was the Jack Daniels honey product. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, that's not so good.
+
+[31:46] Oh, this is just a horrific product. Yeah. But um it's more horrifying that that that this guy at the bar thought that A, that Nastasia couldn't order for me. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[31:57] That's the first thing that was like, uh, excuse me. She knows much more about liquor than you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that he thought, looked at me and was like good stuff. Yeah.
+
+[32:06] And that's what I was gonna want. Yeah, that's a honey guy. Yeah. And then we went to a third dive bar. Which bar was that?
+
+[32:12] I gotta know. The gaff. Okay. And then we went to a third bar and got taken for tourists and got the tourist rate at the dive bar, and that pissed me off. Oh, that was so.
+
+[32:24] Well, you were a tourist at that dive bar. I was, although I used to live around, I lived around the corner from it for five years. I didn't go to it because I went to the Holland. Yeah. You know what I mean?
+
+[32:33] Well, see, you you weren't you weren't one of the that dive bars. But the the the bartender looked at us, right, John? She just yeah and just freaking, freaking It was like $47 for three drinks or something like that. Yeah, bad dive bar drinks. And I was like, I was like, hello.
+
+[32:51] Excuse me. Excuse me. You know, like, yeah. You know, you you you should have showed your face in there a few times. I haven't lived in that neighborhood in like 18 years.
+
+[33:02] So you were a tourist. I mean, I guess, but you know, Lower East Side isn't a tourist in midtown, you know what I mean? It's like, I don't know. Oh, that's funny though. That's funny.
+
+[33:11] God, oh, ouch. Yeah. All right. So some more Umbridge while we're at Umbridge. Yeah.
+
+[33:15] Oh, not this. I like that. You you generously. So at the book launch, Dave uh generously signed all of the books that people stole. I think.
+
+[33:24] I didn't get you to sign this for Yeah, they were they were there for the taking. Yeah. It's like you stole yours. I did steal mine. Before anyone said anyone could take anything, I was like, I went up to the person.
+
+[33:34] Publishing people are so funny because they're at the table, and the person that they put in charge of the table usually has no power. So it's mean slash fun to make them a little bit nervous. Be like, I'm gonna steal this. Can I steal this? She's like, uh I'm like, I'm gonna steal this right now.
+
+[33:50] I'm stealing this. Okay. And she's like, uh, you know what I mean? But that's me. Well, all that ends for it.
+
+[33:57] I'm I'm Italian. I would go there and like, you know, talk them out of it. But you're like the this weird northern Italian who also knows how to speak German, right? I I don't know how to speak German. No.
+
+[34:06] No, I mean I can read it a little bit. Yeah. Uh my German was my weakness in in doing this book. All right. Let me let me see.
+
+[34:12] Where's where's your where's your table of uh weights and measures? Which smart is near the beginning of the book, which is something I should have done. It's uh after the after the topical outline of engines, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
+
+[34:27] Anyways, a bar spoon, my friend, four milliliters according to my count, not five milliliters. It depends on the bar spoon, doesn't it? I measured them. I mean, all right, we're gonna have a bar spoon fight. For the for the purposes of this book, it's five milliliters.
+
+[34:43] Okay. Although I do appreciate you using the uh cocktail ounce at 30 mils, which is something that I believe uh anyone who thinks about an uh uh bar ounce being 28 point whatever is just wrong. It's how are you gonna measure that? You know, that's the thing is like I tried to we we used like 30 mil. We tried to make it uh everything is is metric in here, but we tried to make it as easily convertible to ounces uh as possible.
+
+[35:11] Yeah, the cocktail ounce is 30 milliliters. It allows us to to not look like tiny children to our uh international compatriots. Exactly. Uh so I do appreciate that. And then uh also, uh John, I don't know if you know this.
+
+[35:25] Uh I am a I'm in the molecular mixology. You know how d horrible molecular as a term is. I uh it it's completely meaningless. Yeah, it's it's uh all mixology is molecular, but uh exactly. Yeah, but but on the other hand, that's what people call it, and that's what we needed to title the entry.
+
+[35:43] It's it's uh you know, uh 'cause people have to be able to find it. You know, uh one of the uh interesting things uh way back in the day, uh people tried to oppose like make a um kind of a a diametric oc opposition between people who enjoyed uh learning about old techniques and people who uh were more interested in new techniques. And so not just in in in cocktails, but also in in food, I'm thinking John Mariani, who is you know, horrible at that. I mean, like he might have been good at other things, but horrible about that. And also very rude if you want it to be rude person.
+
+[36:23] He c he could certainly be a rude person. Yeah. Uh uh well, rude and like I'm rude, but I hopefully not mean and rude to people that I don't know. I hopefully I'm only mean to people that I know well enough that's a hell of a distinction. Well, I mean He was mean to his friends, but he was nice to everybody else.
+
+[36:43] I mean, yeah. I mean, I don't know, like I think it takes a different kind of jerk to be rude to a stranger. Oh, I think so too. Actually, uh I try not to do that. Yeah, 'cause you don't know who this stranger is, or or why would you be rude to a stranger?
+
+[36:54] Why would you be rude to a stranger. That just doesn't compute to you? Exactly. So, like before we get into another another interesting uh thing you have at the at the near the end, is you try, as many people have, to categorize the world of spirits. How much of a pain in the behind was that?
+
+[37:16] Oh, it was interesting. That was actually kind of fun, but it was also really hard. Right, because like vodka well, so for those of you that oh wait, what'd you write about Bialystokers? I didn't even see that. Oh, it's just someone named Bialy Stock and as a postcu thing.
+
+[37:29] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I come from the Lower East Side is where where I live. That's that's Bialli Stoker Plaza. That's where and where the Bialis were from in the in New York.
+
+[37:38] You can't really get a good Bialy anymore. No, I haven't seen one in a while. And and they're really the the last one I had was extremely boring and not very good. Yeah, Kosar's, which is uh like on the block where I live, back before they got sold, back when they when they used to close down for the Sabbath, like all of the businesses did in that neighborhood, they made a good bialy. You know, a little bit dry, a little bit of onion stuff.
+
+[38:04] You had to eat it the day. It was a couple hours after the I mean they really don't keep. They're not even good in the evening. No, you want to know they they have to be practically fresh out of the oven. Yeah, which is what you're supposed to do.
+
+[38:15] You know, and then they're moist and delicious. Yeah, but uh nowadays I have not had a good uh I've had like these biales that like I think people want them to last and they shouldn't. Yeah. It's like this idea of shelf stable. Nothing should be shelf stable unless it's in a can.
+
+[38:32] Look, and I hate to poo-poot this, the other thing is like uh Kosars used to have a decent bagel, I thought. Like back in the day. I haven't uh it's not, it's not in my circuit. Uh you know, I'm in Brooklyn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[38:44] So you have your own decent bagels. But they went from being uh kind of uh a normal bagel. So if you're gonna think about bagels on the 1980s spectrum of H H to Essa, that kind of dichotomy, right? Uh they went from being kind of the denser, small, not Union bagel size, but you know, reasonable size bagel, chewy and dense. Yeah.
+
+[39:09] I got one last time, literally, I thought it was a football. It was like Oh no, no, no. Yeah, it's not good. No hole, but like, you know, not even as chewy as Essa style, but just like a football, like a like a bready football. And I was like, what?
+
+[39:25] What? That's the end of the bagel as we know it. I mean, I don't even think it's called Kosar's Bialis anymore. I think it's just called Kosars now. Yeah, because nobody knows what a biali is.
+
+[39:33] Because no one knows what a biali is. Oh well. Can I say something else? Not related to cocktails. Anyone who's listening, if you're gonna open a bagel store, store, right?
+
+[39:43] Or a store. Or a store with a shtick, yeah. Please, please, separate lines for the people like me who just want to come in and buy bagels, separate line from the people who want you to manipulate their bagel. I don't know why anyone would want a bagel shop to manipulate their bagel for them, but fine. You know what I mean?
+
+[40:02] It's like it's Hey, you manipulated my bagel. Exactly. I mean, like, I gotta stand behind someone who's like, what kind of cream cheese do you want on your bagel? I don't care. I'm just buying a dozen bagels and getting the hell out of here.
+
+[40:13] Make separate lines. What do you think about this? I would love to see that because I just want the bagel. I just want the bagel. I toast it at home if I want it toasted.
+
+[40:20] Also, New Yorkers. We have a uh uh New Yorkers take note. When you come to or non-New Yorkers, when you come to New York and order a bagel, because we hate being ripped off, they're gonna put too much cream cheese on your bagel if you have had the bagel shop do it. Like a crazy amount of cream cheese. Do you do you hate the fact that they put so much cream cheese on bagels here?
+
+[40:43] Uh I don't hate it. It's so much so messy. I don't know. I I like I like butter on my bagels these days. So that's you know, that's that's me.
+
+[40:50] Nastasi, what do you think about butter on a bagel? No, not really. No? What about toasting? Where are we on toasting?
+
+[40:56] Bagel side only, of course. I mean cuts out. I like it toasted with butter. Toasted bagel with butter is my favorite. I know that's you know, completely wrong in every way, but that's still what I like.
+
+[41:05] Wait, Jack, what'd you say? Toasted bagel with butter is my answer as well. This is why you moved to Los Angeles. Yeah, I think I I spent a year in Los Angeles and that probably corrupted me. I think like, look, if you if if you've been relegated to like, you know, eating lenders, then sure, split and toast that sucker and put butter on it.
+
+[41:26] You know what's actually good? I uh going against myself here. A buttered salt salt bagel. Oh, that would be good. Yes.
+
+[41:33] I would I would eat that. Yeah. I would eat that right now. All right. Speaking of uh eating right now, uh, you've just poured us before we go further in depth into these things.
+
+[41:40] He wanted to uh describe what you're drinking. I I brought a little bit of rum that uh my friend Alexander uh from uh plantation rum uh sent me. This is made in uh one of the two operating three chamber stills in the world. That's a type of still that nobody really that that had fallen out of the distilling industry's consciousness used in America from the beginning of the 19th century up until World War II. And uh it's uh it's sort of a if uh uh pot still, the kind of you know, bootleggers still we think of, if that's a muzzle loading gun, and uh the column still like they make vodka on is a machine gun, you know, you just feed the stuff in and it comes out the other end.
+
+[42:26] This is sort of like a bolt action rifle. It's like you gotta load each each charge, but it's got a bunch of them stacked up to be distilled inside the inside the still. Does he does the a uh analogy take over to accuracy too? Bolt action rifle is extremely accurate. Yeah, this is extremely accurate in terms of flavor.
+
+[42:43] This gets the most flavor. Uh uh, I mean, maybe uh it's different from a pot still, it's a little lighter, but the stuff stays in for a long time and gets steam run through it. And uh this is uh this is from the uh Vulcan, which is a Cincinnati manufacturer uh three chamber still that they have at the uh West Indies rum distilleries in Barbados that they found uh rusting away in a corner and uh and and and refurbished and have been using. What's the proof on that guy? Uh it's uh 51%.
+
+[43:20] Well, I would I would have guessed that it wasn't quite that hot. I would have guessed like 45, so it doesn't drink as hot as it is. No. But it's got a lot of flavor to it though. Yeah, it's got like uh it's weird, it's got some fruitiness to it.
+
+[43:35] Yeah, it does. That's what really comes out is like kind of the mid-range and and the base flavors. It's very good for that. There's a lot of body for it. What do you guys think?
+
+[43:44] I like it a lot. Anyone tasty? I have to try it. Hasan, are you willing to drink out of my cup? I know I don't know how you feel post-corona.
+
+[43:51] Uh I've already had it and I'm boosted. If there's something else we could pour it in, also, we could do that. There you go. All right. There we go.
+
+[44:00] Uh huh. So this is uh this is on obtaining, huh? Uh right now it is. It I I'm sure it'll be on the market soon, but uh age oh aged in a chestnut barrel. Oh well further on obtaining.
+
+[44:11] Yeah. This is like this is everything that I geek out about in in in one in one bottle, basically. Where do you stand on uh GMO chestnut trees? Uh I have not thought about them. One iota.
+
+[44:24] But uh if they're using them, I'm not for 'em. Oh, I'm I'm for GMO chestnut trees. What are they using them for? N uh nothing. They just wanna they wanna have American chestnuts back.
+
+[44:34] You know, I I see what you mean. Yeah, okay. So like, you know, what they've done is they've they've uh made a GMO chestnut that um that will that will resist the uh resist the blight. The black. And so, you know, in other respects, because it hasn't been back crossed with uh Chinese chestnuts, yeah, it is an actual American chestnut tree.
+
+[44:54] It's just resistant. And so Yeah, that that that doesn't bother me as much. Yeah, because uh you know it would be nice if they could get back elm trees also. I mean Which are which are beautiful. Uh I mean what's what trees are gonna be left?
+
+[45:07] Like uh the hemlocks are are dying, and that was the great uh, you know, after we killed after we cut down all of the white pine. Yeah. Uh you know, hemlock was uh, you know, in this area over where John, you know, is par uh you know mom lives, is uh that was all hemlock. And that has all died because of an invasive bug. All of the ash trees here are dying left and right.
+
+[45:33] You know, it's it's like D-Day. Uh I mean, the invasions are huge and and well supported and they won't stop. And every every uh plant in the world is gonna meet its its worst enemy. It's it's uh it's scary. Yeah, I mean, like uh the only ones that survive are the ones that aren't dense enough to get nuked by uh by an invader or or that are just like hella weeds.
+
+[45:54] Yeah, yeah. But look, you know, we might even lose uh I mean I'd like to find a kudzu pest. Oh my god. Well, do you have any property down south? Have you ever had a kudzu problem?
+
+[46:05] No, but I've I've I've driven, you know, I've traveled through the South a lot, and holy Hannah. In the 80s, when cable TV first came about, yeah, uh HBO, I think was one of the first things on on cable, and they only ran movies like uh from like 3 p.m. to remember. And they used to have shorts. So one of them was on kudzu, and it implanted in my mind as a kid this horror of kudzu that to endures to this day.
+
+[46:34] Well, I mean, you drive through like parts of rural Mississippi and see it just covering whole fields, including the houses that used to stand in them or still stand and are completely covered, and just it it's it's like this the it's like a fungus on the face of the earth. Yeah, you know, it's amazing. Uh it's one of those things that the railroad brought. Yeah. You know, and they they thought it was gonna stop railroad embankments from falling down.
+
+[46:56] Yeah, it was uh anti it's good for it's good ground cover. Yeah, it's really good ground cover. Also in the 80s, I should go look at it. Remember, um, so for those of you that aren't, you know, that are younger, which is basically everybody, uh, you know, who's listening, the um in the 80s you used to read magazines. This was something that you did, and like this was a valid way of finding information because there was no internet.
+
+[47:18] You bought the almanac every year and you read magazines. Smithsonian Magazine was an interesting magazine in the 80s. It still is. I just don't read magazines anymore. You used to write for an interesting magazine in the 90s and 2000s.
+
+[47:31] Yeah, in the 2000s. I wrote for Esquire, which was great. In the 90s, I wrote for The Village Voice, which was great. Oh my God. Remember when the Village Voice, like what happened?
+
+[47:40] How did that just fall off of the Well, you know, the internet took away all their classified ads. Yeah. And that and those ads were what paid the people's salaries. So Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink, Nastasia Lopez and I were driving up to do a lecture at what was that? Was that Williams?
+
+[47:57] Yeah. We're going to Williams. And we were driving up there, and he's like, you guys gotta be quiet. I'm doing a very important interview. This is after like the Village Voice was on its last legs.
+
+[48:09] And Nastasi was like, who's it with? Peter goes, Village Voice. Nastasia starts laughing, and I go, worth worth Village Voice, worth every penny. This is after it had gone completely free. Oh man.
+
+[48:21] Remember that, Sus? Yeah. Yeah. I I was almost their music editor, which would have been really interesting. Well, also, small known fact, you were a bassist.
+
+[48:29] I was a bass, I was a bassist for 10 years. But you prefer chunk a chunk of bass. You don't like uh, you don't you're not a super flamboyant bass guy, like you're not a Larry Graham aficionado. I'm not a Jaco Pastorius Larry Graham aficionado, no. I'm more like how do you put Pastorius and Larry Graham together?
+
+[48:46] I mean, I get it, they're both. They play a lot of notes. I'm gonna forcefully interject here. We should get to some questions. In five minutes.
+
+[48:52] What? Yeah. I haven't even asked my questions. All right, I'll ask the Patreon questions. All right.
+
+[48:57] Uh from Warren Johnson, Johnston, in episode 13, around the eight-minute mark. So you I want your mind, Dave, to go to the actual eight-minute mark uh of Life Behind Bars. It is mentioned that Count Negroni had spent time, quote, as a cow puncher in Montana and Alberta. Can you shed some light on uh how you discovered this or where there might be more sources referencing it? Uh yeah, well, uh there's uh a book on the traces of the count.
+
+[49:24] Uh uh I guess I'm I just translated that from Italian. I can't remember what the uh it's it's basically in the count's footsteps. I can't remember what it's called in in English by Luca Piki, P-I-C-C-H-I, that tells the Count Negroni's life and uh the life of the Negroni cocktail. It's a very good book. Luca's a uh a great guy and a great researcher, a bartender in in in Florence.
+
+[49:49] But uh there was uh an article in uh this new this newspaper columnist Bob Davis ran into Count Negroni in the uh 20s, and uh they got to talking, and it turns out they had friends in common in Montana. And uh Negroni uh gave a whole uh spiel about his days as a cow puncher. And I've found in New York City uh city directories, he was in New York City, he was a fencing instructor. Uh he was evidently a uh a gambler here. He was a very sporty individual.
+
+[50:25] He uh he definitely led the sporting life in New York and out west. And uh so uh there there is some evidence. Uh it's you know, it's mostly his recollection, but it checks out uh because he remembered the people that Bob Davis remembered. So so that's uh that's kind of interesting. Uh two quick uh follow-ups on that.
+
+[50:45] One, every bartender, I know you said Florence, but every bartender in Milan's name is Luca, discuss. And two, when you uh I think it's been when you first started working in history, the internet didn't have everything digitized. There's still not everything digitized, but there's a lot of and you mentioned that actually in the in introduction, how that kind of I wouldn't say makes life easier, but just gives more information for you to have primary sources. But I think we all know from the past four or five years, no matter what side of the political debate you're on, that just because something is written don't make it true or unbiased. So when you're reading someone who has all the biases of the 1880s in their own head, how hard is it to actually get what you find to be truthful or good or solid information out of primary resource back?
+
+[51:33] I I I try to confirm everything I can. I, you know, my my motto is chase down every rabbit. And you know, every every thing they say, I I double check it and and you know, try to find other sources to confirm it. And sometimes I can't. And then it's basically this is what I learned in graduate school is weighing sources.
+
+[51:55] I I was I I specialized in ancient uh scientific poetry and and uh that was my dissertation. And a lot of those things we only have the poem, you know. We don't know anything about anything other than that. And confirming stuff is is basically a judgment call. But you learn a certain amount of judgment.
+
+[52:15] So I can't remember whether you wrote the section on adulteration in here or whether it was somebody else. Uh neither can I. Yeah, but like, but like the interesting thing specifically about things like adulteration is is that I find in any historical first, you know, uh writing about things like that, they're usually heavily anti-other, heavily kind of racist, anti foreigner, right, right, right. And uh fear of the unknown, and often just kind of wrong, right? Not the section adultery here, but I'm saying like that specific topic just popped to mind because I was looking through it today.
+
+[52:52] But it gets into issues of corruption, and then that gets people started, you know. And we we see we see what people think is corruption these days is just you know it it's complicated. Yeah, very complicated, yeah. From Jonathan Oberhaus, milk clarification. Uh does lactose intolerance still apply since the method increases cocktail longevity.
+
+[53:11] I've noticed flavor intensifies and proves with time, but for how long before it degrades, sincerely someone who drinks too fast to wait and see. You should always drink cocktails quickly, but in moderation. That's about right. Yeah, yeah. The moderation's the hard part.
+
+[53:25] Yeah. But uh but you but uh the solution is smaller cocktails quicker. Yeah, anyway. I don't know about the the lactose personally, because uh uh I I think you're getting rid of all the solids. Right, but the lactose stays.
+
+[53:38] Lactose stays. Yeah, but last lactose is a sugar, so that's gonna stay. Yeah, the the the real point, Jonathan, is uh uh it's it's a matter of quantity. If someone truly can't have any lactose at all, then it's gonna be a problem. But the the amount of milk and milk punch is usually quite small per volume of liquid consumed.
+
+[53:57] So, you know, it's not like pounding a thing of ice cream. It's yeah, exactly. It's it's it's it's really it's pretty it's not negligible, but it's very small. Yeah. Uh from Miguel Kunz, I recently purchased uh Tempest Tempest Fugits creme de banane.
+
+[54:12] Can you say that with some French, John? Creme de banane. Thank you. Also, yeah, you have five minutes. LCB.
+
+[54:17] Oh, I'm winning because I had five minutes, five minutes ago. I have one. Uh I I love it. Uh can uh Dave Wandrich please talk about some of its historic uses, cocktail recipes, et cetera. Thanks.
+
+[54:28] Uh there aren't a lot of cocktail. Actually, I gotta confess something here. I loathe bananas, so I've never really looked into creme de banan. Ah in general? Yeah, I just I I can't take their flavor.
+
+[54:41] And uh I do not like uh I I just don't like them. And so I don't like banana flavored liqueur. What about fake what about fake banana? What about Laffy Taffy? No, nasty.
+
+[54:51] What about that song Laffy Taffy? Terrible. Well, that's bad too for different reasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[54:56] I mean, that's more for for that. It's a terrible song. That messes with your ear, not your digestion. And now it's going through my head. But uh, but in general, I'm I I there are very few recipes that uh that are classic cocktails uh or or from the classic period.
+
+[55:12] There are no like big classic cocktails that use it, and very few in the past. It was not commonly used, that's for sure. It uh commonly used in cocktails. It turns up occasionally, but it's pretty rare. Uh Tempest Fugit uh does great stuff in all their liqueurs, though, so I'm sure it's a great product.
+
+[55:31] It's just not unfortunately. Uh uh, this is this is like my kryptonite, and uh you just unerringly put your finger right on it. Well, there you go. Uh I have to say, Miguel, kudos for coming up. Uh now the world knows.
+
+[55:47] Yeah, yeah. Now the world knows. You tried to keep it a secret. Yeah, everybody's gonna give me those drinks with the uh with the bananas cut to look like dolphins on them and and all that stuff. I went through a period in my life when I thought that I would give people things that they hated, but I would be the one that made the it's not it's don't do that.
+
+[56:04] Don't do that. It's mean and dumb. Yeah, life is hard for everybody. Why make it harder for them? Yeah.
+
+[56:09] Oh, one more. Uh John, do we have any more questions for specifically for Dave? We should do one more that is good for for the two of you. Uh from Josh S. Okay.
+
+[56:14] Quick question. I will soon begin designing a bar build-out, about 24 seats and a hundred and thirty seat restaurant. It's a new build-out completely from scratch. I'm interested to know what are some of your favorite touches behind a bar for ease of use, efficiency, or just fun. Good bartenders.
+
+[56:32] Good bartenders are the that's the most fun part. Uh other than that, you know, if you can uh uh get a potato can and mount there. Yeah. And uh that would that's uh that's impractical. I recognize that.
+
+[56:46] I I don't know if my old partner Don Lee is still doing uh bar layout consulting work, but he has some very good bar layouts. Um you know, uh Nastasi and I were looking at a bar. Uh keep make sure everyone has a rinse sink, make every station identical. Wait, did I say this? Make every station identical.
+
+[57:06] That way the bartender can just show up at any of the stations on your bar and act, you know, not be pre, you know, preoccupied with figuring out where the stuff is and can just focus on the on the guests. Good rinsers. I I mean, in terms of like uh aesthetic stuff, I always like to see a shelf of books behind the bar because that tells me that the bartenders are are actually, you know, studying their drinks, and you know, I can order things that I might not otherwise order. Um I like to see a shelf of of weird bottles of stuff. I like to see I like to see the liquor displayed behind the bar.
+
+[57:44] What about foot rails? Uh wood rails are good. Uh my favorite bars are stand-up bars uh where there are no stools. But I I recognize that that's impractical, but uh God, I love those. What do you call this thing?
+
+[57:57] The thing that you rest your uh arm on. What do you call that that big round thing that the Labot Balkan bars had? That big molded. It must have a name, but I I don't know what it is. Are you for it or against it?
+
+[58:08] I don't mind that at all. Stops your drink from falling down and gives you something to lean on. Yeah, that's that's good. But you know, I can lean on anything. Yeah.
+
+[58:15] Do you like alternative materials or do you prefer wood mahogany? I like a nice polished wood bar, I have to say. Uh on the other hand, my I think the most beautiful bar I know is at uh Camparino in in uh Milan, which is an S-shaped bar of of uh kind of an open S of great size, and it's a single casting in pewter. Oh my god. It's glorious.
+
+[58:39] And from 1910. Uh I you know, uh, Museum of Food and Drink has Lutes' old bar, which is in pewter. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's cool. It's cool.
+
+[58:49] I mean, that that's that's a thing of it. If you want to see a beautiful bar, look at Camborino. It's got mu mosaics of parrots behind the bar. I enjoy parrots. Yeah.
+
+[59:02] And it's just the the gaudiness and beauty of it is is is quite something. I was talking to a uh falconer the other day. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And uh I asked them, uh, because falcons apparently can uh deal with different people, whereas parrots usually they they like one person only.
+
+[59:18] Yeah, and everybody else they're very mean to. Yeah. And I was like, I wonder whether that's because falcons are predators and parrots are prey. So they they don't feel like they can be kind of connected to more than one. Having done falconry, they're the most arrogant animals I've ever seen in my life.
+
+[59:35] More than us? On par. More than, well, uh, Congress people, okay. All right, one last thing. So you wrote the section because I checked on the Rob Roy, and you seem to like it, even though it is a terrible cocktail.
+
+[59:51] It's not a terrible cocktail. It is the worst of all the Manhattans. It's the worst of all the Manhattans. No, it's not. It is a country.
+
+[59:57] It's a commercial drink. I love I love Rob Roy. I was engaging Tolner the other day for a friend's birthday, and they had a Rob Roy on the thing, and I asked the guy, I was like, has anyone ever ordered one and liked it? It is a garbage drink. Yeah, my hand is up for those of you in the audience.
+
+[1:00:11] I order it every time I go there. Come on, man. It's a great drink. Are you kidding? You should have just said Dave Wundrich orders it, and that would be like, oh.
+
+[1:00:17] But like Yeah, I I drink that, I drink those with pleasure. So for those of you that don't know, if you take a perfectly good drink, the Manhattan, which you know And you make it into a different drink with scotch. Ah well, you do say that it's the only scotch is very hard to mix into cocktails. It's hard to mix with because it's very pungent because uh any anything pot stilled is gonna be hard to mix into cocktails. Well, six.
+
+[1:00:38] It's not just because of scotch. Yeah. No, it's it's really it's because of the depth of flavor. Like try mixing with baiju. Woo.
+
+[1:00:45] Uh yeah. One time uh we were doing that at the at the bar existing conditions because there was a baiju uh rep coming through, and the entire bar was like, what's happened? Yeah. And we're like, it's faiju, shut up. It's it's the baby poop uh aroma.
+
+[1:00:59] And I like Baiju. I actually I drink it gladly and I'll drink it, but I but I drink it neat with with Chinese food. It actually works, uh, can work well in citrus cocktails if you push everything. If you just if you're just like, yes, you know what else it works great at is uh a couple drops out of an eyedropper in a Manhattan. Really?
+
+[1:01:17] It's just wild. If you use like Mao Tai, like a really good aromatic one. It's like it just adds this thing going on. You don't know what it is, but it's it's like adding meat to it. Yeah.
+
+[1:01:30] Yeah. Dave, we're gonna have to have you back on. I'll come back. Okay. So if you like the Rob Roy.
+
+[1:01:29] Dave. What's the worst Manhattan variant? Uh the one where they treat Vermouth like they do in Martinis and put in a teaspoonful. That is just nasty. They didn't even know that was a thing.
+
+[1:01:49] That it was a thing back when Vermouth was always stale but I didn't know that was still a thing. It's still a thing. The country is bigger than than uh than you think. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[1:01:58] Yeah. And uh well so we'll have you back on. Uh you finally come back. You didn't write the section on uh cocktails in the movie so I won't I won't torture you about James Bond or why he had his martini shaken or what what the hell sense that makes that wasn't your section to write but it makes no sense it would be colder. Okay.
+
+[1:02:19] That was Ian Fleming you know yeah it's cold man. Yeah he wanted it cold. All right all right martini is a drink best served cold. It is yeah like revenge. Yeah much like revenge which uh revenge here's to revenge and martinis revenge and martinis I learned that phrase from uh Ricardo Montelban in uh in uh Star Wh Star Trek uh two Wrath of Comic.
+
+[1:02:40] Yeah well there you go one of the great movies of all time Dave uh thanks for coming on appreciate it Dave Nastasia John cheers thank you cooking issues
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stan Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan, New York City, East Coast, New York State. Remember, we are a whole state and not just a city, although we tend to forget that down here. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, true.
+
+[0:25] Trying to forget that. Uh very happy to have back in the booth, Joe Hazen. How you doing, Joe? I'm doing great. How are you guys?
+
+[0:34] Uh doing well, doing well. Uh I'm sure you did not miss us at all. No, I missed you guys dearly. Uh, nice, nice. Uh, and we have our West Coast, uh, we have our West Coast musical and engineering crew, Jackie Molecules.
+
+[0:50] How you doing? Surprise, I'm in Mexico City again. Ah, what is it with you in Mexico City? Why do you why why, dude? He can be anywhere.
+
+[0:57] This is the the time of working anywhere. This is the world Wait, what's what's that song? This is the world we live in. Uh, this is the hands we're given. What's that song?
+
+[1:07] I don't know. This is the world we live in. Uh what song is that? Who sings that? I have no idea.
+
+[1:14] Uh no idea. Uh Phil Collins. Oh, yeah, yeah. So little known fact. There's a very famous musician whose violin costs how many millions?
+
+[1:27] I'm not gonna call him out by name, not that anyone cares, but Stas, how much is his violin cost? Oh, like uh a million? I don't know. No, no, no, many millions. Oh, okay.
+
+[1:34] It's a stratavarius, many millions. And uh uh can't listen to rock musicians, can't listen to rock music because it's too sloppy for him. Except for what group, Nastasia? Genesis. Genesis.
+
+[1:48] And we're not sure, we're not sure whether he enjoys a Peter Gabriel Genesis or more of a Phil Collins Genesis. Phil Collins, I think. I would say so because I mean Peter Gabriel, no offense, but you're a little sloppy compared to my man Phil. I don't think you could be pulling off that uh Nastasia's favorite, all-time favorite thing, maybe, is when Phil Collins has to make it to that dang drum set. Oh god, yeah.
+
+[2:15] Have you seen it in the air tonight? He's walking around the stage singing the beginning of the song, and he has to make it to the drums for that part, you know, for the part, the part. And he makes it. Yeah. Spoiler.
+
+[2:27] Yeah. For for those of you who like so for so I'm 50 and I'm kind of old for I'm sorry, sorry, kind of young for Prime Phil Collins, right? So the Phil Collins I grew up with was the Sis Studio Phil Collins. Which is, you know, I mean, he made a lot of money, but that's not like the best Phil Collins, is it? No.
+
+[2:50] Uh oh my God, remember when he remade that Supreme song? Can't hear any love. Oh my God. Why? Why did that need to get remade?
+
+[2:58] One last thing about music before we get into what we're doing. Oh, by the way, Nastasi the Hammer Lopez, how you doing? Okay. Always, always selling yourself, Stas. Okay.
+
+[3:09] Still breathing. Not underground yet. You know what? You gotta start doing like my uh crazy uh racist grandpa used to do all the time. Is that when you say, How are you doing?
+
+[3:19] He only had two answers. Vertical, meaning not dead, or soberly, meaning meaning he hadn't started drinking. Or I think he meant sober in the old school sense of angry. Yeah, yeah. Like severely syllably vertical.
+
+[3:36] Those are his only two answers ever. Yeah. Uh so last music thing before I talk about our our guest. First of all, Patreon people, call in your questions to uh 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
+
+[3:50] And uh we're gonna what we're gonna do is gonna split this show, and we're gonna just gonna like go crazy at the end on a bunch of Patreon questions and other questions. So don't worry. The show, the beginning part of the show, it's like two shows in one, people. Two shows in one. So I'm walking past the ice rink.
+
+[4:06] You like this ice rink stars? It used to. Okay. This do you want to describe the thing that you've taken over now? It's now not even my family's thing anymore, it's your thing.
+
+[4:17] I don't know. Sign of the cross. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. No, no, I know.
+
+[4:21] And you want it, you want to t tell people. So originally this started as something in my family. I don't know how many other families have this. But now Nastasia, and Nastasia has her own culture of sign of the cross. Yeah.
+
+[4:31] Right. So you might be thinking, you Catholic out there or people who watch movies, might be thinking that what sign of the cross means is, oh, you like you cross yourself, like something bad happens, you cross yourself, right? That's what you're thinking, John? Yeah. All right.
+
+[4:42] No. What a sign of the cross means is someone, usually someone, you don't sign to the cross someone who's who you're not like. It's like a family member. It's like when your sister does something to you, or your cousin, or your brother does something to you that is so bad that what you do is you it's almost always at the dinner table. Kind of has to be at the dinner table.
+
+[5:04] It has to be in front of people. You can't sign to the cross someone on your own. It doesn't work that way. Okay. All right.
+
+[5:09] Ready for it? You go, that's it, sign of the cross. And you pull out a piece of paper, you make a cross on it, you fold that paper up, you put it in your wallet, and they're dead to you. That's it. It's over.
+
+[5:22] They're dead. Sign of the cross. Right? So that's in my family, that's what they do. And you have to say it that way.
+
+[5:28] That's it, sign of the cross. And then that's it. It's never mentioned again. They're never brought up again. You don't bring that person up to that person.
+
+[5:35] They're not just dead, they are like expunged in a Stalinist sense. Got it. Right. Now I have no such pieces of paper in my wallet, right? And by the way, neither does my stepfather.
+
+[5:46] It was more of the older generation that did the sign of the cross. I mean, I don't know. I mean, Gerard does have some people that he's kind of signed with the cross, but it's not actually physically in his wallet, like it was in his dad's wallet. Anyway, so Stas, what your your your culture of it's slightly different. Well, yeah.
+
+[6:01] I mean, you you taught me, and then I put in two, like a couple years ago. And to me, they're like they're dead, right? But I also hope like the worst for them. Not death, but like the the worst thing. And it usually happens.
+
+[6:19] So that happened. I took those two out. Then I have one in there right now that's been in there for like two years, three years, maybe. And then I'm I need to put the new one in soon. So yeah.
+
+[6:29] Yeah. And Dave is like, Dave has said to me, like, no, don't do that. No, come on, no, don't do that. Like, so Dave actually believes that this is uh Well, it's supposed to no, no, I don't believe it's gonna have a negative impact on them, but it's supposed to be a permanent personal statement. Yeah, but I also add a little to it.
+
+[6:45] But what I'm saying is, yeah, your y your culture of the cross can be different from mine. Yeah, you know what I mean? It doesn't have to be the same thing. But like you know, in my family, it's just not that it's not serious for you, but it means something slightly different for you, I think. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[6:58] It may it means taking down, remembering to hop wish them ill every time I see it and take them down in a very specific way. Yes, so like, yeah, so like in my family's sign of the cross, they're just gone. Right. You don't do anything against them. Right.
+
+[7:13] You know what I mean? It's just that's it. Yeah. They have to have the piece of paper. It's all about the piece of paper.
+
+[7:14] Yeah. Uh molecules, were you gonna say something? I thought I heard you say something. Nope. Now listen.
+
+[7:25] No. We have some upcoming uh he's worried he's gonna get the sign of the cross put on him. So I'm going past I'm going past the rink. And they're playing that Sam Cook song. Don't know much about history, don't know much biology, don't know much about the French I took, all the all this other stuff.
+
+[7:41] Let me tell you something. I was thinking about that. I was thinking about myself. Imagine if I use that strategy to woo somebody. Listen, if you are not Sam Cook, don't use the strategy, I am a complete dummy, dumb butt to try to woo a date.
+
+[7:56] And the reason I thought about this is because the only reason I can think that molecules is going to Mexico City so often is you have some sort of hot date down there, someone who brings something other than yellowtail to the table. Everybody thinks this. I didn't think that's a good thing. Because it's the only reason to travel to the same place. I don't think so, Jack.
+
+[8:11] Thank you, stars. Yeah. Why? I I believe that you're there because you can work anywhere. And yeah, anyone who thinks that is envious.
+
+[8:20] It's cheap, it's delicious. There's an incredible music scene. I mean the weather is perfect. Come on. So for those of you down there, he doesn't have a hot date, you can call him up.
+
+[8:32] Okay. Now uh that's right. Still single. The next the next two episodes are focused on, and we haven't uh we haven't had anyone from the museum on a long time on the museum of uh food and drink. And we have an upcoming exhibition.
+
+[8:46] So next week we're gonna have on uh Dr. Jessica Harris, who is the curator of the upcoming show African slash American Making America's table, correct? Making the nation's table. Making the nation's table. Uh and uh we're gonna have her on, but she's also gonna talk about uh High on the Hog, her Netflix documentary, and like all the books she writes, and also people might not know this personal friend to Jackie Molecules.
+
+[9:11] I mean, I've known her a long time, but you know, Jackie Molecules and Dr. Harris are tight. Also, you should ask a lot you should ask a lot of specific questions for Dr. Harris because it's very rare that we get to uh have her on because even though she does live in New York most of the time, like a lot of the time she's either in New Orleans or you know, in other places, so you know, get your questions in for her. Uh but this week we're having uh actually the new well, not new anymore.
+
+[9:37] It's been like almost like half a year or more or something like that. I lose track of time. The older you get, the more you lose track of time. But the the president of the museum of uh food and drink, Nasley Parvisi, how are you doing? Hi, Dave.
+
+[9:50] How's everything going? I love that you just did it's good. I just love that you did my annual review and don't know that I've been there for a year now. That's true. I was on the annual review.
+
+[9:59] Listen, I'm telling you, uh the older you get people, like a year is like a year is like a week and a half. I know. It's like well, especially this year. Yeah, also anyone I mean like I feel like you can do a yearly review after like three days or like after like five years. You know what I mean?
+
+[10:18] I feel like it's just not working for us. It's been four days, you're fired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that. You know, people should do that more often.
+
+[10:24] I honestly like it would save a lot of problems. Yeah. For those of you out there, I feel like you kind of have lots of things taken out. Yeah, well, look, how often has it happened? Look, so Nasley, before she came to the Museum of Food and Drink, uh, was uh like okay, so she's in California now, moving back to New York, but she, you know, was uh working in the Bloomberg administration.
+
+[10:45] What was your what were you what were you running? What were you heading up at Bloomberg? Not Bloomberg, the company. Yeah. Yeah, Bloomberg, the mayor.
+
+[10:53] Um I was the commissioner for community affairs for New York City. All right. So in other words, you had to deal with a lot of people. A lot of people. Like a lot, lot of people.
+
+[11:03] So True or false. Yes. When was the last time when was the last time that when you hired someone or brought someone on, right? That you were like, this person is a hundred percent right, and then you like, oh my god, I hate this person. That doesn't happen that often, right?
+
+[11:19] Not that often. Here's the thing. I would say my talent in life is hiring. Like everyone's got a way to manage or a talent or whatever, and mine is hiring. So I don't think I have done that.
+
+[11:32] I definitely towards the last days, hired somebody who I knew I wasn't gonna like. Um, but I gotta say, I also think that's a sign of growing up is hiring people that you don't necessarily like, but who are right for the job. Um, I actually thought that was okay. Right. I don't think I've ever hired somebody who's like really failed me in the end.
+
+[11:51] Well, you've never had to hire someone and you had that little twinge because you needed someone right then. That's never happened. It's not worth it. My management style is to not manage people. And so I have sort of taken a hit both on like I'll have to do the extra work or other people will have to cover to make sure the right person's there.
+
+[12:12] There's no payoff to quickly hiring somebody. There's just not. I don't even know how we got on this. Nasley, this is not a hiring seminar. We've got to talk about the exhibit.
+
+[12:20] So why don't we talk about I'm happy to tell you? I know, I know. It's it's my fault. As usual. As usual.
+
+[12:27] Oh, do you are you hiring people right now? Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right, people. Yeah.
+
+[12:29] We are hiring folks, yeah, on the floor. We need folks on the museum floor during uh while the exhibition's going. And I think we still need uh an educator, so we're hiring for that. What about dos and educator to work with the kids? What about docenty kind of people?
+
+[12:44] Yeah. Docentie kind of people are both on a volunteer basis, and the folks who work on the museum floor are essentially going to be trained as docents as well. While making sure you don't touch the ebony kitchen. So, okay, so let's get let's get to the let's get to the exhibit. And so I'm yeah, we'll probably go kind of hard in on content next week, uh when uh Jessica's here.
+
+[13:05] Yeah, yeah. So let's go into like the mechanics of like how and John, by the way, full di full disclosure, uh when the exhibit was being made, John was one uh on the curatorial team. That's true. At Frank, you know, uh and like on the exhibitions, and I'm on the exhibitions committee. So like, you know, we're pretending that we're siloed here and we all have different jobs, but really we don't.
+
+[13:24] So um come on. So Nazi, you and John, I guess can talk about uh a little bit about the um the advisory structure. I'll just say this at the beginning. So, like for those of you that don't know, like uh I'm the founder of the museum food and drink, and that it's my was my idea, but I don't do the work to to make it happen, right? I mean, I do some work, but not the work to make it happen.
+
+[13:45] And um we've done several uh exhibits. Uh, you know, the smallest exhibit was the very first one that I did. I literally built in my wife's architecture office on American country ham. Back when no one was talking about American country ham. No one was talking about it.
+
+[14:02] Anyway, so like I was like, you know, you have to like s eat it like a prosciutto. Slice it, don't cook it, eat it like, you know, love your American country ham. I was on that train. I gotta say, I gotta say, Joe, before anyone, before anyone, Joe, people might say that I'm I was like lit, I was early to that game. I was before the game.
+
+[14:14] I wrote, I made the game. I created the game. Anyway, uh, not to toot whoop whoop my own horn. Anyways, so that was the first exhibit. Uh tiny, did it a trade show?
+
+[14:29] That's how I actually got into the food business uh for real. That's how Michael Batterberry found me and I got hired on food arts. Anyway, of course, I don't know how to start a museum, so I didn't. So the mu idea floundered, festered until Nastasi and I were like, hey, let's throw this fundraiser. Stas, best fundraiser you've ever been to in your life?
+
+[14:45] Best. Yes. Best. We know how to party. We know how to build a few.
+
+[14:51] Keep hearing about that fundraiser. And sub party. Nazi, when was the last time you were at uh when was the last time you were at a event where a whole roast ostrich was wheeled in? Ridden by the house. Uh uh.
+
+[15:08] When was the last time you were written by a cook? That's all I'll say about it. I think we know the answer to this. I mean, it's like Joust. Have you ever played the game?
+
+[15:16] I was ridden at one point by a cook. Yeah. Joust, great game. So also let me ask you another question, Stas, and this is actually what I'm most proud of. Not that we had like an amazing like all-star cast of cooks, not that, you know, people who were huge at the time, people who became huge afterwards, like, so like good choices all around.
+
+[15:34] Uh also, what was that event, Stas? Was that event late? No. No. It was during the day.
+
+[15:41] No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, like, did it last the amount of time that it was supposed to last? Oh, yeah. Did the dishes go out on time? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[15:49] Did was anyone waiting around to eat? Was there a lot of speeches? No. No, no. People.
+
+[15:56] People. People. I don't understand what it is. Maybe rich people. Maybe rich people like to hear people talk when they're trying to have a conversation at the table.
+
+[15:59] I know that we don't like that. I know that no one I know likes speeches. If you ever need someone to speak, I know you listen. If you listen to this show, you're like, oh, Dave, he talks forever. Not at events.
+
+[16:16] At events, Stas, how fast are my speeches? So fast. So I think you were the auctioneer too, right? Oh my God. Sas, how fast was that auction?
+
+[16:25] So fast. You'd be good at that. He's very good. Uh first of all, I turn on my loudest, fastest jet wine. And I I I'm not aggressive.
+
+[16:34] No, but like, remember that time I did an auction uh at the Thanksgiving farm and uh what's her name? Lorraine Bracho was there, and I shamed her for not upping her bid once. Oh God. Yeah. While she was like at the height of Sopranos kind of thing.
+
+[16:48] I was like, come on. I was like giving her stuff anyway. I'm just gonna say, for those of you that have to give speeches at these events, snappy, fast, hit it, quit it. Snappy, fast. Yeah, hit it, quit it.
+
+[17:01] Right? Boom. Yeah. Yep. Because because listen.
+
+[17:05] Words to remember as we plan our fall events. Listen, people. No one wants to hear it. No, but not only that, you're angling to sit next to that one person that you paid all that money to sit next to, right? So you just want to have a conversation with that one person or meet someone new.
+
+[17:18] That's the only reason to pay other than to look whatever. Give money to the institution, sure. So you pay, you're the one speaking, you want to talk to that person, you don't want to get interrupted every 25 seconds. You know what I mean? And lots of alcohol.
+
+[17:28] We did that. I had to give speeches on behalf of the mayor, and I was like, I'm gonna just cut four of these paragraphs because no one cares, especially when you're not the mayor. Like the last thing they want is some like city employee giving his speech, and they're just start chatting. You're like, This is dumb. Why am I here?
+
+[17:44] I mean, I don't know, Nasley. I mean, not for nothing, but I'd rather have almost anyone other than Bloomberg give a speech. I mean, the guy is like the guy's like a desiccated sponge in terms of his uh speaking manner. I mean, he's smart, but he's hear him in Spanish. Brilliant.
+
+[18:02] I mean, oh my god, his Spanish is hilarious. I mean, like, I mean, like the whole thing, he's I'm I'm not saying anything negative about the guy. What I'm saying is is that he's a boring speaker. That's all I'm saying about him. You know what I mean?
+
+[18:12] I think he'd agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, on the other hand, he's a billionaire.
+
+[18:17] Oh, yeah. Why is can you tell me this is not a massive this is not a museum question, but and if you don't feel comfortable answering, why does he not have any love for Medford? I mean, I know why I for Medford? Yeah. I mean, I can see many reasons why you wouldn't have love for Medford.
+
+[18:34] This is where he's from, people. Bloomberg is not in New Yorker. Bloomford Bloomberg's from Medford Mass, where they used to have the rum, where they where Paul Revere has stopped and drank the rum and they have that event every year, blah, blah, blah. Medford. Why he why hating on it?
+
+[18:48] Um, I kind of feel the same way he does, which is, and by the way, he has certainly like given a lot to Medford, but sort of uh it's not obviously anything he makes a big deal about. But I think for all of us who grow up in Massachusetts, it's an amazing place to grow up. But uh, I'll say from my perspective, someone who grew up outside of Worcester, like I grew up knowing I could not wait to get out of there and I couldn't wait to move to New York City. And as soon as I turned 18, I moved to New York City. Um, and Mike got out of Massachusetts as soon as he turned 18 as well.
+
+[19:21] Um I think that when your success is built in New York City, you're not sort of trying to be like, let me figure out how to make Medford the world's best city. I mean, it's just it's a small town. He didn't have a choice in growing up in it. And New York is where he made a name for himself. And PS New York's got bigger problems, and that's where he decided to spend most of his money to try to sort of move the needle on some of those problems rather than Medford.
+
+[19:47] Um, but yeah, I don't I I always say this like I I love my Boston sports teams, blah, blah, blah. I love Massachusetts. I don't know that Massachusetts loves me. And I would say as a brown kid growing up in central Mass and maybe as a Jewish kid growing up in Medford. Um, I I'm not I don't want to speak for him, but I'll say when you're different, you really feel different in New England.
+
+[20:06] Yeah, I mean that probably goes anywhere, but when you're different, it's like really stark in your face. Like my town was Irish Catholic. Uh signs of the cross everywhere. Yeah. Um I mean, as as a white as a white man who used to go to Medford as a kid a lot 'cause, you know, I have family there.
+
+[20:23] Like I I've never I've never been to a place where someone assumed they could say such crazy overt racist to me about other people. That's Massachusetts. Yeah. Oh, I didn't mean to. But I I a friend of mine who's Haitian sort of said this kind of perfectly because we talked about how weird it was for both of us to grow up there and kind of also love it and kind of also hate it.
+
+[20:51] And he's they moved up there because his mom was getting a PhD at Harvard. And he goes, you know, the bus never stopped for my mom. And she would always say, At least in the South, I could get on the bus. This is obviously years ago. She goes, I have to sit on the back of the bus, but I could get on the bus.
+
+[21:05] And in Boston, the bus didn't even stop to pick me up. And that to me is kind of like a nutshell of like old Massachusetts racism. Um it's changing. I don't mean to sort of like paint a bad light, but I think anybody from New England like knows that you can be like have super liberal values and be extremely racist. Like the two are not mutually exclusive in a place like Massachusetts.
+
+[21:27] Right. But I mean I think there's like it's so different there now. First of all, the T's in this is now the Medford show. The T is there now, right? Or it's about to be.
+
+[21:36] And then the uh like the the other thing biotech has completely changed these tones. Yeah, no, I mean it's like it's like everyone's getting you know, all those uh old school like blue racists are getting priced out of their out of their out of the area, right? I mean it's all yeah. Totally. Yep.
+
+[21:53] Yeah, same with Worcester, like all of it. The T's goes from Worcester to Boston. Like I grew up next to Worcester, no one ever went into Worcester for anything. No one even worked in Worcester. Can I tell you a story about that?
+
+[22:05] Can I tell you a story about that? That's really Nastasia's story to tell. She's gonna get mad at me. I'm gonna get hit for this afterwards. Because she's not gonna tell it.
+
+[22:12] I don't know what you're gonna say. Nastasia, Nastasia has a friend of a friend who's a local reporter in Worcester. Okay, a local reporter in Worcester. Not gonna sell this person out who they are. They live in California.
+
+[22:27] But they are a local reporter in Worcester. So they would rather just like scan Twitter feeds from Worcester people than get anywhere within a thousand miles of Worcester to write about local Worcester stuff. That that's crazy. I love that. I love that.
+
+[22:44] No, that tracks to me. That makes total sense. Have you been to Worcester? I'm not trash Massachusetts. Well, I I don't think I'll ever go back.
+
+[22:53] They they closed the uh the uh armory museum, so I don't know that I'll ever go back, but you know, I mean, that was a great museum. Burned down. Well, that's one way to close it. It was metal, it all burned to the ground. Yep.
+
+[23:06] Great museum if you like armor and armory stuff. Amazing museum. Yeah. Even if you don't like it, it was an impressive thing. Yeah, I don't care about armor.
+
+[23:16] That museum was awesome. I have to say, again, last, like the like Massachusetts has like a lot of cool, weird little museums in it. You know what I'm saying? Totally. The Whaling Museum.
+
+[23:27] Yeah. Go to the Whaling Museum, people. Elizabeth Gardner. Oh, I know I've never. Marketing Museums, lots of colleges.
+
+[23:34] I've never been back. I've never been to the Gardener. Uh I've never been to the Gardener. I need to go. I tried to go last time I was in uh in Boston, but they they're time now and I could I couldn't get in.
+
+[23:43] But uh the Whaling Museum, like the best thing to do is to be my age and have gone in the m early to mid seventies when they were still like whaling, yay, and then go like when you have kids and they're like whaling boo and just see how the museum changes over time. It's kinda fun. Uh all right, so let's talk about a big thing for us. Yeah. Let's talk about like uh so we start the museum and we develop this apparatus for like talking about food as a lens through which to view culture, uh, technology, history, economics, the whole the whole gamut.
+
+[24:18] Basically, we try to view all of the aspects of you know, what it means to be a human through the lens of food and at at the same time trying to promote um learning about each other, each other writ large by, you know, breaking bread with each other, which is you know, pretty much everyone involved with the museum believes that the best way to um kind of build bridges between people is to break bread with them and talk about, you know, what we're eating, why we're eating, etcetera. This is why Nastasia hates Italian people because that's all they talk about. Eating and what else? Don't hate Italian people. Okay, all right.
+
+[24:52] But you hate that they only talk about food and food and and digestion, right? Yes. Okay. That's fair. I haven't said an unfair thing.
+
+[25:00] And not working. Yeah. They love to talk about not working. They're for it or against it. Or the northerners talk about the southerners, or both.
+
+[25:08] That too, but generally deeply against it. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go there. I'm not gonna go there. But the uh so we developed this apparatus, and then this is the first exhibit, I guess chow to some extent, right, as well. But this is the first exhibit where we're like, okay, we're gonna hand over the apparatus of the museum to an outside um curator, uh Jessica Harris.
+
+[25:33] So I don't know whether you whether you want to talk about the process of like the advisors working with the museum or what what we want to talk about here. I'll leave it up to John and John should take that question. Oh. Yeah, John, I think you should take that question. Okay, yeah.
+
+[25:47] If you want. Um Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, we wanted to talk about this subject that's you know, hadn't really been given much attention. It also timing-wise kind of worked out. It was the you know, 1619 project was coming out, it was 400 years of uh, you know, since uh slaves enslaved people first arrived to the Americas. So it's just a really kind of timely uh exhibition that we wanted to put together, and we realized that no one on the staff was really capable or had the expertise to be able to talk to this.
+
+[26:14] So we've uh Peter Kim and I think Dave and Catherine were able to talk uh Jessica Harris into helping us out with it. And she was really just a tremendous force to work with. She is the authority on the subject. And then with her help, we also got together a sort of advisory council of just really terrific figures in uh the field of African American culinary history, current culinary chefs, things like that. Um you want to read some of them off?
+
+[26:43] Yeah, uh Alexander Smalls, um Michael Twiddy, Adrian Cheatham, uh Pierre Cham. Who we've had on the show. Who we've had on the show, uh Eric Adjapong, I think. Carla Hall. Carla Hall, yeah.
+
+[26:58] Tanya Holland. Thank you. Yes, yeah, Tanya Holland. I mean, really just this tremendous really amazing roster of chefs and historians and just people who were involved in this world. Um, and they helped us put this story together and really realize what was important, what we needed to hit on, how to talk about all this properly, and you know, really helped put together a great exhibition.
+
+[27:21] Yeah, I mean, uh, it was funny. So I was there in the first meeting um years and years ago. So this is something we'd wanted to do fundamentally forever, uh, ever since I I knew Dr. Harris's work for obviously for a long time, but when Pierre took me on to Senegal, she was also on that trip. And I was like, uh, hey, you know, like would you ever wanna do, you know, do something with the with the museum, you know, because we had already had the idea, but we weren't going anywhere with it yet.
+
+[27:50] And she's like, Yeah, sure, you know, and so then um, you know, and then she became friends with Peter and it all kind of snowballed from there. But we were at this first meeting. So for she's gonna be on next week. But you know, for those of you that don't know Dr. Harris, she is the kind of person that pretty much everyone defers to, right?
+
+[28:09] So I couldn't imagine anyone better to have as the kind of person leading up the team that r running this uh exhibition so we we had this giant meeting uh you know near the Andas Hotel right near here in midtown and uh we get like the a lot of the advisors you're talking about people calling in but people around the table this is pre-COVID like way pre-COVID and uh just this huge table and I think because she is such a force in the you know in the community food community the black community uh and writing about in writing in teaching that she was able to kind of cement what would otherwise be an incredibly disparate group of people into a m kind of message and idea that a lot of that at least most of them could get behind. I thought it was an interesting process. Yeah. What do you think? I wasn't at that meeting but I heard good things about it was all the at all the other subsequent meetings but yeah didn't make that first one.
+
+[29:11] Yeah. Oh man I know man gotta be in the room where it happens I know I was a lowly intern at that point. Lowly in Oh how oh how you have risen. Yeah yeah Jesus art history professor. Yep.
+
+[29:25] Letting Dave know with the empty city bike crack. Uh hey people life's not linear okay so uh actually something we also haven't said on this yet uh Nasley when is the exhibition formally opening up to the public and when can everyone get tickets and where can they get tickets? Thanks, Sean. Um ticket sales start tomorrow, which is super exciting. Unless you're a MoFAD member, you're able to buy tickets starting yesterday.
+
+[29:52] Uh but ticket sales uh start tomorrow and we delayed um like so many other folks did, but this time thankfully it was only by three weeks. Uh so the public opening is February 23rd, which we are so excited about. Um it was supposed to open actually uh this week, but I think we made the right choice. We just uh it's funny, we didn't Omicron obviously hit New York City pretty hard. Um my problem was that we just don't have a lot of staff redundancy, and you know, if the person who's supposed to deliver all of our like new panels and new furniture got sick, or the carpenter who's supposed to make it, like all the work that we have to do right now is basically physical and on location.
+
+[30:34] So it made sense just just to try to build a little bit of a time buffer um to make sure that we could actually get the exhibition up in time. So uh some yeah. Let's talk about COVID. So this exhibition was supposed to open in uh March of 2020. Uh uh it was slated and we were only a couple of weeks out when the when the kind of COVID hit.
+
+[31:00] Um it was you came on I don't know, maybe I guess a year uh or like nine months after a year ago. So but yeah, but I'm trying I don't know how like nine months after the lockdown or something like this. Um but so what like obviously a lot of our listeners know about how hard it is to run a hospitality establishment during these times of COVID. Yeah uh cultural institutions have been hit obviously extremely hard. But do you want to talk about what it's like to be a small cultural institution when this kind of thing hits?
+
+[31:35] Sure. Sure. And I think, you know, I'll go on the soapbox. I think the difference between running the cultural institution and a small one versus a restaurant. I think we have a lot of the same challenges, but restaurants did not get nearly the same amount of help, nor was the aid offered to restaurants useful for how restaurants operate versus how other types of businesses or cultural institutions operate.
+
+[32:01] Because we were really saved by the PPP, not the first round. That was also geared terribly towards cultural institutions, but certainly the second round and subsequent aids. And know that you can sort of turn on the lights and there's money for sort of decades, not to kind of make light of what every institution was going through. And I think space is this really interesting thing because a lot of organizations have to deal with tens of thousands of uh square feet of space that they have to kind of still maintain even if the doors remain shut. But I I think for small institutions, um, you know, we gave up our the MoFAD lab space.
+
+[32:52] So by the time I got the uh I got the position, um, we were out of the lab space. There was no way we could afford to kind of keep paying rent on a space that was going to be closed. Um, the majority of the staff were laid off. Uh, some of them were unhelpfully rehired for six weeks, and then that money ran out that first round of PPP, and they were laid off once again or eight weeks, twelve weeks, whatever. Um, and it's just incredibly hard.
+
+[33:15] And I think part of it too is, you know, the sort of psychological impact, it's just really heartbreaking. Um, you know, we don't sort of talk about that because I think we're all sort of heartbroken in our own ways uh during these last couple of years, if you have to deal with any one of the ramifications as a business owner, as a parent, as a as an employee, what have you. Um, but I think it was really hard, you know, to some extent, uh, given everything that happened in the last two years, especially with the movement with black lives, like I'm happier that we're opening now versus then. Um, I think that the show, there's just a lot more interest in this um around any number of topics around the history and acknowledging the history of African Americans in America. Um, I think there's a lot more interest on food ways given all the amazing food programming that's sort of come up through sort of Netflix and other venues.
+
+[34:09] But um, I will say it's been unbelievably hard. I think that everyone has felt a sort of personal responsibility to keep their favorite local restaurant alive to sort of make sure that people are being fed in their communities and culturals fall to the bottom, and I get that of people sort of giving structure. Uh cultural institutions aren't necessarily deemed as necessary when push comes to shove. And when you're dealing with an emergency situation when you see lives getting really broken and more and more people unhoused and more and more people sort of with food insecurity. So yeah, it's been kind of zero fun.
+
+[34:42] And I would say if you're gonna take a nonprofit job, don't do it in the middle of a pandemic. Um, but that said, there's enough people and the staff, like I can't say enough about how amazing the staff is. Any one of them could be paid twice as much and be working somewhere else. And their dedication and their devotion to MoFad, um, to the show, to getting the show open, is is really something to behold. I feel really lucky um to have inherited the staff that I inherited.
+
+[35:09] Uh I feel really lucky. Um, they're an amazing, amazing group of people. Uh and yeah, I think for us the pivot um we made a pivot to virtual and that's actually been really was really successful and still continues to be um fairly successful but we were really quick. I think by June we started our first virtual event and I would say a lot of culturals like if we're gonna look for some silver linings have sort of said this. It didn't do a whole lot in terms of funding but you know it's not kind of how we can like stay alive um but it sort of kept us going uh and it did the other thing as an educational institution that we always think about which is access like for the first time we had we have audiences from California to Omaha to Singapore to China like joining in and I say Asia because somehow the timing of our programs worked really well in the Asian market.
+
+[36:04] Not necessarily in like the European market or anywhere else but weren't they at like at seven people at 7 a.m. Yeah. That's yeah the before work uh it's like their before work happy hour program. As uh as someone you know Nastasi and I are quite well versed in doing business in Asia and we really enjoy all of the calls right during dinner, don't we Nastasia? Oh yeah.
+
+[36:29] Or like you know if you happen to be out don't you love having to like you love when I'm at a club and I'm like I'll take it from here. Yeah first of all it's more like a it's more like a clerb and she calls up and it's like I'm like Stas, I can hear it. I can hear it. I can hear it. We're on a business meeting.
+
+[36:44] Uh so okay, so in the in the in a couple of minutes we have left before I have to start going uh speeding through Patreon questions. Why don't you run us through the exhibit? So talk about like like the structure of the exhibit and what you're gonna see, and of course, what I consider to be the gem, the the test kitchen. So obviously going back to what Jean was talking about with um with Dr. Harris and the advisors, I think there was a choice between breath or depth.
+
+[37:11] And I think Dr. Harris really felt like, don't forget again, two years ago, I would say a lot fewer people sort of cared about the subject. Dr. Harris is like a rock star these days, right? Like she was one of Time's 100 notable people, like this subject and Dr.
+
+[37:26] Harris um and all the work she's been doing for decades. Like, I think it's amazing for her to kind of like reach her moment um kind of fully 50 years into her career, right? Like that's pretty incredible to to watch. But I think that for Dr. Harris, uh, the thought was to really contextualize all this within sort of the history, like the 400 years of um the beginnings of the when enslaved people were brought over to the Americas and sort of into the now.
+
+[37:53] And this means that it's like you'll get kind of a wide understanding of the context world of the show, um, and not a ton of opportunities to sort of go super in depth, except for my favorite object. Dave and I uh each have our own, the sort of my sort of favorite sacred object is you walk in at first to our legacy quilt, which is just 406 squares, beautifully, beautifully hand stitched by the Harlem Needle Guild, um that we commissioned and designed um and had them sort of sew it. And the each square represents uh mostly people, uh, but also sometimes ingredients or organizations that really impacted um sort of black food history. And that could be anywhere from inventions to the Black Panthers uh school lunch program uh to Dr. Harris, who's obviously featured on the quilts, but folks who've had a significant contribution over the last four four centuries in African American food culinary history.
+
+[38:44] And the nice thing about that is like you can sort of, it's cool, you can have a there's a tool, uh you can use your phone to kind of scan it, because we also have a built-in uh mobile app. And you know, you sort of click on something you're interested in, and you'll see like a two-tweet, uh sort of 268-character description of what you're looking at. Um and it's a really nice chance for people to kind of get an understanding of who's on the quilt, but also an understanding, uh, an opportunity to explore that further and dive deeper. Then you go into sort of the body of the exhibition, which we sort of split up thematically. So it's agriculture, commerce, um, culinary arts, distilling, uh, brewing and distilling, uh, and again cover sort of like we focus on Golagichi agriculture, um, rice culture down in the low country.
+
+[39:39] Uh, and then what we do with exhibition is kind of start with a piece of um like Golagichi culture, which is from the 1600s, and then bring that into sort of what does that look like and what's the legacy of that farming culture today, along with other stories around agriculture, um, including like sort of gardening and sort of modern day African American farmers and gardeners and their contributions. Um, culinary arts, we go into the 18th century, um, talk about James Hemming and how he brought French food and kind of really introduced French food and other uh foods into American and kind of the American vernacular. Um, and then again, go into sort of modern day African American chefs and their contributions. Brewing and distilling, we talk about uh Uncle Narist, uh, the enslaved uh man who's taught Jack Daniels how to brew, um, how to make whiskey not how to brew, how to distill whiskey. Um easy people.
+
+[40:31] Uh and again, going to uh the modern story of Uncle Nearest, this wonderful, wonderful whiskey brand. Um I have not tasted it to make some of the best whiskey in the country. I have not tasted it. Really good. I know.
+
+[40:42] I have not tasted it. It's taste it. It's a delight. Is it like uh exactly is it taste like Jack Daniels? No, it's much better.
+
+[40:51] It's a much smoother product. You know, uh when I was young, were you and I like Jack? Were you ever taught the the ghost of Gentleman Jack? You take the Jack Daniels bottle. You take well, you take the Jack Daniels bottle and then you you you take it and you run it under hot water in the bathroom, you turn the lights off, and then you you put a a match to the thing that goes whoosh, and that's the ghost of Gentleman Jack.
+
+[41:17] Yeah, that's what we used to do. What? Yeah. Okay, that's amazing. My art professor.
+
+[41:22] No, I'm around vodka in our house, and that was it. Cool artifact in the exhibition is the original or like the first line of uh square Jack Daniels bottles. They used to be rounded and we found one that was first one that was square. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[41:37] From like the 1890s. Yes. We also have an ideal bartender there. We do, yes. Original that was loaned to us by Greg Bone.
+
+[41:45] Yep. We uh the only climate controlled thing that we have in the exhibition, the only climate controlled display case. Yeah. All right, but we're we're running out of talk about the ebony test kitchen because I want people to know that they this like amazing thing that we have. It really is amazing.
+
+[42:00] So um the whole sort of ebony complex, business complex in Chicago was about to get knocked over by the battering ram to make way for luxury condos. And a great preservation organization, Landmarks, Illinois, put out an RFP. They pulled the kitchen out before the sort of battering ball came in and put out an RFP to any organization that wanted to essentially buy it for a dollar and refurbish it. And MoFed did it. We jumped on it.
+
+[42:26] And I think Dave or Jean cannot correct me if I'm wrong. This was done while we were kind of almost done planning for the exhibition. And it was kind of this last minute edition, but well worth it. I think everyone jumped on the opportunity to get their hands on the exhibition to get their hands on the kitchen, lovingly restored the entire kitchen, which was no easy feat. And now it's kind of the last thing that you walk through.
+
+[42:51] And you know, this is to me like a lot of people have seen the Julia Child's kitchen in the Smithsonian, like this is so cool and so sort of funky. We say it's everyone says the word psychedelic. You know, the design of it is so 60s and 70s. It's orange, it's purple, it's green. Um, it's swirly patterns all over the cabinets.
+
+[43:11] Uh it's small, uh, which is actually, I mean, for anybody who's worked in kitchens, like it's kind of an ideal-sized test kitchen. Uh, and so much, you know, in some ways the exhibition ends with this kitchen because so much of the exhibition goes through from enslavement onwards. Um, uh, so much of the story is about sort of black people sort of farming for white people, um, cooking for white people, serving white people, and you kind of end on this note of sort of post World War II, uh, where you have kind of a black publication company dedicated to providing black content for black people, and really kind of for the first time, right? Uh, and the kitchen kind of embodies that you had African American chefs in there and the food editors who were really kind of rethinking and modernizing what is black food. Um, you know, you had GIs returning back from wars, kind of having traveled to different places, you had a sort of versioning middle class um black communities who again were traveling places, bringing back ingredients, going back um to the African continent to kind of and bringing in uh ingredients and kind of playing with them anew.
+
+[44:19] And Ebony really captured a lot of that. And Ebony actually magazine captured a lot of just the histories and the stories that we tell that probably would have been lost if they hadn't so beautifully and painstakingly preserved them. So it's a really fitting end to the to the exhibition. It's an amazing space. Dr.
+
+[44:35] Harris actually was there when it was working. She, you know, would visited it on occasion, and we interviewed all of the living uh ebony editors who use the kitchen and we talked to them about it. And we had to make uh couple minor changes for just for um uh accessibility. Uh and you know, we ran it by the editors to make sure that we weren't kind of hurting what they thought was the um essence of the kitchen. We widen the entrance ways to wheelchair people.
+
+[45:02] Yeah, and it's uh it's a uh it's an amazing thing, and I don't think it's I think in the way that Julia Child's kitchen is a proxy for what she meant to kind of the explosion of kind of interest in cooking post-war uh for a certain group of people. I think the ebony test kitchen is just as important, you know, if not more than her kitchen in the in the Smithsonian and honestly just as cool. I mean, Julia Child's pegboards are cool. I'm not gonna say that Julia Child's pegboards in her kitchen aren't cool, because they are, but this kitchen is super cool. Super cool.
+
+[45:36] Something else. And it blows the no offense, James Beard House, but James Beard's Kitchen sucks. Now, one thing about James Beard's kitchen is you actually cook in it. I mean, they've changed it somewhat, but it sucks. Hooks.
+
+[45:51] Famously. Terrible. No, this is an artifact. Yeah, but this is an amazing kitchen. Uh so and it's got some cool food processors.
+
+[45:57] I don't know whether we're gonna have them out, but like all these cool like fold away. It's gonna be on display. It's not gonna be folded down. Yeah. It's got like a uh an in the wall toaster.
+
+[46:07] The in the wall toaster is pretty sweet. Uh well, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when we used to have can openers. I know. Can openers. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[46:18] Uh we got a caller? Caller, you're on the air. I think. Hello. Hello?
+
+[46:28] Hey, hello. Hey, sorry about that, guys. I never called in before. Um my question was I know I know Dave's doing a book on some moisture stuff. But just reading that inner listening to that intersection of laziness and quality episode.
+
+[46:44] Really good episode. Um an RD for a Pennsylvania-based convenience store chain. I'll let you flip a coin as to which one it is. Um we do a lot with speed ovens, like Turbochef, Mary Chef ovens. Right.
+
+[46:58] I was curious if there'd be any application to include steam into that forced air portion of it. Or if the microwave would just kind of cancel that out, or if they wouldn't interact very well. Huh. So they're so you're dealing with combination impingement microwaves. So it's like a combination of yeah.
+
+[47:17] Uh yeah, I don't have seen one with steam. I mean, look, steam, I don't know, to be honest. I mean, I'm sure that I one one of the problems would be um, I don't really, I've never really studied in depth how the recirculation works on the impingement. Uh I think they're they're just cycling it through and blasting it down. I mean, I could imagine a lot of positive effects just because keeping the humidity level at the right place, but the the a lot of what the benefit you get out of the combis are for kind of longer cooked things where you're really worried about the um keeping the moisture level of the food uh exactly where you want or keeping the wet bulb where you want so that the inside doesn't overcook while you get the outside cooked.
+
+[48:00] Uh and so because most of those impingement things are all about no, no, no. I don't know how much of a benefit you would get. Although I could imagine like very fast reheating. So, like, you know, uh reheating of like baked goods where you want to keep them moist. I could imagine a high humidity, like uh on the equivalent of a combi oven setting of like 300 Fahrenheit, like 50% to 65% steam for something like a quick bread that you want to take from frozen or refresh fast.
+
+[48:32] I could imagine like hitting it with the impingements, maybe in combination with microwave being somewhat beneficial, but I don't think it must not be enough of an application for them to to because the c the extra cost of steam is high. You know what I mean? Sure. But it's interesting because maybe it's a violent way to cook to cook food. Just thought maybe there's something interesting there.
+
+[48:52] Also, one more thing real quick. Sorry, I know we're in a gedge here. Um you said you had a family member that went to Penn State. Listen, if you're ever in the area, if you ever want to come down and check out some ice cream, I still got friends in the program. It's really an amazing thing.
+
+[49:04] So if everything levels off. Let me know. I think that'll be a lot of fun. I would love to. I mean, uh, yeah, my my grandpa was uh in the very first uh like uh radio engineers uh grad uh class out of uh Penn State in the 30s.
+
+[49:20] And so like uh yeah, I've always wanted to go to their ice cream. I want to have an ice cream off. I wanna I want to somehow like get a very rich person with a helicopter and we'll go to Cornell's ice cream and then Yukon's ice cream and then Penn State's ice cream, like bing bing bing, all in one day, and just have the have the different ice cream. Yukon, I mean, look, Penn State Ice Cream, world renowned, their ice cream program world renowned. But I mean, Yukon, the cow is right there, like literally the cow is right there.
+
+[49:51] You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I gotcha. I mean it's great, great talking to you. Thank you. Thanks a ton.
+
+[49:56] I love the show. Oh, good. Thanks, thanks for thanks for calling in. Uh Nazi, you have any opinions on ice cream. Um, you know, I'm from New England.
+
+[50:07] We eat more ice cream than per capita, I think, than anywhere else in the country. That's true. And it's fully a winter dessert. Um, yeah, I'm a fan. Although my brother and I like to split life up in half, and because we're the same age and way too competitive.
+
+[50:21] Uh he's the ice cream guy. Uh man do I love. Man do I love ice cream. I'm glad that New York has caught up on the ice cream scene. Oh, you think you think we were behind on the ice cream scene in the way that we were behind on coffee for years and years and years and years and years?
+
+[50:35] Vastly. Oh, yeah, there was nowhere to get good ice cream in New York in the 90s and even early 2000s. Like, yeah, I feel like in the last 10 years, they've caught up on ice cream. All right. Okay.
+
+[50:46] I have some full statement. But nothing like Tuscaninis, like all right. I have some friends who will argue with you. Well, that's for his okay. Okay, so listen, on the uh on your way out, because I got a blast through these Patreon questions.
+
+[50:57] I can't look I can't without asking you a food question. Tell me about a food that you want to talk about like briefly. What's like give me give me a food stuff? I'm not gonna place one on you that we've talked about before. Give me a food stuff.
+
+[51:08] Place one on me. You're asking the president of MoFat to just talk about any food. Yeah. That is what's a food. What's a food that I should be thinking about more?
+
+[51:17] Either a food that you feel is trending up right now that people are talking about or food that people should be talking about more that they're not talking about. And by the way, people, I'm putting her on the spot. I didn't tell her this beforehand. Yeah. No, I cannot believe that Pandan is not bigger than like I get it's obviously super huge in like Indonesian and Malaysian cultures and flavoring, but like I don't understand why we're still using vanilla.
+
+[51:42] Like it's great. But anything that use vanilla for to me is like, yeah. Vanilla's delicious. It's delicious. I love it.
+
+[51:51] But like Pandan to me is like equal and and so amazing. Like it's vanilla, but it's also coconut, but it's also herby and toasty and so my god. I like can never get enough of pandan. There was a time or any kind of good there was there was a time in the mid 2000s when like a lot of you know, back when uh pastry chefs were pastry chefs in restaurants were kind of more famous than they are now than current yeah, I mean you know, there was a moment where pastry chefs were becoming extremely famous. Yeah.
+
+[52:21] And Pandan was having like I it felt like it was gonna get really big, and I don't know why it didn't take off more. Um, I think one of the reasons is that most of the suppliers uh in New York, anyway, uh you're buying frozen pandan leaves, and the frozen pandan leaves are of like widely varying quality. So, so like one like a bad pandan leaf when you thaw it out has a very characteristic fishy aroma, right? Um and I I don't really know. I mean, also, like, I don't know, maybe people would enjoy it more if it was called screw pine.
+
+[52:57] Screw pine is such a good word. You know what I mean? Everyone likes greenish things, right? I don't understand, like if you're gonna hand me a green confection, I would rather have it be pandan than uh than matcha. Although I like a matcha, like a cookie, I like a matcha ice cream.
+
+[53:12] But I'd rather have a No, I know, I like matcha too, but I'm it every time I see something green, I'm like, oh, maybe pandan, and they're like, yes, matcha. I was like, I don't want a matcha croissant. I think that's like not a good flavor profile. I don't know if I want a pandemic croissant either, but why not? Yeah, I love matcha, but it's definitely not you know why not?
+
+[53:28] Too brown, too brown. You know what's really good, pandonized, pondinated. Uh make a pandon butter and then pandon shortbread. Oh, we used to do that at the SCI all the time, do pandan shortbread. But the the problem is Oh, that's amazing.
+
+[53:42] You have to pull it before it gets brown. And the reason it's good in this application is that shortbread and people pay attention. Shortbread is supposed to be blonde. It's not supposed to be really. Although everybody overcooks their shortbread because why?
+
+[53:55] Because brown butter is delicious, right? So they overcook their shortbread, but shortbread is supposed to be blonde. And pandan shortbread, especially don't brown it. You lose the effect and you kill some of the flavor. But make yourself a pandon butter and go for it.
+
+[54:08] Uh well, Nasley, thanks so much uh for coming on. I gotta rip through some Patreon questions. You can stick around if you want to. Stick around if you want. I'm just gonna have to, I'm just gonna be talking about stuff that you may or may not care about.
+
+[54:21] Uh I'll I'll go on mute. I'm in I'm always in the middle. No, nothing. All right, we could chime in anytime, you know. Uh from Biff Dit.
+
+[54:30] Oh, that's that's the second part of the show. I like that joke. Can I have that one more time? I'm gonna have one more time. Do you know that that sound is basically going in my head 24 7?
+
+[54:41] Me, by the way. Really? Anyway. Uh mute button? No, no, no, no, no.
+
+[54:46] Joe, Joe's got a uh like a uh like a rewind, a fast rewind uh sound effect, which is my other favorite sound effect is the ripping the needle off the record sound effect. Yeah. That's a good one. That's also like my life, ripping the needle off the there you go. Sound of my life.
+
+[55:07] You know who likes uh vinyl? Nastasia. That's kind of quite all right. Uh from Biff Dit. If I occasionally want to make French fries uh and store the used fatslash oil, is my move to get a solid fat like tallow or lard to fry with, solid fats are more resistant to rancidity and oxidation than any oil, right?
+
+[55:23] Technically, yes. Uh in reality, um stable fry oils are pretty stable. So my question to you is like, how much are you using and uh you know how long are you using it for? Most of the time when you're if you just don't overheat the oil, and if you after it's sufficiently cool, you strain it through uh through like a fine strainer and then uh store it in absence of light with and you store it in um so it doesn't have a lot of oxygen on the top, so like you know, back in the bottle from which it came and keep it like fairly topped up. Uh it's gonna uh last a long time.
+
+[55:58] Like I get like, I can get like if you're careful with it, I can get like four or five fries out of uh even corn oil, which is not, you know, particularly a fancy oil, right? Uh so if you like a solid fat, it is true that solid fats uh have different properties. Some people believe that they can uh make a crispier product. I don't really know whether that's true or not. I worry mainly about fats and their texture when they're cool.
+
+[56:28] French fries, since they're eaten hot, I don't really think it's a problem unless you're gonna eat cold fries for them getting that kind of waxy feeling from when they cool off. So I think you could pretty much use whatever you like the uh flavor of and not worry about it. Do not use canola or soy. As long as you do not use canola or soy, you will probably be in uh okay shape unless you have access to very expensive uh like industrial fry like modified soy oil for frying, right? Uh it's because the specific um fatty acids in canola and soy are terrible and give you that awful fishy, disgusting, rancid uh aroma.
+
+[57:06] Things like corn aren't gonna give you a bad flavor, but yeah, I mean I've I've filled my deep fat fryer with lard, I filled my deep fat fryer with butter, I filled my deep. You know how much, you know how expensive it is to fill a 40-pound deep fryer with butter? It's expensive. And it didn't last that long, to be honest. Uh lard doesn't typically last that long uh compared to I've never had tallow.
+
+[57:27] I've never filled my fryer with tallow. Crisco works like a dream tube, though. I mean, you know, uh, but I would say I wouldn't worry about it um that much. Also, you need a little bit of oil breakdown in order for the oil to work properly anyway. So you want to keep it in that optimum zone of uh fryability.
+
+[57:45] The other thing I'll say about this is that uh most of the stuff that's in oil breakdown isn't actually the free uh fatty acids or the ran, because that stuff actually evaporates, it's volatile. You smell it, it close off. Most of that stuff polymerizes, and that's kind of why your your oil kind of gets dark and kind of starts foaming. It's like all polymerized oil and surface active things. A little bit of it good, a lot of it bad.
+
+[58:08] Is that a good answer or not? Did I answer this? Good answer. All right. Uh boom.
+
+[58:13] Zach from Pittsburgh wants to know about a particular chef, whether I have any opinions on it. Zach, I do not feel comfortable giving opinions about people that I don't know personally on the on the air unless it's like wide widely known. So I'm just gonna I'm not gonna gossip about somebody else's thing. Is that a smart move, John? Smart move.
+
+[58:33] Okay. Uh Maxwell writes in hey, cooking issues team. I have a question about carbonating with a CO2 cap, uh CO2 tank and a carbicap. I can make perfect seltzer with this setup in a two-liter soda bottle, but I have basically no luck making high balls. What are your thoughts on highballs, John?
+
+[58:48] Whiskey highball? You're not a whiskey highballer. No, not really. What about you, Joe? You whiskey highball?
+
+[58:52] Okay. Yes. Yeah. Really? Yeah.
+
+[58:58] It's not my, I I can drink them, but it's not my thing. I don't think Stas's thing. I don't know about uh Jack. Yeah, no. I like them.
+
+[59:05] You like them? You know what? You know what Nastasia's favorite mixed mixed drink is? Nastasia's favorite mixed drink is champagne. You know what she likes to mix it with?
+
+[59:15] More champagne. Yeah, yeah. Listen, people, when Nastasia comes to the question. When Stasi comes over to your house, just get the nice rose bubbles. Don't get her crap though.
+
+[59:29] I think she deserves to have something that she likes, enjoys drinking. Don't you think so, Sas? That's nice, yes. Um, similar taste and stuff, yeah. Yes.
+
+[59:38] What makes something a highball, Dave? Uh I think it's like the glass, and it's just a whiskey high ball. It's like a long drink. So that's an interesting question. So, like I think most Americans make a whiskey highball, it's so basically club soda.
+
+[59:44] So it's like soda with like some salts in it, typically and whiskey, and supposedly with nothing else added. So Americans tend to use more whiskey, but like a traditional Japanese uh highball has a lot more soda water in it than an American highball does. So where most people go wrong when they're making high balls in America is because you're not adding sugar to it, if you take the high ball down to a level where the carbonation is going to be nice and bright and refreshing, the whiskey ends up losing its backbone once you get down to like four to one. So most Americans I think are closer to like two to one, three to one, whereas like some Japanese highballs can get like three to one, four to one in terms of like water to, and at that point it loses its backbone. Uh so things like Toki, which isn't like which is huge over here, the Toki highball, uh not tokey highball is huge over here.
+
+[1:00:41] That whiskey, I don't even think they sell it in Japan. It it's it's here for high balls. And what's interesting about it is if you rub that in your palms, it's kind of a very heavy whiskey. It's kind of not saying that they dope it with glycerin, but I'm saying it's got that heavy feeling. So it keeps its body better at higher dilutions.
+
+[1:00:57] So the first thing problem you're getting with carbonation is you're probably not diluting it enough. Highballs need to be fairly diluted for you to get good uh bubbles. The lower the alcohol uh content, the better your bubbles are gonna stay. Uh the other thing is, I mean, I'd have to hear your actual steps of what you're doing to to carbonate it, but super cold has to be colder than seltzer water. Uh add some glycerin.
+
+[1:01:18] So if you're going higher on water, but you want to maintain the structure of the drink, you need to add a little bit of glycerin to it. I know people hate that idea because they're dumb. They should just add a little glycerin to it like a little bit and that'll keep the structure as you go to a more diluted highball uh and then carbonate it three times make sure you vent in between carbonations look a single carbonation is good for water so the fact that you can make good water doesn't mean you can necessarily make a good cocktail you want to squeeze all the air out get it colder than freezing not colder than it freezes but colder than zero uh then squeeze all the air out carbonate it once twice three times a high ball right so like carbonate it three times let it rest so the first two let it blast off you can uncap them real quick the third one wait for it to completely settle and go completely clear before you unscrew it and serve it and that should give you a good highball how's that all right all right from panda pendato pendato daka what do you think am I getting that right I think so it's it's a it's a hard number of syllables for me to make it yeah uh not exactly a question would love it if we could talk a little bit about uh awamori which I hope I'm pronounced right it's the Okinawan uh distilled beverage uh I've had for the first time the past summer and loved it very challenging to get on the East Coast but would love to know more about the spirit. We need to have I need to have uh like one of my uh many experts on uh distilled beverages and we should have asked uh we should have asked this last week with uh Wandridge yeah yeah uh so I mean like so basically it is a distilled beverage from Okinawa that you know until recently was seen as kind of second fiddle like that means lower quality than uh shochu uh, you know, from you know the other islands, but now is respected and loved in its own right, which is of course different from soju. Uh, I think it goes through a single fermentation, and it's typically made with a different kind of rice.
+
+[1:03:13] It's made, I think most of the rice that they use in Okinawa for actually come from Thailand. But that said, I don't know a lot about it, so I hesitate to say anything. But next time I speak to an expert in this kind of thing, we'll have them we'll get you some information. Does that sound good, John? Sounds good.
+
+[1:03:27] All right. Uh Tim writes in, I did not drink alcohol, and shortly before the pandemic, when I moved to New York City, I fell in love with the non-alcoholic drink options at existing conditions. Well, thank you. We worked hard on them. Uh specifically the spruce mousse with champagne acid.
+
+[1:03:42] I've been to a range of bars and I've never been to one that made such unique drinks that truly tasted exciting like the ones uh at XCON. Well, thanks. Uh I think the one thing that we kind of did that was different at the time. I'm sure a lot of people are working on this now, is we were focusing on what makes specific styles of alcoholic drinks taste the way they do and drink the way they do. So it's not just flavor, it's mouthfeel, it's the speed at which you want to drink them, right?
+
+[1:04:09] What makes them them other than the alcohol? And then trying to mimic those kind of um, those kind of properties in so like so, and obviously carbonated ones, which spruce are easier because you just you you you you need to, there are fewer things to emulate. It's har much harder to emulate a shaken drink or a stirred drink. So the two ones that we can kind of emulate the feeling of are uh built drinks on rocks, where it's all about like designing a drink that has a lot of body and richness and then changes over time as it dilutes the way that an old fashioned would, or carbonated drinks, where it's easier to kind of get those flavors on because they're relatively dilute anyway, so it's easier to subtract out the effects of alcohol and reconstruct it. Use a lot of glycerin so that we can lower the sugar.
+
+[1:04:59] That's really the secret. Lower the sugar, put a little glycerin in, and all of a sudden it tastes more like a real adult drink than a freaking sugary soda. That's the that's the trick on that one. Uh add a little something with add a little something that has like a tea kind of flavor to give some sort of sort of like a back of the throat phenolics, some some sort of astringency, uh, and then like whatever your upfront flavor is. And so it's those combinations of thinking about what alcoholic drinks do.
+
+[1:05:26] That's kind of what we did. But I think a lot of people are thinking along those lines now. I don't know. Uh I don't know. I'm not in the business right now.
+
+[1:05:31] From Douglas L. Uh, looking at making black garlic, uh, the Noma Ferments book makes it sound like a simple problem of sustained temperature management. That I'm not writing that book, moisture management. Sorry, can't help you, Douglas. No, I'm kidding.
+
+[1:05:43] Uh I had I lack a rice or a slow cooker for this. You should get one of the I don't have a slow cooker, but rice cookers, if you do get a rice cooker, I would spend the extra money on the one with the induction. Why? Because the rice cooker bowl can go on your induction hob and you can saute things like onions and stuff in the thing and then put it back into your rice cooker and go. Secret trick for you.
+
+[1:06:06] For you, Douglas. I have the Zoji Rushi because that's just the best one that was available in the United States at the time. But I don't know. The if I had the money, I would buy one of the new super fancy rice cookers. I freaking love my rice cooker.
+
+[1:06:19] I love my rice cooker. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you this. I love my rice cooker. Uh okay, I use it all the time for many things. I used it last night to reheat a chili.
+
+[1:06:29] You know what I'm saying? Rice cooker. Um, but wondered if bagging and low-temping uh the black garlic would suffice, or would the trapped moisture cause a bacterial playground? No, you're fine. You you heat it at a high enough temperature uh that it's not gonna be a bacterial playground.
+
+[1:06:44] Uh when you vac it down, keep the stuff in in one layer so it heats relatively quickly in the bag. Your main problems are gonna be you're gonna be spending a lot of electricity. You've got to keep a giant bucket of water running for you know 10, 12 days, and you have to keep the stuff submerged. That's the other pain in the butt. So you're gonna have to keep it submerged, and boy is that sucker gonna want to float on you.
+
+[1:07:04] Uh so little trick is um you can uh either put like a bag uh I wouldn't put a bag in a bag, but you don't want that this touching the garlic necessarily. In fact, you don't, but like put weights in the bag, and then the bag will sink. And then what people who bag it do is they after they open it, they air dry it a little bit because it will be more moist because it won't have uh evaporated at all. Is that good answer? All right.
+
+[1:07:30] Umastasia, Nicholas Petty. The only reason he has joined the Patreon is to hear you tell the story on our new airwaves of the Ristorateur and the rat. Oh God. Uh yes. There's a restaurateur who had a restaurant on Sixth Avenue, and rats would run in outdoor seating and rats would run toward the the diners.
+
+[1:07:57] And he would come out running out of the front door and and kick them. Okay. Kick them across the street. But you're not Yeah, I'm not gonna say who it is. But you're also not selling it.
+
+[1:08:07] What like when you first told this story? Yeah, first of all, what kind of shoes was he wearing? Nice Italian wingtips. Like, I know the I know the guy. Yeah.
+
+[1:08:18] He's a fancy man. Mm-hmm. He's a fancy man. He wears fancy clothes. Yeah.
+
+[1:08:22] And uh he has fancy shoes. Mm-hmm. Right. Now, so he runs out of the restaurant. Uh proposal of nothing, right?
+
+[1:08:29] You guys are having a drink, standing around having a drink. He's like, excuse me, runs over, kicks the rat, like kicks the rat into a tree, correct? Yeah. Rat doesn't die right away, right? No, no.
+
+[1:08:43] Stunned. Rat. Stunned. Rat's like, what? Rat is used to being the one that makes other people move, not the one that like gets gets kicked, right?
+
+[1:08:51] Yeah. Okay. So the rat, the rat does it does a thing, like kind of like stands up like one of like a like a miniature version of the inflatable rats from the the Union Busters, right? And then and then what is this unnamed gentleman do? Uh I think he sat down and ate with us.
+
+[1:09:07] Didn't he kick it again? Didn't he didn't he finish it? Yeah, he tried to kick it. But the thing is, like, passerbys on the street walked past me and Mark, and they were like, Do you know that guy? And I was like, No him, he owns this place.
+
+[1:09:22] And the other thing is that so I want before you answer this question, I want you all to imagine what the look on his face was as he's running after the rat, right? So the question is, and I'll have Nastasi answer it in a minute. No him, he owns it. Uh the look on his face could be horror that the customers see a rat. Could be blank face, right?
+
+[1:09:46] Just I'm a machine, he's the terminator, right? Could be pure joy. So, of those three choices, Stas, let people think about it for a second. Which one of those three looks was on his face? Or it could like could be anger.
+
+[1:09:59] Anger's a fourth one. Just Terminator. Terminator mode. Oh, so dead face. I thought it was joy.
+
+[1:10:04] Oh. That he got to kick that out. Afterward, he was joyous. Yeah, yeah. He loved it, he loved it.
+
+[1:10:09] He loved it. And he will be very angry that we're telling the story again. So but we're not telling a story about a person. It's just, you know. Okay.
+
+[1:10:14] It's gonna be like a fairy tale that people tell the restaurateur and the rat. Yeah. By the way, as I've said many times on the on these airwaves, uh, they can change the laws, but as far as I know, when I was growing up, literally there's no illegal way. There should be, but there's no illegal way to kill a rat. You can't not kill the rat.
+
+[1:10:36] You can't kick a rat and not kill it. That would be animal cruelty. First of all, it is animal cruelty anyway. I don't want to hear about it. But I'm saying legally, legal technically.
+
+[1:10:45] Lego technically. Good to know. Yeah. Uh, because they're straight up vermin. Yep.
+
+[1:10:51] Yeah. Uh okay. Um, from Spirit and Matter, hey, Dave. Uh thanks for the content and the info you've shared along the way. I have a question you may know the answer to.
+
+[1:11:01] If I infuse fruit with liquor and then dehydrated at 145 degrees Fahrenheit, uh for 12 hours, how much alcohol loss would you experience? All I mean, like, not I mean, look, you never get rid of a hundred percent of the alcohol. I don't want to hear about it from people being like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but like once you get rid of the moisture from everything, the alcohol goes before the moisture. So if most of the water is gone, almost all of the alcohol is gone.
+
+[1:11:25] It's below, it's below what you would find measurable. It is not true that boiling a soup that you add alcohol to gets rid of all the alcohol. Measurable amounts of alcohol remain. But when you're physically dehydrating something, that alcohol is pretty much gone. I mean, that's how distillation works, right?
+
+[1:11:41] Um Daniel Cook, I have a question on shaking. You've mentioned uh shaking technique doesn't matter so much as time shaking. Does the same hold true for cocktails made with egg whites? I imagine the whites make for a different structure that might make shaking technique matter more. My bar manager says it's good to get the inside of the shaker spinning as opposed to back and forth when you're working with eggs.
+
+[1:12:04] Thanks. Listen, I'm not gonna yuck on your bar manager's yum at all, but I would say, yeah. I would say that what that is is that they have developed a shaking style that suits their mode of looking cool, and that that we'll just leave it at that. What you should do is get Wasta's cocktail cocktail cube. Sell.
+
+[1:12:24] Those things. You know, and she would those things. Remember, Booker and Dax, the company where that's nice to have the stuff, but you know, really, whatever. The world will be just as fine without us. Uh send me an email at John at Booker and Dax.com to get your cocktail cubes.
+
+[1:12:38] Really, John? The important test, the important test, we make we literally make no money. We just want you to have one. Listen, uh, the important test to do is to figure out whether you want to do your dry shake beforehand or your whip shake after you've shaken. I before I ran my test before the whip shake, which is when you do a dry shake after you do your first shake with ice.
+
+[1:12:58] I ran my test before that was a thing. Uh most younger people like the whip shake better than the dry shake. Um, also obviously shake vigorously and use big ice and a cocktail cube, but do a test at your bar. It's a really fun test to run, to be honest. And to test two different people against each other is very fun.
+
+[1:13:18] Yeah, it's really fun. Uh, Nicholas, I had a question about uh um reduced uh cassava, like brown cassava, like sauces and liquids. I don't have enough information to answer that, Nicholas, so I'm gonna try to get to that uh later. Uh Chris Crandell wanted to know what I think about lofty water, which is, I guess, a water that look, it's some sort of new ant non-carbonated, carbonated bubbly stuff. So I'm gonna guess it's nitrous, but they don't tell you a lot.
+
+[1:13:44] I hate when people I freaking hate when people are like, we're changing the world. Then tell me how. Tell me how, right? Tell me how. Either you have a patent-pended process, in which case, tell me how, or what like they don't mention the gas they use, they don't mention anything.
+
+[1:14:00] They put a bunch of I'm not, again, yucking yum or trying to hurt somebody else's business. I would like to hear more about what it is they're actually doing. My guess is that they're just putting nitrous in water. And what is straight nitrous and water taste like, Stas? Uh good?
+
+[1:14:16] No, no, poison. It tastes like poison. Straight nitrous. Our mix tasted good, but when it's just nitrous, it has that, remember that fake, that fake sweet flavor? Oh, kind of, yeah.
+
+[1:14:25] Yeah. Poison. So they add flavor to it so that you don't taste that poison, and it is lightly sweet without having sugar in it, but it's a weird sweetness, like a saccharine sweetness. Yeah, I I I've served you that, John. Straight nitrous water?
+
+[1:14:38] No. What? Before his time. We gotta go, Dave. Listen, listen.
+
+[1:14:41] For those of you that want to taste what straight nitrous water tastes like, get your uh EC whipped cream maker, right? And just uh in inject it, inject, put ice, ice, and water, make sure it's real cold. And then just put whipped cream chargers in and shake real hard. Two of them. Put one in, vent it, put another one in, shake it real hard.
+
+[1:15:03] That's nitrous water. You can taste it, swirl it in your mouth, and it it's very sweet and weird. I find it maybe with flavor in it, it's okay. It's kind of fun to do um unsweetened lemonades with it, but it's on its own tastes somewhat poisonous. Is great with uh with uh what's it called?
+
+[1:15:22] Uh as a mix with CO2. So we got a couple more questions. We're not gonna get to them, but whenever we have a backlog of questions, people, we're gonna do this uh where we cut off at the end and go kind of jet wine through the stuff, right, John? Right. What are you gonna say?
+
+[1:15:35] I just want to get to a couple announcements real quick. Um some exciting things. So just to remind our upcoming guests, next week we have Dr. Jessica Harris, followed by Adam Di Martino, Francesco Magoya, Nick uh from Grove and Vine, Kenji Kenji, and uh James Hoffman. And then obviously join the Patreon membership.
+
+[1:15:54] There are great perks like the new one where uh just this morning we posted the all the classics in the field list that both Dave has mentioned and uh Matt Sarwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters. And we have an exciting uh sort of cross-promotional thing happening with Kitchen Arts and Letters where we will start tr uh offering on most books uh 20% off discount for the authors that are coming in for the show. So there will be a coupon code up on Patreon soon for High on the Hog by uh Dr. Harris. So keep an eye out for that.
+
+[1:16:23] Nice. Yep. I enjoy that. Yeah, all good things. Yeah.
+
+[1:16:27] So uh on the way out, John, what is the name of the Connecticut relish that you brought me? Blackies. Blackies. Poorly named, yeah. Poorly named.
+
+[1:16:37] I mean, but uh so it looks like a it's not like green, right? It's kind of like brownish, reddish green. Yeah. Look, but it looks like a standard relish in the jar, not a standard relish. No.
+
+[1:16:50] Not a sweet relish. No. It looks like a sweet relish. It does. Like a sweet pickle relish.
+
+[1:16:56] Yeah. What are your feelings on relish? I like it. I love relish. Yeah.
+
+[1:17:01] I think relish is good. It is. It's delicious. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff.
+
+[1:17:04] Yeah. Uh, I was not expecting this to be completely dead not sweet. And I have to say, enjoyable, uh, what's the what's the word I'm looking for? Enjoyable um alternative relish. Yeah.
+
+[1:17:14] Connecticut's got a really good style relish. Yeah. Connecticut. Go Connecticut. Go Connecticut.
+
+[1:17:14] Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stand Studios in Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, although she's still in California chilling. How are you doing, Stas? I'm good.
+
+[0:24] How are you? Doing well. You decided not to fly home in the uh in the snowstorm? Decided that would be a bad idea, huh? Yeah.
+
+[0:31] Plus, I had COVID during Christmas, so it's nice to see my family. Yeah. You did have the COVID Christmas, the the uh the most enjoyable Omicron solo Christmas. Uh we got uh, of course, uh John behind me. How are you doing, John?
+
+[0:43] Doing great, thanks. Everything good? Yep, everything's great. Were you back in New York City or you uh you in Connecticut? No, no, back in New York.
+
+[0:49] Okay, listen, I have another hot dog. We can talk about it in a in a minute. I have another hot dog to add to the list of hot dogs. Someday, by the way, Joe Hazen in the booth, how you doing, Joe? I'm doing great.
+
+[0:58] How are you guys? Doing well. And in our roving, I'm just gonna call Jack a roving booth from now on because I never know where the hell he is. He's either California, Mexico, Long Island. You're in Mexico now, right, Jack?
+
+[1:11] Mexico, probably for the last time. So there's life, there's hope. Not ever, but I mean for the last time. For now at least. You know what?
+
+[1:20] I do go to places at this point, and I'm like, I will never be here again. I do that now. Like it, like it's weird, it's weird. It is weird. It'd be like, even places I like, I'm like, I will never be here again.
+
+[1:31] You know what I'm saying? Anyway. Or when I meet somebody somewhere like here, I'm like, I'll never see you again, probably ever. Yeah. For me, most of the time, that's good.
+
+[1:40] You know what I mean? It's not that I don't like people, but it's just like a lot to try to to to try to maintain, you know? Anyway, uh Patreon, uh, people who are listening live, calling your questions to 917-410 1507. That's 917-410-1507. If you don't know what Patreon is, or you're not a Patreon member, uh, go look us up, right?
+
+[1:59] Right, John? Yep. And remember, Patreon listeners get 20% off the book of the week at Kitchen Arts and Letters. This week's book's gonna be High on the Hog by Jessica Harris. So go check it out, Kitchen Arts and Letters.
+
+[2:11] Let me introduce who I have with us. Uh uh, I've known I've known her a long time. I don't think she's been on the maybe she's been on the show a long time ago. But we have with us today a special guest, Dr. Jessica Harris.
+
+[2:22] Hello. Hi, how are you? Doing well, doing well. So she's here. I just I just figured I'd usually uh I rant for about 15 minutes before I even get around to introducing the guests, but I figure let's just have you in here so that you can feel free to chime in at any point.
+
+[2:38] Rant along with me. Yeah, rant along, rant along with me. Okay. So uh so you know, I'll just introduce who, you know, in case you don't know uh who she is, um she was a professor at uh Queen's College for eight, you know, what like a long time? How long?
+
+[2:52] Uh half a century. Yeah. And started writing books at some point in the 80s. Correct. Yeah.
+
+[2:58] And has how many books have you written so far? Uh written 12. Written, edited, translated, whatever, 18. So a few. And uh the first book, uh the first book of yours that um I bought was uh The Africa Cookbook, which I think was uh in the the mid-90s.
+
+[3:17] Yeah. That was in the 90s. Yeah, and uh at the time uh it was the almost only non-colonially colonial focused book on uh on other than northern African fruit uh that I ha could find that I could get. So what's it like being a pioneer in that field? Just means I'm old.
+
+[3:41] Just means I'm old. You know, I mean the thing is that you know, you do what you do and you I who knew, pioneer. What the heck? Um, you know, I I had written about other things. Basically, I was sort of tracing a culinary curve from the African continent through to the so-called new world.
+
+[4:03] And um, you know, the editor finally said, Okay, let's do it. So it's like, okay, Africa it is. So there it was. Right. And then 10, 15 years, you many books in between.
+
+[4:15] Uh 10, 15 years after that, you wrote uh a book which has now been turned into a Netflix series, High on the Hog, right? And so uh I think a lot of people who maybe didn't know you before know you because of uh High on the Hog. So kind of what's that been like to have this book that you wrote like, you know, it's a decade ago. Yeah, yeah. It's a decade.
+
+[4:36] Actually, it's 11 years ago now. So what's it like to have a book that you wrote back then hit so hard now? That's gotta be, I guess, gratifying, but like it's weird. It's it's deeply weird. I mean, it's first of all, I tend to not read my books after I write them.
+
+[4:53] So people will now tell me things that it's like, oh, did I say oh, okay, I guess I did. All right, well, who knew? Um it's um it's interesting. It's it's deeply gratifying in in many ways, all of the kind of wonderful things that people are saying, certainly about the show, and equally about the book. Um, it's surprising.
+
+[5:14] You know, I've become this person that I kind of look around and go, who the heck is she? You know? Um, but it's it's very interesting. Right. I mean, you've been named to a time's 100 most influential people.
+
+[5:24] I mean, it's amazing. I mean I think it's great. That's wacko. I think it's fantastic. Straight up wacko.
+
+[5:29] Yeah, everybody that knows you already like, you know, knows that you should be up on those lists like since forever ago. You know what I mean? But it's uh it's so funny because everybody, like if if you go around in the kind of uh food world, you're kind of one of those you're one of those people that I don't know, everybody respects. It's weird. It's like it's kind of like uh, and people don't want to say no to you.
+
+[5:55] Like when we went to you told me, yeah. Yeah, we told well, you know, you told me to go to uh Dukey Chase's last time I was in uh New Orleans. And because uh, you know, you spend part of your time in New Orleans, part of your time in Brooklyn, part of your time in Martha's Vineyard, right? Right. That's not a bad way to be.
+
+[6:12] I'm not complaining. Not a bad way to be. So you you told you sent me there, uh, and you said I needed to talk to them about cocktails, and you told them that they needed to talk to me, and both of us were like, I don't know, but she told us that we needed to talk to each other, so here we are, because like everyone just listens to what you say. You know what it is? Was it a good conversation?
+
+[6:30] Oh, it's great. There you go. By the way, that I think I told you the uh uh the recipe, the printed recipe for their shrimp clements so is inaccurate because uh uh they do something different to the shrimp clements so there. To me, that was the It's those old pots. Yeah, to me that was the that was the money dish, and not even just the shrimp, it's the butter.
+
+[6:47] It's yeah, it's the butter, it's the garlic. It's I've naturally never tasted it because I'm allergic to shrimp, but I do know that it is the dish that you know, the late and sainted Leah Chase would send out when she wanted to send somebody something special. She'd always send the shrimp clemence. So it's always what I say, go have. Yeah, I uh I tried making it according to the published, and there's two or three published recipes from them, you know, or because she uh she used to make it on uh when she used to do the rounds of the talk shows or something.
+
+[7:16] That was one of the things not the same. I mean, like the I'm pretty good at hitting a recipe, like if I'm following the recipe, not the same. You say it's the pots. I well, I mean, I think, you know, there is that thing that in in uh well, happy new year, by the way. It's lunar new year.
+
+[7:30] So there is that thing that uh Grace uh Young has informed me about that's called the walk hand, which is the hand of the cook in the dish. You know, no matter how accurate the recipe is, you don't get the hand of the cook in the dish. And that may just be something as simple as knowing a smell and doing something when the smell occurs, or turning the spoon one way and then another way, and then you know, you know all of those kinds of technical scientific things, but there are all of those little tiny things that you can't encapsulate in a recipe. Right. This is why, like, even like uh it's better.
+
+[8:07] I mean, I shouldn't say this because I'm trying to write a book now and I want people to buy it. But uh the nice thing about YouTube is you can physically watch what people do. Yeah. And I always say it's better to watch a cook in many ways and to listen to them because Well, I mean, and and sometimes the cook doesn't even know it. I think most of the time.
+
+[8:25] You know, the cook doesn't know it. It's something that happens automatically, that unless something goes ping and you know, sort of sets it off in their memory, they don't even think about it. And those are the imponderables. I hate writing recipes, you know. I need to stop saying that because I am actually working on a cookbook too.
+
+[8:42] But recipes we have come to think of it as being, you know, like blueprints for a house. If you move this wall, the house will fall. It's like, no. No, it won't. You know, the house will still stand, and it might be a better house for you if you do it the way you think it should be.
+
+[9:01] So uh I also have this problem with recipes, right? Because we're both gonna talk ourselves out of these cookbooks. So let's not go quite down there. No, but I mean it's like the issue is right that it's like uh people want recipes, and I get that, but it it's more like the structure of how to think. I w I'd rather just talk to people about you know how how to think about a certain process or how to you know what I mean, or well, if you think of old cookbooks, old cookbooks made assumptions about people knowing how to cook.
+
+[9:35] And so they didn't say you've got to do this and wait for 50 cook until done. Yeah. You know, not 15 minutes or until this or until you know, we have dumbed down our cooks. But people hate that in recipes. They hate it.
+
+[9:51] You know what I mean? Like, so like like literally, John, right or wrong. My what I always tell people, Stas, you back me up, is like how long how much should I add? The right amount. Yeah, exactly.
+
+[10:00] Enough. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Enough. How threatened to write a cookbook that just has ingredients.
+
+[10:07] Not even measures, just ingredients. Well, this is why I feel that people before you should attend okay. Look, sometimes you can't help it. No, but baking is something else now. I'm talking, I'm talking cooking, not baking.
+
+[10:20] But you should have a target. I always say this a lot. You should taste something before you attempt to make it, unless there is no other choice. You know what I'm saying? If you're if you're trying to make something specific.
+
+[10:31] If you just want to make something delicious, then sure, read the body. Do what you want to do. Do what you do, read the bones of a recipe, make it your own. But if you're trying to make something, you should taste the target before you I don't know what you're getting at. You know what I mean?
+
+[10:41] Yeah, yeah, I know. Uh so speaking of target, uh, so I uh have something for us to taste that's outside of the realm of what we uh normally uh do. Uh so what do you normally do? We don't normally eat things. So I was in California.
+
+[10:54] I took my first trip since COVID. You? Yeah, yeah, I have for work. What happened? Okay, so I'll okay.
+
+[11:00] So I was supposed to press up. I was supposed to go to uh I was supposed to go to an event that got canceled because that got omacroned out. By the way, you know who else is allergic to shrimp, speaking of great minds, uh are allergic alike is uh McGee can't have shrimp. Harold McGee. Yeah, can't have can't have any crustaceans.
+
+[11:15] So, you know. Oh, okay. Well, I've always loved him. Another reason to love him. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[11:19] You know what he's he's considering well, he's not. I I I'm trying to get him to consider taking the shots. You know, I used to be allergic to cherries, and now like I'm back to being cherry-proof because I've been but of course are you cherry proof or are you just cherry resistant? Resistant, cherry efficient now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[11:36] Uh anyway, I don't know if they can do it with with crustaceans, but anyway, because they are delicious. Although I have to say, have you always been allergic? I think it's an adult onset for me. I vaguely remember peeling and maybe eating shrimp as a child. But um Peeling shrimp's no fun.
+
+[11:52] Uh it wasn't a problem. I was a kid. I had little tiny fingers. Getting that little black vein out was fine. It was an adventure.
+
+[11:58] Are you okay with crayfish powder, like in small amounts? Uh so it makes it difficult for a lot of students. It's iodine, and so I'm very careful. And and you know, I mean, and particularly in Asian restaurants where there's a lot of fish sauce that may have oysters and stuff, I pay attention. Uh-huh.
+
+[12:13] So uh so anyway, I'm in California, and the one day I'm supposed to fly back is the day we have the snowstorm here, right? So like my flight gets canceled, and you know, thanks, no thanks, Delta, Delta hosed me. I got on a jet blue flight. Did you know they have a category of flight that you're not allowed to have a check bag on? It's like it's like that's that, you know, the the super is super super savor.
+
+[12:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's like A B C D E, and then like right before they shut the door, they're like, and group F. Yeah. Group Q. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[12:42] That that was me. So, but thankfully uh Nastasia found it for me. Otherwise I would have been hosed. Cause I'm one of those guys, I just want to get back. I just want to get back.
+
+[12:49] You're ready to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to get back. So, like, you know, my choice was hang out in, you know, beautiful San Francisco. I know Stas has her issues with San Francisco, right, Stas?
+
+[12:58] Oh, I thought you didn't like it either. I like San Francisco. I just there's aspects of it. Like, why can't I go? Why aren't there 24-hour stores in San Francisco?
+
+[13:06] Like it's not New York. Do you know that right now in San Francisco, like it's a new thing that people get on social media and say we're gonna go break into XYZ store? And so all of the fancy stores have 24-hour security guards outside of them. Yeah, I do know. I read about that.
+
+[13:20] Yeah. It's bananas. So I'm out there, so like, you know, I get there and I'm still on New York Time. So I get up at five in the morning and I'm thirsty as hell. I am thirsty as hell.
+
+[13:32] And I know people are gonna say, oh, what a douche, what a douche. I think that's as strong as I can go, right? In a family show. That's enough. Yeah.
+
+[13:39] So, but I uh seltzer water. I want seltzer. I just want bubbly water, all right? I just want it. I'm 50.
+
+[13:45] I want my water the way I want it. I've earned it. So anyway, so like I'm like, I'm gonna go outside and I'm gonna get it. Nope. Walked an hour, and I have not felt in physical danger in an American city the way I felt walking in some parts of San Francisco since the 80s.
+
+[14:03] It was cra it's crazy over there. I'm not gonna say anything, but anyway. I know some places you can visit that you feel physical danger. So let's just draw the draw the veil of discretion over that before we get all right, you know, sort of x'ed off of all tourist offices. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[14:14] But it was uh, but you know, look, that's when it's you know in the middle of the mor, yeah, early, early, early in the morning. But I'm just surprised at how it shuts down that city. I love you, San Francisco, but why do you shut down? I guess that's why we're the city that never sleeps. That's it.
+
+[14:31] Do you know that only like 20 minutes outside or half hour outside of San Francisco, they have redwoods. It's so beautiful there. All right, anyway. So I get so jet blue is like, hell with it. I'm gonna fly back to New York, even in a snowstorm.
+
+[14:43] We get almost all the way, but of course, the folks at JFK, even though the snow stopped, hadn't swept the runway clean yet. So we couldn't land, and they divert us to of all places, Buffalo. So I'm in the airport. Yeah, well, as well. So I'm in Buffalo, in the airport, and they don't let me out of the airport.
+
+[14:57] But one of the things I've always wanted to try in Buffalo is this stuff they have called sponge candy. I know it. I love it. It's amazing. I'll eat it all.
+
+[15:06] Here's a well, take so I have I have a couple darks and mostly milk. So like take some and then pass them around so that John and Joe can have it. It's kind of well, so what they do is so it's for you guys might know it as honeycomb candy, but the difference is in Buffalo they uh in Buffalo they uh they add some gelatin to it, so the bubbles are real small. So most honeycomb candy, the bubbles are kind of all different size, because you cook sugar and and syrup until it gets, you know, up to kind of hard crack stage, and then you put the baking soda in and poops. Yeah, and then they cut it into a block with a saw, and then they dip it in chocolate.
+
+[15:38] But they add gelatin to this one before they add the baking soda. And so what that does is it creates a real fine texture on it. And I've always wanted to have sponge candy. So thank you, Storm. Now I got to have the sponge candy.
+
+[15:50] And who knew? Because you could have come by my house. I order honeycomb. It's just it's a candy from my childhood. There used to be a shop on the vineyard called Darling's Candy Store, and they used to sell it as molasses puff.
+
+[15:59] And as molasses Puff, it wasn't chocolate covered. It was just the sponge. And it was absolutely amazing. And it's been one of those tastes of my childhood for forever. So about five years ago, maybe ten, I actually found it in London.
+
+[16:18] I think it may be a British thing that's come over. Um, but I found it in London where they call it honeycomb. And you can go into the, you know, those massive candy stores that they have in London. So you can go and buy it by the ounces or whatever. So I would always come home with a suitcase packed full of honeycomb.
+
+[16:36] But about, well, since COVID, uh, I, you know, on the net at midnight or one o'clock, cuz what else am I gonna do except shop? And there it is. Honeycomb. So I've I've ordered it. In fact, there's some that's going to be delivered today or tomorrow.
+
+[16:51] Well, tell me what you think of the tell me what you think of the Buffalo version. It tastes like a crunchy bar. It's really good. Yeah, right. Only this one I think is older than the Crunchy Bar.
+
+[16:59] I think Buffalo started making it in the 40s, I think. I don't I don't know. But delicious, thank you. But someday I'm gonna get to go back to Buffalo because I want to try their beef on WEC. I've never had that either.
+
+[17:10] I don't know that either. But this one I do know. It's lovely. Thank you. Nice.
+
+[17:14] So, you know, it's good news to gain diverted, right, John? Yes. Yes. A couple times. So uh, and just so people, you know, you don't only write cookbooks or books about food, you also write about cocktails.
+
+[17:26] Mm-hmm. Right. And then in 2017, which I can't believe this is the maybe I have not seen you, obviously, I haven't seen hardly anyone, but I haven't seen you since the pandemic. So in my mind, your your memoir is still a recent thing. Even though that was uh four or four years ago now that it came out.
+
+[17:41] Um you have uh a uh a memoir where it is uh my soul looks back and it's it's music paired with like chunks of your life and kind of the amazing people that you've kind of hung around with. So that's another aspect of Jessica Harris people need to look at. Um but there's a new book that I didn't even know was out that uh I looked at and I want to talk to you about before we talk about the Museum of Food and Drink, which is kind of why we brought you here today. Uh not for myself. Well, for what you have done.
+
+[18:11] Sure, sure backstroke. I love it when you do it in homework. Come on, walking backwards, back in that one off. Vintage Postcards from the African world, uh, in the dignity of their work and the joy of their play. Uh a book came out, I guess right mid.
+
+[18:25] Middle of the pandemic. May of 2020. So I looked at this book and I kind of just want you to talk about it a little bit because it's kind of amazing. It's first of all, there's this word that I didn't even know existed, deleteologist. Mm-hmm.
+
+[18:41] I am a deleteologist. Do you know what that is, John? Don't look at my don't look at my notes. Do you know what that is? I did not know until I looked at your notes.
+
+[18:49] Oh, you cheating. Well, I can see it right here. But you're from Belgium, which is one of the play yes, if I'm correct, no? My dad is from Belgium. Your dad is from Belgium.
+
+[18:56] But I mean, so um Deltaologist is one who collects postcards. And some of the great well, some of one of the things that started me on my postcard journey, if you will, is the um flea market at Sablon in Brussels. Okay. So that hence that was the Belgian reference. But um so I collect postcards.
+
+[19:18] I specifically collect, well, I collect a lot of different areas, but the book is about cards that I collect about um early images, and when I say early, some of the oldest postcards go back to the turn of the 20th century. So very, very 1904, 1890s, the end of 1890s, um about Africans and Africans in diaspora and food. And that means everything from growing it to, you know, serving it to processing it to eating it, and then celebrations. So that's a a bulk of the collection. I mean, what's kind of amazing to me about it, so it's uh, you know, for those of you that you know go take a look at it, but it's uh there's uh there's an essay about it, or like, you know, and then like just a bunch of amazing images as well.
+
+[20:12] And I think what's kind of I don't know, it's just such a you wouldn't expect it just saying what the book is, but the richness it's there, all the layers that and the different ways you can approach the images. Yeah, that's the thing that's so much fun about postcards because they're they're so layered. You can, I mean, I've had people who are dress historians who have written to me to say, oh my god, what a resource for anybody that's working on costume. I have people who are looking at tools and just some of the tools, some of the old mortars. There is one where a woman has a particular kind of hoe that is, you know, sort of native, if you will, to the African continent.
+
+[20:54] They're all of these kinds of layers on which you can look at things. They're they're really snapshots of a moment in time, and as such, they're kind of fun. I mean, you know, you I always wonder, what were the people thinking. Some of them were posed, clearly posed. Some of them are um are mislabeled.
+
+[21:14] I mean, there's a whole set that were done by a Frenchman named Fartier. And Fartier was actually an ethnographer, large quotation marks around that word, um, who was in Western Africa at the turn of in the very early 20th century, um, who took pictures. But he took pictures all over the place that then became postcards. He he had there's a whole collection of his, I think they have some at the University of Oh gosh. Midwest somewhere.
+
+[21:44] Um, and um, and they're they're just extraordinary. But as they became postcards, some of them are mislabeled. Right, so it's like one like says it's in Dakar, but it's Benin's. You can begin to sort of see all of those, all of those things. And then if you juxtapose the cards, you can see things, you know, oh wow, that's a basket, and that's the same basket in South Carolina, you know, kind of thing.
+
+[22:21] So you can see things like that. But equally you can sort of you get the colonial eye as well, because who's taking these pictures? And who's consuming them, yeah. And who were they taken for? And you know, so there's so many layers and levels on which you can look at them.
+
+[22:36] They're kind of fun. Right, trying to see the person behind the pose behind the eye that it was intended for. But then uh then you can just turn all that off and and like like I'm trying to understand how the agriculture works. I'm looking at the size of those damn oysters. Right, or the size of the the fish.
+
+[22:50] Yeah, oh my gosh, the fish, and they say, you know, nobody's catching fish that size anymore. What about the coconuts? Either those are the tiniest people on earth or like John, like right with those are water coconuts, right? They were like this big around. Wow.
+
+[23:04] Yeah, there's some, yeah, I mean, they're they're pretty amazing. Like people can't, I know I'm on radio, I hold my hands out here. People are really gonna see that. Yeah. Big.
+
+[23:11] Big. Yeah. Big. Anyway, so like I think it's definitely uh a book people should check out. Well, thank you.
+
+[23:18] Um yeah, it's such un it's just unusual. It's also like uh what's nice about it is um yeah, you're trying to find like the people behind I know it's just like I say, a lot of layers with which to to look in and uh who is it? Was it uh who is it that talked about uh pictures pictures being um about death? Is it Bart? Is that Roland Bart?
+
+[23:44] I think so. Anyway, damn defined though. I was thinking I was only a French major, I have no idea. I think it wasn't it? I think so.
+
+[23:51] It's been a while since I read that. Uh but just uh like so like that's how I grew up kind of like the philosophy of uh photography as uh photography as form of death because you're looking into someone who's static and stasis is death, right? So it's like and you're looking in there, but you can tell that they were alive. It's kind of an amazing thing. Yeah, you know, I mean, and one of the cards specifically that calls to mind is there is a card of a woman who was an ex slave, you know, somebody who had been enslaved, actually standing on the auction block on which she had been sold when she was five.
+
+[24:32] And so you want to talk about layers and levels and just everything that's encapsulated in that. Yeah, with the price tag. Well, and then you've got the well, in the captioning you've got the amount because I think she w it was fifteen thousand dollars or fifteen hundred. Yeah, fifteen hundred dollars. Yeah.
+
+[24:51] And that's that's just so horrific and uh it's unspeakable. And it's that's in New Orleans. And yep. And uh the the image is so compelling that I went and looked up that hotel, and as you rightly point out, it's the old uh St. Louis Hotel.
+
+[25:06] It I guess got destroyed in a hurricane and they rebuilt it in a similar fashion. But it's like those things that just make you go, ooh, you know, it's it's there's there's a lot. I mean, there's there's more to postcards than most folks think. Or like just wish you were here. The look uh look in that kid's eyes who's delivering meals that like those.
+
+[25:24] Yeah, as you say, an adorable boy, but like, man, those eyes. Yeah, what has he seen? Yeah. And of course, now dead. Obviously, no, all of them.
+
+[25:32] Yeah. All of all of them, because the postcards date unless they were absolute infants. None of the cards are later than the nineteen thirties. No. And you have, I think, one or two, I can't remember where you have the the hand tinted version and the black and white version.
+
+[25:54] Yeah, to see how people tinted them. And unfortunately, what what I didn't get to show a lot was some of the comments on the back. Oh. Okay. Sometimes you get to see, you know, the sender commenting on the card.
+
+[26:09] You know. And were they mostly white folks sending the cards? Pretty much uh, you know, I would say ninety-nine percent. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[26:18] You can't always tell. Right, right. But you get that sense. Because remember that back then, postcard, you know, there was no Snapchat. There was no, you know, whatever you you're using, that's this instant communication.
+
+[26:31] So postcards were a little bit of that. It was quicker than a letter. You didn't have to write a letter. Right. Less formal.
+
+[26:40] Less formal. And, you know, certainly something that was public because the mailman could read it. Right. You know, as well. So that you get a whole nother sense of how how people so one of them says, you know, won't be on the morning train coming later, you know, kind of thing.
+
+[27:00] Um, so they didn't go necessarily quite that rapidly, but they were a way of of communicating, you know, things that might otherwise, you know, nowadays you'd call, you'd send a text, you'd do whatever. Even in the 70s, though, I love postcards. Yeah. I used to love them. Yeah.
+
+[27:16] I'll tell you a quick story because I'm gonna get in trouble. But I used to work for the I worked for the post office as a casual employee when I was in college in the summertime. Very casual. Although it's a cra that's a it's a cruddy job. They really uh anyway, uh, it's good if you can get in the postal union.
+
+[27:31] If you're a casual worker, not so much. Uh but the um I remember once I was like, you would have all these catalogs come in, right? So I would see, I would see, so when Publishers Clearinghouse sends you the envelope and it's like, you know, you may have won, I would see the entire town. I would like put all of those, you may have. They may have worked.
+
+[27:50] May have. Didn't may have. Anyway, so I remember I was reading someone's catalog once, and I just I just planted maybe 200 of these catalogs, you know. And uh the guy's like, That's somebody's mail, you're committing a federal offense. I was like, really, dude?
+
+[28:03] Really? So it's like you're saying, you know, the mail, the you know, the the carrier can read that the postcard, and yeah, they frown on it, but come on, we look at that stuff. Well, of course. I mean, you know, it's there. It's it's you know, you putting it in the box.
+
+[28:15] You can't help but read it. Yeah. The guy, the guy who he wasn't super mad at me, but he was the Nixie clerk. You know about Nixie clerks? No.
+
+[28:22] In every zip code, there's at least one person whose job it is to figure out completely undeliverable stuff. And that's the person who knows the most. People who work at the post office, at least they used to, have a surprising amount of knowledge about who you are and where you live and who's in your Yeah, yeah. And so the Nixie clerk is the person who knows the most. So when something's just like scratched across and like it comes into that post office, they're the ones who figure out how to get it to you.
+
+[28:51] Or not. Or not. If they're good, they get it to you. And if they if they don't, uh, they don't. All right.
+
+[28:57] So now, uh, I have I have John's gonna get bent at me. Let's talk about the Museum of Food and Drink. So I don't know how long ago it was. Well, I mean, since basically since forever, you know, I've wanted to have you uh work with the Museum of Food and Drink Um on a project, and then is it what is it, four years ago now? Three.
+
+[29:19] Oh, it's longer than four. I think it's your fault. Yes, yes. Uh no, but I mean, in terms of just the current exhibition. No, it's longer than four, I think.
+
+[29:27] Remember we was that first meeting. We lost two for COVID. Yeah, and then it took us a while to do that. And then there were at least two years before we ran into COVID. So it's probably five, five, maybe six.
+
+[29:39] Uh all right. So uh and thus do we age. Yeah. Uh right. And people, for those of you, it gets it gets worse.
+
+[29:46] Time runs faster. It's like so weird. You'd think it would run slower. My grandfather used to say that. It's like, you know, he I never knew him, but my mother always quoted him as saying, you know, as you get older, it just moves faster.
+
+[29:59] It moves. Remember when it used to take forever to get to Christmas? I know. Now you blink and it's Christmas again. Remember Christmas morning?
+
+[30:07] How messed up that was? Even waiting that like 45 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.
+
+[30:12] But let me digress. Yes. So uh we knew that we wanted to get you in. And so we had done a couple exhibitions. Uh well, you know, a million years ago, I did something on country ham.
+
+[30:25] Then we did um we did flavor and then uh which is Oh, before flavor, the puffing gun. Oh, the puffing gun, which was supposed to we wanted to do all of cereal, but I we couldn't do cereal because we didn't have the money. So we just took one component of the cereal exhibition, which was the puffing gun. So we did the puffing gun. Uh then we did, you know, flavor, which was about kind of the the birth of the flavor industry and how you know your tongue and your palate works.
+
+[30:47] Then we did Chow, which was um uh, you know, how did it come to pass that uh how did the Chinese American restaurant come to pass? Because it's kind of an amazing story. Uh and then we said, okay, uh we want, you know, we want you to come in and we want to figure out what kind of story we should tell about uh uh black food in America or the contribution of uh African Americans to uh American food waste. And so we're like, well, that's we can't that's not us, right? What we have is an apparatus or uh, you know, uh, you know, we have a vehicle, right?
+
+[31:27] A thing, the museum, and there was only one person on earth. I swear, there's only one person on earth who I was like, I think it goes back to what I said earlier is that people may disagree with you, but they're gonna but they're gonna think but they're gonna defer to you. You know what I mean? Right, there's relatively well. There's a level of respect that only you can get.
+
+[31:56] And so we got an amaz how many people did we have on that initial meeting that you ran? Oh, it was about 30, I think. 30, maybe 40, I don't know, but it was it was a sizable number. And an impressive group. Yeah, it was like we sort of rounded up the usual suspects and dug up some that folks hadn't thought of.
+
+[32:14] Yes. Do you want to talk about kind of like how you conceptualized what the because it you know, from us from a museum standpoint, for those of you that don't know, like I'm uh on the board of the museum on the founder. Let's talk about conceptualizing a museum. People who just sort of say, and let there be museum, that would be Dave. Yeah, right.
+
+[32:34] So uh well, so the the issue is the hard part about an ex uh exhibition, any exhibition, is you have finite space. So you gotta you gotta pair this the story you're trying to tell down into kind of the space that you know is allotted to you and the budget that you have. And then when you when you're tackling a story that's so giant, the main problem, the main problem becomes what what are you going to say with this space allotted? And so to me, like how um you know, you and the group of advisors came up with a story. Maybe if you want to talk about that a little bit, because I thought it was kind of an interesting process.
+
+[33:12] Wow, well, it was it was certainly crazy, and it was all very discursive. I mean, it a lot of it came out in in just plain conversation talking. I mean, the centerpiece of the exhibit as now is a legacy quilt. I mean, it's there are several centerpieces, but the the sort of entry, wow, oh my lord, what is this and what are we learning? Is um a legacy quilt.
+
+[33:37] And I remember we were just riffing one day sitting around a table, and I said, you know, I've always thought that a quilt is important. And you were the one that said, yes. We are going to do a quilt. A quilt. Now what can we do with the quilt?
+
+[33:51] And so we ended up with a legacy quilt where we've kind of encapsulated 400 plus years of African Americans and food in this country. By the way, I think that the title of the show is sort of informational and and you know, sort of a little, you know, not necessarily argumentative, but uh, you know, it there are people who will raise eyebrows. And the title is African slash American, making the nations table. So the idea of it, the backstory, if you will, is the absolute foundational role that African Americans had in the creation, not just of African American food, but of American food. And so that's that's kind of what we started from.
+
+[34:47] That was the matrix. Once we all agreed that we agreed on that, then it wasn't it was it was difficult, but it wasn't impossible because it's like, okay, how are we gonna try to break it down? How are we gonna try to look at this? How are we gonna try to make this into something that we can actually handle? Because it is enormous.
+
+[35:09] And, you know, it's like, how do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time. So it was about trying to figure out how to come up with those pieces. And so eventually we kind of wrestled ourselves and, you know, whoever else wanted to join in the mud fight, down to four basic buckets, if you will, for want of a better way. And they are agriculture.
+
+[35:39] And agriculture would take in absolutely everything from the work that the enslaved did, the know-how that they brought to that work, which is extraordinary that we don't always think of. But equally, um, the botany, the animal husbandry, all of those things fall in that. And so we do that and we center it pretty much around rice. And rice because rice was so transformational in the Carolinas. So that's that's one bucket.
+
+[36:18] Then we move on to culinary arts. So when you start to talk about culinary arts, then you get all of those hands in the kitchen. You get all of those African Americans during the period of enslavement who worked both, well, certainly during the period of enslavement, who worked unpaid, unheralded, and for the most part unknown, but who fixed food for everybody, including those who were fixing the food of the founding fathers. So you get um Hercules Posey, you get James Hemings, you get all of those people, as well as all of the people who followed them, all the way up through Downing, who had an oyster refectory, all the way through people today, you know, and I'm not gonna name names because I'll forget somebody and then I'll be pillowed, and you know it won't be pretty. But um Yeah, we what up talk a little bit maybe about the because I think this is what this is the key insight is that it's not just the things that you think about.
+
+[37:26] No, it's not. Yeah, it's like uh the outsized contributions that uh, you know, that were made to hospitality in general. Exactly. Well, I mean, I think now if anybody's seen the Netflix series based on my book, uh High on the Hog. Again, I'll say it, I'll say it again.
+
+[37:42] You know what that series needed is more Jessica Harris. So I'm gonna say it again. Well, bless you, bless you. From your mouth to God's ear, my dear. Um, but I think that one of the things that, you know, just basic stuff.
+
+[37:54] If you look in, I think it's episode two, mac and cheese. For the Lord's sakes, no, I'm not trying to say that African Americans invented mac and cheese, because we didn't. But we certainly popularized it, and we popularized it through Jefferson, and it was James Hemings through Jefferson that popularized mac and cheese, which now is there's nothing more American. It's kind of a crazy recipe they used in that episode. Do you see it?
+
+[38:22] Do you have you tried that recipe? I have not, but the idea of butter, how bad could it be? Yeah, but she cooks it in milk, yeah? And then and then like she just layers like the cheese in between the stuff, doesn't make it into a sauce. So it's unlike any mac and cheese that I've ever had a lot of butter.
+
+[38:36] Yeah, a lot of butter, and but it's not the Bechamel. It's not the Bechamel that you think of, but it's another way of doing a kind of Bechamel if you think about it. Yeah, no, it's just but but I mean, and I think that's part of it as well, because then you start to think about remember how they cooked. You know, is this the way that you can do it if you are hearth cooking when you can't really stand there and stare at the bechamel? You know, when you can't make that sauce that way.
+
+[39:03] Yes, uh Hemings was one of the people who brought, I think one of the early potager, I call it a potager, everybody else calls it a stew-hole stove, but brought one of those back when he came back along with the copper pots to use on it. So he was one of the first who began to move away from hearth cooking into that kind of place where you are regulating flame and and being more able to make that bechamel the way we know now, but otherwise you couldn't. So that that recipe of necessity speaks to not only time, but also manner of cooking. So that that cooking it in milk and sliding those bits of butter in would have had to do with how it was cooked as much as with what was being cooked. So they're all of those things that you learn, and of course the fact that it's it's you know, it's mac and cheese in my kitchen.
+
+[39:55] I think the thing that people most comment on in my kitchen, I have a box of the brand mac and cheese, the blue box with my face on it, because I did some consulting work for the company and they gifted everybody that consulted with boxes of mac and cheese with our faces on them. It is the thing that is most commented on in my kitchen, you know, and their beard awards and book covers and pretty good art and all kinds of stuff. But people walk in and it's like, oh, oh my god, you're on a mac and cheese box. I mean, somebody, I think the first time I heard anybody say, Oh my god, you're such a baller, it's like, I'm a what? You know.
+
+[40:36] And that's kind of how the mac and cheese box did it. Well, you know, like I I don't know anyone that didn't. Unless you're allergic to dairy or gluten, I don't know anyone that hasn't had that. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, no, exactly.
+
+[40:50] Sooner or later you got it. Unless uh no, no, my mother never used the box. My mother always made her own. But uh she like the tiny elbows still? Yeah.
+
+[41:00] I like the tiny elbows. I'm not talking against the tiny elbows. What else would you use? I don't know, but I do all kinds of horrible things that you would get mad at. Probably.
+
+[41:08] I like to put some peas in with it. You know what? No one because I know, bro. Anathema. I know, I know.
+
+[41:16] Not all the time. And you had mentioned mushrooms and color creams. So bad, bad, bad. I will ask, I'll ask this question then. People ask some questions.
+
+[41:24] Hold a second. Uh this is Devin wrote in on the Patreon. Question for Dr. Harris. For cooking collards, you do you trim, you trim out all how much do you trim out of the central stock in collars when you when you do this?
+
+[41:38] I trim out probably more than most folks. I am a wasteful collared person, but I save them and then do a vegetable broth that I can use for other things. I never done that. Good. The boss?
+
+[41:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I trim a lot out too because I don't like that stock. Uh yeah, I don't either. You know, I I keep the stalk in the little ones. Otherwise, I basically take out that whole that whole rib.
+
+[41:56] Are you a ripper or a cut? I'm a ripper. Yeah. Well, I'm a ripper and a I'm a ripper and a tearer. Yeah.
+
+[42:03] I don't cut them. Oh, you don't cut? Cut. No, I'm not. If I'm doing a Brazilian style, I'm a ripper, I roll them up, and then I cut them as the French would say, on chiffonade.
+
+[42:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's what I do. I I I cut, I I lay them flat, cut the rib out, then roll them ba ba ba ba. Is that bad? Am I doing it wrong?
+
+[42:17] No, just not color. Uh-huh. That's all. I mean, I um I rip them. I then, well, first I let let's let's get basic now.
+
+[42:27] Cause they can be dirty. First, I soak them in water. Then I drain them, then I soak them in water again. Then I rip the ribs out, then I tear them, then they go in pot. Uh and uh okay, so Devin wants to know your meat of choice.
+
+[42:45] In in the in the in the in the liquid for the for the color. Swine. Any kind? Um you hawk person. Hawks are great.
+
+[42:54] Hawks are wonderful, but uh sometimes I'm lazy and it's bacon. Yeah. You know, I just I want pig and smoke. And then uh turkey, I guess turkey neck's fine. As long as it's smoked, right?
+
+[43:07] Beef beef bones, nah, right? I mean, I think here's here's the thing. I think one loves what one is used to. I am used to pig and smoke. Um, but there are generations of people who are used to turkey necks, turkey wings.
+
+[43:25] I just am not used to them. Um, that used to be that they were so, you know, they were being proclaimed as being healthier. You know, it's nitrites. It's the same, you know. You you're getting the bad stuff from the smoke, not from the meat necessarily.
+
+[43:42] I don't mind any of that bad stuff because uh as long as you are enjoying your food, I think it reduces your stress level and therefore increases. It can't be bad. Yeah. Okay, you are you ready? Speaking of can't be bad, are you ready to get mad?
+
+[43:53] He wants to know whether you put mushrooms. Now, listen, I'm assuming he means just a jack the umami, but wants to know if you put mushrooms in your collards. Or yes, no. He says yes, no. Um you you can't even speak.
+
+[43:59] You are so upset. Hey, is there is there a box that says hell no? Yeah. Um I think you do what you do. I'm not saying he's wrong.
+
+[44:15] I'm just saying it ain't mine. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, it it could be interesting. It could be unusual.
+
+[44:23] Um I mean, the nice thing about mushrooms, right? If you like mushrooms in that situation, is that much like greens, they can't really be overcooked as long as you don't dry them out. Right, right. No, I I mean I I like mushrooms. Mushrooms are.
+
+[44:36] But I don't necessarily think of mushrooms in my greens. You know, because you can I've known people who've done cornmeal dumplings in their greens. Really? Mm-hmm. Cornmeal dumplings are interesting.
+
+[44:48] Like like uh like puffy or like dense cornmeal, like uh like what size? Like what are we talking about? Small, small little dumplings that are just kind of dropped in and cook in in the pot liquor. And then do they how dr how dry do you like to take it down? Oh no, no, no, no, no.
+
+[45:03] I I need some pot liquor. All right. You know, there there is liquid. And uh I guess into and this is is is another question in for you, and we can fold this into the agriculture section of the uh of the exhibition if you want. But uh Monty Zukoski wants to hear you talk a little bit about okra.
+
+[45:24] Okay. And was it what was it you wrote way back in the day wherever Where Okra points its green nose Africa has been. Yeah. Or it's green tip or something to that general thing. Um, yeah, okra or us.
+
+[45:36] I love okra. Uh I think again, referencing that aforementioned Netflix thing, uh, okra's on my stationery. I um I just, I mean, it is so here's a word I probably overuse, totemic for Africa and the food of Africa and the survivals of the food of the African continent, that it is just sort of interesting to find where it isn't. Uh certainly it's it's throughout Southern United States, not necessarily the Northern United States, except via the Great Migrations and stuff. Um you get into the Caribbean and you've got all of the Sopa de Kimbombos, you've got all Sopa de Malandron in the the Dominican Republic, you've got um Kiambo, which is an okra soupy stew in Curaçao, you've got uh the Kalaloos that sometimes have okra with them.
+
+[46:35] You've got all of those kinds of levels and layers. You get into South America, you've got Brazilian Caruru, you've got all kinds of things there. I remember being absolutely astounded. I was once invited to Peru. Who knew?
+
+[46:51] Um, but Peru for African American History Month in Peru. Who really knew? Yeah, I've never been, so on my list. Yeah, it's definitely worth worth going. It's extraordinary.
+
+[47:02] Um and uh an incredible food nation. I mean, so much going on. But um I spoke for a um a culinary school and I asked uh if they knew okra. They didn't. I was astounded.
+
+[47:17] I was absolutely astounded. Now, I don't know if it was just because I was in Lima, and maybe if I had been closer to the coast or closer to other well, Lima's on the coast. Yeah, the other coast. Yeah, which coast. Um but I mean, if I'd been closer to a real sort of African American community, maybe they would have known.
+
+[47:36] But nobody, nobody, nobody knew. I met an incredible woman who has since died, may she rest in peace, named Virginia Izquierdo. And we exchanged cookbooks. I had at that point a book called The Welcome Table, which was my African American food book. And she had a book on the cooking of black Peru.
+
+[47:58] And so we exchanged cookbooks, but not a hint of okra. So it was just that was amazing. I mean, there's no reason you can't grow it there, right? Well, no, it it clearly could grow. I mean, they've got so many microclimates.
+
+[48:09] They've got everything from, you know, papayas to apples. They got, you know, they grow pretty much anything. Do you love papaya? I don't love papaya. I don't dislike papaya.
+
+[48:18] Here's one that surprises people. I don't particularly like ripe mangoes. Really? Mouthfeel thing. Huh.
+
+[48:26] Because it makes it tingly in the mouth? No, no, no, no, no. I just it's something about them. I don't like I don't mind the taste. Yeah, question.
+
+[48:33] Is it worse if it's fibery or worse if it's the non-fiber kind? It's not even that. I just don't. There's something about the mouthfeel of them I don't like. I don't like melon.
+
+[48:44] Except why. I like I like green mangoes. Like in a salad or just in general? In general. I mean, I'm one of those people that could probably cut them up, eat them with a dash of hot sauce or some salt or something like that.
+
+[48:56] But I also like green peaches. You know, I don't necessarily like ripe peaches. What do you do with a green peach? Same like you would do with green mango? Yeah, exactly.
+
+[49:05] Cut it up and eat it. I mean, it's a taste that I somehow or other I think I remember my father liking green peaches, you know. So I'm always looking, I'm you know, I'm the one at the vegetable stand that's looking for the hard ones. I like tart I like tart fruit a lot too. Yeah.
+
+[49:14] Uh but let me ask you, go back to okra for one second. So, you know, whenever I whenever I buy it, I'm sitting there squeezing it so I don't get the woody ones. Is there anything you can do to a woody okra? Uh, throw it out. There's nothing you can I don't think that yeah, no, no, it's not they've they've let it grow too long.
+
+[49:36] They've let it grow too long and it's two and a half minutes before it goes to seed. And it just can't be fixed, huh? I don't think so. I don't know how to fix it. People when you go to the package, if you shop in a place at like New York where they don't grow that stuff, squeeze those things that they feel like wood, they are.
+
+[49:52] Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. Oh man. Now, do you like preparations where they don't develop the the thickening properties?
+
+[50:00] Like, for instance, like whole pickled or whole fried or like whole whole in a chip. Anyway, well, I mean, you know, okra, one of the things about okra is the more you cut it, the more it exudes its mucilaginous properties. Um, but I think the thing with okra is um I like it every way. I mean, I'm not necessarily a partisan to some of the West African dishes where it comes in kind of ropes of uh ex exudation or whatever you call it. How do you make it that mucy?
+
+[50:32] Just a lot of it? You cut it. There are there are some recipes in um in Candomble houses. Candomblé is Afro-Bayan religion. And a lot of the recipes are actually traditional, and traditional in the sense that they are not even written down.
+
+[50:48] They are just passed by oral tradition, and there's certainly one which goes, you know, take a hundred okra pods, cut each pod essentially a hundred times, but I mean, you know, and then cut those a hundred times. So you're getting something that is just slime, for want of a better word. And that's how you get that sort of rope. So another slimy thing, uh sassafras leaves, aka filet. Yeah.
+
+[51:18] So why don't you talk to me a little bit about like uh filet versus okra, maybe together? Like why would like how did that come to be a place that had okra down there, you know, for to thicken things? Like, how did they also come to use filet? I actually I I like chewing on sassafra. I like to say, like, whenever I see a sassafras tree, they're small, scrubby trees, I I pick up one of those mitten-shaped leaves and I chew on it because I like that texture in my mouth.
+
+[51:45] Do you know Melochia? Melochia is North African, it's a green and it does that same kind of slime thing. Um, so um, you know, I keep thinking Hank Williams, jambalaya crawfish pie and a filae gumbo. Um, but there used to be a distinction between filet gumbos and feve gumbos. Fevi gumbos being kind of okra gumbos and filee gumbos being gumbos that are thickened with filet.
+
+[52:10] Um there used to be uh saying that um that you basically didn't put filet in an okra gumbo because it would over thicken it, but I've seen people do it. So I mean, I think they're just those distinctions. There are sassafras based gumbos, or gumbos that are thickened with sassafras, and then there are okra gumbos. And you know, people. I am not to the gumbo born.
+
+[52:38] Okay, and I contend that unless you are to the gumbo born, you should probably shut up about it after a certain point. So this may be the point at which I shut up about it. Because somebody will call in and go, she's wrong. And they'd be right, because everybody's gumbo is the gumbo that their grandma made. So, one more filee question that's not gumbo related than.
+
+[52:59] Well, I guess they all are, because what else do people really use it for? Uh I wonder why we don't we have so much sassafras around here. Why don't we use it? Why don't we use it up here? Um, I guess because the whole idea of, well, the filae is basically a Choctaw thing, if I'm not mistaken, and the Choctaws aren't up here.
+
+[53:18] Huh. And we just never figured out how to use it. We just made like syrups out of the out of the uh roots, but never figured out how to use a leaves. Dumb butts, we're dumb butts. Well, we we have our own uh sort of lacune.
+
+[53:33] Yes. Uh let me Well, we wait, wait, wait. Just just to get you back on target, because we are now going wild and off in It's all cooking related, it is, it is, but we've only done two of the four things of the exhibit. We've got two more to go. Hold on, I got one more agriculture question in for you.
+
+[53:50] Okay. All right. So this is it came in. Uh he didn't know he was gonna uh ask for you. Nicholas asked this.
+
+[53:56] Um so there's he says there's an Amazonian cassava uh preparation. You know, I did not realize that even though cassava is uh South American, you know, that's where the you know d domesticated, uh, that Nigeria now makes more cassava than anyone else on Earth. Probably it's one of those things that back and forth, back and forth. It went to um Africa, to the continent, specifically Central and Western Africa, where it actually supplanted the traditional yam. And so it's now used more commonly and more frequently.
+
+[54:30] And people sometimes prefer it to the traditional yam, which if I remember correctly, you know, remember that gray hair, I'm old, I may forget things. But which somehow or other is not necessarily a good thing because nutritionally it is not as good, if you will, as the traditional yam. So cassava is an emptier tuber, if you will, in terms of its nutritional value. That I don't know. I know that it, you know, whereas you can cook and eat a yam, if you do that to a cassava, do it to the wrong cassava, cyanide.
+
+[55:08] Yeah, you know, I've never really cooked a lot of cassava. What's cool about it is how it peels, how you can peel a cassava, pop that pop the outside off of it. But um, so anyway, uh there's an Amazonian cassava product that I've never heard of. I thought I'd heard of it called I'm gonna I'm just gonna mutilate the pronunciation for you. Niapia, right?
+
+[55:25] Which I don't know, but it's a slow reduction of fermented cassava juice with uh chili is cooked for a long time until it turns black and thick with a lot of umami notes, and to me that sounds like Kazareep. Uh which you know what? I've never had it on its own. I've never I've had things cooked with it, but I've never had it on its own. Nicholas wants to know, do I think this process could be due to some specific fungus, bacteria or mold native to the Amazon that breaks starch similar to aspergillis.
+
+[55:49] I tried to replicate it but couldn't get to the same point before it dried out, and locals can't really explain what's happening in the process because it's such a traditional method. Uh my impression, I don't know, you know, I'll let you talk about it, especially about that. You're not gonna let me talk because I don't know, Jack. Well, no, but you know about this next thing, but cause uh in the Beyond the Jack that's on the ring. Right.
+
+[56:07] And beyond gumbo, you uh well, we'll get into it, but so uh I think the trick with it is is uh you have to grade it. So you look up look up Casareep production in there's also in Brazil, I think they call it something like Tukupi or something. Tukupi. Yeah. Uh so you you have to grade it.
+
+[56:26] It i it's a byproduct of starch manufacturer. So you got a great amount of. Well, there used to be uh a kind of long sock like thing that you'd have to squeeze it through. Yeah, like a big basket. Kind of yeah, like a big basket, but one of those baskets that gets tighter as you squeeze it.
+
+[56:42] So you'd have to squeeze the pulp of the uh cassava through. If I recall, and I haven't done any research on this in decades, but originally it was chewed to process it. Chewed and then spat out, and then that was part of the process too. I believe it. The ones I which in which case amylase enzymes would break down some of the stuff.
+
+[57:05] Well, there you go. But I also looked up uh the nutritional compounds of the juice. So like like look, wet starches are wet process. That's why they're not like, you know, and then they have the bagas, which is left over in the in the sock, whatever its name is. They let the starch settle out.
+
+[57:21] Maybe that's not what you're doing. And then they have that the juice is mostly stuff that's soluble. So they reduce the ever loving hell out of it. And and I think it just turns uh like uh brown and black because of the reducing sugars. And I know certain of the uh bitter cassavas have a yellow juice anyway, uh, because of uh beta carotene.
+
+[57:40] That's probably gonna add to it too. But uh I wanted to bring this up for you specifically because uh Kazareep is of course the you know one of the signature ingredients in um in pepper pot. Well in Guyanese pepper pepper pot. South American pepper pot. How does that relate to Philadelphia pepper pot?
+
+[57:57] And what's the whole story with there? Oh pepper pot is interesting because there seems to be a north-south confusion. Um a confusion that um the Guyanese pepper pot is a rich, dense brown stew. The Jamaican pepper pot is something that's a little bit more like kalaloo, that is a kind of okra-based thickened stew. So it's not quite the same thing.
+
+[58:27] The I would say Northern Caribbean, Jamaican, arguably even Tobago and well, it's called Kalaloo and Tobago, it's called pepper pot in Jamaica. Um, that dish is what we kind of see as what was then sold on the streets of Philly in the 19th century as Philadelphia gumbo. That is in fact pepper pot. And that's as we know-based, right? Tripe-based, yeah.
+
+[58:59] Yeah. Tripe peppers, I think okra even, I'm not positive, but I think there may be some. It depends on recipes. It used to be back in the day you would go to the old bookbinders in Philly, and bookbinder's restaurant would have pepper pot, and that would be what you would go. Sometimes I think it even had maybe turtle, but I could be confusing things.
+
+[59:22] But it was it was a thick, soupy stew. And actually there's some illustrations from old Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly. Uh, there's one that has the street vendors, and there is the African American woman selling, and she is the pepper pot vendor. So it was that kind of thing. It was sometimes served on the streets of Philly with what were transcribed as frufre dumplings, but which were probably fufu dumplings.
+
+[59:51] And uh do people, if it came via Jamaica, do they I know that they have things in Jamaica they just call food. Is food just uh a uh a a change in word of foo foo to food? No. Like the dumplings. No, no, no, no.
+
+[1:00:04] Food is something different, nah. So that that's a whole nother rabbit hole we could go down, but let's let's not. Um, but I think that the idea of um of that Philadelphia thing, the fufu dumplings, people tend to forget that Philly was, as was New York, in fact, very much a Creole city. They were port cities, and they were port cities during the certainly colonial and federal period, the colonial period, particularly when it was the northern colonies and the Caribbean colonies. So there was a lot of back and forth stuff.
+
+[1:00:42] You could get plantains in Philly in the 19th century, you know. You couldn't necessarily get them in New York in in general compass until very, very much later. So there was that kind of trade that would have brought it up. And I'm saying Jamaica, but not necessarily only Jamaica, and possibly not even Jamaica, maybe another place in the Caribbean. But Jamaica was the reference for that North South pepper pot thing.
+
+[1:01:10] All right, so now I apologize for t make taking you on my tangents, but let's get to the we missed three three things. In the three remaining minutes? No, so okay, we get brewing and distilling, and that's something about which you have a few small things to say. Yes, exactly. And then we get commerce, and that is also something about which you had a few small things to say in the terms of our refrigerated trucks.
+
+[1:01:29] I know. And you know what? Those those morons, I hate to say this, uh, but I wanted to get one of those reefer truck um. Well, maybe if you want to tell the story real quick, but like I wanted to get one of those original reefer trucks, uh, you know, um units. Because they're not that big.
+
+[1:01:50] And, you know, the entire our entire coal chain is based on this discover, not well, this invention of, you know, they the mobile, like mechanically refrigerated boxcar, which he also, those reefer units he also invented. Give us the he. Give us the he. Oh my God. You've just erased all of the names from my head.
+
+[1:02:14] You've even erased the name of the company because I'm so mad that they wouldn't give us the the unit. Don't look at me. Oh my god, John, his name is Frederick McKinley Jones. Uh, Freddy Jones. In 1939, patents this stuff, but the main units are coming up after the war, isn't that accurate?
+
+[1:02:29] Yes. And it's uh carrier, but not carrier, it's uh who the heck is it? Thermal King. No, it's coming back, but I'm so mad at them because I was like, yo, Thermal King, give me not give me, loan us a reefer unit because this is an invention that literally has changed all all of our lives. American food.
+
+[1:02:52] Well, not only international food, everybody that eats something that comes in a refrigerated truck. African American hand behind that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh like a kind of a, I don't know what you call like a multiple inventor.
+
+[1:03:06] Whatever, like it, but he, you know, he was a guy that was just uh knew how to make things and invent things. And um the company, and um I'm erasing again because I'm still so mad at them, Thermal King, who is still the company to this day that makes the the most of those units. I was like, yo, I know you have one. Take a deep breath. I was like, why don't you why aren't you interested in this?
+
+[1:03:31] Why aren't you interested in this story? Like, why aren't you interested in this story? You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, whatever. But I could I couldn't couldn't get anything out of them.
+
+[1:03:39] Uh and well, we before you go, and I know I'm gonna run you over a little bit, and I know Patreon people, there's a couple of qu unrelated, not unrelated, that's a wrong way to say it, but a couple of questions that uh I'll get to uh next week, right, John? Yep. Okay. Uh so I didn't forget about you. Um, but we gotta talk about this ebony test kitchen, a kitchen that you saw when so we have the the the quilt which we had, and you know, which you know is your idea to say, hey, listen, we don't want to look like we're just cherry picking.
+
+[1:04:09] We want to show that this is huge thing that we can't possibly talk about in the space allotted, right? So there's the quilt. Then we have a couple of stories that we talk about in those five categories in the main uh exhibition, and then it all gets tied together in this amazing kitchen, the ebony test kitchen. You want to like uh you you know, you experienced it in the real life. Absolutely.
+
+[1:04:32] I'm friendly with Charlotte Lyons, who for about 25 years was the um head of or the food editor for Ebony. So she worked out of the test kitchen, and it was one of those things where you would come up in the elevator in the ebony building and you'd look and there's a little kind of peephole pathway kind of thing, and inside it's day glow orange. It is so of the period. I mean, any of you that are familiar with Laugh In on the TV show, it's that aesthetic. It is the 60s, the 70s, it is all of that.
+
+[1:05:13] But what's so extraordinary about it is it is the place from which so many recipes were disseminated, from which uh so many African Americans learned not only to cook, but also had an outlook to the world where they could see not just the food of perhaps their individual home, be it Mississippi, Virginia, or San Francisco, but where they could see a world where they could see food of the Caribbean, where they could see food from the continent itself, and certainly as Ebony grew more and more sophisticated in in passing years, that that world got larger and larger. And so the ebony test kitchen is a perfect way to end, if you will, because it it then takes the focus of the four buckets for want of a better term. There is also a fifth path, which is the path of migration, and it takes that path of migration and takes it out into the world again, so that it's really kind of a perfect way to end the exhibit because you get to go through it, get to watch it move, and then get to see how it got taken to the world. What was it like there? How is it different working in that environment with that kind of vibe as opposed to um other publications at the at the time?
+
+[1:06:44] Like was it just a different feeling? I think it was. I mean, I think even today, if you look at um at high on the hog, I'm sorry to keep referencing it, but the whole idea of working with a group of what people are now calling black creatives, um gave a kind of different feel to it. I was the travel editor for Essence back in the day. And I didn't even realize it.
+
+[1:07:13] But the bottom line is as you do that, as you as you realize this sort of camaraderie, this kind of ability to speak in a shorthand, where you don't necessarily have to give the the backstory, and you don't necessarily have to do the justification of I want to do this because, where people kind of get the because and where you can move forward with it. Um it's a different way of being. So I mean, I think that was very much a part of Ebony as well as it was of Essence, as well as it was of Black Enterprise back in those days. And they own Jet too, right? Yeah, well.
+
+[1:07:53] There were, you know, it was Johnson Publishing Company. It wasn't just Ebony. So and uh John, I don't know if you want to John, you had didn't you had to truck it here from Chicago, right? I did, yes. Weren't you gonna give a shout out to the uh you're doing uh something with uh with the Illinois Preservation?
+
+[1:08:10] Wednesday, February 23rd at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, I'm gonna be doing a uh Zoom talk with Landmarks, Illinois, about uh the whole Ebony Tusk catch, and I'll be joined by former Ebony Food Editor uh Charlotte Draper there as well, and we'll be speaking with Lisa DiCiara, and I'll post a link about that on Instagram for anyone who's interested. And when is the exhibit opening at the uh at the Africa Center? The exhibit is at the top of Museum Mile. Uh it's called Again, African slash American Making the Nation's Table.
+
+[1:08:38] Concept. If you haven't listened to anything else we said, just go see it. Just go see the exhibition. When is it open? It's gonna run from February 23rd through June 19th at the Africa Center at Alico Dungote Hall.
+
+[1:08:50] All right. And uh oh, we were gonna I know that we've had to scale back. We're still doing something about another concept you wanted to put into it on the on the way out, the shoebox lunch. You want to say anything about it? Or I know that we've had to scale.
+
+[1:09:02] I know, I know, but I mean, you know, I've I've now taken to saying COVID willing. Yeah, uh COVID was not willing. Um, but the idea to end was going to be to end with communal conversations around some of the foods that had been inspired by this history. Uh now there will be takeout boxes available by uh varying African American chefs, including Carla Hall, Adrian Cheatham, Chris Scott, Kwame Onwachi, and Tanya Holland. So you'll be able to purchase and take away a shoebox lunch.
+
+[1:09:42] And the whole idea of the shoebox lunch is shoeboxes were kind of used in the Great Migration by any number of families. There was a classic shoebox lunch that was taken on trips on um trains, specifically because you never knew when you'd be able to stop and where you'd be able to find and get food, so you can't traveled with your food. Yeah, where where you'd be welcome to purchase. Exactly. Yeah.
+
+[1:10:08] Uh so go see it. Uh we're super excited. Thank you so much, uh, Dr. Jessica Harris for coming on. Thank you for having me.
+
+[1:10:14] Uh it's great. You know, you know, obviously you're welcome anytime. Love having you. And we can talk like we'll get more uh arguments going about different oh yeah mushrooms and the greens. Oh my god yeah come on man Devin man what are you doing Devin is enjoying his greens leave him alone all right we'll do cooking issues take care of the
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Your Shoes coming to you live on New Stan Studios at a Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good.
+
+[0:22] Back from your California trip there? Yes. Yeah, you have a good time in California? Yes. Except for in San Francisco.
+
+[0:28] Let me ask you a question. Oh, I know. I know. We have we have our San Francisco issue. Hey, here's a question for you, Stas.
+
+[0:33] Ready? Well, we'll go through it. Remind me, San Francisco. You gonna remind me? Yeah.
+
+[0:37] Yes. Uh also, as usual, we got uh we got John, we got customer service. Uh John, how are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah.
+
+[0:44] You're in New York City these days? Yep. New York City these days. Yep. Yeah.
+
+[0:47] And we got, of course, Joe Hazen in our freaking Rock Center booth. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you guys? Yeah?
+
+[0:53] I mean, uh, you you probably have the most to report. Not that you want to report it, but you know, there you go. And uh we got uh Jackie Molecules chilling uh now where are you now, dude? Come on, man. Where are you?
+
+[1:04] Los Angeles. I'm home. Los Angeles. I'm home, LA. All right.
+
+[1:08] Where do you live? What part of Los Angeles are you from? Or where you where do you live? I'm from New York, whoa, whoa. Oh, first of all, I don't even know why I asked, because you could say anything, and unless it was literally the Hollywood Hills, I would have no idea where it is.
+
+[1:20] You could just make stuff up. And I have no idea. I would have no idea where you are. Uh and we were supposed to have a mushroom farmer on the uh like a literal mushroom farmer. And if anybody is listening, uh from the New York Botanical Garden, this is the botanical garden in the Bronx.
+
+[1:37] All right. For those of you that don't know, we have two very good botanical gardens here in New York City. We have the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and we have the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Now, they were founded, I think back when Brooklyn was its own city, right? So Brooklyn's kind of, even though Brooklyn's one of our five boroughs, they're kind of a pain in the behind to the to the rest of us because they didn't, when they integrated the two cities together, they didn't want to integrate their systems.
+
+[2:00] So four boroughs, I can borrow a book in in if I'm from Staten Island, I can borrow a book in Manhattan and I can return it in Staten Island where I live, because the library system's all the same. Staten Island, Bronx, same. I can I can get it. If there's a book in the Bronx, I can get it sent to me, right? Queens, not a problem.
+
+[2:19] Remember, Queens envelops, envelops Brooklyn. Brooklyn is completely surrounded by Staten Island, Queens, and Manhattan and water. I mean, that's it. I mean, it's completely enveloped. And yet, Brooklyn's like, no, our library system is different, and we're not going to combine them.
+
+[2:35] You guys have your library, we have ours. And they did the same thing with their botanical garden. All right. Now, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden is an amazing. It's awesome.
+
+[2:41] It's like a jewel. It's not as. I wish they had handled their reopening differently in COVID, but whatever. That's what it is. It's a beautiful place.
+
+[2:48] But the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx is one of, it's it's what got me through the pandemic. Remember, Stas, you remember when people were like, what is there to do in New York now? And I was like, I don't know, there's the botanical garden and like we have some parks, and I couldn't think of anything else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[3:01] So in the botanical garden, there's this thing called the Enid Haupt Conservatory. Now, the Enid Haupt was a very, very rich lady, so rich that she was able to keep herself alive until she was like 101 or some crazy thing. I mean, I think she was just transfused with money on the constant basis. And she paid for the redoing of this big old glass conservatory that looks kind of like Hugh Gardens, you know, everything's based on Q. Anyway, in order to go through the conservatory, you have to go through this underground tunnel made of corrugated metal that looks like it looks like you're getting shot out of somebody's colon.
+
+[3:32] It's like corrugated metal and it's dark, and there's no plants in it. It's the only place. Whole freaking, whole freaking botanical garden. No plants. I was like, you know what you should do down here?
+
+[3:41] Mushrooms. It should go mushrooms in that tube. Even though, I don't want to hear about it from you people, even though mushrooms are more closely related to people than they are to plants. They're not plants. I think the average person would enjoy it.
+
+[3:54] Yeah. Anyway, we were supposed to have a mushroom farmer on. I could have asked them about it, but they uh apparently couldn't make it. Farming mushrooms. Yeah.
+
+[4:02] Anyway, uh, if you're listening live on Patreon, uh call your questions in 2917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And if you'd like to know how to listen live and call in questions, uh, where should they look us up, John? Patreon.com/slash cooking issues. Yeah.
+
+[4:17] All right, now back to San Francisco. Stas. Lady on my floor is is moving uh uh out of the buildings, right? So, you know, she's like, I saw her, and you know, she has the dog dog sniffing me. I'm like, oh hey, smells my dogs, which is the dumb thing that every dog owner says when another dog is sniffing you, right?
+
+[4:32] Oh, he smells my dogs, right? How many times have you heard? You when you hear it coming out of your own mouth, it's absurd. You know what I mean? Because you've heard it so many times.
+
+[4:38] Anyway, whatever. It's it's what it is. It's it's like you know, the equivalent of talking about the weather. Anyways, so she's like, Yeah, I'm moving, I'm moving, I'm getting, I'm getting out of this city. She doesn't talk like that.
+
+[4:47] I'm moving, I'm getting out of this city. I'm like, oh yeah, where are you going? She goes, London. I go, you have to get out of the city, so you move to London. I was like, London's like the same place, different accent.
+
+[4:58] And she completely disagreed with me. Completely disagree with me. Don't you guys am I wrong or is she wrong? I think you're wrong. You think I'm wrong?
+
+[5:08] I think San Francisco is much more different from New York than London is. I mean, London's huge, it's a pain in the butt. People are jerks. They have good food and they have a lot of culture, and they sp they speak English. They're more like us than San Francisco is for sure.
+
+[5:24] Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, I'll say. Oh, yeah. They have a they have a they have.
+
+[5:31] You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know. I I I would feel much more at home in the fence, San Francisco, but I feel much more at home in in London than I would in San Francisco. Aside from like, you know, I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[5:43] Whatever. Yeah, I agree. London's like the most New York city outside of New York. I agree. Yeah.
+
+[5:49] And what is it that you hate about New York that's fixed by moving to London? You know what I'm saying? That's the other thing. I mean, I guess I'm uh sure they're different because like you're gonna travel to Europe. Yeah, to other places in Europe.
+
+[6:03] All right, but that's becomes your Philly. France becomes your Philly. Wow. France becomes your Philly. All right.
+
+[6:12] I hadn't thought about that. I was just thinking about it strictly on a city basis, not on a uh leaving basis, because as everybody knows, as soon as you move to a big city, unless you're rich or a specific kind of person, your life contracts to a two-block radius. You know what I mean? Like, like this will be Oh, you live in you live in the big city. No, actually, I live in like a four-block, five block radius, and anytime someone asks you to go like far afield from that, you're like, oh God.
+
+[6:39] Stas, what do I gotta do to get you to cross a river? Uh we never cross a river. That's right. Like, e like if you had to clean up, if you had to clean up somebody's like, you know, murdered body, and you had to cross a river to do it, you would hire a task rabbit instead of going to do it yourself. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[6:56] Because you don't want to cross the river. Am I wrong? Yes. Yeah, all right. Uh yeah, the only river she crosses is when she's getting out of dodge and going back up to Connecticut, right?
+
+[7:05] What a nightmare. Anyway, all right, sorry. All right. So we're since we don't have a guest, we're gonna answer uh a lot of the Patreon question. But Stas, you want to talk about what are these things here that are sitting on our desk?
+
+[7:14] Well, Joe. Oh, I forgot. I forgot. We have a whoa. Oh, family show.
+
+[7:22] Sorry. I believe you're talking about uh a male, a male chicken. A male chicken. Uh do you know that there's an actually a bird called Cock of the Walk? It's an actual thing.
+
+[7:35] I was told by my what's a bird of file called? A bird lover? What are the what's what there's a word for him, right? People who like love birds. My cut my my nephew and and my uh brother-in-law are are bird people.
+
+[7:46] Cock of the walk. Yeah. Where's it from, John? I'm assuming you're looking it up. It's orange and black.
+
+[7:51] Uh let's see. Ornithologists? Ornithologist. Oh, that's a person, one who studies birds. That's a studier.
+
+[8:00] So just like a hobbyist bird. Yes, it's yeah, the cock of the walk is a South American bird. Now it's kids all coming back to me. The Andean cock of the rock is the national bird of Peru. Ah, man.
+
+[8:11] We should have asked our man about that. Yeah. It was a bad connection, so it was hard to get through. All right, so Stas also. I mean, one more thing.
+
+[8:18] Uh we have Joe. Joe, pronounce your last name so I don't mutilate it. It's Joe Gutesha. But like how much of an emphasis do I put on the tug? Gutasha.
+
+[8:28] Like is that uh it's a T, so I want it to sound like a T. You don't want it to be D'd out like gooey. Yo! Well, sometimes that happens. Guda Sha.
+
+[8:37] Yeah. Do you hate that? You hate it a lot? No, I don't. And uh Joe is a fresh New Yorker.
+
+[8:43] He's a freshly minted New Yorker. That is true. How are you like it so far? Uh I'm still adjusting. Yeah.
+
+[8:52] Uh you know what, you know what? I'm gonna ask you in about 20 years. You know what you're gonna say? What? Still adjusting.
+
+[8:58] Still adjusting. Still adjusting. You know what the best thing about New York is? Have I already told you this? This is what I tell everybody.
+
+[9:02] So the best thing the honestly, the best thing about New York, they the one thing that that keeps me loving the city, like after everything, is that the thing about New York is that because it's such a like a uh a garbage disposal, like it just chums you up and spits you out. Like as soon as you show up in New York and pay your first rent check, as soon as you say you're a New Yorker, you're a New Yorker. I mean, I think that's the best thing about us. Like we're from everywhere. Like, you know, and like, you know, even if you've lived in New York for eight billion years, you try to flex on someone saying you're a legitimate New Yorker and someone else isn't, and you'll get smacked right down to the street top.
+
+[9:42] You know what I mean? I mean, I think that's the best thing about us. You know? Unlike some other cities I know where, you know, if you haven't been there 18 generations, you're fake. You know what I mean?
+
+[9:51] Whatever. You do you feel that way, Joe? Um, I don't know. It would feel dishonest still for me to present as a New Yorker. It's it's not about it's you don't have to present as a New Yorker.
+
+[10:03] It's as soon as you feel you're a New Yorker, you are. Okay. That's the nice thing about it. You know what I mean? That's what's so cool about it.
+
+[10:10] You know? And then as soon as you feel like you can't hack it anymore and you need to move to the burbs because you have some sort of I don't know, then you're not anymore. But you can still say you are. If you've lived here for an appreciable length of time, you can still say you are. What do you think?
+
+[10:23] What do you think, John? Do you think if you live it if you live in Manhattan for like 10 years or Brooklyn or Queens, whatever, and then you move out to like, you know, New Jersey. How long can you say you're a New Yorker? I think once you leave New York. You can't anymore?
+
+[10:40] You think then you say I was a New Yorker. But what about when you're traveling? People ask you, where you're from. The city. Yep.
+
+[10:49] Yeah. Yeah. All right. I I told everybody in Mexico I was from New York. See.
+
+[10:55] Then I said I lived in LA. From New York, I lived in LA. All right, that makes sense. All right. I'm from New York where I live in LA.
+
+[11:02] From New York? That makes sense. You know? I'm from Palo Alto and live in New York and have like since forever. I mean, but like, you know, I haven't been back to Palo Alto since I was like three.
+
+[11:12] So it doesn't really count. Uh John, you want to tell them about what we have coming up on uh uh the Patreon and uh for Patreon subscribers and people that are coming up soon. Yeah, super exciting. Next week we have Francisco Magoya coming on to talk about uh modernist pizza, so it's gonna be great. Then the following week we have Nick uh from Grove and Vine, and we're gonna do an olive oil tasting.
+
+[11:31] We're gonna have Kenji Lopez on on a Monday at a different time, but we're gonna have him on in person. So just giving everyone a heads up that that's coming. Just got the walk book. Haven't read it yet. Yep, I've got to read it.
+
+[11:44] Uh James Hoffman, Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters. James Hoffman Coffee, Coffee Genius. Yep, Coffee Genius. A lot of people have been asking for him. Uh then Matt from Kitchen Arts and Ledges is gonna be making a guest appearance soon to talk about some classics in the field.
+
+[11:54] Um, and we are still working on running a 20% off of most authors' books coming up. I don't know if that applies to modernist pizza. If I guess no, but um, I'll be in touch with him. And we also wanted to thank Well if he does, we have to figure it out right now because yeah, I mean, I'll email him today. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[12:10] Um but he wants to run that promotion after we have the guests on the air anyway. So we have a couple of days, but whatever. I'll find that out for everyone. Um, and then we also have been meaning to call out two people who sent us some products recently, uh long time ago, Yandu Vegetable Umami. Uh by the way, yeah.
+
+[12:26] Good product. Great product, yeah. Yeah, you mentioned it on air a couple weeks ago, and we didn't have the brand name, so I wanted to everyone to know about that. I legitimately use it in my house. Same.
+
+[12:33] Even even in non-vegetarian applications. Oh, we gotta talk. If there's time at the end, let's just let's go out on vegan Fridays and Eric Adams and like what's going on here and like the it's the verbal language. It's not vegan Fridays that bothers me, aside from like the weird cast of like Catholicism that it, you know, putting on a Friday when anyway, but like let's go because the language that's surrounding it is I think troublesome. But we'll we'll do that later.
+
+[12:59] Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. And then we also want to thank out uh Mike from Toronto Panatone. He is obviously in Toronto and he sent us a pantatone right before the holidays.
+
+[13:09] We forgot to thank him on uh you know publicly for it. It was one, it was probably the best pandatone I've personally had. So thank you, Mike, for that. And he cut off a piece of it and then threw it out the window masked uh at the in the height of the pandemic, tossed it at me and drove. I had to I had to like I had to like make sure it didn't fall into a puddle of filth.
+
+[13:26] Hey Nastasi, remember when we were moving in the uh we were moving stuff into uh Eldritch Street back when we had the lab, and I'm trying to stay clean and we're moving all of this like big heavy stuff. And I was that was your your favorite shirt. Well, I've got my favorite shirt, my favorite, uh my favorite uh, you know, like uh guyabera that Jen bought me when she was working in Panama. It's like it was that peach colored like linen, like the whole nine yards. I'm like, I don't want to ruin your shirt.
+
+[13:52] So I take it off. I'm in a you know shirt sleeves, because of course I always wear 8,000 shirts, you know what I mean? So anyway, so like I take off the my outer vestments. You said guard it with your light. I put it in the back seat of my car.
+
+[14:05] Nastasi's like, opens the door and like just like bustles it with her butt into. Now, it's hard to beat a New York City filth puddle. Ugh, yeah. It's like dirt, dead rats, oil, and like street sweeping garbage, melted snow, water, and spit. And in this particular location, the shavings off of Coconut Foot's feet who live next to us and kept shaving his feet into the sidewalk every morning.
+
+[14:32] Remember that? Remember Coconut Foot? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[14:35] Yeah. So shirt goes right in there. I'm like, it's done. It's done. I'm so angry.
+
+[14:42] It's too it's too wet. I can't even burn it and give it a decent burial. It's like it's over. Uh that's our relationship in a nutshell. Anyway, back to Yondu.
+
+[14:56] We should get that. Maybe they'll uh want to sponsor because I legitimately think it's a good product. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Yeah.
+
+[15:01] I'll try and find her email again. But uh stupidly, whenever I use it, I sing this cat man do song with just Yondu. Okay. I'm gonna use Yondu. I'm gonna use Yondu like that, like stupid, dumb.
+
+[15:16] Just dumb. This is the problem of cooking alone, and like, you know, you just have to sit there and sing things to yourself. You need some form of infotainment. I have no infotainment in my kitchen, so I should maybe should rectify that. Anyways.
+
+[15:29] Yeah. Uh so Stas, you have some stuff here. That's not for me. That is from Joe. It's from Joe.
+
+[15:33] All right, Joe. What do we got? Yeah, I brought some bruise from Mexico. Keep your face in the mic, Joe. It's not about his face in the mic.
+
+[15:42] All right. All right. So what are you doing? It's about my voice. Okay.
+
+[15:45] So I can't see them from where I'm sitting. Yeah, those are panditas. Uh they are enchilada-flavored gummy bears. Alright. Alright.
+
+[16:01] What? Well, let's try that first. And then we do the rest of them after the class. All right, listen. Gummy penditas enchilados.
+
+[16:10] Let's see here. This is the it's not a mouth noise. This is the crinkling of the bag, which is Nastasia's reason she doesn't go to movies. Hold on. Give me a mouth noise away.
+
+[16:25] They're good. They taste like uh gummy bears rolled in um in that uh Lucas powder. I could use more spice on it though. I could use a little more acidity, a little more spice, but I'm gonna go ahead with good. But Stas, you like your gummy bears tacky like that, or you like them harder?
+
+[16:41] I like them like this. Do you know what I like? I like when you get the hairy bow bears and then you let them go stale. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
+
+[16:51] Why is it that a stale hairy bow is good, but a stale marshmallow is bad? Because even a white stale hairy bow is good. Yeah. Anyway, I like them in all of their phases. Uh Joe, uh the two Joes, what are your favorite uh stage of gummy bear?
+
+[17:05] You like them fresh or you like them, uh you like them hard? I don't have a exact preference. They're both they're both great, I guess. All right. And what about you?
+
+[17:19] What about you, uh Wacky Jackie? What do you got for me on your gum? What's your gummy bear preference? Fresh. Mmm, fresh.
+
+[17:26] Do you like pectin based candies? Like, like those uh, you know those fruit wedges, those heart, those pectin fruit wedges that like they're love them. Yeah, they're good, right? Love them. Yeah the kosher yeah i don't i don't mind those yeah i think they're delicious.
+
+[17:40] And they're like uh what's the uh when that when the French make them and they make them all high end they're like pet free pat the free yeah yeah but i call them fruit slices open the white one open the white one all right this one says oh which by the way like my favorite gummy bear yeah are the haribows but the uh you can only get them in Germany they're called Saft S A F T, which means juice in German and I believe they're like 75% fruit juice they set a whole new bar for gummy bears. Well we gotta get them you gotta ship them here and we'll try them. I found them on Amazon I'll get some for us next time all right get them yeah we'll we'll expense that stuff and uh we'll even sing their little jingle Haribo Mach Kindelfro Underwachs not Ebenzel right yeah yeah and you know during the holidays during December time if you I don't know why but if supposedly you bring chestnuts to the haribo factory you can trade chestnuts for gummy bears well whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what first of all you know they're opening a factory in the US out of if they haven't already opened it it's in construction right now uh a new factory in the US can you pull that chestnut business here in the US? Can we go to the US factory hand them chestnuts and get gummy bears why I really don't when I went when we were in Germany in Berlin um they were like oh yeah everyone goes around this time to uh to collect chestnuts and bring them over to the factory I'm like that's interesting I wonder why that is the case and no one knew why like tooth fairy but with chestnuts this is a good fact Joe this is a good fact I think our I think our listeners are would will enjoy uh enjoy this fact. Yeah.
+
+[19:17] Huh. It's kind of like the Pope's hat. You know about the Pope's hat? It there's a ratio. If you carry a skull cap around with you at all times, and you happen to meet the Pope and you hand the Pope your skull cap, he will try on your skull cap, and if it fits him, he will give you his old one, and if not, he'll hand you back yours, but the Pope is still Yeah, yeah, it's a thing.
+
+[19:37] Is he still walking around like Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's all it's it's one of those things, it's like if if Nastasi were the Pope should be like, oh, the hat thing again. Oh God. That's what right, Saza, you would hate that. You would call an end to that creation.
+
+[19:51] What's the ratio, John? The fruits of the forest are weighed and then exchanged for prepackaged haribo products at a ratio of ten to one for chestnuts. Wait, ten to wait, ten chestnuts, one bear, or ten bears, one chestnut? By weight or by unit? By kilogram.
+
+[20:06] And then five to one for acorns, according to the number of kilograms. Acorns? What are they gonna do with acorns? Only chestnuts and acorns without shells will be accepted, the company said. You have to shell the acorns?
+
+[20:17] Oh my god. Wait, wait. Which is the ten? Ten bears or ten nuts? Bears to nuts, I think.
+
+[20:24] So if I show up with a pound of shelled chestnuts, I get ten pounds of gummy bears? It can't be. It can't be. That's that that is a that is an economically non-feasible ratio. John figure it out.
+
+[20:35] So what do they think about it? Are they doing something with the nuts that's kind of helped the process of making the gummy bear? Originally organized for children in 1936. The collecting and weighing of chestnuts is annual now an annual event for both young and old. That's what they feed the Umpalumpas.
+
+[20:51] Alright, so we got these things. I've actually had these, but not this brand. Arc. How do you pronounce this? Pronounce this for me.
+
+[20:58] In uh pretend it's it's a Well, don't drop it, don't drop it! Oh god. Alright, so I'm looking at these things. I've had them before. Joe, here, take this one.
+
+[21:06] Joe. So these are graham crackers with marshmallow bloblets and like I think coconut usually, and like half of the bloblets are pink, and the other half are like uh are white. It's like a checkerboard. It's like a checkerboard. I've had these before.
+
+[21:23] I'm gonna go with a solid. Oh, this one's not graham cracker, though. It's like a buttercracker. Let's try let's try this, guys. Already?
+
+[21:28] Okay, sorry for the mouth noises. I like it. Oh. Artificial strawberry on point. Mm-hmm.
+
+[21:38] Kind of tastes like Nestle Quick. Mm-hmm. What I like especially about this, no fruit was harmed in the making of this product. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's nothing, there's nothing natural about that.
+
+[21:54] I'm gonna guess uh, where's the pri I'm gonna guess margarine for sure? Is there anything? Let me um see if I can read this because it's undoubtedly in Spanish here. Uh they have a they don't want you to know anything about the nutrition, so they print it black on foil. So it's even if my eyes were still a young person's eyes, it would be completely illegible.
+
+[22:18] Now we'll worry about it later. So, Stas, that's your favorite so far? I think so, yeah. You don't want to try Yeah, yeah. You think it's Principe?
+
+[22:27] How do you think you pronounce that? Principe. Príncipe. Those are my favorite. Those like fueled me and my team in Mexico.
+
+[22:34] You know what uh in my in uh my stepfather's family when they're making fun of someone who's like uh very delicate. Prince Pesa delegat. You know what I mean? Like, she's the she's a delicate princess. You know what I mean?
+
+[22:46] And so we're trying sorry, sorry, people, but we gotta try all these things for you. So what I'm looking at here are Principes. You must have had these in your checked luggage, Joe, because uh they got the ever loving heck beat out of them. They're still, they're still, let's see, it's uh all right, here you go. By the way, do you know what I had recently when I was in the airport that I haven't had in decades, but I love, love, love them?
+
+[23:08] The Keyboard Corporation, these are the elves that live in trees, Keebler, and they they they cook bake things. So they have various little snack packs that are cookies, little cookies, usually buttery cookies, crossed between a ritz and a saltine. You guys know I'm talking about these cookies? Yeah. And the combinations are regular cookie, cheese cookie, and then the other combination is peanut butter or cheese in the middle.
+
+[23:33] The money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money combo that I found, I saw, and I haven't had since I was a kid. The combo to end all combos is the cheese cracker with the peanut butter on the inside. That is hyper money. And I I had that in the airport, and it made airport travel so much more. And I was like, uh, oh, that bright orange, that bright orange, fake colored, like cheese colored cookie with that peanut butter in.
+
+[23:59] So what are your what are your guys' thoughts on the uh principe's? I like the chocolate in it. I like it, yeah. Reminds me of a cookie I used to have back in Paris when I was a kid. Can't remember the name of it though.
+
+[24:10] Hmm. So, like, yeah, what's nice about the chocolate filling is it's it's real greasy. You know what I mean? It's like almost it's it's almost like it's a liquid. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[24:22] Yeah. Alright, I'm for it. And it's very cocoa like. Do you do you guys like chocolate flavors where it's like you can literally taste a cocoa powder? It's like uh, do you like Tootsie rolls?
+
+[24:34] Yeah. Yeah? Because they are Tootsie rolls are objectively bad. If you had never had a Tootsie roll before, and someone was like, I made this, you'd be like, the texture is good, but it sucks. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[24:51] But because you grew up, but because you grew up having them, you're like, I love this. This is good. It's also the kind of thing where like it's so in handy. It's it's like it's you know the you know the um the Southern Italian cookie mostaccoli? No.
+
+[25:06] So there a bunch of different things are called mustacholi, but the one that like that we eat, right, is like basically it's just honey and flour worked together into a paste and baked, and they break your teeth. They're they're absurd. You know what I mean? They're ridiculous. And then the first time you eat it, you're like, this sucks.
+
+[25:23] Then you eat another one to be polite, and the third time now you want them again. I'm sure Tootsie Rolls are the same thing. It's like you have to get over that hump. No one tastes their first Tootsie rolls, like, all right. Do they?
+
+[25:35] Am I wrong about this? I could be completely wrong. I like the flavored ones. Isn't that like a Starburst in a tube? Yep.
+
+[25:42] Yeah. All right, Starburst is a delicious candy. That's great. Starburst. That's right, yeah.
+
+[25:47] I think uh, have we talked about Starburst versus Haichu? No. No. I believe, I believe that the high chew, while I like the flavors, a little too waxy sometimes on the chip. Yeah.
+
+[26:03] What are your guys' thoughts? I mean, John's with me. What do you what do you guys think? I don't like them. You know, but do you like Starburst?
+
+[26:08] Yeah. Yeah. What about Twizzler Red Vine? Twizzle. I like.
+
+[26:14] Whoa, you you're a red vine? You're a red vine on a twist? I don't like it. I don't like either. Do you know why I like them?
+
+[26:19] Starch based candy. It's a starch based candy. I love a starch-based candy. All right. I don't like red vines at all.
+
+[26:25] Really? Because they don't have flavor? I do like a Twizzler. Do you not like the red vines because of their complete lack of flavor? Um, not just that.
+
+[26:33] I don't like the texture as much, but like I grew up in a weirdly enough, I grew up in a kosher home. And uh we had our licorice that we had was made by Joya. Oh yeah, yeah, I know them. The Joya licorice is dynamite. I have not had their licorice, but of course we've all had their fruit roll ups because they invented the freaking fruit roll-up and they're out of Brooklyn.
+
+[26:55] Brooklyn. What's your favorite fruit roll-up flavor? Mmm, Apple. Ooh, I'm an apricot man. Apricots are good too.
+
+[27:04] Because I love myself some dried apricots. This is some New York history for you, people. Uh if you want more New York uh related food crap, just uh ask and we can go on uh forever and ever and ever. Uh but we should not, right? We should not.
+
+[27:16] I should not. Uh Biff Ditt wrote in, hey, oh, I shouldn't have done this one because this is more just talkie talk. But uh Dave, you mentioned quickly that you got into the food business and uh Michael Batterbury found you. Can you actually fill in that blank from what I can remember? You were doing sculpture in Brooklyn after college, then somehow got a job teaching at the FCI.
+
+[27:31] How did that happen? Not Brooklyn, my friend. Not Brooklyn, Manhattan. I've always managed to somehow keep my feet firmly planted on uh on the island. So when I moved back to New York uh after college in '95, uh we, you know, I went to Columbia for grad school.
+
+[27:49] So we were like way, way uptown, and I lived up there for a little while and then moved into the Garmin District. This was so at that time, people were already saying, Soho's so expensive. No one, no artist could live in Soho. It's too much money. And artists were moving out to Brooklyn, and so people were like, I remember when like Williamsburg was a freaking nightmare.
+
+[28:09] I would go over there to work, right? So I had jobs in Williamsburg. I was working for a uh uh sculptor named John Kessler who had his studio over there, and it was an entirely different planet back in the in the 90s, like Williamsburg, you completely, completely unrecognizable. Um anyway, after uh grad school, uh I went uh I moved to the garment district. I lived in an illegal loft, and that's where uh I started buying commercial restaurant equipment, and then because it was illegal, so I originally built a kitchen that was completely hidden.
+
+[28:43] Like so uh, because I wasn't allowed to live there. Our bedroom was hidden, so like the bedroom was exactly the width of a queen-sized bed and had a and had a wall so that you wouldn't even know there was a bedroom there. It was unfindable. It was in this like secret hallway. And then the kitchen, I built a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf on casters that floated the entire uh bookshelf a quarter of an inch off the floor, so nothing was visible.
+
+[29:07] And then I built a wall out where the kitchen was, where the sink and all the kitchen was, and the entire bookshelf wheeled in and completely closed off where the kitchen area was, so it was completely invisible, like completely. So, like it was like if someone walked in, they would not know that anyone lived there, except for we had a shower. And what I said was that I'm an artist, I do a lot of welding, I need to be able to wash up. So I put a shower in, and that was legit. Like they knew I had a shower.
+
+[29:34] Uh then back in New York back in the day, we used to have something called a Fox Police lock. Now, a Fox Police lock, if you if you look at any old school, they're they're they're gone, they don't exist anymore. But what it was is is that you know, we used to have these black like blast doors in in uh our loft buildings, and the locks on them were these giant steel bars that would you'd have a you'd pull out on a knob and you'd rotate the knob, and just like an old school dungeon, it would make that old school dungeon noise, and these these I had the cheap one with only two metal bars, but the real hard hardcore people had four metal bars, top, bottom, left, right, and the bars would just expand out and go into the cement of your wall, and it would take like it would take a bulldozer to break your door down if you had a Fox police lock. So I had a Fox police lock, and then I just never answered my phone, and I wouldn't answer the door if people knocked, and I realized the landlord was never gonna come in. So I started collect I went from having a completely hidden kitchen to having a commercial deep fat fryer, uh a commercial two-door deli case uh glass fridge, which is life-changing but also incredibly inefficient, uh, uh a garland, six burner garland with a salamander, and so I started customizing restaurant equipment and I was moving away from art uh and I came up with the idea of Museum of Food and Drink actually.
+
+[30:49] And when's that thing opening up? February 22nd. Yeah, and so I was trying to transition into the food world, and I came to the attention of Michael Batterberry, who hired me actually to write history pieces until because I, you know, I was a food history guy, until he realized I was also a food tech guy, because I had been helping Wiley out. I befriended Wiley because Wiley was hitting on Miley, my sister-in-law, who runs the food network magazine now, but at the time was writing for Time Out New York. And the rest, as they say, is uh history.
+
+[31:21] I started writing for Food Arts magazine, and then he got me hired onto the FCI. And there you go. There you go. Is that a great answer? Yeah, done.
+
+[31:31] All right. Uh from Oxy, why do you press down an espresso shot dense into a machine into the porta filter? But to tamp a mocha pot is not done. Oxy, my friend, it is a matter of pressure. In a uh in a commercial espresso machine, you have like uh many, many bars of pressure, like 135, 140 pounds per square inch of pressure going in there.
+
+[31:53] So the idea is to make a very finely compacted puck and you want a very even percolation through it. You're barely getting like any pressure at all in a mocha pot. In a mocha pot, you're boiling stuff and uh it's percolating up through the through the uh coffee grounds into the pot, but the pressure is, as we say, minimal. If it's not, you're in deep, deep doo doo. So you if you compacted a mocha pot too much, you're not gonna get the percolation you need, it's not gonna work.
+
+[32:19] Is that a decent answer? Yep. They're entirely different, by the way. The next time someone says to you that I know many people who love mocha pot coffee. You guys all know what I'm talking about, mocha pot, right?
+
+[32:32] The little hexagonal or octagonal things, right? Uh it's fine to love mocha pot coffee. It's not espresso. Okay? They're different products, they're different products.
+
+[32:40] And the next time someone conflates them, just drop whatever you're doing. I don't care whether you're doing surgery on somebody, just drop the stuff and walk out. Don't, you know, don't be mean or anything like that. Just you have to, you have to get your you have to get yourself out of that, out of that situation. It's just a bad situation.
+
+[32:56] Um Brandon Bird, when uh with modernist cuisine turning 11 years old this year. Can you believe that? 11 years old. Dang. Not so modern anymore.
+
+[33:06] This is the problem with using the term modern. Like modern art is from like almost a hundred years ago. It's like it's a 50s. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[33:15] Right. And people don't make modern art anymore. No. It's dumb. It's a dumb term.
+
+[33:20] We're even done with postmodern art now. Yeah, post no, postmodern art was back when I was doing it. And it was like, you know, at least like come up with a dumb term that no one understands. And then you i you could widget it, right? Like, ooh, structuralist.
+
+[33:32] Post structuralist. You know what I mean? Ooh. You know, neo-Marxist post structuralism. At least these are just like widget words that you can move around.
+
+[33:42] Yeah. You know what I mean? And then every 20 years you can change their meaning and whether or not you like the people who wrote about it. But modernism, I mean, modern is supposed to have a word, modern. It's like Nouvelle Cuisine.
+
+[33:53] Yeah. People are short-sighted. Anyway, uh with modernist cuisine turning 11 this year, it's like, why don't you just call it now cooking? You know what I mean? And then you can look back at like the 1970s and see like, you know, the old Conran's ads or like old Macy's ads where people were like right with those goo goofy 70s fonts.
+
+[34:12] You know, 70s is coming back? Did you guys see this? If you guys look through furniture design manuals now and like food stuff, like the 70s is huge again. Why? I I don't know.
+
+[34:22] What's the worst era that you hope never comes back? I don't know, the dark ages sounded pretty terrible. I mean, for food though, for food. Oh, for food. The 80s were pretty trashy.
+
+[34:34] 70s and 80s are pretty. I mean the 90s we had some good stuff. I don't know. Yeah, 80s. Early 90s?
+
+[34:47] Do you hope never comes back and what era do you love the most? Uh uh, early, late 80s, early 90s, never again. And wait. Oh, that's your time. I don't know.
+
+[34:59] Well, that as my I don't love, but what about early 80s? Like totally frosted. You like that? No, actually. No?
+
+[35:06] Mm-mm. All right. I love the memory of it, but when I see it now again, I'm like, yeah, that wasn't so good. But my memory of it is that it's fantastic. I carry a picture of my wife from the 80s in my wallet with me at all times.
+
+[35:21] And I used to show it to people. And they would she got so mad at me that she threw the picture away and then her mom gave me another copy of the picture recently. So her 80s picture is again. What happened to the permanent? What do you mean?
+
+[35:36] The hairstyle, the permanent. What happened? People don't do that anymore. Do they? Stas, do people still do that?
+
+[35:41] I don't know. Get permanents? Have you seen someone with a permanent recently? No. That was a thing.
+
+[35:46] You never got a permanent, did you, Sas? No. Mm-mm. I love that. All right.
+
+[35:50] With Modernist Cuisine Turning 11 this year, low temperature cooking and sous-vie techniques have been popular for a decade or so. I would say they were able to write the books because the uh the techniques were already popular. That's what I would say. Um in uh my estimation, what are the best new techniques or applications that have emerged in the years since Modernist Cuisine's publication? Curious about both low temperature cooking with circulators and combis as well as actual sous-vid using vacuum machines.
+
+[36:14] Also, Stas, uh Josh Bell is on record as enjoying Genesis's Genesis's Supper's Ready and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, which are both squarely in the Peter Gabriel era. Huh. Did you know that, Sas? No, we only had the one date, as you recall. Yeah, but you know, you you like you know, you like any sort of Phil Collins reference, and now you have even less you have even less in common with him.
+
+[36:40] Yeah that he chose a Gabriel Genesis, because you're not a you're not Peter Gabriel person, are you? No, really. I mean, Sledgehammer was a good solo first effort, right? Sledge. Yeah.
+
+[36:50] Good video. Um Brandon, I'm not exactly sure I understand what you mean, because like new see, the the crazy kind of explosion of creativity that happened in that time was about a certain like going after a just a boat ton of different pieces of equipment. Like everyone was racing. People had just me, I had just figured eBay, I was buying stuff on eBay before people like bought kitchen equipment on eBay for Wiley. This is why I was able to get them stuff so cheap, and even though we didn't have any money.
+
+[37:26] And people were just getting all kinds of lab equipment. And there was this huge explosion, which I guess you could trace pretty squarely to what Ferran and a bunch of other people were doing over in Spain. And um it was also a huge moment in history because people with the you know, this is before that. This is in the you know late 90s, people really were looking not as much at France anymore, and because of Spain, and we're looking at Spain as and they understood that that the finest of fine dining and what was going on didn't have to be centralized, didn't have to be French, didn't have to be like kind of what we grown up classically thinking. And it was kind of a mind explosion moment.
+
+[38:05] And I think that that same level of creativity is ha happening today. It's just not in that same vein anymore, right? So I think that, you know, what's happened over the past, you know, five, ten years with uh fermentation, with uh, you know, various kind of um, you know, new fermenting of new products, like the stuff that Jeremy and Rich are doing, and uh, you know, like this kind of uh even even the explosion like 10 years ago of uh, you know, new charcuterie products and all these sorts of like uh just attempts to control your environment, I think are where going forward. But I don't know that of any new amazing technical uh techniques. I mean, we develop new techniques all the time, but nothing on the order of you know, using a circulator or low temperature cooking, which I believe is the biggest fundamental change in how you think about cooking that's happened in like you know, 200 years.
+
+[39:06] So it's like, you know, it's like you have you have fire, right? Then you have like controlled fire in ovens. That's a big deal. Refrigeration's a big deal, and then figuring out low temperature cooking is a big deal in terms of how it changes the way you think about the way food cooks. And so, you know, it's unlikely that something's gonna make that big a dent again soon.
+
+[39:26] I don't know. What do you guys think? Yeah, yeah, it's definitely not been, I don't know. I don't want to say not exciting, but it hasn't been exciting me personally the last couple of years, the food scene. Yeah, but I think you're just burning out.
+
+[39:41] Yeah, it could be. I mean, the thing is like you you know what you have to do? You have to the pandemic is damaging you. This is this is the thing. It's like uh every you have to every couple of years, you have to have an oh my god experience somewhere.
+
+[39:55] You know what? The uh the other night I went to Zuzu's out in Hudson Yards. If you guys haven't been yet, it is excellent. That place was really, really delicious. Yeah?
+
+[40:03] Yeah, great Mediterranean food, really fun. It's with a lot, a lot, a lot of the old stuff from Nomad, the Nomad Hotel. Yeah. Uh front and back of house. And yeah, the food was really good, really exciting.
+
+[40:12] So what was it that surprised you about it? They did this duck a l'orange play, but inside the sick the cigar boreck. So, you know, the phyllo dough-shaped thing that's like in the spiral, and they stuffed that with duck, and then this like really nice orange glaze on top was really delicious and fun. Um this uh steak au poivre on a kebab was really good and just fun and innovative. I don't know, it's just it was it was a really good meal.
+
+[40:29] I'd recommend going. Kababo Piv, what cut of steak did they use? Filet. Yeah. Yeah, that was good.
+
+[40:39] I'm okay with it. I think people need to stop hating on the filet because even though it doesn't have that that much flavor, it's texturally amazing. It's got its place. It's got its place. I feel like you know, everyone who knows about food has hated on it long enough, and now you can just be and like, yes, there's not that very much of it that's in a cow, so to only want to go eat fillet is a huge mistake.
+
+[40:59] But that doesn't mean you have to hate on it. Yeah. You know? Agreed. Yeah.
+
+[41:05] Yeah. LA Now New York Joe. What are your thoughts on steak à poivre? Steak au poivre. Um I don't have like a really memorable experience eating one.
+
+[41:21] No, this is LA. You need to get some steak à poivre in you, man. But we know a really good club. Yeah? Yeah.
+
+[41:28] For steak à poivre. Are you talking about the other place? The place we went. So Nastasia, so imagine like two rail thin, long hair, pretty pretty boy DJs. Beautiful, man.
+
+[41:39] Pretty boy DJs. That's all you need for Nastasia, plus a disco ball, and you know, that's it. She's good to go. But it's a great club for anybody that wants to go dancing, right, Joe? Yeah, no, they played really great music.
+
+[41:51] They're very friendly. You can go right up to them and dance. The DJs he's talking about. Oh, yeah, the DJs. They even take requests, which most DJs don't.
+
+[41:59] Yeah, they played uh my favorite Italian disco song. Which is Tivoglio. Uh Joe. And Dave danced. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[42:09] Joe. Uh so listeners, longtime listeners in the show might know you as Mr. Persimmon Compote. Oh yeah. Why don't you talk about a little bit about that?
+
+[42:14] I don't think you know that. Why don't you talk a little bit about persimmon compote? Persimmon compote. You apparently made a persimmon compote for Nastasia and she enjoyed it. Do you have no recollection of this?
+
+[42:32] No, but are you kidding me? If I made a persimmon compote, I cook, I cook like every day. You know what I mean? Are we sure it was persimmon? It was persimmon.
+
+[42:43] It was persimmon. Yeah. Okay. And like some it was in the summer. I would be like persimmon.
+
+[42:47] Was it Hachia persimmon or foo you? You made it, dude. You put it on pancakes. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[42:56] You remember that? No. Oh, okay. This is it's struggling to come up. Um.
+
+[43:01] Yeah, how did I do it? Is that what you're asking? I just want to know like where they came where it came from. Where it came from? Well, I like persimmon is kind of a fruit I've recently become enamored with.
+
+[43:13] And I've made compost in the past with like raspberries and blueberries. Nothing fancy, but then I was like, yeah, let's like heat up a saucepan and throw some persimmon in there, reduce it, put in I don't even know what kind of- I might have used coconut oil. What? Oh no, you're gonna throw it in there. Alright, fine.
+
+[43:34] Go ahead, go ahead. Uh and you probably used honey, not sugar. Maybe some sugar, some cinnamon, perhaps. I like the Nagman. I call it na in our house, it's Nagman.
+
+[43:44] I don't know why. But yeah, persimmon. It was just I thought, like, why not persimmon? And I mean, that could flip that on. Like, why persimmon sure persimmon.
+
+[43:54] Yeah. Well, I like to make a few. And which persimmon. What's the taste of persimmon? That's the thing.
+
+[44:05] No, I won't. I can't. I can't describe persimmon. Like it's one of those indescribable. It's like an apple.
+
+[44:11] Not quite, though. It's like a peach. No. Creamier in a way. It depends on which one you're having.
+
+[44:19] My favorite is the hachiy, which like really gets soft and ripens, like almost like a custard. And when you bite into it, it's it's viscous. It's like liquid. See, and you hear the tone of your voice, viscous liquid. There's something, and I don't mean this in a negative way, or as I I like to say styles, what's the word I always use?
+
+[44:39] Uh pejorative day. Yeah, pejorative. Uh there's something. Do you know where that comes from? This is a short, terrible story.
+
+[44:46] We're in Japan and we got a piece of equipment, and Dave's telling the Japanese who can barely understand him, this piece of equipment is weak. It's weak. And they're like, I don't understand weak. Uh with the word weak. I don't know.
+
+[44:55] And Dave was like, I don't mean it in a pejorative way. And they're all like, what? Like they don't understand weak. Yeah. Anyway.
+
+[45:05] So like there's something deeply revolting about persimmon. And I don't mean it in a pejorative way. What I mean is there's something that when you eat it, it there's something frightening about the flavor of a persimmon. There's something kind of like you're eating something that you shouldn't. There's something kind of like there's something like to me, there's something like kind of like uh like almost not like full animal, like not like animal note, but like something like other, there's something other about poop flavor poop, like the um like that molecule that what's her name used to talk about?
+
+[45:40] Jasm the jasmine stuff. Uh yeah, whatever that molecule is. There's something like that. It's like it's part textural and it's part that like non-acidic fruit aroma that like non low acid fruits, like I find like deeply disturbing. You know what I mean?
+
+[45:57] So like when we eat things like canistel, which I love, right? I s I put acid on them. You know what I mean? Because otherwise, like I'm like, it's a little bit repellent, like like if you ate a bunch of it, you would throw up. You know what I mean?
+
+[46:10] It's like there's something that my body is rejecting in it, and I don't know what it is. And for me, persimmons like that, but I like it. It's good. Anyway, not in the way that beets taste like filth. I mean, like, you know, but like a different thing.
+
+[46:24] You got but you guys don't get that? It must be a weird mental thing. No, yeah. I encourage you to investigate this feeling further because I also don't know what part of the persimmon you're referring to. Because it's not you're probably eating it when it's ripe, no?
+
+[46:37] Like you I've eaten them bled, I've eaten them dried, I've eaten them, I've eaten them hard, I've eaten them so I mean I'm not talking about the astringency. I can deal with astringency. Yeah, okay. Come on, man. I'm grown man.
+
+[46:46] Okay. Um anyway. I don't know. It's you should read the poem Persimmons by Lee Young Lee. It's a lovely long poem about that features.
+
+[46:58] It's nonfiction. I'll read it to you, Dave. It sounds like it's about persimmons, so it's nonfiction. They exist. Persimmons are real.
+
+[47:06] Um that's not what constitutes nonfiction or fiction, but whatever. All right, Joe. Uh that is not what constitutes fiction. Like I can write a fictional story about you, Dave, and you're a real person. Nah.
+
+[47:30] Nastasia would disagree. She'd say, I am what? Half a man. Yeah. Half a man.
+
+[47:36] Uh Alexander writes in, uh, I just want to come with an update. So remember, Alexander wrote in about um potatoes. So back in the day, you're supposed to throw sticks into the bottom of your birch sticks into the bottom of your pan. Uh, put your meat on top of the birch sticks so it stays above, and so that you know the birch. I don't know why you don't just buy a steamer basket, but instead you use birch sticks, right?
+
+[47:57] So, you know, those of us over here where we don't have birch sticks, what we do have is steamer baskets. But I'm sure the birch sticks added Rome, I'm sure it's great. You remember back like uh 10 years ago, everybody was cooking everything in hay? Yeah. Oh my god, everyone was like, That's the hay!
+
+[48:13] We're cooking in the hay. I love the the the best part about getting older is seeing these like things cycle in and out, just seeing them cycle. You know what I mean? I didn't mind the hay cooking, you know. Let me ask you a question.
+
+[48:25] Stas, you remember hay? Remember when hay was a big thing? Kind of. Okay. Have you ever had something cooked in hay that was not viciously overcooked?
+
+[48:33] Like viciously overcooked. Jordana and I did our clam bacon hay, and it was good, fine. Do you like overcooked uh pencil eraser clams? I do. I don't mind them.
+
+[48:44] I'm just- I'm asking you legitimately. It was fine. Fine. I think it's one of those things where it's more fun to do it than it is about the taste. And why hay and not seaweed?
+
+[48:53] We didn't find any seaweed on that beach. But you found hay? Yeah. Were you cutting down dune grass, which is destroying the habitat? Yeah.
+
+[49:02] Lunatic. Uh okay. Alexander writes saying, I want to come with an update. I did a test and boiled a bunch of almond. Don't cut down seagrass, Doz.
+
+[49:11] What do you think keeps the beaches from washing into the ocean? Uh do that in Cape Cod and you'll get decked. Do you do that in Cape Cod? And that's like, you know. Anyway.
+
+[49:23] Uh. I boiled a bunch of almond potatoes. Remember those, those little potatoes, starting with cold water. This is important. Cold water lit on, just like you would with uh, I'm not gonna pronounce it properly, pen at penic penet.
+
+[49:36] Uh uh, only without the actual meat. I used a long time to heat up the water, around 30 minutes to one hour to get it to boiling, and boiled it for over three hours. None of the potatoes burst, but they got softer than they did at Christmas time, where my dad said he boiled for three hours. Uh so here's what I think is happening. Your slow boil, I think is the key here.
+
+[49:56] I'm pretty sure that what you're doing is the old Jeffree Steingarden trick of uh by bringing up slowly the enzymes in the uh the pectin methyl pectin methyl esterase enzymes in there, which remember are the opposite of pectinase. Pectin methyl esterase in the presence of calcium will cross-link pectin and make it very, very stable, right? So pectin methyl esterase, acidity, so any vinegar or anything that's added to liquids, uh, anything like that. All of those are going to strengthen pectin. So the very slow bring up is gonna allow those uh pectin methylesterase enzymes before they're deactivated, they get deactivated above 65, 70 C, somewhere in that range, between 60 and 70 C.
+
+[50:38] Uh, allows them to do their thing and stiffen those freaking potatoes so that they don't burst. This is my guess about what's happening. It maybe in the real recipe, maybe there's some acid. I don't know, from the meat from a marinade from a marinade that drips down and maybe also strengthens the potatoes. I can't tell you, but I'm guessing it's the slow bring up that's helping you.
+
+[50:57] What do you guys think? Anything, anything? Yeah. Yeah, stash. Okay.
+
+[51:01] I got time for one more question. Hold on. He also wants to add uh someone asked about shaking a couple of weeks ago and about dry shake versus not dried shake. And Alexander feels that just if you just shake that ever loving snot out of it, you can do it with one shake with an egg white. You can just get a nice foam with one with without it without a dry shake.
+
+[51:20] I don't know. These are tests that need to be run. Uh mood therapist writes in a question for the show. I've tried clarifying tamarind a few times, and it always has a super fine cloud of stuff that drops out after the fact, but it's too fine to be caught by even a coffee filter. What is it?
+
+[51:34] And is there a trick for dispensing uh with it without spoiling the flavor? Thanks. Um, so unless you have a very, very, very strong centrifuge, a lot of these things, things that don't come out are typically uncharged uh items, so usually not proteins. Most of the uh, well, unless they're soluble proteins, but it's not usually that if they set things that eventually settle are typically particles of um non uh non-charged polysaccharides. So starch and starch breakdown products.
+
+[52:02] I'm pretty sure that that's what's going on in the tamarind. There's some uh there's some non-charged polysaccharides that are floating around, and because they don't have charge, the wine finding agents can't really act on them, and because they're not pectin and not pe uh or uh uh or hemicellulose, the enzymes can't break them down. So I think what you have to do on that is just uh rack it, just rack it. The other thing you can do is you can try to um re-put just filth in it and then spin the filth out, and some of it'll stick to it. But anything that you're gonna add to it that will hard stick to things like that.
+
+[52:31] Like bentonite is also gonna strip a lot of flavor. But that's my guess. For instance, uh certain bananas, even very ripe bananas that aren't Cavendish bananas, have a lot of starch in them, and that that they don't uh clarify easily unless you have very high powered centrifuges. But I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. Tamrin, best tasting, ugliest thing.
+
+[52:48] Am I right? Yeah. Ugly, delicious. Do you when you buy Tamarind? Do you buy when you buy whole tamrind?
+
+[52:56] Do you buy the sweets, the sours, or the mediums? Uh I don't know. I've I've never bought tamarind, actually. Really? Yeah.
+
+[53:07] I love tamarind. Unless they have the bug holes in them. You get the box home and they all have the bug holes, that kind of ticks me off. I like them all. There's a medium one.
+
+[53:14] The really sour one I think is too much. The really sweet one is delicious. The one that's right in the middle. I believe it's Thai. Did I ever get you this sauce?
+
+[53:22] There's a Thai product where they they don't make it into a brick, but they completely take all of the ugly veins out of it and all the seeds and just pack it so that you could just you know how fast you can eat tamarind if all of that stuff's taken out of it? So fast. So delicious. Pure tamarind. Without all the I like the crystal lee sugar stuff, and but sometimes I just want pure tamarind, you know?
+
+[53:43] Is it what are you eating right there? Tamarind candy? Just one of uh Joe's uh Tamarind candies. I was telling me to open, yeah. Bull Boli pica.
+
+[53:50] Sorry, give me give me some have these guys have some have this while I uh I'm gonna say. Uh from Will Klein, as a connoisseur of bubbles and carbonation guru, uh, I wanted your uh my uh opinion on pouring technique. I've recently seen videos of bartenders pouring carbonated beverages uh down the stem of a bar spoon, stating it helps to mix the components of the drink and preserve bubble potency. Uh I'm of the opinion that that would be more surface area than pouring down the side of the glass. Your insight would be appreciated.
+
+[54:15] Uh the podcast has gotten me through many over uh overnight work shifts. Thanks. And I can't wait for the Sears All Pro. Me neither, Will. Me neither.
+
+[54:22] Uh I'm gonna go with you on this. I think what pouring things down a bar spoon does is a cool bar trick. Basically, that's a cool bar trick. Um, but I I'm a firm believer in tilting the glass, pouring it until you have a liquid surface. And once you have a liquid surface, I just I drop the glass down and pour it directly into the liquid.
+
+[54:40] But that's that's just always what I do. I've never actually done a test where I've, you know, uh measured the carbonation because measuring carbonation is a huge nightmare. Almost, you know what I was doing the other day, John? Measuring the surface area of potatoes. How would you go about measuring the surface area of a potato?
+
+[54:57] Oh, I would take tinfoil. Ah. Ah. And a planimeter. Look up planimeter, kids.
+
+[55:05] That is a that is a fun piece of equipment again that no one within five years, everyone's gonna have a uh their iPhone will be able to do a complete 3D scan and tell you the volume and the surface area of everything. But now I'm still wrapping potatoes in aluminum foil, spray painting them with black paint, spread spreading the aluminum foil back out, and then tracing that with a planimeter to get the surface area of a potato. From Maximo 95. Uh, hey, Dave, Nastasia, John, Joe, and Joe now. Uh and Jack, come on, man.
+
+[55:34] Come on, Maximo. Leaving Jack out. Leaving out the molecules. Come on. Quick question.
+
+[55:40] We're thinking about getting a Buchner funnel, which is a terrible word. Uh Buchner funnels, okay. So for those of you who never used a Buchner funnel, uh, it is a terrible word. It's a like typically white ceramic funnel with a rubber stopper in the bottom of it, and in the in the in it is a flat perforated plate. And you're meant and what you're meant to do is you're meant to stick a filter paper into the Buchner funnel and then shove the Buchner funnel into an Erlenmeyer flask.
+
+[56:08] Erlenmeyer flasks are the triangular ones with the flat bottoms. One that has a vacuum takeoff, and then you put the vacuum takeoff onto the Erlenmeyer flask. You pour your crap into the you wet your filter paper so it sticks down to all the little holes. Make sure there's no no empty, you know, holes that are showing. You pour your crap into the vacuum uh Buchner funnel and it filters the liquid out and leaves a solid behind.
+
+[56:28] Am I clear? Am I clear? Now, this works great in a lab, horribly in a kitchen because the Buchner funnel is gonna clog up instantaneously. So unless what you're trying to do is get a very small amount of precipitate on the filter paper out of a reaction, like some sort of, I don't know, you're precipitating potassium permanganate or some kind of crazy thing, but you're not doing in a kitchen. It is not, in my estimation, a good piece of equipment to use in kitchen scale environments.
+
+[56:58] That's uh that's that's what I'm gonna say about that. Was that what? Yeah, we gotta wrap up now. What I have one more. One more, one more, and I'm done with all the Patreon ones.
+
+[57:10] All right, John, can we do it? I guess. We'll sell two more Patreon ones that came in earlier, but yeah. Steve Goodwine writes in I've noticed that I get better browning and better crust when searing proteins such as steak, pork chops, burgers, etc. in a skillet on the stove with very little oil.
+
+[57:25] That's the key that they're talking about, very little oil. Uh I get best results when I put a small amount of oil in a preheated skillet and wipe most of it out. Is there anything approaching a standing if there's anything approaching a standing pool of oil in the pan, it takes a prolonged cook to achieve a similar look. Why might this be? Listen, uh, Steve, I'm actually doing some tests on this.
+
+[57:44] I mean, not as we speak, because right now I'm speaking to you, but uh I'm testing a lot of this right now, and a lot of this has to do with whether the meat is raw or whether the meat is cooked. If the meat is cooked, it can't conform to the pan, right? So if you're if you're searing something that's already been cooked like low temperature, because it is it can't conform, you need enough oil to actually touch it, right? So it there are different different issues to look at. I'm assuming what you mean is raw meat.
+
+[58:09] And it's an interesting question. I'm looking into it. We'll talk more about it uh soon. All right. And did you have two more Patreon things we need to do we need to get to them now?
+
+[58:20] They're not time sensitive, no. All right. And then what was it? What was it, Stas that we said we were gonna talk about, but I didn't get a chance to? San Francisco, but you did.
+
+[58:27] No, no, it was something else. Nah, no well. Oh yeah. Now you don't remember yesterday when we talked on the phone. I don't remember.
+
+[58:34] You know what my mom used to say? If it's really important, you won't remember. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[58:40] You always forget the most important things. Hmm. That's life. True. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from Rockefeller Center on New Stand Studios in the heart of Manhattan. Joined as usual witness Dacia. The hammer Lopez, how you doing? Good.
+
+[0:21] Yeah? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Your week's been okay so far? Yeah.
+
+[0:24] Yeah. Nice. Good. Uh got uh John here uh with me. How you doing?
+
+[0:29] Doing great, thanks. How's the customer service life? Is it just everything you'd always hoped? Super swell. Yeah.
+
+[0:34] Yep. Yeah. Get to run to Stamford later to go to offside storage and get some parts to mail to people. Oh snap. Indeed.
+
+[0:41] It's gonna be the best. Yep. Yeah. I haven't I well, quick side note on that, actually. I've been telling everyone who has an old school uh spinzall lid, the one with the clear plastic bubble on the top.
+
+[0:49] If you're having issues with that, reach out to me and we can get that fixed so that you don't rip the bearing out of the lid. Oh, nice. Cool. All right. Working the boards here.
+
+[0:57] We got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing great. You guys looking really smart today. You know why?
+
+[1:03] Because you loaned me your fancy reading glasses because I forgot mine. That's why. Uh and of course, uh working our international intercontinental uh engineering needs. We got Jackie Molecules. Hey, how's it going?
+
+[1:17] Um it's going well. I am excited, especially to have you. I'm always excited to have you, Jack. Even when you're just in LA and not in in in Mexico. Oh, by the way, were you back?
+
+[1:30] Oh, you're what the hell, dude? You uh you had to leave so that you couldn't like have fun during all the uh LA Super Bowl parties? Yeah, I'm doing radio stuff with the Line Hotel. So you sound excited to do it. I'm sure if they listen to this, they'll be psyched I'm doing radio stuff in the line.
+
+[1:46] Yeah. Well, it's sad to miss the Super Bowl, but I love no, I love it here. Yeah. CC's the best. Okay.
+
+[1:52] Uh, all right. Uh, you know, sure. All right. But the reason I uh I'm excited, and I'm I'm hoping actually that you that you kind of punch in with questions, Jack, because today you have you are in a privileged position to ask specific questions that I might not think of that other people might not think of. Because today on the on the program we have Francisco Magoya, who is most late latest, most late, latest project is Modernist Pizza, which came out, I don't know, how long ago did that come out?
+
+[2:29] A couple months ago. A couple months ago. And it's like a it's like a pamphlet on pizza. It's like a three-page black and white Xeroxed pamphlet on how to make oh no. No, it's like an 8,000 pound three volume with a kitchen set uh thing that comes in a in a you know, you know, a water jet cut metal powder coated box.
+
+[2:53] But it's it's like a a giant pizza multi-toned pizza thing. Francisco, thanks. How you how you doing? I'm doing well, and you're doing well. Doing well.
+
+[3:04] So uh we're gonna obviously have uh a lot of uh technical questions, but Jack did the editing on your modernist pizza podcast, right? Right, right. So I so first you want to just pitch pitch the pitch the uh the the question everyone wants to know why do I need three volumes that each one is like bigger than a presentation bible on uh on on pizza well, I mean, there's a a difference between need and want, right? I think that the uh the biggest uh pitch here would be that it's you know, when we were doing research for this book and we were searching for pizza books, uh first there's not a ton of them. Um most of them are geared for making pizza at home, which is fine.
+
+[3:53] Uh but when we're doing research, we're trying to find also books that are you know for professionals for people who make pizza at home and pizza, I mean sorry, in restaurants, pizzeria, and so forth. And I I think maybe there was one or two. Um mostly when you have a book on pizza, it's it focuses on one style. So either Think Crust or uh you know New York style or Neapolitan and so forth. So essentially this book, the intent of this book is to be uh all encompassing.
+
+[4:23] So every actual style of pizza that exists, um environment it can be baked or cooked in, um, all of those uh uh aspects were taken into consideration. And yes, it was you know, four years of research of of doing you know a lot of travel, a lot of you know, RD, a lot of experimentation to get to the results that you know, for those of us who are familiar or those of you who aren't familiar with our books may know, which is uh basically a deep dive into the world of pizza and the most popular food in the world. I think uh you'll find pizza pretty much anywhere you go. In the book, I believe you say arguably the most popular, because then obviously it's an argument. You don't have to prove it.
+
+[5:09] You know what I'm saying? Right. Um you I mean you have to maybe not everybody believes it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I think that there's there's two countries, uh, and I forget where they are, but there's only two countries where there's like no trace of pizza.
+
+[5:25] Well, where's that? Yeah, you forget where they are, but like don't go there. Like, I mean, everywhere I've been, there's some pizza. It might be horrific. You might be, you might uh I had a uh I had a sweet durian pizza in Shenzhen once.
+
+[5:39] Oh no. Yeah, yeah. Like it was like it was like cafeteria style crust. You know what I'm saying? Like uh somehow like super doughy and yet also undercooked, like they left it in for a long time, but still somehow it was gummy, you know what I'm talking about?
+
+[5:55] And uh plus the durian, that's like the bonus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the durian on top, and I was like, oh, durian pizza. But it was like sweet, like sweet sweet. And I was like, this is not like I could have imagined a world, like I've had alternative pizzas, like I love the I I don't know what you think about it, but I love the pizza that comes with the bonito flakes waving in the breeze from the heat of the pizza cooling off.
+
+[6:17] Like I like that, you know what I mean? Like I'm open, I'm open to things. Uh-huh. But the durian pizza, I was just like, man. Plus, did you guys do p I don't remember?
+
+[6:26] Uh it I I read the I read the book uh a while ago. Did you do pizza in China or no? No, no, we did not visit uh nor do a like on the ground research in China. Okay. Uh but it's uh from what I hear, it's in in areas that's a little bit of a sort of like a fancy event.
+
+[6:47] It's not as casual as it is here in the United States. Like it's uh an event to go and have pizza. Well, I have had takeout pizza also in China, and I wanted to get your take on they you know the you know the like the gloves that they pass out at a crab boil in Maryland. Sure. Yeah.
+
+[7:07] So in China, with the takeout pizza, at least when I've had it, again in Shenzhen, it the you were expected to put on rubber, like not rubber, the those plastic, ill-fitting plastic, like polyethylene LDPE gloves to eat the pizza. And I wondered whether you'd ever encountered that and whether you also believe it's an abomination to eat pizza that way. I can't, I mean, I think the only purpose I could see for that is to just not get your hands messy, but it is there's other ways of accomplishing that that are not using those gloves. But uh I have not encountered that, no. What are your thoughts on uh on former uh mayor uh former uh mayor de Blasio who theoretically of Italian extraction, first day in office, eats pizza with it with a knife and New York style pizza with a knife and fork.
+
+[7:59] What are your thoughts on this? Oh boy, I mean, I think that you know, those are it's not something you need to do. Um, but I would say that you know, there are parts like in Naples where pizza comes from, you could eat pizza with the fork and a knife. No, that's where it comes from, and that's you know, that's that is where people will eat it with the fork and a knife. I mean, you can choose not to, yeah, but that's because can we start this now?
+
+[8:26] Neapolitan pizza is not you can't it fall if it it gets limp in the tip. Like you can't get around it, no matter how hard you fold it, the sucker's gonna get limp in the tip. I am not I appreciate a great, you know, DOP pie, but I'm gonna say it's not the be all and end all of pizza. I mean, I know you s obviously you wrote a million pages uh on it, but it's like if if I had to press a button and eradicate one of the famous styles of pizza, or I should say, if I had to could save only one, it wouldn't be that one. Right.
+
+[8:59] No, and I think that in the book, we don't necessarily say that, you know, this is the best pizza in the world. I think I don't think we really say that about anything. In fact, I because there isn't such a thing as the best pizza, right? When people ask me what is the best pizza, it's the one you like. Well, except for except for pizza.
+
+[9:17] You you say that people who like their own pizza, and this is I feel like the first hundred and fifty pages of the first book is paving the way for you crapping on New Haven pizza. That like honestly, like as a guy that lived in New Haven for, you know, years, like I feel like the first maybe 150 pages. You literally say, you have a there's a section of the book, people exaggerating a bit. Oh, there's a section of the book You are exaggerating. There's a section of the book called uh but what about the pizza I grew up with?
+
+[9:47] And in this section of the book. That's what you're you're you're you're validating that argument, but please go on. No, no, listen, listen. You lichen enjoying the pizza that you from where you come, right, to the Stockholm syndrome. You literally say, and and and I was like, he's talking about New Haven people.
+
+[10:07] I was like, he's talking about New Haven, and to some extent New Yorkers. Because New York pizza was, let's be honest, with a few exceptions, like straight garbage in the 80s. You know what I mean? Like, like it was like it was not, I mean, there were like the the the classic places were here, but it's like, you know, whatever. But it all goes down to you're you paving the way for crapping on Sally's and Peppy.
+
+[10:29] So so go ahead and let's get it out there. I like a burnt crust and I don't feel like I'm in Stockholm syndrome like area. Like just to have it out with me. You guys flew around the world, you're testing. One of the things that that is gonna be complicated about this conversation we're going to have right now is that let's pretend I'm let's pretend you're a Republican and I'm trying to convince you to be a dec Democrat.
+
+[10:54] It's just not gonna happen. But I'm gonna tell you how we came to this conclusion, and maybe you can hear me or maybe not. It's it's really up to you. Um I think that what matters most is that if I eat something that is burnt as a chef, whatever it may be, whether it's pizza or a piece of fish or a piece of bread, if it's burnt, if it's burnt, we call it what it is, burnt. But if you enjoy the taste of burnt, then that is fine.
+
+[11:18] We pref we prefer to not have a burnt pizza. Now there's dark, there's char. If you have a Neapolitan pizza, it has a little flex on it. Uh you go to some pizzeria like Rasa, you have these bubbles that you know got a little bit darker, which is, you know, it's completely delicious. But when you see this blackness in the crust, I don't particularly like it.
+
+[11:39] I also don't love when the crust is unseasoned. I think the dough should have salt in it. I think that it's a if somebody acquires a taste for a dough that is made with very little to no salt, again, that's fine, but it's always preferable to have about two percent salt in the dough. Um, we can all I agree with you, Andrew. We can all agree that Tuscan bread is the worst bread in the world, but go ahead.
+
+[12:02] Yeah. Right. Yeah, but the you know, there's a similar there's a s there's that spirit to most of the pizza doughs that are made in New Haven, which is that they don't have salt. Now, you're also going to have every top ten list of pizza, there's like a pizzeria in New Haven. Has everybody in this that writes these articles actually go to New Haven, or is it easier to just say, Oh, New Haven is great?
+
+[12:25] And to have a difference of opinion, it's like, oh, what the hell are you talking about? How could you have a different opinion from mine? But our opinion is not just like we like, we don't like. I mean, who are we to tell you to not eat it? I mean, there's there's other pizzas that are better seasoned that are less burnt that could be tastier.
+
+[13:02] And uh and you didn't like Sally's either, right? You didn't like Sally's or Peppies. Well, I mean, I think that there could be vastly improved. I mean, there was an interesting uh occasion where you know they brought a pizza to us, it would look perfectly fine, and then they're like, no, no, no, put it back in the oven, get it darker, and we're like, no, it could it would have been perfect at that point. Um, but you know, I think that you know, we can talk about New Haven and and how you know how much we dislike the pizza if you like, but you know, maybe there's there's other things we'd like to discuss when it comes to pizza, but it's it's not our number one pizza.
+
+[13:43] I think it's uh uh I don't think we spend 150 pages on it, but of time there. Again, the first thing I did was turn to I gotta be honest, and a lot of people the first thing I did was I turned to this section on New Haven and then went and read the whole book with what you said about New Haven in my mind the whole time. That's what it was. And by the way, I don't think they're the be and all and end all of pizza either. I agree with you in a lot of ways that um like one of the interesting things about certain American things, like American styles of things, like hamburgers, pizzas, certain extent, certain hot dog things.
+
+[14:22] Like a lot of the old school people make a point of not tasting other people's products. And so it's very hard for them to grow and to get better. So I, you know, I I agree. I'm just giving you a little bit of a, I'm giving you a little bit of a hard time for the old town's sake, all right? Come on, man.
+
+[14:38] It's all right. So uh you know, uh it's a bit of a sore subject here because the everybody does have an opinion on pizza, right? And it if people, there's like a very strong, it's like people on their sports teams, right? I mean, I don't know if you you find this, but it's people will defend the one style they like to the death, figuratively speaking, but there are there are very strong emotions associated with preferences of pizza. So dislikes too.
+
+[15:07] So what about uh I was interested because there's certain styles of the pizza that I've never had, even though they're only a couple hundred miles away from me. Like what's with this old forge? I've never even heard of Old Forge Peach before I picked up your book. I'm surprised because there's a sign at the entrance of Old Forge that says best pizza city in the world. So it must be.
+
+[15:27] And how could you not have been there? Umge is you know, it is baked on a sh like a, you know, typically baked on a full size sheet pan, aluminum. Um, you know, the dough is is kind of like white sandwich bread dough, so it's like soft, a little bit sweet. Um then uh most places will like put the sauce down on top of the dough directly, then like chopped onions and then the cheese. And then it's baked kind of pale, like there's very little browning.
+
+[16:04] So um that is and there's a bunch of them. There's a bunch of pizzarias down uh the street. Like I mean, I guess if it's by quantity of pizzeria, maybe it might be the you know, the per capita uh uh pizza capital of the world, but it's a slightly, you know, like what you would get in a like uh cafeteria, right? I mean, these are and and some people will love it and be fans of it, and it's uh it's a style. It's it's definitely a a type of pizza that uh numerous pizza people in Old Forge really have a liking.
+
+[16:41] Huh. And so and the aluminum pans are shiny. Is that one of the reasons why there's no crust development dark? It's not dark at all. It's like they use shiny aluminum pants.
+
+[16:48] Uh no, it's one of your your regular kitchen uh sheet pans, aluminum. So it'll also bend and warp as as it's baking, so you don't get like that nice uh crispy bottom underneath the pizza. Sounds delightful. It's uh it's yeah. So uh if you had to say what style of pizza let's assume it's not its own style.
+
+[17:13] Pizza Hut is what is it? I think uh Pizza Hut would call New York style a distant cousin, a relative that they uh don't see anymore. But they might have a uh maybe some DNA uh in common. Huh. So maybe maybe that.
+
+[17:34] But Pizza Hut used to be good. I don't know how old you are, but I know that there was a point where it, I don't know if you recall, or maybe it is that childhood pizza syndrome that, you know, it was enough cheese, enough, you know, uh, you know, big enough, it was good enough. But I I I seem to recall as a kid that it wasn't as terrible. We I grew up in Mexico City and we had Pizza Hut and it was like a special thing to go on your birthday to Pizza Hut. And maybe I have those sorts of associations with it, but it's it's definitely a very different uh animal at this point.
+
+[18:10] I mean I believe Pizza Hut like one of the things they do is grease the hell out of their pan so that it it like almost the bottom gets kind of fried and uh and they need to do that because they viciously overtop their pizzas. What do you what are your thoughts on viciously overtopped pizzas? You know I know some people like them but I think that the problem you have with that is that sometimes it steams whatever's underneath it and it doesn't really uh you know whatever you're having including the dough could get stay like gummy um so I don't know if you've had like Chicago uh stuffed crust um no I've had regular Chicago uh deep dish but I've never had this no I've never had the stuffed guy the stuffed crust is almost it's uh you wonder why they put the you know the the second layer of dough there because it almost it's it stays it doesn't it never really cooks and so it almost feels like it's more cheese but it's really raw dough. Again sounds delicious are the things that happen yeah right I mean we did encounter a few horrors on this trip. I had a banana topped pizza in Buenos Aires, and I only had it because I how could I not?
+
+[19:21] I mean, it's on the menu. We have to we have to see what this this banana pizza is, and it's as awful as you might imagine. But there were there were a few of those things that we encountered uh throughout the research. Well, so is that part of your Brazilian thin crust pizza, which I know nothing about. I'd like you to tell me a little bit.
+
+[19:36] I've never been to Brazil. So what's that? What's that all about? Uh so yeah, we went, we were on the fence on whether we should go to South America. Um, but when we started to see like the you know, the the the visual aspects of you know the characteristics of these different pizzas, we thought, you know, it's they look like they're actual styles that we need to see, document, learn about, and also figure out if if they should get a recipe in the book.
+
+[20:06] And uh uh Sao Paulo alone has 2,000 pizzeria. I mean that's uh uh it's a large city, yes, but still 2,000 of anything uh is is pretty remarkable. Uh it is thin crust. Um it is a it has you know, you can have like your average normal like tomato sauce cheese topped uh pizza, but uh as it happens in many places, you have uh sort of like an adaptation of toppings that uh you know, depending on what's available, people will put on pizza. So some of the things that we saw uh very frequently is like just canned tuna fish.
+
+[20:47] Uh we had uh you know hard-boiled eggs, there was uh hearts of palm, uh shrimp is a huge one, um like together on the same pizza. Like all of that together? All of that? Yeah, and yeah. Uh yeah, but then you also like another common one was like our pepperoni.
+
+[21:07] They call it calabresa, and it's like a similar sausage, so it's, you know, it's a it's a sausage that is is popular in in Brazil that they also put on a pizza and it's wonderful. But it's thin crust, it has its own rituals too. I mean, I think that that is another important important cultural aspect of pizza is that wherever you go, it has like different cultural uh you know aspects that are important to to talk about. Like it's a people only have pizza for dinner in Sao Paulo. Um there are a few places that are open for lunch, but it's almost out of the question to to have it for lunch.
+
+[21:44] But here's an you know, to the point of eating pizza with fork and knife, that's how it's eaten in Brazil. Um uh the newer pizzeria is actually encourage people to use their hands to eat pizza, but people eat it with fork and knife, and it's like table side, it's like a little fancier. So people like go have pizza, and the waiter brings you your pizza to your table and puts it on a tray on the side and will serve you slices as you're eating them. It's a little bit more uh there's a little bit more of a ritual around it that is is more of a special event. Uh but if you go to Buenos Aires, it's completely different, and it's a completely different pizza.
+
+[22:21] It's I would say that that one might be the most similar to Pizza Hut because it's baked in a pan that is oiled. Um it's a thick crust, and the amount of cheese they put on this pizza is insane. I mean, you cut a slice of a hot pizza, and there's so much cheese that it it just completely wraps the slice when it melts, and it just pours down and covers on top of it. But it's the sort of pizza you have one of one slice, and you're kind of done. Yeah, I don't like that.
+
+[22:52] I like a pizza that you could have two, two and a half slices. That's a more of a like preferred. Yeah. You know what I do? You know what I do all the time?
+
+[23:00] Since since I turned 40, I always put salad on my pizza no matter what it is. I always order a salad, throw the salad on the pizza, you it, shove it in my face. I don't know. I just like it. No, no, I I don't believe in health.
+
+[23:14] Uh but uh I don't know, something about I just like having the green crunchy. I I guess it started. Nastasi and I used to, when we went to Roberta's all the time, we would want to throw fresh arugula on our pizza and they would never give it to us, so we started just bringing it with us. You imagine going into a restaurant with your own arugula with your own arugula and throwing it on the rice though? Yeah.
+
+[23:35] Yeah. Because they would because you know why we did it? Because they had it in the restaurant but wouldn't let us buy it. Isn't that messed up? Anyway, so like uh yeah, we used to do that.
+
+[23:46] So that that's what I do. Um I'm a horror show. I also use an unconscionable amount of uh crushed red pepper, but that's enough enough of me. So how did this work in the book? Did you guys do the trip in the middle of writing it?
+
+[23:59] I mean, you could tell me. Like, like the way you started is you start like here's the styles and then here's the research, but you had to have done a lot of preliminary research before you did the trip, no. Yeah, we started uh the project towards the tail end of our bread book, which came out in 2017. So there was a period of time where uh the kitchen staff, including myself, were done with all of the material we had to turn in for the book. And so between that happening and you know, starting the new uh publishing the hard you know print of uh of modernist bread, uh we got working on on the pizza book.
+
+[24:39] So there was a good about year or so of uh RD and experimentation that occurred before we started going on trips. Uh, because the more we read, we also there were things that we learned about pizza that we didn't know, like you know, the fact that there is uh distinct styles of pizza in South America, or how fanatical people can be about Neapolitan pizza in Tokyo, for example, uh, you know, all of these things that you start to learn as you start to dig deeper and deeper. So uh so the trips occurred, uh I would say uh most the bulk of the trips were in 2018, so on year two of the project. Um, and those really helped either clarify the vision or fine-tune uh recipes or completely eradicate recipes and and basically rewrite them because the idea was to basically learn to go to different different pizzerias and pizzaiolas that were willing to talk to us and show us how they did their pizza. Um there were there was some a lot of of learning that came from that, including that there's no one standard way of making, like, you know, in in Naples, there's like the VPN, right?
+
+[25:49] But nobody really follows it. I mean, there's no if nobody follows it to the T, uh, but you sort of have to to get the certification, but everybody does it slightly differently or vastly differently. Uh there's many you know, changes that people do and adapt their their recipes to. Um, which we also mentioned the book, and you know, because there were different ways of making Neapolitan pizza in the US, you have like the long 48 hour, 24 hour cold proof. In Naples, it's overnight at most.
+
+[26:20] Um, and then there's a VPN version. So we have three very different uh Neapolitan style recipes. They're all like for a different purpose in a in a different use, but um those were the things that that we learned as we went and we just started to like insert them into the book um as we saw. So as a breadhead and a pizza head, do you think that the cult of hyper long fermentations is gone like overboard in this country? Like that it's like it's almost like remember like the cult of espresso where the espresso all of a sudden now is like only like 10 milliliters out of the out of the puck.
+
+[26:59] It's like you think that it's gone beyond like what you would need. Because like for me, I know I have a problem. I do a lot of whole wheat stuff. So like if I let my stuff go that long and get slack because I have too much, I have too many enzymes in my dough, so everything gets slack if I let it go that long. What do you think?
+
+[27:14] Mm-hmm. I agree. I think that there is a sort of like a sweet spot for cold proofing, uh, which is between 24 and 48 hours. But we did have a lot of uh, you know, pizza that are doing like seven two seventy-two hours. Um, you know, one guy that's doing Roman pizza, like he even advertises it on his menu.
+
+[27:39] The 96 hour cold proof. Um it's not it it I don't know that it makes things better. Uh I don't know that cold proofing is all that important, really, if if you're fermenting your dough properly. I think that it, I mean, it slows things down. Uh you have uh, you know, uh uh, you know, whatever activity would happen at room temperature happens in refrigeration too, just a lot slower.
+
+[28:03] Um, it does make the dough easier to handle. I mean, that there's there are some pros to cold proofing your dough, but I would cut it off at 48 hours. I would say that after 48 hours, you're really not gonna be seeing very much uh improvement on your dough. Um, but if you if you do like our master neopolitan pizza dough, is a 24-hour bulk fermentation at room temperature. It never touches the refrigerator.
+
+[28:26] So how hard is that to titrate them? How like the how how hard is it to get your yeast dosing exactly right to hit 24 hours at room temperature? Yeah, I mean, there's we had the precedent of what we learned from our bread book, which was uh you know, multiple experiments on percentages of yeast. You more or less, when you make a lot of dough, there's a point where you know what's you know, understanding a recipe by baker's percentage that you understand what uh percentage, how long it's going to take to ferment. Um from point one, the difference between 0.2, 0.3, 0.5, how long, how much time you have, it kind of becomes this uh I guess second nature understanding of of how much yeast is enough.
+
+[29:15] Um, but also because, for example, if you think of a preferment like pulich, if it's a if it's a preferment that you're gonna do, you know, 18, 24 hours ahead of time, use a minuscule amount of yeast. So then we thought, what if we just do this for the dough? And we didn't have to do a lot of tries to realize that that was just the right amount. Um, so you you rely a lot on like background work that you did beforehand to get to these numbers. And as a as a chef, as a cook, your go-to is what, SAF red?
+
+[29:43] I mean, you give exhaustive ways to like go back and forth between the different yeasts, but I mean, is there a reason for the average person, even professional, to use anything for pizza other than SAF red? FAF red is good because it's it's instant, and I think that you know SAF is the brand. And you know, for those of who don't know, if they they find other brands of instant yeast that'll work fine, but that's the important distinction to use instant versus active, uh, mostly because instant has more live yeast cells per gram than active does, because the process of producing active yeast is a little harsher on the on the yeast cells. So there's more dead yeast cells, which is why you have to use like hot water to kind of like wake it up uh and break through all the dead yeast cells to get to the living yeast cells. And so that alters your dough temperature.
+
+[30:32] So it's kind of a mess to use active. So don't use active if if you can avoid it. Fresh is fine. Uh for those who do not know, it's a it's basically it's yeast that is in a uh in a in a moist form in a in a uh uh like a cake, if you will. It's it looks like about a pound of butter, has a similar look.
+
+[30:54] Uh, but it's already hydrated. Uh the problem we have with with fresh yeast is that not every maker will put its expiration date, and you only really have like two or three weeks to work with it uh before it it starts to decline. Um so if you have a lot of production and you do a lot, sure, go ahead and use uh fresh you know, cake yeast. But if you're doing it every now and then or if you're not sure about the the shelf life of your least, just use instant yeast. Even in professional environment though, even in a professional environment, I mean, I don't really I mean, have you uh you've done the test, so you tell me any flavor advantage to fresh?
+
+[31:31] I don't think so. No, and that's but people will die on their sword on it, right? And so that's why we we wanted to make sure, okay, if we're gonna say it's instant, then we we need to back it up. And so we did numerous tests on, you know, flavor is very subjective. So that was the last thing we tasted, we tested.
+
+[31:49] Uh we wanted to see if it had an effect on the rheology of the dough, meaning how the dough, the integrity of the dough. Um, so we would make a bunch of different percentages of yeast with both instant and fresh with different flowers, different hydration proportions, and then we put it through uh a machine that's called an extensograph, which is a machine that is going to basically you put a strip of dough on on the machine, and it's got it's like a robotic finger that goes up and down. And so it basically pulls the the strip of dough up, and once it snaps, uh what it's gonna tell you is how extensible the dough is. You know, basically, how much can I stretch the stove before applying X amount of weight uh uh to it will make it basically rip. Um, and so we didn't see a lot of differences to to that would be remarkable that would say, you know, use this yeast instead of that yeast.
+
+[32:41] Um and the flavor part, I mean, like that is different from each person. You really would have to bake the pizza on its own without any sauce or cheese to be able to really tell the difference if there was a taste uh you know difference because um that's just the nature of pizza, it's bread with other stuff on it. But in our uh triangle tests, uh the triangle tests are tests that you do to get people's unbiased uh opinion on what uh they perceive from what they're tasting, whether there's a difference between one thing or the other, or no difference at all. Uh so we weren't were not able to detect, people were not able to detect um strong differences between pizzas made with one type of yeast versus another yeast. So, you know, there's there is something to be said.
+
+[33:30] If you've always used fresh yeast and it's always worked for you, then great. You don't need to switch. And if you've always used instant, don't feel bad that you're not using fresh. They're they're both can be used interchangeably. If you use them in the right quantities, you know, you need a lot less of the instant because it's dry than you do of the fresh because it has water.
+
+[33:47] So you just need to know what the conversion is from one to the other. And speaking of it, if you like conversions or if you like tests of things, you gotta check out the book. Because it's like it's all of that stuff. There's a there's a a page where you guys uh review all the different flowers. And actually, surprisingly, I'm surprised.
+
+[34:07] One of your main recommendations for a lot of styles is kind my standard kind of house brand, which is Hackers. You use a lot of Hackers. What uh what what draw what draws you to them? Uh so I started to use Hackers. Um, you know, one of the the uh the people that we learned uh a lot from is Tony Gemini in San Francisco.
+
+[34:27] Um and I took a few classes with him and worked at his pizzeria um to basically learn, you know, how he makes pizza. Um that's one of the ones that he uses for uh a specific style of pizza. He likes the strength that's in it. It's a really it's a a higher protein content flour uh that has a particular strength, but it also stretches nicely, right? So because you can have flowers that are very strong that you're trying to extend, and it's just like a rubber band that pulls back, right?
+
+[35:03] So uh an ideal flower is gonna have a dough that's gonna produce a strong dough, but it also can yield to pressure without ripping and tearing the dough. So um you may or may not know this, but heckers has another name, it's also called Sarasota. Um not spelled like Florida, not spelled like Florida, spelled with a C. No, yeah. Correct.
+
+[35:22] And it's the same flower. So if somebody can't find find Hackers for some reason, Sarasota is the one-to-one, it's made by the same company, they just have two different names. Why do they do that? It's like Hellman's mayonnaise and best made it's the same mayonnaise. What the heck?
+
+[35:36] So dumb. Why do you think I don't know? I don't know. I have no idea. It's a great question then.
+
+[35:42] So for my crew, because I'm gonna have to ask the questions in from the Patreon a minute before we run out of time, but for my crew, things like uh they're gonna they're gonna love things like uh vacuum, vacuum draining of the mozzarella. You want to describe things like that that my my crew might particularly enjoy? Yeah, you know, I one of the things that we were thinking is like when you buy fresh mozzarella, it comes in, you know, this ball form. It it's about I think a hundred grams ball on average. Uh, but every pizzeria that I know that utilizes that type of mozzarella, what they do is they have to basically cut it.
+
+[36:14] There's different ways of cutting it, and then they have to drain it, whether it's overnight, you know, in a uh like a some sort of straining environment or you know, cheese top, what have you, because there's too much moisture in it. Um and so you know, I I keep wondering why doesn't somebody already sell this cheese already pre-cut and pre-drained, so I can just use it. Um and the the thing is like you can do your own uh if you want to do there's different ways of doing it, but you can also uh you know, one of the ways to do it is to put like the fresh mozzarella, cut it in the shape that you want to cut it. Uh you know what works great for cutting fresh mozzarella easily is a French fry cutter. Really?
+
+[36:57] It cuts them into perfect, yeah. It cuts it into basically um even size pieces of cheese. You don't have to freeze it. No, no, it cuts the uh what I like to do is like I'll put two inside the the French fry cutter so that the one behind pushes the one in front and so forth. Um but you get these evenly cut pieces of cheese that what we like of that is that it'll melt, they'll melt at a similar rate.
+
+[37:27] Which which cutter are you using? Which uh which which size cutter? Oh, I'll have to get back to you, but it's the biggest one you can find. And then we found it. Can I say where?
+
+[37:36] Sure. Because it it's yeah, it's called the Websteron store. Oh, yeah, yeah. But those guys are evil, but yeah, sure. That they they have everything.
+
+[37:43] They're not that it's not that they're evil. It's not that we I'm sorry. I maybe I have nothing against them other than they've swallowed up a lot of business. You know what I'm saying? Sure.
+
+[37:52] I mean, the the the Bowery is the shadow of its former self. Yeah, well, well, if I was gonna say you might find find it in the Bowery. I mean, I don't know how far people uh live that live in your uh, you know, or listen to your show, but um the Bowery would you can certainly find it there. But it's a very restaurant specific piece of equipment that um you know it it's it's got these like feet that are like suckers so that it can really hold on to the table. Um but that's the one we use, and it cuts them to the same size.
+
+[38:23] But anyway, so you're using like a half inch probably, right? A 13 millimeter cutter. I think I think that's the biggest one you can find. Well, they they do a wedge, they do a wedge cut, but uh you're not using the wedge cut, right? You're using a square cut.
+
+[38:35] No, no. Yeah, yeah. So it's probably 13 millimeters. There's an attachment for a RoboCoup that you you can also do it, but a RoboCoo is really expensive, so maybe not everybody has it. French fried cutter, you know, it's it's something that it's it was less than a hundred bucks.
+
+[38:51] I mean, have you had luck with the RoboCo? Because it mutilates cheese when you're putting it into it. You know what I mean? It's a good thing. Oh, I don't love it.
+
+[38:56] Yeah. Yeah. I don't love it. I like to I prefer to use the French fry cutter for for cutting uh even shapes. Because you can hand tear too, but they also when you hand tear, it's a pretty nice look.
+
+[39:08] But the hand tear, there you have different pieces, different sizes, they're gonna melt uh at different rates. Even if we're talking about 60 seconds or even more, like because you can use fresh mozzarella on any piece that you want. Uh but uh if you have like very small pieces, very large pieces, they're gonna melt at different times. And also therefore brown at different times if it's like a longer, longer bake. Um but putting the you know, the cut mozzarella inside a caroback bag with uh clean paper towel, uh, you pull a vacuum, you have an instant strain.
+
+[39:41] Because sometimes you can forget, right? I mean, it can happen. You you have to plan ahead. Um and that's when we saw that we was like, well, people could just buy it like this. Why why why not be able to provide uh this sort of service if if you're selling uh fresh mozzarella, especially if you need to, you know, if you maybe you don't have enough people working in your kitchen, maybe you're short stuff, maybe you don't have a bunch of time.
+
+[40:03] It certainly is a convenient product that that could be sold. Right. Like I know some of my friends they they sell like an intermediate cheese, like it's like halfway between a mozzarella and a scomorza, but it's not the same thing as cutting it and draining it. You know what I mean? It's not the same product.
+
+[40:18] Right. Right. It melts differently, it has slightly different taste, sure. Yeah, yeah. Uh and one more question from me before I get to look.
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+[40:25] I'm gonna get my head stabbed by John here for not getting to the proper questions. But this is going into bread, into back into bread bread head again, but as part of pizza. So you know how we all talk about uh hydration, right? But the hydration, we always talk about it on the on the dough side before it's cooked, right? And you know, you and I both know that, you know, protein is a factor, damaged starch is a factor, uh, whether there's bran, other inclusions that have uh that hold on to water as a factor, right?
+
+[41:00] And almost all of the research that I've read focuses on the the what the water does to the dough when it's still a dough, including up to like the size of the bubbles uh as it's raising, etc. etc. And you've done amazing work in modernist bread and here showing the effect of hydration on cooked on the cooked dough structure. But what does the high let's say that you could have uh two different flowers and you could get them rheologically identical. Again, rheology for those of you, but you know, is the is the is the the kind of texture and pulling and snapping of the dough.
+
+[41:34] You could get them identical at different hydrations. What effect would that have on the cooked product? I think that the most one of the the things that you're looking at on a on a cooked dough is that uh water is going to affect how long the dough is gonna take to bake as well. Uh, because there's something that occurs inside a dough while it's cooking that is extremely interesting. It's called a heat pipe effect, which is that once you put your dough inside the oven, uh, what's going to be happening is on the surface, the surface is what gets hot first, right?
+
+[42:12] Because it's in closest contact to to the hot environment. Um, and so what occurs is the water that is on the surface, the little droplets, uh they're basically going to get hot enough that they're gonna turn into steam. And then that steam has to go somewhere. Uh the heat pipe effect is a property of steam that what it likes to do is it likes to find a cooler spot. So once that dough starts to get hot on the surface, the steam is not escaping.
+
+[42:39] What it's doing is it's going, it's digging deeper and deeper into the dough. Um, so basically, when you look at the dough at a dough next time at a baked loaf of bread, you'll see you know, the crunch structure, there isn't a single bubble that will be intact. There is, they're all basically inflating with steam, they pop and then they go to the bubble directly below them or in closest contact to them. And then the same thing happens again. It expands and then it pops and it goes down again.
+
+[43:08] So steam is finding the coldest spot and it's always going to be at the core at of the dough. So once the temperature at the core of the dough starts to sort of equalize to what the temperature of the steam is, then the steam is going to start to escape from the surface. So the more water that you have inside your dough, the longer this process is going to take. Additionally, more water is gonna mean that the crust is gonna take a longer time to set. Uh so if you want a crispy loaf of bread, like you know, a nice crusty sourdough, if it's very high in hydration, it's always worth venting, meaning either cracking your oven dough a little bit longer, or if you have like an actual bread oven opening the vent for a little bit longer, so you can form a nice crust on the outside of your loaf of bread.
+
+[43:54] So it's it has to do with the duration of the bake and with uh formation of crust as well. Yeah, that heat pipe thing was my favorite thing from modernist bread, I have to say. It's great, isn't it? It's it's I love explaining it because when people first it's non-intuitive, right? At first you think, oh, well, heap is this heat is escaping, the steam is coming out as it's baking.
+
+[44:17] And it's actually it wants to go to where it's coldest. And that's it's a very interesting phenomenon that occurs. Well, and it answered for me a question that I had had forever. Why does banana bread take so long to cook? Right?
+
+[44:29] Why does banana bread take so long? Because it doesn't form that open structure on the inside. So that's why it takes an hour or more to cook a banana bread, even though it's cooking, you know what I mean? Because everyone's like, oh, it's because it's cooking at a low temperature. It's like, no, it cooks at a low temperature because otherwise it would burn in the length of time it takes to cook.
+
+[44:45] It's right. That's why. You know what I mean? It's always like, uh, to me, like as soon as I read that, I was like, you know, it was like uh I had the I hit my head and I said I could have had a V8. I uh I love that.
+
+[44:55] That's great stuff. Uh so I have a question. But also, you know, go ahead. No, no, I wasn't. The other thing is banana bread is really dense.
+
+[45:02] Banana bread is super dense, and so that that is it it's very comparable to like a a rye bread, right? These are breads that are very dense, they're gonna take long periods of time to bake. Uh a rye loaf of bread is uh, you know, rye can absorb up to 16 times its weight in water. So that these are why these breads they take so much longer to bake, but also why they last so long. They they don't uh stale as quickly as other breads might because of the the ability of water retention and the type of starch that you have in rye bread.
+
+[45:34] So anyway, that was just a quick update on density. Well, the thing about rye though, that's such a pain in the butt is that you have to wait so long after it comes out of the oven. It just takes so long to set. I hate that. Yes.
+
+[45:44] Well the other thing. No, because it's so fragile that you can't even vacuum speed it. Like if you're using like a high protein flour and you want to vacuum it, you can vacuum it, and sure, you might like rupture some of the stuff on the inside, but you'll just destroy a rye bread by throwing it in a vacuum machine to cool it. You know what I mean? Like just freaking ruin it.
+
+[46:05] You can't speed cool it. Um one more question on this. Do you have a trick? And I don't remember because it's been a long time. So like one of the issues that people, if they think about it, have with uh very high hydration products like whole wheat, like rye, is that they mold very quickly.
+
+[46:23] Um so like they don't stale, but they also they mold. So like is there like anything you have for that? Uh you know, I think the why do things mold is because they're sitting out in an environment that you know mold finds uh friendly, right? So I would say that being preemptive is probably your best solution. So if you have uh bread and it's been sitting out for you know an extended period of time, it's because you're not eating it fast enough.
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+[46:51] So why not freeze some of it? Um I would cut the slices that I want, wrap them or putting in, you know, some sort of you know enclosed environment and freeze them. Uh, because once they're sliced, they're gonna thaw a lot faster. Uh and they'll also, if you're gonna toast them, they'll toast faster, and you don't have to cut this like frozen piece of bread. So I would say that that would be a way.
+
+[47:12] Otherwise, you're looking at adding uh certain ingredients to bread that uh are like for reducing mold. Um I don't know that I love adding that. Yeah, those uh you know like sodium benzoite, you know. Like I don't know if I want to add that to my because it'll kill the yeast too like there's all of these like side effects to utilizing those ingredients I'm with you and you can toast from frozen too. All right so listen can you put on your chocolate hat for one minute you bet.
+
+[47:41] Justin Sherrill writes in uh I've been buying deodorized cocoa butter for use in making chocolate bars. Uh most of what I have received has had some plasticish smell to it probably from storage or maybe from the deodorizing process or me I guess from not deodorizing it enough. Any chocolate I'm uh I add any uh anytime I add more than a little bit of this cocoa butter to the chocolate, it takes on that same smell uh especially in milk and white. I've tried several different suppliers with hit or miss results. It's not a strong smell, but given it's one of the three main ingredients, it matters.
+
+[48:15] Can I deodorize it further or is there some way to mask or overwhelm this I think that initially what you should do is uh probably get a different source of of deodorized uh cocoa beef uh cocoa butter. Uh the two that I would recommend is uh cocoa berry. You can and it it's very convenient because it comes in like these tiny like teardrop size pieces. So you don't have to like cut this huge chunk, you know, huge block of cocoa butter so it melts very easily. I've never had any problem with that uh with cocoa berry uh cocoa butter.
+
+[48:51] Uh and Marrona you can also get cocoa butter from them. Um so I mean these are re reputable sources. I have looked for you know deodorized cocoa butter for other purposes uh just like whatever brands to see what would be available that is is you know for you know most people they're typically not very good and they're not a hundred percent deodorized but these other two brands um I would recommend but can you stir like an adsorbent like uh bentonite and let it settle out will that do anything in a in a in an oil based thing or can you keep it hot for a while to flash off the volatiles? I mean is there any other thing that you know that works I don't know that it's I mean I would I would say that because it's if it's a fat soluble taste and aroma it's gonna be very hard to get rid of. Uh like if you were to infuse vanilla into like butter how do you get rid of a vanilla taste like completely.
+
+[49:42] Yeah you I think that the amount of time that it would take to do that. I mean these these are oils that merge into each other and can't really separate them. Uh so I would say you know use that cocoa butter for other purposes get a fresh bucket of of uh cocoa berry or valrona and you know we you won't have to worry about that problem anymore. And they come in like five kilo tubs or something it's like a good amount. So I wonder whether they uh stored the cocoa butter he's getting in PVC because PVC like uh you know PVC wrapping because you know how awful that stuff smells you know what I mean like yeah it could be and any fat that it touches like when so you when someone takes a nice piece of cheese and wraps it in that stuff and then the whole freaking cheese smells like that makes me so angry.
+
+[50:25] Right. Um okay uh uh Roger Chi uh wants you to know that you are sorely missed in Poughkeepsie and your awesome Hudson chocolates are sorely missed. Uh are there any plans for a modernist pastry? Uh I can't say yet um unfortunately, we are working on well I I I one because of the other. I I can't and therefore I won't.
+
+[50:54] Um because uh we're working actually on a couple of different projects right now. And it will all eventually, you know, come to light. But uh, you know, that um that's as much as I can say right now. And then uh um we have uh from uh Payne MJ also basically the same question, what's the next what what like what's next on your plate? Because as we know from reading your current book, you started that while you were still working on other ones.
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+[51:24] So we know you're already working on something. I mean, yeah. Uh so you know they assume that you will not reveal what you're what you're gonna do. Uh and then link to that wants to know regardless what uh we on the show think you should work on. I mean, look, obviously, I mean, pastry is a big gap.
+
+[51:41] You haven't done cocktails yet. You haven't stepped into my into my little uh corner of the universe yet. But uh I don't know. Like what what you like aside from what you're working on, what are you interested in thinking about right now? I guess we'll put it that way.
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+[51:56] Yeah, I think an interesting, you know, when when we finally reveal what this is, nobody's gonna be surprised. I can say that. It will be like, oh, okay, cool. Um but I think that you know, there is a an entire world out there of baked goods that uh require our attention. Um and it's something that has really interested me and therefore uh those of us who work here.
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+[52:23] So I think that if we're uh working on anything in earn earnest, it's these uh this particular world of baked goods. So what do you think about the panotone explosion uh of the past two years? You know, I think it's great, mostly because uh whenever you or a baker would make them, let's say six years ago, seven years ago, what the general audience had them to compare had to compare them to would be the junk that you get at the grocery store that's made, you know, six, seven months ahead of time in some factory, maybe, maybe not in Italy. Um so they would say, like, why are you charging you know 20, 30 dollars for these things? When I can buy it for five dollars at my you know, local local deli or even my like stopping shop or whatever grocery store you have.
+
+[53:14] Um and it also like made people they dislike it so much that what they do is they'll toast it and dunk it in coffee. And you know, like that's to me is just wrong. Um so I'm glad that all of this pentatone explosion is happening. I mean, I think we need to, you know, basically uh the person to thank is Roy Schwartzappel in in California. I mean, he's single-handedly uh made this bread popular again, and he's made it popular to have not just for the holidays.
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+[53:44] It's uh the year-round thing, right? It's like pie. Is is pie supposed to only be had in you know Thanksgiving, or can we just have pie year-round? Yeah, don't get me started on pie. Don't get me started on pie.
+
+[53:55] You like pie? Uh it's not that I like pie fanatics. Obsessed. A fanatic doesn't even begin to describe it. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[54:02] That's a good obsession to have. Well, in fact, I was gonna not get into it, but like the one thing about the the old forged pizza is they refer to it as a cut. And my favorite pie guru, my pie guru to end all pie gurus, also at time to time would refer to them as cuts, not as slices of pie. So I'm all for uh whatever. All right.
+
+[54:20] Starving vi starving violist writes in violist, violist, not viol, violist. Uh I'm looking forward just talking to you, Francisco. I'm looking forward to hearing you on cooking issues. I'm a devoted uh homes hobbyist cook and have invested uh what some would say is an insane amount of time and energy uh baking from modernist bread since it first came out. My question is about hand mixing versus machine mixing.
+
+[54:42] No matter how thoroughly I mix my bread by hand, the gluten development and resulting loaf volume never match the loaves that I make with a mixer. Even after adding additional stretch and folds and every trick suggested in in your book, the hand mixed loaves never seem to reach full gluten development. Am I missing something? Perhaps a temperature factor. Modernist cuisine and other reliable bread books claim that hand mixing is, if anything, superior, but my hands tell a different story.
+
+[55:06] Please help. I mean, there's a few things without having seen the process from beginning to end that I could uh make uh you know some assumptions on. Uh, the first is uh, you know, make sure that you're using a strong bread flour. I mean, that's that's number one, right? Um and the second would be that some things that could help is uh mixing.
+
+[55:30] If you're gonna just do folds, I would say do your initial mix first, try autolis, and by this I mean just mixing water and flour. Uh if you have a preferment, you can throw that in there. Uh let those ingredients like just mix them till they look like a almost like a paste, uh let them sit for half an hour, then add your salt and whatever other ingredients, and do a more thorough mix by hand. If you're just mixing in a bowl, uh that could slow things down. But you know, after you do that initial mix, put it on a wood table or a marble, and then knead it on that.
+
+[56:04] You're gonna get a lot more bang for your buck there with you know physical absorption. Um, and so mix it there until it starts to get some body and some some stretch and some elasticity with the kneading motions that we show in the book. And then something that could help develop your dough is that instead of doing your bulk fermentation uh at room temperature, if you do it in a warmer environment, that helps to strengthen the dough. Uh it also is good for fermentation, it's good for a bunch of other things. But if you can find a place to put your dough that's about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, uh this is going to have a really good effect on your bulk fermentation on the dough as far as strengthening and flavor development and tenacity.
+
+[56:46] Um, in reality, if you're not doing, if you're doing all the folds and that's not enough, just keep going. I mean, really keep going with the folds. Uh, if it feels like the dough is getting too bubbly and gassy, then at this point, switch it into a cooler environment. So you can basically uh determine the the how the fermentation curve is gonna go by how well you can control the temperature. If let's say you don't have a place to keep it at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, well, maybe you fill a bag with warm water and the tub sits on top of that uh for you know in between folds.
+
+[57:23] Uh maybe you have a like a you know, one of these like back warmers, right? People put them on on their back to, you know, uh if they have like sore muscles or whatnot, that could help. Um, you know, there's different ways of keeping warm environments that don't require like a ton of money. And if it's you need to cool it down, just put an ice pack on top of it, you know, and before you give it a fall so that the coldness goes disperses uh inside of it, uh, or maybe the tub is sitting on an ice pack, um, you know, just cooling down. So you're basically slowing down or speeding up the yeast as you see fit.
+
+[57:57] But I would say if it feels, if you've done six or seven folds and it's still not a hundred percent there, just keep going uh and control the temperature of your dough. So all of those factors should, I hope, uh help from getting the the right flour to the auto lease to doing a uh more robust initial mix by hand and then just doing uh temperature control between folds uh from start to finish until you reach um the elasticity you're looking for. Good tips. Lightning round, four questions, two minutes. Mood therapist, pineapple on pizza, thoughts.
+
+[58:29] Uh it's fine. I wouldn't order it, but if it's what's available, I'll have it. Uh and it's always better to use fresh pineapple than canned pannel. Oh interesting. We uh we don't have the time to get into it.
+
+[58:39] Uh from Frank Mosca, uh, longtime pizza, home pizza maker and enjoying Modernist Pizza Podcast. Also, shout out to Jackie Molecules. Something I have been curious about for a long time. It seems like the Italians are the only culture who specifically talk about digestibility when describing their pizza, and I find it quite common. This triggers nostasi as well.
+
+[58:55] She hates this. Uh as if a point of pride selling point or even a defining characteristic. I guess the point is that fermentation has an impact on how our bodies process. Oh, dude, I got 15 seconds. All right, what's the answer?
+
+[59:07] Uh the answer is that it's a little bit of BS, and there's really no way to measure digestibility because it's different for everybody. All right, and Quinn wants to know on the way, I guess it's the last one we're gonna get to wants to if you have any advice on the way out for people breaking into culinary consulting, especially when part of the value proposition is using modern and technical ingredients. He has a good ice cream book you should look at, by the way. Yes. Uh it's called Frozen Desserts, and I'm the author of it.
+
+[59:32] Nice, nice. No, but like uh nobody no say uh no, but uh how do you uh how do you get into the uh how do you get into this business? Of consulting? Yeah. Oh my god.
+
+[59:43] I don't know. LinkedIn. I mean you gotta meet people you have to go out and unfortunately meet people I don't know there's many there's many different approaches a great answer thank you well uh Francisco thanks for coming on check out uh the modernist pizza podcast uh edited by our own Jackie Molecules check out uh modernist pizza the book uh how much does it cost nowadays Francisco oh I don't know it depends on where you buy it uh but anywhere between 350 400 all right well it's a it's it's a lot it's a lot of work it's the only pizza book you need it that's definitely what's the only three puts pizza books you need anyway thanks so much for coming on I appreciate it cooking issues my pleasure thank you so much
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive on Newstand Studios in Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez in her undisclosed Heidi Hole in Stanford. How you doing, Stas? I'm good.
+
+[0:26] How are you? Doing alright, doing all right. We got uh got Joe Hazen in the booth. How you doing? I'm doing great.
+
+[0:34] How are you doing? Uh doing all right. Here's a question. There was a question uh from our special guest who I'll introduce in a minute about whether we're actually on the radio or not, which of course we aren't. Not, you know, because we're podcast, right?
+
+[0:45] But this let me Joe, when you were growing up, were you a uh were you a pirate radio guy? Were you like, did you do radio stuff or just music y like engineering stuff, or is that not your bag at all? Uh my bag was first in the studio, and then I became the head engineer of an East Village Radio, which was a radio studio in the East Village. A real radio. Real internet radio.
+
+[1:04] We started out on FM, and then we quickly got in trouble by the FCC. Yeah. My uncle was a country, he's an Italian crazy crazy Uncle Larry. Just as he's no, it's crazy Uncle Larry from Medford, okay? If that sets the picture.
+
+[1:18] Like old school Italian guy, uh, country DJ, and he almost got arrested, got his house padlocked when he was a kid because he built a big pirate station and didn't realize that the FCC was gonna come around with a triangulation antenna and like totally they have no sense of humor about this stuff. You notice that, Joe? None. None. But guess what?
+
+[1:39] Guess what rules we don't have to follow, Joe. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. FCC. Yeah.
+
+[1:47] Crap on them. Crap on them. Crap on the FCC. Uh, joined also with uh customer service uh extraordinaire agent, uh Jean Nahoul. How are you doing?
+
+[1:58] Doing great, thanks. Yeah? Yep. Yeah, he's right here in the studio with me. Yep.
+
+[1:59] So we're swapping it up. It looks like someone from Booker and Dax has to be in Connecticut at all times or the earth ends, I think is what happens. I think that's how it ends. And of course they got Jackie Molecules. Which booth are you in now?
+
+[2:12] You in some sort of DC thing? You still doing that DC thing? No, no, I'm in LA. I'm home in LA. And my first job was on AM radio.
+
+[2:19] Oh, wow. Like AM talk, or when they still tried to play music. They're like, it's stereo now. Do you have the stereo AM machine? Do was it like that?
+
+[2:29] It was no student radio 1440. We played music and we do stuff like I don't know, giveaway bowling tickets, you know. I'd be like, first caller to call in gets bowling tickets or something like that. You know what? It was cool though.
+
+[2:41] It was real radio. I think bowling is really fun for a game and a half. What about you? I two full games. Two full games.
+
+[2:50] What do you do with a half a game? I don't know, man. I used to go bowling more when I wasn't of drinking age. I'm sure if if the cocktails kept coming to the alley, I'm sure I could go for more games. But I have really fat fingers, and so they get stuck in the thumb holes.
+
+[3:04] And so like e either like the thumb hole is so big that it's like slip sliding away down the down the lane, or I get that every time it leaves my thumb and then my thumb inflates bigger and bigger, and I have to move to a bigger and bigger ball the further I go down. You know what I'm saying? Uh that's rough. I think that's where my two game max comes from. I'll watch you play forever as long as there's like, you know, I mean, I don't really like chicken tenders, but I'll eat the chicken tenders and and and you know, and some cocktails in a in a plastic glass.
+
+[3:31] You know what I'm saying? Sounds good. Yeah. Uh so before we talk about uh further inanities, let me uh introduce. We've been trying to have this guy on for, I don't know, stats.
+
+[3:43] How long? A year? He was supposed to do his birthday in December. All right, so like not a full year, but a different year. So, like, you know, in the way that they age soy sauce, it's been a year.
+
+[3:54] Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, we have with us uh Nicholas Coleman from Grove and Vine. He is, and this is the grossest title ever, an oleologist. All right, is that what he said?
+
+[4:05] Oleologist? It stems from the Italian word oleologo, which is like the enologo of wine becomes an enologist, so an oleologo becomes an oleologist. Right. And that term was coined by Luigi Caricato, this famous Italian olive oil expert. Yeah, well, a lot of things sound good in other languages.
+
+[4:23] But like, for instance, like one of my favorite kind of gross words, uh food description words, oleaginous. Oh, mine is mucilaginous. Oh. I think that's one grosser. Yeah, you know, we had an okra discussion a couple of weeks ago when Dr.
+
+[4:36] Jessica Harris was on. Very mucilaginous. And by the way, John, Mofad, you want to tell him uh it's opening up to the public when? Tomorrow. Ooh, African slash American.
+
+[4:46] Yeah, making the nation's table. Is giving an NPR interview right now in WNYC about the exit. I know, I know, I know. But go listen to the WN, go listen, listen, if you're listening live on Patreon, call in all of your olive oil questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
+
+[5:03] And then listen to the listen to Dr. Harris afterwards, man. Afterwards. What? No, they can't, because if they they could look, they can only listen to one of us live.
+
+[5:14] They can't. And first of all, first of all, I have I have Nicholas here. I have Nick here all this whole time. We're gonna be talking about olive oil and various other unrelated things. For instance, it is my estimation, I could be totally wrong, that Nest now, I I met you through Nastasia.
+
+[5:31] Yes. Yeah. And you two bonded over your mutual hatred of story songs. Um no, we I think we bonded over our distaste of corporate middle management. When do you guys have to deal with corporate middle management?
+
+[5:46] It's a thing. Yeah, it's a thing. Like literally, both Nastasia and I are the middle management, the bottom management, and the top management of our company. We've worked our way past corporate middle management into our own thing. And and but anyway, I think that's how we bond it.
+
+[6:02] But we've known each other for many, many years. Yeah, and you also but you do hate story songs. No, you you uh let me be a people out there in podcast land, Dave Arnold in no way represents my ideas or thoughts. Okay, well, uh correct me if I'm wrong. The thing that I say about you all the time that you hate the most but is most true is that you think Dylan's way overrated.
+
+[6:24] No, Dylan is a genius and he's a living legend and he's an American hero and he's a pioneer. Well, he's also a jerk. I mean, sometimes after listening to him for a period of time, I'm like, I gotta turn this off because this guy's voice is starting to become a really obnoxious. Uh-huh. Yeah.
+
+[6:44] And that's a fair assessment of that man's voice. And mine. Uh so the um the other thing is uh that and and listen, listen, so the reason you should keep listening to get past this intro thing where we're gonna be talking about random things, is because what Nick does is like for you, basically, whoever you are, right? Travels the world and finds amazing producers of olive oil, right? Convinces them to bottle it under a under their own or his own label, but like keeps it so it's not getting bucketized into huge tankers, right?
+
+[7:24] Keeps the production like within a region he can control, and then brings them to you in their finest state. And then, but it's not just like remember, do you guys remember? First of all, way back in the day, it was like it's only it's Italian oil, it's it gotta get Italian oil. I love Italian oil. Don't get don't get bent at me, Joe.
+
+[7:41] But I love Italian oil, right? But then someone's like, oh, it's Spanish. It's the it's the it's the Nunas de Prado with the with the with the one where the the olives they squeeze themselves, and that's the one, all right. And then that got all blown out of proportion. Look, Nick's McGillah, if I'm correct, is that you're like, listen, uh, I'm gonna just search for what's delicious and interesting, and I'm gonna bottle that as fresh as humanly possible and and bring it to you regardless of what you grew up thinking was the best, right?
+
+[8:09] No one country has a monopoly on quality. It really comes down to individual producer, and if they're pruning if they've planted the right cultivar and the correct microclimate, if they're pruning the trees properly so all branches receive equal parts, sunlight and oxygen, if they're harvesting the olive at the correct moment to get the desired flavor profile, if they're getting it from tree to mill in mint condition as quickly as possible, and then if the olives are milled by an expert in a clean, modern sanitary mill and then filtered and stored correctly, and gotten in your hands fresh, then you can get great oil from around the world. But most countries, most of the oil they produce is not good and falls below the extra virgin threshold, despite the fact that so many oils are labeled extra virgin, because we live in a world of lies. We do live in a world of lies, this is true. We uh that is a very good fact.
+
+[8:59] Now, you also we'll do one more thing before we get to the stupid crap that we have to get to because that's just who we are, right? When I uh I met you at the French Fry movie. Yes. We met at Tribeca. At Tribeca, the French Fry movie A Premiere, right?
+
+[9:15] Yeah. Where uh, you know, I was in a French fry movie. You can go look it up. Uh I was their one of their science experts, along with Harold McGee. Yes.
+
+[9:22] Who you were olive oil tasting, you say with Harold McGee just uh two weeks ago. I was in uh I was selected as a judge for the Los Angeles International Olive Oil Competition, and I get flown out there, and we taste, you know, upwards of 500 oils with a panel of about 12 olive oil experts. And Harold McGee was one of the judges. And it was the first time we had tasted oils together, and uh he's the one who told me if I'm on this that it's actually gonna be videoed, despite the pack fact that people think it's audio. Right there.
+
+[9:49] So yeah, there we go. Uh he has been a trained olive oil taster for probably 11, 12 years now. He's been like uh, he took all the original training with the with the Italian folks, and then he's been on like all of those panels for years. Yeah. Now let me ask you this since you've never tasted olive oils with him.
+
+[10:06] Is there anything better than Harold McGee's thinking tasting face? I love watching the man tasting because he's like, he looks up and he's got his thinking and tasting. There's a lot of pondering. Yeah. You know, you you smell and then you think.
+
+[10:22] First, you smell the oil before you taste it. Then you analyze the smell, then you taste it, analyze the taste, and then you analyze the taste and smell in combination, because that's really important to evaluate in oil. Now, how fast do you get fatigued tasting oils? Like hams, I get fatigued very quickly. Like because of the salt content, fatigues you wicked quick.
+
+[10:41] We'll taste we'll taste about 40 to 50 oils in a day, and that'll be between 9 a.m. and about 2 p.m. And what's the standard palate cleanser? Is um sparkling water which scrubs the tongue. Uh huh.
+
+[10:54] A small thin slice of green apple. And what's been more modern in the olive oil world is um yogurt, plain Greek yogurt that helps kind of clean the palate. But you don't necessarily do it after every oil. You do it every day. Um is it a chill bani or a faye?
+
+[11:12] It's a faya. It's a fire, all right. They use it. I don't select they. Yeah.
+
+[11:16] All right. Yeah. Uh so. So where where do we start? I mean, this is a massive topic that olive oil isn't even about olive oil.
+
+[11:25] Olive oil connects all sorts of things in cultures and history and science and technology and agriculture and politics. All right. Well, this is the one. Let's keep on tasting for it. Let's keep on tasting for a minute.
+
+[11:36] So, like, one thing I notice with olive oil, especially olive oil, like that has like uh a lot of either the grass, not the buttery one so much, but the the the peppery ones and the and the ones with the kind of high grassy notes, they can taste different from sip to sip depending on how you aerate, where where it hits you. I always find that the second sip tastes way different from the first sip. So, how do you work around that when you're tasting? I don't find that. You don't like I don't find the second sip tastes way different than the size of the side.
+
+[12:05] Oh, I do all the time. Maybe it's because things like maybe it's because I need to prime my palate. Like whenever I go taste olive oils, I just disregard whatever the first sip is. So disregard it. Why?
+
+[12:14] I don't know. I think that's I think you should listen to your initial instincts and not completely disregard what's happening inside of you on a first taste. I almost always like the second sip. I I I think a second, I kind of believe in the mandatory second sip as a way to honor the producer that they've like sent it in. They've worked all year to make this oil, and to taste it only once seems a little silly.
+
+[12:37] So you can kind of like analyze it and taste it once and then taste it again as almost a verification. But if an oil tastes radically different on two sips, that's not good. Well, I think like a like for me, like a lot of times, I don't know whether maybe I'm blocked up in the first thing. I don't get a lot of like the like the the like any pepper grass thing comes through a lot more on the second sip for me than it does on the first. I don't know whether I'm just like choking it down too fast or like not doing the not doing the the the whole McGill, but I feel for me, a two-sip sitch is the only way.
+
+[13:07] I respect the two-sip sitch. Yeah. All right. Uh I think today I'm gonna try to get you on the first sip to taste the grass, the bitter, the pepper, the nuance, and and we'll we'll get there. Now, what do you think about the old school uh Italian convention that the more bitter the better because that's what they consider the like they basically feel that way?
+
+[13:23] You're miss you're mischaracterizing an entire country. It's regional. No, no, but Italian the people who used to run the the tasting thing for quality, right? Weren't they like phenolic hogs and they wanted like high phenolic, high, you know, however you pronounce that, or being awesome. It's about balance.
+
+[13:42] And some oils are too bitter relative to the grassiness or the pepperiness, and that would be an unbalanced oil. And that should get scored lower than something where the aroma and the bitterness and the pepperiness and other secondary aromas are all balanced with each other. Additionally, Italian oil, there's no such thing as Italian oil. It's hyper-regional. There's over 500 different olive cultivars.
+
+[14:05] The olives they grow in Liguria, which due to the microclimate, they harvest later are delicate and sweet and mellow. Whereas a Tuscan oil, they have to get the olives off the tree really early in the season because of frost can roll in. And those tend to be on the grassier, bitter, peppery side. So it's to judge a Ligurian oil based on that it should somehow be bitter and pepper would be like a false it would be a false relationship. So those oils are beautiful because they're sweet and mellow and like ethereal.
+
+[14:34] And when paired with a regional cuisine like pesto, allows the pine nuts, basil, and garlic to take center stage, and the oil just supports that. So you believe that uh you you are a believer, which I am not. You are a believer that that whatever is from locally probably tastes better with the local stuff. Why are you telling why are you using your words to say what I believe? No, no, I'm saying you just said the regional supporting.
+
+[14:58] You're saying the regional support thing. That's one. So you don't believe that? No, I think you can use all different oils for all different foods. Right.
+
+[15:06] And I don't think it has to be regional, but I do think the regionality is a really interesting way to learn about it because of that phrase, like kind of what grows together goes together. Especially you don't believe that you're saying. I believe that the world in today's world, you can mischaracterizing it. And both are not mutually exclusive. Remember how we just said that like facts are facts at the beginning of the show?
+
+[15:35] Anyway. It's it's it's there are many forces at play here. Okay. Okay. Which is true.
+
+[15:42] Okay. I think we want to simplify things, but it's actually more a little more nuanced than that. And that's what I think we should get into here: of how there is no one way to taste this stuff or pair this stuff, but it's uh whatever kind of piques your interest. All right. So how am I mischaracterizing you on this next statement?
+
+[15:59] Okay, go for it. Uh you do not believe in stocking your words. Okay, paraphrase back to you from when we were hanging out. You know you you should not stock different levels of oil for different different things in your house. Like, for instance, like I have an oil that I use for sauteing, and I have an oil that I use for finishing, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna pour my expensive oil into a fry pan to saute.
+
+[16:28] And you told me I was wrong. I think that's an excellent way to approach cooking olive oil, uh, using olive oil for multi-purposes in your home. Use the clean extra virgin olive oil that's more affordable for cooking, and then use the more single estate monocultivar finishing oils just raw. So you're okay with you're okay with it. Highly recommended.
+
+[16:47] All right, so economically advantageous and uh culinarily perfect. All right, so you were just double you were devil's advocating me before. I was saying that in my situation, I use the same oil to cook with that I finish with. Yeah, because you're like Mr. Olive Oil.
+
+[17:02] And that's why there are many forces at play with all these things, and it's very personal. Are you selling the uh are you selling the scrapers? Do you have a body-based olive oil? No, but I want I I have thought about um designing a sickle. Like a little one, a body scrap.
+
+[17:18] Yeah, that you could like so you could cover your body in fine olive oil. And because traditionally, olive oil was not used for food. Historically, the original use of olive oil was for skin, and people will cover their bodies in the oil, and they fatten the olive oil, lifts the impurities off the skin, and then they would skim it off and they would be clean and they would smell like whatever they infuse the oil with. So it was involved in the earliest form forms of perfumery and aromatics and and cleanliness. So you'd be a millionaire selling it to people for their because they think all the stuff they douse their bodies with it and then scrape it off.
+
+[17:49] You know what I'm saying? What does that say? Can't see. Now, you also uh are aware of my hatred of the recorder. And so you tried to bring me a cousin instrument to show me that uh it's but it's not because you blow on a recorder, and this is a real, like a real woodwind stuff, not woodwind, uh, what do you call a flute?
+
+[18:18] Uh the beauty of the flute is it's just wind. It's wind. So what have you what do you have here? So I brought, I figured I was on like a podcast slash radio show. I figured I'd bring something for interludes.
+
+[18:29] Um so I brought uh Indian bansuri flute that was made by this guy, Subhash, who's a famous concert bansuri maker in India. Describe a bansuri. A bansuri is a bamboo flute that is carved out in different keys. Um there are bass flutes, alto flutes, etc. This thing's giant though.
+
+[18:50] I mean, like in other words, like compared to uh a Western metal like orchestral flute. This so this is similar size, but it's like thicker. It's thicker, yeah. They're not the same. This is this is like Indian classical music uses this with a tabla, and you're you're flying.
+
+[19:05] I love tabla music. Give me some of this. Sounds better with Reverb. Nastasia, thoughts. I just judged it down.
+
+[19:42] What the F is going on. Now this is not that, this is not that classification, but Nastasia, what is Booker and Dax as a corporation? What's our least favorite category of music? Uh world. Correct.
+
+[20:02] No, yeah, no, no. Generically world. Like I we like music from all over the world. We hate generic world music. And you know as soon as it comes on.
+
+[20:13] Right? Yeah. I'm not saying you're doing that. I'm not saying you're playing that. Yeah, like playing a flute doesn't equal world.
+
+[20:20] No one's saying that. No one's saying that. Not one person has said that. All right. Hold on.
+
+[20:27] Uh but yes, this instrument can be found in the world in India. It looks it's very nice. It looks like it looks nicely made. It looks a lot better. You know what it looks like?
+
+[20:36] It looks like a really, you know that really when when you go, okay, for those of you that never like been to the United States when you were a small child, one of the things that happens to you is you're drug around to like all these, like at least back in the 70s. You're drug around to all these kind of like patriot slash revolutionary war sites, and they would everyone would sell you like yellow, brown, burnt up copies of the Declaration of Independence in a plastic tube and the Constitution in a tube, and uh a really crappy three-corner hat that was like made by the same people that make the Mickey Mouse hats, and an unworkable fife. And the unworkable it looks like a much nicer version of the unworkable fife. So it kind of triggers me a little bit because not one kid has ever made a decent note out of the unworkable fife. This thing has triggered you deeply.
+
+[21:25] Did you struggle with a recorder when you were a young child in class publicly? I I I wouldn't say I struggled. I instantly overblew that thing and was like, nah, no. Yeah. It requires it's about uh delicate control.
+
+[21:39] That is not me. Yeah, I am not known for my delicate control. So something that A sounds bad even in the best hands, B is so easy to overblow, and C drips spit everywhere. These are all losses. These are all losses.
+
+[21:54] What's your instrument of choice? Uh well, I I play bass. Oh, cool. Or played bass. What a sultry instrument.
+
+[22:00] Uh, you know what it was? Uh I can understand four strings. Every single one is the same interval apart. It's not like a guitar where you're like, that B string. Yeah, he's what the hell's that?
+
+[22:09] It's uh it really screws things up. Yeah, who the hell wants that? I don't play chords, I play bass. Yeah. Right.
+
+[22:14] And I also dislike guitarists who pick up basses and are like, I'm gonna play it like it's a guitar solo. Wrong. It's a bass. It's a bass. Though I'm a big fan of Jacopastorius, and he would.
+
+[22:29] Um he would uh transcribe Bach pieces, and so he would learn the different voicings of Bach. And I do think it's important as a basis to understand how to play the other melodic passages in a song to see how your bass line can fit within that in terms of counterpoint. All right. What about James Jameson playing with one finger, passed out drunk on his back in the Motown basement, some of the best songs ever? The best of the best.
+
+[22:57] Yeah. The the what do what'd they call his fingers? Something like the claw or something. They called his one his one fancy, his one. Because those guys with one finger.
+
+[23:06] You know, this like three-finger thing that Les Claypool and Flea are doing. They were not doing that. Les Claypool is a great bassist, if only he would remember what a melody is. Like he was amazing during Fizzle Fry. Like, like Primus in Fizzle Fry.
+
+[23:18] Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God. And live, they were so they were so awesome. But I, you know, and I love Les Claypool, and I'm don't want to insult any Primus current prime like Primus people.
+
+[23:29] Those guys crawled into their own buttholes a little bit. Oh yeah. Once once uh what was it? Um Tales from the Punch Bowl came out, it was downhill from there. I don't know.
+
+[23:38] But like amazing. Just amazing. I would agree. Amazing, amazing bass. Amazing bass.
+
+[23:42] Uh so one other thing. I don't know when we're going to do it, Joe, but uh, you're here on a very auspicious day, uh, Nick. You know why? I have no idea. Because today is the first day of the cooking issues sponsorship.
+
+[23:56] We have a we have our first actual sponsor now that we've moved radio uh stations, we've moved networks from the other station Who Shall Remain Nameless. Okay, uh, to uh newsstand uh studios, and we have our first sponsor, and we're gonna play an ad. So how's this gonna work, Joe? How are we gonna do this? When do you want to do it?
+
+[24:14] But like when do you want to do it? Set it up. How do other people do it? They do it. What time during the show do they do it?
+
+[24:22] They set it up, usually like, hey, we Here's a word from our sponsor. Oh. It's mid-roll. It's mid-roll, so it should happen maybe now. Okay.
+
+[24:35] And now, a word from our sponsor, right back with Cooking Issues. This episode of Cooking Issues brought to you by Aura King Salmon, our favorite fish. Today we have Michael Fabro from Aura King to tell us more about it. Thanks, Dave. Great to be here.
+
+[24:50] And really excited to talk about Aura King salmon, uh, which we raised down in New Zealand. It's a super premium salmon that's available to professional chefs and home chefs alike. So coming from a zero waste perspective, Michael, I see that you're now using the fins for dog treats. That's right. Yeah, this is part of a a real goal we established a couple years ago about full utilization of the animal.
+
+[25:12] You know, in New Zealand, we cut uh fillets, we cut portions, we we do smoking, so you have a lot of trim. So we wanted to find a good home for that trim. So we developed the a line of pet treats. We also do uh oil as well. And we sell these under our uh brand called Omega Plus.
+
+[25:29] Uh Aura King Salmon, follow them on Instagram at Oracing Salmon. Everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Uh by the way, uh your dog actually tried those trees, Joe. How were they?
+
+[25:41] Did the dog enjoy them? She loved them. Um she she had them a little bit this morning. And you gotta cut 'em up, you know, for a small pup. So um she didn't know what to do with the actual scales or the the the actual the actual fins itself, but she did eat the meat.
+
+[25:57] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And for all you who are not Patreon subscribers yet, we have a really exciting discount coming up with Aura King Salmon that we'll talk about next week and give a discount code, but only to our Patreon members. So there's another reason to sign up.
+
+[26:10] Another reason to join. Aura King Salmon, legitimately delicious. And if you're in uh if you're in New York City, you can get they are the uh New Zealand King salmon that is at uh Russ and Daughters So if you've been to Russ and Daughters and have the New Zealand King, that's Oura King. Just a just a little FYI. All right, back to oil.
+
+[26:29] And back to oil. So uh are we still talking about fifes and music? We're back on oil, right? Yeah, we should get back on oil because music is pointless to talk about because it speaks for itself. Wow.
+
+[26:39] It does its own talking. No. But you hate talking in music. I'm just caving. That's why we gotta talk about olive oil because that's a little more mysterious, and I don't think it has the voice that it deserves.
+
+[26:52] Olive oil is fundamental and primordial to Western civilization, and yet we ignore it like we often ignore salt and we often ignore honey. And those three things, if you have those in your kitchen, you can do so much. And so if you also have flour. I'm just kidding. I'm just I'm just effing about.
+
+[27:11] All right, so before we start talking about it, let's talk about some terms so people get an idea in their head what's going on. Sure. So uh do you want to talk defects or do you want to talk about like No, first I want to talk about what olive oil is. Because it's incorrectly positioned in the supermarket where it's next to all the seed oils, like canola oil and vegetable oil and corn oil, etc. But the olive is a stone fruit related to the peach and the cherry and the plum.
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+[27:34] And in a way, olive oil is a fresh fruit juice and really belongs in the produce section of grocery stores. Uh-huh. So you want it next to the avocado oil. Just messing with you again. It could be.
+
+[27:44] That would be more accurate than next to like seed oils where they have to add heat and chemical solvents to extract the oil. But they also do that to bad olive oil. They do. Um but good, high quality extra virgin olive oil, it must be from raw a raw fruit. And then you get into this whole defect world.
+
+[28:03] Um couple things about the olive I want to say before we start. The olive is inedible off the tree. You can't eat it. All the olives you eat have been cured to leech out this bitter acrid substance called glycosides. I've tried it.
+
+[28:17] It sucks. It's disgusting, and you will spit it out. And so there's a lot of people out there who don't like olives because they're cured, but they love olive oil. And that makes perfect sense because they're really fundamentally different products. The olive oil you take directly from the tree and immediately mill it into olive oil, ideally.
+
+[28:32] So it really is a raw fruit juice in that sense. Secondly, the olive tree never dies. From the pollen that grow from the roots, they can regenerate themselves. And that's why olive trees are many thousands of years old in certain parts of the world, and they can still produce fruit and you can still make oil from them. That said, the age of tree has nothing to do with the quality of the oil.
+
+[28:51] People who say, oh, our trees are 800 years old, so the oil's better than a 50-year-old tree is a very important thing to do. Well, I'm sure you need a certain amount of age, right? You need a certain amount of age for it to bear well, right? Olive trees get to full bearing capacity between 15 and 30 years. All right.
+
+[29:03] So the that that's the magic number, 15 to 30 years after that. What about the architectural structure of the tree and the health of the tree? So you can have old trees that are not pruned well, that aren't receiving benefits of oxygen and sunlight and get really bad oil. So never let someone tell you that the age of the tree is the key indicator of the quality of the fruit. Because unlike the vine, which grows deep and gets nutrients from different layers of bedrock, the olive tree, the roots are only a few feet underground.
+
+[29:25] So it doesn't matter how old it is. It's not getting different nutrients. So uh talk to me. What does the what does the the farming practices pre harvest in terms of how it's pruned? How does that affect the flavor of the oil?
+
+[29:39] The key determining factor of the flavor of the oil will be the olive cultivar used and the timing of the harvest. So all olives start their life green and they ripe into a deep purplish black, and the color of reflects the stage of maturation. The earlier you harvest the olives, when they're primarily that yellowish green, the less oil is gonna be in the fruit, but it's gonna be more grassy, bitter, peppery, and pungent. The later you harvest the fruit, when they're more that dark purple color, the more delicate, sweet, and ethereal the oil's going to be. And there's one is not inherently better than the other, but it depends on what flavor profile you like and what you want to pair it with.
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+[30:13] Is one more likely to have problems, like I would guess the later it's harvested, the more likely you are to have problems. More problems with it on the tree, more problems with it in terms of it the because you're getting the oil later in its life in the fruit, the shelf life of that oil will be shorter than if you harvested that same olive a few weeks earlier. So it's not the protective, like uh the polyphenols and all that that's in the oil that's keeping it last longer. It's the fact that there's also less garbage in, or both? Both.
+
+[30:43] Now, how do they harvest these things? So they just put tarps around it, do they shake them? What do they do? There's different ways. Some can literally hand harvest, and that's one of the reasons why you prune the trees, is to keep them at a at a height that you can manage the harvest.
+
+[30:57] And they'll just use it with their fingers and put it into baskets. Other people put nets down and they use combs to comb the olives off the tree. And then other people use um shakers that grab the trunk of the tree and shake it and that falls off. And there's another method called uh super high density production, where you can take uh a certain a few olive cultivars like the Arbequina, the Koroneki, and the Arbosana, which are dwarfable, and you can plant them in hedgerows and prune them very close to the central trunk so a machine can go over the hedgerow and harvest them at an ideal moment of ripeness. But can you get good oil that way?
+
+[31:32] You can, because you can get it at the right, you can harvest it at the right time, but you don't have the diversity of flavor profiles because there's only like three cultivars that are dwarfable like that. And so people are working on dwarf stocks for a bunch of things now, or they're not? No. And it's debate, I mean, it's economically advantageous to harvest that way because one of the reasons an oil will be really expensive is the way it's harvested or the landscape is harvested at. So like in Tuscany, for example, where they have all these terraced landscapes, they can't even modernize and and use these machines to do it because they don't fit on these ledges.
+
+[32:06] So there's all these different price points you get, and it's depending on the cultivation and the and the cultivar you use and how it's harvested typically. And so uh and I just don't know that much about uh like olives as opposed to like apples. They they people are growing olives on their own rootstocks, or they're growing them on it, are they grafted like an apple? They typically there are nurseries that grow them up to about four years, and then you'll buy from a nursery and plant a four-year-old tree in your grove, and that that's gonna take better to it. Because if you plant it by seed, if there's weather issues, it could hurt the tree.
+
+[32:38] But the roots are the same variety as the tree itself. You can graft so this is interesting, you can create Frankenstein trees where you can graft a different cultivar onto a tree, and from that point forward it will be the new cultivar. Right, right. Because almost nobody grows apples on the on their own roots. Okay.
+
+[32:56] Yeah, you know what I mean? But in in olives, you can do it either way. Either way. Okay. It's very flexible.
+
+[33:01] And then some cultivars are self-pollinating and other cultivars require a pollinator. You mean like a like a like a partner olive? Exactly. So like there'll be a producer who has like every 20 rows of frantoyo he plants, he'll plant one row of pendolino. And so it's like that blend is technically a monocultivar frontoil oil, but really five percent of that is pendulino, and that's the pollinator that at a certain time of the year when there's wind and stuff, it it pollinates all the flowers, so you get a lot of fruit.
+
+[33:29] All right. And so how many pounds of olives does it take to make a bottle of the kind of oil? It depends on the cultivar. So some olives can have upwards of 20% oil in them. Some cultivars have 6% oil in them.
+
+[33:41] In that sense, some olives are used for the table. Well olives that have very low oil are typically used for the table because the yield would be so little. But some people produce oil out of those to have like hyper-rare cultivars, like the Giarafa olive in Sicily is like typically a table olive, but this one producer, Mandranova in Agrigento, will turn that into oil and have like a really rare boutique oil from that. So olives like calamata are the exception rather than the norm that are used for both table and oil? Calamata is not typically used for oil.
+
+[34:09] It's mainly the Koreneckian grease that's used for oil. Oh, a friend of mine used to make Alamada oil. Anyway, uh, do you like that or is it too pedestrian for you, the calamod? Do you like eating olives or do you only like olive oil? I like eating olives, but I don't eat olives three times a day, and I do use olive oil for three meals a day.
+
+[34:25] All right, all right. But I think the olive oil is a little more malleable than the olive. Would most oil olives make a nice high-fat table olive if they were cured or not? I don't know. I have not tasted table olives of so many cultivars because they're really reserved for oil.
+
+[34:41] Alright. I just don't know. All right. So you uh you want to start, you want to taste some oil, you want to talk like actually pull some oils out and taste some oils and talk about how to taste these oils and what we should be looking at? Yeah.
+
+[34:50] So first of all, I want to say my company, um, what I do is I chase the harvest northern and southern hemisphere. Freshness is a key component to quality, and any good, legitimate bottle of olive oil should have a harvest date on it. If there's no harvest date on a bottle and only a best before date or an expiration date, that sends a bunch of red flags to me. Secondly, you want to know the olive cultivars that are in the oil. If it just says extra virgin olive oil, product of Italy, you don't know what olives are in it.
+
+[35:17] It'd be like buying a wine that just says red wine. I do that constantly. No, you don't. And so you want to look at the olive cultivars. And then you want to know the producer.
+
+[35:27] You don't want it just from a general country, because so long as the oil's bottled and shipped out of Italy, it can say it's packed in Italy. But a lot of times those olives come from Spain, Tunisia, still doing that? They're still doing that. So a lot of olives that a lot of oils that have Italian sounding names, if you actually look on the back, the olives are from all different countries. They buy them, ship them to Italy, bottle it and ship it to North America, because we're the third largest consumer of olive oil in the world, but we don't have them in olive culture.
+
+[35:53] And we're like the dumping ground for a lot of unwanted oils from throughout the Mediterranean. We're the island of Misfit Oils. If you want to call it that, you can call it that. All right. Um by the way, can anyone who can grow olive trees make a good olive if they pay attention to what wants to grow there?
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+[36:10] Or is it really that some places can produce better olive oils than others? The weather is such a huge factor. And so you want to be in a place that has the right exposure. For example, like hillsides are really good because you want the water to rush rapidly into the valley because the olive tree, if it gets too wet, um, it's really bad for the fruit. You want it to have to reach for nutrients and reach for water, and they thrive in these dry, arid environments.
+
+[36:34] So one of the common things people do who are trying to grow olive for the first time is they overwater them. And if you overwater it, it'll look like it's dehydrated because it's clogged up and it's not getting to the leaves and the leaves look dry, but it's actually because you're overwatering. So there's all these problems people have. But it's really is, it really comes down to it's like uh a keto, not boxing. You want to work with nature because if you've planted something incorrectly and you're fighting nature, there's nothing you can do.
+
+[37:02] You're hitting on boxers now? All right. No, I'm I'm trying to work with things. I think working working with other things is like a it's like a hack. P.S.
+
+[37:12] working with the weather. You now now with uh with the global warming, it's warm enough again to grow wine in England in Kent. And for Queen Elizabeth's uh 70th or Jubilee, they've released an English sparkling wine, which you can get on like the Queen's website. They're out of stock right now and they don't ship to the U.S., but it's an actual English sparkling wine. No one's given it a taste review.
+
+[37:36] The world is changing rapidly. Yeah, yeah. You know, she's also releasing a ketchup. I don't believe that. It is a true fact.
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+[37:44] And she's also put a uh she wants her 70th anniversary uh prize-winning pudding. There's a contest for making the best pudding that's going to be labeled under her moniker. Yeah, she's gone into the food business. Everyone's getting in the food business. She's 95, she gets in the food business.
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+[37:58] She's a billionaire and she's 95. Why does she have to make ketchup? Because food is maybe the only thing that really matters. All right. All right, what are we tasting?
+
+[38:06] So we're you totally eat the Queen's ketchup. I'm not a ketchup guy. What? Me neither. What?
+
+[38:12] Yeah. And in that genre of condiments, I'm more a mayo guy. I like a really well made mayo is a really special, luxurious thing. Mayo is the universal solvent. Like mayo, you need mayo.
+
+[38:26] Mayo is a way to solidify oil. Mayo's nice. You have any tricks for not having uh olive oil go bitter when you make a mayonnaise out of it? No. Okay.
+
+[38:33] You you can use a more delicate mellow oil that has uh hints of almond and sweetness to it that's not so grassy, bitter, and peppery. All right. But I am not a mayo specialist by any accounts. I love mayo. I love a mayo sear.
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+[38:49] I love mayo. Yeah, mayo's great. Love mayo on a fry. But I also like ketchup. Yeah.
+
+[38:54] You know why? Because ketchup's good. Yeah. Good on onion rings. I love it.
+
+[38:58] I like a great onion rings. On uh bacon, egg, and cheese salt pepper ketchup is really a fundamental. Bacon, egg, and cheese, Shepard boy. Listen, speaking of uh onion rings, went to super duper weenie, John. Oh, finally.
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+[39:10] Yeah, uh it was really, really good. Dax had no, it was really good. It was good. Yeah. I only had one.
+
+[39:17] I wasn't expecting, I wanted the kind of the whole I had the New Englander, which is split with the bacon, so that reminds me of the way we used to have them in New Haven at the Yankee Doodle back when the Yankee Doodle was a thing. But uh, and it was it was really good. But like uh Dax had the some sort of chili dog variant. He had two of them. Uh huh.
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+[39:32] Yeah, but we had the onion rings. I thought it was quite good. It's not a regular weenie, uh, Nicholas. It's a super duper weenie. Super duper weenie.
+
+[39:40] I respect that. Yeah. All right, what do we what do we have here? What's this John's? We're gonna taste two oils.
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+[39:45] Oh no, no, I didn't know there was all these people. Okay, well, okay. We're tasting two at once? No, we're tasting one at a time. All right, well, can we give we can we get Dave?
+
+[39:53] This is not complicated. Don't taste it yet. Oh, Jesus! You just said it was not complicated. I think you have mania.
+
+[40:00] That's not okay. So the first thing we want to do, Dave, you're gonna need that back in your hand. Yeah. Okay, jee bits. Is so first of all, these are in dark blue glasses.
+
+[40:10] You can see this on the screen. Color has no bearing on quality. A lot of people think the greener oil the better, or the grassier or the more vibrant. Well, it wouldn't we but it does have to do with when it's harvesting, it might add some characteristics to the grasses, right? Didn't you say earlier that the color I'm telling you now, finally, and f and definitively the color of the oil is not an indicator of the flavor profile or the quality.
+
+[40:29] Okay. Some really bad oils will add chlorophyll to the oil so it looks greener. Never judge an oil by the color. And that's why we taste out of these dark blue glasses because you don't want that color to have any psychological impact of the smell and taste of that oil. So at your events, you do them out of the cobalt.
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+[40:51] Yeah, like in professional uh Los Angeles, like in the New York competition, the Los Angeles competition, it's always out of dark glasses. You're never seeing the color. Sweet. All right. Good to know.
+
+[41:00] Because I would have not thought that based on the ripening and what we were talking about earlier, so it's good that we That's the color of fruit. That does not correlate to color of oil. Ah. Because all olives start out green and ripen to a dark purplish black, but different cultivars will have different hues to them for a variety of reasons. So you could have a late harvest oil that's green as a day as long, even without chlorophyll.
+
+[41:19] You could have a later harvest coratina oil from southern Italy that will be more grassy, bitter, and peppery than an early harvest tajasca oil from Ligurio. So it's cultivated, it's it's like I was saying before, like there are many forces at play with anything that's interesting. And to say any one definitive thing can be a little silly. That said, I will definitively say that the color of the oil has no bearing on the quality. All right.
+
+[41:48] So whenever you taste, you want to put it in the palm of your hand and cup it with the other hand and swirl the oil. And the bottom palm warms the oil while the top palm traps the aromas. And after about 20 to 30 seconds, you the oil should be warm enough where the volatile aromas begin to lift off of it. And then the first thing we're gonna do is just smell it. Have you done this with Nastasia?
+
+[42:08] Yes. Really? Yeah. She could tolerate what I'm doing right now. You gotta warm it, man.
+
+[42:13] Okay. Nastasi, what do you think of this process? I respect what Nick does. This is That's not what I asked. And this is this is this is supposed to be leisurely and relaxing.
+
+[42:26] And when you taste oils, it's a time to slow down and focus on yourself because the action's happening inside of you. These are all things that I can't do. Okay, so let's smell it. Let's smell, let's smell some oil. I get freshly cut grass and herbs.
+
+[42:48] Do you get that at all? Yeah, it's kind of like a like a hexanol hit, like a like a grassy. Go for the hex. Yeah, go for always go for the hex. I love the smell of grass being cut.
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+[42:58] Yeah, it's a childhood love of all of us. You know what I like? When you don't pick up the grass from before, and it also hits a little bit of the hay, and you get hay plus grass. Green plus brown. So it's clean.
+
+[43:12] You notice it's not waxy, it's not cr it doesn't smell like crayons, which a lot of supermarket oils will smell like. Ooh, crayons. It's not winy or vinegary, which is another thing that's called a defect. And also it doesn't smell like cured table olives. That's fussy.
+
+[43:26] That's your boy, right? Oils that smell like cured ale uh cured table olives have a defect in it called fustian. It means the olives underwent anaerobic fermentation before they were pressed. Um, none of that is in this, and that means there's all signs of quality and cleanliness of the fruit. Where's this from?
+
+[43:41] You don't want to tell me? No, of course. We uh we telegraph everything about every producer on every bottle we release. But like you want to tell me before we go? What what are we what are we tasting?
+
+[43:48] This is from Tusha Italy, which is a small pocket nestled in between the southeastern part of Tuscany, the southwestern part of Umbria, and the northeastern part of Lazio. And it's this little area called Tusha, and this is by a producer called Oleotamia, who's owned by this man named Pietro Ray in this small grove. And this is a blend of his Frantoyo and Lechino olives. Those are typical olives of Central Italy. Now, when you taste, you want to do this method called stripagio, where you take a sip of the oil and then you aerate it multiple times to create to open up the oil so you receive all aspects of the flavor profile before swallowing.
+
+[44:26] Oh trigger alert, trigger alert, mouth noises to come. And this is probably why your first sip tastes the same as your second sip. I feel like we're watching Blue Planet with David Attenborough or something. You're making like it's then I stop and then I swallow. It's grassy, herbaceous with balanced bitterness, supremely clean, hint of arugula, and rocket with a delayed elongated peppery finish.
+
+[44:57] And what causes that peppery finish, which many people think there's something wrong with oil when they taste it, is oleocanthol, which is a natural antioxidant and polyphenol found in the oil. And the more that peppery burn you feel that lingers, the higher levels of oleocanthol is in the oil. You differentiate between arugula and rocket? They're similar, they're just bitter greens. Sure.
+
+[45:22] Walk me through it. You want to put it in your a little bit in your mouth, almost like it's scaldingly hot soup, you know, when you sip it. And then I use my teeth to create um remember Banaka? Yes. It's this like aeration, an aerosol, and you want to aerate it in the mouth multiple times to unlock and open up the oil so you get all the nuances.
+
+[45:43] But is it like but you're the the sucking in, is it Hannibal Lecter? Is it or is it like everyone has their own style? Okay. What's your style, Dave? Uh someone's liver with some fava beans.
+
+[45:54] I don't know. I gotta I can only think about lector now. I was like, I'm gonna try this, people. Trigger noise. That's not me making that one.
+
+[46:02] He's trained. Trained. I just nailed it. Um good oils should linger and have secondary aromas, and you should be able to taste an oil for um a good oil you should be able to taste for like 20 minutes after you taste it. You don't know this about me, but as soon as you say the word linger now, I can only think about the cranberries.
+
+[46:34] I just have the cranberries going through my head and nothing else. You're a music freak. Well, the cranberries, they were great. Um clean, herbaceous, bitter, balanced bitterness, and a delayed elongated peppery sensation. John, you're gonna do it or not?
+
+[46:48] I just did it. Uh I didn't hear you. I did away from the mic okay. Oh, make me trigger people, but not what a guy. And this is like this flavor profile, this kind of grassy bitter peppery, is very typical of oils from central Italy and in Tuscany and Umbria and Northeast Lazio, where they mainly go grow the frantoio, Moriolo, and Lecino olives.
+
+[47:09] And they have to harvest the olives early because of frost can roll in and damage the fruit. So you have to get them off the tree and into oil. Um, usually they harvest in that area around like October 20th or so, but it depends on the weather. Whereas in Sicily, they can harvest in uh late September. Whereas in Liguria, they start harvest in November.
+
+[47:27] Yeah, I used to buy, I still do buy a lot of Sicilian oil like uh like uh Nochelara and am I am I a chump for liking that stuff? I love great clean, fresh Sicilian oil. There's Nocholara oil, you can find coratina, you can find Biancolila, Cherasuola, Giarafa, Moresca, and the very rare cultivar, the Tond Iblaya from the southeast region of Sicily, tondo coming from the word rotunda meaning round, and Iblea from the Iblea Mountains where it's grown. Sweet. Uh by the way, I you said this before, but I'm gonna highlight it, because this is the reason I was super excited to have you on.
+
+[48:01] You were the first person I know to kind of, as you say, chase the freshness. So it's not just a once a year thing when the fresh oils come in for you. It's at least twice a year and more because the season, it's like you were telling me the harvest is depending on where you are, in the northern or southern hemisphere, several months off difference, right? And so you have probably four or five different harvest months a year, right, that you can deal with. Yeah, but typically it's there's two harvests a year.
+
+[48:29] There's the northern hemisphere harvest, which happens in really October, November, and then there's the Southern Hemisphere harvest, which happens in you know, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, etc. Um, and that happens in like late April, May, and maybe the beginning of June. So you have almost four months. So you can chase the harvest northern and southern hemisphere and get fresh oil every six months, which is the for me, that was the only way to build a business around olive oil to have really the freshest oil at any given moment. But you're the only person I know who does that because you're not locked into a region.
+
+[49:01] You're just locked into finding the oil you like. I have the greatest breath of freedom to go where the weather is good and the harvest is good, and that has been like such a blessing for me because due to climate change, you'll have a good year somewhere, and the next year there can be no all literally no olives. So do you like make friends with someone and then you show up the next year and you're like, oh dude, you're all suck this year. Sorry, bye. No, they I have a lot of relationships with a lot of producers that I've built over a decade, and they're very transparent with me because they every producer in the world wants their oil sold in North America, specifically New York City.
+
+[49:39] And they know that we only select oils of a certain caliber. And we've had producers say, like, this year, we're not going to be able to even offer you an option. Um, because they want their oil to be outstanding for that North American market. And we airship the oil in. So, like this oil that we just tasted was bottled stateside on November 18th and sold to the public on December 1st.
+
+[50:04] That's like highly rare. So, how much has it changed in the in the intervening uh two and a half, three months? It's mellowed out. A lot? Not a lot, but you'll see in like one year's time, this thing will be a very different product.
+
+[50:18] But but so like uh part of the change is interesting and fun, like an like an old-fashioned cocktail, and then and then it gets to a point where it's not fun anymore, right? So, how long is the window of fun in change of a good olive oil? Depends on the cultivar and when it was harvested. So if you harvested Coratina olive really early, which has high levels of of antioxidants and polyphenols in it, that oil, I've had oils two years out that still tastes super fresh. But uh Arbequina oil harvested in middle season, nine months out, it's already lost its legs and is kind of flabby.
+
+[50:51] So it depends on the cultivar. It depends if it's filtered or not. A lot of people think unfiltered oil is better. Not true. You want to filter out the micro and macroscopic olive particles and sediment in the oil because what they do is they settle on the bottom and there's water in that, and that escapes and it goes, it gives an off taste in the oil called muddy sediment.
+
+[51:09] So the best producers in the world filter their olive oil. They also don't cold press their olives. They cold extract them. The cold press method where the olives um are crushed by stones and stacked on fiscally into what looks like a 100-layer lasagna and pressed is an outdated method. And the problem is the olive paste oxidizes during that time and those mats aren't always clean and you can get unwanted residue on them.
+
+[51:32] Whereas the cold extraction method, the olives run through a series of vacuums and centrifuges where they're separated by the density of the oil, the water, and the solids. And you can harvest the olives faster, it's more sanitary, it's c it's and you can get sharper oil from more ripe fruit. So a lot of the best producers cold extract the oil and they filter it before releasing it to the public. So I'm gonna ask you a question while you're pouring the second one because I don't want to run out of time. Uh, and because I had to also do some question questions, uh, which you're obviously supposed to chime in on as well.
+
+[52:02] Uh what are your thoughts on uh enzymes to liberate more olive uh oil from the from the paste? Um any of your folks use them? Ideally, you don't have to do that. If you plant the right cultivar and harvest at the right time, you don't have to do that. Some people will add water to the paste to help the during the mallexation process to help break it apart.
+
+[52:26] Uh, and they'll use like cold water to do that. So I've seen that done with great results, but uh the enzymes, it's not like yeah, one of the main uses of the enzyme that I use constantly, Pectanex Ultra SPL uh and Ultra XXL is probably in the secondary extraction after they get the first oil that you're using out, they hit hit it with a bunch of enzymes to just completely wipe out the the fruit so that everything's liberated out from it and they just you know jack the yields. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that would be like a totally different product than extraversion olive oil. Cool.
+
+[53:00] All right, so uh what am I what am I saying? Oh, sorry. Exactly. Sorry, geez, man. For those of you that can't see, I'm doing the swirly dirty.
+
+[53:08] Oh, well, now you are. You were about to just chug it. I was about to chug it because again, okay. So check this out. Now we're in Spain.
+
+[53:16] We're in the Toledo, the area of Toledo outside of Madrid. And this is a producer named Garcia de la Cruz, and this is an early harvest monocultivar piqual oil. And the piqual, it's interesting. Traditionally, this Spanish cultivar historically was harvested very late because they wanted the quantity. It's amazing how like olive oil is one of the foods that's getting much higher quality in the last couple decades, whereas so many other foods are becoming like more and more tasteless.
+
+[53:43] Typically, historically, they would harvest this really late and it would get this smell called pipi di gato, which is this like cat piss aroma that this was known for. And then they started harvesting it really early, and they started noticing that early harvest piquo olives have a distinct aroma of green tomato leaf. Ooh, I love green tomato leaves. You don't like cat pee though? Not a cat pee man?
+
+[54:03] Not in my food. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. And I love I I've distilled tomato leaves because I love them so much. Not poisonous, by the way.
+
+[54:11] That's a it's a myth, at least not in small quantities. That is a really special aroma. Smell that before before I'm so clean. Peep de gato. Now, you know, I've never been to either Toledo, Spain, or Toledo, Ohio.
+
+[54:24] Have you been to both? No. But I've been to Toledo, Spain. All right, so now let's sip this. I nailed it again.
+
+[54:39] Uh hold on. It's real burning in my throat. It might very peppery, not so bitter. It's in my throat. That's the last one.
+
+[54:48] I don't know how to do this job. Do you point your head down when you do that so it doesn't go down your windpipe? How do you do that without sucking it into your windpipe? I love I love how I love how non-plus Nick is. He just keeps on going.
+
+[55:02] So good. They're you aerate it multiple times and then you stop and then you swallow. I think you're like, Dave, I think you have mania. You're inhaling and swallowing simultaneously, which is just, of course, you're gonna choke yourself. You're choking yourself.
+
+[55:24] I like that oil a lot. I wish it wasn't in my lungs, but a lot. So much different kind of mouth noise on Mike right there. So there's just two oils, both harvested in October 2021. One of them is an action bronson collaboration we do, which is this really interesting thing that we keep developing, and we're getting the oil into a market that would otherwise never have never really known, I think about fresh high-quality olive oil.
+
+[55:51] So he's on tour right now on his NABA leather tour, and it's a U.S. tour, and they're selling the oil at the shows. Oh, nice. And it's just amazing to see at a rap concert at the merch table with the vinyl and the hoodies to see like world-class olive oil being sold and people loving it. Is he doing Italian or Spanish?
+
+[56:10] Which one's the Bronson? The Italian at the moment. Now, how hardcore was that Spanish olive oil like three months ago? It was that much more alive and dynamic. It's pretty alive and dynamic now, so says my lungs.
+
+[56:23] I think that's delicious. I would eat the hell out of that. It's great. And it's super versatile in cuisine. Yeah, but I would just pour the heck out of it on some bread.
+
+[56:30] Um is that bad? No, it's great. Highly recommended. Uh all right. Do we have any uh cust like questions?
+
+[56:39] Like I wanna I want to help anyone under I want to help you mystify this. John, what do we got? What do we got in the Discord? We got anything in the Discord? Nothing right now.
+
+[56:46] But what's the best? So, you know, if I buy one of these bottles and you know, pick you know, pay pay the price that these are worth. How do what's the best way to store these to ensure that the flavors stay as great as possible? You want to open it soon. Olive oil should be thought of like a fresh beer.
+
+[57:00] It's a race to the bottom of the bottle. So you want to open it soon after you get it and you want to use it quickly. Okay. When I open a bottle, ideally I want to use it within three months. That would really be as long as I like to go.
+
+[57:13] But for me in my home, I open a bottle and it's gone in a week. I've never had an aged beer I've loved. I've never had like a really, really old like a barley wine beer. Is a key component to the enjoyment of it. And it's a real waste of money to buy a nice bottle of olive oil and then keep it in your cabinet for a year and a half and only use it sparingly.
+
+[57:35] It's meant to be like you're meant to dose your food in oil and drag your food through puddles of oil before it goes into your mouth. What about light and heat? Light and heat both damage it. The the enemies of olive oil are light, heat, oxygen, and time. Um I think sunlight will burn through your oil super fast and destroy it probably the quickest.
+
+[57:58] And so you I that's why all our bottles are in dark glass. Do you do wine bladders for restaurants? We do uh five liter uh containers for restaurants. We supply about 40 restaurants in New York City. Including right next door, Lodi.
+
+[58:11] Yeah. Like right next door to the studio, we we supply that with olive oil. Not named after the apple, strangely. Huh. No.
+
+[58:17] Uh maybe the New Jersey town. Oh, wow. Which is not where the apple's from. Uh Misplace Enthusiasm says you might enjoy this, Nick. Hey, what are those collar things on poultry legs called?
+
+[58:28] And why? Well, in French, John, they are a a manchette, which was that a little little glove? Malchettes, yeah. Or like a little sleeve even. Malsh is a sleeve, yeah.
+
+[58:38] Yeah. And it's just there so your hands don't get uh in filth and because back in the day, you know, uh, it's not like today where it's like you grab a hold of something and you just like fist it while you carve it. It's like, you know, you had to show up at the table, you had to touch it, you had to boo-boo, and it's it's a way to not be touching the food with your hands while you're while you're doing your it's a presentation thing. It's just for show. You know, well, not just for shows, to keep your hands clean.
+
+[59:01] Do you like the little frilly things? They're old though, they've been around for hundreds of years. The little frilly things? Okay. So have you ever watched a cartoon of a turkey coming out of an oven and then when it comes to table, it's got little like chef hats that are cut up?
+
+[59:13] Yes. Yeah, those. We have a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, how's it going, y'all?
+
+[59:19] Uh this is Josh from Norfolk here. Um I've got a non-olve oil related question. This discussion on oil has all been really interesting. So thanks for that. Um I want to do quails, but prepared sort of in the style of wings.
+
+[59:36] I'm considering like batch cocking them and then frying them whole and tossing them. I wonder if you got some advice on best practice to do that. Okay. Here's what you want to do. First of all, I need to know when you say in the manner of wings, do you mean from a size standpoint or from a crispy standpoint?
+
+[59:54] How boneless do you want them? Because like, well, you know, you can totally inside out bone a quail. It is a biznagge to do it. But you can inside out bone a quail so that all that's left are the little leg bones and you can hold on to it, and then the whole quail becomes boneless. Uh so it it all depends on what you want to do, but you can spatchcock it and then rip out the big bones.
+
+[1:00:12] If you do do that, please roast off those bones and use them to reinforce another poultry stock so that you have that uh quail stock, which you're gonna thank me for later. Uh what I would do is I would low temp the quails uh uh, you know, at um get the sticky bones out so they don't go through the bag. You can even ziplock it if you don't have that. And then uh I would do it somewhere in the area between 55 and 57 just to get it up for like I would do it like 45 minutes or something like this. Um because you know, quail's pretty tender as is, except for the legs, you're not gonna do it long enough to comfy the legs out because nobody does that.
+
+[1:00:48] And then I would cool it all the way down and then fry it. We use I used to do that where where I would inside out bone it, leave it whole, low temp cook it, then get this. I would put uh a 30 uh 62 degree soft poached egg inside the quail, then batter the whole quail and deep fry it, and then you'd hold it by the legs and go plow, and the the egg would just go all over the fried outside of the, and that's a joyous thing. I like saucing the bird with the egg yolk. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:01:17] Saucing the bird with the egg yolk is a thing, yeah. But the hard part is shimmying the egg into the into the quail's butt before you uh I just want to mention the frying component, because you mentioned you wanted to fry it. Um you can fry an extra virgin olive oil. The smoke point of extra extra virgin olive oil is 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can fry a lot of things around 350, 365 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, also, yeah, no one actually brings that this is a good point.
+
+[1:01:42] Everyone talks about the smoke oil. Stop paying attention to the smoke oil. I mean the smoke point. Stop paying attention to it. If you're heating an oil high enough to hit those kind of smoke points, you have another problem.
+
+[1:01:53] And also, like a lot of oils, the the like smoke point is listed, but it it's it's not usually the relevant phenomenon. Most of the off-tastes in frying don't come because of smoke point. It comes because uh of the particular, like for instance, canola oil has uh um uh linolinolinic, not linoleic, linolinic acid in it, which is a trash can garbage, rancid fish smell, and it breaks down and causes that aroma while you're cooking. So it's like please, like anytime someone tells you what the first thing you need to worry about is a smoke point in a frying recipe, just it's not true. It's just not the case.
+
+[1:02:36] Uh I mean, it's if you're gonna abuse the hell out of your oil, then you need something with a high smoke point because you're gonna abuse the hell out of it. But it unless you're gonna abuse the t to death, smoke point's not the primary, in my opinion. I and I love like I'm when I make eggplant parm, like for me, that eggplant must be fried in extravagant olive oil. I I don't see what the alternative is to give you an authentic eggplant palm. Ah, all right.
+
+[1:03:00] So, so Patreon people, I'm gonna give you your time next week. I'm gonna get to the questions I didn't get to. So good to have uh Nicholas Coleman from Grove and Vine. Give him what's your website? www.grove and vine.com.
+
+[1:03:11] Chase that oil! Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you alive from New Stand Studios, the Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia De Hammer Lopez, but she's uh joining it from an undisclosed location. How you doing, Stas? I'm good, how are you?
+
+[0:26] Doing well. Doing well. Hey. Uh well, we have we have we can ask finally later in the show the question about whether we were completely in the wrong when we went to that place in Tokyo. Remind me.
+
+[0:36] Because we gotta we gotta ask whether we were completely just being the worst cultural ambassadors of all time or not. You know what I'm talking about? Yes, yeah. All right, so remind me, remind me. Uh joined in the studio with uh John, how you doing?
+
+[0:51] Doing great things? Yeah, everything. What do we have? So we don't forget, because I always forget, what do we have to announce today? Oh, we've got so many awesome things to announce.
+
+[0:59] Why don't we take care of the announcements? Yes, great. So up through Friday through Kitchen Arts and Letters, you can get 20% off the Japanese art of the cocktail. Um I also posted on Patreon and in the Discord today about the Oricing Salmon discount as well as the Grove and Vine discount. So if you are not a member of the Patreon, what are you waiting for?
+
+[1:18] Because in addition to all this great content, you're getting uh these exclusive offers with some of our partners, and it's really great. Then upcoming guests, we've got James Hoffman, uh Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters, Adam Di Martino, Kenji Lopez Alt. And next week we don't have any guests, so we will get to uh the backlog of questions that we have. Right. So anyone that any Patreon question we haven't answered, although John, you should call and see if any are uh what's what's the word I'm looking for?
+
+[1:41] Time sensitive. Yep. See if there's any or time sensitive, like someone has a wedding or something like this. Also, Patreon, like reach out to us if you if you if you really need something right away. I guess you don't have to wait for the show, right, John?
+
+[1:55] But then I won't talk about it on the show if I tell you right away. Is that true, John? It's true. It's true. And joined as usual by the dueling banjo of engineers, Joe Hazen here in our New York booth.
+
+[2:05] How you doing, Joe? Hey, how you doing, Dave? I'm doing well. You sound mellow today. That's uh that's kind of like uh is that like fake new dad mellow or actual mellow?
+
+[2:15] It's actual mellow. Things are good at home. That's great. That's so awesome. Yeah.
+
+[2:20] Uh and of course, uh Jackie Molecules Jack Insley in I'm assuming LA. I don't. Yes. All right. What's up?
+
+[2:29] I'm here in LA. Man of the world, Jackie Molecules. Hmm. All right. But today we have uh we were we were gonna have him on earlier, right?
+
+[2:39] So it's it's not that we had to wait a full year after the book came out. We we we had a little bit of a scheduling uh snafu, but we have uh today on the show uh Masahira Urushido, uh, who I've only ever spoken uh as Massa. I've never ever used his full name. In fact, for years I didn't know he had a full name. He's just masa in the way that Madonna, I mean, who knows Madonna's last name?
+
+[3:01] You know what I'm saying? In the in the bar world, masa is masa and there is no other masa. You know what I mean? In the bar world you think it's act? Am I accurate here?
+
+[3:09] We also have uh a guy I've known actually for how many, like 12, 13 years? At least. Yeah. Michael Anstendig. So they wrote a uh now, so a lot of people don't know this, but uh Hannah Lee and Michael Anstandig are this like kind of like power food power couple in New York.
+
+[3:27] And uh Hannah Lee runs Hanelee Hannah Lee Communications is the name of the company, right? That's right. Yeah. And they uh you might have heard of a bar called uh The Dead Rabbit. Maybe you've heard of it.
+
+[3:38] I don't know. If you've been to a bar in New York, you've heard of the Dead Rabbit. Anyway, so she uh, you know, she helped make the them like one of the biggest bars. She works with uh Massa at Katana Kitten, his amazing bar here in New York, uh, which we'll get into. But here's what I'm gonna tell you about uh Hannah and Michael.
+
+[3:56] They were very early on the very first board of the Museum of Food and Drink, even I think before it was even officially called the Museum of Food and Drink. So very uh longtime friends, known them a long time. How are you doing, Michael? Doing really good and uh delighted to be here. Yeah.
+
+[4:12] And Masa, how you doing? Amazing. Yeah, amazing. Thank you. So came out with this book.
+
+[4:19] The now do you pronounce it the art of the Japanese? You don't pronounce it the way it's written on the book. You don't say Japanese art of the cocktail, you say art of the Japanese cocktail, right? Which one do you do? The Japanese art of the cocktail.
+
+[4:30] Jap the Japanese art of the cocktail. So not so it's not it's the Japanese way to make a cocktail, whether it's Japanese or not. But not the art of only Japanese cocktail. So it's very important that the art go in the right spot. Exactly.
+
+[4:43] All right. So uh we got a lot to we got a lot to get through today uh on on this. Uh and John, we had a couple of questions coming. You wanna you want to hit you wanna hit them up with the questions early? Yeah, why not?
+
+[4:56] Let's do it. Do that before we get into the, you know. Great. All right. Okay.
+
+[5:02] So this is from Warren Johnston. I believe Katana Kitten has one of the Suntery Highball machines for pre chilling and carbonating whiskey. High balls for on tap service. Have you ever done a side by side comparison with a three times force carbonation technique in Dave's liquid intelligence? And aside from the quicker service, are there any distinct advantages for the Suntery machine?
+
+[5:23] All right. Well, go for it, Masa. That's an amazing question. Yeah, and we're gonna get a lot after this on on high balls too. So say what you want about the question, and then we'll get into it.
+
+[5:33] I love it. Well, but the first of all, thank you for having us. Oh and that was very sweet introduction, Dave. And then you are so natural. And then I'm just like so amazed by this, how do you call it?
+
+[5:46] Like MSing? Oh my gosh. We've been doing it for like how many years we've been doing this for? Just so natural. And you're not reading it.
+
+[5:54] No, no, no, no. No, it just comes from your mind. That's amazing. But the trick is, uh, people this is funny. No one's ever asked me about how we do this, but the trick is is that like I have the questions here, and then usually I just have like a couple of notes.
+
+[6:07] Yeah. But uh most of the time I get into such like questions that I I even forget to go to the notes sometimes, you know, but usually it's just for the questions. So fast. Well, this is the problem with my head. This is why I go in tangents all the time.
+
+[6:19] I mean, you know me from the bar. This is why they never let me behind the stick at the bar because I'm just all over the place, you know? Super cool. Yeah, yeah. So okay, token.
+
+[6:28] Tokyo machine. The machine, yes. Uh machine is super cool. Uh, and then this uh financially it's very affordable. So it's kind of like a win-win, and then that's kind of win to that brand, the Santoris that they created this absolutely amazing machine.
+
+[6:43] So you asking about the comparison. So yes, I guess we did. So that we bought the um um uh Schweps that the soda water cross the street from Ride Aid, and it came back and very well chilled. I spit it out a little bit to give it room, and then they put the carbonator, just like you know, the I learned how to carbonate things from uh from Dave. So back in the days that like the uh everyone was using the s uh soda stream.
+
+[7:10] I should not say this. You can you can say whatever you want. Yeah, okay, okay. So that that was like like, you know, then the for the bar in in the very early time, like everyone used it. It was like this is good, but it's almost like almost like a home cooking use, you know.
+
+[7:23] It's not professional. And then I learned that false carbon. Oh, you you remember that was from uh Shiva's competition. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which you won.
+
+[7:30] You won the Shivas competition. Yeah, yeah. The carbonated uh we were weird, nomad. Nomad, and then you show everyone how to uh uh the force. Right with the bottles, yeah, yeah.
+
+[7:38] Yep. And then the the what's it called at the with the carbonator cap, the uh liquid red carbonate. Uh that was an amazing experience. And then it seems like we started using it. Uh anyway, uh uh go back to the answer to the question.
+
+[7:48] So um we tried so that again the false carbonated the a store bought uh soda water a couple of times. At some point, like you can't really add much. You know, you know that the you're not making the size of the bubble smaller. That's how I felt. Right.
+
+[8:04] You know, the the tasting comparison. But the it's it's all about comes down to consistency in how rational that you'll practice basically to you serving hundreds of hajjes for high ball every night. So um to answer to the question that the difference, yes, but you know, I prefer that the machine carbonation. Right. Well the other thing is I think you know, from my perspective, like taking on the kind of carbonation that we did is there look, there's a reason that we were there's a reason at both bars that I, you know, had that we were like I think very good at certain things and then other things we just didn't even attempt to do because there's just a lot there's a lot to maintain that kind of carbonation program, you have to devote a lot of your energy to that carbonation program, which means uh you know y you want to think when you're young that you have uh i i an infinite amount of energy.
+
+[8:55] The uh they don't you don't. You don't. You have to focus on some things. And the Toki machine, I actually believe it's a good machine. I think it's a good machine.
+
+[8:59] Um I think it's also uh it's maybe like a slightly different result. What's what's interesting to me from reading the book that I didn't know, I didn't know you could adjust the mixture ratio on a Tokyo machine. Oh yeah, you can do one to one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh one-to-one, you can do, you know.
+
+[9:17] Because the traditional Toki highball uh Japanese style is a is a four to one, right? A three is it three and a half or four to one? It's uh you know what? That the so I don't know exactly ratio because of the you know when I was young, I didn't, you know, really care that what's in it, or like you know, the the pay attention to those details. So I remember that the enjoying those uh the Japanese highball when when I was you know going out.
+
+[9:39] I tasted it very thin. I mean, like that's also kind of is a kaya or like a little nicer uh bar. The the way they make it, the as you go to the nicer bar, I tasted it more whiskey in it. So like the ratio is much more, you know, like smaller. But if you go out in the isakaya or like those that the casual uh environment in the casual setting, I tasted it more thinner in an obvious reason, you know.
+
+[10:01] It sure saves some money. But um uh from from restaurant bar perspective. So like I'm not sure that exactly that what we do now at the Katara Kitten is about one to five. One to f so so it's light. Hold on, hold on, sorry, sorry.
+
+[10:15] That that's your question. Hold on, Dave. Uh the 12 ounce glass. I'm so I'm so happy that I brought I brought a little refreshment if you guys like that. Oh, nice, yeah.
+
+[10:24] Of course. So while while Massa's getting this, um I'll say also for those of you that don't know, Toki is an interesting whiskey because it built a lot for highball. Oh my god, look at this. So check this out. It's a perfect question.
+
+[10:41] Perfect first question. I mean, this is Massa. Look, Massa. Massa comes prepared. Listen, Massa, like for those of you that have never been to Katana Kitten, Masa is an unbelievable host, and that's part of the bar experience.
+
+[10:53] Is not only the cocktail and the way it looks, but unbelievable host. So uh a well-known bartender back when existing conditions was open, went to Katana Kitten and then came to uh our bar and was like, look, I got a signed uh I got a signed, you know, whatever it was, like the the sake box or something from uh or something signed from uh from Massa with my name on it. And so I just took a piece of fruit off the bar. I was like, get out of here, jerk, and signed it and gave it to him because like we there's no one can no one can beat Massa at that kind of host game. You know what I mean, Michael?
+
+[11:24] I agree a hundred percent. Yeah, there's a he's super interesting. So while oh look at this. Yeah, so I brought some uh uh glass. So well ice, just like we make uh uh back in the katana kit.
+
+[11:36] So uh for uh uh a visual, I uh there's appears to be a chilled bottle of spirit, chilled glasses with ice in them coming in a uh like in a container. Perfectly tempered at ice. Per perfectly tempered, yeah, yeah. Not like look, it looks clear. I'm giving you a visual reference, and you can see it if you're a Patreon member, you can see what's going on.
+
+[11:57] Yeah. Now, I'll say this about Toki. What's interesting about Toki, the whiskey specifically for highball applications, is that it is a very viscous whiskey. So uh it maintains its body uh with dilution. It's specifically designed to maintain body over a wide uh over a wide dilution range.
+
+[12:16] I would d I don't think you were there, Massa. I don't know. I did with Don years ago at the Brooklyn Bar Convent. I we did something with Toki and I was getting to talk to the uh not the distiller, but the new the the US rep uh American guy. And we were what?
+
+[12:30] Gartner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we were we were talking about uh we were talking about like specifically why Toki is designed for uh highball. You know? Yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely I'm so sorry I brought only three do you have a cups okay oh my god oh beautiful so thank you so much Michael and Pai Yeah can I brought I brought enough uh uh I think I brought enough whiskey for another and John we we can we can split oh I like the little twist on time cheers thank you for having us yeah so this is this is what we would refer to as a delicious refreshing drink right but the but the nice thing about um Toki right so like would you say it's fair that culturally at least in the past American bar drinks have skewed higher in alcohol than than the equivalent actual drink consumed in Japan.
+
+[13:27] So like this tastes like delicious and refreshing like maybe nowadays I think many people gravitate towards this and I get older I gravitate towards this kind of drink becoming very popular now. But back in the day there was more of a difference between Japanese perception of ideal amount of alcohol in a drink and American idea of ideal alcohol and drink. What do you think? I'm not sure you know like the I I think that the consciousness was more the experiencing alcohol which is feeling the booze right like may maybe that's what I think. So like today, like you know, like it's not about uh uh thinner, but more flavor.
+
+[14:04] Right. You know, like the kind of the the focus is more on not on the money, that penny that you're spending on you know, like it used to be like, oh come on, like it's it's so thin, you know, like it was I I pay this much and it was another shot, you know, that the that kind of the ratio on the the taste and you know knees. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's an extreme fine line. Here uh Michael, pass it back to John so you can have a taste, please.
+
+[14:25] Sure. There's an extreme fine line with uh booze in general, whiskey specifically, where like it's delicious, it's delicious, it's thin, right? And and and what's nice about Toki is it's a little bit more forgiving if they don't drink it at the right speed. It stays, its body stays good a little bit longer than some other whiskeys. Uh and in fact, we had a question, I don't know who it was from, uh, John, but roughly, uh roughly stated uh was if you were going to make a bourbon highball, what what would you use?
+
+[15:00] And so you'd have to choose one that works well over a wide dilution range. Do you have one that you like or not? What a high-proof bourbon work well, or is there an expert opinion as to the quote unquote correct bourbon? What would you use for bourbon? I think so.
+
+[15:11] Uh I don't I I really don't actually. I I like I like Scotch. I like I like um I like the Scotch whiskey. I like a nice Scotch whiskey. I like Japanese whiskey.
+
+[15:21] Uh I like bourbon too. But not particularly out of make that with uh uh soda water high boy, I just drink itself. Yeah. I don't know. I've never actually it's interesting, I've never made uh I've never done uh like a whiskey soda with uh bourbon.
+
+[15:37] I have one, I have one actually. Yeah, okay, what? Uh I've okay. Yeah. I I think that that makes absolutely beautiful high ball.
+
+[15:44] All right. Well then. That's what it the uh I was making back in Japan, actually. Oh really? Yeah, you know that there's a square bottle.
+
+[15:50] I think that was a 12-year bottle. Everyone's changed their age statements now, you can't tell anywhere. So but the that was like around 2000. Um the square bottle. Um kind of like almost a kind of etched design bottle.
+
+[15:59] It's so beautiful. And then I think that was something they uh used to make um back in Japan. And I I thought it was a delicious. There you go. I see.
+
+[16:12] Actually, uh Jim Beam has uh eyeball RTDs. Yeah, are they well everyone's everyone's on the RTD market now? Japan beat us way to it because they don't have the stupid liquor laws that we have, so it's much easier for them to do RTDs there than it is for us to do it. Have you had the Jim Beam RTD, Michael? I I have.
+
+[16:27] How was it? Quite good. Quite good. Yeah. Now let me ask you this.
+
+[16:30] Are you representing it? I'm just saying. No, no financial interest. Okay. Okay.
+
+[16:38] And you like it? I do. Do they jack it with glycerin? I don't know. Listen, people, if you if you were having trouble with your highball and you're using a whiskey that isn't designed for it, right?
+
+[16:51] Or if you just want to make your drinks less alcoholic but not taste thin, just put a little bit of just trust me, try it. Put a little bit of vegetable vegetable glycerin in it. You're not making it worse. You're trying to get a different effect. As long as people hate glycerin because it was meant to make things cheap, but if you're using it to make things better, there's it's it's has it's not dishonorable to use it.
+
+[17:11] Anyway, um that's amazing. Yeah, oh it's great. I mean, like, and so like uh, you know, when we were doing um like we were doing whiskey soda, we do whiskey soda with a company, and they they wouldn't they wouldn't want us to write uh they want the ratio they want. I would always add a little bit of glycerin because I was like, it's too thin. You know what I mean?
+
+[17:29] Uh Toki, you don't really need to. Like, you know what I mean? Like Toki is built for it almost. In fact, they don't sell it in Japan, right? It's only here still.
+
+[17:36] Yeah. What? I'm sorry. Toki is still only in the US. Uh maybe in the UK.
+
+[17:41] They have in the UK, but it's not in Japan. It's made in Japan but sold here. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[17:46] Let me ask you about Japanese whiskey, because I know you love it. I know Michael loves it. Do you remember when like in like 20, like 10, 2011, Japanese whiskey was so so affordable? You could buy it. We like we bought Yamazaki was nothing.
+
+[18:02] I mean, not nothing, but it was like completely affordable. Now it's as you write in the book, Pappy Van Winkle syndrome, it's crazy. Is it making more difficult in your life to do it? Or does it mean that do you have enough customers come in and want to pay for it and then so it's fine? Or does it make you angry that it's much harder to enjoy for people because of the cost?
+
+[18:20] That's a long question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but I remember, I wish I remembered like you know, like walking to Lucas as I like a 10 years old and the early interests, you know, looking at the shelf and checking out the Sansori's um uh whiskey price. But I remember uh d have you seen those um ceramic bottle, the new year bottle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[18:39] I have one. Yes, yeah. I have one, yeah. I remember that we had s my um my grandpa from mom's side, he used to have um um the watch clock shop, you know, like repairing uh the watches and the clocks. Um and then kind of new year gift.
+
+[18:54] Oh, didn't you say your dad worked for Seiko? Uh yes. But not the clock people. Not the clock. No, for the the new stuff, like the computers and screens.
+
+[19:02] Um the grandpa shop, so like as a new year gift. I think he was giving away those um for those uh regulars that uh you know clients and as a thank you, I think. So like all those like a ceramic model we have I I used to see as a kid, like what's in it. Of course, curious. But like there was a whiskey, so you can't touch it.
+
+[19:19] But I used to remember that the wall to wall over the those kind of uh what's it called? That the Sansori. I think that was the Sansori Royal. That's the inside of the juice. But the new year different shape and giving away to um those uh uh clients.
+
+[19:29] Um next time I go home and I'm gonna check on the shelves. Yeah, check out that shelving. Put it in your pocket because that stuff now, whisk like Japanese whiskey, you can't you can't even touch it. Like I remember once uh even a couple of years ago, we had a uh a bartender, very unusual, an American American, like an American born person who was working in a in a Tokyo bar, which is unusual as you know, and not in an American bar in Tokyo, in a Japanese bar in Tokyo. And he told me that like he goes to the liquor store like every day to see if he can spot one of the limited releases that come out, and then he buys it, and half of his income is actually just retrading limited release Japanese whiskies.
+
+[20:10] It's just nuts. It's crazy. Very risky. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. But apparently, like the stuff doesn't go down in value, you know.
+
+[20:17] Oh, is it illegal to do it? I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. So you don't spill it.
+
+[20:25] I mean, I mean, the the thing is nobody anticipated this boom, including the Japanese producers. So you can't just make this stuff overnight. You know, it has to age for a certain period. So I I think we're gonna be facing this situation for a while. Yeah.
+
+[20:40] Well, I mean, like, in a way, I mean, obviously it's good for the producer, right? I think so. You know, I if I was uh making uh if I'm if I'm the whiskey producer, it's like um Japanese whiskey producer, you know, like I went to buy it. I went I went to buy my uh all my whiskeys. Don't drink too fast, but uh not too slow, you know?
+
+[21:00] Exactly. Yeah, uh now something I want to ask you. So you came over in what, like uh 2007 or something like this? 2008. 2008, yeah.
+
+[21:08] So uh and you write about this. One of the things that's always fascinated me is culturally the difference in how to learn a craft in Japan versus in the US, right? So in the US, we expect that if I'm gonna go do something that you're gonna teach me, right? And uh we get mad if you don't. If you don't teach me, you know, we get angry.
+
+[21:36] You know what I mean? Uh you we feel that uh that the you know the mentor is is not uh is not a good mentor, that they they are not uh, you know, they're not being giving, right? And um, you know, from the few times I've interacted with people in Japan or you know, from Japan coming over, it's very uh different. And you you know, you write it in the book, I'm gonna mispronounce it, but uh um Minaraya, how do you pronounce it? The look and learn, watch and learn, min minar.
+
+[22:06] Min Minara. Minara. And it's a very, very different, it's a very conceptually different, right? It's not about me asking why you do something, it's about looking and paying attention, a completely different way of learning. So as someone who is brought up with that, but you have to train American staff.
+
+[22:27] How does that work? Like how do you how do you split that difference? Do you feel more American in the way you train, or do you feel more like uh in the Japanese way when you're training people? That's gonna be a very long uh answer. So the I think to meet today, uh this is how uh the way I think is that you know, like thanks to this very person, his name is Mr.
+
+[22:47] Asai. He's in the book that you know I really uh show um really gratitude. He was the head waiter in your first big job, right? Exactly. Amazing.
+
+[22:55] You read it. Um so so Asai um told me once and says, like uh how important that like important to be a uh absolute beginner. So I think that the to answer the question, the different side of the teaching and different era that we all uh came from, like what we learn through the experience and working in very particular place in a very particular uh time period. And I I think it's to me, is it up to that how spongy your brain is, how flexible your brain is, or the mental state that they're ready to learn, not to take anything, not anything is that's the uh the very difficult, but how to be kind of not just only receptive, but but the how to take things in to you, you know, like that the as you get older and then you have the experience and you have certain mindset that like, oh, this is the way I like, maybe that there's a way I like to learn. But then when you when you were like in 1819, pretty much my head was like, you know, like that pretty stupid, you know, like that the kind of the airhead.
+
+[24:01] Um and that way that I I didn't take certain way of uh teaching method, and I wouldn't say in this, you know, that the interview that um wasn't efficient to me today. Uh if I look back, I can oh that that's not how you should talk to general generally talk to other people, you know. That that's not nice, you know. But uh back then I I took it like like really uh something harsh words and you know, like attitude so it's me that they're from those uh senpai's essentially, and then and on the way back and then uh on the train, and I was like, I don't know why he was so mad at me in that way, and then I I I trying to do this way, and then it was wrong way to him, and then like they got mad and why why why keep thinking like I never took it personally like the way that like you know this you know like so um which is the way everyone takes it here you know so like I kind of kept like never got like mad at them me in a way it was just like why the curious question why they were so mad why you know sleep on it wake up next day you have to go back to work you know like so you feel like a little oh maybe I don't want to go you know but it show up to work and it's again switches on like you clock in and on like you know like really like mode um in in its own that like setting up but you know that the tables and everything and then keep thinking and then next time you see something he does so many things so many you know like the amazing tricks and um then I think like oh oh that's why that's why I was wrong you know like when you see that kind of success in front of you like how he served and then made that guest happy like you know like really smiling and happy and then then I learned oh there you go that's a timing. That's a timing how you do it.
+
+[25:51] You know like that's kind of sort of the moved to New York sorry just fast forward and then moving to move to New York and then I learned so much from Naran Young and Lyndon Pride at the when I was uh Saxon pro and you know very different that the way I kind of like learned before like so like just like oh back in the school so this is the feel you know that they're learning from them and then they're both from Australia and then you know lived in New York and uh experiencing in New York in the restaurant and bars. So uh I kind of took lots of advantages in from that experience. It's just basically all these ideas that they're something personally I learned the way that from Japan, and that at the same time kind of, you know, just it's not teaching, but it's more like it like a sharing idea to uh staff that with the um something I personally experienced from those Japanese uh sensei from those Japanese sensei and then uh uh Narayang as well. So would you say, because this is the way I think to me, ideal, which I don't know how to do it, but to me the ideal is to teach, I think, which is the heart of what you're saying, is close observation, right? Close observation.
+
+[27:01] And another thing you, a concept you uh bring up a lot, which is uh the kaizen, constant improvement, close observation, constant improvement, and also the value and the love of repetition, the value of consistency and repetition. So, like these are very hard things to teach, right? And so, like, I guess the value of the system you grew up with, although you were young when you came over, but the value of the system you grew up with it's all that, you know what I mean? So, but like combining that in with kind of the US mentality, it's gotta be an interesting problem. Very hard to teach.
+
+[27:36] The hardest thing to teach, the the getting people to love the idea of focusing on the tiny differences in what they do the same way every day, the tiny differences. Because you can't see the tiny differences if you don't do it the same, try to do it the same way all the time, right? Yes. Um sorry, I'm just trying to listen to every single like the uh the questions, but yeah, um the beauty that the art of repetition, just like you mentioned, and then also, you know, the kaizen that goes back to the kaizen. The kaize sometime, yes, something existing and it makes a little bit better than uh existing stay, or you know, like what was it before.
+
+[28:18] But something you set called recipe and then repeat that again and again. And um, you know, so we have a highball menu and then signature cacto menu that you know the the on the menu, the sections or the five high balls and five signature cactus and the five um uh boiler makers. And the top three isn't always the same, you know, like kind of you know stays the same. And I'm sure there's a certain amongst like a certain people, there might be a fear of kind of pressure that oh, I have to constantly change in the menu. I have to keep it like exciting and you know, like that.
+
+[28:56] But what once we made those perfect three top, you know, top uh high balls, and then three signature cactors, including martini, uh Negroni twist, and then uh uh whiskey sour variation, and then high balls that do, you know, the same that we have ginotonic and um voca soda essentially is called melanime soda. Never comes up to the menu, but that there's a really definitely uh art that just like you go to your old favorite place, you know, it could be a diner, could be like in a diver, you know, neighborhood or uh your favorite restaurant, you know, always certain your one of your favorite comes out absolutely same flavor, same temperature, you know, like the same plating, you know, not too much sauce, but like exactly amount of the the right amount of the sauce every single time. And I I think that's beautiful. It's comforting, it's comforting, it's very comforting. So that's that's right.
+
+[29:46] So that I think that's the word that they kind of come back to the service, and you know, while we do it, they to make sure it's comfortable, I think. And approachable, and then it's comfortable, I think. Right. I mean, uh, it's interesting though, because I I think that's true. Like, so you know, at this point in my life, right, I have recipes that I've been making pretty much the same way for I don't know, in 15 years, 16, 17 years, something like this.
+
+[30:14] Uh and um, you know, uh professionally, I mean, not like, you know, at home, you know, but and sometimes yeah, you just have to keep focusing on it because you have to keep sometimes you have to erase in your mind what you know because the conditions on the ground change, and so the product isn't the same as it was when you start. It's crazy. Like you have to still be open your entire life to change because otherwise you can't see it happening in front of you, you know what I mean? Right. I think that the the the mindfulness, but the mind of uh the the kaizen.
+
+[30:48] So that's why you notice the difference from the before. It's just like it's that like, oh, this carrot doesn't taste the same like today, you know, like from yesterday. And then I think um that kind of like from the start, like a beginning of Kaizai, I guess. Like you kind of start noticing uh maybe the difference. All right, so we're gonna go to a commercial break, but what I want what I want to take away, we come back maybe, is uh Moss's idea of the spongy brain when you're young.
+
+[31:11] And I think the way to stay the the the peak thing when you get older people, I don't know how old you are listening, but when you get older, try to get some of that spongy brain back. The hardest thing to do, throw away what you know and try to be a beginner again, no matter what age you are. This way you can you can keep learning. Anyway, spongy brain, we'll be back in a minute. Cooking issues.
+
+[31:32] This episode of Cooking Issues brought to you by Aura King Salmon, our favorite fish. Today we have Michael Fabro from Ora King to tell us more about it. Aura King salmon is a king salmon raised or farmed down in New Zealand. Among all the salmon species, kings carry more fat. And then Oraking is particularly uh rich in fatty.
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+[31:51] We like to think of it as like the wagu of salmon. Uh our fat content's about 25%, so 25% fat tollen. And the salmon it's cured with uh sugar and salt, and it's smoked with manuka wood. It's uh an indigenous wood to New Zealand, and and down there it's very traditional that you would smoke meats and fish with this. And it also imparts what I think is like a pretty cool flavor.
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+[32:13] Like I've picked up the shavings of Manuka, and it kind of has this herbally, almost eucalyptus essence to it. So it's just a little bit different. Oracing salmon, follow them on Instagram at Oracing Salmon. Everybody's favorite fish. And we're back.
+
+[32:29] Uh so uh I had a question I wanted to get to because we have uh uh Michael and Masa here today. So I know you're experts in uh uh Japanese spirits, Japanese products. What do you guys also like know a lot uh about like Okinawan products as well? A little bit? Can I ask you a question about Okinawan product?
+
+[32:48] I think so. Just a little bit, just a little bit. Well, I mean like more than me. Uh which is zero. I know nothing except for the sugar, which is delicious.
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+[32:55] Do you guys use that Okinawan sugar or no? Yeah, we do. It's good, huh? Yeah. There's different, there's so many different kinds.
+
+[33:00] Every brand, every one is a little bit different. Which ones do you which Okinawan sugar do you use? Uh just buying it from uh so we moved to near Palm and I could ask you. And then it's like we found this the Japanese grocery store next to it. This is just sell it.
+
+[33:15] And it's uh from um uh you know, like it kind of like a rock sugar. Yeah, yeah. But um looks like basically the kind of coagulated molasses, kind of looking. You know, like that the not the like rock sugar, like a kind of sharper edge on the cut, but like more like a kind of round, like it looks like a little, you know, looks like something, but but kind of like a little soft, more kind of the powdered edges, but that the dark cane sugar. So they form Okinawa.
+
+[33:42] And but uh because some I've had are very bitter and some just a little bit bitter. Like I don't know which one you like because the the different applications, not necessarily better or worse, just different. Like, do you like it more bitter, more sulfur, or do you like it more like a little less crazy? A little less crazy, I think. I use those for uh uh especially in cooking, particularly in cooking.
+
+[34:04] Uh amazing with the pork. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Apparently they have some amazing pork there too, right? I've never been to Okinawa.
+
+[34:11] I've never been to Okinawa. Someday I'll go. Uh okay. So the question was, and I'll butcher it pronunciation again. Uh Awamori, which is uh so tell so the question was from um Panda Tadoka was not exactly a question.
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+[34:25] Would love it. We could talk about our mori. I had it for the first time this past summer and loved it. Very challenging to get on the East Coast, but would love to know more about uh more about it. So if you guys have something to say, let me know.
+
+[34:36] What do you got? Michael. I mean, for my uh from my limited knowledge, I would say it's uh very similar to uh shochu, but it uses a uh a different kind of uh koji, which is a uh beneficent uh enzyme that helps uh turn uh sugar into turn starch rather into fermentable sugar. And uh I I believe they use uh a different strain of rice as well. Yeah, I forget which which is like a like uh the Thai rice, yeah, like in indica Thai rice or something.
+
+[35:11] Exactly. So that the only my memory of uh uh Awamori, very particular everyone's taste changed right like from like when you were young and in the older and then I I think you get older and then much more appreciation and more knowledge you know you have that before you even sipping something so like okay so you already have appreciation appreciation taste makes things think taste taste um better so uh is like pretty much like so I'm from Nagano the country's heart in the mainland in uh Japan high school I believe no I think it was a high school high school or junior high uh field trip you know like the the everyone's like taking in the uh the airplane for first time and then it's going to Okinawa so that that was Okinawa I think yes and it went to Okinawa and you know what we do like in the 13 15 years old kids you don't like you drink you know like you so um and but you don't know how to drink and then I remember how funky it was and immediately immediately you know but the the way you drink it you know like 1315 it's like you drink from the bottle you know then pass it around and um I remember how funky there was I remember how immediately I guess it um that's my uh Awamori impact uh on my brain to this day until I tasted some uh the modern one uh recently but I wish they didn't change that like certain brands like started making more any you know you can do whatever you want but I like more funkiness and then like more kind of uniqueness you know just to stay as it is instead of oh make it little you know let's do like three times and then oh listen last time maybe you can put in the continuous and it comes out a little smoother you know so you can sell but um that that's my uh what uh well what brand do they ship out here I don't even know I'm not sure that they were you know, like Skernik. They have like wide selection of um imports from the colour. I love Skarnick. Skirnik was great.
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+[37:05] Yeah. But the That's a dis that's a distributor, by the way, uh out here in New York. But they they're they're good for those of you that don't know what we're talking about. Well, big out a big shout out to Justin. Well, but the sorry, this is not uh Mori, but uh we we carry uh the rum from Okinawa.
+
+[37:23] Oh, yeah. Uh but not from mainland Okinawa, but the Okinawa can at the kind of state of Okinawa and the other tiny island called Minami uh Daito. I think that's the name of the Minami Daito, that name of the island. It's called Korkur. So C-O-R, Space C O R.
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+[37:37] They have a green one and a red one. Uh those are unique rum uh from Japan. Uh from Okinawa. And we can pick that up here in New York, right? You can buy from yeah, you can find it in New York.
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+[37:47] So can I tell you, Mike? Like, so this is uh when uh young when you have something the wrong way. So my first experience with sake, I had no idea. Now remember, this is in the late 80s, right? So like in 1989.
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+[38:00] So I'm like 18, 19, and it's illegal it's illegal for me because it was already 21 years old and I wasn't 21. So like uh all we knew back then in the in the US was oh, you're supposed to drink this hot. You're supposed to drink this hot. So we went to the wine store, and somehow someone bought us this bottle of sake, like a little bottle, I still remember it. Ugly bottle, like really ugly bottle.
+
+[38:25] Really bad quality sake. You know, uh and uh and we heated it up, and I went outside to watch a band play. And the minute this touched my lips, I was like, oh people drink this. I was like, this is the worst experience of all time. You know what I mean?
+
+[38:44] And it was many years before I could come back and appreciate it, just because if you have something wrong the first time, you know what I mean? Or when you're young or you someone doesn't prime your head right, it can poison your mind for a long time. It's crazy. Traumatizing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[38:58] Yeah. Uh so you mentioned also um, I know like a lot and mo most of our listeners will already know. Okay, but you have a beginning section where uh where you you talk about it, so let's just you want to dispel or talk about the differences between uh shoju and shochu, like the difference between them, like Korean versus Japanese, like what's going on and the difference just so people know. Most of our listeners will already already know because we have a very technical listenership, but why don't you get into it and then your love of it? I know you could work a lot with uh Ichiko, which is a good company if you want to talk about that too.
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+[39:34] Yeah, about the Shochu and the Soju. Yeah, so the Soju is from I believe it's from Korea. Well, pretty much anyway, like you can make and then as much as you have a respect for the origin, and then you can call it the soju or the shochu. You know, you can I think you can make any shochu in here, and you can't call it, but like you can make it. Are there any rules here?
+
+[39:52] Do we have rules? I'm not sure. Can you make American shochu? Do we have rules? Michael, do we have rules?
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+[39:59] I have rules. Well, you have rules. Um, like we go there there are there are uh soju's that have been made in the US, and you can call it soju, but the not shochu. That I'm not sure of. So if you had to like tell like the main difference culturally between the two, what would you say?
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+[40:20] Here's the thing. Um, confession to make it. Have I ever tried the soju? I'm not sure. Really?
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+[40:26] I'm not sure. Because even when I was in Japan, even I really drink much shochu either. You know, I was I like I like being and I like wine. All right. You you tell the story about stealing all of the wine after the guests leave.
+
+[40:42] Not stealing. No, not stealing. It's kind of gross. But like no, no, back then, like it wasn't gross at all. Like, you know, like you 19 years old.
+
+[40:49] If you read the book, people are like leaving like half glasses of like 82 Latour around with the one you mentioned in the thing, and you're like, I mean, of course you taste it. Come on. Come on. Someone leaves like, you know, $1,000 bottle of wine in the in the you're gonna taste it. Yeah, absolutely.
+
+[41:03] Look at this, like, oh, Chateau La Fit. You know, like in the 89. Um, beautiful, you know, like it's a beautiful one. And it's like, how how come like they're such a waste they wasting money, like this much, like this much? Yeah, you know, leaving in the bottom of the uh bottom of the bottle.
+
+[41:16] He's showing a full glass with his fingers, by the way. I just poured it out and it's like it's all the the segments. You'll let it settle, yeah. Um I've poured expensive stuff through napkins. I don't know whether you guys have done it, but I mean I've poured expensive stuff through napkins.
+
+[41:29] I'm not, you know. You should use a spinzall. Well, that's interesting. It would uh I wonder what how much it would aerate it. I'm gonna think about it.
+
+[41:37] I've never tried to desediment with it. Hey, so go ahead. Yeah. So we're talking about like other shochu. Yeah, other, yeah.
+
+[41:43] So, like, so you're saying you weren't drinking it that much, but you use it a lot now. I do. Um, I think the unique thing about shochu, um, speaking of Japanese shochu, made in Japan. Honkaku shochu, those are a little uh lower alcohol percentage than 25% compared to, you know, like the alcohol. When you say white spirits, you expect like 40% and plus, you know, that the so that's why you get that uh when you sip it or you chug it, you you taste that uh weight.
+
+[42:12] So that kind of reflects in the cocktails as well. Um but that the today, like you can, you know, depends on how what you mix it, but you can make beautiful, flavorful uh drink with hunkakosho, 25% alcohol, which is much more lower, but still it kind of surprises that like sometimes I think that you know, more higher the booze, and you expect more flavor on in the way, but the uh you need to think about uh those hong kaku shochu that 25%. You know, it's definitely slighter, it's like lighter to your palate, the the the way that it calls your mouth, that the alcohol calls your mouth. But lower lower alcohol, but still carries enough flavor to stand up for that the 40, 40 plus percent uh spirits. Right.
+
+[42:53] Difficult to use in a cocktail though, right? I mean, that's why like Ichiko, which is like a 40% like uh sugar. Saiten Saiten, that the that's the name of the we use both actually. Right. So we we use um uh Ichiko Silhouette, which is a traditional Honka Shochu, 25%.
+
+[43:07] Uh you we make kind of like old-fashioned, seasonal old-fashioned style cocktail. So old-fashioned that you expect like a kind of stronger cocktail, but uh the it comes out as kind of a little lighter, but the good flavor cocktail. So then uh we use um uh Ichiko Saiten, which is the um uh higher purified, I believe it's 43% alcohol. And we use that uh for our signature um uh negroni twist. It's called megaroni.
+
+[43:32] Yeah, yeah. You want to talk about that? Because you have a lot of like uh funky stuff in that. You want to talk about the recipe for that? So that's in the megoni number two, which we change the recipe on the way, uh Kaizen, uh whatever.
+
+[43:44] Um so uh Ichico Saitan as a base, and then we add just like the Negrani. So that's a uh portion of it, and then equal parts of that and cafo red bitter, the Italian bitter instead of campari, it's a little bit rounder, uh, and then uh cockto shochu, which is the choya, uh, which is a big uh shochu, uh sorry, big umeshu maker in Japan. Uh they make it this one's called kokuto, which is uh just we oh my gosh, that's just like we were talking about that the uh cane sugar, the black cane sugar, extra age uh uh umeshu. So kind of little richer style of the umeshu. And so we uh dash of uh uh Geneva to kind of give that a little more kind of a little maltiness kind of yeah it's very maltiness stuff.
+
+[44:26] Use the old duff you said in the you call out the actual brands in here, which is interesting, which I think is a it's a newer way of writing. Anyway, go ahead. Uh no, it's okay. So yeah, two different styles of shochu. Um but today definitely I appreciate more um I don't want to repeat the story, but like how I remember from first shochu experience in Japan when you're young, um, to today because I have more appreciation, so uh I get to taste, you know, uh different nuances, yeah.
+
+[44:54] Let me ask you this because I don't want to forget. So Nastasi and I, and you mentioned the bar here, the uh park high at the New York uh the New York Bar and the Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo. Amazing service here. I mean, like Stars, how much did we love working there? Loved it.
+
+[45:09] Loved it. Uh the um the people who uh were the the the staff there was so nice to us. We Stas, how many unreasonable requests did we make? So many. We couldn't you and I couldn't figure out the subway system.
+
+[45:26] So they they did everything. It was it was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. I still remember one of the uh my son Dax came and one of the guys, uh, one of the people who was working at the uh and what's weird is I liked the uh Europe that so the Hyatt is a European company, right? So like the the very high management is European in in a lot of these big hotels, right?
+
+[45:44] But the uh the the staff, most of the staff, Japanese. And remember how mean sometimes like some of the European people were to the we couldn't believe it. Remember that, Stas? Yeah, yes. It was so hardcore.
+
+[46:01] So there was one guy named uh Isagai. Isagai son was one of the bartenders. Uh I don't know his last name. Anyway, he helped us, and when my son Dax came, uh, they were super nice to Dax. Dax was, I don't know, how old is he, Stas?
+
+[46:15] He was like eight, something. He was really young, right? And we were taking him around, and uh Isagai takes off his his uh he had like a silver chain. It's cool, it's like cool shape, takes it off and puts it around Dax's neck. Dax still has it.
+
+[46:30] We call it the Isagai chain. Oh my god. I gotta find this guy. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[46:34] Anyway, that's not the story. So Nastasi and I, before my family showed up and before uh you know her boyfriend at the time showed up, we went, I've told the story on the air before. We went to we were just wandering around Tokyo. We have no idea where we are, and you know, I'm very cheap, so I didn't pay for data. So I had no GPS, I had no nothing.
+
+[46:52] And you know how hard Tokyo is to get around, especially if you can't speak, you know what I mean? And uh remember Stas? They literally gave us a piece of paper to hold up that says, We're idiots, please tell us how to get back to our hotel. Remember? It just said, take me back to my hotel.
+
+[47:07] Yeah. So good. Yeah, yeah. Take me back. Anyway, um so it's like it's late.
+
+[47:15] We'd already gone to one place where we had gotten the whole experience where they wash the ice and they do all this stuff, and we went to another one. And then our host left, so we were there, and we just were wandering around, and we hear, we hear like a noise. So we go over to this, I don't know, maybe a house, maybe a, I don't know, maybe maybe a a bar. We don't know. And we look in, and there's right size.
+
+[47:39] There were people, there was a bar downstairs, kind of, right? No, I think it was somebody's house. I don't think I don't know. I think it was a bar. There was a lot of people in there.
+
+[47:49] And I thought they were in a line, like at a bar, right? And so we knock, they open the door, and we obviously can't say anything. We don't know anything. And they look at us and we look at them, and they all have drinks. And so they just take us upstairs and put us on like a balcony and give us uh like a a buzzer, and then they come up and they just start bringing us stuff.
+
+[48:17] Did we even pay those people? What the hell happens, Dus? What happened to us, Masa? Is this something that happens in Tokyo, or is this completely random? You know, like you feel definitely many people feel pressure and after these like amazing compliments.
+
+[48:31] And that's that's like what we get. No we um if I was living in Japan, working in a hotel or walking in the bar, that's the kind of pressure I would get that all this amazing kind of out of the world compliments, you know, like just like like the what just happened, just like you said, that the impression kind of makes us like kind of makes me uh that would make me feel like like I gotta keep trying. I gotta keep trying. Sometimes I definitely feel the pressure when I was working at Katana Kitten, because when you do something special to one person, and everyone expects it. That's the beauty of you know, like just like the our talent is that like noticing make sure everyone feels special.
+
+[49:07] So you know, like that's that's kind of very unique, a compliment to towards you know, like a certain place, which is Tokyo or Japan, and then when you travel and then like unexpected kind of surprise that in absolute positive way that like remember that people remember those that the you know the your you know the Daxas Chen into you know that the those like a food and the the drinks and came out in right timing that very unxpected situation, which is you could walk past, but like you notice something, and it's just randomly walked in, that randomness, you know, and then you get that something, you know, you don't have to remember what it was, but like there was a food and then the drinks that like something you had, you know. So we didn't do anything wrong? No, no, no, 100%. I I think people in general, whenever you travel to I think like just like people like you and charming and ice, and you know, ask nicely, and then people do a favor for you, you know. Because like I know for sure, like every every once in a while nostalgia, like, man, I don't know if we did something wrong, right?
+
+[50:09] Right? Anyway, uh all right, back to uh wait, John, didn't you say we had more questions for these guys? I don't want to miss them. We had one more question. Uh somebody wanted you to just speak about the trend of koji and drinks and amazaki and and other similar such products.
+
+[50:28] That is uh there's a person, the perfect person to uh answer the question. Uh his name is Don Lee. Um but Don's not here today. And I know pretty much nothing about Koji, to be honest. I know it's it's a starter for many different things.
+
+[50:45] And I know Koji, I know the word koji as Japanese, born and raised, growing up, very familiar sound. But like, but like no, I don't I yes, one point maybe in school, you know, like some uh the the chemistry class or something, maybe maybe they talked about a koji, you know, that but you know you're not really paying attention at the time. So but um what koji when you say koji to me that the the the word and the flavor and the aroma associations go to yes, sake, uh miso uh shiok koji, which is you used in uh lots of cooking. Um and then the amazake you mentioned like kind of sake, so kind of sakikasu, that kind of flavor and an aroma, kind of sweet aroma, you know, uh kind of reminds me of uh the kind of connection to uh koji as well. Amazake, koji, sake, but no alcohol.
+
+[51:41] Um, you know. Um sorry, that's my own. Well, you're you're you're you're approaching it more from a taste perspective than from uh a technical perspective, which is how you should, you know. Right, like it's just like an east, right? Is it so like something lives there, you know, in the in the air.
+
+[51:57] The um kura, uh kura is traditional Japanese house, house, house um uh the structure. So there's a main home and a cura. The kura way you store things, which is kind of thick, uh insulated, kind of like made out of kind of mud, but kind of the more silky way, and lots of um uh the stokes and the grains in it, like to kind of make it like uh structure, uh structurally stronger. So cura, like you know, that the Japanese traditional kawara, uh the roofing and the cura. That's um where grammars, you know, generations and they keep uh uh the pickling.
+
+[52:34] When you open it, you smell it, you smell um very unique. It's not funky, actually. Maybe it could be a funky, but uh to me it's more about cold, even in the summer day, you know, they're just like running around outside and then open the heavy door of a cura, uh walk in, and then you smell that dusty because it's so dusty in there. Dusty, but cool, wet, um, but salty, very particular smell. It's hard to describe it.
+
+[53:12] And you were you were around this stuff when you were a kid? Yes. And then that's that that should have the aroma of colji too, I think. But you grew up in a modern house or not in a modern house? No, no.
+
+[53:22] You go really not from countryside. But like but yeah, yeah, but like I didn't know whether you like uh still lived in a mod. So did you have like an aurory in the whole thing? No, that I I wish we did, but it the that was a little before. So that the I'm maybe my grandpa's house renovated one point when I was like maybe five or six.
+
+[53:42] So maybe that time before it was, but the after that, even after that, I grew up in uh you know, beautiful tatami mat, you know, like that's why I I slept on and um and then yeah, until we moved uh my dad built his house uh literally like uh five steps out, and then yeah, that's my cozy. Sorry. So, like uh do you miss that that kind of construction, that kind of feeling for living? We because like New York is so kind of physically not serene, you know what I mean? It's physically punishing here.
+
+[54:16] Do you miss it or not? I do, I think. Now you told me this, and I miss it. I think. Imagine like, you know, like maybe um a place in Upsea, New York or somewhere, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[54:26] And then built a traditional Japanese house. That could be cool. There was a guy I never visited him decades ago. He built a traditional house in Colorado. I tried to go to his restaurant uh like decades and decades ago before people did this, and he built the traditional house with the Aurori and everything.
+
+[54:42] And like he had a restaurant and a school there, but I didn't get to visit it when I was there. I was kind of depressed. So like on this subject uh of Japan. So something that's interesting. So like uh like I I like we're separated like a little bit.
+
+[54:55] I'm 50, almost 51, right? So we're separated a little bit generation. So people my generation and older, right? Like the people I knew, if you were in Japan professionally in the hospitality world, and you came to the US, you didn't go back to Japan, right? It's like it was kind of like a one way, it's kind of like it's you had to almost break tie almost.
+
+[55:17] I don't know, it seemed weird, right? But now it's completely different. So it could when people were coming in Japan 15 years ago, they would hire like a Westerner to come open something for the concept, but not necessarily a a Japanese person who had gone somewhere and come back. But now it's totally different, huh? What do you think is is the change?
+
+[55:37] I mean that that sounds really interesting, really fun. I think it's I think it's amazing. Yeah, just like you said that the um just like a shingo. I think it shingo uh go con I think I I think he's like a perfect example. You know, he travels and uh lived in New York, and now how successful he is, and he opened in the barn in Shanghai and uh Tokyo as well.
+
+[55:59] Um but 20 years ago, this never would have happened. Right, and then Sol Run and the uh Sol Run as well, I think he Yes, he lived and worked in London and he came back. And uh Gen Yamamoto, um, I believe I've been to his bar, it was beautiful. Um also he worked in New York and it went back and off me in his bar. So um I think it's I think it's amazing.
+
+[56:21] So would you ever open a place in Japan? That'd be super cool. That'd be super cool. You know, like imagine like if you have I have something in there, so I get to see my family, maybe half of the time. And you know, then my family can travel with me in half of the time.
+
+[56:39] Um yeah, that'd be cool. The cool thing is you don't need a liquor license. Really? That's crazy. Uh wait, so a couple of things I will be remiss.
+
+[56:48] One, uh, you said that when you're make a daiquiri, you like to hit it in the vita prep for a little bit to aerate it first. I actually think that's a really good idea. Uh, Garrett Richard, who worked with me, he likes to sometimes pre-aerate with uh those little those little handhelds. Uh I think it's a good idea. I think it's a very good idea.
+
+[57:05] But do you actually do I didn't I never asked you about this? You actually do that behind the bar whenever someone orders a daiquiri off menu or or only sometimes? Sometimes. Yes. I think it's a good idea.
+
+[57:13] Yeah, it's cool. You know, it's just random. I think that I made up for my uh friend Stelo. Uh remember the time that he he came and he uh he was working for uh banks run back then. And um, you know, I'll make it something special.
+
+[57:28] You know, just just we thought about it and just and did it. Yeah, now I feel I gotta set the record straight also. Like uh, look, so the hard shake, right, and the cobbler shaker. I'm still obviously I know you love the cobbler shaker. I'm never gonna get my brain around the cobbler shaker.
+
+[57:45] For those of you that don't know, that's the three-part strainer. But like it's very Japanese, right? I mean, where it came from is not important. It's very Japanese using the cobbler shaker. Um so many years ago, the people everyone was talking about uh the hard shake, and um what happened was is uh Ueda San at the tender bar, even at the time he was maybe in his 60s, right?
+
+[58:11] And everyone was talking about the hardshake as this technique to get a certain kind of flavor in a cocktail. But uh the he not him, but Americans built around him this mystical concept of what it could do, and then Greg Bohm actually, your partner, my old partner, shipped him over here and he did a class, and I came out saying that I didn't think that the hard shake had any kind of meaning in terms of how it made but it it makes me sound like a bad guy, right? So the thing is I think he was very he looked very good when he was shaking. I just don't think that his particular shaking technique made the drink better in a way that we should focus on his technique in particular. I just want to clear clear up my perception of what he was doing, and it is true, I believe that aeration differs, it's more dilution, doesn't change that much depending on what kind of anyway.
+
+[59:12] Anyway, I just want to clear up because I know that like people have said that, and I never meant to be disrespectful to him or his work, just I'm saying, you know. But anyway, but you have your own version of the of what you call the hard shake. But for you, it's also you care more about aeration. You want to talk about what it means to you, the term hardshake, because you mentioned it in the book several times. I think I think I think as your experience, you know, like that doesn't matter.
+
+[59:38] You walk into this small bar or like a big high volume bar. I think as that shaking or preparation, a certain kind of like you know, the person's style of the shaking, and I as that theatricalness becomes a part of the experience, uh what essentially comes uh down to in front of you, that the glass sitting in nice and cool, you know, that they're either some people even like double strength, where it's got the strainer, but the hole's big, so it's just like you know, it comes down and the catcher with the some tea strainer. Or directly from you know, heart shake to you know the still kind of vigorous straining mode, and you know, like that comes down and then there's a shaz floating on top, and some people like it, some people don't like it because of the way that it comes to your mouth and like the melts and kind of watery, tastes watery. So I think it everything comes down to even to me that the you know, like those the kind of straight, sharp uh shoulder, straight shape cobbler shaker to like a just like today, that round shape. Does that taste um different?
+
+[1:00:44] Maybe to my feeling that like you know, rounder, maybe rounder, you know, that the the the sh the um let's make it a tiger in the heart shake. And then if I make uh myself the exact same ratio, same amount, same amount of ice, not the how many, which is literally the same amount of ice. Make sure your hand is when you first grab it, your hand is warm enough, not the second shake that your hands are colder. So kind of to that level and make it too different from the the straight shape uh cobbler shaker to round the one. Maybe a random one tastes a little rounder, and then the straight shape might taste a little bit more um uh refreshing, or you know, like a more acidity comes out.
+
+[1:01:22] I I don't know, like a kind of um uh feeling to me, but um, I think it's kind of part of experience and part of it. Oh, how come he's shaking so hard and how come he's not spitting anything and on his white jacket and it kind of yeah so oh I have very I have almost zero time so on on the way out what is it describe first of all uh I only know how to walk there. What's the address of Katana Kitten again? I only know how to walk. 531 Hudson Street.
+
+[1:01:51] So it's on Hudson Street between uh Charles and um oh my gosh, what's that called? It's a Charles and then the 10th. Charles and the 10th, yeah. And uh the book uh with Masa and Michael Anstanding, uh Japanese Art of the Cocktail. You can get it uh on discount at Kitchen Arts and Letters from our Patreon.
+
+[1:02:07] But on the way out, uh describe as we're bleeding out here the Hinoki Martini, how it looks such a pretty drink, so beautiful. Describe in in the sake box. That is very well made dry martini. But a little touch of a Japan. Delicious.
+
+[1:02:24] Yeah, look at his book to see a picture of it, and then go to Katana Kitten and drink one. Thanks guys for coming on. Hope you had a good time. We'll see you next week. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking New Shoes coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center and New Stance Studios, joined as usual with Nastasi, the Hammer Lopez in person today. How you doing? Good. Yeah?
+
+[0:22] Doing well? Great. Got John here with us. How you doing? Doing great.
+
+[0:26] How how has your customer service uh experience been these days? It's been good. I yeah. I can't well, yes. I had some been getting good feedback because I'm awesome at my job.
+
+[0:35] But uh for everyone. Um for everyone that has a spinzall, your I need to make this announcement now because I've seen this too many times. The clear plastic bowl that goes on top is meant to come off. You are supposed to clean under that. Um so if you can't get it off, try running a little warm water to dissolve what's under there and give it a clean.
+
+[0:59] If you if you can't get it off, that's like I'm just imagining someone like not changing their underwear for so long that they can't get it off. Yeah, I had that call last night. I'm gonna have to do it again with them tonight. Yeah. Nice.
+
+[1:09] All right. All right. Uh joined uh in our uh faraway booth with by Jackie Molecules. How you doing? I'm great.
+
+[1:18] How are you? Where are you this? Where are you today? Where? Where?
+
+[1:22] I'm in LA now. I know the fun the fun times of me being in the new city every week are probably over. I'm just saying home in LA. I like LA though. I do.
+
+[1:30] I like LA. You do? I do. I do. I feel like you're always ragging on it.
+
+[1:35] I rag on every place. Listen, because jealous. It's like this. It's like my wife's like, you make fun of the music I listen to. I was like, I make fun of all music.
+
+[1:42] I make fun of it all. You know what I mean? It's like I like I think LA is, I mean, I I couldn't ever live there because uh, you know, my family will never, you know, certain members of my family will never ever let me move, but I like LA. I love New York now. I decided yesterday that I like New York again.
+
+[1:59] Yeah. Okay. I like I like being a New Yorker. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[2:02] Maybe let's bring uh Joe Hazen. Joe Hazen running the panels here. How are you doing, Joe? I'm doing great. How are you doing?
+
+[2:07] All right, how do you feel about New York? I love New York. I've been here for 21 years. And um, you know, I'm raising a family, and who knows? Maybe we'll stay.
+
+[2:16] Who knows? But yeah, but also, um, happy international women's day. Oh, nice. Happy International Women's Day. Nice.
+
+[2:22] Yeah. I don't know why I suddenly I'm okay with New York again. I don't know why. I was walking down the street, and I was like, you know what? I'm back.
+
+[2:32] Uh because for like a couple years now, I've just been like, oh crap on this place. That's exactly how I feel every day. There are two piles of human feces on my block, and I I it I just die inside. And then somebody raided the empty building next door, took out, you know, used big fryer oil thing. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[2:50] It's been sitting in this abandoned building from the club. I mean like a cube tanner. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And dumped it all over the sidewalk.
+
+[2:55] Nobody is cleaning it up, so it's just like festering away. Let me guess who let me guess who cleaned it up. No one. Your dog. Oh, I am very good about having her avoid that, but man, I guess.
+
+[3:04] Oh yeah, hey, listen. It's not that New York's any cleaner because it's still a giant filth pit. We're having issues with this kind of stuff right now. If you are a human being and you visit our fair city, don't let her food. Don't let her food.
+
+[3:14] Don't let her food. Please don't let her food. Don't break glass in the streets either. Don't break glass in the streets. But listen.
+
+[3:19] Yeah, when you come to my neighborhood and go see the basketball game, like, don't let her on my block either. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, here's the deal.
+
+[3:25] First of all, like we have rats. Like, I love this outdoor dining McGill garbage that people have, like the whole idea that it's great for business. It, you know, whatever. Someday we'll be the Paris of New York or whatever the hell we are. I think they're getting rid of the What?
+
+[3:39] Yeah, that's what you said. Look it up. Look it up. Look it up. They said it on us.
+
+[3:44] Look it up. On SNL they said it. Yeah, that's where Nastasi gets her news. Look it up, I want to know. But then um, but rats are living underneath those things because they were built by without care for that.
+
+[3:56] So there's rats. So if you litter food, first of all, the rats get much worse. That's one. Two, a lot of us have dogs, right, Joe? Right?
+
+[4:05] Yes. John, Joe, dog. Dogs. Guess what dogs eat? Filth off the ground.
+
+[4:09] They they they eat the aluminum, because dogs don't really have as developed a sense of taste as most of us do. It's just they smell it, right? So if there's food on that aluminum foil, they just eat the foil and they choke it down. They don't care that it tastes like aluminum foil because that's not what they're in it for. Whatever.
+
+[4:24] I'm just saying. Under the new proposal, not all outdoor dining would be affected. Umbrellas and other barrier setups that are not considered full house-like structures would still be permitted. Current restaurant sheds would not be grandfathered in under the DOT's plan. But whose proposal is it?
+
+[4:39] And who does it need to pass? Here's the other like little secret. Julie Shipper, director of the Department of Transportation's open restaurant program. All right, so you need to contact Julie Shipper if you have an issue with this. But my the thing about it is that almost nobody did it legally.
+
+[4:54] Like almost nobody, and by legally, I mean no one respected the distances you need between the like uh outdoor lampposts and like providing enough walkway for people to get past. Whatever. I'm not saying we did, but I think it's been a net positive. What do you think? Yeah.
+
+[5:10] Yeah. Yeah. Net positive. All right. So listen.
+
+[5:13] Patreon listeners, call in your questions to 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. We'll take your calls. I mean, preferably cooking related, you know, um, I guess. Uh, and today is uh is the is the guest list cooking issues because we're gonna try to get through some of the questions that we've been behind on, right?
+
+[5:35] Yeah? Yeah, yeah. No tangent Tuesday. So it's the thing. You know, but listen, you can't have listen, Taco Tuesday is supposed to be every Tuesday, and we only do the show on Tuesday, so you can't have no tangent Tuesday.
+
+[5:47] Once a month, it's no tangent Tuesday. It's gonna be a thing you just watch. I yeah, I concur to that. All right, all right. Uh so uh let him know who's coming up.
+
+[5:58] Let him know uh let's do it all the uh what's it called out of the way, John, all the stuff. All the announcements. So coming up next week, we've got Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters. So we're gonna be talk uh discussing classics in the field. Let us know what you would like to talk about, and we'll you know get some uh good book list tailored to it.
+
+[6:15] After that, we'll have Kenji. Little word of advice. Get it to us before Monday so we can get Matt the information on the Monday. It's okay to like, it's okay to like bomb me like 20 minutes before the show and figure out, but like like let's give Matt a little time if you have a question you actually want him to look into. Yes, thank you.
+
+[6:32] Um I want to tell Nastasia the story about Kitchen Arts and Letters, and the guy just swiped that book from you. Uh Kenji Lopez is will be on the week after, uh, coming on Monday. And then we got James Hoffman. When you say his name, do you supposed to put the alt or you're not supposed to put the alt? I don't know.
+
+[6:47] I put it there because it's published on everything, so why not? But you didn't just say it. You just said Kenji Lopez. Oh, did I? Oh, I meant to uh Kenji Lopez Alt.
+
+[6:53] Sorry, meant to say that. Try to, yeah. Okay. My bad. Uh James Hoffman, Adam Di Martino, Oliver Millman, and hopefully Tanya Hopkins coming on.
+
+[7:02] And also remember we got the Ori King uh salmon discount and Groven Vine. Check uh the Patreon post about that. By the way, that olive oil, good. So good. Delicious.
+
+[7:11] Good olive oil. Really great product. He's not even paying me to say so. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[7:15] True. True. Um, but if you aren't a Patreon member, you don't get access to our awesome discounts. So sign up for our Patreon. Go to Patreon.com/slash cooking issues and you can join Fresnel's $5.
+
+[7:29] Except he didn't like that you put words in his mouth. Dave. He also put words in my mouth, and he called me Manic. Okay. So fair is fair in uh podcast and whatever in the heck else.
+
+[7:39] Yeah. Are you gonna tell your story? Tell your story. So Nastasia, we were at Kitchen Arts and Letters the other week, and you know, we're there talking with Matt and everything. And guess what we're talking about?
+
+[7:48] Pie! Actually, I walk into the store and I'm like, Matt, I'm not here to talk about pie. And then of course that ended up happening, but only a little bit. But uh Matt showed Dave this book that Dave really liked and was almost gonna buy, and then he was like, No, no, no. I'm gonna it's gonna be my reward to myself, you know, after after I do it.
+
+[8:02] And there were some other people in the store, and I guess they were eavesdropping, so they ended up buying it out from under Dave when Matt said, you know, it's like I'll try and you know keep this aside for you for when you come back. Yeah, good job. Good job keeping it aside. Oh my god. It was awesome.
+
+[8:20] Wow, wow. It's like the new that's like what we used to do in the record stores. Yeah. Oh man, geez, Louise. He said you could borrow it, Dave.
+
+[8:28] That makes it feel better. Oh, oh, oh, thank you. Oh uh you want to tell him the other book store we went to for the first time, both of us, because we're troops, because we're stupid. Bonnie Slotnik's down in East Village. Great store.
+
+[8:38] Yeah, great store. Why have we not been? Because we're dumb? I think so, yeah. Great store.
+
+[8:41] Yeah. Yeah. Love out-of-print books. I know I'm not allowed to talk about it, but uh I I did talk to her about pie. Yes, you did.
+
+[8:48] Uh, I also talked to her about my new micro obsession with guardian serviceware, vintage, uh, aluminum, uh, cooking and serveware. So if any of you, if I don't have time to today, which I probably won't, uh, and you are interested in me waxing infinitively, you know, forever about uh Guardian serviceware, then ask me a question, and we can get to it on no tangent once in the month Tuesdays. All right. Okay. Uh from Castro by the Shore.
+
+[9:18] Uh to me, I believe you own and use a Breville Polyscience control freak. Uh I don't like the name though. You you like that name? Control freak? No, no, no.
+
+[9:28] Why am I a freak? What makes me a freak? I mean, accurate, but care to share your favorite cooking programs or favorite way you use the freak. Uh okay. Let me say this.
+
+[9:39] So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, the control freak, and this is gonna come up later with um others, because someone later in the in the show asked me about induction units for their kitchen during a remodel. But the control freak is just a standard plug into the wall induction. When I say standard, I mean it takes a standard plug, like 110 or 120 US voltage plug, plug into the wall. So it's limited to 1800 watts of power, roughly. That's what you're limited to.
+
+[10:07] How many watts you pull actually often, depending on the equipment, depends on the exact voltage that your your house happens to get. And it's gonna be somewhere between 110 and 125 in that range. RMS voltage. Please don't get me, don't get me. Don't get me.
+
+[10:19] So um so what's nice about the control freak is it's got a little dot in the center, like a spring-loaded dot, and and that measures the temperature of the pan that you're using, and then it has kind of a standard induction uh ring around it, and induction, of course, heats the pan directly by uh I don'm not gonna get into how induction works. Now, uh what's nice about it is it's got uh you know Philip Preston's PID, you know, temperature control algorithms built into it, and it's got a probe, so you can can you can control it based on the probe, you can control it, and it's by far and away the most robust induction burner I've ever used. And I'll talk about that more. In fact, maybe I'll just combine them, I'll combine them in, right? Let's combine them.
+
+[11:01] Where's the who asked the question on uh on um uh on um Mark Siegman? Let me read it. We're doing a kitchen remodel in late April, and we'll be without use of the kitchen for six to eight weeks. I need to buy a hot plate slash single burner. I assume induction is the way to go, but do you have any brand recommendations that won't break the bank, i.e.
+
+[11:21] no brevel control freak or features that it ought to have things. Okay. So now I've always complained about the control freak, not because of the price, because full awareness, like they used to have this. Uh remember that lady, Stas? The their old brand rep, the Australian actress.
+
+[11:38] Yeah. Yeah. So she sent me one. I was like, I think it was after. Oh, you didn't go with me.
+
+[11:44] I was with Chris Young from Chef Steps, and they had their new uh blender pitcher out, and she was like, This thing's indestructible. And so I put it on the concrete ground and started literally jumping as high as I could and slamming on it. And of course, I scraped the corner off of it because nothing's indestructible, which was my point to her. And it was early in the morning. I had not been drinking at all.
+
+[12:05] I don't know what got into me, but I was hyped up to do my thing. So I was hyped up, you know what I mean? And she was, uh, she sent me a control freak. Yeah, true. Yeah.
+
+[12:13] There you go. Uh and by the way, speaking of ruining Breble products, if you put your control freak right next to your high output gas uh, you know, burner, stove top, which I did, you will melt the side of your control freak. Now, my control freak still works like a champ, but it looks like uh it looks like a Dali painting on the on the right side underneath, you know what I mean? Um that said, if you did that to any normal induction thing, it would be toast. The the one of the complaints people have about the control freak is that it's too tall, it's too big, right?
+
+[12:48] It takes up a lot more room on the counter. And that's because the failure mode of most induction units is they overheat. The electronics on the inside overheat. So the the control freak never overheats. It keeps going.
+
+[13:00] And so this is answering kind of the second question first. I bought a cheap induction unit on um the internet recently. I forget the exact brand name. I should have put it in my head before I came, but I I didn't. I specifically bought it because one thing that the control freak can't do that really pisses me off is you can't set a wattage.
+
+[13:17] You can't say, I want to dump 1200 watts into this item, right? And that's not necessarily useful for you, the average consumer, but it is useful for someone trying to write a cookbook and who is trying to equate induction units and gas units based on BTU outputs and relative efficiencies and trying to calculate relative efficiencies. It's very much useful for me to know exactly how many watts are putting in. But what I noticed was is that uh as soon as this cheap induction, when I say cheap, like 60, 65 bucks, 70 bucks, as soon as it started to get warm at all, it was wasn't putting out anywhere near the wattage that uh it was rated to do it and that it said it was putting out. Uh so it was useless for me for calculations.
+
+[14:00] Uh I bought a what's called a kilowatt meter, where it's basically a plug that you plug into your plug, and that and then it's got like a little screen on it, and then you plug whatever you want in, and it registers how many watts you're using. You need to get one that's, you know, that'll work up to 1800 watts, but but there you go. So that's the one thing that kind of ticks me off about the um about the Brevel. The other thing is is that uh it has the ability to store programs, but the programs uh I've never used them. Uh I think it's a real missed opportunity by Breville because they can do whatever they want, right?
+
+[14:31] So you could set a particular ramp to a temperature ramp, you could do all of this stuff and do really, really funky stuff with it. Um, but they don't really let you do that. They basically let you just do kind of simple programs. Huge, I think, missed opportunity. If you had like a uh desktop software and you could actually control the stuff, I think it would be amazing.
+
+[14:49] And they could still do that because it's firmware upgradable. So for me, the USB key, I don't use programs. Um I'll also tell you this. This is not published anywhere. The what the way that the induction uh the control freak can has three settings basically of how fast it's gonna heat your product.
+
+[15:07] There is a slow single flame unit, a medium double flame unit, and a triple. Heat it fast, right? And what I re what people do, if you I've done this, I've taken thermal imaging cameras and put a pan on a uh cast iron pan, which heat very unevenly, despite what anyone tells you, they're the least even heating things on Earth, unless you're heating it in the oven, in which case they heat very evenly because it's in an oven. But when you put it on an induction burner, you get a bright donut of overheated. And if you if you put uh a cast iron pan on an uh a Breville control freak and crank it on high fast, and and you do it to a high temperature, you'll see a ring where you've effed your uh seasoning right where the induction thing is, because that's how hard it can overheat because it's it's powerful, right?
+
+[15:54] Uh anyway, so I recommend even if you're heating up to a high temperature, putting it on medium or even low for your cast iron. And then once it's at temperature, then you can move it up to fast so that it responds faster to adding food. Does that make sense, John? Yep. Okay.
+
+[16:09] Uh the other thing is that when you don't clean your sensor very well, there is a good five, six degrees difference between a clean sensor and a not clean sensor in what it's reading at the bottom of a pan, as as registered by how hot does it say when it's boiling water. They also know that the sensor is not gonna be that uh accurate. So 212, really it boils at about sensor temperature 210 on my unit, anyway, in Fahrenheit. So the wattage on slow is 585 average watts, as measured by me in a kilowatt in my in my plug. The medium is 1181 watts, and the high is 1735.
+
+[16:47] The things that the control freak is awesome at that you can't do anything else is it's a monster at keeping your pressure cooker right at the right uh level without having to worry about it, and then turning off when you want the pressure cooker to turn off. So you just don't have to worry about it. I still sometimes bring it up to temperature on my regular stove, put it on the induction on the control freak, I walk away from it. It is the world's greatest thing for sweating onions, hands down, because you just set the temperature you want the onions to sweat. For me, that's like 230, somewhere in there.
+
+[17:15] You walk away from it, stir it every once in a while, freaking genius. You wanna be cheater, you want to do your artichokes, you want to do your, you want to do your lightly crispy like carchaufi in a pan and you don't want to have to worry about it? Control freak, because you can set exactly your ramps right up to it, gets it going, steams it, pull it off, sizzle the bottom. It's a genius uh thing with that. I do a lot of things like that.
+
+[17:37] That's like, or like reducing tomato sauce. Oh yeah. You never burn a tomato sauce when you're reducing it on the uh uh in the control freak. So that's the kind of stuff that I like. Stuff where you want to not have to worry about scorching the bottom of it or you need a fairly accurate temperature.
+
+[17:53] Is that a good answer? Great answer. All right. From Positive MD, uh favorite pizza sauce recipe. I have a friend that's been making Neapolitan style pizza, and it's been difficult for him to get more flavors slash sweetness in there without a lot of sugar.
+
+[18:07] Uh well, I was it did this come in in time for Magoyan and we just missed it? We didn't yeah, we just had too many questions. From the Magoyanator? Yeah. So uh this morning I reread the modernist pizza section on it.
+
+[18:20] Uh by the way, I have not yet tried the Bianco de Napoli tomatoes, but I bought them. Oh, okay. And I'll have to say, I've been tasting, you know what Wiley likes from stretch when he was you he uses uh what's it, moti? Muti. You know that brand of tomatoes?
+
+[18:32] Oh, I think so, yeah. Yeah, he uses that. I think tomato technology has come a long way since when I did my first deciding what I liked and what I hated way back in the day. It used to be that I avoided like the plague any tomato packed in um any tomato packed in puree. But I think there are good pureees.
+
+[18:50] It depends on whose puree it is. I remember the old, the old ones I used to test and stuff. You remember how crappy at the FCI the the whole tomatoes in puree tasted? They tasted tasted like, yeah, it tastes like you were sucking on like metal. Yeah.
+
+[19:03] Garbage. Uh I know a lot of people now also hate calcium being added to their tomatoes. It doesn't bother me. You guys have any because it's only a little bit. I don't taste the bitterness from the calcium, but a firmer tomato doesn't bother me as long as it's moderate, moderate amounts.
+
+[19:15] I agree. Um so what they say, and what I agree with is that nearly everybody makes uh uh their sauce with uh canned tomatoes. Because unless you're growing your own tomatoes and only want to make pizza for one month of the year, you're gonna use canned tomatoes. You know what I mean? Um if you don't, make sure you take the skins off because skins taste like garbage.
+
+[19:35] Uh they said something that is interesting. They believe that, and this is kind of strange, right? They believe that Neapolitan, see, I don't have they're cooking with ovens that are hot enough. And since I unhot rotted my oven, my oven's not that hot anymore. My oven's now just like a 550 oven, like a like a chomp like a jerk, like a weasel, like a nothing.
+
+[19:52] Weakness. I mean, I might as well, I might as well just like I might as well just like I don't know, put my put my head through this glass window and walk home. You know what I mean? Because that's all I deserve. Yep.
+
+[20:02] With my 550 degree oven, like a chump. Anyway, uh, so they say with a real Neapolitan style that they actually prefer, get this, a thinner sauce. Thinner sauce. Thinner sauce. Um for sweetness though, you care about sweetness.
+
+[20:22] And the reason they say that is because uh I guess they're not putting very much on and that it's so hot that it flashes off a lot of sauce and they're not putting that much on. Whereas things that are if you know things that are cooking longer, they have it a little bit thicker because otherwise, you know, it'll make that gum layer at the bottom with the lower temperature. I don't even know if I believe that in all applications. At a 550 oven, I like a fairly thick sauce, very smallish amount of of a kind of a thick sauce. And I always my standard is if I have a lot of time and I feel like wasting energy, I will I will use uh whole tomatoes, I will crush them up, and then I will cook them down by about half, adding oregano and garlic and whatnot that ever I want.
+
+[21:00] I like anchovies in my sauce. You guys have anchovies? Mm-hmm. I like it. I like anchovies in my sauce.
+
+[21:04] I do. I wouldn't like it. It's good. Yeah, like you have to judge your people. Yeah.
+
+[21:11] You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Um I love anchovies in a sauce. It just adds so much written richness.
+
+[21:14] Anyway, then you cook it down. But really, most of the time, what I do is you use just the whole tomatoes, you reserve the juice, and then you add paste to get the texture where you want it. Lightly marry it together with heat with the garlic and whatever, you know, herbs you're gonna do. And then if you make it too thick, you dope back the juice from the can. I think that's what I do.
+
+[21:34] I think that's what most people do. And I and if you're using paste, paste is so sweet that you only have to add like a little bit of uh sugar, right? So I find that like I add more sugar to like shaksuka and things like that because I'm adding a lot of pepper and other stuff to it and a lot of paprika that brings kind of bitter notes, even though it's sweetish, it brings kind of uh not sweetish, sweetish brings those notes back in. Um I don't know. Hopefully, this has been moderately helpful.
+
+[22:02] Um okay, this also I think we didn't we talked about Matt from Mystic's question on proofing with Magoy. We asked him and he said just push it. Isn't that what happened? Push it. I don't remember.
+
+[22:13] I don't think it was satisfactorily answered, but if you think we did, then if you don't think it's if you don't think it's satisfactorily answered, well then it's not. Um right? Yeah. Yeah. All right, yeah.
+
+[22:24] Let's try and let's try and do it. And we don't want to, you don't want to leave Matt from Mystic hanging. No, definitely not. Matt from Mystic uh wrote in uh is there, and this goes back to the Magoyanator courier, uh, is there a more precise slash scientific method to determine when a loaf is ready to bake besides the finger dent test? Sometimes I feel like single loaf responds differently from pressing it in different places.
+
+[22:44] Okay, well, that's an interesting question. Um, but any quote unquote scientific test that you would use is gonna have the same problems because it's just gonna be something, it's gonna be like some sort of electronic finger going, pushing it a very specific amount and going and pulling back. And in fact, if you look at um, um I'm look, they have good tech at the Modernist Cuisine people, right? Including like full scanners. And so, like I was talking with Harold McGee once, I was like going over the scanned pictures from modernist bread of like the where they're measuring loaf volume, and I've been measuring loaf volume.
+
+[23:19] But the fact of the matter is, if you cut open a loaf and you see that it's got one big giant bubble, right? That one bubble doesn't tell you much about the crumb in general. It it most of the time it means that when you were shaping and forming, right, just you captured a big air bubble where you were laminating it over, that thing didn't fully seal in, it expands out, right? It can be due to rupture, but that's different. You know the difference.
+
+[23:44] You can you all can hear what I'm saying and understand the difference between one big bubble and like coalesced smaller bubbles, right? And so when you're pushing on a loaf of bread, and I've just read, by the way, countless exceedingly boring documents on uh bread bread proofing technology, right? Um, how it's formed, the moisture level, like, you know, uh how well it was covered when it was rising is going to mean that it is going to be very different at different and how you shaped it, is gonna be different at different parts. So what I do is I usually push it in like two places and see what's going on. Uh and by the way, no one will give you a really good answer on what happens when you actually overproof.
+
+[24:27] You want to you guys wanna know in it briefly, Styles can if uh briefly, may I? Yep. Okay. Uh mixing is incredibly important when you're making the dough because that's where all the bubbles are actually put into the dough in the mixing, and then when you're forming, and if you do any work of the dough while it's while it's in bulk, right? Before you before you shape it.
+
+[24:50] That's where actually all of the small bubbles are in there. So even though a dough looks like it doesn't have bubbles in it, that's when all the kind of bubbles get put into it. You the yeast doesn't make bubbles, right? The yeast inject like makes gas that leaks into the bubbles and inflates it. When you're baking bread, right, there is a race.
+
+[25:10] What happens is as uh the bread is baking, the bubbles inside expand. And then at a certain point, they break, right? And when they break, then the bubbles can talk to each other, and that's why bread can bake so quickly. Once they break, though, there's no more expansion because the expansion, right, is done inside of sealed bubbles. So what you want is those bubbles to break at exactly the right time.
+
+[25:35] And part of that is the flour you use, part of that is the gluten you have and the amount of gluten that's been developed, part of that is the temperature of the oven, right? But if you overproof, those bubbles have started to coalesce before you bake. And if those bubbles start to coalesce, or if the gas walls in the bubbles is too thin before you bake, then you can't get any rise out of the oven because the cells will just coalesce on the on the inside before they rise. So that's really what happens when you kind of overproof, which is why if you knock it down and make those bubbles kind of small again, you can bring the loaf back and kind of erase proof as long as it hasn't turned to a bad flavor or gone slack because it's been fermented too long. Is all that's making any so that's what you're trying to do.
+
+[26:19] A very properly oven springed loaf is proofed such that when it expands, and this is why everyone tells you it's better to underprove than overproof, because the bubbles are already there and they will expand, right? And then when they hit the right temperature, which if you get it just right, it breaks right as the gluten is getting firm, right as the starch is getting stretchy. And it can hold its shape. They pup, they puff, they break. It allows the bread to cook real really quickly, and then that you get grape bread.
+
+[26:47] That's that's the answer. All right? Much better answer than when Magoya was on. Good job. Oh, it's because I, you know, that's my opinion, not Magoya's appearance.
+
+[26:55] Yeah, no, no, I know, but that's why. If he wants, he can have someone listen to this, yeah, and then he can write his response and tell me I'm wrong. No, that's a satisfactory answer. It's been deleted. Alex Godin has a non-pizza question, which must have come in during Magoya times.
+
+[27:08] Yep. Can you talk about residential versus kitchen of ventilation and any considerations I should make when selecting a hood? We are buying an apartment where we may be able to install a hood, and I'm trying to get it right so I don't set off the smoke detector all the time. Oh my God. I'm gonna save the majority of this for uh I'm gonna save the majority of this um for when Hoffman comes on.
+
+[27:29] Because for those of you that, for those Americans who aren't paying attention to world coffee scene, he's like coffee master, guru, genius from uh uh UK. But I've been I've been doing roasting again, and so I've been testing force cooling of my roast because when you roast coffee, it makes a lot of smoke if you don't have like a we were having a meeting at your apartment once and you were doing it, and somebody called uh the super on you and they came and checked because there was so much smoke coming out of your window. They thought your apartment was on fire. Yeah, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[27:57] Yeah. Do you like the ACDC song House is on Fire? I do, even though most people hate that that whole era of ACDC. I enjoy it. Uh so anywho, uh I was experimenting with ways of rapidly uh cooling it in the roaster to not have to generate the smoke.
+
+[28:14] And we've just installed new cooking detectors in my house, even though we're in a fireproof building. And the cooking detector went off when I did a I was trying to do a side-by-side of cooled versus not cooled to taste the difference and say, so Jen's like, if you can't do it without setting off the smoke detectors, you can't do it. And then you know what? Fair. Because setting off the smoke detectors, as for as much as it I don't mind smoke, uh, it really does ruin everything in the house.
+
+[28:43] That layer of garbage that that that settles down on top of everything. Like when like a couple weeks ago when I used a quote unquote smokeless Korean barbecue tabletop grill, and my kids almost cracked their heads on a table because when they got up, the layer of grease on the floor next to the table was so thick that it was like a it was like the god dang ice rink. Anyway, uh here's the issue about ventilation at home. I am very much for ventilation at home, good ventilation at home, and I think that I can't wait for the day when people require it and when it's built in. The problem is, uh, in recommending to you hoods, right, is that I would say the vast majority of people who listen to this show and do things based on what we say in the show are in this weird in-between zone, right?
+
+[29:33] So, you know, you're not an occasional home cook who, you know, you know, just needs a little bit of ventilation. And you're also not a restaurant with a deep fat fryer, a rationale combi oven, and a flat top griddle grinding all all day. And the problem is there are very clear regulations for home, and the clear regulations for home are just that the duct uh, you know, needs to be a single layer duct work so nothing can get caught, and that if you go over 400 CFM, uh that you need to need to have makeup air. Now, why do you need to have makeup air? You might ask yourself.
+
+[30:11] So in my apartment, and I don't know, Alex, maybe in your apartment, right? The closest thing to a boiler, a gas-fired boiler, is like a mile and a half away, because we get steam pumped into our house. So a negative pressure situation in my house is a zero-risk phenomenon for me. Zero risk. If you live in a house, or if you live in a place where you have a gas water heater or an oil burner, right, and you suck a negative pressure in your um in your kitchen, you can reverse the flow of ventilation for your boiler or for your uh heater.
+
+[30:48] And when you do that, you're sucking carbon monoxide into your house, and that can kill you, even not in the kitchen, right? So this is why, you know, this is why the regulation now, in an apartment where literally, like I say, there's nothing around me, I don't care, right? But that's something to think about. That's why you have to have makeup air in the kitchen when or in something directly connected to the kitchen when you're running higher than 400 CFM, because there's a risk, and if in, you know, the newer smoke detectors have carbon monoxide detectors as well, but carbon monoxide will kill you dead without you knowing for sure. Um now, the other thing is is that in in a commercial kitchen where they're doing a lot of frying, right, they have ansel systems and there's lots of regulations, right?
+
+[31:32] Because what you're doing is is you're putting grease into a duct. And the grease can drip out of the duct at at poorly sealed seams, it drips out of the family. If you've ever gone on top of an incorrectly cleaned roof, like a uh where the where the exhaust fans are, you can see the black grease dripping out of the cage on the sides if they haven't cleaned their ductwork properly. And a real commercial hood has uh grease uh like um filters, right, to stop the grease. But no matter how good those grease filters are, your duct is gonna fill with uh grease uh over time.
+
+[32:07] It just it happens, it needs to be clean. And in home, you don't do that, right? So if you were gonna be at home and you put a real hood in, like, you know, like I like I have done, right? You need to keep it clean because uh what happens is is you're sitting there, you either make a mistake or you do your little flambey megilla cutty, right? And you don't have an ancel system at home.
+
+[32:29] So what happens is um the the flame goes up, and if you should by chance ignite the grease on the inside of your ductwork, it is game over because what you have is a very highly oxygenated system. So what what happens in a commercial kitchen is they actually leave the exhaust on, the ancil system leaves the exhaust on, but they turn off the makeup air to try to choke out the fire and they leave the exhaust on to get the smoke out. But in your situation, if you just have the thing going and you keep getting fresh air into it, you're stoking a fire inside of a tube that's burning on grease, and they can get well over a thousand degrees Celsius and melt ductwork and light crap on fire. So, like, you know, you gotta make sure that you can egg that your ductwork is adequately sealed, that it's adequately cleaned, and that nothing touching it can catch on fire. And that when you and the imagine of a a fire-breathing dragon shooting, shooting fire out of the side of your building where you're ducting to.
+
+[33:29] And if that's going to catch anything on fire, think about it. Here's one more thing I'll say about this. Uh, if you do something that is not legal. Now, I looked it up. There is no maximum CFM on a home unit.
+
+[33:44] If you have, but if you do something that is untoward and you uh burn the place down, your insurance may not pay. So what I think is there needs to be new kind of guidance and regulation for you know greater than you know, normal home hoods because the average homehood is without worth. Uh wait, I've been t I I'm being told by Joe Hazen that we're gonna go to a commercial break. This episode of Cooking Issues brought to you by Oracing Salmon, our favorite fish. Today we have Michael Fabro from Oura King to tell us more about it.
+
+[34:17] You know, we raise what we think is the best salmon in the world down in New Zealand. Uh, I would agree. I believe that this uh Oricing salmon is delicious. And I'm not just saying that because you're a sponsor, you're a sponsor because we love the product. Auri King is grown, even though it's a very high fat content, it's grown without adding too much stuff to food to the water.
+
+[34:34] So you're not getting big algal plumes and stuff, right? I mean, this is stuff that you've verified. Yeah, so king's salmon will eat until they're satiated. And we actually have underwater cameras to watch the salmon eat. So as soon as they stop taking the feed, we'll shut it off, and that prevents any excess feed from getting in the water or sinking to the bottom.
+
+[34:53] And also our farm density is really critical. We operate at a density of 2% salmon to 98% water. That allows us to uh maintain an equilibrium state. So any fish waste that will go to the seabed will naturally compost with the organisms down there. So we we're able to operate in the steady state where you don't have an accumulation of waste on the bottom.
+
+[35:15] Aura King salmon, follow them on Instagram at Oracing Salmon. Everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Hey Stas, so what do you think? Should uh when you know, instead of the cookbook, should the memoir be fish waste or should the memoir be uh uh stop taking the feed?
+
+[35:33] For you? Yeah, yeah. Uh fish waste. Fish waste? Yeah.
+
+[35:37] What would your memoir be? Oh, I don't know. No? You don't know? No.
+
+[35:42] Come on, you must have given it some thought. No. Huh. What about you, John? Yeah.
+
+[35:48] I don't know. I used to be a PhD. PhD. Uh I used to be a professor. But hold up a quick question just came in on the Discord based off of the ad.
+
+[36:00] Josh says, so thinking of pulling the trigger on some Oura King salmon and having a salmon party. How should I cook that bad boy and with what? First of all, salmon party. So when uh my cousin Ridge, not my sister-in-law, my cousin Ridge, he he's a he's a gym head. He's like he's like a strong, he's a personal trainer.
+
+[36:19] Uh but not like the jerky kind. Like he's cool. You know what I mean? Attractive dude. Uh anyway, so like when he used to go to the gym, there was a guy that you used to just go up to him all the time and just say, Friday party, Friday party.
+
+[36:30] So anytime someone says something party, in my head, all I hear is Friday party. Got it. Friday party. He never partied with that guy because he thought he was the weirdest dude on earth. So he never actually partied with it.
+
+[36:40] But my whole family, you say blah party, they're like Friday party, whole family. Friday party. So uh what was the question? How would you cook uh salmon for a salmon party? Okay.
+
+[36:54] First of all, there are infinity ways to answer this question. The cook the it it w what are you doing? Cold prep? Listen, at a party, I think cold people like a cold prep. What do you think, John?
+
+[37:07] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for a cold prep, I don't have the numbers offhand. I tested uh I tested for the book every number between 47 Celsius and uh 60 Celsius on cold prep.
+
+[37:25] Okay. The trick for cooking it, the trick for cooking salmon is I think you should stay somewhere in the 50-52 range. Anything higher than that, and even with salting it, which you need to s I put salt and sugar on it, or you can soak it in salt and sugar for a little while. The reason being that it helps maintain the white goop on the inside of the salmon, right? Uh you know what I you know what I actually did that was fun.
+
+[37:53] Here's the other here's the other thing. Can I can I say? Here's the other thing. Uh the problem with the cold prep is is that you really don't cook it to pasteurize it. You really don't, right?
+
+[38:05] So, like what uh if you're gonna like cook it and then chill it, you just have to be aware that you're not killing all the bacteria in it. You just have to be cool. You have to be cool with that. You know what I mean? Uh you know what a fun cold prep is is to cut the cut it, cut it down like into two like like tall isosceles triangles, meat glue, roll it, right?
+
+[38:28] And then uh I did a thing, the nori gets soft, right? That's fine. Then I rolled it in nori and then in uh in like cucumber fish scales, and then rolled it and cooked it, right, in a tube. So it looked and then you slice it and then you take the slices off, and it's like, you know, it's pretty nice. And you serve it with like a with like a tzatziki kind of a situation, and uh it was really good.
+
+[38:53] Um, or like I say, just do a cold prep. Or I mean it's fatty enough, that sucker that you could just kind of grill it up. What you're gonna notice that the aura king doesn't have a lot of like gaping in it, that's why, because it's firm, so it you know, it'll hold up, unlike some lower quality salmons. I also think it's really fun to cure it yourself. And I think we've given it on the air before.
+
+[39:14] If not, ask for it again. We'll give you the you know, uh, I use a standard 2-1 salt, sugar. Uh I add a little smoke powder to it. This way you don't have to smoke. And I can give you that recipe if you want.
+
+[39:24] That's a three-day situation, but then you're like, I cure my own salmon, suck it. And then you have the part. If you if you cure your own salmon and then you bust out your own bagels, and then you know, they're not even gonna be, they're not even gonna ask you about the provenance of your cream cheese. Clearly, Rust and Daughters cream cheese is the best. And this is why I've never even tried to make my own because they wouldn't tell me how they made it, and I just haven't really entered into the cream cheese thing.
+
+[39:48] You ever made cream cheese, any of you guys? I have not, no. Do you who here has had Rust and Daughters cream cheese? Yeah. Best.
+
+[39:54] Yeah, yeah. Joe, Rustin Daughters, cream cheese. It doesn't keep. Don't buy it to keep it. Doesn't keep.
+
+[40:00] Yeah. But today, the best. So anyway, oh, one more thing. If you're gonna cure the uh, if you're gonna cure the um the uh aura king, I recommend not trying to slice it whole. I recommend skinning it, uh salt, sugaring, and then putting in a 375 flat convection oven on uh on a parchment, the skin, crisping the skin up, serving it separately, and then busting the uh filet into the top belly, cure them separately.
+
+[40:27] It's gonna be very hard for you to slice it at home the way they slice it if you're not if you're not trained. So I I cure my stuff in pieces and slice them separately. How's that? Was that it? That was excellent.
+
+[40:37] All right, we got 19 minutes left, and let's get these nine questions out. All right, Brian Yurko. What? That's a minute per question. No.
+
+[40:45] Two minutes? And we just wasted some time. You didn't even give me a memoir title. I thought you were gonna bust in with a good memoir title. What about you, Jackie Molecules?
+
+[40:52] What's your what's your what's your what's your memoir? Uh I don't know. Molecule Life. Anyway. No.
+
+[41:00] Give me the give me the title. I want all of your freaking memoirs. Mine's fish waste. All right. Brian Yurko writes in a friend of mine just took over as the corporate pastry chef for an NYC uh vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free restaurant, and bakery group.
+
+[41:14] All of the previous pastry chef's recipes include minor amounts, steam, five to fifteen percent, uh, and extravagant pre-programmed rationale combi baking presets, five to six different temperatures, steam fan speed changes for a single bake for items like cookies, quickbreads, and muffins. Do you think small amounts of steam will make a big difference in baking cookies and quick breads? Thanks, Brian. Uh ooh, gulash riot, the name. Gulash Riot.
+
+[41:41] Yep. You know what I haven't had in a long time? Gulag. Like a goulash. Anyway.
+
+[41:47] Uh look, short answer. A lot depends on exactly how the steam injection works, right? So, like, when you say small amount, you're like, I'd have to measure it. I'm finding I've been measuring my ANOVA, uh, actually measuring wet bulb and doing all this, and all of the stuff does make a difference, right? So, for instance, breads are appreciably moister when they're reheated at 350 with 50% steam than not, right?
+
+[42:18] Uh, appreciably, right? Uh, and and I'm working very hard to try to actually suss out what's happening because the literature on steam injection above uh 212, above 100 Celsius, is look very hard to figure out what what's going on. And so uh I'm still trying to figure it out, and when I figure it out, I'll let you know. But uh in general, I find that when people are coming up with recipes, what they do is they make a tweak, they like it better, they keep the tweak. Then they make another tweak, they like it better, they keep the tweak.
+
+[42:54] They make another tweak, they like it better, they keep the tweak. If you then just remove all the tweaks, you might actually like the product still, right? And then maybe you could do one or two tweaks and get it to work the way that you want, right? With cookies, it depends on the cookie. So I can't really answer your question because with cookies, it's all about controlling the spread and the surface of the cookie, getting it to inflate and deflate properly, depending on which one you're gonna do, and steam can affect all of those things, but they're also easily changed by changing the recipe that you use.
+
+[43:22] Um, I don't know. Is that an okay answer? I mean, not really helpful, but perfectly okay. Sargon, friend of the show wrote in, uh, what coolant should I use for my rotovap chiller? Uh and uh I answer that uh off the off the air line.
+
+[43:36] The answer is glycol and water. The answer is glycol and water. I didn't answer it on the show, I answered it offline. Glycol, water. Just while you're doing that, then uh you mentioned adding glycerin to add body to oh never mind.
+
+[43:45] Glycolglycerin, different. Sorry, keep going. Yeah. Do not add propylene glycol to your drinks. Definitely don't substitute ethylene glycol for propylene glycol, one food grade, one not.
+
+[43:57] And if you're gonna use a rotovap, anyone that flies rotovaps will tell you, add some food coloring to that son of a gun. It is impossible to see flow. Uh once there's food coloring, you can kind of tell it's flowing, but add some food coloring. Uh okay. So, and then a separate question from Sargon uh is using a freeze-dried culture, how are any organisms alive in a freeze-dried culture?
+
+[44:20] I don't know. I don't know how that works, actually. Why they why they survive. I don't know. Uh well, next time we get a biochemist on, we'll ask them.
+
+[44:28] Yeah. And then he has another question. Let's have three questions stacked into one because give me the question. And follow-up question from today's show. Is there really any difference between viscosity and body?
+
+[44:38] In addition, is there a better way to talk about it in a quantifiable manner, say Stokes? Well, there's also no such thing as like a single viscosity number. That's why it's like it's like measured in a certain way, right? So it's like uh there's kinematic viscosity, there's uh, you know, there's different ways to measure kind of uh viscosity. So it depends on what you're interested in, right?
+
+[45:00] So in general, in the field, a lot of times viscosity is measured with uh different cups. Like one that I have at home is called a Zon cup, where you you put it in and then you literally count how long it takes to uh drip until the drip breaks, right? And so there's various different ways to measure different kinds of uh viscosity. Some people have like very fancy machines that will stir at a specific rate and measure how hard it is for to stir it at a specific rate. Uh, but then if you change the rate, the numbers change, right?
+
+[45:30] And so, and uh you just have to choose a system. Really, it makes a difference only for people who need to be a hundred percent repeatable, right? You know, like uh like if you're making large quantities of sauce that need to stay pumpable and you know, the these kinds of things. Or, you know, if you get your viscosity wrong, all of a sudden the the batter flies off of your chicken when you're frying it, right? But in general, like those discussions aren't so much uh important for the average home cook.
+
+[45:59] Uh I mean to me, body is more than viscosity, right? Wouldn't you say so, John? Body's more than viscosity. Yeah. Right?
+
+[46:08] Yeah. Yeah. I can't really describe it. Yeah, exactly. It's like somebody else asked, somebody else asked the general discord, crispy versus crunchy.
+
+[46:17] I have had people give me satisfactory answers, but those satisfactory answers instantly evaporate from my head. And the fact that they evaporate leads me to believe that I didn't believe what they said to begin with. Does that make sense? Because if I believed it, it would have stuck. If I don't believe it, it evaporates.
+
+[46:31] You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway. Uh all right. From Oxy, uh hydrocolic question.
+
+[46:38] Are there any good thermo irreversible, i.e., non-meltable gels for high heats that are not the boutique methyl cells? Uh you mentioned tilos. I don't I don't know anything about it. I don't know anything about it. Never use I don't know because I find those really hard to cast.
+
+[46:51] Uh I want to make hot shapes. What about that as a memoir? Who wants hot shapes as their memoir? I mean. No?
+
+[46:58] You don't want to take no? No one's taking hot shapes? Hot shapes. No. What if it's said like that?
+
+[47:03] Hot shapes. No? No. Okay. Uh.
+
+[47:08] You're gonna want to use low athlet, uh, low acyl uh methyl cell. Uh sorry, sorry, low acyl gel an. Uh that's uh Calco gel F. Don't use uh the high ACEL one, the native one. First of all, the low ASOL one is clear and brittle, like uh, like, you know, it's clear and brittle, like agar kind of texture-wise, but clear.
+
+[47:28] And you can add things to it, like if you add uh, I forget what the one that you want to add, like I forget whether it's not, I think it's LBG because Guar has an interaction. I oh, or is it the other way around? I I had a bunch of fun interactions where I literally purposely mm F with the function, but I don't remember. It's been so many years. But you can soften them a little bit, but though those won't melt.
+
+[47:47] High acyl uh gel N will melt, low ACL will not make sure low ACL calcogel F. If that doesn't work, hit me back. From Lord Naboo, uh made an attempt, adapted Dr. J the other evening. I used Kevin Coss's recipe for acid adjusted orange, a superjuice, and it was delicious.
+
+[48:04] What's Dave's opinion on the superjuice thing? So I I looked up the the video that you sent, and what what it is is um basically using acid instead of sugar to do an oleosacrum, right? Which is not a bad idea. And then I guess watering it at and adding adding juice. Uh, and then he makes some claims in there that I wasn't able to verify.
+
+[48:26] Like he says succinic acid, which is one of the you know, three acids in in lime juice, which I did a lot to actually publicize early on. Succinic acid is what gives lime juice its characteristic kind of reality of taste as opposed to just malic and citric, but it's incredibly unpleasant. So in the video on its own, in but if you little bits of it make fake lime juice taste so much more real. Uh so in the video, he says that that's actually what causes lime juice to oxidize, and the succinic causes oxidation. I don't really think I wasn't, I'm not gonna say he's wrong.
+
+[49:02] It's just I wasn't able to find any data that he was right, right? So someone please send me that information if you have it. Um I will say though, that that weird kind of bloody, crazy flavor that succinic acid has can mimic the flavors of kind of off lime juice. So in essence, what the lime juice here is is the super juice is it's juice done with peel, so kind of halfway to an oleo. Oleos last longer uh than regular juices do, bolstered with real juice, and you don't notice that the real juice is is turning off because there's a lot of other liquid in it.
+
+[49:34] So I don't know. I have to taste it. I've never done it, never used it, but you know, I know oleos last a lot longer, and I have done acid-adjusted oleo juices and use them for quite a while. Also, OJ in general lasts longer than lime juice. Is this an okay answer or no?
+
+[49:46] Great answer. Chevron Hubbard writes in a friend like the squash or like the writer. I uh you like a Hubbard squash? Don't know if I'm familiar. Let me see.
+
+[49:59] Uh a friend has uh requested a butterscotch infused tequila and a cocktail to use it in. My approach would be to treat it as a fat wash, but at a loss for what to make with it. Any ideas would be a big help. Thanks. Yo, with something like butterscotch, I mean, you could look.
+
+[50:14] We used to do like a hot buttered rum thing, like co cold buttered rum, and we did some of those that had like with some brown butter, some butterscotchy stuff. But I think if someone wants butterscotch, they're gonna want it to taste kind of like a cream soda. I would stay with the Alexander-y style specks. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[50:30] Yeah. Uh although a tequila Alexander, no. Now that I look at it, tequila. Tequila Alexander, no thanks. I'm trying to think, what would butterscotch tequila taste like?
+
+[50:42] Wow, it's butterscotch tequila. Kind of vegetable, tequila notes, and butterscotch. I'm not feeling it, Chevron. Yeah. I don't know.
+
+[50:52] Is anyone feeling it? Uh look. No. I love to be wrong. Make a vial of this product, send it our way, we'll taste it on air, and we'll we'll talk about it.
+
+[50:59] We'll try to figure out what we think it's good for. All right. But like I was with you, I was like, oh, butter scot, bubba, and then I reread tequila. I don't know how I feel. Unless it's an extremely neutral tequila, in which case, then why tequila?
+
+[51:17] Yeah. Okay. Uh this one from Kim Yardi Ferre. Well, that's how it's said to pronounce it. I hope I got it right.
+
+[51:25] How do you pronounce it with the French? Give me some French. I don't know if it's French. But no, but it's it's written like it's pronounced French. Kim Yardiferret, if that's it.
+
+[51:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why we have you around, dude. Yeah, thanks. No other reason. Yeah.
+
+[51:39] You know it? Yeah. Uh, what's your recommended temps for roasting chicken? This is a complicated thing, Kim, that you're doing here. I'm thinking 300 Celsius, give me that in Fahrenheit.
+
+[51:50] That's like a lot. 572. Yeah, it's roughly infinity. I'm thinking 300C for 15 minutes in my pizza oven, then slow cook at 90 C, so under for three hours in my rotisserie oven, then re-sear for 20 minutes at 200C, which is like 450 or something. Uh, but I'm sure you've given this more thought than I have.
+
+[52:08] I read long ago that Heston Blumenthal recommends 120 all the way through and then deep fry to sear only at the end. All right, listen. The magic secret is that once the temperature of the chicken skin goes over 100 degrees Celsius, then uh the inside of the chicken is going to cook at 100 degrees, no matter what. Right? So uh manipulating the outside temperature is really just about manipulating the skin.
+
+[52:35] Period. So in general, what I do, and the rotisserie is good at this, is control the radiation that that that is hitting it. So if you have a rotisserie oven, right, real rotisserie, it's probably got a lot higher incident radiant heat like that. So even if the air temperature is 90, right, then the rotisserie skin. This is why rotisserie is a great way to make a chicken.
+
+[52:56] And in fact, there's no need to do all of this massive researing ahead of time. Like the rotisserie, it's like, you know, if it's getting too brown, you can just pull it away from the radiant heat and let it keep going until it gets in. But it's really an kind of an ideal way to do it. If I had a rotisserie, I would cook my chickens in a rotisserie. I like rotisserie chicken.
+
+[53:14] What do you guys say about rotisserie chicken? Yeah. If you're roasting it in a conventional oven, which it sounds like you're not, nice thing about a pizza oven is because it's so hot, you can get radiation all the way around it. But most people, when they put their chicken in the oven, they uh for the pan dripping, what happens is is that you lose almost all radiant heat off the pan because it fills with liquid. That liquid doesn't get too hot.
+
+[53:37] And then in essence, there's no browning of the underneath of your bird. So you want to lift the bird up so that it can see the oven walls all the way around. You don't want to get it too close to the top of your oven because if it's too close to the top of your oven, it's gonna uh scorch there. Not huge problem if you just uh aluminum foil it. Uh like that'll kind of like but you have to keep an eye on it.
+
+[53:56] Is this any of these answers any good? Yeah. All right. Rob Pasco, in the last episode you mentioned adding glycerin to add body to a hoo-hoo-isky highball. What percentage glycerin would you start at?
+
+[54:07] Uh, you know what? I should know this, but I just make sure that I don't go over about five mils per drink, right? Uh I just I usually add it by eye, and I usually add closer to five mils per two drinks. I mean, I would say that I add less than a percent. Like uh in general, somewhere between one and two percent.
+
+[54:30] Uh I made that up, but just do it by eye and taste it. Uh Mark Siegman, we're doing a kitchen remodel. Uh we did this one. We did it. All right.
+
+[54:37] Now we have the two Discord topics that people want you to weigh in on. What's that? What are your thoughts on crispy versus crunchy? Uh when we talked about this. I don't know.
+
+[54:44] If I knew, if I knew, I think crispy, so like so like a baguette is crispy and a Sullivan's loaf is crunchy on the outside. Crunchy means thicker, it goes crunch. Yeah. Like a Dorito is crunchy. And this is what I was told by someone.
+
+[55:05] A Dorito is crunchy, and one of those thin laser wise chips is crispy. I like that. Yeah. It came back to me. That's perfect, actually.
+
+[55:15] Yeah. That works. Forget who said that to me. Thank you. Uh and then one more.
+
+[55:20] Okay. General one that this topic has actually blown up. Um, I had a sandwich-related question that might require a diagram, but when eating a sandwich or a burger slash burgaloid, do we grab the sandwich front facing thumbs on the bottom of the sandwich, bending elbows to bring it to the face, or inverted overhand grip, fingers on the plates side of the sandwich, flipping it 180 to bring it to the face. No. Does the latter insult the sandwich maker by inverting the order of ingredients?
+
+[55:50] Insults God. Like, I mean, like you you pick it up, you eat it, and if the bottom sogs out, blame the person that made it. Yeah. If it has started to sog out, then you can flip it on your plate, but you have to put a look of disgust on your face because you have been done wrong. That's my thing.
+
+[56:22] You know what I'm saying? Sure. What are your thoughts on the tiny bun that all the stuff extrudes out of? No. No.
+
+[56:32] This is why you know what I really enjoy? The oversized English muffin. Remember when remember when Thomas's was like, you know what? We're gonna make an oversized English muffin. We know you guys want to put burgers.
+
+[56:42] You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I feel like uh my my mother-in-law makes a lot of English muffins. I'm gonna ask her to make some burger-sized ones.
+
+[56:51] I like English muffins. Yeah, they're good. Good product. Yeah. Uh Mike Henderson writes in, I have a question about stirring wand that uh what is the actual mechanism that speeds up chilling and diluting?
+
+[57:02] Is it the friction between the ice, liquid, and glass that speeds up melting, or is it simply pushing all the liquid into contact with the surface of the ice or a combination of both? Not the friction, it's just a it's just the convection for you're just increasing the massively, the convective uh uh heat transfer ratio. Um I uh do bartender trainings, uh, I say it's a combination, but I'm uh not 100% certain, so I thought I would ask. Love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
+
+[57:24] Listen, the wattage when you're stirring, the wattage is extraordinarily low. Like frictional heating uh is a huge factor in a vita prep because you're dumping hundreds of watts of power at thousands of RPM. But in a in a in a you know, in a regular stirring kind of a situation, the wattage is like exceedingly low. And all frictional heat uh you would notice based on the power you're putting into it. Was that a decent answer?
+
+[57:47] Yep. Kyla Ruder writes in, hey Dave, is there a way to find the individual citric malic acid levels of an ingredient so that we know the amounts to add in order to replicate the acidity of other components such as limes? Basically, I'm looking for what a fruit offers naturally a starting point to mimic the lime acidity. Thanks. In general I look at the USDA's published uh fruit numbers for single strength juices and then uh and then that's how I go.
+
+[58:09] I just look on the internet and pray that I get it right. Uh all right try to get one more Joe Waterhouse. Hey Dave I've been thinking about tap cocktails for a while now and I wondered if you could uh wait I wonder if you could to me I don't understand the question you John you get that one there. Alan uh Cartellano wrote in hey Dave I hope you're well can ask you a question I've infused rum with coconut cake coconut flakes and pineapple skin what is the base for the clarified painkiller milk punch it came out absolutely and deli which is the base it came out delicious and super clear but as soon as I add ice or even keep it in the fridge it will go cloudy do you think it is the egg in the cake or the oil and the coconut I would guess it's the oil and the coconut should I fat wash it before I milk wash I wish I had made a rotov app. I wish I had a rotative app thanks.
+
+[58:48] Yeah try that but just let it get cloudy my friend just let it get cloudy cooking issues
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+[0:11] Hello, welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live in the heart of New York City Rockefeller Center at New Stand Studios. Joined remotely today by Nastasi Dehammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? I'm good.
+
+[0:24] And you are remote uh because you were exposed to the but you weren't with former president Barack Obama, but you got exposed to like his new style of COVID. Is that true? Uh yeah. Yeah. So I'm being safe.
+
+[0:41] Yeah, nice. Uh can you can you let people know? So this is classic. If you've been in business with Nastasia Lopez as long as I have, you you get to appreciate the classic Nastasi moves. You want to.
+
+[0:52] So any of you out there that have a business know that people like to send you random scam emails constantly. So what was that? What was it uh they sent to you for the pasta flyer business? That you know the Nastasia closed that restaurant down on Sixth Avenue. How many years ago?
+
+[1:07] I think three. Three years ago, okay. So what'd you get? Yeah. I got a text saying that I'd qualify, or pasta flyer qualifies for 257,000.
+
+[1:17] Uh and I wrote back and said the the restaurant closed, but can I still get the money? And they said, yeah, send us your email. And I said it's scam at email.com. Scam at email.com. Scam at email.com.
+
+[1:32] That's classic. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[1:35] Nastasia and I love to do that kind of stuff. Uh all right. Uh we also have uh, of course, uh working the working the sliders here. We got Joe Hazen in the booth. How you doing?
+
+[1:46] I'm doing great. How are you doing? Doing well. I'm doing all right. Uh we got uh we got Captain uh John Nihul here behind me, rocking the customer service.
+
+[1:56] How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. And what do we got? What do we got? Uh let's do the bookkeeping right now.
+
+[2:00] What do we got? Bookkeeping right now. What do we got? So for the first time ever, we are live streaming on YouTube for a Patreon people. You gotta go check out Patreon and uh see the post about it.
+
+[2:10] We are still and reminder that's for all access members only. P.S. That's Jackie Molecules Rocking the California booth, which I haven't introduced yet. How you doing, Jack? You doing well?
+
+[2:22] I'm good. Sorry, I broke a radio rules. It's not a radio rule. It's not a radio. Listen, everyone knows you anyway.
+
+[2:27] Like if Jackie Molecules can't say what he wants when he wants, what the hell is the world coming to? Like that. Back uh anything interesting to report from uh California. No, no, no. Nothing really except except getting this video set up, which is which is fun.
+
+[2:44] Um and yeah, reminder, it's for the all access members, which is the ten dollar month tier. So if you don't see it, all access sounds always sounds super gross to me. All access just sounds freaking horrible. Anyway, I mean, I know it's a good thing. I know people want all access, but like anytime someone says we'll give you all access, it's something I'm like, oh please no, please edit.
+
+[3:06] Please just give me partial access, tell me the good stuff. Anyway, uh back back to bookkeeping. John, what do we got? Thank you. Um we are still doing the discount with Orking Salmon up through the end of April, so check Patreon for that.
+
+[3:19] Um and then upcoming guests next week, Monday at 10 a.m. special time. There will be no show on Tuesday next week on Monday at 10 a.m. We have Kenji Lopez Alt coming in, which will be great. Uh then we've got James Hoffman coming on, Adam Di Martino at a future date, Oliver Millman on a future date, and hopefully Tony Hopkins at a later date.
+
+[3:38] And we will be working with Kitchen Arts and Letters to offer 20 or a discount to be determined amount uh for Kenji's uh upcoming book. So stay tuned about that. Well, and if you want to meet Kenji, first of all, I should just say this. Today in the studio for the first half, we're doing a uh uh half the show version of Classics in the Field, yeah. Old school with Matt Sartwell's we're gonna we're gonna from Kitchen Arts and Letters, uh, which you can find uh on the socials at K-A-S-L N Y C.
+
+[4:10] Yeah, K-A-L-N-Y-C. That would be Kitchen Arts Well, the arts. There's one A, so you don't get the and Kitchen Arts Letters NYC. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[4:20] Uh anyway, so we're gonna do uh a classics in the field, but Kenji is going to be at for like you don't really normally open then, do you? No, we're opening uh we're not really opening, we're ha we're I'm getting there early. Uh so Kenji can come in sign a couple hundred books for us uh on Monday morning. And then we're gonna go to the case. Oh wait, are you are c are customers allowed to go or no?
+
+[4:39] No, no, no. Uh sorry people. This is a uh Oops. We gotta we gotta churn him through because he's got this uh rendezvous with you. Don't fish bowl him then.
+
+[4:48] I thought maybe it was like an early morning signing, which is like I thought maybe it was some sort of like West Coast thing that like West Coast authors now that he's a West Coast guy are like we we signed things very early in the morning, but you know, yeah. I've just just doing what we can to make it happen. All right, all right. So uh since we only have you for the first half, uh John remind me, I'll save my uh regular morning tangents for uh for after the break. Perfect.
+
+[5:12] All right, you gonna remind me? I I won't have to, but yeah. What the hell is this? You'll you'll go on your tangents. So before we get into people's classics in the field question, uh I have to get this out of the way.
+
+[5:24] I'm sorry, Matt. Uh but Matt knows that, and everybody who listens to this show knows that uh I I've been kind of deep diving on this pie expert, uh Monroe Boston Strauss. Uh I now, you know, own something like six or seven Monroe Boston Strauss pie tins. I have, you know, uh which they're fine. They're not great pie tins.
+
+[5:49] They're not God's pie tin. Anyway, by the way, you should own several sizes of pie pen. I have two. You need several sizes. Here's why.
+
+[6:01] Uh let's say you want to use his classic trick of doing the inverted baking where you bake on an upside down pie pan, well then you're gonna want to upend that into the next size of. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Uh some of there's a lot of new pie books out, right, Matt?
+
+[6:18] Uh yes. The fall of uh 2020 was like the pie magedon. Oh yeah it was and any of them that stick out that you really enjoy? Um I think there were several pretty strong books that came out uh in that rush. Uh uh Kate McDermott uh who've had the two butt pie books and of course now I can't distinguish them in my brain.
+
+[6:39] Uh but either of them is is strong. There was a book called New Pie which came out a little earlier a couple of guys from Atlanta uh they were non-pros who like just enters a whole bunch of contests and they do a whole bunch of weird things to the to the pies. Like they use a little some modern techniques and yeah I mean there's some some fairly classic things but they're they're pretty crowd pleasing pies. Um I think they uh they have a few unusual approaches, but mostly it's just uh tweaks of flavor rather than technique. Um so I would say uh those uh Aaron McDowell.
+
+[7:14] Um I would look also, you know, it's been around for longer, the book from 4 and 20 Blackbirds. Uh all of those are strong, strong pie books. Nice. Well, uh yesterday, of course, was Pi Day. Yes.
+
+[7:27] John, if uh if we're all still alive next year, we should uh make sure that we do our pie social stuff at actually 159. That way it's 3.14159, right? And then that that you know, that's about as many as I keep in my head. When I was a kid, were any of you guys memorizing pie kids? I was one of those memorizing pie kids.
+
+[7:48] I used to do be able to do a couple hundred digits. Oh no, no. Uh no. It's a three point one four. You don't you never had the one five nine?
+
+[7:57] No. And then like I think I would have said one five seven, so I would have been. The way I always remembered it was 3.14159, and then I think I can't remember what's after that. I thought then the the next digit I always remembered as a single, and I think it's two. And then there's like you remember them in like you remember them in like strings.
+
+[8:14] Like I know like pretty soon after that, there's an eight, nine, seven, nine. Like it's like you gotta like you s you remember it almost like a gotta find the role and yeah, you gotta find that you gotta find the pie roll. Anyway, uh yesterday being pie day, I thought it was m moderately appropriate to uh discuss uh uh Monroe Boston Strauss. Now I'm gonna ask Matt this because you know he's the expert in this. So his famous book was called Pie Marches On.
+
+[8:37] Absolute the classic in the field, amazing book. Everybody knows it, hard to find now, but there's reprints and it's online, scanned. Monroe Boston Strauss came up with a second almost completely unknown book that is I've never seen in the wild a copy of it. I interlibrary loaned it. It's called How to Make Better Pies.
+
+[8:56] And it is an entirely different book. And I have done all the research kind of that there is to do on it. I have scanned a copy of this book. Uh and we have it up for Patreon people, right? It's right up now for pot for pie day for you guys.
+
+[9:12] I know I owed you a video. I haven't done the video yet, but I put that book up, scanned. I tried to do a good job. I don't know if you guys looked at it. It's a decent scanning job.
+
+[9:19] I did a decent job of scanning it and OCRing it, right? It is obviously a lot of the same information, but um like Pie Marches On, which was a series of articles that was published in a magazine, uh how to make better pies is also a series of articles in a different magazine. So they are slightly different. And he has slightly different points, especially about uh he finally talks about how to substitute flour in in Baker's in the um in the how to make better pies. So that's up there for you for Patreon people.
+
+[9:46] Now here's the question. Since I'm a believer in information being free, especially because the actual copyright on this is as long as you give the original people credit, you're allowed to distribute it. Right? According to the original magazine that was in, they're like they're like, do what you want as long as you give us credit. And since they're way defunct, I'm super happy to anyway, I'd be happy to give them credit.
+
+[10:08] So how long do I wait to have it just be the jealously guarded secret of the Patreon people and then release it into the world so that everyone can have this amazing document? Uh I absolutely uh understand the impulse there. I don't know the answer to that question. I uh I'm afraid that you would really need to talk to somebody who has been to law school to be able to do that. Well, no, I mean not legally, just like what do you think's right to give our Patreon people?
+
+[10:30] Morally right, uh like a month. Well, you mean your Patreon people do good things for you. I'd I I give it a little longer for the Patreon people. I give it like six months. Six months?
+
+[10:42] Yeah. All right. I mean, and the the true believers who are not yet subscribed to your Patreon will be willing to wait. All right. And maybe it'll tip the balance and you know, support you.
+
+[10:54] That's true. Because if you want to go buy this book, there's one copy on s uh on the internet as far as I know. I spoke to uh Bonnie about it, and she was like one she thinks that the two copies are up, one of them's fake. And the other one, you know, it's like one of these places that like says that they have it, but they don't, they just price match and try to go get it, which I didn't even know was a thing. She's like, Oh yeah, that's a thing.
+
+[11:13] It's definitely a thing, yeah. No, if she if she's suspicious, I would I would trust that suspicion. So there's one copy available on the internet and it's three hundred dollars. So one of you can go buy it if you want, or you could just join the Patreon and get the scan. Much cheaper.
+
+[11:27] And you know, yeah. $300 is not a s surprisingly high price for that book. It's a paperback. Still scarcity of material, give it being what it is. I'm not, you know.
+
+[11:38] I've seen worse. The thing is, is that I have a love for these things that are not actually valuable, just no one cared about them until much later, and so they weren't saved. Well, that's the that's the story of so so many books. Um I mean Monroe Boston Strauss has had sort of waves of revival, but this may be the first time that he's sort of caught the attention of somebody who's willing to do something about it. Yeah.
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+[12:05] You know me. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of that, uh when Dave Chang was on, I mentioned that, you know, again, the Pi King was there and how Los Angeles i is actually, where a lot of pie innovation happened in the uh early mid uh twentieth century, right? From the 20s up to the 40s, uh, because of him, really.
+
+[12:24] But you think also Marie Calendar is down there, like that that was the genesis of a lot of kind of modern modern pie work was there. Uh the chiffon pie. I was gonna say chiffon pie. Well that's Strauss. That's that's last year was the hundredth anniversary of the chiffon pie, and I couldn't get anyone to have us write an article about it, right, John?
+
+[12:42] That's right. It's ridiculous. I was like, hundredth anniversary of the chiffon pie. And P.S. You're all doing it, not there's no right or wrong way, but like the original was cornstarch thickened, which is weird because Monroe Boston Strauss was well known for hating cornstarch as an over-thickening agent, and yet that's how his chiffons were thickened, not with gelatin.
+
+[13:00] So, you know, the original way is actually a veget vegetarian way, not uh a gelatin way. There you have it. Um anyways, uh I and you know what what did I say I was gonna do for the video? We'll get into it later. I'm digressing.
+
+[13:15] Exactly. The other Los Angeles thing that I I spoke to you about, and this is why you sent me to to Bonnie on ephemera, is uh Guardian serviceware, the crazy aluminum pots. You ever you ever I have gone too deep on this? I've seen pictures of them. I've never owned one.
+
+[13:29] I now own too much too many of them. And I have a couple of uh, you know, uh listeners and Patreon subscribers who have started snatching the stuff up on eBay. It's still really cheap. It's not induction-friendly, so it's not necessarily a long long-term solution for those of us that are gonna move to induction in the near future. It's gas and electric only.
+
+[13:45] But they're very thick aluminum pans, and they're a form of waterless cooking. So, like everyone needs to go. So, what what waterless cooking was back in the day is you would very like tightly make the pot so that the lids fit on very tightly, and then you would cook everything with the water that came with it. And it's a very similar analog to Dave Chang's microwave bowls, right? So his microwave bowls, the idea is you microwave it, they make steam, the steam then absorbs all the stuff, and this, and fundamentally, you're no longer microwaving the food anymore, you're just providing the energy to generate the steam and it's steaming itself in its own vapors.
+
+[14:17] And Guardian Serviceware from the 30s to the 50s when their factory burned down in Los Angeles, uh, they were doing the same thing, uh, waterless cooking. During World War II, when there was an aluminum shortage right at the beginning, they stopped making their lids out of aluminum, made their lids out of glass. So if you're searching for these things, Guardian serviceware, they're pretty awesome. I love them. Uh, but glass lids are post-war and metal lids are pre-war.
+
+[14:42] And I have put up both copies of the first edition, which is the pre-war metal lid edition, and the second edition, which is the glass lid edition of Guardian Service, tested recipes up for the Patreon users as well. So you can look at their recipe book should you be so inclined. They stuck with the glass lids post-war. They did. They stayed with it.
+
+[15:00] And what's interesting is that uh as a business, this I find this very interesting because sometimes you do things because you have to, but then you end up liking it more. So having cooked with both glass and metal lids on the Guardian service, everybody I'm gonna correct me if I'm wrong, guys. What do you like cooking with? Glass or or do you do you like the the stainless steel common lid, like old school all-clad lid, or do you prefer glass lids? Uh I use what I get out of the drawer first.
+
+[15:29] Wow. By the way, all lids should be you got to figure out a way to hang your lids. Draw uh lid drawers are an abomination. I d I don't disagree with you, but uh somebody I have to get the people to move out of the apartment next door before I can expand my kitchen that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[15:46] I mean, like on my as far as I can, my lids are on the wall. That's why, like, luckily, in my metal lids, I've drilled holes in them all, uh in the edges, so that I can hang them. And then in my glass lids, they usually have a vent hole. Glass lids do. I guess otherwise they might be crack if the heat was too high or something.
+
+[15:59] I don't know. But most glass lids that I have have a grommet lined hole that you can put uh over a brad, at least most of mine do. Um we should get to some classics in the field. So I would say everyone likes seeing through glass, but the old school one, they used to use a trick because what am I gonna say, John? What am I gonna say?
+
+[16:23] What is the key thing about aluminum in the kitchen? I I don't I don't know. Okay, two key things. One, amazing heat conductor. Yeah.
+
+[16:32] We all know this, right? Second really only to copper in commonly found kitchen equipment. Two, very low emissivity. So the thing that they're trying to work around here is the fact that you can't get a lot of browning. So they have a lot of roasting recipes, but all their roasting recipes do a lot of pre-browning of the meats because there's no emissivity, so you get v almost no browning, even if you stick it in the oven.
+
+[16:54] Now, what they do do with the old glass lids, and I haven't tested it yet, but here get this. They put it on the burner, and the whole point is you use very little gas because it's such a good heat conductor, and then you pull it off the burner, you move the lid over to the side and literally literally reflect the the the gas flames radiant heat off the lid and boom, back onto the food to brown it. That's how they tell you to do it in the first edition cookbook. I would be scared. I'm just skeptical.
+
+[17:24] I haven't tested it yet, but I'm just like, really? Really? Is the lid meant to get that hot? I didn't know. Well, it it shouldn't get it should get some conduction heat, but all of the radiation, most of it should be reflected.
+
+[17:36] So to the extent that there is radiant heat coming off of it, it's supposed to act like a very good reflector. Uh interesting concept. One last one, John, I know you're mad at me. Yep. Their double boiler is a dry double boiler.
+
+[17:50] Seriously. Nothing, nothing down below. No water. So what it is is it's it's just one pot sitting inside of another, perfect seal between the two pots, and just an air gap between them, and that's their double boiler. They're like, our heat is so even that we can do a double boiler without water.
+
+[18:06] Have you tried it? I have one on the way. Okay. Glass lid. Anyway, uh when their factory burned down and they moved from Chicago to uh Los Angeles, and when their factory burned down in the 50s, they went the way of the dodo.
+
+[18:22] Hard to recover from that. All right, classics in the field. So are we answering questions or are we just letting Matt talk about classics? Does he he had the questions in advance? He can he can you can describe why don't you do it in the order that you see fit?
+
+[18:33] Okay, well, I have some of the questions uh in my head, and I worked out some longer answers to them. Uh depending on how time goes, we can revisit some of them. One of the questions that popped up several times was information about classics from the classic era, books from the classical era, I should say. So books from ancient times. Um those are very scarce.
+
+[18:55] Uh not a lot has survived. Um, and what we often have uh is fragmentary material. Um and stylistically, in terms of approach, they're very different from anything we would consider a cookbook these days. The oldest material that we have in any kind of substantial form comes from about 330 BC. Uh it's a poem by a guy named Archestratus of Gala, which was a Greek settlement in Sicily.
+
+[19:23] And his work doesn't actually survive on its own, uh, but large portions of it are quoted in a work that was published at the end of the second century AD, so almost 500 years later. He was quoted extensively in a book by a fellow named Athenaeus, who was a well-known orator. He was living in a Greek colony in uh in northern Egypt. And he wrote a book, 15 volumes called The Deep Gnosifists, which translates as roughly the philosopher diners or the learned banqueters. And it ranges across a wide range of subjects, somewhat erratically, as you might expect from dinner conversation among learned people in Greece.
+
+[20:11] And he often quotes from Archistratus who gives something like recipes, something like shopping tips, mostly for choosing fish. The Greeks were serious about fish in a way that almost nobody who succeeded them has ever been serious about it. And it's full of advice on how to recognize a good one. Don't let an Italian cook this particular fish because they'll do it wrong, but have them cook this fish instead. It's highly opinionated, it has a lot of character, but it's not a set of detailed instructions in the way that we now in the 21st century expect.
+
+[20:52] Italians at the time well-known bad cooks, right? They hired Greeks to do their cooking. But they hated work, right? The Romans hated work. Well, I mean, lots of people hated work, particularly the people who were producing these books.
+
+[21:03] I mean, and that's one of the problems with the surviving material. Um, Plato, for instance, uh, didn't really think much of the Sicilians because he thought they were too serious about food. Plato was suspicious of people who liked to eat well. He thought it was a sign of character. Plato, a good writer, crazy lunatic man.
+
+[21:21] Yeah, lots of in lots of respects. I mean, you know, uh he was uh paranoid and uh hyper conservative and invented Atlantis to discourage the Greeks from having a navy. I mean uh so not always the person you want to go to for good food advice. So there were fragments of books that we know like about tiny little amounts of, like uh uh there was a book on breath making uh by someone named Chrysippus of uh Tyana, but it's only known by reference in other works. Um so the idea that something, you know, equivalent to even like the Koran of classical Greece, just those those things weren't being produced in part because the people who did the work were not the people who were creating the books.
+
+[22:14] What about the what about the um the cuneiform tablets in the Yale Babylonian collection that were translated a number of years ago by that French guy who's now dead? Um I don't I haven't seen material from them, and my recollection is that it's uh more in the way of record keeping than it is a set of actual instructions. But I mean, he I forget the guy's name. He compiled a book which was then translated in the mid-2000s. But yeah, it's one of those things where the recipes, I read the recipes and they're extremely like mash up, mash up these things and you get it together.
+
+[22:56] But then people have tried to um people this one professor tried to like infer based on other knowledge he had of what people would have had, tried to infer kind of how they would cook, and he did a cookbook, and I forget the name of it. But you know, and then recently there was in England in a in 2019, I think, some uh group of a Mesopotamian scholars did a dinner where they tried to recreate a lot of the stuff. Uh but again, it's a lot of it's very speculative, I think. It has to be speculative just because uh we're not even confident in a lot of cases about the ingredient names. Yeah.
+
+[23:32] Um, if you start going back and looking at the history of early grains, there's there's so much division about what something possibly could have been that it's all making leaps of faith. Right. I mean, and even stuff that is fairly well attested, like a petis, right, which we haven't gotten into yet. Is that how I'm supposed to pronounce it apicius? Like I say I say apicicious.
+
+[23:53] I mean, I know people say a picius, but I also say Julius Caesar instead of Iulius Caesar. So who says that? You should say it the way you say it. I like it the better with the way you say it. Apecious?
+
+[24:04] Yeah, and Julius Caesar. Yeah, no, I I mean I say I don't try to pretend that I'm pronouncing it in the classical Latin way because they're all dead anyhow. Yeah. But I mean, these they've entered contemporary culture and sort of assumed contemporary American pronunciations, is my that's my thinking. Yeah.
+
+[24:21] Also, though, people shouldn't make the mistake that just because the everyone's dead, that we can't figure out how it was pronounced. There's a whole historical linguistics uh uh field of study, which is amazingly interesting. I took a class on it in college where they can deduce the pronunciation based on the changes that happen post that language. It's amazing work. You ever read that stuff?
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+[24:39] I read small amounts of it and realize that was in way over my head. Yeah, it's it's just amazing to know that somebody does that. That's all I need to know. I don't need to do it. I took a class on it, and it's enough to know that there are other people who do it.
+
+[24:51] But my issue with uh Apicius is that most people, and this is why my favorite is I think the more recent one, instead of the the Dover reprint, I prefer the Sally Granger because she I think tries to take seriously the recipes and not say, well, all of these recipes must must have been wrong, therefore I'm gonna use my modern cook sensibility to recreate them, which I think is always the wrong move. Like I think the assumption is that these people A knew what they were talking about, and B, their food tasted good. That's always the assumption to make, right? I think so I think you have to take it that way because otherwise, I mean, why are you interested? Um if you're not trusting in in the author uh to have at least a passionate concern with their subject matter, then you're wasting your time.
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+[25:37] Uh and the the velling translation that is that I think the one that's available in Dover. Um it was a interesting work because it got the ball rolling on doing translations of a piece, but there have been numerous subsequent ones in the Grocock and uh and Granger one, the prospect books has done. That is impressive. It acknowledges differences in the text, it tries to understand them. Um that's a serious effort to get into the material and see what can be drawn from it.
+
+[26:07] Right. And speaking of Sally Granger, I thought we should get her on sometime. I don't know if she is interested, but she just did a recent book on uh fish sauce on Garam and Liqueman, but it's unobtainable because it just costs so dang much. Why did well you said that their publisher is known for not caring about things? Aaron Powell There are some publishers whose uh whose business model involves direct sales solely to interested academics.
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+[26:31] Um and they assume that it's somebody with a book buying budget, either a library or uh an institutional budget, and so they're pricing the books at $180, $500. Um they don't offer discounts to booksellers uh or to any kind of reseller because they're confident in their in the direct market. Reak. Weak. It it breaks my heart because you know, there's a lot of ask a lot of very good material out there that should be more widely available.
+
+[27:04] Now for a more modern someone had a question uh and then we'll then we'll move to a different continent. Unless you have more for the uh for the old world. No, no, I think we uh or the European slash because there's nothing Egyptian, right? No one's done any good work on Egyptian. Not that I've seen.
+
+[27:21] I mean, you know, tiny bits of information around about beer making uh and so forth, but food production, you know, and there's some blurry lines about the way Egyptians treated beer. They sort of concert considered it a way of preserving grain and um and they fed people a lot of beer, weak beer, uh, but nothing more complex than that that I'm aware of. Aaron Powell Any uh any good uh really good new work uh in English for like uh the translation of the 14th century Islamic stuff? There have been some books. There are several good books that are um that are coming out translated by a scholar named Nawal Nasrala.
+
+[28:04] Uh and she has uh continued to translate that material, I think very thoughtfully, uh well supported by footnotes and anecdotes and and her own research. But those are expensive too. They run anywhere from 90 to 200. Ugh. Um so it's better than some things, but it's not a casual weekend to pick up.
+
+[28:27] And are these the kinds of things that you I guess you'd have to interlibrary loan them if you didn't have the money, right? Or something like this. Yeah, I would I would assume that a good interlibrary loan program would be able to get them to you. I mean, we keep three or four of them at the store uh because we do get enough inquiries about them. They're not on the website, unfortunately, because to be honest, um I need to spend time with them to be able to write about them intelligently.
+
+[28:51] And I haven't done that yet. Most of the stuff that I've seen uh well, see I haven't researched in a number of years, so you you tell me, but you know, the last time I researched it with you was a number of years ago. Uh medieval medieval Chinese stuff in English was really sparse. Has any good thing good come out? I haven't seen it, no.
+
+[29:06] I mean, I'd I'd I'd love to have a selection of things like that, but I'm not aware that it's been translated. Right. And I know that someone was working on a translation of the old, like uh Thai royal stuff. Did that ever come to light? Nothing.
+
+[29:21] Andy Ricker told me that that there were these old documents that Thompson got and or whatever, and then Wow. I mean, I'd love to have that. I'll I'll ping ping uh ping rickers, I think. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[29:33] Uh because that would be fantastic. Amazing. I have no idea what that would even look like. Right, because those recipes are different because it's like they live in a different literally different like plane from the Yes, from the ordinary people. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[29:47] Yeah. I mean, wouldn't that be that'd be something something? Yeah. All right. So uh we have a question uh from uh Rapa.
+
+[29:57] Does Matt know it we're talking about the what I've always referred to as the Mukoito books, but there's actually four books, right? There's Introduction to Japanese cuisine, flavor and seasonings, and then there's cutting techniques one, Muguita 1, and Muglita 2, right? So uh do you know if they're just out of stock or if they're out of print? They are technically out of stock, but there is no date in the system as of a week or two when I last checked on them. So that means it at least not in the next two to three months.
+
+[30:30] Um but uh they're distributed in the United States by Random House on behalf of Kordansha, and um I have back orders in this in the random house system for all of them. Yeah, and they're well enough known that the price on ABE is pretty jacked up. I am not surprised to hear that, yeah. Yeah. Uh they are useful, uh meticulous books, and I don't understand what the what the difficulty is in finding a bigger market for them.
+
+[30:56] I mean, I don't own any of them, but I've seen the the spreads, and they're pretty good. Yeah. They're I mean they're they're they're from the source. They are the kind of uh careful, thoughtful, precise uh approach that you would expect from a serious Japanese uh system. And I don't know why it's such a struggle.
+
+[31:15] Are they in English as well? Or no are they are in English, yeah. They are translated. Are they as bad as the Monte? Not that I'm gonna make you bad mouth Montego.
+
+[31:23] Yeah. I mean, you know how I feel about certain Spanish publishers' translation skills. I I I know exactly what you're talking about, and I will say that they are getting better. I don't know that they've actually hit the perfect point, but they have taken criticism seriously. Well, that's nice.
+
+[31:43] I mean, if I can tell that your Spanish translation is bad, it's real bad. Yeah. Because I don't speak Spanish. So it has to be really bad for me to know. There are there are some publishers in Spain who were being very careful.
+
+[31:55] The uh the recent Disrutar book was really well translated. It felt pretty idiomatic. Nice. I mean, like, yeah, I've said it a million times, but like uh the the most important Spanish book in the United States in the early 2000s wasn't, I don't think the the El Bully books. It was uh it was the uh Roca book in terms of its impact on working chefs.
+
+[32:21] Everyone I know who was interested in in Sue V low temperature book, they were all getting the Roka book, and a lot of people based a lot of their early thoughts off of the Roka book. It was the only book on uh on on on technique. Yeah, you know, prior to uh when Thomas Keller came out with his book, which I have issues with, many issues with. I have issues with the Roka book too, but it was the very first group to attempt to do it. Uh and it was kind of a kind of a watershed moment.
+
+[32:52] And, you know, at the school, when I was at the French culinary at the time, uh we had both the Spanish and the English versions. And so I I, you know, looked at them side by side because uh the Rokas were super famous for this uh warm cod, right? And so in and then I looked at the recipe, I was like, that's gross. 'Cause it's cod, right? And I'd never been to El Calar Ken Roca.
+
+[33:16] I still haven't, which is unfortunate because I'd love to go. I was like, that's gross. 104 degrees cod? You know what I mean? Like gross.
+
+[33:24] And then I looked at it, it. It's backlog, it's it's bacalao. So it's salt cod, entirely different beast. And just that's how little they cared about translating into English back in when was that book? Oh four, oh five, something like that.
+
+[33:37] It might have even been a little bit more. Oh three, oh two, somewhere around there. I would have said two. Yeah, oh two. That makes sense.
+
+[33:42] Because that yeah, right, because uh one or oh two, because Wiley, I was buying him circulators in like oh two, oh three, you know, and he had that book right when WD opened, WD-50. It was like he had that very early on. And I I was remember I remember reading that book and being like, what the hell is this? You know what I mean? Like, anyway.
+
+[34:03] All right, so let's get some more classics so that we can uh well, all right, all right. We gotta get the classics out because I lose Matt after the ad roll. I'll have to do it adds soon. So what else we have? What about New World?
+
+[34:11] Hit me. For do we want to do classics in the field? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so uh two two books that I brought to suggest. First, not really New World, but Simple French Food by Richard Olney.
+
+[34:23] Um, amazing book from 1974. Uh only is an incredible snob, and he's a big liar uh about when it comes to the the idea of simplicity. But if you know that going in, you're gonna find this a fascinating book. He is incredibly passionate and detailed. Uh at the same time, uh he's you get the feeling that he would have been a horrible pain in the ass to know and work with.
+
+[34:48] But the book is completely absorbing, and it is very true, particularly to Southern French Provenceal food. So I think it's the kind of thing that anybody who's interested in French food needs to know about. Just take his I mean, he tosses around the word imbecile uh fairly often with regard to just about anybody. It's a good word though. Who isn't himself?
+
+[35:10] Well, I mean, it's not a good you're not allowed to say it anymore. I mean, it's like it sounds good. Imbecile. Imbecile. Well You like Dolt better use it too many times.
+
+[35:14] Yeah and uh it starts to lose its power. Yeah. Um as a contrast to that, uh I came to talk about Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis. Both of these are about uh home cooking. They're very rooted in a sense of place.
+
+[35:33] The the Lewis book is about the food that mostly the food that she knew growing up in a very small community in in rural Virginia. Um it's very connected to the way the food was produced, where the ingredients came from. She talks about a salad green that they picked that they planted along the fence post on the way to the well because they watered the greens every day as they were carrying water into the house. So it has that that sense of uh of being very connected to a way of life. Um the only book is a little more there's a key phrase point in the early part of the only book where he talks about uh how when he talks to the men in the village he lives in, they're always willing to talk about great food forever and ever.
+
+[36:16] And the women get very tired of talking to him about it very quickly. Um and I think he's sort of divorced the the work of the production of this food from the enjoyment of eating it. Easy to talk about if you don't have to make it. Yes. And I think that comes through.
+
+[36:30] But still, it's it is um it's an amazing document of of of culture and food. And despite his um intrusiveness uh and uh his giant blind spots, uh he is passionately concerned with with the way that these people were cooking and eating. But diametrically opposed to Edna Lewis. Yeah, I I mean it would I I've I've never seen the two of them in a room together. Uh I can't imagine how much they would have had to say to each other in their time.
+
+[37:00] But Lewis was uh she was very calm and collected and stately, and um, and I think didn't much care about what other people thought uh and only was passionate and intense and sort of a darting wit, um, and technically incredibly accomplished as a cook, but um not much uh uh flexibility in the way he thought about things. So let me ask you a quick question. I'm I'm gonna get my butt handed to me here. Uh in the Americas, has anyone superseded uh Sophie Koe's America's First Cuisines? That because that's old.
+
+[37:41] That's like 1994, 95. It's like pushing 30. I have not seen any serious attempt at addressing pre-Columbian uh cultural food in English. Since then. Yeah, since then.
+
+[37:52] There may be works in Spanish. Is that book any good? It is. It is. It's uh I think it's quite seriously good.
+
+[37:59] Um it uh it really wasn't um interested in in sort of hearsay on folklore. She was looking for for documents, she was looking for archaeological evidence. She wrote it with her husband, who was an impressive uh scholar of Middle America. Um a lot of the research was her own, but she used him as sort of a rigorous sounding board. Um and uh she also did a a book called The True History of Chocolate, uh, which was done a few years later, um, still in print also, and uh and fascinating look at what we know.
+
+[38:36] The problem with a lot of that time is that the there were records in many cases, and they were destroyed by uh Spanish colonial people who thought they were preserving the natives from their heathen ways. Right. And uh on the way out, and we'll go right from whatever you say here. It's been a pleasure having you on uh on the way out as usual. We'll have you know we'll have you back uh for this.
+
+[38:57] I guess we're doing half half segments, John, basically. Yeah. Uh flexible. Coda asked, would love to hear a classic in the field about either old school uh ancient cooking in general in general, well, or Native American first people. So here in the U.S., anything?
+
+[39:12] What do we got other than the Sous Chef, which is a newer book, not a Right. Sean Sherman's book is is great, but it's definitely a contemporary look at at the use of traditional Native American ingredients, but informed by classic technique. Um, we don't really have um some great ancient work from even from the 19th century, as far as I know. It's um that was pretty much stomped out in a lot of cases. People who had indigenous traditions were uprooted and moved.
+
+[39:42] They were forced to adapt their diets to uh things like wheat, which were uh beneficial to the the wealthy white settlers who were growing it and selling it to them. Um so uh it's there's a tremendous loss there and um and documentation about what's out there is mostly about agricultural practices and what can be discerned, but in terms of like cooking, no. Not to my knowledge. Well, there's uh field of scholarship open there, if it's possible. Yeah.
+
+[40:16] Well, Matt, thanks uh so much. Uh, we're gonna be right back with more cooking issues. This episode of Cooking Issues brought to you by Oracing Salmon, our favorite fish. Today we have Michael Fabro from Ora King to tell us more about it. The way that a an animal, a fish specifically, is slaughtered has a huge effect on the actual quality of the muscle meat.
+
+[40:37] And you guys take great pains to make sure that the fish is under as little stress as possible, right? Yeah, absolutely. Everything we do throughout their life cycle, we're trying to minimize stress, but that becomes critically important at harvest. We basically gather the fish, have them swim up kind of the through this upstream channel where they will get to a point where there's a percussive stunner and a bleeder, and the percussive stunner will knock them out so that they're uh not uh aware of of the next kill step, so they're not feeling pain. There's no release of lactic acid.
+
+[41:10] So when you buy aura king, you're buying a salmon that is hatched in the second cleanest water in the world, kept in good conditions in a low density environment, very good genetics with a very high fat content, is slaughtered under very non-stressful conditions and shipped immediately to LAX such that it arrives at your door from Goldbelly four days after uh it was swimming in the water. Oracing salmon, follow them on Instagram at Oracing Salmon. Everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Uh so I realized uh after I let him go that I didn't answer some uh ask him some questions.
+
+[41:45] Gas station chef uh in PA wanted to know if if the white rabbit cookbook was still gonna come out. Matt says it's been put on hold indefinitely. Why, John? I couldn't hear what he said. Uh well, I know.
+
+[41:55] Yeah, I don't really know much about the yeah, yeah. Was that one owned by some like horrible person? No, but I mean he definitely a lot of rich Russian olive garks would have eaten at his restaurant. It's one of the best restaurants in the world on the 50 best list. Yeah, all right.
+
+[42:07] Oh wow, you just invented a new word, olive gark. Let's say oligarch. I know, but like we gotta get Nick from the olive oil thing to come in. He's not gonna be the olive gark. Uh and I also forgot to ask uh for uh Miguel Kunz, the bet like the best book on uh for infusing uh liquors, like a deep dive, like liquid intelligence style.
+
+[42:27] Why don't you ask Matt offline and we'll we'll get that to him on Twitter? I spoke to him about that beforehand. Uh that doesn't really exist yet, unfortunately. Uh yeah. Well, you can get that Italian liquors book that got ganked from May.
+
+[42:38] Yes, that's true. You know, because that's all that's all infusions and stuff, but it's like Italian style, like Fiore the Alpi and all that stuff. So well, I'm glad you asked that because then now we know that we at least tried to get an answer. What else do we miss? Uh foraging.
+
+[42:52] Classic downfield. I mean Yule Gibbons. Yep. Stalking the whatever, stalking the blue-eyed scallops, stalking the wild asparagus, like uh stalking the uh the health verb's not as good, but like anyway, those. So uh Stas.
+
+[43:09] You there? Yeah. Can I tell you a story? You're gonna you're gonna enjoy it. You ready?
+
+[43:14] You ready for from my morning? So you had your scam thing. So here's what happens to me, all right. So uh so for those of you that don't know, like in my house you can't play music out loud because it triggers kind of booker. He loses his mind.
+
+[43:29] So like consequently, like I haven't taught Dax like a lot of like you know, what I used to listen to, so Dax you know only listens to you know very specific stuff. Anyway, so like when you want to hear music, you you put earphones in, and so you uh like people are walking around the house and we can't hear what's going on around us, right? You know, you get the picture. So uh, you know, I go into the bathroom this morning, I'm doing my business, and I'm listening to uh Soundgarden as one does. Everyone who listens to the show knows I love Chris Cornell, loves SoundGarden.
+
+[43:55] I'm listening to uh, I forget what song it was. I think it was like uh, you know, my wave or something. And of course, I'm marveling at how well Chris Cornell can go between like all those different registers, right? I mean, how seamlessly the man can go between all of his different registers, right? It's it's he's great.
+
+[44:12] And then uh the next song that comes on, because you know how like Vastasia likes this, but you know how you choose one song and then Apple will just decide what you're gonna listen to next? Yeah. And it's not based on anything, right? Yeah. So they decide that what I want to listen to is uh Machine Head by Bush, right?
+
+[44:30] Now, do you remember that song? You remember that? Yeah, yeah. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, like that crap. It's not bad.
+
+[44:39] It's not a bad song. It's just like I wasn't listening to the radio at that point in my life because I owned a 76 Pontiac Bonneville. Uh I hadn't yet spray painted it gold, or it was right around the time I had spray painted it gold, but stuck in the cassette player was uh a bootleg of uh James Brown Star Time uh discs three and four. So that's all that I ever listened to was James Brown Star Time three and four for the entire time that I had that Pontiac because that's all the Pontiac played was James Brown. Anytime you turn the key on, it was James Brown.
+
+[45:15] So like that was like the soundtrack of my life for the time that Bush became famous. So, anyways, I'm listening to my earphones, breathe in, breathe out. And I'm like, this song is so much easier, like the vocal range is so much smaller than freaking Chris Cornell. So I'm like, it's not a bad song, but I'm like, these guys are weak compared to SoundGarden, right? I mean, just vocally.
+
+[45:34] I mean, he's a good singer, but it's just not the same. You agree with me, right? I mean, it's just not as impressive. Of course. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[45:40] So you know, I got this crap. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. I get up, and uh, I lean over and I'm hearing the breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. And then all of a sudden the music stops. I'm like, what?
+
+[45:52] And then I feel the earpiece falls out, my airpod falls out of my ear, and I'm like, no. And I see because my head is over the toilet, and it's falling in to the business. And I'm like, and while it's falling, like my whole life is in, like my whole brain is in slow-mo. I'm having all of these thoughts. I'm like, I'm gonna have to reach in and reach out and reach in and reach out and reach in to get it, right?
+
+[46:24] Through the business. And then, like, what am I gonna do with it? And so, but then I realize, oh no, my finger's already pressing the flush button and gone. Gone. Breathe in, breathe out.
+
+[46:41] Breathe in, breathe out. Anyway, that was my mind. Why would you try to that? You your mind does terrible things, Doz. That's like I told you, I like I knew this guy who knew someone who their first day at at work went to retrieve a pen they dropped into the deep fryer.
+
+[46:58] Because, or like people, if you i if the if you're about to have your first job in a kitchen, like and and no one tells you this, your reflex is to reach for the knife that you've just dropped. Let it go, get your feet out of the way. You know what I'm saying? Your reflex is to go get it, and it's not a good reflex. Very bad, not very bad.
+
+[47:17] Very bad. Yeah. Or, like I, you know, like anyone who's heard me say this, like when you catch on fire, your reflex is to run away from yourself. Why? Because you're on fire.
+
+[47:26] Don't do that. You have to train yourself not to. Uh yeah, that was my that was my morning. Nice. Awesome.
+
+[47:34] Yeah. I knew this Nastasi would appreciate that. I mean, it's no, it's no closer, but you know. Nothing beats that. Yeah.
+
+[47:44] Yeah. If, you know, if if all of this goes really south, and, you know, the, and we're all gonna get wiped off and there's gonna be a nuclear Armageddon, right? If that happens, what sandwich is Peter Kim gonna have as the missiles are coming in, Stas? Yeah, the tuna tuna. You think tuna?
+
+[48:04] Do you have time to make a tuna fish sandwich? I guess I think it's like you have 15 minutes, right? It's 15 minutes from the time someone says go to the time we're all vaporized. I mean, when you throw something in a wrap, yeah, it's you know, quick enough. So Peter Kim, for for for new listeners, is uh the uh you can go listen to his podcast.
+
+[48:24] Uh he was a former favorite punching bag when we were on the old Voldemort network. And um uh yeah, the man, he his his main one of his main skills is no matter what is happening, man will be eating a sandwich. Truth. Yeah, no matter what it is. No matter what it is.
+
+[48:43] Like if he had been like, I want to Photoshop Peter Kim eating a sandwich into like images of the Titanic going down. He would have been on the deck of the Titanic, Titanic munching a sandwich. You know what I mean? While those bands were playing. He's like, I'm listening to the world music here on the Titanic as we're going down.
+
+[49:01] I got a sandwich. Anyway. Yeah. All right. Positive MD wrote in.
+
+[49:07] Any wrecks for food-related activities around the UK. Listen, I have not been since well before the pandemic. So I'm gonna ask the Discord and the Patreon people, uh, maybe some UK people over there, people who have been there recently to uh hook us up with some information. Would that not be uh a better plan? Yeah, or yeah, hold up.
+
+[49:25] Let me just read off what I sent him so everyone can do it. By the way, a John, uh a John Hill recommendation is a good recommendation. The man knows his at least Belgian stuff, at least. Thank you. Um, okay, so definitely St.
+
+[49:40] John uh by Fergus Henderson. That's an absolute must. Um, then if you can get a reservation, dinner by Heston Blumenthal. I was asked about that over the Fat Talk. I haven't been to the Fat Talk, so I can't say, but what I will say about dinner by Huston is really the value that you get for what you pay for there is fantastic.
+
+[49:57] And the food is super delicious. The staff is awesome. That uh roasted pineapple dessert is really delicious too. Um then, in terms of just other places uh for fish and chips, the Golden Hind, Poppies or Golden Union, Beirut Express for Shawarma, the three stags for meat pies, I believe. Uh M Mans is the oldest pie shop in London and is pretty fantastic.
+
+[50:22] Brickling bagel bake for the salt beef bagel. What? What? Bagels in London, really? Yeah.
+
+[50:28] Okay. Yeah. Uh Fortnum and Mason for supposedly original Scotch egg, even if it's not the original, it's still quite good. And scotch egg. Yeah, me too.
+
+[50:37] That's all I got. So uh Fabulous and Jeremiah and the wild end. So I'm gonna throw that one in the what is it? Sorry, Dishume. I want to throw in the mix.
+
+[50:46] Dishume B-I-S-H-O-O-M. Indian uh restaurant in Soho, I believe, in London. Very good. Nice, nice. The uh the original, but not the best.
+
+[50:55] Soho. I'm just messing with you. Uh Fabulous and Jeremiah at Wild Air have a Scotch egg olive, which is delicious. Yeah, it looks really good. It is uh it doesn't just look good.
+
+[51:05] You know, it tastes good, tastes very good. Uh and obviously, and you're not mentioning it because you're assuming that everyone already knows about it, but it might not be the case. You must go to Neil's Yard Dairy. Yes. Yeah, fair.
+
+[51:16] Yeah, yeah. I mean, don't assume that they know about Neil's Yard Dairy. Uh it used to be uh years and years and years and years ago, like you know, 15 years ago or so. Uh maybe even longer, it was before maybe I had kids. Is that the airplane would land and I would go directly from the airport to Neil's Yard Dairy so that I would never be in my hotel room without cheese.
+
+[51:39] You know? And for those of you in the United States who don't think Neil's Yard Dairy maybe is all that anymore, realize that they send they don't send always their best stuff here. Like the stuff at Neil's Yard is just freaking amazing. And if it wasn't for Neil's Yard Dairy, I mean, they were very early in the kind of cheese renaissance, and like I mean, have just done untold good for the cheese world. Would you not agree, John?
+
+[52:08] Yeah. I mean, yeah. Also, Borough Market is just kind of cool to go to. Yeah, and there is a Neil's Yard there. It's not the original one, but I think that's now their main wholesale distribution point, and that's where they sell the grilled cheese sandwiches uh or did a couple of days a week.
+
+[52:21] And yeah, Borough Market's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right. So uh we'll get to some social uh media and email.
+
+[52:29] Do we have any more Patreon questions? Yeah, the omelet. What I missed from Z. Oh. Xander.
+
+[52:33] Uh I've been watching all of these omelet videos. By the way, do you like omelet traditional style, two T's and E, or are you guys more E and T, more American style? I still do the two T's. Two T's and an E? Yeah.
+
+[52:47] Yeah. What about you, Stez? No, I don't care. Wow. On brand.
+
+[52:55] On brand. Nastassi Lopez on brand. Well, let me ask you this, Nastasia. What kind of omelets? Do you like omelets, right?
+
+[53:02] I don't usually eat them, no. No. So what like so like when you when someone says to you omelet, what do you think? Like, what is an omelet to you? Like what's inside of it?
+
+[53:14] Well, in other words, are you thinking like a small wet thing or like a big puffy kind of like hard cooked thing? Does it have a bunch of stuff on the inside? Hard cooked lobster crap inside. Okay, okay, okay. And uh what about what about uh what about you all you other guys?
+
+[53:30] What's like what's in your mind? As I say omelet, what do you what do you what do you think? The first thing I think of is like the omelet station at a hotel when they do, you know, buffet breakfast or something. It's horrible. It's just the first image of the money.
+
+[53:43] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because I don't generally eat I don't really have omelets at home. Even if you don't eat it at the station, just watching that. There is a guy at a so if you drive along I-95, there is a truck stop called uh what is it, um T something on I95, like just outside of Brantford. You come out of New Haven, you go north, there's a truck stop that you pass there.
+
+[54:05] And I remember when I was in my early 20s, we would go there, and uh the omelet station at the All You Could Eat buffet was run by a guy that we called uh uh Rat Boy because he was you know a little bit younger than us and he looked like like a human personified rat, like rat tattooy, rat boy. I now realize this guy's in his probably late 40s. He's probably he's a rat man now. He's a rat man, yeah. But it's not that his omelets were great, but in the way that Dave Wondrich once told me that just the sight of the of the airline uh drink cart makes him like salivate Pavla style.
+
+[54:41] Like the idea of like the omelet station, I just find so enjoyable, you know, regardless of the quality of the omelets produced. Well, you want to talk about some omelet technique? So, what Xander is thinking about is the what about you, Joe? What's your omelet? I don't need eggs.
+
+[54:59] Oh, all right. At all or in things? No, I just I'm sorry I don't eat eggs. They don't agree with me. Oh, all right, okay.
+
+[55:05] Uh I'm assuming John uh thinks about the French little like you know. How do you describe that? It's not a teardrop, it's like a double-sided teardrop. It's like a it's like a lozenge shape. It's like uh how do you describe that?
+
+[55:18] I don't know, that's a good question. You know, in a way that's not uh suggestive. In a non-suggestive what what is that shape in a non-suggestive way? Uh tube with pointy ends? I don't know.
+
+[55:33] I don't know. Yeah. I'll have to think of it. All right, we'll think about it. Yeah.
+
+[55:37] Uh anyway, so it's kind of a very uh blonde, no brown on it. No brown. Like wet-ish but not gooey. Correct. Little suggestive shape.
+
+[55:49] And so that's the omelet that we're talking about. And uh typically, you know, Jocomos like us would make it in a nonstick pan, but traditionally you'd make it in a very well-seasoned uh blue or or you know, carbon steel pan that is used exclusively for omelets. You got John, are you putting anything else in that pan? No. What if someone put something else in that pan?
+
+[56:12] Death. Yeah, death. That pan is for that. So I've been watching all these omelet videos of uh Jacques Papin. By the way, Jacques Papin, famous.
+
+[56:21] Worked with him, worked with him for a bunch of years at the French Culinary Institute where he was one of the deans. So in finding Nemo, the the shrimp's name was Jacques. And so Booker early on saw that, and he was like, that shouldn't be Jacques, that should be Jackwes. And so we had a cleaner shrimp at the time because we had a saltwater tank, and we called the cleaner shrimp Jakuz. So in our house, Jacques was always Jackwez.
+
+[56:50] So then I started calling with Nastasia and with our interns. I started calling Jacques Papin Jackwes Peepin. And then from Jack Wes Peeping, it went to the Peep Show, and then also sometimes Jackie Peeps. So in our house, he's Jackie Peep. And then, yeah, and then we had like a remember that tall intern Andrew Nastasia.
+
+[57:11] Yeah. And he used to come up with nicknames for Jackie Peeps constantly, and then he would do the Jackie Peeps voice. Anyway. Yes. Yeah.
+
+[57:20] Andrew, he was hilarious. Anyway, uh, so whenever you say Jacques Papin, I'm always thinking Jackie Peeps. Yeah, or Jacques Peepin. Anyway. We've got three minutes.
+
+[57:28] I feel like I can make uh okay. And I feel like I can make my omelets like perfectly wrapped, but the problem is that I can't do it while making the eggs as runny as he does. Because uh then they leak out the side and stuff. Because when you're trying to do the final flip, all of the eggy mixture, a lot of it hasn't gotten tucked in properly. So when you're uh told to fold the final bit over, part of the runny bit in the middle starts folding out onto the sides.
+
+[57:50] You can never really get the lip over perfectly. So it's very tricky, and I don't understand what technique I need to do. It just seems insurmountable. I don't get it. It's so hard.
+
+[57:57] How do they do it? Well, what they do is uh this is literally how they do it, is they have someone who knows how to do it stand over your shoulder, and then they have you make them constantly until you get it right. That's basically what they do. So uh, I mean, and without seeing you do it, I can't really I'm not very good at it, but I could probably be the guy standing over your shoulder. Make sure that your pan is well seasoned.
+
+[58:24] And just look, keep watching the videos and don't listen to anything anyone is saying. Just watch the videos and look at the eggs. And the hands. And the hands. Yeah.
+
+[58:33] Look at the eggs and the hands, watch how we see it. See the movement panel. And see whether or not are you a are you a bump the wrist or you yeah, you gotta watch when they bump the wrist, watch when they do it, watch the angle of the pan, and figure that all out. Just so you know, I'm I'm allowed to keep answering questions. What should I hit?
+
+[58:46] I'll hit one uh out of here. Uh from Steven, ooh, this is gonna be a long one on flowers. I'll hit it quick. Impossible. How much time do I have, John?
+
+[58:55] Two minutes. Two minutes. Minute and a half, minute and a half. All right, Steven. My question about blending flours with different protein contents.
+
+[59:01] There's a famous chocolate chip cookie recipe that blends 50-50 cake flour, which is 8% protein, and bread flour, which is about 12.7. Well, it depends on what you use. My question is do blends like this function as a flour with the average of their protein contents, in this case 10.35%, or are there specific qualities that are achieved with a blend? I would think that AP flour sits around this percentage, and the recipe doesn't call for it. There must be a reason for mixing.
+
+[59:21] Thanks so much, Stephen from Chicago. It is not the same. The difference between look, cake flour is not just soft in terms of protein, it has very low damage starch, which means that it normally wouldn't hold water very well, but it's been brominated so that it does hold water. In a cookie recipe, I would actually try subbing a soft flour that doesn't have bromination or bleaching so that you don't so that you don't have the water holding, it means you can use less water and it'll change the spread. But if the recipe is what the recipe is, it is what it is.
+
+[59:49] But no, it's an interesting mix because putting cake flour in lowers the protein without lowering its water holding capacity that much. From Joe Waterhouse, hey Dave, I've been thinking about tap cocktails for a while. Oh no, this is the one I told you to reword. I don't understand what they're saying. But I mean I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center at New Stan Studios, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? I'm good. Yeah?
+
+[0:21] Mm-hmm. Doing well? Yes. We have also uh work in the panels, Joe Hazen. How you doing?
+
+[0:27] I'm doing great. How are you guys? Good, good. Uh we're supposed to have Jackie Molecules in the California booth, but we're worried maybe the big one hit because we can't raise them. So this is not going out live to the Patreon people.
+
+[0:37] I'm sorry. But uh if somehow uh you're uh on the Discord you want to call in questions to our guest at 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And of course, our special guest today is uh fan of our um uh fan favorite for from our listeners. Fan of the show.
+
+[0:57] Oh, nice, nice. Uh Kenji Lopez Alt. How you doing? I'm good, how are you? Doing well, doing well.
+
+[1:02] Uh like I said, I'm good. Good I meant good. Yeah. Uh so all right, so you know, you might know uh the food lab, right? Which sold, I don't know, what, like uh a copy for every person who lives in the United States, something like that?
+
+[1:15] Something like this. Something like like there's enough copies for like every you know person uh to have one in the country, uh, which is great. To have 50 pages of one. Yeah, part of one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:26] I like how you've calculated it. That's very good. Uh, but you come out with a new book, and I'm kind of surprised. I it you know, I was surprised when I learned it was a long time ago that I learned what you're doing, but uh on uh the walk, just on the walk. And you say in the intro, uh you're like you felt kind of weird because it's the pan that you use the most.
+
+[1:45] Right. And that you kind of left it out of your first book. Yeah, I mean, not not totally by choice. You know, it was my first book. Yeah, I mean, you worked with Maria, but uh uh the my first book when I turned in the manuscript to her, she kind of you know took took the axe to it because it was way too long.
+
+[1:59] Um and so all all you know, most of the stuff that stayed in was kind of the American stuff and American adjacent stuff. And then so there was a whole chapter on the walk in that book, um, among other things that got cut. Um the only thing that remained in that first book is in the is in the chapter is in the introductory chapter on uh equipment where I said you should buy a walk, and these are the things you can do in a walk, and then I didn't mention a walk again in the rest of the book. Right. So yeah, so I mean I remember in uh you remember like uh so across the way from Maria was you know, whoever her assistant was at the time.
+
+[2:31] Right, right. Yeah, I mean, she you know, in the time that we were writing, she had I think like two or three. I don't know which one you had for the l like the longest length of time. I don't remember. Yeah, but in that side in the side uh cabinet was your stocks of paper.
+
+[2:47] Because you submitted like eight billion pages of stuff for the first book. I mean, every time and Maria would every time I showed up, she would waltz me across the room and be like, look at Kenji's stack. Where's your stack of paper? Where's your stack of paper? I'm like, I don't have one, Maria, I don't have it.
+
+[3:06] So yeah, anyway, uh yeah. Good times. But uh one thing I think it's interesting and um I think gonna be interesting for like a lot of our listeners if they don't already have the book. And when did it come out, by the way? Uh March eighth, officially.
+
+[3:21] Yeah. So uh oh, congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. Um you were a very early advocate and continue to be of the flat bottom walk.
+
+[3:33] Yeah. And and I think like this is gonna be interesting for a lot of our listeners and might solve maybe some of their problems in that uh a lot of people who poo-poo the flat bottom walk as being, you know, a scare or air quotes, depending on. I actually asked my wife yesterday, I was like, what's the difference between a scare quote and an air quote? She's like, it's scare quote when you write it, but it's air quote when you make it in the air. I was like, but do they have the same meaning?
+
+[3:57] And she's like, well, they don't have to have the same meaning. Anyway, uh, yeah, so it's in quote unquote inauthentic. As though authenticity really has meaning anymore. But uh, you know, like what is really authentic mean? But the but the point is is that uh you say it just flat out cooks better, does what on the kind of burners that we use, unless you have an actual walk burner.
+
+[4:17] Exactly. Yeah. Which is it's cooks better, it's also it also cooks safer, right? It's like you know, there's a big chapter on deep frying in here because I think you know, a walk, I think is the best vessel for deep frying. Because it expands.
+
+[4:25] For well, for a number of reasons, yeah. But um, yeah, because it expands so the bubbles don't go over and out. It catches you're able to get under there more easily, you can maneuver food more easily. A number of reasons why I think is the best tool for deep frying. But a flat uh round bottom walk, I don't want to fill that up with like two quarts of hot oil and have it kind of teetering on a western style burner designed for a flat thing.
+
+[4:43] So, you know, part of it, part of it is performance because you're getting more of the pen closer to the closer to the fire. And the and you know, and and the ring on a Western burner is designed to spread heat outwards. So when you're when the sides of the walk are elevated up, they're the the flame spreads out even more, so you end up kind of heating up the sides of the walk instead of the bottom, which is what you want when you have a round bottom walk. Yeah, because I have an extreme, and I was surprised because there's also different, there's different levels of flatness, right? There's those ones where it's just a little bit flat.
+
+[5:10] Right. But that's not what you're talking about. You're like almost have like a four-by seven inches. Yeah, like a six or seven inch thing. Yeah.
+
+[5:15] So it's almost like a real, it's almost like uh like a two quart saucepan's bottom or something like that. But with much wider sides. Much wider sides. But I'm in terms of the flat. In terms of the flat part, yeah, yeah.
+
+[5:24] I'd say so. So it feels safe on like a regular spider. Because I have to say, I actually kind of agree with you on this. I have extraordinarily high output burners at my house. Oh, just because that's the way I live.
+
+[5:35] Yeah, but what what's the number? Oh, it's hard to technically measure because um the person who installed the stove didn't put a regulator on it. Okay. Okay. And so our gas comes in at slightly higher pressures.
+
+[5:47] And I'm not saying that I have a commercial stove because that would be illegal for me to tell you that I have a commercial stove. But commercial stoves require regulators. Yeah. Uh otherwise their output's not regulated. Right.
+
+[5:59] You know, and so they don't explode. Yeah, and so um it's real high. It's above, it's it's it's around they're they're over 35. They're like 40, you know, like the it's under context, like in most homes, the the like my I have like a kind of semi-fancy regular home range, and I think the highest burner on that is like 18,000. Yes, this is ridiculous.
+
+[6:20] Yeah, yeah. So um the problem with it is as you say that uh and in fact I easily overdrive even like an an eight, an eight-inch uh skillet. I'll overdrive it and you'll the flames will come out like the side. You know what I mean? If you go ape crap on it, right?
+
+[6:38] But it's true that the that even with all of that output, I still have and this is the problem I think you're gonna have with the round walk, and you I want you to talk about it because you you talk about it in the book quite a bit. Is that I get water problems in the bottom of my round bottom walk because I have enough power that I can use a ring, right? Right, but it hits it hits it it does like a fryer tuck. You know what I mean? I get like a fryer tuck situation in my walk, and it's a problem.
+
+[7:03] Uh yeah, I mean, for yeah, for some certain dishes, it's definitely a problem. You know, actually, on the cover of this book, the the illustration, the illustration here, um, you know, I I did a sketch of this and then the artist went at it, and the in the initial illustration, all these flames are pointing outwards. And that was the only comment. I was like, make the fun like make the flames point towards the middle of the wall, because that's where it's supposed to get hot. Um yeah, it can be it can be a problem.
+
+[7:22] I certainly I certainly run into that problem. I, you know, I think having a flat bottom helps there, especially because you can, you know, you can move it around, you can slide it around the stovetop more, whereas, you know, with a round bottom, generally most burners have like a it'll it'll settle into a place that's naturally in the middle of the burner and it's difficult to keep it stable by moving it around and um getting it in there. But yeah, you you know the th those problems are mainly issues when you're doing specific types of stir fries, right? The kinds, the kinds where you particularly want to like capture a lot of woke and get that kind of that specific kind of stir-fry flavor. For a lot of like, you know, home-style dishes or simpler dishes or or dishes from you know that aren't from like southern China where you don't need these gigantic flames um or non-restaurant style dishes, it it doesn't pose as much of an issue, you know, because you don't um you know, as long as you're cooking in batches and as long as you're not letting everything just sit there and steam in its steam itself, um it's not it's it's you can work around it.
+
+[8:12] But you know, but because of that, in some cases, you know, you find that um an electron or uh an electric or an induction cooktop actually works sometimes better, you know, if if the ring is even the right if if the ring is not the right shape on a gas cooked up and it really spreads out the flame wide, um an induction or or a um uh resistive coil is always gonna have the heat right in the center down there. So that can sometimes work better. But if you know, if you're really serious and you really want to get this like restaurant style cooking, you're you know, you're gonna you're gonna invest in like an outdoor burner. You're you're gonna need the space. But yeah, they're pretty sick.
+
+[8:40] Those real outdoor burners are are pretty sick. They're pretty nice. Yeah, they're fun. They're fun if you have the outdoor space. Yeah.
+
+[8:45] And if you live in New York, you can just go buy the real thing. You don't need to go on the internet and buy it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just go to Chinatown and pick up the burner. Yeah, the real cheaper you know what I mean.
+
+[8:52] Like uh and so let's but well, before we get into it, let's get into it. That said, I do want to clarify that like 95% of the stuff in this book is doesn't matter what kind of cooktop you have. Like it's designed for home use. Like you shouldn't fall into this trap, which I often see, especially on the internet of people saying, Oh, I can't cook in a walk because I don't have a restaurant range, right? That's that's clearly not true.
+
+[9:12] But I think I think it is helpful to say, honestly, like it, you know, try the flat bottom. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Try the flat bottom. If you're having bad results on your stove, try the flat bottom.
+
+[9:22] Yeah. Um, another thing. So uh I don't know if you whether you keep track of this, but in New York, uh, there's a proposal to uh limit or to basically stop having gas being put into new residential stuff, right? In Northern California, same thing when I was living there, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[9:36] And so uh a couple of people who you know I interact with on the Twitter are huge into uh Chinese cooking, and they're like basically say, look, that's it's racist. So like you know, it's bracist because you their position is that induction sucks for walk cooking. Sucks, in their opinion. You know what I mean? Now, I've used, and I had this argument with them, I was like, I've used the five kilowatt enough.
+
+[9:59] So just for so you guys know in case you don't, the average uh uh high power in induction burner that you plug into a regular wall socket maxes out at about 1700 watts. Right, which is the equivalent of around I think 6,000 BTU. If it if your gas was actually efficient, it's it's as good as a 20k burner. About it's about this, it's about equivalent to the power out of a 20k burner. And you know, and a fo if if it there's a lot of efficiency things, but they're pretty damn good.
+
+[10:27] You know what I mean? Uh like uh the the real ones, the ones that um the cheap induction units, like the thin cheap ones, they throttle down as soon as they get warm. That's the reason to buy the expensive induction burner, is that it keeps putting out its power forever without throttling down. Like the the cheap ones throttle down without even telling you. So you wouldn't even know.
+
+[10:47] Right. Right. You can hear it. Yeah, yeah. So then uh anyway, but if you've ever used like a five kilowatt like walk burner where the actual induction unit is shaped like the walk, they are ridiculous.
+
+[11:01] They are ridiculous. They're so you need special wiring for those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, if that's what you want to do and you have electric, and then he was like, No, they're no good. I was like, listen, man, I don't know whether he's actually used these super walk burners, because they'll cherry it, they'll cherry a walk in like what I mean is so uh induction people can't heat uh metal past what's called the Curie point as soon as um as soon as the iron heats up to the cherry red point, it loses its uh uh hysteresis loss wins on the induction stuff, and so it it self-limits.
+
+[11:32] Right. But when it's glowing, you know what I mean? So it's like but it would be hotter than you need. Oh, so much hotter than you need. It would cherry up that walk like that.
+
+[11:39] Yeah. And I was like, Th no one needs this much power. It's crazy, it's crazy amount of power. I mean, on my you know, on my trip here, um, you know, I'm traveling around doing some live demos and stuff. Um and I'm packing I have I pack a a case with an induction, uh, an induction walk burner.
+
+[11:52] So it is, you know, rounded to fit the bottom of the walk. Um and it was like five hundred bucks on uh on Webster on the R. But it goes into a regular socket? Yeah, eighteen hundred watts, and it's perfectly perfectly fine to cook on. Well, it's gonna do it's gonna do any recipe as well as any h normal home stove wood.
+
+[12:08] Yes. And so if your aim with your book is typically to allow people at home to do you've never focused on the crazy, you focused on things that people can do at practical. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um it does, you know, it it it it works differently, right?
+
+[12:21] So it's it it's cupped to shape the walk, but the induction element only heats up, you know, the bottom, maybe what I don't know what diameter is, 10 inches, uh eight inches, something like that. So if you want to heat the sides up, you kind of gotta like roll it around a little bit, but the same as you might want to do on like a gas flame. So, you know, so for things like when you're stir-frying and you want to add like a sauce around the edges and you want it to immediately sizzle, um, you kind of have to heat up those sides. So you you work with it a little bit differently than you would a powerful gas flame, but um, but you can certainly get good results with it. And do you use a Cantonese in that or do you use the uh handle lock?
+
+[12:50] I I use a handle walk, yeah. I mean I recommend a handle walk for pretty much anyone just because Cantonese walks, like yeah, the Cantonese chefs use them, but I think for home home cooks, like having that handle um is has a layer of safety to it, you know. Cause you know, as a as a chef, if you're if you're cooking in Cantonese or if you've ever worked in a restaurant, right? It's like it's an automatic thing. You have a towel and you're always touching things with towels, whereas I most home cooks um, or at least a lot of home cooks don't do that.
+
+[13:12] So I I always recommend a handled walk anyway. Yeah, I uh I cook I have Cantonese at home. Okay. I don't know why. That's because it's round, I think.
+
+[13:20] Okay. Yeah. But maybe I'll go get a flat one. After reading your book, I was thinking, he's like, you know what? You can get round flat, you can get round handled walks as well.
+
+[13:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But uh, I mean, but yeah, but I used to have one. I was like crap on this because like when you touch it, because uh my ring is not big. I don't have a professional burner, and so I always felt more stable with a Cantonese walk. Okay.
+
+[13:39] Because I'd always been like, I'm gonna use the round bottom because I'm shopping in Chinatown where I live, and I'm gonna buy you know what I mean. It's so like, you know, uh uh, but maybe I'm after you're doing a book, I'm like, maybe I'll go get a flat one. Well, I mean, whatever is more comfortable. Maybe I'll get with a handle, you know, I'll start doing the tossy toss. Speaking of the tossy toss, you do mention the old uh modernist cuisine thing about the steam doing extra cooking on the toss, and I have to take some issue with that.
+
+[14:01] Okay. I just don't believe it. A lot of people talk about steam in cooking, and I think by and large, it's hocum. I think because you me you so you're talking about the idea that when you toss, so the the thing that they said in Modern Cuisine, which I quoted and I think I quoted directly in my book, or I might have referenced it anyway. Paraphrasing, yeah, you referenced it, yeah.
+
+[14:21] Is that um when you toss when you're when you're cooking in a walk, there's this hot column of steam that's coming off the food, and when you toss your food through it, um, some of the steam recondenses on the food and gives it additional heat. Yeah. And then it falls back down and steams again, and so you're you're kind of cooking it extra fast. Like a re a reclaimed reclaimed heat kind of a situation. Right.
+
+[14:39] Okay. So what's the issue you think about it? Because I just don't believe that that's the case, because as soon as the surface temperature of the food is uh is uh above the temperature uh of boiling water, then the it's it's a wash. Steam only it adds heat in when the thing is not actively uh expelling water. Right, right.
+
+[15:01] But is the food you think the food when you're tossing it in the in the air, you think it's going fast enough that it's not cooling down, and then you you don't think there's a chance that it's cooling down when it comes out of the walk enough that the steam is going to reheat it again, even a little bit. If it does, I think that at that point, first of all, people anytime you see steam, that's not steam. Steam that's water droplets. Yeah, that's water droplets. That means it's already condensed, it's already given up all of that massive amount of latent uh heat.
+
+[15:26] So as soon as you see steam, it's over. You know what I mean? That's why, and I write this well in the book, in case I ever finish my book, my that I'm writing, right? What I say is that the most dangerous is the steam you don't see because that's actual steam. Anyone who's ever opened, yeah, right.
+
+[15:40] Anyone that's ever opened a combi oven too quick, you know, some of the old ones that don't have locks, uh huh, and you put your hand in, or anyone that's like immediately lifted off a steamer basket and tried to go in and it looks okay, toast. You know what I mean? Because like that's the steam that's gonna get you. Yeah, because it's way hotter than the vapor you'll you're seeing. Oh, yeah.
+
+[15:57] Well, and it has all of its latent heat energy in it. You know what I mean? So anyway, but yeah, so I just never I never believe, like there's also people who believe that steaming things, and I know you know this is wrong, steaming things is faster than boiling them. Uh-uh. No, it's not.
+
+[16:11] It's just not the case. And I I never understood the argument. Is that is that they're saying because the steam can get hotter than water? Is that the argument? It's all the latent heat.
+
+[16:19] So, like, so like when steam condenses, right? Right, this is why it takes so much energy to boil water, right? Which either you make steam or it condenses, it's a lot of energy. And so it's true that the most rapid transfer of heat energy is steam condensing back on a cold surface. Right.
+
+[16:35] But as soon as the surface is at the same temperature as the steam, all of that massive heat loss and gain is over. Is over. And then it's just, oh, what's a better heat transfer mechanism? Water. I mean water is denser, yeah.
+
+[16:51] Yeah. Yeah. Uh so I've always hated that argument. Yeah. I mean, you know what?
+
+[16:55] What I think is fair to say, and and I I mean, I get it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, um, you know, we uh we we we talked briefly about this, and I and that was one of those parts um in the book where I was like not a hundred percent sure I should include this, but it's like all right, modernist cuisine, that's a pretty good source. I can, you know, I can they can back it up. Um, you know, but but uh, you know, I believe more more more data is needed.
+
+[17:15] I believe nobody ever about anything. We can never write anything because everyone's wrong. Um, you know, but but the thing that I think you can say for for certain is that you know, one of the reasons why you toss food um and and one of the reasons why a walk is so useful for stir-frying as opposed to you know a uh saucier or a or a skillet um is that you know the wide shape and getting the food out into the air does encourage um the evaporation of moisture from its surface. You're giving it more convection, you're giving you're giving it more opportunity for that moisture to come off. Um, and that's that's really what's important as far as getting the food to cook rapidly right kind of a natural uh fluidized bed kind of a situation I believe that that I believe all right uh now uh another thing uh just recall the book yeah yeah I'll take I'll take uh I'll take a little bit of umbrage in your torch choices you uh okay you like the Iwatani yeah I will say this so having done a I mean obviously you know that we do a lot of torches yeah we do a lot of torch work here uh the Iwatani so you recommend so the Iwatani is a butane torch the the the nice thing about um butane torches is uh you can get them anywhere and they're cheap they're relatively cheap yeah they're relatively the canisters are like a buck ninety nine yeah yeah you can get them anywhere like in other words when I say anywhere I mean any country of the world like whereas like our propane cylinders here or you know like uh whatever map um you you can't like that they're country by country they're country specific right you you can get um uh certain other gases but they're they're they're not very good for torches at this point.
+
+[18:47] Yeah okay I mean they're also even within you know even within the US they're they're harder to get I think they're less less widely available than the than the butane cans. Right. And if you're going to get the a portable gas burner for picnics and by the way you the Iwatani that you recommend for the the the picnic burner was what I call them. I don't know what you call it or the three horsepower whatever the three ZP or 15K. Yeah.
+
+[19:09] They're great. Yeah right and those take butane and that and that would be one of the recommendations for people who are who have induction who do want to work with gas um is to get a yeah the Iwatani there's a couple of manufacturers that make 15k uh yeah 15k BTU butane burners I got the one from the other manufacturer because it's half the price. Okay. Yeah but like you know what I mean but uh yeah the 15k and by the way people don't be fooled there is a there is a 7000 roughly BTU picnic burner there is a 12,000 roughly BTU picnic burner and there is a um 15 and most 99.9 you can't walk in on the street and buy one of the 15s almost everyone is maxing out at the 12s and a lot of them have the sevens and it's not clear which one you're gonna get especially if you buy from like the less fancy brands like like the not Iwatani brands you have to really look up and see what you're getting and don't listen to the salesperson. They are the worst.
+
+[20:11] I almost like I got an argument I walked into a store that claimed they had the 1500 on their website I walked down I was like yo where's the 15 they're like this isn't the 15th like it's the same gas I'm like I'm not asking what gas it takes I'm asking I want the the one that with the right amount of power and they're like because I need it for the book because I'm doing tests. You know what I mean? By the way you can measure the BTU output of your of your stove just by uh turning it on for a specific amount of time weighing it before and after you can see exactly how much gas it's consumed you do the math and then you can calculate the efficiency based on how much water you boil. If you want to know what my life's like that's what my life is like right now. Anyway uh so make sure you're getting the right one and don't believe someone that they're all the same because they ain't they ain't so but back to back to propane versus butane is that uh so on the Iwatani pro uh butane torch they're not a bad torch with this proviso I can't tolerate having something in my kitchen that requires two hands to turn on and turn off.
+
+[21:08] And so the Iwatani, you have to turn on the gas. Right. Then click it on. And then you have to, if you're very good, if you have good dexterity, you can use like the the where your thumb and your hand come together and you can turn the gas off with one hand. Yeah.
+
+[21:24] But it stays on. And I want my tor my kitchen torches to be either off or on. You mean the you mean the the gas the g even after you let your finger off the trigger the gas keeps coming out. The trigger all it does is it has the electric starter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[21:36] Yeah. And to me that is like, but where it is good is that it's a bushier flame. And so as opposed to the uh burn somatic torch and you say the 4,000, come on, man, if you're going to get the torch, get the 8,000. Come on, man. Come on.
+
+[21:49] Uh but uh the bushier the flame, the less of the that and kind of nasty torch tastes you'll you'll create. So you do want a bushier flame. Iwatani does have a bushier flame. And you also don't need that much power for what uh you're doing with it. So but and and I uh you know we've been speaking to our torch manufacturers and asking them why had no one has built a and I know why but I don't have the time it would take the rest of our time together to talk about it.
+
+[22:16] Uh it's just stupidity but why they don't make a um a a butane that just turns off when you let go of it. Right. Right? Um I mean you know for me the recommendation for the the Iwatani it's it's mainly about practicality right it's like if you want to if you want to learn if you if you want to go down a torch rabbit hole like you can read your stuff right yeah or talk to you and you and you'll go down a rabbit hole and there's a lot of things to choose from. For me like the Iwatani it's like as far as like the combination of of the ease of accessibility to the can canisters and just being able to order like a 40 or 50 dollar thing off of Amazon or wherever.
+
+[22:49] Like I think for most home cooks, like that's the most practical approach to take. And it's what I do at home. Like I don't, I I got, I have a, you know, I ha I have a, I think I think I have an 8,000 at home now. I'm pretty sure I do. Yeah.
+
+[22:59] Um, but it, you know, it's in like a plastic case. I don't leave it at sitting out of my kitchen all the time. Oh, yeah. I always have it out. The Watani, it's just like in my, it fits in my cupboard easily.
+
+[23:06] I just pull it out when I need it, and it takes a second, and I just find it a lot. I mean easier storage-wise and you know, shopping-wise and and all that stuff. But but everybody's different. Obviously, I always have my torch out and all of my burners are standing pilots, and I always the first thing I do when I get a standing pilot burner is I kill the pilots. Uh-huh.
+
+[23:22] And then I just I mean, I know I shouldn't. But I I kill all the pilots and then I I torch light them. Yeah. Because I just I just don't need all that extra heat in my house all the time. Got it.
+
+[23:30] I have I my um my stove, my my house came with a broken stove um and it doesn't have any ignition. So I have like a little uh like a piezo. I hate those things, clicker thing. Oh, I love it. I hate them.
+
+[23:41] Why? Uh because they're all like they're all poorly made, so that uh is it just a piso unit? Uh it's got it's got like a little gooseneck. Yeah, yeah, I hate them. Because a battery.
+
+[23:52] This is the this is the part of the design that's terrible, is that if you look at it, it has the same technology as like piezo lighters. Uh-huh. And so unlike a piezo lighter in a torch that's buried with so the gas comes out and it's lit actually away from the service. If you uh use your if you use that clicker in a dirty environment, the end where the piso is gets oxidized. Right and then it doesn't freaking light anymore.
+
+[24:16] And then you're like click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. You know what I mean? And like clicking a thousand times. Maybe, yeah. Whereas if they just buried the dang piso in the gooseneck, yeah, you wouldn't have that issue.
+
+[24:27] You wouldn't have that issue. I suppose, yeah. But uh, but the but the way it, but the way it's set up, I can use it to like um I can also use it to like light kindling in the fireplace and I can because it's exposed, I can use it to like light the uh the edge of like a you know a fire log. If people wanted to be a little bit better with their lives in terms of design, if it was not virtually impossible to innovate with factory production, right? You could build one that would last forever.
+
+[24:44] Yeah. That wouldn't get gunked up and have to be thrown away after after six months. And I get like virulently angry when things aren't working at the moment when I need them to work. Yeah, you know what I mean? Uh like I just I just hate it so so much.
+
+[25:06] Um, let's talk about seasoning. Because a lot of people have questions on seasoning the walk. When you're talking about like seasoning the walk, we're not talking about MSG yet, right? We're gonna talk about MSG. We have time.
+
+[25:16] Uh so like first of all, like you mentioned all the materials. Does anyone actually make an aluminum walk? I've never seen an aluminum walk. Uh I've seen aluminum walks. Yeah.
+
+[25:24] So my old friend um Chi Chi Wang, who was a writer at uh serious seats for a while, she actually owned uh an aluminum wok that she was a very strong advocate advocate for. And back back in the day, like maybe this was twenty or ten or twelve years ago when we were talking about this, but um she was a very strong advocate of aluminum walks. Um and I and I cooked on hers a bunch. It's I don't they're not they're certainly not common. No, no.
+
+[25:44] Um it it was um I mean hers was like super well, it was it was dark. It was well, you know, it was it was dark and uh you know seasoned. Um I don't know how it came, but I'm assuming it came looking like a northern. Oh yeah, yeah, it was naked. Yeah.
+
+[25:55] Yeah. It's not like uh one of these, like not clad, not no, no, no, no, no. No, it's like you know, like a restaurant pan. So how light was it? Was it pretty light?
+
+[26:02] It was like it was maybe I would say close to a centimeter thick. So it was it was pretty thick. Um relatively light though. Yeah. I mean about the same weight as a as a carbon steel walk was.
+
+[26:13] But it was it was aluminum colored on the outside, but seasoned color on the inside. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how she treated it. Well, this isn't brings us to our other interesting question.
+
+[26:21] There are two schools of thought. So back in the day day, way day, back when you were, you know, writing at Sirius Eats and I was at the French Culinary Institute and the modernist folks hadn't yet come out with the book, right? Right. There was all these discussions about how seasoning actually let's just say look, listen, get get get get carbon get a carbon steel walk, right? Get a carbon steel walk.
+
+[26:41] That's the answer. Right. That is the answer. That's the answer. That's the easy answer.
+
+[26:45] And there's no reason not to. Yeah. There's no reason to get a different thing. Yeah. Unless you already have it and you know unless somebody gave you a $200 all cloud walk for your wedding registry or whatever.
+
+[26:53] It's not going to do better than a car. A carbon steel walk is going to do better. A clad walk. Why? I you don't want a shiny walk.
+
+[27:01] If you're walking, if your walk is shiny, you're doing it wrong, right? I agree. Yes. If your walk is shiny, you're missing out on flavor. You're making your life harder than it needs to be.
+
+[27:08] Uh yeah. Yeah, you're just doing it wrong. Yeah. Right? And so uh, in my opinion, in my opinion, and you know, you wrote the book here on walk, so you tell me I'm I don't think I'm wrong.
+
+[27:17] I definitely would not recommend buying a shiny clad stainless steel walk. I would not recommend it. Yeah, don't do that. Um so uh yeah, just get the steel. The steel is so bad.
+
+[27:27] Now is there a huge difference between you think spun versus hammered versus stamped? Uh you know, I I've I have both. So I'm traveling right now with it with a hammered walk. Um, or or at least it maybe it's spun and then has had hammer marks added to it. Um because from what I what I know, there's very few people actually still making really traditionally fully hammered walks.
+
+[27:43] But um, but I have one that has you know has a hammered finish. Um and that but the one I use at home is spun. Um I haven't noticed a huge uh huge difference here. The main the main difference is that um when you buy a hammered walk, um, at least in my experience, they're pretty much always gonna be relatively heavy gauge. Whereas spun walks, they get them down.
+
+[27:59] They you can buy a cheap spun walk that's like, you know, that's like 18 gauge, like a millimeter thick, really, really thin, and is going to be kind of flimsy and flex a little bit, which I which you won't get with a hand-hammered walk. But as far as like performance goes, I haven't noticed much of a difference at all. And on the thinness, like uh you're actually an advocate for relatively thin because you want the hot spot. You actually don't want the heat traveling. You want Japan to be reactive, right?
+
+[28:23] You want to be able to turn down the heat and for the pan to lose its heat. You want to be able to turn it up and for it to get up pretty pretty fast. And you do want there to be you know, unless unlike a Western skillet where you're looking for, um you're frequently looking for very even heating, right? And you're looking for retention of heat and and so that so that when you add food to it, it stays at relatively similar temperatures. Whereas in a walk, it's like you're doing a lot more fast cooking and on-the-fly adjustment of things.
+
+[28:45] Um, so I recommend um 14 to 16 gauges generally, so like one and a half to two millimeters or so. Um, I think the one I the one I've been I've I've been using for the last 20 years is like I I I measured as like 1.7 millimeters, something like that. 16, I've been measuring so many pans, it sucks. I hate doing it. Um 16 gauge, for those of you that uh care about this, is the only gauge that is roughly similar to its uh fractional dimensions.
+
+[29:08] About a sixteenth of an inch. All right. Roughly uh old metal worker guy, me. Uh yeah. I mean, you don't want to become a metal worker if you're not already a metal worker, but you know, not for a living anyway.
+
+[29:19] You don't want to cough out all of that uh soot at the end of every day. Uh all right, listen, Kenji, we're gonna go to a commercial break and then we're gonna come back and talk about MSG. All right, sounds good. All right, we're back with cooking issues. This episode of Cooking Issues brought to you by Oracing Salmon, our favorite fish.
+
+[29:34] Today we have Michael Fabro from Oura King to tell us more about it. Thanks, Dave. Great to be here. And really excited to talk about Aura King salmon, uh, which we raised down in New Zealand. It's a super premium salmon that's available to professional chefs and home chefs alike.
+
+[29:50] So coming from a zero waste perspective, Michael, I see that you're now using the fins for dog treats. That's right. Yeah, this is part of a real goal we established a couple of years ago about full utilization of the animal. You know, in New Zealand, we cut uh fillets, we cut portions, we we do smoking. So you have a lot of trim.
+
+[30:09] So we wanted to find a good home for that trim. So we developed the a line of pet treats. We also do uh oil as well. And we sell these under our uh brand called Omega Plus. Uh Ora King salmon, follow them on Instagram at Oracing Salmon.
+
+[30:23] Everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Uh okay, so listen. Yes. We're gonna have the MSG argument, but maybe we should get some questions down because people wanted to ask you questions.
+
+[30:34] Let's get to it. All right. Is it questions about MSG? Uh no. And we actually we didn't really actually talk about seasoning.
+
+[30:39] The big difference in seasoning was right. Uh there was the argument is is it the special iron oxide, the black iron oxide magnetite or magnus, whatever it is, the you know, the the special black iron oxide, is that what's really uh causing the seasoning, or is it oil polymerization? Right. And most Western writers have come very hard down on polymerization. Yeah.
+
+[31:01] And, you know, and in fact, as you point out in your book, if you look at like skillets, right, uh, you know, you build up those layers by layers by layers by layers. Whereas typical wok seasoning, you maybe you do it like once or twice, and it does build up a seasoning, but you're not like layer, layer, layer. It's thinner. Yeah, yeah. And it's because, you know, with walk with wok cooking, you have you have all these big temper temperature differentials, so your metals expanding and contracting at different rates.
+
+[31:23] And so you it's hard to build up those layers in the first place and they flake off more easily. And then you're also going to be very frequently deglazing with us, you know, with sauces and with acidic things all the time. So with a lot of wok dishes, like when you're done cooking with them, even if you have, you know, I have a 20-year old walk, but even when you're done with them, like very frequently you'll see a little bit of like sort of sort of dull silver metal at the bottom. So there's like there's no real layers of Especially when you overheat them, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[31:45] There's no special, there's not really much sort of none of the layers of like thick seasoning that you find on a well, like an old cast iron pan. Right. Um, but what what's your um what's your take on it? What's where do you come with? So what's interesting is is there's a lot of recent uh work out of China, some of which has been translated into English for uh, you know, international journals that is focusing on, I mean, and I don't know how much of it is BS, because most science writing is BS.
+
+[32:11] Uh no, I mean for real. Uh, but like uh iron oxide nanoparticles, so the black stuff, right? And like like that's the magic of the walk. You know what I mean? For them in terms of seasoning.
+
+[32:22] What do I think? I think it's somewhere in between, right? So like, you know, when you are seasoning, uh I mean, it is true that carbon steel seems to blacken up in a way when you're season it properly, right? In a way that, for instance, we were talking about aluminum before aluminum doesn't aluminum will get brown, it won't get black. If you yeah, it only gets black if you leave the oil, like a if you do the oil, the polymerization over and over again.
+
+[32:44] Right. And even so, it looks different. It does. You know what I mean? And so what do I think?
+
+[32:49] I think it's somewhere in between. So like in the Chinese writing, I don't think they have a lot of experience with Western pans, frankly, because of what the way they write about Western cooking, I don't think they have that much experience with Western pans. And so I think they poo-poo our stuff in the way that our scientists poo-poo their stuff. You know what I mean? And so I think I think it would be interesting to actually get like two groups of people together and because I think both are at play.
+
+[33:13] Yeah. I mean, I I can say for sure that at least from a practical standpoint, um, when you cook something in a carbon steel wok side by side with a stainless wok, um, the flavor is no like you could I've done blind tests on this, and you there's a noticeable difference in flavor, um, which I assume comes comes from some interaction with the metal or with the seasoning. But um Right. I mean, so like you want like your seasoning, you want it to be uh hydrophobic, but you want it to be lipilic, right? Because you want oil to smooth slick out on it and provide good contact.
+
+[33:45] But you but what's what you know, what the most recent, I should have printed it because I didn't, I was too stupid, but um they've got the the kitchen gods gift is what they I believe if you want to search for it, people. Uh but they're like, well, what's interesting about wok seasoning is is that it is actually sticky in certain regimes, which is useful, right? Like when you're pulling it up on the side, yeah. Certain temperature regimes and uh and nonstick when you need it to be. But again, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, and I think the research hasn't really been done yet.
+
+[34:15] We need to bring those two groups of scientists together and you know, have some sort of seasoning conference. But nobody cares about this because there's no money behind it. Right. All food science is driven by money. Right.
+
+[34:26] Well, well, hopefully I'll I'll drive walk sales and people will care about that. People will care about it. All right. Uh let's get to some questions and then we'll uh we'll we'll do our MSG, we'll do our MSG smack down towards the end. Won't be smackdown, but you know.
+
+[34:37] I mean, there if you hear like things getting flipped over, like yeah, all right. Uh all right, from Patrick Chicone. Uh how should a walk on an induction burner be preheated and seasoned? So we dealt with this a little bit, right? I'm typically using a wide, flat-bottomed walk on a portable induction burner, the ducks top uh 1800.
+
+[34:54] It allows you to choose between constant output and constant temperature control. I have remember, Patrick, as I said earlier, don't get a kilowatt meter. They're 12 bucks. I swear to God. Go on uh or 14 bucks.
+
+[35:06] Don't, you know, whatever, the evil empire Amazon, go on, get a kilowatt meter, and plug your induction burner. Make sure you get one that'll do 1800 watts, though. You don't want to blow it out. You don't want to blow it out. Plug it in and monitor your induction burner as you're using it and see what it actually is doing.
+
+[35:23] And I just I told you, I just returned uh one that I bought because I was like It was regulating without you wanting it to. And without telling me. Yeah. It wasn't like, I'm too hot. I'm too hot.
+
+[35:33] It didn't say that. It was just like, yeah, I'm putting out 1700 watts. I'm putting out 1100 watts. Big difference. Yeah.
+
+[35:40] Uh sorry, Patrick, back to your question. Uh I haven't figured out a particularly good way to preheat and not also burn the existing seasoning off. Uh you should use a lower uh lower power setting and let it heat up longer and then crank the power when you're cooking, is what you should do on that. Anyway, or is it better to just start a high temp in this case without much preheating? Yeah, so I I well I I would have the opposite of advice.
+
+[36:00] So first of all, I wouldn't worry about burning the seasoning off your wok because uh again, like I don't care about the at least the layers of seasoning that are gonna bore burn off the polymerized stuff. That's flak like I I don't have that on my walks most of the time. Like I um it for me, like you know, wok seasoning is more of a per use basis as opposed to like a western skillet where you're trying to build up this thing and make sure that it doesn't come off. Um I would, you know, i I always recommend preheating it as hot as you can until it's smoking hot. Don't worry about what's going on with the seasoning there, then lower it, add your oil, swirl it around, and start cooking.
+
+[36:30] And then, you know, then if a recipe calls for the highest heat, leave it on the highest seat. But you really want to get your you want to get your oil in and then your food in as rapidly as possible after you put the oil in, because the the danger is that your your pan is so hot you put the oil in there and you're gonna start creating these flavors that you don't want. It's gonna start smoking and you get these flavors you don't want in there. So you need to get the oil and slick it around and then put your food in. Um, you know, if you do it that way, you can you can cook an omelet in a walk and it's a brand new walk, and it's not gonna, it's not gonna stick.
+
+[36:55] You don't need the heavy layers of seasoning on it. Can I tell you something? Yeah. So uh back in the era when when aluminum cooking was aluminum cookware was uh the the preeminent cookware in the United States. Uh so we're talking just pre-World War II.
+
+[37:15] Everyone was using straight aluminum, unseasoned, right? And the trick is is they took everything up above the Leidenfrost point. And so if if it's above the Leidenfrost point, right, then your food can't stick to it. Right. Literally, your food cannot stick to it.
+
+[37:34] So it floats, and then as it's floating, there's enough heat in the float to lightly set the surface stuff so that then when it does settle down and get the super hot, it doesn't stick. Exactly. I mean, but that's also you know, that's also what you know, the layer of oil. If you're if you're one of the reasons why you put oil in a skillet is so that as you're putting food down in it, it it starts to set before it comes in contact with the actual metal. Right, right.
+
+[37:56] But I mean you can't do that on a flat riddle because it just but but my point being that like you can achieve nonstick results in surprising ways if you're willing to take the heat up high enough. Yeah, yeah. And and that I mean that's typically how you do cook in a walk, and like most if you you know watch videos of most people chefs cooking in walks, they you preheat it really hot till it's smoking, then you add your oil, swirl it, and then you adjust your temperature to to whatever you want it to be, whatever the recipe calls for. With a Western pan though, Patrick, I'll still stand by what I said because an induction burner can wicked overheat if on full power, an induction burner will heat a ring, because induction burners are nine times out of ten ring-shaped. Right.
+
+[38:39] And you'll burn a ring into the center uh in you know, around your your your skillet. And even on like on the fancy ones like the poly science, the the the freak, it it it measures temperature in the center. Right. And by the time the center of your cast iron pan, because they're so slow, gets up to temperature, you've hardcore messed that ring. So I preheat on a slower setting up to the temperature I want, then jack it when I put the food in.
+
+[39:08] Can I ask you your opinion on something? Because um, and uh this is a reader question for you from me. Um so you know, so first of all, I want to ask you like when you when you cook on a when you're when you're sauteing or searing or whatever, do you do you pay attention to the surface temperature of the pan before you put the food in? Is that something you do? In real life?
+
+[39:24] Yeah. In the real life, I mean it depends on I I've been doing a lot of cooking on weird old pans for the book, but like in general, I'll in general I always have a little water and I always just go. Okay, so the more practical method. Yeah. Um I don't know because people thermometers don't work on pans.
+
+[39:40] So like I've done a lot of tests, uh except for on carbon steel pants, they work great. Yeah, because they're black. Because they're black. Yeah. Uh but I have done a lot of tests where I look at them uh where uh I I've done a lot of tests where I take uh carbon black and I carbon black my pans, and then I look at them with infrared cameras to try to see exactly after I've completely blacked them out uh and looked at them and kind of looked at how the surface behaves and um you know with uses and stuff.
+
+[40:10] So I have looked at it, like what, but in general, when you're cooking, um when I'm actually cooking, no. Right. So like my my job when I'm trying to write this book is to try to figure out how all of this data that I'm collecting actually helps someone else be a better cook, you know. You know? Actually, this photo I did by I use spray proof, like matte black uh heat proof mat matte black paint to get the iron photo.
+
+[40:33] But um so my but my question is carbon black is harder because it you need a lot of it for it to be infrared uh opaque, uh-huh but it does wipe off your pan as opposed to the okay, yeah, these I had to ditch. Yeah, but um so people ask me like, oh, I'm making I'm making, I'm serious steak, like what temperature should my pan be at? And my answer is always like, well, I mean you temperature is like a material-specific thing in the first place, you know. So it's like uh like a thin aluminum pan at 500 degrees is gonna be holding a different amount, a different amount of heat uh energy than a thick cast iron pan at 500 degrees. And it transmits it differently.
+
+[41:02] And it transmits it differently. Yeah, so it's like so to me, people if people if someone is asking you like what temperature should my pan be for a specific use, generally like that's that's not the question. That's that's not what you're really looking for. What you're looking for is like the rate of heat transfer and the amount of energy that the pan can store, which is a different number from temperature. Exactly.
+
+[41:17] And and it's much harder to measure at home as well. It's impossible. So the thing is is that I think like, and that's really what I'm working on in the book, and my wife is like, you're gonna sell exactly 12 of these because like what I want people to under one of the main things I need people to understand is that temperature isn't what does anything. I mean, I mean there are certain things that are temperature. Temperature's useful if you're talking about like water and everybody the you know, everybody's water is is water, everybody's air is air, but a pan is not a pan.
+
+[41:43] It's like it's like actual heat transfer. Right. You know what I mean? Right. And the same, like, so I've I've been like measuring what's actually, you know, going on with uh in different heat surfaces.
+
+[41:54] I have these weird anomalous things that are happening in my oven that I can't figure out. And like it's and again, the the the for me the challenge is figuring out how that actually makes you a a better cook. I think people kind of focus on this stuff too much. You know what I mean? Like I think, in terms of what you're saying, I think it's important, like cold oil into a pan because you're gonna break the oil down too much.
+
+[42:13] If you heat your pan up to where you want to heat it up and you the oil's already in there, good night. You know what I mean? Like the oil's gonna start smelling like dead fish and rancid oil and broken, it's gonna smoke, and the food's not gonna be good. So yeah, cold oil, hot pan, boom. You know what I mean?
+
+[42:27] And you know, pretty much most home burners can't get you hot enough to be dangerous in any reasonable amount of time. So don't worry about it, right? Um I think the lightenfrost effect is a good thing if you were interested in that. And so, like I've been doing a lot of tests on that at home, like searing burgers without grease on a on a you know, greaseless burner where I've lighten frosted it out, you know, so that what that means, people is the the balls run around like they don't don't boil. They're gonna be able to do it.
+
+[42:55] When you sprinkle water on it, uh the the water is evaporating, and and the force of that evaporation is holding the water above the surface of the pan so that the heat transfer is actually slow. So there's a point at which when you pour some water into a pan, it'll actually evaporate slower than at a slightly lower temperature because it's not in contact with the pan anymore. Correct. So that's what we're talking about. Uh but on the other hand, right?
+
+[43:15] Like my old school method that I always used to do, which is I cook the bacon in the pan, pull the bacon out, rip the rip the grease until it's like just starting to turn blue above it, and then put the burgers in that. Is it better the other way? No. Yeah. You know what I mean?
+
+[43:30] No, it's not. Uh, because talk about surface area, deep frying. Uh-huh. Deep frying people, and you're basically deep frying at that point. Like, because there's a layer of grease that like lips up around the bottom of the thing.
+
+[43:40] You know what I mean? And the pan's already hot. The thing that deep frying doesn't get you the pan, you know, that saw that searing in a skillet or grilling can get you is that with with grilling and searing, you can you can get hotter than the temperature of the oil, right? You can singe certain bits and you can get some kind of blackening. Or there's a dip frying deep frying, you just get a big if you want to go black.
+
+[43:57] If you want to go black. I sometimes like going black. I often like going black. If you like going black. But like if you like for browning, I mean, because the the truth is, right?
+
+[44:06] And have I done that measurement yet? Look, there's a people, there's a big difference. There, there's a I we don't have time to get into it. I have questions about it. Okay, right, all right.
+
+[44:16] But like the the there's there's there's there's a bunch of different numbers you can look at when you're looking at how heat transfer works. And one of those numbers has to do with what is the temperature going to be right between two things that are quote unquote touching each other but right? And so that where the actual heat is going on the meat is a very interesting place. Anyway, uh let's get to some questions. Uh from uh what do you think?
+
+[44:41] Ivan or Yvonne? What do you think? Ivan I'll go with Yvonne. Yvonne all right. Uh hey, uh Dave, Kenji and the rest of the crew.
+
+[44:47] For over 10 years, I've used a trusty, well-seasoned wok that fits the recommendation in Kenji's book for everything except gauge. Uh I'd say that mine is about one millimeter thick rather than two. And you were talking about this, which is why I didn't go into it at the time. I knew how to cook. Okay, got it.
+
+[44:58] I'm gonna pretend that I remembered that, which I did not. Uh how much of a difference does this really make? Should I buy a thicker one? Which uses and techniques would benefit from uh such a change and by how much? Thanks a lot.
+
+[45:08] So, yeah, when you're talking about the the thickness of your wok, one versus two millimeter. I mean, there's two things that matter. So, well, so first of all, the most important thing is that if you've had this wok for 10 years and it's well seasoned and you're happy using it, then there's no reason to change, right? Yeah, if you're happy with something, keep it. Well, what are they gonna get from?
+
+[45:22] Yeah, so there's two things, right? So one of them is of course is just sturdiness, right? So I find that at one millimeter, if you take your wok and you kind of push it around, it flexes pretty easily, you know. So it to me it just feels like it's it's not as easy to get control because it's flexing as you're cooking with it, um, especially when it's when it has a significant amount of food in it. Um so one of them is a slight is a control issue.
+
+[45:40] And then the other one is a is a heat retention issue, right? And so you're there's there's a bit of a trade-off there, you know, and it depends what kinds of things you tend to cook in it a lot. So um, you know, uh a thicker, the thicker the material is, so a wok that's twice as thick is gonna hold twice as much heat energy at the same temperature, right? So if you preheat it and let it come to the point where the oil inside is smoking, um the one that's twice as thick is gonna have about twice as much energy in it. Um and so that means that you're gonna be able to put more food in it without uh having a rapid, rapid temperature drop.
+
+[46:07] Um on the other hand, it's gonna be less reactive. So when you make an adjustment in your flame, um it's gonna take longer for that adjustment to reach uh the food. I would say in general, with a with a wok, um, you know, I I find the sweet spot to be around one and a half to two millimeters where you get a good amount of reactivity, but you also have enough heat that you can cook like you know a half pound of something at a time without it completely um using up all the energy. Whereas if you go smaller to like a millimeter, you're just gonna have to cook in more batches. And that's you know, that it's just gonna be cooking a little bit longer.
+
+[46:34] But it, you know, but if you have a 10 if you have a one millimeter wok that you're and you're happy with the weight and you're happy with how it handles, then there's not really any reason to change it other than just you know adjust the recipe, not the tool, I'd say. All right, see what I'm saying? If you like it, keep it, but maybe it flexes too much. Yeah. By the way, uh, I gotta finish these questions and we gotta do MSG, but but I want some of you, some of you are gonna need to sit down if you're listening on headphones right now.
+
+[46:57] First of all, Kenji doesn't rinse his rice. Kenji doesn't rinse his rice. Only because I'm lazy. All right, all right. All right, all right.
+
+[47:09] Do you rinse your rice? Yeah, of course. Always? Yeah. All rice.
+
+[47:12] All the time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's just habit.
+
+[47:16] You put the rice in the rice cooker bowl, you put a boat ton of cold water, you swirl your hand around, you do the the dump, and that's it. You know what I mean? Like, I might I don't think my grandma I ever saw my grandmother washing the rice. Maybe she did, I don't know. I that's a good thing.
+
+[47:29] I mean, they have rinse-free rice, but I don't buy that. Yeah. I buy I buy mainly I buy mainly calories. Okay. Because my son likes it.
+
+[47:36] Anyway, uh the other thing uh on rice is that for a weights man, you do your rice by volume. Did I did I do I not have uh both in here? Uh your big thing is like volume. I don't know, man. I don't know, man.
+
+[47:52] Yeah, maybe maybe in the there's like a chart in there that has that has volume. You know, again, this is one of those things where it's like you know, you have to know your audience, and it's it's a question of practicality versus precision. And most of the times, like I I weigh down, I come down on the side of practicality for that, you know. And I I when I'm when I'm making rice, I don't I don't pull out a measuring cup, I don't pull out a scale, I pull out whatever cup I have handy. So if like I have a water glass in my hand, that's what I'm using to measure my rice and my water.
+
+[48:18] I always have uh we have a couple of rices and they're in like big bulk things. Right. And I just keep my rice scoop in the bulk rice. Oh fair. Yeah.
+
+[48:27] You know what I mean? Uh and so I even though I hate it, yeah, I use the I also go by volume. Uh and uh I use truth comes out. Yeah, I use the the Zoji Rushi rice, you know, cup. I have you know, I have uh, which is a dumb measurement.
+
+[48:45] And I it the person who said that's a cup needs needs needs to get a special place in hell because it's not any relationship to a cup. So you mean to the actual measure of a cup. Correct. Yeah. And people say, oh, one cup of rice.
+
+[48:58] You're like, and then how many American cooks have been ruined by thinking that the cup was a cup? No, I mean, I just think of it in ratios, right? So like when I store my rice, I buy in bulk also and I keep it in containers. And the only thing that I have in the container is um, you know, like I have a label maker, I put the the type of the rice, and then I put the ratio of I do like one to one point one or one to one point five, depending on the rice. I'll say what the v the ratio of rice to water is, and that that way, like any time I scoop out of it, whatever vessel I have, um I just eyeball it.
+
+[49:23] So I'll take a cup, I'll scoop out the rice, I'll pour it in, and then I'll go to the sink, fill it up once, and then a tenth and pour it in, and that's how I that's how I do my rice. I noticed in your kanji that you use uh broth, but you don't add additional salt. You're not that kind of a heathen, are you? To add additional salt to the side. You know, there's the whole argument, yeah.
+
+[49:38] Don't salt your kanji. I I don't salt my rice that I'm serving at the table. You know, so my my wife and I both come from rice-eating cultures, right? She's Colombian. I'm uh my mom's Japanese.
+
+[49:50] Um so in Japanese and Chinese traditions, you typically don't salt the rice because the food is very highly seasoned. It's meant as like a kind of bland. You hate people that do salt the rice. At least I don't. Oh, all right, all right.
+
+[50:01] Um whereas in whereas in Colombia, um the rice is always salted. And I think in a lot of American traditions, this the rice is gonna be salted. Um so we we um we battle about that. But but it's really contextual, right? If we're making Colombian food, we salt the rice.
+
+[50:13] If we're making Japanese food, we don't. I like that you're flexible. Uh all right. Um from Kevin McHugh, uh digging into the wok, and it's as it it is as impressive as expected. Uh I've been uh cooking Andy Ricker's uh pot thai recipe for a few years now, and I find it regularly removes the seasoning from my wok right at the bottom.
+
+[50:31] I'm left with a dull gray surface uh that food sticks to. So uh I mean we talked about this, yeah. Right, a little bit. But uh what we didn't talk about is I mean, when I use uh let me finish the question first. Uh other dishes I cook in the wok don't have this problem.
+
+[50:44] I assume it's the tamarind. Right. Is there anything I can do to avoid losing the seasoning? I'm usually frying on a gas burner with peanut oil, avocado, or bacon fat. Thank you.
+
+[50:52] I I mean, like I typically, you tell me what you think. I typically, after I use my wok, when I rinse it, I'll spray a little bit of oil and just heat it to dry it, and that fixes it. Yeah, generally what I do is, yeah, I'll rinse it, I'll scrub it if I need to. I have like a bamboo scrub brush that I use. Um I'll scrub it if I need to, use soap if I need to, and then I put it back on a burner, turn on the burner until it dries out, and then rub some oil in it.
+
+[51:13] Um I rub it, rub oil in and then take a let it let it smoke a little, then take a clean towel and rub it out as if as if I had accidentally put it in there. Um you don't you don't have to worry about that. You know, that happens. Yeah, it's probably the it's probably the combination of the the you know, the tamarind and the amount of liquid that's going in there. You know, that that happens with other dishes too.
+
+[51:27] Like I cook like, you know, if you braise like chicken adobe or you do like raspberry red braised pork belly, something like that in your wok, it's gonna come away. Some of the seasoning, it's gonna leave that that dull silver color. But you know, if you go out into like uh the the streets of Bangkok and see someone cooking pad thai, they're cooking in aluminum or cast or carbon steel. Um and very often you're gonna see those walks have the same thing. They they lose their seasoning with each cook.
+
+[51:49] But that's you know, that again, I think the the issue comes from from thinking of that of the use of the word seasoning and and thinking of it in terms of like how one would season a cast iron pan. But you don't have to worry about it. It's gonna happen. Um from Ezra, probably one of the most common questions you'll get, but I'll ask anyway. I need a walk.
+
+[52:06] What should I be looking for when I pick one up? And we've hit some of this, right? I'm assuming carbon steel, large size, but what else? I prefer not to shop on Amazon. So if I go to my local restaurant supply supply store or Chinese market, what should I look for and how much should I pay?
+
+[52:19] Carbon steel, at least one and a half, you know, 14 to 16 gauge, so one and a half to two millimeters about. Um carbon steel, I would recommend 14 inches with a flat bottom and a long handle. Um, you know, though the the long handle is really a matter of personal choice, but I would recommend a long handle. Um and uh yeah, that's that's about it. Those that's really the only criteria you need.
+
+[52:36] Um, and I don't think you should pay more than if if you're at a local shop, you'd probably be paying like looking at like 40 bucks, maybe, maybe. That much nowadays? Maybe less, but yeah. What about in Chinatown? They're not that much.
+
+[52:44] I I think I think the one at like the walk shop in San Francisco's Chinatown is 40 bucks, something like that. Um if you want to order it online, you can find the same prices. Um, or you know, you can buy it from some modern American manufacturer of carbon steel things and pay 99 bucks if you want. And you ever uh you ever mess around with actually having a like a reel with the with the water surround? The real remote.
+
+[53:06] No. I've I've you know I've had the chance to like go into restaurants where they do that. Um if you've ever seen, you know, uh you do you know Wang Gong from uh from you from the YouTube? He's uh he's a he's a Sichuan chef who has a very popular and very good YouTube channel. It's all in Chinese, but most of it's dubbed um uh uh that has subtitles.
+
+[53:23] But he he um he has a really great video about how he's about a new kitchen he's setting up, and he talks about um the water pouring down um the surface under the walk and how important that is for well for all the cooking. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a it's a cool video. You should check it out. It's sick. Uh someday.
+
+[53:38] Someday. Uh from Jason Gray. Uh heard you bring up induction. Uh we went full induction for our new kitchen based on statements over the years. Let me see.
+
+[53:47] The uh oh wait, I don't think this is a question for you. Okay. All right. He has this sick uh have you seen it or used it? Like the the thermador like wide induction that like figures out where the pan is.
+
+[53:58] It's got like 56 different. Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Uh I have where have I I think I've demoed one somewhere. I can't remember. But yeah, I know the one you're talking about.
+
+[54:06] Those are pretty cool. Yeah, I've never used it. I Electrolux tried to make one years ago, but it wasn't good. Yeah, but I hear the thermodynamics good. You can actually move it and it figures out where yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[54:15] And and then it has a little touch screen display that shows how many where where things are, and so you can click on it and see what it's like. I mean, I prefer a non-electronic in like interfaces to my cooking. Oh, yeah. Like, I want things that I want things that twist and click. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man.
+
+[54:28] Even it, even if like under the hood, it's all electronic, give me my tactile business. Um, see if these others are for you or whether we can get into oh Dale Harris wrote a time sensitive thing. I don't know maybe you do know this. I don't know. Uh would be great to have an answer for this week because he's arriving in the United States now.
+
+[54:44] People, if you hear this, uh go on our Patreon or go on my Twitter and give answers to Dale Harris. Coming to Boston and New York City for a few days with my closest friend who's hitting 40, both love bars, but he can't drink alcohol. Where should we go that has amazing non-alk beverage programs right now? I don't know. I feel like this is a you question.
+
+[55:03] I don't know, but like we I felt we don't know. Yeah, I don't I guess I went to one last night, but uh did they have a good non-alk program? No, I've uh they had an okay everything program. All right. Well, if if that's all you say, then we won't uh we won't uh do it.
+
+[55:19] Oh, here one from Jared uh from Jared Johnson. The other one was from Dale Harris, by the way. I don't know whether I said it right. Uh Jared Johnson writes in any issues uh can you with substituting between ghee, olive uh oil, avocado, coconut, or macadamia. Macadamia is so expensive.
+
+[55:33] Why would you like it so expensive? Uh would it would be also be good if you guys could discuss a minimum investment for a walk burner? Well, you say you can do it on almost anything, but yeah, if so I th when he says a minimum investment for walk burner, I'm I'm assuming he's talking about if you want to be able to do like certain restaurant style dishes that have a lot of the you know, the woke, um, which are which is not by no means every the every in every dish. You don't need that in every dish. But a walk like that, a walk burner like that.
+
+[55:57] I mean, if you live near Chinatown, you can pick one of those, you can pick the burner itself up for like 25 bucks and then you just need a place to install it. If you need like an all-in-one thing, um, probably you're looking at probably around 150 to 200 bucks, you're gonna find uh like really bare bones ones. Um, and then you know, they go up from there if you want a professional installation or whatever, you're gonna build an outdoor kitchen, it goes up from there. But the but the burner itself is probably 25, 50 bucks at most. But it's a lot to put it in.
+
+[56:20] But the ones that you buy that are outdoor on Amazon are still only like you know, 80 or 100 bucks or something like that. Uh depends on I think the I so I did a I did a review on Sirius Seats, you can find it um of a bunch of different models. And I think the uh there is an in relatively inexpensive there's so this one called the uh the big kahuna something. And I think it's like 160. It's okay, right?
+
+[56:38] It's fine, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That works, that works, it works fine. It's like 65,000 BTU, I think. And then there's um the other one I recommended was called the Power Flamer, which is made by um a guy out of his garage in in Northern California who who told me he could definitely handle volume and then couldn't.
+
+[56:52] So I don't know how long it'll take to get one of those, but um, but those are yeah, he makes he buys basically, you know, uh stock parts and and and puts them together. Um, and it's just a really inexpensive uh like metal tripod with a with a burner on it, and those, yeah, those those get up to like a hundred, you can buy like a hundred and sixty five thousand BTU models of those, which is more than you need. And uh I don't remember in in uh in the book, because he I heard you say to someone else that uh the mapo tofu is the thing closest to your heart. Do you do the Japanese one or the do you do the channel? Well, in my book, there's two.
+
+[57:22] There's there's there's both recipes in the book, but the my the Japanese one is the one I grew up with. So that that's the recipe that is closest to my heart. Yeah, yeah. I love mapotofu. It's delicious.
+
+[57:30] I love both. Uh okay. Uh one last thing before I get we have two minutes and thirty seconds, but I will say this. It's so funny. Like both of us had an experience, I guess, because you actually write it down of like our first kind of street Jinbing thing you know, on the streets in China, and you're like, holy crap, why isn't this all over America?
+
+[57:49] So this is like they crepe. So they make a crepe, but then they wipe an egg into the top of the crepe, crepe and then flip it and do all the toppings. And what's hilarious to me is that you and I were both like, this needs to be a thing, which it's not, strangely. A couple of people have tried. But you came and did the exact opposite of thing I did.
+
+[58:08] So you came and used you did a tort like a tortilla to make life easier so you don't have to have a crepe maker and know all that stuff, right? And I came and I did the crepe with the egg, but put Mexican fillings into it. Oh, okay. That sounds good. Yeah, it was good.
+
+[58:22] But like, but I was like, I was like, I can't even talk about this. That's a double appropriation. Like I'm stealing like a Chinese street food recipe and then putting like Mexican stuff into it. It's a no it's a no-ken do. Yeah, well, that's where having a name like Kenji Lopez helps, right?
+
+[58:35] Yeah, you can do whatever you can do whatever you want. Uh it's just me that can't. Anyway, so let's talk MSG. So in your book, uh, I'll just say this. I'll say what we agree on.
+
+[58:44] If someone doesn't want to eat something, don't serve it to them. And don't make people feel bad about what they don't want to eat, ever for any reason. Yes. If somebody doesn't want to eat something, don't give it to them. Yeah.
+
+[58:54] But we are gonna disagree uh specifically with what you said in the book, uh, where you said that that MSG, don't worry, we still have some time while we're while the music's playing. Okay. Uh the MSG, it's a scientific fact that um that people have reactions to it. I'm gonna disagree with this. Okay.
+
+[59:11] And and and I think, you know, I think I know where your disagreement's gonna be, which is that the the study that I that I cited in the book 2000 study, yeah. Yeah, um, that uh it wasn't actually blind because people can taste MSG through the orange drink. Is that your is that your equality? Yeah, well, first they can taste MSG through the orange drink because people, let me tell you, it was two, it was uh five grams, five grams of MSG in a 200 milliliter beverage. Okay, for people that were self-selected already, as you know, of people who think they're sensitive to MSG.
+
+[59:41] Right. And the people who wrote this study, this 2000 study, didn't redo a triangle test on the citrus beverage with the people in their current study. They relied on a triangle test from 1979. That triangle test was not run in triplicate. And so what they didn't do in the 1979 study was see whether or not the seven people who could tell accurately, whether they could repeatably tell accurately.
+
+[1:00:10] So to me, the entire idea that this citrus beverage can mask MSG has not been shown. Sure. That's yeah, and I and I think that's a totally fair uh totally fair um uh disagreement. Um, so so for me, the the the issue that I take on the other side, you know, and so I, you know, I've heard you often cite the study where people were given um pills. And this is the one where where people which frequently pe people frequently cite the one where people are give people are given pills, placebos and non-placebos, um, and that uh people who have MSG re reported MSG sensitivity don't get any reaction.
+
+[1:00:44] So my quote there is that it's very possible that the the reactions you might get from something like MSG are something that require local, you know, local absorption in your mouth, right? Because a lot of the a lot of the sort of like the whatever. There there's there's many things that could be going on. And my the whole idea that um we know for sure one way or the other. Can we both agree that we don't know for sure one way or the other?
+
+[1:01:04] I don't know. I think the overwhelming proponent there is let me put it this way. In the world where we have like our current era's fake facts, like I don't want to give equal weight, I don't see any scientific evidence that there is an effect. Well, there's so I think I think what this largely comes down to is we place different weights on on observation, you know, on the on the on the reliability of a preponderance of anecdotal observable evidence versus versus controlled lab study. And I think there's right now there's very little controlled lab studies.
+
+[1:01:34] Well, there's I mean there's a lot, there's none that like there's no way to figure out if I paint your mouth with MSG and somehow knock you out so you don't know what's happened. Right. So that's the difficulty. But I think the odds that like, because it's absorbable everywhere, the odds that the like oral route in your mouth is gonna cause different reaction, I just don't see it. And I find further problems with this 2000 study, which we only have the time because we're about to get pulled off, but like to get into in terms of they didn't even follow the recipe right from 1979.
+
+[1:02:00] You know what I mean? Right, right. Like the citrate that was added was added in the wrong way here as opposed to in the 1979. So like I just think it's a bad study. I think it's bad science by bad people.
+
+[1:02:10] I don't know that they're bad people. They might be good people. So it's bad science. So is it fair to say that we both agree that there should be more studies? I would like to see the study that proves that this like kind of like tiny window that you give for there to actually still be an issue is wrong.
+
+[1:02:24] Yeah. Which I believe there is no evidence to show there is no evidence. In the way that like there there is no evidence that taking the vaccine is gonna make you sterile. Like, I don't need to see that much more evidence that vaccine doesn't make sense. I think it's pretty different.
+
+[1:02:38] I think it's pretty different from that. All right. Um we can agree that. We can agree that you shouldn't tell people what what you shouldn't tell people to eat something they don't want to eat. Uh and we can agree that MSG is delicious.
+
+[1:02:48] It is delicious. All right. Thank you, Kenji. Kenji Lopez, all cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Asian. This is Dave Arm, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of New York City and a Rockefeller Center at Newsstand Studios. Joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? I'm good.
+
+[0:22] Yeah? Mm-hmm. Anything anything fun happening? No, just Joe from Connecticut. Oh, wait, Joe from now.
+
+[0:27] Wait. Joe from Connecticut? Yeah. Who's Joe from Connecticut? Me and Joe from Tro.
+
+[0:32] Oh, Drove. Nastasia's life's full of Joes. She's got like 8,000 Joes on the line. So if I, you know, for all I know, there could be a Joe from Connecticut. Got as usual, uh working the panels here.
+
+[0:44] Joe Hazen, how you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? You look a little hot and sweaty. Oh man, it's just one F up after the next.
+
+[0:50] You know, I uh by the way, is John on the horn or is he too sick to get on the horn? He's too sick to join us tonight. Yeah, John. Please, please, Booker and Dax people, give our customer service representative uh a little bit of a break for a day or two. Let him let him heal his his uh his meat sack.
+
+[1:05] He needs to, you know, uh get back to get back to health. Uh, but we do have Jackie Molecules, right? Yes, sir. I'm here, and exciting. I'm watching you on YouTube's live stream that our all access patreons can also get.
+
+[1:21] Well, crap, what am I doing right now? What am I doing right now? Well, you're uh slightly delayed. You have your hand up now. Stas just turned her head.
+
+[1:28] Now you just looked at the camera. Alright, I believe you did. It's a nine second delay. I timed it up. Now you're doing like a up and down thing with your hand.
+
+[1:36] I don't know what that is. Okay, okay. That was me trying to see if you could see what I was doing. All right, right, all right, enough. No, I gotta I gotta keep your I gotta keep your Connecticut Joe's name out of my effing mouth.
+
+[1:48] You keep my Connecticut Joe's name out of your effing mouth. Nastassi and I decided we're gonna use that all the time. So, like, so like uh watch this. I was making pizza, I was making some pizza. Oh, keep pizza out of your pizza.
+
+[2:01] No, then you have to insult my pizza, and then I have to say, keep my pizza out of your effing mouth. Like that. I think it can be used for anything. You know what I mean? Too soon?
+
+[2:12] No, not too soon. Uh okay, so back to why I'm so hot. I'll tell you this. Today is the second closest I've ever come to not actually making it in because of a bike accident. Nastasia almost didn't make it home once in Brooklyn when she used to bike, because she hit a pothole that would have swallowed a freaking tank in Brooklyn.
+
+[2:33] Brooklyn's the land of potholes. Yeah. It's bananas. That's true. Anyway, she got swallowed by a pot.
+
+[2:39] Because the thing is this you look over at the car that's trying to kill you, you hit the pothole, you can't win. There's no winning. Anyway, remember that uh, so anyway, so I'm going down the street, and for those of you that bike in New York, right? There are these cars that they get as close as they can to like the Jersey barriers or whatever during the construction things. And it's like, yo, we're still here.
+
+[2:56] We're still here. You know what I mean? And so I'm biking next to one, and I'm like, you know what? F it. I'm gonna take it.
+
+[3:02] And you're on a city bike, which is like a giant kludge of a piece of garbage, right? And so you're like, I got like two, three millimeters. I got two, three millimeters between me and this guy's window, right? Bam! I clock his his rear his rear view, his side view with with my uh with my hand, right?
+
+[3:19] I don't think I did any damage. But if you've ever hit someone's side view with your handlebars, it's like you're in a Jerry Lewis movie all of a sudden. And like, meanwhile, I'm in between like all these cars, so I'm trying not to hit any other cars because if I hit another car, I'm going down. If I go down, I get this. Door opens, whoop.
+
+[3:40] You hit my car! And then not not coming in. That's it, it. It's over. You know what I mean?
+
+[3:44] So thank God I kept the thing on its wheels, and there was so much traffic. The dude whose side view I punched, his fault, by the way, never caught up to me. So there you go. Silver linings. Silver linings.
+
+[3:57] What was that movie about? Doesn't matter. Let's go on to questions. Well, uh, if you're listening on Patreon, uh, are you are you doing the book? Usually John says what's coming up next and stuff.
+
+[4:07] Are you gonna do that? What's coming up next? Uh I think it's the mushroom guys next. I can figure it out. No, great.
+
+[4:13] I mean, I may be late, but it's also good that at least one of us is prepared. Uh calling your questions to 917-410-1507. That's uh 917-410-1507. Listen, a little tip for you guys. And maybe we should do something better about this on the Patreon.
+
+[4:29] Nastasia and I don't go out as much as we should. Nastasia goes out more than I do. But whenever I ask her for recommendations, she clams up and looks at me like I'm an a-hole, right? Right? Well, where I go, no, none of our people want to go.
+
+[4:40] Right. Where do you go? Just like weird, really weird places. Uh, isn't that they want like the tasting menu at the blog. Why do you always assume that you that that I know our people?
+
+[4:52] Yeah, because you you're often wrong. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think that's true. For uh April 1st.
+
+[5:02] Anyway, while you're trying to figure out April 5th, James Hoffman. Is that next week? Yep. And then the coffee master. April 12th, Adam DiMartino and Phoebe Tran, the mushroom people.
+
+[5:13] The mushroom people. And then April 19th, Oliver Milman. You sound enthused, man. You should do this for a living because. Well, that's the insect guy.
+
+[5:21] That's cool. You should just uh, you know, you should do this for a living. You're you should be not as enthusiastic. I want to I want to imagine Nastasio Lopez, world's worst hype man. Like you could you could make any rapper, like the audience just be like, uh John is is John like is John 10,000 times better?
+
+[5:39] I didn't realize I don't know. Johnny, Jack, what do you think? No coffee, James Hoffman. No comment. Wait, he's not gonna drink coffee or he can't come on.
+
+[5:46] No coffee, James Hoffman. No James Hoffman, therefore no coffee. All right, well, okay. All right. Anyways, so what else are we?
+
+[5:56] We're we were talking about something else first. By the way, very quickly, um immediate comments from the Discord about people listening that would be interested in weird places. Because after all, this podcast is weird as hell to begin with, says uh, the places I go though, like you usually can't it's like a weird night, you know? Yeah. But that's what they love best.
+
+[6:16] But that they'll that'll never happen again. I'm testing live feed for Joe, so I'm temporary. Okay. Yeah, again, good information for everyone to know. Uh what John does.
+
+[6:25] Anyway, my point is this is that like, okay, so like yeah, I'm invited to weird stuff. So yesterday, uh La Maison du Whisky, La Maison du Whisky, I don't have John here to pronounce it for me, like did a launch of this thing called artist series, where these guys, they're in Paris, they go and they buy individual casks from some well-known and some not as well known different distilleries around the world, and they bottle like the single cask. So I went to their the launch of this product, and it was great, but how the hell is anyone gonna buy it? Because literally, I walked up to the to the you know, one of the people who runs it, and I asked her, I was like, how the hell do you guys, how is it that you even fly all of these people to New York and have this event when like some total of the number of bottles of this thing's 143? And you just poured one of them.
+
+[7:09] Like, what the hell is this? And she was like, I don't know. You know, no say. Well, I don't know what they. How do you say it in French?
+
+[7:16] How do you say I don't know in French? Uh you shouldn't say pa. There you go. You didn't say pa. And I'm like, I don't know.
+
+[7:20] We don't do it to make money. I'm like, well, why do you do it? I wish we could have a business where we made no money and it was okay, right, sauce? Then you, yeah. I mean, we don't make any money, but it's not okay.
+
+[7:30] Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. Uh congratulations to uh Questlove on his uh on his what's it called, right? Yeah.
+
+[7:37] Oscar. Nice. A little uh a little overshadowed maybe by what happened just before he got it. Anyway, okay. So if you're gonna call and ask for a recommendation, well, here's what I recommend.
+
+[7:47] I recommend we put these things out on the Discord so that people who go out more than we do to kind of normal restaurants, like, like I'm more like, I'm better at uh, you know, where do I buy weird ingredients? Or you know, like if you're in a town that I've been to a lot, like what's the good cheese shop? Like, that's what I'm good at. You know what I mean? Like, uh Nastasia's good at like, you know, where's the fun place where weirdos hang out, or like, you know, how do you find X, Y, or Z, like, like uh strange happening in in a particular locale?
+
+[8:20] That's what she's good at. But like But that doesn't happen twice, you know. Yeah, but the hottest, the hottest restaurants, like I don't really I don't really go that often to the hottest restaurants anymore. Use us? No, I do not.
+
+[8:32] Do you enjoy going to the hottest restaurants? I do not. Okay. But the Patreon people, I'm sure a lot of our Patreon people know it. What?
+
+[8:41] Like the hottest new restaurants. Why? I don't know. Kind of gets tired. Wow.
+
+[8:48] Wow. Wow, we just we're just a bunch of mopey moes here today, huh? Yeah. Man. In case we have time, which we won't, uh, if we need to unmope, my my cousin James told me a fantastic joke, and it's not even uh it's not even offensive too much.
+
+[9:05] Anyway, uh, but I doubt we'll have time. Okay. So, uh again, and this is this goes back to the first question that's on my list. We had uh last week from Dale Harris. Get this out on the Discord.
+
+[9:15] This is something that should be handled on the Discord. Uh Boston, New York City, best places for non-alcoholic beverage program. I actually put this out to Derek Brown, uh, who uh is currently or just formerly of Columbia Room, uh who does a bunch of amazing non-alk stuff, uh, and also uh Jackson Cannon in Boston. I haven't heard back the names of the programs yet. Uh so I don't know what to tell you, Dale.
+
+[9:37] I uh I you know, like I want people in the uh who are who are uh who are you know listening in the in the in the um Discord to help out, you know? Biff Ditt writes in, hey Dave, have you had we I've always think it's pronounced Ouija, but I don't know. W E G E. I've always since I was a kid pronounced it as Ouija. What do you think?
+
+[9:52] Ouija or Ouija? Ouija sounds bad. So I'm assuming it's Ouija, right? Yeah, it's not Ouiga. No.
+
+[9:59] No. And it's not real German. It's not Veg Vege, right? It's it's Ouija, right? Yeah.
+
+[10:04] Ouija. Uh have you had Ouija pretzels from Hanover, Pennsylvania? If not, uh, where can I send a bag to their top drawer? Well, uh, Biff, I have had them many times. Uh, so we it they don't really sell them that much around here anymore.
+
+[10:17] The brand of record that you get here, you still get uh Schneiders every once in a while, but for some reason for the past 20 something years, Schneiders have been impossibly stale. I don't know why. Schneider's is also the only brand that uses the clear salt. You know what I'm talking about? The clear pretzel salt.
+
+[10:31] Are you a clear salt or a white salt gal? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. All right. Are you remember when we were uh at the bar and I was serving hard pretzels and a friend of yours, like uh uh a restaurant a restaurateur came in.
+
+[10:43] He's like, You should serve soft pretzels. What did I tell him? No. I said, get your own place, jerk. And he's like, he's like, he's like, I have my own place.
+
+[10:51] I was like, then serve soft pretzels there and leave me alone. Uh I like soft pretzels, but I love hard pretzels. I'll put that way. Uh so I used to get them. Uh, and you know what?
+
+[11:00] They're good. I used to be like very much more of a purist on pretzels than I am uh today. Um so you know, I like them. They're good, but they contain a small amount of fat. Uh and I used to be a hundred percent against any fat at all in a hard pretzel because uh it tends to make the texture of the pretzel a little more cracker like.
+
+[11:23] So a little bit, a little bit less shattering on the tooth. And the way that you don't like if you're gonna use all purpose flour and you don't use uh uh fat your host because it's gonna be too hard because of all the protein. But if you use Slavelli's, which is what you're supposed to use, soft pastry flour, uh, you know, not bleached, but soft pastry flour, then you're gonna be fine. Uh they use a little bit, but you know what? It's not cracker like like Bachman's is, uh, which is always disappointing.
+
+[11:48] So I do actually enjoy their pretzels, and they are very old school. And my I believe, I forget whether it was that one or one very close to it that uh my great uncle worked for in the depression, was very close to that. My great uncle Luke. Uh so yes, I do appreciate them. But my real appreciation for fat containing pretzels, if you go to Dietrich Dietrich's, I think, meats in uh out out past uh Allentown uh in Pennsylvania, near where Nastasia's mom comes from, um, there's a meat store right on the road there, and they have this pretzel's name I can't remember, but it's like coated in butter and then dried hard.
+
+[12:23] So, like that like was so far in the fat dry pretzel thing that I was all of a sudden I was like okay. Okay. Okay. And I'm getting older so I'm actually getting softer in my old age about some things. Can you believe that, Sas?
+
+[12:38] Aren't you isn't your birthday tomorrow? My birthday is tomorrow. What are you doing? Uh well I was planning on getting up in the morning, puttering around, doing some work, like uh maybe taking a shower, shaving, doing some more work. Then I was gonna like uh go shopping for dinner, cook it, and then maybe go to bed.
+
+[13:04] Wow. Exciting. For all of your like family, you know, gatherings and all the family stuff. I I cook at all of those. Okay.
+
+[13:15] And it's during the week. Are you gonna at least cook something exciting? Jen's like, Jen's like, you want to go out? I'm like, where? I'm going out on Friday anyway, because like one of her friends is coming into town as you know our friends actually.
+
+[13:26] So I'm going out on Fridays. I don't want to go out like three times what am I? What am I? 20? Going out three times a week?
+
+[13:32] I had to go to this event yesterday. Am I gonna cook something special? I don't know. I have some magic pork in the freezer. I might cook myself some magic pork.
+
+[13:39] Okay. You know what do you what should I have with the magic pork people? Anyone? I might use my new waterless cookery. I don't have time now to go into the ins and outs of waterless cookery but these like weird aluminum pots from the 30s that I have I've been doing all of my mashed potatoes in them and cooking them without water.
+
+[13:58] So you just clo you literally it's the craziest thing in the world you just put dry potatoes into it washed with the peel on into a dry pot. You with me so far? Dry potatoes into a dry pot. And the trick is is you have to almost fill the pot. Like as full as the pot is can go, that's how much you should use.
+
+[14:14] Then you put the lid on and you turn on the heat until you can feel the steam hit the top of the of the lid. And then as soon as that happens, you turn it way down just so that the lid stays hot. And as long as the lid is hot, you have enough flame to be vaporizing the water, but not enough to have the steam leaving it. And the potatoes are cooked in their own water, but they don't dry out like they do in an oven. So you can let them rock for a long, long time.
+
+[14:41] And all that happens is the part of the skin that get that is actually touching the bottom of the pan gets brown and thick, but not bad actually, because I've eaten it. And then what you do is you you do you guys own grill grill gr grill gloves? Grill gloves? No. So I like these grill gloves.
+
+[14:57] I use them at I you have some, Jack. No, I don't. You should get some. Uh don't be worried about the fact that they're black, because it turns out that most of the heat from the grill isn't is not in uh not in a range that matters anyway. So a white glove might as well be black in the infrared, which is where the heat is.
+
+[15:15] So don't think that that they're not that good just because they're they're black colored. Don't think that they need to be. I mean if they're reflective, that's better because they'll take on less stuff. But once it's not reflective, it doesn't matter anymore what color the glove is. And um they're like two, three layers.
+
+[15:28] So, but they're they're there's not a lot of liquid on the outside of the potato, right? So I can literally put on these grill gloves, go right into the pot, pick up the like steaming hot potato, and then just take the peel off with a petty knife, right? And just that little bit of peel that I'm holding on to with the with the petty doesn't burn my thumb. I mean, my I also don't feel very much heat with my thumb. And so I can peel these potatoes like while they're steaming hot, leave the jackets on, so I lose very little, and you know, I yeah, I think it tastes maybe better.
+
+[15:56] I don't know. I haven't done a side by side, but I think it's a good way to cook the potato. So maybe I'll do that tomorrow, Nastasia. Okay. Is that enough of a what kind of gravy should I have?
+
+[16:04] I don't know. I don't know. I've been making a lot of mushroom gravy, so I'm kind of sick of it. What kind of gravy should I make? I don't know.
+
+[16:12] What kind of gravy do you like? Do you not like gravy? I don't usually make it, no. What about you, Jack or Joe? What's your gravy preferences?
+
+[16:21] Mushroom gravy sounds good. But I just made a mushroom gravy. I make a really good mushroom. I don't know. I don't really know.
+
+[16:26] What about just like a pan gravy? Yeah, but I do all low temp cooking, so there's no pan stuff no pan stuff left. No. No. This is why I like when I, whenever I do um like birds, boys, I like to uh like to bone them so I can make a gravy with the bones before I bother cooking them.
+
+[16:43] You know what I mean? I like to I like a two-front thing, but I don't think I want a chicken gravy with a pork. I mean, I have a bunch of chicken bones in my fridge. Freezer, rather. I mean, who doesn't, right?
+
+[16:53] Anyway. Do you save your chicken bones in the freezer? No. You don't have chicken bones. You don't like to cut up animals when you're alone.
+
+[16:59] I don't, yeah, I don't cook a lot. Okay. Uh from uh wait, did we get this? Oh, there's another one. Josh Kaplan.
+
+[17:09] I'm uh fine dining chef in DC, headed to New York City for a pizza tour. I built a list from uh Mike Portnoy's reviews and asked some chef friends about their favorite spots. Are there any places not to be missed? I mean, I'm not a free, I'm not on point. I'm I'm useless.
+
+[17:22] I'm I'm a useless person. You guys gotta ask me questions like I know the answers to, like exactly what's the difference between like uh a soft pastry flour, an all-purpose flour, and a bread flour. Hey, or I can help you out. Best pizza in New York, I can't help you so much. Jack, you used to eat pizza in New York.
+
+[17:37] And and and Joe, you eat pizza in New York. What do you like? Are you fancy pizza people or cheap pizza people? I could tell you a good dollar slice. What's your dollar slice?
+
+[17:46] Wait, I'm interested in that answer. I mean, it's not good. It's good for a dollar. It's like, you know, like uh like uh uh a kia is a terrible Bentley, right? But it's not a bad Kia.
+
+[17:58] You know what I'm saying? It's like you know, if if you're walking into a place and you and you're like, I want a slice, I'm gonna hand you one dollar bill. They're gonna hand you like a sallow piece of garbage with like a lot of potato starch mixed in with the cheese so that the cheese is stretched, and you're like, I get it. That's fine. You know what I mean?
+
+[18:16] And the one on Sixth Avenue, I think is decent for that. Sixth Avenue and uh eighth. Yeah, it's good, right? You like that one, right, Sas? Caller, you are on the air.
+
+[18:24] Hey, this is Jacob calling from Des Moines, and I have a moisture management question. And since Dave is the master of moisture, I figured this would be a good place to ask. There you go. All right, what do you got for me? Okay, so I am really curious about the method of making puffy crispy skin roasted pork.
+
+[18:45] Oh, yeah. And I have I have seen many, many iterations of it. I've seen the Marco Pierre White one where he literally just rubs some oil on it and puts it in a low oven and it gets insane. I've seen uh a Chinese method where they prick it with like the Chinese equivalent of like a chicard and then brush it with vinegar and then put a layer of rock salt on it and then roast it and then broil it. I've seen some random guy on TikTok who essentially shallow braises it uh and smokes it and then finishes it under the broiler, and I am just curious about what's going on.
+
+[19:20] Can you kind of tell all the nice folks at home how to succeed at this process? And then ultimately, what my main question is, what I really want to figure out is can I cook the pork ahead of time? If I were to do, for instance, an event off site, cook the pork ahead of time without puffing the skin, and then bring it to the site and puff the skin on site. Absolutely, you can. Uh now it's so it's funny.
+
+[19:42] It's a it's a good it's a good question. Most of the jacquarding and uh like uh pricking or the way that uh the uh modernist cuisine guys used to do it with a dog brush, make sure you get a fresh dog brush. You know what I'm talking about with the dog brush, right? The one with all the tiny wires on it, yeah. Uh that they use on duck breasts, but I think they also use it on pork.
+
+[20:00] Or if you look at like um a lot of the um, you know, Chinese language uh pork uh YouTube, you'll see them like like multiply stabbing the skin a bunch of time. And that's really just to kind of like help it um help it render, but you render the fat, right? Render, right. The interesting thing comes like salt, obviously is gonna draw some moisture out as well as make it taste uh good, right? Um the the interesting question is always like some people are painting it with an acidic paint on top, and some people are painting it with a basic paint on top, right?
+
+[20:36] Like baking soda, for instance. And uh I have never like so what's funny is is that anytime you take uh most of those things aren't affecting the fat itself, they're affecting the connective tissue under the fat, right? And so um anytime you and that which is protein based, and any time you shift a a protein away from what's known as its isoelectric point, uh, you induce changes, right? So the the other thing is that baking soda will shift it towards uh brown because it also shifts Myart and Browning reactions into high gear, whereas shifting it towards acidic will keep it blonder. So like the more acidic it is, and I'd I I haven't tested exactly which effect is gonna be better on the collagen to break it apart and cause it to to puff up much.
+
+[21:20] But it's interesting that both are used and it just goes to show how uh like the same chemistry in two opposite directions can have kind of similar effects. But I again I haven't run it down on pork skin. It is something that I was gonna do for the book, but then so many other people are working on it, and I figured that if I tried to tackle crispy pork skin, I would be accused of like going outside of my wheelhouse. So I kinda stopped. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[21:45] So I kinda stopped looking into it. But um whether or not you can cook it ahead of time, for sure. The issue is really just drying that skin out uh in advance, right? So what I would do is um I would if you're gonna let's say let's just say we're doing belly. I don't you didn't say you were, but let's just say we're doing belly.
+
+[22:01] Yeah, yeah. Keep the piece as big as you can. Right. Also, um just be aware that uh you know how like there are certain muscles in the belly that tend to dry out more if you're gonna low temp. If you're gonna do a traditional brace, uh then kind of the gelatin uh from the connective tissue kind of weeps all over everything and tends to moisten the drier muscles.
+
+[22:24] But in a low temp cook where the the collagen uh becomes soft but doesn't actually completely bleed out into the entire mass of meat, those muscles can end up tasting a little drier than you would like in in a pork belly. So but I would keep the piece as big as you can, right? Low temp it and then chill it all the way down until it re-gels, okay, until it's a solid mass again and the skin is isn't is soft. And not me, sorry, re-gelled, not soft. Uh and then I would cut it into whatever portions you're gonna crisp on and then.
+
+[22:59] And then I would air dry the skin with and you know try to protect the meat somewhat from from drying out and air dry the skin and then do it. And I then, you know, I mean I've always wanted to, I didn't do it, do a side by side where, you know, one side has nothing, once, you know, well, three sides. One is one is the vinegar and one is the baking soda. My my guess is that it's going to be differences of uh just texture on the on the outside, you know. Um and then of course you have a question are you going to pan it in oil?
+
+[23:28] Because that crisps up real nice or is it just going to be a broil, right? Or are you just going to throw it in the oven. The oven's the most dangerous in terms of overcooking the meat at the bottom, drying out the meat. You know what I mean? Sure.
+
+[23:38] Sure. Right. I've got options there. And that's kind of what um I I guess another great point that I'm glad you brought up. So the the site that I'm thinking about doing this at has a wood-fired pizza oven, basically.
+
+[23:51] And if it's possible, I mean that could be a thing. Could impart some nice flavor onto it perhaps. I also have the camp chef portable. It's basically like a pizza oven that you stick on top of a propane burner. But like one of the big like the the the bigger like what do you call it?
+
+[24:11] Almost like a stove that's got like three propane burners on it that you'll see like a lot of people make like pho with or whatever outside. Right. So I have I have it's basically like a pizza a pizza attachment that they recommend running around 600 to 650 600, 650 degrees, which I think for this purpose would be great. Um, but then I also have like a big walk that I can take with me outside and then just do the oil over the top of it too. Yeah, I mean, look, all I I again the I would test all of these.
+
+[24:43] I think any one of these could make a good product. Just realize that like a wood fired oven where the let's say the dome of it is getting over 800. And if you do the math, right the difference between 900, 800, 900 degrees and 500, 600 degrees, the difference in radiant energy coming off that thing is a lot because it doesn't go up linearly. It goes up um you know, to uh what is it? Oh my god, it just went out of my head, six uh fourth power, right?
+
+[25:09] So it's like and well, and I'll say too, we can we can control the temperature on that oven. Like usually I do um more of a I'm not gonna call it Neapolitan style, but it's more of a Neapolitan style pizza that cooks in like two minutes because we're running it between 70 and 800 degrees. But then I also at the same site did um Detroit style pieces, so I was running that between five and six hundred. So like I can control the temperature. It's it's literally I'm building a fire inside of this thing and like controlling the temperature that way.
+
+[25:39] So I feel after especially after having successfully done these Detroit style pizzas, I feel like I can do anything out of that out of that oven now. But yeah, that was just just another option that I'm gonna do. Yeah, I mean, I would look if you're comfortable with a particular piece of equipment, that's nine tenths of the battle. Especially like, you know how many times I've seen people show up at events, it's usually events, right? And they're like, I'm gonna use this piece of equipment and I'm sure it's fine.
+
+[26:02] I've never used it before, but I'm sure it's fine. It's never fine. Have you had do you know do you know anybody who I mean that's that's one of my points with my business um is that I want to be able to execute uh a certain a certain level of of execution anywhere. And so I have what I lovingly refer to as a completely mobile kitchen. I have all of this propane cooking equipment or electrical stuff that I can take with me and use because yeah, you go do catering events and stuff and they don't have anything.
+
+[26:29] It's like, but I I don't I'm not the type of person that has quote unquote catering equipment. I'm not going to warm everything up, put it in a hot box and then drag it out there and put it on a plate. I would much rather bring cold product and then warm it up on site or finish it on site. So yeah that's that's part of the reason that I have so many toys is because I want to be able to execute a high level of quality uh anywhere. Yeah.
+
+[26:55] Well I mean it's also like I mean I think the mistake people make right all the time is they start in the wrong place. Like you know the equipment that you have right and you know where you're going to be making the food, right? So design the menu around that around how you're gonna make it. You don't design the menu around what you want. You know what I mean?
+
+[27:16] I mean that's my first question when I have bigger events too I'm like what kind of equipment do you guys have there? Like what can we because this that's gonna dis dictate what's on the menu, you know yeah yeah listen don't don't promise your customer an item until you know the particulars of the situation unless they have infinite money. If they have infinite money, fine. Right. Infinite you know money as Cindy Lauper famously said, money changes everything.
+
+[27:44] Love her. Yep. All right well listen good luck. Let us know uh tweet me back uh with some pictures of your test. I'd love to know what you uh came down with and how it came out tweet me tweet me back to cooking issues.
+
+[27:53] I appreciate it. Hey I'll give it a shot thanks for the insight. All right cool. All right and now we're gonna go uh to an ad for our favorite fish, Aura King Salmon, and we'll be right back with Cooking Issues. Today's episode brought to you by Oura King Salmon, everybody's favorite fish.
+
+[28:08] Today in the studio we have Michael Fabro from Oura King Salmon to talk about it. And I was curious about sustainability. You guys have the highest certification possible from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. Is that true? Yeah, that's absolutely true.
+
+[28:24] It was important to have a third-party certification to verify that our practices were sound. Really, the one that most consumers or most uh Americans look to is this Monterey Bay Seafood Watch program. And they have a a very simple way to judge it. They have a green-yellow-red system. Green meaning it's a best choice.
+
+[28:43] Yellow is a good alternative, and red is something you should avoid. They look at everything from your feed, your impact on the water and surrounding environment, fish-in-fish-out ratios, any impact on wild fisheries. Like Aura King was actually the first marine farmed salmon in the world to score the green or best choice rating. So that was a really significant achievement for us and kind of validated what we've been saying all along. There you go.
+
+[29:10] The only best green choice for salmon aquaculture, Aura King salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Okay, so we have a question here. Um this is a classics in the field question from Zachary Stewart. I don't know if I have the answer today, but let's see here.
+
+[29:28] Uh my sister-in-law is cooking for uh is looking for a book uh that talks about all the cuts of meat from as many animals as possible, uh, at least pork and beef. It should give the characteristics of the cut, how it is best used, the kind of dishes, and how best to cook it. Trying to learn the things a butcher would know without becoming a butcher. Uh, how to be an informed meat consumer, et cetera. Thanks for the show and keep up the good work.
+
+[29:48] So, I don't know if there's one book that deals with all of that. The uh what is it called? The North American Meat Producers NAMP uh old picture guide of various cuts. And I think we talked about it when Matt was on the show briefly uh a couple of weeks ago. Um it's maybe a little outdated, um, but it's an awesome picture book.
+
+[30:07] It's spiral bound, and you can take it into the shower with you because it's meant to be like washed down, and like in case you accidentally cut open a cow next to it and like it bleeds all over the book, your book's gonna be fine. Uh, and that's an amazing book. Everyone I know uh likes it. Uh, but find it used and don't buy, don't spend a lot of money on it. Uh I think the you know, for one that's a little bit now long in the tooth, it's a little bit old, but the old River Cottage meat book uh I think is good.
+
+[30:33] Uh gee, you know, John reads this kind of crap. And next time we have Matt on, I'm gonna have uh I'm gonna have I'm gonna put a pin in it and ask uh Matt when he comes back on the show because he's gonna be coming on semi like once every other month, right, Sas, something like that? Yep. Yeah. Uh someone in Discord said on the last call, this is a long ass call.
+
+[30:52] Okay. I'm keeping up with the comments. Yeah. Well, thanks for slowing down the show for telling me that. Awesome.
+
+[30:59] Uh licensed magician 69 at AOL uh writes in Dave once mentioned that he knows why. Wait, that's the guy. Nastasi, Nastasi goes this. Nastasi's like, that's the same thing. That call was long, and here I am.
+
+[31:09] I'm gonna make it longer. That's a guy that just commented this. Really? Awesome. So here I am spending time on your stuff.
+
+[31:17] See? See? See? All right. Uh Dave once mentioned that he knows why electric uh multi cookers, aka the instant pot, etc., aren't made to reach a full 15 PSI.
+
+[31:26] He did not say specifically why. What's the reason? Okay, so Nastasi and I used to hang out with occasionally someone who made these things professionally for one of the big name manufacturers. I won't say, I won't say who it is or what it is. And literally, some of it is this following fact.
+
+[31:43] They're like, Well, what do you need the extra, what do you need the extra pressure for, right? So there's a whole range of people who like are engineering and making this that aren't necessarily cooks and don't really understand why you would want the extra pressure. Because in truth, right, it doesn't necessarily take that much longer to cook something at 10 PSI than it does to cook it at 15 PSI. It does take a little bit longer, 5 PSI. But uh they're not sitting down in a kitchen like they would be in the 1910s or 1920s.
+
+[32:11] And frankly, they're not hiring someone in a kitchen. So it used to be that the big manufacturers would hire, they would set up a test kitchen, and people who make food like Unilever still do this. But kitchen manufacturers don't have kitchens anymore where they're hiring people to come up with recipes that are awesome with their equipment to sell to you. I just don't think that's as much of a thing as it was in the teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Uh and so they're not doing like the tests with like you know that we used to do back in the day where you know we we get a pressure cooker and we cook products in it at 10 different pressures and see which ones taste best.
+
+[32:48] The answer is 15. Like like 20 PSI, not better, worse. Like 15 is the answer. So part of it is just not understanding why you would want that extra pressure. They have to over design it to get it to go to those pressures.
+
+[33:00] It becomes more of a design problem. And also those electric instapot things, a regular real honest to God pressure cooker, you moderate the moderate it yourself. You set the temperature and you moderate it. Uh in one of these things, there is a pressure relief valve that goes, but they're monitor they're doing the temperature with just uh a temperature sensor, right? With like a thermistor.
+
+[33:24] And uh, and so what they're doing is they're choosing a temperature that's not that high, it's above boiling but's not that high, I think so that they don't scorch or have any other problems and just make their life easier. And I I really think that's I really think that's why they do it. Interesting fact. Um, you have to to get a pressure cooker to build up pressure, you need to create uh a little bit of steam, right? Obviously, duh.
+
+[33:48] Uh and it the thicker your item is, the bigger of a temperature differential there is between the bottom of the pan and the actual liquid that is at boiling point. So even though the liquid that's boiling is still just at boiling temperature because you don't really have enough solids in your products to increase the boiling point of the water that much, it can be as much as 15 degrees uh difference in the bottom where the where the heater is and and the product that's actually boiling in a thicker item than in a thinner item. You always need some superheat at the bottom of a pan. And so very thick items at the bottom of your pressure cooker, you have to use a lot of extra superheat. And then if you if you gel, if you make a gel layer on the bottom of your pan, like let's say you're thickening in a gravy and you make a gel layer on the bottom of the pan, then all of a sudden you're creating a layer you have to have conduction through, and that drastically increases the temperature uh you need to uh maintain pressure without scorching.
+
+[34:42] And so I would very much uh caution you when you're using pressure cookers to make sure that the liquid that's directly touching the bottom of the pan is as thin as possible. That makes sense? Mm-hmm. Okay. Uh Will Robinson wrote in Hey, uh when Dave was talking slash complaining, is there anything do I ever talk about things without complaining about them?
+
+[34:59] No. Okay. So it's like talking is complaining. You don't need to say both. Right.
+
+[35:03] Yeah. Uh about the measuring cup that came with his Zojiirushi rice cooker, rice cooker. Uh uh, was he was he fully aware that the Japanese go is a volume of measurement predominant in rice cookers? No. Uh and I I I wasn't.
+
+[35:18] I was just, you know, I had never really researched where that measurement came from. So then I looked up a go, and a go is uh 180.4 milliliters, according to the Wikipedia, if you can believe the Wikipedia, which is for those of you that are keeping track, 0.76 cup. And so I took my Zojirushi uh cup, which hasn't seen water in I don't know, decades, right? Because I don't get my rice scoop wet. I'm not a crazy person.
+
+[35:45] And damned if it didn't hold 180 milliliters, but you have to meniscus that sucker like all the way to the top. So it's dribbling everywhere. So thank you, Will, for it's still a ridiculous unit, and why don't they just call it like rice measure or go? Just tell me go. Don't insult me and call it a cup when it ain't.
+
+[36:02] You know what I mean? Don't insult me. Uh do we answer this question about tap cocktails? I know you're gonna want to say yes because you hate any question about tap cocktails. I don't think so.
+
+[36:12] All right. Um Joe Waterhouse writes in hey Dave, I've been thinking about tap cocktails for a while now, while now, and wondered if um Oh, this is the one where I keep asking John to reword it because I can't read it on air because it's not you re you read it, you reword it, and I'll I'll read the next question. All right. Steinberg says, still thinking about corn tortillas, can you make nixtamol in a pressure cooker to speed up the process? Uh I have found that it's not helpful.
+
+[36:36] Uh what happens is that when you're making an so for those of you that, you know, I don't know, haven't been following nixtimalization. So in Nixtimalization, you're using a base, uh traditionally, either uh calcium hydroxide, cal CaOH, or pot ash, uh, even older, uh, because it's harder to make calcium hydroxide, uh, and you boil corn, dry corn, you know, uh, in uh don't do it with popcorn, it's a pain in the ass. Regular, like, you know, field corn, although there's it's delicious when you do it with really fancy varieties. Oh, you know what? I should nixtamalize some of my bloody butcher.
+
+[37:08] Oh my God. It's gonna be so good. Anyway, you boil it in a in an alkaline solution and it dissolves it does a couple of things. It dissolves the outside of the seed coat a little bit and actually turns that into kind of these uh hydrocolloid-like things that help plasticize the uh masa that you're making. It also partially gelatinizes the kernels uh so that you know some of the starch is is functionalized, which also gives body to the dough, but you have to do it kind of the right amount.
+
+[37:34] If you overdo it, uh then too much of the starch is gelatinized, too much of the, you know, too much of the outside is is kind of wiped off and it's not good. Then after you you you boil it, then you soak it for a while at a lower temperature, like while it's coming down. Soak it, then you rub off, you know, however much of the outside sea coat you want, then you grind it into masa, and that's what is tortillas and and whatnot. It's masa. You can use it for wherever you want, but it's masa.
+
+[37:58] If you pressure cook it, it's easy to go too far too fast. You're not really boiling it that long anyway. Uh and so, you know, it's gonna be at a high temperature for so long that uh it's it in my experience, you weren't saving a lot, and the odds that you could go over were too high. That was my uh experience. Anyway.
+
+[38:16] Okay, so you want this to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You answer you, you ask me the question. Just reword the question so that I can answer it.
+
+[38:21] Hi, Dave. I've been thinking about tap cocktails for a while now, and I wondered if you could tell me if I'm being very smart or very stupid. If I attached a keg to a cement mixer under pressure, it would be a good one. Oh, we did this. Don't do it with the cement mixer.
+
+[38:31] We dealt with this one. Okay. The cement mixer, the problem with the cement mixer, remember, is that how are you gonna keep the the tube from getting wrapped around itself and kinking? You're gonna spend so much money on a nice rotary fitting, and then you still have to make sure that the rotary fitting spins on center, right? Because the mistake people make is you can't freaking carbonate unless it's under pressure.
+
+[38:54] And I highly recommend you do not stick the CO2 tank into the cement mixer with the keg, because if you make a mistake with a keg that's at like, you know, 80 psi, 100 psi, if you're doing it at room temperature, that's 80, 100 psi. If you make a mistake with a CO2 tank and you knock the nipple off the end of a CO2 tank, that's 800 PSI. That's a that's a rocket. That's a missile. That's not uh that's not a good idea.
+
+[39:20] Uh Nicholas says, asks, would you recommend any resources or books on how to get the most out of your rotovap? I think we already answered this one too. No, I I I don't there are no good books on rotary evaporation just because there aren't enough people doing it. Look at cooking issues. The best thing to do, and I know this sounds like a dick move, either get one and find a chemist who is willing to come to your house, pay them in booths, and have them show you how to set it up, and then go on cooking issues or anyone else who writes about using rotary evaporators for cooking, and then try to learn the difference between what a chemist is trying to do with a rotary evaporator and what you are trying to do with a rotary evaporator, because it's very different.
+
+[40:00] But learning the nuts and bolts of running one, actually keeping one in good shape is a very different thing from learning how to make it taste good. And usually, like you can't find the same person who's good at both. Does that make sense? Uh question: why do uh why does meat, this is from uh Jay? Why does meat go dry slash mealy if you sous vide for too long, even at low temperatures?
+
+[40:23] For larger cuts, I notice it continues, uh, even at temperatures lower than desired. Uh, is there a way to prevent this while still breaking down collagen? And if not, does this suggest some steaks are too thick for sous vide? Uh too thick for sous vide. That's my uh that's my that's my mental, my mental capacity, too thick for sous vide.
+
+[40:41] Let me ask you before I I'm gonna answer, I'm gonna answer your question. I'm gonna give you your time. I have been studying like the long extended history of low temperature cooking, going back way far back. You know what we should do sometime, Stas? Were you willing to do uh how easy is it to dig in your in your backyard?
+
+[40:58] Easy. Really? So it's not like like where I was in Connecticut where it's all rocks. You want to do some underground cooking? No.
+
+[41:05] Why? Okay, yeah, let's do it. Why? I'm not curious. If you say no, you said no so quickly.
+
+[41:11] I've asked you to do that last summer, and you're like, I don't have time, I don't know. I don't, but if I do it for the book, I'm gonna say I don't have interest. You know what? You may pay me to be this terrible person. Anyway, uh here's the issue.
+
+[41:22] So collagen breaking down, everyone likes to say, everyone likes to think, and I might have even written back in the day, but it's just simply not true. That once meat fibers, the fibers themselves, right, the muscle fibers, reach a certain temperature, that they are relatively static, right? And so then you can keep it at that temperature forever without it overcooking. Simply not the case, right? Simply not true.
+
+[41:47] So uh what happens is is that it's true that most of the movement in a protein like that happens relatively quickly, but then it keeps on uh, first of all, getting firmer, uh, and then also getting like mushier as it goes forward, right? So the more you can drop a temperature below your target temperature, right, the longer you can keep things running. Uh but certain things it's almost impossible to keep them from going uh dry or stringy. So for instance, like tenderloin has no connective tissue in it at all. And so you start noticing that mushy fibrousness in uh in a filet very quickly, which is why like I try to keep all of those uh cooking times down below an hour on a filet if you're gonna do it, right?
+
+[42:35] Like all in, I want that like under an hour. And this is why if you read all my a lot of my old stuff on the blogs, I'm like, I really don't like cooking chicken longer meat, low temp longer than an hour because once it's reached cooking temperature and stayed there at cooking temperature for more than an hour, I start to notice some of that mushiness. And this is borne out by tests that we've done, terrible tests. Remember those tests how disgusting they were stuzz? Of just eating skinless, unseared meat, like cubes of meat that have been cooked at various times and temperatures.
+
+[43:06] And that's when you notice it, not when you're when you're finished. And so those meats really want to only be at their target temperature for a little bit of time and then dropped, sometimes substantially. I think you noted that uh you're dropping down to 125. I don't I can't do that in Celsius, but you need to drop a good five degrees below your cooking temperature to really halt a lot of that progression forward in terms of mushiness. Collagen, on the other hand, uh you need to break down for a long time.
+
+[43:34] And so a lot of times you have to run a compromise between breaking down of collagen and not making this stuff uh mushy. So it's not necessarily it is it is a thickness question, right? In general, with very thick cuts of meat, all I'm looking to do is hit a target temperature on the very inside for insurance. I'm never doing kind of direct serve on those things. So I'm not really tenderizing those big, big, big cuts.
+
+[43:59] Uh more when I'm doing tenderizing with uh sous vide, I'm doing smaller things like uh ribs or uh you know, sh short ribs or things like things that are high in collagen that you want to like render out for a long time. Things like roasts, I I tend to just take them up to their target temperature. And even though it takes a long time, uh it's fine because the part that is kind of what you would call mushy on the outside is gonna get overcooked when you roast it at a high temperature anyway when you're doing the actual f finished cook-off. So it's not really a problem. Does that make sense to us?
+
+[44:31] Mm-hmm. All right. Uh okay. Henry Botz writes in, what's the difference between tomato paste in a tube that says 2X versus a small can and can they be used interchangeably? It's a good question.
+
+[44:43] I haven't used a l any of that uh 2x tube-based stuff. I'm a can man. You ever you are you a tube lady? Mm-hmm. Anyone uh anyone on the Discord uh jack at the time?
+
+[44:52] I'm a tube. Yeah. You're a tube? Tubes, yeah. Mm-hmm.
+
+[44:56] You know the internet's a series of tubes. Yes. Why do you be curious to hear your answer to this? Why use it? Um, I don't know.
+
+[45:05] It's easy to open and close if I only need like a little bit for something. Yeah. When was the last time you only needed a little bit of tomato paste? I'm always like, I use so much tomato paste. Really?
+
+[45:16] All right. Yeah. I write all of my recipes around uh the six-ounce can of tomato paste. Huh. You know what I mean?
+
+[45:25] Like I'm always like using. I don't have the tube. I would guess they're the same, though. I would guess that for I I would guess that like maybe they're a little bit different, but I would guess that uh it's just like a dosing thing. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[45:39] Like maybe like you're saying, like it's easier to dose out the stuff that's in a tube. Like some cultures like like have all of those like toothpaste tubes of stuff lying around anyway, like they're used to cooking with them. The only thing I have in a tube in my kitchen is uh callus caviar. You guys like that stuff? Yeah.
+
+[45:54] Yeah. I like it. You never had it? Nils used to call it Swedish toothpaste. It's like it's like fish row and salt and like oil, and it's got this like it's got this kid with this preposterous grin on the front.
+
+[46:09] Like uh like Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. It's good. You know what's good on?
+
+[46:15] Crackers. You know what's not good on? Anything you're gonna have, it really ruins wine. You should really have it when you're not drinking wine. It's not wine friendly.
+
+[46:24] Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what it is. Smoky? Yeah.
+
+[46:28] Smoky, salty. Something about cured fish products and most wines, I don't I don't like. Like uh, I love I love cured fish. I don't really like champagne and locks to me is like the worst combo. Like carbonated.
+
+[46:43] What about you, Stas? You hate that too, right? I don't think I like that. Yeah. I mean, that's maybe the only situation where champagne's not the right answer.
+
+[46:49] Yeah. Because, you know, every other situation, it is. Uh did I get this one? All right. Uh Timothy Helmet writes in hey, can you talk about cooking with essential oils?
+
+[47:01] For steam distilled ingredients, what's the difference between food and non-food grade oils? Uh, is it a big risk to consume a minute amount of an edible oil that's not explicitly food grade for some background of assembling the ingredients to make the chili sauce in the Sichuan tofu uh rice recipe, which I didn't click, so I don't know what it is. Uh, they use uh oh my god, I can't pronounce that. Oh, is that cubet? Look up, look up let's say a cubeba.
+
+[47:28] Is that cubeba cubeba for soap making or for aromatherapy, but nothing explicitly food grade. Thanks for making the show, Timothy. Is it is it cube's? Because I love cube. I love cubebs.
+
+[47:42] Is that what it is? I don't know, Litsea, though. What? Two questions in a row that I also have. This is this is great.
+
+[47:50] What's Litse? I have the same question. What's Litseia cube? You guys looking it up? I don't have the internets.
+
+[47:59] Anyway, um to answer your question. It's very difficult to dose those things. And also essential, if the recipe specifically calls for an essential oil, that means that use the essential oil, try to find a food grade one. They are minute quantities. I remember once we did a thing at the French Culinary Institute where we were trying to make cocktails and dishes with uh the essential oils, and this is back when the school still used styro cups.
+
+[48:25] We still had styro cups styrofoam cups for like drinking coffee out of and whatnot. And we were we took a dropper and we put dropper in and it melted the styrofoam cup. Were you there for that one, Stas? Yeah. So in other words, like to try it, maybe sure.
+
+[48:41] I I'm I don't feel qualified to give you an answer. Now, on the way out, because I have a minute and 40 seconds, I'm gonna read you the introduction from the houseware story, a history of the American housewares uh industry by Earl Lilshe from 1973, made by the National Housewares Manufacturing Association, whose managing director, Dolph Zapfel, wrote uh this rather uh breathless uh introduction. And this is the most over the top anyone's ever been when talking about housewares. This is back when it was still cool to ruin the environment and build as much stuff as humanly possible before the first oil crisis. The publication of the houseware story is one of the proudest accomplishments of the National Houseware Manufacturers Association in its 34 years of service to the American housewares industry.
+
+[49:22] We're sure this lively and comprehensive history of a fascinating business will prove to be of great interest to all members of the industry, veterans and newcomers alike. We hope that further this important first will enrich their understanding of the industry and make them even more proud to be a part of the amazing conglomerate we call housewares. It was 1968 that the industry leaders then serving as NHMA directors determined that the time had come for someone to chronicle this American economic miracle that is housewares. Someone somewhere should write a history of this lusty, sprawling giant that has grown at ever-increasing speed in the years since World War II, reaching an annual volume of over $15 billion in 1972. They felt it was time that someone weave into words the narrative of an industry whose thousands of manufacturing plants stretch from coast to coast, and whose myriad products are found in every room and every home in the United States.
+
+[50:12] No small job. But of course, the answer was obvious to all. Earl Liffshi, a man whose experience, background, and talent eminently qualified him to take on this major production. Fortunately for the housewares industry, Earl promptly accepted the commission of this exciting undertaking. He immediately began one of the most thorough and painstaking research tasks ever attempted.
+
+[50:35] Earl's natural curiosity about anything and everything took over. His journalistic intuition came into full play, and he was off on what was later described as the most stimulating challenge of his almost half-century career of editorial and merchandising endeavors in the housewares industry. No one but those closest to him during these past four years can fully appreciate Earl's dedication to the detective work necessary to unearth the people, the facts, and the figures about an industry whose roots literally go back to the first man who cooked a piece of raw meat with a crudely improvised utensil. And no one will ever know the number of hours nor the amount of intense effort Earl poured into producing this sweeping history of a many faceted industry. The houseware story is, of course, dedicated to the thousands of men and women who make up the housewares industry, to those former and present manufacturers, representative, buyers, and trade press editors, and others who've contributed so much to this book.
+
+[51:27] Without their help, this thorough and comprehensive story could not have been written. The National Housewares Manufacturers Association is proud to have played the initial role in the conception of this history of the American housewares industry, and we hope you will share our pride and take pleasure in the intriguing historical saga that Earl Lipshe has woven in the houseware story, cooking issues.
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+[0:12] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Harold, your hosting cooking issues coming to you live from New York City. I happen to be in the Lower East Side because I have the COVID today. So I'm being remote. But the rest of us, well actually, Nastasia's also.
+
+[0:23] Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is in California, so she's also remote. But the rest of us, with the exception of Jackie Molecules, who is always in California. Hey, Jack. Hey. How you doing?
+
+[0:36] Are live on Newstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Hey, how are you guys doing? Alright, doing all right. And uh John, uh customer service uh extraordinaire from Booker Index. John, how you doing?
+
+[0:56] Doing great, thanks. Yep, Pete. And uh because I'm actually not in the studio, I think like I'm gonna we're gonna do the because so you know, for those of you that listen to this program before, usually, you know, we we uh shoot the breeze for a while and then I introduce the guests. But because like first of all, because like the two guests do kind of such different things, I'm gonna introduce them right now, and everyone we're just gonna get together. How's that sound, John?
+
+[1:22] Does it sound like an okay thing? Yeah. Yep. Sound good. Okay.
+
+[1:26] So uh whathing. Keep going. Today we have today. We have uh Phoebe Tran, who uh has uh how you doing, Phoebe? Doing good yeah.
+
+[1:41] So you have your uh she has her like uh her irons in in in many fires. Uh so you I guess I don't know what do you go what do you go by first? So like uh you you you you set up gardens for the Brooklyn Grange all over the city, right? You're like the you're like a a garden manager like in this in the kind of setup and design side of it. Am I correct in that?
+
+[2:05] Is that one of the things? Or do you say that your primary thing is um is like the the night market uh festival that you set up the Happy Family Night Market Festival or are you more uh a more on the kind of Bebop side with the you know your your your project to um bring uh like hard to find uh Vietnamese produce and ingredients cook with them to uh to our to our plates like which one of those three are they all this are they all together um I typically I feel like it when it comes to cooking issues I would first and foremost introduce myself as Bebbe uh my Vietnamese roaming pop up and then I mean I guess like most of the time I am in the garden hands in the dirt um specifically tending to like edible gardens all right so you're growing things that are green okay let's just be clear you are growing things that get their energy from the sun and then provide the energy for the rest of the things on earth that that live whereas our other guest Adam D Martino doesn't do that grows things that are uh well they're not parasites they're but they're like they're like us they have to get their energy from things that have already grown mushroom grower uh with um small holes so like so why don't you describe so this is an interesting concept. So you correct me if I'm wrong here. You help other people to grow mushrooms. True or false?
+
+[3:39] Well, true. Yeah. So in other words, you so I can go on, I can go on your website and I can I can you know order a mushroom kit and grow it myself. But like it seems to me that like what is you're doing a lot of is going into like a Whole Foods setting up like a like a whole grow, what do you call them? Mini Grow State, what do you call them?
+
+[4:01] What's the name of them? It's uh it what we call them mini farms. Um we sort of do all of the above. Uh we have uh all manner of farm basically. We put automated mushroom farms that are connected to a network uh that we sort of run remotely uh inside of grocery stores and uh restaurants around the country.
+
+[4:21] Uh and then we also actually have large automated mushroom farms uh the size of uh warehouses, like 20, 35,000 square feet, uh, which grow significant quantities of produce for large retailers around the country. Okay. Now I kind of don't know where to start because again, like mushrooms, not even plants, not even related to plants, closer to closer to animals than to plants and plants. So what's it like? The other thing I should add is that you two are a couple.
+
+[4:55] So is there ever a problem like the mushroom side versus the plant side? Do you guys get into arguments on this? No. I think our only issue sometimes is that we only to talk about food. Yeah.
+
+[5:09] Which I feel like isn't much of an issue on cooking issues. Yeah, we um Yeah, right. You know who doesn't like talking about food strangely? Is uh Nastasia. I don't know whether she was having some technical issues.
+
+[5:20] And by the way, we all had thanks for coming in today. Like, aside from COVID, uh new like a lot of New York City happens to be on lockdown today. So thanks, thanks for making it in. Um Phoebe called an office. Isn't that bizarre?
+
+[5:35] Uh and drove in actually. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she drove in, right, because like a lot of the a lot of the what's it called subways are are are shut down. Anyway, I don't even know. I'm not gonna get into it because I don't even know.
+
+[5:47] I don't even know what's what's going what's what's happened. All right. So again, not knowing where to start, I'm gonna ask this. Or both. Yes.
+
+[6:09] Yeah. It's uh uh but I guess it's so means like mushrooms making it into the middle of the plate, right? Yeah, that's the concept. Basically, um mushrooms uh are unique in the produce section of the grocery store and in our lives and that they occupy such a central part of it, although often are overlooked, right? Um thirty percent of most forest floors are are made up of fungal matter.
+
+[6:33] Um and it mostly goes on scene. The largest organism in the world is uh is a honey mushroom. Um up in Oregon. And so these are things that we often just don't really talk about, although I feel they're at the forefront of a lot of people's conversations today. Um and they definitely can occupy the center of like basil can't so oh harshing on basil.
+
+[6:59] Wow. Not liking the pesto. Wow. Okay then. All right.
+
+[7:04] All right. Gauntlet throne. Uh so I've heard that that particular uh honey mushroom, the armillaria that out there is uh A, not that delicious, and B, even though it's the largest organism in the world, is actually being endangered by people going to pick pieces of it off because of how famous it is. Because I asked on Twitter whether any like mico friend out there would get, and they're like, don't do it. They're like, don't do it.
+
+[7:30] It's also like a serious parasite, that mushroom. Yes. Right. I mean, it it's wiping, I mean, it depends on what you like better. Do you like Douglas Furs or do you like uh or do you like uh hugging mushrooms, right?
+
+[7:41] I mean, I'm partial to both. They can live together, just not in one place. Ish. Uh okay. So, but the interesting thing about this cookbook is first of all, that the paper is extremely stiff.
+
+[7:57] It's like it's like uh almost like golden book stiff, like like board paper, and it's relatively short. But the idea of it is is that you're buying it and it's actually for a nonprofit. The profits of it go to uh a foundation. You want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, the Vangi Foundation uh promotes uh biodiversity and mushroom awareness.
+
+[8:17] Um honestly, it's it's one of the cooler uh organizations out there in the mushroom world right now. Um I'd give uh Juliana over there a lot of credit for really pushing that agenda and making people aware of just how important mushrooms are, not just to you know humans, but to the planet. Uh and honestly, that's sort of the mission of of small hold as well. Um we really want to use or sorry to facilitate knowledge around mushrooms in the hopes that people will pay more attention to their natural environment as a result of it. So I noticed in the book that uh there was a little bit of a hate down on the common button mushroom.
+
+[9:08] And I understand why there needs to be a little bit of a hate down on the common button mushrooms, but come on. They are delicious. Do you not find that they are also delicious? If they were rare, how expensive would they be? So expensive if they were rare.
+
+[9:22] No? Well, in uh in Korea, they are kind of rare because of uh a manure shortage, right? They don't have the right kind of manure to grow buttons on and uh they're significantly more expensive, like upwards of ten dollars a pound, I think. Um but I'll I'll just say like people like them there as a result of them. Yeah, I mean, I think that they're they eat them and they like them, but yeah, I eat them and I like them.
+
+[9:48] I'm not anti-button mushroom, I'm just pro all other mushrooms. I have to say though, I feel like I haven't had a white button mushroom in a really long time. Well, I mean, Phoebe, that checks out, doesn't it? I mean, can you imagine if like you if you went if you went like brought home like a standard 10 ounce pack? So people, in case you and I'm gonna ask this later when it comes to like the economics of this, the standard unit of of button mushroom in the United States is a 10-ounce uh uh packet in made of cardboard with perforated plastic over it that's been extremely highly designed to keep those things in decent shape for a while.
+
+[10:26] Anyway, so that's if you're thinking supermarket mushroom, it's that. That's 10 ounces of mushroom, right? Uh yeah, so I can imagine like so Phoebe, so are you actually Jones in for some button mushrooms now then? I mean, I definitely I feel like the last time I've used it, it was for this like vegan version of a di a Vietnamese dish called bone ryu that my mom makes, and you like have to use white button mushrooms because she like blends it with like a slurry of of other mushrooms, but mainly white button mushrooms and an egg, and then she sort of like quinels it and like drops it into a boiling soup so that it like acts as this like vegan version of like a crab pork cloud. And like you couldn't do that, you couldn't make that recipe with any other sort of like chewier mushroom like oyster mushrooms or trumpet or whatever.
+
+[11:23] Like it has to be white mushroom button mushrooms. Huh. Huh. What texture are they when they drop? Like straight dumpling texture?
+
+[11:33] Like what like what are we looking like a mooser? Yeah, like, but not like fish mousse would be a little bit like bouncier. I feel like, yeah, they're pretty slight like very light, like kind of like fall apart in your mouth texture. Give it a name again. I get I guarantee you people are gonna look this up.
+
+[11:54] What is it? Well, you can't really find the dish anywhere else because she's made her own version of it, but the but the meat version is called bone ryu B-U-N-R-I-E-U. The Ryu word means But the mushroom version. The mushroom, I mean the mushroom version, I guess would still be like a Ryu. Ryu, meaning like traditionally in in Vietnamese cuisine, the the dish is cooked by pounding crab, and then and then sort of boiling that, and then the what what floats up is is the ryu.
+
+[12:26] And then there's like an Americanized version, which is like crab and pork and lots of eggs and then there's the vegan version which is the white button mushroom with lots of egg. But that's that's your that's your mom's only that's a family thing. It is, yeah. Where is the bunry? Where does that what part of Vietnam does that come from?
+
+[12:46] Uh Southern, I would say, yeah. Yeah, definitely southern. Which is where your mom comes from. Yeah, that was uh that was John's favorite place in his culinary travels. I've never had the pleasure of going.
+
+[12:57] And all my travels. And I feel like I feel like I have no, I feel like I have like almost zero knowledge on it's pathetic on Vietnamese uh food. In fact, I didn't realize how huge Vietnam, like physically how many people were there until I looked it up last week, like how big it is. It's like almost 200 million people there, right? It's like, isn't it?
+
+[13:20] Or is it one one it's it's huge country, much huger than I thought. Um and like my lack of knowledge is pathetic. I went and looked up last week, like like our my particular and people my age in United States, white folks, uh, like our knowledge of different Asian cuisines versus how many people are in that country. And like there are like some huge, huge gaps. I mean, obviously, Philippines, huge, like we know so little compared to how giant that country is, you know.
+
+[13:49] But I was kind of shocked also at you know, Vietnam, besides the stuff that we all, you know, know and and and eat here in New York on the regular. Would you say that's a a problem in a lot of places? New York specifically. I mean, like I know that there's huge diasporas down south. Uh-huh.
+
+[14:06] Yeah. I actually grew up in California, but yeah, I grew up in Southern California. There's uh a little part of Garden Grove in Southern California called Little Saigon, where a lot of uh Vietnamese immigrants settled, including my parents after the war. Um I would say there's like there's always like these pockets, but I would say that in New York in particular, there's definitely I don't know, like apparently there's like a really like small Vietnamese community up in the Bronx, but I feel like because there aren't very many Vietnamese immigrants or like a hub of Vietnamese immigrants here, um, it's definitely reflected in like the options for V good Vietnamese food in New York City. 97 million though.
+
+[14:54] Ninety, not 190, but still huge. A hundred million people is a lot of people. A lot, a lot of people. Uh all right. So yeah, and so in John, you know who else?
+
+[15:05] John uh said it was w one of their all-time best. I mean, he again, I focus mainly on food was uh Bobby Murphy, bartender at uh uh beverage director at uh existing conditions. He spent like uh a month and a half, two months there just going around eating his way through. And everyone who goes says that the food is like life changing. But I don't know.
+
+[15:29] I've you know Would you say that it's life changing, John? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, some seeing some of those things, I'm tasting some of them were yeah, amazing. I mean, it's largely the reason why I started farming because I was cooking before I was farming. Okay.
+
+[15:43] And I don't know. I think I just like realized how much how many ingredients we were lacking, in particular, like herbs we were lacking, um, specifically in New York. Like, you know, there's something to be said about like the fact that I can only go to one grocery store in Chinatown that's closed on Thursdays. It's tiny, it's called Tentin Hung, and that's the only place that you can get like a selection of herbs, but they you know, it's still very limited. It's maybe like five different herbs that you can only find there.
+
+[16:17] Which streets, which streets that on? It's on Bowery and Grand. Unless you don't want to call it out. What it's on the bottom. Oh no, I'm I'm all for promoting them.
+
+[16:25] Yeah. 121 Bowery. That's uh wait, you say Bowery and Grand? That's my neighborhood. How have I not gone there?
+
+[16:31] Bowery and Grand? Yeah, Bowery and Grand. There were there used to be another one called Can Hang on Grand, and that closed during the pandemic. Like a lot of chance. Now, is it a problem in New York growing these things because like our weather's not that good?
+
+[16:50] No, I mean, in New York, we actually have like a subtropical climate in the summertime. So as long as you're starting things uh sort of like earlier on, like indoors in a greenhouse, then I mean, tropical varieties can thrive in the summer. Unless people um steal your starts. Somebody stole Phoebe's starts this morning. Literally, there's a plant thief.
+
+[17:16] Come on. From where? Like, where do they like they jump into your area? Like they jump into your private area. No, no.
+
+[17:25] I mean, we have a shared sort of storage floor, and I left it on the floor while I was grabbing some stuff, but it actually got returned. Oh, yeah. Uh, someone's boss got really upset and they claimed that they thought it was trash. Oh uh, you know what? You know what?
+
+[17:43] You know what? Having dealt with people like that who are like, like, oh my God, I can imagine it. Like they just want to be jerks and they're like, it's not exactly the way I want. So they just throw it all out to make a point, but they don't really because they know they can't do it. So they save it and then they give it back to you.
+
+[17:58] I know this kind of person. I hate this kind of person. I know and hate this kind of person if it's the kind of person I'm assuming it is. You think, am I right here or am I barking up the wrong tree? I mean they it definitely wasn't trash.
+
+[18:10] They they took the tray of plants inside of a crate and left the crate. So yeah. Yeah. I know people like this. Uh unpleasant unpleasant people.
+
+[18:22] So what are the what are the herbs that you think could like be like in terms of the the average like person like myself like super slam dunks like super slam dunk herbs that we don't already know about. Are you familiar with uh rice patty herb? I mean I uh slightly I don't know where I can buy it man I know what it is uh you know I know what it tastes like but yeah I don't know where to buy it but uh yeah because I anyone likes spicy and and sour right I mean so it's not really sour it actually smells a lot like citrusy citrusy like it smells like it smells like cumin it's uh you can definitely get it at Tan Tenhung and it's it's traditionally used for uh a Vietnamese um sweet and sour soup called ganju it's like used as a garnish but like I mean, I feel like I had a I had a recent pop-up at my my friend's pop-up, a pop-up and a pop-up. Metapophazdak be it in uh on Forsyth. They just had their last uh pop-up last weekend.
+
+[19:31] And uh they were using it in this like sort of like raw fish uh salad um that we made, like a crude o salad, and it was so good. And I've been obsessed with it ever since. How um how uh what's it called? How indestructible is it? How fragile is it?
+
+[19:48] Oh, it's not a few. I've just had it served to me. It's pretty it's pretty sturdy, yeah. I mean it's meant to be served cooked. Um yeah.
+
+[19:57] Have you had uh fish mint that is crazy? I haven't. I have not had it. Uh, but I am intrigued by the idea of a mint that has a fishy aroma. Yeah.
+
+[20:09] Apparently there's also um a mushroom herb uh that's that tastes like mushrooms. That's not Vietnamese, but I did order I d I did order a plant on that sea to see our world color. That would be an interesting uh that'd be interesting cross pollination there, right? Uh an or this so like but talking about the fish mint, like like does it really smell like fish? Yes.
+
+[20:32] John can attest. Yeah, it is it was mind-boggling the first time I I encountered it. I feel like it's the like what kind of fish? Like what do you mean by fish? Like dried fish.
+
+[20:44] No. Like ammonia? Like a a white fish. Yeah. I don't know.
+
+[20:50] Just it I felt like when I was smelling it, I it was like not quite. I don't know, but yeah. I would say like tilapia is closer. Or catfish. Oh, catfish, I'd say, yeah.
+
+[21:03] I don't know, but it was like it was clean smelling. I don't know, it was just, it was really, I don't know. It's like putting your face in a bowl of like fish fume for me, like minus the the acidity of the wine, but it's just like it was crazy, yeah. So is it used mainly in fish preps then? Or do they is it opposite land where they use it in non-fish preps or like what?
+
+[21:24] And does the fish smell stay when it's cooked? Uh it's not typically so the the fish mince in particular is not typically cooked. It's served fresh on like an herb plate with many other herbs. So it's meant to be paired with other herbs like perilla and mint and uh I don't know, lettuces and and sorrel. But like the the herb itself, I don't know.
+
+[21:51] Like it's it's it's meant to be it's meant to be paired. It's it's meant to eat be eaten fresh with like you know, other like like fried things or soupy things. You could top it in a soup and then in that sense it would be cooked. I think that's like a common misconception for people who go out to eat uh you know Vietnamese in America is that herbs are sort of a side part of the meal and a coutrema. Uh whereas, you know, if you're eating Vietnamese food, it's an integral part of the meal.
+
+[22:20] Right? You mix you you have your herbs as a part of that meal every meal. It comes in a giant bowl right next to your dish. I mean, it is meant to be copiously added to what you're eating. It's great.
+
+[22:33] I like that. Yeah. I like that. Um and in Vietnam, they also use what I know of here in the Latin markets as coulantro, right? Mm-hmm.
+
+[22:42] Yep. The the cilantro tasting thing that's kind of long and looks like a long tongue. Yep. Satcha. What's it called there?
+
+[22:49] Uh um. Yeah. I don't really like that one that much. I gotta be honest. I would always rather have cilantro.
+
+[22:59] What about you? Like, what do you guys think? John, what do you think? Are you like the are you a coulantro fan? Or do you like, would you always in other words?
+
+[23:07] I understand that everybody needs different things, but I'm saying if someone if if if I had to reach for to cook with cilantro or coulantro, I would always grab the cilantro. Am I just being a a butthead here? Probably. Probably. I don't know.
+
+[23:21] I would I feel like I would also grab cilantro, but that's because of my lack of familiarity with the coulantro, even though I've had it a bunch of times. I still I don't know. I think it's more, I think the way that you think about it is less like interchangeably with other herbs and more like in combination. Also, it's magai, not na um. Just thought I correct myself.
+
+[23:42] Um do you remember like oh well, I don't want to, I don't know, like eight years ago when everyone was like, Delphinium's the new thing because it's like cilantro light. Also, I would never rather grab that. Would you? Would you ever be like, I mean, I I like it. It's great, but like I don't I mean, maybe it's just because I grew up eating so much cilantro that to me, like, I mean, I just I go through so much cilantro in my house.
+
+[24:08] Maybe that's it. The things that are similar to it, but not it, I'm always like, it's fine. You know what I mean? It's it's a mental problem. I think I'm having a mental problem, and uh, as I'm speaking, I'm realizing that I need to address it.
+
+[24:19] I'm pretty sure that's what's happening. Uh I need to address my uh lack of uh willingness to try other cilantro-like products. Because I'm happy with other basils and other mints. I love trying like different kinds of uh basil and mint relatives. I mean, they're all relatives, but anyway.
+
+[24:36] Uh you know what, Dave, how do you think? How about we don't get that at that place in uh go for it? Ask your question. Well, no, no, ask your question and then I'll I'll introduce. Can we get can we get the fishman at that place on Bowery and Grand?
+
+[24:46] Yeah. Oh, nice. Oh. As soon as I'm not quarantined, I'm gonna go there. As soon as I'm not quarantined.
+
+[24:57] What were you saying, John? How about we do a quick commercial break? Yeah. All right. Okay.
+
+[25:04] We'll be right back with more cooking issues. Today's episode brought to you by Oura King Salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And today we have Michael Fabro from Oura King Salmon to talk to us more about how it's uh raised and bred. So I haven't really thought about this, but when you're raising wheat, you're raising just like a kind of a like a bunch of clones, right? Or you know, of a specific variety, not a lot of uh diversity.
+
+[25:25] So how do you make sure that there's gonna be enough diversity when you're when you're raising these salmon? So one thing that's different about us is we have our own hatchery. So we're not buying eggs, and this is traditional husbandry. This is selective breeding. Sometimes I'll use the analogy, it's like it's like raising thoroughbreds.
+
+[25:41] You know, some of the traits we look for are fat content or skin color, flesh color. And there's a lot of science behind it. You know, we have well over 200,000 individual broodstock salmon in our database that they can go to and look at eat the characteristics of each one. We have well over a hundred family groups, so we're able to ensure enough genetic diversity and avoid potential issues with inbreeding. So this is a uh science and an art of traditional husbandry, and it's really critical.
+
+[26:10] Like controlling your own breeding and hatchery really helps you develop a a very unique salmon in the end. Awesome. Or a king salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Uh oh, before we go uh in, I just wanted to say this.
+
+[26:26] So Stuart Fox, who uh uh helped us uh finishing up the uh exhibition for opening uh Africanslash American, making uh the nation's table at uh the Africa Center with Museum of Food and Drink. So he's working on a uh project. So I'm just gonna read a little promo that we thought might be good for particularly uh people who list listen to us who are in New York who are in the uh hospitality business. As restaurants around New York City finally get back uh begin to get back on their feet, over a million of our neighbors are still wondering where their next meal will come from. The North Brooklyn Mutual Aid Society maintains free distribution sites around Williams Point Williamsburg and Greenpoint, and it needs your help keeping people fed.
+
+[27:07] If you are a cook, chef, restaurant, or bar owner, or if you are a grocery or bordega, bodego who would like to provide space, material support, technical capacity, or food in support of ready-made meals to the local free distribution sites, please contact the North uh Brooklyn Mutual Aid Free Fridge Program team at Greenpoint Helpers at gmail.com. That's Greenpoint Helpers at gmail.com. And thank you for helping us to make sure none of our neighbors have to go hungry. And their website is uh North Brooklyn MutualAid.org as well. And I'm sorry, Stuart, that I I I can't give it my usual gusto, but the COVID is taking me down to about I would say 70% of my normal scream factor.
+
+[27:47] I've only got about 70% of myself here, so I apologize. I couldn't give it the normal scream a rama. But was that all right, John? Was I all right with that? That was great.
+
+[27:57] And if anyone missed any of that, feel free to reach out to me on any of the socials or email or anything like that, and we can talk more about it. Yeah, if you are a if you are a food supplier and you have food and or time and want to help making ready-made meals for people to pick up at local distribution points in Brooklyn where there's plenty of people who who don't have enough food to eat, reach out. Yep. Right? Right.
+
+[28:22] Right. And then one more thing too that we forgot to mention at the top. Uh if you want to call in, call 917-410-1507. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[28:33] Now, Phoebe, I want to get back to this because I had a question. So you're also, you do uh a festival once a year. Are you still are you continuing or did did did the pandemic uh do damage to the to the uh to the happy family? Yeah, we actually uh so I actually stepped away from the project in 2020 when I started farming. Um and also, yeah, like we weren't allowed to do like 2,000 plus people per person uh festivals anymore.
+
+[29:00] So yeah, we pivoted, they pivoted to online programming. Um and supposedly another Happy Family Night Market Festival is supposed to be happening either this year or next year. Um yeah. Well, you had a lot of good people doing it, like a lot of people, like even from my neighborhood, like Copi Kyom and all those guys. Um a lot of really good people at it.
+
+[29:23] Was is is it named after Happy Family the Dish? It is. It is, and actually uh it was inspired by the by Mofad's um uh last exhibition. Oh, Chow? Chow.
+
+[29:39] That's so nice. That's great. I love that exhibition. Um actually, John, you came on to Mofad during Chow, right? During during the making of Chow?
+
+[29:48] I did, yeah. A year after it opened. I started in 2017 on Mofad. Were you there at the same time? Yeah.
+
+[29:55] That uh I think I might have been. With other John? With John Hutt. When John Hutt was there. Yeah, it was John Hugh.
+
+[30:02] Yeah, so we must have must have been. John the Hutt. Yeah, John the Hutt uh is like somewhere like being himself in in Spain right now. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, that was the he was the Mofad chef.
+
+[30:17] And uh he was the one who was using the we used we had to have a uh uh an induction walk there, which is why everyone who hates on induction walks is like, you know, I don't know if you've used this hardcore induction walk, because this induction walk, it would get like cherry red. It was crazy. And first of all, like you guys went like at the beginning of that exhibition were doing the craziest, like fermenting like so many crazy distilling illegal stuff there. It was kind of a fun time, you know? Yeah, I think John John just aspired to just always have a fermentation kitchen wherever he was.
+
+[30:53] He also had a pretty eclectic knife knife collection. Yeah. Yeah. A lot. But I remember I went to go visit him.
+
+[31:02] Yeah. I went to go visit him at this um Australian cafe that he was also working at at the time. And he took me downstairs to the fermentation kitchen that he had set up down uh yeah. I guess they they couldn't they couldn't afford to hire him, so part of his uh agreement with them was that they would he would be able to set up a fermentation kitchen downstairs. Yeah.
+
+[31:22] That checks out. He's not so much with uh uh rules. He's not so much with rules. Doesn't like them. Doesn't enjoy rules.
+
+[31:30] You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. His later his latest. So the happy family.
+
+[31:37] What? Well, his latest paper, I I think that or in video uh was the title was it I'm proofreading that paper now. It was uh from fermenting anti-capitalism. Yep, yeah. Uh that checks out.
+
+[31:54] Uh that checks out. Uh so Happy Family, I have to say, this is how this is how demented I am. Like I always thought it was a perverse. So Happy Family is a dish that has like a lot of different meats in it. For those of you that have never heard of Happy Family, right?
+
+[32:14] It's got a lot of different meats in it. And I always thought that someone was going into like a barn with a machete and just wiping out all of the animals that were in the barn and making it into this one dish. And so it was like a, you know, like kind of like a demented happy family, in other words, just like some sort of Manson family massacre of all of these animals to make the one dish. Yeah. And then just today, just today when I was looking over the stuff, I was like, oh, it's probably that your family is happy because you can serve them all of these meat.
+
+[32:47] It's not a sarcastic that the animals must be happy, and it's I always thought, you know what I mean? That just goes to show where my brain goes. For years I've been thinking this. I mean, it's a really kitchen sink dish, right? I'm pretty sure it's that you're yeah.
+
+[33:02] I think everyone's happy. Yeah, but it's like the maximum number of different kinds of animals killed for one dish of anything I can think of off the top of my head. You know what I'm saying? Who is this? It's the maximum carnage.
+
+[33:19] Well there was uh it was a a king in the Huei Dynasty who had uh people scour the scour all of Vietnam and the lands beyond for the most random uh stuff he could they could find and bring it back to them, him and then they would combine it into these weird sculptures. It's it's super esoteric. Yeah, there's uh the royal cuisine of of Hue cooking. Um I did like a a sort of like research post on it on my Instagram, and it was uh it was a it was like a big feast that featured all these like exotic animals that were caught by these knights in Vietnam that would like bring them back, and it was like bear claw and orangutan grain and just like you know, really crazy but then combined into sculptural food pieces with like pig snouts and tails. Um I mean, I kind of want to see that.
+
+[34:20] I don't want any orangutans killed, but I kind of want to see it, you know? Um like a like a real-life arcing buldo, but with animals instead of vegetables, huh? Yeah, so okay, so I found the I found the toast. So each of the emperor's meals consisted of 35 to 50 dishes prepared by a team of 50 people who made up the Tuung Tian Doi, a kitchen cabinet that oversaw the sourcing preparation, cooking customs, ceremonies, a medicinal balance of each dish. Um, each meal needed to include eight auspicious dishes that were believed to bring health and longevity to the emperors, uh, peacock spring rolls, phoenix rolls, birds' nest, rhino skin, bear paw, deer tendon, orangutan lips, and elephant leg meat.
+
+[35:07] Uh yeah. Wow. Talk about kitchen sink. But keep going. Is there more?
+
+[35:12] I mean, like, uh that's already that's already a conservationist nightmare right there. Well, yeah. I mean, the statement was these dishes were centered around exotic and now endangered and beats, elaborately displayed as works of art and passed on from generation to generation. So now there's there's one woman uh who lives in Hue that has her sort of like uh school that she maintains to carry on this like tradition of of Hue cuisine. And it's not just those like eight auspicious dishes, it's like the entire sort of like process of like carving these elaborate sort of like vegetables and and putting them together here.
+
+[35:52] I'll show I'll show John. Oh wow, that's wild. I have heard that bear paw is actually delicious. I have heard this. I've only eaten bear once and it tasted terrible.
+
+[36:03] Now I cooked it and I don't know how to cook bear, so it could be on me. Also, like it's it was an old bear. I had a very, very old bear. But uh, I don't know. Where did you get it?
+
+[36:14] I've had enough different people tell me that bear tastes. Sorry. Uh well, there used to be this guy out of Chicago who sold uh who sold kind of uh uh exotic meats. And uh when I was back at the French Culinary Institute, we bought some stuff from him because on his website he made it seem like everything was lit legitimately sourced, right? Like legitimately, like not just legal, but like, you know, uh you know, not amoral, right?
+
+[36:49] And uh I found out later that uh that wasn't the case, that he was doing like a lot of really bad uh stuff. Uh and so we didn't order from him anymore. So bear was one of the things that uh that that we got. You know what the worst was though? Raccoon.
+
+[37:10] That tasted terrible. I mean it was a greasy, tough little terrible. I feel like raccoon winter maybe a pinch. Yak. I I don't know about choosing to eat.
+
+[37:24] I know what they eat. How'd you prepare it? Uh we low temped all of it just to see like kind of like because and we tried to keep it as neutral as possible. Like we weren't saucing it. I know I don't want to, I don't even know what I don't need it, I know what a what a good sauce tastes like.
+
+[37:42] I want to know what the meats tasted like, right? So we basically just uh low temped them for a long time and then just tried to like flash them off to you know get a little uh color on the on the outside. And yeah, the raccoon, I was no part of it I liked. Bear too. Uh the yak, delicious, delicious.
+
+[38:03] I would I would travel to eat good yak. High altitude yak. Yak. As well. I have not had yak's milk.
+
+[38:12] I've had yak's milk cheese. I've never had yak's milk. But yeah, but yak itself, that's a good product. But uh, but the bear, I'm willing to try the the bear again. I've heard that the bear from Hokkaido is like the bear to have.
+
+[38:27] Like if you want to go like like very northern, you know, part of Japan, that Hokkaido's got the bear to beat. If you want like the best quality bear. Not that I'm saying you should go to Hokkaido and kill a bear. I'm not saying that at all. Sounds dangerous.
+
+[38:44] Okay. Yeah. All right. So back to mushrooms for a second before I get to the Patreon questions because I don't want to miss them before before we go. Adam, have you ever been?
+
+[38:54] And I know that you're not, I know specifically that you aren't interested or a part of the mainstream mushroom industry, but I kind of have to ask, have you been to the mushroom festival in Kennet Square? Yes. It's very wholesome. I have been wanting to go for a number of years. Years.
+
+[39:14] I've been wanting to get the t-shirts. Years. Should I go to the Kenneth Square Mushroom Festival? Um, I would say that's that's a hard yes. I mean, it's uh, you know, it it's it's similar to a lot of towns who have a produce or something that comes from them.
+
+[39:29] Like we have an Apple Festival uh in my parents' town up in Connecticut. Um it's it's similar to that. Uh although uh a lot more deep fried mushrooms, lots of fried mushroom products. Yeah. There's also another mushroom festival.
+
+[39:43] Did you did you enter the contest? Did you enter the deep-fried mushroom eating contest? No, no, you know about that. Um, yeah, I mean, we're kind of uh we're friends with a lot of the growers down there. Um it's not not a bad place to be.
+
+[39:58] And mushrooms are great. The people who grow mushrooms are all uh it's all one big kind of family in Kenneth. Uh everybody, like uh the shipper is somebody's cousin who knows Bob who started a mushroom farm, used to work for John, who started another mushroom farm. Uh it's a very sort of awesome part of the country. I think like 70% of the mushrooms in the country come from there.
+
+[40:22] Yeah, it's bizarre. It's huge, right? And so, like what I you know, one of the things I thought uh was interesting is that um, you know, you were pointing out like butt but button mushrooms are rare, and but but 70% of all of the mushrooms in the United States come from there, no matter what the variety is. Yeah, in this town that no this area that no one's heard of. How the hell did that happen?
+
+[40:39] Well, the um I think I forget which wave of Italian immigration it was, but basically in Philadelphia, which is our first city, um, the main mode of transportation and a lot of you know uh uh the the business was focused around livestock and horses, uh, and the byproduct of having you know cows and horses uh is a lot of manure, and that's actually uh a business if you grow mushrooms. Uh and you know, Italians grew mushrooms on that manure uh when they emigrated to the United States. And that's how the business sort of started and it grew from there. Um, you know, fast forward about a century and a half, uh, and you have uh a highly industrialized mushroom, you know, business. Uh, you know, stratify with shipping and logistics integrated, and uh it's a pretty it's a pretty massive thing.
+
+[41:27] So it's basically become essentially uh the the iceberg lettuce of the mushroom world. Uh so I'm not again, it's like button mushrooms are good. I like iceberg lettuce too. I just uh wouldn't want to only eat iceberg lettuce. Yeah, it has a great texture.
+
+[41:43] Mushroom again on pizza, button mushrooms are are awesome. Um but there's a world of mushrooms out there besides buttons that most Americans, you know, not in Vietnam, right? There's there's a lot of different kinds of mushrooms uh that are not you know misconstrued with meat textures. That's one of my biggest pet peeves is uh when people call something that has uh you know mushrooms in it plant-based, or they compare it to meat. Um I I think that there's a there's a world of mushrooms out there besides button mushrooms.
+
+[42:17] That's a whole kingdom. Yeah. Yeah, whole kingdom. Well, yeah, yeah. So uh by the way, just a point of point of question.
+
+[42:27] What's the difference? Is there a difference? And when do you use it? You you use trumpet. Is that the same as what I call king oyster?
+
+[42:35] Like the like the royal trumpet. Is it the same, or are they slightly different? Yeah, and that that's correct. They're the same mushroom. Uh and actually uh buttons and portabellas, right, and cremini are the same mushrooms as well.
+
+[42:50] There's one that's one mushroom just at different stages of maturity, uh, and babybellas. Um and so they've just been sort of chopping up button mushrooms for again, like a century. Um when if you make a comparison just again to greens, uh we saw kale, right? Kale hit the grocery stores in you know, late 80s, early 90s, and it was sort of the the indicator species in a way for a wider organic movement that was opening up with like Whole Foods. Uh and I think we saw that with Shiitakis that brought the word umami to our lexicon in in America.
+
+[43:30] Although I feel like there was a bit of a missed opportunity there to sort of promote mushrooms on a larger way, in a larger way. Yeah. Well, I mean, shiitakis, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but unlike uh I looked it up, I had to do some writing the other day. Uh actually it was months ago now, sorry, the other day. Uh I think button mushrooms worldwide are are only fifth in terms of how many are are produced, and shiitakis are number one.
+
+[43:53] Yeah, like number one worldwide. China has they grow them all. They grow it million pound harvests of shiitakis uh per farm. Like it's not it's a it's a massive industry. The fact that we sort of missed that is still, I as somebody who's been working in the industry for a minute, uh, is still surprising.
+
+[44:13] Like how how do we miss mushrooms? Now, uh on shiitakis for a second. Uh with with shiitakis, now that they can grow them if they want to in humidity controlled environments and temperature-controlled environments, right? They're no longer beholden to what's going on. They can make the flower style shiitakis whenever they want now, right?
+
+[44:37] Do you think that those ones that are grown that way that aren't natural, like the flower top or whatever, uh, whatever you want to call them? You can tell me what you prefer to call them on the ship. Do you really think that they taste any better? Um, I mean, honestly, I've had some mind-blowing shiitakis in Seoul. And I was actually supposed to fly to China in March of 2020 in February.
+
+[44:55] I got a call from my fixer. Uh, you know, you shouldn't come here. Um, and so I'm I'm really bummed that I got to miss that or had to miss that. But uh yeah, like they're the concept of like a gift mushroom with that's pristine and has been grown in the optimal conditions and selected, uh, is very real. And I feel like if not just a psychosomatic sort of sort of impression of them, giving them their flavor is is true.
+
+[45:22] I I do feel like there's techniques that growers can use to make shiitakis grow slower and take nutrients uh in different ways that add flavor uh and uh visual appeal that go back millennia. And I don't think we should discount that from the Shaitak. And also there's genetics, right? And so and growing them outside uh in a specific way, especially there's a farmer in Japan uh whose uh output is actually changing due to climate change. Um but he has been farming mushrooms in this same patch of forest in the same style, dunking them in the same pond for you know generations.
+
+[46:06] They have been farming them in for generations. Uh and people swear by those. So I would I would say yeah. Because shiitakis are grown on on wood, right? Plugged wood, and then you have to get them wet before they start the fruit.
+
+[46:20] Is that how it works? Like can you can you run through? I know that they're gonna cut us off pretty soon, but can you run through the the process? Kakota asked, would love to hear Adam talk about the underground mycelium network, but they're not all underground. Like so many things are grown on different kinds of substrates.
+
+[46:34] Can you can you just run through that really quickly? Yeah, I mean, more more to mushrooms in general and and how they're farmed uh indoors, I guess. There's like there's outdoor farming and there's indoor farming. Outdoor farming is a little bit of a it's still a lift, like it technically it's like hard to do. Uh, but indoor farming, you're you're managing the climate uh all the time.
+
+[46:53] And so uh with blocks of mushrooms, what you're doing, we're primarily uh growing decomposers, right? So uh they're decomposing wood and turning that into it's it's their food. Uh and so you'll you'll start off with sawdust and agricultural waste product. Mushrooms grow on waste streams, uh, or at least the ones that we grow. Those uh mushrooms uh take the you'll take the substrate, uh, the sawdust, as it were, and put that in an autoclave, which is uh pressure vessel.
+
+[47:22] Uh and that pressure vessel is the size of a submarine usually, uh and you put it in 500 pound racks, uh, and then you cook it. Uh, you know, I'm I'm sort of going quickly here because I know we have time. Um you cook it and you kill everything else that could be competitive uh with the mushroom that you want to grow on that substrate. Uh so any bacteria, right? Any pathogenic stuff.
+
+[47:46] Uh, and then you add your spawn, which has been genetically selected uh, you know, over time, uh, to that substrate, let it colonize in a plastic bag. Um, and uh that takes, you know, two to four weeks, depending on the mushroom and a few other factors, uh, and then you enter the fruiting cycle, at which point you expose that uh substrate, you open the bag, uh, the high heat uh bag. It's it's able to be to withstand the temperatures of an autoclave. Uh and then you open that and expose that substrate and the fungus to oxygen, and you change the lighting, and it triggers the fruiting process. Uh and then from there it's about another generally two to four weeks, but you know, some mushrooms take longer and some mushrooms are shorter.
+
+[48:36] The key to all of it is is sterility indoors. So when I if you go on, if you go on your website and you buy one of the mushroom kits, and right now you have well, you have two different ones, right? That you're selling right now? Lion's mane and blue oyster. Oh yeah, nice.
+
+[48:53] I like lion's mane. So now it it says delivers in two to three weeks. Is that because you just like it's just like you can't catch up, or is it because you want them to be exactly the way they need to be when they show up so that they're ready to rock and roll when they hit when they hit the your doorstep? You mean two weeks to fruit? No, I well, it's uh like your shipping was two two weeks out on the on the thing last time I checked.
+
+[49:14] Um, you know, to be completely honest, uh it's a living product and we kind of have to grow it. Uh to if we have a bunch of uh fruiting blocks sitting around, they're gonna keep growing and we'll have a lot of wasted products. So we we give ourselves a bit of a lead time to make sure that the product is ready to grow out uh before it hits yeah, hits the doorstep. And then when you cut it open, you have to do it. Right.
+
+[49:40] You're not you're not selling BS that's like either like too too young or too old, like you're waiting to get the order, you're getting it primed just right, and you when it shows up, it's though it's the right way. Yeah. I bought one not from you guys. I bought one once from a place in uh on the West Coast and I brought it home and it did not grow at all. Like it got parasitized by something else.
+
+[50:03] I don't know what the hell happened. Uh I forget what kind of mushroom it was. This was over a decade ago. And uh I don't know whether it I I tried not let it dry. I don't know what the hell what the hell happened.
+
+[50:14] But my question is if I get if I go and I buy one of the blocks that you have, first of all, how mu how many mushrooms am I gonna get out of one of these blocks that I get from you? One. And two, will you help the person try to make sure that it's not gonna go south on them like it did for me that time? Yeah, we're uh we're pretty active with customer support and especially on Instagram, uh in our email. Um I actually my phone number was the main phone number for for a couple of years, and I had like it was we got featured in a couple of uh like new news news outlets, like and after that I I had to change my my phone number because everybody kept calling asking how to grow up.
+
+[50:53] But we definitely are don't do that answering them. Um and yeah, I mean honestly, like you're gonna get um Phoebe's mom actually is crazy uh she uh obviously gets the hookup uh and uh has set up a mini mushroom farm of her she constructed a mushroom farm in her house uh and now gets she gets like the best biological efficiency off of those blocks that I've seen pretty much anybody get with uh anywhere from two to five pounds uh sometimes more off of a block so you're getting two to two to five pounds off of a block over the course of how long? Uh she'll do multiple flushes which a flush is um you know every time a mushroom fruits off the block and so uh every harvest basically uh and uh so yeah she'll she'll do that over a period of basically four weeks I think all right so an easily a very easily consumable quantity of mushrooms. Yeah actually I mean um who was it ste Stephanie Stephanie Bardeen uh who uh is a a mutual friend of Phoebe and I's uh actually just uh texted me um she got I think it was like seven or eight pounds off of a couple blocks uh and now that actually becomes an issue because then all of a sudden you have all these mushrooms and you gotta you basically eat mushrooms for I mean not that I I'm opposed to it I just people get overwhelmed sometimes. So be prepared.
+
+[52:18] Dave fire off those last two questions. Now I noticed some of the things some of the things that you're selling right uh with with that you're creating like the actual like grow units which this uh goes in Monty Zukowski want to know what kind of investment does it take to set up a facility. How do you figure out what the earning potential is and can it work in a small community with tens of thousands of people in it? Right. I noticed that like the the blocks that you're using, you have, is that UV light to stop like nasties from growing on this stuff?
+
+[52:45] Or like what is that? Like they're kind of glowing that kind of bluish color. Yeah, there's two uh well so there's two kinds of facilities. I think uh I'm not sure but the the question asked might be referring to our larger facilities. So for instance we're opening one in LA in two weeks uh downtown LA and that's like a 35,000 square foot facility and that's like many millions of dollars.
+
+[53:06] Uh and then the the home well we don't have a home unit but a unit for a restaurant or a grocery store you know you're talking about anywhere depending on the modifications uh between 10 and and 30 thousand dollars uh and then but it yields uh significant output and so it is viable for a lot of people to make a business out of it that was actually the original intention for the business was to set up uh we set it had a shipping container on North Brooklyn Farms uh as a proof of concept that we would be able to uh put modular farms on other farmers land to provide them with alternate sources of revenue so there is a business model there for people who want to start up small farms and I'm happy to engage them if you want to give my info out. So so let's just let me just back back of the envelope. Don't give me real numbers just back of the envelope. So 20, let's say 20K for the initial investment, right? And like how many pounds a year am I getting out of what the what are the input costs?
+
+[54:01] Like in other words like how much is a pound of mushrooms cost to make um in a in a home unit, like you're gonna be the block itself will cost you depending on where you live and shipping you know anywhere between 10 and 40 dollars. I can't really speak to you know people in sort of the nether regions of the of the country. Um and then you can charge at a farmer's market, right? If you if you put it in a pint, um you can charge up to you know thirty, thirty-five dollars a pound, uh, especially in a market uh where people don't see those mushrooms often, right? Right.
+
+[54:38] And it grows by the way 40 pounds a week. And your your inputs excuse me, in terms of electricity for the lighting and whatnot are are minimal, right? Because you're it's LEDs. Yeah, we stores it a lot of money in electricity as well. It's just it's it, you know, I I wish I could, you know, say it's more complicated.
+
+[54:58] I mean, the the system itself is complicated in how it regulates the temperature in an environment. Um, but the actual utility costs are very low. Mushrooms actually don't, they're not a very water intensive crop. Uh and also um the light is the simple LEDs. Uh, we're not using any complex.
+
+[55:17] There's a little bit of UV in there that we use uh basically to promote you know healthy cap development and royal trumpets and blue oysters. But aside from that, um they don't actually require full spectrum light like plants, which is most of the expense in running like those large indoor operations uh from a utility perspective. So yeah. Pretty cheap. Can it can I listen?
+
+[55:40] I need someone to do this. Do you have an inn with the New York Botanical Garden? Have you been to the New York Botanical Garden? You're the only mushroom producer I've spoken to, so I need to tell you this. Okay, so you know how they have that tunnel in between the two sections of the of the you go to the Init Hau Conservatory, you go and to get from one wing to the other, you go underneath in a tunnel.
+
+[56:02] Mushrooms. Grow mushrooms down there. They're fire off from the room. You can get them to do it. Okay.
+
+[56:09] Uh let's go to Phoebe on uh Derek Black and wants to know any tips for growing uh Rao Ram. Uh I can never get it to overwinter indoors in a container. I am in USDA hardiness zone 6B, which is negative five Fahrenheit. Uh I've had success creating like a greenhouse effect. So like putting like plastic over it.
+
+[56:28] Um obviously keeping it within like a temperature range of like I don't know, around like 75 degrees. Um but yeah, keeping it keep it like keep it covered in plastic so that there's like it's a there's humidity so it doesn't dry out from the heat. I'm finding the material, I guess the mushrooms still have a lot of uh unextracted flavor in them. A blender seems to do a better job, but then clarification is a challenge. Is there food grade chitinate?
+
+[57:04] So for those of you that don't know, the the main structural item in uh mushrooms is chitin uh or similar agent. I have not sargan found a chitin agent, but I mean do you guys uh I mean like uh do you guys have any suggestions for this? I would say just use the uh you know, cook the alcohol out of the uh mushrooms when you're done and use them for a culinary thing. Don't throw them away. There's actually a guy who makes uh mushroom spirits and sells them at farmers' markets.
+
+[57:30] He used to his farm was called Blue Oyster Cultivation. Uh I think I saw that. Yeah, and now he's almost I'm not sure if he exclusively sells the spirits, but he definitely does that. In terms of making a martini, I mean I would just rim it with mushroom salt. It wouldn't be the easiest way, but when I get super technical, maybe Phoebe.
+
+[57:49] I haven't tested that before. Making a mushroom liquor. I've made mushroom fish sauce or vegan fish sauce. Oh, how is that? How's the mushroom fish sauce?
+
+[57:59] I think that it you have more success using like fishier oyster mushrooms like yellow oysters or pink oysters. Um and I was actually doing the experiment at MoFad. Um with John. Did you write it? Did you do one of those presentations?
+
+[58:14] I tasted it. I mean, there's actually if you want to make a mushroom drink, there in the cookbook is a uh mushrooms in the middle. There's a shiitake bloody Mary recipe. Not a martini, I'm sorry, but it calls for uh you know 15 grams of dried shiitakis quite a bit. All right, Dave.
+
+[58:32] Yeah. We used to at Booker and Dax, we used to do a uh cognac and shiitake called the Championistino. That was uh Nick Bennett's uh Nick Bennett's drink. Uh actually one suggestion drying the mushrooms. Dehydrating the mushrooms concentrates the flavor.
+
+[58:49] When you rehydrate them, that's how you get the most flavor out of the mushroom. Yeah, this is also true. Also, um it's not a myth that if you rehydrate them at a lower temperature rather than using heat, you'll get more of the umami-based compounds out of them. So uh, you know, a lot of people try to skip it and go with hot water, and you can rehydrate a uh a dried mushroom with hot water, but if you have the time, cold water rehydration and then bringing it up slowly and letting it sit because all of the cool reactions in mushrooms happen around 60 degrees Celsius and below. Just that's a separate.
+
+[59:25] By the way, Adam, I was just playing around with the button mushroom. Obviously, I think everyone should go get fun, cool mushrooms. Everyone should get cool mushrooms. Go uh go check out uh go check out uh I don't know, John. You you say all the things you should check out because I'm gonna forget some stuff on the way up.
+
+[59:40] At small hold on Instagram. Come on, John. And I'm I'm saying it at small hold on Instagram and Phoebe. I'm gonna mispronounce it, but at beb.baby kitchen. There we go.
+
+[59:50] And I'll post them on the Patreon stuff for now. All right, thank you. Thanks, guys. All right, thanks guys. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live, but wearing a mask. Uh from the uh heart of the city, Newstand Studios, Rockefeller Center. Uh joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas?
+
+[0:24] Good. Yeah. So, like uh, you know, if you listened last week, I I had the COVID last week, and I'm on my last day of having to wear a mask in public according to the CDC guidelines. So apologize if I sound a little bit muffled. Yeah?
+
+[0:38] No. Sound great. Oh, thanks, John. Yeah. Also joined as usual with uh John, the customer service uh extraordinaire.
+
+[0:45] Uh Nihula, how are you doing? Doing great. Great, thank you. Yeah. Better now that I got my D-trix.
+
+[0:50] Uh well, we'll talk about that later. And we got uh rocking the panels. We got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing great, Dave.
+
+[0:56] How are you doing? I'm okay. I feel good. You know, I felt not so good. I felt not so good last week, but you know, if you're fully vaxxed and everything, you know, you bounce back pretty quick from this, uh especially because I guess the old Macron, whatever, what's the new variant called?
+
+[1:07] The one I got? BA2 or something? Something like that. Yeah, BA Baracas. Uh and of course, on our California panels, I'm assuming you're in California, rock rocking the YouTube stream.
+
+[1:18] How you doing, Jackie Molecules? I'm in DC, believe it. Oh, freaking DC. What are you doing in DC? Um, I am uh overseeing the radio station that I built here, full service radio at the Lion Hotel, and uh training people on how to use it themselves when I'm not here.
+
+[1:37] So wait, wait, so wait, did you leave and go back, or have you always had your fingers in that pie? Well, the hotel's obviously reopened now. They changed ownership, so they're they want to reopen this radio space. Um, some consulting on it, basically. And you're like, you know, listen, it costs a little more than you'd think to reopen something.
+
+[1:56] You can't just turn it off and on like a spigot. You gotta, you know, it's gotta be re-upped. It's cost some money, am I right? You are right. Yeah, absolutely.
+
+[2:06] Just goes to show people you can't just turn somebody off, turn off their turn off their money tap, and then expect to turn it on at the same price. That's not how life works. It's just not how life works. Not how it works. And hey, not not to start you on a tangent, but um, I just have to say I I forgot how ridiculous jumbo slices of pizza are in this city.
+
+[2:24] I had one last night and they're just absurd. I don't know if you've ever experienced the DC jumbo slice, but I have not. It's a trip. I've heard of them. Like how big, like enormous.
+
+[2:35] Three three feet long? Oh, what's ridiculous? No, no, no, not three feet long. But there's a place up by Columbia University, I think it was called crown pizza or something like this, that used to serve an absurd o New York slice. It was the equivalent of two and a half regular New York slices.
+
+[2:52] For those of you that never had a New York slice, a New York slice is a thing, it's a size. No one's like, what size of slice do you want? It's like a New York slice is a New York slice. Am I am I wrong here? No?
+
+[3:03] No, you're right. Yeah. For sure. But there was a place that catered to college kids that was like, we're gonna have big slices, and they were known for that in the 90s. It was like, you know, we're the place with the big slice.
+
+[3:14] It's only a little more, but it's twice the food. All right, this one looks like it's 17 or 18 inches. Oh, so it comes from a large pie. Yeah. The pie itself is oversight.
+
+[3:25] It does. Yeah. It's the pie itself. Yeah. And is the idea when you have it that you're supposed to feel like a the wonder of being a small child again?
+
+[3:33] Can you remember what it's like holding a slice when you were a kid? When you were a little kid, you got a slice, you're like, oh my god, it's this big thing. You remember how awesome that was? Yeah, I guess that kind of happens with a jumbo slice. It's just it's just uh logistically kind of hard to eat.
+
+[3:44] You can't really fold it like a normal slice, you know. It's it's a big undertaking to eat one. So Nastasi and I had Nastasi and I had this intern at the French Culinary Institute. His name was was Cliff. He actually does a lot of videos.
+
+[4:02] You can see him on was that Eater he was doing videos for or Yeah, I think so. Peter, yeah. Cliff. Cliff, Cliff Endo, he went by on, I think on his thing, uh, even though his last name is not that, it's uh Gulliber. Anyway, so like he was he's a large, he is he is a large and imposing human figure, like a large, large man, like just a towering giant.
+
+[4:22] Like uh to me, he always reminded me like he looked a little bit like a uh like a Palauan Orson Wells, but much taller. Is that accurate? You say Stas? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[4:33] Uh or early Orson Wells, like the handsome Orson Wells, not like the the late devolved into his own Phil Florison Wells. And um, and then at the same time, Jeremiah Stone from Fabulous and Jeremiah Stone Contra Wild Air, you know, fancy folk here in New York City, he was working in our amphitheater. So they were both in their chef whites, and and Jeremiah Stowe, in case you don't know it, is a small is a smaller man. He is not a large man, right, Stas? Yeah, small man.
+
+[5:00] And so we found this tiny, almost novelty whisk. Remember this, Dus? And I believe we gave Cliff the novelty whisk, and we gave Jeremiah, we had this, we have those giant like hotel whisks that are for, I don't know what they're for whisking for, because no human can can wield this whisk. And then we also gave, we got the smallest, like pan, smallest sauce pan, that's ridiculous tiny pans that they use for presentation at the table. You know what I'm talking about?
+
+[5:25] Yeah, yeah. And like the biggest one. And I can't do we give Jeremiah the big ones and Cliff the small ones or vice versa? But then we took a series of pictures of like FU scale. And it was it was fun.
+
+[5:36] Rest us? Yeah. Remember when Cliff didn't dilute the cocktail we served and everyone got wasted. Well, yeah, but then there was the flip side when Cliff saved us when he started over, he started over diluting that one drunk guy's cocktail, remember? No, I don't remember that.
+
+[5:50] Remember we were at this party, and the guy would was coming to us, and he kept on coming to us, and rather than shut him off, only Cliff would make drinks for him. And he titrated that guy's drinks down to zero ABV over the course of the night. Which was, you know, on the one hand, not I mean, like he wasn't paying. It was a party, it's fine. If someone's paying to do that, you can't do it.
+
+[6:11] You have to cut them off and kick them out. But in a party, I thought maybe it was an okay thing to do. This is an interesting ethical question. See what you guys think. See what you think at the Discord.
+
+[6:19] Let us know. Speaking of the Discord, uh, if you're listening on Patreon, call in to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. You can also, if you're a member of the Patreon, chime in on the Discord to do anything like that. If you want to know how to be able to do that, then uh join our Patreon.
+
+[6:34] You want to give them information on that, John? Yeah, uh, go to patreon.com/slash cooking issues. And there's a bunch of membership levels. Uh obviously the more you pay, the more awesome stuff you get. So go check it out.
+
+[6:46] Yeah. I feel like I sound crazy. Do I sound crazy? No. No?
+
+[6:49] All right. You know why I feel like I sound crazy? Because I'm hearing myself in my own head and reflected in my mask and in my earphones. You know what I mean? So I sound like I'm in one of those Houdini boxes where I got to escape, and Nastasia's praying I won't, so she can saw me in half and have real blood come out of the box.
+
+[7:09] Yeah. I mean, I I can just imagine. It's like for those of you that have never met like Nastasia, she has this, she has a uh she has normal joy and she has Nastasia Demented Joy. And I love the Nastasia Demented Joy face. I like that.
+
+[7:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like I'm picturing her just with the look of demented joy sawing through my body in one of those magic boxes. You know what I mean? And you know what? I'm okay with it.
+
+[7:33] I'm all right with it. Yeah. Uh well, you know what we could do next time is we can do like you know, like that band Lightning Bolt. We can just like basically just take a mic, put it in your mouth, and then just duct tape it to your face. Oh, yeah.
+
+[7:47] That's awesome. Oh, that is cool. Yeah, yeah. As long as I I was I'm glad you didn't go the Gigi Allen route and have the microphone go into a different hole, because that would be unpleasant. Yeah, I don't know.
+
+[7:59] I still think do his fans ever forgive him for not dying on stage like he promised to do. I don't know. That guy has an enigma. I mean, here's the thing about it's disgusting enigma. I used to listen to all of that kind of stuff growing up.
+
+[8:13] It's just not good. If you go back and you listen to it, like musically, it's just not good. You know? I don't know. Whatever, it's not a show on music.
+
+[8:22] Uh but uh interesting aside, so yesterday I went with Dax, who's my you know younger child on our first college visits uh uh, you know, ever, and uh we went out to uh Lafayette and Muhlenburg, which are in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Now, if you've ever driven out that way, as soon as you get over the border into Pennsylvania and all the way over there and down, you're in what I consider to be interesting culinary territory, and you're in like a territory that like a good chunk of my family comes from. So, for instance, like over near in Pennsylvania near Philadelphia, some of you might know this, right? They don't call what do you Nastasio? What do you call a sandwich with Italian cold cuts on it and like oil and vinegar and like shredded lettuce and tomato on like a long roll?
+
+[9:08] What do you call that? Italian combo. Okay, if you weren't gonna a hero? You call it a hero? What do you call it?
+
+[9:15] I mean, like people as I I know where we're going with this. I'm like, there's I got a lot in my head right now. Yeah. A sarni? Sarni?
+
+[9:21] Ooh. Where's that from? Whoa. Yeah, I don't know. It's my British um friends.
+
+[9:27] Call them sarnies. Whoa. Yeah, I like Sarni. No offense to your British friends. They're there's they're mistaken, but what do they call it in California, Stas?
+
+[9:37] Oh, wait. Where are you? Where where's your family at, Stas? What do you call these things? Uh I don't know.
+
+[9:43] Sub. Subs? Mm-hmm. That's valid, right? That's I think probably the most popular statewide.
+
+[9:48] What do they call them in Connecticut, John? Subs. You call them subs? What would the what is Nardel Nardalini's call it? They call them subsidies.
+
+[9:55] I think so. Subway is also based out of Connecticut, so I think it's a good thing. Milford, Connecticut, yeah. Uh yeah. Zepp is the longest one I've read.
+
+[10:02] Long Island definitely hero. Long Long Island. Well, that's where uh, you know, the New York areas where that hero ain't nothing but a sandwich thing was from back in the day, remember? Who uses grinder? Yep, yep.
+
+[10:12] Where's grinder? Oh I think they do. All my gay friends use grinder. Ah, zing. Zang!
+
+[10:22] And a grinder ain't just a sandwich! Uh oh man. That's strong, Stas. I'm gonna give you a pound on that. My hand sanitized, so it's all right.
+
+[10:31] One day, maybe for Patreons, I can go back and make a best of compilation of Star Zangers. Stasengers? When they hit. Yeah. I'm the only one that knows what a chef's kiss tastes like.
+
+[10:41] Tastes like alcohol and sadness. Uh so all right. So anyway, in the Pennsylvania area, they're called hoagies, right? Hoagies. And so my my wife's family grew up eating these things, these hoagies, right?
+
+[10:55] Uh like from a you know, place called uh Westchester, Pennsylvania, and Chester, Pennsylvania. Chester, Pennsylvania actually is where their family's from. And anyway, so like they go to this place called Phil and Gyms, it which is and that place now, they do this fun thing. I think I talked about it before, where they'll separate out the wet from the not wet so that you can ship the sandwich or carry the sandwich, like you know, for a long way, and then like put it together at the last minute, like a like a McBeal DLT. I talked I talked about this before.
+
+[11:22] So, Dax, who doesn't understand geography at all, was like, we're in Pennsylvania, let's get hoagies. I'm like, you're in the wrong Pennsylvania, dude. But I'm like, fine. Because we're in Easton, which by the way, I'm gonna throw you under the bus dots. This is like one of Nastasia's ancestral homelands, is is uh Easton PA.
+
+[11:40] Yeah, yeah. Land of the Crayola factory, Lafayette College, and Nastasia's roots. Yeah, right, Saz? Yep, yeah. Do they make the bats there too?
+
+[11:52] Ooh, what bats? Baseball bats. Really? I'm just asking. The Easton is a bit popular baseball bat.
+
+[11:59] Oh, yeah, I don't know. John's looking it up for you. Um, the guy I didn't mention, I mean, it's for me, it's like, you know, Crayola, they still make Crayola there, and you can go visit the Crayola factory. That's not my point. So we're like, hey Dax, uh, I'll find you a Hoagie shop here, you know, in in Easton.
+
+[12:15] We'll take Hoagies home for dinner. The Hoagie store, by the way, don't ever do this. It was a place in Easton, very highly rated. I'm not gonna throw them under the bus. It said that it closed at 4 p.m.
+
+[12:26] All right, you guys with me? Close at 4 p.m. says so on the web. Closes at 4. All right?
+
+[12:28] On their own website, what times they say it closes, does? Four. Four. What time did I get there? 358?
+
+[12:39] 3. 3 45. Closed. The guy was still in the shop. We're closed.
+
+[12:49] Closed. I was like, hey. Because of course he doesn't speak where I'm from. He doesn't speak like, you know, New York, New Jersey area. Hey.
+
+[12:57] And you know, I tap where a watch used to be back when I used to wear watches. He's like, sorry. Yep. Shut this. Don't do that.
+
+[13:05] If you say you're making sandwiches till four, it's not like midnight or two and you're really tired, you want to go to bed. If you say you're making sandwiches till four, make the sandwiches till four. You don't know if they got there early for the breakfast shift. There is no breakfast shift there. And I don't care.
+
+[13:22] Don't say that you're gonna make sandwiches till four then. Be like, you know when we stop making sandwiches? When I feel like it. You never closed one of your bars when there weren't enough customers at the end of the night? Ever.
+
+[13:35] Not ever. You know why? Because you do what you say you're gonna do. And you don't know who's gonna show up or why. What you do is is over time, if consistently you don't have enough business to stay open till a certain time of day, then change your hours.
+
+[13:51] Yeah. That's kosher. Change your hours. Closing early, I drove back, right? Because I had driven all the way out to somewhere.
+
+[14:01] So I had driven all the way back through traffic, right? Hitting the pedal in the middle. For any of you who don't know, driving down some of those Pennsylvania routes, they are wall to wall with cops. All right. Like flies on poop.
+
+[14:14] Cops, all up and down that road. I'm trying my best to get to the sandwich shop so I can get Dax's freaking hoagies. And I get there and the guy's shut down. You don't know who's rushing to get to your place. I even told the guy I had a lot of bad traffic to get here.
+
+[14:29] No sandwich. So Dax went home with no hoagie. I was bent. I was bent. So for those of you that don't know, like New Jersey, basically Easton's right on the border.
+
+[14:38] You can, you could throw a rock from Easton and hit New Jersey, okay? So I'm like, Dax, find a Hoagie shop on the way home. I know it's going to be New Jersey. It's not the same. Make sure it says Hoagie.
+
+[14:48] So he finds his place called Hoagie Heaven in Princeton. Princeton's a beautiful town. I've never been to it. But for those of you that don't know the geography, like it's an hour out of the way to go from Easton to Princeton and then back to New York City is an hour out of the way. All right.
+
+[15:05] I've been driving since 6:30 in the morning, P.S. You know what I mean? Taking him around to places. Okay, okay, fine. And like Dax wants his hoagies.
+
+[15:13] Jen will be happy, even though we're eating in COVID-style housing now. So like we have to have our dinner in shifts. You know what I'm saying? We have the what Dax calls the foamite dinner. He calls us all foamites.
+
+[15:23] For those of you that don't remember back in the early days of the pandemic, a foamite is like an object that will give you the COVID, that'll transmit the COVID to you. So he no longer thinks of us as people, but merely as human foamites. Anyways. He brings them, we drive an hour out of the way, we go to Hoagie Haven. By the way, their sandwiches, they're good, right?
+
+[15:40] They're good. And they call them hoagies. Whenever we got the Italian BMT equivalent, they're classic. We bring them home. I get booked or tuna, of course, because that's all he wants to eat.
+
+[15:49] Kid's gonna get mercury poisoning, he's gonna go full pivot on everybody. It's nuts. Anyway, the kid would eat nothing but salmon, tuna. The kid is unhealthy. He eats only fish.
+
+[15:59] And uh, you know, and and I tried to buy him the mercury-free freaking tuna. He's like, I don't like it as much as the he's also a cheap date for tuna, which is weird because he's expensive on salmon. He likes chunk chunk tuna. So for those of you that don't know in in oil? Yeah, yeah, in oil.
+
+[16:15] So for those, well, for those of you that don't know how tuna works, right? Solid tuna is what you normally think of as chunky tuna, and chunky tuna, tuna chunks is really just flakes of tuna packed into a can. All right, okay? That's why it's cheaper. Anyhoo ha.
+
+[16:30] So we bought him the mercury-free one, he's like, I don't like it as much. I only like the one with the mercury in it. I hate the aftertaste. Yeah, yeah. So, but the kid, you can't get it for him because he'll eat like he'll eat like four cans in a day.
+
+[16:43] And I'm like, that's like two months' supply for a kid. Anyway, whatever. Have you introduced him to any other type of, you know, uh fish? Like a sardine? He likes sardines.
+
+[16:57] Anchovies? He would eat me out of house and uh home in skinless boneless sardine. But of course he likes a skinless boneless and all. It's crazy. It's interesting information.
+
+[17:14] That's very good. So Jen, my wife, who's gonna come into this story in a minute, she sends me a picture, like midway through one of these, you know, days that we're having, and she's like, penguin feet, thermal breaks. I'm like, you know what? Made my day. Made my day.
+
+[17:26] So, anyways, so Jen, who grew up eating the hoagies from Phil and Jim's. We bring all these things home. I'm having my uh my the sandwich with her, and I'm like, yo, what do you think? And she's like, it's good. I'm like, what do you mean it's good?
+
+[17:39] She's like, well, it's good, but it's not a hoagie. I'm like, what do you mean it's not a hoagie? And she goes, this is literally what she says to me. It doesn't have that hoagie taste. I was like, what does this mean?
+
+[17:51] What does that even mean? It doesn't have that hoagie taste. Anyway, so that was yesterday. So, but we went to Lafayette, which is right in Easton. Then we went to Muhlenburg, right?
+
+[18:03] Which I think I told you before, every time I hear the word Muhlenberg, I sing Lukenbach, Texas with the word Muhlenburg in my head. And this, and even though the guy's name is Muhlenberg, not spelled like the animal, they have that their mascot is the mule, the animal. And they're one of the Muhlenbergs had a walking stick with a mule on the top of it, a carved mule. And I have to say, I kind of want that stick. I kind of wish I was a walking stick guy now, so I could go steal the Muhlenberg walking stick.
+
+[18:27] Anyway, that's not my point. I did not know they have, for a small liberal arts college, they have the best ranked food like almost every year in all of Pennsylvania colleges. I did not get to eat at their food place. It is a shame. Yeah.
+
+[18:40] But you know what's 15 minutes outside of Muhlenburg, John? Leonardsville, Pennsylvania. Uh, well, I don't know. But Crumbsville, Pennsylvania is about 15 minutes outside, which is the home of our favorite, our favorite meat shop, D-Trix Meats. Now, you and I know of this place of our own accord separately before we knew each other, right?
+
+[19:00] Yeah, I've known about this place since 2004. Yeah. And so why don't you describe the D-trix? It's right off the highway. The place just reeks of smoke in the best possible way.
+
+[19:11] You go inside. There's just I like it's a pretty small space, but they're just like four or five aisles of different pickled things and jellies and jams, and then there's like a nice little dessert section. There's a great freezer section with every type of meat or poultry that you could think of. And then like what, three or four deli cases of just smoked meats that are delicious. Ring bolognas, uh, they make my favorite beef jerky, killbasa snack sticks.
+
+[19:37] I mean, just so much good, good stuff. And it's really old school in the sense that they only take cash. Get this. They're like, hey, listen, don't worry. If you don't get what you want, well, they don't talk like that.
+
+[19:46] They're like, well, we'll we'll ship out, we'll ship it to you. I'm like, oh yeah, how does that work? He's like, well, you send us the order, we figure it out, we tell you the amount that it is, and then you mail us a check. Swear to swear to God. We mail you, you mail us a check, and as soon as we get the check, we'll ship it out to you.
+
+[20:04] Amazing. I'm like, what? Just get with the just do Venmo even. They take money orders as well. I'm sure they would take, I don't know.
+
+[20:11] I was like, do you take American Express travelers' checks? You know what I mean? Like, it's the craziest thing. I'm sure you're best. I'm sure you could pay them in deer or in gold bricks, because you could also bring your deer there to get processed.
+
+[20:23] Yeah, exactly. Anyways, so anytime order it. Yeah, yeah. Anytime, like uh either uh my my cousin Brady or or I or John are passing through that neighborhood, we're like, yo, yeah, you gotta go with Dudrick. So I I got John his order, I got my order, I got I got Brady his order.
+
+[20:38] But what I what I always get there is a thing, it's an interesting phenomenon for those of you that don't know Pennsylvania cured meats. There's a thing called Lebanon Bologna, okay? Now, it's spelled Lebanon Lebanon is like Lebanon, the country, Lebanon. And bologna bologna is like bologna or like bologna the city, right? It is no relationship, and also what you know, what John got the ring, the ring bologna, no relationship at all to mortadella.
+
+[21:07] American bologna is mortadella without the chunks of stuff in it, okay? That's what American bologna is. And by the way, for those of you that didn't grow up in the 70s, 70s, there were two, there were two lunches. There was bologna sandwich and there was PBJ sandwich, both of which have been completely written out of childhood lunch histories, right? Like no one gets PB and J's anymore because peanut butter is basically off limits to most of the schools that you know my kids at least went to, you know what I mean, because of allergies.
+
+[21:35] And I just don't think people eat bologna sandwiches anymore. Bologna is delicious. I balone It is, yeah, but it's been maligned, I think. It's been nobody likes it. It's been much maligned.
+
+[21:45] Yeah. Do you prefer Stas, where are you on baloney? I don't like it. Okay. Why?
+
+[21:50] Because it we grew up not liking it? We had a lot of it growing up, and it was like when we were really poor. We'd eat a lot of it. It was it was a poor person's food starting in the 20s. It was developed as one of the first things that was vacuum packed and sold that you could buy very cheaply.
+
+[22:05] It was used in a lot of institutional uh um uh environments, schools, prisons, whatnot, uh in you know, programs to feed people, so it got a bad rap. But it is delicious. There was once a uh a big uh strike because I think I think it was in a prison because they were like, we don't want our bologna sandwiches cold, we want them hot. A hot bologna sandwich. By the way, a fried bologna sandwich, money.
+
+[22:28] Very good. Money. Never had one. Oh never had one. That's good.
+
+[22:33] Wait, but do you do mustard on your bologna or mayonnaise? Both. Ding. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[22:41] It needs the white bread, and if you don't, even though it itself isn't emulsified sausage with a good bit of grease in it, you need that mayonnaise there to like, oh yeah, oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, anyway. Anyway, leaving lemon and bologna has nothing to do with that. And I grew up eating it because my grandma grew up eating it, right?
+
+[22:59] So they've been what it is, it's it's imagine, Stas. You remember the summer sausage and uh and the beef sausage from like when you were a kid and like someone would send you like the what was that company that used to do that? The one with the baskets. Remember what I'm talking about? Yeah.
+
+[23:12] So it's it's it's a beef sausage like that. And it's but it's the it's the most acidic cured beef sausage you can get, okay? And then it's dry and it's they smoke the living snot out of it. And that is Lebanon Bologna, and it is delicious, but it's only from that neighborhood. Like, so you got it from Pennsylvania, like from that and actually from Lebanon, which is not quite there.
+
+[23:33] But anyway, if you've never had Lemon and Malona, get it. It's delicious. Don't wuss out and get the sweet one. Get the original first and then move to the sweet. That's my point.
+
+[23:43] That's what I always get there. And my car, instead of smelling like teenagers and dogs, smelled like smoked meats all the way home. But I brought some things. So remember how many times have I said on the show, first of all, I brought uh Nastasia and my our favorite candy, the uh the gets. I'm gonna go, I'll go to the ad right there.
+
+[23:59] If you want to eat after me, you want me to hand this out after the ads? We'll hand it out after the ads. We'll have a little bit of an advertisement. We'll come right back with cooking issues. Today's episode brought to you by Ora King Salmon, everybody's favorite fish.
+
+[24:09] And today we have Michael Fabro from Aura King Salmon. And there's something I've been curious about. Like a lot of fish, anyone that's ordered fish for a restaurant or been to a fish market knows that no matter how sustainable someone says the actual fish is or the fishing is, that it's it's a world of contaminated styrofoam box nightmares. It's just styrofoam everywhere. But uh, you tell me that Oracing has made a very concerted effort to not be part of this kind of styrofoam economy.
+
+[24:34] Yeah, we don't pack and ship our aura king in styro. And like if you go to the Fulton Fish Market, for example, it is incredible the amount of styrofoam there. Ours are packed in it's uh corrugated box with a uh aluminum foil film. You would only see this in the wholesale trade, but it's kind of like our calling card, the give me those salmon in the silver box. The current box is not fully recyclable.
+
+[24:56] This has been a goal for us for a long time. Because with seafood, you have to have like good thermal insulation. But we are in the works of a project to have a fully recyclable box, which we hope to come out with pretty soon. Hey, yo, give me the salmon in the silver box or a king's salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And we're back.
+
+[25:14] Uh in that break, I pounded an entire seltzer with no breathing so they wouldn't contaminate you guys. Do you enjoy that? Right. Okay. So uh what I brought for you guys to taste, first things first.
+
+[25:26] Every like Nastasi and I, our favorite candies are these Gets caramel creams. I love these things. Did you who else grew up eating these? Did you grow up eating these things? Yeah.
+
+[25:36] Yes. Yeah. It's caramel with like a little like grease, like a solid grease puck in the middle. I love them. Grease sugar puck in the middle.
+
+[25:44] To me, this is the ideal candy, right, Stas? Mm-hmm. Okay. Secondly, I brought the only pretzel that contains fat, like a large amount of fat that I hard pretzel that I am for. Now, for those of you that don't know, in general, I'm extremely anti-fat in a pretzel because of fat.
+
+[26:04] Fat in a pretzel makes it more cracker-like. Some places put a minor amount of fat, a tiny amount of fat, it's okay, but I don't want my pretzels to be cracker-like. These pretzels are A, sweet, which I don't generally like, and B, contain fat, which I don't generally like. Yet the combination of it all is somehow, I think, enticing and delicious. I don't think it is the same as a hard pret regular hard pretzel, but I think it is a valid product.
+
+[26:30] Now, these are made, these are called Ruthie's pretzels, and they're only available in the neighborhood right around Dietrich's, right? They're from a place called Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, and you can get them at a they're made at a place called Shady Mountain Market. And I think what these guys do, because I have their I have their what their ingredients list is flour, which undoubtedly is Snavley's, because everyone uses Snavely's flour there, soft wheat flour, brown sugar, yeast, salt, right? So that's the what they consider the solid base. Then sourdough, butter, oil, and water.
+
+[27:03] They don't c are very blonde, so I don't know how much alkalinity is in them, right? But they don't call out an alkaline ingredient, but I think that they do have some bit of an alkaline boil or alkaline wash in them. But I think what they do is they add a little bit of oil to the dough itself because they're much bigger than a standard hard pretzel, and yet they don't they don't destroy your teeth. They have an interesting texture. And I think that they fundamentally think they they brush it with butter, bake it, and make a soft pretzel, and then dehydrate the soft pretzel.
+
+[27:30] And I think they're great. This is something that needs to be investigated more. What do you think? What do you guys think of them? They're good.
+
+[27:37] Tastes like a dried-out Anti Anne's pretzel, and I mean that in a really good way. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm for it. Uh so the caramel cream, you guys can look up now.
+
+[27:46] The other thing, as John uh intimated, can I have one more uh uh tissue, please? Uh as John intimated, uh, this place has row after row after row after row after row of things of meat in in jars. Some of them have been a little bit of a duds. I had their pickled chicken hearts once, and I was like, you know what? I don't ever need to have a pickled chicken heart again.
+
+[28:09] Okay, fair. But I got something for us to try. This is the the ring bologna, which is also not bologna, it's it's baloney. It's it's be it almost looks like a kilbasa, and it's it's in a ring, hence ring bol ring ring. This is the hot version, pickled hot in a jar.
+
+[28:25] And I have uh I have a uh a no touch mechanism where you can where uh I'm gonna get my I'll get my slice here and then you'll pass around and we can I have I'm I'm not trying this. This is a live try. Hold on a second. So I was thinking this was gonna be like a smells good, like a Vienna finger. Did you guys grow up with Vienna fingers?
+
+[28:51] Sort of canned sausages, uh hand or one of these things. I'm gonna say I like it. It's not for those of you that grew up with Vienna fingers, which are canned sausages in water. Or I guess I've had can I guess I've had pickled pickled red hots before. It's kind of like a pickled red hot.
+
+[29:12] You know what I mean? It's good. It's a good product. It's a good product. All right.
+
+[29:16] Enough enough of Dietrich's and uh Pennsylvania Dutch uh foods, but for those of you that have never done the Pennsylvania food trips, I would go ahead and do the Pennsylvania food trips. What do you guys? Are you co signing on this, Judge? Yeah, 100%. All right.
+
+[29:31] A lot of good food in Pennsylvania. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I was like, what am I missing here?
+
+[29:35] She's like, you should get the scrapple. I was like, first of all, I already have scrapple in my freezer. And second of all, I'm gonna be driving around all day, so I don't think I should put scrapple in my car. And third of all, you know, how much liver do you have in your scrapple? They're like, of course there's liver liver in our scrap.
+
+[29:52] What's what's they almost they looked at me almost like he wanted to punch me? You know what I mean? But he didn't punch me though. He was very nice. Uh, because of course I went and had to take money out to buy all the stuff I bought.
+
+[30:03] Yeah. They do have an NTM on the site, which is practical. Yeah, but just to show you what kind of neighborhood it is, like they're like, like the maximum amount without having to push other is like $140. They're like, do you want to take out more than $140? You're like, dude, whatever.
+
+[30:20] Anyway. Uh on the Patreon from Johnny Shakespeare, uh, my initial question was is it possible to carbonate by carefully measuring dry ice, placing it in a Cornelius keg, aka the corny keg, adding chilled liquid, and then placing the lid on. Uh I recently came across a Reddit Ask Me Anything with uh John uh was it's Ness? I never knew. Uh owner of niche soda shop uh Galco's in Los Angel uh uh in um Louisiana, LA or Louisiana?
+
+[30:50] Where's that shop? Anyway, LA, where he was commenting on methods of carbonating and mentioned the following. Uh the second way to carbonate is to use dry ice. It breaks down, uh, you get a real fine bubble that will stand up. That's what we call pinpoint carbonation.
+
+[31:02] Is this what he's referring to? All right. Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Uh listen, I don't know, but I'll say this.
+
+[31:10] Be careful. Uh look, if you accurately measure uh the dry ice, then you will be able to know. And the larger the vessel that you're pressurizing, the kind of less dangerous it gets because you have more wiggle room, right? So every liter of uh every every lead, the the most you're gonna put probably into a soda is about four volumes of CO2, and a volume of CO2 is two grams per liter. So every liter of uh product is gonna have at most probably eight grams or so of dry ice, right?
+
+[31:56] If you go over eight grams per liter of dry ice, you start creating an explosion hazard, right? Because it's going to pressurize it way over the amount of pressure that that you want. You start getting much, much less, and of course you don't have enough carbonation. Not to mention the fact that dry ice, uh it's a it insulates itself pretty well. So what happens when you throw dry ice into a container, unless you have a lot of time, is you freeze a layer of liquid around the dry ice pellet that insulates the dry ice so that it doesn't uh sublimate as quickly, and it actually takes a good bit of time for you to get the kind of carbonation you want.
+
+[32:34] So you can shatter the dry ice, but of course, dry ice is incredibly hard, so it's much harder to shatter than regular ice is, and then somehow mix it in. To me, it's just a huge pain in the behind. I just wouldn't do it. Of course, you don't really need to chill your liquid beforehand, as you say, because you're adding dry ice to it. Uh but as soon as you start doing it in small bottles, it gets, I think, exponentially more dangerous because if you measure it wrong and the pressure gets too high into one of those bottles, if you've never been next to a soda bottle that explodes, then you've never been next to a soda bottle that explodes.
+
+[33:07] And I hope you will not be next to a soda bottle that explodes because it is a nightmare. Um that answer that? Yep. Okay. Um Sargon Dylan writes in uh what temperature do you want your water bath on for a rotor vap and how much vacuum do you use?
+
+[33:21] Uh so what we're talking about here, by the way, just you know, it's a like a quick, you know, if you don't know what rotary evaporation is. In a distillation, you uh heat a liquid until the volatile parts of it, and that's usually aromas and flavors and ethanol, if there's alcohol in it, start boiling off. After it boils off, you then uh have to chill it so that those vapors recondense. And one of the, one of the, it just it's what it is, all of the energy you put into boiling, you have to put at least as much energy into the condensing to get everything back. That's just physics.
+
+[33:54] That's just thermodynamics. You have to do it, right? So in a rotary evaporator, the entire system is under a vacuum. The vacuum lowers the pressure at which everything boils, so everything boils at a lower temperature. You still need the same amount of power to boil, and you still need the same amount of cooling power to recondense.
+
+[34:12] So that the temperature you set the boiling at is directly linked to how much of a vacuum you pull. The harder a vacuum you pull, the lower the temperature at which it boils. That is a strict relationship that is governed by like a the boiling point pressure curves, and you don't get to choose, right? So the temperature at which it boils is strictly set by the vacuum. And the lower the vacuum, uh the lower the vacuum, the colder it boils.
+
+[34:38] In other words, the lower vacuum means more of a vacuum. So if you want everything to boil at a low temperature, because for instance, you don't want uh your fancy herbs and whatnot to get heat damaged, right? The lower you want the temperature, the more of a vacuum you have to suck on it, right? Now, you asked a separate question, which is what temperature do you have to set your water bath? And how hot the water is around the vessel that you're boiling with is not the same temperature as the product itself.
+
+[35:05] Typically, in a in this situation, because you're heating through glass, there is between 10, 15, or sometimes 20 degrees difference Celsius between the product on the inside that you're boiling and the water bath that you're using. So I would set your water bath about 20 15 to 20 degrees hotter than you want the distillation to go. If your distillation's ripping, right, if you're distilling a lot, then uh your product is gonna be cool a lot cooler. It's gonna be closer to a 20-degree delta, uh 15 to 20 degree delta between your water bath and your and your product. And if you're distilling very slowly, if it's a stuck distillation, then your distill then your dis your product is gonna get up closer and closer in temperature to your water bath.
+
+[35:48] So uh that's what I would do. Is that is that clear? And the way you feel how hot the product you're distilling is is put the the back of your hand. If you cook a lot, your fingertips are very bad at sensing heat because you've burned them a lot, right? So typically I use the back of my hand, which I don't burn very much, or the back of my fingers when I need to sense heat.
+
+[36:07] Um, and so you just put the back of your hand against the spinning neck of your flask, and that temperature is fairly close to the temperature your product actually is if you don't have enough money to buy an actual temperature sensor, which I guess people do now. Anyway, the covered and smothered? Yep. Okay. Uh Babino wrote in, I'm currently in a rental unit with a gas stove and really poor ventilation, a non-venting range, it just blows uh blows out air upward and through a charcoal filter.
+
+[36:34] That thing is fundamentally useless. That is a joke. I don't even know why people are allowed to market those as things. That's like that's like one of those things when uh I don't know, I don't know. It's it's like you get a huge gash on your hand and someone draws a picture of your band-aid around it.
+
+[36:49] You know what I mean? It's like it's an absurdity, it's an insult. Those things are an insult. They do make good uh indoor uh hoods for people who need to deep fry inside and basements and stuff like that, but those hoods are fantastically expensive. And if you're not changing the filters out on a constant basis, then it ain't doing squat, right?
+
+[37:11] By the way, activated charcoal only lasts for a certain length of time. Yeah. So if you if you have you're like, uh, this this hood is great. It's got it's got a charcoal filter in it. It was uh we put it in like eight years ago.
+
+[37:22] No, that's not how that works. And and also not every activated charcoal is the same. The the the chemistry of how charcoal filtrates has literally filled many volumes of work, and I recommend that you just dip your toe into the weird world of charcoal filtration just so that you can see how tweaked uh different kinds of charcoal are, right? In terms of how they operate and what they operate. Anyway, um Bobino says that uh their stove is located next to a window.
+
+[37:55] What are some options for ventilation while I'm cooking? I've considered a twin window fan, but I worry about the dust buildup. What do you think they mean the dust buildup? Like how dust eventually just like clogs up a fan, but you just have to take it apart and wipe everything down. That's what I would do.
+
+[38:10] Yeah. So okay, so you can get so like it also depends on how nice you want it to look. Like I used to live in the Garment District, and the classic look in the Garment District was a piece of like a CDX crappiest plywood possible with hand jigsawed circles, and then you would buy the the fans that had the four mounting nuts, uh the four mounting flanges on the outside of the cage, and you would have twin fans in the cutout plywood, and then that would be duct taped into the window. Anyone who's ever been in kind of neighborhood where I used to live has seen this setup. And the benefit of those is you can get to all the parts to to clean them.
+
+[38:51] Yeah. But I would get a slightly nicer version or get it made. If you, if you can't find us a system that is the exact size you want, there's an uh an outfit called send cut send in in uh I think they're in Utah. And you can send them a two-dimensional picture, and they will, they will uh, I think they use water jet. They will cut out whatever thing you want at very reasonable rates out of whatever you want.
+
+[39:18] Stainless, aluminum, if you're a weirdo, titanium. And so you can make like a very nice cutout that is like metal stainless and have it mounted exactly in your window with cutouts for the fan. So I would get the fan, and then I would get those things, and then just keep it, keep it clean. Unless you meant you're worried about dust coming from the outside and going in, in which case, then you need to get fans with uh with auto louvers on them, right, John? Yep.
+
+[39:45] Remember, none of these are valid technical, uh, so you have to be careful that you're worried about grease fires and whatnot, so you have to keep them clean so there's not, but that's the only thing I would do. And I'm hoping uh for your sake, Babino, that that the air naturally wants to go from your living area into your kitchen and out your window, because if you're pushing against a gradient, then it's gonna get much harder for you. Was it covered and smothered? Yep. Okay.
+
+[40:10] Uh Bradley uh Christenton writes, uh, I'm thinking of doing cocktails on tap, something like a Tom Collins or a gin and tonic with clarified lemon or lime. Are there recirculating pumps necessary to keep it from separating, or is it just a good shake enough? Does it vary based on ABV? Uh it doesn't really I wouldn't say it's an A B V thing. It is true that things will settle over time, but literally just an up down, up down is enough to redistribute that stuff.
+
+[40:37] So I think a recirculating pumps a couple people used to use recirculating pumps just because they were having issues with with the code. I forget what it was, but like if it was constantly moving, then it wasn't rebottling, and if it wasn't rebottling, they could legally do it, right? There was something really stupid about that, some really stupid reason that way. The other reason people use recirculating pumps is to carbonate itself. So you're recirculating through a carbonation stone.
+
+[41:01] But in your application, or some people would recirculate through a uh a chill loop to keep it cold without having to actually uh refrigerate the whole keg. All of those are valid or less valid reasons to recirculate, but I would think just distribution of the product is not is not that necessarily a good. Now the the the when you're in a corny keg and you're uh remember it distributes from the bottom. So if anything settles out, like this is the main problem you're gonna have. Like if you do, I'm not saying your clarification is subpar, Bradley.
+
+[41:32] That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is if your clarification is subpar and you have stuff that's settling to the bottom, that stuff gets dispensed first. And so um, you know, you might get a slightly different, if it's been sitting for a while, you might get a slightly different pour uh as stuff settles out. This is especially true on things that are naturally suspensions, like a lot of uh um uh Amari, for instance. Uh and those, you know, once a day, boop, boop, upside down and back is good enough.
+
+[41:59] Covered and smothered. Yep. Is that a Waffle House reference? Why are you saying that all of a sudden? Did you go to Waffle House yesterday?
+
+[42:05] No, anytime I deal with a photographer. Okay. I was talking to Travis who's shooting the book. Got it. And I don't know where they get it from, but like back when I I was I used to do like food styling with like uh my sister-in-law Ridge and other people, like we would like do a bunch of stuff.
+
+[42:26] They would take like 8,000 pictures and would be like, You got this? Yeah, covered and smothered. And then that was it. That meant it's done. We have every photo we need.
+
+[42:35] It might have come from Waffle House. I don't know. Do you know what I mean? That's what I thought too. As soon as John said that, I was like, I feel like saying covered, smothered, and capped.
+
+[42:43] You know, that's my order, yeah. What's capped mean? Well, with mushrooms. Oh. On a waffle?
+
+[42:48] No, in the hash browns. All right. Yeah. I don't want I love mushroom gravy though. Yeah, that too.
+
+[42:55] Yeah. Uh yeah, I don't know. So it possibly comes from Waffle House. You know, I've never been to a Waffle House. Whoa.
+
+[43:00] Yeah. And and as a bad father, neither have my children. Snob. They don't have them in New York. No, I know, but should go to Waffle House.
+
+[43:13] Yo, I passed one in I passed one in Pennsylvania yesterday. And Dax goes, Waffle House, what's that? I was like, Oh my god. They don't have tuna. Well, no, but Dax will do anything.
+
+[43:22] They don't have tuna in Waffle House. I don't know. I was explaining to him the Waffle House index for natural disasters. He's like, what do you mean? Like hurricanes?
+
+[43:30] I'm like, yeah, like hurricanes. Like Waffle House, they just don't close. Like, you know, unless unless the Waffle House has literally been picked up and thrown into the ocean, like it's serving food of some kind. You know what I mean? Uh, but I didn't bother with the house.
+
+[43:45] Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, listen. I grew up, and listen, uh, no offense if anyone listening owns one, but I grew up with the International House of Pancakes, and I went back to it and I was like, yo, I don't like this. So is Waffle House.
+
+[44:01] Yeah, except for the Boysenberry syrup. Their boys and is pretty good. Okay, okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So for those of you that is is IHop all over the country or no?
+
+[44:10] Or is it just East Coast? Uh I would assume it's an international house. I was thinking the same thing. Well, a lot of things say they're international and aren't, dude. Like the Royal Canadian Pancake House.
+
+[44:21] It wasn't, it was neither Royal nor Canadian. It was a pancake in a building. Anyway, but my point is IHOP, what it was known for when you were a kid was they had not just the one flavor of syrup, they had like four. Right? They had more than that, I'm sorry.
+
+[44:37] Really? Oh, yeah. But all I remember is there were there was that that wooden cart that would be at the table. Yeah. Everything was stuck to it.
+
+[44:46] Yeah, dude. That's the money right there. So there was the maple-esque one, maple similar, mate, you know, maple like syrup, right? Which is the one all the parents went for. Yeah.
+
+[44:58] And then they had, I think they had strawberry, but but the one that all the kids went for, and we I don't know who Boyson is. I've never seen their berry. Right? But but the boysenberry syrup, that was the one all the kids were like, ooh, ooh, boysenberry, right? Am I right?
+
+[45:17] Yeah. Yeah. That was it. Fond of memories. But I went back as an adult and I was like, yo, these pancakes just aren't.
+
+[45:22] Doesn't hold up, huh? Well, look, the one I went to in Connecticut didn't hold up. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[45:28] Also just watching a short cook of Waffle House. I suppose they say that. Yeah. Yeah. I'll say the IHOP pancake I had tasted a lot like a bisquick pancake.
+
+[45:38] No offense to Bisquick pancake people, but offense to you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like if you grew up with a biscuit bisquick pancake, God bless you, you're fine. You know what I mean?
+
+[45:44] It's like it's okay. It's just like any of you guys bisquick pancake people? No. Stas? No.
+
+[45:54] No. All right. No. Yeah. I mean, look, Bisquick is a look.
+
+[45:59] Having bisquick in your house, especially if you have kids and you want to get them into baking and like, you know, flour that already contains uh fat and rising agents, it's not a terrible idea. It's not a terrible idea. It's just doesn't make the best pancakes, in my opinion. Or the best biscuits, in my opinion. Uh Kevin Stademeyer writes, uh, hey everybody, I got a boatload of wild duck breasts, 16 of them that are all fairly small and crucially without skin or fat.
+
+[46:28] Listen, I'm glad that whoever your buddy is got you the wild duck breasts. Tell your buddy to leave the freaking skin on. You know what it was? I bet you they didn't want to pluck it. Maybe.
+
+[46:42] I bet you I bet you they were like, I'm not plucking these things. This is a pain. And they just rip the skin off, and the the like somewhere in a pile, you know, in some marsh somewhere, is like a bunch of feathers with a skin, which imagine how sad it is finding like this the feathered skin of a bird empty. Anyway. Yeah.
+
+[47:03] Uh, do you think that's what happened? Probably. Why else would you do that? Yeah. Especially for 16 of them.
+
+[47:09] Yeah. Maybe a couple. It's like you messed up the plucking behind if you're doing all. All right. I I I can see where Kevin's going with this.
+
+[47:14] Uh, I got these for free, so I can't complain. True. True. But what's the best way to cook these and do them justice? They are a few ounces each and relatively thin as well.
+
+[47:25] Well, you're just adding, you're like, they're also they're kind of thin. Um, I look, here's the issue. I don't do a lot of wild duck. Um I would not, I would cook them as quickly as possible, low temp, right? And then I would sauce them appropriately, and I would make something crunchy.
+
+[47:45] Like you almost want to like buy some regular duck skin and just crisp up the skin and make like ducks, duck skin chicharron, or like buy some. I know it's a different, that's what you kind of want to do, right? You want something crunchy, but just because I mean I love duck breast, but you I would be craving that crunchy skin with a little bit of fat. What are you guys with me on this or no? I think I'd probably grind them up with a little fat bag and make meatballs.
+
+[48:10] Meatballs. Probably. Listen, meatball. All right. Meatball.
+
+[48:14] Meatball. Hey, listen, you ever done this? You ever done this? You're like, I'm gonna make what was that? There was that famous place that used to make it.
+
+[48:21] Uh I'm gonna make, I did this once. I'm gonna make duck hot dogs. So I got all this duck breast, right? And I got all the fat, and I chilled it all down, and I did the double grind, and then I, you know, I put my bowl in. We had the ice chips, I did the emulsification, I did all this spices, I got all the spices right.
+
+[48:43] I mean uh uh skins, of course. Come on, please. What am I? Come on, come on, come on. Anyway, so uh I pipe them all out, right?
+
+[48:51] And kitchen obliterated. I'm tired, I'm tired to death, right? I made these things because I wasn't really set up to do it. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[49:02] And uh Jen goes, yo, these uh these taste like hot dogs. I was like, uh he did all his work, took all this, and it tastes like a hot dog. So I'm just worried that the meatball might just taste like a meatball. Maybe. Yeah.
+
+[49:19] If you look, you can go John's route and make meatballs, or I would say uh cook them for no longer than uh 30 minutes at 57 degrees Celsius. Okay, in a water bath, pull them out, and uh, and then just um I would immediately sauce them and serve them with something crunchy. Slice them thin, sauce them, and serve them with something crunchy. That's what I would do. I would test at least one.
+
+[49:43] The issue with wild ducks is that they can get very, very livery. Some people like that livery flavor, and some people uh detest that livery flavor. Uh so you gotta let me know what you want. Or, you know, go go go the go the John route. Meatball it, meatball.
+
+[49:59] What do you think of meatball as an insult? It's like a loving insult, I think. Kind of like dirt bag as opposed to comeback. Yeah, all right. Uh all right, Zev writes.
+
+[50:11] I'm getting ready to make the full-time switch to induction, but I'm sad to give up my copper sauce pans. They heat so dang evenly and look so nice hanging in my kitchen. Have you found or seen any reliable and effective retrofit options? The steel disc converters seem cumbersome and inefficient if they don't make great contact with the pan. You're correct, Ziv.
+
+[50:27] Uh curious to hear your thoughts on these. In my head, I feel like it should be possible to attach a steel disc to the bottom of the pot permanently using some sort of thermoconductive epoxy, but nothing I can find online seems to have the adhesive conductive heat resistance and water resistance properties needed for the job. Zev, no one has no one has solved your problem yet. Um the closest thing you can do is, and I've tried this and it sucks, is basically turning your induction unit into an old school French top, right? Where you're like way overheating it.
+
+[50:56] But the the issue isn't, because remember, at the end of the day, you're going to be as efficient, even though you're poorly transmitting heat. But the actual temperature of the metal that you need to heat up, instead of it being like, let's say we're gonna boil something at 212, instead of getting that metal at like 212, you're gonna need it to get it like 350 just to do a 212. Because you gotta remember a French top is ripping hot, right? And that's why you can conduct from the solid metal of a French top into a pan. Because they are ripping.
+
+[51:25] So if you're not willing to make your induction unit rip that hard, you're not gonna get a good thing. And I haven't found a good system for bonding a plate to the bottom. But if I think about it, uh I will uh figure it out. Quinn, I will get to your question uh next time. More on cooking issues.
\ No newline at end of file
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center on New Stance Studios. Joined uh as usual, but not live. She's in uh the great state of Connecticut. Small state best date, right, John?
+
+[0:23] That's right. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, how you doing? I'm good. How are you? Good, doing all right.
+
+[0:27] I mean, I'm I'll put you out a little bit. You had a birthday recently. How'd it go? Is it good? You feel happy, feel good?
+
+[0:32] Yeah, it was good. Thanks for coming, John, Dave. Thank you. Uh hey, listen, I was taking my kid to college. I did uh not college, like to visit colleges.
+
+[0:41] I'm sorry that my son has to like figure out where he's gonna go to college. I apologize that I couldn't go to your party so that my son could have a future. I deeply apologize. I don't actually. I don't.
+
+[0:52] Uh I deeply I deeply apologize for going your 40th birthday many years ago. Yeah, at the school, it was also two people's 40th birthday. And again, you weren't taking your son to c to visit colleges because you didn't have don't. Whatever. I don't want to get into it.
+
+[1:06] This is a dumb conversation. You know what? I also apologize for buying you all those fireworks for your party. Maybe I'll go back in time and not have bought you all those fireworks for the party. All right.
+
+[1:15] I'll go back in time and not have done that. Uh anyway. Uh by the way, the one thing I learned, I learned many things. I don't have time to talk about them because we have a jam-packed show today. But should you be driving in between like Albany, Saratoga, and Burlington, Vermont?
+
+[1:32] Should you find yourself on Route 22 there? There's a tiny town, tiny town, Orwell, Connecticut. Uh, sorry, Vermont. Tiny. As you're driving past 22, doing 75 and a 50, right?
+
+[1:42] You'll see a small handwritten sign on the side of the road that says, Maple syrup, $40 a gallon. It's like my car must have done three 360s when I hit the brakes when I saw that sign spun out. You can't find it. So, like, I had to go into a post office and be like, yo, the maple syrup sign on the highway. Where is it?
+
+[2:01] Come on. And the guy was like, I don't know. It's this family guy. I don't know. Misty Maples.
+
+[1:59] And so, like, uh you it's 61 Raymond Road. Write that down if you're gonna be at $40 the gallon. The gallon. Anyway. Uh also got uh John, customer service uh extraordinaire here in.
+
+[2:16] How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. How's the how's the customer service doing? It's going. Yeah.
+
+[2:20] I mean, you know, just peachy. Appreciate everyone being patient with the delay of the series all pro. Some people have been changing their addresses, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's gonna happen.
+
+[2:28] People move. That's what the that's what people do. Yep. Yeah. Uh in our, I guess, DC booth, Jackie Molecules.
+
+[2:34] How you doing? Back in LA. Ah. World Traveler, Jackie Molecules. He's just like in the ether, like uh moleculing it about.
+
+[2:41] Nice. How's uh is LA? How's that treating you? It's great. Stars.
+
+[2:46] I was in Stanford this weekend too. Thanks for the invite. Oh, oh, that hurts. I was gonna I was gonna leave that like the lead balloon that is. I didn't know.
+
+[2:59] I didn't know. I'm gonna go. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[3:03] Okay. That's all right. Okay, okay. Uh someone's got some something in the radio in the background or something. And work in the panels, as usual.
+
+[3:11] We got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you very much. Nice, nice.
+
+[3:17] But let's get right into it. Uh fewer fewer tangents, more stuff, just because uh he was supposed to be on the show before, and uh we had to cancel. Uh, and I apologize for that. But uh, we're very excited to have James Hoffman Coffee Coffee, what like how do you go by this uh m magnate, influencer, influencer magnate? Uh guru.
+
+[3:37] What do you like? What's it's all bad? Yeah, yeah. None of it. Uh I don't know, coffee guy.
+
+[3:42] Coffee guy. Weird, weird coffee person. Weird coffee person. All right. Uh yeah, you were supposed to um many people who um I guess aren't from the UK, because you're based in in the UK, are gonna know you from your YouTubes and uh what's your YouTube channel?
+
+[3:58] So that everyone knows, shout it out. Just my name, James Hoffman. Yeah, yeah. And uh World Atlas of Coffee, now in its second edition, right? Uh I guess most people are gonna know you who did you know, don't know you from the UK are gonna know you uh from those those two things.
+
+[4:12] We actually first met. I was doing a cocktail class when the first edition of your book came out in in 2015. So that's kind of how uh we met the one time and very happy to have you on the show. Sorry that uh we had uh a little bit of confusion beforehand. Um but before we get into the eight billion questions that uh people have for you and that I actually uh have for you, uh let's just go through like a quick rundown.
+
+[4:33] So you got into the coffee business in in 2003, right? So you must have like basically just been out of college a year or two at that point, right? Pretty much, yeah. Just trying to find something to do for money. Now in 2003, obviously on the west coast of the United States, in you know, north northwest, not in LA, Jack, uh, but like, you know, in the north of of California and uh specifically also Seattle, obviously, there was there was already great coffee at that point.
+
+[5:01] New York City, kind of a hellhole for coffee, and the rest of the country, pretty much a wasteland for for what you would think is is good coffee, right? What was the UK like back then? Oh, it's bad. It was really bad. It was much worse.
+
+[5:13] Really? It was like maybe some Starbucks, and that was kind of it. It was, it was just bad. Huh. So I think people should take note that like become interested in something that's not yet really good if you want to make a mark.
+
+[5:27] You know what I mean? Like, honestly, like if you're young and like it's great to get into something that, you know, uh someone like James has been working on for the for the past 20 years and try to get really good at it, or you could try to find something that you could pour a life into that's interesting that hasn't been covered and smothered by other folk. I'm just saying, as a piece of advice, what do you think about that, James? I think it's pretty good advice. I I think it was, you know, we started roasting coffee in London trying to sell fancy coffee when no one was drinking it.
+
+[5:57] And for me, that was the opportunity, but everyone else would kind of look at London and be like, well, no one drinks good coffee, so why would you why would you try and sell good coffee? You know what I mean? It's just uh it's just like a mindset thing. Right. And you, but you're you're you know, you're uh I guess your point is another interesting thing about your kind of style if people haven't, you know, read your book or or you know, watched your stuff is that you you very explicitly say, and I think maybe this is why you could be successful in an arena where people didn't already want the product, right?
+
+[6:25] Is you're like, listen, I'm not gonna tell you what the best of anything is. There's no best, like you don't want to pick your favorite child when it comes to styles of coffee or types of coffee. I mean you have certain things you don't like, you clearly don't like robusta in any form, but uh, or you say, you know, why would you do that when you could drink something else instead? But whatever, that's fine. But my my point is is that you you're very much about helping people enjoy the product on their own terms, which is I think a very kind of inviting way to get people to enjoy things, no.
+
+[6:54] Yeah, I think I probably went through the youthful arrogance phase of like this is the good stuff and you're drinking the bad stuff, and I've got the good stuff, but I I think I've got a little older, uh, a little bit calmer. And uh yeah, I just I feel like telling people they're doing it wrong doesn't help. So what's the it's like do you even have like a you are you even willing to admit that there's a go-to style that like is your comfort or not? Not even yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would just drink, I I drink a lot of drip coffee like Paul River.
+
+[7:24] That's just it. Like espresso is just too too much. Uh so yeah, I drink a lot of drip coffee, and I'm very happy. Nice. All right.
+
+[7:32] Um, so we should oh coup a couple more things. So you have released I'm going back to espresso though. So you you you've uh you've released uh a couple of machines in kind of concert with uh Victoria Arduino, which for those of you who aren't like coffee style people, not related to Arduino, the microcontroller people. Victoria Arduino and Arduino the microcontroller people, two different sets of people. But uh very different things.
+
+[8:01] But I don't think they don't have a lot of penetration, I don't think, in in the US market. I think their sister brand um uh Nova Simonelli has kind of more penetration here in the US, but you want it how long have you been working with those guys? Oh like uh maybe maybe like 10 years. Like um, like the brand is really old. It's from like 1905, but it kind of it no one did anything with it for a really long time, and then maybe eight, nine years ago we started working on stuff, and that's kind of been the the kind of specialty coffee brand for that company.
+
+[8:33] Uh, and that's why I've worked with them on the kind of nerdier end of espresso of uh like commercial espresso machines. I mean, I think that I mean, like I think I've never owned one of their machines. I think they're fantastic though. I remember like so the two cups of espresso that changed my life, right? And re made me realize how little I knew about anything on Earth.
+
+[8:56] The first one was at uh in 2001 at Cafe Vivaci, which is Shomer's place, back when they were, you know, the the highest form of coffee in the US. And, you know, uh, I had, you know, I had a couple years earlier bought my first commercial machine at an auction, which I don't have time to tell that whole story where like, you know, I I got a drug dealer to drive me home for money. He only referred to me as White Boy. I accidentally left the pro con pump in his trunk and had to track him down and knock on his door. He was very curious why I was knocking on his door.
+
+[9:24] Anyway, long story. But um, so I thought I knew a lot about coffee. I had that cup of uh that espresso uh shot at Vivace and was like, oh, I don't know anything. I know nothing. And then the second was actually at McCormick Place, which is a nightmare freaking trade hall in Chicago, like just a crap show of a place to have to hang out, like just as bad as the Javits here in the United States.
+
+[9:45] Any trade show floor sucks. And I was at uh the National Restaurant Show, and Victoria Arduino had a booth, and in that booth they had a lever, a Victoria Arduino lever pull machine. Uh and whoever was working the floor that day, this was I don't know, maybe 2011, maybe 2008, 2009, 2010. Whoever was working the floor that day in Chicago pulled a lever shot, changed my life. I was like, oh my god, the lever.
+
+[10:07] Oh my god. It could have been as early as 2007 or eight. Anyway, uh, so I I'm a big fan of their stuff. Is their stuff still really good or no? I mean, I I I would say yes.
+
+[10:19] I'm still I'm still working with them. So yeah. Yeah. And wasn't um wasn't uh Simonelli one of the first companies to uh move to uh lever lever valves on the steam and water wands. Uh that's a good question.
+
+[10:35] I don't even know about that stuff. I feel like like um the kind of mechanical leather stuff I'm trying to get away from, actually, and just moved to like solenoids because they're just they they last longer. But uh I don't know the history of that stuff actually. So it was either them or was it Las and Marco? I thought it was Simonelli.
+
+[10:50] I love the the lever so much more than the knob. I hate the knob so much. The knob is the worst, am I right? I mean, I know you say you're moving away, but the knobs are worse. The knob is very stupid.
+
+[11:00] Yeah. The knob is the worst. Yeah, it's just pointless. Have you ever met one that didn't start leaking almost right away, like when you're using it? No, right?
+
+[11:06] No. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. And for those who are into measuring things, right?
+
+[11:12] Uh you the coffee machine you helped uh design for them was like the uh was like the first one to uh weigh the weigh the shot as it was going as opposed to just measuring the number of millimeter milliliters that was going through the uh through the unit, right? Right, right. Like if you if you get weird about coffee, then like flow meters are like okay, they're not bad, but like um we kind of worked out in the sort of preceding years that measuring liquid in the cup was the kind of answer to curing the weird inconsistency that you would experience with espresso, where like sometimes it's great, sometimes it's just not quite great, and that's very frustrating. And it turns out really paying attention to how much liquid you push through the coffee was the kind of game-changing piece of information and not just kind of eyeballing it or going by feel. So yeah, that was the that was the kind of idea behind that stuff.
+
+[11:59] Yeah, and so what what do you not like about what do you not like about the flow meter just because they don't integrate accurately enough? Or is it because you don't know how much is retained in the puck, or like what is it that you don't like about the flow meter? I mean, they're pretty good at working out how much water went to the coffee, but not how much actually went through. So yeah, kind of like a couple pieces. One, that there'll be some variation because really accurate flow meters just get really, really, really expensive.
+
+[12:26] And then yeah, puck absorption or other stuff. Like you'll you'll just you'll have a slight variation in the amount of liquid passing through. And it's depressingly true that like a gram of liquid variance in the cup is tastable to most people. Right. Right?
+
+[12:40] That's kind of how annoying espresso is. So the standard is that why you work this out. Is that why is it is it a fussiness that actually makes you prefer to just hang out with drip, or is it a lack of fuzziness, in other words, or is it really just that you prefer the drip as your just your comfort coffee? I think it I think it's all of it. I think my I can kind of switch my brain off more with drip and just be a normal person and drink the coffee and be happy to have had a cup of coffee.
+
+[13:04] Whereas espresso, I feel like I'm much more likely to just nitpick it or like try and work out why it's not completely perfect or whatever's kind of wrong with it, you know. Um it's just I think it's healthy to try and you know detach from the obsessive kind of diagnostic brain that you can easily get if you work in food. Uh and just remember that stuff is supposed to be fun to eat and drink. Yeah. And and by the way, if anyone wants to see James's uh like videos on how to do like you do tons of like long, nice, in-depth, like good to watch videos on like how to tech how you like why you choose the techniques you do and how to do them.
+
+[13:42] So we won't go too into depth to that here because what's the point? They could just watch the stuff you've produced on that, right? Wouldn't that be easier? Right. Uh I think I think it would be easier.
+
+[13:49] That would be easier. Yeah. Uh I had one other question. Wait, so the way so you're telling me the paddle wheel flow meter that I have in my in my La San Marco is kind of a trash can flow meter. They're kind of garbage in general.
+
+[14:01] I mean, they're okay. They'll just be a a reasonable amount of variance in the output. You can measure it pretty easily and and see. Oh God, don't send me down a rabbit hole. Uh all right.
+
+[14:12] Uh okay. So let me get to uh some of the oh, one more thing. So when you first came out with um uh with the World Atlas of Coffee, it was pretty interesting in that you you go through some of the stuff, you know, uh about coffee in general, the history of everything, and then it's mainly like by by region, right? And then when you came out with the the the uh new edition, right? You there was new regions.
+
+[14:35] I mean, it's kind of interesting, like you came up in coffee in such an interesting time, such that you could be in the business for over 10 years, write a book with over a decade behind, you know, under under your belt, and then six years later or whatever it was, have to come out with a new edition. You want to talk about that. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it it's definitely been an incredibly interesting, like 10, 20 years for coffee with the whole boom of the specialty thing. And then I guess as as suddenly there's roasters everywhere looking for something interesting. I think it's it's it's led them to be more interested in unusual origins and sort of invest and and go hunting there for interesting stuff.
+
+[15:12] So um, I'm trying to think of a good example. I think like Uganda is a pretty good example, right? Huge coffee producer historically, but traditionally a lot of robuster or kind of commercial coffee. But in the last 10 years, out of nowhere there's been these kind of small amounts of these super interesting things starting to pop up. And I I think that means you should start to talk about a country in a book designed for people who are looking for some guidance in how to explore this big, confusing uh world of coffee where there's suddenly just just infinite choice.
+
+[15:42] You know, in the past, coffee was simple, you know what I mean? Like it wasn't complicated. Maybe you picked roast or something like that. But now there's like uh endless options for everything, and that's I think kind of confusing. So yeah, I'm trying to give some guidance, and that's why.
+
+[15:58] Right. Um I think that's a good thing. It's worthwhile including these kind of fringe places. That's the nice thing about the book, I guess, is that it's, you know, it's about trying to give people hooks into it rather than just throwing a wall of information in front of them and you know freaking them out. You know what I mean?
+
+[16:14] Yeah, yeah. I I I think that I'm trying to do the opposite. Like um, you know, I've watched people try and buy coffee, try and order coffee in coffee shops and realize that it's like we're not we're we're really pumped on all the information we have. We want to tell you everything. And I think a lot of people kind of these days probably eye roll a little bit at the endless information that comes with a cup of coffee now.
+
+[16:34] But you know, to sort of make sense of that and try and answer the question of, okay, here's my money. Will I like this thing? That was the kind of bigger goal of the book and mostly what I do. Like I just want people to to buy and enjoy coffee and kind of see value in it in this thing that historically wasn't worth very much to people. It was like super cheap.
+
+[16:51] It was a lost leader in supermarkets. Um but it it has value, it needs to have value to be sustainable. So that's kind of the that's the idea behind most of what I do. I said I said I was gonna go right to the questions, but I'll ask one more of my own, sorry. Uh so do you think there's a big or do you see a big age difference in preference?
+
+[17:09] So like people, so like I'm, you know, 50, what am I, or 51 or whatever. Uh so people my age versus people who are younger in terms of acidity. I know a lot of people my age really don't like like a bright acidic cup. Not sour, I'm not saying sour, but like something with a lot of acidity. Uh whereas I feel like a lot of younger people kind of like like an acidic cup.
+
+[17:29] Do you see an age difference, or is it really just person to person? Yeah, I I think it's probably an age difference because it's kind of what you started drinking is your benchmark, right? And and I think it's rare that your preferences move too far from that initial benchmark without some effort, if that makes sense. So, you know, when you started drinking coffee, there wasn't a ton of super light-roasted, super acidic kind kind of coffees out there. Whereas if you started drinking coffee in the last five years, that's most of what you seem to have access to in the kind of nice coffee shop.
+
+[18:00] So yeah, I don't think it's age as much as the first coffee you drink and you kind of benchmark as coffee, good coffee. That's that's kind of gonna stay with you for a long time. All right, let me get to some people's questions so I don't get my. Oh, well, so I it's interesting. I grew up not liking coffee, even through college.
+
+[18:19] Uh to stay up, I would pound uh tea. And then um, I forget why I decided I was gonna make myself I was like, I I was 20 something, and I was like, I'm gonna make myself like this stuff, and if I'm gonna do it, it's going to be uh espresso black. That's it. You know what I mean? I'm and so like I just would go order a cup at Starbucks because people crap on them, but they brought a lot of people to coffee.
+
+[18:43] Let's give them the credit. They brought a lot of people to drinking milk, actually, right? They brought a lot of people to drinking milk, let's be honest. But like, so I would go to Starbucks and get the their incredibly over roasted, like incredibly bitter shots. They were still using real machines back then, I think though.
+
+[19:00] And uh, you know, this was in the late 90s or whatever. Uh and uh yeah, I would just drink one every day until I wanted it. Until I until I actually desired to have it. And now I can drink black drip as well, but I still am an espresso guy. You know what I mean?
+
+[19:17] Um that's how I I did it the same way. I started working in coffee and and and forced myself to like it. Wait, so why did you choose coffee if you had to force yourself to like it? Just because it was like kind of un uncharted or uh no, they paid weekly at the job that I got. I I needed the money.
+
+[19:37] Uh like it was that. Like I didn't want to work in coffee. It was just uh an opportunity. So, like uh one of the guys in my college band, one of my college bands, he the same way he took a job in coffee, wasn't a coffee guy, and he was also a heavy smoker, so he was already like a little bit kind of like twitchy, like a heavy smoker. And uh he he took to um drinking, he took to drinking coffee constantly on the job and eating because there was an ice cream shop next door.
+
+[20:04] They would trade him ice cream for coffee. So he would just set the machine on Turkish grind and grind coffee directly on his vanilla ice cream and eat it. The the man he was a jittery, jittery dude. A jittery, jittery dude. You know what I mean?
+
+[20:21] Nice guy. That's not that's not good. That's not healthy. That's not healthy. Uh all right, let's get to some questions so that I because people have been waiting for your questions for a long time.
+
+[20:28] All right, Jason Gray writes in. There's a question for you, James. Uh I'm working up a decent collection of manual coffee makers, uh less so espresso. So uh the Hario V60, is that the standard small one, or what is that one? Yeah, yeah, that's like the the most common little pour over cone.
+
+[20:45] Yeah. Uh the uh Yama Vacpot, the Aero Press, the Mocha Pot, the vintage atomic coffee maker, the double wall stainless steel French press, and a bripe. What's a bripe? Is it brick? Bripe is a coffee brew pipe.
+
+[20:59] It's bright, spripe. It's like uh it's like a copper pipe that you kind of cook coffee in and then drink a bit like a port sipper. Why would I want coffee to touch copper? In i for a long period of time. Uh is it tinned?
+
+[21:14] Right, right, right. Uh I assume it's coated. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[21:18] What's the word? Is it passivated? Is it something else? It's kind of fun. It's ridiculous, but it's it's really fun.
+
+[21:23] So I should try I should I should bripe one day. One day I should bripe. I'll get you a bripe. All right, all right. Oh, by the way, I noticed that uh on one I was on your one of your videos or was it in the book?
+
+[21:33] I can't remember, where you're actually like, listen, I don't drink mocha coffee, but if you're gonna do it, here's how I love it. That's what I love. You're like, let's look at this thing that people like and try to make it as good as we can, right? No? That was you, wasn't it?
+
+[21:45] I think it was. Right, right, right. Yeah, absolutely. That was probably yeah. People love their mocha pots.
+
+[21:49] People live their mocha pots. I don't really understand it. People love it. All right. So uh that was Jason Gray's list of oh, mocha pot's on the list.
+
+[21:58] There it is. Uh I read it. I didn't even see it. Uh the only item on my wish list is the Yama Slow Dripper Tower. What am I missing?
+
+[22:05] What is Jason missing with that list in terms of unique processes or fun brewing devices? I have room for one or two more before I run out of uh wife allocated shelf space. Stasia loves that. Uh P.S. She does not love that.
+
+[22:20] Uh uh if there's time for two questions, any idea on how to clean the atomic so it's safe to use. I got new seals, but should I be worried about the old aluminum or anything, or just run it a few times first? I don't know what that means. Is that the one with the like that looks like a juicer? Is the atomic the one that looks like a juicer where you pull the two handles down?
+
+[22:38] No, no, it's like uh it's like a moca pot but fancier. Like uh it's like a kind of weird, bulbous, pretty moca pot thing that kind of runs at slightly higher pressures, but not much. All right. So what what what we're doing is a mocha pot. What weirdo thing should Jason get?
+
+[22:51] He's got space one or two more before he runs into trouble with his uh spouse there. Uh I I would say I know he's not really sounding like he's into espresso, but I would probably throw like a lever espresso machine of some sort in there, like a little manual one that doesn't need power or anything like that. That would be fun. He has no cold brewing stuff, so yeah, uh uh like some sort of cold dripper, but I don't know. I'm personally not a huge fan of cold brewed coffee.
+
+[23:18] Um that's just me there. Some people like like it a lot more than I do. But yeah, I would say like a little fun manual lever espresso machine would be would be joyful and kind of beautiful. Something like a robot uh or like a flare or something like that would be fun. Oh, not like one of the older ones like a Pavoni or like uh what's the what's the actual spring small one?
+
+[23:37] I I actually own one of them. What the hell is it? It's uh I forget. Oh uh with the spring? Yeah, no, there was a small one made by a uh a spring fire um the Fire Mina?
+
+[23:49] No, it's made by a full-size company. It's it was like the lever pull version of like the Sylvia. Uh but it wasn't no it's older, much older. It's small, it's red, it's got like enamel and like a lot of chrome on it, like a small thing. Oh god, it has two separate Oh my god.
+
+[24:07] Uh I can't remember the name of it. I have one. It's still in parts. I I think I tried to sell it and I couldn't um whatever. Uh but I like lever.
+
+[24:15] I told you I like lever. Lever's great. But you don't I can the newer go with the new one, not with like a pavoni or something like Pavoni, that's the old one, right? Those ones don't work like a commercial lever. Like the Right.
+
+[24:27] Like they're direct pressure. So you you're you know, compressing a spring, you're compressing, you know, you're pushing down on the coffee with the lever. Um they're they're just kind of cheaper. They're kind of a little bit more fun. You can play with them a little bit more if you like to mess around with this stuff.
+
+[24:40] And you can get them that they don't need power, you just pour boiling water in them, and so they're a little bit cheaper and kind of fun to play with that way. Are you an enjoyer of the uh of the uh pressure gradient going down like a le like a spring would do, or no? Or do you not an enjoyer of that? Yeah, yeah, broadly, yes. I think that's you know, if you get into the whole pressure profiling thing, then yes, decreasing pressure toward the end of the shot, especially uh is broadly a good thing.
+
+[25:04] Yeah, I mean, I think that's why the old levers made such good shots. I mean, it's I think it's just a you know, that's the way they could produce pressure, and it just so happened it made something delicious, and that was lost in the era of pro cons. Procons are nice, they're easy, but whatever, okay. Uh and uh and on the atomic, you think he's good to go, safe to use? Yeah, it's just I mean, like uh people freak out about aluminium.
+
+[25:27] Um, and and I don't really think they should. Uh so I would just keep it clean, just scrub it clean. Uh people let mocker pots and things like that accumulate a kind of patina of dirt as if that's a good thing. And it's it's it's not a good thing. Yeah.
+
+[25:42] I I'm a big fan of just clean it properly, detergent, keep it clean, beautiful. Right. That's the answer. Don't dishwash aluminum. It's fine to use uh steel wool pads on um uh get rid of the calcium and uh salt deposits on the inside, they build up and that's nasty.
+
+[25:56] Okay. Uh pain MJ, uh to you, uh James. Uh do you have much interest in tea and will you ever produce content on it? I did search your YouTube channel for tea, but it seems to just bring up coffee videos, or perhaps he's interested in it, but there's not the same depth of technique, equipment, etc. when it comes to brewing tea, so it just doesn't fit your content.
+
+[26:14] So the question is do you feel a deep dive in your life on tea coming coming in any point? I I love tea, but it's I can't lose more of my life to stuff. Like I I can't I can't go down one more rabbit hole. I can't do it. I like tea, I want to drink good tea but I I kind of refuse to learn about it meaningfully so that's kind of my weird thing with tea and whiskey.
+
+[26:35] I like them both and I refuse to get weird about them because I just can't I can't do it. You know what? I think this is healthy. I think this is a healthy healthy attitude. Yeah.
+
+[26:44] Uh Koto writes saying good morning. I would love to hear uh James's thoughts on green coffee beans that are aged for an extended period of time. So um I guess like I guess there's other stuff happening besides just the old school monsooning uh that I I'm not aware of uh I never have had it but I've read about some roasters in Japan that use decades old aged green beans. Uh I would also love to hear uh your thoughts about Nell Drip brewers I which I don't know anything about so go go for it. Okay.
+
+[27:10] Uh I I think it's really just one cafe in uh Tokyo called Cafe Lambre. And uh I went there and um they they sort of age out these raw coffees and I chose the oldest coffee on the menu which was um from Columbia and picked in 1952 at the time which is like 2012 maybe so like it was old old and um I'm very you know that they're lovely people and they care deeply about what they do. It is the most terrifying and alarming cup of coffee I've ever consumed in my life. It was the moment where I took a sip and and you were reminded that your sense of taste is primarily there to stop you dying. And that was like every alarm going off in my body of like don't swallow this but it was really expensive and I'm there with like two hosts and I'm like oh wish it's it's it's pre-COVID so I can pass the cup around and be like no no you should try some you should definitely I I don't recommend it.
+
+[27:59] I I think I think coffee does not age well unless you're freezing it like really cold. Um it's kind of fun and interesting to taste, but I don't think coffee degrades quite notably in flavor, sweetness, complexity. It starts to taste like jute bags, even if you don't keep it in jute bags. So I'm not a big fan of of aging out green coffee. But I wouldn't it's not I wouldn't say it's good.
+
+[28:22] Uh it's interesting. It's not it's not necessarily good. You know, uh when I got into home roasting in like the early 2000s, uh, you know, back when everyone was using uh popcorn poppers, you know, um it was hard getting green beans. Most of the green beans you got were terrible, right? And back then, one of the selling points was that, oh, green beans, they last forever, right?
+
+[28:44] And I man, they don't. Oh my God. So like I at the very beginning of the pandemic, when I thought that maybe no one would ever deliver anything to New York again, I bought a bunch of green beans and got them shipped to me. And uh I found a pack that was two years old recently, and and it had been in in plastic, sealed. Oh my god, it was bad.
+
+[29:04] Oh my god. Just like you say, it tasted like a bag, it was flat, it tasted almost like baked, like a like a roast fault. You know what I mean? It was just a nightmare. Mm-hmm.
+
+[29:13] Yeah, yeah. You can keep it in the freezer if your freezer runs really, really cold and it and it's okay. But um, yeah, it's it's just gonna age out and taste bad. Yeah. What do you think about the home roasting movement?
+
+[29:25] Do you like it or not like it? I mean, it's kind of broad question, but otherwise, like what do you think about home roasters? Uh as a people or uh equipment? Uh as a people. I think they're it's fun, right?
+
+[29:36] Anything that increases the uh anything. And it's super fun. Yeah, it's fun, right? It's not like they're gonna take your job away as a roast. As long as you're not No, no, no, no, no.
+
+[29:46] No, like it it it's it's enough of a pain that most people won't do it, you know. Like it's not it's fun, but it's it's kind of annoying at times as well. Um but yeah, I I I I think it's um as long as you're not trying to s like save money or something doing it, because that that just doesn't work out. But if you just want one more hobby and coffee is maybe not easy enough for you or you know, difficult enough already, then um then yeah, like level up your complexity and start roasting yourself. And um, it's a just a giant rabbit hole.
+
+[30:12] I would say of pain, but that's because it's you know, I have a kind of commercial mindset for that stuff. But um yeah, yeah, home roasting is huge fun. It's very satisfying too. And the house smells good, even if it doesn't really smell of coffee. Yeah, well, except for like if you live in an apartment like me, the the the oil settles all over everything.
+
+[30:29] It's kind of an and if you have a son who's nervous that the fire alarms are gonna go off, he now I don't know, it's it's it's hard in my house. Anyway, uh James, we're gonna go to a commercial break and we'll be right back with uh more cooking issues. Today's episode brought to you by Aura King Salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And today we have Michael Fabro from Oura King Salmon to talk to us more about how it's raised and bred. So I haven't really thought about this, but when you're raising wheat, you're raising just like a kind of a like a bunch of clones, right?
+
+[30:59] Or you know, of a specific variety, not a lot of uh diversity. So how do you make sure that there's gonna be enough diversity when you're raising these salmon? I'm not a wheat farmer, but I think a lot of the farming in the United States, they're actually buying the seeds. So one thing that's different about us is we have our own hatchery. So we're not buying eggs.
+
+[31:18] Definitely a lot of the aquaculture industry sources eggs from hatcheries, but we have our own hatchery, and we have for many decades. In fact, we're on our tenth generation of salmon. And this is traditional husbandry. This is selective breeding. You know, some of the traits we look for are fat content or skin color, flesh color.
+
+[31:35] But there's a lot of science behind it. You know, we have well over 200,000 individual broodstock salmon in our database that they can go to and look at the characteristics of each one. But it's really critical. Like controlling your own breeding and hatchery really helps you develop a very unique salmon in the end. Awesome.
+
+[31:55] Orican salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. So we have a caller, but before we do, Jordan wants to know what's your guilty pleasure at a coffee shop, uh, James. There is no guilty pleasure. That's not a thing.
+
+[32:09] I like the cappuccino just fine. Oh my god, I love that. Why be guilty about what you're drinking, right? Oh, nice. Uh, there's no I have no kills.
+
+[32:18] I love it. That's the correct answer, everyone, for everything in life. Uh we're back with uh James Hoffman, uh talking coffee. And we have a caller. Caller, you're on the air.
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+[32:30] Hi, James. Uh, my name is Ray in New York City. Uh immensely grateful for uh all the information on coffee that you put out there. I have a quick question about commercial roasting uh on a 15 or 20 kilo. How do you mitigate uh smoke and smell to keep your neighbors happy um without going full blast on a uh on a um afterburner?
+
+[32:55] I've seen vortex out there, but the internet has very mixed reviews on it. Um I just want to get your thoughts. Sure. Um okay. Treating smoke is one of the most frustrating and irritating parts of coffee roasting.
+
+[33:08] So like there's not there's no good answers to this question. There are some like um sort of hybrid systems that do like a ton of filtration, um, like a little bit of HEPA, some other particular stuff, and then uh like a little bit of I think catalytic uh oxidizers in there too. I think Probat makes a system that's relatively small for like up to 15 kilos. Um you've seen some people uh use like um misting systems and those kind of stuff to try and just like use water in the air to capture stuff and and sort of wash it away. None of it really works as well as afterburners do, and afterburners are the least elegant solution to a problem in history.
+
+[33:44] In that I have some smoke, the answer is just to burn the smoke and then it's gone. Um they're ultimately net beneficial to the environment, which is sort of depressing, uh compared to just letting the smoke go. But um, yeah, this there's honestly, sadly, it's just not that many options out there still. Um we did try electrostatic precipitators at one point, um, where you sort of pass the smoke through these charged plates. They they will take a little bit of the sort of particulate out, but you'll still get a lot of aroma that way.
+
+[34:13] So there's not a good answer to this question still. Until ultimately, if you want to fix the problem, it's an afterburner. At home I use a fake afterburner. Yeah. You do?
+
+[34:28] Well, when I'm I'm doing 400 grams, so it's nothing, right? So I just use one of my so many torches because of my torch business, and I just hold a torch in front of the thing uh while it's going and it eats all the smoke. Otherwise, all my alarms would go off because my ventilation's not as good as it was in my last apartment. Anyway. Uh as you say, not elegant.
+
+[34:47] Um T Dubs asks, uh, question Have you ever tried a staccato espresso shot where the fine, mid and coarse grounds are separated and then layered? Is there a way to get a similar extraction without all the sifting equipment? And is there a reason to do so? Um I have tried them. I I kind of I they're these kind of weird experimental espresso things that people do are really interesting as a kind of one-off thing, but part of my I'm just not that interested in them in a bigger way because they're just so wildly impractical because you you can't do it without the sifting equipment.
+
+[35:21] And, you know, sifting anything is miserable as an experience, even if you get the little machines that do it. So um if you have someone with a bunch of sieves, you should totally just try it as a one-off. But no, you can't really replicate it, I don't think any other way. And I and I don't think it's worth the effort of doing it outside of a single, huh, how interesting kind of moment. And also who makes a sieve stack that can accurately do like 18 grams and then get it all back.
+
+[35:50] There is one in coffee and they do like a put like like 10 sieve sizes and stuff. Um it it it it works okay, but obviously it's it's you know, sieving is hard. Sifting is hard. Yeah. Uh and doing it by hand is like not not super effective, but it's kind of okay.
+
+[36:04] Yeah, I'm with you on sifting in general. Not with coffee because I haven't tried it, but in general. Uh misplaced enthusiasm asks, uh uh you've tried many foods and drinks that contain coffee that should not have. Is there anything that you've thought, damn, this would be good with coffee in it? Uh also I've seen many applications of specialty coffee.
+
+[36:20] Uh have you seen many applications of specialty coffee in food? I imagine some interesting fermentations could be really good in something traditional like chocolate. I I'm kind of curious on your thoughts on this one too, Dave. But I I think coffee is is mostly a very difficult and ugly flavor to work with. And outside of, you know, it goes really well with dairy because that mitigates the bitterness.
+
+[36:41] Sugar is always friends with that, but it kind of limits the number of foods that it truly works well with. You know, sometimes we have a bunch of Maillard crossover that can be like a a nice flavor pairing, but again, that's you know, i i it's nothing new or that interesting. Um, you know, I think most applications of coffee and other stuff don't work. I think most coffee beers are terrible. I think most coffee, you know, uh things that aren't very obvious.
+
+[37:07] Uh, you know, it's fine in a dessert or whatever, but like most other applications, I just think it's a very ugly flavor when you put it up next to sort of more interesting things. Yeah, I don't have I don't I've never had good luck with it. I like coffee a lot. I don't like coffee flavored things very much. How did coffee or espresso rubbed steaks ever become a thing?
+
+[37:27] Coffee what? Rubbed steak. Oh coffee or espresso rub steak. I hate it. I think that's gross.
+
+[37:32] Well, you know, like you say, the traditional, like you throw a shot of a uh of espresso into a cake mix, it helps sometimes, you know what I mean? It's not even really present, it's just there to add a little bit of bitterness in the back of something or you know, some richness or in a in a chocolate situation. But yeah, I don't have anything good because I don't use it. I don't ever do that. Uh definitely don't dump Turkish grinds on your vanilla ice cream and and be like, you know, the lead singer of my band.
+
+[37:55] Definitely don't do that. Please don't do that to yourself. Um Matthew Solomon writes in, hey James, I'm an American transplant in Istanbul. I'm curious what, if any, your experience has been with Turkish coffee. Specifically, coffee is hugely popular here, uh, as is Turkish coffee, but they're mostly completely separate worlds.
+
+[38:13] I've seen a few special specialty shops offering uh specialty Turkish coffee, but it's very uncommon. Uh grinding a fresh to order is unheard of because there's that one store in Istanbul that everyone waits in that huge line to buy the stuff out of the grinders, right? It's kind of cool. You should go to that store if you're ever there. Uh, but it's very uncommon.
+
+[38:29] Grinding Turkish coffee, fresh to order uh in a coffee shop. It's unheard of, so it seems like there's a huge untapped world here to explore. I I'm surprised I don't see more people doing it. Uh as an side, Matthew likes it in in in cocktails. And we have another person who says hit all the Turkish stuff right away because we because we're gonna run out of time all the way.
+
+[38:44] This is from Michael J.K. My family's Lebanese and it always drank the uh Arabic Turkish style of coffee. The Greeks call it Greek coffee, by the way. Did you know that? After years of going down the rabbit hole of uh third wave coffee, I was wondering if anyone in the space has attempted a more modern take on this old brewing method.
+
+[39:02] And I will add for myself that uh I love that stuff and I'm terrible at making it. I even tried to do a sand uh thing once with my you know e brick, and I can't get a good, I can't make a real good cup of Turkish slash Greek coffee. So what are your thoughts, James? Uh I was um initially quite skeptical. I think I held that, you know, the the Turkish coffee that I'd had in the sort of first 15 years of working in coffee was mostly very traditional and not necessarily to my taste that much.
+
+[39:33] But then there's uh there's a shop in Berlin called Ben Rahim, and they do specialty Turkish coffee, and and uh they blew my mind. Like it was some of the best coffee I've uh I've had in like years. Like it was so good. Um and so I I kind of wrote down a bunch of notes of how they do stuff, and I was gonna, you know, go and learn a bit more, and then the pandemic happened, so it kind of got shelled for me. So uh it can be really good.
+
+[39:57] It's really simple. Um, you know, the the temperature piece is really, really, really important. Um kind of where you start and where you end up and all that kind of stuff. Um they were starting at like 60 Celsius as their kind of beginning point and heating from there quite gently. Uh but it can be really good.
+
+[40:12] And I and I it's definitely something I want to get into because I I had my mind blown by that shop. It was just so vibrant and kind of interesting and strong, but not like overwhelming. It was it was really good. So it's definitely got huge potential to be very delicious with kind of modern coffee. And also like the ritual of it's so amazing, you know, like uh the first rise, the second rise, the whole thing.
+
+[40:29] It's a kind of an amazing ritual. And then I and I've had it where I've loved it. I had it in Greece actually. I loved it. One of the well, like I think he was a world uh barista champion at one point.
+
+[40:43] I forget his name. I was we were Nastasi and I were at his coffee shop and he he made it for me. And I was like, the whole thing is lovely if it's great and it can be great. So like I look forward to you, you know, now that the pandemic is, you know, uh hopefully getting more manageable. I look forward to you producing some content on that.
+
+[40:59] Um I think it definitely is a it's high on the list. Yeah, good. Uh Devin Patel writes in coming from uh being a world barista champion, which uh uh faces the industry to a cafe roaster and now having a YouTube channel uh facing almost exclusively the home enthusiast slash user, uh we can see some of the struggle that manufacturers catering to the home enthusiast market have to deal with. Uh straggling uh the imaginary line uh between or was it st uh whatever straddling the imaginary line between equipment made for a professional and as a hobby hobbyist with the need to create distinction uh between the two. As a test and reviewer of both equipment made for the home and work markets, uh, why do you think equipment made for home enthusiasts is not made with the durability that the professional ones uh have and how or can how how can it or should it change?
+
+[41:48] This is I mean it it's just the the the nature of the market, right? Like a a domestic machine will be durable enough to last under normal usage to just past its warranty date and maybe a little bit longer, because that's what it needs to do to hit the lowest possible price to get as many people to buy it as possible. Whereas commercial stuff is just gonna have a rougher time, and so the build is is totally different. So I I think it's just the nature of the the beast in a way, and that's probably true of most equipment, be it kitchen equipment or coffee equipment or anything else. Except except refrigerators.
+
+[42:18] Commercial refrigerators break every day and home ones don't. That's the one thing that's flipped. Yeah, but they're open like 200 times a day, right? Like they're just constantly fighting. Listen, don't buy into their marketing.
+
+[42:30] Don't buy into those people telling you, listen, why is your commercial fridge so damn loud? It that they suck. Commercial refrigeration is by and large just blows and everyone's just used to paying, you know, thousands of dollars a year to have some Jocomo show up and fix it for you. I think it's what it is. I don't know.
+
+[42:48] Whatever. That's also true. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and Devin has a second question for you, quick one.
+
+[42:53] Uh, how many hand towels is appropriate to have behind the bar? I I don't know. Like uh that's a that's a very open question. Well, are you a miser? Are you a hand tell miser?
+
+[43:05] Are you are you a profligate? No, no, but I like you. But you're you've got to look like you're organized, not like you're drowning in hand towel chaos where everything is apparently a mess and leaking. Like you have enough that you're, you know, stuff is clean, like half a dozen is fine, but then you know a big stack behind you or whatever. Looks like you've got a places and there's just clothes everywhere, and that just that just gets a bit gets a bit much.
+
+[43:26] Well, this is this is what access to it, you know. This is funny. This is funny. Okay, okay. So most baristas consider themselves more front-of-house style people, right?
+
+[43:36] Back of house style people get so anal about hand towel usage. I mean, crazy, because like the chef is it's usually the chef who has to pay the linen bills. And so they know that if they let people on the line use hand towels, that all of a sudden they're gonna spend all of their money on hand towels. So, like the the amount of yelling that happens if you waste hand towels or like don't use your hand towels properly in a kitchen situation is like so like when you're like half a dozen, like half a dozen, um spendi spendi. You know what I mean?
+
+[44:08] It's like different attitude, you know? Well, I I'm kind of being open on the definition of towels. I can't believe that's a sentence I just said. But like, you know, like if we're talking about a towel for the steam wand, a towel for like the bench or towel for the grinder, each grinder, all that kind of stuff. Like there's a lot of towels necessary for good coffee, but not like an insane amount.
+
+[44:27] Yeah, I like how you went Bill Clinton on the def like what meaning of is is on paper towels. Strong. Um Josh Kuhn. What? Josh Kuhn writes in, uh I recently visited a large city in the southwestern United States.
+
+[44:41] Some of the supposedly good coffee places served me uh an Americano so acidic and astringent that it was undrinkable, and I dumped it. Uh I was off to also gifted some medium, in quotes, roasted beans from a local roaster. This kind of goes to what we were talking about before, that were so under roasted that I could barely grind them with a Lito. Oh my god, it's so hard to roast beans that have that are uh that are low roasted. Oh my God.
+
+[45:03] You know the brevel grinders won't even work. The clutches won't work. They'll they'll think that they've hit a rock if you do like a lighter roast. Uh I don't know if you've had that experience. Anyway, these beans produced a similarly undrinkable coffee.
+
+[45:15] Were these just terrible coffee producers? Or do people actually like coffee like this, which I can't believe. Thanks, uh Joshua from North Dakota. Uh by the way, you should be nice to him. He's a hunter.
+
+[45:25] If you get in good with him, maybe someday you'll send you some uh some you know, some meat. It's been very good. Yeah. Some meat. Uh um, so I I would say people do like coffee like this.
+
+[45:35] People do like very light roasted coffee. Um, but uh but I think it's just it's it's the problem is uh historically the you know, the last 10 years that's been presented as somehow like better or superior. Whereas I feel like these different schools of coffee can totally live side by side. And I think it's it's just trying to work out before you order does this coffee shop serve a style of coffee that I like or not? You know what I mean?
+
+[45:56] And that way, you know, have a look at the beans. If they don't look how you expect coffee beans to look, you're just gonna have a bad time. And and you know, uh other people will have a great time. So yeah, I I I get the frustration in that you know, this this new style of coffee seems to be more common suddenly, especially amongst independent businesses if you don't want to go to like a a corporate chain or whatever. But um, yeah, I uh you know, uh I I think coffee can definitely be too light and it tastes of like grass and straw and it's not it's not good.
+
+[46:26] Yeah, that's it. But um and and that definitely was a thing for a while where there was just super light roasts kind of everywhere and they were just I I thought kind of not fun. Uh but no, I think people do prefer some people definitely prefer lighter roasted coffee, uh which is, you know, if you if you didn't have acidity in your coffee for most of your life, then you know, these kind of light roasts have so much that it's weird, you know what I mean? It's like something is wrong that there's this much acid in this drink, right? That never usually has any acidity.
+
+[46:57] So I think that's just the moment of like, what is this? This is not coffee. Well, are people typically doing it with beans that have some of the fruitier notes to try to make it more like you're drinking a cup of fruit instead of a coffee, like some of the more blueberry things, or people more doing these light roasts on on beans that are kind of classically high in acid, like uh like uh African and and and high you know high altitude uh you know beans from I think places like Africa, Ethiopia, and what is that mainly what they're doing it to? Are they doing it to places that typically would be on kind of a more of a dark, more of a sweet, more of a full bodied place? I would say that they're doing it to kind of everything because the the sort of the the idea, the philosophy behind it is the the darker you roast something, the more you'll kind of roast out the origin characteristics, the kind of taste of place and replace them with kind of the more generic, kind of roasty flavors, right?
+
+[47:51] And um that's broadly that's broadly true, but uh I think that gets taken to extremes sometimes as well, where people are roasting so light to try and preserve these flavors that they never really develop them in the first place either. So um, but you know, that's the kind of idea. It's it's all about kind of taste of place in a way, or or kind of preserving the unique characteristics of that farm's coffee or that co-op's coffee. That's the kind of that's the the philosophy. Right.
+
+[48:14] And uh well, let's say I I'm there's so many questions I want to ask, but I got to get through the ones that uh the people asked because like I'm curious, like so much has changed in the in the world of pr of producers now, where you get a lot of producers who are taking much finer control over the processing, fermenting, you know, washing or not, however they they're doing it, dry or not, of their coffee. And has that just been a hundred percent net positive for the industry? It has to be, right? That that the producers are taking so much care. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's it's good for the consumer.
+
+[48:47] There's way more variety and choice, and coffee's flavor has a much broader spectrum than ever now. Um and yeah, I think broadly speaking, as well, coffee as a whole is kind of getting better. Like more producers are kind of focusing on ripeness and evenness in the fruit, and people are willing to spend the money necessary to to you know incur the additional costs of of growing and harvesting ripe fruit. Like it's it's just you know, fruit harvesting is miserable, especially when it's done by hand on the side of a steep hill, you know, uh a few thousand feet up. Um so yeah, it it's definitely net positive.
+
+[49:14] Uh I think there's some weird and wacky stuff going on too, but that's that's inevitable. Um but yeah, it's it's a it's a very good thing. I mean, what do you think there's still a place for the like the huge like countrywide cooperatives like uh like what Columbia did, where like it obviously helped a lot of people for a long time, but then really held back a lot of Colombian farmers from getting to that next level and specialty. Is there still a place for that? Is it still necessary?
+
+[49:41] Does it need to move the way that stuff's done or no? I I don't think so. I think um, you know, we we have a kind of bleak future in terms of supply and demand uh with kind of climate change and stuff coming in. Um so you know, that's sort of that's gonna impact prices in a whole other way. And ultimately money is the big root of all of this, like what would get the producer the most money for the work that they're gonna do.
+
+[50:04] Uh and and these days keeping it traceable, keeping it separate i i is typically a way to earn more money than kind of lumping it into like a national sort of buying program that Columbia used to have. Yeah. Uh well, interesting you say about climate change, because I don't think we have any questions on that. So I'll I'll I'll hit it to you is that you've done a bunch of interesting videos on non uh Arabica uh coffees that uh taste like some of them which taste like Arabica and grow in like lower, hotter climes. You wanna do you really see a future in that?
+
+[50:37] I mean, you were you were very hesitant. You didn't want to say, hey, this is a solution, don't worry about climate change, let's just grow this stuff. But you you said that it might make an interesting cup of coffee, right? You want to talk about that? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[50:48] There's this old species of coffee called stenophila um that they wrote about in like the 1930s as being more delicious than arabica. A Eucharce wrote about it in all about coffee. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, he would have heard it from someone else.
+
+[51:01] Like his whole book is like secondhand information. Um, an anti-Uchers pool. Oh, snap. Okay. I mean, it's fine.
+
+[51:09] It's a fine book. Oh my god. That was a lot of received information on his part. I mean, he lived mainly in New York, right? I mean, he he he was in New York at the coffee thing, and he also did tea.
+
+[51:19] So he, you know, he went down two rabbit holes, but you say because he was an aggregator. I've never heard anyone go down on euchers like that, so I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Uh it's I mean, it's a fun book. It's a fun book.
+
+[51:30] But I mean, like, he's so desperate for coffee to be an American thing that he's trying to like cram it on the first boats from England and stuff. Anyway, um off topic. So Stenophila uh grows at much lower altitudes, can tolerate like six, seven degrees Celsius higher temperatures than Arabica, which is like a lot. Um, but it it's a lower yielding, which is why everyone stopped growing it in the 1940s. But they found some, they thought it was extinct and they found some again.
+
+[51:55] And yeah, it it it sort of has the genetic potential to create a more climate resilient coffee where you don't necessarily have to breed away in a kind of breeding program the negative flavors. So like Robusta is is more climate resilient, but most people prefer the taste of Arabica. And you've got to work really hard to kind of reduce the bitterness or the kind of rubbery harshness of Robusta uh to to kind of have it be more palatable. Well, and to your point, even when you get rid of that, it's not interesting, right? Though that's the other thing about Rob Robusta is that even when you get rid of that kind of burnt rubber action that it it can have, you're like it's just neutral.
+
+[52:30] And why would you want just neutral, right? I mean, you know, the the answer to that sadly is that so we still have some sort of coffee to drink. Um but you know, stenophila represents this interesting opportunity. The the problem is that just not enough people are freaking out yet, and so not enough people are funding it. So research is a little slow.
+
+[52:49] And what was that other variety, like parent variety that you tried that someone gathered like enough beans that you were able to like roast like a little like a handful of it and make a cup of coffee and your thing was like that was that was it. Oh, that was a stenophyllla? That was stenophila. Wasn't there another variety of things? Yeah.
+
+[53:05] There was a kind of uh like a parent family of um Arabica, but like a weird uh cluster of varieties in Yemen that they're called Yemenia that was kind of halfway between the two, so it was you know growing in a much more difficult environment, tasting very good, um, but just interesting as a kind of fresh pool of genetic material. Because most Arabica coffee really stems from one or two varieties, and so we're not quite as, you know, uh screwed as bananas, but we're we're not in a great place in terms of like uh genetic diversity. So, you know, if if a disease comes for coffee, it's just gonna take all of coffee out because there's just a lack of that that sort of diversity. Um so this was interesting in that it was kind of a fresh injection of genetics potentially into what we're typically consuming or or growing, sorry, all around the world. All right.
+
+[53:56] Um because the problem, right, with climate change, we all know the problems, but with coffee specifically, there's only so far you can go up the mountain, right? Before you can't anymore, no? Right. And there's a lot less mountain the further up you go. So yeah.
+
+[54:11] Uh Miguel Kunz writes, uh I'm a barista working on a semi-auto two-group Linnea classic espresso machine. Thus I have no ability for controlling pre-infusion, pressure profiles, etc. What tips do you have for getting the best out of this machine? Uh I believe uh uh I believe this plus uh a Maser Jolly is a super common setup for cafes in the United States. Thanks for the consistently high quality coffee info and entertainment.
+
+[54:37] It's not it's not a bad setup at all. Um, you know, I would obsess a little bit on the whole weighing the the shots piece, like uh, you know, pay real attention to the recipe. Espresso is just such a fussy thing when it comes to recipes. Aside from that, I wouldn't freak out about the pressure stuff or or pressure profiling or pre-infusion too much. Um and and probably not that the Maz is a bad grinder, but you know, upgrading the grinder would be the next kind of thing I would look at to to kind of getting better espresso.
+
+[55:06] But in terms of squeezing the most out of this, a lot of measurement is kind of the answer. What about how fidgety are you with uh distribution and tamping? Different if I'm making it for just me versus making it for hundreds of people a day. If it's just me, I'm going the whole hog. Like a little paper filter disc at the bottom of the basket makes a massive improvement.
+
+[55:29] I definitely recommend that. Uh and then I have like the little needle distribution tool, which I've kind of become a big fan of, where you kind of um the kind of acupuncture needles stuck into something and you kind of stir the clumps out of the coffee before you tamp it. Uh that I think is very helpful for most people at home. It's not super practical in a kind of cafe environment. What do you think?
+
+[55:48] So that's the kind of the line I would draw there. Right. What do you think of the weird for fast cafe stuff, like the weird triangular distribution thing on the flip side of the tamper where you like do that one side distributes and the other side tamps? Uh I'm not I'm not a huge fan of it. I think I don't think they're necessarily detrimental, but I don't think they're a particularly big improvement on on not doing them.
+
+[56:11] So um I'm not I'm not a huge lover of them. They're fine. I'm not gonna say they're bad, but they're just not a huge improvement. I still have my Reg Barber that I bought 25 years ago, so that's me. Okay.
+
+[56:22] Uh Prashan Kanesh writes in uh do you have any recommendations for a first electric coffee bean grinder? Do you re of the problem? Okay, uh Prashan has not said what kind of coffee he's interested in, so we're gonna have to you're gonna have to do a couple of things here, right? So uh first electric coffee bean grinder, do you recommend burr versus blade? I currently own a Hario manual grinder, so Prashant's used to that style of grinder, right?
+
+[56:45] Uh but it takes too long to grind coffee in the morning. So for someone who likes the Hario, but it takes too long to grind in the morning. What would you say? And I guess give me two price points. Give me a crazy one and give me a like uh, you know.
+
+[57:00] And not. Okay. The easy one is like the the the lower price point, it's still high because it's you know, it's still a hundred and something dollars. But like uh the entry-level Barazzo Encore, I think is a good starting point. Like that's a great grinder.
+
+[57:12] They seem like a good company. It's good value for money. They seem like a good company. They're a good company. And they're good people, good support.
+
+[57:18] I think I think they're great value for money. There's loads of secondhand ones, and I think the burrs are gonna be fine. And as long as it sort of works fine, you know, cleaning one up and and using that is not a bad thing to do at all. Uh and that's at like 150, 160 bucks, I think, brand new. Is it which now which model is that?
+
+[57:34] Is that one of their low retention ones or no? That's just uh the I think it's the Encore, which is their kind of entry-level burr grinder. It'll go down to like um nearly mock a pot fine, uh, but not espresso. Um so yeah, that would be that I think that's that's uh no one else is really super competitive in that section of the market. Uh so that's why I think it's just an easier recommendation.
+
+[57:58] Yeah, my brother-in-law Wiley uses their stuff, but he has one of their you know much nicer zero retention things. Anyway, okay. Mark uh Stegelman rights. Uh I have a Gogia classic US model from 2017 with no PID control. I'm wondering if there's any pre uh if any of the pre-infusion hacks like opening up the steam valve for a few seconds at the start or turning off the brew button and flipping it off for a few seconds uh actually work.
+
+[58:19] Thanks. What are your thoughts on these uh hacks on the uh on the Gagia? Yeah, don't turn the pump on and off and on again. That's not good for the puck. The the Steam Wand hack isn't a bad one though, so that's worth doing.
+
+[58:31] And the one mod I would recommend is changing out the over pressure valve spring on the gadget to something a little lower, like a six-bar spring, that will definitely improve the coffee. Nice. Uh do people still buy the way we get the last question from Sean Mayo. Any brewing method has a number of dimensions that affect the final product grind, temperature, time, water ratio. For the home brewer, do you have a priority order for which variables to play around with first?
+
+[58:52] Uh or uh versus just setting to a default and ignoring. What's your priority on here? Yeah, I try and keep my ratio. Yeah, yeah. I I I would keep as many things fixed as possible.
+
+[59:04] So like dose in like how much water I'm using, all of that stuff I keep fixed, and just really adjust with grind. Like that's my primary thing to mess around with flavor and extraction with. So that's that's the number one thing to change the flavor of the coffee and to improve or or kind of fix any issues. Alright, sorry, one more last. Jacob P wants to know is uh there any point in centrifugion coffee or is it too fussy?
+
+[59:25] From my perspective, I think it can be fun with cold brew applications to force stuff through, but I don't know what else people are using centrifuges for. Too fussy, anything interesting with centrifuges? Uh if you spin it fast enough, you can spin the oil fraction out, and it's truly disgusting. Don't don't eat that or drink it, or whatever it would be. No, it's not that useful.
+
+[59:43] I I would say like uh it's interesting to kind of clarify it a little bit, but um yeah, it it's not it's not that useful. All right, well, James, thanks so much for coming on. We really had a good time, and uh, you know, maybe someday you'll come back on again. Uh I appreciate it. I hope so.
+
+[59:58] Thanks for having me. Thank you. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center from New Stance Studios. Not joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. She is on an aeroplane. But uh I am joined uh with uh John, Customer Service Extraordinaire.
+
+[0:25] How are you doing? Doing great. Right? Stas is on an airplane right now? I believe so, yeah.
+
+[0:28] Yeah. Yeah, traveling to fancy far away countries. Fancy far away countries. Uh buy me a ticket on an aeroplane. We do have Joe Hazen rocking the panels here.
+
+[0:37] How you doing? I'm doing great. Great to see you, sir. Yeah, anything good happened this week? Anything good, anything bad, anything indifferent?
+
+[0:43] Oh, not much. Um uh my son is kicking ass right now, and yeah, I'm all about it's all about the praise for him. Nice about to turn five months. Five months. Uh now you have to refresh me.
+
+[0:54] So five months, the smarts aren't uh the smiles aren't fart smiles anymore. They're real smiles at this point. They're real smiles right now. Nice. And he's just learning to give kisses too, which is amazing.
+
+[1:03] Oh, nice. Yeah. I love it. Uh where where are you in the in uh where have people settled on solid food? It changes every uh every ten seconds what people are supposed to do with their with their kids.
+
+[1:14] We're moving into solid foods or a uh medley of a mix of formula and then uh like you know, uh a pseudo-liquid food in about six months. Well, I like pseudo-liquid. Yeah. Well, it's you know, slightly viscous, it's not really you know, sludge. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:33] Yeah. You know, uh you know how like sometimes people buy uh quote unquote like greens. They used to buy greens and then juice the hell hell out of them to give them to their kids, and then they would give their kids nitrate poisoning. Yeah. More E.
+
+[1:48] coli. Listen, for those of you that are that are that are just having kids, I'll give you some stuff that I've I'm 51. I got two kids. Like they're, you know, two 20 and 17, and I've seen plenty of people raise kids. There are no right answers.
+
+[2:00] Just try not to feel guilty. There are no right answers. Uh you know, just do your best and don't feel guilty about it. Would you agree? Absolutely.
+
+[2:08] We're trying our hardest here. We're making it up as we go along. All right. All right. And uh we got Jackie Molecules who's uh along with John is running the Discord uh right now and if you're a Patreon uh person you can listen live or else you know wait till Friday but uh Jack how you doing?
+
+[2:24] I'm good hanging in LA. Oh you're back in LA the other day because I uh I don't know yeah yeah I had a had a weird urge to make jambalaya for some reason. Really? And um you know needed like yeah I only needed like a little bit of tomato paste didn't have a tube opened that can when I was done like now what? Well the good news about tomato paste the good news about tomato paste Jack is tomato paste lasts for a a decent amount of time.
+
+[2:50] You know what the main problem with tomato paste is what well when you wrap it you're gonna get some nasty dehydration on the tomato on the inside of the can above the area where you scooped it out with a spoon and it looks really bad and then when you scoop that out that crusty black part doesn't really mix in as easily as the rest of it and so it's gonna make you think that everything in the world has gone bad but it hasn't two things you could do you could push that's exactly what happened yeah I know dude I'm telling you man again 51 I've been I've been down this road a long time. So like uh you know push you can push plastic wrap down onto the top of it all the way in to kind of prevent that but the the people who uh the good people who designed the tomato paste can did not make it uh do you know what I I uh again I told you I I make most of my recipes so that they take a whole can of tomato paste just for this reason. And uh I like that I I'm an open on both ends and push the sucker out like it's cranberry jelly kind of a fellow, if that makes sense to you. Ooh. Yeah, I like that.
+
+[3:51] I'm a two end open. But now in the days of uh I started doing that way back when no one ever recycled anything, and so now it does leave sharp edges if you don't have one of those things. So I do worry that someone in a sorting plant somewhere is going to. But I guess they deal with cans all day, so probably it's not gonna, I'm probably not gonna be the thing that drives them over the edge. All right.
+
+[4:12] So I'm glad we got to have that little conversation, Jack. But today we have uh special guest uh on the radio, Oliver Milman. Now, Millman 1L, not like so not how how you doing? I'm I'm well, yeah. How are you?
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+[4:24] Uh I meant to ask you before we're on the air because it's not what I usually ask about. But is is is Millman like uh similar to Miller in terms of where the where the name comes from? Like does it derive from milling or is it entirely unrelated? Uh unknown provenance. I always assumed yes, and we just uh became pretentious and dropped one of the L's at some point uh along the line.
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+[4:44] But yeah, no actual milling experience in my or my family's history as far as I'm aware. Yeah, well, and I just want to say uh I don't you know most of you who hear this are listening at some way later date, but it is for you an extremely busy news day, and I am uh not related to what we're talking about today, but uh d today last night is the night and you're covering this for The Guardian, uh that the uh was Alito, right? His uh his stuff was leaked on Roe versus Wade. So thank you for coming with us on this extremely busy news day for you. No, not at all.
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+[5:18] Um it's good to hop from one crisis to another. Yeah. Well, so like uh so do you normally cover both like so you're the quote unquote environmental reporter for The Guardian. Yeah. Uh but do you also normally do podcasts or is this just uh No, uh I I kind of we uh we're on kind of rotors, so I was on the 7 a.m.
+
+[5:37] shift this morning, and once you're on that shift, it's a kind of like a black hole of you just get assigned whatever's going on. So of course, once that news broke last night, I knew okay, I'm gonna be writing about abortion in the morning, which you know it's obviously a delicate area to to write about. Um different from from the environmental stuff I usually cover, but uh certainly interesting to dive into those kind of things. But yeah, normally my bread bread and butter is uh the environment, climate change, funny animal stuff, right? That kind of thing.
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+[6:08] Yeah. Yeah, so well anyway. Um do they know who leaked it? Because that's crazy. Yeah, there's two competing theories, isn't there?
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+[6:15] There's the the kind of liberal justice clerk who wanted to kind of warn the world of this impending thing happening, or the conservative side to kind of uh get us all ready for this to get the outrage out of the way before the actual judgment comes down. So yeah, there's these two competing narratives. I have no idea which one it is. I'm sure by the time people listen to this, they're it may be maybe a bit more clear because there's an investigation underway into looking into what happened. Yeah.
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+[6:38] All right. So you are here for uh the book that you recently came out with, by the way, same publishers, Norton. Right, yeah. Good old Norton. Yeah, yeah, employee-owned Norton.
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+[6:48] Yeah, that's right. Good guys, uh really hands-on, helpful publishers. Yeah, can't say many good uh too many good things about them. True. I also enjoy them, although I owe them a book, so you know, there's that.
+
+[7:01] So the book is The Insect Crisis, the fall of the tiny empires uh that run the World. And if you have any questions uh for Oliver, call in to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And if you'd like to know how to call in and listen live, uh go to our Patreon, right, John? Yep, exactly.
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+[7:14] Uh patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh so before we talk about uh stuff in in general, uh, when you're reading the the book, it's actually something that uh apparently everyone knew about, but I I I didn't. You start with kind of a si a silent spring style of what the world would look like with it with a dearth of insects, actually with no insects, right? Uh and uh and so you want to talk like it's about that and then about this kind of which I didn't realize huge until I thought about what you wrote and like thought about my own observations. Again, as I said, 51, so I've lived through a big chunk of the depredations that you're talking about.
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+[7:55] Uh so you want to talk a little bit about a world without insects and then the kind of the more recent knowledge that a lot of people are coming to that there's been a huge crash in insect populations. Yeah, sure. So I was thinking about how to kind of open the book and uh uh kind of thought we could kind of dive right into the science, all these kind of scientific warnings about happening to insects. But I thought before you you start going into those things, you've got to get people to care. And it's been one of the kind of challenges of climate change journalism, frankly, over the last kind of decade or so.
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+[8:25] Is this you know, uh, you know, a lot of people think it's a kind of far-off problem affecting people in the Pacific Islands or polar bears. And you've got to kind of show that it's a here and now issue and uh it's gonna affect us all in some way. So I thought the kind of starkist way to do that was to kind of illustrate a world without insects at all. That's the prologue of the book. Um, it's kind of taken a little bit like you say, inspiration from Silent Spring, this idea of a quartined world, a kind of nature that's been stripped of any kind of life uh of it.
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+[8:52] And also the uh the kind of the work and the insights of E.O. Wilson, this kind of biologist, he passed away uh earlier on this year. I didn't know he finally died. Yeah, he did. He was old as dirt though.
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+[8:59] Yeah, 92, 93. I I interviewed him last year, and um yeah, he was I mean he was still quite kind of articulate, and but you know, he's he was he was getting on. You know, the the rule that what they say now is that the more you keep act uh what's it called, exercising your mind as you get older, the sharper you stay. Right. Or can.
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+[9:22] Yes. If you're lucky. Yeah, uh, I think he he still he still kind of was involved in scientific. Had he made it through kind of the some of the crazy controversy that he kind of went through, I don't know, was it 10 or 15 years ago on some of his evolutionary thoughts? And some of that kind of resurfaced after he died.
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+[9:36] There was this kind of like backlash to the to the praise he was getting about his views around evolution and so on. I think that's a kind of open question. Well, his his book uh The Ants with Hold Holb Dobs, Hol I can never pronounce the guy's name, Holb Dobler. The other guy Wilson's so easy, he totally shafted the other guy. Hold on I can't even remember, I can't remember.
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+[9:58] But that's that is one of my the classic books of all time. Yeah, it just happens to be on ants. When was the last time a book on ants won the Pulitzer? I know. I mean, incredible skill as a writer.
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+[10:07] I mean, a lot of scientists are kind of deathly dull uh and terrible writers, but he's actually a very accomplished writer. Um, and he kind of looked at this issue uh a little while ago, looking at what would happen in a world without insects. And um it was kind of really striking to me. It was kind of well, we'd last about three or four months, maybe. Um, you know, there would be mass starvation, uh, you know, the world would kind of crumble around us in terms of ecosystem collapse and so on.
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+[10:34] It would be a pretty grim place. I tried to kind of illustrate that uh in the book, um, showing us exactly what we would lose and maybe touching on some things that people really do care about. Like there's this tiny midge that pollinates the cacao plant that gives us chocolate. So this hundred billion dollar a year industry relies on this tiny little midge. No one thinks about that when they're eating chocolate.
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+[10:54] Um, but they'll be gone. Um ice cream will be under threat, uh, all the kind of lovely fruits and vegetables we like to eat would be under threat. So I wanted to kind of show what's was at stake first, first up. That was the kind of first job of the book, I think. Right.
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+[11:08] Speaking about uh chocolate and the flies, you know, one of the things about the book is you interview a lot of scientists, and these these entomologists are kind of nutty, which is kind of they're kind of fun, right? Like so uh I wrote I wrote down uh uh her name. Erica McAllister is your chocolate and and fly person, and you have her dressed as a fly on a go-kart chasing someone dressed as poop. Yeah, those entomologists they like to have fun, don't they? Yeah.
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+[11:33] Yeah. Um, yeah, I think appropriately the uh fly did catch the poop in the in the race. Well that makes sense. Yeah. I I have uh this I want to make this shirt that like I haven't figured out exactly what the wording's gonna be, but it's gonna be a fly, and it's gonna say something like, Hey, my last stop was poop, but don't worry, I brought you some.
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+[11:52] You know what I mean? Delicious, delicious poo. Yum yum. Yeah, although it's so funny because it's cultural, right? I mean, nobody likes to see a lot of flies on food, but you don't shun food at a picnic that a single fly has touched.
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+[12:06] Right. I mean, like at least I don't, not cultural. It's something swarming with flies, yeah. And and in and culturally a lot of places, it's their norm, and so it's just kind of ignored, and who knows whether it's better or worse. But there's a whole theater around what particular people in particular cultures find repellent and disgusting.
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+[12:24] That's not always linked to any sort of truth. It's really just culturally determined. Yeah, it's numbers, isn't it? You see one fly in the sandwich, you can shoe it away, you tell yourself it's fine. Yeah.
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+[12:29] If there's like a thousand on there, probably stay clear. But I mean that was one of the most interesting aspects of this book for me writing was the cultural aspect. The cultural aspect in terms of how we view uh insects and how that's completely out of kilto with their importance to the world. I mean we we can revile them or we think they're pointless a lot of the time when they're actually you know imperative to life on earth. And also the kind of cultural difference between kind of Western cultures and uh those in kind of Asia and and Africa, South America where you know they've been eating insects for a long time.
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+[13:02] They have a different kind of relationship with insects to us. We we kind of find them a bit bitch a lot of the time. Yeah I was gonna bring I forgot uh to bring it because I'm I'm dummy but uh I was gonna bring actually because we all eat we all eat honey a lot of us those who eat honey eat honey let's put it that way uh which no one seems to mind being processed through uh through a bee, right? So somehow it's like again we don't even consider it. Right.
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+[13:28] It's not even a problem. But there's a ve there's a rare honey, uh rare ish out of uh where is it Austrian I think that you can get you can go online and the Saratoga Tea and Honey Company, which is run by Haley Stevens, one of my friends who I used to work with at the French Culinary Institute in Saratoga Springs, and she stocks this black forest honey that is uh where the the honeybees actually collect the honeydew from aphids. So the aphids suck out the plant juice, concentrate the plant juice into a sugar rich thing which is as as uh high value enough for the bees to gather as nectar would be. And so they can get a pretty much, you know, single varietal of this concentrated like tree thing from or leaf thing out of it. It's cool.
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+[14:12] I was gonna have you taste it, but you know what? I forgot. Oh, damn. Isn't that stupid? I I really want that now.
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+[14:18] Yeah, I know. I know. But yeah, it's it's incredible, isn't it? We were what the only species that drinks another species milk. Uh we're the only species that you know eats uh the vomit of a of a bee on on mass.
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+[14:32] So yeah, it is strange what we see acceptable and what isn't. I mean, that is the wrapped up in the whole kind of cultural element, isn't it, of how we view interact with animals in the world. Oh, well, so let's get it out of the way at the very beginning. A lot of people, because this is a food show, are going to assume that that uh we had you on to talk about eating insects as food. That's not what this book is about.
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+[14:50] This book is more about um kind of what's going on with insects in the world today and uh kind of what a nightmare it is and how why we should care about it and a little bit about what we should do to I mean, a lot about, but you know, difficult answers, let's say, on how to fix these problems. Um you want to let's just get the eating right out of the way. What do you think about it? I did you you don't really you go into it a little bit, but like the eating the eating insects things, like it's uh you want to talk about it now? Let's get it out of the way.
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+[15:22] Yeah, sure, let's get it out of the way. I mean, there's a little bit in the book on that. Um the bit the time I got to that part, it was kind of the midst of the pandemic, so I couldn't actually travel anywhere to go to some of these restaurants that are set up around the world uh and in the US uh that offer insects. Um I didn't even need to get to a kind of cricket protein bar. I'm a vegetarian.
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+[15:42] I don't know if that's a gray area. It's probably not. I don't know. So you eat bugs for research, but not in general? Yeah, I mean, I was kind of like, that's a kind of ethical kind of, I don't know, morass that I wasn't sure what how to cut into.
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+[15:55] I mean, I wouldn't have I don't think it would have bothered me that much eating insects for the for research purposes, but um, you know, in terms of crunchy kind of crickets covered in chili or ants dipped in lemon or something, yeah. I you know, I was like, oh, that's that's clearly an animal, and I don't eat those, so that would have been a bit strange. But the interesting thing about ants is they often bring their own acid. That's one of the nice things. Tangy.
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+[16:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like 2,000 species of insects that people eat around the world. Um, like I was saying before, it's culturally kind of acceptable, good source of protein, uh, vitamins, zinc, so on. Um, and uh, I think the point I wanted to make on that in the book in relation to the loss of insects and the impact of that in a wide environment is ironically, it might be a good thing for us to eat more insects because raising insects in terms of their impact on the environment is far less than uh meat, for example. So um, just in terms of what it's involved, in terms of water, air pollution, land use, you don't have to deforest a huge area, for example, to to raise a pasture f of uh of insects, you can just do it in a shipping container and raise, you know, how many million uh crickets you want.
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+[17:03] So um that could be a small part of the solution to what sort of the kind of bigger issues that are kind of looked at in the book. But it's not something I kind of dwelled on hugely. Yeah, I mean uh I don't know. Anytime someone in the food sector says they're gonna save the world with X, Y, or Z, A M skeptical. Yeah.
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+[17:24] Yeah. Uh let's just uh put it that way. Um And how do you get how do you get people to suddenly eat lots of insects as well? I mean that that takes a shift. I did think about those lobsters, you know, lobsters used to be seen as these disgusting bottom feeders, didn't they?
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+[17:37] And I think in the early days of uh following the establishment of the United States of America, um uh farmers would crush them up and put them on fields as fertilizer because they're seeing these kind of worthless bottom feeders. And now what you can go around the corner here and get a $30 lobster roll, can't you? Um so attitudes do shift. I mean, sushi is the attitude to shoot sushi has shifted in my lifetime. It's now one of the most popular foods around.
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+[18:01] So maybe one day we will want to uh eat insects, but it's not gonna happen overnight. Well it's so funny, like it's uh a lot of it's really about kind of scarcity and what people are kind of forced to eat or not forced to eat, and when things become expensive or not, you know, and a lot of things that used to be uh foods of necessity are now the most expensive things in the world, like like certain hams. You know what I mean? Uh I mean it's like all of these things become uh it isn't it is an interesting is an interesting subject. But what what I think will never change is if somebody thinks that they can make a buck by saying that they're gonna save the world, they will say it.
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+[18:34] Yeah, of course. Yeah, you know what I mean? And everybody greenwashing. Yeah, you put that on your product, this is gonna save you know X, Y, and Z. I mean it's it's very common now.
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+[18:44] I think a lot of it is comes from a kind of a good place. Everyone wants to save the world. You know, especially, you know, everyone wants to think that they're doing something good. Right. So I don't think it's it's not always from a no uh what's it called, a uh a bad place.
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+[18:57] Yeah, there's no silver bullet on this, unfortunately. Yeah. So John, we had a question about uh insect farming. You wanna you want to hit that one? Absolutely.
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+[19:05] From Jared Johnston. I'd be interested to hear uh Oliver's thoughts on how to get started farming insects for personal consumption. Wow. Uh uh again, that isn't something I got into in the in the book, but I mean there are kind of uh terrariums you can get and raise insects quite easily. Uh, like I was saying, you don't need much space uh to raise a lot of insects.
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+[19:27] That is their strength evolution in terms of evolution, they're able to reproduce in huge numbers uh and repopulate. So um in terms of in terms of doing that, um there are lots of um websites I'm sure you can go to to find terrariums to do that, or if you have a kind of uh spare plot in the backyard you can you can raise them there. They're uh bee hotels you can you can um you can buy now. Not that you want to eat bees, but there are lots of different things now you can buy where insects will gather together. Um you know it's it's legal now in New York to it has been for maybe 10-15 years to have uh beehives here.
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+[20:03] Right. Yeah, but it's relatively recent that you're allowed to kind of do it on on rooftops. Yeah. It's kind of cool. Yeah.
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+[20:10] Yeah, this this craze of urban geek beekeeping now, isn't it? You see that, you know, it's become a bit of a hipster thing to kind of um a beekeeper. Yeah, what's his name? Zeke Freeman, right? That's his name.
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+[20:21] I think started a lot of that stuff back maybe 15 years ago here in New York, and there's a number of people all over. But then of course in Paris they've always had the you know, like a a couple of hives that they made very fancy honey from. I think the Queen has her own honey and all that other stuff, you know what I mean? It's like nice. Have you as uh someone from the UK have you been following the Queen's uh food craziness that's going on?
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+[20:41] Her ketchup? Yeah, and how she eats a banana as well. Have you seen that? No. But have you tasted her ketchup?
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+[20:47] No, I haven't tasted her ketchup. I'm only only I've only eaten Heinz ketchup. What's up with a ketchup? I don't know. She's coming out with a ketchup.
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+[20:54] Oh, is she? Yeah, two varieties. And uh she's also coming out with a sparkling wine, which I think might have been grown in Kent because of global warming. Right, yeah. They can now grow grapes again in Kent.
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+[21:05] And so I mean, Kent is an amazing place. Yeah, yeah, the Garden of England. Yeah, it is. The Brogdale's an amazing place. Okay, so back to uh where we're going.
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+[21:14] We had another question on uh insects and allergies, actually. Uh forget maybe that came in on Twitter. I did a little bit of research. There's not I couldn't find a lot of uh stuff on people having allergic reactions to insects as food. Of course, people have allergic uh reactions to insects in their environment, especially asthma with things like cockroaches, which we'll get into uh later.
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+[21:37] But I I don't know, I forget whether that's known, whether that's the bug itself or just the stuff that comes with it. But uh do you know? Yeah, it's um they they release pheromones and they kind of kick up dust and stuff, which can trigger people's um allergies. If you've got asthma, it might not be good to have cockroaches around. But in general, cockroaches are far less harmful to us than we think they are.
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+[22:00] I mean, we kind of despise them, don't we? Oh, yeah. But um uh their actual their actual threat to us is minuscule. Right. Yeah.
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+[22:08] Okay, so we're listening we're gonna get to food, but just not about insects necessarily as food. We're we're now concluding the insects as food portion. Let's draw a line under it. Of the yeah, of the thing, right? So now for people that don't uh know and uh count me as one of them, how much of a crash has there been?
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+[22:28] So you like we'll talk about like the German study that you got uh released and also that that guy, what's his name? I wrote it down, uh Muller, who uh drives cars to see how many bugs have hit his windshield and has done for the past 20 something years. You want to talk about the relatively recent uh evidence on how much of a crash has been in insect populations? Yeah, sure. I mean, I would say that kind of if somebody told me kind of four or five years ago my first book would be on insects, I would have laughed at them.
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+[22:55] I think I've always been drawn to the kind of um the big flashy things in the environmental world, the kind of polar bears, the Amazon rainforests, you know, I've been on the Great Barry Reef in Australia, that kind of thing. All of that kind of stuff is very sexy. But it it occurred to me around kind of 2017, 2018 that there were these all these studies coming out, uh kind of one after the other, like a kind of avalanche of research coming out showing these quite incredible insect declines. And and we weren't really talking about it in terms of the big conservation challenges of our times. We're still kind of thinking about orangutans and rhinos.
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+[23:32] So I kind of thought the public really kind of needed to know more about this. So I started digging into it and yeah the the the kind of losses are astronomical. I mean you mentioned the German study they uh they crunched all this data going back to 1989 um from nature reserves in Germany not not industrial areas or agricultural uh areas nature reserves they found that three quarters of the flying insects had disappeared since since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany's lost three quarters of his flying insects. You you mentioned that other study in Denmark uh and as Papi Moller quite an eccentric guy um noticed that um birds had seen when he disappear from the area of countryside in Denmark where he was raised and he thought maybe it's due to insect loss.
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+[24:13] So the way he decided to experiment uh this was to get a a beat up old 1960s Ford Anglia and drive up and down the same stretch of road in Denmark and he's done that every summer since 1997 and then counted the bugs that were squished on his windshield. I mean that's that's I think the good shorthand for a lot of people to recognise this, because we don't we often think of insects as being everywhere, and what of course there wouldn't be a shortage of them. They're just annoying and they're all over me. But I think when you think about it, you can maybe people of a certain age at least would think, oh yeah, I remember when I was a kid driving cross-country on vacation, and we had to stop to scrape the wit the bugs off the windshield. Or when we got there, there were bugs everywhere.
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+[24:53] And now it's just less and less of a thing. I was in Montana last year, most you know, most sparsely populated state in in the US driving around for a week, not a single bug hitting the hitting the windshield, driving through these kind of like r really remote areas, nothing. It was kind of really kind of shocking when you think about it like that. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, like this is the part of the book that really kind of hit me the hardest was and you you bring it up um in relation to something that we've all many of us seen before because we know how fish populations have been uh kind of destroyed. Uh the baseline shift.
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+[25:28] This idea of baseline shift and of kind of uh and again coming back to my age again, 51. Yeah, I remember like, you know, the car, it'd be like, especially like near in the morning or at dusk, it's like dragonflies smacking into you, like big bugs, juicy bugs would hit your windshield, like on the constant. Yeah. Like, you know, nowadays you just use the windshield wiper fluid for like uh with salt spray or you're maybe you know, dust on the road. But you you used to need really good stuff just to get the bugs off.
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+[26:00] Yeah, that's right. And and I think that I mean you speak to people in Texas and they know that uh they talk quite sadly about the fact they they don't have your fireflies around. You know, they used to remember the kind of the night sky being kind of dotted up with uh with fireflies, uh lightning bugs or whatever you want to call them. Um which are you? What do you call them?
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+[26:19] Uh fireflies, although they're beetles, so it's very confusing. Yeah, yeah. So many different things. They are uh they are one of the coolest animals. I've always felt real sad for people uh on the other side of the Rockies who their their fireflies don't light up even in good.
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+[26:32] I know what a loss. What a loss. Yeah. And but you also mentioned, thankfully, that we in New York, even though we have all of our bright lights on, have like a species of firefly that doesn't care whether there's ambient light around. Yeah.
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+[26:44] That's part of the light pollution section of your book of things we can do to fix fireflies. We've got like the equivalent of the kind of uh indestructible rat, you know, that we have in New York. You know, they will survive any environmental conditions. Love it. That's it.
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+[26:56] We've got the firefly version of that. I love it because like it's one of the few things like you're like in a densely urban environment, any patch of grass on the right on the right night, and you know, you you'll see a whole bunch of fireflies and it just makes you feel good. Yeah, I know. Imagine that, you'll your bum lighting up like that. Incredible.
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+[27:11] Yeah. Um so yeah, there is that mournful element, I think, and it's happening so quickly that people can remember it. And you mentioned shifting baseline syndrome, um, and the kind of classic example of that is the study done down in the Florida Keys where uh they looked at pictures of uh people catching fish over the years and um you know, in the nineteen fifties the fish they were caught were as big as them, uh and go current current day and they're kind of like maybe a foot. Uh uh but the the people's smiles are just the same. People are just as delighted as they ever were because they don't remember what it was like.
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+[27:42] The insect crisis is happening so quickly that um uh we can recall what insect abundance was like in our childhoods. It's not the it kind of feels strange. I mean, to lose kind of ninety eight percent of insects like it did in in Denmark, uh Puerto Rico, and that was uh rainforest, 98% decline since the nineteen seventies. I mean, these are astronomical losses in short periods of time. Like we may have lost ninety-five percent of the world's tigers, for example, but we've done that over kind of hundred, hundred and fifty years, you know, hunted them to that point.
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+[28:14] Um we we're losing insects at that rate over, you know, since uh since last last time people were wearing fled fled uh pants, you know. Right, but it's also the straight numbers and species. I mean, one of the other things in the book I thought was striking, one of the things that you bring up is um people be like, yeah, right, look, I I have all of these bugs all the time that I have to contend with that I'm trying to kill on the constant, and I can't kill them. And you're like, no, the point is is that we'll still have a whole bunch of insects. It'll just be the three or four ones you hate.
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+[28:42] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I've been on quite a few radio phone-ins in um uh especially in like Louisiana, Texas, places like that. And they're the all the kind of calls are about which I don't blame people for. It's like, how do I get rid of termites?
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+[28:56] I hate these fire ants. Yeah. You know, what do we get rid of them? Yeah, yeah. And and I think there's the assumption that I want to save all termites and fire ants and it's not it's not that.
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+[29:05] I mean, of course, like some insects you don't want around. But we've kind of ordered our world to the extent that we've pushed nature, including insects, especially insects, to the margins of our lives away from us. And um that's been extremely detrimental to the things we do want to hang around, the bees, the butterflies, things like that. Right. And so in the book, and we're slowly making it back to food people, so don't worry.
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+[29:28] But it's so like in in the book, the other thing that you kind of i i what's interesting is you you what I like is you don't want to come down firmly. You realize that there's nuance in kind of all all of these, all of these positions, right? Um so you're like, listen, one of the tensions is like, why save this? For our own benefit? Or because it's the right thing to do, even if it doesn't necessarily benefit us directly.
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+[29:56] You also point out a lot of quote unquote sexy bugs like this giant walking stick from Australia, this walking stick bug that's like I looked it up on the internet and it was just like it's bananas or like that giant burrowing cockroach that as you say looks like an armadillo. It's so big and armored looking that it almost isn't you can almost see it as some sort of space creature and not think of it as a bug anymore. It's bananas. It weighs an ounce, people, it weighs over 30 grams. Some people keep it as a pet.
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+[30:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh so you know, you show these as means of trying to pique people's interest in hey, licks and we're losing a lot of cool stuff, right? And you have a whole chapter on monarchs, everyone's favorite fluttering thing, right? Right. And I remember what they're like.
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+[30:39] Remember people, don't eat monarchs. Not all I I can't ever remember whether they themselves are poisonous or if it's just the milkweed that the caterpillars eat that make them bitter and poisonous. Yeah, the milkweed has this poisonous property that they embody and then birds know to stay clear of them. Right. Every time though, like that you have a chapter or a section on a cool or interesting bug, it seems like you feel kind of bad because it's like you're like, listen, the whole point is we shouldn't only save things that are cool.
+
+[31:04] Yeah. Yeah, that was a kind of constant tension through the book is like, do we just look at from a purely selfish point of view? It's like what's useful for us? Okay, bees are useful uh because they pollinate, you know, a third of the food we eat. Um, you know, butterflies, less so in terms of pollination, but they're beautiful, they're pretty.
+
+[31:21] We like seeing them fluttering around. You know, beetles do some kind of interesting things to to help cycle nutrients through the soils and stuff. So maybe we'll keep those around. But there's like a million named species. There may be five million, ten million out there, we don't know, 30 million named uh species of insect.
+
+[31:36] Uh the rest of them are a bit pointless, we don't have to worry about them. So you could make it a very kind of selfish kind of human-centric thing. Um, but I think that would miss the kind of broader story of insects. Uh their intrinsic importance, obviously. They they deserve to be on this planet just like us.
+
+[31:50] They were here before us, they're probably going to be here after us. They were here before dinosaurs, they're off they survived the extinction of the dinosaurs as well as four other mass extinctions of this world. So yeah, I I did kind of had to straddle those two kind of points of, you know, you know, we they're really cool and we, you know, they they do important things, they have their own value though, and uh, you know, we we can't be motivated to save them for selfish reasons, but hopefully we'll uh we'll we'll act for for more altruistic reasons on that too. So getting to bees, right? And you deal a lot with the problems with bees and bee crashes and uh but the bee itself is also problematic in the sense that most of a lot of the places it doesn't belong where it is, and it completely screws with local pollinators.
+
+[32:37] I don't know if anyone still reads. I remember years ago I read a book called uh what is it called? The Forgotten Pollinators. I don't know if anyone still reads it or if it made a splash, but it was the first book that was like it's in 1996 or something, that was like P.S. We all love bees, but uh it's wiped out like a bunch of pollinators because it's so freaking good at just taking whatever nectar is around that like you know, this little species of uh solitary bee can't compete with it and it just nukes it.
+
+[33:05] Honey bees, let's be clear, honey bees about yeah, yeah. European honeybees, yeah, European. Not like not like you know, melopona bees or anything like European honeybees, yeah. That's right. Yeah, again, that's a kind of double-edged sword because a lot of the kind of campaigns to save insects have been based on what people know.
+
+[33:19] What do people know? They know bees, and what do bees look like? They've got uh black and uh yellow stripes on them, they make honey and they buzz around and they live in hives, and beekeepers dressed in funny white outfits look after them. Those are honey bees and they're kind of an imported species, they're not native to the US. Uh, and they're essentially using that as an agricultural input in the US.
+
+[33:38] I mean, a beekeeper used to be this kind of hobby, right? It used to be this thing where you kept a couple of hives, you made some honey, smeared on your toast. A lot of fun. Now most beekeepers are kind of contractors, they're contract workers who have to kind of take bees around the country polluting blueberries and almonds and citrus and all that kind of thing. Just to keep the to keep the the agricultural system running.
+
+[34:01] Food security in the US is dependent on honey bees. Um so it's they're very important, um, but they have humans to look after them, uh, to artificially keep their numbers up. And like you say, they have detrimental impacts. When we were talking before about this kind of craze of urban beekeeping, people think they can help by kind of getting a honey bee hive, putting it in an urban environment. Um, I mean, you can do that, but all that's going to do is vacuum up all the kind of food around around you because there's you know 40, 50,000 bees in a hive, uh leaving nothing for all the wild native bees, bumblebees, there's only maybe 30, 40 in a nest.
+
+[34:35] There's lots of solitary b bees, there's thousands of species of bees. Most of them are solitary bees like mason bees, these kind of leaf cutter bees that um live by themselves. Uh, they're left with no food because honey bees strip that all from the environment. So we it's not it's not hugely helpful to kind of just boost honey bee numbers, just to keep honey bees. It's not uh it's not doing it's not doing much for the kind of broader ecology of uh of the country.
+
+[35:00] Right. Well, uh, that's what I got out of your book. There is no big win. No. I know.
+
+[35:06] I'm sorry. I know we're we're in kind of times where there's not a shortage of problems, and I'm sorry to lay another one on us, but yeah, there's no quick, there's no quick way out of it. Hey Dave, I'm curious, you know, to ask, um, uh do we lend a hand in those African wasps that are been killing the uh the honey bees? The ones that have been I guess what they do is they they they they look and resemble uh honey bees, but they're not, and they vibrate and attack them, I think four or five at a time to kill the bees. Do you know about these?
+
+[35:40] Yes, yes, they were kind of uh they came in via shipping, didn't they? They're another kind of invasive speech. I mean, do does does do humans like help to eradicate this wasp to let the honey bees uh uh live, or do we let the nature take its course? Uh I mean, I guess for our own kind of uh food security and our own imperatives, we're gonna intervene on that. And I can see that that's you know, sensible.
+
+[36:05] Uh the same with uh the um uh the murder hornet, so-called murder hornet that's popped up in Washington State and British Columbia and Canada, um, which they they behead bees, and there's a kind of huge effort kind of being mobilized there to find and eradicate these nests. And I I like I can I can understand that. I can understand that effort is being made, it makes sense on certain levels. Uh I only wish that we made such an effort to protect all the all the other species of bees that actually um that help us uh that actually help hold aloft life. You could tell when you read the book that uh Oliver is a great lover of the bumblebee.
+
+[36:42] I love a bumblebee, yeah. They're great. What are those giant ones? You ever see that we used to get when I was a kid, we used to get that you can't even believe that they can fly. They look like they're giant.
+
+[36:53] They look like a child's drawing of a bee. They're huge. In a big furry coat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[36:57] Yeah. I know nothing about them except for like I was never worried about them. They never really like the big kind of cuddly bears of the insect world, don't they? Yeah. I mean, I stayed away from them.
+
+[37:07] I didn't like go and try to get one. Yeah. But I wasn't like, oh my God. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[37:13] They don't they don't engender panic like a wasp does or something. No, I gotta hit them. No, I'm not supposed to. Yeah, no. I hate them.
+
+[37:20] Yeah, no, no, I understand. But yeah, Bumblebees are great. I mean, they're very intelligent as well. They can be taught to play soccer. They can uh understand the concept of zero, they can't.
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+[37:27] That's saying something more about soccer, isn't it? I'm just kidding. I'm just messing with uh okay. So when we're talking about um pollination, there's a a lot of stuff that impacts us directly when we lose pollinators. It isn't just is it alternative forms, human-led forms of trying to get rid of pollination and 'cause part of the thing that you deal with is that you're like, hey, listen, I realize that we have billions and billions of people to feed.
+
+[38:00] Yeah. And that uh this problem's only getting worse, and that nobody says that the answer is, well, what we need to do is let a whole bunch of people die, right? Because some people will say that. I think they're crazy people, but some people will say, yeah, the answer is it's a whole bunch of people are gonna die in the next couple of decades. Right.
+
+[38:17] You know what I mean? Darwinian response. Yeah, right. I don't think that's an appropriate response to have when we're talking about people. Uh but you know, a lot of people will say that.
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+[38:26] So you you know, you're not s saying that you realize that these are problems. Um, and then you go to try to kind of suss out all the stuff. You're like, look it. There's been a bunch of studies that if you pollinate something uh via a mechanism that was int intended by the evolutionary biology of the of the plant with its particular pollinator, your yields are often much higher than when you try to either handsex something uh or as you you know, tongue in cheek, too well not tongue in cheek, they're really trying it like robot bees. Yeah.
+
+[38:59] Which is kind of just bananas. Yeah. I mean, I love the idea that I can build a robot bee. Yeah. But I mean, the idea that that's going to be the solution is kind of Yeah, it's kind of hubris, isn't it?
+
+[39:10] It's human kind of like, yeah, we can do you we can do what you've been doing for 200 million years, no problems. Let's let's build a little robot. They'll do it. Yes, you're not gonna do it. Do you want to talk a little bit about like how this a lot of these technological ways to try to increase yield, which is important and vital, have actually decreased yield in certain ways and eventually might cause crashes in yield.
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+[39:34] Yeah, sure. So, like you mentioned, um we've kind of settled on one type of bee to kind of pollinate everything, which is the honey bee, because there's so many of them in a hive, you can move them around pretty easily. Uh uh, they're not the best pollinators of a lot of things, like tomatoes, for example. I love them. I love tomatoes.
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+[39:51] Tomatoes, bumblebees do do that. So shake their booty, right? That's the whole thing. Yeah, they've got the big hefty booty and they can vibrate really quickly. That's why vibrators, if uh, we can mention such a thing, have been used on on uh tomatoes to to pollinate.
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+[40:08] Like ones that were intended for humans. But for for human use. Yeah. All right. Um I did not know that.
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+[40:12] Wild, yeah. Yeah. Uh but they they discovered even with I gotta think about that for a second. Yeah, I know. So sorry to bring the tone down.
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+[40:20] I mean, I'm talking about this in a agriculture or up depending on your thing, if that's your thing. Fruit and vibrators, that might be your thing. But um, they found even that didn't couldn't really fully replicate what not even a vibrator. Well what I know is that a vibrator can't actually replicate the real thing. Is that what you're saying on my own?
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+[40:44] Oh man. So yeah, we we've settled on the uh a kind of bee that can't do it all. Um we've also decided to douse our agricultural land in lots of chemicals, which kills not just the pests but everything else. Uh and we've decided on a model of farming that is this kind of monocultural one crop in a field, nothing else there, no bordering plants, no hedgerows, uh for kind of financial reasons and for the interests of large agricultural companies. Even in the UK, the hedgerow isn't what it used to be.
+
+[41:18] They've lost half of their hedgerows in the last kind of sixty years. That used to just be a symbol of the whole country, right? Yeah. I mean, there's our effort now to bring them back and field size in Europe and UK is generally much smaller than in the US. The US has kind of uh engineered this model of huge vast agricultural farm farming, right?
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+[41:37] You had these huge sweeping fields in Iowa and elsewhere in the Midwest. Anyone that's looked out of the window of their airplane has seen it when they're flying. You know what I mean? It's it's it's a ma it's crazy and amazing and perhaps horrifying. Yeah, but it's all of those things, you know what I mean?
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+[41:51] But well to bring that like um to bring that back, right? You know, like a lot of the solution for i i it's like look, you're like, listen, our urban sprawl has ruined a lot of things because we don't put a lot of places for a variety of insects to kind of survive. And one of your other points I think is making it it actually doesn't take as much intervention as we would think to make things a little bit better. Right. You know what I mean?
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+[42:17] That's we can get back to that in a second, right? But I uh you know, I gather that the majority of the problem is really all of the farmland that we put over to uh use in a way that is completely inhospitable. And so two of them are and and you point out that like a lot of people's methods to try to increase diversity by like saying, okay, you have to grow three different crops over the course of however many years ain't really cutting it. It's not real. Yeah, it's not real diversity.
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+[42:42] It's still just, you know, three different kinds of potato chip instead of just instead of uh uh you know a balanced diet, if you want to use the metaphor of of different plants as as diet for um so in a f in a farmland situation, right? I mean, aside from the pesticides, which we'll get to in a minute, which I think is really interesting, uh you know, this this idea that you can keep your yields as high uh because we need to feed so many billions of people. It's like most of the studies, it seems where they have positive outcomes by increasing biodiversity are done in areas that grow high value crops on smaller plots of land and not on places that grow a billion acres of wheat for to feed a billion people. And it i where where where can those two ideas kind of meet and what's the kind of solution for like these massive farms where we have to literally, you know, three or four countries provide the grain output that feeds everybody. And we're locked into a world where we need, you know, a huge amount of soy and wheat and uh uh corn and rice, right?
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+[43:50] I mean, we we that's the kind of basis of a lot of our diets and um uh what we're just used to. So those kind of large at scale um farms do have a place, but they've kind of stripped out everything at the margins that would support insect life and actually help them. I mean, diversity is a good thing in farmland because it avoids a single catastrophic event wiping everything out, right? You have one disease that goes through and it kills your one crop, that's it, you're done. Um and it's the same with insects.
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+[44:20] Insects um, you know, we a lot of farmers seem see them just as pests, and they obviously are pests, they're aphids and so on. But um, but a lot of insects around farmland are actually hugely beneficial because they eat the pests and they also help um replenish the soils, they kind of do a lot of good for farmland. So a lot of work has been done in Europe, for example, having these kind of wildlife corridors that go through agricultural land. So you say to farmers, look, okay, you want to plant that one thing, grow that, okay. But at the at the edges, well, you're not really doing anything but weeding, especially in the circular guys, right?
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+[44:55] Yeah, you can have wildflowers, you can even grow like herbs and spices. Some of the work they'd be doing in North Africa now is is encouraging former farmers to grow herbs and spices at the borders of the fields, because then that's another form of income for them, isn't it? And it encourages insects back. And once you get insects back, you can um use less pesticide because you've got natural predators of the pests, and you have a more vibrant kind of um environment, and you have crucially that kind of pathway for insects to kind of go through the landscape. Because at the moment, if you're a bee, you're looking out over land, it's kind of like a desert.
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+[45:29] Uh, and when you do go to try and eat something, it's kind of poisoned. Um, one one of the scientists told me it's a bit like um, you know, there's nothing to eat but chips, you know. Even if you don't eat chips, you're allergic to chips, all you've got is chips. Um uh to go back to your chip anal analogy with the channel. Well, I got it from you.
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+[45:44] Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. But yeah, they um uh it doesn't take much, is what I'm saying, to kind of just ameliorate slightly the the impacts of this kind of monocultural farming model. I mean, it'd be great if that was broken down entirely and we kind of went back a little bit to more diversified farms, but you can do a little bit around the margins just to make things a little bit more friendly. Right. So uh and you uh you know, you get that point.
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+[46:07] It's like let's let's do the inner in like the interventions that we can, right? But then on the other hand, like a lot of the huge interventions are like they backfire, right? So, like, you know, Joe, you were asking about like trying to kill a particular thing that once it's once it's in, it's like most of our broad brush kind of interventions tend to be uh have unintended consequences, yeah, shall we say? Yeah, yeah. You think about um how Australia had that outbreak of beetles who were eating through all the um sugar cane there and they decided to import a type of frog from South America that apparently would eat the beetle, didn't eat the beetle, just spread across the whole country eating everything else.
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+[46:45] That cane toad movie is one of the great if people, if you have not seen the original cane toad movie, yeah. Uh I forget what it's called. Maybe it's called cane toad. I don't know. But like it remember, yeah.
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+[46:57] It it's like from the eighties, I want to say this movie. Yeah. But it's great. Like like it's people who love the cane toad, people who hate the cane toad, yeah, people whose dogs were poisoned by the cane toad. Anyway, but it's great for unintended consequences.
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+[47:10] It is, isn't it? And it's also instructive and illustrative of that human desire to go, oh, it's the cane toast fault. I hate the cane toast. Like, who brought the cane toad here? Yeah.
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+[47:18] Well they cane toad was just doing what it was gonna do. Farmers do it. Yeah, cane told you, yeah, you can't hate on the cane toad. No, uh, then they have some lovers of the cane toad in the movie. It's a little bit of a spoiler.
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+[47:27] Can I give a little bit of spoiler, John on the movie? Go for it. All right. So there's a guy, uh, I don't know, it's probably a defender, but some jeep like some jeep like vehicle. And you're in the passenger can you're in the c you know, the front cabin with him and you s and you s and he's talking, right?
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+[47:43] And you could tell that the the vehicle's kind of swerving. You know what I mean? As he's talking, the vehicle's just swerving. And you're like, Wait, wait, what's going on? You know, what what?
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+[47:51] And you know what I mean? And then it pans back and you see that he's swerving on the road to pop cane toads as he's going down the the street. He's like a he's like a cane toad murderer. Like a horrible version of Marica or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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+[48:06] Yeah. Great movie. Uh yeah. People play golf with him and stuff. I mean, I don't think I mean I think the numbers need to be controlled.
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+[48:14] You don't need to be cruel to cane toads though. They're just doing their thing. You know, yeah. Yeah. You can kill them humanely.
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+[48:19] Yeah. Well, Australia is so interesting because, you know, it was uh physically isolated for so many millions of years, and then you know, it's just depredation after depredation of things that were brought. Of course, we have our own here in the US, right? Like the uh all of our trees are gonna die. We're losing all of our ashes now.
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+[48:35] We're losing uh losing our hemlocks, we're losing our, you know, we've lost our elms years ago, we lost our chestnuts. It's like Yeah, you've got feral hogs down in the south. You've got those are at least delicious. Asian carp coming up on the Really? Are they they yummy?
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+[48:50] All pigs are good. Uh if you don't uh well, you don't eat them, so it doesn't matter to you. No, but do feral hogs taste different to regular uh I think it depends on exactly when they're like, you know, uh uh there's a thing called bore taint. Right. Right from the uh the in uh but uh I've never been a hunter of I've never I've never hunted them, so I don't know how to avoid bore taint.
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+[49:12] But uh many people I know who uh eat wild boar love it. Oh okay. Yeah. Well there you go. They're also apparently very challenging to uh hunt because if you if you miss one or don't actually like knock it down, they don't not fight back.
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+[49:28] Oh, they'll come for you. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. They'll get revenge. Yeah. That's why I don't know if it's still the case, but like a lot of uh in the movies, if you ever watch movies about people that hunt wild boar, they they used to in the movies like Robert Mitchum did when he carried a uh uh uh he would carry a handgun with him in case he got rushed by a boar because you know once they're rushing at you your long gun's not going to be very right helpful.
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+[49:53] You're gonna have to get down the dirty with this thing. In close. Yeah. I think they shoot them for helicopters too, don't you though which would uh reduce the risk. Oh I never thought about yeah I don't know.
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+[50:04] Yeah. Uh all right so back back to this uh b back to what we're talking about. Um all right so another interesting thing I think uh in terms of food solution is i uh i is i hopeful maybe one of the hopeful things is is you say even conservative people in places like I think it was Bavaria in 2019, cons very, very conservative people uh are passing environmentally friendly uh laws that restrict what they can do, which is unusual for a conservative group of people to do, because they realize that this is the only way for them to keep in other words, the long term is becoming short term in a way that even people who are acting only in their immediate self interest are acting on. Would you say that's accurate? Right, yeah.
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+[50:48] They they could see the long little long-term view and what would actually happen if these declines continued. I mean, this was in the wake of the German study that showed three quarters of the internet's gone. So uh that kind of rational side of the brain kicked in for you know, do we want to go another 30 years and see what happens then? Uh the way with things are going, or should we change things? And they held this referendum and yeah, they agreed to kind of give over about a third of the land to organic farming, which is quite a quite a kind of bold move for like you say, such a kind of conservative pharma-led kind of place.
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+[51:19] Yeah. Okay. Now, pesticides. So this is something that I didn't realize. I mean, everyone everyone talks about pesticides.
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+[51:29] And most of the stuff in my world that you hear about is kind of uh people buy organic, right? And most of the people I think are worried about the pesticides in terms of their own health, right? Uh that's a lot of what I hear people worried about the pesticides effect on their own body. Uh and then, you know, in the 80s and 70s, you used to hear a lot about runoff, right, into streams and kind of the damage of uh fish and fish eggs and whatnot. Uh what I didn't realize is the intense ubiquity of them, even in other words, like buying organic ain't stopping the pesticides from affecting you.
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+[52:13] There's there's kind of everywhere in the way that if you set off a nuclear weapon, the radiation goes everywhere and you can't you can't help it. Yeah. So uh you want to talk a little bit about neonicotinoids, which is a great word, which you shorten to neonic eventually because you just got sick of, I guess, writing all of those letters. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
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+[52:32] So they're they're based on uh nicotine, natural pesticide in in tobacco. But you want to just talk about like the immense ubiquity of them and kind of what they can do in non and here's what I didn't know, what the effect of them is in non-lethal quantities. Sure. So this is a kind of class of about six different kind of chemicals that are used as insecticides really. Uh and they you are right to say they're kind of widespread uh in American agriculture and increasingly around the world too.
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+[53:01] Um the problem is they um layer in their toxicity in the the land. They're kind of marketed as this this wonderfully um you know successful and effective uh way of getting rid of pests, and in a way they are because they kill everything. Yeah, but you have to keep reapplying. So they're not they don't remain effective. So there has to be this continual kind of layering of pesticides, which is done year after year, to the extent now that uh American agricultural land is 48 times more toxic than it was 25 years ago because of this build-up of toxins.
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+[53:32] But cause even though they reapply have to reapply it, it doesn't actually go away. So unlike, and I know you're not a fan and no one is right now of uh Roundup glyphosate, like uh at least that stuff degrades. They say it degrades anyway. But uh and uh again, let's knock it into but this stuff doesn't degrade in that same way. Yeah, yeah.
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+[53:52] And yet it's still constantly reapplied. Yeah, and I think the frustration for a lot of scientists who study this is it it doesn't even do the job that well. So neonics, um, they're typically now they're sprayed on places, but more and more now they're coated on the seeds that are sold to farmers. And a lot of the times the farmers don't really know what they're getting. Uh but if they do know, they've been quite heavily marketed to by uh big egg to say, look, you need this, because if you don't have uh these chemicals right from the start point of your your plant, whatever you're growing, corn or whatever it is, um, then you'll have this outbreak of pests.
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+[54:26] Um and so uh the neonics are in there right from the beginning, the plant begins to grow. Um the thing the trouble is they're water soluble. As soon as it rains, they're kind of leaches out into the soils into waterways where all kinds of other creatures are. Which is why they have to keep applying it to keep the levels up. But it's leached away, but it doesn't break down.
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+[54:44] Right. And the planting season uh uh happens, they leach away. By the time the actual pests arrive in summer, most of the chemical is gone. Right. So they use preposterous amounts to keep the level high enough for the when the actual pests show up.
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+[54:59] Yeah, it doesn't match. The peak of the pesticide doesn't match the peak of the pest, uh, which is like insanely annoying to entomologists. They kind of like it's the most annoying thing in the world to them because it's like it's not we're not even having a benefit here. And there's so many studies showing that yields haven't like drastically increased because of the huge use of these chemicals. In some uh some places they've actually declined.
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+[55:21] It would actually be better not to use them at all. So there is even in intensive farming. Yeah, even intensive farming. There's little evidence that the chemicals, these chemicals being used in the quantities they are. I think in certain uh instances they are appropriate.
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+[55:35] Um, but the levels and quantities they're being used at is uh is not helping anyone. It's not helping us in terms it's not helping farmers in terms of their yield, it's not helping um uh insects and other wildlife, particularly because they're being poisoned. Birds pick this up. There's declines in bird numbers being recorded now because of uh neonics they're ingesting. But let's talk about like microdosing uh neonicotinoids and bees and how it makes them like high and stupid.
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+[56:01] Yeah, that's right. So if it doesn't, if it doesn't kill you, it will send you mad, basically. Um they scramble bees' brains, essentially. And uh bees are incredible. Uh sorry to bang on about how good they are again, but they have these amazing logistical abilities, and they go between flower and flower and know where their hive is, fly long distances.
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+[56:20] Um and it messes with all that. Bees can't find their way back to the hive. Um they can't um collect pollen and nectar as well as they would do normally. Um they've actually kind of tested this in in labs where they've sliced into bees' brains and analyzed them and um give them little doses and tested them between other bees that didn't have doses of them, and it's quite clear that they um they basically uh become a bit stupid, uh, really, uh, and ineffective, and they may as well be dead really for the roles they're meant to be performing. All right.
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+[56:53] So if you want f food, and especially if you want a variety of food, not like monoculture and like robot food. Yeah, uh, we need to do something about the crashing. That's the that's the point. We need to at least pay attention to the problem, even if there are no easy solutions. Yes.
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+[57:08] You wanna uh we're we're gonna run out of time, but I want you to talk a little bit about um kind of ways that help that aren't necessarily they're not gonna change the the whole world, but we can help even in places like New York. You want to talk about King Kingsland wildflowers and Newtemps Newton Creek? Yeah. Newtown Creek. So this is the industrial area in uh Green Point uh in Brooklyn, um, where the kind of oil industry had a big foothold, you know, a century ago, uh polluted the hell out of the whole area, of course, but now it's kind of looking to regenerate itself and on top of a former kind of factory, you've got this wildflower meadow, which is incredible.
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+[57:45] It's kind of this kind of steel and brick and grey everywhere, and suddenly it's this shock of green on the top of this building, is basically where um this environmental group um has put put this kind of wildflower and it's meadow and it's incredible. It's just long grasses, plants. There's insects kind of humming everywhere. They hit you on the legs and the face, and it's an incredible place to be. And the diversity has kind of come back, right?
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+[57:59] Yes, right. You can bring back diversity even in urban environments. It shows that. Right. So just leave connected plots or easily connected plots of a little bit of wild, unkempt stuff at the edges of your farmland, at the edges.
+
+[58:20] Don't don't put microdosing levels of pesticides to wipe everything out. Uh John, any food questions I'm missing on the way out? Nope, that's everything. All right, so one more one last thing. I'm gonna throw a political bomb at you on the way out.
+
+[58:32] Even though we're not a political show. One of the interesting things is you say Brexit might have actually helped some of these things because countries who are in the EU sometimes have problems with their own rules getting stepped on by well-meaning but not necessarily good EU general rules. You want to talk about that a little bit on the way out? You're oh god, a Brexit question. Yeah, I mean, Brexit's a pretty much a disaster around, I feel, but they're at least now farmers are able to experiment with different ways of farming rather than set in a in a kind of set way of doing things.
+
+[59:01] So I think if farming more generally could think more innovatively about how they use the land rather than just in the set model of how things are, that's a good thing. Right. So not all things that are necessary not all things are all but good or all bad. That's right. There's nuance there, for sure.
+
+[59:16] All right, well, listen, uh uh Oliver, thank you for coming on. Uh go get the book, The Insect Crisis. Is it gonna is it in that kitchen or no? We have it. I don't think so, no yet.
+
+[59:25] I don't know. We'll see what's going on. Uh and Patreon questions that were non-insect related. We'll get to them uh next week, right, Todd? Next week.
+
+[59:33] No tangent Tuesday, yep. No tangent Tuesday next week on cooking issues. Thanks for coming in, Oliver. Thanks so much. Good to be with you.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Joined in this intercontinental cooking issues uh edition by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez live from an undisclosed location in the middle of the Nile River in Egypt. It might take her a second because she's got a mute and unmute because she's literally on a boat. How are you doing?
+
+[0:32] How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Can you hear me? Yeah.
+
+[0:38] Yeah. So uh well, hold on. I'll just say everyone else who's on. It's no, it's theoretically no tangent Tuesday, but here we are. We're about to go on a tangent.
+
+[0:45] We got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. Hey, what's up, guys? How you doing? We got uh John is uh at a different undisclosed uh Heidi Hole uh in the uh small state best state of Connecticut. How you doing, John?
+
+[0:59] Doing all right. Yeah, and uh Jackie Molly what'd you say? Getting better, my back. Nice, nice. Uh and better, my back is thrown out, so yeah, well you throw out your back.
+
+[1:10] You know, you know how? Like all that heavy customer service mental lifting, you're like, you know, one more person spins all broken. You're like, I can't take it, my back. Anyway, uh and uh Jackie Molecules, where are you uh this fine uh day Mexico City? Ah really, man.
+
+[1:28] Oh my god. Man, man. Yeah, we're really gonna kind of end up today. We're we're a north, south, east, and west kind of crew today. Um, so Stas.
+
+[1:39] I mean, I'm assuming you've gone back, Jack, and and and gotten some more uh Florida Calabaza case it is because if you haven't, that just shows bad judgment on your part. Actually, the plan is today. Um I'm showing some friends around who haven't been here. Okay. And the plan is to go to the market today.
+
+[1:55] So I mean, okay. I have gone to I have already had my meat bucket meal though. So that that much has been done. So meet meat bucket in Florida Calabaza. But more importantly, a place I have never been, but have always desired to go.
+
+[2:09] Nastasia chilling in Egypt. So what's it like over there? It's really it's like incr it's incredible. It's like nothing I've never I've ever like come across. It's it's fing amazing.
+
+[2:24] Um I'm like oh sorry. Sorry, it's there. Um yeah. The food is right now I'm eating watermelon, popcorn, and white wine. Okay, let me ask you this.
+
+[2:37] Watermelon, comma, popcorn, comma white wine, or some sort of melange. Yes, commas, commas. Commas, commas. Uh so uh how's the watermelon? Is it some sort of like fancy dancey watermelon or is it just good because it's so dang sunny over there?
+
+[2:55] No, it's just good because it's so dang sunny and the peaches are amazing, and the bread, like all the fresh pita I had ash cake made, you know what that is? Like you put the the bread underneath the fire ash and then let it rise and like on an open fire in the desert. That was amazing. That sounds good. Um Yeah.
+
+[3:27] Well, how's the date game? Not dating, the date game. You would you would love it. You would love it. Yeah, you would love all the dates.
+
+[3:34] There's like hard and soft and sweet and like not so sweet. I mean it's yeah, I'll bring back you some back. Nice, nice. So uh like have you been eating in like restaurants or is part of the tour group? Or both.
+
+[3:49] No, com combination. Like a lot of like open desert cooking. I don't know why. I like that. Um I like that a lot.
+
+[3:57] Some restaurants. Yeah. Yeah. Some restaurants, and then now I'm on the boat, so the crew cooks. And that's all like traditional Egyptian food.
+
+[4:07] And even the boat food is good. Yeah. Really good. I mean, I'm on like a they're called yeah, th it's like a boat with like from the twenties with the big sails. It's really pretty.
+
+[4:19] And there's the whole like tour group is Italian, Argentinians, uh, YouTubers. Oh Jesus. Yeah. Uh and the Italians only only talking about uh pooping and food, are they? Is it only is it only talk of poop and food?
+
+[4:34] You know, I I like I like them the best. They're really great. So yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.
+
+[4:41] They're great. They're really funny. So let me ask you this because my uh my in-laws once uh took a river, not a river boat in the American sense of river boat, but a boat on a river in Europe tour, and their assessment was boats are floating petri dishes. What do you think? No, because it's so dry here and that it doesn't feel disgusting.
+
+[5:03] Right, right. So like a like a boat on the Danube. Petri dish boat on the Nile. Fine. Yeah.
+
+[5:10] Nice. And uh no and we we talked about this a little bit. No Agatha Christie, no murders yet. No, but but people on the boat think that the YouTubers are f are not real. So What do you mean not real?
+
+[5:23] Like they're not actual humans? I mean I don't there's a place you could find out. What's that thing called? It's on the internet. What's it called?
+
+[5:29] YouTube. YouTube. Yes. If they're YouTubers, you can go look up their YouTube videos. No, I no, I know.
+
+[5:37] But it's a long, it's a long we're it's a it's a mystery right now. It's like an Agatha Christie type thing. Also the internet is like spotty. So it's not like we're yeah. I don't remember Death on the Nile very well.
+
+[5:49] Uh I saw the movie, it was from the 70s. But uh because the whenever I think Agatha Christie, I can only think of the uh murder on the Orient Express uh one. And you know, spoiler, everyone did it. So but I don't remember what happened in Murder on the Nile. John, you should remember because uh you're freaking Belgian.
+
+[6:07] You're Belgian, so you should know everything about your boy Ercule Poirot, right? Isn't that when you're born as a Belgian, don't they be like, hey, here's here's your it's it's like being Swedish with ABBA. You like you you get you get the the aircule pass, no? What happened in that in that murder on the Nile? I have no idea.
+
+[6:24] I want on the Discord, by the way. You can call your questions to no tang no tangent, yeah, right. 917-410 uh 1507. That's 917-410-1507. If you're a Patreon member, if you want to become a Patreon member, uh, where do they go, John?
+
+[6:40] Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh-huh. Uh now. Now I want to know on the Discord. Also, you can get on the Discord if you're joining the Patreon.
+
+[6:50] I want to know what percentage of people think Nastasia would be the murderer in this situation, and what percentage think she would be the person murdered. I doubt there's anyone who thinks that she's completely uninvolved when it happens on this boat. Am I right, Stas? She has to unmute. Whenever you unmute.
+
+[7:09] Uh what do you think, John? I think the clear answer is that she would be, she would be an accomplice. That's the clear answer for me. An accomplice. Oh, that's totally, that's totally on point.
+
+[7:18] She would cause it to happen. Yeah. She would be the puppet master. Right. No, I would be the one that everyone tells that they did it.
+
+[7:29] I would be the one. I would be the confidant. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. Oh, because uh originally when you started talking, I thought you were gonna say Patsy.
+
+[7:36] Like they're gonna blame you even though you didn't do it. See now there's all these different roles, right? So you like you're the you're the confidant. You made it happen. Here's what happened.
+
+[7:44] You said, wouldn't it be nice if they were dead? Oh my god Don't you wish they were dead? You would keep saying that until they did it, and then the the person would be like, You told me to, you told me to, you told me to. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[7:56] Yeah. Yeah. That was like last night on the boat. Yeah. Hey.
+
+[8:08] Good job, John. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[8:12] Well, uh, this all checks out. Uh this all checks out, by the way. And just to remind you, Nastasia, that low-level crimes that you commit in other countries won't get prosecuted in America when you come back, but high-level crimes will. Just as you know. Just as you know.
+
+[8:26] Okay. Yeah. I'll remember. Okay. Uh all right.
+
+[8:32] So who do we got as upcoming guests, John? Uh wet wet people's whistle. We have uh the folks from Joy of Cooking coming out in June. Oh, that's gonna be fun. We that's gonna be fun.
+
+[8:47] So like it's been a family cookbook since the 30s, people. In case you didn't know this, it's been a the Joy of Cooking was a family, was it's a family run operation. It was taken in and and kind of taken away from the family for a little while, and then kind of the control was given back to them like two times. It's a fantastic story. We're gonna have them on about like family and cooking and like doing a cookbook like The Joy of Cooking in the modern era.
+
+[9:14] It's gonna be a lot of fun. So can't wait for that one. What else? That's right. We have uh Bob Florence of Moromi Show You coming on to the good as well.
+
+[9:23] He Good Soy Products. Good soy products. Yep, great soy products. And from Mystic Connect. Yep.
+
+[9:31] Yeah. Just barely got got their toe in Connecticut there. Just barely not Rhode Island, Mystic. You know what I mean? Shit barely.
+
+[9:37] Yeah, true. Um then it looks like we're gonna have the two founders of Made in Cookware coming on. For all for all your potential. So listen, when we have made in on, the the reason we thought this would be interesting to you folks is because I know that uh and you know, John and John and Anastasi and I, like we, you know, believe it or not, we talk uh outside of this. And uh we think that a lot of people not only like do they make products that you know our listeners might be interested in that you guys might be interested in, but I think like a lot of people who listen to us are kind of like in between a lot of worlds and might be interested in how these businesses got started, right, John.
+
+[10:18] Yeah, agreed. Yeah. Uh yeah. They're two young guys. I mean, it's a really new company and they're in a lot of the best kitchens in the country.
+
+[10:24] So yeah, they've been and they have, you know, we have some of their products and they're great products. Yeah. And uh also uh on uh Rancho Gordo, I mean, they make great they make great beans, and someone asked me uh what I do with the yellow eyed, uh yellow eyed um uh beans, and I will say this. So no one reads it anymore, I don't think, but uh uh Matt and John Thorne used to put out a newsletter and there's a compilation of their of their work, and it's uh it was really good writing. I want to say maybe in the 90s, I think this stuff came out like uh serious pig was one of their no, was it serious pig or something on the fire?
+
+[11:05] I forget the names of the books, but I read them all. But they lived in Maine for uh a long time and they did a lot of writing on Maine cooking, specifically on main potatoes and main beans. And so I kind of went down a beanhole uh it, you know, reading that stuff, especially when I'm working on my new book. And there's three really great varieties of main beans that are baked beans. And everyone from Maine knows that Boston's baked beans, I mean, that's just something that tourists say, Maine is is baked bean land, right?
+
+[11:32] And so the three varieties of beans that are uh the big deal there for baked beans are soldier beans, yellow-eyed or stebin beans, and Marfax beans. And so far I've experimented with Marfax and Yellow Eye, but I'm doing fundamentally uh, I mean, I'm doing some stuff I can't talk about yet because I don't know whether it works, and so I don't want to get people in uh you know involved, but I've been doing basically baked beans. I just bought a ceramic bean pot. I've been doing that versus doing it in a coon recon. So I do a very traditional kind of soak, long cook with um uh Crosby's molasses, of course, Crosby's molasses, uh pork, uh, you know, uh oil, onion, uh uh mustard powder, mustard powder people, mustard powder, and just you know, letting it cook uh you pre- what you do is you pre-cook it till they're tender, and then you put it and you and you bake it off slow for like eight hours.
+
+[12:24] And I have to say, they are delicious, but I'm not ready to quite give out the actual recipe yet, because I'm still working on it. Is that fair, John? Yes, fair. Yeah. And the difference between I've been doing a lot of work on evaporation and exactly how much water the beans absorb and how much you want them to absorb.
+
+[12:42] And there's a huge difference between uh when they become tender and eight hours later when you take them out. Uh and I haven't run the tests on how much of that is just the fact that you have molasses in it and it just gets progressively darker as they cook, but they go in as a much lighter color and they come out like dark, dark brown, baked bean color, and it's really kind of amazing. And I really, anyone who's never cooked with yellow eyes or Marfax's before, Marfax is very hard to get uh a hold of. You have to order it shipped uh direct from uh someone who grows it in Vermont or Maine. But um, but yellow eye you can get from Rancho Gordo.
+
+[13:17] All right, is that enough to answer that question someone had, John? Am I good? Yep, good. All right. Uh Quinn wrote in.
+
+[13:24] Uh did I uh cut off? Is that all the guests we have that we know coming up or what? Yes, correct. Still working on some others from listeners suggesting the working on more, yeah, what we have to talk about. Okay.
+
+[13:39] Uh Quinn wrote in uh question. Uh I'm getting into making my own masa, so we're gonna be talking about, you know, uh masa, not uh, you know, masa, the the corn, the corn product masa, right? So we're gonna be we're talking about nixtimalization people, the process of using an alkaline, uh, you know, you you you you par cook uh typically corn in an alkaline solution, typically calcium hydroxide, although you can also use potash or there's various alkaline uh solutions you can use to do it. You parcook it, uh, then you soak it, then you rub off uh, you know, a good portion of the skin uh that you've kind of solubilized with the uh with the alkaline. You uh drain it, rinse it, and grind it, and there you have masa, which makes uh you know nixamalized masa, which is why tortillas taste like tortillas and not like cornmeal.
+
+[14:28] Um so that's what we're talking about, in case I don't know, in case you don't know. Uh I'm getting into making my own masa, going off your old archived instructions on the blog. I wrote how many thousands of words did we write on that, Stas like 4,000 words on masa back in the day? Oh, we lost we lost her internet, her internet got cut off. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[14:48] Well, she's on a boat in the Nile. I mean, you know, I can't get internet on the boat here either sometimes. You know, you're in a boat. Um I think it was like 4,000 words. Although, you know what?
+
+[15:00] I tried to read some of the old blog posts, John, and like they got reformatted when like, you know, when we got turned into a Russian porn site and then a Russian Cialis site for a while, like some of this stuff got reformatted, so it's hard to read because everything now is percent signs and all this other garbage. You notice that I did not. Let me I mean I'll I'll take a look at it. Yeah, anyway. We'll see what we can fix.
+
+[15:26] Uh of course, I immediately went to experiment with using a flavorful liquid in the process. So typically water is what you use. You use calculus. The reason calcium hydroxide is a good uh thing to use as a base is because it's not extraordinarily soluble. So you're not gonna like heavily OD on calcium hydroxide, I mean, flavor wise, OD on calcium hydroxide in uh in the water as a as opposed to using other basic substances.
+
+[15:51] But typically you do it in water, not in in flavorful liquid. Um, of course, I immediately went to use experiment using flavorful liquids. I was also tempted to save the liquid, but even with the alkaline uh protection, I was be squeamish about saving something like poultry stock after sitting at room temperature for many, many hours. Could I potentially do the initial simmering stage and then hold the entire mixture around 60 C for a much shorter steeping time, or is that just a recipe for overcooking the corn? Um 60 C look.
+
+[16:18] I'll tell you from my bean experiments, Quinn. Uh increasing the temperature of the water radically increases uh how fast things absorb, radically increases how fast things absorb uh water. Um I would think 60 is a little bit high because uh starch will actually start uh swelling uh at that temperature. Um so I would go a little bit lower. But you listen, this is all stuff that you know I could that could just be tried.
+
+[16:46] I would actually argue to go lower temp for longer as a probably better thing, right? Like cool it down and let it go longer at at refrigeration temperature if that's what you're gonna want to do. Uh my second idea, this is Quinn's second idea, is to do the initial simmering with a flavorful liquid, then it is cooling down, swap that liquid for fresh warm water at the same with the same proportion of calcium. I think it'll probably leach out a lot of the flavor. I don't even know how much is going to penetrate because a lot of the stuff that goes in is water, so the heavier molecules, I don't know over the short cooking time how long they're gonna make it in.
+
+[17:15] What do you think, John? I don't know. I am not sure. Yeah. I mean I've never done this, but yeah, I don't know.
+
+[17:25] I mean, look, so uh Fabian von Hauske of uh, you know, uh Jeremiah Stone's partner at Contra and Wildair back when he was uh, you know, one of the times he was an intern with us at the French Culinary Institute is when we were doing a lot of the nixtimalization uh stuff. And, you know, our most successful um non-standard nixtamalization was to nixtamalize rye. Now, uh calcium hydroxide isn't strong enough to nixtamalize rye before it's overcooked. So I had to use lye, uh like lye, and then uh and then rinse it and then put calcium hydroxide in to give that classic calcium hydroxide taste to it. And I got it was a pain in the butt, but they were delicious.
+
+[18:05] The rye nixamalized rye tortillas are great. And if you have someone else who will make them for you, I highly recommend that you have someone else make them for you. They're a real pain because they're extremely sticky, because rye itself is extremely sticky once it's hydrated. Um we experiment so Fabian, who I will call fabulous because I always have, so to make that mental substitution in your head, uh, he had always said that his grandma used to cook chicken with cow, which is calcium hydroxide, but I can't remember whether it was actually cow or a related substance called uh techasquite, which is actually a mixture of salts. So techusquite is uh like it just, you know, it's like uh it's a non-pure salt.
+
+[18:45] So it's partially sodium chloride, it's partially partially sodium carbonate, partially sodium bicarbonate, and uh and a bunch of other things. So it's alkaline and salty, and it's used as a as a flavorant, but also as a meat tenderizer and also as something to keep things green because uh it'll keep things green. Because uh when you shift um green vegetables into a basic regime basic meaning alkaline regime, they don't turn color, but they also get mushy faster. So one of the interesting things about mixtures of basic salts like texquite is if you have calcium in that mix, calcium, because basic things also make things mushy. So if you have calcium plus something that's basic, right, then you can keep something very green but also not overcook it at the same time.
+
+[19:28] So it's an interesting phenomenon, but but Fabulous used to say that his grandma would cook chicken with it. So we did some uh tests of making chicken stock with cow and also with lye and I was not able to get something that I liked it in fact one of the problems was when I went to go neutralize the uh the the product afterwards to make it not so basic not so alkaline uh the fat in the chicken saponified and it tasted like soap uh or I don't know whether it happened during the procedure it was what but after I finally made it neutral enough to taste it but I didn't even taste it when it was basic because it was very basic. By the time I could taste it it had saponified and taste like soap. So I would just be wary of making something extremely basic that has a lot of fat in it because you might get some off flavors. This is was this an okay answer uh John yep good answer.
+
+[20:21] Anyway uh DJ mustard uh again I need someone on the Discord to weigh in DJ mustard we said this a couple times ideas on good veggies to grow in a home garden I'm zone 7B I have not had a garden DJ mustard I have not had a garden in in years and years and years but I will say this back when I did have a garden I was in a similar zone on the coast of you know near the coast of Connecticut over there and do you guys have a garden John Yeah my mom has a garden stock with bench from Home Depot and things like that. Yeah I mean if you live in Connecticut what if you live in Connecticut first of all find a good seed store near you. If you live in Connecticut, you're blessed because Baker's uh Baker's Creek, I think, heirloom seeds, they're that out of old Weathersfield. Yeah. You can go to Weathersfield, which is like a quaint little Connecticut kind of a McGillakuddy there.
+
+[21:14] You go there, you stop in, you can get some sort of like, you know, kind of farm eated table, like foody stuff at the thing, and then you go, and you know, it's quaint and all this. And then you go to the seed store, and the people who are working at the seed store actually grow the things that they sell. So even though they ship nationwide, they know exactly how the stuff grows in this neighborhood. Remember, it's not just your zone, it's the actual dirt you have, right? That's why, like, you know, uh, that's why Stokes Farms tomatoes, uh, even though the temperature regime might be the exact same as someone that's 20 miles away, the combination of temperature regime, water and dirt and husbandry is different.
+
+[21:55] Um, and so they're they're a different product. But like, you know, the the person who is there can recommend, and it's much better to get recommendations from people that actually grow stuff, not just based on the climate, and I'm not an expert in any of this, but not just based on the climate, but based on exactly where you are. And I'll tell you, you the thing that as a non gardener that uh uh was shocked me was stuff that grew great the first year that I had it. Man, by the second year, the pests had really caught on. You know what I mean?
+
+[22:23] You guys get anyone else get this problem when they're growing? Stas, you grow stuff in the garden a lot, right? The second year you plant something, the pests are like, oh, that was delicious last year. Oh, yeah, she's not here. That was delicious last year.
+
+[22:32] Not here, yeah. You know what I mean? That was delicious. I'm gonna eat all of it. You know what I mean?
+
+[22:37] But if I ever have any land in this zone again, I'm going to plant pawpaw trees. Pawpaw trees. Get you some pawpaw trees. Because they don't ship well. I've never even had one, but I would plant it taste unseen based on what people say.
+
+[22:52] It's the it is the I'm told tropical tasting temperate fruit of choice. Because, you know, everyone knows no, no one knows, but I like uh may apples, which are poisonous, po like deadly poisonous when they're not ripe. Delicious when they're ripe. I mean, delicious. But the problem is you have to fight the chipmunks and squirrels to get to them because they're also gonna eat all those suckers.
+
+[23:15] Um I would get a pawpaw tree. John, get a pawpaw tree over there at your mom's house. You can get them shipped. They grow them in Jersey. What?
+
+[23:25] Huh? I don't know. That would that's a good idea. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah.
+
+[23:29] If I grow them in Jersey. Yeah. You grow them in Jersey. And if you plant a tree, right? Couple trees, then like, you know, it's like you plant it, you don't get anything for a couple of years, so there's no immediate gratification like with gardening.
+
+[23:41] But once they take, it's a freaking tree. You get it year after year. You know what I mean? Really? I love trees.
+
+[23:50] And I theoretically love pawpaws. I mentally love them. Someday, I forget who it is. Someone keeps writing in, threatening to send it to us, but then we never we never actually make contact when it's pawpaw time. Let's not have that happen this year, John.
+
+[24:01] Let's not sleep on pawpaws this year. Okay. Yeah. I've only ever had a Native uh American, uh, you know, American native to this country, in other words, not your non-Asian and non, you know, European persimmon once. I stole it off of a tree in a in a horticultural garden in Washington, D.C.
+
+[24:19] So I also don't feel like I know anything about like uh American persimmons, do you, John? No, I do not. But I've never, I've never, I've never been like if someone said to me, if if I woke up in the morning, someone shook me awake at night and we're like, Dave, you're never gonna have another persimmon in your whole life, I'd be like, okay. Uh I mean, like, if you never I mean, I'm not saying I don't like persimmons, I like the concept of them, but if you never had one again in your life, you wouldn't be like, oh man, right. Agreed.
+
+[24:51] Yeah. And this is a challenge. I want to feel as though it's something that I crave. I just don't. You know?
+
+[24:57] I want to. Anyway. You know who uh Nastas I know she she can't, she's not on, but Nastasia's friend Joe made the that persimmon compote that we spoke about a year or so ago. Remember that, John? Persimmon compote?
+
+[25:11] Yeah. I was so shocked someone made a persimmon compote. So then when I finally met Joe, I was like, talk to me about the persimmon compote, and you know what? He didn't even remember it. He didn't even remember it.
+
+[25:20] I'm like, who the hell makes a sip persimmon compote and it doesn't remember it? What the hell is that? Hey, listen, here's another thing I would plant. Obviously, get apples, right? Obviously, plant apple trees.
+
+[25:32] Again, I'm gonna only recommend trees. And if you're gonna get apple trees in this zone, get yourself a copy. Uh it's old, it's but not out of date and small. So, like, you know, you can get Burford's book and all there's a bunch of like very, very comprehensive books on growing uh apple trees, uh, especially in in this region. But get the um Brooklyn Botanical Gardens book on apple trees.
+
+[25:55] Brooklyn, if you if I don't even have a garden, and yet I own about two-thirds of the collection of Brooklyn Botanical Gardens uh um books on gardening for the home, and they are absolute treasures, classics in the field. They're very short, they're very cheap, and they're very to the point. So they'll they have a book on you want to grow potatoes, which by the way, everyone should grow potatoes once in their life, twice in their life, three times in their life. Joe, you ever grow a potato? No, I never have.
+
+[26:23] Tell me about it. I mean, I know you know what? Actually, I grew up sweet potatoes. Uh different. They are potatoes.
+
+[26:29] I mean, they're different. They're not the same. It's not uh it's got the word potato in them. That's true. In the way that a a love apple is a potato, if not an apple.
+
+[26:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But not they're botanically not related, I guess is what I'm saying. True. Starchy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[26:42] True, true. But the thing about potatoes that I didn't realize until I grew up. First of all, it's like a lot of fun, right? Because you put the potato in, right? And the potatoes grow around this, uh like like near the surface where they're growing.
+
+[26:55] So what you do is is, and they make for this purpose these kind of like uh potato sacks, but not like potato sack, like you jump in. It's more like a like a like a like a top hat that like opens up. So you start it low, and then as it grows up, you keep mounding more dirt around the stalk so that it'll grow potatoes deeper, right? The idea is that you don't want potatoes to just grow at the surface. You want to get a lot of potatoes out of a very like narrow thing because you're doing it on your deck, right?
+
+[27:24] Or whatever. And so you you keep mounding it up so that you can get uh a larger depth of potatoes, right? And then at certain point you stop and it throws off all the leaves and stuff like this. But not only are potatoes delicious, I recommend getting uh potato at a farmer's market because they haven't necessarily been treated with uh sprouting inhibitors, right? And then you cut up the potatoes and then you let the potato parts sprout and then you plant those.
+
+[27:48] Um potato leaves are gorgeous, potato flowers are gorgeous. Potato plants are gorgeous. They grow relatively quickly, they're relatively easy to grow, and at the end you get potatoes. What kind of win is that? We have a caller.
+
+[28:03] Caller, you're on the air. Hey David Gang, uh Josh from Norfolk here. How you doing? Uh so I'm I'm well. How are you?
+
+[28:13] Good. Not in Egypt, I'm jealous of that. Yeah, me too. Um so I'm I'm doing a bottled cocktail for an event this Sunday. Um Blanc vermouth, campari, and clarified strawberry, which are popping off here in Virginia now.
+
+[28:27] Um I'm trying to do that. Let me write this down. Hold on a minute. Let me write it down so I can see it. So like are you using dole?
+
+[28:33] Are you using dolan? Or what are you using for your Blanc Fermouth? Uh either Dolan or either Dolan or uh Acha, which is like a Spanish vermouth we have. Okay. And uh, but it's uh it's a it's a sweet white, not uh not a dry white.
+
+[28:47] Uh I'd say like off dry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like like similar to the dol. Yeah, okay, okay. Not the Dolan dry, but like the dole.
+
+[28:54] Yeah, okay. You say Dolan Clarified Strawberry, what else? Uh Kempari. Okay. All right.
+
+[29:02] Question. I got it really. So the plan is to just carbonate them in uh, you know, ECs and then uh bottle them. Um and I'm trying to figure out whether best practice would be to uh just make like a Houstino out of the Kempari and the vermouth with the strawberries and then dilute that down, or to just use clarified strawberry juice. Uh well, okay, so normally if you're making a spirit that you're going to age, right?
+
+[29:34] Hustino is always uh a like a different process. You get a different taste, right? So like making a banana Houstino tastes different from making a um from making uh banana ju clarified banana juice and adding it, right? Because what happens is is that a lot of the stuff in the rum, like a lot of the polyphenols and whatnot, kind of get attached onto the banana. So the banana, like the banana is adding to the liquor but the banana is also subtracting from the liquor does that make sense so I would think that in especially in a long drink that's gonna be carbonated right I would think that too much would get stripped out of the Dolan or whatever the vermouth and the compari in the Houstino process.
+
+[30:20] And now it could be delicious it could be what you want but it's actually gonna lower your overall yield to do a Houstino right and in a long drink where you actually have the space to make it up with the strawberry, I think it's just gonna be much more cost effective and brighter tasting right because you can make the strawberry and then freeze it and then it's good, right? So like you can make the strawberry today, clarified strawberry today, freeze it and then thaw it and it'll be great in like six months as long as your freezer is good, right? And so I think from a um from just from the fact that it's gonna be a long drink anyway and uh I think you're gonna strip a lot of the characteristic notes of the vermouth and the compari that you're kind of going for and because of the like kind of the money you're gonna lose in that especially for a long drink, I would say clarify the strawberry. Does that make sense? Yeah totally thanks.
+
+[31:11] Yeah no problem. Uh let me know how it works out. Tweet me back and tell me how how the drink is I would just be I mean I obviously you know this but the the Kampari Kampari takes over in a good way I love Kampari but obviously compari is like rides over the top so it's gonna be an interesting balance to get it to get it right on. But you know I do love Campari. I do not I mean like I Yeah, I'm gonna go real light on it.
+
+[31:31] Yeah. Yeah, I love Kampari though. It's uh it's for a pairing with a dessert and stuff, so I'm kind of looking forward to a little bit of bitterness to you know cut through the richness of uh of the dessert course. Yeah? What's the uh what's the dessert?
+
+[31:46] Uh I don't have the menu in front of me. It's the chef doing it, but the plan is to be like kind of oops all strawberries. So um a couple different ways over like a pretty simple cake. And uh so you wanted to keep a strawberry drink, but then you know, still have something that's gonna cut. I mean, even like jack it with a little citric acid just to brighten it up.
+
+[32:04] Yeah, no shame in that. Or in Kampari a lot, if you uh uh the champagne acid is nice because it really pushes it in a wine direction and like pushes it away from a citrus direction. So with vermouth and um and compari, especially carbonated, if you want to like make it taste really kind of different and not citrusy, like try don't you know, whatever. Just try the champagne acid, which is you know the the uh six percent, so three percent uh lactic uh acid the by the crystal form and three percent um uh my god, tartaric acid, right? So it's three percent tartaric and three percent lactic, uh to make the same as lime, and it's like a little bit, not a lot because it's you know quite sharp, but a little bit of that.
+
+[32:48] Try it. I think you might you might like it. Sounds like it would work well in that. If j again, like typically we'll add like a bar spoon just to brighten it, but it definitely brings a winier note to it as opposed to a more citrusy note, which I I do uh I do appreciate. And I also appreciate the Captain Crunch reference, oops all berries.
+
+[33:06] Although Captain Crusader. Yeah, Captain Crunch is one of those things that I really I ate a lot of it growing up, and every time I ate it, I was like, why am I eating it? You know what I mean? Every time I ate it, I'm like, why am I eating this? I mean, like, two things that I did every single time when I was a kid.
+
+[33:24] Burn the hell out of the roof of my mouth with pizza, because who's waiting, right? And uh the roof of your mouth, how much does that hurt when you have your skin like like coming off like like like you're in a cave uh coming off the top of your mouth from the burnt pizza? No one likes that, right, Joe? Hell no. You know what?
+
+[33:40] I never had uh never had the Captain Crunch. We didn't have sugar in the house. Oh, well, look, you weren't missing what am I missing, yeah. No, because Captain Crunch is an extruded cereal, and I love extruded cereals. But Captain Crunch, even though it contains no grease, tastes greasy, and I don't know why.
+
+[33:56] And also, it's the hardest thing. It's physically hard, right? So, like a pizza that ruins the top of your mouth. When you eat a bowl of Captain Crunch, at the end of it, you're like, my mouth hurts. What the hell am I doing?
+
+[34:07] Like, not your teeth. Your teeth break right through it, but it's that roof of the mouth. John, back me up on this since you I'm sure you had this or or or or Jack. Come on. No, I do not back you up on this.
+
+[34:18] I am actively against you, and as matter-of fact, like I have a bowl of Captain Crunch yesterday. And how's the roof of your mouth? Yeah, okay. Alright. Listen, the joy of being a human is the ability to disagree with each other.
+
+[34:34] Very true. Yeah. We are nothing if not creatures that try to do it. I do not like it. And all berries, I mean, like, that's just like that's just like that's just like juiced up tricks.
+
+[34:45] What the hell is that? All berries is just like I only like the original Captain Crunch. I don't like all the other ones. I don't like the peanut butter, I don't like the berry. Oh, peanut butter.
+
+[34:55] Yeah. I I I think we had Fruit Loops in the house a few times. Oh fruit loops, I mean, it's all the same stuff. It is. It's all the same natural.
+
+[35:05] Well, it's all extruded stuff, but I feel fruit loops. I feel fruit loops weren't as hard on my mouth, maybe because they weren't as sharp. They're round. You know, fruit loops are like mini donut-y things, but they're hard as hell, but like for some reason they didn't do it. You know, like uh someday we should just do like a cereal aroma because I've studied cereal.
+
+[35:23] I've done I've studied cereal quite extensively. We should have some one of the cereal experts uh on. What so like if you didn't have a lot of sugar, uh Joe, what was the cereal that you had in your house? Cereal choice. It was honestly, it was it was it was honey nacherios.
+
+[35:36] Those are good. That was basically that was basically it. Or oatmeal. But you know what? You know, actually, I was just thinking about just the other day, and I don't know why I brought up Fruit Loops, but does anyone feel the same way as me?
+
+[35:46] Like when you order pork pha, I think it's only pork. Uh the glaze that they use on the pork faw reminds me of the taste of Fruit Loops. Not per se like a particular flavor, but something about it. There's an essence of Fruit Loops in pork pha. I'm gonna have John uh comment on this as the resident expert.
+
+[36:09] What do you think, John? I don't know. I've actually never had pork faux. So I don't even know if I've got chicken. Yeah.
+
+[36:18] Okay. Not can't uh, yeah. Sorry, Joe. Okay, no, I just a beef all day, everyday kind of a dude. Beef all day, beef every day.
+
+[36:27] Oh, speaking of beef, from uh uh Papa Wagyu, we had some uh uh Picanha, which what was the what was the story with that one? It was so delicious, though. Uh we'll talk about it later. We'll post it. It was so delicious.
+
+[36:40] It was so stupid. Oh my god, it was so dumb. This tasted so good. Anyway, um uh all right. Oh, on cereals though.
+
+[36:49] In my house, I mean life. Life is a great cereal. And frosted mini wits. Life, was that Mikey likes it? Yeah.
+
+[36:59] That was Mikey Likes it. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't die from Pop Rocks, by the way. No, right. Did I tell you I met the inventor of Pop Rocks?
+
+[37:00] No. Yeah, he took a class with me at the French Culinary Institute, I believe, on, I don't think it was Hydrocollege. I think it was low temperature cooking. And he was one of the people who worked on the team that uh did Pop Rocks. Really?
+
+[37:17] Yeah, Pop Rocks is are amazing, right? And it and it used to be maybe you still can, you could get custom pop rocks made by there's companies that have it, because what you do is is you essentially make a sugar candy under extreme pressure in uh CO2. Then you release the pressure, it fractures, but like there is CO2 still trapped in it. That's how it works, right? Got you.
+
+[37:36] And and uh it was huge in the early uh to mid 2000s. Pop rocks were everywhere in all fine dining. Ever all fine dining went through like the same three phases. Like first everyone was like, well, everyone's using Tonka beans now, and they're like, eh, it's not so good for you. So they stopped doing that.
+
+[37:52] And then everyone's like, oh, we're all using menthol now. And everyone's like, oh, that's actually gross. And then everyone, like the crystals. And then it's like, oh, everyone's using pop rocks. John, you remember this?
+
+[37:59] Are you uh old enough to remember this? Anyway, neutral pop rocks. So what people do is they would they would uh I think it was Chef Rubber or someone would sell neutral, just non-flavored Pop Rocks, and then people would just mix the neutral pop rocks with whatever flavor they wanted and make you know the pop rock a du jour. Well, you know, the the the the that chocolate company, Tony's, has a and I'm not a big fan of white chocolate, but I had to taste it. They have a uh white chocolate raspberry, um, I can't remember what they call it on the packaging, but it's basically raspberry and pop rocks.
+
+[38:31] Yeah. Pretty good. I mean, I like Pop Rocks. Uh so Mikey did not die. That's not true.
+
+[38:37] Uh, from uh Pop Rocks and Coke, I believe was the was the I thought it was Pepsi. Oh, it could be Pepsi, I don't know. Some a soda product and pop rocks did not kill him. But it is true. This part is what I'm about to tell you is true, according to the guy, that they had a truck that was full of pop rocks once, and it got caught in a storm and had a massive leak, and the truck uh was damaged by the pop rocks reaction.
+
+[39:03] Someday they'll find it the pop rocks reaction. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. That's what he told me.
+
+[39:09] Could be a lie. But that's what he said. I'd like to see what that truck looked like. Deformed. I would like to remember what that guy's name was.
+
+[39:16] I mean, I think one of the greatest coups that cooking issues ever had was we had the uh, you know, the inventor of Fudgy the Whale and Cookie Puss on. I mean, that was sick. Oh, that was great. Yeah. Uh all right.
+
+[39:27] Josh S. writes in any suggestions on doing waffle in waffle infused whiskey without a hydraulic press. Josh, I have good news for you, my friend. Uh the hydraulic press is completely unnecessary for the production of uh waffle infused whiskey. What the hydraulic press does is vastly increase your uh yield, right?
+
+[39:47] So if you're willing to lose more product and you're willing to put and also remember, so people, here's what we did. I cooked waffles. I used my waffle recipe. John. John, this is my American waffle recipe.
+
+[40:00] All right, I don't want to hear it from you. Okay. It wasn't a leak. Oh, I thought you used eggos. No.
+
+[40:05] What am I? An animal? Am I a brute? Come on. Hey, egg goes are tasty.
+
+[40:11] Uh now we're gonna have to agree to disagree. I do not like I do not like eggos. I do not like egos. I do not like them, Sam. I am.
+
+[40:20] I do not like them. I mean, yeah. I mean, it's definitely a t uh I know they're not good, but I I enjoyed them, and they're definitely like a child of themselves, I think. I mean, I could I could maybe see using them as a component in something else because they are a thing. They're like a thing.
+
+[40:29] You know what I mean? But like, I don't know. I'm not I mean, I I like their advertising campaign, Joe. Yes, Lego My Ego is a was a good advertising campaign. Uh anywho, right?
+
+[40:48] No, we made waffles. You know what I mean? But American style waffles. Not not Brussels, not uh not Lies. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[40:57] Not Stroop. We just made American style waffles, which I love them. I grew up making them until I was 49 years old. All I ever made and knew and loved was American waffles until I went to Belgium and was like, I'm an idiot. And now I realize that all of our waffles are vastly inferior to a common grade uh Belgian waffle of any variety.
+
+[41:23] And right right or wrong, John. Yeah, no, very right. Yeah. I mean, like our waffles are like so l ego's are a different style of waffle. That's like a like, you know egos are based on like this, I don't even know what they would be called, but like a very thin waffle iron that looks like the kind of early cast iron waffle iron pans.
+
+[41:46] They're they're thin waffle. I don't even know what they would be called where they come from. I I don't really know, right? But what I think of as like the m the waffle that you get that w what we used to call when I was a kid Belgian waffles, right? Right.
+
+[42:00] Uh that most closely mimics what would be known in Belgium as uh the Brussels style, right? However, ours is ours is not good compared to theirs, right? I don't think it's a matter of oh, it's just different. No, sorry, Brussels, this stuff's better. What do you think, John?
+
+[42:14] Yeah, agreed. Yeah, no, it is it is better. And then the Liege. Uh well classically, no. The classically they're yeasted, first of all.
+
+[42:33] Uh, and uh they whip uh the egg whites and then um put the egg whites back into the batter, that provides nucleation sites. So interestingly, most of the recipes that you'll read, the the whipped egg whites go in before the rise. And you're like, why would you do that? The egg whites are just gonna go flat. But what it does is it provides nucleation sites so that the entire batter really aerates.
+
+[42:56] And so you get just like kind of massive amount of aeration and kind of a really good uh yeasty uh thing, and they're just light and their waffle irons just kick the crap out of our waffle irons. They just kick the ever loving crap. Like like they get like really freaking hot. And they're heavy. Heavy.
+
+[43:14] And they're heavy. So even like the super heavy. Even the the waffle iron that people use at home in Belgium is not the same waffle iron that we use at home here. It's heavier, right, John? I mean it's not as heavy as the commercial ones, but it's still heavier than the one that we use here.
+
+[43:32] And so it's just because no one here has had a decent waffle, the ones that we eat taste good. So we're not like, oh, you know, uh this is bad. You know what I mean? But it's the kind of thing that then when you have the other one, you're like, Oh my god, I didn't know that there was this other level of waffle that was attainable. Fair, John.
+
+[43:54] Very fair. Yeah. So uh regular American style waffles, which, by the way, here's how you can tell that your waffle game isn't very good. And this is the way I live my life until I was like, I say, like almost 50. Is if your pancake waffle, if your pancake recipe and your waffle recipe are basically the same, right?
+
+[44:11] Which so the difference for most people between their pancake recipe and their waffle recipe is strictly the amount of oil and or butter they put in, right? You need to have a decent amount of butter or oil in a waffle recipe to get good release from the pan, whereas you can lower the amount when you put it in a pancake. I don't. I use the same amount of butter in both because I'm not afraid of putting butter in my pancakes. You know what I mean?
+
+[44:35] You know what I'm saying, people? I'm not afraid of it. Uh but that's the main difference that most Americans do. And that's just not the ideal. If you have a good iron, that's just not the ideal waffle spec, is the same as pancake.
+
+[44:49] Makes your life easy, right? Because you only have to remember the one recipe. And hell, you know, you can make waffles and pancakes on the same day, pour some into the iron and some into a griddle, right? But it's just not going once you had this other kind of waffle, it's just not going to be the same. But, anyways, so what I'm talking about here is you're fundamentally making a uh uh American style waffle, which is a pancake with you know about twice what a pancake would have in terms of oil or butter.
+
+[45:15] I would make sure you put vanilla in. I would not go totally dry. I would put some sugar into that waffle more than you would in a Brussels style waffle because that's typically an unsugared waffle as opposed to liege waffles. Then let it cool, slice it into strips, put it in, soak the and and you what I would do is I would get a container, I would uh put the the strips in, and then basically fill it to cover the strips just exactly with uh your your whiskey, right? Cover it and let it sit.
+
+[45:44] Just let it sit. Let it sit. Now, then what I would do afterwards, after letting it sit for whatever, it doesn't really matter, is I would um I would dump it into a hydraulic press, and then I would press the hell out of it, like really press the hell out of it. So I would get almost a hundred percent of my product back. I also was squeezing it so hard that I squeezed all of the butter back out.
+
+[46:07] So we used to have this like whiskey butter that would float on the top, right? So we would get these, we would have these uh you know these containers, and then you would let the containers after you press it settle for a day or two, and at the top you'd have this amazing whiskey waffle butter, and like that stuff was crazy to use uh for cooking, right? It was great. Uh and then you would you you would you know decant off of that or like you know, get we would use separatory funnels to to anyway. Um, but you can accomplish pretty much the same thing with a super bag, just squeeze the ever-loving snot out of it, man.
+
+[46:40] You know what I mean? It's just you're not gonna get your yield, the taste will be good, but the yield won't be as high. Is that uh is that fair, John? Yep, fair. The science slut writes in, and uh I w I wish I could have gotten uh more information on on this uh for you, but we're gonna read it anyway.
+
+[46:56] Maybe someone in the Discord can help us out. Uh I recently had a good, a really good mezcal flavored with a local wild avocado. The flavor was impressively clean uh with fresh avocado notes. Any tips on how one could recreate this uh with such a mushy, volatile fruit as an avocado. So that's interesting.
+
+[47:15] And it made me think of uh made me think of many things. Uh first, I'm wondering what kind of avocado they use, whether they use so like, you know, like most of the avocados that we get uh here in the US, um, most of the ones that you you know that people use for things like avocado toast are a variety of avocado that are very high in oil, right? But there are varieties of avocado that are very popular in in other places that are fairly low in oil, right? So they're lower in oil, um, sometimes like brighter green, less of that kind of olive color to it. And I'm wondering whether this local wild avocado is maybe a lower oil avocado.
+
+[47:55] I also am not clear on well, uh huh. I'm not clear on whether this is like a soupy thing, like they blended the avocado in, or whether this is a liquor that's kind of clear-ish with like avocado in it, right, John. Were you clear on what they what they meant? Yeah, I think I think what you're you're saying is what Yeah. What, clear or soupy, goopy?
+
+[48:18] I think clear. Yeah, I don't know. Because you know, there's the it could be of a false thing and there's a lot of debate on it, but some people say that avo avocat, the uh the uh Dutch uh egg liquor was originally based on a an avocado liquor, but then when it was remade in Holland, it was made with eggs, and then other people are like, oh, because they don't have avocados. Other people are like, that's garbage, right? So it could be the soupy thing.
+
+[48:41] See, the problem with avocado is obviously as uh as uh the science slut points out, is that it oxidizes, right? And so there's various things you can do to prevent oxidation. One of them is alcohol, because alcohol will uh inhibit uh polyphenol oxidase enzymes. However, it's not a hundred percent, right? So, like um, you know, you want to put as little oxygen into the mix as possible when you're making it.
+
+[49:06] So I wouldn't blend it forever, you know. You know, you might want to mash it with ascorbic acid. So like ascorbic acid uh will prevent uh oxidation for a while, but it will then go away. So I think some mixture of ascorbic acid and alcohol will stabilize it, but not for infinity. So like what they might do is alcohol, ascorbic acid, then bottle it and then slowly bring it up to a temperature that will kill the enzyme but not make it taste uh too cooked, right?
+
+[49:34] You have to be careful when you're heating alcohol in a bottle because remember the alcohol boils at a much lower temperature than uh water does. So you have to be very accurate with your temperature control to not blow up a bottle when you're when you're heating it. Um but you also and that'll actually, you know, as you heat it a little bit and stuff's volatilizing, that'll actually help strip oxygen out, which will also stabilize it more. Um, but I I would try this, but I don't know of any other magical party trick that'll that'll make it happen, but maybe someone in Discord does. Was that uh was that okay, John?
+
+[50:15] Yeah. Also, strange to say, uh Haas, right? So when uh when most of us, I mean, you know, most of us think of an avocado variety, we think of Haas, right? Haas, uh uh again, this is from memory, but Haas is a um, so for my wife's birthday, I bought her they they make these uh they make these vases now, right? They that uh one for an acorn and one for an avocado thing.
+
+[50:44] So it's it's basically, like uh for a designer, like 10 steps up from sticking a bunch of toothpicks into an avocado pit and putting it over a glass of water. You remember that when you were a kid? Everyone did that when they're a kid, right? Toothpicks avocado. So these are like, you know, you get them at MoMA design and they look nice and you can grow an avocado for a while and then plant it, right?
+
+[51:01] So I was gonna go do it, but like I'm never gonna grow an avocado in New York City to the point where it's gonna make an avocado fruit, right? That's just never gonna happen, right? Because I'm not gonna have multiple trees, and I live in New York City and I don't have a lot of light, and so that's just not gonna work for me. So what is it that I can get out of an avocado plant? Because I only care about things I get things out of, right?
+
+[51:20] What what can I get? Anyone? Anyone? Leaves? The leaves.
+
+[51:25] But Haas avocado leaves, right? So like the original Mexican cultivars of, or not the original, but Mexican cultivars of uh avocado, of which, and remember, avocados are like uh a member of the laurel family, right? And so a lot of those have um aromatic leaves, like Lindera benzoin, which you know is an amazing aromatic thing, or uh sassafras, I think is a laurel, isn't it? And then um uh bay laurel, obviously, laurel, like you know, uh bay leaf is is is a laurel, but uh avocado is related to those. And and so like a lot of them have aromatic leaves.
+
+[52:05] Uh Haas is not one that has a good leaf. So if if I when I go to the supermarket, I keep looking at it and all I get are haases. I need to find an avocado with a pit in it so I can get the leaves because it's not so easy to get fresh leaves here. Uh maybe I I just haven't looked hard enough, but like uh I would love to be cooking with uh avocado leaves, right? Those those Florida avocados are huge.
+
+[52:27] They are big. Huge. And not as tasty. Those might be the ones that are less oily. Listen, look, yeah, well, there's Florida, the being the big bright green ones, and they're also in my market, they're labeled as Dominican.
+
+[52:37] Yes, Dominican. Uh, but you know, I remember uh the first time I went to Columbia, the country, and they, you know, they gave me these those avocados, and I was like, yo, this isn't oily, and they're like, yeah, this is the way we like them. So it's just like I think we're accustomed to liking the very oily ones, and I think that the the uses are different. You know what I mean? It's like the non-oily ones don't make such a good avocado toast, but they are good at being themselves.
+
+[53:07] You know what I mean? But since again, I mean I only got to eat it once, and then I get the leaves, hopefully forever. So, you know, I want the leaves. And anywho, huh? Uh yeah, so uh again, memory serves Haas is a hybrid.
+
+[53:22] So it's part part Guatemalan, part Mexican avocado. But people who uh people say that the the certain I don't know whether it's true or false, that that certain leaves from certain of them are not only bitter but bad for you. But again, I have no idea whether that's true or false. Not an expert in that, in that. Um Warren Johnson writes in uh something that's bum been bugging him.
+
+[53:46] Oh, it was a joke because I was supposed to do it during the insect episode. Right? I liked having the I liked having uh the millman on for the insect thing because it wasn't our normal, wasn't our normal ball of wax, and I had to keep on working to try to make it about food. What do you think, Joe? I enjoyed it.
+
+[54:02] I'm glad we just stay away from the food. Talk about eating things and like it was about more of like the the small microcosms of the Yeah, like the food systems, the systems. Yeah, which is not our normal, not our normal uh purview, but yeah, it's okay. It's okay to talk about something different. Anyway, Warren Johnson wrote in for uh last week.
+
+[54:21] Not an insect question, but something that's been bugging me. Is there anywhere on the internet that is currently selling one quarter inch reinforced braided bev seal ultra polyethylene hose that uh I recommend? Now, uh so I have everything else but this hose, and I cannot find a suitable non-PVC option in Canada to hook everything up. Uh any hit hints on tracking this down. So I'll say this again for anyone who hasn't heard me rant about this.
+
+[54:48] I am not against polyvinyl chloride in general, although many people are, right? It is a plastic, it has its uses. Uh it's much easier to do PVC drain pipes than it is to do cast iron. Although I had to do cast iron because the last time I had to do plumbing, New York City still required all cast iron for the drain. Nothing is less fun than well, okay.
+
+[55:11] That's not true. Nothing in plumbing is less fun than cutting and hubbing together cast iron freaking pipes. You know what I mean? I hated it. They're so freaking heavy.
+
+[55:22] I used to have to carry 10-foot lengths of these cast iron pipes on my shoulders from the local plumbing supply down east Broadway where I live, like sneak it into my elevator because I wasn't allowed to do the work on my own, and then like ruin my like my cutters cutting the cast iron pipe. Like you because you have you score it and then it goes kink and breaks, and then you put it on the free-and-these hubs, and the hubs suck. So, like, the reason you're using the cast iron, right, is because it supposedly is like so like rough and tumble that it's gonna last forever. And then what am I connecting it with, Joe? Freaking rubber hubs.
+
+[55:52] Freaking rubber hubs. Anyway. So I'm not against PVC. However, I don't want my beverages flowing through PVC. And everyone believes that PVC is okay.
+
+[56:02] But if you've ever bought new PVC hose, the plasticizers that they use in the PVC to make the PVC hose flexible smell terrible. Terrible. And if it tastes and smells terrible, as I would like to say, tastes like poison, probably is poison, right? I mean, there's plenty of things that poison you can't even taste. But if it tastes like poison, I mean it's probably poison, right?
+
+[56:27] Yeah? Anyway. Uh and I would run taste with PVC hose. Everyone's like, oh, PVC is fine. You can't taste it.
+
+[56:35] I don't know what you know why? Because they're drinking only soda. I drink only seltzer, right? So I taste every bad flavor that goes in because A, I filter the hell out of my water, right? So that there's no chlorine taste in it.
+
+[56:47] You ever go to someplace and the local water tastes like crap and then they carbonate that local crap water, and then you you like when you get a seltzer, you're like, oh, how am I gonna drink this whole thing? It tastes like death, right? I mean, how many times does this happen? Oh, all the time, right? But if you filter it, right?
+
+[57:03] And so if your water tastes like poison and you're used to poisonous water anyway, then what's a little uh what's a little uh leaching in? Sure, your kids will uh, you know, your kids will go through puberty when they're freaking 10, and who knows what's gonna happen to them later on and like all these other negative things, but you know, you're not tasting it because your water already tastes like poison. Um, PVC, I've done the taste tests and I have never had PVC uh tubing the flexible stuff that didn't produce an off-flavor. Now maybe it's possible that if I stuck it, you know, in a lake, or not a lake, you know, in a in a river and let fresh river water run through it for a month and a half and it leached all the chemicals into the environment to kill some fish downstream instead of me, right? That maybe it would uh not taste bad anymore.
+
+[57:52] That's possible, but why would you do that? The answer is polyethylene. Polyethylene does not provide a taste to uh the um I also don't like uh PVC wrap for that reason. Anyway, uh here's where you get it. Marr Sales, M-A-U-R-E-R sales.com, and good news, they ship to uh regular humans as well as to um uh companies.
+
+[58:19] And unfortunately, we should update the video, John, because the video, the company that we recommend that I use for over 20 years stop selling to people. Anyway, uh Justin writes in there's been several questions about induction burns lately that were answered on the show. What about ovens? I have an ancient wolf gas oven now that some uh that uh wait, that would be happy to replace with uh induction units, so I guess a range, right? Well, you don't have induction ovens, right?
+
+[58:41] I'm not sure about replacing the oven itself. The large size is convenient and the heat of the pilot makes some tasks uh like yogurt very easy, but the single chamber doesn't hold steam for any real time. I've used newer, horribly expensive rationale comedy of it in work and would love to get some sort of steam capability. I listened to the episode Dave did interestingly, uh, about tiny A Nova uh about the tiny oven. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about non-gas oven solutions beyond uh ANOVA.
+
+[59:04] Um listen, Justin, if you have the money, yeah. Like electric ovens are fantastic. If you have the money and the power, because a lot of the newer ones can be set to a lower temperature. I have never had any personal experience with the larger fancy ovens like the Gagana's, because I've never had like I don't have the power, frankly, in my apartment to be able to use them. And I also don't have the 10 grand to drop on them, but I hear they are fantastic.
+
+[59:27] And if anyone wants to invite me to their house so that I can play around with their fancy big electric oven. Although I have to say, back in the day when I used to buy stuff from restaurant auctions, I bought myself a half sheet bloggic. And this is back when I had uh, you know, a hundred amps of three-phase power in my loft when I lived loft living. And that thing freaking cranked. I love that thing.
+
+[59:44] Um anyway, listen, Max O'Plun. Uh, I have a lot to tell you about renovating your kitchen. I know you're gonna do it in a couple of weeks, and this might have come in last week, but uh I don't have time to go through it today. I'm gonna get to your question uh no matter whether there's a guest or not. You hear me, John?
+
+[1:00:06] We're gonna get to that because that's important, right? And uh Jameson also, uh with your with your Dave Chang about pizza and stuff, I gotta go listen to the references and we'll talk about it next time on cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center at New Stan Studios, joined via Skype for however long her Skype minutes last. Nastasia the hammer Lopez live from Paris. How you doing? I'm good.
+
+[0:25] How are you? All right. How is it over there? I I it's fine. I extended the trip thinking that it would be great, but I think I should have just no offense to no offense to France, but uh I think I should have just come back after Egypt.
+
+[0:44] Okay. That's how I'm feeling. Like uh Egypt was amazing. I mean Egypt was amazing. So I wish I had it stopped, you know what I mean?
+
+[0:51] Okay, when was the last year's great? When was the last time you were in Paris? Oh god, I don't know. Like eight years or nine years ago. When did they start doing the flashing Eiffel Tower?
+
+[1:02] 'Cause I I kinda like the flashing Eiffel Tower. Disco Tower? John probably pre-2000. It was leading up to the millennium. Oh really?
+
+[1:08] Yeah. Yeah, now it's like every hour at night that they do it. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty sick.
+
+[1:17] Yeah. What neighborhood are you staying in? Saint Germain. Oh. Well, maybe that's why you don't like it.
+
+[1:24] You're basically staying you're basically staying in like No, no, it's literally no no no no no no no no no no. It's literally uh you we can talk about it when I come back. But like the the food and the way the people in Egypt like the love that they had for it and everything. Well, I mean the Parisians obviously are not happy you're there. Right?
+
+[1:42] I mean the Parisians obviously don't care that you're there. Right. Right. I mean they're not happy. They're not happy, no.
+
+[1:47] Right. Right. I mean, you know, the Egyptians are very happy. Very happy. Let me put it to you this way.
+
+[1:52] If you got stepped on by a Parisian, they wouldn't like remove you from their shoe with their hand. They would just wipe you off on the corner. You know what I mean? That's what I'm trying to say. But you know, you know what I remember about Paris is there's definitely for me a before and an after Paris.
+
+[2:07] Like in and the before and after is when Paris got good at picking up dog poo. Because Parisians are the world's worst dog poo picker uppers. They refuse to pick up after their dog. It's like it's like goes back to some like it's the one little piece of like French aristocracy they want to hold on to. No, I will not pick up my dog's poo, right?
+
+[2:27] And so sometime around, I don't know, probably also somewhere near the millennium, like Paris was like, We're just gonna spend a lot of money on these vacuums, we're gonna suck up all this poop. And they have motorcycles with the vacuums on them, and somebody just goes around vacuuming up dog all day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But before that, dog poo, yeah. The two poopiest places on earth, Florence, which is a city of poo.
+
+[2:47] I have never seen as many varieties of poo in a one-hour time as I saw years ago in Florence. It was just like it it was almost like, you know, you go to what is their museum, the Ufizi, you go to the Uffizi to see all the art, and then you just walk around the streets to see how many different varieties of poo you could find, like like a like a I love Florence too. And the Duomo. And the Duomo. And the Duomo.
+
+[3:08] Yeah, you know what? Dax doesn't go anywhere with us because he says, Mom, Dad, all you want to do is museums and churches, museums and churches. And we were like, what about when we took it to Kyoto? And he was like, Those are temples, different. Those are cool.
+
+[3:21] I'm like, all right, man. All right. Wow. All right. Oh my god, name.
+
+[3:25] Oh my god. I have to say one thing. So the Italians on the on the Egyptian boat, they um we got off the boat, and they give you your tap at the end where they're like, you had this many bottles of wine, right? Because that's separate from everything else. And so the Italians had sixteen, but it's a couple.
+
+[3:43] They had sixteen bottles of wine in a five day fan, right? Damn. And so they paid it. So then we're like they were like, Oh, let's go to dinner off shore. Let's in uh Aswan, let's have dinner.
+
+[3:54] So we sit down and the husband says, I'm gonna get a cocktail because I haven't had a drink all week. That's so Italian. That's the most Italian thing I've ever heard. I know, I know. That's so Italian.
+
+[4:11] Yeah. You go to lunch for the Italian, they take a whole bottle of wine down. You you you you eat dinner, they take a whole bottle of wine down. You want a cocktail? I'm not an alcoholic.
+
+[4:21] What am I? I don't drink. Like what? What? Yeah.
+
+[4:27] The weirdest culture, man. Oh man. Yeah. That's that's class that's classic Italian. I need to go back to Italy 'cause that's that's that's some classic business right there.
+
+[4:37] I know. Uh uh have you have you been to the uh you know I like to check out supermarkets. Have you gone to see what's up with the Monopre, the single price these days? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[4:47] How was it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But any good yeah. Great.
+
+[4:51] All kinds of fruits and vegetables, yeah. And did you went to the there there used to be one right there by Saint Germain deprece? There's still one right there. You have to go downstairs, like you go in at the at the corner, go down. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[5:02] I've been there many times. Many times. Uh what's the worst country for supermarkets? I'm trying to think. Like just the worst country for supermarkets.
+
+[5:11] The worst supermarkets have ever been. Like Iceland. Oh my god, you know what? Iceland. Okay.
+
+[5:16] That's because I I get what you're saying. Because you're like, that's how much it costs? That's how much it costs. Oh my god, that's how much it costs, and they only have the three things. But they do have the good licorice there.
+
+[5:25] Yeah. They do have the good licorice. You know. Sure. Yeah.
+
+[5:29] Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Did you like did you uh they also like, I think for tourists, because 90% of the people in that country at any given time are tourists, except I guess not in the winter, but like, like they have like, they're like, here's your fermented chalk. I know you want it.
+
+[5:43] And I would have to say it's fine. Oh god. It's fine. Fine. No, no, it's not.
+
+[5:48] It's disgusting. It's fine. Look, if you can I've said this many times. If you can accustom yourself to eating uh ammoniated cheese, not that you not that you like ammoniated cheese, but I'm saying you've all had it. They someone brings it out, they're like, I love this cheese, and they give it to you, and it's like way over the hill, and it's like it smells like a cleaning agent.
+
+[6:07] And you're like, I'll eat it to be polite. So if you've done that before, then you can handle it. You know what I mean? That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying you enjoy it.
+
+[6:18] And did I bring this up on the air or to a friend of mine? Uh every uh by the way, congratulations to Harold uh and I'm not gonna say anything more. I'm not gonna bust them out on the air, but I gotta talk to you about it afterwards, Nastasia. Do you guys know? Oh boy.
+
+[6:31] Here's a fact. Do you guys know that if you're in I didn't know this? It's an interesting fact. If you're in for men too, not just women, if you're in a ceremonial kimono complete with the official underwear, there's no flap in that underwear. No flap in that underwear.
+
+[6:49] Good to know. I did not know that. This is a new fact for me. And what? Why does it matter?
+
+[6:57] Well, because sometimes people need to use it, Stas. You need to use the restroom. I mean, not not everyone has, you know, not everyone has the ability. Yeah. Like, do you use the actually use the flap?
+
+[7:11] And they're like, no, I never use the flap. There's no way to remove, you have to remove what I'm trying to get to is you have to completely disrobe to get these ceremonial chonies off. And you can't like get like anything out of it to do anything with. You know what I'm saying? That's all I'm saying.
+
+[7:29] Yeah. Anyways. Wait, were you in one? No. No, I just learned it from someone who was at a wedding the other day.
+
+[7:41] Uh wearing one uh for the first time. And uh, and just like I feel like you want to practice. I feel like if you're gonna for nine hours like have to keep your undies on and not remove them, that like you know, somebody better ought to tell you that like in advance you want to practice, work your way up to it. It's like learning to breathe at the bottom, or not breathe, learning to not breathe at the bottom of a pool, right? You gotta work your way up.
+
+[8:02] Yep. Like my fear of public restrooms can keep me from using the restroom in an airplane for a long time. You know what I mean? As I get older, I'm carrying a little bit less. I'll use a restroom in an airplane.
+
+[8:13] But I've been on the flight many times from Newark, New Jersey, to Hong Kong without using the restroom. Because I'm like, no, no. The power move is to use it right when you get on the plane. Get that economy plus, get on the airplane right away, zip back, use it once, sit down, like buckle yourself in, and you know, get ready for the ride. That's what I'm saying.
+
+[8:37] You know what I mean? Yeah. Stas will use it a lot, but hates it. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
+
+[8:45] I don't know of a worse feeling than when you're in an airplane bathroom and the turbulence hits. And you're like, oh, first of all. No, oh man. First of all, you hear the boom and you're like, oh man. Yeah.
+
+[8:58] Like, if you're lucky, you're just doing the number one, but even with the number one, you're like, I'm gonna paint this bathroom. I'm about to paint this bathroom. Not because I want to. Trying to wedge yourself up against the scale. Yeah, that's the worst.
+
+[9:12] That's the worst. That's like, you know, like uh, you know, in the in the in the they try to make a romantic thing out of an airplane bathroom in the TVs and the movies and stuff. I'm like, what? No. Yeah.
+
+[9:23] Nothing on on earth could be less sexy than an airplane bathroom. Yeah. In my in my opinion. Yeah. People are like, m first of all, who flies at 5,280 feet?
+
+[9:34] Mile High Club is the dumbest name. Any club. That's like everyone in Denver. Everyone in Denver is a member of the Mile High Club. Stupid.
+
+[9:43] Anyway, uh dumb. And uh Jackie Molecules, you're back in uh you're back in the uh great state of California. I am in Los Angeles. I saw a TV program uh with the with the Los Angeles on it, and it had the same view that I love from a different TV show in Los Angeles. I was pining for it for that, for that hills view.
+
+[10:04] I love the sparkly look of uh Los Angeles from the hills. Like all the little colored lights, all the stuff moving around, like spreading out a little bit of haze up in that piece. Don't fix all your pollution, Jack. Just a little bit of it. Fix a little bit of pollution so it's not dangerous for your lungs.
+
+[10:19] Keep a little bit because it sparkles, it sparkles in the night. You know what I'm saying? It's romantic. Yo, I remember in the in the 70s and 80s when I would fly in there to visit my grandparents in San Bernardino, and back then it was like a constant it the pollution was so thick, it was like a dust storm. It was like it was like so thick, it like you could see the air.
+
+[10:41] It was like uh go watch Night of the Comet. Stas, you've seen Night of the Comet, right? No, I haven't. So the idea is that it's a zombie apocalypse in LA in the in the in the 80s, and that's got some prime 80s style LA pollution action in it. Well, don't well, don't they like like hold up in a in a movie theater?
+
+[11:01] Anyone who is underground uh survives and then they have to come out and fight. You know what I mean? Anyway. Uh and what's up with what's up with you, Joe? How you doing?
+
+[11:11] Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels up here in New York. I'm doing well. How about yours? You you're looking really fresh in that orange shirt. Oh, I gotta go orange.
+
+[11:18] You know what? I used to have this rule. I used to have this rule. I don't follow it anymore, but in college I came up with this. The more tired I am, the brighter a color I will wear.
+
+[11:25] This way no one will know. No one will know. Uh that's a great idea. I like that. Yeah.
+
+[11:32] Uh I also had another rule. Uh uh, a shower is worth two hours of sleep, but you can't pull a full eight with showers. You can go from four hours of sleep to eight hours of sleep by taking a couple showers during the day, but you can't make it, you can't completely give up sleep just by showering and drinking coffee. You never had the micro shower to wake yourself up? I mean, I do that in the morning.
+
+[11:56] No, no, but you've never been like, oh my god, I'm so tired. Either I go to sleep right now or I'm gonna take a shower, and then I can work more. He's never done that. I mean, I did that over the weekend when I did the pig roast. Well, speaking of why I haven't introduced you yet, we're about to talk about John.
+
+[12:10] Get this. He buys what I like to call an in-between her pig. So an in-betweener pig is anything that's larger than a suckling pig, but smaller than about 200 pounds, uh, or like 220 live weight or something like this. So, how big was your pig? Uh 90 pounds.
+
+[12:24] In between her pigs? In between them. Straight in between her pig. Now, how much flesh did it upon's body? Because a suckling pig is basically like a sack of bones with some you know, sucking with delicious meat on it, but it's a lot of bones.
+
+[12:35] So how how fleshed out was the meat on a 90 pound pig? Not as much as I was expecting. Pretty thin layer like around the torso and the hams were big, but I don't know, not huge. Like we didn't have any leftovers when we had about 70 people there. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[12:48] Well, what the pig wants to do with its life, if you didn't kill it, right, is build up its bone mass first and then and then you know, yeah, build out. Uh okay, so now let's talk about the the technique. Your mom rented a uh a pit, right? A rotisserie. Yeah, okay.
+
+[13:04] Now let's talk about this. Let's talk, as Jack Nicholson said in the shining. What is uh what happened with this rotisserie unit? Well, it was already a nightmare from the get go because it didn't have a lid on it, so everything was gonna take a lot longer. Or infinity of wood.
+
+[13:18] Yeah, a lot, a lot of charcoal. Uh, used coal? Yeah. I start off with wood at the beginning. How many how many pounds of coal did you go through?
+
+[13:30] Used eight bags that I think were each like 20 pounds. Oh, not that much. I thought you were gonna use like Essex steam train quantities of. No, not okay. Not that huge, but still like a lot, you know, the really big bags.
+
+[13:40] Um you ever cook with anthracite, like the way that some of the coal oven people do? No. Me neither. I wonder what that's like. Yeah, I don't know.
+
+[13:48] I've never even lit a piece of anthracycle. Yeah, I don't think I have either. I've been hit in the face with it on the Essex Steam train, but I've never used it myself. Uh you ever have uh your parents give you the lump of anthracite coal as a joke for the Christmas? No.
+
+[14:02] I did many times. Yeah, my parents loved me. Oh, yeah. Well, not me so much. Uh all right, so go ahead with the rotisserie.
+
+[14:08] Um But really the worst thing about this rotisserie, apart from not having a lid, was the terrible motor on it. So that when you know the pig would do the rotation, get to the top, as soon as it would kind of like go over that, it would lurch down. Oh my god, can I make the noise for you? I hate it's so triggering. Annoying.
+
+[14:35] And then it's just it causes so many problems towards the end of the cooking process. Yeah. Well, the problems start early. You just don't notice until later. Yeah.
+
+[14:42] Yeah. What do you like better? The fact that it tears the meat up because it like keeps like hitting itself too hard. Do you like that? Which actually makes the the whole slip and fall even worse every time it goes around.
+
+[14:53] Or do you like the underdone, overdone part where it one piece travels past the fire too fast and so it doesn't get the same brown and the other piece stays there too long? Which part do you like better? That defin those both definitely happened. I'd rather the latter because dealing with the meat falling apart and everything was such a nightmare to deal with. Listen, listen.
+
+[15:15] Uh I don't know because I haven't had an outdoor uh rotisserie in a long time, right? So and back the last time I had an outdoor space, I wasn't doing rotisserie. I was doing either tandoor or cowboy grilling. Hashtag vertical grilling, hashtag horizontal grilling. Uh, and I didn't do things that needed to cook for long enough to do a rotisserie.
+
+[15:34] I built everything around cooking very, very quickly, right? Uh like if I was gonna cook a pig on that cowboy, that sucker would be spread out like it was uh, you know, a flying pig. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Uh you ever you know I've never done, I've never done the diagonal like uh like South American style where you put it on the diagonal where you flatten it, put it on the diagonal and you move it around.
+
+[15:54] I want to try that sometime. Yeah, yeah. Right? It'd be fun, no? Yeah, no, it would be interesting.
+
+[15:58] Yeah. I wonder how too comfortable. You could make that at New Lab. Well just I can make it, but where am I gonna go with it? Go out on on like Clinton and Grand Street in the lower east side.
+
+[16:08] Can you imagine? Can you imagine in the lower east side? Like where I live, pe like I I'm outside and be like, that's an awful lot of wood. What are you doing with all that wood? You're like, it's my wood.
+
+[16:18] Why don't you shut up? Yeah. Get out of here. You know what I mean? Like people are so nosy where I live.
+
+[16:24] You know what I mean? It's like everyone is in in everyone else's business because it's all co-ops. Yeah. So they all think they have a reason to be in your business. People, so like I'll pick up after the dog, and they're like, You're not like some of them.
+
+[16:36] I'm like, Some of who? Some of who some of those dog people who don't pick up after the dog. Get away from me. You know what I mean? Just leave me after.
+
+[16:44] Just leave me alone. Don't talk to me. Anyway, so uh it is a commonly known fact that ninety-nine nine percent of all rotissary motors aren't just not good. They suck. Yeah.
+
+[16:57] They're ac they actively hurt the food, right? And it's because the gear motors have too much backlash. They're not using uh the right kind of gear. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
+
+[17:06] So if you used a gear so so what you're experiencing there is the gear backlash. Now, there are motors that there are zero backlash or very low backlash motors. And the problem is they're like 20% more expensive. Yeah. But get that 20% more expensive.
+
+[17:22] You would pay 40% more to have a motor that didn't act that way, and yet they're only 20% more expensive. Yeah. I mean, the I had to take the pig off the spit in the morning, you know, hack the like waste off with my cleaver, you know, put that part in the oven then because they was just completely falling off and it was gonna not cook through. Um turned into a horror show. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[17:45] How is the meat though? Good. Yeah, yeah, good. Yeah. Could have cooked a little longer, but good enough.
+
+[17:50] Well, when I was in uh grad school when we built uh the uh that's the second to last time I built a rotisserie. Uh I stole a well, Mark McNamara, my studio mate, and I, you know, we did the whole thing. We cut 55 gallon barrels in half, burned them out to get rid of all the toxins. You know, Mark and I inhaled those toxins on the roof, burned them out, welded the stuff in, stole some, stole some expanded metal, used it as the grates, reinforced the whole nine. And then we stole um you can buy them surplus, they're really good.
+
+[18:19] A bowdine brand DC gear motor. They're like like they used to use them in the uh in the chemical and nuclear engineering lab that was downstairs in our building. Okay. And they were these like tough as nails little uh DC motors and zero backlash, and we just built the rotisserie with that, and we spun that pig all day, no problems. If that pig doesn't undergo any slap adappa-doo with gear backlash, it just it makes a world of difference.
+
+[18:48] I believe it. I believe it. Rotisserie super stressful. Rotisserie designers out there, somebody make a decent motor. I'm sure somebody makes a decent motor, but I don't think the average person when they're shopping for rotisserie knows like how bad this is gonna be.
+
+[19:00] But also, like as the rental company, like why wouldn't you just get the good stuff? Because it because you're gonna rent from them once, and you know what? If you did it, you would rent it again. Yeah. It's the same reason why restaurants in Times Square suck, because you're in Times Square, you're gonna eat at that restaurant.
+
+[19:14] Yeah, they don't care. There's no incentive for them to be better. Not only that, as you know, when we're building stuff at our factories, right, if not everyone is doing it, it's impossible to get someone to do it for you. Yeah. You're like, I want to use a good motor.
+
+[19:27] Why? No one else uses a good motor. Yeah, you don't need it. You're like, you're wrong. Like, I'm a cook.
+
+[19:31] You're not. You know what I mean? Like, make it right. But no one does. Yeah.
+
+[19:35] I'll also add that my hog I was less than impressed with uh what the farmer did. I mean, it was still pretty dirty. Had to shave a lot. There were just like still dirt between the toes and everything. That's old school though.
+
+[19:48] You didn't appreciate that? I didn't singe it. Did you torch singe the head? Did you scrape? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[19:53] Oh, sweet. Um, yeah, it's not a good thing. Not like completely, but yeah, it smelled terrible. But then also, like, he didn't bleed it as well as I think he could have. So, like, as it was cooking, you know, blood starts coming out of like all the holes, and just like as it's turning, it just like creates these like black ring marks around the head.
+
+[20:08] Num num. Yeah. Hey, Nastasia. Uh, she's gone. Already Skype Credits.
+
+[20:14] Oh my God. So dumb. So stupid. Like, oh my God. All right.
+
+[20:22] Unbelievable. All right. But she talked so much in the intro, she had to figure it all out. Well, you know that's a good thing. It's those French Skype credits.
+
+[20:28] Nastasia has this thing. She's like, she's like, the show is one hour long. I'm gonna buy one hour. She did that last week and fell off. And she did that this week and fell off.
+
+[20:39] It's not like last week it was quicker. Last week it was like nine minutes. This time it lasted 14. Yeah, but l but but but the thing is, like I'm sure, like A, the show would pay her to do that, to to buy the extra time, right? One, right?
+
+[20:53] And two, it's better to be on a lower quality audio and just use the regular internet connection than it is to have a like a semi-high quality audio for 13 seconds and then drop. That's all. Anyways. Uh anyways. Anyways.
+
+[21:08] So I have some information for people before we get to uh questions, because people people have been uh asking me some questions. Ready? Ready. Beans. Oh, beans.
+
+[21:14] Beans questions. Now I'm not willing to give all of my bean stuff out because I haven't tested all my bean stuff yet, but I'm gonna give you some information that might be useful in your life. You ready for this? So, first information I want you to get into into your head. How many, how many of you out there, you can't answer me because you're not.
+
+[21:34] Oh, by the way, if you're listening on Patreon, we should do this now, right? If you're listening on Patreon, uh you can call your questions in too 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. If uh you don't know what we're talking about, Patreon and want to join, John, tell them what to do. Go check out patreon.com/slash cooking issues, and you can see all the great membership levels.
+
+[21:52] You got a bunch of cool perks, you get access to the Discord where we are just like constantly having great uh discussions about things on the show and things beyond the show. If you like the show, you'll love the Discord. Um book discounts at Kitchen Arts and Letters, and just like really a whole bunch of other great stuff. So check us out. Here's three different kinds of people who might hear this.
+
+[22:10] Ready? Europeans who don't know how or no, not Europeans. That's terrible to me. People anywhere not here. Anywhere not here.
+
+[22:18] Everywhere, not here, right? They uh I just think of it as metric as French. Sorry. I just you know what I mean? My my bad.
+
+[22:26] Because they they voiced it on us. Anyway, so metric people who won't know how to convert into what I'll now call American units, right? Americans who don't know how to call uh who convert into metric units, right? And then that small subset of people who have in their heads the instantly the conversion between like inches and centimeters, right? I'm gonna assume that you're that last group, John.
+
+[22:50] So don't shout it out. I want you guys to because it this is gonna be important. You gotta remember this, it's gonna help you in cooking, right? Right? Okay, so get in your head how many centimeters are there in an inch.
+
+[23:03] Now, I'm not gonna tell you, I want you to think about it first. One, two, three, ready? I'm gonna tell you, ready? 2.54, right? So anytime you're converting between it's 2.54, right?
+
+[23:13] Uh now, here's another reason to remember the number 2.54. When you are looking at uh sodium on a label, when I try to figure out what a recipe should be like, and I'm and I'm looking at commercially produced stuff, one of the things you want to know is the salt content of the food that you're looking at so you can get a target for where you are, right? But they don't actually write on the back of a can. This goes back to beans, because I was researching like how much salt was in baked beans and whatnot, right? When you're looking at the back of the can, they don't tell you what they tell you is milligrams of sodium, right?
+
+[23:47] You with me now? Okay. So milligrams is easy, right? Just, you know, if it's a thousand milligrams, that's one gram. I'm not gonna talk about that.
+
+[23:55] But to figure out how much salt that is, which is what you use in the kitchen, multiply by 2.54. It's the same. I mean, there's a couple of decimal points afterwards, but it's close enough. So if you if you if you read the number of milligrams of s of sodium and you calculate how much like salt you know there is per hundred grams or per whatever, 2.54. Very easy to remember if you already know centimeters to inches, right?
+
+[24:21] And so I did this a lot, and the first thing I tried to figure out, as many of you might know, when when you're soaking beans, by the way, soaking beans, uh, there's a lot of arguments on whether you should soak beans or you should not soak beans. Um I'm gonna say a lot depends exactly on the kind of bean you're cooking, right? You can cook it without soaking, you can cook it with soaking. Some people say it tastes better if you don't soak it, but what's happening there is people are throwing away the soak water, right? And then because there are a lot of things in the bean that are water soluble, even when the bean is not cooked yet, right?
+
+[24:57] Uh and the good news about throwing that, the bad news about throwing that stuff away is you throw away some flavor. If you've if you you should just make a habit of tasting bean-soaking water. I've been tasting bean-soaking water for the past month now, and there is flavor. Most of what is leached out is actually sugar. So I think you could probably sugars.
+
+[25:14] So I think, and colors, right? Because a lot of that stuff's water soluble. So you could probably get a lot of the flavor back that's leached out, honestly, by just adding a little bit of sugar to non-sugared beans. And I think people who are doing things like baked beans, I doubt you would taste that much of a difference between soaked and pitched versus not. I have other solutions for this, but anyway.
+
+[25:31] The reason to throw away the soaking water, frankly, is uh if beans make you toot. If if if beans are a hardcore musical fruit for you, right, then uh throwing away the bean water uh helps. Don't let anyone tell you different. I've been reading all of the studies. I have some more stuff to get rid of the musicality.
+
+[25:50] But because I've been testing beans for a lot, if you eat beans at least once a week, that also detuts them. If you make beans once when you're buying canned beans, the way that they typically make those is they are soaked because they want to reduce the amount of energy they're using because they're making tons of beans. So cooking tons of beans for less time is definitely a win for them. They soak it, they pitch it, they blanch it, right? To the reason you gotta blanch the beans, if you think about this, people.
+
+[26:16] If you're putting a bean in a can, right, you need to get it to basically its finished size before you put it in the can, and you don't want a lot of air coming out of the bean. So what you have to do is you blanch it to try to have it absorb a lot of water, but more importantly, get rid of the air. You then pack it into the can with the amount of water that you're gonna want it to absorb. You cook it, it has to have enough water in the can or sauce in the can to cook it through accurately. Uh and then also, and this is important, as it sits for a couple of weeks, it'll absorb a little more water, right?
+
+[26:47] As it as it's cooked. So that's why the beans in the can aren't necessarily as as tooty, as you know, as wind-producing as the beans you make from scratch, because they're actually typically dumping a lot of the water that you would otherwise uh keep. Make sense? Yep. All right.
+
+[27:03] Now, assuming you're not worried about that, uh, here are some interesting facts. I bought a bean pot. I bought an old school like northern bean pot, the ceramic ones, and I have to say I like it a lot. The advan advantage of the bean pot, I'm not one of these people who believe that ceramics are like the be-all and end all of cooking, but they are relatively uh slow. Here's what I do, ready?
+
+[27:26] I soak the beans. By the way, guess I I did this with five or six different bean varieties, and within a couple of within a couple points, decimal points, what percentage weight do you think beans are when they're cooked versus what multiplier would you use? Like if I have one unit of beans, how many units of cooked beans with with all the liquid drained off do you think you would want to shoot for? Because no one tells you this stuff, right? Yeah.
+
+[27:52] Okay, so what do you think it is? Three times four? You would think that it's about 2.3. It's about 2.3. But, and for years I tried to cook beans sous-vide, right?
+
+[28:04] For years. Uh, because I was like, you know, there's the famous Italian beans in the in the fiasco in the bottle, right? And the idea of the beans in the bottle, which are delicious, you remember you ever had those where you shake them out of the bottle? You put the you put the beans, you put the beans, the water, like if you're using alliums and like you know, salt and like rosemary, and you put it all into like a like a wine bottle, you know, like a fiasco, like a Chianti bottle, right? And then that's just got that little neck to to vent out of.
+
+[28:35] Yeah. And you cook it for a long time, and then when it's done, you shake the beans out. The advantage of these cooking, either a bean pot covered or this, you know, bottle, is that you have to cook it with excess water. That's what my tests have shown. If you don't cook it with excess water, the beans just never taste good.
+
+[28:49] They never have a lot. So what you want to do is cook the bean in excess water, bring it up to full hydration in excess water, and then slowly evaporate. The reason people's beans break up on them is because they're boiling them rather rapidly on the stove. You can cook a bean for nearly infinity. Anyway, I haven't tested over seven seven, eight hours yet, right?
+
+[29:09] I will, but uh it but that cooking, that long cooking is a very slow evaporation covered in the oven, right? Or in the Chianti bottle, or on a stove in a pressure cooker that's sealed but not at pressure, right? Or any sort of one of those waterless cookings where your steam evaporation is very low, right? In those kind of long cooking applications with very little actual churning inside, you're not drying out the beans at the top much. It's not very violent, and you're not breaking the beans up.
+
+[29:39] But you need to have them cook through in excess water. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So you're looking for a final ratio of about 2.3, right?
+
+[29:48] And you want some extra water. So what you need to do is figure out how much extra water you want in your beans. I'm shooting for a finished salt content uh of about uh 0.875%. Okay. So that's your bacon, your ham if you use it, your salt, whatever salty stuff you're using.
+
+[30:06] So what I do is I figure out my non-beans and like so in a pound of beans is 464 grams. You with me? Yeah. Okay. And I add somewhere between like like uh like 400 to 700 grams of what I like to call non-bean material, right?
+
+[30:25] So non-bean material is if you're making baked beans, molasses, right? Or uh mustard powder people do not add acid to beans before they're cooked or they won't cook right, right? Umions, garlic, herbs. And I just calculate those as non-bean and I just pretend like nothing happened. Bacon, ham, whatever.
+
+[30:46] I pretend that none of those things matter. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So like I'm adding between 400 and 700 grams of non-bean.
+
+[30:53] You have to calculate the salt content of pork if you're adding it, right? Right. And then I figure that by the end of it, uh I want to have about two kilos of product left over. So for every pound, I want about two, that's that's what I like to call a medium bean liquor situation. They're not dry, but they're not soup, right?
+
+[31:14] So that's for like a good baked bean situation. So figure that whatever you're cooking should end up being about two kilos if you're following my recipe of about 400 to 700 grams of non-bean product in it, right? Um what that means is is that after they soak, right? Uh uh sorry, I multiply the, I multiply uh the beans by uh 2.3. You multiply by 1.3 to figure out how much extra water to add, right?
+
+[31:39] Because it itself is one, right? Yeah, right. Okay. Then add about an extra 850 mils of water, right? That's what I soak it in, and then I don't throw it away the water because I have a way to deal with that, which I can talk about later once I've tested it.
+
+[31:54] And then I cook it on the stove until they're almost done, right? Until they're almost done. Okay. Then I put it into my bean pot my preheated bean pot into your fiasco. Uh you close the lid on the pressure cooker, but don't let it go, and then stop or slow your evaporation for a long time, and then you can let them ride for as long as you want until they're evaporated to the place that you want them.
+
+[32:15] Does this make sense? Yes. Okay. So that's people have been asking me about the beans. That's the beans.
+
+[32:21] Well, interesting thing about beans, Dave, is do you know who our guest is next week? Oh, it's next week is the beans guest? All right. All right. So we have uh from we have uh um Steve from Rancho Gordo Beans coming on uh next week.
+
+[32:36] And he is interesting in that he he basically just he's like just cook the just cook the beans until they're done. He doesn't want to get into any controversy, so we'll see if we can get him to weigh in. Uh you can also ask him questions for next week about nixtimalization. He was the one, although I have never met him, uh, who back when I was doing my nixtimalization um tests in whatever it was way, way back in the day, 12 whatever years ago, 15 yeah, 13 years ago, was like um, yeah, he had a nixtomatic. He was the early US owner of uh Nixdomatic.
+
+[33:09] So we'll talk to him about nixtimalization, about cooking in ceramics. He has a ceramic saphile, so uh claophile. Wait, wait. Ceramophile? Ceramophile is that a word you made that up.
+
+[33:20] I did, but it sounds right. Yeah, sounds good. I'll take it. Yeah, I'll take it. Uh yeah, and an all-around uh lover of uh the bean products.
+
+[33:28] Yeah. Yeah. He has a book. I wonder whether we're gonna put it on sale. At the not a sale, but for the uh kitchen arts and letters.
+
+[33:35] Good question. I will ask Matt. Yeah. I don't know whether they've re-upped it. That book came out maybe ten 10 years ago, eight years ago.
+
+[33:41] When did that book come out? I have a copy somewhere, but I haven't read it in a while. I guess I should read it. Uh we're just having him on. Also, uh, who else are we confirm for upcoming guests?
+
+[33:54] Uh Joy of Cooking folks are gonna be uh June 14th. Hey people, I need you to get your questions ready for those guys. So John Becker and Megan Scott are the current team who's running the uh the joy of cooking, but this has been a family business, sometimes rested away from them by publishers, sometimes and sometimes rested back. It's I mean, I guess it's never fully rested away from it's never fully taken away from uh the family, but it's been a family cookbook since 1931, I want to say, in the early 30s. That's wild.
+
+[34:24] It's amazing. It's gone through like so many different uh cycles, but uh, you know what it's always remained? Relevant. Yeah, relevant, right? And the the currently retired generation of the of the family, uh Ethan Becker, also like one of the foremost designers of survival knives, which it's it's like that's a crazy thing.
+
+[34:46] Doesn't make kitchen knives, the guy. Yep. Survival knives. Yeah, we were looking at them this morning. Yeah.
+
+[34:52] Yeah. Apparently, if you want like an all-around survival knife in the hundred hundred and like $20 range. What was it, the BK2? Is that the one we were looking at? Yeah, it's sold by sold through K-bar.
+
+[35:06] Yeah, but he's been with K-bar for a long time. So like he, from what I can gather, he like, um, he got into the knife uh stick. He from what I can gather, okay, you familiar with Kukries? No. So Kukries are those knives that are like they're they're they're shaped kind of like uh like a like like a little bit like a hook.
+
+[35:26] They're like a big bill on the end. So it's like imagine if you took a machete and bent it. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's like a like a kukri.
+
+[35:33] And I think it's supposed to give you a good angle when you're hacking down through uh brush or people's heads and whatnot, right? Nice. And so he sent some of these to like with his buddies to Vietnam and then like amazingly like was like so how did the knives work? And they were like, well you could change this, you could change this, you could change that. And so he got into like designing and he's an outdoors person.
+
+[35:54] So he got into designing knives that were useful in a way that like we think that we look at kitchen problems and work on those things. Oh speaking people have been asking uh what do I think of the ANOVA vacuum uh chamber vacate chamber back we're we're getting one we'll review it for you coming up soon um Wiley asked me about this new thing Sue V. Have you heard about this? No. I I don't have one of those so I can't review that sorry if there's anything else let me let me know what else what else we got coming up uh Wiley is coming up as well still working on a date with him um but now that other dates are formed up that we'll get going with that we're gonna have Garrett uh call in in two weeks.
+
+[36:32] Gary Richard yeah yep to talk about uh well we had this question it's been sitting around forever uh from you know I gotta figure out who it is but who wants to know more things to do with their Hamilton Beach milkshake maker and I was like I've never owned one yeah. Why don't we get Garrett? Yeah. Garrett knows how to use those things. That's true.
+
+[36:49] And he doesn't make milkshakes with them. That's very true too. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be good.
+
+[36:53] Yeah. Now I have that s freaking milkshake song going in my head. Uh all right. So let's uh Maxaplun writes in. I'm going to have my kitchen remodel starting in a couple of weeks.
+
+[37:03] Uh, what are some minimal prep, minimal cleanup things I can cook so I don't have to eat out every single night. Uh I'll have an induction hot plate, instant pot, uh, and hot water kettle. Uh, is this the dump meals time to shine? Well, okay. There's so many things.
+
+[37:22] Uh what do I, you know, I actually, the beans thing I was just telling you about, like uh like a long baked bean on an induction, if your induction has good low temperature, or you have an instant pot and you can let it ride for a long time so it's just barely evaporating, make yourself a good pot of baked beans, get some nice bread to eat that with, or even I eat the leftovers on rice with like crumpled up, I have to say, French's fried onions. If you don't want to fry good, yeah. If you don't want to fry your own onions, and let's be honest, who the hell wants to fry their own onions? You want to fry your own onions? No.
+
+[37:54] I'm not saying that you can't fry your own onions. You know what the problem with them is? Not gluten-free, a lot of flour on them. So, like if you if you if that's a problem, you know, but like on baked beans, come on, man. I mean, so baked beans you typically don't, by the way, I don't add sugar and molasses to my baked beans.
+
+[38:11] I did forgot to mention this. I use about 120 um grams, 120, 125 grams of Crosby's molasses in my baked beans per pound or so, which is light for a baked bean. Most baked bean stuff is like to me, a side dish. I want a baked bean that I can eat as the main dish. And when you add too much molasses and too much sugar to it, it just tastes like dessert or a side dish to me.
+
+[38:38] It doesn't taste like a main dish. Yeah. See, I want a beans that I can eat it over rice, I can hack them an avocado, put some French fried, French's fried onions on it, maybe even a little sour cream. I turn everything into sour cream, Frenchish fried onions, lettuce. I basically will I will taco bowl anything.
+
+[38:56] You give me anything that is in goop format, and I will taco bowl it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. You know why?
+
+[39:04] Because all of those fixings taste good. Like, like I'll do like uh another good one is uh here's a weird one for you. What one one one dish, right? Hack up a bunch of uh peppers, right? Like so red and red and green, uh, sweat some onions first.
+
+[39:20] Once the onions are sweated down, throw in some hacked up uh green and green and red peppers, right? Uh then after those sweat down, but not, you know, you just don't want to burn it. Like throw in your garlic, right? By the way, sweat them in butter. By the way, a preposterous amount of butter.
+
+[39:36] While that stuff is like so stupid, the amount of butter you're gonna use, right? Then uh uh get the cheap, see, I'm a big fan of cheap salt fish, cheap salt fish. Like for holidays, you want the really good, the the good bacalh, the good salt fish, right? Because you're gonna reconstitute it. You're gonna you're gonna let it soak for days, you're gonna keep changing the water, and you want these big pieces, and you're gonna serve it with the parsley and the oil and the and the and the lemon and the sliced onions, all that stuff, right?
+
+[40:03] You're gonna do that, do it up. But for this, get the cheap one, the one that comes in a little bag, you know what I mean? They're thin. Throw those things, rinse the extra salt off, throw them into a big pot of water, bring the water up to a simmer, uh, but don't boil it, and then dump the water, do it again. Now it's ready to use, right?
+
+[40:21] Hack that up small, right? While the sweating the peppers and you got the and you got this fish stuff, and you remember butter. Don't but don't stint on the butter, right? Then boil and mash yams. Real yams, not sweet potatoes, yams, the white ones, yams, the tuber.
+
+[40:41] You could do potatoes if you want, but the problem with potatoes is is they have a different texture. It'll still be delicious, but you gotta be careful when you're mixing it that it doesn't get gluey, right? So, like you mash up the yams, then you throw that all together with the butter and the yams, and you you you stir that up, and that's your base glop. That's your base glop. Then with the base glop, rice, taco bullet, rice, you need avocados with that son of a gun, hacked up tomatoes, lettuce, lime.
+
+[41:07] You need to squeeze lime on it. Lime, avocados, and I like sour cream, and I put I put you know hot pepper all over mine because come on, it's me. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, that's a good one-pot uh thing that I make quite often.
+
+[41:18] Um if Nastasi was still on the phone, she would say pastas. Yeah, always pastas. Always pastas, always pastas, right? Yeah, pasta delicious. Pasta delicious.
+
+[41:29] Also, like you didn't mention blender, but I'm a huge fan of no-cook uh blender-based sauces. And just using the residual heat from the pasta to heat up like a thicker blender-based sauce, right? So, you know, there are many different blender-based sauces, right? So pesto is a blender-based sauce. By the way, do you when you make a pesto, do you do you do you make do you actually use pignolis and all that?
+
+[41:54] Not re I mean, no, not really. What do you use? You throw almonds in that sucker? Sometimes, I don't know, it depends what nuts I have around. Yeah.
+
+[42:03] But yeah, I don't know. I guess I I'll yeah. I'm probably do that more by price when I'm at the market. Yeah. See what nut looks interesting and different.
+
+[42:11] Yeah, pignoles are always just too expensive. They are, right? Yeah. They're so dang expensive. Yeah.
+
+[42:14] You know what uh I've been told by Harold McGee not to use is walnuts. Why? Uh they oxidi well again, I don't know. But basically, uh the tests he ran way back in the day, I believe his findings were that they uh are the ones that caused the basil to oxidize the fastest. Interesting.
+
+[42:36] Yeah. Okay. So anyway, pet pestos are good. Uh a can of tomato place paste plus anchovies plus anything else is always good. Easy.
+
+[42:45] You know what I mean? Yeah. Um what else is a good like one pot uh wonder, not a lot of mess. What else? What else you got, John?
+
+[42:52] What's a what's a good uh anything? Breakfast for dinner, eggs, bacon, things like that, pancakes. I like that. Yeah, the the the trick with pancakes is just being able to mix them in one bowl, not have like make a mess with the bowl. And you can do it.
+
+[43:08] Yeah. But I do it. You know, like uh like I can I can have pancakes on the table basically instantly. You know what I mean? And without making uh, you know, dirting a dirtying a lot of uh a lot of stuff.
+
+[43:21] Yeah I love the giant pancake though. You know I make the giant pancake. I didn't know that. I have the cramping. Oh, right, right, right, yes, yes, and I've I make one pancake because I'm not about sitting there flipping over all these silver dollars, sons of guns.
+
+[43:34] It's just not my life. That's not how my life works. All right. So uh I wouldn't dump meal it. Uh oh, by the way, if you have uh now is the time to do oh shoot, it's too hot.
+
+[43:46] I don't know where you live, Max Oplun, but if I had gotten to you even a couple of weeks ago, you know what's a delicious one-pot sucker? You need uh to make rice separately. Well, it's two pots. You need a pan for risotto and you need the pot asubuco. Yeah.
+
+[44:01] Asibuko is so delicious. It is. You know what else is delicious? Um and it doesn't mess your kitchen up too much, except for the initial frying, right? So you can you can um if you want, you can brown the the the meat.
+
+[44:15] You can use turkey uh cut up turkey legs. Get your butcher to cut up turkey legs if you can't afford the uh the asebuco, because asubuco is absurdly expensive. Yeah it does. Make sure you tie it when you flour it. You can um you can do that in your pan on the induction so that you're not trying to I hate browning in my in my pots that I braise in, right?
+
+[44:33] I hate it. Yeah. I don't like making asebuco in wide things because I don't want it to evaporate too much. So a lot of times I'll I'll do my initial fry in the pan that I'm gonna do the risotto in. Then I'll move them over to my pot uh and I'll deglaze and then dump that into the pot, let that go, because that's gotta cook for a couple of hours anyway.
+
+[44:53] Then I can scrub out the pan I did my initial fry in and then do the risotto when it makes sense. Yep. Anyway. Uh God, I made some turkey asabuko. If it wasn't for those damn tendons, I hate those tendons.
+
+[45:04] Yeah. Hate the tendons. Turkey's good though. Turkey delicious, yeah. You know what I've never done?
+
+[45:10] I've never done uh I've never done uh chicken thigh uh in this style of asubuko. And it doesn't look like asebuco, but you could tie them into birds. What what what do they call those little things in French, those tied up volatile they call them vole, right? They're little like but they're usually birds of veal. It's usually you take like a veal cutlet, you roll it up into like like almost like a drumstick shape, and then you like braise it off and they call them vole, don't they?
+
+[45:34] I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's been a million years, but like I'm sure that would be good.
+
+[45:40] Yeah. I also I make but this makes a lot of smoke, so you probably don't want to do this, but like uh uh I do salting book, another veal dish that I do with chicken, but I always do it with breast because uh, you know, I do the uh breast pounded out. And then I was like, why don't I do this with chicken thighs? And the verdict was, and you know, you put the prosciutto on or spec and with a sage. I put the sage underneath to do it, and if you're really doing it, you can meat glue the prosciutto with the sage to the meat so that you don't have to use toothpicks to keep the meat on, right?
+
+[46:10] Uh and then I was like, why don't I make this with uh with with thigh meat instead of with breasts? And I was like, oh, oh, it's because I'm stupid. That's why. Um so do you think do you think I'm supposed to pronounce this Jameson or am I supposed to pronounce it jam five on? I think it's Jameson.
+
+[46:29] I think Jameson, yeah. But jam five on is also good. Yeah. Because now I've got like a loony song in my head. Five on it.
+
+[46:35] Not familiar? You're not familiar with I Got Five On It? I don't think so. Have you been to California before? What?
+
+[46:40] Two or three times, yeah. Two or three times? Maybe four. You've been to San Francisco? Twice.
+
+[46:47] Twice. And you've never heard the song I've got five on it. I don't think so. Okay. Yeah.
+
+[46:55] Right, Jack? Sorry to disappoint everybody. Yeah. I mean, does that make does that make any sense at all? Oh, maybe if I heard it, but we can do that.
+
+[47:03] I've got five on it. What's the here? I got five on it. You never heard this song? No, I don't think so.
+
+[47:08] Oh my God. Yep, living under a rock, I guess. Listen, if you own a bar, here's a good skill. I don't own a bar, so I don't need this skill. I would like to own a bar maybe someday again.
+
+[47:18] Uh if you own a bar what and you're and you and you're controlling the music and you're also talking to the guests when they come in. So what you need to do is get like a couple of songs from every city and state around the country so that when someone comes in from there, you can bust out like whatever like the local thing is. So when I know someone is like from like San Francisco or like, you know, someone comes in from like San Francisco or Oakland or Sacramento, like you can play music from there, and it always gets them in the mood. And then when they're in the mood, then it makes the person next to them, who's probably from like Long Island or Jersey, right? Like, like they get in a better mood because all of a sudden you made this California person, you're like, ah, I used to listen to that when I was a kid.
+
+[48:04] You know, you bust out like the E40 or like uh Mac Dre. You gotta listen to some California stuff, John. You can't just listen to your East Coast, can't keep your head up your behind and only listen to East Coast stuff. Jack, am I right about this or no? Yeah, absolutely.
+
+[48:18] Absolutely. We need a West Coast hip hop education. But not just that, like is Southern, like, you know, you gotta have some stuff like from like Texas, you gotta have some stuff from like Freegan, like Atlanta, Florida. You know what I mean? Sure.
+
+[48:32] Yeah. Yeah. Some Detroit stuff. Yep. No matter where someone comes from, if you can play music that was like from where they were when they were like a kid, that they enjoy it.
+
+[48:41] I'm just saying that they enjoy it. You don't have to do it. Uh from Jam, I got five on it. What'd you say, Jack? It's nice.
+
+[48:50] It's a nice thing to do. Yeah. But it's not just nice, it's good for business. It's good for business. Yeah.
+
+[48:57] Uh Dave Chang uh on May 5th in his podcast, uh, around the minute, 15, 30 seconds, says that we, meaning anyone, I guess, can't make good pizza at home and can't make it as good as pros good, so we should quit. Also, Chris Ying repeatedly derides gadget cooking uh in semi-scare quotes. Can you have single quotes of scare quotes, or do you need to have double quotes if they're supposed to be scary? I think single works. Single is scary?
+
+[49:14] Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I'm not afraid of a single quote. Gotta give me two quotes to get me afraid. Um tough guy.
+
+[49:28] Do I have a response? Uh well, look, I I think, first of all, in their podcast, like they have to be somewhat in incendiary. Like, that's kind of like that's their MO, right? To be a little bit incendiary. Nastasia 100% agrees with them.
+
+[49:44] Nastasi's like, why do anything when professionals are doing it? I and you know, what I think is there's a there's a there's a couple of things. Is it true that the odds that you will make a pizza? There's a very good odds that you can make pizza better than someone who does it their whole life who doesn't care. Very good odds.
+
+[50:00] Because if they don't care, they're just never gonna get good at it, right? Like uh, you know, like in in lunch cafeteria pizza is never gonna get good. Someone can make it their whole life and it's never gonna get good because they don't care. I'm not saying that's a bad thing to say, but you know what I mean? Like dollar slice pizza is never gonna get above dollar slice pizza because the goal, their goal in life, isn't to make the world's greatest pizza, it's to make dollar slices, and they're very good at it.
+
+[50:24] And I have a fond spot in my heart for the Sixth Avenue, West Fourth Street, dollar slice, right? Uh, and just the fact that they can crank it so hard. That's like the two for a dollar hot dog joints that they I mean, they're not two for a dollar anymore, but man, I used to walk in and just dog after dog after dog. I mean, there's just certain kind of like zen craziness about just the number of hot dogs that came out of those places, just like infinity of hot dogs. I used to have these dreams where I would walk in, you know, I'm in grad school, and so like my standard lunch was five dogs, 250, right?
+
+[50:58] So I'm like, you know, cheapest. I'm like five dogs, two fifty. They're like, fine. And that's you know, if I had the 50 cents, otherwise it's four dogs for two bucks, right? But I used to have this dream that I would throw a party and I've never done it.
+
+[51:08] Where I would walk in with like a crisp, crisp hundo and just be like, uh, Benjamin, and hand it to them and be like, give me 200 dogs right now. But you know what? They could have cranked it. They could have just they wouldn't have even blinked. Well, they wouldn't have blinked.
+
+[51:23] They just would have cranked out a hundred dogs. Yeah. 200. 200, 200. 200.
+
+[51:27] 200. Hand them 100, they hand you 200 dogs. Amazing. Yeah. It's amazing.
+
+[51:33] Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Um, probably terrible for the environment. But you know what I mean?
+
+[51:38] Like, like someone has to lose. If I can walk in and have such a huge win where I hand someone a hundred dollars and they very quickly create wrap, bag and hand me 200 hot dogs for that, something's wrong with the world. Somebody's getting hosed badly. Someone is losing a big time. You know what I mean?
+
+[52:00] And maybe it's all of us in the long run, but anyway, it has to be has to be figured out. Has to be figured out. Um, but what I think is this: there, they're you're not gonna get better than someone who cares as much as you do, but does it constantly, right? Because they have the opportunity to get better than you can because they're doing it all the time and they care as much as you do, right? That I'm stipulating that they care as much as you do.
+
+[52:27] They also have the money to get the good equipment. Uh I think it's fundamentally incorrect. They bring up croissant as a thing specifically in that episode that you shouldn't try to do. And I made uh croissant once or twice, and you know what? They were fine.
+
+[52:41] They're fine. Were they the best croissant? Not by a mile. But I'm happy I did it because I have an appreciation for making croissant now. It's not about whether or not I can do it as good as the world's greatest croissant maker.
+
+[52:53] It's about as a crafts person in general, I want to understand what it's like to make something. And so I do it. But do I do it all the time? No. Right?
+
+[53:02] Yeah. Um things like pizza, like I I also think that, you know, um, and they talked about it a little bit on the on the episode. Uh a lot of people who make pizza, they they they build their recipes at home around the limitations of an oven, right? So you load up with uh with uh uh steel and whatnot, and you're you're overcoming the fact that your oven doesn't have as much power as a commercial oven does and it can't get as hot. And you could probably crank one good pizza out of a home oven that way.
+
+[53:27] The problem is you can't repeatably do it like you can uh in a restaurant, and you have to change the dough. So what a lot of like people who write for home people do, uh, which like I'm doing some now with my current book, is you modify the recipes to try to get a result that's good with the equipment you know the people have. And so there's honor in that, right? Um, and you enjoy doing it, so just do it. You know what I mean?
+
+[53:49] Yeah. And as for gadgets, I love a gadget. Although I'm de-gadgetizing some stuff and going more I'm going anti-Alton Brown actually. I'm going into single use things. Like on my uh my mixer now just does mixing, right?
+
+[54:04] Like I had the food processor attachment for that, and you're like, you know what? I bought a hand crank food processor. Like I'm buying a hand uh because I'm an idiot. I'm buying a hand uh meat grinder. Because I'm not gonna grind a thousand pounds of meat, but there's this recipe I want to make.
+
+[54:17] You ready for it? I sent you the image. Oh, I never responded. Yeah, sorry, I was dealing with the big stuff. But yeah, no, that is ridiculous.
+
+[54:23] Devil dogs. Are you ready for this recipe, people? I'll give uh I'm gonna make it hopefully this weekend after my meat grinder comes. You take American cheese, I'm assuming government style, block, right? Half pound.
+
+[54:29] Half pound, but I'm assuming not slices, block. Yeah, yeah. For yeah. Half pound of hot dogs, Frankfur's, right? Now you ready for it?
+
+[54:40] You grind them together. Grind them together, mix it with mayonnaise, mustard, and if you would like some sweet relish. And is there any onion or whatnot in that? No, prepared mustard, egg, salt, make it, egg, egg. That was the thing I forgot.
+
+[54:56] So you bind it together with egg, right? Pickle relish. Yeah, pickle relish, mayonnaise. So mayonnaise is the fat other than the hot dog and the cheese. And then you you spread that into hot dog buns.
+
+[55:06] Joe, you ready for this? You wrap them in aluminum foil and you bake those suckers. So they're like baked. And then they come out in the aluminum foil. I have to say I'm gonna crush these things.
+
+[55:18] That sounds great. I'm just gonna crush these suckers. You know what I mean? They're gonna come out of the oven all soft and melty, and I'm just gonna rip through that. I bought a number 10 hand meat grinder, specifically, Joe, to do this recipe.
+
+[55:34] Where did you find this recipe? So uh my cousin Brady's grandma would put all of her recipes in old school file cards. And so it's like it's like 40 or 50 or years of file cards. And I was just going through them and I was like, devil dogs. That's not the kind of devil dog I'm used to, but I'm for it.
+
+[55:53] Yeah, I'm definitely for it. I'm gonna cook the hell out of those things. Yeah. You know, I love it. Yeah, but it'll be delicious.
+
+[56:01] It calls for a grinder. Yeah. I mean, how do you think she did it? Did she have a meat grinder? I gotta ask Brady.
+
+[56:08] Anyway. Uh I'll let you guys know. Uh Colton Johnson wrote in, hey everyone, I recently bought a ninja creamy. Is it really called a creamy? Their fake Paco Jets called a creamy.
+
+[56:19] That's gross. Creamy. It is, yeah. Ninja creamy. Yeah.
+
+[56:24] I don't like that. Do you like that name? No, not really. How about just like the ninja ice cream maker? Yeah.
+
+[56:31] I don't know. Joe, where are you where are you with creamy? I'm indifferent about it. Creamy's creamy. Well, it's creamy with an eye.
+
+[56:39] I just don't like the name Ninja. So I mean, this like you can put like anything in front of creamy. It'd be all right. I also dislike the name Ninja. Have you seen the movie Dead Sushi?
+
+[56:49] No. No. Yeah. It's by the same director who did Machine Girl. Have you seen Machine Girl?
+
+[56:55] Do you like bad, like splatterfest, like Japanese weird movies? I don't mind it. Like like Tatsumo's Iron Man and stuff like that. Yeah, but but more recent. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[57:06] Gotcha. Um, okay. Uh recently bought the uh creamy, and I absolutely love it. I have not used it. I've only used uh the Italian fake Paco Jet and Paco Jets.
+
+[57:16] I still have not because the thing is that it's hard for me to like I literally like any time a new piece of kitchen equipment shows up in my house, and by the way, I'm having another piece. Someone asked me on the Twitter about this microwave pressure cooker. Coon Recon makes a microwave pressure cooker. It only gets up to I think eight and a half PSI because of the temperature limits of the resin, because it's resin-based, not metal, right? And you throw it in the microwave, and it got some bad reviews because people don't understand how microwaves and and pressure cookers work.
+
+[57:41] So they're like, my microwave has more than 900 watts. Like Coon Recon was basically just saying that you can't put dump more than 900 watts into it because you're gonna evaporate too much water. Right. Right? And you'll you'll ruin it.
+
+[57:51] So you have to, once it comes up to pressure, you have to turn it down, right? But it got so I they must be discontinuing it because you can go on Coon Recon's site right now and buy them for $30 a piece. Anyway. Damn. Uh I've mainly been playing around with sorbetes and dairy-free ice cream options, but wanted to try more traditional ice cream base with egg in it.
+
+[58:08] What is Dave's basic ice cream uh recipe base? Okay, mine is not very good. It's extremely rich, John, but I make it and I still like it. 10 egg yolks, right? 500 milk, 500 heavy cream, 170 grams of sugar, and then if you're gonna put vanilla in it, two scraped vanilla beans, then I uh I put uh salt in it to taste.
+
+[58:27] I usually just I don't measure it, right? Then uh I cook that vacuum bag it, I put drop it into an 85 degree Celsius bath so the temperature immediately drops down to 82. Cook it at 82 Celsius for about 20 minutes, pull it out. Make sure you rap a tap tap that bag uh after it pulls out because you gotta break up any weird curdy stuff that happens that really increases the uh the the niceness of that texture. And that is a good but very rich base, and you can add other stuff too.
+
+[58:52] It's probably too rich for the on glazed bases you're used to, right, John? Yes, you can also find Dave's uh onion ice cream recipe in one of the old Patreon posts. Right. For dollar uh with your shrimp problem to keep it warm. Um I just go low.
+
+[59:07] If you have a steam oven, go real low. You're drying it out like, but if you keep it down at like, you know, uh 40, 45, there your shrimp should be fine, it won't get too much harder as it goes. But if you keep it in the oven in a pan, it's gonna dry out and and get overcooked. I can deal more with that uh on the next go-around. And someone asked me, Douglas asked me about um this like standalone hood, the air hood.
+
+[59:30] I have not used it, but I am dubious that you actually get the number of hours out of cooking out of it that that they say you do. But hey, uh I'm looking for it. Uh and then is that all we got for this week? We have more coming up. That's all for this week.
+
+[59:43] All right, we're gonna be back next week with more cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan and New Stand Studios. Joined again in the studio with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez back in the good old US of A. How you doing, Stas? Good.
+
+[0:24] Yeah? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And uh I asked her what she said last week. She still stands by her former statement that her trip to Paris was unwarranted.
+
+[0:33] Well, you said I thought a waste, but yeah. Yeah, wait. A waste. Waste. Uh got uh at on the far away uh rocking the Discord and rocking the uh YouTube's.
+
+[0:43] We've got uh Jackie Molecules back in Los Angeles. How you doing? I'm great. Yeah? Yeah?
+
+[0:51] Anything anything new or interesting happening in Los Angeles? No. No. Just boring old LA. I have to say, I think, you know, a lot of New Yorkers love to hate LA.
+
+[1:02] I like LA. I don't think I'm not gonna go Randy Newman. I don't love LA. But I like LA. You go back and forth on this.
+
+[1:10] Uh it's uh I don't have time. I don't have time to talk about it. Uh got uh got John here. Uh uh also looking at your Discord to see what kind of questions you got. How are you doing, John?
+
+[1:19] Doing great thanks. Yeah? Any new interesting food uh things that you've done recently? Uh no. No?
+
+[1:26] No. Yeah. So uh I don't have time to get into it now, but uh the devil, the devil dogs recipe that we discussed last week. I did make it. It is delicious.
+
+[1:35] I will say I think it would be better as a hot dip. So what it is is you grind up hot dogs and American cheese, sweet pickle relish, and uh mayonnaise, mustard. Okay, you with me so far, and an egg. You you whip that together and then you wipe it on buttered buns and you bake it. Now, this recipe goes back to my cousin Brady's.
+
+[1:54] Are you ready for it? Ukrainian immigrant Grandma tiny. Grandma Tiny was her name. It's what we went by. She was, in fact, a small woman.
+
+[2:03] And I'm gonna work on the recipe. It needs something crunchy. You know what I'm saying, John? Needs something crunchy in it. Maybe some lettuce.
+
+[2:08] You could turn it on to those fried onions? Oh, yeah, I did put that on. Listen, anything can be turned into a taco bowl. You know what I mean? I think it would be good as a taco bowl dip.
+
+[2:16] We'll talk about it later. Uh we got Joe rocking the panels. How are you doing, Joe Hazen? I'm doing great. How are you?
+
+[2:21] I'm okay. You look you look well. You're peppy today. Is it a good day in in New York for Joe Hazen? It's a good day for broadcasting, yes.
+
+[2:28] Nice. It's a good day for product. I like that. It's a good day. No, not for Joe Hazen personally, but for broadcasting.
+
+[2:34] Yes. It's a good day. And I'm very uh excited, first time on the show. Our special guest, the Bean Master Blaster General, Steve Sando from Rancho Gordo Beans. How are you doing?
+
+[2:47] Hey, great. Thanks for asking me. I'm still reeling from that devil dog recipe, but I'm doing my best. I'm a survivor, so I'll get through it. Oh, listen, listen, listen.
+
+[2:55] Just so you know, it's equal parts, American cheese and uh and hot dogs. So I went to my cheese supplier and I was like, I was like, listen, listen, I know that this isn't what you normally sell, but they're it's Di Palo's, you know, which is an Italian store here in New York City. But they carry a lot of stuff that they wouldn't otherwise carry because they have like you know, 80, 90 year old customers who have been buying this stuff since the 50s. You know what I mean? And so like they have to carry like the Boris Head Block cheese.
+
+[3:25] They have to carry. There's a uh there's a fake uh fake, well, it's fake, Argentinian uh like parmesan substitute that they still carry because there are some people who were still alive during World War II and and started buying that stuff, and then they still want that product, so they still carry it, but they they won't talk to you about it. Like they don't, you can't see it when you go. So I was like, I was like, yo, give me some of that black cheese. Give me some of that.
+
+[3:49] They're like, don't call it government cheese. I was like, uh, okay. Just give me some of that black American. So I I had the black American, par froze it with the hot dogs, grounded up. I did a vegetarian version with uh the field, I forget the name of it, the the highly rated vegan dog.
+
+[4:02] It was actually had a better texture than the meat one. It held together because of all the hydrocoloids they put into it. Uh enough of the uh enough of the devil dogs. Although someone asked me, I think a Patreon member, uh you you can find out and say who see who it was, John, what meat grinder I used. I uh I deaccessioned or put into storage all of my kitchen aid materials because I I decided I was disgusted with the kitchen aid and I wasn't going to use it for a while.
+
+[4:25] Uh, but I didn't want to buy the meat grinder attachment for the Bosch. I'm I'm going back to almost all manual grinding stuff. And I'm gonna talk to you about, I'm gonna pull you back into this, Steve. I bought uh I bought a hand number 10 hand meat grinder. I bought the stainless one, the LEM used on eBay.
+
+[4:38] But like, you know, you can get the porkart and it's a joy to grind small amounts of meat by hand and not have the you know what I mean, and like in like cleaning all that crap. Yeah. Hand grinder. So now that we're talking about grinders, I first came to know of you, Steve, not because of your uh amazing uh beans, but because of your love of masa and you were the person who discovered in America the nyxtamatic grinder. You want to talk about that?
+
+[5:02] Do you still advocate for the nix d'amatic grinder? That is hysterical in a jolt from the past. Yeah, no, well, I when I first started going to Mexico, I was kind of horrified by the state of the more I went, the more I realized I didn't know anything. I thought, you know, I'm from California, I love burritos, of course. I know everything about Mexican food.
+
+[5:24] It's ridiculous. But eating real tortillas in Mexico, it I just became obsessed with masa. And you know, you adding water to a powder isn't the same thing. That's uh massa jarina. And it serves a purpose, but I just became obsessed with different corns and soaking them in calcium hydroxide cow.
+
+[5:45] Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's calcium hydroxide. Anyway. I mean, some people use potash and some people use other things.
+
+[5:54] Yeah. Well, I guess, and is it technically the same thing as lye? No, that's a sodium hydroxide. So you can use any base. It's just like the most prevalent base in in um in in Mexican cuisine is cow, which is calcium hydroxide, as you say.
+
+[6:10] And the advantage of the calcium hydroxide is it has relatively low solubility. And so it's relatively easy to use. It's also not very um, like it's not super caustic, so it's not gonna ruin you the way that like lye can really. I mean, I've you know had to go to the hospital once because I put lye on my tongue by mistake. Long story, I won't get into it.
+
+[6:29] Um Nastasi was there. My wife was like super bent at Nastasia for some reason just because she was in the room when it happened. Remember that, Stuz? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was bad.
+
+[6:40] And first of all, like when you put lye on your tongue, it's not like you have to wait around. It's not like you're like, oh, did I do something bad? You know how like when something gets on your skin and you're like, oh, did I do something bad? When lye hits your tongue, you're like, oh, hospital now. You like wash yourself off.
+
+[6:55] Anyway, so I would use calcium hydroxide. Pot ash is another thing, uh, you know, because people would uh the same stuff people use to make soap, anything you have for base, but cow is traditional. Have you noticed? So I I when did I write that article, Stas? Like 2011, 2010, 2000.
+
+[7:12] Yeah, something around there, when I was doing all my nixilization experiments and I what I discovered was is that grinding sucks it's a terrible job and like I felt right like immense well I felt like immense like I I couldn't believe like the work that all of those women for so many thousands of years have done grinding corn you know what I mean like it was just so much work and um yeah and then someone was they would they do them on the stone the lava matates and you know it's in a submission position submissive position and it really kept women down when you think about it because they had to be on the floor they're you know using their backs to push this uh meal and it it really was part of the liberation to not have to do that yeah when uh machinery came in I mean it does still they'd argue that they still taste better but you know who wants to be on the floor all day pushing corn. Yeah Rachel Laudan did a uh uh a study once uh on how on like just how many hours it takes to feed like to feed a family just based on grinding time you know what I mean and yeah it's nuts I bought so in in the in the early to mid 2000s in New York City like the closest I could get to buying a real matate they were it was basically an ornamental matate and so trying to grind on an ornamental matate is even worse than trying to grind on a you know on a real one I quickly gave up. I hate the Corona grinder a corona grinder I don't like I I'm sure it's fine if you hook it up to a washing machine motor but like like a hand grind a hand cranked like Corona is like uh it's a freaking nightmare. And then someone pinged me on the blog, which I was updating at the time, was like, um, Steve Sando has a nixtomatic. I was like, Well, I'm not flying to Mexico to buy it.
+
+[8:59] And then I've eventually got taken to Mexico, and the very first thing I said was, take me to the store, we're buying a Nixomatic, as soon as I got to Mexico City. And it is a lot better. You know, I abused it once with um uh with nuts, right? So I was I put nuts through it, and I don't know if you know this. If you grind peanuts with sugar, like it gums up the machine instantly, right?
+
+[9:21] Like instantly, like melts the sugar, gums up the machine. Smoke came out of the back of the nix d'amatic. I was like, oh, I'm dead. And it came back to life. Can you believe that?
+
+[9:30] Wow. Yeah. That's great. There's also, you know, I think people make mole in it though, so it should be able to handle more stuff. I think it's a good thing.
+
+[9:40] I mean, there's very little sugar, if any. Yeah, I think what happened is the sugar, uh, I think the sugar caramelized with the heat and then just like froze and gummed it, and then that was that was it. Uh a lot of people I know now, you know, you know, more because more chef people kind of do the masa. I know people who don't have the money to buy the the, you know, the the decent size grinder. Like, you know, there's like a there's like a $2,000 like restaurant size grinder that people can get now.
+
+[10:06] Um a lot of people I know they run it just they run it through a meat grinder a couple of times with a fine plate, but I I've never had the product. I don't know how good it gets. I mean, I know that I hate the food processor because you have to add too much water. You know, I don't know. No, and I know Alton Brown at one point was proclaiming that's the way to go.
+
+[10:23] And it's like, ah, this is not masa, but I know. This isn't what this isn't what I understand. All right, can I good massa to be? Can I tell you a cheat? Can I tell you a cheat?
+
+[10:31] Can I tell you a cheat that I do that is you gonna you're gonna think I'm a terrible person? Sure. Uh so okay, listen, you do it in the food processor, and you and I, we all know it's too wet, right? It's not it's not real masa, yeah. So what you do is you put a little bit of maseka in to get the texture back where it's supposed to go.
+
+[10:44] And I know it's cheating, but you still get the majority of it is fresh Nixtamol, and you're just trying to knock that you're just trying to knock that extra water back with a little bit of uh masica. What do you think? Um I don't think it's a crime. I mean, it's still better. The I know a lot of local tortilleras that well, a lot of them, there aren't a lot anymore, but a lot of times when you find a tortilleria that will make fresh nixtamol, they add masica so it'll last longer.
+
+[11:19] Well, as a preservative almost on the side. And it's Maseika isn't the devil, but the company is, but the product actually works as that's the problem. And so people I think compromise too much. Right. Well, it's better than it's better than a pre-made tortilla.
+
+[11:34] When I was growing Well, for sure, but you know, when I was growing up, you know, I'm old. So I'd go into the mission in San Francisco, and there were probably seven different uh tortillas you could buy, all made from Nixtamall. I mean, nothing was massa harina at that point. And you'd walk in and the smell was like heaven. And now, you know, most of the Mexican stores we have here in the Bay Area are they have Texas uh Guerrero brand that has uh a paragraph of ingredients.
+
+[12:03] So and I think that's probably what led you and me to getting a little obsessive about it. Well it was interesting in New York, we've kind of had the flip. In two thousand and ten, there was exactly or nine. There was exactly one place in New York that did uh that made Nixtamall. In fact, they called it the tortilleria nixtamal.
+
+[12:24] Yeah. And you know, I think since then there are now more people, like uh restaurants doing it themselves and stuff stuff. Let me ask you about the flip on this, because I know that, you know, um, I don't know, ten years ago or so, even in Mexico, a lot of places were moving uh away from doing uh fresh Nixtamall just because it's so much less convenient. But have you noticed with the and I know there's been a resurgence and that you know the guys at Maciendo are working really hard on bringing back even like like awesome old varieties of corn, but have you noticed now that people who are doing it tend to I think overcowl it just to prove that they made it from scratch, so it's like so heavily cow tasting. Have you noticed that?
+
+[13:04] No, I haven't said that I wouldn't be surprised. Well also, you know, it's you don't have your grandmother telling you what to do. So people are kind of rediscovering something. So I that's really I hope it isn't why they're doing it. Maybe they just don't know how to rinse it.
+
+[13:18] I mean, I don't rinse it completely. I actually like a tiny bit of that there. But yeah, me too. If it's too much, that's pretty awful. Yeah, yeah, because it's like yeah.
+
+[13:27] Uh while while we're on uh Nixamal, I will bring this up because uh long time listener uh and ice cream author Quinn uh wrote in with a question for you about it. Uh I I had uh I guess he didn't like my answer a couple of weeks ago. Uh Quinn wants to know, because he's doing his own uh masa, whether you've ever used flavorful liquid in the process instead of just water. Oh god, no. No, I'm sorry.
+
+[13:54] No, I my instinct is like, no, that's a total horrible mistake. But I I don't know. No, I mean maybe it would be interesting. Listen, no. Quinn's a naturally yeah, Quinn's a naturally uh curious person, so I think he just wants it to not be a waste stream.
+
+[14:07] I think I think where he's coming from is Quinn wants it to not be a waste stream. So he wants it to be useful afterwards. You know, but yeah I just can't Oh oh what to do with the water after you've got to I think he wants it to be a two part I think he wants it to be a two part situation. Right. I think he wants the corn to pick up flavor from the the process, right?
+
+[14:31] So that there's flavor in the aside from just the flavor of the next a mile in the corn. And I think then at simultaneously I think he wants the the the product that's left over to not be a waste stream. Well I would just say if you're going to all this trouble and say you're getting corn from Macienda or someone like that it's disrespectful to the corn if you don't do it the traditional way. But then once you drain it though, use that in the garden because it's people put lime in their gardens all the time. So the strained water you can repurpose and so it's not gone to waste or going down your sink.
+
+[15:12] Yeah yeah I guess that's true. All right I like that uh uh well okay before we get to beans because I just want to get all the non bean stuff out of the way uh first you're also a a a clay pot aficionado and I remember that uh you know Nastasi Nastasia and I went with Harold McGee to visit um of course back when she was alive Paula Wolford right when she was doing a lot of her kind of clay pot lunacy and you and she would get together uh in uh in clay pot land right yes and she is still alive oh she is oh her husband died. Her husband died. Her husband died yes sorry my bad well she's she has some serious health issues, is what I'd say. Um yes, but no, she I was sort of had a casual interest in it, and then she made me realize, oh no, this is really fun.
+
+[15:59] And uh she's come to Rancho Gordo and done presentations. Uh she got a lot of uh there's a whole generation of clay pot is nuts. Because you don't really need them, but there's this gentle heat. She talks about the unglazed pieces, have their memory of everything they ever cooked. Uh and you know, every culture that I know of, like from Mexico to Italy, even Spain, I mean, everyone knows the best beans are cooked in clay.
+
+[16:27] So it started there and then I've gotten them. I tend to not have many casual interests. So if I think there's some validity to it, I go a little crazy. Right, but you're also not precious, right? You're like they're gonna break.
+
+[16:39] You're like they're gonna break, so don't worry about it, right? Well yeah, that is it is in an yeah, it's not an heirloom you're likely to pass down. Although I break very few, but it might be because I have so many in there in rotation. But we're working with a village in Puebla, kinda near Oaxaca, and they have a special clay that naturally has uh cows uh what is talcum powder in it, um, naturally. They don't add it.
+
+[17:03] And they burnish the pots with rocks, quartz rocks that have been the family for generations. And this is these are the best pots. They're sort of a neutral kind of taupe color, and then as you use them they get darker and i they're and because there's no glaze, there's no issues with lead. And you put 'em right on the gas burner, and I don't even you know, gently heat them and bring it up. I just turn 'em on and go.
+
+[17:28] And th these things are amazing. Are they similar to the Casuelas? Are they similar to La Chamba? Like the Colombian ones? They would be, but they're taupe colored.
+
+[17:39] They're not black at all. And I think the chombas are naturally red and they add herbs to them and then they burn 'em at the end and it it stains them. It might I think my impression is is that there's iron in the there's iron in the clay and they do a second firing in oxygen deprived atmospheres to uh create the uh black iron oxide I think that's how they do that. But they're burnished. I guess not the color but like the burnishing so that they're unglazed but still not very porous exactly.
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+[18:11] And it's just the best way to cook. I I I do almost everything in them. And we I even have a thing for making tamales it's a it's clay uh uh what do you call it steamer and it's got a clay rack it's got a little hole in it so you can have more water it's the most beautiful thing it's pretty rare. Huh I like that I like that and and you sell these pots you're out of stock right now you're trying to get them back but you sell these pots in general on your website right and in our store in Napa. Yeah the fun thing is so I met this woman Lourdes whose family makes them and we did our initial order was for 30 and she told me later she was she was making them and thinking this is so stupid Gringos eat a McDonald's why am I making these pots no one's gonna cook them and it was so much fun calling her in a week and saying we completely sold out and sort of breaking stereotypes on both sides of the border that for me that was a real joy.
+
+[19:05] Oh nice and we now buy thousands from her every year. So how long have you uh had this partnership with them well I went first so the a company I work with is called Shoshak and they make dried prickly pear sour prickly pear called shokanosle treats and they uh if I'm going into too much detail just cut me off but they were all set for export and I said well that's really sweet but this isn't gonna be a market. Are there any heirloom beans in the area? And they said, No, no, no, no. But the mother chimed in goes, oh, there's one in the village.
+
+[19:40] So it turns out the person they're everywhere and and just like what I did, I mean beans have been under our nose and no one was really paying an attention to them. So because of their uh situation, they would go to a lot of trade shows and folk art shows and we'd meet the best craftspeople all over Mexico and we started uh importing their things. So it was 2008 that I met them and we've been doing it ever since. And we keep coming back too, which I think is also important because I think a lot of times m Moss is the flavor of the day or clay pot cooking is the flavor. And it's like, no, I incorporate this into what we're doing, and if it's really valid, we're we're we we stick with it.
+
+[20:20] Nice. Now I have a gardening question that I've I've I've had been waiting to have an actual person who grows things. Now, one of the things uh first of all I want to know from your opinion, like what effect local conditions have on the flavor. I know that you write that you know they like a certain amount of sunlight, etc. etc.
+
+[20:42] But how much do the local conditions alter the flavor of a particular bean? And so like I'm at like so you have certain beans that grow really well in Maine, or you have certain beans that you know grow really well where you are in Napa, but how much of a difference is there from place to place with a particular bean? Well, uh the first thing though is beans want to grow. So they're really easy to grow compared to other plants. And I think Jack and the Beanstalk happened because they're just so easy.
+
+[21:09] But we had a great bean called Good Mother's Stallard, and we had crop failure over and over again. And I remember going to we found seed in Holland, which was really rare. And beans are seeds, so I thought, well, I'll cook a pound to make sure it's okay. And I remember cooking them and thinking, oh, these taste like crap. This isn't the same bean at all.
+
+[21:29] Um, but we went ahead and grew them and they were fabulous. So there really was a terroir issue with California and this bean. Um and I'm not I'm not being cute. I mean, it really I was almost heartbroken when I tasted them, the Dutch ones, and then we grew them and it's like, oh, it's good mother's dollar. So I think there really is a difference.
+
+[21:48] We also famously uh we became buddies with Marcella Hazan, the Italian cook. And I asked her at one point what her favorite uh bean from Italy that she missed the most was. And she's from Venice, so I thought she was gonna say Lamon, which is a borlodi cut of bean. Said, no, no, no, it's Sorana beans are my favorite. And if you can bring those, you'll have a customer for life.
+
+[22:12] And it's like, well, lady, I'm not gonna charge you for beans, but yeah. Uh so we imported them, and uh it they've been a huge hit. She unfortunately died, and we call them Marcella with her husband Victor's blessing in honor of her. But just last year I went to Serana to meet the farmers there, and I thought they were going to come at me with pitchforks and knives because I had taken their bean and we grow it in California. Because in Serana it's a very small town and they they can't expand at all.
+
+[22:43] So they couldn't do anywhere near the production we need. Um, they could they were so flattered we'd done it, and the most important thing is I called it Marcella instead of Serana because they believe there's a total terroir issue as well with them. That really it's the soil and the conditions that make the bean taste different. And I think uh yeah, I think it's a huge issue. And also in Mexico when we grow beans, there's no irrigation at all.
+
+[23:08] It's just seasonal rains, whereas at California, we're completely controlling the irrigation since we don't have summer rain. Um so I think that really does all those things affect the flavor. Like, do the beans care? So here's is another just a random question. You know, I I mean, obviously, you know, like that we're divided up into a series of growing zones, right?
+
+[23:26] But those growing zones don't they they track only on temperature, not really on daylight, right? So I mean, like do beans do well at certain altitudes. I mean, like, do you do you think it's a mislabeled system? Should they change the system or what? Well, I think for the things that most people grow, it's probably fine.
+
+[23:46] But we've brought beans in from Mexico, and clearly they need more daylight hours or the an altitude thing. I know the whole family of runner beans need cooler nights. You know, we so we grow them coastally. I mean, there's little things like that. But I I in general, if you want to do it, you can do it.
+
+[24:03] I mean, you think the South, you know, grows butter beans and uh pigeon peas and things like and pintos as well. And that that terrain couldn't, it's humid, it's hot. I don't know if it ever cools down at night. Um it's completely different than California, but they're still able to do it. Right.
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+[24:19] Do you think main beans are such a thing because of their long, long days because they're so far north and it's it's like hot enough in the summer because like they really only have like the two seasons. Like, is that why they're so good at certain beans? That could be. I wish I I wouldn't. I don't I don't know.
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+[24:36] So you know what, you know what? I don't have any main beans right now, but I I have some I have some Vermont yellow eyes in my house. I'm gonna go buy some of your yellow eyes. I'm gonna do a California Northern Vermont. Yeah, yellow eye side by side.
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+[24:52] But the main people will be mad because they're gonna be like, it wasn't from Maine. It wasn't a it wasn't, you know. Um yeah, yeah, so it's not a real comparison. No, no, and the main people are, but I would assume they have longer daylight, but they probably have a shorter season too. Yeah, so the we grow one bean called buckeye, and it was from Montana, and it it's in California, you almost watch it grow.
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+[25:16] It's so quick, and it's really a great bean, too. But I've had your buckeyes. Yeah, I've had your bucks. Yeah, and I think they were developed for having a short season. One year we even got two crops in.
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+[25:29] I was gonna ask that. So you can you can do double crops? But rarely. Almost never. But this year we were able to, that one year we were able to with buckeyes.
+
+[25:39] And everyone needs a break at that point too. I don't know if you've gardened it all, but uh for me it's like at the beginning of the season, I'm like, I'm uh I've got nature in control. She's gonna listen to my whims, I'm in charge. And by the end of it, it's like, oh, we just harvest and get this thing over with. Um it's it's uh ever I do this every year, and it's always a surprise.
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+[25:59] Yeah, something crazy I didn't realize because I've never done dried beans like back when I used to have some some a plot of land outside the city. I tried beans, but we always harvested them fresh. So I've never taken them to dry. They actually go all the way to 15% moisture while they're still on the plant. Yes, that's when we I mean, people ask where you dry them, and we do it right in the field.
+
+[26:24] So when they're about 15, sometimes twelve percent moisture, you cut the plant at the base, and then we let them dry in the fields, and that's when we harvest them. And then the harvester comes through and you you get them in wind rows and they they go up a chute and they're shaking like crazy, and the beans go in one bin, and then the pods go in another, and then the pods shoot out into the field with a blade cutting up smaller, so they're they go right back as green manure. And I'm not I I mean, I don't want to get on this. I we we do the beans for the flavor because I think they're great, and it turns out they're healthy, but they're even conventional beans are really incredibly good for the planet. And so you can plant in the spring, harvest in the late fall, and you've got this incredible protein.
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+[27:10] And I'm not giving up meat and I'm not I'm really an omnivore, but what it takes to bring a pound of beef to market versus a pound of beans is insane. So we should be eating more beans, whether or not you eat the well, so like just out of curiosity, because it seems also like uh I mean, it takes so many beans to make a pound of beans. So my unless you're doing lime is whatever. But my my question is like how many pounds of beans can you get out of an acre the way you do it versus a commercial. I've just I have no referent point for like I have no refer point for reference point for like how many beans come out of an acre of land.
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+[27:48] Yeah, no, and I'm probably the worst person. I'm trying to dig I think we get like three to six thousand, and I'm probably gonna have people calling me like you're an idiot. I don't know. So ours yield about a quarter less than conventional beans and sometimes half, is what I would say. So we have a lot of farmers who don't want to grow for us because they don't get as much per acre, and we can say, Well, we're paying you more per pound to actually make more money, but there is this macho thing with some farmers like, no, I need this many pounds per acre.
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+[28:21] So that's kind of what we're up against when we are looking for new farmers. I'm gonna go ahead and say Macho Man was my least favorite village people. What do you say? And the heirlooms are fussier too compared to uh conventional beans. Yeah.
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+[28:39] Go ahead with the village people. Well, I'm just saying Macho Man is like not like everyone listens to Macho Man, not their greatest song. You know what I'm saying? It's not. It's not Macho Man, not their greatest song.
+
+[28:48] Um so uh back to the question that I was supposed to ask you. Blessings in the sky, one of our uh skies, one of our Patreon listeners. By the way, anyone who's listening on the Patreon can call in questions to 917 410 1507. That's 9174101507. Wants to know what should they grow in 7B.
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+[29:06] So are there any beans that I don't even, I think 7B is like kind of like where I am, right? New York is like 7B. Is there uh is there any bean that like you've heard does really well in in New York? No, I I no, I'm so unqualified. I you know, I call the master gardeners of the area and ask them, but beans want to grow, and the beautiful thing is you can take one of our beans, um, put it in the ground, and as you get the first true set of leaves, you actually can cook that plant and saute it with butter.
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+[29:40] It's out of this world. Then it gets flowers, and if you want, you can take those flowers and put them in the salad, and they're really beautiful. And if you do a runner bean in particular, they've got really big, almost gaudy lipstick colored flowers mostly. And then you can keep letting it grow and you get a green bean, or probably a string bean, and you have to you can string them and eat them at that point. Then you can get what you were doing before, a shelling bean, you can shell them, or you can fully let them mature and get them dried.
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+[30:10] And it might be you don't get to the dried point. I mean, maybe not even the shelling, but I don't imagine anywhere where you couldn't at least get to the green bean point. Now I think they're worth it. On the shelling. I know that you I your Christmas limas are good, right?
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+[30:27] But a fresh shelled lima bean is like is like a godly thing. You know what I mean? Like a fresh shelled lima bean. I mean, I mean, am I wrong about how delicious a fresh shelled lima bean is. I think so, but I'm from here.
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+[30:43] Where you where did you grow up? New York. New York area. This is very telling. I can always tell New York.
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+[30:48] Okay, that's unusual. Um I hated lima beans growing up, fresh, frozen, dried. I thought they were the most vile things, and usually it was because my mother cooked the bird's eye vegetable medley that was frozen with potatoes, limas, and carrots. And I thought I just would do anything rather than eat these. And I think part of it is because they really taste more like a vegetable than a bean.
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+[31:11] So I think they almost you just have to stop thinking of them as a bean because they are more like a vegetable. And I'm trying to think Christmas limas were my gateway into loving lima beans. And I because they don't taste like regular lima beans, they taste like something else. And I used to put them in Gorgonzola sauce, and I was like, this is okay, I can do this. And then little by little I discovered uh the rest of the Lima family.
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+[31:41] But I've no, I I really couldn't stand them. And to me, fresh beans don't taste as developed as the dried ones. And maybe that's a prejudice that I've had to develop. Yeah, that's that's fair. I think they taste better dried.
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+[31:55] For me, I grew up tolerating limas because we would have the same limas you're talking about. Like in the 70s, like the lima bean was a big thing that people we had, and they were always kind of pasty, mushy. There was nothing really to recommend them. But the first time I had the fresh ones, and you know, I'm not really concerned with whether or not I get enough nutrition. Like I've always been overnutritioned, so I don't feel like I have to cook my lima beans that much.
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+[32:20] Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, I know there's anti-nutritive things in them, but I've never really worried about it. So just like quick cooked, like like fresh succotash. I had that the first time I made that. Like, you know, when they first started when I first started buying the fresh limas, like, you know, a couple decades ago in the farmer's market here.
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+[32:35] I was like, oh damn. Man. Uh, but yeah, different, you know. Okay, I'll try it. Yeah.
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+[32:41] I'll I'll I'll take your advice and try that. Just try it. Uh yeah, I will. All right. So from you like little baby limas or do you like bigger ones?
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+[32:51] Uh no, like they're almost f they're almost full-sized. You know what I mean? Because otherwise it's uh kind of more like infanticide because you're not eating the the you know, the pods that go with it. Um, so here's some beans that you've written about of yours that I haven't tried yet, right? I'm gonna get to it before I get to the questions.
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+[33:06] I'm gonna get in trouble. Black calypso, you say they have a russet potato flavor for real, but only if you but will that flavor go away if you cook it too long. No, no, no, they taste potato-y. We haven't grown that one for years, but it's a great I think other people do, and that's a great bean. Hmm.
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+[33:24] All right, I'll keep my eye out for it. But it does taste potato-y, as opposed to creamy. I mean, they really are slightly different. Yeah. So let's talk about that for a second.
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+[33:29] Now there's dense, there's creamy. So what are you assessing first with the bean? You assessing the skin, like the thickness and or thinness of the skin, the pot liquor, and then the texture, and it can be like anywhere from fudgy, meaty, creamy, and but you don't really call beans mealy, but some of them are kind of mealy. What would you where like w where do you how do you how do you judge a bean? Well, I think in a funny way, Christmas Limers are a little bit mealy, but it I it's wonderful.
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+[34:02] But the word mealy isn't what you'd use to mark. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But no, I have an emotional attachment to the bean. So I'll I'll eat it and like what does it make me feel like?
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+[34:13] Because I'm not really very scientific. I'm more romantic, I think. And um generally it's a nostalgia thing. And that's why I think, you know, kidney beans and uh navy beans are so boring. It's like, oh whatever, they're distiller.
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+[34:26] Where then you eat these other and I grew up on those, I think. I mean not really getting it one way or the other, and then eating heirlooms is like, oh, this is something else. So it it's an emotional thing, I think, when I first eat them. And often you look at a bean and you think, oh, this is this gorgeous golden brown thing, so it's gonna be honeyish and wonderful. It's like, oh no, no, it's like umami and i the you get a different reaction to each one.
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+[34:52] But the pot liquor is just as important, you know, the bean broth. Um I'm sorry, I'm jumping over like jumping all around like a pinball, but I think it's also important to cook the beans with just water in the same thing I said before is like out of respect to the beans, this water, onions, garlic, and a little olive oil. That really is how I judge a bean. And then what happens after that is where I start getting all judgy. Yeah, I've read multiple multiple times where you're like, please don't please don't tell me that you cooked it with nothing and then say you put a ham hock into it.
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+[35:24] Like you should just have a t-shirt that says, Don't talk to me about your ham hocks, right? No, completely. And I love ham hocks, but it's a different dish. There's a great uh chef cook, uh, Georgian Brennan here in the Bay Area, and she actually will cook her ham hocks separate and slice the meat off and then add it to the beans. And I it doesn't make sense for a lot of people.
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+[35:46] It's like, no, I want slow cooked goodness. But it's actually the flavors are sharper and distinct when you add them after they've cooked on their own sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean like uh I feel like like a l now you're gonna get mad, but uh I have been cooking with a lot of pork just because the recipe I've been working on for the past month is is baked beans, traditional baked beans. And a traditional baked bean needs the it needs the I mean it's a baked bean.
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+[36:11] It needs the molasses, it needs the I think you know, pull the sugar back, it needs the needs the doesn't need the pork. You can make a vegetarian one, but but you get me. Um so you know and oh one of the beans that you don't mention in any of your stuff is one of the big big three uh main ones is Marfax. You have any uh anything with Marfax, or yes, it's not a bean that you've uh messed around with or no. Any feelings on Marfax?
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+[36:35] You know, it's not on my radar. I love that other people are doing it, and um I don't need to be a pig about growing every bean. Right. Someone else is doing it really well, and that's a great main bean. That's uh it's fine.
+
+[36:48] I'm happy to let that go. All right, so baked beans, I know I I I I know y you're coming around uh coming around more to pressure cooking, but you're still not a fan, right? See what you think about this. This is what I've been I've been I've been doing. Oh, one more thing before I even get into that.
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+[37:03] Would you agree that the two I'll just say this and see whether you agree. Two of the stupidest uh sayings that we have is find a penny, pick it up all the day, you'll have good luck. Not true. It's the opposite. Don't bother with the penny, it's not worth it anymore.
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+[37:16] The second one is beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot, because it's the exact opposite. The more you eat beans, the less you toot when you eat them, true or false. Very true. And you can imagine this is my favorite subject to go about. But it's like, uh yeah.
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+[37:39] But it's you know, it just means your body's working for one. And the more you eat beans, the more your body is figuring out how to deal with the fiber that you haven't been eating enough of. So don't blame the beans. Blame it on the rest of your diet. Yeah, beans, beans are.
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+[37:51] So when you finally get beans, your body's like, well, thank you. Yeah, yeah. You eat enough of it, and it's the formerly musical food. More you eat, the less you toot. Exactly.
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+[38:01] It's it's exactly. Um I hear I hear tale that some people just never get over it and they just get gassy. But it just someone wrote a book called to Air is Human, to A I R is Human. And it's like, okay, just get over it. Well, some people who get gas and it gets painful as the easy.
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+[38:23] Right. The issue is is that like if you ha let's say you haven't eaten beans in a long time. And uh and a lot of people, and I know that look, we're gonna get into it on this because and I know you said we the more scientists you talk to, like the the less they worry about throwing away the the the bean water, right? The the the soaking in the bean water. However, those scientists probably eat a lot of beans.
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+[38:42] You know what I'm saying? Like, because there have been studies where they've so you know. But with everything, I am not as I mean, I used to insist, especially when I first started, this is the way it is. And now to me, if you're cooking beans and you want to soak it and change the water, good for you. You're ahead of everybody.
+
+[39:02] So go ahead. Like it's not what I would do necessarily, but if you find that that works, more power too. You have right because my feeling, my feeling is like I'm not as adamant as I used to be. If you can eat commercial canned beans and not have a uh a problem, what those people do typically is soak it, throw away the water, blanch it, and throw away the water. And that that's why they don't have flavor, right?
+
+[39:25] So they've gotten rid of a lot of the flavor. Right. You know, most of it like soluble sugars and whatnot, but also like coloring and things like this. But like that is how they I mean, true or false, also, like with things like black beans, they have a uh they they buy black beans with a super high colorant level so that they can do all their processing and have them still come out black instead of gray, right? I mean, so if if you're having that's what I think I don't we don't deal with cans, so I don't know.
+
+[39:51] Yeah, but I believe it though. But that's you know, so like if if you can eat, if when you cook dried beans, you have a problem, but when you eat canned beans you don't, that to me is the is the the uh so I'm doing a lot of research on this, but the problem is I don't have access to the equipment to let me test whether or not I've gotten rid of the it's raffinose and stachios. It's these, it's these uh it's these non-digestible uh, you know, uh oleosaccharides uh that do it to you, right? But can I tell you I shouldn't even mention this because I haven't tested it, I don't know if it works. Can I tell you my current thing that I do?
+
+[40:25] My and but I cook I've cooked so many beans in the past couple of months that I probably can't tell anymore whether it works because I've just been consuming so many beans. But here's what I do. You ready for it? See what you think. I take the beans, I I put them uh in, I soak them because I'm I'm a lazy, right?
+
+[40:44] So I soak them at about a hundred and uh five degrees Fahrenheit on my induction burner, right? And to that soaking water, I add, I soak it in salt so that it soaks in faster. In fact, and you might hate this too because I know you do, or you've written that you do. I s I uh I I add the full amount of salt that I'm gonna use for the recipe because I know how much the beans are gonna weigh when they're done, right? You know, I've I I cooked a zillion batches of beans and I'm like, oh, you know, this is how much the beans are like I'm putting in a pound of beans, I'm putting in 400 grams because I'm doing baked beans of non-bean product, and I know that I'm gonna end up with 1.
+
+[41:24] you know eight kilos of product when I'm done, I just add the salt at the beginning because I know exactly how much I'm gonna reduce it. Okay. And uh I soak it and then I add beano to the soak water when it's at a little bit above body temperature, and you can taste it. The the bean liquor's getting sweet. I know I'm leaching out the sugars.
+
+[41:43] I think the beano is wiping the stuff out there. I add two beanos, I don't put the gel cap in. I open the gel cap and dump the powder in and stir it in. Then, you know what else I've discovered in among my tests that when you are, and I I think it's less farty. And the other thing I've noticed is that I tried to for years to do a sous-vide bean recipe, and I couldn't get it to work because I think beans need to be cooked in excess water.
+
+[42:06] You need to do the open lid. So here's why I think the pressure cooking recipes are a problem because they don't evaporate enough. I think what you want to do is almost fully cook the bean open pot and let the water evaporate. It needs to be in extra water, it needs to evaporate, and as soon as they start getting soft, that's when you need to slow down the boil. That's when people are shattering their beans when they overboil after they've gone soft.
+
+[42:32] That if you I did a test yesterday, it's not quite right. So do you cook baked beans ever, or is it not your thing because you don't like all the pork and the molasses and stuff? Uh you know, we're we're I'm also doing a book. We're actually having to experiment on baked beans, and culturally it's a completely different dish that I grew up with. Right.
+
+[42:54] So we're I I'd love to talk to you later about it because I don't get it. It seems like so much work if for what? I I don't think the payoff is there. And it probably says more about my cooking or the baked beans I've had, but it's like, uh, that's a lot of work. Well to me, it's kind of a miracle.
+
+[43:11] This is strange to me. It to me it's a miracle. Well, the most of the recipes are overly sweet. Any any recipe that adds both molasses and sugar, I I discard, which they all do now. But that what is a miracle to me is how dark they turn, right?
+
+[43:26] So like they're done after 45 minutes or so, right? They're physically done. And by the way, because I know I'm gonna cook it for seven hours, I add the molasses at the beginning because it doesn't matter because I know I'm gonna cook it for seven hours, right? So uh, but the color change from that might actually help, right? Uh maybe.
+
+[43:44] Keep them together. Yeah, it's true. I don't add, I never I never use prepared mustard though. Dried mustard only. Dried mustard only.
+
+[43:50] No, I don't add any hardcore acids to it. But the color change over the seven hours is amazing. It's just keeping the evaporation in check. Uh so that's everything I've been working with. So if you cook it and then you you have to calculate how much water leaves your pressure cooker per hour.
+
+[44:06] Two hours in a pressure cooker is about the same as seven hours in your oven. FYI. Just ran the test last night. And it's close to it's not I haven't gotten quite to as good as my bean pot you know, in a two fifty oven for seven hours. Eh, I'm pretty close.
+
+[44:23] Pretty close getting there. Um and are you doing it in the clay pot? Uh well, yeah, yeah, but fully fully glazed. Fully glazed. The thing is I've done it all different ways.
+
+[44:33] And the the I think uh honestly the main thing about the clay for me is just the moderation. Like the the whole point is you're trying to slowly evaporate the liquid. You're trying to keep the beans at that high temperature so that they turn brown and taste like baked beans, which I know culturally is something you're not as interested in, but you have to deal with it with this new book, right? So you need to keep it at that high temperature for a long time to have that reaction take place where they turn brown and it has all these like reactions where it turns into a baked bean. But at the same time, you can't have too much water evaporate.
+
+[45:05] And clay is really good at moderating that heat. And the traditional, like New England bean pot has such a narrow lid for its size that it actually slows the evaporation uh when it's lidded. It's so like you get very little evaporation in a low oven. So um if you use a big pot. Yeah.
+
+[45:25] So if you if with a bean pot, you can put it in a two fifty oven and it will stay at, you know, almost a boiling point for the full time. I would guess that um you might get i if you got more evaporation, you'd have to probably raise the oven temperature to 300 or so. But the higher you raise the oven temperature, the the more of a chance you're gonna dry out the the bean over time. So you, you know, like I have the benefit of having a like a lot of uh high weight scales in my kitchen. So I can I can measure and I've been measuring the pot as I cook to see how fast I'm evaporating water.
+
+[45:57] Um there's there's a lot there with the with with with with the baked beans uh and and with pressure cooker. So you don't think I'm I'm totally off base with what I'm saying. What about my thing that you have to have the excess water at the beginning? You have to have it and then evaporate. No?
+
+[46:12] No? Anything? All right. No, well, I I always cover it by two inches myself. I I'm the opposite of you.
+
+[46:19] I'm the completely non-scientific and more emotional about it. So I do in the pot, I cover it by two inches. I also find you almost need like a third of the pot needs to be beans, a third of the pot liquid and a third air. And I found like when I've seen people cook up to the top of the pot, and I think something's wrong. So and I d I don't know if it's science or just emotions, but I really insist you bring it to a really high boil for about 10 minutes.
+
+[46:49] And it's sort of what you were saying too, and then turn it low. And I use the lid to help regulate it. So it's always open, so there's always evaporation, but also you're it's a gentle boil after you've had that first 10 to 15 minutes of rapid boiling. Yes, and I don't tend to have a lot of splits. Yeah, I think the mistake that everyone makes with a split bean, whenever I see a split beans, I'm like, do like do the high boil early, right?
+
+[47:13] Like just like you say, right? Get it three quarters of the way cooked, and then from there on out, you want your water level to be correct so that just mere evaporation, almost like low simmer, couple bubbles, you know what I mean? Um, that's where you want to go. And you're not you're not gonna split the bean if you do that. You don't need to stir your beans that much.
+
+[47:29] But beans though means you have better pot liquor. So it's not like the worst crime of the century anyway. Yeah. I mean, if they turn to pudding, you don't want that. But yeah.
+
+[47:40] Yeah. Also, but I think like if there's too much water with too much pot liquor, they it it tends to get watered down. I mean, there's so much, there's only so much that uh most beans can give, you know. Um what's you what what is it, what is a what is a pot liquor heavy bean. I mean the runner beans, like I cooked it more.
+
+[48:00] Go ahead, go ahead. Sorry, we have good. Well, first I can say with the pressure cooker, since there is no evaporation, the pot liquor tastes dead. So Deborah Madison, the vegetarian cooking for everyone, taught me you do uh I think it was 20 minutes under pressure, open it up, natural relief, then do 20 minutes stovetop with the lid off. Or it's still less than an hour.
+
+[48:25] I'm not sure the timing. But basically, try it the other direction. You're not done when you've cooked them at a pressure cooker. I would do it the other direction. Yeah.
+
+[48:31] And and not only would I do it the other direction, uh, but I mean the because the great idea. Yeah, the the benefit of um the benefit of a pressure cooker is the the the the downside of a pressure cooker is there's very little evaporation. Uh the upside, and it's hard to control unless you've measured exactly how much evaporates because different pressure cookers are different. The advantage of a pressure cooker is that uh n there is no rapid boiling inside of it because it's under pressure. Because it's under pressure, you don't get a lot of bubbling, so you're actually very unlikely to break your beans in a pressure cooker so long as you use natural release.
+
+[49:13] See what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Um but you know, our beans are all within two years old. I I they don't take that long to cook.
+
+[49:22] So I to me the pressure cooker is just this extra step. It's changed everything, and I've made a lot of money thanks to the pressure cooker. There was this one year, it was Joe Yonan had cool beans. Everybody had an instant pot, and then we went into the quarantine quarantine. So everyone was cooking beans.
+
+[49:39] But and it was part of it was the instant pot. It was kind of amazing. But uh I I still just either use cast enameled cast iron or clay pots on my gas stove. And that really there's something I'm it to me is very romantic. And you turn a little rock into something creamy, and it's pretty simple.
+
+[49:59] Right. I mean, to me, the pressure cooker is useful if you're doing baked beans and you don't have seven hours, or you don't want to have to think seven hours to dance. Okay, well, yeah. You know, um, but I I'm very anxious to hear how that your final recipe for that. That would be great.
+
+[50:11] Yeah, well, maybe we work on it together, it'd be fun. Uh since we're both doing books. Uh and you know, uh mine's about moisture management and yours is about beans, so we can get together and like you know, join heads. Um, so some beans. All right, so uh black nightfall beans.
+
+[50:28] You say they taste piney. I've not tried them. Is this a bean to search out? Um, we stopped growing that. You're I think you're kidding.
+
+[50:37] These are old descriptions. Um, we actually have one called turkey craw, I think it's called, and it's cut we we're it's in the ground now, and we're gonna have it in the fall, and it's very similar, and it definitely was a great beam. It's there's black nightfall, red nightfall, and sometimes that was called Mayflower, and this turkey craw, and they're all really similar, and we actually found seed for this, so we'll have it in the fall. And it's it's uh they're definitely good. If you especially if you like buckeye, it's that kind of bean.
+
+[51:05] I do like buckeye. What about Eye of the Goat? Okay, that's my I mean I don't have favorites because the others get offended, but uh that would be one of my favorites for sure. It's just I I don't even know how to I am not smart enough to describe it, but it is juicy, velvety, it's got a skin but not thick, and it's got really superior polycker. And that's one of the ones too onion, garlic, sauteed and some olive oil, the beans and water, and you've just got heaven in a bowl, as far as I'm concerned.
+
+[51:39] All right. Now, um done with my questions. I need to rip through the Patreon questions before they rip a hole through me. I got uh Quinn. Yes.
+
+[51:48] Uh I got his question already. All right, from Timothy Helmuth. Uh have you found delicious or unusual beans that you've been unable to grow in commercial to quantities despite the desire to do so, and what are the issues that get in the way. Yes, good mother stallard. We did grow it early, but you know, the yields we weren't a very big company, and now to keep up, we've had really uh just a nightmare situation.
+
+[52:11] Um the Lamon at the Borlotti from uh the Venice area has been a tough one. It just the yields are so low, and you it just takes a couple of seasons to do it, and we're so busy, and we have so many other beans that we've probably neglected some of these. But yeah, there are some that just don't do so well here. Mark Mandal writes in, I live in the Boston area, which has a large Cape Verdean and Brazilian population. My local market basket supermarket stocks, quote unquote, rock beans, which I've cooked several times.
+
+[52:40] They have a curious, very strong, earthy flavor, much stronger than any other bean that I cook. They look similar to Marfax. Uh are there any thoughts on recipes? Internet searches mainly turn up articles on rocks in beans and how to remove rocks, which is not very helpful. Do you know this bean or by that name or any other name?
+
+[52:57] I'm sorry, I don't. I've never heard it. And it sounds fascinating though. Rock beans. But it sounds like if it has a funky earthy flavor, it might be a different variety.
+
+[53:07] It might be more of a pea even than a bean. I don't know that. But I would wonder. Do you ever do you ever mess with the pea world? Do you ever do the marrow fats?
+
+[53:14] You ever you ever are you a mushy pea fan or not? I'm not a huge mushy pea fan, but I actually just got back from Alabama and we're working with uh hopefully we're trying to encourage young farmers to grow heirloom peas, like pigeon peas, field peas, uh all those things. And there's uh thousands of spot or at least hundreds of varieties that are kind of dead that I think that's a great opportunity to uh help encourage people to do that. And we definitely need younger farmers. That's kind of an issue as well.
+
+[53:47] Do you have a copy of the 20s book, The Peas of New York, which was the last of the Vegetable of New York series put out by Tapey and uh UP Hedrick uh from the Geneva Station. Have you seen that book? It's amazing. No, that's great. Color pictures from the 20s of peas.
+
+[54:02] Oh pea. Yeah. Wow. It's good. It's very strong.
+
+[54:07] Um all right. Oxycodone, that's their handle, uh wrote in, uh I'm so ready ready for the beans. Here are my bean questions. Uh I plant beans I get at the store. That's not really a question, that's more of a statement.
+
+[54:18] Can you plant beans you get at the store? Are they fine? Have they been treated? No, they're fine. Yeah.
+
+[54:24] And also, just you know, there's no GMO commercial beans yet. I'm sure it's coming, but beans are so prolific and so happy, there's even conventional beans, there's no need for GMOs at this point. No. I mean, I don't think there ever is, but if if someone's concerned about that, that shouldn't be something. How much variability is there per plant and can you share tips for bean cultivation at home?
+
+[54:47] We can buy your book on bean cultivation. Well, I will just say I started this company by growing beans in my backyard and I had extras and I took them to the farmer's market. And the very first season is like, I can't do this. What you the yield from homegrown beans is you're gonna do it all summer and you're gonna get a pot or two. So it's a fun thing to do, but you should leave it to the professionals really if you want to have a lot of beans.
+
+[55:11] But if you want the fresh beans and the flowers and everything, and just they look great, I think it's a great thing to do, that you water them. You know, people were going on about how difficult it was to cook beans, so I did a thread on cooking them, and I said basically simmer until done. And so there are lots of fun tricks and uh fenessing, but and you know with beans it's like add water to the plant. I mean, they really uh are pretty simple and w we that they want to complicate things. Well they like light though, right?
+
+[55:41] Or a certain amount of it. Right? They like light and they like water. They like light. I mean they can't deal with but I have these beans from Oaxaca.
+
+[55:49] It's called uh free holom grief, and it's this big gray runner bean, and I planted them in the spring. I f finally it died in February, and we've had really hard frosts and the freezing cold rain, and it it was just shocking. This thing wanted to live. And I know in uh England a lot of people don't know that you can eat the scarlet runners. They just grow them for the flowers and they just you know, they think they're perpetual, but I think they're reseeding um the beans are tough right uh I mean not tough like tough like strong not tough like a pain in the early them yeah yeah well no no I mean they're they're yeah they're butch yeah yeah there you go I like that I like that uh so they they have more questions European beans what's the deal are any of them native to Europe well I think that lentils would be Middle Eastern I'm sure uh favas uh are probably their have connections I mean they're really most what we know of beans are new world beans so they're or indigenous to the Americas well and that's what you focus on in general right almost all of them yeah and then they said that this first then we used to even call them new world but people got offended by that because it's like well new world to who it's like oh that's actually a good point.
+
+[57:04] So we just play indigenous to the Americas now. Right their follow-up is is a lentil a bean and why is a black eyed pea so different and they would like you to sketch a a bean tree of life and their relatives okay uh well although we might not have time for that we're running out of time so I can't do that. But you know lentils are and black eyed peas are peas. They're not beans so they're all legumes but uh they're not necessarily beans right right they're all f fabase e but they're not necessarily uh phaseolis or the uh or the or the other one um yeah. But there are some native like like um favas are phase olus, are they or are they not?
+
+[57:50] Maybe they're not. I don't know. I'm not an expert in in in no they're not what about black eyed peas? Those are from from Africa. Those are definitely I don't know if it's Europe, but it definitely Africa.
+
+[58:00] I think of pigeon peas, field thieves. I thought black eyed peas too. Maybe I'm more Oh don't worry, the music came on, but I I can still get to some of these questions. All right. That's my two minute warning.
+
+[58:09] That's basically like, you know, I gotta get the game over with. Oh. Uh hold a second. Uh wait, John, am I missing any bean questions? Come on, I gotta get all the bean questions in.
+
+[58:18] Uh did I get all the beans? Oh my god, if I got all the beans, that would be amazing. I think you got all the beans. Andrew Fobel wanted to know what brand of carbonator cap I use, uh, because the last one they got stank. I don't know.
+
+[58:32] Uh they're they're cross-threading a lot, Andrew. Uh tell me which one you use and I'll make sure not to buy it. Uh Alexander wrote in for a no tangent Tuesday, which this is not. We're not allowed to go on too many tangents. Uh see, what am I missing?
+
+[58:45] Anything from the for for Steve off of the off of the thing. No, no, I forgot everything. All right. So then let's go out. Let's go out with this.
+
+[58:51] You ready? You had a quote that I wanna kind of if you're willing to go into. When I started out, I wasn't allowed to sell at my local Napa farmers market due to local politics and management wanted to keep the market small and clubby. What's that all about? Not allowed to sell at the locals' farmers market, had to go up to Younceville.
+
+[59:07] What the hell is that? Well, it was a different era. But I mean there was twenty years ago and I had tomatoes and there was someone else who had tomatoes and they you know had story time and they had hippie folk guitarists and it was really slow. And I'm like, no, it should be a vibrant food market with like there should be too many tomatoes to choose from. And everybody would benefit.
+
+[59:28] So that's it was the management of that. It was amazing. I I I'm really an outsider. I have no agricultural background. And I think it's helped me because it's like that doesn't make sense the way you guys do things.
+
+[59:42] So I just did it myself. And I think that's there's a lesson there. And uh because I did that, I went to Yonville and then that's where I met Thomas Keller. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[59:52] And things work. I also don't know how to distribute. Yeah, yeah. That's a pain. Believe me, believe me, I know that sucks.
+
+[59:59] Hot take Pinto bean the best commodity bean. Yes or no? Commodity bean. Um yeah probably yeah it's a great bean that we take it for granted. Yeah yeah.
+
+[1:00:11] All right that's uh that's probably so that is uh Steve Sando from Rancho Gordo go to Rancho Gordo uh beans check him out check out his books uh what else am I missing? Um go to buy the beans. You also do distribute like local stores within like we I can buy it locally in New York uh and one I'll go out with this. Steve has never discounted a bag of beans in his life. Rancho Gordo is now 21 years old.
+
+[1:00:39] Rancho Gordo can go 21 years. It can go buy a drink at a bar now. Rancho Gordo can go buy a drink at a bar and in those 21 years Rancho Gordo has not discounted a bag of beans. Thanks for being on Steve. Thank you it was fun.
+
+[1:00:53] All right. Cooking issues
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan and New Stand Studios. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? You're taking over the taking over the John seat.
+
+[0:24] You're sitting right across from me there. Yeah. By the way, you know, people are watching you right now. I know. Yeah, okay.
+
+[0:28] Yeah. You can see how the Nastasia rolls on the show with the Zappos. Remember when I used to accuse you of the. No, I'm on uh what's it called? I don't know.
+
+[0:36] Discord. Really? Yeah. Nice. So uh so with it.
+
+[0:40] Uh uh rocking the panels, we got Joe Hazen. How you doing? How are you doing? I'm all right. How are you?
+
+[0:45] Nice. Ooh, nice. Peppy today. I like that. It's pep very a very peppy Joe on a hot, hot day.
+
+[0:51] And uh we got uh John has decided to escape the heat of uh New York City and is in uh San Francisco, the coldest place uh in the uh his area of uh California. How you doing? He's gone. Great, but it's actually supposed to get to up to 90 today. Oh, you ruined San Francisco for them by going out there, huh?
+
+[1:13] Actually, I guess they probably like it. Yep, exactly. They probably like it hot. You doing anything fun or nothing fun? I have done some fun things who thing to go to uh lazy bear tomorrow night.
+
+[1:29] What's a what's a lazy bear? Yeah. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. Uh I'm just messing with you.
+
+[1:37] Uh Patreon members, call your questions in to uh 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And uh, John, if they're not a Patreon member, why don't you tell them how to become one? Should go to Patreon.com/slash cooking issues. And the newest and coolest thing about the Patreon uh perk for you know for people is we have started a Google Maps, a listener-compiled Google Maps where I'm also adding to it.
+
+[2:08] Um everyone's adding to it and just adding uh restaurants, bars, interesting food places, butcher shops, all that kind of stuff. And so the Google map is populated with um like 400 places already or in countries all around the world, so it's really cool to see how it's coming together. So if you want access to this, join our Patreon. Hey, uh John, would you be willing? I've also put in all my hot dog recommendations in Connecticut.
+
+[2:33] Nice. Would you be willing, John, to share your Belgium document with the Patreon people? Yeah, why not? I can do that. So those of you that don't know, John has the most in-depth food tour-related Belgium document ever compiled by a living human being, as far as I know.
+
+[2:55] As far as I know. Which I will say is not very far. As far as I know, it turns out it's not very far. But, you know, there you have it. Right?
+
+[3:05] Anyway. Uh and Jackie Molecules, we got you. Your mic was muted a little bit before you all right. Oh, I'm here. Can you hear me?
+
+[3:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where uh where where are you now? What uh what what city, what state, where are you? Oh, just LA. Yeah.
+
+[3:24] I had a dream about regular regular LA. I've been dreaming about LA left and right. I don't know. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is.
+
+[3:32] Maybe you gotta get out here. Maybe. I don't know. Uh all right. And uh before I leave it, uh John, who we got coming up and upcoming shows that people should look out for.
+
+[3:43] We have got um Majority Cooking folks coming on in two weeks. Uh today we have a quick appearance from uh Garrett Richard. We have Bob Florence with More Me Show You coming in, and then the co-founders of Maiden Cook, right? It's gonna be a double banger of a week. So on Tuesday we'll have Bob, and then on Wednesday, we will have uh Jake and Chip from Maiden.
+
+[4:08] It'll be a double episode week. Cool, and they're coming in live, yeah. That's why we're having them on the off day because they're coming in live. All right. Now, uh just so you know, a lot of people have been asking, right, about uh the new ANOVA vacuum sealer, and I say what I always say, I haven't used it, so I have no idea.
+
+[4:27] Now, one did I I they they they sent us one to look at and I've started looking at it. I haven't finished my um, I haven't finished my assessment. But I figure, John, better than like spending like 10 minutes or 12 minutes in one episode talking about it, maybe better just to like mention snippets as I get them. What do you think? Yeah, why not?
+
+[4:50] All right. So the first thing is this. Yeah. Uh it is small, right? So it's small, it's easy to carry around.
+
+[4:59] Like if you've ever, if any of you have ever picked up a commercial vacuum machine because it's got the oil-based pump in it, it those are super heavy. Nastasia's favorite thing used to be when I used to get angry. Remember this, Duss? And I'd be like, Can someone help? Can someone help?
+
+[5:13] Can someone help? And did anyone ever help Stas? No, no. So I'm like, and I would just lift it. And I'm not a strong guy, but I have anger strength, right?
+
+[5:22] Yes. Yeah, yeah. Super anger strength, right? So like I I would lift these heavy vacuum machines around. Uh, you know, so I'm used to it.
+
+[5:29] I know how much they weigh. Oh my God, Stas. You remember Del Posto? Yes. Yes.
+
+[5:34] Yes. So Mark Ladner, this is before you were going out with Mark, right? Yeah. So Mark Ladner at Del Posto used to have one of these floor standing vacuum machines, right? So vacuum machines that most of us use in the restaurants, they come in, you know, three basic sizes.
+
+[5:51] The floor standing ones, which you hardly ever see anymore, right? So that's because they're just so damn big. But the oh my God, are they monsters? The vacuum pumps in those things will like, you know, he they rip. Anyway, uh, and then the the kind of big tabletop one, which is kind of what most people have.
+
+[6:06] Uh, and then the smaller one, which is the one that I like, the little uh the MVS, I think 45, the small one, easy one to carry. There, those are all commercial machines with with uh oil-based vacuum pumps. And they're all heavy as lead and pretty big. So the ANOVA does not have an oil-based vacuum pump in it. Of course, it doesn't cost $1,500 either.
+
+[6:24] It costs, I think, like $400, right? So you can't assess it with the same kind of eyes that you would assess, you know, a $1,500 unit. It's very lightweight, easy to move around. It's small and looks pretty. It's well designed, but it the chamber, you have to understand that it is uh small, right?
+
+[6:42] On the chamber. So for instance, um, it has a uh a function, which I'll talk about in a second for cooling uh cooling things like bread. So I use my chamber vacuum machine for cooling bread, my big one, right? Um this unit is too small to hold like uh a loaf that's made with like five, five hundred and fifty, six hundred grams of flour, like that size loaf, is too big to fit into the chamber without smashing it, and so you can't cool it with that, right? So it's you just have to really keep in mind, like it's more of like a one stake kind of a situation, right?
+
+[7:17] Uh the other thing is is that uh, and this is something that I'm a little disappointed in, it doesn't have uh a firmware update, it's not an updatable firmware. And why is that important, you might ask? Why would I need to update the firmware? Well, they've made a couple of choices that I don't enjoy. So uh one of the choices I've made, they've made that I really, really don't enjoy.
+
+[7:40] Any commercial vacuum machine that I've ever used in my life, uh you close it, the program starts, and then uh you wait. When the liquids and stuff start boiling over, you hit stop. And when you hit stop, it instantly seals the bag. So stopping the cycle in a commercial vacuum machine seals the bag. If you don't want the bag to seal, you don't hit stop, you actually turn the power off.
+
+[8:07] That's how you run a commercial vacuum machine. Every single one I've ever used. I'm talking, I've used you know, uh multivax, mini packs, uh, I've used whatever that German one that starts with an H is. I've used I've used zillions of different ones, and they all work this way. Burkles.
+
+[8:24] Um in this one, when you hit stop, it stops and then doesn't seal the bag. And what that means is is that like, for instance, if something's really light, the bag can get ejected around without getting sealed, stuff can spill, and it just you can't let's say you're bagging creme en glaze. Cremon glaze is gonna boil no matter what. You can't help it, crema glaze is gonna boil uh because of the air bubbles, it's gonna foam over. So, how are you gonna bag creme en glaze?
+
+[8:51] Because you can only set two modes of vacuum, long or short. So you can't just sit there. Well, it'd be better if they let you just suck a vacuum for up to 60 seconds instead of 40, which is the long for them, then hit stop and has seal the bag. So if you could update the firmware on it, that's something that's easily fixable by them down the line. But like that, that's a uh another issue.
+
+[9:11] So then they rate the um they rate the vacuum pump in in some unit that I don't understand, like uh like cubic meters per hour or something like that. It ends up being about two point uh something five, two point three uh CFM, which is how most Americans rate pumps in CFM. You have to take CFM with a huge grain of salt. Why? Because CFM is CFM in a certain condition.
+
+[9:34] What really matters to you in vacuum land isn't how many cubic feet of air the pump can pump when it's pumping at atmospheric pressure. What you care about is how fast it can suck a vacuum. And it does a decent job of sucking a vacuum on a thing like a steak, but my standard test is to put uh cold tap water in and see if you can boil it. And it will not boil cold tap water within 40 seconds. Warm tap water, not hot, warm tap water, it will just come to a boil right before it it shuts off.
+
+[10:00] So uh it's got a lot of cool features like infusion features and cooling features, uh, but I I haven't really used them yet. More on that later. Is this an okay first run on a on a thing, John? Am I right? Doesn't care.
+
+[10:13] Yep, sounds good so far. Doesn't care. Doesn't care. All right. Uh all right.
+
+[10:18] All right. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, all right. Okay.
+
+[10:22] So Mark Mandal wrote in for uh the beans episode and was talking about his uh rock beans, rock beans, and we got a response, which of course I should have thought of too. He said, Search for the word rock bean in Portuguese. If you search for the re words rock bean in Portuguese, which I will now, uh, this is it from Rob L uh uh sending in, uh said, miss the live show and just listening now. The person curious about rock beans and recipes for them, we'll find them by searching. I don't I can't pronounce Portuguese.
+
+[10:50] Can any of you guys pronounce Portuguese? Anyone? John, anyone? Molecules? No.
+
+[10:56] Uh all right, so I I apologize in advance. Uh Fayhao, I don't know, beans of di Pedra, rock, uh, reciita, you know, recipes. I I can't pronounce Portuguese. Sorry. Uh these exist in some places in Brazil where the bean varieties are ultra-regional, but this is really the national bean of Cabo Verde, and there are a lot of Cape Verdeans in Massachusetts.
+
+[11:20] I found a recipe for them uh even before I read this because I I searched uh I wrote rock bean and translated it and looked for it. Uh crumb snatched, it's kind of a like a crazy name for your your website, right? Crumb snatched? Crumb snatched.com. Sounds kind of dirty, right?
+
+[11:37] Crumb snatched. I don't understand. Anyway. Because it has the word snatch in there. Oh.
+
+[11:42] That's probably what you're thinking of. Oh. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. I wasn't sure if he I don't know.
+
+[11:49] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, because then it's like it's oh, you know what it is? It's like a mixture of crumb bum and snatch, which is super gross. Does anyone call anyone crumb bums anymore?
+
+[12:03] No. No? Crumbum. I've never heard that. Crumbum?
+
+[12:07] That's a good old school insult. I mean, it's no dirt bag, but uh, so then I also looked up pictures of these beans and they're kind of funny. They got like a little line down them. They almost look like like they've started to sprout a little bit in the picture because they got a little line down them. And they remind me of the fact that some people with barley miso, do you guys remember this?
+
+[12:27] They call them loincloth because a little bit of that line from the barley is left over. And I always thought it was like super gross to think of all of these dudes' loincloths hanging out in my miso miso. No? Anyone? No?
+
+[12:39] All right. All right. Should I should I give a bean recipe? I I came up with a vegetarian bean recipe. Should I give it or later?
+
+[12:46] Later? Sure. I'll give it. Okay. So for those of you I I I gave pretty much my regular baked bean recipe, but I had to work on a vegetarian baked bean because I thought that uh, you know, I thought a vegetarian was coming over to my house last night, but they didn't.
+
+[13:01] But it's fine. Because the recipe actually, I have to say, this recipe tastes to me as good as the one with pork in it. So the secret that it's no secret, everybody knows this. The way you make vegetarian baked beans is by adding some sort of tomato product and then some other sort of umami product, for instance, uh uh nutritional yeast, and then some form of smoky thing. I added a combination of both hickory smoke powder and uh smoked sweet paprika.
+
+[13:27] So here's how you do it. And here's also how I'm doing these recipes. I need some feedback from you uh folks out there on whether or not this is a reasonable way to write a recipe, because I really do do this by weight. Anyone with a five kilo scale can you think the average person has a five kilo scale who has a scale? Those who have a scale, do you think five kilos is the number they have?
+
+[13:47] No one? Anyone? Yeah, I think so. Five? Yeah.
+
+[13:53] I think so. Like they don't have a 10. Yeah. But five. I mean, if if you're if you're if your scale can't do five kilos, then you're really limiting yourself.
+
+[14:00] You know what I mean? I think five kilos is a good number. All right. So you take a pound of dry beans for uh metric folks, that's uh 463. It's not actually, but the average pound of dried beans isn't actually a pound.
+
+[14:13] I've averaged about I've averaged uh a bunch of packages, and they most of them come in around 463. I don't really know why. Uh okay, so here's what you do now. Ready? Put those into your pot, uh weigh them, right?
+
+[14:28] Right, and now tear it out when it's dry. Tear it out before you wash, and I'll tell you why. Then wash your beans and then put the pot back on the scale, because now you've already measured the extra water that you have attached to the beans. You with me here, guys? You with me, John?
+
+[14:41] You with me? Stas, you got me? All right. So then add to that 1,458 milliliters of water. Uh and you honestly, that number doesn't matter much at all.
+
+[14:51] But you have to know what you've added. Then uh I add 2.6 to 2.7% salt on on bean weight basis, which is 12.2 grams of salt per pound. And I do that because I know exactly how much water the beans roughly are gonna absorb. Now my cook to dry ratio that I've measured many times with several beans is 2.3 to 1. So I'm looking for the cooked beans to weigh 1,065 grams.
+
+[15:18] Which means, folks, if you do the math, I have 857 grams of extra quote unquote water. Then I add onions. I added one medium large, 177 grams, four cloves of garlic, 23 grams, three medium carrots, dice real small, because I'm I'm basically making the veg stock as as it cooks. Actually, I'm lying. First, I did the water and salt and I let it soak for four hours at 104 degrees Fahrenheit on my induction burner with uh two bean o caps in it to to kind of wipe out the fartiness of it, as we discussed last week.
+
+[15:46] So then after the soaking for a couple of hours at 104 to try to wipe out the the farts, 177 onion, uh 23 garlic, three medium carrots, 208, peeled and finely diced, three medium things of celery, uh finely diced, 125 grams of Crosby's molasses. You can use steens or maybe maple syrup instead, but probably not as much. Uh 75 of olive oil, 4.5 uh grams of dried mustard. If you don't have dried mustard, you can add prepared mustard, but add it after the first cook step. Uh 11 grams of nutritional yeast, which is two tablespoons, 5.5 grams of sweet smoked paprika, 2.5 tablespoons, uh a little bit of hickory smoked powder, I add about a gram and a half, uh, 1.5 grams of bay leaf and 5 grams of rosemary uh thyme rather uh tied uh with string.
+
+[16:30] And uh then I after the soaking I simmered that for 40 minutes. Now here's what you do before you simmer it, put your pot on your scale, right? Don't use a giant pot because it'll weigh too much. Put your pot on your scale and weigh it, okay? Then after you cook it for about 40 minutes, the bean should be about three quarters of the way done.
+
+[16:47] Weigh it again. Now you know how much water you've lost. So yesterday when I cooked it, I lost 626 grams of water, which means I have 231 grams of extra water left. Do you get how I'm doing this now? Then I added the 75 grams of tomato paste, right?
+
+[17:02] And then I put it in my bean pot. You don't have to have a bean pot. You could put it in anything in an oven, right? But weigh it before you put it in, because you know that you're playing with 231 grams of water. So I put it in the oven at 250, and then after two hours, I measured, I weighed it again, and I had lost 73 grams of water.
+
+[17:20] That means I had 158 grams. I put it back in the oven. After four hours, I uh I lost another 102 grams, which means I had 56 remaining. Now that's a little low, right? You want to have uh about a hundred, 110 left or something like that.
+
+[17:34] So I added another 50 more water, and to be honest, I could have eaten it just then. Right. I also, that's when I tasted it for salt, after the four-hour mark, because then I'm pretty much where I'm gonna be. I added another two grams of salt there. Then after another two more hours at six hours uh uh after I'd added 50 more water, I had I had lost 77 more.
+
+[17:53] I only had 29 remaining. Now I made a mistake there. I shouldn't have added 50 more water, I probably should have added like a hundred, hundred and twenty-five. It was a little dry, but they're delicious. And that's how I do this recipe by just weighing in between so I know exactly how much water is left.
+
+[18:06] Does that make sense? Would anyone it's not that hard once you get used to it, but what do you what what do you what do you think? Is this a reasonable way to do something or no? No, no. Yeah, I think so.
+
+[18:17] No, no, no one gives crazy. I think there's a delay with the phone. And I thought it was just when I was in Egypt, but apparently it's there's a little bit of a delay. Yeah. So it's so this is like when uh when like you're calling into CNN or whatever, and like then the person's like waiting.
+
+[18:31] Yeah, and they're talking about something horrible, so you want the response right away, and then they're waiting. Yeah, I hate that. Don't you hate that? Oh my god, I hate that. Um speaking of horrible, uh uh, I was at uh my re the like uh my wife's reunion at Yale this weekend, and they have a uh restaurant there called Louie's Lunch, which is famous for its uh hamburgers.
+
+[18:50] It's the one where like they throw you out if you have ask for ketchup. Yeah, it's good. Uh and they're the when I was there, they were op only open for lunch, right? That's why it's called Louie's Lunch, right? But now it's open until like 1 a.m.
+
+[19:02] But so many weasels were there for the reunions, right, that they ran out of hamburger meat. How the hell do you run out of hamburger meat? Yeah. I mean, it's not like it's not like one of these Texas barbecue joints. It's hamburger meat.
+
+[19:18] I guess it's because they're closed on the Sunday and the Monday, so like I guess on a Saturday, like they can run low, but I was like, oh my goodness. I was very upset. But I want, for those of you that have never been, here's what's cool about it. First of all, everything's served on toasted white bread. Everything.
+
+[19:36] The hamburgers are served on toasted white bread. And they have one of those vertical toasters, you know, that like that like lifts it up. You know what I'm talking about, Styles? The toaster comes up in the air and goes around. And then all of the hamburgers are cooked in these like mini crematoriums.
+
+[19:51] Am I describing this right, John? You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's like, it's like you looks like they're in the Munsters and there's like a chimney coming out of the top, and it's all gas and fire in, and they've got these two tall, skinny doors that you open up, and then they put the burgers into these weird little slots in these crematorium things, which is where they cook them. And then it's onion and cheese whiz. And then and that's it.
+
+[20:13] There are no toppings. If you ask for toppings, you are summarily ejected. But they're good, I think. I think they're a good burger. Anyway.
+
+[20:21] Louis lunch. Potato salad? I've never had potato salad there. I would just have another burger. What kind of potato?
+
+[20:30] What kind of potato salad? American or German? Uh German style German. Do you prefer a German style to an American style? No.
+
+[20:41] I just prefer whichever one tastes better when I'm eating it. So you're an equal opportunity potato saladist. You're not a purist on your potato salad? Yep. Correct.
+
+[20:50] Okay. Okay. Well, what about you, Styles? What's your potato salad, the go-to potato salad? Um with mayonnaise and mustard and yeah.
+
+[20:59] It's like classic American picnic style. Mm-hmm. Potato salad. What about you, Joe? You are you a potato salad man?
+
+[21:06] I like to know who I'm talking to. Yeah, I'm a potato salad guy. Um I don't know. I like the way there's vinegar. You like vinegar?
+
+[21:15] You like a German style? Yeah. Yeah. So, and uh Jack, you haven't weighed in your nerve. Don't tell me you don't like potato salad, Jack.
+
+[21:23] Don't don't get me. Don't get me started. I don't, I'm not a potato salad guy. Jesus, Jesus. You know what sucks?
+
+[21:31] You know what sucks, folks? Other than Jack not liking potato salad? Another thing that sucks is when you have an American style. This is why, like, when you have an American style, okay, okay. So on coleslaw, I'll do a mayonnaise style with vinegar in it, right?
+
+[21:46] Like sort of like a little bit of tart. But what I don't like is sometimes an American style potato salad when it's been kept in the deli too long, starts fermenting and it starts tasting carbonated and sour. I hate that so much. I feel like I'm being poisoned. How many times has that happened to you, Stys?
+
+[22:02] Uh not a lot. Not a lot. That happened to me all the time. I hate that. You know how I bet you've eaten a lot of uh poisonous potato salad is uh our friend uh Peter Kim.
+
+[22:12] Yeah. Yeah, man who loves a moldy egg salad sandwich from a gas station has to have eaten a lot of fermented potato salad in his life. Oh yeah. What about celeries in your potato salad? Stash you like celery?
+
+[22:21] Yeah. Yeah, me too. Like, like, do you like well, aside from gas station, do you like egg salad? You know why? It's good.
+
+[22:28] Tastes good. Like everyone likes deviled eggs. Why wouldn't you want the basic thing hacked up on a sandwich? That tastes good, right? Yeah.
+
+[22:34] It's a good product. What about that, Jack? Do you like uh freaking egg salad? Oh god. Yeah.
+
+[22:42] You don't like egg salad? Do you know what I'm very few things I'm not that into? Oh, I just happened to pick two of them. Okay. Uh all right.
+
+[22:53] Well, how about it? I would say they're baited. Uh do you not like mayonnaise? Yeah, that's kind of that's that's sort of the thing here. Whoa.
+
+[23:03] Yeah, that's problematic. Yeah. No. No, you know. To each their own, I guess.
+
+[23:10] Uh I had another I had another one in this, in this, in this vein in this genre. You know what I like that nobody likes? Tuna mac. I like tuna mac. I like both hot and cold tuna macaroni salad.
+
+[23:25] Anyway. And everybody hates it. I don't know why. Here's another thing. Did any of you guys grow up eating cream chip beef on toast?
+
+[23:33] No. None of you? None of you have ever had cream chip beef on toast. Do you know what chipped beef is? I know you've talked about it before.
+
+[23:43] I have? Yeah. Chip beef is like super thin dried beef that comes in like a plastic package. It's already been like hacked into tiny pieces and it's dry and salty. And then you make it into a cream sauce and you put it on toast.
+
+[23:56] And it was a real like, it was a real kind of like, this is the only beef we can kind of get kind of a food. So it was uh reviled by a lot of people, but I grew up eating it. Like my grandparents would make it a lot. So I used to have it a lot. Uh it's dissimilar because it doesn't have like the acid of like a Welsh rare bit.
+
+[24:17] You guys ever do the rare bit growing up? No. Joe, you did the rare bit? A little bit, yeah. Yeah, John did the ribbon.
+
+[24:24] Yeah, rare bit's. No, I didn't do the rare bit. I only got introduced to the rare bit when my wife came to the States. Oh, yeah? She enjoys it.
+
+[24:32] So do you does she make it? No, she doesn't make it. No, but you know, we'll we'll we'll have it out. Yeah, I like what forever. All right.
+
+[24:39] All right. Enough enough of enough of what the 70s used to taste like. Uh all right. So yeah, by the way, we have Garrett calling in in any any minute, I think, to uh answer your question about how best to use your uh milk your milkshake making machine. Uh let's see what else we got here.
+
+[24:58] Um so Dollar wrote in and hot holding shrimp. Yeah. Right. Hot holding shrimp, what I can find is 120 degrees Fahrenheit. What is that in Celsius land for 50 temperature 49?
+
+[25:13] 49. All right. So FYI, 49 degrees Celsius. You're you're slipping into the danger zone there, right? Um and John was saying, so Dollar had a question of how to hold his shrimp, and then he said he uses a reverse sear method.
+
+[25:31] And I mentioned that I can never remember which is reversed because you can sear something before and after, and I don't know which one would be reversed. Which one's reversed, John? Well, I think it's that you're reversing by putting it in the oven first and then searing it. Why is that reverse? Yeah, but like I always sear at the end.
+
+[25:53] I I don't know. And any classic recipe for, you know, it can go either way. It's just a question of when you do it or both. We need to like people need to stop. People need to stop.
+
+[26:05] It's not a good term. Anyway, um, so on this, you said they at the restaurant used to hold them in a burblanc, right? Yeah, that's right. Uh hold it in a burblanc on that shelf above the range. Um, and we'd keep them in there for like an hour and a half, two hours tops.
+
+[26:23] We'd usually solve them by that, but if they were over two hours, then we'd, you know, eat them or toss them. Right, because you're basically realize that you're keeping them in the danger zone. Nastasia's a great thermometer idea. Right, Sas. I don't want to tell anybody again.
+
+[26:39] What? Because it's a viable product. I mean, I guess it's like wine santa, which it'll never be. Well, it's not only that not only that, we've already said it, so you can't. Yeah, I don't I don't want to still want to talk about it.
+
+[26:51] Okay. All right. It's too good an idea. Speaking of too good. It's just too good people.
+
+[26:56] Uh well, that's like the idea. I want someone else to become a millionaire on labs and labs. Remember that idea? It's all Labrador Retrievers in laboratories. That's easy to do.
+
+[27:06] With coats on. Think of how many calendars you'd sell. So many calendars. Um speaking of ideas that we've said before, like someone out there in, you know, who can hear our voices needs to figure out a way. People still, when you search for cooking issues on the internet, you get the old HRN feed.
+
+[27:27] So like every week I get a uh a tweet from someone saying, You haven't done a show since 2021. And I'm like, we have. Every week. Like someone out there has to be some sort of like search engine monster, or someone can tell us how we can get the real show to show up first, right, Sas? What's the trick, John?
+
+[27:50] Doesn't Jack know? Jack knows, John knows. Someone what what's the dealy? What what what do they have to search for? I mean what's the point?
+
+[27:58] On Google or in the podcast. Well, here's the thing. Anyone that can hear me already knows how to get me to find. But anyone that can hear this already knows how to find it because they're hearing it. It's one of those things.
+
+[28:08] It's crazy. Or your Instagram or anything. Crazy. Maddening. It's maddening.
+
+[28:14] Oh, so back on uh on dollar's problem. So uh the the Bur Blanc is interesting because when um when uh what's his name? Thomas Keller and Ruhlman came out with their book Under Pressure, like uh they did their lobster, they cooked their lobster in in uh in a Bur Blanc. And there's two reasons to do that. One, because uh when you add water-based product to uh butter, you can't add flavor to it.
+
+[28:42] Secondly, it's gonna increase the heat capacity, although I think that's actually a negative. I'll tell you why. If you increase the heat capacity of the uh fluid that you use to hold it, right, then you're increasing the chances that you can overcook, right? You with me there, John? By increasing the heat capacity by adding water, right?
+
+[29:00] Because remember, oil has about half the heat capacity of water. So it doesn't heat things nearly as quickly. It also doesn't move as quickly, so it doesn't convect as much. And so it's a lot more gentle of a heating uh method than water. Now, Bur Blanc is thicker than either oil or water.
+
+[29:16] So the lack of convection maybe makes up for it. I don't know. I'd have to do some measurements, right? Uh, but it's an interesting idea. But it's also a uh a boat ton cheaper because water turns out is a lot cheaper than butter.
+
+[29:28] You know what I'm saying? A lot cheaper than butter. Um anyway, uh so yeah, you can oil hold, you can butter hold, uh, and it will overcook it less quickly. And John was rocking them around 49. And remember, the problem with mushiness in shrimp is that if you cook it at a low temperature, they turn mushy, especially if you cook it for a long time.
+
+[29:51] It's not a hot it doesn't happen 100% of the time, but if you've ever had a pasty shrimp in your mouth that was cooked this way, like you can't even swallow it. You have to spit it out. It's so gross. And so gross. But if you high hook high heat cook your shrimp, which I think you should, right?
+
+[30:08] That inactivates the enzyme, and then a low hold isn't gonna cause it to go mushy as long as that enzyme is deactivated. Does that make sense to everyone? Yeah. Yes. Crumb snatched.
+
+[30:21] Uh Ian wrote in. Uh, did you get this answer for Ian yet, John? Did you look at my uh at my uh the Ian wants to know what our nut nut milk technique is. You didn't post a recipe or a video. No, on all of my videos, on all of my posted a picture of it.
+
+[30:41] No, but on all the videos, I wrote down, I remember I made the titles for them. I wrote down what I was doing when I did it. I was like, here's 400 grams of this, here's 400 grams of whatever, bop up, and I wrote down all of the numbers. In the videos. I have looked through both all of your Instagram and Booker Index's Instagram, and I see nothing.
+
+[31:00] I didn't see anything in the dropbox either, but you didn't see me making I never made a nut milk in our Instagram in the 12 days of spinzole. I made freaking You posted about you you made four pints of nut milk, three something other than two something else's, but you didn't post the recipes, and you only posted a picture of that one. Every other one. But those were all videos. Those were all videos, right?
+
+[31:26] So nut milk wasn't a video? Nope. No, son of a God. And there's no nut. On the fourth day of Christmas, my spin's all made for me, four pints of nut milk, three French hen smulches, schmaltzes, two sticks of butter, and a quick batch of cold good coffee.
+
+[31:44] And you posted no recipe. That sounds right. Listen to you. Thanks for all the help with those, Stas. Thanks for all the help with those videos.
+
+[31:53] Uh so like the uh John, let's talk about making videos. Yeah. Oh yeah. Stasen's like you need to post another video, Dave. Did you make it yet?
+
+[32:02] Did you develop the recipe and do the video yet? Uh all right. So Ian, I thought it was out there, and there's nothing in the in the manual on nut milk. No. Triple check.
+
+[32:19] All right, Biff Dit wrote in and wants to know, uh, considering what jokers we are, how we can possibly make money. I don't think I could talk about that on air, right, Stas? Literally, Biff Dit wants to know like how the hell we're able to live in New York considering that our restaurants have closed. Well, you you have your wife is helps with that. I mean, and my wife's not my wife's an architect.
+
+[32:44] And I don't think she's out printing money. Yeah, no, I know. And I don't live in the city. My wife's an architect, I got two kids and two dogs. Right.
+
+[32:49] Biff, it's not easy, man. And I don't live here, and John is barely making it. Yeah. We're okay. We're we're as okay as we can be until we're back on top again.
+
+[32:59] We'll be back on top again. Hey, speaking of uh Booker and Dax closing, anyone out there wants to open a booker in Dax, well, you come talk to me. Uh Alexander wrote in, hey, uh got a question for no tangent Tuesday. Is there any way to safely inspuce a s uh uh spirit with cigars? Uh when I search for it, all I find is techniques for the opposite, where they put a shot of rum in closed container with their cigars.
+
+[33:22] I assume this will not affect. Do you remember that cigar party? Oh my god, yeah. Was there anything worse? Now listen.
+
+[33:31] I think that may have been no, no, that wasn't the worst event. You know what the worst event was. What? Which one? Uh or I couldn't go behind the bar.
+
+[33:41] Okay. So let's go. Can we tell a little bit? No. A little bit?
+
+[33:45] Okay. You can do the cigar. I need you guys to imagine there's a situation where for some reason Nastasi is not allowed to go behind the bar and does so anyway. First of all, let me say, I won't say anything specific about anything, but I will say that it is unreasonable to ask two people to come and make drinks at a place and not give them a place to do so. Like literally, we were trying to make uh uh pecan bourbon old fashions in a Lexan with uh with the hand blender plugged into a wall in the hallway.
+
+[34:26] Or not even a hallway, next to a trash can at uh at a fire exit in floor in a venue. Yeah, yeah. And I have never been I I mean, like, I'm used to being Nastasi and I are used to being disrespected, right? We're used to being literally treated as garbage. At the French Culinary Institute, our office was in fact a garbage room, right?
+
+[34:51] Literally a garbage room. But that was the first time in a long time I actually got bent after a while. Like the the remember that one time the person came in and said that we had to move again? Yeah. And I just I gave that weird.
+
+[35:07] I gave that weird high-pitched laugh. Yeah, yeah. That was. Anyway, the cigars. So the cigars was most physically punishing event we've ever done because we were invited to do a rum event.
+
+[35:20] I think we did Banana Houstino, right? And maybe one other drink. Yeah. Right? Because it was four ronza kappa.
+
+[35:25] Uh back when they could still say 23 Solera on their label, right? Yeah. And uh, oh, speaking of which, uh, afterwards, remind me wine. You're gonna like this idea, all right? All right.
+
+[35:35] Uh so we're like, yeah, we'll do it. They're like, oh, it's a it's a somebody dialing. Someone's got an old school dialing. We were doing a rum and cigar party. And I think Nastasia and I didn't know, I don't know whether we thought it was gonna be outdoors or what.
+
+[35:54] We were in a basement doing rum and cigar party where they were encouraged to smoke their cigars while we were making the rum. And it was it was the two of us and then like a bunch of six foot two model type people. Yeah. And I never speak to model type people, right, Stas? Yeah.
+
+[36:14] And I was like, yo, how are you guys okay with this? And they were like, no. It was the it was the worst event. I mean we smelled so bad. Uh uh, yeah, I think we just burned our clothes.
+
+[36:27] Yeah. I think we just burned our clothes. I mean, I think the people had fun who who can tolerate that, but like, man, if that's what it was like to be a robber baron in the uh 1800s, no thanks. You know what I mean? Not worth it.
+
+[36:40] You know? So was that uh was that Bibity Boobity Bobity? Was that Garrett? Calling in, Joe, we got Garrett on the line. Garrett, Richard, how you doing?
+
+[36:50] You there? Busy. We lost him. I don't, I don't think he's there yet. No, I heard beepity bobbity boop.
+
+[36:58] I thought we had him. All right. So I'll answer this question on cigars. So what a lot of people used to do is they would light the cigar and they would put the smoke under a cloch, right? Or they would leave a burning cigar, and some people would even like uh like you could pump air through a cigar and like burn it and under a cloche, and then that will definitely infuse uh that flavor into it, but that's burning, right?
+
+[37:24] So if what you want is tobacco and not burnt tobacco, you could infuse it. Todd Thrasher uh used to do a tobacco, I think, bourbon, I can't remember, back in the like uh early mid 2000s when he was uh working in DC, I think with um uh oh my god, uh what's his name? Famous man, famous man, uh Spanish guy, famous. Uh World Central. Yeah, Jose Andres' uh bar.
+
+[37:53] Yeah, uh in DC. I've always shied away because I think it's probably poisonous. You know what I mean? Let me put you this way. Have you ever tried chewing tobacco and accidentally swallowed the juice?
+
+[38:07] Do you know what happens? You blow chunks everywhere. My friend Charlie Cargill, when I was in high school, I was in his room, and he's like, here, try this. And he gave me the chewing tobacco. And I had never done it before.
+
+[38:21] I put it in my mouth, and like all of a sudden, I felt like my head was in a vice because I also don't smoke, right? So, like my head was like, I was like, ah, you know that feeling? And then he was like, What he's like, where have you been spitting? Oh, geez. And I said, What do you mean what do you mean?
+
+[38:43] Oh no. Yeah yeah and so I just been swallowing all of that chaw juice and then like literally right after I said that I was like blah like all over his room all over his backpack all over his books all over his giant Grateful Dead bootleg collection because like you know all the deadheads back then we had like you know 50 60 Grateful Dead tapes uh yeah and then you know what I never tried it again I never and and even to this day like like at a wedding like I'll take a couple puffs on a cigar and like that nicotine hits my head and I don't like it. I think it's just because of that one like super aversion therapy thing. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[39:26] So to answer your question I don't know Alexander I don't know what a safe level is just remember you know don't sip the juice you know what has a really good smell to it everyone likes I think the smell of not necessarily when it's burning but even when it's burning a little bit pipe tobacco why because they add smell to it they add they add like fun stuff to it don't you like the smell of pipe tobacco smells good like fruits uh yeah uh all right Joe Waterhouse uh I've been thinking about tap cocktails for a while now and wondered if you could uh ask me if this is smart or stupid I've attached a keg to a cement oh we did the cement mixer didn't we didn't we do the cement mixer question we did the cement mix oh we did yes yes sorry it's difficult super old the other thing is this you can shake uh a five-gallon corny keg if it's only got a couple of gallons into it it. It just hurts your chest and makes you feel really stupid. You know what I mean? But you can do it. Nastasia has watched me do it and laughed at me heartily.
+
+[40:33] Yes. Yeah. You know why? Because it's funny. That's why.
+
+[40:37] I was in the elevator, going back to Deviled Eggs a little bit. I was in the elevator. I don't know why. Person says to me, I've been making a lot of deviled eggs recently. Oh, I know why.
+
+[40:48] Because I had like three dozen eggs in my bag. Because I cook a lot of eggs. And he's like, I've been making a lot of Delled eggs recently. I was like, because they're delicious, right? And he goes, Yeah.
+
+[40:57] And that was it. Kind of a not a normal elevator conversation, though, right? Yeah. Uh any other of these questions here, John, that I should know we've already answered. Uh Nicholas writes in, uh, would you recommend any?
+
+[41:10] I don't think so, yeah. All right. Would you recommend any resources or books on how to get the most out of your roto vap? Didn't we answer this? There is no good information about rotovaps.
+
+[41:20] There is no good information about rotovaps. The reason there is no good information about roto vaps is why would someone write a book on it? Rotovaps are listen, in order for someone to write a book, there has to be a market for the book. Someone has to put like, you know, a bunch of time into writing it, shooting it, editing it, and then a publisher has to come out with it, right? This is why, and it's just there's just not that many of them.
+
+[41:44] And even like a lot of people who use them don't use them necessarily to their best effect. So that's why I think there's a dearth of information on rotary evaporators out there. But the the thing is is that you really need to find someone who runs one and and train live. It's not the kind of thing I think you could do from a book. We could someday, you know, once I get mine hooked up again, we could do a YouTube thing on it, right?
+
+[42:16] Right, John? Something like that. It's beyond it's beyond TikTok. It's more of like a half hour hour thing. But a book, I just don't think that's gonna happen.
+
+[42:25] Um did we I think we partially answered this, but we can go more into it. Uh Nastasio, hopefully we'll remember. Uh from Jay. Why does meat? I I think we did this.
+
+[42:35] Why does meat go dry? So what happens, people by the way, is is that at the end of everything are questions that John thinks I haven't answered yet. Right? Uh and so what that usually means is. Yeah, I wonder if I was not here on this day when he interviewed.
+
+[42:49] Well, what what it usually means is he doesn't think I've answered them well enough. That's usually what it means. Um that's true. See if you can get Garrett to come. I don't want to miss him because I told uh told him I'd answer that.
+
+[43:00] Uh told Ilya I would answer it. Uh why does meat go dry mealy if you uh souvied for too long, even at low temperature? For larger cuts, I noticed it continues even at lower temps, uh cooking at lower temps than desired, uh, i.e. dropping down to uh what's 125 Fahrenheit in Celsius? 125 Fahrenheit is 51.6.
+
+[43:27] Right. So uh Jay has noticed that it gets uh dry mealy even when cooking at 51 uh for beef steaks. Is there a way to prevent this while still breaking down collagen? And if not, does it suggest that some steaks are too thick for sous vide? All right, Jay.
+
+[43:43] Um you have talked about one of the things I do, which is I take it to the temperature I want and then drop it down, right? Which is what I do uh to usually about 52 is where I drop it because that's like the lowest where I feel comfortable to let it ride for infinity, right? And then I can break down, break down the collagen. But some cuts of meat that don't have enough connective tissue, you just can't cook for a long time. Like filet, right?
+
+[44:10] So all of the um anything that doesn't have enough structure to taste good uh when it's long cooked, you should just avoid doing that way. Like I just don't think there's a good way to cook uh tenderloin for a long time. They're just not. Uh whereas like a rib steak, I don't perceive it as going dry mealy even when it's cooked for hours, right? If you cook it at 54 or 5 or 55 Celsius for uh hours, then you know it'll actually get kind of harder, right?
+
+[44:45] Uh and then it can have some of that dry chewy. But if you if you take it 55, 545 for 45 minutes, an hour just to get the inside up and then drop it down to 52. In my taste, it doesn't go dry mealy even for many hours afterwards, right? Uh strip steak, you know, I think it's a little more texturally difficult than uh rib, but uh kind of the same. And things that have higher amounts of connective tissue, the texture is overwhelmingly created by the connective tissue and not by the actual muscle fibers themselves, in as long as you don't overcook them, okay.
+
+[45:23] But cuts of meat like uh tenderloin, yeah, like the the texture of that meat is entirely based on the muscle fibers, and there is not a way to cook that thing that I have ever found to cook it longer than about 45 minutes or an hour and not have it end up being uh you know, as you say, mealy, dry, gross. Um, so I don't know. That answer that question, John, to your satisfaction that time. That was a great answer. Okay.
+
+[45:51] Great answer. All right. B plus. Um I asked uh I already answered uh the one about pressure cooking. Uh uh I already answered the pressure cooking Nixon.
+
+[46:00] Yeah, yeah. Uh and we also answered Henry, like I think these are old questions because we talked with uh we talked about tomato paste in a tube with uh because we know that that Jackie Molecules likes his tomato paste in a tube, right? So the question that was asked back in the day, I did do some more research though, since the last time we talked about it. Okay. And it turns out that in Europe, I think there are different levels of tomato paste concentration, right?
+
+[46:26] Whereas I think in the United States, there's really kind of only one. Like all the tomato paste is roughly the same. And I had written down uh, you know, whenever the last time I looked about this, what the actual solids level was in tomato paste, but in the US, they're pretty much, I think, all the same. Does that make sense? Yeah.
+
+[46:48] Interesting. Yeah. Um, and I think that's all the questions. So we're waiting for Garrett to come in, so now I could talk about someone that I'd like to, because yeah, he has 13 minutes to call in. You got you did you send him a text there, uh, John?
+
+[47:03] I did, yeah. Okay. So I know this is a super old story, but he just got released from prison like last year and then deported to uh Indonesia. But uh there's a guy, Rudy, and his last name starts with a K, but I didn't write it down, so I don't remember what it is. So Rudy was in the early 2000s a super famous wine forger, right?
+
+[47:27] So what he used to do is he would buy a bunch of wines at auction and go, he would spend like $500,000 a year in wine, so that everyone's like, oh, this guy spends a lot of money in wine, right? This guy knows his stuff. So he would get invited to all the fancy wine parties and he got to know all like the mega rich wine weasels out there, right? And then when he got to know all the mega rich wine weasels, all of a sudden he started saying, Oh, I have these other super fancy wines, and he would auction off these super fancy wines, and he sold millions of dollars worth of hyper fancy wines at auctions. And so this was his scam, right?
+
+[48:04] Because they were all forgeries. They were all fake. Uh and he got caught because he invented some wines that never existed. Like one of the one of the, you know, owners of the vineyard was like, that vineyard didn't exist back then. Or like he sold like, you know, six bottles of I forget what it was, like 45 Petrus, and like there was only like 600 bottles ever made.
+
+[48:26] And so like he sold more bottles than anyone had seen like in anyone's lifetime, so it's like not possible. So and like, you know, occasionally the label would mess up. Now, here's the thing. They say when they caught this dude, right? They say that they broke into his California apartment, and in there they found a bunch of empty wine bottles, right?
+
+[48:49] Because one of one of the tricks, and they interviewed some people from UC Davis about how he did this. So one of the tricks was he would buy like kind of a crappy old vintage from a famous thing. So he'd buy like a Romanet Conte, you know, super famous uh burgundy, but he wouldn't buy the best year, right? He would open that sucker and he would put a little bit of fresh wine into it so that he can market it as the super expensive one, right? Because then it turns out, because here's the thing.
+
+[49:19] You know what you didn't get caught on? Guess what he didn't get caught on, Stas? I don't label? I don't know. No, he did not get caught on the fact that the wine didn't taste accurate.
+
+[49:27] Are you seeing where I'm going with this? Like, and so all of the stories are written by journalists who, you know, a lot of them basically are like, ha ha, super rich wine people get the wool pulled over their eyes because it turns out that this crappy wine, this guy was making, and I'm hearing the exact opposite. What I'm hearing is that this guy has the secret to making things taste like bottles of wine that cost thousands of dollars. Give me those secrets. So, like one of the secrets, right, is to take a $400 bottle of wine that's old and like a uh, you know, a newer bottle of wine that's like a hundred dollars, and then bop, bop, bop, like dose a little bit in, and now all of a sudden you have, you know, bottles that are worth thousands of dollars as long as you forge the labels for them.
+
+[50:12] I'm not as interested in that technique. Why? Because I'm not about to spend $400 of uh of my money to make a fake thousand dollar wine, right? That just that doesn't, that's not a good bargain for me. But it is interesting from a technological standpoint, right?
+
+[50:27] Uh, that you could, you know, synthesize the freshness of this super fancy wine. You know what? Even Robert Parker apparently gave one of his fake wines a hundred points, right? So the guy knows how to make a decent fake wine. But he also had formulas for taking wines and making them taste like they had like the right flavor and age on them.
+
+[50:50] I want those formulas. He got deported to Indonesia. Do you think we could get him on the show and talk about the formulas? Wouldn't that be amazing if he gave us the like the formula for like all of these super fancy wines? There's gotta be one where he takes like a less expensive bottle of wine and knows how to jazz it up, right?
+
+[51:08] Wouldn't you wouldn't that be an interesting thing, Saz? That would be interesting, yeah. It would be cool. Yeah. I mean, how could the how the whole Netflix documentary about his stuff that's called sour grapes?
+
+[51:18] Yeah, but do they tell you how to do it? I want a how-to. This is like when the DEA, when the DEA and Rudy Giuliani got together after 9-11 and did a a drug museum in Times Square, that this really happened, people. That drug museum basically taught me how to convert opium poppies into raw. Like they they showed me the the knives, they showed you how to score the opium poppy, how to let it drip down, like how to boil it.
+
+[51:48] They they they told you how to do money laundering. Now a lot of it's changed in the era of crypto, but back in the day. Go back to that guy who was like, how do you live in New York in the 40s? Yeah, yeah. I wish.
+
+[51:58] I wish. I wish. I wish I wish. So my point is like this drug museum. Now, you need it like they showed you a whole meth lab with all of the equipment, right?
+
+[52:12] But they didn't give you all the instructions for meth, but pretty much heroin, they gave you everything you need to know. And coke and crack. So like you went into this place knowing almost nothing, right? And all I left being like, I could do this. Like if I hadn't already had a job at that point, like I would have been like, this is what I should do.
+
+[52:32] You know, thank you, drug enforcement agency for, and it was very little of like it was very little of the like just say no from the 80s, and very much like, this is exactly how you do this awful thing, right? So it was crazy. I have the program somewhere, you know, because I used to I used to get programs for whatever I have it somewhere. Because people don't believe me when I tell them how crazy this exhibit was. I mean, it was and imagine having in Times Square.
+
+[52:58] Times Square, back in like the late 90s, early 2000s, there was only three kinds of people. There were about four. There were tourists, drug dealers, undercover cops posing as drug dealers, and prostitutes. And that was it. That was where I lived.
+
+[53:14] You know what I mean? Like that was the whole ball of wax. And so, you know, it was very, you know, it was very good for the neighborhood, I guess, right? It was like, you know, it's teaching you about your own neighborhood where I lived, you know. But uh, so what I want is that for this wine thing.
+
+[53:29] Because I think that our listeners wouldn't would enjoy, even if they can't afford to do it. Like the guy from UC Davis, I forget his name, he Ariel would be good on this one too, because she's uh she knows all the wine chemistry. Uh, but he intimated that that certain old wines, he gave me some of the hints, canned asparagus, like a little bit of canned asparagus, he said, is a note that some of these old wines have, right? Oh, also I learned something else uh while I was researching this, trying to find because I because I'm like, I'm like, I type the guy's name on like pop up formulas, and you can't get anything. And then they show you like a picture of what you think is gonna be his formulas, like on the thing, but it's not, it's just a like a list of wines.
+
+[54:10] So anyone who's a legal scholar out there, I'm sure that these formulas were the papers that were found in his uh And there's no patents that you didn't search his patents. Well, he didn't know he didn't publish it because he's like a forger. You know what I mean? But I guarantee you that in discovery for his trial, these formulas were entered into evidence. Somebody who's like a legal mind can probably get images of these formulas because I want them.
+
+[54:29] I want to know what they are. And then maybe we can get them on the on the on the show. And then you know maybe we can test some of this stuff. But um, do you remember back in the day uh that uh it used to be people would say that if you had a corked wine, remember back when wines had corks? Yeah.
+
+[54:52] Uh yeah. Uh they used to say that if you had a corked wine that you could crumple up plastic wrap and put it in and that would absorb the cork taint, right? Uh well, uh that was true because the original saran wrap was a different chemical compound. It wasn't polyethylene, it was P V D D or I forget what it was. Poly something something.
+
+[55:12] And uh so the new the the new saran wrap doesn't work anymore and there is no there is no uncork or there is no uncork tainter that I think is commonly available anymore. There's a business idea for somebody, right? Make something out of that old plastic with a boat ton of surface area and like like sell scunchies made out of it that people can toss into their glass of wine to like to take out the taint. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[55:39] And take out the taint. There's a lot of things that don't uh work like that anymore. That's like uh Harold McGee also with saran wrap. So polyethylene is great in that it doesn't have a lot of nasty chemicals that leach into your uh foods and it it it basically is very, very taste neutral, which is great as opposed to PVC plastic wrap, which does uh can put a lot of nasty flavors into things, especially fat heavy foods like uh cheese. Problem with uh uh polyethylene is it's fairly gas permeable, especially it's fairly oxygen permeable.
+
+[56:13] This is why most uh vacuum bags for cooking and for freezing are multi-layer with polyethylene on the outsides touching the food, and then nylon. Nylon's not so good because it can absorb water, right? But it's it's gas impermeable, so it's a multi-layer uh bag. So McGee did a bunch of studies on uh how to keep the your half of the avocado. Remember those stars?
+
+[56:36] When you did how to keep your half of the avocado green and testing a bunch of different stuff. And saran wrap used to be the answer, but the new saran wrap is polyethylene, and so new saran wrap, and by new I mean like 10, 12 years old. Yeah, uh, it no longer there is no commercially available plastic wrap that will keep your avocado uh nice and green. Put some lime juice on it. Also, if a little bit of your avocado gets a little bit brown, is it the end of the world?
+
+[57:01] No. It's not the end of the world. It's not the end of the world. All right. So it doesn't look like we're gonna get Garrett on the line for you, Ilya.
+
+[57:10] I apologize. We we really thought we were gonna get him on to talk about how to use your fancy uh what's the word? Hamilton Beach uh blender, but Kesarasara. Um I don't know, Matt, uh for the first time ever, I'm out of questions. What should we talk about?
+
+[57:30] I have two minutes, I have two minutes and 27 seconds left, Joe, and I've literally run out of questions and I hadn't prepared any. Oh, I'll give you one. So I was at the uh at the reunion, like I told you, I was at my wife's reunion, right? And uh there when you're when you go to a college reunion, they have professors give talks, right? That you go to and you can pretend like you're a student student again.
+
+[57:53] You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And so this professor's name is uh what's his name? Jason Stanley, right? And he's a philosopher professor, and he hates it's so funny.
+
+[58:02] His brother's an economist, but he hates economists, right? And his dad was a sociologist and hated philosophers, so it must have made for great Thanksgiving table uh talk back in the day. So he's a philosopher who specializes in propaganda and uh free speech, and his basically his shtick is that he thinks that inherent in them in a democracy is this contradiction between you need free speech, but on the other hand, tyrants can use free speech to uh F with democracy. That's his whole shtick shtick right there. Uh and he's funny guy.
+
+[58:35] So anyway, so he's going through his talk, and he says the word panopoly. And I'm like, Panopoly? Because in my head, I've always heard panoply. Panoply is what I've always heard. And I don't ever speak it out loud because it doesn't sound good, right?
+
+[58:51] But when he said panopoly, I'm like, Panopoly? I'm gonna use this word all the time. Like, what do you got? I got uh how how much? Panopoly!
+
+[58:59] I got it like a lot. I was like, oh my god. Like, I that was worth the entire reunion right there, just like taking a word that was not fun to say at all. Like a good looking word, right? But completely not fun to say, and turning it into a word that I want to say all the time.
+
+[59:19] Panopoly, cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from middle Manhattan and Rockefeller Center on New Stan Studios. We'll be joined in a little bit with Nastassi the Hammer Lopez, who is caught in traffic. But we do have Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How you doing?
+
+[0:26] I'm doing great, man. How are you? You're looking smart. Oh yeah? Yeah.
+
+[0:29] I I made it a little bit earlier than normal, so I've already dried out. That's what it is. Um what I did was I took the dogs for a shorter than normal walk today, and I figured, you know what? I'll be home in time. I can walk them.
+
+[0:41] You know what I'm saying? Copy that. Yeah. And then uh on our California panels, we got uh Jackie Molecules. How's it going, Mr.
+
+[0:48] Molecules? I'm good. How are you doing? Doing all right. And get guess what?
+
+[0:53] Guess what, Jack? What? So uh uh John. John uh decided that he liked Seattle so much, he was traveling to Seattle that he would get the COVID so he could stay there for an additional ten days. How about that, right, John?
+
+[1:07] Wow. Yeah, it's it's great. Yeah, you loving it? Yeah, there's no better way to see a city than to get COVID and have to lock yourself in a box for 10 days, am I right? Exactly.
+
+[1:20] Modern traffic so much fun. Yeah, yeah, it's sweet. Yeah. Uh uh. Well, so like did you did you you were in San Francisco first and then Seattle, so did you eat or and or drink anything interesting before you uh before you got quarantined?
+
+[1:37] Yes. In so didn't haven't done anything interesting in Seattle, unfortunately. But in San Francisco, we got drinks at the store called True Laurel, which was really delicious. Uh they even had a spin-ball, which was exciting to see. Cool.
+
+[1:51] Um yeah, just really delicious cocktails. I don't know. The menu descriptions seemed odd. Like what? But they every drink I I don't know, just like things that I didn't expect that I'd be into, and then the drink at the table and you know, it was like you at uh at Sun Harbor chugging Garrett's pins.
+
+[2:10] Um they were just really really delicious. Well that was delicious. Garrett Garrett is gonna call in later this time, by the way. But but give be more specific, dude. Like I don't I still don't have a handle on what you're on what you mean.
+
+[2:19] Like give me a drink that you thought was not gonna like, but you ended up liking. So hold on, there is this something with pistachio. Let me pull up their menu. Pistachio pistachio, one of the best Italian words. A pistacchio.
+
+[2:35] Yeah, good word. Yeah. Okay, so the Maio Mai, which is blended rum, lime, pistachio or job, curacao, coffee rum float, and milk washed. Oh, you had me until you said coffee rum float. You had me until you said coffee rum float.
+
+[2:50] It I know, but it was really, really good. Like really good. Uh here's here's the thing about coffee. Love coffee. I make coffee-flavored beverages for other people.
+
+[3:02] Here's two things I don't like in my coffee milk or sugar. And so like uh I don't really end up liking coffee flavored things. You know what I mean? I like a little shot, you know, like you know the old time secret of you put a shot of espresso or back in the day it was instant coffee into chocolate cake mixes to kind of like punch them up a little bit. It's it's a thing.
+
+[3:23] Uh that I'm okay with, you know what I'm saying? But like, yeah. Yeah. You know? Like no no Manhattan specials for you?
+
+[3:31] No. Although uh I know uh so Manhattan Special Soda, for those of you that have never been to New York City, is a soda that I don't think they sell outside of New York City. And it doesn't actually come from the island of Manhattan. That's that's a mistake that people make. It's from Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn, is where is where it's from.
+
+[3:44] That's where it was made. And it is like a coffee soda, all right. And the people who like a Manhattan special freaking like the Manhattan special. It's an old school soda, not my gem. Are you a Manhattan special man?
+
+[4:03] I grew up, my father was from Brooklyn, so we had Manhattan specials all the time. In Florida, that you can find Manhattan specials. Really? Because of all the uh new Brooklyn expats down there. Yeah.
+
+[4:16] That's real. I don't think that I mean, like, I I think maybe it's contracted. I I've I have never seen it outside this. I'm glad that you can get it in Florida. But along with um, along with Dr.
+
+[4:25] Brown's celery, those are like the two ray. Celeray soda, by the way, I just have to say this. I'm just gonna put this out there. I I don't like cherry soda. I don't, right?
+
+[4:34] So like I never liked the Dr. Brown's cherry. But celery soda is the greatest soda flavor that is, in my opinion, is my favorite soda flavor that I've ever had. Also, Wiley Dufresne, who's gonna come on the show, his favorite soda flavor. And it's not celery, the the stick, it's celery seed.
+
+[4:53] Celery seed soda. And Dr. Brown, and so like maybe I'll I I think Wiley developed it once, but since uh it's getting harder and harder to find celery soda. You know, I've never, I don't think, made for money, in other words, at any of the bars. I've never made uh celery seed syrup to do like carbo cocktails.
+
+[5:11] Is it because I'm stupid? Is that why? Probably because that would be so intensely delicious. Like, so like, you know, like um, if if you take a look at the book Liquid Intelligence, uh, the coriander syrup that's in that that's that is used in the Cliff Old Fashion was originally developed for uh a ginger ale substitute because like coriander seed plus uh hot pepper kind of hits the same kind of like like flavor love buttons that like ginger ale would hit, right? Uh but celery soda is different, but it's also in that category of kind of like vegetal awesome bracing uh product.
+
+[5:56] So like maybe maybe that's uh maybe that's the next uh thing, you know. Well, I'm not really working on cocktails. Hey Dave, in in the Discord, we we got we had a little chat going on here. Josh says cheer wine is one of the great American products. I have to agree with him.
+
+[6:10] You're not a cheer wine guy? Uh I mean it's just not from here. I'm from here, so like I'm not against cheer wine. I'm not against it. You know what I mean?
+
+[6:18] But I'm just it's just uh, you know, uh it's just not cherry soda, really? I I've never met anybody who doesn't like black cherry soda. I don't yeah. Wow. Uh so you know what you know what's a really dumb regional soda in uh from Massachusetts is uh Razcal.
+
+[6:35] You ever have Razcal? No. No, we're never even heard of it. I mean, it's fine. There's a rabbit on it, and their their motto is nobody famous drinks it.
+
+[6:46] So if you drink it, you're guaranteed to never become famous. At least according to the bottle. Nobody famous, or you have to stop drinking it. Your ego shrinks? I guess.
+
+[6:57] It uh like it doesn't say nobody who is currently famous, in other words, it doesn't say that famous people have never drunk it. It just says famous people don't drink it. So like once maybe you can become famous and then you just can't drink it anymore. But you know, yeah. Uh I don't know.
+
+[7:14] Well I want to chime in with a little burn here. So Dave, did you chug that stuff growing up? Oh hell yeah. No. But only when I was in Massachusetts.
+
+[7:22] Only when I was in Massachusetts. Okay. You know what I'm saying? It's like you gotta get a regional soda when you're in a regional location. Uh the other one, what's the other uh what are some other regional sodas?
+
+[7:32] Hmm. I had oh, uh terrible Scottish soda. Oh, it's Nastasia. How are you doing? I like your uh I like your summary outfit.
+
+[7:41] Yeah. It's because it's hot as hell and she's driving in a car without air conditioning because she hates air conditioning so much. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what. Oh, wait, Dave, do you know this soda ale eight one?
+
+[7:52] No. It's like a ginger citrus thing, and it's like I think it may only be in Kentucky. Ooh. Well, when I was in Kentucky, I didn't have it, so no. Uh the worst soda in the world is iron brew.
+
+[8:06] That's like a Scottish thing. And it is terrible. It is a bad product. I like hearing Scottish people say the word iron brew because of the way they say it, which I won't try to imitate. But it's not a good, not a good soda.
+
+[8:23] I think it's bubblegum y, right? Isn't it kind of a bubblegum flavor? Yeah. It's not good. I think it's supposed to be orange, no?
+
+[8:31] It's orange color. It's orange color. Yeah. But it itself is uh, yeah, yeah. It itself is uh a trash can product.
+
+[8:40] Uh no offense to those of you who grew up uh loving uh the iron Brew. All right, so next week, please get your questions in. We're having uh the uh the the couple that is the current uh what what do you what do you call them? Current keepers of the joy of cooking, right? Uh but for the first time ever, we're we're doing an like a a uh cross-continent couple thing where one of them is going to be in not here and one of them's gonna be in the studio.
+
+[9:11] So Megan Scott is gonna be in the studio with us next week, but John Becker uh is gonna be somewhere else. So we'll see how we'll see how that works out. We'll see how that we'll make faces and see whether he can he can judge. But get your questions in. Uh I know you better get your questions in now because if not, I have like a million questions.
+
+[9:28] I have I think six editions of The Joy of Cooking, uh, including like a facsimile of the original. Uh I don't I can't remember whether I have the one with the war rationing insert into it, but I also have the famous one that my uh old editor Maria Guarnishelle, the one that kind of took her down at her uh at her second to last uh job. Yeah, so we'll we'll talk about the joy of cooking. Classic book. Uh who else we got coming on, uh John?
+
+[9:57] Uh Bob Florence from More Me Show You and then uh the co-founders of Made in Cookware. That's gonna be a double header week. Um so we'll have more me show Bob on um Tuesday and then made in cookware on Wednesday. So are we but are are we going to then skip the week after? What are we gonna do?
+
+[10:20] Yeah. I don't know. We can just Yeah, I don't know, we can discuss that. I don't think there are any plans. All right.
+
+[10:26] Okay. There's no one scheduled for the following week, so we could, yeah. And it's up to you guys. Uh so Nastas. We'll talk about it out there.
+
+[10:33] Yeah. All right. So Nastasia, how have you how have you been other than uh other than getting caught in traffic without air conditioning driving into uh our grand city? How have you been? I'm fine.
+
+[10:41] Have you seen anything or eaten anything interesting? You have good plants out where you are? Any uh seagulls murdering uh starfish? No, no. I still I say like uh Nastasia got traumatized watching uh a seagull eat a starfish a while back.
+
+[10:56] That was in uh late March 2020. And you said it just ripped off the legs and then just like housed the legs. Yeah, and I think w like the problem was you were like, that's not delicious. No, no. I mean, starfish not a delicious product.
+
+[11:11] I mean, what the hell is this seagull getting out of it? I don't know. I don't know. It was dark. Yeah, it was dark moment.
+
+[11:17] And then I told you to watch uh The Lighthouse and you wouldn't. No. Dave asked me to watch the lighthouse in twenty twenty when I was living alone in my lighthouse. So Yeah, yeah. Well, you know.
+
+[11:31] Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, if you weren't already creeped out enough by wind and storms and yeah, then I will I make you pull my head out of the oven, like, yeah. Well don't you have no don't you have an electric oven? Doesn't work, Stas. I know.
+
+[11:46] What could I do? You know what? That's like uh yeah. I heard a terrible story, which I won't repeat uh r regarding that s exact phenomenon. Um by the way, get this, get this, Stas.
+
+[12:00] I I said to uh Jack before we got on the air today, I said, Jack, you you eat anything interesting recently? And here's what he said. Jack, what'd you say? I said no, not really. I'm on a fitness kick.
+
+[12:13] Oh nice. Thanks, Doug. What does that mean, fitness kick that you can't eat something that tastes good because you're on a fitness kick? What does that mean? The blunch diet, the like what's the thing?
+
+[12:26] But I eat but I eat normal, I eat normal food in the evenings. I ate normal human food. That's a fitness kick. That's not a fitness kick. All right.
+
+[12:36] So what's what is this fitness kick? What do you say about eagles for breakfast? Did you say I eat eagles for breakfast? I said acai bowls, you know? I'm like really leaning into the LGBTQ.
+
+[12:49] What is an asai bowl? You know what? Why don't you just embarrassing? Do you know what's cheaper than Asae? Just straight vitamin C.
+
+[12:55] You know what I'm saying? It's like a like Well, there's other fruits that are in there, you know? Okay. Do you know fruits and do you know what happened to the guy who uh popularized mega doses of uh vitamin C aside from winning two Nobel prizes? Do you know what happened to him?
+
+[13:12] Oh, really? What happened? He died. He died. So like all that vitamin C didn't make him live forever, as I know because he is now dead.
+
+[13:21] Forever. When? How old was he? I mean, he was like, I don't know. Like Linus Pauling.
+
+[13:27] You can look him up. Linus Pauling. But like the like the the man wins uh a Nobel Prize for the uh uh the exclusion principle, right? And then he uh Paulia Paul, I can't remember anything. And then he wins a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-nuke stuff, and then he goes on this kick that vitamin C, that antioxidants are gonna keep you alive forever, as as though uh like like someone who someone who knows that much chemistry and physics, right, should understand that your body is a like a a redox thing.
+
+[13:59] You need oxidation and reduction. You can't just only be antioxidant uh your whole life. Like you burn oxygen for a living. Like that's how you stay alive. So like to be completely like antioxidant freak show, it just doesn't make sense to me.
+
+[14:13] Do you feel and here's the other thing that makes me mad about any sort of like crazy like fad thing is of course you feel better because anything, if I gave you a block of sand and I said, if you eat this block of sand every day, oh my God, you're gonna feel so good about yourself, and then like you'd feel good about yourself eating a block of sand. Speaking of which, you see, uh speaking of selling people blocks of sand and making uh telling them it's gonna make them feel good. You see, uh Oz is now uh Oz is now the uh uh the Republican candidate officially in Pennsylvania. I'll just say this. While this is not a political show, while this is not a political show, and I'm not gonna make a political statement about Dr.
+
+[14:51] Oz, I worked for the guy in the 90s when he was, and it's true. I'll say this about him. He was a he was a good surgeon, a good heart surgeon, right? And when I worked with uh for his lab, I was in college and my mom's faculty Columbia, so I got you know, I used to get summer jobs at Columbia. So uh, you know, one summer we went in and literally we would they would uh take kill a pig, right?
+
+[15:16] Because my mom was a uh uh a transplant, she wasn't a surgeon, she was a cardiologist, right? Pediatric cardiologist. She ran their transplant program. So I used to work with uh, you know, uh labs that were working on what's called uh xenotransplantation, which is uh when you temporarily put uh another animal's heart into uh into a person to keep them alive while they can get a transplant. It doesn't really work that well.
+
+[15:38] Or like uh they would test different ways to what's called uh perfuse a heart uh a heart or organs, which is how to, you know, keep it in good shape while they have it in a literal igloo cooler on the learjet, like going from point to point when they're doing a transplant. Like doctors running around in learjets and helicopters with a straight up igloo cooler and with a human heart in it. It's kind of creepy, right? That is creepy. It is creepy.
+
+[16:00] Did I ever tell you this? I probably shouldn't tell you this. So uh when you when your bodies are donated to science, one of the things that you can get donated to is like your organs can be used for teaching, right? So my mom used to have a human heart that she would use for teaching. And I went to the garage one day, and I opened up we used to you know how like I don't know whether your life is like this, but like, you know, when you a freezer breaks, it goes into the garage and becomes a uh a chest of drawers almost.
+
+[16:28] You know what I'm saying? Storage bin. Yeah, storage bin. You know what I'm talking about. I said, we're we're we're we're the same.
+
+[16:32] We're the same. Anyway, so we open up this thing, and it's like can of paint, can of paint, can of paint, human heart ah you know what I mean? It was like some it was some creepy stuff. So, anyways, so it's in the 90s, and I'm working for uh I'm working for Dr. Oz.
+
+[16:48] And uh at the time, it was apparent that while he had uh was skilled at surgery, he would say or do anything to get ahead, and that he it was full of crap and has remained full of crap, and uh I probably wouldn't want him to operate on me anymore, right? Uh, but also like why would anyone believe anything that he has to say outside of the operating field when it's known that he will say anything to get ahead? And that's all I'm gonna say about about him uh personally as someone who worked for him. Uh, you know, I have more funny stories about sheep dropping over dead and stuff like this in the in the lab, but uh, you know, not gonna necessarily get into that. Speaking of transplants, you remember when they tried to do that head transplant in Russia?
+
+[17:32] Oh, I think I read something about what happened. He died. He died. He died, he got a head. Listen.
+
+[17:39] Hey. Whoa. Uh you know what I feel? Like, it's like anytime they do, I mean, any time they're like the first person to do something, like, it's always bad. You know what I mean?
+
+[17:50] Like, so uh it's a head transplant. Yeah, I mean, it's like the same ears, the same eyes, same mouth, same brain. Listen on another person. Don't let's not pretend that doctors, like I come from a family of doctors, so like I realize they're regular human people, right? They're sitting around high out of their minds, because they're people, right?
+
+[18:13] Watching Futurama, and they see like the heads in jars, and they're like, you know what? It's just and this is the way surgeons think, right? And back me up surgeons out there. Back me up, surgeons out there. It's like, it's just tubes and wires.
+
+[18:27] It's just tubes and wires. I could hook it up. I could hook it up. I hook up tubes and wires all day long. I could do it.
+
+[18:35] And so they're like, you know what? Your body is failing. The head's okay. You you you you want to give it a shot? You want to give it a shot?
+
+[18:41] And they, you know, I'm willing to hook it up. If you're willing to give a shot with your head, I'm willing to hook it up. You know what I mean? They're getting better with things like hand transplants and uh, you know, other member transplants. That's cool.
+
+[18:54] Yeah, yeah, they are. They're getting better. Uh getting much better. Uh anyway, all right. So uh uh enough enough of that, I guess.
+
+[19:02] Um all right, so Ilya, we have Garrett, we swear on a stack of Bibles. Garrett's gonna be uh calling in uh today uh at some point. All right. Now, Biftit Ritza uh wrote in and said, uh, most recipes I've seen for tortillas seem to say uh to hydrate the masa slash masa harina and then briefly rest before shaping. Do you think there would be any benefit to doing a long rest to allow enzymatic activity like there is in uh wheat flour-based uh recipes?
+
+[19:31] Um I mean, if with masa harina, obviously it's been dried already, and so um, you know, it it like you want to let it hydrate to get to its kind of final texture, but um, you know, an enzymatic breakdown in flour, I mean, you're you're not trying to get a rise out of it. So the answer is no. I don't think you'd get a thing. And when you're making real masa, sucker's already wet on like, you know, and there is on the inside of it some uncooked, uh, you know, unhydrated uh starch. But I, you know, I think the the benefit of resting um, you know, I guess once you just grind it, letting it rest a little bit is a is a good idea.
+
+[20:14] But I mean, I think it's mainly with masa harina. But I would say no. Again, I'm not an expert, I've not studied that, right? So like I would speak to someone who does that every day, like, you know, uh someone who, you know, makes uh fresh Nixtamal every day and you know has rested it versus not. Or more importantly, because think about this, right, Stas, when you buy uh when you buy masa, you know, like a like in the you know, real one, right?
+
+[20:38] You buy it, you don't use it all right away. It's sitting around. So if there was a huge difference in resting it, then the tortilla you made in hour four would be way different from the tortilla you made in hour one, and typically they're not, right? Typically they're the same. Anyway, after an initial rest.
+
+[20:55] So I'm gonna say it's mainly just a uh hydration uh question and not a sucker gonna change kind of a question. Is that was that uh answered uh sufficiently? Yeah. Okay. Uh Ian writes in, I would humbly like to resubmit the nut milk spinzall process question uh for no tangent.
+
+[21:14] Tuesday, Dave, I promise you it is not on your Instagram. Having thoroughly stalked the cooking issues and Booker Index Instagram accounts, uh and John helpfully said, uh maybe Garrett knows. All right. So here's what I'm gonna say about uh about it. So the easiest nut products are in a full-sized lab centrifuge.
+
+[21:44] If you're gonna make nut milks in the spinzole, the problem is that um you need to line up your numbers correctly, right? So in in general, actually, like if I'm because people don't generally want like a small amount of nut milk, they want a lot of nut milk. And the problem with the spinzole is it tends to separate the nuts into like nuts, and then there's not lit, there's not enough residual stuff in the milk. It spins it almost clear, and so you end up with having not as much nut product in the milk as you want. Does that make sense?
+
+[22:22] So the way that you do it, right, is you have to start with the amount of nut solids that fill the rotor, okay? So, like if you if you it so you want like 450 grams of nuts or thereabout, 450, 460. That's how much nuts you want, okay? So that's the key. Then you add however much water you want, right?
+
+[22:46] And then you run that sucker through the centrifuge once or twice, and the bucket will pick up most of the solids, right? And then you can re-filter the stuff through until you get the kind of flavor level you want. But at that point, might as well use a bag. Uh but the key is just to use like a like a an exact amount of nuts. If you're using 200 grams of nuts, then you're not gonna get uh a good product out of it.
+
+[23:13] Is this making s John? You use uh a spinzall makes make sense to you. Yes, it makes sense. By the way, by the way, people, uh I just want to say John was on this email this morning. This is how irritating in general our life is in terms of our business life, okay.
+
+[23:34] Uh we have a company in in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We pay them a lot of money, right? Stas every month, right? Okay. And we've been trying to get the spinzall remanufactured for how long?
+
+[23:47] Two, two years now. I started at the company. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, okay.
+
+[23:52] So, and every week we're like, anything, anything? And like they swear that they're gonna get it done, like, you know, that they're gonna get it done by the end of the year. We'll see. Okay. And we're like, listen, next time around, it's actually like I had forgotten, John, how much I love taking apart spinzalls because John and I don't have any spinzalls left.
+
+[24:13] So, like before he went and and uh got himself the COVID in Seattle, he scraped together a bunch of parts at our storage facility and brought it over, and I had to kind of mind meld a a working unit out of uh all of these parts. And uh I had forgotten how much I enjoy ripping apart one of those spinzalls and putting it back together. I'm just kidding, I hate it a lot. You know what I mean? How much do you love doing it, John?
+
+[24:39] I hate it so so much. Especially if you point it out dealing with that split ring from a shaft. So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, if you look at a shaft, okay, w a cheap way to keep things like bearings and whatnot on the shaft is to use what's called a split ring. So you you take a lathe and you go, me, and you make like a a line in the shaft, and then there's this ring with these two little holes in it that you spread apart and you put over the shaft. You can also do internal ones, right?
+
+[25:09] And it clicks into that into It's like a horseshoe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a horseshoe with two holes in it, right? And there are two kinds of split ring pliers, good and the kind that we have. So the kind that we have just don't grip the split ring at all.
+
+[25:25] I swear, if there's a person, if there's a person, and I wished that they would die. If I hated them so much that I wanted them actively dead, I still, if you said I'm gonna buy these pair of pliers for them, I'd be like, don't do that. Don't buy them those pliers. They're such garbage. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[25:43] It takes and turns a a 10-second job into a into a into a five-minute job. I hate that. Anyway. Uh so back to what I was saying. We get an email this morning.
+
+[25:54] Bear in mind, every month we pay these people thousands of dollars. Now, they're like, we need to ship the rotor out to a uh a factory to test for for balancing the you know, the the rotor test that we're doing for the next run. Uh and uh it's gonna cost $70 to ship it, so we're waiting for you to approve that. We're like, what? What?
+
+[26:16] What? What? First of all, like they're there it it it's it's over 24 hours to get anything done because of the 12 hour time difference that we we have. But it's like we're we're we're so we're we're two years in the hole. Just send it.
+
+[26:32] We're good for the 70 bucks. We're good for it. Did you see that email, John? Did you get as angry as I did? Yeah, of course.
+
+[26:41] Yes, I always do. Waiting to hear is the $70 okay? We've gotten more ridiculous ones like $20 from our other factory. Yeah, where they wait. They just wait.
+
+[26:53] Oh, well, that $70 isn't approved. Do you have my many thousands of dollars you owe me for my monthly fee? Yeah. Like, no. Just you know, whatever.
+
+[27:03] I don't want to get into it. It's bad. Okay. Um, so I answer with the uh John, did I answer sufficiently the nut milk question? Yes, I think so.
+
+[27:15] And we'll hear from me enough if he doesn't, but I think that's good. All right. Sorgan wrote in I'm satisfied, I will delete it. Okay. Because you know, if John doesn't feel satisfied with it, it stays in it stays on my uh on my thing, and I get I see it, and you know, Sargon writes in let's say you are building a vessel to blend Thai basal daiquiries.
+
+[27:36] Let's just say this is just a theoretical theoretical uh in an inert environment, and that you wanted to use a quick di quick disconnect mechanism. It needs both liquid and gas loads. Which quick disconnect do you recommend using? The beer quick disconnect seem to fail because the female part has a little plunger that has a seal and the seal pops out. Uh and that's very annoying.
+
+[27:57] Uh also they're kind of hard to push in. I need to handle roughly uh 50 PSI. Uh well, without knowing exactly how you're doing it, the standard quick disconnect that uh every DIY person and even non-DIO, oh my god, Styles, do you remember that printer we bought? Mm-hmm. No more tangents.
+
+[28:16] No, but this is about that. Nope, nope it's not a tangent. I have to answer the question. And so do you remember we bought that Z Corp printer? We named it Bruce.
+
+[28:25] Yes. And uh it never worked right because if all four inks, it was basically an inkjet printer. Z core printers are inkjet printers where it sprays uh binder in clear and different colors onto plaster roughly uh with other stuff in it, and that cures it into a three-dimensional shape. And that was our first 3D printer that we had, like right when we started Booker and DAX, like way back in the day. And the fun thing about the one that we had was is that although it had four inks, right?
+
+[28:57] And if any one of those four inks failed, the machine would be like, nope, ink's broken, and it would stop in the middle of the print. Anyway, they use those connectors. So even in that, in that printer, they use the connectors I'm about to say. Colder Products Corporation, colder products, CPC. If you look quick disconnect on McMaster Car, that is the uh quick disconnects that they sell, right?
+
+[29:23] They don't brand them because McMaster Car uh reserves the right to change manufacturers at any time, so they won't tell you who makes it, but they're colder products companies. Now, uh what you have to choose from is they have three main styles. And you can mix and match different hose barbs and all that stuff, and they have them with in pipe connections, they have them hose barb, they have them panel mount, chrome plated brass, polypropylene, and acetyl. Go chrome-plated brass. Uh the polypropylene ones are too big.
+
+[29:49] Uh the acetyl ones will break. They're they're great. They're my favorite ones to use if they're not gonna open and close a lot, but anything that's gonna get shaken around, uh, they have a tendency to crack, especially when they're cold. So get the chrome-plated uh brass ones. You can get them with or without uh shutoff valves.
+
+[30:05] They also have seals on them that will eventually fail, but uh they're reliable for you know two, three hundred pop-on and pops offs. They're actually uh, and you're gonna this is gonna be a problem for you. They're a little worse under vacuum than they are under pressure, but they will also work under vacuum. I've used them many times, and they can be fixed. Oh, Joe duh Joe tells me we have a caller, caller, you're on the air.
+
+[30:29] Hey Dave, it's Garrett uh from the Sunken Harbor Club. Uh, how you doing? Every everybody's uh so like I've been to your bar now twice, uh, and it's a fantastic bar. How's it how's it? How's it going over there?
+
+[30:44] Everyone, everyone everyone seems to like the Sunken Harbor. Yeah. Yeah, uh hi Nastasia. Hi, John. Hi.
+
+[30:51] Hey, Garrett. Yeah. Uh you want to plug you want to plug your upcoming book, though? You want to plug your upcoming book before you get started, or no? No, uh, my upcoming booking, yes.
+
+[31:02] I'm doing a seminar at DCB um next week on the history of the blender. Um, I'm doing it with Jelani Johnson, who used to be with uh Clover Club. Um and yeah, we're gonna be talking about uh Hamilton Beaches and uh wearing blenders and frozen machines, and it should be really cool. But uh that's why I'm calling because I heard one of your listeners had a question about how to use uh milkshake mixer better. Was that the question?
+
+[31:33] Well, so it was Ilya, but he says go buy either Eli or Elijah for my English spelling, my English pronouncing foolish self. And the question is this summer is approaching. And it's kind of approached. It's hot up. Summer is approaching, and I'm looking for unorthodox things to do with my classic milkshake uh maker.
+
+[31:52] Something refreshing, non-alcoholic, but not as heavy and sweet as an ordinary milkshake. Any ideas or places to dig for those ideas? So what we're talking about here, people, is it it looks like uh it looks like an outboard motor with a stick and like a little little propellery thing at the bottom. Would you say it's an accurate description, Garrett? Yeah, I would say that's the best way to describe those types of machines.
+
+[32:17] Is they're really they're like electric swizzle sticks, you know, that have like a you know, if you if you have a good one, it has like a 3,000 RPM motor attached to it, you know. Well, and you're the you're the prime user, so what what what should what should they be doing with them? Yeah. We yeah, we use uh we use the Hamilton Beach uh Flash Blenders quite a bit at Sunken Harbor Club. We use them for basically most of our crushed ice drinks.
+
+[32:47] Um, but there's a lot of there's a lot of different uses for that machine. Uh if you like cocktails, um egg white drinks are actually fantastic coming out of uh Hamilton Beach. Um they give a I mean, basically, when you're using those machines, you're getting a lot of aeration that is not possible in a shaker. So for a non-alcoholic drink, you would want to look for something that needs extra texture. Maybe that's um maybe that's fresh mango.
+
+[33:23] Maybe it's you know, taking something like champagne mangoes and pureeing them, and then um, you know, that puree, it might be kind of thick in a in a shaker or just sitting on crushed ice, and having that air will make it lighter and fluffier, and um you know, just bring out a lot of uh flavors that the fruit has that you wouldn't necessarily get in a you know, shaken or a built drink. Um but let me give uh your listener kind of the basic template we use for the uh Hamilton Beach. So for an for an up egg white drink, what we do is, and obviously I don't think you'd be using an egg white for non-alk, but this is just to give you some general guidelines. For an up egg white drink, what we do is we build the drink with a half ounce of egg white, and then we uh use the spindle mixer uh and blend it without ice first for like five seconds, that emulsifies everything, and then we blend it with 12 ounces of crushed ice for five seconds and then strain. So that's an up drink.
+
+[34:31] In general, for any sort of crushed ice drink, what we'll do is we'll put a cup of crushed ice in the tin, and then about a half a cup uh to a full cup of crushed ice in the glass. Um the ice that goes into the tin is gonna liquefy, it's going to break down a little bit more, so you're gonna get layers of ice when you're pouring it into the glass. And you know, the the non-agetize non-agitated ice is going to be in the glass that's gonna hold the temperature, while the ice that you put in the blender and blend with blended with is gonna, you know, just drop the temperature a little bit more, um liquefy as I said before and just um you know give uh give all these like points of contact which then create the texture in the milkshake mixer. Now do you freehand it or do you click it in? Do you freehand or click?
+
+[35:30] Uh you can do both. Um I behind the bar we installed the little there's a little plastic piece in a lot of those uh Hamilton beaches that um allow you to just freehand it and just push it up and then it goes and um we build all our drinks in the bigger side of the tin for those uh for those cocktails because uh it's too it's kind of too dangerous and all too wonky to do it in the smaller side of a shaker you need that you know sort of big like milkshake you know like the same milkshake tins you see at like Johnny Rockets or you know whatever but I I like I like that you think that I've been there and I'm like those are the milkshake tins that I see there. Stas you like that kind of place you like a milkshake joint yeah yeah yeah. Uh wait wait so but you you you so you don't make them in the actual regular Hamilton beach like because they're oversized tins. They're bigger even than a big tin, right?
+
+[36:26] We we have about six of them yeah we use we use them but if you don't have that at home a big side of a cocktail shaker will also work. Yeah well I mean but if they have the mixer they probably have that tin it came with it. Yeah they're they probably have the big tin. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[36:41] Now yeah but you want to build you want to build in your tin, build all your ingredients first and then add your ice and then uh and then run it for about five seconds on high and that that will get you your electric swizzle stick essentially. Yeah. Now would it was the uh okay I never went to the gem spa back when it was open so I have no idea. Was the original egg cream uh concept made with one of those before they added the seltzer to whip it up before you put the seltzer in or not. You know I could see that being a possibility but um every you know that's a that's a question about order of operations, right?
+
+[37:20] Because you know sometimes you see some of those old school uh egg cream places they'll they'll actually mix the soda and the chocolate syrup first before adding the so you would if you did that in the Hamilton you probably would you know fizz out most of the soda but if you did the milk with the the syrup I would imagine it would be perfect. So that's definitely something worth trying. But you know for for non-alcoholic stuff um you know I think definitely playing around with um you know uh like behind behind the bar what we were doing we were using actually recently Tomers tonic as sort of a substitute for alcohol and then using uh you know combining it with pineapple and cardamom and pineapple whips really really well in a Hamilton beach so um were you doing juice or juice juice or pulp uh we were doing kind of both we were using um a acid adjusted pineapple juice and then we make pineapple gum syrup with pineapple juice sugar and gum arabic so um both whip up really nicely. So I think that would and and with Tomers, if if your listener hasn't had Tomers, it's a very sort of Caribbean spice tom uh tonic syrup. It's very it's less I you know it has quinine, but it also has all you know all spice and cinnamon, so it has very tropical flavors.
+
+[38:52] And uh it that that syrup was designed by Tom Richter, who used to work at Deer Irving and Attaboy and is a very accomplished uh bartender in his own right. Is it is it's not as I all spicy as all spice gram, right? Because to me that just rides over the top of everything. I know that everyone likes it. Uh I'm not trying to be negative about it.
+
+[39:09] No, no, I think it's just Tom Richter wanted to do kind of like a 19th century style uh, you know, tonic concentrate. And it and it works, it's it's a fun thing to do with non-alcoholic drinks. So I would definitely recommend kind of playing around with that for the Hamilton Beach. You done any food things with it? Is there a food thing to be done with it?
+
+[39:37] That's a good question. I mean, uh if you're if you need to whip up a bunch of um you know acid-digested juice, it uh integrates the the acid pretty quickly, which is nice. And what about like coffee drinks? You done any coffee drinks? I know it's not food, I know I'm jumping around here, but you have any any good coffee drinks.
+
+[39:56] That stuff whips nicely, like espresso-based drinks with it. No, I have an espresso machine because my uh roommate uh used to be a barista, so that's that's definitely something I should try. But I mean, it it's interesting that the the other thing that I've I've liked doing with the Hamilton Beach, which I haven't seen outside of one bar, which is the TKT in Los Angeles, is I like adapting Alexander style drinks to the Hamilton Beach because I think I think in general Alexanders, they're a little weird having them up, right? Because it's a cream drink. You know, it's only going to get worse as it gets warmer.
+
+[40:39] And, you know, do you do you really want to slam uh, you know, a cream drink unless it's like really small. And uh, you know, what's nice about you know having like something like a banshee or a uh grasshopper or you know, what have you on uh the the whipped you know crushed dice is it kind of you know gives it some time to open up, you can hang out with it, it's the temperature holds, and you know, the it cut the the ex the little extra water cuts through the cream a little bit more and you know it's kind of a fun uh avenue to go down for after dinner drink. Yeah, I was gonna say that you know I very rarely order that style of drink until you brought up the grasshopper and the nitromuttal grasshoppers. I would slam that. I would slam that hard.
+
+[41:25] The nitrometal grasshopper. Yeah, because that that that had the freshness of the mint oil and and you know whatnot. And that was yeah, that was a very you gotta be in the know to order that at existing conditions. That was uh but quite a damn good drink. At no longer at no longer existing uh conditions.
+
+[41:43] Oh, something I I'll have uh well, I have you on the air. Last time we were at Sunken Harbor, uh I described these bottles that I grew up with that I think I brought up on the air last week, the Bowl's ballerina bottles. Yeah. So they're like uh find one? Found two.
+
+[41:58] I found so what they were that I talked about this last week, right, Joe? Didn't I? You did. Yeah. So in case you didn't hear last week, there are these bottles and they're shaped kind of like an upside-down bell, and there's a container inside of it molded in, and underneath is a music box with a ballerina.
+
+[42:17] And they used to have either Danziker Goldwasser or like apricot with gold flakes in it, right? So I picked up an apricot one, and the apricot uh ballerina is the apricot ballerina is uh is wearing a white tutu, and I picked up a Danziker Goldwasser one, and that one uh she's wearing a red tutu. I had to fix kind of them a little bit, but I got them, and here's what I did. So I'm I'm gonna make a banana houstino with extra banana with uh Ray and Nephew so that I can add more banana and still have the high proof so that it pours. You you like where I'm going with this, uh Garrett?
+
+[42:53] And then I did to for the apricot one, I did uh again, Ray and Neff, because I want it to be like what pill are you gonna choose? You can choose the banana pill or the apricot pill. I put apricots, uh dried apricots, blendums, obviously, because you know I'm a high acid man. But then I also put in canned peach halves to uh lower the proof a little bit and up the sweetness and get my yield high along with a little bit of their juice, and I spun that out in Ray and Nephew, took it down to about 40% alcohol with by adding enough uh peach and stuff so that it stays right at about 40 proof. And I floated the gold flakes into that sucker, and with the ballerina twirling and the apricot peach freaking Ray and Nephew, and I mean like that bottle is styling now.
+
+[43:40] That bottle tastes much better now than it did probably in the uh you know 60s when it was originally made. So I'm I'm pretty stoked. I'm gonna take those up to Rochester because I'm gonna go see uh Donnie Clutterbuck. In fact, I have there's a I'm doing a tasting thing on Friday at Cure in Rochester and giving a talk at the Rochester cocktail revival. Maybe I'll bring maybe I'll bring those bottles up because uh floating gold around everyone likes floating gold, right?
+
+[44:03] Everyone, pretty much? Do both did both bottles uh play the same song? It's always blue dance. It's all yeah, it's the same old song. Yeah, it's uh it's a blue danube.
+
+[44:15] It's always blue danube. So it's basically you're choosing basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, but they you know, they so I don't think that they were making like uh those kind of like, you know, uh card cartoon like uh uh, you know, alcoholics anonymous jokes with their songs back then. They just wanted to play blue danu, man.
+
+[44:35] They sold this bottle for like like 30 years. I think it like the Bulls Ballerina bottle was was uh was was uh was a thing. The knucklehead that sold this bottle on eBay, they broke the cork, and so their response was to glue the cap down. Glue it down. You know how hard that was to get off without breaking the bottle and then repair the cork?
+
+[44:54] Anyway, uh so for those of you that are doing dried fruit Houstinos, try using a high proof uh thing and adding a little bit of a wetter fruit. So even if you're gonna do like mango, you don't want to use all fresh mango, but if you're doing mango, try adding like dried mango and then one fresh mango to jack the water up and provide some hydration to the uh dry fruit, otherwise your yield is very, very low. Haven't you noticed that uh Garrett? Yeah, and I mean it, you know, Ray and Nephew is really good for that kind of stuff. If you would need a more neutral um white rum that's like, you know, high proof, the uh diamond distillery that they make El Dorado.
+
+[45:36] They have a pretty clean white 151. So, you know, if you needed something that's like less aggressive in flavor than um then Ray and Nephew, that's also a really good option. And it's cleaner than the old Bacardi 151 that I think they discontinued that, right? Yeah, it's it's significantly cleaner. I'll use it sometimes to jack the ABZ and a frozen drink or whatever just to like neutrally bump off the you know alcohol content or whatever.
+
+[46:05] But so like 151, by the way, for anyone who's interested in trying an auto Hustino, 151, it depending on how much stuff you add to it is enough to automatically break pectin. So you can do uh you can add stuff and it will automatically clear even without a centrifuge as long as you keep the the proof high enough. Um the other fun thing is the thing to know, if you're going to blend uh, even whether you're using a centrifuge or not, um you want to get the proof down to 40, 40 and change before you add your enzymes. So blend in your fruit before you add the enzyme because I don't know. I haven't tested it, but my guess is that that super high proof might denature the enzyme and stop it from doing its uh job.
+
+[46:53] So I would blend the fruit first and then add the enzymes. I don't know, but I'm gonna say that like just why take a chance. You know what I mean? It doesn't care. Doesn't care.
+
+[47:06] Uh no, it's it's it it's it sounds delicious. I I'm I I want I'm I'm interested in the apricot mango one for sure. Yeah. Well, I added apricot peach, apricot mango would be good. Although you were like, yeah, apricot mango would also be good.
+
+[47:21] You mentioned champagne uh mangoes, and the only thing I went through my head is they're they're good, but not as good as champagne. I don't know that they deserve the name. Nastasi and I were sitting here, and if you put a man a champagne mango and then a bottle of champagne, what would you what would you dive into first, champagne. For sure. For sure it's gonna be the champagne.
+
+[47:40] Especially if it's rose. That's a no contest. That's true. That's no contest. Nastasia and I will drink an ocean of uh Rose champagne.
+
+[47:49] You know what I'm saying? Stuff's delicious. We'll never turn that down. Um last thing before I let you go. You have a book coming out in what, like nine months, something like that.
+
+[48:00] You want to talk about or too early? Too early? Too early? Too soon? It's uh too early to talk about that, yeah.
+
+[48:06] All right. All right. Well, I've read it. It's good. Everyone's excited, everyone's excited for it.
+
+[48:10] Do you know do you don't have a release date? They didn't give you a release date yet. Uh no, yeah, I can't, not officially announced yet. All right. Uh so I didn't say anything.
+
+[48:20] You don't have a book coming out. Don't bother looking for it. You won't find it. But uh all right, Garrett. Thanks for uh thanks for calling in and giving us some uh milkshake stuff.
+
+[48:33] Yeah, if uh if if your listener uh have any questions, I'm I answer pretty quickly on uh my Instagram at the Garrett J. Richard at Instagram. So yeah. All right. Well, thank you.
+
+[48:48] Yeah, and come by um the Southern Harbor Club. We do uh, you know, we built the carbonation station like we did it, like we had it in existing conditions. Um, you know, we play a lot with cordials and uh just all the good stuff that you guys talk about on the show. By the way, you I like that you call it a spindle spindle mixer. But that the word spindle mixer sounds like bindle stiff, so you have to make a bindle stiff spindle mix drink for like circus people.
+
+[49:19] Well for yeah, for hobos from the 20s. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But weren't they specifically circus hobos? Weren't they circus hobos only? You can't be a random hobo and be a bindle stiff, can you?
+
+[49:36] I mean, uh the the clown theme is is more fun to play with. So yeah, I'm I'm into it. All right. So I want like you text me when you have it done, and I'm gonna have the bindle spit the bindle stiff spindle mix when I come in. Uh in addition to your delicious uh Pim's cup uh variant, which everyone on Earth should try.
+
+[49:55] I mean, everyone who drinks that should try it. Yeah, also just to pump up the bar a little more. Garrett's bar is fantastic. The drinks are delicious. The ambiance is super cool, the glassware is awesome.
+
+[50:05] I mean, if you're in New York City or visiting New York City, you have to go. It's it's a great place. Speak speaking of PowerPoint. Wednesday, Wednesday through Sunday, but uh yeah, we may be open a uh we may be open late more days coming up, but uh Wednesday through Sunday right now. So you put that late 80s, early 90s, pump up the volume, pump up the volume, dance, dance.
+
+[50:27] You can't hear anything, Sas? No, I can hear you. I can hear you, dude. Oh, griff. Well, the last person on earth you want to hear.
+
+[50:33] All right. All right, well, thanks, Garrett, and uh hope to see you soon. Yeah. Yeah. So uh Nastasia, I'm guessing that this question uh is one of your friends.
+
+[50:41] I don't know. Uh this is from the mayor. Oh, I don't think so. The mayor of Myanus. For those of you that know, I think it's actually pronounced Mianis, but it's like a little townlet.
+
+[50:51] What do you call it? Like a hamlet near Greenwich. Right? And so, as I've said many times, whenever you're driving uh up or down 95 and you hit traffic there, because you always will because it's a garbage street road, right? You g you you always have to say, it's slow going through my anus, or heavy traffic out of my anus, or stuff like this every time.
+
+[51:14] You know what I mean? And Booker gets real mad. So I thought maybe this was a friend of yours trolling me because it's a troll question. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[51:22] So uh but true to true to us, I'm gonna take it seriously anyway, from the mayor of Mayanus. Uh one of my neighbors' horses died recently, and I would like to cook some of the meat for them after the vet finish uh after the vet finishes their autopsy. Uh I'm hoping to cheer them up a bit with creative horses for courses menu. Does Dave have any go-to horse meat recipes? Thanks in advance.
+
+[51:48] So I'm gonna go ahead and assume, because there ain't no horse owner on earth who would eat their own horse. Their neighbor. He's gonna serve it to the or I'm assuming it's a guy. Gonna serve it to the neighbor. By the way, uh we knew someone once who left their dog with a roommate they hated, and the roommate killed the dog and served it to them when they got back.
+
+[52:16] They were not pleased. That's really screwed up. That's hard screwed up. You know what I mean? And the only other, yeah, I mean I know some but here's the thing about horses.
+
+[52:25] Like Cavalo. Yeah, but you might but in in the US, we don't eat it. It's people are horrified. You know what I mean? And you have to ask yourself why certain animals are off limits for us to eat.
+
+[52:37] Like I wouldn't eat a dog, right? I understand that it's uh, what's the word? Not logical that I don't want to eat a dog because I eat other animals that are just as smart as a dog, right? So it is inherently illogical for me that I wouldn't do that that I wouldn't eat it. But I I I mean, like if you know, I could see a situation where you know you don't want to be impolite and all this, but I would never choose to eat it.
+
+[53:01] I would never want to eat, I would never enjoy it, right? I think a lot of people feel that way for horses, but again, it's completely illogical. But because I also have illogical behavior, I understand it, right? Would you eat horse stuff? No.
+
+[53:13] I remember when I went to Germany. I've eaten it. How was it? I've had horse too, yeah. How was it?
+
+[53:20] Well, you you like French people. I was about to say the French the French eat horses like it's going out of style, which in fact it is, even in France. I I had it from it was like an M it was an M Wells pop-up, so that makes sense. French Canadian. Yeah.
+
+[53:34] So I'm gonna go ahead and say that like I I'm not against obviously against eating the horse, but I don't I I probably would eat horse. I just have not eaten horse. So no, I don't have any recipes for it. But I went to my international uh uh buffet uh recipe book, which is the one that has the recipe for whale meat in it. Because I'm figure if this book has a recipe for whale in it, it's gonna have recipes for horse, especially because it's a French and like Eurocentered book.
+
+[54:00] And so the the Italians eat horse, the French eat horse, like a bunch of people eat eat horse, and there's a there's a long history of the French uh eating horse, especially after the revolution, right? As kind of an F U to uh to the aristocracy because the horses are seen as kind of an arist uh uh aristocratic thing. Um maybe that's why people didn't used to eat horses because there's because we use them for other things. The horses that people used to eat were in general, I think, old horses, right? Because n this is the thing that you know, I I guess Booker doesn't, you know, understand he's vegetarian now.
+
+[54:33] Uh, but I'm like, no one keeps these animals, work animals alive past the point when they're useful for work anymore because they're doing it for a job. They're not like part of the family, they're not friends, they're just they're a work machine. I sad to say, but that's so I think that's what a lot of the old horses originally were ways to get rid of old horses. Wouldn't you say that's right, uh, John? Jack.
+
+[54:57] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so the only time I ever have the opportunity to eat horse was when I went to Germany at the height of the mad cow scare and nobody in Europe was eating cow. And so it was Zauerbraten vom Ferd, which means sauerbraten from horse.
+
+[55:15] And I didn't get it, but so maybe do that. If you have your old horse meat, make some saubratten because it's this is not a young horse. This is an old horse. You know what I mean? I'm assuming that the neighbor's horse didn't die young.
+
+[55:26] First of all, not a good idea to i if if an animal drops dead and you don't know why, not a good di idea to eat it. You know what I mean? This is why, like, when when roadkill is fine to eat if you if you can see that the animal wasn't diseased and it just got hit with a car, but you don't want to eat a diseased animal. Like, how many times does the Bible have to tell you not to eat a diseased animal before you listen? You know what I mean?
+
+[55:47] I mean, maybe you don't listen to the Bible. I don't know. But it's one of the big things in the Bible. You know, don't eat diseased animals. I think we can kind of get on board with that.
+
+[55:55] This is why we have USDA inspection. You're not supposed to serve people diseased animals. People get bent. Like if you like when a cow shows up at a slaughterhouse and it's dead, they're not supposed to process that thing, right? You know what I'm saying?
+
+[56:07] It's like you we have rules against this. So when a horse drops dead, you're not supposed to cook it. I'm just gonna go ahead and say this. Well, that's why he's waiting for the autopsy results, Dave. The autopsy results is not gonna no, no, no, vet is gonna be like good to eat, good to eat.
+
+[56:23] I'll tell you something else that's sad, going back to what I was saying before when I used to work at the hospital, is they would um, you know, they they would sacrifice uh a pig for these experiments, and we were just using the heart, and sometimes other labs would come take other places. But even though we didn't do any weird drugs to that, they had to dispose of the body. The regulations were they had to dispose of the body, so like a lot of that went to waste. That was the worst part of it. That and every aspect of it.
+
+[56:54] Every aspect of it was actually the worst part of it, but that was one of the bad aspects of it. Um, did I answer this uh question satisfactorily, John, or no? Yes, you did. Yeah, good job. And uh if you speak French or if you have Google Translate, you can get a bunch of recipes off of uh French websites and Italian websites because they both have a lot of oh, also I'll tell you what I will eat.
+
+[57:18] If I ever get to go to Beijing, right, they make these donkey burgers that are supposedly out of this world. Like donkey burger is like a big thing, it's like a donkey based chopped donkey meat. And the, you know, the saying apparently is in heaven there's dragon meat, but here on earth we have donkey. That's how good donkey burgers are supposed to be. Wow.
+
+[57:40] It's like Donkey. Oh, but donkeys, again, are real smart. Uh, did I talk about this? About going and the world's fastest donkey. Did I talk about this?
+
+[57:51] You told me about Donkey. Do yourselves a favor, people. Do yourselves a favor. The uh look at World's Fastest donkey. They run like so fast.
+
+[58:01] There's someone they're the uh Asian onager. Uh it's crazy. All right. 910, uh, wait, how do you think you pronounce this, John? 910AG.
+
+[58:12] How do you pronounce this? I'm missing something in there in their username. Question for anybody out there. I have two chemistry degrees and a huge interest in food. Uh, I looked into a cross-section of chemistry and food and stumbled across a flavorous position.
+
+[58:22] Flavorist is a uh, you know, a job that's very hard to get. Uh, you know, but it's notoriously difficult to get your foot in the door at that kind of a job. Does anybody have any advice for someone in my position? What are some other food science jobs out there? Thinking about working with flavors and how they interact would truly be my dream job.
+
+[58:37] Uh, I've been thinking about uh yet another grad degree, maybe at NC State. So I'm not above going back to school. Thanks. What you need to do, 910, is go join the research chefs uh association because it's a group of people who have exactly your mindset uh in mind, and they have all the hookups for what the jobs are and what you need to get there, and they're a real friendly group of people. John, is that a good piece of advice?
+
+[59:02] Yes, that's a great piece of advice. Yeah, I put a note out to Ariel, uh, you know, and she hasn't gotten back to me yet, but if she does, uh I'll get back uh to you. Also, uh in the 41 seconds I have left next week. I won't have time to talk about it, but I have really interesting hood news for you. Uh I put an air conditioner in my in my kitchen window because Jen uh didn't want the air conditioner in the living room because it was a mess.
+
+[59:26] And the return error coming from the air conditioner somehow doesn't short circuit it. It makes my hood now freaking super hood. So, like I can talk more about that later. I have some beef experiments I ran. And if anyone wants to hear how to make a grease surround for their crepe maker, uh just ask me.
+
+[59:43] And we'll be back next week with uh the joy of cooking cooking issues
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center at New Stand Studios. Not joined. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is off this week, but I do have John here with me. How you doing, John?
+
+[0:24] Doing great. Everything good? Yeah. Yeah? Good to be back.
+
+[0:26] Yeah? Yeah. Good to be here at Rock Center and not caught. Uh John was spent the last however long trapped in COVID quarantine in uh Seattle, Washington, and didn't get to have any fun Seattle stuff. In fact, you got you came down with the COVID before you could even go to any of the fun places in Seattle that you were supposed to go.
+
+[0:44] Yep. Came down with it within hours of arriving in Seattle. And then as soon as I tested negative on Sunday, I bought a ticket and got here yesterday after a miserable flight. Do you wish in retrospect that maybe you had gone out and at least gotten like something to eat or drink before you took that test? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:02] Yeah. Yeah. Would have been nice. I mean, it would have been bad from a uh a public policy standpoint. It would have been good from uh from a John standpoint.
+
+[1:11] But you know what I just have another reason to go back to Seattle. That's how I like to view that. Uh you didn't go to Seattle. That was just you you flew to a room. Yes, okay.
+
+[1:18] And stayed in a room and then flew out of the room back home. Yep. I mean, that's like the worst of all the scenarios. It's true. You know, I mean, um, anyway.
+
+[1:27] Uh we got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels here in Rockefeller Center. How you doing? I'm doing great. Very excited for today's show. Yeah.
+
+[1:34] Anything uh anything interesting happened to you in the uh past week that uh food-wise or not? You know what? I have to be honest, I have not been doing a lot of cooking. Any cooking I have, uh I have a six-month-old son, so it's very quite it's still quite difficult for us to be in front of the uh the stove with all the scheduling that we have going on in the house. So yeah.
+
+[1:54] It's a lot of quick heating up of things. I remember that. It's hard to uh it's hard to find time to pee or take a shower. You know poop. Yeah.
+
+[2:03] Yeah. Oh no, pooping. You don't get to poop. Your poop becomes pee time. Anyway, uh, and uh, where are you, Jackie Molecules?
+
+[2:09] Where in the world is Jackie Molecules? You gotta start at Carmen San Diego for you. LA. LA? All right.
+
+[2:14] I'm in LA. I'm in LA. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, we're not gonna have time.
+
+[2:17] We could talk about it later. But uh on the um over this past weekend, I went up to like way upstate New York, like Buffalo, Rochester, uh, all of those places, and a lot of interesting food stories. I'm gonna go ahead and say a lot of cool food stuff up there. Was hanging out at the cure bar with Donnie Clutterbook, had a good time in Rochester. Rochester, good place, good city.
+
+[2:38] I enjoyed it. I will say that their meat sauce, we can get into it later. I don't think we're gonna have time unless our guests want to talk about it. Meat sauce from the famous meat sauce place called Nick Tahoe, not spelled Tahoe, spelled like Tahoo, but like Nick Tahoe's, which started in 1918. They have this thing called a garbage plate.
+
+[2:56] And yeah, it's it's a bunch of stuff we can get into it. But they have a meat, they have a meat sauce that goes on top, like little granular pieces of meat in sauce goop, which is a uh like my wife was like, that looks unappetizing. That looks like it already got ate once. She hasn't talked like that. But uh I'm gonna say that portion of it, viciously undersalted, but then I was told that that's just because I'm a downstate weasel.
+
+[3:18] Then someone else was like, no, it's you gotta go get the other garbage plate. We could talk about it later. Uh what I'm super excited about. Oh, actually, before we get into it, John, what do we want to do promote the upcomings before we do what we're doing? Yes.
+
+[3:29] All right. Next week we got a doubleheader week. So on Tuesday, we've got Bob Florence for more of me show You out in Mystic. And then on Wednesday at 1 p.m., we've got the co-founders of Maiden Cookware, um, Chip and Jake, and then in July, end of July, we just confirmed Greg Baxstrom, which should be exciting. And then while I've got the mic here, I would also like to kind of shame the Patreon people.
+
+[3:54] Let's let's work on this Google maps that we're supposed to be editing. It's uh got some room for improvement. So I'll say that. Everyone start adding their stuff. Listen, John takes this whole sharing of information and like super granular detail about places like extremely seriously.
+
+[4:10] Like if any of you have you already put your Belgium. I'll do it literally right now. All right. When you see the level of detail that John goes into town by town, place by place and dish by dish in his in his Belgium uh document. You're gonna hang your heads in shame for not populating this map better.
+
+[4:34] And I'll also say this. I'm gonna do it, too. You gotta do it. Do it, man. You know what, Jack?
+
+[4:39] Put on, put like I don't know which maps we're doing, but go do Mexico City, put on Meat Bucket and put on uh put on Florida Calabaza lady. Come on, man. And and I will I will, I will. And for those of you that have no idea what we're talking about, you want to tell them how to what the Patreon is uh there, John? Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
+
+[4:56] Stand up. All right, all right, all right. Uh and are we gonna give him a discount on the show you or is that uh can we do that or we're not we're not to be determined. We will see. It's a good show you hopefully.
+
+[5:05] Yes, it's great. It's great. Even though it's from Connecticut, it's good show you. Uh hey, look, I love Connecticut. That wasn't a Connecticut dig.
+
+[5:11] I apologize. But now, all right, we're done with all the preliminaries. So today I'm super excited. This is also the first time we've had half of our guests in studio and half not in studio. So we'll see how this works.
+
+[5:25] But we have uh John Becker and Megan Scott, who together now are the let me say. So it's one, two, three, fourth generation fourth, fourth generation, fourth generation writer editors of like the all-time best selling, most important, longest lived cookbook ever. Like ever. Like puts a peace to shame because you know what? No one's actually read a pecious.
+
+[5:55] Okay. I mean, I've read it. I'm not saying I'm necessarily a better person for it. But uh so welcome, guys. Thanks for coming on.
+
+[6:02] Thanks for having us. And just just so you know, John, where are you right now? Um, I'm at at our home in Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon. And Megan's here with us in the in the in the studio.
+
+[6:15] Uh all right. So, how do you how do you want to do this? I'm assuming that if you I'm assuming that if you are listening to this that you know what the joy of cooking is, but maybe not. Maybe you don't know. Uh for people who um listen to this show, I love um books that have gone through a bunch of editions over a bunch of time.
+
+[6:40] Uh, not just because that's an indication that the books themselves are important or like have some sort of ongoing meaning for a lot of people, which it also does, uh, but because they span a slice of time, especially American books, uh, that I can understand and look at how people and our culture has changed over time. And so this book, which started in 1931, is kind of the ure like addition chasing book that cookbook people I think go after. Wouldn't you guys agree or no? I think that's true. John, do you feel that?
+
+[7:15] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not I'm I'm not I'm not sure if we uh I mean you can definitely get an inkling of what uh you know how culinary c our c our culinary culture has changed over time. But uh you know I don't think that we're a perfect reflection definitely an imperfect reflection of what was going on.
+
+[7:33] Well, yeah, I mean, so it's not like for instance, like there are certain like nonfiction technical books, like I've brought it up a bunch of times, but uh Louise Pete's book, uh Household Equipment that went through, I think like, you know, 15 editions between like the early 30s and the 70s, like literally spanned a huge revolution in like electrification, refrigeration. But the thing is, so did Joy of Cooking. And it like so it's like the the way the recipes are presented and what people eat span that thing. So it's not as stark as, you know, oh yeah, you don't need to give um recipes anymore for, you know, how to economize your coal stove because ain't nobody cooking with a coal stove anymore. You know what I mean?
+
+[8:17] Uh or uh, you know, you don't have to explain electricity to people who've never seen a what used to be called a convenience socket. I'd like to see what an inconvenience socket is if the for those of you that don't know, like like what you just call us like a wall socket or a plug or whatever you call it, you know, whatever we incorrectly call it. The technical term for that is a convenience socket, because it used to be you hired someone to come in and wire your equipment into the mains. Uh so yeah, that those are convenience sockets. Wow.
+
+[8:45] Yeah. Don't you guys kind of wish, by the way, that we had 220 as our as our mains power so that we could run more power off of wall sockets in the kitchen without having to break such a sweat? I mean, we haven't really run into that as a problem because we're using really like home cook focused appliances, but I can I can see where you're coming from. Right, right, right. But what if, what if, I mean, what would our culture be like if the average consumer could pull like two and a half, three kilowatts out of their wall socket without without without trouble?
+
+[9:17] What would our lives be like? Maybe different. Yeah, probably different. I mean, I do feel like I do feel like home kitchens get sort of stuck in a time warp sometimes or just they aren't very well designed. A lot of I mean, I remember when we were looking for a house in Portland, we would walk in and be like, oh, this is a great house, and the kitchen is tiny and dark and hasn't been updated since the 70s.
+
+[9:38] And it was kind of like, what is happening? Wow. I want to be in I want to enjoy being in the kitchen when I'm there. So you rip that sucker out? No.
+
+[9:45] You can't. I mean, we found a decent a decent kitchen. Okay. Okay. That was a deal breaker.
+
+[9:50] Now, do you but like do you have to have so that so so okay? We're skipping forward to what you guys do now. Maybe we should do that. I don't know. I've we have so much to get through, I don't know how to do it.
+
+[9:58] So uh do you have like three separate kitchens? Like, do you test stuff on an induction, like on a garbage stove, on a gas stove? Like, do you like purposely throw your equipment out of whack to see how bulletproof your recipes are? Like, what's the what's the first of all? Okay, let's just start from the end and we'll go back to the beginning later.
+
+[10:15] So people don't know, right? What happened was is the most popular edition, the one that everyone in my generation grew up in was the one from I believe it was what, 75. That's the one that was in my house. It came out when I was four, and obviously my mom had a copy, right? Because everybody did.
+
+[10:34] Uh and it was that book was uh the kind of last one that you know the grandma worked on. But also, I heard uh uh John that your dad, Ethan, was helped on that book, but didn't get his name on the spine. In fact, he didn't get his name on the spine until the 1997 edition. So this this book had been selling a jillion copies. Well, let's go through the story now, right?
+
+[11:01] So in 1931, your great-grandma, uh uh Irma Rombauer, right? She uh the your great-grandfather dies. She has almost no money left, right? She's got uh and she's 50, like 50 something, 52. And she's like, I'm gonna write a cookbook.
+
+[11:19] Am I right so far? Yep, and in the initial Go ahead. Oh, yeah, the kids are you know, her kids are out of the house, and you know, she was left a modest sum, and yeah, she took half of it uh and privately privately printed the first edition. Well, to hear the story from your great uncle uh who you know wrote the preface to the facsimile edition, and he's like, Well, she kind of asked the kids, are you guys cool with this? And then they were like, Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
+
+[11:48] But what's weird is, and this is kind of interesting, is that by his account, she wasn't really a cook. Like she didn't grow up being being a cook. You know, she reads this uh book that I wanted to get a copy of, but I never did called and so if you want to see what the original Joy of Cooking was based on, it's a book that's really fallen by the wayside, folks. I guarantee none of you have heard of it. Choice Menus for Luncheons and Dinners by Gladys Tossig Lang, which uh if you want to try to find an original 1931 first edition of um of uh Joy of Cooking, you better take Out a mortgage.
+
+[12:22] Whereas uh you can get a copy of Choice Menus for Luncheons and Dinners for like five bucks. Yep, maybe ten. Uh this is because they didn't print that many of them. So she reads this book, she's like, I could do this. But what's hilarious about it in the preface to the book is she's like, you know what I really hate?
+
+[12:37] I'm paraphrasing here. She's like, you know what I really hate when people say they're a writer. She's like, I really freaking hate it when people say I'm a writer. She's like, anyone who can string two words together says they're a writer, and here I am writing a freaking book. The basically paraphrase, that was the right.
+
+[12:53] Yeah. Uh so anyway, so she comes out with this book, self-published, right? Then the publisher, the the printer, was like, I printed an extra 30 copies in case like something goes wrong. Hands her use 30 copies. She's like, What the hell am I gonna do with these?
+
+[13:07] So she sends one to her cousin. Am I still right so far? Um, you're getting all of this from uh from Edgar's preface, right? So you don't trust your great uncle is what I'm telling you? You know, what you're telling me?
+
+[13:19] Yeah, kind of that's pretty much what I'm telling you. Yeah. Um actually uh a food writer named Ann Mendelssohn uh put out a bio kind of a uh history of joy of cooking and a biography of uh Irma and Marianne's lives. And she doesn't really give any credence to those to this particular that particular uh those those details. All right.
+
+[13:43] But uh we won't promulgate them. Yeah, no, no, no. She uh she tried to shop around uh the manuscript, you know, like the uh she was you know, a proposal to publishers uh for several years. And that's eventually she managed to convince uh Bob Smerrell to uh come out with the the first, you know, actually published edition in 1936. And they had it all the way up to 75, right?
+
+[14:10] Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But to hear the story now that I'm not supposed to put credence in anymore, your great uncle, you know, apparently, I won't call him a liar, but you kind of called him a liar. Oh no, I mean it's all right guy rest may he may he rest in peace. Yeah, may he may he rest may he rest in his lies.
+
+[14:30] But the you know to to hear his side of the story, like it got really dicey there and it looked like it like she had a deal and Bob's Merrill was like, you know what, depression's getting worse than we thought. Ain't nobody buying cookbooks. Because another thing is that and I didn't get this from the from the preface, but it's like uh the blockbuster cookbook wasn't really a thing yet other than like Boston cooking school like, you know, uh Fannie Farmer kind of stuff. There wasn't this kind of concept of a non-technical or not not the way the Boston Cooking School was conceived as a technical kind of, you know, coming from the home ec environment mentality, there wasn't this notion of the blockbuster cookbook yet. And so they were like, yeah I don't know.
+
+[15:10] And then like it almost it almost died right there, right before 36 when the major first blockbuster came out. Is that is that part do you agree with? Oh yeah I think that that totally tracks with what I've what I've read. But uh yeah no it was it was definitely a hard sell that she had she had to do and you know she ended up conceding a lot in the uh in the on the contract to the point where you know Bob's Merrill actually had uh ownership of like half the copyright. That's pretty uh it was pretty tough negotiating going on.
+
+[15:43] Yeah well uh well so see whether this is accurate. Like what I one of the things that I thought was really interesting was that your great grandma, right? They're like, hey, listen, we're gonna do this, but we're actually not gonna pay you uh the royalties that you would normally expect because we're gonna put so much of this crap into promotion that you're gonna make it on the back end, and that people told your great grandmother, like, this is crazy, this is a fool's errand, you're nuts, and she was like, eh, okay. And then like that made that kind of made it. That was like boom.
+
+[16:12] Do you think that's an accurate story? Uh you know, I should have I've obviously I should have been studying studying up before this, but yeah, that that sounds sounds plausible to me. Yeah, yeah. So what's cool about this book, if you've never uh like seen kind of the old copies, first of all, you should get a facsimile of the 31 edition, but it's of it's a completely different book from the I don't have the 36, but I have the 46, okay. Uh not the one with the rationing in it, because you know, whatever.
+
+[16:41] I don't need that because, you know, let's be honest, I don't ration. Uh but um the book style kind of changed dramatically. So for you know, we're all kind of used to conversational writing now. Uh, but you know, the the first edition had in it the like it's it's like line by line, like innovations that we now take for granted come in at you know, piece by piece. So in the initial one, it's like this like she's telling stories.
+
+[17:09] Who what? Who tells stories? And then in the in the, you know, in the edition, the 36th edition, it's this new uh do you believe do you guys believe in this whole action method as a term or like what how do you like it's a different recipe writing style? Are you guys okay with that? I don't want to use your term.
+
+[17:23] We use that. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah, we we use the term all the time. Uh she did not uh come up with that term or or use that term to describe the style that's that recipe writing style that she came up with.
+
+[17:35] Right. That's why I didn't necessarily I don't know whether it's a term you guys approve of or whether it was one that's added on to you. And I know how I know how much I hate when people just apply terms to people without it's okay. So you're okay with that. Yeah.
+
+[17:44] So you want to describe what that is and why why that was different back in the day. I can take it if you'll take it. Yeah, I'll take it. Sure. Um so essentially in the in the 1931 edition, the recipes are written very much like you would see a recipe, most recipes written, which is that the in ingredients are broken out at the top, and then you have the instructions below.
+
+[18:08] Um in like a paragraph, she did like a paragraph format, not like one, two, three, four, five. Um, and then in 1936, her new innovation was that the ingredients and the instructions are interspersed. So you might say, melt in a saucepan two tablespoons butter, and the two tablespoons butter is bold in bold text and kind of indented a little to separate it out. So it's just like a more narrative format um where you sort of walk through the recipe with the ingredients embedded, which we really love because it's I mean, there's a lot of advantages, but you know, it you avoid that trap where you might forget, you know, the writer might forget to include an ingredient in the instructions that's called out in the um in ingredient list, or you know, if something's divided, you don't have to say divided, you just put it right in the recipe. So there's I feel like there's a little less opportunity for confusion, and it keeps the recipe writer a little more honest.
+
+[19:00] And while you and because you bold face it, you can still scan for your mees. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. Uh but no one wrote that way. But you should be actually the recipes.
+
+[19:13] You should be reading it anyway. Listen, people, I can't tell you how many times I tell Booker this. Uh and Dax, but Dax says do it. Just read the whole recipe. He's I'm like, he's like, I'm ready, Dad.
+
+[19:24] I'm like, you're not freaking ready, dude. I'm like, tell me all the steps. You're not freaking ready. It tell you, I'm not saying you don't refer to the book while you're reading if you while you're cooking if you need to. Although I don't cook with books in the kitchen.
+
+[19:29] I don't. I jot down the me's and I under uh but like I don't bring my books into the kitchen with me. But God, read the whole recipe. Oh, by the way, I feel uh remiss. If you're listening on Patreon, you can call your questions in 2917 410 1507.
+
+[19:52] That's 917 410 1507. Uh okay. So yeah, read the read the recipe, people. Yeah, just do it. Okay, can we can we go with this for a second?
+
+[20:01] What was the one you guys on Twitter where you just uh uh you wanted to have an eye bleeding emoji, I believe was the one because uh you're like, can't somebody make this eye bleeding emoji? Like because uh someone was going viral. It's gotta feel crazy. We'll get back to the history in a minute, but it's gotta feel crazy. Like you guys spend at least 10 10.
+
+[20:24] I'm not even counting, let's then not even count like the intermediate, like the big additions, right? It was more like you worked on it for 10 years, but like it had been 10 years since it had been uh kind of updated, right? So it's really like a 20-year wedge, and you're working on this thing, it's like, and then some knucklehead goes viral with poison. What was the thing that you guys were? It was a pastrami using celery juice instead of um nitrates or nitrates and a couple of problems.
+
+[20:55] Yeah, some problems. And it, yeah, it went viral, and it, you know, everyone, this is a person that a lot of people like, I guess. I don't know. And I'm like, Man we're trying to understand the original I'm trying to understand the original motivation for that. I guess he was just like attracted to the idea of a green brine.
+
+[21:12] Was it a St. Patty's Day related thing? You know what it is? You know what it is? It's this.
+
+[21:16] It's like I'm I I'm not busting on Whole Foods, but I am here, right? So like Whole Foods decides like you know a billion years ago that they're not going to have anything that is they want everything to say uncured. They don't want nitrites in it, right? So they're like, they put on except for this what naturally crazy celery. You know what I mean?
+
+[21:36] So what they do is is it somewhere, somewhere someone grows a bunch of celery that never sees never sees a salad, you know what I mean? And they chum up this celery in these giant vats and then they concentrate the ever loving crap out of it into nitrates and nitrites, which they then cure your freaking meat with. If your meat is pink, it has been cured people, if your meat is pink, it has been cured right now, it is true that uh nitrate free hams, if they're cured for a year or longer, uh, can undergo reactions where they're naturally pink without uh but bacon ain't that if your bacon is pink it's been cured. And so I think he m he this guy, I don't even remember who it is, so I'm not insulting them because I don't even know who it is was like it says it celery is fine. It's like naturally it's celery celery so then puts it in celery no but part of the part of what made me so angry is that I'm not even sure if he was genuinely doing this or if he was you know just kind of can I use curse words on this show?
+
+[22:40] Ish well I mean I mean family ish family ish show. Okay. Family is show. Or if he was just posting garbage trying to get attention, you know? I don't think so.
+
+[22:49] I think it's like he was trying to get attention. I think he genuinely. Well, obviously he's trying to get attention, right? That's what social media is. Yeah, yes.
+
+[22:56] But I mean, I think that the the the issue is is that do you guys all remember what it was like to start doing something and how little you knew, but how much you wanted to tell people what you knew, but how little you actually knew. I think it's like all of a sudden people who are in that area, right, have a much bigger megaphone. You know what I mean? And so, like, you know, maybe there's not a there's not some sort of inbred, like not in bred or but but some sort of learned disincentive that comes with having said the wrong thing so many times to prevent you from being like, uh no, that's terrible idea. Terrible.
+
+[23:41] All right. Yeah. Obviously not, because this is not, yeah, it's not the first time that he's done done something sketchy for his uh for his YouTube channel. So also there's a whole world to communicate with out there. I mean, like, on literally, I have like I have like five or seven or ten people like that I could go on my phone right now and be like, is this a good idea?
+
+[24:05] And they'd be like, no, dude. No. You know what I mean? Well, presumably this person has a crew of people helping him, assistance, researchers. I don't know.
+
+[24:13] I mean, I think he has a lot of resources. Because it was also now that it's coming back to me, it was for a nationally known magazine and their website. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Their YouTube.
+
+[24:20] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No excuses. Uh all right, right.
+
+[24:25] Wait, so let's go back to history before we get to the present. Because I gotta get through it so people understand what's going on. All right, right. By the way, in that 46 edition, there are some doozies. First of all.
+
+[24:34] So, uh so by the time uh 46 uh comes out, it's uh see. It was wasn't your your grandma by that time was run was basically running the show, right? Or no, was it still your great grandma running the show at that time? So she started uh Marianne started working on the book uh a lot in the 50s, and like in the early late 40s, early 50s. So that's 51 edition, uh she did the entire the entire, I think the breads chapter.
+
+[25:03] Um and you know, it kind of shows like has her fingerprints all over it because she was very uh she really tried to do do the homework, I guess. Irma was more of a, you know, fly by the seat of the pants uh food writer, if you will. She really just kind of wanted to, you know, she was chatty, you know, had a had a lot of uh really snarky head notes. And oh yeah, you know, that was it was kind of like her as a writer, whereas Marian was much more, I guess, um, you know, scholarly in her own way, I guess. Well, I really like some of those weird chatty things.
+
+[25:36] So for instance, in the section on, you know, what's old is what's what's new is what's old, whatever, whatever we're supposed to go, right? So like you know how everyone's having a chicken washing debate? So in the in the 43 slash 46 edition of uh so everyone's like, should I wash the chicken? Should I not wash the chicken? The government's gotten in on this, by the way.
+
+[25:54] They're like, when you wash your chicken, micro droplets from the chicken will get all over everything. Everyone will die. Everyone will die from Salmonella with the washing of the chicken. And I don't wash chicken, I didn't grow up washing chicken. It's a cultural thing.
+
+[26:06] It's a it literally it's a cultural thing. Whether you wash a chicken's a cultural thing, not a food safety thing, in my opinion. And Harold McGee has gone through, you know, some next time we get on, I'll I can just I can just push a button that says chicken washing, and he can just take away the rest of the show. Um but but like you remember, like it's so in the 40s, like she's starting to write things like most of the time you by the time you get a chicken it's gonna be drawn i e it's gonna have its guts ripped out but maybe not so there's some instructions for on how to do that right and then it's like scrub that chicken inside and out if it's you know it's stinky at all you can rub it with baking soda scrub that chicken scrub the chicken and then an asterisk there's a new school that says don't wash the chicken and rub it with a lemon instead and that's it it's like this asterisk and I was like that's very strong that's very strong and also like uh you know things that I like uh like little things that are in there that only someone who's interested in things that have changed would be interesting. So for instance there in the I don't have a 36 so I don't know but in the in the in the 4346 edition she talks about the tendon remover for large birds and she's like well if you buy a bird that doesn't already have its legs uh you know broken off here's how to take the tendons off you make the cut you rip the leg off and the tendons come off with it which is true right so uh you know if you can buy a turkey people and you are strong or have some sort of like a desk you can do it on get get it with the feet on because butchers no longer have the tendon remover but it's right there in the 4346 uh and presumably in the 36 but I don't know uh yeah I'm not sure about that yeah I don't know I don't mean I don't have access to that the 36 is kind of pricey right compared to the Yeah it's it's just more there are fewer copies yeah it's a little more rare.
+
+[27:48] Um Dave you run into the head note where I think I think it's in the 40s editions but Irma says something like people seem to really like this recipe I don't recommend it. Well you know, like that's what's so awesome. Like if you look at it, it's so like very early, it was separated into like here's your meats, here's your here's your and for some reason, like up until like I don't I forget whether even into the current edition, but it's like cakes and then you go through cookies and everything else before you get to icing. Hell is that? What the hell is that?
+
+[28:21] Very very eclectic organization style. Yeah, yeah. And things move around. So like cocktails were in the beginning, then they were in the end, then they got deleted, then boom-boom. Okay.
+
+[28:30] Anyway. Uh no, I don't remember that head note, but I'll go look it out. So, but like there's a joy to read the well, it's uh it's a pleasure to read these kinds of uh asides because um presumably, and you guys can tell me, you know, she is uh because one of the funny things in all of these uh earlier editions is there was a lot of, and I guess you this is your grandma, a lot of scholarship of quote unquote what the authorities were. And so like she'll be like, some authorities say this, I don't really know. Um right.
+
+[29:03] So it's like it's kind of really funny. She was clearly like an aggregator, but also a cooker. So or you know, someone who was testing these recipes, but at the same time aggregating the state of the art of knowledge at the time, which I think is kind of fascinating, and you can pick up kind of the thought process in the thing. So I I don't know, I don't you guys think that's a fun thing to read when you're reading those older editions, or no? Oh yeah.
+
+[29:28] It's kind of an Easter end. Absolutely. I mean, that's yeah, when we first started working on the book, uh, you know, it was basically testing recipes, and we would try to trace them back through the editions and through through that, I you know, it's just I think we were both pretty obsessed just with the differences between the editions, how how they've changed. But yeah, Irma's voice and you know what she had to offer readers, very fun and you know, fascinating. Right.
+
+[29:56] So in my at least So the last edition that your great grandma had input into, and it was uh yeah, I I guess it was yeah, right. The 51 was the last one, right? Yeah. And but basically that was your grandma was made she had fully taken over the reins, and uh she was trained as an artist, right? She was trained trained art artist and she did uh I know she didn't end up doing the illustrations for some of the later editions, but she did the earlier uh editions illustrations, correct?
+
+[30:24] She did. She did um paper cuttings because apparently she could not, she was not good at drawing, but she was really good at cutting paper. Those silhouettes are cool, by the way. Yeah, they're really cool. If you go look at the facsimile of the 31 uh edition, they're cool.
+
+[30:35] Uh okay, so 51, everyone knows what the most important thing about the 1951 edition is. It's the squirrel. So, like so the the the Beckers uh are an out we'll get into this later. Huge outdoorsy kind of family, right? So uh, you know, we'll get into uh uh John, your dad in a sec, right?
+
+[30:59] But like so there's always like some game and whatnot in it. But in the 1951, and people might not know this, right? So 51 edition, I don't have a copy of the fifth edition, like you know, from the 60s. I have the 51 and I have the 75. And there are two different how to skin a squirrel drawings, but they are the same drawing.
+
+[31:23] But whoever did the 1975 edition was like, you know what? You know what? The boot that the person is wearing when they're skinning the squirrel, is a little too my three sons. It doesn't, it's a little too stylized for my taste. I'm gonna do a little more of a of a of a realistic line drawing of a boot stepping on a squirrel's tick.
+
+[31:42] Because the idea is is you cut through, so you cut through the skin on the back, and then you cut through the tail bone, like you would if you were gonna do uh e ikime on a on a fish, right? But you keep the skin attached. Got me, people? Then you cut a line so you can kind of open up where that they and then you step on, you step on the tail, you grab the body and foop, foop. Was that pretty much accurate?
+
+[32:10] Yeah, totally accurate. Yes. I mean, yeah. And I it's it's I don't know. I based on like our experience with rabbits, it's definitely not like we actually you don't agree.
+
+[32:23] Yeah, we're not gonna be. We don't recommend that method anymore. Yeah, um, is that why the squirrel drawing did not make it back in? Well, we haven't gotten to the carnage of the 97 yet, but the squirrel drawing, yeah. The squirrel drawing went away in 97 for many, many reasons.
+
+[32:37] Our publisher really does not like it at all. Um, we know people who have it tattooed on their bodies, so that's interesting. Um, but yeah, we don't recommend that as the way to skin a squirrel anymore. So we didn't put that back in. But if you go into the book, we do talk about how to skin a rabbit.
+
+[32:52] You basically skin a squirrel the same way. It's really easy. Do you do it? Do you do the rabbit the same way that you did in the drawing for the rabbit where you cut around the hind legs and you hang it and you pull down? No, we did the thing where you you make an incision in the back.
+
+[33:07] Yeah, and then you stick, you can just stick your fingers in and pull it off, pull all the skin off. I mean, the thing, okay, not to get gruesome, but the thing about the squirrel thing that seems to me to make sense and the boot is that this is and there's there's anti-tularemia, uh, like you know, wear gloves and all this, which is hilarious. I love it. It's like because it's in a cookbook, right? And uh, you know, you very rarely get that kind of stuff.
+
+[33:29] And that's the other thing I love. That's the other amazing thing about um the 75 edition is that it had just grown to such a size by 1975 that in it you'll have detailed instructions for how to how to rip the skin off of a squirrel, and then like, but like it's just so like encyclopedic yet still quirky. That's what's amazing about it, right? Which you've kept up, you know what I mean? But like that's what's kind of cool about it.
+
+[33:54] But the thing about the boot is it's very clearly like I just shot this squirrel, I need to get the skin off this thing now, and I'm gonna put it skinned already into my bag, right? Yeah, it's not going in the game bag until I get this thing off. I don't have anything to hang it on. What I what do I have? I have a knife and I have the ground and I have my boot, and I'm gonna rip the skin off this squirrel.
+
+[34:12] So it seems to me, if you're out there and you take a squirrel down, you want to get it into the bag, and you don't want all that fur all over everything. It's very pragmatic. Yeah, yeah. But the illustrations in the 75, those were done by someone named Iki Matsumoto, and he was a student of Charlie Harper. I don't know if you are familiar with Charlie Harper.
+
+[34:31] He does a lot of like he did a lot of bird, bird and animal drawings, they're really geometric and cool looking. Um, but yeah, so he did those and then the 60s and 50s, I think it was Jenny Hoffman. And those are like the we call those the Jetsons hands illustrations because they have that very like mid-century vibe. The boot does look cool in the 50s. The boots are really cool in the 50s.
+
+[34:51] Uh so people who have the tattoo, do they have the 50 or the 75? I think the person we know has the 75. I mean, if you're gonna get a tattoo, I would have gone for the 50s. Although the rabbit looks better in 75 because in the 50s, I don't know, for layout reasons, the rabbit is horizontal. Whereas in the 75 edition, the rabbit is hanging as it should be, and then says, you know, uh, my it's uh my god, you guys, you gotta read these recipes because it's like it's clearly written by a family that has some experience with game meat.
+
+[35:22] It's like, um, uh, you know, like the original pheasant recipes are like, I hope earlier editions, before Pheasant was something you could buy. They're like, we hope, we I I forget the exact quote, but we hope the breastbone of your pheasant is nice and pliant as a sign of quality. I'm like, I hope so too. Thank you. You know what I mean?
+
+[35:42] Or it's like if you're if your meat is of a certain age, you might want to hang it a couple of days. Like, so these are not things I think that people really specify anymore. You know, the hanging game. Anyway, all right. So 75 comes out, and it was kind of like it was like the book.
+
+[35:59] It went crazy. I don't know the numbers, but it sold like some ungodly number of copies, right? And uh, and again, uh, John, your dad worked on that. So Ethan Beck was this time to get into him, right? So, like, here's a crazy story, people.
+
+[36:16] Heathen uh Ethan Becker, born in 1945, same age as my dad, right? Uh so he's part of this joy of cooking thing, but then also like famous, like world famous knife designer. Sends, sends some like like knives that he made, kukri style, which is this like funny curved blade thing with some to give to his buddies to take over to Vietnam for a deployment. Comes back and is like, how'd they work? And they're like, Well, you could have changed this.
+
+[36:44] He's like, Okay, I will. And then he starts making these knives. He made what is apparently like the best tactical backpack of anyone in that era, right? Yeah. Never made a kitchen knife.
+
+[36:56] He did make a kitchen knife. Really? So but they're calling it kitchen knives. But um he didn't he didn't start making knives until like the early 80s. So yeah, the the whole I mean, I think, you know, he Ethan has had plenty has plenty of acquaintances who were in Vietnam, but I don't think that uh yeah, it wasn't like he sent them on deployment.
+
+[37:16] Well, no, I mean not like no, not the built ones, but he he made two, right? And sent them to his or at least they were in the military using them and they gave him feedback. This is what he says on this on the YouTube things. I've always been fascinated by this. But he made kitchen knives.
+
+[37:28] Why do you why does why did people not well he uh yeah, I don't know. I think the first time he tried to make uh he tried to make a line of kitchen knives. Um he got a whole bunch of prototypes made up. Um and I don't know, he just never found the right distribution deal and you know, never found the right um the right the right um people to collaborate with on it. I guess it's a harder it's a it's a harder industry that than he well it's maybe it's just he's not familiar with like the kitchen knife industry as much as he is with the outdoor knife industry.
+
+[38:04] Um we actually have been, you know, he's been thinking about um he's been definitely thinking about doing a kitchen knife project project, but more on like kind of the custom end of things rather than uh mass produced. Well, I guess you know, at this point in his life he do whatever net do whatever the hell he wants. Uh, you know, I mean, it would be fun from uh a consumer perspective to have one that was kind of obtainable. I know that like for instance Sean, does Sean still doing like is Sean still doing a big business in kitchen knives or no? I haven't shopped for kitchen knives in the world.
+
+[38:35] Mostly out of Williams Sonoma now. I think that's they were for a time they were making big plays. So like they were one of the early people pushing uh like VG 10 knives to the masses, and um they got another famous designer, Ken Onions, like 20 years ago or whatever, to do uh a knife, but it was kind of so wacky that I think you know it I don't think it got a lot of adoption. You know what I mean? The the Ken Onion cooking knife.
+
+[39:02] What's the famous one that your your dad did, the famous fixed blade uh like uh oh my god, what is it? The one that everyone still buys. Oh, what's it called? Uh well that's for me at least it's the machine, the the kukri style. But yeah, I well, you have a family obsession with kukries, my friend.
+
+[39:20] Like that like this this, but like the normal, the normal like uh like like seven-inch blade fixed guy with like the like the rugged as hell, comfortable, like can chop through uh uh can chop through a log and still come back and and do whatever you need. What the uh it's out of my head. It's like a hundred and it's like 110 bucks. Everyone loves it. So like the BK7 and the BK9 are both um, you know, kind of straight, straight bladed, not not Kukri style, uh have a clip point.
+
+[39:48] Yeah, they're they're really rugged. So I mean what is it with the family in Kukri's, by the way? I mean, what are they good for? What like okay, besides cutting into people's heads, like besides like being, you know, uh like a weapon of war, like are they like uh are they better machete style things for like going through brush? Like what is it what is it with the kukri?
+
+[40:09] Because I have one, but like you know those with K bar, right? They're good for going through Yeah, that's right. They're good for for going through brush, but primarily they're really just really, really great at chopping wood. Um so uh or you know, batoning through wood. Um so yeah, that's that's primarily what that's what I think of them as being the best for, especially the first um Kukri style blade that he made, the machs, because it was you know, fairly thick.
+
+[40:41] So, you know, just once you get it going in a you know, in a log or whatnot, it it really does help to kind of split it open. So when you go out in the woods, you're rocking the kukri. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, I mean, we haven't been out in the woods for in like a kind of a field craft situation for quite a while. But yes, that's that's that's what I would choose.
+
+[41:05] Yeah, well it's I mean you have to, I mean it's in the blood, right? But also it's also some nostalgia because you know, yeah, he was made he started making knives out of his garage. And so, you know, that's kind of when I was, you know, whenever I would go to visit, uh, you know, just kind of get to see the machs that's being made. And it's like, oh, it's a cool, it's a cool knife. It's a cool name.
+
+[41:28] I like it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so I haven't even made it to the real stuff. Hold a second. Okay, it's good.
+
+[41:34] Okay, ready. So here comes the bloodbath edition 97. So uh that okay, so as we all know, as I know, my editor, Maria Guarnicelli, was the one who took over editing, but your dad, Ethan, was still the he was by this point the name on on the book. By the way, funny that he went to the Cordon Blue cooking school and his contribution by name in the back of the book is uh his version of duck cells, where yes, he's like, I don't like to do uh use shallots, so he uses onions. Ba boom, right?
+
+[42:08] Like if an American's gonna go and do the duck cells, yeah, use onions because none of us like using shallots. They're such a pain in the butt. I totally agree with this. You know what I mean? Uh yeah.
+
+[42:14] He's he's a he's a practical man, very practical man. Yeah, he's like, why why skin a billion of these little suckers? Like they they taste like good. John, don't get me wrong. Shallots are good.
+
+[42:30] But it's like shallots are great. But like, you know, if I'm making duck cells, it's gonna be put into something else anyway. I'm gonna add all the and he puts porridge and stuff. We've got to put the stuff in and mushrooms, what the hell is shallots, please? Onions.
+
+[42:41] I thought that was a strong move. Uh so Maria though uh takes over this thing. It was kind of her ondoing at the at the publishing house. How much of a memory of this do you have, John, of the actual like bloodbath? I was, let's see.
+
+[42:57] When it was published, I was a senior in high school. So I mean, you know, I I definitely uh I met Maria a few times, and you know, she seemed like a really nice person to me. But uh yeah, uh as far as like the the aftermath of of the 97 goes, yeah, there was there was a lot of um, you know, we got a lot of pushback afterwards because you know, the 1997, it was just a huge undertaking, and she really did kind of not she didn't start from scratch, but let's just say it was a much more uh ground up revision that had had ever been done, even by Marion when she took over the book like for real in the 1960s. So, you know, it it was like the manuscript just went way over like the page limit that they had in mind. And so they ended up, you know, axing entire chapters.
+
+[43:46] So no preserving chapters, no cocktails, you know, there's there were a lot of casualties. Right. And she paid a lot of money to writers to ghost in chunks. And I, you know, I remember I spoke to her about someone that she had run afoul of during that. And he's a fa he's a famous like like food writer.
+
+[44:05] And I was like, yo, you know this person. And she's like, and this is literally what she says. She goes, Oh, I hope he's dead. Can someone please tell me that he's died? Oh my God.
+
+[44:15] And I was like, I was like, uh, sorry, sorry, Maria. He's he's he's still kicking. Because she had done like the classic, like uh creative person's move, which is basically she was so demanding uh of like the crew at that time. I mean, like the stories of like what she put everyone through on that are legend legendary, right? That he was like, I have the I have the manuscript, but you're gonna pay me more, hijacked it, ransomed it for more money.
+
+[44:47] And so, and she was already so strapped because she had gone so over budget on that sucker that uh, you know, anyway. Uh and it by the way, wow, the the 97 edition is a it's a good book, it's a great book, and what it brought, so like it's kind of like uh if you look at like uh on food and cooking, the first uh on food and cooking, which by the way, funny, she she didn't get to finish, but she signed up the second on food and cooking. But the second on food and cooking, like a lot of the lore has been taken out, and it's like you know, like much heavier on like kind of nitty-gritty and science. Uh uh and in the same way, like a lot of the personality of the book was removed, but a lot there are a lot of positives on the 97 in terms of beefing up and streamlining some of the more technical aspects, which I think when you guys took it over, I think you're you know, you're I think you're getting the best of both worlds. So, like, you know, you you start in 2010.
+
+[45:45] Now we get to the real world, right? So Megan, in 2010, this is the interesting thing. This is what I was telling you guys before we went on air. I had a tough time discerning on the internet. Turns out you guys are much like uh like I was with with my wife, so I'm like, I don't understand.
+
+[45:58] Like you started working on the book in 2010, but you also met in 2010, but you didn't so like you guys started going out in April, and by October you were already an item and already working on the book together. Is this accurate? Yes. Now so like I like like I say, I like people that make decisions quickly, right? Uh so I like it, love it.
+
+[46:18] You know what I mean? Um, and you know, they're like, you know what, I know what I want. Boom, good. Uh strong. So, and you're originally from uh North Carolina, right?
+
+[46:26] Right, okay. That's right. Uh right. So now, had you already been tasked when did your dad, John, say, why don't you guys do this? It's time.
+
+[46:37] I mean, I know I mean I've never but he doesn't sure he doesn't talk that way, but like uh like when did that happen? Was there like a was there like some sort of like you know, veto Corleone moment? Like how does how does that work? There was like an anti veto corleon moment, like a few of them where he kind of tried to dissuade me from going into the family business, uh, and was like, you know, you really need to look for something else because just because of the like the uh kind of uh just the relationship with the publisher over the years and what he had had to deal with, and uh I really I kind of came to it by myself. I mean it's weird to say that, but I obviously not in a vacuum.
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+[47:18] But um, yeah, I don't know. Just felt at one point in my life, I just felt called to it, and I really wasn't sure what to do at that point at that juncture. Well, you had you had read something for me. You had read something your um your grandmother Marion had had written and it kind of changed your mind on on the book. Yeah, it was actually the four the let's see, the inscription or what what is it?
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+[47:46] Dedication. The foreword to the 1963 edition. She just expressed like she had this very heartfelt um you know statement where she was like, you know, Irma passed this book along to me, and I hope that I hope my sons carry it on afterwards and their sons afterwards, and I don't know, it just hit me it hit me in a very special way, let's just say. Exactly. Yeah.
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+[48:17] And you know, I had spent a lot I had spent a lot of time editing at that point already. Um like, you know, straight to library titles of literary criticism. The sad thing is that there are no more straight to library titles because libraries don't buy books anymore. They just died. Yeah, it was a the end of a golden age.
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+[48:38] Yeah, yeah. All right. So so you start in 2010. So if it published in 2019, you were done with that edition in 2017 or 2018, right? Because it takes a year to get it out.
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+[48:50] Twenty eight twenty eighteen. I mean, I feel like we were really pushing it. We really pushed the Yeah, we were. Well, I mean, there's something like six hundred. Yeah.
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+[48:59] Yeah, we might have been still working on it early twenty nineteen. And it's a complete Oh Jesus, really? It was rough. And it's a c it's a complete revision. So like I look at something like this and I'm like, that's a billion hours of work.
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+[49:11] Yes. So, like, did you like I'm sure you guys couldn't even eat out one time. Like you have to just only be cooking. Like how many people were working on you with this, like with recipe testing? Like, how does that work?
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+[49:20] Like, how do you how does someone hand you this thing and you're like, well, everyone wants us to kind of bring it back into a family situation, less away from this. I'm not gonna say that Maria's version was more sanitized, but it's more it's more cooking school like. You know, it's less personal, it's less of a family cookbook. It just is, you know what I mean? Uh, which isn't to take anything away from it, but it just it it is.
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+[49:45] Uh to take it back to a family, I mean, it's it's gotta be nuts, right? Like, like describe the process. Well, we started when we started working for the book in 2010, um, one of the first big projects we undertook was to test. Basically, we were tasked with testing all the recipes in the 2006 edition. Um, right, the anniversary the anniversary of the seven.
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+[50:08] That that edition was very much the family's attempt to take the book back to what it had been like in the 70s, essentially. And in some ways it did a good job, and in other ways we think it reverted too much to that sense of nostalgia. Um, and we wanted to really actually, you know, we wanted to retain that that personality that the book has, but we also wanted to move it forward in a really intentional way. We didn't want it to be a museum piece. Right, because personality and nostalgia aren't the same.
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+[50:35] Right. You can be modern and be a person. It turns out thank God the singularity hasn't happened yet. We're not, you know, pets to our uh to our computers yet. You know what I mean?
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+[50:45] Uh yeah. Uh okay. So I mean, well, we'll we'll talk more about this in the 35 you know seconds we have left because I gotta get to some of these. But before I get to the questions that the Patreon people have, they will be mad if I don't get to them. Here's what I like.
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+[50:58] If you buy goat, beware bandsawed goat with the bones because it contains small sharp bone fragments. This is good advice. But you guys are fans of goat, huh? These are the first, this is the first edition that's been like go goat. Go go goat.
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+[51:14] Well, I actually worked on a goat dairy for a few years, and you also eat goats on a goat dairy, as it turns out, and uh they are delicious. Yeah, they are. I mean, rack of goat, you know, I'm like whatever. It's expensive. It used to be goat was cheap.
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+[51:27] I think goat is expensive now. I mean, I think it's like not cheaper than lamb. It used to be almost free. Um, and baby goat tastes as good as baby lamb does. Like if you ever you ever used to do that Easter time, like baby, like milk, like really young.
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+[51:41] We have not done that. Oh, it's so good. Oh, speaking of which, can I just mention this? Please someday bring back so in the 1975 edition, at the uh again again, yes, it's culturally not cool, right? But so like for festive recipes.
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+[51:55] I mean, that's the other thing you like we'll we have to get into is that like there are a lot of things in the books that are of their time. Like descriptions of uh, you know, someone's cook in Mexico putting an apple in their mouth, which is not you can't do that, right? But it's of its time, whatever. We're not gonna talk about it. I mean, I just did, but you know what I'm saying.
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+[52:16] Uh but in the 75 edition, in the front, you open it up and there's like little uh what's it called? Little uh symbols. Oh yeah. And the star symbol means Christmas. Okay.
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+[52:29] Uh not not just any festivity, mind you, Christmas. And uh the recipe in there that's most interesting is it's so funny. It's like it in the game section, it goes, any lover of art loves even vicariously the chase, and then starts talking about killing wild boar, okay? And then says, the one thing we have left from this, which I've never seen in my life, is stuffed boar's head. And there's a recipe there, wow, which is very similar.
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+[53:01] It's asterisk as a Christmas recipe. Very, very similar, but just the head. So I gotta do this recipe to the um Colombian, like outside of Bogota, where you st you take a whole pig and you turn it into like a Batman cape and then you stuff it with rice. It's very similar, but it's the head. So you boil the head, right?
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+[53:20] Gotta try to keep that skin whole. If you do, if you try to sew it after, so you boil it until the skin gelatinizes, you cool it till it's cold, people. You wait till it's cold, please, right? Then you remove the skin slowly, cut around the eyes, keep it as as as a like a as a mask, as a Texas chainsaw massacre face mask of a pig, right? But gelatinized, all right?
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+[53:40] You with me, people? Then you make a r you cut off all the meat and you make a rice mixture. So this is just like that Colombian dish, but it's like clearly like an American thing, and then you sew it into this back into the into the pig head, and then you crisp that sucker up in the oven, and I'm like, I would eat the hell out of that. Sounds delicious. Bring that back.
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+[53:59] Bring it back. Okay. Uh bring it back. All right. Yeah, that's next next on our testing list.
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+[54:05] Yeah, for sure. Let me know how it goes. If you need any help, I mean I'm never in Portland, but I would love to, you know, get invited to that to that dinner. All right, also before we have uh we'll get into it. We have we have six minutes.
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+[54:13] Yeah, yeah. Okay. Come on, Megan, kale salad. Specifically, it's called out as you, you know uh kale salad. Do you actually like eating kale?
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+[54:20] Now, look, honestly, you massage the hell out of it and then you pour a hot dressing over it. Why not just cook it then? Like, I mean, like, do you love kale salad? Do you wake up in the morning and you're like, you know what I want to eat? Kale in a salad form.
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+[54:32] Do you mean you're from North Carolina? You like cooked greens, right? I do like really cooked greens. Yeah. But I also like kale salad.
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+[54:40] Okay. With the papitas, it's really good. Okay. Have you tried it? No.
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+[54:44] No, you don't like rock ale? Uh no, no. I mean, like, I like I'll eat it. They're like, if you slice it real thin, it's almost like a green that you could eat. I'm like, why don't you just use a green you can eat and cook the kale like God wants you to?
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+[54:58] Uh I do appreciate your cornbread recipe with boiling water and no sugar at all. You want to talk about that recipe for a sec? Yeah, so I I wanted to um develop a cornbread recipe that used some of the coarser cornmeals, but I found that when I did that, um, it hurt your teeth. Um, so what I ended up doing is I can kind of create a soaker with two like uh fine and medium grind cornmeal, stone ground cornmeal and boiling water, and you just let that sit. So you start that in the morning, and then when you get home from work, you just add buttermilk and eggs and salt.
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+[55:33] I think baking soda, and that's and you throw it in a hot skillet with some fat. Um it's super crispy and almost like has a custardy texture because of the boiling water, the soaker. Um, it's really but not custardy to a spoon bread cut because there's no leavened egg whitey stuff in it, although it's got powder and soda, right? Anyway, so uh all right, let's get to the Patreon questions and then I'll come back with my little my little questions of of uh of things if we have a second. All right.
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+[55:58] Uh Smeagol Canival. I like that. It's a good name there. I get it. Uh question.
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+[56:02] Uh, how have you suggested uh portion? How have suggested portion and serving sizes, caloric content, richness of the recipes changed over the decades? Oh wow. This might be a this might be a little bit of a trolling question. That's hard to hard to say.
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+[56:14] We act there was a controversy uh over that. Um, you know, there was like this peacacking scandal up at Cornell University, and one of the professors that was involved, the professor that was involved with it, had done a like a comparative nutritional analysis of recipes over time through different editions of Joy. And uh it turns out that you know, we actually tried to do uh, you know, a you know, good faith, you know, nutritional analysis of the recipes that he uh that he chose, and it you know, it's basically just all bunk. Um but you know, what I can't do. All nutritional stuff is it's all bunk anyway, because it's all calculated from crazy values that have no meaning, right?
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+[57:04] Well, yeah, bomb the bomb calorimeter is not not your stomach. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, none of it has actual mean meaning, you know. Yeah, it's a general idea of what something might have in it energy wise, but it's not super accurate. I mean, not to be gross, but take a look at the toilet.
+
+[57:20] You haven't fully used all that corn. You know what I'm saying? Like you didn't digest all that corn. Your toilet tells you so. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[57:27] Um, but how has it changed over the how how's the goal changed over the decades? So, like for instance, Madeline Kamen, like I didn't like the later editions of her books because she had to fake healthify it in the 90s. But you guys kind of skipped that because Maria hated that kind of crap. Well, there were some low fat recipes in the 97 um specific, but you know, it was like a handful. Right.
+
+[57:47] She's not an arbiter. And then in the earlier editions, even when margarine was really popular, you know, Joy was always like, You can use margarine, it exists, but it tastes bad. Right. So, like, even when other people were pushing margarine in the 70s, you know what I mean? Like the 75 edition is like margarine exists.
+
+[57:59] Hello. Uh, you know what I mean? But so I feel like a lot of people have asked us this question, and we didn't make a concerted effort to like make recipes healthier or do anything like that. We just wanted to make recipes that you know result in something that tastes good. Um and we, you know, when we thought about serving sizes, that's a huge can of worms, but we wanted to to have the recipes so that when you make them you can get a roughly predictable amount of food out of it.
+
+[58:27] So if you're feeding a family of four, you're not gonna actually end up with uh just enough food for two people because there's all these variables like who's eating it, how old are they, how what's their metabolism like? Are they exercising a lot? Like, I don't know. There's just so many things to take into account. So we try to be a little generous with serving sizes to err on the side of generosity.
+
+[58:44] Well, then also and also if somebody's making one of our recipes and it uh makes less than they expect, that's something we don't want. Whereas the opposite, people have leftovers. You know, uh it just it feels more practical to just, you know, assume that somebody is either has, you know, a high um nutritional requirements or okay, but uh, but okay, are the serving sizes golden corral size serving sizes? Or are they like I mean, I guess that's where we're going at like a no no no, all right. No, no, yeah, all right.
+
+[59:16] Uh Dale Vengroff, I mean, no, no offense, golden corral. I mean, although your food's terrible. Uh, I mean, I've eaten it many times. All right, Dale Venroff uh writes in how is the rise of social media as a source of recipes and an arbiter uh as an arbiter or a culinary trans affected how your audience uses Joy of Cooking, and uh, how do you approach your audience nowadays? And what, if anything, has remained constant despite all the new technology?
+
+[59:41] Um that's kind of a hard question. I I mean, I we are on social media. I have a very much kind of love, hate love relationship with it. Um I don't like to spend a lot of time on it because it feels like a time suck, which it is. Um, but we try to keep our content pretty pretty attainable and home cook focused, and we don't like to use a lot of um, we don't like to use a lot of uh very highly styled photography.
+
+[1:00:05] We we try to keep it like we're taking photos in our home kitchen of stuff we're eating for dinner. Um so that's our general approach. Cool. And uh John, you got your questions here? Yes.
+
+[1:00:15] So uh this one's from Jameson. What are your thoughts on adoption of new gear and techniques? How do you decide when to add recipes for newly adopted equipment? What do you anticipate adding in the future? Um we try to take a pretty balanced approach with that.
+
+[1:00:30] Yeah, that's that's tough also. Um, but we try to be balanced with that because we know things are cyclical and things fall in and out of style. Um so you know, for in the 2019 edition, for example, we wanted to talk about sous vide, but we didn't want to include a bunch of recipes that were just for making with you know an immersion circulator. So we included a chart of like things you might want to cook, most common things you might want to cook with times and temperatures and some notes about how to execute it. Um we included some instructions for using like a countertop uh pressure cooker in like the grains cooking chart because it makes sense to use that.
+
+[1:01:02] Um, but we didn't write we don't usually write recipes specifically for those things. Most people are gonna get specialty books for that stuff anyway. Yeah. Um all right. So, Megan, I'm assuming this is you.
+
+[1:01:14] Your red eye gravy has cream in it. First of all, the ham okay. For people is that's not me. Okay. I don't own that.
+
+[1:01:21] All right. Then John. Because like, okay, growing up ham slice, that was a ham slice, fry ham slice, soak it if you want beforehand, fry ham slice, water coffee in the pan. Yeah, that's on the ham slice. Yeah.
+
+[1:01:29] That's it. You guys kind of pan boil the slice, drain the water, add stuff back to the stuff hitting the bottom of the pan, and then add cream to your red eye gravy. Discuss how did this happen? It might be delicious. It may be delicious.
+
+[1:01:51] The boiling in the pan is just uh it's just another default. It's just, you know, to de-salt it a little bit. Just like the soaking was, except it's like, you know, happening a little bit faster. As far as the cream goes, I'm actually not I'm not quite sure. I think the red eye the red eye gravy part of that recipe actually is one of a hold of uh holdover from the 97.
+
+[1:02:11] Oh, it's in there? I didn't know that was in there. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely grew up with a masterplug on that one. I grew up with the just cook the ham in the pan and then you add coffee.
+
+[1:02:21] Maybe not even water, like you just add cock cold leftover coffee and then put that on biscuits and stuff. Yeah, I think my grandma had coffee and water, but she was probably using some bull crap instant coffee. You know what I mean? Like it was the 70s, you know what I mean? But like that's definitely something where like anyone that grew up with red-eye gravy, it's like red eye, you know what I mean?
+
+[1:02:39] You know the best super salty. Yeah, the best red-eye gravy variant ever was Dave Chang's uh red-eye gravy mayonnaise, which was oh wow, yeah, seriously on point at Samba. Uh yeah. Uh all right, so like, all right, so that's something we can address. Well, we're making notes.
+
+[1:02:56] We're making notes. Yeah. Uh all right. Uh so in the couple of seconds we have left, which is uh zero. Um, when's it you guys are already working?
+
+[1:03:07] Like, what's the next what's the when's the next thing coming? When's the next edition? Uh 2031, which will be a hundred years. Ooh. Yeah.
+
+[1:03:16] So like, how far is that from now? Eight years, you got eight more years? Are you gonna actually try to turn it in a year in advancement? I know how hard this thing is. And what are you gonna change?
+
+[1:03:24] You guys start working on this book in 2010. In 2010, it was still like loved and advi and like uh considered a good idea to go very far afield worldwide culturally to get recipes. The book gets published, and then very soon after that it becomes a lot more of a hot button issue of appropriation when you're taking on recipes. This is the first one of the editions that I think in a very kind of respectful way tries to take on recipes from a lot of other cultures, but have you gotten any pushback for those kinds of recipes being in there and like how do you see that going through it into the into the future? Is this something you even think about?
+
+[1:04:00] Oh yeah, we definitely think about it. I mean, we we haven't gotten any pushback on it and we shouldn't, I don't think I'm not saying you should get pushback. I mean, uh, you know, it happens, but um I mean I think we will probably continue that going forward. Um, but you know, probably paying people who are maybe from those cultures to create those recipes in collaboration with us so that we are not the ones who are saying this is what this dish is. Right, because the the I mean like the 2019 edition really and people who don't understand how like working on something for a long time works, it's like, you know, it's almost a hundred years in the making, but you guys are working on it for like eight, nine years, and you know, you know, John, it's been in your family since forever, right?
+
+[1:04:45] Uh and so you're working on it, and it was a really kind of in between twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, a huge thing has changed in the way cookbooks are written and how things are approached. So like that's also got to be nerve-wracking for you guys to take on something that has to stand around forever and yet, you know, like getting buffeted by the waves of what's happening. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
+
+[1:05:15] So I feel like I've just made this made you nervous. You've haven't said anything like helpful or good. Um it's hard to know what to say. I mean, it's it's obviously a problem. It's uh it's a problem for us, and it's something we constantly have to renegotiate.
+
+[1:05:29] And uh, you know, I I just I just hope that we uh what we've done has been respectful. Uh and that's that's what we strive to to do in those with recipes from other cultures like that. And it felt wrong to leave them out because they feel very much a part of American cuisine and the the just a big picture of American cuisine to us. I uh would agree with that. I think it's and and I think uh I think you've uh what what do they call it?
+
+[1:05:56] Dividing the baby's bath water, whatever you're supposed to do. I think you guys have uh done a really good job. I'm looking forward to the 2031 uh edition, and I hope there's a freaking picture of the new squirrel method with the old boot style. Get the new squirrel method slash rabbit method with the old boot style, and please bring back, please bring back a a culturally neutral fest, you know, festival, festival level boars stuffed boars head, if you can. That's my request.
+
+[1:06:27] You got it. All right, thanks guys for coming on. Thank you. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center in New Stance Studios. Not joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, who is stuck in traffic on the beautiful Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx here in New York City. For those of you that don't know, like the Bruckner Boulevard is one of our main hellhole thoroughfares, and it ranks right up there with the Cross Bronx Expressway, uh the BQE, uh, and the FDR Drive and portions of the West Side Highway as uh X the most unpleasant places. Actually, West Side Highway is not so bad.
+
+[0:42] The view is okay on the West Side Highway, even when you're in traffic. FDR somehow manages to spoil even the view of the East River, but there's some of the most unpleasant places in New York City, and so Nastasia's enjoying the view from there on her way in, should be here shortly. Uh John is also uh not here today. He had to attend to some family business. So uh I'll have to do all the Patreon stuff.
+
+[1:02] If you uh if you're listening live on the Patreon, call your questions in to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh, and if you don't know what Patreon is and you want to be able to listen live and call in and um all those nice stuff, and we have all kinds of fun things like books that only you can get, like uh maybe we have a very rare Boston Monstro Runroe uh Strauss uh pie book that is not available on the internet that we have only for our Patreon people. Maybe we do. You'd have to check out the Patreon and find out.
+
+[1:28] Uh Patreon uh forward slash cooking issues. We do have Joe Hazenrock in the panels here in New York. How you doing, Joe? I'm doing great, man. Thanks for coming in today.
+
+[1:39] So someone's keeping the lights on, Joe. Uh, you have anything interesting happened to you this week? No, that's a little Father's Day, a little Juneteenth. Oh, yeah. First Father's Day.
+
+[1:48] Yeah, first Father Day. First father. Thank you very much. Yeah. Uh it was quite enjoyable.
+
+[1:53] Uh not too much again with the food. I I'm so excited to get back into the kitchen and do some some serious cooking. So stay tuned for that. Yeah, yeah. Is it uh look that everything changes now?
+
+[2:04] You know, everything changes every every like three years, everything changes. Is the kid on solids yet? How does that work these days? What are they saying? He is on solids um every day.
+
+[2:12] It's mostly just to figure out for allergens. Uh we've gone through, you know, the broccoli, avocados. He's really into bananas. Um, he's eating bananas with his hands, which is great. The whole, you know, about a half a banana.
+
+[2:24] Yeah. Um that's fun to clean up. Butternut squash, the uh sweet potatoes. Um, so we've been doing a lot of that type of preparation for the week. Unholy mess at Joe's house.
+
+[2:35] Oh, absolutely. Uh so like uh when I when I when I had kids, uh was unfortunately the height of uh when all of the doctors were saying it amazes me how uh every you know number of years doctors don't mind changing the behavior of millions of people. So when I when I was uh you know having kids, they were like, oh yeah, you gotta keep them clear of all of the things that may cause allergens. And then about 10 years later, they're like, oh no, you gotta feed them all of those things, otherwise they're gonna be allergic to it later in life. So where are they now?
+
+[3:06] Where how have they messed with your generation of children, Joe? I'm not sure, man. Hey, I love you, doctors. My whole family's doctors. I love you.
+
+[3:13] I love you. I I think there's someone on the phone. Who's that? Let them roll in. Hi, this is Andy.
+
+[3:18] Oh, hey, how you doing? Good. This is the first time we've ever had a caller. This is the first time we've ever had a caller before I even introduced Jackie Molecules who's on the okay, carbonation question. Go.
+
+[3:30] Yeah. So I've got a soda stream, and I'm actually pretty happy with it. But I hate the little gas cylinders. You know why? Because they're a rip off.
+
+[3:40] Yeah, it's a rip-off. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've been looking around online and I've seen a bunch of kits that give you a hose that connects a regular 10 or 20 pound CO2 tank to the soda stream. Go 20.
+
+[3:56] But 20. None of them are actually Okay, 20. Yeah. If you have the room. Yeah.
+
+[4:06] So none of them are actually labeled. The kits are actually labeled food grade. And in the Amazon reviews, most of them have at least some complaints talking about them adding bad taste to the water. Uh huh. Well, uh I'm gonna go ahead and file under highly doubt.
+
+[4:26] Uh so here's the here's the thing. So a conversion kit uh consists there's two ways you can you can do this, right? Uh I'm assuming that most of the conversion kits go uh there's a high pressure hose and it's a little thin, it's a little thin uh like like over braided, very strong hose. And the reason it's thin is because the thinner the hose, the easier it is to withstand the 800 to uh thousand PSI depending on the temperature that the CO2 is gonna reach, right? So thinner hoses equal easier than to not burst.
+
+[4:58] Okay. A little thin black hose and uh a CGA, I forget the CGA number, I think it's uh 310 or something like this, 320. And you're gonna go from the CO2 uh tank to to uh to a soda stream uh uh converter like uh nozzle. Now gas is the only thing passing through that. The liquid never touches it.
+
+[5:17] Uh if you're getting bad taste or bad stuff, uh if you have improperly purged uh tanks, that can happen. So, like uh I sh I shouldn't uh uh uh later if at the end of this story, if it remind me, guys, if we have time, which I doubt we will. Did I already tell the story, Joe, about the exploding tanks on the air? Uh I can't remember, man. Well, you would have remembered exploding CO2 tanks, no?
+
+[5:43] No, I don't remember that. All right. So at the end of the show, I can talk if we have time about exploding uh CO2 tanks. And it's and by the way, CO2 tank people, you're like, oh, it was the aluminum ones because the fatigue, right? It's the fatigue and the aluminum, the aluminum.
+
+[5:55] Nope. Steel. Steel. Steel CO2 tanks exploding. I can talk about it later.
+
+[5:58] Uh, but I don't have the time to get into it now. Hopefully I will later. But I highly doubt taste does transfer through liquid lines very, very easily. But I've not had a case where taste is transferred through a gas line due to the line, due to the gas, perhaps, not to the line. And uh memory serves, memory's typically bad, but uh uh none of the CO2 and it doesn't have a regulator.
+
+[6:19] So like if you have a regulator with uh oil in it, sometimes that can transfer uh flavors and aromas, but uh I'm assuming that this doesn't have a regulator. Does it have a regulator or is it just an on-off uh no needle valve? On off needle, like a transfer hose? Yeah, just a valve. Yeah, I highly doubt it.
+
+[6:35] I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go with highly doubt. I would say don't worry about it. What I would say is There were a couple of comments about it being the washer. Uh well the washer uh is is is a white plastic. The the washer is a white plastic.
+
+[6:48] I believe it's feels like polyethylene. I don't uh uh HDPE. Uh there's a standard uh CGA washer for uh CO2. If you're using a crappy rubber washer, throw that away and get yourself uh uh, you know, the good white, completely inert. You can suck on them like a lifesaver and there's no flavor.
+
+[7:06] Uh do not trust the built-in rubber washer on the CGA fitting on the tank, uh, in my opinion. Don't trust that one as your sole leak leak thing. And um if you can store your excess outside or in the basement just in case you get a leak or whatnot, you don't want your place filling with CO2, although that's never happened to me. Or anyone I know. All of the deaths with CO2 uh have to do with people piping multiple tanks together and doing liquid transfer through lines.
+
+[7:33] A line bursts fills the uh room with CO2 and kills them. No one's ever, as I people have died from kegs exploding, people have died from CO2 tanks exploding, but not in bar, restaurant, or household situation. To my knowledge, happy to be corrected. This answer your question. I I would be happier if no one could correct you, but you know, we'll see.
+
+[7:55] Again, listen, things happen over time. People mess things up, people die constantly for different reasons. So it's hard to stay current on industrial deaths. I mean, that's a full-time job. Yeah.
+
+[8:07] So do you think I can get that correct washer from air gas or the wherever I would go to the water. You can walk into any welding shop and just ask them for the white CO2 washer, the white plastic washer. If they try to give you something else, be like, no, the white one, the white plastic one. And they'll be like, fine. And then if they charge you more than like 20 cents, it's a rip-off.
+
+[8:27] They're basically free. They they're they they they they they fall from the from the sky like snowflakes. All right. Awesome. All right.
+
+[8:35] It'll work for him. It'll work for him, people. It'll work. Jackie Molecules, how you doing? I'm doing good.
+
+[8:39] How's it good? California. California, California? California. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[8:45] Delightful here. All right. All right. Uh so I'm assuming that you you would have told me if you had done something interested in food, but I'm gonna because I'm gonna ask you now and embarrass you. Have you done any anything interesting in the food space in the past week?
+
+[8:57] Uh yeah, I'm cooking back through my my Thai food books, the Pac Pac book and the night market book. Uh during COVID, I got on a real pick. Like I went extreme, like the I think I did the entire PacPak book. So I'm making my way back through some of that. Since you live in LA, you can cook something from the night market book and then go to night market and see whether you did a good job.
+
+[9:19] Yeah, well, night market actually, I live right across the street from it here in Silver Lake, and they had a fire, and they just reopened and it's a really limited menu. So I actually can't have that many things there. Well, I hope I wish them all the best luck getting back in gear. I did not know that. Again, just it's a full-time job keeping up with this stuff.
+
+[9:41] Yeah. Uh that's right. So, Mr. Molecules, did you know we have an actual molecules man in the studio with us today? Not that you're not an actual uh Jack.
+
+[9:50] Jack, I didn't mean it that way. It's not that you're not an you're always you're always Jackie Molecules to me, my friend. Always. Uh but uh today we have Bob Florence from Maromi uh with Showyu Company in Mystic Connecticut. How you doing?
+
+[10:05] Great, how you doing? Doing all right. Who is believe it or not, a polymer chemist. In like in a f in a former incarnation of career polymer chemist, true or false? True.
+
+[10:14] Now, before we get into what you do now, I hear that you're from Syracuse, New York. I am from Syracuse, New York. So my brother and sister went to Syracuse. Oh, great. Yeah.
+
+[10:22] And uh when in the sometime in the two thousands, right? And uh like you know, mid two thousands or something like this. And uh I never went because I'm a I'm a bad brother. I'm a bad brother. So uh, but my son Dax is looking at Syracuse now, so I just went through there, and you know what I didn't have a chance to do as I was going through?
+
+[10:39] What's that? Have a speedy sandwich. You didn't have a speedy, I didn't have a speed. Will you describe for people who've never been in the uh in in this well, Syracuse, what's more Binghamton? Syracuse, you're in between the Binghamton and the hot dogs from Rochester, right?
+
+[10:53] Like you're in between those two. Where do you shade more on on in Syracuse? More speedy, more hot dog. You know what I shade toward is Italian subs. Is that what the Syracuse?
+
+[11:05] Well, it's from the State Fair. So if you were a kid growing up at Syracuse, she went to the State Fair every late summer, almost, yeah, a couple months from now. And uh my favorite thing was just going and getting an Italian sub. So it was just an Italian sausage on the grill, peppers, onions, plenty of salt and pepper, and that's it. Slapped on a great piece of bread.
+
+[11:26] You know, I love uh I love uh as we call them down here, the sausage and pep, but uh I I can't have them anymore. I make them at home, but I got traumatized. There's a terrible festival in New York called the San Gennaro Festival. I don't know if you ever heard of it. It's a it's uh it's it's kind of my worst nightmare because one of my favorite stores in the whole world, DiPalo's, is right in the middle of it.
+
+[11:47] And so I have to fight my way through it. And I used to have to commute when I taught at the French Culinary Institute. I would have to commute from the French culinary to my apartment through the San Genaro Festival, and people would be like wasted in the middle of the daytime and step right in front of my bike. And they'd be laughing, they'd be laughing. They're like, uh, I'm like, I almost killed you.
+
+[12:03] Why are you laughing? You know what I mean? Like it's funny. It's funny. You almost died.
+
+[12:06] Yeah. Anywho, so uh, yeah, so like uh they would poison me, and then I I went there once and uh the guy was making the sausage and peppers, and he pulled up his shirt and did that thing where he makes his stomach do the rolling wave belly dance thing. Oh yeah, yeah. And I haven't had a sausage and pepper since then. That would make you lose your appetite.
+
+[12:25] Yeah. Definitely. It's over. So in Syracuse, uh like how small of the sausage cut for this sausage. Are they left whole with the pebbles?
+
+[12:32] Yeah, yeah. They're whole. Here, I'm pretty sure they're hacked up. Joe, right here in New York, they're hacked up. Absolutely.
+
+[12:40] Yeah. I have to say something about New York City for one second before we get into what we actually came to talk about. The more I go outside of New York City, which isn't enough, right? The more I realize how uh crappy our hot dogs are compared to the rest of the world and how people think that we're known for our hot dogs. You go to Connecticut, you got Hummel.
+
+[13:01] Yeah. Right. You go uh to Rochester, you got uh whatever it is, Weigels, whatever. You go to you go to uh uh Buffalo, you got Solens. Everyone's got a good hot dog but us.
+
+[13:11] You know what I mean? Our hot dogs just aren't that good. They really aren't. Everyone's got Nathan's, right? Yeah, which are fine.
+
+[13:17] Fine hot dog. Fine. Uh Sheller and Weber is good, but like most people don't don't carry it. Like people make these like small but like everyone outside of New York, like they make the skinless ones for for for people, I don't know why, but they make them. You know what I mean?
+
+[13:31] But then they everyone has a good real uh hot dog with snap. You gotta have the snap. Gotta have the snap. Do you like Hummels or are you more of an upstate New York y uh have you been in Connecticut long enough? You know, I grew up in Liverpool outside of Syracuse, and we had a place called Hyde's Hot Dogs.
+
+[13:46] And I don't know what I don't know what the brand of hot dog was. They're still there. But it was uh when I was a kid, they took uh bucket of mustard with a paint stirrer and you slapped it on your hot dog, and it was just a wonderful dog. I love it. A little bit of char on it, a little bit of burn on it.
+
+[14:02] Oh yeah, yeah. Absolutely delicious. Upstate New York loves the char. Upstate New York loves the char. Maybe that's why they had better hot dogs.
+
+[14:08] And we're joined by Nastasia De Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stash? I'm okay. I was describing to uh before you showed up that you were on uh one of everyone's favorite places, the Bruckner. I left my house at 10.
+
+[14:14] Like, yeah. Two hours. Well, the by the way, uh this is like Gilligan's Island. Nastasia lives an hour away from here. So she was in, she got to spend an extra hour on beautiful.
+
+[14:33] Imagine this, people. So this actually makes a little bit so Moromi's in Mystic, Connecticut. Correct. And Mystic, Connecticut is right up on the end of Connecticut, like right before Rhode Island, right? And uh for those of you that don't know like uh geography out here, 99.9% of uh Connecticut's coastline is shielded by Long Island.
+
+[14:55] It's called the Long Island Sound. Looks like the ocean is not the ocean. Not the ocean. Not the ocean. However, at the very tippity tip, in fact, right where uh Moromey is, between Mystic, so we've if you ever go to Mystic, and I go to Mystic all the time because my in-laws are from Mystic.
+
+[15:10] I was married at Mystic at the Union Baptist Baptist Church uh 27 years ago with my anniversary uh uh this weekend. Congratulations. Oh thanks. Uh so like right there, like right there, you're like Mystic Connecticut is kind of an agglomeration of two places, Groton, where the sub base is, and Stonington on the other side, right? So you're like, you're from Mystic go, Stonington or the Groton side, right?
+
+[15:30] I mean pretty much. So when you're on the Stonington side, you're looking at the ocean. But when you're on the Groton side, you're looking at Montauk. Is that pretty accurate from uh from a geography standpoint? Yeah, pretty much.
+
+[15:41] Pretty much. Yeah. So you're on the Stonington side, so you're like real. Well, I guess you're shielded by the Fishers Island. You know, I actually live on the Groton side.
+
+[15:48] Oh, you did. And I was so confused when we moved there 10 years ago, or like people are asking us, we live in Mystic, and they go, Stoning 10 or Groton side? And we're like, what the hell are you talking about? We have no idea. So it's it took us a while to figure out, oh, we're right on the border.
+
+[15:59] So we're out actually on the crotten side of the Mystic River. Oh, nice. All right. So we'll get we'll get back to Mystic because I love Mystic. And for those of uh, for those of people who have never been to Mystic Connecticut, since I've was a kid, they have a place called the Mystic Seaport there.
+
+[16:14] So it's always been like kind of a location for kind of fun and interesting people. And over the past formative place in my life, too. Really? Oh, yeah. You used to go there, Jack?
+
+[16:23] Oh, yeah. As a kid, yeah. Yeah, yeah. My dad took me there. It was formative.
+
+[16:28] Yeah, we used to go all the way from Jersey, which is like a forever drive. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Uh, but I loved it. You know what I mean?
+
+[16:34] And it's still going. And and they have uh um Caesar Pelley, famous now dead Connecticut architect, did the uh aquarium, which is also a great aquarium. Beautiful aquarium there. Uh they got a good jellyfish tank. Who doesn't like it?
+
+[16:46] Actually, my nephew doesn't enjoy a jellyfish tank anymore. He used to love jellyfish tanks. And then one day he was like, it's just a sensory overload, like watching those jellies just kind of like do their weird alien space thing. Sensory overload, that's it. They get me hungry because they're delicious.
+
+[17:01] Oh, you like it? You like a jellyfish? Jellyfish is delicious. Like like you dry them and then cook them in something else. Or what do you do?
+
+[17:07] No, no, they're they're they're actually cut up. We had them when we lived in Shanghai, we used to eat them for like an appetizer. So they're served cold with like sesame oil and soy sauce and uh probably a little bit of chili oil on them. They're delicious. It's still served as a cold appetizer.
+
+[17:21] But like uh the preparation like wipes out the sting, apparently. Apparently. I think they're probably stingless, as far as I know. Like moon jellies, that kind of thing. Oh, yeah.
+
+[17:30] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Whenever I see them floating in the water styles, you see those suckers outside your uh door sometimes, right? That's a no-fly zone for you. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[17:38] The jellies. No. And also, I've been told, not that I know anything about it, that if you see a whole bunch of jellyfish where you didn't before, that means big problems with the environment. Probably. So you gotta start eating those suckers now.
+
+[17:49] Although that's that's like uh you're you're you're just curing the symptom, not the not the problem, right? By eating the jellyfish, you're you're not actually solving the problem. I can't eat fast enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh all right.
+
+[18:00] So Mystic over the past uh I would say 10, 15 years, has also really blossomed as a place where people are making things. Uh a lot of food. You have uh olive oil companies, you have salt companies, you have uh, you know, great bakeries, you just have like this explosion of uh people who are interested in um the like small smaller holding food production. And uh and um you're the first person actually that we've had from that group of people on, so uh I'm super super excited. Well excited to be here.
+
+[18:32] Yeah, yeah. So let's go back in time. So you started as a polymer chemist. Now, I'm assuming I'm assuming that your name and my name are roughly similar like levels of there's a million of us out there. So I'm hoping that I got the right you because I'm assuming that uh there's only one of you that worked for GE back in the day.
+
+[18:51] But did you get your start uh looking at instrument panels for uh cars and making better plastics for instrument panels and cars? Yeah, for GE. Yeah. So here's something I didn't know that I believe it or not, our listeners are probably interested in. So uh Lexan, right, is a polycarbonate uh polymer, uh poly well, polycarbonate, right?
+
+[19:13] Uh uh that is uh everyone knows it, right? But what I didn't know until I read your paper on new processes for uh instrument panels, uh, I didn't realize, first of all, that the that the knee size, the lower part of the instrument panel, needed a much lower temperature rating than the upper part. I mean, it makes sense as soon as you read it, but it's like it's like a big difference in temperature requirement. Yeah, like 30 degrees Fahrenheit difference between the upper and lower because of that freaking sun. Uh but what I didn't realize it now, so if you look at this paper, now remember, uh Bob worked for GE at the time, people, so uh it's very little surprise that when he was presenting to the Society of Automotive Engineers uh in the very late 80s.
+
+[19:54] It's no surprise that the GE branded product, Lexan, uh filled and unfilled, by the way, people, you don't necessarily need to reinforce fill your Lexan to have it perform uh in a much superior manner to uh regular polycarbonate or polycarbonate ABS blends. But what I didn't realize was that there was such a huge difference between uh branched uh branched uh polycarbonate, lexan, and what we call just polycarbonate. Because I think the average person when they're building something is like, oh, polycarbon is polycarbonate. Lexan is the same as polycarbonate, but no, it turns out much better material properties out of Lexan. There's a lot of different varieties of polymers out there.
+
+[20:29] So yeah, so we were going for safety. So when you build an instrument panel, if you get in an accident, there's actually built-in safety features in the materials of construction for those things. And that's what I did for a living. Yeah, yeah. Well, what's interesting is like early this is early, right?
+
+[20:44] Early, early. Uh so you had just moved past the point you just started using new polymers, and if any of you have ever bought a car from the 70s, the instrument panel cracks, like it like it cracks, it's done, right? It doesn't last. Right. Right.
+
+[20:57] So you were in a new era of polymers uh at that point, but you hadn't yet decided what was better for the fracture mechanics. Do you want it to be brittle and fracture easily, or do you want it to be more like Lexan where it's tough? And then you decided in the paper you came down no small shards? Mm-hmm. That was relatively new knowledge at the time, right?
+
+[21:14] People were just started thinking about it. Huh? Yeah. So how long did you do that for GE? Because then I have you later with get this, I'm assuming this is also you, a patent for you ready, people?
+
+[21:26] Oleaginous micro uh microbial biomass is subjected to pyrolysis to make microbial pyrolysis oil for use as a fuel or otherwise formed into combustible products for the generations of heat and/or light. That is me. Yeah. So that's a I mean, I know it sounds very different. Uh yeah, yeah.
+
+[21:41] Well, first of all, for those of you that for those people that don't know, so growing like uh an algae, right? So yeah, so we grew algae, and that was actually the start of my fermentation career. I worked for a startup in San Francisco called Solzyme where we grew uh algae in industrial fermentation tanks. And these are big tanks, and we fed them sugar. So if you overfeed anything like humans or algae, we get fat.
+
+[22:07] And so you just store all that excess energy as oil in the case of a plant or fat in the case of an animal. And so the technology that we were working on was to feed algae a lot of sugar, and they'd convert all that sugar into oil. It's basically um it's like sunflower oil. And then we'd extract that oil, and then downstream you could take that oil and you can turn it into fuel, you could turn it into chemicals, or you could just use it as food, because it's it's basically vegetable oil. Um so that was the technology, and that's what that patent speaks to.
+
+[22:36] Right. Well, you were doing it in a way that I think people don't, and here's the thing again that I didn't know. I learned a bunch this morning when I was researching your former life, that apparently if you heat up uh this like uh biomass at very high temperatures in the absence of oxygen, the oil doesn't actually break down. It just vaporizes and then you can separate it easily that way. Was that the was that one of the main parts of the patent was figuring out that separation?
+
+[23:03] That was uh key part of the technology was trying to figure out well, how do you get high yields out of the algae after you try once you grow the algae, you're trying to extract the oil and you're trying to get as much out as possible. So yeah, that patent is all around. Well, how do you optimize that process? Yeah. But then I read in just a an interview where they probably don't care about these things that you're like, yeah, but oil got so cheap with fracking that that actually did happen.
+
+[23:28] Yeah. So yeah, so when we started the company back in uh I joined them in 2010, oil was trading around, I think around $140 a barrel, similar to what it is today. And um and then after Belkin sh you know, Belkin was found in tar sands up in Alberta, oil prices really came down. They came down to like forty dollars uh a barrel. And all of us in that biofuels industry sat around looking at each other and going, well, this doesn't make much economic sense anymore.
+
+[23:57] What else are we gonna do for a living? Right, right, right, right. But I like the fermentation, so that really got me hooked on fermentation, which kind of led me to where I am today. So how so how did you end up then in Connecticut from California? So um after we after I left Solzheim, which was a startup company I mentioned with algae fermentation, uh I went to work in private equity, which is basically resuscitating dead companies.
+
+[24:21] So you take a company that's gone through bankruptcy, take them out of bankruptcy, and restructure the company so that it's in uh new profitable form and shape. So I I was responsible for helping to take uh industrial uh equipment company in Connecticut out of bankruptcy and make them profitable again. So did it did it work? It did work. And Debbie and I, my wife Debbie and I, we decided we really like the place and we stayed.
+
+[24:49] So when we moved there, we moved from the Bay Area, San Francisco to Mystic, Connecticut, sleepy little town, and we're driving down from the airport in Rhode Island. Driving down the road, and there's like trees all around us, and there's like nothing. And we're looking at like green and trees and green and trees, and I said, Where is everything? There's nothing here. We're in the middle of the woods.
+
+[25:08] And it was really, you know, even though I grew up in central New York, which has a lot of trees too. I was so used to living in cities as an adult, it was really a strange feeling. Particularly for Debbie because she grew up in LA. It's like, wow, what are we gonna do here? Well, Mystic's a great town.
+
+[25:22] It's also like an easy, it's easy to get up to Providence, Boston, down to New York. It's right on the Amtrak line. Yeah. I think it's also it's got a good mix of people. It's not all like it's not all like one kind of person there, you know what I mean?
+
+[25:34] It's uh different different walks of life. I learned how to drive comfortably at 25 miles an hour. And in a relaxed mode. It's just like, okay, this is it. I'll never get there.
+
+[25:46] So for those of you that don't know, when you're going to Mystic, uh one of the main exits for Mystic is you get off of it going a billion miles an hour off of I-95 because you finally punch through traffic. Like once you're up there, the traffic is boom, you're gone, right? And you get a little bit bent because because I-95 is incredibly for those of you that live in places with properly designed highways, I-95 through Connecticut is the worst design in the world. Stas, back me up on this. No yeah.
+
+[26:12] Yeah. Every once in a while, it's like some some uh civil engineer, which is what my grandpa was, he's like, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna get rid of a lane. Whoa, whoa, whoa. And then we're gonna merge another lane in in like, you know, 250 feet.
+
+[26:24] Just keep the lane. Just keep the lane. So like you'll have like right up near Mystic, there's a place that there's a lot of accidents because the highway narrows and then instantly opens up again for the exit to go to Mystic. You come off that exit going a billion miles an hour, and then instantly it gets down to 25 mile an hour, and there's often a cop there waiting to t uh to tag outsiders who don't know to slow down to 25 mile an hour. True or false.
+
+[26:46] True. True. Yeah, uh anyway, I love Mystic. Mystic's a good place. Uh so let's talk about your your partner.
+
+[26:51] So you go to Mystic, you start from well, you start fermenting first, not a business, just at home. Just at home. So what do you what do you start with? So um actually I started with cheese. Um so after I got out of the Soulzyme algae fermentation, I was looking at fermentation technologies and I was playing around with cheese and cheese technology, and I decided very quickly with Connecticut laws and how they handled milk, and you couldn't make raw milk cheese without owning a cow and owning a farm, and I was like, Well, I don't want to mess around with that.
+
+[27:19] That's a level, yeah. So I quickly kind of dumped that as a as a career path and said, Um, what else are we looking at? And I was looking at casting a wide net on fermentation at large and said, okay, well, there's this technology of show you soy sauce manufacturing. And what was interesting to me is is quite complex, although the the technology is like really old, the complexity of it is really challenging. So I thought from just from a curiosity standpoint, it was just really interesting challenge.
+
+[27:51] So I started making um soy sauce at home, and I started buying cultures from a company up in Washington called Gem Cultures, sells Koji spores. And they've got a little packet that has instructions, and I was making like gallon quantities of Koji. And I built a incubator in my dining room uh out of wood and had little trays in it, and I was steaming beans on a pressure cooker on the stove, and I was making roasting wheat in the oven and grinding wheat on a kitchen aid. So I had all the components together, and I'm putting it in my little incubator, which was heated by a light bulb and had a humidifier in it. It was yeah, it was pretty old school.
+
+[28:28] But it it worked. And so I was making um easy baked koji. It was absolutely absolutely and I still have that machine and it works great. Um I was like babysitting this thing every night. I'm like checking the temperature every hour, and I was like obsessed with how to grow koji.
+
+[28:44] And um, so I was growing a lot of koji, learned how to do that and did batch after batch after batch, and I'd be getting up in the middle of the night, going down and checking the what's the temperature of my koji now? Is it too hot? Is it too cold? Is it too wet? Is it too dry?
+
+[28:58] And so you you kind of get all it koji's pretty picky, it doesn't just grow. Um well, maybe in the right absolutely ambient environment, like in Japan or Southeast Asia, but uh Mystic Connecticut's not that. So you have to keep it warm, you have to not keep it too hot. Once it starts growing, it generates a lot of heat, and it actually can kill itself because it'll generate so much heat through metabolization that it'll just burn itself out. And then it doesn't like to be too moist, like wet water, like raining on it, uh, but it doesn't want to be too dry.
+
+[29:32] So it's got this really, really sweet Goldilocks zone that you can grow it in. And so I was obsessing over well, how do I make that happen and how do I make it happen repeatedly? And what year is this? And this is uh like 2017, 2016, 2017. So that's right around the time, but really kind of just before when kind of uh the do do-it-yourself PID controller was everywhere.
+
+[29:55] It was like at the cusp of the case. Yes. Yeah, yeah, exact exactly. So this is the same thing. We don't need to get into it.
+
+[30:03] But yeah, but I like PID. Yeah, PID is really works great. Yeah, but like prior to that, in the early uh in the early early 2000s, early even teens, you know, you had to really know what you were doing. You know, you'd go get a Watlow or an equivalent controller, and you know, you had to have some industrial background to but now like you know, they're almost free. You don't even need to go on eBay, you can just buy one for like 15 bucks.
+
+[30:25] They're not that expensive at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so so that's what I started. So I started making soy sauce.
+
+[30:32] And I was just making soy sauce batch after batch after batch, making the same thing. And so I made some soy sauce that I thought tasted pretty reasonable. It was like, yeah, this is this is pretty good stuff. And so Instagram was kind of I guess it'd been around for a while by then, but I had got on it and I had contacted a local chef, James Weyman, um, who was working over at Oyster Club. He was the executive chef at Oyster Club at the time.
+
+[30:59] And I said, Hey James, I'm I'm making soy sauce over here. Would you be willing to give it a shot? And he's like, sure, sure, bring it on down. So you were a customer? You were a guest?
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+[31:07] You you were a regular? Yeah, I was a regular. Yeah, yeah, people. Don't underestimate the uh relationship between regulars and the restaurants. So true.
+
+[31:18] So uh so anyway, I I brought in my little, I was so proud of it, brought in my little bottle. It's a little like five ounce woozy bottle, like a hot sauce bottle. I brought it down there and uh gave it to James and kind of sat there like, is he gonna taste it? Is he gonna taste it? Uh wonder what his reaction is.
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+[31:33] I'm kind of staring at him, wondering what he thinks of it. And he he tries it and he's like, hey, this is you know, it's pretty good. It's pretty good stuff. And so uh so that that was the beginning of a relationship, and I really have to hand it to James just for taking a uh flyer on a guy who's just making soy sauce in his daughter's bedroom. And um, so I so I made some batches of soy sauce, and uh I think I was getting better at making koji, which is really the basis for making good soy sauce.
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+[31:58] You don't make good koji, you don't make good soy sauce. So I had made um some soy sauce, and I'm like, okay, so here we are. I've got a lot of experience working in Asia. Uh back to my instrument panel days. I used to go to Asia and sell the Honda and Toyota and those guys.
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+[32:12] Oh, nice, nice. So that was the beginning of my my love of of working in Japan and in Asia. And of course, Debbie and I lived in Shanghai, and I had an office in Tokyo, one in Bangalore, one in Shanghai, and one in Seoul. So I kind of tooled around Asia for years. How many of those languages can you speak?
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+[32:26] I saw that video. Probably a quarter of several, but not two languages. So I'm like fluent in 1.5 languages. There you go. All right.
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+[32:35] If you add them all up. So I'm presuming that you can speak or something. Some, some very, very rudimentary. What what they call taxi Japanese or um anyway. Um, so I I had made soy sauce, thought it was pretty respectable.
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+[32:55] So I wrote to 15 CEOs of Japanese soy sauce company. So um I sent out letters, I researched soy sauce makers in Japan, found out who the CEOs were, wrote him a nice note and said, Hey, I'm Bob, I make soy sauce in Connecticut, and uh wondering if you'd be willing to meet with me when I'm in Japan next and uh try my soy sauce. And so 15 letters went out, emails went out, and uh got responses from three of the CEOs and said, Sure, come on over. I was like, Oh, oh okay. So I bought a sort of thing.
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+[33:26] That's very surprising to me. It's very nice. So uh so I got on a plane and went over to Japan with samples of soy sauce, and I met with um uh Yamaki uh Ogura soy sauce and chiba, Yamaki and um uh outside of Tokyo and Chiba Shoyu in Chiba, Japan. And that's the video you're referring to. So that the president and um he's like the fifth generation owner president of Chiba Shoyu Idesan, uh has really taken me under his wing.
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+[33:57] Uh so I went over there, I gave my samples of soy sauce, and he's like this is pretty good for an American. That checks out, that checks out with one of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was but it was uh it was good. And then we spent we spent an hour talking about salt.
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+[34:15] And it you know, one of the things when you make soy sauce, it's two stage fermentation. So you make koji, and that takes two days, and then you put it in a barrel with salt water, and that takes six months to a year to ferment it in a in a barrel, and then you press it, extract it, and bottle it. And so my question was all around well, how much salt do you use? And how do you calculate a percentage of salt? And you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to translate between salt content.
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+[34:45] Like you think 16% salt's pretty easy. Is it 16% by weight, by volume? Right, weight and volume, or like is it is it before you add the materials? Is it after you add the material? So we had a long conversation because I'm not fluent in Japan and Japanese, and they're not quite fluent in English.
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+[35:01] And so we spent a lot of time just talking about salt. We spent the first hour of our relationship was just salt and salt water and baking salt. And so then Do you know who would have hated that? This one behind me, Nastasia would have commanded the stuzz. Imagine that, that.
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+[35:13] That's like a I know. You would have been beating your head. You know what though? You would have been beating your head against some of the most beautiful fermentation barrels I've ever seen in my whole life. This company, you gotta go on the website, go on Maromi's website and look at the video, and and even if you don't understand anything that's being said, as I didn't, because I don't understand anything.
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+[35:33] Uh when you see those barrels, oh my god, how beautiful are those barrels from like the eighteen fifties? They're old, they're like a hundred he said eighteen forty-nine, I think, in the video. So he said around they were built at the time of the gold rush in America. Around Levi Strauss. But they're makes a joke about that.
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+[35:48] Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he holds up a sign that says we love Levi Strauss, and that's that's the connection. Good info. But like these barrels are like amazing. Like, what is what are the like so they have steel reinforcement duh because otherwise they'll get blown apart, but they have these old woven like what is that?
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+[36:04] Those are bamboo. So it's woven bamboo. And um what it what it it's woven wet and then it dries and it constricts as it dries and it it holds the the wood slats together. And do they have to redo that every once in a while? That bamboo?
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+[36:18] Those those barrels aren't really made anymore. There's a f there's like a couple of barrel makers that are trying to get back in the business, but the issue isn't making the barrels so much as finding the wood to make the barrels. Because those old barrels are made out of very ancient wood that had zero knots in it. So you can imagine that if you have a knot, they they leak. Right, right.
+
+[36:37] So you have to have this super clean wood to start with to make the staves that go into the barrels, and today there aren't the trees around to really make those anymore. So it's it's a it's a dying art, and the old barrels are slowly like deteriorating to the point where they're being taken out of production. So most soy sauce today is made in concrete pits. So while you'll always see pictures of wood barrels, the this the reality is is these things are made in concrete pits. Yeah.
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+[37:06] That are well these barrels in this in this one for to give you guys a size reference they're of a similar size as you would see like uh wart brewing in um in like uh a distillery they're big yeah they're big they're big big so yeah I had a chance to uh to go with the owners of these soy sauce makers and and actually taste soy sauce at different um process areas or stages in the process rather and so we're tasting maromi maromi is the mash so that's the name of my company but um maromi generically means mash like if you were to make whiskey you'd make maromi mash if you make sake you make sake mash um sake maromi so anyway we went around we were tasting that maromi from the directly from the barrels I'm like this stuff's delicious it's like why do you bother squeezing it it's like just delicious just like it is what they say well that's what we do. That's yeah yeah yeah and tradition important so let's before we get any further let's go through the actual process for for people like how ja Japanese uh do you want to go through like the the rough kinds you're not interested you want us go through your process we can go through the process I think all right so you're so as you say you started with you start growing the the Koji from and you're buying the spores right yes because don't want weird as well you don't want weird stuff growing so having a real pure culture to start with is really important. Right so they're all aspergillus which is a kind of mold, but the the the kind that you normally grows on bread, the green stuff, flavus will poison you because it can poison you. Aflatoxin can, doesn't always, doesn't need to poison you. Can can be not encouraged, right?
+
+[38:43] Right, right. And then the uh the and I can never pronounce them, so I'll have you pronounce the one that means that it goes on rice, because I can never pronounce that. Or or as I or is I print or as I yeah. So there's that one as and then the the two common ones, and then there's the one that's for uh soy sauce, which also uh I wrote it down, but I I never can remember its name either. Sojay.
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+[39:02] So is that what you use or so? So use uh I actually use a combination of those um varieties. So the idea between by the what's called Koji tanny, which is a spore, is you want for soy sauces, you want something that's going to digest protein really efficiently. So you want um uh mold that's going to create a lot of protease enzymes, and those protease enzymes then digest the proteins and turn them into amino acids. And the aminos are what tastes really good.
+
+[39:35] And so that's really what we're after. So the whole idea of um making koji is really you're an enzyme farmer. Um but it's similar to what's happening with malt. So if you're if you're using malt, you actually you sprout barley and you're creating enzymes, and the enzymes are then used to break down the sugars in the substrate. And so with with um koji mold, you're doing the same thing, but you're using a substrate that's a combination of soybeans and wheat.
+
+[40:02] And so we start with soybeans, we steam them at high pressure, um, we roast wheat, and then we crack the wheat. Um combination of wheat and soybeans together is then inoculated with koji, and then you grow the koji on that substrate. And what's happening then is the koji as it's growing, it's injecting enzymes into there to digest its food basically. And how how do you determine for you the uh how do you determine for you the ratio of uh wheat to to soy? So there's a broad range of ratios in soy sauce.
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+[40:36] But the major um soy sauce that's sold worldwide is is a variety called koikuchi, which is essentially 50 percent wheat, 50 percent soybeans, or variations that are very close to that. And that combination is a very traditional type of soy sauce. In fact, this the showy that I make is is about 50-50 soy and wheat. Um and so that koji then goes into a barrel of salt water and then it ferments in that barrel. So that's a barrel fermentation that occurs over time in a very, very um salty environment.
+
+[41:07] And uh so very salty, how salty? Um soy sauce is on the shelf for most soy products that are of koikuchi variety are around 16 percent salt total. So it's uh on the order of 900 milligrams of sodium. And when people say that uh, like for instance, that some of the higher wheat varieties taste saltier, they just taste saltier, right? They're not actually saltier?
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+[41:29] I don't think so. I think it's a matter of how you perceive things, and a lot of your perception has to do with what you've eaten um and what time of day it is. So your body is actually metabolizing and you've got a lot of microbes in your mouth that behave differently at different times of the day. So your perception changes over time. So if you were to taste something in the morning or taste something after night after lunch or taste something before dinner or after dinner, you might have uh different perception as to the saltiness of that, yes.
+
+[41:55] Huh. So 15%, yeah. You know, I used to have to do uh I'll do calculations later. I should have done my calculations before I showed up because uh I'm not good at math on the fly. Uh okay.
+
+[42:06] So how long then is it is it aging in this for free? In other words, like let's say somebody wants to start doing this at home. What's a reasonable size? Gallon at a time? Yeah, I think so.
+
+[42:15] I think starting off at a gallon size, so you're you're gonna be making about um five kilograms of koji to make about a gallon or two of soy sauce. Okay, so roughly. So five, so five I like how we're going to be a few. Five kilograms of metric imperial cell. Roughly ten pounds.
+
+[42:34] Okay, so yeah, yeah. Uh to make uh one gallon to eight pounds of. So you get less soy sauce than you start with co koji. Yeah. By by weight.
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+[42:48] Right, right. Right. Okay. So now now do you mash the stuff up or do you leave the beans whole? Um, so that's an interesting question.
+
+[42:55] So if you look at an industrial soy sauces today, are made mostly from soy grits. And so when soy soybeans are harvested, they're pressed and the oil's extracted. The oil goes into cooking oil markets or industrial markets. What's left over are grits? And the grits are used to make most industrial soy sauces are using grits, not a few.
+
+[43:13] Like a kick them in red. Right, yeah. And Yamasa as well, or um there are there are different grades in each, every manufacturer has different grades. What I'm making is what's called whole bean soy sauce. And so you're using the oil that it's in there as well.
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+[43:26] So you're not throwing out like half the components of the soybean when you're making soy sauce. And what that does is it allows you to have more raw materials to create flavor components. So if you throw out the oil, you're throwing out all the fatty acids. All those fatty acids get converted into esters and ketones and really tasty things. Those flavors, like you like Harold McGee, he he describes those flavors as being flowery components of flowery notes when you're when you're having a a taste of an ester or taste of ketones and esters and in acids and combinations.
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+[43:58] They're really nice flavor components. And so if you don't use them to start with, you'll never have them in your soy sauce. And so what I'm trying to do with my soy sauce is have a soy sauce that's not just a single note, which is the umami or amino component, but it's really like a cord. You get a beginning, middle, and an end, you get that whole flavor profile out of it because you're using whole soybeans to start with. Now, how do you prevent, or maybe you can't, or you know, it's protein breakdown can sometimes result in very bitter polypeptides, right?
+
+[44:29] But you don't get that much bitterness out of most soy sauces. Like, what is it that's controlling? Is it just because the breakdown is more complete, or is does does soy sauce go through a more bitter point? And I know that certain soy sauces have like we were talking earlier before the show, kind of a bitter acrid note. Or for instance, lipid breakdown products can sometimes be very reactive on the tongue, and like they make so if I eat certain cheeses that are high, I can tell if cheese, an aged cheese is high in fat because it pops my taste buds out.
+
+[44:55] Like I have this like crazy reaction to like lipid breakdown products. Um soy sauces depending on the stuff that's going in? You know, that's a good question, Dave, because I I did when I had you know tens and tens of barrels up in my daughter's bedroom when I was first making this. I made a lot of mistakes. So I made a lot of stuff that went into the compost pile that really wasn't suitable for human consumption human consumption.
+
+[45:24] And and a lot of those are like, well, the koji didn't really go in the right direction. So if you don't make koji the right way, you're probably making bacillus, and if you're making bacillus, you're making like stinky cheeses like orange wash rind cheeses. Those are bacillus-based bacteria. So the built bacillus will outcompete the other organisms like yeast that are gentler on the taste buds. And so some of the bitterness that you have in there can be result of just having really bad koji to start with.
+
+[45:56] And that's so that's one issue that you have there. The other issue is you barrel ferment things. Um those barrels need to be maintained. They need to be stirred. So I stir every barrel I have gets stirred once a week.
+
+[46:06] So it seems like a lot because there's a lot of barrels, but it's good for my upper body workout. So I'm okay. So but if you were to just make koji throw it in a barrel and just leave it alone for a year and don't maintain it, you're gonna get this stratification where you get layers of um like almost like a pellicle, like if you're making vinegar. So the pelical layers like layer upon layer upon layer of different organisms that survive in different environments until you get to the koji, and those create different chemical components that can create um ammonia, can create some of those off-flavors, can create some of the bitter flavors. And so a lot of it is how you is really in the craft of making soy sauce, and that can get lost on um sort of hobbyist if you're just making it and you and you don't have the ability to maintain that um meromi over time.
+
+[46:55] You could probably run into that, yeah. All right, so let's say I've got my 10 gallon paint bucket. Right. I've got uh what'd you say, five kilos of koji in it, and how much 15% water uh so uh saline water am I adding to that? It's almost like a half and half.
+
+[47:07] So you're not half of Koji component, half of the salt water. Okay, so I'm adding another five kilos. So I'm at I'm at 10 kilos right now, 22 pounds. Okay. So and divide by eight, and that's how many gallons?
+
+[47:19] So it fits in a five-gallon bucket, fine. Yeah, yeah, okay. Absolutely. Uh now, even room to foam, if it does, I don't know. No, it doesn't.
+
+[47:25] Good, nice. So then uh you're stirring it, right? I mean, you leave them whole, and then you're stirring it uh what do you say once every week. Okay, for how long? It depends.
+
+[47:38] So I I used to say that I'd made stuff and I'd age it until it tasted good. And I still do that. So and there's a little and there's little differences in terms of each batch I try and maintain as much control over what I'm doing as possible. But even with that, there's some slight variation. So I taste as I go along, and it's like that's really tasty at this point, and I'm gonna extract it.
+
+[48:03] So typically that's like six months to a year, and you can get to get to a year, you can get to after you. I've had 18 months, I've had 24 months. And what happens if you go too long? Is it a little bit more than a little bit? You know, I haven't gone too long yet.
+
+[48:15] No. Doesn't lose anything, it doesn't like die. I have yet to have gone too long. So you decide it's ready, it's done, then what do you do? Okay, so once it's done, then I press it.
+
+[48:26] And so pressing it, I have uh what is um an apple cider press. And so you make uh what's called a cheese, which is a layer of uh filter cloth, a platin press, another layer, another layer. So you make like 10 layers of of uh cake, and then press it, and you extract the raw soy sauce, and the raw soy sauce then goes into a pasteurizer. And unlike milk, it's really healthy to pasteurize soy sauce because it drives myard reactions. So now you've got a lot of um aminos and you've got a lot of sugar from the wheat, and the combination of sugar and proteins, as you know, over time or with heat, create these myard components, which are really tasty.
+
+[49:07] And that contributes to what is the darkness and the dark uh color of soy sauce. And so pasteurizing for soy sauce is better for flavor, versus with milk, you actually denature proteins and you make it worse. But with soy sauce heating, it actually makes it better. I would love to try before and after. Maybe someday we can visit.
+
+[49:28] Yeah, I know John really wanted to visit now. Anyway, I would love to visit too. I would love to taste before before and after that. Oh, that'd be cool. Now, once you okay, so you you press it, so you're getting out of that 10 kilos, you're getting uh eight divided by you're getting like four, a little under four kilos of product out out of ten.
+
+[49:48] So what are you doing with the how much of it evaporated over that time? Like how much is actually left when you're done? So um evaporation I control because I add back water. So whatever the head space is on that barrel, it's gonna maintain that over time. Right, because otherwise your salt would be way out of battle.
+
+[50:04] Yeah, the salt content gets too high and it kills everything. So you want to maintain um microbiome environment that's healthy and stable. And so if you let it evaporate too much, you're gonna have salt concentration, so absolutely nothing will live in there. Um whereas at the salt levels that you're making soy sauce at, you you want certain yeast bacteria to thrive in there that are continuing the work to convert proteins into aminos and starches into sugars. So when you're pressing it in the cider press, by the way, you've been to Clyde Cider Mill?
+
+[50:33] I have. Love Clyde Cider milling. Same thing. My my press is just a small version of that, and I love their cider donuts. Oh, yeah.
+
+[50:40] For those of you that don't know, Clyde Cider Mill is uh still operating pre-prohibition cider press. Uh it's either in or right outside of mystic. Yeah. And uh they have this like the I don't forget, they might have converted the motor, but all the old belt-dry stuff is still there, and they have this giant press and they just wheel in the apple palm as and you hear that in the big press comes down and squeezes it, and you can see the juice shoot around the outside. That's a fun that's a fun trip.
+
+[50:59] Yeah. I once asked like uh they used to just lie during prohibition, basically. You know, they stayed around during prohibition when a lot of cider uh mills went kind of defunct, and they claimed that they were making uh vinegar for liniment for horses. You know what I mean? And they were doing pressing a lot of other people's apples.
+
+[51:20] Yeah. People like because the nice thing about apple juice is you press the cider, it's not alcoholic yet. I mean, it's not my job to stop it from coming alcoholic. That's how Welch has made all their money figuring out how to stop alcoholic fermentation. Anyway, I digress.
+
+[51:33] So uh the first stuff that comes off the press versus the last squeeze. What's the taste difference? The first stuff that comes off versus the last stuff that comes off. You know how like it's pretty homogenous. Really?
+
+[51:46] It's pretty homogenous. It really is, yeah. There's not a huge and I taste, I have guests come in, we taste, and honestly, it's all really good. It first straw for the first time. First trip last trip.
+
+[51:59] Somebody said that before. Yeah, all right. Now what do you do with the with with the uh whatever it is, uh six. Yeah. So the lees um goes into certain preparations.
+
+[52:13] So my partner James, uh as you as I mentioned, is uh executive chef. He owns Nanas in Westerly, Nanas Mystic. Um so he's constantly playing with different formulations that use all the ferments that we do, whether it's koji, whether it's soy sauce, whether it's our miso, our show use leaves. So we've come up with some creative uses for that, um, culinary uses for the lees. Um, I'm looking for other uses and other outlets as well, and we're toying around with some ideas with that.
+
+[52:39] What does it tasting? It tastes like soy sauce, it tastes like dry soy sauce. So it's like a um it would it's like a seasoning. Um so I think it's really good. I think it's got a lot of applications.
+
+[52:52] In Japan, a lot of it goes into agricultural feed. Um, but uh but I look at it as potentially another seasoning. If you dehydrate it and powder it, like uh what's it texture like? Yeah, what's the texture like? Um it's like a really fine coffee grounds.
+
+[53:08] Super fine coffee grounds. Like Turkish? Yeah. But does it feel grit? In other words, it doesn't dissolve, right?
+
+[53:13] So that is that the issue with it, is that it doesn't like dissolve on the side. No, it does not dissolve. So you can't use it like a salt. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[53:20] But you could use it for like a spice rub. You could, and we do. And I do. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's it's really delicious.
+
+[53:27] So I think I think it's an underutilized asset um that could have a lot of applications, so we're playing around with that. But again, my main focus is making really super good soy sauce. So the show you leaves is is a whole nother exploration that needs to happen. For the future. But the soy sauce is like that's gotta be right.
+
+[53:46] All right, so so someone that gets is getting into it, right? They can go buy uh Rich uh She and Jeremy Umansky's book, uh Koji Alchemy to get started. Sure. And uh they can start making a gallon batches, but let's just go piece by piece. So you started making Koji and you said uh, you know, you had good results clearly from the beginning, or you wouldn't have continued.
+
+[54:05] That's the sad truth about most most of us. I mean maybe you're not. Yeah, yeah. If you if you don't have at least some initial success, it's a kind of a disincentive to continue, right? Right, right.
+
+[54:13] Uh but how long until you really felt like you knew before you again, every every day I go into the kitchen I realize how little I know, but like how long did it take before you felt you kind of got a handle on it? So I was about um it was a couple of years into the process that I started thinking about breaking out into a space. And in Mystic isn't known for its industrial spaces and so I spent actually a couple of years after I figured out that I wanted to do this to find a space that was big enough tough enough industrial enough to make soy sauce in. There's that there was that old gas station on Route 1. Remember that place that old gas station but enough infrastructure I mean you know Mystic's a tourist town right so you know we've got great restaurants we've got all this but we don't have a lot of factories.
+
+[54:58] Right right and so finding a place to make something is good. And I found a really great um sports facility that was uh had a batting cage is like 4,000 square feet of batting cage with astro turf on the floor and I ripped all that up I designed and engineered a building that would house a Koji room um all the packaging equipment uh pressure cookers um roasting machine like for the wheat it's like a big coffee roaster and then all of the downstream area for barrel fermentation and then packaging who knows you get you need a lot of room for packaging it's amazing yeah you got to put stuff in stuff so what's your current batch size? Current batch size is uh sixty gallons per batch six sixty gallons of meromi so I make about six hundred bottles of six hundred of these babies a batch. So is that a custom barrel size or is that like no it's a you can buy them commercially commercially it's it's pretty like it if you look like uh like a oak barrel like a bourbon barrel or something like that they're about six and you're all in wood I've seen pictures right I'm in both. I'm in wood and I'm in plastic barrel.
+
+[56:02] And what's the difference in taste between the two? So um in blind taste testing, uh the plastic barrels actually edge out the wood slight ever so slightly. I mean you'd really have to just you'd have to taste a lot of soy sauce to tell the difference. But I think what's happening is that the microbiome stability is a little bit more in the plastic because they don't evaporate so quickly, whereas the wood tends to have a little bit more um uh evaporation and change and variability over time. They're they're both really tasty.
+
+[56:32] I mean, it's like splitting hairs in my view. All right, Stas, come over here. We've got to do a tasting while I'm asking the Patreon questions, or I'm gonna get killed. And by the way, tamari isn't actually just a wheatless soy sauce. It's the it's the leftovers from your miso production, correct?
+
+[56:46] And that's why it's there's so little of it and it's cost so much. Tamari is um it's interesting, is because tamari is sort of a predecessor of soy sauce. So it's a if you make if you make miso, you're gonna have a puddle on top, which is tamari. And soy sauce actually optimized making of tamari. Um so historically there was a little bit of liquid, and the Japanese turned it into mostly liquid.
+
+[57:11] But your stuff isn't is it's miso. So I make I make Shiro miso, which is white miso, and we have a little bit of tamari at the top, and I collect that, and it's very precious, very nice. All right, Jordan writes in have you done side-by-side comparisons of different Koji starters? Uh Nastas, what if you guys tasty? We've got we've got to crush this all in.
+
+[57:28] Have you done side by side comparisons of different koji starters and making sure you end our miso? I know some strains are known to have more protease activity, but is it really that noticeable in in the final product in your experience? I think most people, most hobbyists would probably not know the difference. And unless you've got like GC mass spec and you can go analyze all that stuff, you probably won't notice as a hobbyist, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. All right.
+
+[57:49] And on a similar note, uh Jordan always hears that protease production is favored when grown at lower temps, upper 70s, while amylase is favored at higher temps, 80s to 90s. Is this something you've actually noticed in your experience? Have you tried growing koji under different temperature profiles to see its effect on the final product? I have. And Jordan's uh was asking also about what happens after you uh strain it with the solids and uh they bury them in vegetables with great results, but is there anything else you recommend?
+
+[58:23] You're working on it, you say. You're working on it. Yeah, I think like spice rubs is certainly an area of exploration. All right. Uh Science Slut wants to know tips and guides for getting started at home with fermenting with Koji making soy or shoyu.
+
+[58:35] We hit that a little bit, right? Yeah, we did. Uh are there good sources or strains of Koji in North America? Do you still recommend gems? I think Gem Cultures is a great starter place, yeah, absolutely.
+
+[58:44] Right. And guides for uh to choose for which application would you go to Koji Alchemy or like what other websites? What about uh Koji Alchemy is good? I think um Does Shirtleaf still update uh they have a wonderful body of knowledge as well. The Soy Institute or whatever it's called?
+
+[58:58] Yeah. Uh what are you most excited for in this space now? Seeing a ton of people on Instagram and others experimenting with Koji and Miso in North America. I'm curious if you see any super exciting areas of development or research or areas that need to be explored in the future. I think I think this is kind of like on the cusp of uh craft industry, similar to what the beer industry was at for 40 years ago, 30 years ago, when you started breaking out of very generic uh beer.
+
+[59:25] And so I think it's exciting that people are looking at different types of fermentation and different types of shoyus and different additives and showyus. And we've got a different variety here that we've got variety, rye. Oh, that's so delicious. I tried that though. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[59:39] The rye showyu is uh that's something different. That was a mistake, by the way. But what do you mean? You accidentally you're like you can't tell rye from wheat when you're looking at it. What do you mean?
+
+[59:46] No. Um no, I actually didn't. I picked up a bag of rye. Um James said, hey, there's there's some wheat over in the farmhouse, go grab a bag. And I went and grabbed a bag and I'm like, this is the weirdest looking wheat.
+
+[59:57] But I made it anyway. I was like, oh, what the hell? I'll just make it. And then it was rye. Was it problematic?
+
+[1:00:02] Was it we like physically was it problematic? No, it handled the same way. It didn't roast quite as quickly, but um but the pentazans didn't mess you up, you didn't get like weird, like ropey or bubbly or anything like that. It is delicious. People, if you get a chance to go on uh Moromi Webb's, is it still on the website?
+
+[1:00:19] The rye, because like everything I've had is delicious, and we're gonna taste them in one second. Uh but the rye is something that uh you've never had it before. You ever gonna do fish sauce by the way? Like in a Shiri style, Japanese fish sauce? No, I have made fish sauce, but I'm gonna focus on soy sauce.
+
+[1:00:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do one thing, yeah. Uh Memphis Leak wants to know uh have you noticed uh any differences uh in terms of s uh soybeans, the quality of the sources of the variety in terms of the result. And go for wheat too. Like what kind of wheat?
+
+[1:00:44] Do you use a hard wheat, a soft wheat? Does it matter? Hard red wheat uh has a higher protein content, so you want as much protein as you can, so you're gonna pack in more protein with hard red wheat than soft white. So, yeah, definitely. Um, and you want to use uh kind of a medium size yellow organic soybeans, a good place to start.
+
+[1:01:02] But do you notice a huge quality with like harvest time or any of this stuff or you know I I I got into some soybeans that I wasn't happy with. Um it's there's so many variabilities in agriculture, it's hard to put your finger on is it the variety of soybean or is it the way they were harvested? Is it the way they were grown? Is it was it the weather? There's just too many variables to s to pin it on one single thing.
+
+[1:01:27] Um, you have a supplier you trust now. And is it possible to find a supplier that you trust? I've got several. And the other thing is we're trying to develop local supply. So I've got uh now three growers of soybeans locally in Connecticut and Vermont, and I've got local wheat being grown.
+
+[1:01:41] And the kelp you use is local. It's in Stonington. Do they make combo style kelp or just like they make sugar kelp? Um again, we incorporate that into a soy sauce, which we have here as well. All right, and then before we taste, which we taste, we're gonna taste on the way out.
+
+[1:01:57] Uh someone wrote in 910 uh 910 AG, I guess, uh a while ago, has a chemistry degree, wants to get into food more on the flavor side. What about has being a chemist helped you in what you're doing? I think it's helped me in terms of understanding variability in a process. So it's like I only wanted to make one thing, so it's make soy sauce in how to make great soy sauce. So if you're if you've got something that has like 20 different variables to it, and you understand that you can screw things up like a million different ways with 20 variables, I think having a science background helps you in terms of being just disciplined in terms of how you do things and how you document things and how you write things down.
+
+[1:02:39] So I have lab notebooks on everything that I've ever made in terms of what I made, how I made it, what it's put together with, what raw materials I use, what process I use, the whole nine yards. So yeah, absolutely helps. Yeah, cook should keep notes, especially about anomalies. Uh let's taste. Let's taste before we run out.
+
+[1:02:55] Okay, so this is uh we start off with a standard show you. And so this is uh, as I said, it's a koikucci style showyu. It's uh 50 50 wheat soybeans. And this forms the basis for everything you're gonna taste. So uh again, it's a based on a whole soybean.
+
+[1:03:11] Yes, it's delicious. Let mean get that roundness of flavor. How long would you say this stuff will how after you open it, how much is it gonna change in the bottle over time? Like what what's your feeling on that? It won't stay in the bottle, you'll use it.
+
+[1:03:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but theoretically, like it it it really won't change that much um over time. I think I think you're good for something like six months in a bottle like that as you kind of dribble it off. But hopefully you'll use it faster than that. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:03:36] This is one of our latest, it's chanterelle. No, but I haven't tried this one. My partner James um is an avid forager, and so last year, um your hot sauce is quite nice too, actually. Thank you. Last year you went out foraging, for some chanterelle mushrooms, which we incorporated into this.
+
+[1:03:52] And when does the chanterelle get added to the process? Um, pretty much right after we start with the people. That's some nice product there, too. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[1:04:05] So that's chanterelle. And I want to uh before we run out of time, I want you to try Susie's um sugar kelp here. And so this is uh right on fish. Made with stoning sugar kilp, huh? Stonington kelp company sugar kelp.
+
+[1:04:20] Oh yeah. And the kelp is also going in with the water. It's going in right at the beginning of the maromi, right? Yeah. So in fact, we just made a bunch of batches because kelp season was last month, so we had a chance to oh yeah, you can get fresh kelp through June from them, right?
+
+[1:04:38] No, I think the season, it's a really short season, it's like six weeks. Kelp's so weird because it grows from the top down. What a weird process. And so they go from Oh my god, so money. And that's that's the rye, yeah.
+
+[1:04:55] That's so money, people. You gotta go get like for a product that is, and that's what yeah, actually, like your buddy at Chiba was like, wants to send an engineer to talk to you because you're allowed to go outside of the bounds of normal products. He doesn't do any of this stuff, yeah. So he can't, right? He says it's not part of his.
+
+[1:05:15] You do a very good job, actually, of calling out your suppliers with like pictures of the individual like stores, specialty stores you can go to. So buy from the website or buy from one of those stores, support those. Uh check out Nana's in uh Westerly and in Mystic from uh James Wayman, who's by the way, very well-known chef in the Mystic area. Love Mystic. And also, uh, the other partner, uh Debbie Michiko Florence is a well-known author of young adult uh like novels and books.
+
+[1:05:41] Check out Jasmine Tegucci Mochi Queen. Well, thanks, Dave. And keep it together, Keiko Carter. Are the two titles that I really kind of buzzed in on. Uh Audrey and Jenna were causing real problems for Keiko.
+
+[1:05:52] Real problems. You know what I mean? They think they're best friends. They come back from the summer, boyfriend problems, man. It just gets rough to be in middle school.
+
+[1:06:00] Don't I remember that? I hated it. Uh worst time of life, middle school for me. Uh well, thank you for coming on, Bob. I really appreciate it, Dave.
+
+[1:06:07] All right, cooking issues. Thank you so much.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of the New York City Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios. Joined uh via telephone with Nastasi De Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? I'm good.
+
+[0:24] I would uh normally ask you if you did anything interesting over the week, but uh we actually recorded uh our normal show yesterday, so I'm assuming that you had nothing really interesting happen in the past 24 hours from a culinary perspective. Is that true? Yeah, true. Yeah, true, true. Uh and uh also joined back in the studio.
+
+[0:46] We have John. How you doing, John? Good, thanks. Yeah? Yeah?
+
+[0:49] Anything? Uh glad to uh I didn't have you yesterday, so you had a whole week and days worth of time to come up with some interesting culinary facts for me, and the look on your face tells me that you have not. False, Dave. False. Oh I went to uh the British steakhouse uh Hawksmore.
+
+[1:07] Oh, yeah, how was it? Very good. Very good. Good steaks. Yeah, I cooked over the charcoals and ate a lot of food for one person.
+
+[1:13] Yeah? Yeah, I got a 20, you know, six oysters, 24-ounce porter house, cream spinach, fries, sticky toffee pudding, cheesecake, and a cheese course. Now, am I allowed to have the same uh hot take that everyone else has about the porter house? Not possible to cook it right. Yeah, true.
+
+[1:30] Like why what made you go for the por? Look, I understand there's a certain like bingo la 70s about the porter house. There's a certain like, you know. Yeah, I think that was it. You know, I just felt like a mystique.
+
+[1:41] Yeah, I don't know. Just I wanted to, I just wanted like a classic steakhouse kind of meal. So which side was cooked properly, the fillet or the other side? The other side. So the fillet was hammered, huh?
+
+[1:56] Yeah. Yeah. A little over. But it's still it was still very good. Very good.
+
+[1:59] I'm also gonna take another, and you know, uh how about this? Someone remind me to get back to the hot take on steak. We'll get back to it. I'll go through the whole thing. Do we have uh senor molecules on the on the line?
+
+[2:10] We have Jackie? Or is he not? Is he is he here? I haven't spoken to him yet today. Molecules on the on the line.
+
+[2:15] I'm here. What's up, Jack? How you doing? Hey man, I'm great. It actually rained this morning in LA.
+
+[2:21] Crazy. Is that uncommon? Yes. Yeah. Especially in the summer.
+
+[2:25] You know what I like? I like rain. What? I like rain. Yeah, me too.
+
+[2:29] Remember that uh remember that uh group garbage? Oh, yeah. I'm only happy when it rains. Oh, yeah. Only happy when it's complicated.
+
+[2:37] Great song, great band. Uh do people still listen to it? Do people still listen to garbage? Or did that fall by the wayside? I mean, it's a perfect name for me.
+
+[2:46] Anyway. Uh the reason that aren't they Scottish? I don't know. No, garbage was here from the States, right? Weren't they?
+
+[2:57] They were from Wisconsin? Really? Maybe I'm mistaken. Wisconsin is pretty much the Scotland of the U.S. I know they recorded at Smart Studios because I wanted to work there.
+
+[3:06] Oh, really? Yeah. Nice. Anyway. Uh I will go to that reunion concert, assuming everyone's still alive and in DC.
+
+[3:14] Madison, Wisconsin, by the way. You're right, Joe. Yeah. Madison. Well, that makes sense.
+
+[3:18] All right. Uh the reason we are recording on a special day. So for those of you that are just, you know, listening on the regular internet, uh, you know, you won't notice that this is a special day. But the reason uh that we're recording on a special day is because it is the day that the founders, Chipmalt and Jay Kalick from Maiden are here. And it's the first time.
+
+[3:37] Is that true? No. We've had ANOVA come on to talk about things. Uh, but about a specific oven. This is the first time we're bringing in uh a basically a whole equipment company to talk to us because we thought it was something that our listeners would be interested in hearing the process on because that's who our listeners are.
+
+[3:54] So welcome guys, how are you doing? Thanks for having us. How's it how's everything going? What are you guys in town for? Are you allowed to say?
+
+[3:59] Or is it super top secret? Evil. Half of it's really exciting. The other half will probably put the listeners to sleep. I mean, Chip, do you want to talk about your project in town?
+
+[4:06] Uh yeah, so uh Chip Malt here. I run the e-commerce and digital side of the business. So I'm in town speaking at a conference. So okay. That's the part that will put everyone to sleep.
+
+[4:16] So everybody loves a conference. I was just having this conversation with uh Dr. Jessica Harris yesterday. Uh, you know, uh the curator from African slash American, which you can still see up. It's got extended for a month at MoFed.
+
+[4:28] Please go to MoFed. Uh you have an extra month to see it. Don't sleep on it. And uh we were just talking about the fact that it's those kind of conferences that actually have the money to go to cities when it's nice to go to them. Okay.
+
+[4:40] As opposed to Tales of the Cocktail, which was started with no money and therefore had to be in New Orleans in the middle of July, which is no offense, a crap time to visit New Orleans unless you really, really, really like physical discomfort. If there's something about you that doesn't like to be dry or comfortable, then New Orleans is a fantastic place to be in July. And she's like, Yeah, Essence Festival started there at the same time. Same reason. Same reason.
+
+[5:06] Uh, you know, we're just not an industry with a lot of money. So I'm sure the e-commerce folk have the cash to spend on a nice crap toss, as we used to call it in the trade, right? A good little convention, uh, huh? It was a great conference. I mean, a lot of uh talk about future of marketing, uh obviously a lot of disruptions in the marketing world right now with Apple privacy and things like that.
+
+[5:25] So a lot of trend talk, but also, as you mentioned, a lot of great events. Um, we were able to go to you know Nobu and a couple other nice restaurants out of it. So that's great. Great job. You know, I've never been to Nobu.
+
+[5:35] What? Yeah. Any of the Nobus? Nope. Nope.
+
+[5:39] You know why? Dummy. I'm a dummy. Here's another here's some other places. Uh back in the day, even though it was literally my job to do so.
+
+[5:47] I never went to El Boolee, right? I never went to Trotter's restaurant when it was open, which was dumb because I knew the guy. I just, you know, when I was in Chicago, I didn't go. I did go to uh Alinea, obviously, and I even went to Moto back in the day. Didn't go to Trotter's joint.
+
+[6:06] I've never been to Per se. I went to Alan Ducasse's Essex house. Okay. But I missed the multiple. So for those of you that don't know, uh Alain Ducas is uh he's still super famous, right?
+
+[6:20] Yeah. Yeah. So for those young people who are like, I don't pay attention to anyone who's old, right? Ducas was a middle of the road, correct me if I'm wrong, here's a middle of the road shif, gets in an airplane accident. Like, like gets caught, it's like trapped out, like after this airplane accident.
+
+[6:38] And I think that's how he injured his eye. I could be making all this up. This could be a fever dream, but I'm pretty sure it's true. So while he's waiting to get rescued, and John, you're checking up on me here? Well, well, well, he's waiting to get rescued, he's like, I'm gonna become the world's greatest chef.
+
+[6:53] And then, and then he just started like goes bananas and like goes on like a Michelin star frenzy. You know what I mean? And when he opened up Essex House here in New York, I'm gonna want to say this is like 08 or something. I don't remember exactly when, because you know, time blurs. John is so not believing me right now that he's literally going on the internet to check this out.
+
+[7:14] The word the word back in the day was that he was hanging upside down from a tree clinging to life. That I'm sure is an exaggeration. Anyway, uh so when he opened up in New York, New York is famous for being buttheads, right? Just extreme jerks. You know what I mean?
+
+[7:30] To people if you're trying to do anything outside of our box, right? You know, you guys know this as selling to us, because I'm sure we're a decent size market. Our customers are all very nice. No jerk. Uh you know what?
+
+[7:41] I found that in our bar too. Like, I really liked our I think what it is is that if New Yorkers get rubbed the wrong way in media, we go bananas, right? Absolutely. So uh Essex House was a very kind of stayed, you know, old school French stuff with a little, but the frills were old school front frills, right? And one of the things that they did, and this is remember when WD was going great guns, and you know, Grant was doing his thing over in in Chicago, and all this stuff was happening.
+
+[8:07] It was all about being new. America had just started looking away from France as being the leaders and everything, and they look towards, we're looking towards ourselves and other places. And uh they had this thing where the meal was absurdly priced. And they would bring out like a pen selection so that you could choose what pen you wrote your check with, and they just got freaking hosed in the media for that. They're like just shellacked.
+
+[8:30] Anyway. So, what made you choose Alinia and not Trotter's and this version, not that? Uh well, Alinia, when I was in Chicago, we had two meals that at that time. And I was going to, which we can talk about, the McCormick Place, world's worst place. I don't know, what's worse?
+
+[8:46] The Javit Center, which is our convention center here in New York, or McCormick Place in Chicago, go discuss. Javitts. Uh, I'd say I'd say McCormick because you're McCormick. There is so little food options around that place. Like Javits, I think you can get to a decent restaurant quicker.
+
+[9:01] Um you can. So you're stuck at McCormick with nowhere to eat all day. And you're waiting for that bus. You have to take the McCormick bus back to wherever your hotel is. But the Javits, when you're inside of it, when you're in in a trade show situation, the Javits was designed by the devil to show you that you weren't worth living.
+
+[9:22] You know what I mean? I mean, standing on the trade floor, which I've had to do several times on the Javits all day, is just like it's just a punishment. Depressing lighting. Yeah. You know what?
+
+[9:33] Anyone who's gonna start a business, so I hope that someone out there is thinking of starting a business and that what we're about to talk to is somewhat useful for them. Because believe it or not, while people don't like direct competition, like every person that I've ever met who I like wants other people to succeed going forward. Right? Would you guys agree with that? Yep.
+
+[9:53] Yeah. Uh so one thing that you guys, new people, younger people, won't have to do is probably stand on a trade show in the old school way, because not the way it used to be. Like there, I'm sure they can't be as bad as they used to be, like orders trade trade shows where you have to stand around and wait for orders to come in and like. But that made trade shows worth it. Now we don't get orders, we just stand there.
+
+[10:16] But why why even go anymore? I don't know. You kind of have to kiss the ring of the the cookware elite and you know, do the whole whatever. But you learn something, you see new ideas, but I think they're going away. We were just in the Chicago houseware trade show and it was pretty quiet.
+
+[10:29] I think people took COVID as a chance to break the traditional, you know, events. I mean, I remember like a lot of the a lot of the old trade shows kind of started going out of business. Some of the ones still were like, especially the ones where you have to eat stuff. So the so-called fancy food show, uh, you know, I get it. And if you know, for your stuff, like people want to like touch the product and you don't necessarily want to ship a full line out to people and you can kind of show people up close, I get it, right?
+
+[10:56] Um there used to be a a book that you you were supposed to read that I was started reading in um in like the late 90s. Uh like, you know, how to do your first trade show. And it was this book called Trade Show Gorilla. And like Gorilla, not like ooh-ooh, but like, you know, like Gorilla Warfare. And uh it was kind of an amazing book because when you're doing a trade show, you can't really be a person.
+
+[11:20] It's kind of it's it's similar, and believe it or not, if you've ever worked a shift on the floor of like a restaurant, you know how like punishing it is to have to be on all the time and everyone's looking at you and you're always catering and you can't be yourself and you can't like just look at your watch like you're bored, and you can't like you know, go on your phone and start like looking at stuff or reading some sort of book. You have to be in service mode the whole time. Now, imagine doing that in a trade show situation where even when there are no guests in your place, you have to have that eager beaver look that I'm doing business. Isn't it a nightmare? It's like how tired are you at the end of the day after a trade show?
+
+[11:59] Exhausted. We actually had a pretty interesting trade show experience. We did a trade show and then we did a food and wine festival, which is essentially a trade show for consumers, right? And the restaurant trade show was dominated by vendors selling impossible burgers and other kind of non-meat-based things. That was the theme of the show.
+
+[12:17] Next week, consumer-based, didn't see one of them. Um super interesting. I mean, if that's you see that as a lagging indicator, you see, obviously those things are coming and coming in force, and it was probably uh probably 80% of the floor we were on was was those kind of um alternative meats and and non meat. Really? So yeah.
+
+[12:33] So do you feel misplaced? Oh, that's the other thing. When you're in a trade show, you get a giant map of the trade show floor. By the way, McCormick, we can get so we're gonna get so you get a giant map of the trade show floor, and you have to pick where you're gonna be well you're correct. You don't do it anymore?
+
+[12:47] I don't get to pick if you're two years old. They put you in the back of the back of the back of the room. Oh jeez, Louise. It used to be, because I haven't had to buy my own trade show slot since like the early 2000s. And it used to be you're like, oh well, yeah.
+
+[13:00] Well, first of all, you don't have the money, you're in a crappy little booth. But you get to say, you at least tell them what they do, and you're in a section of people related to you. If you get put in the wrong part of the trade show, you're toast because the buyers just don't come next to you. You know what I mean? That's the kiss the ring I was saying.
+
+[13:14] Like, you gotta do your time, you get to move up, you get more selection, you get to be in a better area. We were like the bathroom vendors with like the candy, right? Right in the way back. Oh my God. I really the only time I had my own booth, we were we were selling handbags.
+
+[13:28] My wife and I had a leather handbag business, and we were we were selling them, I forget the name of the show. Uh and the second time I had my own booth was the very first uh museum of food and drink event. I did the uh American Country Hams in like 04, and they gave me a booth. Uh that actually wasn't punishing because I felt like I was doing something that I needed to, it wasn't punishing. The leather bag one, punishing.
+
+[13:55] Terrible. And we were next to people who were selling like cut rate jewelry stuff. So none of the leather handbag people were coming. It's okay, okay. If you're a buyer and you're going to one of these trade shows, go to the wrong zones and just scan because you're gonna find the gem that the other fools didn't find, right or wrong?
+
+[14:14] Good spin zone. I like that. Yeah, yeah. Please and help those poor sons of any. Okay.
+
+[14:19] So uh interesting that uh we're talking about McCormick, uh, because actually the restaurant equipment, the houseware's business really kind of started. Although our first show apparently was the first couple shows were in New York, but really the actual like the the the uh what was it? It was the NRA, right? And all that stuff started with at in the McCormick area. And so it's kind of like hyper historical important that those shows, the Chicago shows, to the housewares industry.
+
+[14:47] Is that maintained to now? Yeah. Uh NRA was great. We were there a month ago. Yeah.
+
+[14:51] Yeah. I won't say anything negative about it. The restaurant NRA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
+
+[14:55] The other NRA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the other. Yeah, I used to do shows. Anyway, uh, okay.
+
+[15:00] So uh Jake, you come from so you come, Chip, you come from an e-commerce background. Correct. Right. Uh, which obviously is vitally important to you. But oh, for those of you that don't know, made in is uh a brand of uh what do you call it?
+
+[15:18] Kitchenware. Kitchenware, there you go. Because it you you do you do start it with pot like pans, pots and pans, but you also do knives. Uh apparently your wooden spoon is much beloved. That's Jake's franchise.
+
+[15:30] Cold following. Cold following. On the wooden spoon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[15:33] I noticed uh uh Steve, your your engineer was uh was uh pushing for using the wooden spoon on your on your Teflon on your on your Teflon pants. We could get into customer service here, but we get into a lot of trouble when we show videos of of our of our cooks using metal on non stick, uh, because in the writers write in and say, I used metal and I scratched it and it's broken. So we try to make it as foolproof as possible. All right. Well, before I get into history, then let's just get down to the utensils.
+
+[16:00] On your clad section, right? So your the first products that you guys launched were the were your clad were your clad pants, right? Yep. And uh what do you what do you call uh in what's the non-branded fully clad? Multi-clad.
+
+[16:11] Multi-clad. But like in other words, like the difference between like disc versus like fully clad, you call it multi-clad. Yeah. Right. And uh John, should we just get into should we do this as we get and then jump around back and forth from history and equipment, history and equipment back and forth?
+
+[16:25] We're okay. Yeah. And did you look it up? Was I correct about uh about your boy Duke? Was stuck out there for seven hours, but he'd been cooking a long time before that.
+
+[16:34] He was, but he was basically he was like just a high-end normal dude. He was middle of the range. He wasn't a shoe. I'm not saying he was a shoemaker. Yeah, I don't know.
+
+[16:41] He was working for like Roger Verger and working for working for. Does he still have the most Michelin stars of any chef? I think he does. Still to this day? Yeah.
+
+[16:50] Yeah, he wasn't freaking Alain Ducasse. I sat across from him once at a lunch at WD-50. It was crazy. It was Alan Ducas, uh, Jose Andres, uh uh freaking um uh uh what's the name? Ferran Adria, right?
+
+[17:07] And because they were they were talking they put them next to each other so that they could yak it because not everyone could speak, you know, Catalan, right? And and then I think that Dave Chang was at that table because he, even though he wasn't famous yet, he was I mean he was kind of famous, he was like noodle bar famous, but he wasn't like, you know, the the the Chang monster that he is now. And uh he was there because he was Wiley's buddy, and they put me there because I you know knew Chang. You know what I mean? And so that was kind of it's surprisingly intensely boring conversation.
+
+[17:36] It's like super super boring conversation because Faran was like just like, I don't speak the language that these buttheads speak. And so he just kind of stared around or whatever. You know what I mean? Ducas was just there being Ducas. You know what I mean?
+
+[17:53] It's like, you know, Nastasia, you agree with this. You'd rather just hang out with your buddies and hang out with a with a with a with a bunch of people just to say you hung out with them, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Stas like Nastasia would rather, I mean, she doesn't dislike hanging out with with big wigs and famous people, but if someone's gonna be boring, she doesn't want that.
+
+[18:14] She hates that. She still does not let me forget anytime I make her hang out with someone that she considers boring, she freaking hands it to me for years and years, right, says, yeah. So that's yeah, get back to get back to me then. Well, anyway, and the other thing is though, is that whatever. Whatever.
+
+[18:33] Okay, I'll I'll get back to what we're talking about. What the hell were we talking about? Oh, pants, clad. Uh, so that was the first thing uh that you came that you came out with, right? Um, in your care instructions, because I carefully read your care instructions yesterday on your website.
+
+[18:48] Uh, you also don't recommend metal tools on the clad. Is that a mistake, or do you really not recommend metal tools on the cloud? Or did you have somebody hit it with an with a mallet? Like what what? We serve two kinds of customers, right?
+
+[19:00] We have we have a pretty big customer base. We have what we call the prosumer customers or even the professional cooks that understand that you can use this fish bat on a multi-cloud piece of cookware and it's just fine. We have some customers that see us on TV and like the idea of Grant Hackett's using our stuff and buy our stuff, and who knows what they're using on it. So, in order to keep those kind of customers as happy as possible, we try to make sure we accommodate their cooking styles, right? But I'm gonna say this though.
+
+[19:29] I'm gonna say this. If I'm like, you know, like uh, you know, random consumer. Let's say I'm random consumer, which I definitely You're not. I'm not not just because like uh sometimes I intentionally punish things just to see what the hell's gonna happen to them. You know, I think I told that story where this person told me that her blender pitcher was unbreakable, so I threw it on the ground as hard as I could and started stomping on it.
+
+[19:55] Like Uncle Buck. Remember, you guys see Uncle Buck, he's like he accidentally drops a plate and he goes, hmm, I'm breakable and then shatters it. Anyway, that's we've done we've done similar stuff. I mean, we run run over the pans with cars and trucks and things like that. So uh similar.
+
+[20:09] Hopefully you didn't have any Elon Musk moments uh with uh your your your windows breaking. Cyber truck? Yeah, cyber truck moments with your windows breaking. Although I have to say, my Subaru windows would not have survived uh Fritz hitting them with a sledgehammer either. I don't know that you want a guy named Fritz hitting your stuff with a sledgehammer, like in a guy in a tight black t-shirt named Fritz hitting your break anything.
+
+[20:30] Yeah, he'll break anything. It's gonna go through it. So uh if I'm a consumer and you tell me not to use metal in my clad pans, and there's a there, and you know who they are, you know what I'm talking about. There's that consumer out there who's gonna listen to you, and they're gonna use crappy, because let's face it, John, back me up on this. I'm not gonna make them say anything.
+
+[20:51] Nylon sucks. Yeah. Yeah, nylon spatula is freaking blow. And before you guys like get angry at me about it, first of all, if you're cooking with proper heat in a lot of situations, the nylon's gonna get this little weird like lip where it like semi-melts. I'm not saying nylon's getting into your food.
+
+[21:11] That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that just the the surface of it, like lips over. But even that I can tolerate because I can shave that off with a knife. What I although, you know, be careful. But what I can't tolerate is that a nylon spatula, when it gets warm, when you do like a rest over in an oven, it gets a permanent set.
+
+[21:32] And that permanent set on your nylon means that when you're when you're moving stuff out, you get so many drops off of that nylon, and it never acts the way you want. It doesn't move stuff around the way you want. It's just trash, right? Silicone is typically too soft. No one has figured out a way to, you know, no one has figured out a way to make.
+
+[21:54] I'm fine with um nylon tipped uh tongs and whatnot. You know what I mean? Although uh, you know, uh Steve, you know, who did the video legend? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was watching these videos.
+
+[22:06] So he uh he said that you're gonna use these nylon tongs on the nonstick pan to move fish. And I want you to know that I'm not forwarding that to Wiley or Dave Chang because I I think I mentioned on the air before that like the closest I ever, second closest, Nastasi remembers the closest I ever got caught to getting hit by Dave Chang in a meeting. Remember that, Staz? Yeah, and we should not tell that story. We won't tell that story.
+
+[22:35] But let's just say a lot of silver backing in that meeting. Do you got well? We'll get back into me, but like was when an argument I had at a restaurant uh about the use of tongs, wherein I said tongs are an appropriate tool to use in the kitchen, and they shouted at me saying that uh they weren't ever appropriate because someone might use them on fish. And I was like, hey man, hey man, you know, hey. Uh I mean we we we do wholeheartedly agree with you.
+
+[23:09] We're coming announcement. We're coming out with a uh uh utensil set in the fall. Nice. Five pieces. Breaking news.
+
+[23:16] No five pieces, a metal fish spat, fully metal tongs, and then we've got the upstill upsell nonstick spatula uh for for those for those customers that want a nonsticks bat. So so we're very much in your camp, right? Like we we know we know the tools that that make sense, but yeah, the good news is the customers who will not use well the the people who know what to do, they'll ignore the care instructions, right? Um we're not making those care instructions for the customers who don't know what they're doing. Right.
+
+[23:41] But my point is though, my point is is that the person who doesn't know what they're doing is gonna have a more negative experience than they should because they're gonna follow your instructions and it's actually gonna make their life worse. That's the issue I have if someone's using nylon or silicone spatula in one of your fully clad pants. That's that's the only thing that makes me it's it's a it's a fair point. And it's we could talk about like the struggles in running a business, and you have the stakeholder that oversees customer support versus the stakeholder who designs product, and it's a consistent wrestling match about who wins in the voice of the room, right? Oh, yeah, no, it's terrible.
+
+[24:17] Like uh the stuff that we have. Uh I was talking to uh someone the other day, and just like the fact that you have to put prop 65 warnings saying that your materials cause cancer on your boxes, and then people are like, then they write negative ammo. Well, you know, for us, they write negative Amazon reviews saying, it says on the package it causes cancer. I'm like, I have to say it. It's like our lawyers won't let me sell it if I don't write that.
+
+[24:41] There's nothing that's gonna cause cancer in it, you know? It's like our Hertz Rent a car had a Prop 65 warning last week. Yep. On the door. I mean, I have to say there's a lot of stuff in a car that will cause cancer.
+
+[24:52] But I mean, no more so than anybody else's car. You know what I mean? Like, anyway. So, what we're trying to do with that YouTube channel is teach people how to use our products um to the best of their abilities and inspire them to cook. And so when we have the uh and utensil collection, which uh hopefully PR doesn't get mad at about us leaking here uh for the first time, like that will be a great opportunity for us to come out and teach people how to use utensils correctly, because that will be from us.
+
+[25:14] We designed it, um, and then we can show them how to use it. So I like that. Okay, so so so since this is new information, I can't I don't I literally, people, this is not stage. I have no idea that this is coming. So I'm gonna ask some random questions.
+
+[25:25] John, what's the worst problem? What are the two worst things that happen with tongs? What are what are your two least favorite things? And maybe they're different from mine. I don't know.
+
+[25:34] I've had my tongs for 12 years. I like them a lot. Really? Yeah. Okay.
+
+[25:39] Average metal tongs. Yeah, they've never failed me. They're extra long, but they're they're great. Well, first of all, um, as a home person, I have a set of super mini tongs that I use for salad bowls because they don't fall out of a salad bowl. One of the big people, you need a small you need mo you need more than one set of tongs.
+
+[25:56] You there's not one tong for all things. Everybody who's ever used tongs to serve salad for family meal knows that the way you should serve salad is with tongs. And if you're sitting there using two hands with these goofy 1970s, like freaking like, you know, giant, like weird like sporks and forget it. You know what I mean? Tongue, also a decent way to toss salad.
+
+[26:19] Tongue is a great thing for salad, but on the table, the long tongs, the cooking tongs that you use, keep getting knocked out of the bowl, leaves everywhere, nightmare. You need to get a short set of tongs for salad. However, the two things that go wrong with tongs for me is not all of them, but uh certain locking mechanisms fail. Like uh so the old hip lock ones where you uh you can't see what I'm doing, folks, but you clench the tongs and then you pop the uh the back against, they fail constantly. Hate, hate.
+
+[26:47] Uh whereas the ones that pull, the the ones that you pull, while it is a two-handed operation instead of a one-handed operation, they do lock better, but they don't lock as tight as the pop guys do. So, in my opinion, the the handles of tongs could use the thing. But here's the thing maybe this is only specific to people who love deep frying the way I do. Deep frying with tongs is dangerous. Your your gut tells you, I want to fry with a tongue, because hell yeah, I want to fry with a tongue.
+
+[27:15] I want to turn that thing over. I want to take that piece of chicken and I want to move it upside down into my oil while I'm jiggling it around. But anyone who has ever taken something out of a deep fryer with tongs and lifted it over 90 degrees or over parallel with the floor has gotten a terrible burn to tell you about from the oil running down. And is this a solvable problem? Are you gonna solve it?
+
+[27:37] Maybe not in the first rev. Maybe you've already been thinking about this, but the oil down the tongue to me is like if someone could solve that problem of the of the fry person having the burnt wrist, that would be they would be doing a good service even if no one ever knew that this had been engineered into their tongs. You know what I mean? Yeah. The the big problem for us solving is the locking mechanism, right?
+
+[27:58] Because because I I I used to sell restaurant equipment in shops, right? And that's where the business started. 95% of chefs buy the Udland tongs that don't have the locking mechanism, right? Five percent do. But at home, right?
+
+[28:08] Yeah, other way around. Yeah, because at a restaurant, we're all just go pop pop, pop, pop, pop, and we're sticking them over the metro, you know what I mean? And we just went, we're grabbing the one side of the tong and flipping and going. Right, right. And yeah.
+
+[28:14] So the restaurant tongs are also like they're all beat to hell. I don't know what the hell people are playing drums with them. I don't know what the hell, how beat the hell they are. I think they are. I think the airplane rhythm of them.
+
+[28:28] Yeah, of course. All right. And they never go out to the table anyway. But at home, they're mainly people are using locks. Yeah.
+
+[28:34] Uh so you've been working on the locking magazine. Working on the lock that locks. My problem with locks is they get janky and then they don't allow the tongs to fully open all the way. So you end up like stopping at whatever you're cooking. So that that's the first thing we're working on.
+
+[28:47] Yeah, I have a bunch that, well, like I said before, that over the years the lock no longer functions, and you'll put it in your drawer because home people put them in drawers, and then pop in the drawer. And then when the tong turns as your drawer opens, I've said this, I said this before. If if if any kitchen designers are out there, any designers at all, when you make drawers, the average drawer when it's designed, there so you design the box out of ply, and then there's uh another piece of wood across the top to brace it to give it strength. Yeah, just push that wood all the way to the back. Make that piece of wood go all the way to the back.
+
+[29:26] Because there should never be a situation where a tong can pop up, or God forbid a knife. I've had it happen in my knife drawer, and it sticks into the top. Then what? Now what? You have to you have to get like your your child, hopefully they're small enough.
+
+[29:42] Yeah, yeah, get oh wow, that'd be smart. Yeah. I've had to get a bore scope out. That's I've had to get a bore scope out to open my uh my utensils drawer. I have a lot of utensils though.
+
+[29:52] Yeah. I'm not very much, I'm not a minimalist. I don't know if you can tell. I'm not a minimalist. All right.
+
+[29:57] So uh, all right, but uh, can you solve the oil drip problem? Can anyone solve the oil drip problem? Is there a way to put like some sort of like some sort of what? Like a sleeve or like some sort of like uh like a like a something that like vents it away so that it spills out of the tong before it gets to your wrist. Is there some way to stop that hot oil from getting to your wrist?
+
+[30:18] There's gotta be. There's gotta be. Maybe that's our collaboration. All right. Revision two.
+
+[30:23] Revision two, and I'll just sit there for I'll just sit there picking pieces of fried chicken out out of uh uh deep fryer fryer and like lifting it over my head and go, Look at this chicken. Ah you know what I mean? Like lift the chicken over your head and have the see whether the oil goes down on my wrist. A real labor of love. Yeah.
+
+[30:38] Yeah. Well, it fits back into one of uh my last art projects that I never did, which was trying to deep fry myself. Uh it was after I burnt myself with the with, you know, after I horribly burnt myself with my um St. George and the Dragon piece, I was no longer allowed to consider deep frying myself. Probably good.
+
+[30:55] Most likely. Most likely good. Yeah. Remember when people used to sell silicone gloves that they told you you could put into a deep fryer and pull stuff out of? Yeah.
+
+[31:04] Uh they cut real easy. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so if I had put my body into one of those and deep fried it, it's like one mistake getting caught on something I hadn't ground down. Toast.
+
+[31:15] And then it gets like once it seeps, it gets too much. Your toast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[31:19] Yeah. All right. Okay. So uh, Jake, let's get into this. So now you alluded to the fact that you come from restaurant businesses.
+
+[31:27] Why don't we talk about that? Because I think a lot of people are like, I want to start a business. Well, like it's not that easy. It's not that easy. Like how small a community.
+
+[31:36] I mean, I used to know when I was at the French Culinary Institute, I used to hang out with the Mercer knife people. And you know, they were kind of giving me an insight even into the knife world about how small it is. How small is that is the community? Like not tiny, but in other words, like it's pretty small. It's pretty small, and the same people that run each company get fired from one and go run another and then go work for someone else and go work for someone else.
+
+[31:55] I my my grand my my family started a food service equipment business in 1929. So my grandfather was building bars and cigar cases in downtown Boston in the north end. And uh and over the years that changed from a bar building business to starting to sell the supplies the bars used to going beyond bars into restaurants and hotels. So Harbor Food Service commercial restaurant equipment and supply design installation, that kind of thing. So were they selling bar stuff out of a catalog?
+
+[32:24] Like the uh like the like what was the company, like the same billiard company used to also do it. Yeah, at one point. At one point, yeah. And that was that was when North Washington Street in Boston had, you know, 10 different food service equipment dealers. Um now there's there's none because the big dig drove them all away.
+
+[32:39] Um and and I joked, I I gave a toast to Chip's wedding two months ago. Oh, congratulations. And I joke that like nobody else could have found a way for me to leave my family business and make a salary besides Chip bringing his knowledge of e com to my knowledge of pots and pans and commercial tools. Well, I mean, but that's undoubtedly true. Yeah, right.
+
+[32:58] I mean, like it like you can't, like your business has done amazing things, but it's built on this kind of relatively new concept of direct to consumer. And you know, we're a much worse version of that because it's through Amazon, and then Amazon controls your money tab. Not only that, we you know don't have the connections or whatever, and we you know, we don't sell things that people want as much as you do. But uh yeah, so like you really need kind of both. So, where did you guys meet up?
+
+[33:25] So I was I was running my family business and uh and we we've known each other for three years old. Yeah, but you're not like you weren't still family, wasn't still in Boston at the time. No, we were. I was I was working in Boston, I was I was outfitting commercial kitchen. So I had the first hand knowledge of like what chefs were buying.
+
+[33:43] We were also wholesalers for the big all clads mode. Modern. Okay, really? Yeah, okay. Yeah, very, very big believer in that.
+
+[33:50] All right, sweet. I grew up in the north end. All right, yeah, yeah. Uh but um my stepfather's butcher shop was there. They he retired in the 80s though, and it turned into something else.
+
+[33:57] It doesn't even look like a butcher shop anymore. It's kind of like there's only one one butchery shop left in there, I think. Yeah. Umisio and Sons was uh yeah, but that was back way back. That was like it closed, like I say, in the in the mid-80s.
+
+[34:09] Um still kept a lot of its charm in the north end. Yeah, yeah. For a big city. Yeah. Um modern, huh?
+
+[34:14] Modern. Modern. Modern. All right. Um can you how many I can't, I gotta be honest.
+
+[34:19] People can get mad at me. I don't I can't eat a whole cannoli, it's just too much. Well, you know they make mini cannolis now. Well, come on, man. Like the mini tongs.
+
+[34:27] Yeah, yeah, mini tons. It doesn't flip your cannoli box over when you uh I mean for any of you. Are you a chocolate chip on your cannolis kind of guy? Oh yeah. Undo pee.
+
+[34:38] I I look I can I I'll eat any cannoli. I'll eat it, but like, you know, when I went to uh what was the other one? Mike's right or whatever. I went to Mike's and Moder on the same day, which you know, you gotta build in your line time. Jeez.
+
+[34:48] And I was just like, uh this is a lot of cannoli. So like I w I got the planes because I'm like, I gotta try the plane. Yeah. It's just a lot of filling. Yeah.
+
+[34:57] What did you think? Are you uh are you a Mike's guy? I didn't seem to be. I don't I don't remember. I believe my my memory was I liked one person's filling and I like the other person's shell better.
+
+[35:06] That was my feeling, but I don't remember which is which. I just remember thinking that this is something too deep for me to get into. And so, but you know. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[35:14] Yeah. Oh, that well, so now we we're talking food. Uh steak, right? What were we talking about with steak? We're talking about a fill.
+
+[35:22] Filet is not a bad cut of meat. Every not a bad cut of meat. Everyone ranks on fillet. Ooh, filet's not it's not supposed to be beefy. It's supposed to have be amazingly tender.
+
+[35:32] It doesn't taste bad, man. Like, you guys with me on this? So fillet's not terrible. Like why why hate it? What's the point of hating it?
+
+[35:39] I can see why you don't want everyone to go order it because it's ridiculous to jack up the price of one little cut of meat that's only a little bit of them in the whole cow, right? It's bad to eat fillet at the expense of other pieces of meat. But if someone hands you fillet and they haven't overcooked it and it's not dry, you're like, that was enjoyable eating. No? You disagree.
+
+[35:59] I've got to be a good thing. Your looks on the faces tells me. You can't cook one side without overcooking the other. So correct. Well, no, you shouldn't serve it as a porterhouse.
+
+[36:12] But I'm saying filet on its own. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. All right. Beef.
+
+[36:17] That's the most thing. Beef beef. That's what's for dinner. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[36:20] Okay. Uh so you start out making bars in 1929. 929. Oh, bad year to start making bars. Bad year to start making anything.
+
+[36:31] How the heck did you guys survive? It's probably a good year for bars, actually. Cigar cases. Yeah. You don't even really make those anymore.
+
+[36:38] Wait, did so the business is still that part of the business is still alive? No, no carpentry anymore. No. We buy the modular bars, you know, that you can do it. Yeah.
+
+[36:47] Um, so but now it's it's heavy design and installation of commercial kitchens. And then we sell them everything they need once they get up and running. So you're like a competitor like Sonny Mattel and those kind of guys, and try Mark Wasserstrom, that that biz. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[36:59] We're we're more boutique regional New England, but um, yeah, so so I was I was selling 15 different brands of cookware. Everything from the Wincos and you know, import stuff to the all clad Maviel Citram. So could kind of see firsthand what chefs wanted, where the value was. I had people calling me every day saying, I'm moving into a new apartment. What what cookware am I buying?
+
+[37:19] I have no idea. So I would, you know, say, like, I'll sell you some Maviel and I'll just sell it to you at my wholesale pricing, which was 50% of what they made us sell it for, right? Yeah, it's a lot lower. Yeah, that's a big deal. And then and then one time Chip called me and he said, Hey, I want to do my own business in the e-com space.
+
+[37:34] And I was looking at the kitchen. Nobody had really disrupted the kitchen space direct to consumer. And and that that's when it clicked. It was like, oh yeah. I was like, nobody cares about kitchen tools outside of the the super passionate home cooks and chefs, right?
+
+[37:45] How do you how do you build a brand that people are loyal about that teaches you why the tools you buy matter and get them excited about investing in tools, like they're excited about investing in grass-fed steak and curating the perfect recipe and finding the right wine producers and that kind of stuff. I think what was interesting about having Jake as a partner in this was he was a product guy first, and he had been selling products for you know his family a hundred years, as you mentioned. And I think that's a lot different than a lot of the DTC companies out there, which you know, the first thing they run to is what brand are we gonna create? What are we gonna stand for? What is our color palette, et cetera?
+
+[38:19] The first thing we did over the next 12 months after that kind of initial call he mentioned was work on the product and have chefs test the product, get it in the hands of all the chefs that Jake had relationships with in Boston. Um so it really was like a product-driven company. Once we landed on where we wanted to go with the product, it was what does the brand stand for and what's the color palette and all the stuff that comes after that? Yeah. I mean, color palette, I don't pay attention to it, but it's important.
+
+[38:42] Uh should we get rid of red? Oh, okay. Yeah, hot tank in the game. So guys, here's a happen. So like I I have a made, I have a I have a made-in um uh um enamel uh enamel cast iron uh Dutch oven, right?
+
+[38:54] Uh beautiful actually. Here's something I have to say. Like uh though for those of you that you know have heard me before, like uh I I I try to be straight. I try to be straight with you, right? So like uh like the handles on this thing like blow the pants off of anyone else's handles.
+
+[39:12] Even the little hex nut on the bottom. So if you've ever had uh a Dutch oven with a crappy little like half standard half Phillips uh thing on the bottom, and you look at it and you're just like right. Uh I forget whether it's seven or eight millimeter. I had to take it off the other day because uh you're uh so I was I was testing cooking bread. So anyway, so it's a beautiful uh on mine.
+
+[39:35] I have a red enamel. Uh the inside I guess is whitish cream. Uh and it's got a brass handle, and then the underside is a sweet custom uh uh hex bolt with a flange on it. So uh again, if you don't think about it, when you're when you're screwing a hex nut, a regular, sorry, a hex bolt down, uh it puts a lot of stress right where the where the points of the hex are. So they bought a very nice uh with a custom logo on it, uh uh hex bolt that has its own built-in smooth flange so that it wouldn't mess up the uh enamel uh where it gets screwed down.
+
+[40:16] And when I undid it, I was like, nice touch. Uh but then, like, uh, the reason I had to take the handle off was because I mean, I guess some people might do it for cleaning, but uh it wouldn't fit into my oven with the uh with the handle on into my brevel oven with the handle on. And it was hot, so I wasn't heating up my big oven to test it. So I take this beautiful, like uh, I mean, fire engine red. It's like fire engine red, like shiny made in red.
+
+[40:42] Made in red. It's made in red. You know what color? Yeah, yeah. You know what color they make those uh fire things?
+
+[40:47] They make them made in red. Although now everyone uses lime green. I don't think anyone's gonna buy that lime, that lime green fire truck color for uh for a potter but maybe they will. You'd be surprised. Well Instagram men.
+
+[40:59] Oh, geez Louise. But the thing is, like, who's got the kind of we'll talk about this in a second? Well, okay, so here's what I do. I take this thing, and I duly went on the website, and they're like, it's good to 550 uh Fahrenheit. And I was like, damn.
+
+[41:14] That's higher than, and because they're using a brass handle and brat that they don't have the problems with the phenolic breakdown for people who use phenolic handles, just as an FYI. I'm pretty sure that the enamel is fine on competitors' brands up to the same temperatures, but it's just the the uh the handle that gets hosed. Right? Would you say I'm right about that? Yeah, totally.
+
+[41:33] I mean, they're fired at the end. 1200 degrees. Right. Well, before I finish what I'm gonna say, like, how much of a problem do you have with enamel spalling uh when they with thermal shock? Any?
+
+[41:42] I've never had it happen on mine, but of course I don't thermally shock my No, we we haven't had an issue with that. I mean, we we launched these, we we tested them for we actually have spent four years making this product. We tried to make it in the US first, couldn't figure it out. Yeah, are you making it it like in France? In France?
+
+[41:56] Yes, we're making it in France with a factory that really knows what they're doing. Not with the not with the Belgian weasels, you don't like those Belgian weasels? No, we don't, I don't think we know these people. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, uh, but the uh because didn't they didn't that production start in Belgium?
+
+[42:08] Didn't the initial uh castle gambles out? Yeah, yeah. Um big in Belgium, big in Czech. Um, but but France is the OG, and that's where we go for, right? We go to the places where they've really been master in this product and find somebody like that.
+
+[42:14] Well, that's the other thing. So we even before we finish that, this is like tangent on top of a tangent on top of a tangent, but almost impossible. I know for from personal bitter, bitter, bitter experience, almost impossible to build relationships from scratch. You know what I mean, with these companies to get them to do what you want. Because it it is a huge, it's a huge like piece of trust on their part to even devote part of their factory for however long the run is and to go make a new product.
+
+[42:46] So I'm sure a lot of that was a little bit easier because you had that was it. I mean, that was we could go in and you know, for better or worse, talk the talk, walk the walk. We we know the history of a lot of the brands, we know which brands went bankrupt, which brand bought who else. So we go in and talk to these factory owners, and we don't look like two direct-to-consumer dweebs that are trying to, you know, corrupt the market. We we are passion we're passionate about cookware, right?
+
+[43:07] Right. We know the stories behind the brands. Right. And but like I think even in today, like everyone thinks that all of these old things have been erased, but they have not, right? Like like companies are still run by human beings who have a history and want you to somehow be connected to that history, or you have to somehow give them a reason to take a chance on you.
+
+[43:26] You know what I mean? Exactly. Take a chance, take a chance. Because there is always a chance, right? Like uh well, you were I was talking to you about a different thing on the phone, and you told me a story.
+
+[43:36] Maybe you remember what the product was, where you thought you were gonna do gangbusters and they didn't make the product for you. Wasn't that you we were talking about? Yeah, we we we had a factory that you know we started working with, and we it wasn't our first collection, so we knew what kind of scale we could do within the first year, and we gave them our forecasts and they were all excited and said, you know, yep, we're good, we'll be able to make all this stuff for you, and then come Q3, they started to drastically cut our production or our forecasts. We said, What's going on? They said, Well, to be honest with you, we we thought you were lying to us when you gave us our numbers.
+
+[44:06] We've we've been making we've been making this product for 500 years, 500 years in the family. And they said, We've never seen a retail brand scale the way you have. Um, so we just discounted it ourselves and assumed you wouldn't get there. And we're like, Well, we're going in a holiday. What do we what are we gonna do about it now?
+
+[44:21] Oh my god, you know what? Like, why is it that you can't explain to people not in the US how important that Thanksgiving holiday crap is? You can't explain it to them. Uh why can't you explain it? I I mean, the consumer in the US is a a special breed, I guess.
+
+[44:39] I mean, that last that last 60 days of the year is believably important for our business. Right. It's like a quarter of your our yeah, yeah. So, but my point is is that like, why can't why do you have a technique to help explain to somebody in another country how important it is to hit that deadline? Because I have not been successful.
+
+[44:56] Amazon gets a lot of of heat, I think. As more of these international brands use Amazon as the way to penetrate the US from a retail perspective, they're starting to see it as well. And it's basically acting as the new retailer for them. Um, a lot of the heritage brands that we've talked to. So I think it'll it'll come around.
+
+[45:12] They need you to see it firsthand. It's one of those things where until you see it, you don't believe it. Um, but it's starting to come around. All right. So back to back to my my uh my Dutch oven, my beautiful red made in red, made in red Dutch oven.
+
+[45:25] So I stick it in to my oven to preheat because I'm doing bread, right? So I had used it already on the I had done some evaporation tests because you guys, no one does this with their pots and pans. But if you want, if you're gonna do long-term braises, and Dutch ovens are very good at braises, right? What you want to do uh before you use your pan for like a lot of stuff is just get a feel for how much liquid's evaporating out of it uh in a given amount of time at a given setting, whatever your setting is. Don't listen to a cookbook because they don't know your equipment.
+
+[45:57] They don't know your oven, they don't know you, right? Just get a gauge for it, and this way you'll kind of get an internal knowledge of when you should add liquid back to your thing or how much you're gonna lose over the course of a brace, et cetera, et cetera. It's just a good idea to do that. A lot of people don't do. Anyway, so when you have a liquid in your in your oven, nothing happens.
+
+[46:16] But I have uh uh an empty, dry made in red, and I stick it in 482 degrees, which is the hottest the brevel will do 480, you know, super convection to really jack it. Uh and I come back to put the bread in, and it's now brick red. It's now like a like brick red. I was like, I've killed it. It's destroyed.
+
+[46:40] Oh my god, I'm hosed. Oh my god, my wife loves this color. Oh, jeez. Uh. And so then, you know, I put the bread in, close the thing, you know, wait 15 minutes for the steaming to happen, to go to take the lid off, take the lid off.
+
+[47:00] I'm dejected. I'm like, here I've destroyed this thing. And uh while I'm waiting for the bread to finish, that 30 minutes, the lid cools off, goes back to being its normal color again. I was like, they should sell this as a to mood ring. Well, or it's like, I'm so freaking hot, don't touch me.
+
+[47:18] You know what I mean? Like it should sell it as like a thing. So then I we we email Maiden, and they're like, oh yeah, that happens on not just us, everyone's red. Like, whoa, whoa, woo woo. Why does anyone tell you this?
+
+[47:30] Because the first time someone does it, they're like, I've destroyed this. It's toast. I mean, maybe the relief of it going back to its normal color is like better than never having a hat happen at all. We often joke about like when a customer gets a product, we we have to hype up a product when a customer buys it. Enough that they want to buy it, but not so much that when they get it, they're disappointed.
+
+[47:55] Yeah, yeah. There's a sweet spot, right? You know that when you're making products. So I mean, that's a little surprising delight for you. Yeah.
+
+[48:01] Easter egg for you. Your reds are gonna turn like it's not that it's an unattractive color, but it goes from being like, it goes to being like uh that like 70s earth tone kind of a thing, not like 70s punch, like 70s earth tone. You know, I don't know. It would have been, I would have felt bad if it hadn't gone back, but it didn't. It's normal.
+
+[48:21] It's chemistry, I don't understand, but it's normal. Yeah, it's just with the with the glazes. Anyway, uh oh man. Uh okay. So uh okay, what are we gonna let's answer some of the the questions from people before I ask the rest of my questions?
+
+[48:33] Like, for instance, once and for all, guys, this is not a question people asked. How do you properly measure a pan? Right? They measure when you're measuring something quartz, are you measuring it to the rim? Are you me where are you measuring?
+
+[48:47] To the rim. Okay. Inches on a on a saute or a fry. Gotta give both. But the if you're gonna give one number, it's from outer to outer.
+
+[48:54] Outer to out. But why? Because everyone's slope is so different, and I don't cook with the outer rim of my saute pan, I cook with the bottom of my saute pan. That's market though, right? So I mean, again, maybe you put the asterisk like, you know, the internal diameter is this, but I think if you look at a 12-inch fry pan across market, it's 12 inches from rim to rim.
+
+[49:13] Yeah. Yeah. But centimeters if you're I mean the one that bothers us the most is pieces in a set. I mean let's ship go on this ramp. You know, we're sitting there and our lid is not a piece.
+
+[49:23] And if we sit there and say our six-piece set is a three-piece set, we will lose the internet customer all day long because all clad sitting there with a three-piece set that they've said six-piece set set 10 years ago to do 20 years ago, right? And so um we tried that. We were like, we are gonna be the ones here we're gonna be the honest ones. Three piece? Yeah, it's a three-piece set.
+
+[49:41] It is like your three-piece is the same as all clad six-piece. Exactly. And they go with all clad all paper. It's what if you put like a key ring and then like you can count the packing inserts as a uh 15 piece, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[49:53] Oh, your packing material is very nice, by the way. Thank you. Um important, it is important, even though we like at Booker Index, where we decided to go like craft craft paper only, like not retail pack, but you know, maybe we're stupid. I don't know. The other thing is like we're trying to move away, we were trying to move away from um like plastic at all in our packaging.
+
+[50:12] You know what I mean? And they were like, uh our factories, it would cost you so much to use renewables because their factories are just set up to do uh EPS. I mean, kind of depressing. Have you guys seen it? We've been co-investing a lot with our factories.
+
+[50:26] Um we just moved a lot of almost all of our tape or all of our tape uh to waterless tape, which is non-plastic, and they were resistant as well. There was a ton of uh pushback on us, and we've been co-investing in machinery and and packaging materials. Most of our factories are still family owned, and they're like, Yeah, this is awesome. We would love to do this, but like we can't figure it out, or we don't want to take the step. But if you guys are gonna push us there, like help us and we'll do it.
+
+[50:49] Right. And I think they're most mostly happy. And a dollar to a dollar to them is two dollars to you, is four dollars to the consumer, and they're like, is the consumer willing to pay that? And in a normal situation, not in your situation, but in a normal where there's another middle person, that's another two multiple, roughly, right? Because like with all the losses and everything.
+
+[51:05] So we're we're big believers though that sooner than later that's gonna become required to do business, is you're gonna have to you're gonna have to make those sacrifices or pay up for that kind of environmentally sound process. And so we're just trying to get out in front of it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right, more on measurement.
+
+[51:21] I notice you have a pie pan, and you give the quartz in it, which is nice. Uh, and then uh, but what do you call it? You call it a nine-inch. Now, where are you measuring that sucker? You're measuring that rim to rim?
+
+[51:31] Uh internal rim to in so that one has a thin little rim. So that one might be internals. But internal, but not base. Not base. Not base.
+
+[51:39] We we we had a whole thing with our I mean, we could talk about rectangular baking dishes and and the the perfect baking dish, right? Never accounts for the height of the of the pan. Uh to me, it's a huge nightmare that you guys can kind of and you do address by giving multiple more multiple measurements than most people do, but uh recipes are a nightmare about this, especially for things like pies, because like the slopes on different pie pans are completely different. You know what I mean? Completely different.
+
+[52:06] And so, like how you measure makes a huge difference. I mean, I'm not gonna say I agree with you guys. You guys like only deep pies, you are deep pie people. Texas. Yeah, all right, fair.
+
+[52:16] Uh, but a lot of your bakeware you teamed with Nancy Silverton, right? Talk about OGs. Yeah, you know what I mean? So was she involved with the pie one or just with the square one? She's she's awesome.
+
+[52:24] I mean, she gives her feedback on kind of a lot of our baking stuff and even a bread knife that we co-designed with her. Um, she's a customer first, and then we started to talk to her about what she wanted to bring to market. Um, but the recipes is a huge thing, right? We we actually hired a uh a culinary director, um, Rhoda Boone, who joined us and she was moved from New York. And because every chef sends us their recipe when we're giving customers recipes, but we need to standardize it to your point for our product.
+
+[52:49] Um so we're now in taking all those recipes, making sure on our stuff they're cooked and measured and portioned properly. Yeah. And it's just like like because I'm working on this book now, I'm just like looking at my pants, I'm like, God damn. You know what I mean? Like especially things like pies.
+
+[53:04] Yeah. You know, like I have three different pie plates from the same many. Here's another thing on pies. I agree with you coming out with uh I like, I like uh glass and porcelain stoneware for pie. I really do.
+
+[53:17] I think uh, you know, a lot of times, especially like silvery, cheap, punched out pie tins, you just it they just don't brown, they're not emissive enough. The emissivity on those things is not high enough to get a good brown crust on the bottom in the time allotted for the pie to cook, even at the temperatures you're jacking, because you know, the upper part is gonna get over before the bottom part gets the color you want. So I, you know, and also for service, you know, you really that porcelain, as you say, the filling's never gonna stick to it. I think it's the way to go. Like glass and porcelain on on pie, I really like it.
+
+[53:49] The only thing about our porcelain, I I love it. It's awesome quality. It's the only product we make that doesn't isn't aligned with our home cooks and our professional chefs' cooks. Because prof like in the professional kitchens, they don't use porcelain bakeware. No, they can't.
+
+[54:02] Right. So everything else is like same for home, same for restaurant, same for home, same for restaurant. We make awesome porcelain bakeware for home, and the restaurants are like, where's my metal stuff? Right. So we're working through it.
+
+[54:12] Do you know who I used to like a lot for uh like uh uh bakeware, Chicago Metallic? Yeah, that talk about OG metal stuff. Yeah, yeah. Chicago Metallic makes some really and their their uh release goop, whatever they paint on their uh stuff, they do a good job, but I hardly see them at the you have to only buy maybe from them. It's like it's not as common as it once was, you know?
+
+[54:34] Yeah, I I don't know. I I'm sure they're on Amazon, but they're they're a great company and they're still making everything here in the US. They're muffin pans. Yeah. Are they trademark release goop, or can we have that?
+
+[54:43] I think Gwyneth Paulcho trade on a game. Yeah, well, well, going to real going to release goop. Uh you have a set of nonsticks. Yep. And uh the big thing is, well, look, if you overheat Teflon next to a bird, it'll die.
+
+[54:58] The lungs. I don't know if the lungs will have issues. Well, they need those lungs to live. Yeah. Depends on how much you're flying.
+
+[55:04] Yeah. So uh, well, okay, John's telling me we only have five minutes, so I'm gonna do the listener questions. All right. Uh from the science slut. Uh, do you guys plan on making any copper core stainless clad?
+
+[55:15] Well, your copper has stainless on the inside, so it's not reactive, right? It's not tinned, it's stainless on the inside. So it's one up over those ones that you have to go back to. Yeah, what was that place? Uh what's that place?
+
+[55:26] I can never pronounce it. De Hillarin. In Paris? Yeah. How do you how are you supposed to pronounce that place?
+
+[55:30] Delarin. Delarend? Yeah. That is a sick store. There are some gems in the basement there.
+
+[55:35] Oh my God. Uh, if you've never been to that store, it's on that, whatever that island is near where Lazalle used to be, right? And it's like, isn't it right near the uh the Ile de whatever Ile de France or whatever? If you're a Patreon member, it's on the shared Google maps. Did you go last time you were in Paris?
+
+[55:50] No. I haven't, I didn't know about it until you told me about it. Then I need to go. You gotta go. I know.
+
+[55:57] Uh gotta go. I mean, if you want if you like surly French service, go. You know what I mean? Uh if you want to not be taken seriously no matter who you are, go. Anyway.
+
+[56:08] Um, do you plan on making a copper core stainless clad cookware? I really enjoy the evenness of uh the copper core pans on my control freak and would love to uh use a source other than all clad. Oh, right, because the bottom on induction. And the induction won't go through the copper and heat the stainless because it's not magnetic stainless. Okay.
+
+[56:24] So what's the answer? Yeah, so so all cloud does that copper core where the middle layer is copper. So you don't even really get to see copper other than like a nice aesthetic band around it to hit sh to flex that you have the copper core. Um we've talked a lot about it. I mean, our our hypothesis or or or approach to making products is do one type of each category.
+
+[56:42] So and that may change over time, but right now we do one type of cladded cookware, and it's aluminum core because we think it's the best value to performance to accessibility ratio, right? What we're very cognizant about is starting to introduce multi-levels of the same category, because then I think that's where customers get really confused. Now, I get I get confused and I know a lot. Exactly. So and for certain customers, they're they're very specific.
+
+[57:05] They know that what they're they're looking for, but I think our customers trust us to make one version of each category the right way, and kind of trust us blindly to buy it and know that they're gonna be happy with it. We don't want to give people decision paralysis. So I'm guessing because you went with five-layer clad that you think that that the performance of uh five is better than three, but that seven is just a load of hooey. Correct. Yeah.
+
+[57:27] More or less. I mean, well, the and the and the difference in price between five and three is super minimal from a raw materials perspective. So you might as well flex up to that five. Right, right, right. And what does the the so they the the what the so for those of you that don't know, the original the original patent was on uh uh well, you could use whatever you want, but it's an induction-friendly stainless bottom, then an aluminum layer, and then uh, you know, a you know, not a non-usually non-magnetic, right?
+
+[57:56] Just like super like surgical stainless on the inside uh they they make them in sheets correct so the sheets are made and then those things are stamped and then either you weld or rivet the handles you guys went with rivets you must have thought the welding wasn't strong enough I I had really negative experience with commercial pans that were welding handles even like the even like Volrath if people don't do it oh those those exact ones I had a lot of chefs had had issues with it when we were selling them like the centurions and stuff yeah yeah or or it was it was actually more of the wherever the the smooth wherever ones they were like the Z4010s right and those were falling off huh huh yeah and and the flush the flush rivets are just really expensive right yeah making those flush rivets it's a crazy technology to do that yeah because what they have to like rivet it flat and then grind it flat on the inside and not hurt the pan surface and not and very select people set up that machinery to do it. And I guess most home cooks aren't worried about like you know I know like Wiley. By the way first uh uh thing I got from your your brand when I first learned about it was I went to Wiley to frame my brother in law I was like hey made any good or is it a load of horse crap? He's like no it's really good. I was like oh okay that's awesome.
+
+[59:04] That's really cool to hear. Because you know when I see something on the internet I'm like those guys are full of crap. You know what I mean? That's my first honestly our hardest challenge because there's so many competing brands on Instagram on Facebook that are as you mentioned uh you know lower product quality but have great marketing. And so you know we talk a lot about how do we differentiate ourselves as a DTC brand or as a uh kind of internet first brand um to show that we are professional quality made the right way live up to your your standards.
+
+[59:30] Which, you know, again, my standards may not be normal, but they are high. Uh so the uh so the the point of adding the so the obviously the the the reason to have those three layers are aluminum is fantastic. Inductor and stainless is crap, right? Aluminum pits, uh has lots of other problems, right? Um and you want like you know basically within reason you want uh not really, I mean whatever.
+
+[59:50] If you like if you like a pan to be even, you want the aluminum to be thick. If you want the pan to be very reactive, you want it to be thinner. Most people most people, Kenji's book on walk cooking aside where he wants very reactive cookware, most people want even and not reactive. That's my guess. True or false.
+
+[1:00:05] Totally. Yeah. So you want the thicker ones, which is why like some of the commercial, like uh super thick base guys I actually really like cooking with, but no home person would buy them. I don't know why. Home people don't like discs.
+
+[1:00:16] They only like uh fully clad, right? Why? Probably an aesthetic thing, easy to clean, easier to clean. Um yeah. I I mean I think I think the fully clad looks better too, right?
+
+[1:00:28] And and then the other thing is it actually when you have a disc, the the the walls tend to be thinner. So when you're making a soup at home, you have to really be stirring that thing all the time. Otherwise the walls get a lot hotter than the base, which end up burning the top of the soup. So especially if you have a big burner that can loop over the discount. Exactly.
+
+[1:00:46] But even even those uh those Belgian weasels, Dem Air, they moved away from uh discs, even though they were the original OG disc folk. You know what I mean? Yeah. And they're not weasels, they're not gonna be. I mean, we sell everything with a lifetime warranty, so uh so correct correct me if I'm wrong.
+
+[1:01:02] The the the additional layers there are actually to slow down conduction so that you get a more even thing, right? Put little slowdowns, like put little like traps in the way, and you find that that actually is beneficial in the Yes. And and for us, the middle of the five layers is actually an aluminum alloy, which is stronger than, I mean, why you would use stainless, which is stronger than the two aluminums, aluminums on each side, because aluminum alloy won't actually bond to stainless. Okay. So that's why there's you know, three layers instead of one, because you couldn't do only aluminum alloy, and by adding the alloy, it actually makes the interior stronger.
+
+[1:01:32] Got it. So it's a sturdier pan, less prone to warpage. Correct. So people get real worried when they're putting pans in and from hot and putting cold water on them. And on a regular aluminum pan, it will, I have seen them warp, right?
+
+[1:01:45] Uh but on the clad ones, do you really have to worry about it that much? I mean, I'm not going to tell people to do it, but do you really need to worry about that much? We've seen, I mean, our first restaurant install was when we launched at the end of 2017, uh high volume steakhouse. Never had any issues with pans warping. What about on the carbon steel?
+
+[1:02:01] Don't worry, we keep going for a little while. Cool, cool, cool. What about carbon steel? Uh carbon steel, the incidence of warping we see is when people put it on induction and heat it up too quickly. Carbon steel is induction compatible, but when you heat it up too quickly on induction, that's when it can get a little bit wonky.
+
+[1:02:18] Well, because it can overheat, it can get almost to the curie point on that ring because carbon steel, believe it or not, not as good a conductor of heat as people seem to think it is. It's just, you know, anyway. All right. Uh Science Sled also believes that you should do a collaboration with uh Larren Thomas, the knife engineer, uh knife uh uh engineering author. Is that you're shaking your head like that might be in the works?
+
+[1:02:39] No, not not particularly. I mean, we love knife steel. He's got that cool steel. We love limited drops of knives. Like it's been a huge part of our brand.
+
+[1:02:46] We'll put 3,000 knives on sale one morning, special edition, special handle, special design, and our customers eat them up. Yeah, so maybe sometime in the future. Uh, can you tell us about uh uh how you think about branding and marketing so your products stand out instead of being commodities? For example, on your website, you say French foodies and professional chefs have been using carbon steel for centuries. That suggests commodity, but you still manage to sell the carbon steel products at a premium relative to some of the French brands like uh uh Borgiot.
+
+[1:03:14] It is impressive that your marketing strategy enables you to pull this off. Can you tell us more about how you think about marketing and pricing versus uh these established competitors? Yeah, I mean we pick uh you know, we pick the thicknesses, the gauges, the fittings, um, all to be premium performance and what would hold up in restaurant kitchens, which is not necessarily the case. So I think part of it is for the discerning cook who actually understands that. And then um it's not like we're pricing in any sort of gouging way or anything like that.
+
+[1:03:42] We actually are picking the most premium finishes, nonstick coatings, um, you know, our rivets, for instance, our 304 stainless steel. That's so that they are not a point of failure over the lifetime of the pan. Um so then it's about how you get that across on the internet. Well you have that section that says why is it cost this? Exactly.
+
+[1:03:58] Like on everything, you're like, why is it costing this? All right, one last question for me if they before uh Joe cuts me off here. Uh, how do you decide what factory you're gonna go to? Your Japanese stuff is made by the Sabatier kind of style factories in how do you pronounce that town? T H I E R French man?
+
+[1:04:12] Tears. Tears? Anyway, I actually really love old sabatier stuff. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like I really freaking love old old, old Sabatier.
+
+[1:04:20] I mean, like I sliced my steak with it because I was like, whoosh, it feels so good. But like what made you like how do you choose which factory you're gonna do what with? We love to go to places that have been making the product for hundreds of years and where we can find family-owned factories that are still running it and are passionate about making it the right way. All right. Uh well, you want to say anything on the on the way out?
+
+[1:04:39] I mean, you've already you know broken your PR rules and like told us about the new utensil set coming up. I'm I'm ready to talk about some more collabs with you. All right, cool. All right. Well, thanks guys for coming on.
+
+[1:04:47] Cooking issues. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stan Studios, the heart of New York City and Rockefeller Center, joined as usual with Mastasi the Hammer Lopez. How you doing Stas? Good, are you? You know what I mean?
+
+[0:24] Yeah. Yeah. You? Fine. Yeah.
+
+[0:26] Yeah. Nothing great, nothing terrible. Nothing great, nothing terrible. You know what I used to hate, but like it's so true. Uh same, what are they, what they used to say?
+
+[0:35] Same, was it? Same blah, another day. What was it? I don't know. Same, same garbage another day.
+
+[0:42] Also, same different day. Oh, yeah, yeah. Remember, family show. I haven't announced you yet. Hold on.
+
+[0:48] Uh rocking the rocking the panels as usual. Uh Joe Hazen, how you doing? I'm doing great. Yeah, I'm gonna go in reverse because she's a friend, so she can get in uh earlier. We have uh on the phones, we have uh Dr.
+
+[1:02] Ariel Johnson. What's your how you doing? I'm great. How are you? Doing well.
+
+[1:07] So we had hey, we have you on because uh you're on this uh you you've just become uh I believe the technical uh term is Ferron approved. Indeed. Yeah, for Ron endorsed, Ferran approved. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh so like almost like a great toothpaste.
+
+[1:27] Yeah, yeah. So I made you a a stamp, like a better housekeeping ste seal with Ferron with like, you know, the two the the two flanked by like the Michelin stars on either side of the word Ferron and approved underneath. So we gotta get that made for you. We'll uh send it off to like stamp stamps.com or something. Amazing.
+
+[1:44] I would love that. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Uh and then like whenever you're like sending off a you know how like like uh Stas, you you you're like you remember when you were a kid and you you would like write letters and then you would be like pop pop like on the envelope. We could just go like pop pop.
+
+[1:59] I feel like people don't write anything anymore, like no one's ever seen a real stamp anymore. Right? The kids growing up, they're never gonna they're not gonna have stamps. When you when I was a kid, you loved stamps. Yeah.
+
+[2:09] Stamps were cool. You know what I mean? Ink pads. True. Yeah.
+
+[2:13] Stas, you used to like the ink? Yeah, yeah. Area, yeah. Ink pads. Uh Joe, what about you?
+
+[2:17] An ink pad man? I did, yeah. Yeah, of course. I love ink pads. What an unholy mess they were, though.
+
+[2:23] And the in the in the 80s and 70s, they were kind of low quality. They dried out real fast. You know what I mean? It's that weird linen stuff. I'm I'm sure that now there's only artisanal ink pads that are amazing and quite expensive.
+
+[2:35] I'm sure that's how I'm sure that's how it's gone. Space tech polymers to keep things uh moist. Yeah, moist. I love that word, you know it. Uh and uh well, there was an artisanal pencil shop, but COVID took it down in the lower east side, right across the street from Scar's Pizza, which people love the scars pizza.
+
+[2:53] Very good pizza. Really? Yeah. They they sure do. People love I but here's the thing.
+
+[2:57] I think Scar's Pizza is good pizza. I it's very good pizza. I think people love it out of all proportion, right? Yep. I like it a lot.
+
+[3:08] I think it's good. But like, you know, I wouldn't saw off my arm for it. You know what I'm saying? I mean, what pizza? What do you saw your arm off for?
+
+[3:17] I have not had a pizza I would saw my arm off pizza. That's the most obvious question. I would saw my arm off for a lifetime supply of Vash Ram Mondoy. Right. Well, what's the food you would saw your arm off for?
+
+[3:30] That's the question. Well, is it like, are you called upon to saw off your arm and then have to choose the food you do it for? Or is it a spontaneous arm sawing that we're talking about? This is an excellent point. I haven't thought about it fully.
+
+[3:46] I'm gonna go ahead and say that you're gonna have to saw off your arm, and therefore you get to choose the food that you then have the supply of. So what do you got? Where do you go? That's a tricky question. I mean that I would give up a limb for.
+
+[4:06] I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. Ariel stipulated that you're gonna lose the limb, but as a consolation prize. And in exchange, you get a uh a a never a never out supply of some thing. Yeah.
+
+[4:18] Or you never lose access to it. Yeah. Yeah. Eggs Benedict. Um eggs benedict.
+
+[4:23] But you could literally make that, I guess you wouldn't be able to anymore. It'd be hard. It'll be hard d'urf. Yeah. It'd be harder to get that Hollandaise sauce in order.
+
+[4:31] It would be. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like. Although holiday sauce is so funny.
+
+[4:37] Everyone gets so bent over Hollandaise sauce, it's the easiest thing in the world to make if you just think of it as a hot mayonnaise. Yeah. Just think of it like a hot mayonnaise. This is true. And then like do people think of it as something else?
+
+[4:48] What do you say? Alright, it just seems like it seems obvious to me that it's a hot mayonnaise. And I'm curious what other people would uh well, people freak out about it. They're like, well, I gotta clarify, I gotta do this. It's mayonnaise.
+
+[5:02] It's hot mayonnaise. Just make a hot menu's. You know what I mean? And then like that's it. You know?
+
+[5:06] And like if you're worried about uh if you're worried about the what's it called? Um the freaking, you know, the whatever, dying from salmonella, just you know, it can be hot enough. You can make it hot enough, you know? Exactly. Um, she's not on approved easier to make thanks to it.
+
+[5:24] She is fraud-approved, endorsed. What's the difference between endorsed and approved? I did I did say Yeah, but that's not like what the award is. But that's what it says on the website. Okay, okay, Ariel, tell us what the award tell us what the actual award is.
+
+[5:38] Okay. So um there is a so the organization that does the world 50 best um has a list uh now called 50 next, which is not ranked, so everyone is uh, you know, technically equals on it. Um technically we know who's best. Young-ish people doing uh important things in food that maybe aren't attached to a restaurant and um you know deserve some attention for being cool and groundbreaking, um, and don't really fit into like a 50 best restaurants list. So I've been named to the class of 2022, um, which is super cool.
+
+[6:16] And uh they've had a few, I guess a few chefs that's on their like best of the best list. They have many lists, um, endorse certain people on on this 50 next thing. And I uh have received the endorsement of Ferran Audria, which is uh pretty pretty cool, actually. Nice, nice. So like who on the list in a Highlander situation would you take out first?
+
+[6:43] Um there can be only one, not 50, only one. There can be only one. Well, I don't I don't uh I don't know all of them. Um button find the one take out the person you don't know. Yeah, take out someone you don't know.
+
+[7:05] You know what I mean? That's I think that's a good price. It's kind of like going going to uh getting what what I hear about getting to prison, and you have to start a fight with like the toughest other person there to gain respect. I think yeah, just going in uh surprising somebody and then everyone else would be afraid of me, would be the uh highlighter situation. I'd go for it.
+
+[7:24] Uh if I went to prison and I tried that, it would go very, very badly. If I if I bear in mind with this list, we're all like a bunch of nerds. So um draw your conclusions. But yes, uh sor sorry Dave, I have to agree with you that if you were in prison and did that, it would probably not go well for you. So so poorly.
+
+[7:45] So poorly. Yeah, yeah. Uh I'm pretty sure I would get uh what's the technical punked out very quickly uh if I if that happened to me. Anyway, um all right, where were we before that? Oh, so what I haven't actually announced, uh John and uh okay to okay to it.
+
+[8:03] So uh John Ariel, you don't I don't know if you know this, maybe you do. Uh John is leaving soon, Booker and Dax, but uh because he's gonna be doing something uh really interesting. What what do why don't you tell people what you're gonna be doing, John? Yeah, I've accepted the position of executive chef at Temperance Wine Bar in the West Village. Um by the way, it's called it's called Temperance.
+
+[8:24] It's called Temperance, but they are in fact not a temperance organization. Very true. Yes, it's kind of a they they don't serve temperance beverages. No, I mean they but they might. Maybe I don't know.
+
+[8:33] They might in addition to, but not it to not be not to the exclusion of uh regular wine. Yeah. Yeah, it's not it's not a carry nation hatchet wielding temperance kind of a a locale. That's not the vibe. Yeah, no, definitely not.
+
+[8:47] Uh yeah, wine bar where they've got, we've got uh 150 ones by the glass and soon some tasty food. Yeah, yeah. Sound makes that it's you know, whatever. You know, obviously a little like nervous about getting back into the into the industry full swing, but you know it's gonna be a good opportunity and just looking forward to it. And I've never been a chef before so it's nice to finally, you know, after I've been working in this industry since 2008 to like get up to that level and you know it'll be fun to do things my way.
+
+[9:11] So let me see. So art history professor then worked in the kitchen, right? Museum curator. Museum curator. Yep.
+
+[9:20] Both fine art and museum of food. Museum of food and drink, right. Then like, you know, with us knuckleheads. Yep. Yeah.
+
+[9:27] And now back to back to the line. Yep. Right? So like uh so I mean trying to think of the trajectory. So then you're gonna start a car dealership.
+
+[9:35] Yes, exactly. Yeah no it's been hard settling down and finding you know I mean that's probably the only way to really make money, right? Yeah that's true out of all those yikes well you know yeah it's good to know John you choose uh big money big money cash money professional love it yeah yeah love being poor. Yeah yeah yeah love it good business uh yeah well uh congratulations uh thank you so now uh you know we we have to we're feverishly looking for uh you know someone who can uh fill your shoes which of course is gonna be very difficult find someone thank you yeah I mean definitely we're never gonna again I mean the odds of us having s you know someone with the Connecticut knowledge that I love so much are gonna be very low odds. You know small state?
+
+[10:22] Yeah I know small state best Dave on the Discord they want to know if you'd accept uh remote except remote what remote John. Oh, remote John. I don't know. This is something that Nastasi and I are gonna have to deal with. Listen, Nastasia's gonna put out the uh what's it called?
+
+[10:38] And you're gonna have to run the gauntlet of Nastasia. Nastasi, give like a typical, give like a typical, like uh you can't put a face over the radio, but make a noise that is like no, I mean, I don't feel as passionate about it as when we were hiring like three years ago. Why? We just need somebody like that's like right away. Yeah, wow, that's that's uh you're really uh whipping up the enthusiasm there with the with the.
+
+[11:03] I just don't feel as passionate about it anymore. Really, I'm just kinda checked out. I'm just kind of checked out. When we like, you know, real we had the time and the all that, but now we're like, we need somebody now. When you need cash now.
+
+[11:16] Like, look at that, JG Wentz. Yeah, what is it? 877 Cash now. 877 Cash Now. 877 Cash now.
+
+[11:25] Yeah. Uh why are we advertising JG Wentworth? I don't even know if they're scam artists or not. I don't know. Are they still even in business?
+
+[11:32] They are still in business. Oh, wow. Uh, I think that old that old guy, last time I saw him was like two or three years ago. He was a he was a bus driver singing the 877 Cash Now because they were doing that opera-based commercial. Remember that?
+
+[11:44] Yeah. Yeah. I have an annuity and I need cash now. Yeah. Do you have a structured annuity?
+
+[11:50] But you need cash now. Yeah, yeah. I have a structured settlement, but it's a good idea. I need cash now. It was so dumb.
+
+[11:59] It was. It was so catchy. We still remember it's been a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[12:05] Local new I think it's a local commercial, right? Like, I like the other. They sat a Pennsylvania page. Oh, really? So not that long.
+
+[12:10] Well, I Pennsylvania's come on. Philadelphia is only like an hour and a half from here. You know what I mean? The other one I used to love is uh Roscoe the Crime Dog. Uh not right uh Roscoe the Bed Bud Dog.
+
+[12:21] Hey, where's Roscoe? He's working. That guy, you remember that? Yeah, yeah. He's working.
+
+[12:26] And then like, like, like they want to prove that they can speak Spanish. So one of the guys, yo, Donde está Rosco! He worky. You know what I mean? Like I love that.
+
+[12:29] As though a dog can really smell the bed bugs. You really think that I mean, literally, they have a bed bug dog. You really think Stas, what do you think? You think a dog can actually smell big bugs? I think yeah, I think so.
+
+[12:44] They have they have dogs that can smell cancer, so yeah. Okay, they yes, they quote unquote have dogs. But last time they don't actually use them for that, right? I mean they can smell explosives. Yeah, I guess, right?
+
+[12:57] Yeah, right, and drugs. Okay, so let me ask you this. Uh as a as a uh money, as a flavor chemist. So, like, so we're gonna uh which by the way, that's kind of what how do you how do you describe how do you describe your soul? Ariel, why don't you just describe Oh hi?
+
+[13:14] I'm uh I'm Dr. Ariel Johnson. I'm a flavor scientist. There you go. Uh my formal training is in flavor chemistry, but I what I do now kind of like extends well beyond that too.
+
+[13:25] Um, but yeah, my my my roots are in flavor chemistry. But then you did a lot of practical work in fermentation as well, so by uh like bio Well, yeah, so it's also like like re restaurant RD and innovation and uh uh yeah, sort of uh self-trained microbiology, yeah, microbiologist, but I do a lot of stuff with microbes. You're uh you're you're you're breaking up on me, Ariel. But I noticed in your on your website that for the uh for the Ferron approved 50 next list, which by the way, isn't the organization Pellegrino? Are we just like like sidestepping around that?
+
+[13:56] Nastasia, what's the worst Pellegrino product? The water. Well, uh which one of the waters? Oh, the aquapana? Yeah.
+
+[14:04] Because it's what? Mouth water? Yeah. Aqua di boca. It tastes like mouthwater to us.
+
+[14:09] But, and we can say this because, Stas, what are the odds we ever get on a 50 anything list? Zero, a zero. Right, Stas? I guess. Checked out.
+
+[14:19] Checked out. It's checked out. Um. Okay. So as a flavor chemist, we're just talking about faking something, right?
+
+[14:28] What were we just talking about? Before that, you would smelling bed bugs? Bed bugs. So uh how can you fool dogs in an airport if you're carrying contraband? Are there masking chemicals you can use to fool these dogs?
+
+[14:47] I mean, I think it would depend on what they were trained for and depend on the dog. I mean, so like dogs are extraordinarily good at uh smelling very trace amounts of things in the air. Uh they have like really really big uh olfactory epithelia. That's the the surface that your olfactory receptors, the things that you use to smell smell molecules um stick out on inside your navel cav nasal cavity. Uh and they have like tons more receptors than we do.
+
+[15:17] Um so I wonder if it would be less a feature of like masking the smell and more like overriding their behavior, uh, if you could distract them well enough with something that is like a way better reward than uh being, you know, getting a treat or being patted on the head for smelling uh, you know, contraband fruit or money or drugs. Uh so you might need like a partner for for this situation with some if like perhaps that's like uh rub themselves down with bacon grease, uh that might be effective. Right, right. But what's the what's the odorant? I mean, most drugs are non-volatile, right?
+
+[15:54] So what's the odorant? What are they actually smelling? Well, yeah, so like when you're I I think when you're training dogs for for this like uh you tend to have the like actual uh like the actual product rather than training them on um you know some kind of pure compound uh so it could be a situation where like for example cocaine is non-volatile but uh some artifact of processing co cocaine is volatile and the dog is smelling that so it's like a secondary signal. So what I think we should do is send one of I'm not saying we should smuggle cocaine that's not what I'm saying but I'm saying what about the strategy of like you have cocaine and then you just like load me up like perfume me with that volatile and have me walk like 10 feet away from you. Then I get full body cavitied right but I don't actually have any illegal products on me.
+
+[16:48] Yeah. That that yeah that's a that's a that's a clever way to do it. Yeah. So Wiley Well I mean and that's that's how that's how like when you what you know everyone everyone knows what weed smells like uh but you're not smelling THC you're smelling like other uh like volatile components from the plant that like aren't the actual drug right that's why everyone carries those baby papers like that but dogs yeah yeah exactly well Wiley I think I mentioned this once on the show Wiley Dufresne my brother in law uh I set off a whole crap ton of fireworks one year and they were real um they were kind of bootleg fireworks so like if you go up new remember Stas in New Hampshire like right across the border at Seabreeze we went and stopped at that place. It's not like a like a big name firework place.
+
+[17:33] And the guy's like, yeah, we get them made special for us. They're a little bit not okay. Remember? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[17:39] And so, like, and so like we I'm like, yeah, it's fine. So like we got them all and we lined them up, but like they had like twice the residue of normal commercial like fireworks. So like everything was coated in like uh in um like powder residue and like little fine like unburnt metal flakes. Everything cars, everything. So Wiley went directly from our house to the airport, and you could have snuck anything around him because like all the cops were like right on him, like like the cops and the dogs like and like like dragged him to another room.
+
+[18:16] It was like it was uh yeah, it was a big big nightmare for him. It was a fun show though. It was a fun fireworks show. So there was that. Uh all right.
+
+[18:27] Um so what else what else we got in one of your last promote the Patreons, John? Oh, yeah. If you're if you have if you're listening live, you want to call in questions to Ariel. The call number is 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507 to call in here to the Rockefeller Center Studios, uh, Newstand Studios at Rockefeller Center.
+
+[18:44] Uh John, what do you got for the Patreon people this week? Uh there is a 20% off all made-in cookware products if you are one of our Patreon members. Um if you are not one of our Patreon members, this is honestly a excellent reason to become a Patreon member because 20% off is a very big discount and made in makes great products, so you should definitely do it. Yeah, so you could join, and literally it saves you money. You could join and it saves you money.
+
+[19:11] Very true. Right? Yep. Yeah. Not to mention, like, you know, the discounts we run on the people when they come.
+
+[19:17] Oh, uh when uh Ariel's coming out with a uh book when when? When is that? It's coming out this fall or next fall. Next fall, fall 2023. But you're allowed to talk about it because you mentioned it on the website.
+
+[19:29] Yeah, yeah. My uh my my book is called Flavorama, the unbridled science of flavor and the how to get it to work for you. Uh and it's basically taking, you know, uh oh over a decade's worth of explaining useful parts of the science of flavor to cooks and chefs and saying, wow, I wish there was a book to tell you this because you're using it so creatively. And uh it this is this is that book because it did not exist before. Joe, you got a lot of reverb, you gotta have a reverb button over there?
+
+[19:57] Nope. Oh, too bad. Do I have a reverb? Well, you I think flavorama needs a reverb button. Flavorama!
+
+[20:04] Like we need like serious reverb, you know what I mean? Nah, maybe next time. Next, when you have a book comes out. I am also when the book comes out, I'll buy a reverb pedal. Go ahead.
+
+[20:14] I'll buy a reverb pedal when the book comes out and we'll loop it through. You know what I mean? Will that will that be my congratulations present? A reverb pedal? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[20:23] We'll just do it. We'll do it a bunch of different ways until we get it. Like it's gotta be as good as the Yonkers raceway, like raceway park Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, kind of that level of reverb. I mean, I can give her this. Flavorama.
+
+[20:42] Ooh, that's dark. Oh wow. Well like that's it's that's dark. What about uh I just saw the maverick? What about slip into the flavor zone on Flavorama?
+
+[20:56] I only have dark stuff. Should I say that? Like if you're deep underwater in a shark's coming at you. Sharks coming at you. Hey.
+
+[21:02] Well, that's important for flavor. Uh, because most sharks have uh are have uh an unacceptably high level of uh ammonia in them to be uh tasty, right? So what are they sure do? They they eliminate uh nitrogenous wastes like through their skin rather than through like a urinary bladder. Gross, right?
+
+[21:14] Gross. That's yeah, real gross. Yeah. I mean, the only thing we pay out of our skin is like garlic and onion, right? Yeah, and uh like like acetaldehyde and some other like alcohol breakdown.
+
+[21:35] Yeah, yeah, yes. The smell of Sunday morning subway, acetaldehyde, right? That's that that's that you've been drinking smell. Uh now, but how long does that keep coming out of your body though? Oh, uh acetaldehyde?
+
+[21:54] Yeah. And I don't know, like a day, maybe? I guess it depends on how much you've you've been drinking. I probably look up the like half-life of processing ethanol and then calculate it from there. All right, so is there something that counteracts that so that when you get up in the morning, your coworkers aren't like well, I mean, I guess hydrating a lot and uh because you don't only eliminate it through your skin, you eliminate it through your other wastes.
+
+[22:26] Uh so the more you're sort of like flushing your body uh with water, I would imagine, the less needs to evaporate out through your skin. Right. I haven't researched hangovers in a long time because I only do it when someone's writing an article and they want to pretend like I'm an expert in it. Right. And same.
+
+[22:41] Yeah, you know. Uh but the last I read, which was again years ago, was that a lot of the hangover effects aren't actual dehydration. They mimic dehydration, but you can have you'll have those same effects even if you are like a giant floating water sack. Yeah, no, I mean the uh the the breakdown products of alcohol are like pretty nasty. Uh so you're gonna feel those definitely.
+
+[23:06] Yeah, you ever you ever told So it's not just dehydration. You ever test that anti-alcohol pill that uh Paul Adams, friend of the show, Paul Adams, uh was uh trying where he came to existing conditions and how many cocktails did he pound stats? It was something absurd. Oh, like the whole menu, I think. It was ridiculous.
+
+[23:21] He took some sort of like uh, I guess something that either like I don't know what it did, like I don't know what it was, but it was something that like vastly accelerated the alcohol breakdown rate. Uh and yeah, I mean, he just powered through the freaking cocktails and walked out. It was nuts. Nuts. Yeah.
+
+[23:43] I mean, remember, Paul's also the crazy guy. So that that you know, got me the anti-fizz pill and ruined my whole remember we drank that that freaking wine, the sparkling wine, and he ruined it with that freaking pill. Yeah, yeah. God. Was this something that turns off your like uh carbon dioxide taste receptor?
+
+[24:01] Or we're yeah, it's the famous it's the famous mountain climbing drug that you uh take that ruins the ruins the champagne for you. It's unpleasant. That's yeah. Well, but okay, so so this this drunkenness de processing pill. So you don't get as drunk, but like does it accelerate the like metabolism of the nasty stuff that happens when you metabolize alcohol, or does it just remove your ability to like enjoy being drunk?
+
+[24:34] Uh we will have to get. I think what it was is that like it took like three times as much to get to the same level. In other words, it's like I think the the point of this p pill drug thing was that you could go out, hang out, then like dose up, and then within an hour be able to drive effectively. I think it was actually supposed to de-drunk you was the theory of it. I don't know that that's a a wise move.
+
+[25:00] It's probably better just not to drink, right? Um, I I can't wait for self-driving cars. To be honest, like self-driving cars to me are like gonna be the best thing ever. Oh, John's not liking the self-driving car. Why?
+
+[25:13] Well, I'm not gonna say you're not allowed to drive. Yeah, but like self-driving car, it can keep driving while you're sleeping. Again, the dream is the self-driving RV where you don't have to sit in the driver's seat. You're in the back, making a cocktail, playing a board game with the family. You go to sleep and you wake up in a new national park somewhere.
+
+[25:35] Yeah. It's already parked and leveled. You know what I mean? You know, they can get some sort of robot to hook you up to the hook up your like, you know, your the black water tank to the freaking like dump. You know what I mean?
+
+[25:45] Yeah. Self-driving, baby. That's the dream. I would definitely do that. I would live in that RV that drove itself around.
+
+[25:54] The pain of the RV, well, I mean Nastasia, you you had a I've never lived in an RV for a week or two as an adult. I've only done it as a teenager. So Stas has done it more recently than I have, and and she's not gonna co-sign this as being the dream. No. No.
+
+[26:10] No, it was not fun at all. You don't want to do that with kids, Nastasia? Like playboard games every night? No. Yeah.
+
+[26:15] Well, the last time I was in an RV with Nastasia. What's the worst part of it? Oh, yes, that's what's the worst? Um, the people I were was with were afraid to drive it. So I was the only driver.
+
+[26:28] Well, what if it was driverless? Yeah. Um, yeah, but it's still like the the finding the um the dump situation to dump the waste. That's terrible. That was always an issue.
+
+[26:39] Yeah, well, I'm hoping that the self-driving one's also self-dumping. Is that I mean, is it getting better? How would that work? Well, how does it drive on it? If it can drive on its own, why can't it dump its own stuff?
+
+[26:50] It's a computer. It's a computer. It could do it. You know what I mean? I'm stipulating.
+
+[26:55] The other thing was, uh, so like it's not easy to drive a big vehicle if you're not used to driving a big vehicle, right? So like I wasn't on the I I got in it because they were driving around Florida and we were all working a gig together, but you know, as usual, I flew in last plane in, first plane out. But I get in the thing with Nastasia, and like they're like, hey Stash, go get go get gas. Go get food. Well, go get well, no, but we stopped at a gas station.
+
+[27:22] Yeah, we needed to do it. And it and like and this this is the noise of an R V scraping against a gas pump. Uh we were like, oh my god. Because once the RV has touched the gas pump, how do you untouch you can't just like you can't just you can't just reverse what you do. Yeah, you can't drive sideways.
+
+[27:49] It's not it's not a crab. It's an RV. You know what I mean? Awesome times. Awesome times.
+
+[27:55] Uh that would be a cool feature to incorporate into a self-driving car. The crab, the crab walk, yeah. Uh well, it's not gonna be. My self-driving car of the future, obviously, is electric. Uh now, the other thing was that I remember is they bought the lowest quality alligator meat I've ever had in my life.
+
+[28:16] It was it had been frozen. That's uh that sounds rough, man. Oh my God. That so like imagine like not like what's like two levels below a ziplock, Nastasia. Like, remember like when you're a kid, those sandwich bags that had the flip over, like they couldn't afford the real locks, so like they put it in the sandwich and then they flip that little Oh yeah, yeah.
+
+[28:36] You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Real busted like bags. You know what I mean? So it was it was a wet alligator meat, like all nasty, like hacked up pieces and all gross, and then just put into one of those things and like tossed in the back of someone's freezer, right?
+
+[28:54] And then a freestyle, a freestyle, a freestyle, a freestyle, a freestyle, a freestyle. And then like we get it out, and then like we thought for its final time, and it's just a spongy, nasty grossness, and we're all like, well, I uh uh I guess we'll cook it. I guess we'll cook it. That was bad, right, so bad. Bad so bad.
+
+[29:17] Low quality. Yeah, yeah, terrible. Um that's not true. How did you cook it? What'd you say?
+
+[29:23] Oh, how did you cook it? I'm curious. Face faced with a uh awful circumstances such as this. How do you what's your strategy? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[29:31] You're clipping up a little bit on me here. Joe, should we have a call back in or no? Because I have a question. I'm also recording on my computer, so I can just send you that. So for the next can Jack can put that in later.
+
+[29:43] All right. So here's a question that actually uh someone had. Oh, we're gonna get you and Paul on to fight it. Actually, here's what we'll do. Here's what we'll do.
+
+[29:51] No matter what John's doing, maybe he'll come back. Maybe he'll bring some wine from the wine bar. Maybe. Saswee, are you liking this so far? I know what like I don't think that's possible with any restaurant situation, but sure.
+
+[30:03] What do you mean? To take inventory to uh No, but we're advertising the thing. Or he we can buy it. Jesus. Okay.
+
+[30:10] God. Like. And uh and we'll get Paul to bring in his magic pills. And we'll I mean, like, it's impossible to do an A B because you can't you can't have the same person against themselves with and without the medication, right? Well, you'd have to do like a crossover study like they do for uh medical trials.
+
+[30:35] Hmm. Where like I give it to and you don't know what you get, and we have to do it like three times. It seems complicated. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
+
+[30:42] Yeah. And so science is complicated, don't know what to tell you. If it was easy, anyone would do it. Yeah. Well, if it why it's also complicated, but why is most food science so terrible?
+
+[30:54] Uh well, food science, the term food science sounds like it should be science that you do on food, and food is like a great, amazing, huge uh thing that we all love. But uh in practice, food science means industrial food science. So the only questions that really get funded are things that help make money for very large packaged food companies. Right, but even though even even those studies I find are often really, really bad because in their effort to control things. Are you talking about like nutrition studies?
+
+[31:27] Because those are also bad. No, I'm talking about literally where they're trying to figure out the best way to cook something. Their controls are almost always bad. Because in order to, in order to control only one variable at a time, they have to like all of the variables are interdependent, right? So like thinking you can just control one variable and actually figure out what the hell is going on is wildly inaccurate when it comes to actually cooking in most instances.
+
+[31:53] Yeah, I mean there are like actually there's statistical models and approaches you can use that uh deal with like highly multivariate data like that. Um but uh I I you know I I mean like I guess uh most of food well the uh i if you look at all of food science the the subset of it that's looking at the best way to cook something is like actually a pretty small uh part of it but uh yeah no I think like typically they don't really talk to people or involve people that actually like enjoy cooking and do it a lot so uh often the choices they make are somewhat baffling to someone who like would be accustomed to cooking that stuff. Right. So get this you're a fermentation person, so you might and you might you will have some in like feelings on this. So I was I was doing uh I was doing a little you know poking about to just stay current on sauerkraut because sauerkraut is delicious, right?
+
+[32:46] Sauerkraut, you like sauerkraut, delicious product that's extremely delicious, yeah. Yeah, good part of classic. Yeah. Hey, by the way, can I tell you something? Not sauerkraut.
+
+[32:55] Uh I don't think I've spoken about this on the air. So coleslaw, let's just coleslaw for a minute. You guys like coleslaw? Yeah, mayonnaise coleslaw, vinegar, or like a light mayonnaise with a little bit of vinegar. Where are you guys?
+
+[33:06] I guess light mayonnaise with a little bit of vinegar. Same and celery. Yeah, I think that sounds pretty much ideal. Yeah, okay, me too. Okay, so we're in the same place.
+
+[33:12] Now, for years, years, years, years, years. I've been a uh quarter the I usually do a half head at a time just because you know I'm not making for that many people, right? So and let's let's leave aside whether we're gonna put carrots or celery or whatever else we're gonna put them. Leave it aside. Uh I put green apple in mine, which I enjoy.
+
+[33:30] Don't do raisins. Green apple. No raisins. They inflate unpleasant, I find it. What am I, Yoda?
+
+[33:36] Anyway, so like uh so for years I like cut the cabbage into quarters, then chop out the the you know that the um, what do you call it, the stalk, and then shave, right? The core, yeah. Yeah. Well, first I'll yeah, first I'll usually do like almost like you're doing a monse like for onions. Uh like cut one line that one line down the middle and then shave so that you're you have like you know, quarter.
+
+[33:58] Not super long strands of cabbage. Yeah, yeah, not super long, but not tiny either. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But okay. Like confetti.
+
+[34:04] I bought a salad master. You guys familiar with the salad master? No. The salad master food machine. I'm not.
+
+[34:10] Oh my God. So in the 20s or 30s, there was a called the Grisker. They made the first one that's like this. And it's the very first cone-shaped, like handle cranked, like grater shaver cutter, right? And then uh they got knocked off by the Saladmaster Corporation out of Texas.
+
+[34:29] I don't know where. I'm gonna say it's plain oak. It's probably not. Anyway, so it's like it's it's just this base that clamps down with a big old handle on it, and you can either put it into the this one section that acts like a chute, acts like a cheese grater, or you can literally just jam the food into the wheel because there's no protections. And they still make it manual.
+
+[34:47] And I got one of these things to test it, and I have to say I like it. I don't use my I only use now my cuisine art for um, I only use it for like, you know, pestos and and and pie crusts and stuff like that. Because I use this salad master so fast. I had to build my own base because of course, because I don't like I don't like the bases that they have, because you know me. I hate suction cup bases.
+
+[35:09] Do any of you like suction cup bases? They suck. They don't suck. That's the problem. They they they they blow.
+
+[35:14] They they never stick. Have any of you ever had a suction cup base before? They're like lowest common denominator, because I guess some people have counters that don't work with clamps, but uh no, they're not a good solution. That's the other thing is that the only clamps that people give you are those ones that are like with that little with the with the where you have to turn it a million times and then it grinds into the thing. We have it's a new world.
+
+[35:41] Spring clamps. It's a new world. Just ship the thing with a base that can fit down on the ground and spring clamps. And then if you don't want to use a spring clamps, then like give you a non-working suction cup so you can pretend like you can work. But no one has done this.
+
+[35:54] No one has made the good base yet. You know what I mean? How much does everyone hate the pasta machine base? Because the pasta machine base, you can't even really reorient that little clamp thing. You know what I'm talking about?
+
+[36:05] Nastasia doesn't want you to have the pasta machine base because she doesn't want you to make the pasta. Sure. You know what I mean? She's like, I designed that base so that you would never use the machine. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[36:15] She doesn't have anything, you don't have anything against the company making money. You just don't want people to actually use it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh that's a that's a garbage clamp.
+
+[36:24] Garbage. Um anyway. So I took the salad master. So wait, here's what here's where I'm getting to the point. They have a shredding disc, right?
+
+[36:34] But I started to go nugget. I started to go nugget. What do you guys think of coleslaw? Nugget. What do you mean?
+
+[36:43] You like cube up the cabbage? So, like the pieces of carrot and cabbage are like the size of like uh like an Advil liquid gel. But thin, obviously, because there's cash. You know what I mean? So it's it it's it's so it's grating it into like in other words, like they're not long shreds, it's nuggets.
+
+[37:09] So I call it like nugget nugget sal nuggetized salad, but it's an extremely, there's no long pieces at all. What? It's all still very thin. Well, the apple pieces are like uh the apple pieces are uh what is what is that? The apple pieces are maybe like a little under a quarter of an inch in in depth.
+
+[37:29] That that's the like a quar maybe like a quarter of an inch is the is the is the height of the scallop that the nut so it's basically like a scallop shaped cone, right? That um doesn't do waffle cuts because the scallop goes all the way to the bottom. So it's not cutting, imagine like a like a very large waffle, like a wide whale, but in nugget form. Because they they they they go back, forth, back, forth. And it rips through it, and I think I think the nugget, I think the nugget, I'm I'm for it.
+
+[37:56] No long pieces. Here's another thing. It's this is unfortunate because it's almost the best thing in the world. You ready for it? Ready?
+
+[38:02] So you got this rotating cone, right? You're feeding the celery into the rotating cone, and if you hold it with the with the ribs up, most of the ribs don't make it into the salad. The nuggetizer grates and then leaves the ribs at the top and you just pull the ribs off, which is freaking genius, right? Because it cuts around the strings? Yeah.
+
+[38:23] These strings, but here's the problem. Oh it's not a hundred percent. And when the when the strings do snap and they end up in the bowl, it looks like you've dropped a hair into it. Because it has stripped them, but then it breaks, and that's hard gross. That's hard gross.
+
+[38:36] Yeah. So I currently still chop my celery by hand. By the way, when you chop that. Do you remove the strings first yourself or uh No, no, no. Fine cross-cut.
+
+[38:45] Fine cross-cut. As you're going. No, no, no, no, it's fine cross-cut. The strings, I don't find the strings are unpleasant if they're under, you know, if they're short. If they're very short.
+
+[38:55] So, you know, when you're when you're chopping by hand, you can guarantee that you're every cut's a cross-cut. You know what I mean? So anyway. Um, it sounds it sounds kind of with the with the string removal, it sounds kind of like how you make linen out of uh flax stems where uh you have to. That's how they do it.
+
+[39:14] I thought they keep it. They beat it, right? Don't they beat it? Or they have to. Yeah, they beat it, but like you beat it kind of like around the around the long uh the long strands that actually become the linen fiber.
+
+[39:25] So I wonder if you could make so like linen uh and other cloths like it are called bast fibers. Um so I bet you could save the strings from celery and make a uh celery linen out of it, a bast fiber. That sounds like a lot of work. That sounds like a lot of work. You should do that.
+
+[39:41] Yeah, you know what, uh anyway, look I always think about like look I look at the linden trees because there's linden trees all around here. And uh those have bast in them. But I guess can you imagine beating just sitting there? Imagine your job. Yo, John, go beat on that tree, go beat the hell out of that tree.
+
+[39:58] No, no, thank you. Um How about John? Where's the radio show located for a couple months? What? Dave, you're like, can you imagine that job?
+
+[40:07] And I'm saying, John, how about the job where you have to tell Dave where the radio show is located for a couple months? Oh, before I f figure out where the Rockefeller Center is hard to find your way around, people. And it's big, yeah. Yeah, it's big and confusing, and everything's called something Rockefeller Center. Nothing's like, oh, 48th and and and sixth.
+
+[40:27] You know what I mean? But the entrance is right faces right there across from the ice skating rink. Everything faces the freaking ice skating rink. Literally every damn thing faces the ice skating rink. I think he was talking about when we were moved over to the 51st.
+
+[40:44] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was both, Joe. It was both. And they would never just answer me. What store is it next to?
+
+[40:51] Can I find Mark Jacobs? Yeah, but that's the thing. I don't shop anywhere. Google Maps doesn't. First of all, Land does research for eight hours on some inane subject, you just can't find the radio studio.
+
+[41:03] Hey, listen. Suck it up, suck it the hill up. All right, now listen. So back to back to uh sauerkraut. So I was researching the uh the effect of temperature on the uh texture and the different bacterial, you know, um what's the what uh cut stu types of bacteria over the three different yeah community there you go, communities.
+
+[41:25] Thank you. That's uh I was cool. I was researching something similar myself, actually, recently. So I'm interested to hear what you found. So there was a 2017 study, I forget who did it, right?
+
+[41:36] And all of the, you know, bloggy blog, McBlogging blogs were like pointing to this study about how, and I'm not saying they're wrong, right? But how the ideal temperature is between 60 and 65 Fahrenheit, which I can't do in Celsius because I that low a temperature I can only do in Fahrenheit, right? And um Yes, same. And right, and they're pointing at this study, right? And and then I read the study, and what's interesting about the study is the quote unquote trained panel hates sauerkraut.
+
+[42:09] Because if you look at the actual it's crazy. If you look at the hedonic scores, they all score highest on day seven. All of the scores go down as you go through day 21. So all of these sites are like, you need to, you need to go at least two weeks for the uh which one's the third one? It's um uh lactobacillus uh, which is the one that it can costinak mesenterioides.
+
+[42:35] Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one that I always think sounds like uh Luconistock, like uh like Lukenbach, Texas. Yes. So um with Willie and Whalen and the boys. So the point is is that like they're like, well, you gotta do it that long, or it won't be complex enough because you won't have all three communities.
+
+[42:51] And yet the study they're pointing to, every single one, everyone hated that, and they wanted basically fresh kraut that was only like a week old. So I was like, can no one read a study? Well, so and and you've also identified a uh a common pitfall with sensory science that uh that that people often don't get, which is well, first there's a sort of uh central central dogma in sensory science that uh doing a sensory analysis on the qualities of something is fundamentally different than doing a sensory analysis on what people prefer. Um and if you are doing testing on what people prefer, uh it's it's not actually accurate to call it the best, uh, because that is impossible to to judge. Uh what you can say is that people have the most preference for that, or of the of the uh consumer panelists that we included, the statistically significant preference is for X.
+
+[43:49] Um, but fundamentally you can't answer questions about what is the best. Uh you could answer questions about what do what do most people prefer, what does the average consumer prefer? What does a uh frequent sauerkraut consumer prefer? Uh and then relate that back to like sensory and physicochemical qualities, but um the kind of appeal to authority that oh well this this consumer panel said this one was the best, uh that's literally based on just like anyone's anyone's opinion of what they like. So yeah, if they if they actually don't like sauerkraut, what you've established is the correct time to ferment sauerkraut for so that people who don't like sauerkraut like it.
+
+[44:27] Right. But do you I I don't even remember. I should have like, I didn't know we were gonna talk about it. I should have written down what the study was so you could take a look at it. But yeah, I mean, well, do most people actually like fresh kraut better than like two-week and three-week kraut.
+
+[44:41] I I don't know. I mean, I don't personally. Yeah. And what's your favorite uh kraut temperature there? Uh yeah, like I don't I don't know that I would need it to be held at like 60 to 65, but um generally a cooler temperature uh leads to like slower metabolism by the microbes and uh generally more complex flavor development, I find.
+
+[45:09] Well, what at what temperature do you think you get more of the risk for softness? And is that risk for softness increased by vigorous? Because I do a lot of pre, some guy looks exactly like uh Senator Grassley just walked through. If it was, you imagine what we would do. Anyway, so like that'd be crazy.
+
+[45:25] The like the vigorous need the vigorous kneading with the with the with the salt beforehand so that you can get brine right away without adding extra is that have a tendency to make it softer or not? Because like if if your temperatures are higher I think I think with softness, you're mostly concerned with like pectin breakdown um and like mechanical stuff early on I think is going to be like less significant than like enzymatic activity at higher temperatures that break down the pectin. So pectin like it's in jam. And it's also the molecule that that glues uh all plant cells together in case anyone did not know. Right.
+
+[46:02] So you're you're a fan of the of the pre the pre-need to to to get that brine action going quick or no? Yeah I mean yeah and you like want the sauerkraut to be like limp uh and you need to get the moisture out of it. I mean so like so okay when you're talking about softening it's either like uh you have plant cells the cells are like packed full of water at like high pressure so like curger pressure um so if you like remove some of that water the pressure goes down and the like plant tissue gets limper. So that's like one way to get softness. The other way is if you like then physically unglue the structure around those cells which makes the like solid part break down.
+
+[46:40] So I think what you want is to like remove remove water uh to to get this like internal pressure down and get some like uh you know limpness but bite uh without getting uh getting too much action of like dissolving that pectin. Um nostasia's been looking all life versus lip sourcing lip sauerkraut I've I've also read that with um yeah with well with both sauerkraut and things like uh you know cucumber pickles uh if you have molds on the on the vegetables at all before you brine them the the molds won't grow once they're brined, but like they have pectin degrading enzymes that then if you like hold the temperature too high will uh will soften it's a little bit more I couldn't hear your handle those started. You're breaking up, but is what you were saying that there's endogenous, there's endogenous pectinases because of the molds, is that what you were saying? Because they're fungi. There yes, there's there's uh pectinases from the cabbage and pectinases from molds, and the the mold ones are like particularly effective and fast at at higher temperatures.
+
+[47:48] So let me ask this. Now I have to say, I don't want it to be stiff, I want it to be kraut, but I like a little crunch in my kraut. I like a little crunch on my kraut. I don't, I mean, I there's like limp implies soft, but soft isn't limp, right? There's there's floppy with crop.
+
+[48:07] Two different things. Just so we're clear. Uh so if you can't control the temperature that well in your uh apartment, and if you know it's gonna get above 70 or so, would you would are you are you a kind of a pinch of calcium kind of person or no? Yeah, I mean, I would either add a little bit of calcium chloride, which helps glue the pectin together, um, or I'd start it in this warm room temperature and then keep it in the fridge. So you have like a very long slow uh fermentation, which is kind of like the uh the strategy that a lot of people use with kimchi traditionally.
+
+[48:42] Speaking of kimchi, oh by the way, I was making some spicy sauerkraut, and someone was like, isn't that kimchi? I'm like, no. No. No. No.
+
+[48:53] Yeah. No. No. Not in any way. No.
+
+[48:58] But speaking of, yeah, no, the uh the the the yeah. No. Uh simp sim simple and stupid definitions, yeah. Very annoying. I have to say, everyone likes the look of uh purple cabbage sl uh kraut, but I really prefer green.
+
+[49:17] You do the taste of green. I like it better. Yeah, like why mess with a classic? Yeah. Uh what about caraway seeds?
+
+[49:24] Yes or no? No. No? What about afterwards when you're cooking? No.
+
+[49:28] Okay. How hard do you press? Sometimes. How hard do you press kraut before you use it for hot dogs? I like a lot of sauerkraut.
+
+[49:38] Press it as hard as possible. There's nothing worse than a soggy bun. Soggy bun. So sad. Yes.
+
+[49:43] Can we protect the bun from the sog? We need a film. Hydrophobic barrier. Yeah. A uh a film of perhaps butter or mayonnaise could do the trick.
+
+[49:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do, I do like that's the thing. So like, you know, people they freak the hell out when you can tell them you're gonna mayonnaise their hot dog, but I think maybe a slight hydrophobic coating on the inside of the bun is gonna stop maybe some of the dreaded sog. That's if I think it's a good thing. Well, it's like putting mayonnaise on a sandwich.
+
+[50:15] That's like the I like an absurd amount of kraut. In fact, I also like a lot of mustard. I I can add enough mustard to a hot dog to almost sog out the bun because I like mustard so much. But I'm also mustard and kraut. I don't really think I mean I like everyone else's idea of, but like to me, like a hot dog mustard, kraut.
+
+[50:35] Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. I realize that not what people want. They want to have all like other kind of stuff on their I mean, that's good too.
+
+[50:44] But always come back to mustard or kraut. Yeah. If someone said to me, if you were like you're only ever gonna have one hot dog again in your life, I would say please make it with mustard and kraut. You know what I mean? Yeah, agree.
+
+[50:56] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um hydrophobic coating. All right. Nine ten, uh nine ten, what do you think?
+
+[51:02] AG? A G? A G? Uh 910 Aggie? Nine ten Aggie?
+
+[51:07] Nine ten a G. Yeah, I don't know. Nine tenogy? They'll know. No.
+
+[51:11] No, no. They know. Yeah. No. So this is a question actually that I texted you before.
+
+[51:16] And uh so since we have you on, I will read it in its entirety and see what you what you say, since uh they seem to me, you texted me? Yeah, yeah, like months ago though. Don't worry about it. Not recently. Yeah.
+
+[51:28] Okay. And and don't worry. The c the question is for anybody out there. You just happen to be the best anybody. All right.
+
+[51:35] Uh I have I have two chemistry degrees. I don't. This is nine ten a G. I have two chemistry degrees and a huge interest in food. I looked into a cross section of chemistry and food uh and stumbled upon the flavorous position, but it is notoriously difficult to get your foot in the door.
+
+[51:49] Yeah, tell me about it. There's only like a hundred of them in the whole like world, right? Or two hundred, some something stupid. Some some small number. Yeah, it's like it's like it's like it's like having a job as a movie reviewer.
+
+[51:59] Yeah, it's like well, it's like yeah, like it's sort of like Harry Potter wizard thing. You can't get can't get that job if you're a uh what do they call them? The people who aren't that muggle muggles, right? Muggles. Yeah.
+
+[52:09] Uh does does anybody have any advice for someone in my position? What are some other food science jobs out there? Thinking about working with flavors and how they inter interact would truly be my dream job. If only we had someone who was writing a book called Flavorama on to talk about this. Uh I've been thinking uh this person's been thinking about yet another graduate degree, maybe at NC State, so I'm not above going back to school.
+
+[52:31] Thanks. Yeah. Well, okay, so I'll preface this by saying that uh I mean, w one would imagine that all flavor chemistry is the same, but I I came at it more from uh analyzing the flavors in natural products and figuring out how those work rather than building flavors from scratch. Uh so it's sort of two separate but related skill sets. Um I would say, I mean, I think like well, okay.
+
+[52:57] So there's three, there's three big flavor houses. There's Juvedon, Firmenich, and International Flavors and Fragrances. And uh they all have operations in France, France and Switzerland usually, um in Ohio, and I think there are all in New Jersey too. Yeah. Uh so I would look for jobs in one of those places and um basically take or apply for like any job at one of those companies that you're qualified for, and then uh try to work your way up from there.
+
+[53:29] Cause um, you know, the the the flavor industry is very uh it's quite like insular and they like promoting from within. Yeah, I mean the place that I know that's like basically a family business. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. The smaller ones, the smaller ones are even harder to get, right?
+
+[53:45] Well, oh yeah. Well, and and it's also um an end an industry like very they don't uh they patent some things, they don't patent a lot of stuff because they would prefer to not talk about what they're doing. Uh so it's an industry where there's a lot of like trade secrets and secrecy. Uh so to even like get close to getting one of these jobs, uh, you know, the technical skills have to be there, but it's also like they have to know that they can trust you with all of that stuff. Um how hard is it to get a job in like Monel or something like that?
+
+[54:17] Impossible? Oh, Monell, uh very difficult. Uh maybe maybe, maybe as a like lab technician, um, you could, but I would say there's probably more jobs available at uh either like big flavor houses or other sort of like food processed food companies. Um yeah, I'm not sure at Monell that you would necessarily like learn you would learn a huge amount about uh you know how flavor perception works, uh, but not necessarily any much that would be directly useful for being a flavorist. Right.
+
+[54:53] Uh which is sort of more of a uh uh I mean there's there's you know a lot of science to it, but you're kind of working more like an artist in some ways or a craftsman. Yeah. All right. Tell me rip through some questions. Should we read this questions?
+
+[55:08] You're gonna know some of this stuff too. All right. From Jake Rieger, longtime listener, first-time commenter. Started working my way through the backlog mid pandemic and now up into the high 300s. Oh my god.
+
+[55:16] Uh just got a circulator, but did not have any uh tips for securing my uh they say clips. They mean clips or tips? Clips maybe? Some people secure their bags. Yeah.
+
+[55:25] Uh clips for securing my bags. I'm also seeing some people using weights or magnets. Uh, what kind of setup do you recommend for keeping things submerged? All right, Jake, this is a good question. Uh so if you're rolling, not in bags, rolling, hating, patrolling.
+
+[55:37] If you're rolling uh with uh saran, like you're doing tubes, then just roll a couple of uh stainless steel butter knives in the last layer of plastic wrap and your stuff will sink down. We call that the Mollyvere after Chef uh Hervé Molivare who uh came up with that idea. So all of his uh like uh plastic wrap rolled things sink straight to the bottom of the circulator. But here's what I always do. That's a good trick.
+
+[55:59] It's a great trick. Uh gotta love AirVay with the with the with the with the full mall of air. Now, here's the issue. Uh, people when you're loading a circulator, the m the two one of the most common mistakes I see is people loading circulators such that bags are touching each other. So not only do you have to have your bags submerged, but if two bags are in firm contact with each other, you've just doubled the thickness, which for math people out there have quadrupled the cooking time, right?
+
+[56:25] And also because the part of the bags that is right near the outside is the most bacterially uh loaded because you've touched that and it mean it you know it's been in contact with stuff, you don't want that to be at the center and actually get the last amount of heat. That's how you get blow-offs, especially if your temperatures are close to where, you know, uh like in in the in the low to mid-50s, right? You agree with me so far, uh, Dr. Dr. Johnson there, you with me.
+
+[56:50] So here's what I do. Yeah, yeah. Here's what I do. Uh this doesn't work when you're doing seven and a half liter cambros for that thing. I usually just jam uh any sort of silverware in and stuff on top to get the bags separate.
+
+[57:03] Uh and you can, you know, put put whatever you want on it. What I do is is uh if you're using half-size Lexans or whatever they're called, food tubs, uh, the cambros, I buy quarter sheet, I buy quarter sheet um cooling racks. They're they're really cheap, right? And then you put one in the bottom, and then that means that your stuff's not resting against the bottom. Anything that's resting against the bottom, if you sink something and it's touching the bottom and it's flat like a stake, then it's also not gonna heat you'cause you're trying to heat through the stake all the way to the bottom and that's not good, right?
+
+[57:35] So you put that first cool. The only thing that's transferring heat is water. So if you're not touching water, you're not getting heat. Right. And if the water's not moving, then you're you're you have a stagnant point, it's no good.
+
+[57:45] So then what I do is so I have that layer, so you can make that whole layer, right? Then what I do is I take two racks and I put them foot to foot so that there's about a oh three-eighths of an inch in between the the racks. Then I put that on top of the first layer, and that keeps everything in that layer on the bottom. And then I can, depending on how thick it is, I can either get another layer on top of that and I finish with a rack. Or uh so I basically use a series of racks up to uh the top of the of the of the unit, and between bags, I always have two racks back to back so that there's a good three eighths inches of uh open space that water can circulate, and then you're guaranteed everything's gonna be even all the way through.
+
+[58:28] That's what I do if I don't have the full Molly Vair. Yeah. So it's a vertical stack rather than a horizontal stack. Hmm. I couldn't hear you cut up.
+
+[58:38] But we'll get it up, we'll get it on the on the post when uh when Jack hacks your when Jack hacks your uh your recorded stuff in, I'm sure we'll we'll uh we'll we'll get it. Uh Lauren Johnson writes in I set up Dave Seltzer tap uh exact same build out uh as it was in a tutorial video, only instead of so if you say exact same, then you can't say only instead of uh only instead of an ice machine, I have a dual circuit coal plate housed in a little refrigerator and have been icing it down regularly. The carbonation is coming out pretty well, but the seltzer is not nearly as cold as I would like to be. Any suggestions? Listen, if you're icing it down, there needs to be dryish ice touching the plate for it to be cold, so it needs to drain because if you have ice floating on the top and and water below, it's actually not that fast of a transfer.
+
+[59:22] You need actual ice touching the plate melting actively as the uh soda is going through it, or you won't have fast enough heat transfer. Uh Zach from Pittsburgh. How might one make electric ovens better for bread baking, more even heat heat uh uh eat he uh heating iron plates on the other racks? I mean, what do you think, Ariel? Iron plates are a good idea if you don't have even heat, but electric's gonna be more even than gas.
+
+[59:46] And the issue with a l uh with those is that you need to have enough power in your oven to actually heat up all of that extra metal you're putting in. What are your thoughts, Ariel? Right, yeah. I mean, so uh heat sinks leading to better radiation of heat, yeah, is a great idea. I mean, you would just have to preheat probably with your broiler for like a very long time uh to get it up there, or get something you could heat up on the stove and then put inside the oven.
+
+[1:00:12] Yeah, you know, I have to say I've been running a bunch of tests with very low thermal loads with bread, so like just you know, using like uh very, very light thermal mass, like uh cloche situations. And I'm I'm getting some good results, so I don't really know where I feel anymore. Uh rebents right in and see whether Ariel and thing of this. I've got about 200 lemons. They range from normal lemon shape size content to freak enormous mainly pith and seed monsters.
+
+[1:00:35] That's what we that's what we're called, right, Sus? Uh what would you do? We're thinking to keep all the pretty ones uh with juice to use as lemons and somehow process the rinds to make a syrup or lemon cello or something. Time intensive is great, labor intensive, preferably not, but life has truly given us lemons. So what they should do is suck on lemons.
+
+[1:00:51] Now what do you guys think? Uh Stas, you you you had your lemon cello experience with your dad, but it was okay. It wasn't that great, right? But it was a good bonding experience, no? Yeah.
+
+[1:00:59] Alright, what do you think, Ariel? There's a lemon cello technique I like a lot. Uh that I I think it's from Giulio Batali's books, uh, this Italian food writer, where instead of submerging the lemons in the alcohol, you get a very large jar that you can squeeze uh close shut and hang the lemons above the alcohol. So you believe in that technique, huh? It's a pure vapor vapor extraction.
+
+[1:01:27] Uh so you get very little bitterness and uh very very clean and extensive uh extraction of the volatiles. You're the first scientist uh that has co-signed that, which is good. I've never tested it, so it's good to know that that is Ariel approved and therefore also. The transitive property of approval, right? So therefore, Ferron has approved that lemoncello technique.
+
+[1:01:53] So uh Benz, if you uh if you're making lemoncello that way, you are transitively approved by Ferron Adria. Uh Wizmer, we're gonna get to your Miracle Berry question next time, although we're not gonna be here next week. Next week uh is the Fourth of July. Happy Fourth of July. Go vote in your primaries today.
+
+[1:02:08] Uh and uh we will be posting the made in the Patreon people already have it. We'll be posting it on YouTube for the Fourth of July instead of a live episode. Ariel, thanks for coming on. We all can't wait for your uh book. Thanks so much for having me.
+
+[1:02:21] Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Aronger, host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New Stand Studios, joined as usual with the Stassi of the Hammer Lopez. Hey Stas, how are you doing? I'm good. How are you?
+
+[0:22] I'm doing really well. How'd uh how did you enjoy your non-air conditioned ride on eye of 95 coming in today in your uh in your sweet sweet, your sweet sweet uh you like to live like it's the 50s, right? With your air conditioning sitch? Is that I do? Yeah, you love it, you're loving it.
+
+[0:39] Yeah, so I'm not gonna be here for the rest of the summer because of it. What? I mean, how about this? I might have to do it. Fix your freaking air conditioner.
+
+[0:46] It's it's way too expensive. It's not just the air conditioner. But let me ask you a serious question on the air conditioner. I know that we've you know joked that we're like, well, well, all right, hold on. Nick Wong is here.
+
+[0:56] We'll introduce him later. I've got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How you doing, Joe? I'm doing well. And we got and we got uh Mr.
+
+[1:02] Mr. Jacques Molecule in the uh there on the uh in the Rockin' A California and all that. How you doing? How you doing, Jack? I'm good.
+
+[1:11] I also don't have air conditioning and it drives me crazy. But like that's that's kind of a choice you're making. That's like a that's like a hundred and twenty dollar problem. You invest 120 dollars in a room. No, it's not, it's not, it's not.
+
+[1:22] How big's your room? How big's your room? I have these flat windows, Dave, that the the unit can't really fit into these windows. It would take it would take some like weatherproofing in my apartment. They don't seal entirely.
+
+[1:35] There's a lot of problems. Hold up. What when you say slat window, give me roughly give me the dimensions of your windows. Um I don't know, like standard window size. Then what's the problem?
+
+[1:49] If it's a standard window size, then why can't you do look? Are you saying they're too skinny for an air conditioner? No, what I'm saying is it's these flats that you kind of crank open and shut and they don't entirely seal. Okay. Um these like glass panes.
+
+[2:05] So even if I were to like take a few of the slats out, I would say it's a whole thing. I have a s I have uh this thing for you. They invented. You ready for it? Are you ready for this invention?
+
+[2:13] Mm-hmm. Duct tape. Cardboard. You just seal everything with duct tape and cardboard. It looks hideous.
+
+[2:21] But you're cool. I have lived for decades with being like how about some duct tape and cardboard. And it's just keep you cool, man. Who the hell lives in LA with no air conditioning like this day and age? Like if it by choice.
+
+[2:36] By choice. How about this? If you don't want to do that, uh go buy a s uh a a sawzall, not a sears all. Buy one too. Go buy a sawzall, cut you a hole in your in your wall, stick the air conditioner in the hole in the wall.
+
+[2:51] Turn it on. Enjoy. You know what I mean? You might have to reinforce the wall. Please don't do that without checking to make sure you're not gonna cut through some structural members, but you know?
+
+[3:00] That's all messed up. Yeah. Look, where there is a window, there's a way. Are you on the ground floor? All right.
+
+[3:08] No. That limits you somewhat. Uh a chef friend of mine once was installing an air conditioner in New York City and did the whoopsadaisy and it went all the way down to the pavement. Shaboo. Oh no.
+
+[3:23] Did not kill anybody. Just luckily. That's why in in our apartments, technically, we're not no one's allowed to install air conditioners. Like technically you're supposed to get someone to come do it and install all the brackets and stuff because like an oops a daisy in a 20-floor apartment, that's like game. Well, frankly, from like two stories, an air conditioner falling is a game over man situation.
+
+[3:44] Paxton, rest in peace. That was Paxton, right? Game over, man. Wasn't that him? Anyway, you guys don't watch movies?
+
+[3:51] I know Nastasi doesn't like to watch movies. Thought you guys like to watch movies. Nastasia only enjoy the Nastasi's only form of entertainment is to be on the Connecticut side of the Long Island Sound and listen to Long Island Radio. Is that true, Stas? Mm-hmm.
+
+[4:05] Yeah. And she calls in and they answer her requests and she interviews, like, you know, 70 stars. Who was that 70 star you interviewed? I don't remember his name. What was his song?
+
+[4:15] Brandy. And what was your theory about Brandy and what did he say? Uh she lives in your mind. Everyone's mind or his mind? Everyone's mind.
+
+[4:25] Is that mean he murdered her and she only lives in your mind or she was always a fantasy, like not a real person? Fantasy. Yeah. Creepy. Uh what?
+
+[4:34] Looking glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Looking glass? The name of the band.
+
+[4:41] This makes no sense to me. All right. We are joined in the studio today by Nick Wong, one of our favorite people. How are you doing, Nick? I'm good.
+
+[4:49] How are you doing? Doing well. So uh you know sorry, I I almost went for it, Nastasia. Oh, so Nick Wong famously to us came on the air, I don't know, like nine years ago or something like this, and said nothing the whole whole time. Just stoned it.
+
+[5:03] Like 15 minutes. It wasn't. No, the whole show the whole damn show. At Nastasius at Nastasia's behest, no, no, no, no. Nastasi's a bad person.
+
+[5:10] The first time he did it, it was on his own, and then the second time he did it, it was at my behest. And that was only 15 minutes. Alright. Oh, because he who only do what you want for 15 minutes? I like it.
+
+[5:20] It's strong, strong. All right. So uh if you're listening on the Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's uh 917-410-1507. If you'd like to join the Patreon, you can go ahead and uh do that.
+
+[5:29] We have upcoming guest, uh, Greg Baxstrom. I'm not exactly sure of the date yet, but uh tune in for that. And John says he wants to come back and hang out uh for that because this is our first official post. John, he's uh he's getting ready for his new job. Getting ready for his new exec uh exec chef position job.
+
+[5:49] Yeah. No longer, no longer with the Booker and Dax customer service. So you guys uh who need customer service at Booker and DAX, you're gonna have to give us a little bit of wiggle room, right, Estas? Mm-hmm. Just a little bit of wiggle room.
+
+[5:59] Have you found in the past that people give us wiggle room? No. They want to talk directly to you. Yeah, that's a bad idea. For many reasons.
+
+[6:07] All right. So uh Nick, you when did you first come? I I first met you. Nick was one of our uh so when I was at the French Culinary Institute as the director of culinary technology, we had uh a couple of what I would call like really good, excellent, amazing groups of people, and Nick was part of one of the first amazing kind of like hardcore groups of people that are still like Friends this day, like whatever what is it, 12 years later or something like that? Something like that.
+
+[6:32] Twelve, thirteen years later. Yeah, so when did you come to the to the FCI? Two thousand and eight. All right. And and you were part of the Mindy, right?
+
+[6:41] You were Mindy, Angela, Eng Su. Right, but you were slightly earlier than them, right? You left while they were there, or no. You were s you were same time as Mindy, right? No.
+
+[6:50] Mindy's I can't remember. Mindy Mindy was not in school. She was working. Right. So she she was one of the very first interns, and then she started running the intern program before Nastasi.
+
+[7:00] Nastasi took over for for Mindy. So then you came on again roughly the same time as Ang Su and and uh Angela, and then we had a couple other good people. I forget. It's very hard for me to remember at this point in my life, like who all the people were at the same time. But back then, you couldn't do this anymore.
+
+[7:15] It's not a good idea. But in order to be an intern, the rules were what were the rules? There's only one rule. You just had to have a talent, right? You had a talent, you had to like supply yourself with a nickname, right?
+
+[7:28] And you were not allowed to huff the nitrous. Um goggles when you work with LN. Goggles when you yeah, back because that was not my rule. And now that's not really a rule for the case. That wasn't my rule.
+
+[7:39] That was like look, some of the things that I put the rules I put like, but like we had finagled our way into getting a nitrous tank so that we wouldn't, you know, so that we could do fun stuff with nitrous. And the only way I could do it was to go completely ape hardcore on not using it as a recreational drug. Also, like literally nitrous tanks are dangerous because what they're not dang it's not if you balloon it, it's not dangerous. Like nitrous tanks are dangerous because you don't OD, you just suffocate. So people will put a nitrous mask on and then pass out with the mask on, and they don't have an oxygen tank hooked up to it, and so they they just suffocate.
+
+[8:18] That's how like basically a hundred percent of people die who die from nitris, right? And so, but that doesn't matter. Like, we just had to have like a zero tolerance on huffing uh the nitris. So uh Nick was there, and we never actually forced anyone to have a special skill, but Nick couldn't come up with his like special talent, right? Stas, you know this story?
+
+[8:44] Yep. Yeah. So Nick couldn't come up with a special talent. So they had a uh was it hot dogs or hamburgers? Hot dogs, hot dogs.
+
+[8:51] Hot dog eating contest at the FCI, which by the way, after you left, I had to hold down the FC, I had to hold down the the culinary technology team. I had to beat everyone because you had left. So he's like, This is gonna be my talent. Either I win this hot dog contest or I'm not coming back upstairs. And what happened?
+
+[9:07] You came back upstairs. One. You won. Yeah. Hot dog's really a mind over matter thing.
+
+[9:13] Everybody's overthinking it. Like, oh, I'll eat the bread first and then I'll eat the meat and then just go. Pound. Pound. Gotta go.
+
+[9:19] Pound. Secret? Small bites. Really? You're a small bite man?
+
+[9:23] Small, small fast. Small, small, fast bite. Yeah. My secret was wearing a luchador mask. Where I had to clip the edges to get my mouth open wide enough to shove all the all the hot dogs in.
+
+[9:34] Did you like win by a lot or by a little? I think I won by like a good like twelve to twenty seconds. Yeah, yeah. Uh ours was I think just number. The one I won was I think just how many you could eat in the allotted amount of time.
+
+[9:48] And if my memory serves me, I completely outclassed everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um it's not a good I'm trying to convince my children not to do food bets. As in don't take any food bets from you? Well, Jen, my wife, is a strictly anti-stupid she's kind of ant like strange that she married me because she's kind of anti stupid, like in gen not anti stupid, but she's not pro stupid.
+
+[10:17] And so like I think like uh all the food bets I used to take, like who could be the first person to finish a gallon of jello, like who could, you know, eat like the full uh, you know, half gallon of m you know, food service container of mustard, who could chug the entire food service jug of crappy paste salsa, like all that stuff. Like, like you know, like how many tea bags can you eat before you vomit? Things like this. She finds this to be not amusing. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[10:44] And so she doesn't want our kids to follow. I mean, Booker's not gonna do that, but she doesn't want Dax to do that. She doesn't want Dax to be like, well, Dad did it, so I'm gonna do it. She doesn't talk like that. Anyway, so she's not for it.
+
+[10:57] So I don't I don't do, and I don't think I could do it anymore. I'm too old for for food bets. I think there's like a limit. There's like a limit. The trick with food, eating food is to get past your mental revulsion where you feel like you want to upchuck if you put another bite of that specific object into your mouth, right?
+
+[11:15] Yeah. So how do how do you get past that? I on the price. Yeah. But like just think this goes straight through it, plow through it, right?
+
+[11:21] Don't look at anybody else. Don't look at anybody else. There you go. There you go. All right.
+
+[11:27] So uh after you uh graduated, you went to uh Sambar. Co actually. Oh, oh, how was that? Was that Serpico Days? Yes.
+
+[11:37] You got me the job. Yes. I don't know if you remember that. Uh yes. Yeah.
+
+[11:41] Uh I remember I remember there were some issues. Like everyone had issues, like like no one wants to cooking issues. Like cooking issues. No, I'm not even gonna get into it. So you got that job, but then you like were like looped into the Momofuca world for like a long time.
+
+[11:55] Yeah. You ended up at Som. And then, but there was a for a while you went to Incanto in between, which is uh Chris Constantino's restaurant in California, right? And then you made the big break and you moved to Houston. Why Houston?
+
+[12:09] Which is where you live now. Which is where I live now. Right. Um the move to Houston was not really thought through all the way. It just kind of happened.
+
+[12:18] Uh, when I left New York in 2017, I kind of did a zigzag road trip across America. And I had Chris Shepherd's contact info. He is a famous chef in Houston, for those that don't know. Um reached out to him, said I'm gonna be in Houston for a few days, give me some recommendations suggestions, and he rolled out the red carpet for me. Uh got back at the end of my trip back to California, and he just kind of followed up and was like, Hey, we're uh thinking about opening a restaurant next year, and your name keeps coming up.
+
+[12:55] Is this something that you'd be interested in? And I said, I'm unemployed and I live at home with my parents. In Milpitas. You you keep on trying to make Milpitas a thing, and it's it's not that's not where it is. That's not how you pronounce Milpitas.
+
+[13:10] That is how you pronounce Milpitas. I want you to be from Milpitas so badly. I know, I know. Let's just say uh yeah, back home in Milpitas. I got the call.
+
+[13:20] How close are you to Milpitas? Like 20 minutes. Uh it's Milpitas equivalent. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[13:25] Milpitas adjacent. Yeah, yeah, all right. Um, yeah, and I said, you know, I'll come check out the city. I went out for a week. At the end of the week, I decided I'd, you know, want to give it a shot.
+
+[13:36] So then went back home to California. Two weeks later, drove out to Houston from San Francisco. Sorry, Milpitas, Milpitas. There you go. And uh we opened the restaurant a month later.
+
+[13:48] And that was that was you started at UB Preserve or you start somewhere else? Uh UB preserve. All right. So UB preserve, and you did that for a long time until it closed. Yep.
+
+[13:55] Right. And then you moved, and then I went there, it was delicious. And then I went to uh I never got to go to Georgia James, which was your most recent. That was more of a steaky housey. So there's two of them.
+
+[14:04] There's a Georgia James, which is the steakhouse, and then there's Georgia James Tavern, which is a smaller concept downtown Houston. And I was there just for a few months and then decided to leave the company and just taking some time off recharging and that's that's what we're gonna that's what we're gonna talk about in a minute. But a few questions. How much of that menu is still uh your menu? Is it been totally changed?
+
+[14:25] At the tavern? No, none of it's mine. No, no, no. Because I was looking, I was like, what is a ghost pepper caviar? Why would I want ghost peppers in my caviar?
+
+[14:33] You like spooky caviar? Okay. All right. All right. So my question to you is first of all, like, I don't know, like what's your are you willing to talk about what you want to do next after you recharge or no?
+
+[14:46] Yeah. Um it's always been kind of the goal to open up my own place, and I think I'm in a good spot now that I feel confident that you know I can open up a spot, it'll be in Houston because it's way easier to open a business in Houston than either here in New York or backhoe and mill Petis. Yeah, yeah. Uh what uh what's your favorite Bon Mi shop in uh is it still California or whatever it's called? Cali Sandwich, pretty good.
+
+[15:11] Um I also like there's this place called Dawn and Tien On. Those are my three. So what's it like? Because I think this is the thing that a lot of people who are more on the pro side uh who listen are gonna be curious about. Like, you know, uh you didn't weren't that long uh with uh with Costantino, right?
+
+[15:32] Like six, eight months or something like that? Yeah. Yeah. Not that long. All right.
+
+[15:35] So we won't we won't include that, right? But you worked for at a very high level for two very famous chefs with very large like media presences, right? Like so Chris Shepard runs uh that awesome charity, you know, obviously, you know, Dave Chang is Dave Chang. Who? Uh yeah, yeah.
+
+[15:56] Who who's that guy? Yeah. And you know, uh zillions of restaurants, like a lot of stuff, and you work in a very high level for them. And when you're in a position such as yours, you are relied upon and seen kind of part of the at once you get to a certain level, you're part of the DNA of the establishment, right? And then when you leave, this can be I mean, I wasn't there obviously when you left uh, you know, the uh underbelly, which is Chris um Chris Shepherd's uh restaurant group, right?
+
+[16:27] But I was certainly there when you left uh Momafuku. Uh Do you remember that last night? Oh my god. You came in you came in strapped. Do you remember that?
+
+[16:39] You you plastic wrapped a smear enough ice to your chest and wore jacket over it and then walked to the pass and smear off iced me. Well, why don't you explain for people who don't know what smear-off icing is? It's a dumb frat boy game. Yeah, but explain. Don't Google it.
+
+[16:54] It's stupid. It's just like a lot of people. Chug a disgusting smear off ice while you're on one knee. Yeah, yeah. That's basically it.
+
+[17:03] Yeah. But anyway, it was something you had to do back then. Anyway, but but it's uh it can be challenging, right? Because like you can you need those people's support. What's it like to leave a group like that?
+
+[17:16] Honestly, I think it's it's fine for me because I again I I feel pretty confident in what I want to do next. And I think leaving the company is gonna allow me a little more freedom. I'm also kind of getting to the point where I just kind of don't want to have a boss anymore. Like I wouldn't I would rather work for myself. If I'm gonna put in the hours and do all the stuff.
+
+[17:38] I'd rather have that be for me. Um I guess for people, cooks, zoo chefs, whatever working in today's environment, the thinking about branding and things like that is like less of a new concept. I think for maybe my peer generation of cooks, it wasn't something that's consciously thought of. Like, cool, I need to build a social media following and have that be my own thing separate from wherever I'm working at. Well, right, except for like what's messed up from the public's per se per perspective is it's not like the in the 70s, right?
+
+[18:17] In in the 60s and 70s, I wasn't, you know, conscious, I wasn't alive during the 60s, but you know, prior, the chef, maybe people who knew knew who the chef was, but the restaurator was more important and the name of the restaurant itself was more important, right? So there really wasn't an opportunity to build yourself. Um, you know, really with the rise in the I would say like mainly in the 90s, right? The rise of like the celebrity chef made that kind of a thing. But it in other words, it's hard to build a business without building it around a personality, or it had been hard, right?
+
+[18:51] It you know, unless you've already been in business eight billion years, you can't build a business around a name unless it has a personality attached to it. But the downside of that is it makes it more difficult for someone like you to get the light shown on themselves unless they're willing to branch out. So I think it's a difficult thing for people to um find their way through because I also think that something that gets lost in the shuffle of people constantly trying to push themselves forward is I think to do a really good job in this business, you need to have some loyalty, right? You need to to to a concept, to a place, to a team. You know what I mean?
+
+[19:27] So, how do you so it's interesting that and you were Mr. Team player, you know what I mean? Like super team player, you know what I mean? Like hardcore. Like I've seen you take some serious crap from people that you should never have taken.
+
+[19:42] Like I won't, you know, talk about it, but like hardcore, you know what I mean? Like inappropriate, you know what I mean? And you know, you you took it, which is not right, you know what I mean? But uh, you know, I'm saying about you know my direct experiences with you, not like you know what I don't know anything about Houston. Everything was very pleasant when I was there.
+
+[20:01] I'm not gonna say anything. Um, but you know, how do you help people navigate that difference? Because I think or that that line, because there is a line. If you're only out for yourself, like you can be lucky and and make it, but I don't think you're ever gonna be great if you're only really in it for yourself. You know what I mean?
+
+[20:21] Or maybe you are, maybe I'm wrong. I think there's also people in the industry that maybe they don't want that spotlight, and they're totally fine to just work, be a company man, you know, essentially. Yeah, no, I know people who have who are great at that. And so it's like a kind of like a team. There's the person who like is that name that's built around, and there's someone who's willing to do that for like 20, 30 years.
+
+[20:45] I don't know, people you know who who do it. But I mean, I don't know. It's it's weird. It's like uh uh uh I don't know, I don't know how I how I I feel about that. You think that they're truly happy with the decision?
+
+[20:59] In other words, like I'm I'm I'm trying to wrap my mind around whether this is something that they are super psyched about. I'm sure sometimes they're psyched about it and sometimes they're not, right? To be in that position. Because there's a certain comfort level to it, right? No one wants to be out there.
+
+[21:14] I mean, I I think a lot of people who need to put themselves out there don't really want to be out there on the social, having people lob bombs at you because that's gonna happen. Yeah. You know what I mean? No one lobs bombs at the right hand. Yeah.
+
+[21:25] Everyone always lobs bombs at whoever the face is, and that can be very hurtful for some people. So, you know, me, you know, I don't know. What do you think? Ready to have some bombs lobbed at you? Not right now.
+
+[21:36] Yeah. Bomb bomb me up. Let's go. All right. So uh when you uh took time off, uh when not time off, when you when you left uh underbelly, you took a car trip uh because a c a friend of yours needed to drive their car from Houston to New York.
+
+[21:52] Yes, that's why I'm here right now. So the first stop from Houston in the drive was Memphis. What did you eat? Um I've never been to Memphis. Not very good barbecue, not bad.
+
+[22:05] But it was just from a rando place because this first Memphis stop was kind of last minute, so no researching, no whatever, just spend the night, get back on the road the next morning. Right. O for one. Okay. But uh really like Memphis though.
+
+[22:20] Good live music. Okay. But you're oh for one. All right. I I'd say zero for zero.
+
+[22:27] It was not a negative food experience. Okay. But it's not a superlative one. What kind of barbecue? What was what was the meat?
+
+[22:34] Uh ribs. Okay. And just a goopy, goopy sauce, dry meat stringy? Dry meat stringy, not that much sauce. Is it just at like a random bar?
+
+[22:45] Okay. It was just sustenance. Okay. Beers. No.
+
+[22:50] Okay. Okay. Uh then you drove to Nashville. Food. Nashville, pretty good.
+
+[22:58] Did you have any of that chicken? You know, I've never I've never been to Nashville, so I've never had a lot of their hot chicken? Yeah. Didn't do the hot chicken. Last time I did my road trip, I did the hot chicken.
+
+[23:06] How was it? Hot. Real hot. Hot, like useless hot? You you're Jack, you co-sign on this?
+
+[23:13] Useless hot? Yeah. The the hottest is useless hot, and the regular hot is tasty. Yep. You know, you know, tasty in my family means that it's garbage.
+
+[23:24] That's what my stepfather says when he hates something. Oh, it's tasty. It has taste. It is not, it is not agar and water. It is not tasteless.
+
+[23:36] It's taste tea. Yeah. Uh the hot chicken is good. What? You you like you're you're you're a fan, but you don't like the useless hot.
+
+[23:46] No, useless hot is exactly that. Yeah, it's useless. I gotta say I agree with that. I think you you like that there's a reason it's called useless hot, right? Because it's just to show that you can do it.
+
+[23:57] It's not it's not enjoyable. It's not enjoyable. When I had that useless hot, it wasn't even seasoned. It's just hot. Like they're not even trying to make this have any flavor at all.
+
+[24:06] It's just there to hurt you. Yeah. Basically. All right. So you didn't have that this time.
+
+[24:11] What'd you have this time? Had some barbecue. Pat uh Pat Martin. Yeah. Good.
+
+[24:16] Good. Uh went to Arnold's. Meat and three. No relation. Yeah.
+
+[24:20] Very delicious. Yeah. That's why it's no relation. Very delicious. Yeah.
+
+[24:24] Um what else? Went to this place called Lou. It was pretty cool. Uh uh. Yeah.
+
+[24:29] Good. Good. So you stayed a while there. Yeah, a couple days. Yeah.
+
+[24:33] Uh what are your thoughts about the Martin's potato roll uh controversy? I know it's not the same, Martin. What do you think about the Martin's potato roll con controversy? Can't I just eat a bun without it being a thing? No, you can't.
+
+[24:45] Can't. I don't you can't just have a bun. I don't think it's it means it's getting hard and harder to separate, you know. Yeah. That is voting with your dollars, right?
+
+[24:55] Like so. Were you on the potato roll? Uh were you were you a potato roll man back in the back in the day before this became a thing? Didn't really sell a lot of sandwiches on the life though. In life, I mean I don't get crazy over them.
+
+[25:06] They're just it's just bun. Are you one of those Hawaiian roll sweet roll freaks? I do like a Hawaiian roll. I don't know if I'm a freak about it though. I don't know.
+
+[25:14] Maybe freak. Stas, do you have any bun feelings? Are you uh any sort of feelings on buns whatsoever? No. Huh?
+
+[25:21] Nope. I like, and I know this is dumb. I like the oversized Martins with the sesame on them. I've seen those. I think I've also seen them being used and just watching all the sesame seeds just get all over the place.
+
+[25:37] Oof. Speaking of sesame, did you know that in January it's gonna get listed as one of the major allergens? So all the bakers are going freaking bananas because all these places that have sesame seeds in their bakery now have to like change all their labeling and all this stuff because it's being added to the major allergen list. I think it's an underreported story, to be honest. I mean, have you heard anyone talk about it?
+
+[25:59] No, the the sesame cabal is keeping it under wraps. Yeah, the ses the sesame people are really keeping it down. They're hoping to murder everyone with a sesame allergy before the end of the year. So if you have a sesame allergy, like watch out. They're out they're after you.
+
+[26:12] Joe and Jack, what are your what are your bun, what are your bun situations? What are my bun situations? Like my preference? Yeah. I actually like a good sesame bun.
+
+[26:24] Yeah. Yeah, but like you don't care whether it's potato, like what do you have a brand you go for? No, I don't. I'm not that like I'm not that worried about it. The baby Jesus invented a bun called Cummelwek.
+
+[26:35] Have you ever had this one? The cumul the cumul the wet is the the cumul buns. It's it's caraway and salt on top of like a standard like soft bun. That is a great oh my god, that's caraway. Yeah, that's the buffalo.
+
+[26:46] It's not inside, it's not rye bread, it's a white bread bun. Soft, white bread bun, egg wash with uh with like salt, like flaky salt, and caraway seeds. And with sliced roast beef and horseradish, super money. It's also hyper money with burgers. What?
+
+[27:07] It's like available in grocery stores. Or not here. No. You have to go to Buffalo. You have to go to Buffalo and Buffalo.
+
+[27:15] And really, you should just make yourself listen. If anyone wants to try this, go buy caraway seeds. I know nine tenths of you probably don't even have caraway seeds in in your in your house. I have caraway seeds like dribbling out my ear. I have so many caraway seeds in my house.
+
+[27:26] Oh, what's your most useful? I do. What's your most used spices, people? What's the one you what's which spices do you rip through other than crush crush hot pepper? Everyone knows I ripped through crushed red pepper.
+
+[27:35] Sumac. Really? Yeah. What brand do you use? I get it from the joint over there on the west side.
+
+[27:42] No, they um the International Grocery? Yep. Nice. Uh they are Turkish, but they sell no, they're Greek and no, they're Greek, but they sell a lot of Turkish stuff. Uh are they Greek or they forget?
+
+[27:53] Oh, what about that place over in the East Village too that had a gro on Avenue B or Avenue C. Dual specialty? Wow, yes. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[28:00] And uh and Calustians. Yeah, yeah. Those are the those are three good places to buy that stuff. How salty is the one that they have there? Because my issue with uh most sumac is they dope it with too much salt.
+
+[28:10] So I can't use it in cocktails. No salt, and I add it myself. Okay. Is it brown or red? Uh it's a good question.
+
+[28:19] It's um I can't remember when we first got it, but it's definitely on the browner side right now. Yeah, yeah. People, if you live anywhere near uh so it's a different sumac that they harvest over there and they bring in. But if you live anywhere near where there's staghorn sumac, the hairy stuff, it's not quite ripe yet where I live, but man, harvest some of that yourself. Nastassi brought it in once.
+
+[28:39] That stuff's delicious. Delicious. Delicious. Delicious. So what do you think about the Portuguese bun?
+
+[28:46] Ooh, I like a Portuguese bun. What's a Portuguese bun? They're like slightly sweet. Not as sweet as the Hawaiian. No, but doughy or dense.
+
+[28:55] Oh, yes. Yeah. Really good with like a like a Portuguese sausage sandwich. Like real good. I also uh but but you could take any base bread and and cumalize it if you want.
+
+[29:07] Just like egg wash and then salt and caraway seeds. That's a family show. Yeah, yeah. My favorite my spices I use the most are cumin and coriander, probably. Cumin.
+
+[29:17] Yeah. Yeah. I love cumin. You know who doesn't like cumin? This lady behind me.
+
+[29:22] When pi when Piper. Really? She is like yikes. Well, I don't know whether she likes or doesn't like it, but she and Piper, I'll never let her forget it, made quote unquote chili. With no cumin?
+
+[29:34] No cumin. That's just stew. And get this. There was cumin in the in the lab. There was cumin in the lab.
+
+[29:43] Yeah. Yeah. Cumin. Cumin is cumin is a fantastic. Yeah, I've got the coriander too.
+
+[29:50] Cumin and coriander, like they transcend like every every cuisine tastes good with some like there are recipes that taste good with cumin and uh I like cardamom too. I don't use a lot of it. I blast through Sichuan um peppercorns in my house. Really? Can I tell you a secret that I think I've said on the air before?
+
+[30:09] Go buy the oil. Okay. It's cheating. Isn't that how Danny Bowen did all that stuff? No idea.
+
+[30:15] Have you ever bought Sichuan oil? I don't think I've ever seen it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called prickly called prickly ash oil. And there's a red variety and a green variety, right?
+
+[30:24] I've tried buying prickly ash because the store was out of Sichuan peppercorns and it was not the same thing. No, but the oil I think is all the same. There's a red and a green. So there's one that's like Sancho like, it's green, and there's one that's red that's more red-like. And it's just like the numbing stuff.
+
+[30:40] It's mainly like numbing oil. And it's easier to dose in those rancid Sichuan buttons that I hate so much. And I use that in my house, but no one else likes it. I mix it into things. You should try it.
+
+[30:54] I like cheating. Why not cheat? I'm all for better living through technology. There you go. All right.
+
+[31:00] So uh yeah, so I'm saying no matter what kind of bun you like, and I I'm gonna say I said this on the air before. I was back in Connecticut taking uh Dax up to I don't forget what I was doing, and um I went to Yukon's dairy bar by the way. Did I try to talk about this on air? No. So UConn, I have not been, I've been to Cornell has an amazing ice cream program.
+
+[31:20] I've been to their dairy. Good. Uh I've not been to uh I I think it's uh U Pen U Pen Penn State, not UPenn. Penn State, the nitty line, sorry, apologize for uh saying UPenn at all. Penn State has an amazing ice cream program.
+
+[31:34] They teach a lot of people all over the country how to make ice cream. They have one of the famous ice cream courses. I've not been there. Uh how do you pronounce that place in Canada? Guelph?
+
+[31:44] Guelph? Gelf? Gel Gelfi Guelph, gu, Guelphy Guelph, Guelph. They have an amazing dairy department, right? And they they do a lot of the internet stuff.
+
+[31:50] So if you want to research dairy on the internet, they're a good place to go. I have not been there. Uh UConn has had uh an agricultural, it started as an ag school, I think, and had an agricultural thing, including an ice cream uh program, which is the freaking amazing because you can see the cows where they get the milk from while you're buying the ice cream. The single udder ice cream? Single udder ice cream.
+
+[32:12] It's like it's just like they they milk it right into the like they they just do the on cyclasturize the eggs and then then they milk it right in and then spin it right there. Well, you can see the machines, and here's what's cool you can take it as a class as an undergraduate. And every year the seniors make a flavor. And so like I had the you know, the the senior 22, you know, dash 22 flavor, and it was just like a bunch of chocolate stuff. And so, like, and like, you know, so it uh, you know, Jen got a milkshake, you know, and I got my cone, and I was like, Oh yeah, I got the senior flavor with all the the chocolate.
+
+[32:47] She's like like 80, 90 years of work, and they're just now coming up with chocolate as their secret flavor. I was like, wow, it's harsh. Their ice cream was very good though. But I also went to Cheese Wings, which I have talked about, Shady Glen. Have you ever you ever heard of Shady Glen, Nick?
+
+[33:01] So Shady Glen in the 40s, they needed a gimmick. So they have one of those big flat top griddles. And so what they did, they the Bernice was the name of the lady who was like one of the owners. It was the guy in Bernice, and so they they made the burgers, they put the burgers down. It's not like a full smash, it's more like patty and like a little bit, a little bit of a press, not a else, you know, smash.
+
+[33:22] They let it go for a while, then they flip it to a different side of the grill, and then they put four slices of cheese on top, and then they melt down and they oh my god, Dax timed it. I wish I had remembered. I think he said it was exact it was exactly something, but I don't know what the exact thing was. Let's call it 45 seconds. It's on that order.
+
+[33:39] And then the guy goes in with a spatula and just goes flip, flip, flip, flip, and lifts them all up into four like like flying nun, like like freecotized like things, and then puts them on the bun, and their buns, which is why I'm talking about it now, are very fresh Kaisers. And I said it before, but as a follow-up, Kaisers are good. Good Kaisers are good. New York Kaisers are stale. I know I've been hating on New York foods recently, but the average Kaiser bun in New York City is a stale sad Kaiser.
+
+[34:08] But a good Kaiser is good. All right. So you go from Nashville to where? Uh Nashville to Detroit. Now, did you have conies when you were in Detroit?
+
+[34:20] No. Didn't do conies. Did you have beef or chili? No, why didn't do any of that kind of stuff? Why?
+
+[34:26] Did you hate, you hate, you hate I I thought I found more interesting things. Okay, like what? Um went to Dearborn, which Michigan? Yeah. Okay.
+
+[34:36] Well, it's like 15 minutes away. Yeah. Um got some really good Lebanese food. Oh, yeah. What what was it?
+
+[34:43] Uh got the fool. Um beans. Well, how do they do it? Like, like, well, not beans. What are those things called?
+
+[34:49] They're like, I thought a full was uh or at least the one that I had was chickpeas. Oh, okay. I think the ones I had was was it favas? I don't remember. It's been a long time.
+
+[34:57] And so yeah, it was good. Yeah. All right. Really good. What else?
+
+[35:00] Uh f fate. Fat fatty? Fete. I don't know. I don't know how to pronounce it.
+
+[35:06] There's a Lebanese dish I had recently, but I forget the name of it, that's cooked like almost like a roti on a tava that's then rolled with like some sort of like lobna like filling, but I can't remember the name of it. But you know what it was? No idea. Good. No, it was good.
+
+[35:14] Oh. But it was like I was passing by, there's a Lebanese place on my street, and I'm passing by it, and I see this like, you know, upside down like Tava thing, you know what I mean? And there you got the got the fire under it. And so I'm used to seeing that more for like the big roties, right? You know what I'm talking about?
+
+[35:36] That like upside down walkie looking things. Yeah. And I'm like, yo, what are you making? And then what was the name of it? I forget the name of it.
+
+[35:42] Now I gotta go look it up. It's like three letters. Nothing? No clue. Good.
+
+[35:48] No clue. Good. Uh all right. And then uh to New York. You had anything good in New York so far?
+
+[35:55] Uh had a really good dinner at Bonnie's in Brooklyn. I haven't been. Yeah. You did. Uh now.
+
+[36:04] Nastasia will be mad at me because last night, what did you do? If I don't bring this up, what did you do last night? I visited some of my old haunts in the East Village. Namely. Drop off service.
+
+[36:20] My God, do you go to drop off service? Yeah. Oh my god. That's where my uh my brother and my sister in law Ridge and Trav, Trav who shot my book. That's where they had their like uh what like a like engagement party or some crap.
+
+[36:35] That's where I had my last drinks when I left uh Sambar. Right near what is it, 13th or 12th or something like that? Or yeah, like 12th and A. It's it's in an old laundromat, right? That's why it's called drop off service, because it used to be in a laundromat building.
+
+[36:47] I didn't even know the place was still there. Also across the street from Zaragoza, which I'd forgotten existed until I got there. I was like, oh, it's Zaragoza. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to have to buy ingredients there when I couldn't make it all the way up to the 40s, which was the old place where I used to get like ingredients because they sell made things and ingredients.
+
+[37:03] Yeah. What do you get there? I didn't get anything there. Probably should have gotten some tacos. I think good you have never had their tacos.
+
+[37:09] Very good. Really? Good. For New York. Goat is the one to get if they got it.
+
+[37:13] Yeah? Yeah. You're a goat man? Yeah. Jack, what do you think about the goat taco?
+
+[37:19] Yeah, I'm in. What's your least favorite taco? What's a taco you've had that you want to love and you've never had one you that you that you've had that you've liked? No polis. You don't like no polis?
+
+[37:31] No. Have you had it all the different ways? Have you had how many different ways have you had no pal? How like how many different ways have you tried it and not liked it? Because I can see not liking it.
+
+[37:41] I'm not I'm not gonna ride you on this. I'm just curious. Well, it's not that I don't like it necessarily. It's my least favorite. Um maybe I've only had it a handful of times though.
+
+[37:52] I don't know that I've really exhaustingly gone through all the napalis. So I'm not a huge fan of canned napalis because they just I don't think they offer that much. Is it but but my question is is that do you not like that tart? There's a tart greenness to them. And if you don't like that, you're not gonna like Napalis.
+
+[38:09] But if it's the if it's the sliminess, that you can work around. That's where I'm trying to get to. You know what I'm saying? Nick, you know what I'm saying. Gotcha.
+
+[38:16] I think it is more textural for me, but I like okra. I like nopalays generally. I just think as in a taco, it's like I've almost rather anything else at any point. But I'm never in a mood for Napalis taco if I have an options, you know. Huh.
+
+[38:29] Huh. Huh. So back on the thing. So in an onigiri, do you like an Ume on Onigiri or no? Or no, Uba?
+
+[38:38] Ubike you like the the plum in the in the onigiri? So you don't we don't mind tart things that are tart that should be savory? Okay. All right. It's not that.
+
+[38:46] It's the the texture of the DePause. No. All right. Now, uh for me, pig ears. I've never had a pig or taco I've liked.
+
+[38:53] Really? Yeah. Oh wow. I've tried several. I've had them more crunchy.
+
+[38:58] I've had them less crunchy. And I've never been like, you know what I want today? Pig your taco. And I want to like it. Like real bad.
+
+[39:07] You know what I'm saying? I went to Mexico City maybe like a month ago. Yeah. Tried an udder taco for the first time. Oh.
+
+[39:14] Speaking of uh utter to utter to table. Yeah, utter to table. Yeah. It was okay. I don't think I'd order it again.
+
+[39:20] It wasn't my favorite. And when it's udder, is it part of the actual like like where the milk comes out of? Is it like spongy fat or is it skin? It was muscly. Muscly.
+
+[39:31] But like organ soft mussly, not like meat muscly. Yeah. Yeah, because like a real dairy cow with like with a full udder, they they look like a bodybuilder. They look like they're all stretched out and veiny and that doesn't look appetizing at all. What about you, Stas?
+
+[39:48] What do you think about that? No, I don't know about that. Uh surprisingly, uh eyeball taco, pretty good. Oh god, I've never liked eyeballs. Can I say this?
+
+[39:58] I've had eyeballs plenty of times. I do not like them. Why do you like them? Do they take the lid? I don't like it.
+
+[40:04] It was all chopped up. It wasn't like a it wasn't looking at you in the taco. It's not the looking, it's just like textually, I think like I would have preferred a better ratio of like let's mix in some face meat or something into this. Is that the name of your restaurant? Face Meat.
+
+[40:18] Face meat. Yeah. Face meat. I would sh I would go to sh face meat. You wanna go to Face Meat?
+
+[40:23] Nick Long opens face meat. It's all sandwiches? Face meat sandwiches? Face meat sandwich. Wow.
+
+[40:30] Classic. Classic face meat sandwich. My uh my favorite meat that I I rarely like the way that it's actually cooked, hearts. Really? I love hearts, but I find that like, for instance, like beef heart chili, it's just ground up too much.
+
+[40:48] I'm not really getting the heart. You know what I mean? Like, I want the heart. It's more an execution thing for you. Yeah, because like my favorite part of the chicken is chicken hearts.
+
+[40:57] That's the best tasting part of a chicken to me. Like I could eat infinite skewers of chicken hearts at like, you know, at like one of those like South American barbecue joints. Like I could do chicken hearts. You know who else loves chicken hearts? Booker.
+
+[41:10] It's one of the few things that he actually likes other than salmon. He eats salmon, like chicken hearts. A man of taste. Yeah. Yeah, chicken hearts.
+
+[41:20] Uh how did we get on? Oh, so you're out yesterday. You did not get a taco. Did not. Right.
+
+[41:26] So then where did you go? Left drop off service, went to Planet Rose Karaoke. Ah, this is where the this is where the rub. So Nastasia was there the only time I've ever done. I went with you, and that's the only time I've ever done karaoke, and we we went there.
+
+[41:42] Wait, that was the only time you've ever done that? Yeah. I've only ever been once. Even though Nastasia came close to opening a karaoke bar. Like that's the that's the I've only been once.
+
+[41:53] Well, what were you yelling in Angela's face when you were singing? Was it rage or was it? It was killing in the name of, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[42:01] I have video. It was great. It turned out that I w wasn't in the mood to do what anyone was telling me. You know what I mean? I get that.
+
+[42:08] Yeah. Uh well, but that brings me what's what is Nick Wong, as it turns out, if you ever first of all, if you live in the in the Houston area in however long it takes, a year or two years for Nick to open his restaurant, uh face meat. It's gonna be called face meat. So like, you know, if you have moral qualms about that. That'll be the second concept, more of a kiosk.
+
+[42:28] Oh, that's gonna be your kiosk. That's where you're gonna go IPO, you're gonna freaking shake shack that, and you're gonna like you're gonna have your restaurant and then like your chef I'm gonna retire and face meat. Yeah, yeah. So you're sh so you're gonna have a chef who starts a kiosk outside, then that chef's gonna leave, and then after they leave and have no like part of the company anymore, then you're gonna you're gonna blow that up into a huge multi-zillion dollar face meat and pie. Face meat worldwide.
+
+[42:52] Speaking of face meat, okay. I know this is really old, okay? This is really old. But uh, you know how I'm obsessed with i I I've never been to the north of China. I've only been to like uh uh Shenzhen Guangzhou, Hong Kong, uh you know, I've never been north of China.
+
+[43:10] But in the north of China they they eat donkey, right? Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. Like mainly like chopped up, like in like uh not they they call it a burger, but it's not like a burger, but it's like chopped up, right? And and apparently it's real good.
+
+[43:22] Apparently it tastes real good. And in twenty fourteen, Walmart I think it was twenty fourteen, Walmart in China had to recall their canned donkey meat, the five spice donkey meat. Wait for it. Why did they recall it? It wasn't a hundred percent donkey.
+
+[43:40] Right. What was it? What was it? Oh, I was just guessing. Oh geez.
+
+[43:44] Uh dog? Close. Rat? No. Fox.
+
+[43:49] Horse? Fox. Fox. Fox. But get this.
+
+[43:53] It gets weirder. Like domesticated foxes? I don't know. I feel like it'd be those Russian pets. I I I uh I I can't tell you, but it gets weirder.
+
+[44:02] I'm assuming this story that I read is true, it gets weirder yet. What is the telltale taste sign of fox contamination in donkey meat? Oh man. If anybody has this answer, it's you. Holy jeez.
+
+[44:19] Well, I read the article. I mean, I'm cheating. I would not have guessed it. I don't know that reading something is cheating if it's just learning stuff, Dave. No.
+
+[44:31] Fish. Fishy. Tastes like fish. As a fishy taste, apparently. Or at least is fishy?
+
+[44:37] I mean, there might have been some translational errors. Maybe like what they're saying is fox is some sort of fox that eats a lot of like fish or something. I don't know, man. I don't know. Wow.
+
+[44:47] I don't know. I don't know. Uh speaking of which, uh, I would also be remiss to not mention that Nick Wong does not know how Venn diagrams work and never has, although he poisoned my son Dax about what a Venn diagram is. And literally two weeks ago, Dax was like, Nick Wong knows what a Venn diagram is, and you don't, Dad. Like literally.
+
+[45:07] Out of boy. I'm still angry at you about that. All right. Uh before I get to the Patreon questions, what's the dumbest thing we made back at the French Culinary Institute? Not the dumbest thing we did, which was probably throwing knives.
+
+[45:19] Yeah, that was great. When you graduated, you gave me a set of throwing axes and a kukri. Yeah, I did. Yeah. And we went upstairs.
+
+[45:27] I got you like a tactical hatchet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we went upstairs and we're throwing. Stas. Remember on the fifth floor before were you there before they built the fifth floor?
+
+[45:35] No. So before they built the fifth floor, before like Nastasi and I had the distinct pleasure of having our office in a garbage room, a literal garbage room, like we were literally treated like garbage. Uh my space was in a place where there was no bathroom and like one like electrical power thing in an unbuilt section of the fifth floor because they ran out of money to like to build it, and so they just stopped. I was supposed to have this beautiful lab. That was that's when they hired me.
+
+[46:03] I was supposed to have this beautiful lab. And then when they were like, We're not gonna build your lab, I was like, Well, am I fired? They're like, No, don't go that far. Instead, we're just gonna put you in this in this hole. So we would go upstairs to this place, and it was how messy was that place, dude.
+
+[46:15] Appropriately messy for you. Yeah. And I found like a big chunk of wood, yep, and we would just go up there and blow off steam by throwing knives, which is not appropriate thing for a theoretical boss at a culinary school. Bull whip, too. Didn't you have a whip?
+
+[46:29] Several bull whips and throwing knives. And like the the dumbest thing we did is Eng Su and I and you and Angela and Mindy went to WD-50 together, and we brought the bull whip on the walk from FCI to WD50, and we went into a public park and just started cracking bull whips. Yeah. This is dumb. Sure is.
+
+[46:56] Sure is. One of their special skills was to do cartwheels between this is how stupid we were. That's Mindy's. That was Mindy's special skill? She did a cartwheel between chairs.
+
+[47:10] We lined up, we lined up chairs and made like the equivalent of a hallway that was like less than 18 inches wide of chairs. And she's like, I'm gonna cartwheel down this whole line. She did it. She did it. But we should not have been allowed to do that.
+
+[47:25] It's no wonder, thinking back why everyone hated me. It's no wonder why everyone who worked there hated me. That's not true. Well, they hated working with me. They didn't hate me personally.
+
+[47:36] That's not true. Do you were you there when I when I hooked up the uh CO2 to the uh ice cream machine? No. I walked up to a tailor once, and uh Sam Mason was like, yo, Dave, can you carbonate ice cream? I'm like, I don't think so.
+
+[47:51] And then I hooked up CO2 to to the tailor and spun it under like some pressure and like just ice cream was spraying all over everywhere. This is the kind of thing. I think the one of the craziest things, not crazy, but just very smart MacGyvery things I've ever seen you do. Uh there was food and wine festival, and you're doing a demo on the rotary evaporator. The gasket had broken or something like that, and it was like five minutes till your demo, and you're like, get me some softened butter.
+
+[48:21] And made a gasket using softened butter around the seal. Hey man, gotta make it happen. Wow. Just gotta make it happen. All right.
+
+[48:29] Uh oh, so at karaoke, what is if you ever have the pleasure of working for Nick Wong at I I suggest you wait for the second concept, face meet. I'm just gonna mean like you can go work for the first one so that you're like higher up in the face meet echelon. Yeah. And like, do I order it by the animal whose face it is? You can order by the animal or you can have a medley.
+
+[48:48] So like a happy family, like mixed mixed face? Yep. Mixed face. Are you familiar with uh what kind what's where is it from? Where was Miles Davis from originally?
+
+[48:57] Isn't it from there? St. Louis. He's from St. Louis originally?
+
+[49:00] I don't know. Anyway, are you familiar with Snoot? No. So that's like crispy pig face. Ooh.
+
+[49:06] That sounds good. Never had it. I've never had a real one. I've had a BS1 on a way game, never judge somebody on their away game. So I had an away snoot, and I'm not willing to judge Snoot based on away snoot.
+
+[49:14] But that's fair. But I feel that like you should tack down Snoot for your for your you know face meat. Because that would make a good sandwich. Or do I just skin the whole thing and use the face skin as a burrito tortilla wrap? Well, you know I love that chimichanga.
+
+[49:39] You know, I love that. So, like when I when I had the joy of cooking folks on here, one of the original joy of cooking like Christmas quote unquote things was taking a whole suckling pig, ripping the skin off of it, and then stuffing it with like meat and rice and stuff, kind of similar to what they do in Columbia in Bogota. And I'm like, that's my favorite. Like just like shape of animal and face, like stuffed with stuff. I'll make you one next time you come to Houston.
+
+[50:04] When you do face meat, do you put brains in that? Because I'm not a brains guy. I don't eat brains anymore. I stay away from the brains. Ever since the spongiform and cephalopathy, I don't dislike the taste of brains.
+
+[50:13] I just like it makes me nervous to eat them. Am I stupid? I mean I am, but am I stupid? That's fair. Yeah.
+
+[50:19] So I will take my face meat without the brains. Okay. Hold the brains. I was made aware that a single small deer brain is exactly the amount of brains required to tan the skin of said deer. Fun fact for you.
+
+[50:34] Do you like brain tanned leather? No. I have seen someone do it on this uh reality survival series called Alone. I got really obsessed with watching it. Yeah.
+
+[50:44] It's awesome. Yeah. How was the leather? Good. It held up.
+
+[50:49] It held up. I should answer some questions, but what is the song that you sing whenever anyone leaves your employee? When they come, you may you take people to karaoke and you sing them a specific song. And Stasia, I don't know, I get chills even just thinking about Nick Wong singing this song. I don't think I know what song you're talking about.
+
+[51:15] Because I have I have a repertoire. Like I got some that I cycle through depending on the mood. No, when someone leaves. When someone it's like the last thing, the send-off. You don't do it anymore.
+
+[51:25] The Whitney Houston song. Whitney Houston? You were doing Whitney Houston. You were doing Whitney and you were like, I always I don't know how much you had that night, but you're like, I always sing this, and you did I Will Always Love You. Amazing Reddit.
+
+[51:37] I mean, that isn't that isn't the repertoire. It's an amazing rendition. You're like, this is how I send people off, because you want people to feel good about leaving and doing whatever they're gonna do next. So you sing them an amazing rendition of Whitney. I don't amazing is a little strong.
+
+[51:53] It's a rendition. I'm I'm for it. What about you, Stas? Yeah. Uh I will say best low-key hype song to listen to before service, non-aggressive, not a rage against the machine.
+
+[52:08] Katy Perry's firework. Oh. You crank that before service or any time. Yeah. You just you let it let it wash over you.
+
+[52:16] It's amazing. Huh. I always mutilate the lyrics to that in my head. It's a good song. Just you just gotta get the boom boom boom part.
+
+[52:25] Like that's fine. What about any of the Miley Cyrus songs? No. I don't know the catalog as well. Okay.
+
+[52:31] Okay. Gaga. Good, but to just get you hyped up, ready for the case. Because it's not like that, yeah. That that firework one is like you can do it positive.
+
+[52:45] Yes, exactly. Yeah. Not share. Share? Oh, yeah.
+
+[52:44] I love share. Well, it's a good share. Anything off belief. I mean belief. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[52:56] Anyway. All right. Uh let's answer some questions. Uh, obviously, everyone chime in. Uh WizMerd wrote in, I'm evil.
+
+[53:04] I mean, we all are. Fair. Like, that's the first step, knowing you're evil. Yeah. If you say you're not evil, you're evil.
+
+[53:12] You're a liar. Yeah, you're a liar. Uh, I stole a miracle berry from a certain botanical garden. It made my glass of wine, a tart natural, a grenache, taste like absolute sweet garbage. You are.
+
+[53:24] Oh, yeah. So Nick is the king of the UR. Nick is the king of the UR. You are. You are.
+
+[53:29] Yeah. And and yeah, with Family Shovel Camp. Uh the question that comes to mind is has anyone built a successful cocktail recipe around a palate skewed by these berries? No. No.
+
+[53:40] There is never like anyone who this is my problem with anything that like alters your palate, is it doesn't alter everyone's palate exactly the same way. And they're they're too broad. They're too broad. And they also like they have an arc to them. So it's possible to make something that tastes good, but like okay, so I'll give you an example.
+
+[54:02] To make something that doesn't taste too sweet but has acid, you can do it, right? So but then you're consuming so much acid that then your stomach hurts for like the rest. It's just not a good it's it's it's a it's a great party trick. It's something you do. I would not build a menu around it.
+
+[54:18] Agree? Agree. Agree. Stas? Agree.
+
+[54:21] Okay. Uh by the way, do you think they really sell those damn berries? Listen, here's what I hate. When things are growing and no one's going to use them, it makes me depressed. I'm not saying you should steal it, you shouldn't, but it makes me depressed when I see that miracle berry there, and I know it's just going to hit the ground and get stepped on.
+
+[54:44] Where a rat's going to eat. Do you know that at the garden I'm volunteering at here in New York? I'm volunteering in a garden like you used to, Stuzz. Yeah. Uh, they have chickens every year, and they they dug up the ground next to it, and the rat problem was so intense that the rats ate the live chickens.
+
+[55:00] The rats came in and were like, not just eat usually rats come in and just eat the chickens' food. They came in, killed the chickens. That's New York. That's New York remains undefeated. Yeah, the rats like, I'm hungry.
+
+[55:14] I want chicken. I'm not going to wait for you to cook it. Yeah. That's a New York rat. All right.
+
+[55:19] Bift it wrote in. Uh, can you riff on how to clean slash sanitize plastic containers? Stuff I've heard is all over the place. Simple soap and water may soften uh the plastic um and leach into it or out of it or not. Uh what about uh 3% sodium hydroxide at 180 Fahrenheit?
+
+[55:36] I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't use alkaline on plastic. Uh mild bleach solution, is it good or bad? And P PBW, which is the uh powder brewery wash stuff, which has a mildly alkaline stuff. Is that is that good?
+
+[55:48] Listen, first of all, I will say this to start. There is no such thing as pla as as a unitary plastic that can be treated in in a certain way. Polycarbonate and things that are related to polycarbonate should never be uh cleaned with alkaline cleaners because it like uh and it starts the breakdown of um of the uh of the plastic, and you don't want that. I've heard that alkaline cleaners like dishwashing is okay on uh Eastman Triton, which is a resin that is mainly used so like like the newer stuff that like Vitamix and and and them have, like they say it can handle the dishwasher, although I never put my Vitaprep blender stuff in the in the dishwasher, but alkaline stuff is very damaging to certain plastics, okay. Also, I wouldn't use alcohol to sanitize certain plastics, like acrylics, anything with acrylic in it, if you put high proof uh sanitizer stuff, it's gonna get crazed.
+
+[56:42] So if you if you ever look if you ever walk into an elevator and you see like the the where you know where the numbers are in the elevator and it looks all crappy, that's because somebody cleaned that thing with alcohol and it crazed it out, right? Uh lowerproof alcohol is not gonna have it. So like there's no one such thing. The nice thing is it's harder to sanitize things like nylon, which can absorb a little bit of water, right? It's much easier to sanitize things like polypropylene and polyethylene, which are like things like quart containers, because they just don't absorb anything, nothing's leaching in or out of them.
+
+[57:11] That's why polypropylene and polyethylene are such great containers for things. And for that, I would just, yeah, bleach is fine. You know what I mean? And it's gonna, it's gonna go out, or any sandy is gonna be fine on it. Uh polyethylene, depending on how hot your dishwasher is, can be a pain in the butt because um I wouldn't subject continuously polyethylene to 180 degrees because it'll it'll bow out and get soft.
+
+[57:33] But polypropylene's fine, like what like even over a hundred. You're not supposed to take it over a hundred Celsius, but you can. You can. Right? We agree with this, Nick?
+
+[57:43] Agree. Okay. Uh Alex Godin. Uh oh, John's not here, Alex. Sorry, man.
+
+[57:50] You missed it. But uh Jack, you're allowed to, you're allowed to, and but Nastasia, do you have your earmuffs on? Mm-hmm. Like old boy, earmuff? Oh, is it old boy?
+
+[57:58] No, old school. Old school. Earmuffs. Cool, yeah. All right.
+
+[57:59] I have a few carbonation questions. Uh can you post a link to the new supplier of parts? I think John did that. We'll look at it. Is a reverse osmosis filter that I I didn't use reverse osmosis filter.
+
+[58:12] I just use a carbon filter to get rid of chlorine smell. RO is probably not going to make the best seltzer because it's got like no flavor to it at all. I don't know. I don't use RO. Maybe your water's really crappy.
+
+[58:21] RO is good. If I'm using a cooler instead of an ice machine, should I use roto molded cooler or cheap E glue or build my own with spray insulation uh insulation? I've done all of those. The issue is is that you don't want it sitting in the water filth because ice will float on top, so you need to create such that it'll drain out. So you just gotta make sure it drains and then have a condensate pump.
+
+[58:39] That's how ice wells work. Ice wells like the plate's not swimming in water. Does that make sense? All right. Is that answer?
+
+[58:45] Okay. Any recommend Jason Gray, any recommendations on features or brands of pizza stone used for pizza and bread making. Oven goes to 550. All right. I will go with steel.
+
+[58:54] The temperature of your oven isn't necessarily as important with how quickly the oven dumps energy in and where the heating elements are. If your heating elements are the reason steel is better, steel and stone have roughly the same uh by weight uh heat capacity, but since steel is about twice as dense, it has twice the volumetric heat capacity. So for a given um thickness, right, you need steel to only be half as thick as uh a piece of stone is to get store the same amount of energy. But the steel recharges much quicker than the stone does, and so it can take energy from the bottom of your oven, uh you know, much faster than uh than your stone can. And so that's why in general I would go with steel.
+
+[59:35] Nick, thanks for coming on. Come on anytime. And you know, good luck in your upcoming adventures. You are face meat. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center in New Stand Studios. Joined with kind of a whole new crew. It's a whole new show today. I got uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is MIA.
+
+[0:26] Where she is, nobody knows. Somewhere at an undisclosed uh location in the state of Connecticut, somewhere near the coast, maybe she's wrestling with a great white shark. Uh I don't know. But even though he no longer officially works with Booker and Dax, we have in the studio, now gonna be ongoing, we hope, recurring just studio mate, colleague. Yeah.
+
+[0:48] Yeah, Johnny Hole, how you doing? No longer customer service, six Jordan. I'm sure you're sure you're super sad to not uh Tragic, yeah. Yeah, I miss it every day. Yeah, so even though, like, you know, John's gonna be coming back on the show, don't send him your questions.
+
+[1:04] Don't text me anymore, also. Don't, yeah, don't, don't he's got a real job. Why don't you you want to we'll go we'll go through that? Uh rocking our panels here in uh New York, as always. Joe Hazen, how you doing?
+
+[1:18] I'm doing great, man. Happy Friday. Yeah, yeah. Special time. So uh unfortunately we couldn't record on our normal uh time this week.
+
+[1:27] And oh, the trailing, the trailing whoopee cushion or whatever. Oh no, that's the trailing party whistle. Friday. Have you ever put um have you ever put it's horrifying? Like uh on next New Year's Eve, if someone gets those terrible silvered cardboard horns with the little plastic whistles on the in you know I'm talking about, those party things.
+
+[1:51] Horrible. Yeah. Uh horrible. But what you need to do is five, minimum five, right? If you if you haven't, if your lungs are still young and big, maybe you could go six.
+
+[2:02] You wrap them all up and you shove them all in your mouth. Like if when I was a kid, the Guinness Book of Worlds record, one of the things they used to have a world record for was simultaneous smoking of cigarettes. They stopped doing that because it's not cool. But if you were like a kid in the 70s and you bought the Guinness Book of Worlds Records, one of the pictures in it, you know, it was a guy whose face was wrapped around what looked like a log, but it was just a whole crap ton of simultaneously lit cigarettes. So this is the vibe you're looking for with the party horns.
+
+[2:37] And then what you do is you just breathe as deep as you can, and then you just you get and you blow out as hard as you can, and it sounds like a dying war goose. It's like the loudest, most like everyone in the room will bull plots. Yeah. Lovely. Yeah.
+
+[2:53] Is it like a Vuvazella? Oh, what's that? The Vuvazilla, the South African horns? Oh, no, I don't know that. Probably if it's horrifying, then yes.
+
+[3:01] They were like banned during the World Cup in the 90s. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh, oh my God.
+
+[3:08] Okay, I don't watch sports. Okay. Yep. Stipulated. I don't watch sports.
+
+[3:12] But in the uh remember when the Mets beat the Sox in uh 86? Wasn't born yet, so no, I do not remember. But you've heard of it. Yes. Yeah.
+
+[3:22] So there is this. It's there's this irritating lady who would stand behind the the mound. She had she got the seats right in the pitcher's line of sight, and she would sit there twirling some crap to try to distract the pit. I'm like, wait, that was uh uh Daryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden? Uh they were two of the stars.
+
+[3:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Outfield and and uh pitcher. Uh yeah, like I don't remember. Uh those meetings on the mound from the outfit is weird.
+
+[3:49] Yeah. All I know is this lady twirling her crap. I was like, what the hell, man? Like, that's your whole thing. That's your whole life.
+
+[3:55] That's what you do. Yeah. That's that's that's the honorable thing for you to do. Sit there and twirl crap. Be a human.
+
+[4:01] Yeah. Uh rocking the panels in California. We got uh Jackie Molecules. How you doing? I'm good.
+
+[4:08] I'm good. You're not uh being here on a Friday. Not in Mexico, you're in LA. I'm in LA. Yeah.
+
+[4:15] Yes. Although not next week, the week after. I'll be in Alaska. So if anybody has any recommendations for me there, food-wise. Okay.
+
+[4:24] I'll bite them. Why? Um, just a trip with my friends. Like my high school buddies. We do trip every year.
+
+[4:32] And uh one of my friends has uh his little brother lives out there, so in Alaska. So yeah. Uh Anchorage and then around Dinali. Oh, nice. Or nature stuff.
+
+[4:45] Yeah, yeah. Well, I hope you get up in the mountains because down in the lowlands, I'm told that there are n there is on earth no better place to get stung by mosquitoes than Alaska in the summertime. That like, you know, like that long light, they just grow up to be like the size of small birds, and they'll just come and they'll suck you dry. That's what I hear. I hear like an Alaska mosquito in the summertime is like uh a sight that you have not yet beheld.
+
+[5:13] So, like, you know, that's good. They got a lot of like standing water on the ground and those little pools and stuff. Uh you know, standing water, like long periods of daylight, you know, long dusk, so they can hang around. You know how like they like to come out at the beginning and the end, right, of the day? Well, what if the beginning and the end of the day are each like six hours long?
+
+[5:33] You know what I'm saying? So it's like it's light most of the time, but then you have those super long, kind of twilighty craps. Like, that's mosquito heaven right there, man. I'm jealous, Jack. I've always wanted to go to Alaska.
+
+[5:44] Poop on Dave. Poop on me in general. Poop on me. I listen, listen, I always also want to go to Alaska. However, I have a bad taste in my mouth because I can't remember the guy's name, but he's a dentist in Alaska.
+
+[5:59] And he's uh I can't remember the name of the valley, but there's a famous valley in Alaska where they grow the world's largest cabbage, right? So the British people think that they have the lock on because the British people kind of started this giant vegetable thing. Like if you if you go to Britain, like they're the people that figured out that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're the people that'll lay like, you know, 20 feet of PVC pipe so they can grow a 20-foot carrot. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[6:24] Like, and they'll have the they'll have the pipe running up the side of their house so that at the end they can unlock the pipe and get this 20-foot carrot out. I'm not saying, I mean, maybe it's 20 feet, I don't know how long it is, but like they're like, here's an ugly giant radish. You know what I mean? I'm British. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[6:39] Like, and so that's kind of what they do. But in Alaska, legitimately, they can grow like 100-pound cabbages and like legitimately they can just grow that crap. And uh, I've been fascinated with it ever since um I got a copy of the Pacific Northwest 1970s uh time life food books, and there's a picture of a small girl and a giant cabbage. And so I'm like, what could be better? Small girl giant cabbage, great picture.
+
+[7:05] And I want to do worlds, I want to do chainsaw coleslaw. And so Steve Hubachek is the guy's name. I'm pretty sure his name is Steve Hubac. He's a dentist and he grows the world's largest cabbage. So we called him.
+
+[7:20] I've said this on the show many times, but at the old network, so you know, whatever, I can say it again. So we call up Steve Hubac, Nastasi and I from the French Culinary Institute, and he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like I keep like I don't remember what he sounds like, but he's like, Yeah, yeah, you know, I there's two or three, they're gonna be the ones that are like the champions, and then the other ones that are like, but oh, they're only like 10 or 15 pounds less. He's like, they're not so important. So yeah, I can ship you one of those if you pay for the shipping.
+
+[7:43] I'm like, yes. And then I think he thinks that we want to steal his seed stock. Or I don't know, all of a sudden he just ghosted us. So I don't know whether he thinks we're trying to steal his uh what's it called? But like I still have this dream that I can get a Steve Hubachek, uh Steve Hubachek cabbage, like, you know, just like uh like oh like an industrial mayonnaise bucket and because the new electric chainsaws, okay, if if the chainsaw's never been used before, you can fill temporarily.
+
+[8:13] You don't want to fill your uh so for those of you that never used a chainsaw before, it's not just the electricity, it's the fact that you have to put bar oil in to lubricate the bar. And they do make uh like non-petroleum-based, like basically like stabilized food oil bar oil for your chainsaws in case you don't want to be throwing petroleum products into the forest, right? And I I buy that, you know. Well, back when I chainsawed. I will I would buy the biodegradable, like, you know, but you know, on a temporary basis, you could buy a brand new chainsaw, like electric one, and just fill that sucker with salad oil.
+
+[8:49] And so then you're not worried about it. When you're setting up your chainsaw, you want to run it and you want to throttle it up and you want to see a little bit of oil spraying off the bottom of the bar onto like whatever you're testing. Otherwise you're too dry, right? It's not like it's gonna be that much oil, but you want it to be food grade. Are you guys with me?
+
+[9:06] Yeah. All right. Speaking speaking of with me, so since you're no longer gonna be uh customer service uh extraordinaire, right, John, and since you uh are also not going to be running the Discord panel or the questions for the radio show, I am pleased to announce that the person who is taking over your position is also uh is also with us today on the air, coming to us live from Vancouver Island, uh, and uh friend of the show, and you guys probably all know him already from his ice cream and gelato book, Quinn Fuchile, right? How you doing, Quinn? I'm good, thank you so much.
+
+[9:48] All right, and if for those of you that don't know, what's what's your it's Q Dragon what? 13 what? What is it? What is that? What is the number afterwards?
+
+[9:55] Uh yeah. Yeah, on Instagram and stuff at uh QDragon 1337. Uh again, I I made that username when I was, you know, 12. So bear that in mind. All right.
+
+[10:09] And and now I'm just, yeah, I'm too committed. I like commitment. So uh for you know, for my uh handle on eBay was my original a sporcula. Okay. Sporcula, yeah.
+
+[10:24] And that was from in college, I was obsessed with sporks. Even though let's all be honest with each other. Sporks suck. No one likes eating out of a spork. I like Popeyes.
+
+[10:36] I don't no one likes that's where you used to get the plastic spork. But like, does anyone like a spork? Does it feel good in your mouth? It's a bad spoon because it can no longer hold as much because it's got the little indents. And it's a bad fork because the times aren't long enough.
+
+[10:44] It's the worst of everything. Right? Yeah. It's the worst of everything. It is.
+
+[10:55] Yeah. So listen, I encourage all of you to uh go out there, follow Quinn if you haven't followed him already, friend of the show, and then uh start directing your customer service and uh Patreon and show related stuff to Quinn. However, give the guy a couple of minutes. This is like today, right now is literally his first day. So, you know, uh while you know Quinn is an uh a champion at uh running people through things, troubleshooting over telephones and whatnot, right?
+
+[11:27] You know, uh just give you know, be a little bit gentle to start. Am I wrong, Quinn? Uh yeah, no, that's correct. Um I'm sure I'll uh I'm sure I'll get the hang I meant uh your time. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[11:42] But yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh all right. And so, like, and then of course the reason that John left, he actually has started his new job. He is now the uh chef at uh Temperance, even though, as we said before, I mean, it's not a temperance joint, it's a wine bar.
+
+[11:59] So why is it called? You know, I haven't had the time to ask that question yet. Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, that's uh that's a good question. I should ask the owner.
+
+[12:11] I interact with him every day, but yeah, no, been uh been a little bit busy. Why uh why why uh why temperance? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right.
+
+[12:18] Yeah. Uh and if any of you hear this, uh see, some more housekeeping stuff. If any of you guys hear this and are gonna be in New Orleans on Monday, Pernot Ricard is having I forget the name of the party, but the the gist of it is bars that have closed over the pandemic. Uh they're doing, you know, a uh uh bring the bring the band back kind of uh party where a bunch of us who don't have bars anymore are gonna go do uh an event on Monday. So existing conditions will be there.
+
+[12:49] Temporarily existing conditions. Yes, it'll be temporarily existing conditions. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[12:56] Uh all right. So, Quinn, you cook anything interesting this week? Uh not this week. Last week I busted open a homemade guanchale and made some amateur shiana, and we finally got our hands on some of that new fangled uh cascotelli pasta. Oh, yeah.
+
+[13:20] So we're cooking that today. So oh, so you haven't cooked it yet. So I I'm curious to hear what your review of that shape is. I like it actually. It's fine.
+
+[13:28] I think it's fine shape. What do you think, John? Yeah, I had it once. It kind of, you know, it's bouncy. It's got some bounce.
+
+[13:34] Yeah. I like a shape with bounce. Yeah. What are your thoughts on other what are your okay, okay, okay, okay, guys. So first of all, Guanchali.
+
+[13:42] For those of you that don't know, cure gel. Now, I got a couple of questions for you, Quinn. Rolled or flat? And then which which? Did you go rolled or did you go flat?
+
+[13:55] Uh flipped. Uh this time, a little while ago, like a few years ago, I used to do kind of a hybrid of Guanchale and Panchetta, where it was the entire pig face rolled up. And that was pretty good too. Rolled face. That's my next uh who is I joking with is gonna open a restaurant called FaceMeat.
+
+[14:20] Was that on the show? Or is that is that last week? Yeah, that was yeah, I think it was last three. That was Nick Wong. Yeah, face meat.
+
+[14:28] Well, you have to make some of your your face meet Guan Chale. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh so now, if you're gonna go flat, here's the other question. Skin on, skin off.
+
+[14:43] Um, I can't rem no, I think we do skin off. Skin off. Yeah. Yeah. I believe, yeah.
+
+[14:52] I can't just like just not pictured leatherface in my sauce. Oh, mean like the uh the murderer? Texas Chancellor, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, these is pe these are pigs, not people, though.
+
+[15:06] Not that much difference. Yeah, yeah. Leatherface. All right. See, so what you're saying is you want like a guanchali chili called like yeah, Leatherman Chili.
+
+[15:19] All right, Leatherface Chili, Leatherman's different. That's a Connecticut guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotta keep gotta keep our references straight on this show. All right, okay.
+
+[15:26] Uh I've said this a million times before and I've never done it, but I've all I bought all the stuff to start making my own uh you'll have to so Quinn's dad is actually Italian, and so that's why he goes by the actual Italian pronunciation of his name, which I won't re butcher again as opposed to how we would pronounce it over here, like fusil or whatever, right? Uh, but what'd you say your dad got called once at a restaurant for the pronunciation of the last name? Um I'm not sure if you can say it on that. Yeah, yeah, because it's well it's no, it's not an actual curse. That's the thing.
+
+[15:58] It just sounds like a curse. So it's kosher. Yeah, you just got a cold. Yeah, that's not right, people. What kind of idiot would do that?
+
+[16:09] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not a hard thing. Yeah, I know. People are people that are people are dumb. People are real dumb.
+
+[16:15] Uh so I've always wanted to make my own um, I'm gonna pronounce it like like like my family pronounces it, superson, right? So, like so pressata. You know what I mean? But like uh I grew up eating it my whole life. I've had other people's homemade, I've never made it.
+
+[16:33] I bought this stuff and I never I have everything to make it, but I've yet I've never made it. Why? Is it because I'm stupid or lazy or because I live in an apartment and I think I would get a lot of side eye or a combination of I'm supposed to be writing a book instead for years. It will make a an unholy mess in my apartment, and I will get side eye. So there's all those things that have conspired to have me not make it, but I've always wanted to make it.
+
+[16:57] And the the homemade ones that I like, I don't like them hyper pressed. I like them lightly pressed. And uh I've always wanted to do the the let it cure and toss it in oil. And I've never I've never even eaten one of the like, you know, two-year-old tossed in oil where you keep it around forever and it just keeps going in oil, but it doesn't dry out anymore. You guys know about that?
+
+[17:17] No. So you take the supersod to, and you know, I know this is a thing that like uh Leo de Groff, Leo and Dale de Groff, you know, the cocktail people, they do in Rhode Island where they call them soupies, right? And so they age them until they like the hardness of it. Right. So that's a dehydration, and then to stop any further dehydration, they just pitch them into into oil in containers, and then they just let them ride however long they want.
+
+[17:44] It's kind of cool, right? It is, yeah. Yeah. And I've never, he keeps on saying, Leo keeps on saying he's gonna give me one so I can taste it, but now I'm just curious about this, like as a as a way, like length, lengthy aging in the same way that, you know. Although I have to say, when I've had hyper aged tunas, they're interesting.
+
+[18:04] I wouldn't necessarily say they're better, although I know a lot of people who would disagree with me. Do you like a hyperage tuna? Have you ever tried those? No. Like a like a two and three and four and a ten-year-old tuna.
+
+[18:14] I'm not No, I don't think so. They're okay. Yeah. They're okay. You know what I mean?
+
+[18:19] But I'll be interested because I think there's a lot more going on uh enzymatically in a super sod than there is in uh in a can of tuna, although I'm happy to be wrong about that. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. All right.
+
+[18:35] So uh what are you working on in your menu, John? Lots of things, trying to figure out what needs to be kept and how they can be improved upon. I don't know, there was a lot of a lot of sandbagging going on before I showed up. In a bad way, like to the detriment of quality? I think so.
+
+[18:52] Just like lazy things over making way too much, like yeah, I don't want to get into like specifics on air, but you know, it's just like things that are just like, wow, I can't believe this is how things were done, you know, before showing up here and um, you know, just yeah, stretching ingredients for longer than they should be and things like that. So it's a lot to a lot to change. So you're redesigning stuff to not require the immense sandbagging? Yeah. We're gonna prep this dish once a month.
+
+[19:23] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, there's it's a it's a fine line, right? You don't want to do like unless you're gonna charge an infinity of money, right? That's another thing.
+
+[19:29] Hey, we're gonna charge an infinity of money and we'll prep everything fresh every day. That's why like uh Andre Soltner from Lutes, right? Yeah, it wasn't an infinity of money, but f for New York restaurants in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and early 90s, it was, you know, a big check, but they just did all their stuff like fresh every day. Yeah. So I was like, hey, you know, chef, did you ever have a vacuum machine?
+
+[19:54] And this is one of those like trigger like not trigger, but like, you know, flip switching in my head of understanding the difference between the way old guard thinks and and new guard thinks. He's like, No, I never needed a vacuum machine because I bought all of my stuff fresh every day. And I was like, oh, yeah, you don't see it as a tool to help you achieve things. It's merely a way to make your life, it's merely a way to sandbag to like keep stuff for longer. And so he really it was just like a very like bright bing.
+
+[20:21] Oh, I yeah, I get I get this divide between his generation and you know, you know, in the newer generation. And uh, you know, I'm two, I'm two or three generations, you know, uh whatever, uh, of chef of of of food person, you know, behind him. But um yeah, it was interesting. Yeah. Um so but it's always this thing, right?
+
+[20:44] Where you know, we especially if you're trying to do a lot of, you know, interesting stuff and you don't want to charge an infinity of money, you have you have to consolidate some of the prep and not do it every day. Yeah, and it's really hard to figure that out too, because it's a wine bar that hasn't been known for its food. So it's you know, like some nights you're really, really slow, you know, and you only have like five tickets on the board, you know, for like an hour or something like that. And it's you doing a lot of prep during service. But yeah, you know, last night got slanted to make things on the fly.
+
+[21:19] And it was just fun. You can go and like, you know, I mean speaking from our what's what's it called? Our uh experience at existing conditions, if you try to have like a larger food program at a place and you know if you're not pulling a if a certain if you're not pulling a certain minimum on your food percentage wise as percentage of orders, then you lose a lot and your food and your labor costs are just through the freaking roof. So it's a nightmare. So you know you can go you even like with with with a with a menu that would be decently planned where you're running like you know 20 you know 25 on food, right?
+
+[21:52] 25% on food for those of you that aren't in the business, that means like, you know, what you're charging a quarter of that charges the the food and you know you generally you want to stay under 25, right? Yeah. You know, for this kind of thing or even less if you can, right? Yeah exactly. Right.
+
+[22:07] But you know, if you don't have people ordering enough of it and you're prepping it out, all of a sudden your food costs creep into the 30s. You know what I mean? Like and then you can't sustain that. And then plus you have to have the labor to be able to make this stuff. So then your labor costs are spiraling out it's very hard to manage.
+
+[22:26] So unless you can get your unless you can get above like 25 30% of the check to be food, it's very hard to make a very I mean it can be done, but it's very hard I think to design a program that satisfies your desire to be good and yet also keeps costs in line, right? Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah. Yeah, the cost thing is a very new thing for me. I haven't had to deal with yet.
+
+[22:52] So, you know, I'm learning and it's a lot to think on too but I mean, and that's why I think like a lot, you know, that's why a lot of bar programs, right? They either want to pull crap out of the freezer, yeah, you know, and throw it in the fryer. Yeah. Or it's why it's hard to get good. It's why it's hard to be good.
+
+[23:09] Yeah. You know what I mean? It really is. Yeah. It's you know, yeah.
+
+[23:13] But you know, don't have to worry about labor costs right now because I don't have the sous chef. So he quit on my second day. Second now, w was the Sioux chef already working there and was like, I didn't get promoted, I'm out. Yeah, basically. Gave me four days' notice.
+
+[23:25] Hey, listen, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people. This world is not as big as you think it is, right? There may be seven and a half billion people on Earth. But unless you're gonna move to a place where nobody knows anybody, right? Unless you're gonna move from and then you're never gonna work in hospitality again, unless you're gonna try to tap an entirely new network where nobody knows anybody, right?
+
+[23:53] Don't leave like that. Yeah, not cool. Don't leave like that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yes, I do.
+
+[24:00] Yeah. Life has been difficult this week. Yeah, I mean, it's just like I think how how old are they? Old enough. I think they were l early 40s.
+
+[24:10] Oh, they should know better because they've seen people leave badly before. Yeah. If you've never seen somebody leave badly, maybe you don't know. Yeah, but still. Then I give you the benefit.
+
+[24:19] You know what I mean? Yeah, but now he's been in around long enough that he he should have known better. Right. I can see resenting it. Yeah.
+
+[24:25] Being pissed, yeah, wanting to get pulled up and and and but clearly they wanted to change the culture of the restaurant. Yeah. Right. And the only way to change the culture of the restaurant, unfortunately, typically, unless there's a vehement disagreement between the Sioux and the exec, is to hire from outside. It's kind of unfortunate, but that's life.
+
+[24:44] Yeah. Yeah. But like, you know, now they've poisoned themselves for getting a job with anyone in your network. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[24:56] You know what I'm saying? Yeah. No, I do. Yeah. Not going to speak very highly of them after after this.
+
+[25:01] Yeah. I mean, you're not the you're not a the vindictive kind of of a of a guy, so you're not going to actively go out and try to try to black ball. No. But I mean, whereas I know many chefs that are like that. Yes.
+
+[25:11] Didn't they didn't somebody try and create a black ball list back in the day? There were discussions about it, like creating like a master like document to share among like a certain level of chef network friends. Well, the way it worked, I mean, I'm not going to name any names, but the way that it worked, like for the people that I know that it, you know, that this was happening to is like, you know, like first of all, like sometimes like I know that there are projects that I didn't get just because everyone's like, oh, he's a freaking wingding. Yeah. Which, you know what?
+
+[25:39] Fair. Because like either if you wanna, if you don't want to deal with my personal whatever's, and it's not that I'm evil, but I I you know, especially if I don't have someone helping me respond to things, yeah, I can be disconcerting because you don't know that I'm gonna do the work that I say I'm gonna do, even though I do. Yeah. You know what I mean? I do the work anyway.
+
+[26:00] Um, but yeah, some of the black, like hard black ball stuff I know, like the way it works is as gross as you think it is. Like the person who has the most power throws a black ball down on somebody, and then, you know, basically, then if any of their buddies wants to hire it, then they're shamed into not doing it because then they won't be part of the cool kid club anymore. So gross, yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, and the the people that in general, if you're working for Fancy Chef A, right?
+
+[26:34] You know, you don't the it the real world is not the bear. That's not the that's not the real world. You know what I mean? Uh that's not how it works. So, like, you know, it so you know they fancy chef B that you want to go work with probably knows Fancy Chef A.
+
+[26:51] So unless you are willing to start your own place and you have your money lined up, like getting blackballed is very damaging. Yeah, you know what I mean? Very and I think the whole concept of blackballing is gross and disgusting. But on the other hand, it is perfectly reasonable to not give someone a good recommendation. Yeah.
+
+[27:06] Yeah. That's perfectly reasonable. That's not evil. Yeah, no, agreed. You know what I mean?
+
+[27:10] Yeah. Uh be like, I wouldn't they left me high and dry. That's all you need to say. Yeah. I don't know.
+
+[27:15] That's all I would say, yeah. Yeah. I didn't really get to work with them that much. I always give people. What do you say?
+
+[27:20] Oh, that's a good one. I always give good recommendations even if I don't love the person. You shouldn't. You know why? Because then that reflects on you.
+
+[27:28] Exactly. Well, I'm creative about how I do it. I'll I'll find like the right thing to highlight, but I just have a hard time being like, you shouldn't hire that person. I mean, that's different, I guess it's different in my field. It's not like restaurants where I know the people, you know, it's it's media.
+
+[27:45] It's like people that have interned for me at radio stations and stuff. So I'm like, I don't want to ruin their. Who knows? Maybe you've turned it around. Back when I was at the French Culinary Institute, part of my job was to go to chefs and recommend my interns to get jobs at places, right?
+
+[28:04] And when I closed Booker and Dax, part of my job was to help find landing places for um our crew, right? And I didn't do that at XCON because there were no landing places. It was the pandemic. You know what I mean? Um, but um I have had I've had very loud, heated yell at me, like yell at me arguments where the the place that I sent people has come back and said, why did you recommend this person?
+
+[28:41] X, Y, and Z is happening. And I've had to mediate. I've had to mediate saying this is why I recommended them, and I think you're wrong in this case or whatever, blah, blah, blah. Because, you know, like the the thing is is like I think the heart just don't recommend somebody to a job if you don't like if someone's getting a job and they put you for a recommendation and and you don't like them, that shows even more that they don't, you know what I mean? That they don't have a handle on what's going on.
+
+[29:10] So it's, you know, you need yeah. Uh I don't know. It's just like you don't want it coming back and biting you that your recommendations aren't solid. You know what I mean? Yep.
+
+[29:21] I mean, I've had people where I give recommendations where I'm like, they're really good at X, Y, and Z and not so good at, you know, like D, E and F, but they're worth it because they're so good at X, Y, and Z, and you really don't need this person to do D E and F. That's valid. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, you're being upfront and honest about the whole picture.
+
+[29:40] Yeah, but still very enthusiastic. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know.
+
+[29:44] I don't know. Anyway, but this this jamoke, this jamoke. Yep. Not not cool. Not gonna get very flattering, flattering recommendations from me.
+
+[29:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and that's the other thing, especially the job you just left. If any, if you if you have any brains, they're gonna call you and ask you, even if they're even if you're not put as a wreck. Yeah. They'll call and ask.
+
+[30:01] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, even if they don't call me, they'll call the restaurant owner. You know, 'cause I mean I would see that as being more plausible, but the restaurant owner thinks the same thing as I do. So yeah. Yeah.
+
+[30:10] Not a cool thing to do. Don't leave people high and dry. Yeah. Well, as soon as as soon as they as you worked it down in the sandbagging and they could see over to the pass over the top of all of the the pre-made stuff and the sandbags are going down, they got freaked out. They wanted to get back into a foxhole, so they they quit.
+
+[30:25] That's what it was. Exactly. Hey. Yep. All right.
+
+[30:30] But yeah, I don't know. I've been cooking a lot of stuff. Obviously, some things that have gone well and some things not so well. Um got a good burrata dish with a roasted red pepper and cherry mustarda that I have with some basil oil. Um like r the mustarda is red?
+
+[30:47] Yes. And how how picante is it? How much mustard in it? Not too much. Like enough on its own.
+
+[30:54] Like if you just eat it on its own, it's you know, kind of intense, but when you pair it with the brat it just like kind of mellows it out and just it's there. And how much of the thickness is from sugar and how much from pectin? Like how does the feel of it? Like is it more like a syrup or more like a jelly? Where are you?
+
+[31:07] Uh thick enough that I canel it onto the plate. Okay. Yeah. Um, but then like the other day I got some baby carrots in from one of the producers that weren't great. They were meant for like the crude plate, but they were kind of limp and didn't snap or anything, so I roasted them off.
+
+[31:25] I wanted to do like a roasted carrot dip with a salsa verde for some reason. I don't know, like in my head, that sounds really good, but I have not been able to really pull that together yet. Yeah. I don't know why. It's just like it's just missing something.
+
+[31:36] The salsa verde part's good, but the carrot dip is meh. Yeah. Yeah. Well, going back to the bear, according to the bear, it's missing acid. Yes.
+
+[31:44] Yeah, listen. Uh so like I watched that show because my wife watches that show. Right. In general, I don't watch cooking shows. Have you watched this thing?
+
+[31:54] Uh almost done with it, most of it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, the thing that for me makes no sense is when there are multiple groups of people yelling at each other at a time. I've never in my life seen that in a kitchen. When one when two people are yelling at each other, everyone else shoves their head in their butthole.
+
+[32:16] Yeah. That's true. And turns into a turns into a box turtle or an ostrich and makes themselves into the tiniest humans on earth. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
+
+[32:25] It's very uncomfortable to be around. Yeah. It's horrifying. And everyone's just like nommi nami. You know how like when there's on the subway and someone gets into the subway and just starts screaming or does something and you'll look anywhere to not look at them.
+
+[32:38] You know, tuck yourself into your own body. That's what it's like to be in a kitchen when people are yelling. You know what I mean? And so like it's completely unrealistic that you would have these like massive. All these big personalities yelling at each other, yeah.
+
+[32:54] No. No. Never. No. No, not ever.
+
+[32:57] You know what you know what I mean? Uh just doesn't happen. Yeah. Uh yeah. So that's that's that's what I'm gonna say about that.
+
+[33:05] Yeah. Uh anyway. Um so wait, what are we talking about? We're talking about Mostarda. Yep.
+
+[33:15] Then carrot dip. Needing more acid. Needed more acid. Oh, you know what I've been working on? So I said I went to this uh uh Eamon Rocky demonstration when I was in Rochester a month or so ago.
+
+[33:25] Right. And so he was doing have I already said what he was doing? He was doing um infusions in extremely high proof ethanol, like ever clear, like you know, like 95% or 90%, whatever it is, right? And this is what I never thought about before. Like I I knew, for instance, I know for instance that um polyphenol oxidase enzymes, you know, that's why nitrumuddling works, because you're nitromuddling and then thawing it in alcohol so the herbs don't oxidize as quickly.
+
+[33:51] But I never thought of the, I mean, I have thought of it, but he's like the the kinetics of infusion in extremely high proof is very different. So you get a different group of molecules because the the the solubility is different in alcohol versus in water. So when you literally exclude water right uh from the mix, you get a different kind of infusion than you would and and then dilute it down again, right? So for instance, uh polyphenols in in tea are not as uh soluble in pure ethanol. This is what he said, and he made some tea things in pure ethanol and then diluted them down.
+
+[34:36] I thought it was really interesting concept. So then I started doing um mint in pure in in pure ethanol, and I have to say it lasts a lot longer. I was able to get a fresh mint flavor in in pure ethanol that you then diluted uh down to last over a week. Wow. Over a week.
+
+[34:56] And I was able to after it was diluted down to 40. Now it wasn't or 50 percent. It wasn't as good in a week, but it was still acceptable. And here's another thing I did. So I took, I took uh 30 grams of mint, so quite a bit.
+
+[35:11] Uh I took 30 grams of mint leaves picked uh and dry, and I put um I think 90, I think I did three to one of uh everclear on it in a zippy, exclude the air, right? And then when it infiltrates, the the mint gets crispy because the it gets dehydrated because all the water like diffuses out of the mint. And so the mint turns crispy, and anywhere that there, I haven't done it in a vacuum bag because I was interested in doing techniques that anyone could do. So I was trying specifically trying to not use any technology. So within three or four hours, you get a bright, bright green uh like uh liquor, right?
+
+[35:49] Uh, you know, pure ethanol tincture of mint that is extremely strong and still very bright. So then I tried to make a mojito pie. So what I did is I made the, I made a uh, so boss, sorry, Monroe Boston Strauss, right? He does this uh, he does this pie uh this this lemon curd that's not a traditional lemon curd. So what he does is he boils sugar and and lemon uh peel, right?
+
+[36:17] Then he adds uh cornstarch slurry because even though in all of the papers it says how much he hates cornstarch, all of his recipes are super high in cornstarch, like super high, like too much god dang cornstarch. In fact, like that's the downfall of this recipe. I gotta figure out a way to do it more traditionally. So here's what I did. I I added the cornstarch, I brought it back to the to the boil to the for the cornstarch to clear out, right?
+
+[36:40] Then, and this it got a little cooked, but then I dumped 60 for one pie. I dumped 60 mls of this mint liquor into it. Okay, and then let the alcohol flash off because I didn't want the pie to be highly alcoholic. Right. Right.
+
+[36:54] So I let it flash off, and that was a little bit of cooking. Then get this. He takes it off the heat, stirs in the egg or egg yolk, depending on what you want to do, then stirs in the fresh juice. So instead of, I use lemon rind, mint, and lime juice stirred in. So he he adds the the egg yolks to let them get a little cooked out while it's warm, stirs in the fresh stuff, and then when it cools, it sets back to uh curd or pudding texture because of the starch.
+
+[37:22] So I need to figure out a way to set it with egg with a minimum amount of starch, set it with egg, but still have this advantage that I can add the mint towards the end and the lime towards the end so they stay fresh. And then you pour it into a into a pre-baked pie shell. But uh so that's what I've been working on. I'm trying to figure out this recipe. Yep.
+
+[37:42] What about uh yeah, reducing the starch and then a little bit of potato starch, because shouldn't that have a lower gelatinization temperature? Yeah, I mean the thing is. I mean, potato starch, yeah, it expands a lot. Potato starch is kind of the most expanding of the starches, but I mean, like I I guess it depends on how much you're gonna stir it, because it also has such rapid breakdown after it uh I mean I'd like to figure out a way to minimize this because here's the thing. So I was also running a bunch of tests because his chiffons are also starch-based and not gelatin-based, right?
+
+[38:15] And so I was trying to do a non-cream-based uh semi-fredo. Okay. So, oh, Quinn, you'll like this. So I was doing a, I was trying to do like what I was making chiffon pies, and because no one in my house is eating chiffon pies, I was freezing chiffon pies. So, like when I would freeze the chiffon pie, I would pull the chiffon pie out, I would eat the chiffon pie, and I'm like, this texture, there's something there, it's good.
+
+[38:39] Maybe you could do almost like a semi fratel gelato with the egg white and like uh, you know, no cream. We have no fat really, you know, like Yeah. My my my my semi fru my semi frater recipe is all of the air is from egg white, and I do include usually some cream, but it's not whipped. Right. Right.
+
+[39:04] Well, so this one, the problem with just doing a uh a Monroe Boston Strouss Strauss chiffon, uh, like a zero fat situation, no cream, is that the starch you can really taste the starch when it's frozen. Frozen, like starch thickened things taste like starch, even when they're cooked. So then I did an agar based one. I did I did an agar fluid gel, and then I stabilized the uh chiffon with uh an agar fluid gel. Wait.
+
+[39:35] Oh, I poured the agar in hot so the egg white got cooked because that's the key with the Boston uh the Monroe Boston Strauss chiffons is he pours hot cornstarch in with the egg. The heat from the cornstarch pasteurizes the egg white, and then uh it stays light enough long enough that the starch can reset as it cools and it sets into a permanent uh shelf stable chiffon. That's how his stuff works. So without gelatin. So I did that with hot agar, right?
+
+[40:05] But still the texture of the frozen agar wasn't what I liked either. I couldn't get, I think maybe I just need the fat. Like maybe either you have to make uh like a sorbet. I mean, I like my sorbet with fat in them too, though. I love coconut milk sorbetes as the base.
+
+[40:20] I don't know. I'm thinking about it. But this one was the mint. It was about the mojito. Yeah.
+
+[40:25] Maybe I'd do a mojito chiffon next time instead. What do you guys say? Yeah, I think that'd be good. Mojito chiffon. Maybe I'll leave a little alcohol in it.
+
+[40:33] But I want it to be family friendly. Yeah. But my sister-in-law Miley, Carpenter, who runs the now, she used to run the Food Network magazine. Now she runs, like now she's the boss of that and a bunch of other magazines. She she got promoted to like, you know, Capo de Tuti Capa, whatever you call it.
+
+[40:49] Yeah. So she hates mint. So for if any of you guys are ever pitching to her, like if any of you people out there are ever pitching to Miley Carpenter, don't pitch mint. Any other herb, don't pitch mint to her. So I didn't know I was going to her house, right?
+
+[41:07] Because it was a Sunday. So usually people come to my house on Sunday. I was testing this pie. So we're going to Miley's house. And like, well, I have this mint pie.
+
+[41:13] And Jen, my wife, is like, she hates mint. What the hell are you doing? Why even bringing that? It's an insult. I'm like, because I have to taste it today because I made it today.
+
+[41:21] I'm not going to sit here and eat a piece of pie right now. I'll bring something else as well. And so like I brought the mint pie. And Miley was like, toothpaste pie. Who the hell wants to eat toothpaste pie?
+
+[41:31] I'm like, mojito. She's like, toothpaste. Anyway. That was uh that was how that went. Awesome.
+
+[41:37] Yeah. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Should we do a question or two? Let's just do all the questions.
+
+[41:42] Let's do it. We have three questions. And then by the way, yeah. If you guys are interested later, if we have time, I've been researching something for something else, right? But uh, you remember how the museum used to want to do uh um farm to toilet?
+
+[41:57] So that was one of the exhibits, not farm to table, farm to toilet. Why do you why are you stopping at the table? Exactly. Do the whole process. Whole thing.
+
+[42:04] Farm to toilet. It's the circle of poop. Anyway, so I have some information that people might be interested in how the inside of your body works with relation to some foods, specifically tooting. And we can talk about it later if we have some time. Let's do some questions.
+
+[42:24] From Jack Rieger. Hey Dave, I've noticed sometimes shrimp, typical uh grocery store IQF 2125 size can be a bit sudsy after I'm not sure. By the way, for those of you that don't know, IQF is individually quick frozen, and the two numbers that are given afterwards is the range in number of shrimp per pound. I buy 1620s. Yep.
+
+[42:45] Can be a bit sudsy after a few bites, the IQF shrimp. I've also noticed when defrosting shrimp in water, the water gets bubbly. I'm wondering if the two phenomena are related and how to cut down on the effect and the mouthfeel. I've cooked shrimp that did not have this issue. Rinsing multiple times seemed to help.
+
+[43:01] Update this may be a result of a preservative called sodium shrimp tri polyphosphine. That can suds out water a little bit. But you know, uh most I brine most of my shrimp anyway before I cook them. Um I know that all of us pretty much thaw our shrimp in water, but it always makes me feel bad. Like I do it, it always makes me feel bad.
+
+[43:40] You know what I'm saying? So like I like I used to be the guy, first of all, I would try not buying IQF. The problem with not buying IQF is you have to use the the highest quality shrimp, I think, are the block frozen. Uh the problem is because what happens with those is they freeze them, I think, right away on the ship in like they they push them into these what are they, three pounds, right? Three pound blocks and they freeze them.
+
+[44:05] And those usually I've never had any of those kind of taste off on me. And they also um they withstand the vagaries of your freezer better. So if you're gonna store it for a long period of time, IQF, there's air in that IQF bag, especially after you've opened it. And so you you can get freezer burney issues on the outside of your uh on the outside of your shrimp if you're not really careful about your storage and about temperature fluctuations, especially if you're in a commercial freezer where you're going in and out of it all the time or it has a lot of defrost cycles or whatnot. So uh mainly if I know that I'm gonna be using three pounds of shrimp at a time, I go block.
+
+[44:45] If I know I'm gonna be using just a couple of shrimp at a time, you know, at home or whatever, I'll I'll go IQF. But the way I used to hate, hate seeing the shrimp in running water. So what I would do is I and it's it's ridiculous. Is you sit there and you run the water over the block, and then you wait and you're like, when can I peel that shrimp off without breaking it in half? You know what I mean?
+
+[45:12] Yep. Yeah, so like you, you know, you you're like, well, my sink's still a little bit gross. So you put a half sheet tray down, then you put a like a half sheet cooling rack on top of the tray, then the IQF block on top of that, and then you like put a bottle cap under the tray so it drains down, so you get decent drain, and then you just when can I take that shrimp off? And then you always break at least two or three of them because you're like, and then you flip the block over and it melts the hole through the block. Yeah.
+
+[45:36] Anyway. Uh so I think probably you're right. Uh if there is some sort of preservative that's causing it, soak soaking it in a little bit of water. I so many people do it that it can't be all that bad. I like to salt anyway.
+
+[45:48] Uh I mean, I have to say, like my I don't even know if it helps, but like I grew up making the way I grew up doing the shrimp is uh salt, salt pepper oil toss sit. You know what I mean? And letting it sit in that for a long time before I you know, it depending on what kind of cook you're gonna do. If you're gonna do like uh grill style or but I don't know. I don't know what to say.
+
+[46:09] What do you got, John? Nothing really, yeah. Seems like a good answer to me. All right. What else we got?
+
+[46:14] All right, from John Dunn. In making fruit syrups for shaved ice, what's a good way to get a good yield? Hoping to do a strawberry, raspberry, and pineapple. In the past, I've macerated in sugar and pressed out as much as I can, but wondering if there's a better technique. I would like would like to keep the fresh, raw taste, so I'd rather not cook things at high temp.
+
+[46:33] Keeping the color is also a plus. No spins all, but have a circulator, Vitamix, and other basic kitchen crap. Thanks. Yeah, I was gonna say, like, how crazy are you willing to go? You know what I'm saying?
+
+[46:44] Like, how nutty are you willing to be? That's what you have to ask yourself, right? Uh I mean, the best syrup I've ever made was by just uh reducing uh clarified fruit juice, like in in a rotovap. It's ridiculous. You know what I mean?
+
+[47:07] Yeah. Like sixty sixty bricks strawberry reduction in a rotovap, it makes you it it's it's you gotta try it once in your life. You know what I mean? Uh it's it's not it's not tenable. It's not tenable.
+
+[47:24] Yeah. Like you gotta try it once. If you have access to a roto vap, you gotta try it once. You know what I mean? That's like uh sixty-six bricks uh roto vap port reduction.
+
+[47:35] This is something you should try once in your life. Sixty you know, sixty six bricks roto vap bomb devenise, try it once. What do you say, Quinn? Uh I was gonna say I I don't have a uh a rotovamp, but I did something pretty similar. I did reduce clarified fruit juice in an open CV sort of basin so that it was just above the danger zone.
+
+[48:06] I think it was like around sixty two. Mm-hmm. And then it just slowly concentrated and it tasted pretty well. Oh, cool. I um as well.
+
+[48:20] I have um I mean the the the reason to reduce before you me sorry, the reason to clarify before you reduce, and did they say they did or they did not have a spinzall? They don't have a spinz all right. So what you're gonna need and if you want your yield to be high, that's the problem. You can either do uh agar clarification or you can and just you know start with a puree or something but blend it, or you can do uh bl uh blend enzyme and rack, but your your what's it called? Your um your yield won't be as high.
+
+[48:51] The the the issue is um you can't reduce stuff with the with all the pectin in it, because if it has that many solids, by the time you reduce it down to where you want, it's gonna get burnt. You know what I mean? It's gonna taste more cooked. So another thing is is um, you know, uh it's not possible you could try to dissolve in, right? You can clarify it and then just dissolve in sugar, right?
+
+[49:20] Um without heating it. But you gotta remember that if you're taking it to a syrup and you do uh if you do a 50 bricks, right? Um with a 50 bricks by you know uh most like a even though by weight it's 5050, like like a lot of it's sugar. So you like you know, you're gonna have to, you're not gonna get as much fruit taste per unit sugar as if you reduced it before you jack the extra last little bit of sugar into it. Does that make make sense?
+
+[49:55] So like, you know, uh if you have some if if you can reduce it some before and still have the taste be where you want. If it must be absolutely fresh, then you know, you could try Quinn's like, you know, evaporation over a period of time, you know, keeping it where it's not gonna go. I've never tried it, but you know, Quinn says it works, give it a shot. Uh but yeah, just doping it with enough sugar is gonna make it not uh to be stable, it's gonna make it taste less fruity. Yeah.
+
+[50:25] Yeah. Yeah, I I would say they probably want uh a refractometer because I'm wise if they are going to just add the sugar, they would probably want to know the bricks of their juice. And then they could bring it to 50 bricks while you know, accounting for the natural sugar. Yeah, well, I'm assuming I'm uh well, I was assuming that they were taking a bricks reading on it. Yeah, but go get the um don't even bother getting the expensive refractometer.
+
+[50:59] Like because you're gonna break it eventually anyway. Like the the current ones do do they're accurate enough and they're you I forget what I have, but I have a zero to eighty or zero to eighty two that's a handheld light one that costs less than 30 buc on Amazon. And if it breaks I don't have to worry about it. You know what I mean? Whereas the electronic ones eventually they're gonna croak on you.
+
+[51:24] Electronic ones are great for uh a bar where you don't want to have to be able to look at it at a light and you you know you you know they're worth it in that situation but they're gonna break. Yeah well one more thing I am working on I I literally just designed this I just need to publish it a calculator for fruit group where the sugar you're adding is also in the same fructose, glucose, sucrose ratio as the fruit. Well like depending on it's interesting so like uh most of the time you know for me in recipes it's always easier just to stay with sucrose because when you're adding sweetness you want to add sweetness in a way where you understand how the dosing works you know what I'm saying? And or if you need to prevent crystallization, then you go with invert, right? Um I and you know uh it's a known fact in in one of the reasons that people use HFCS in sodas is because when you use sucrose in sodas that have acid over time, there's a there's a a slow inversion process that happens in acidic environments with sucrose over time.
+
+[52:50] And so the sweetness level of the product can change if you're using sucrose over a long period of time because the acids are going to break it down. Um I don't know. I always typically stick with sucrose unless there's a reason not to, just because I think everybody understands so well how it responds to both heat and cold as opposed to fructose, which is crazy the way it responds to uh heat and cold versus sucrose. I don't know. Um but for bricks calculation in general, right?
+
+[53:25] There's a formula that so it's interesting. So to me, so I have the the complicated formula for bricks correcting, which isn't that complicated. It's it's 100 minus the initial bricks over 100 minus the the final bricks, right? That number minus one uh times the the weight of the product you want to correct, right? That's the formula.
+
+[53:53] But if you want to if you want to take a product and you know it's bricks and you want just a recipe per 100 grams of that product, it's just uh it's just 100 minus twice the bricks. That'll take it to 50. And guess what it is to take it to two to one syrup? 200 minus three times the bricks. Guess what?
+
+[54:15] If you want to do a three to one, it's three hundred minus four times the bricks. For everyone who is a Patreon supporter and part of the Discord, this formula is pinned in the drinks section of the Discord channel. Dranks. Here's another thing. Remember when you're bricks things, you can't use a refractometer on alcohol sugar mixtures.
+
+[54:36] Also remember that a refractometer is not going to give you an accurate reading of something with higher weight polysaccharides in it. So for instance, molasses is going to read as a much higher bricks than its sweetness would imply because there are higher order sugars in it that don't taste as sweet as sucrose. This is why glucose syrup is thick as hell and has a very high bricks, isn't that sweet because it's got maltodextrin and other dextrins like like uh trisaccharides and like and higher oleosaccharides that are dissolved, right? And they add to body and they add to bricks, but they don't add to sweetness. So beware bricks reading on heavily caramelized syrups, beware bricks reading on molasses, beware it on uh glucose syrup, um, etc.
+
+[55:27] etc. Agave syrup, even because the way they make agave syrup is they they break the um the inulin down to uh fructose subunits, but they're not always broken down. There's there's multi-length uh polysaccharides in that as well. So a bricks reading off of agave syrup is not gonna give you an accurate indication of its sweetness, which is why I've never published how sweet they are, because they're not standardized and nobody knows. All right.
+
+[55:54] We got one more question within the last four minutes. All right, from Alvin Schultz. Wait, well, but Quinn, you're gonna put your calculator up on the Patreon after you publish it? Come on, man. You publish it wherever you're gonna publish it, but also put it on the Patreon.
+
+[56:05] All right. All right, from Al Alvin Schultz, longtime listener, first time Patreon supporter. Really? Hey, hey Alvin. What's up?
+
+[56:12] How's Houston? He's not he's not I mean he's not listening live, probably. Yeah, no, no. But yeah, he is from Houston's shout out to Wong and Eddie down in Houston, Texas. Yeah, of course.
+
+[56:14] Yeah. Um and AJ, he's friends with AJ too, right? AJ, oh, Ede. AJ Ede. Is that who you should use?
+
+[56:26] Yeah, AJ. Sorry. Yes. Um, what unique cooking equipment from around the world should I hunt down? Thinking on the order of Nick's dramatic from uh Mexico City, Belgian waffle iron, crutmaker, etc.
+
+[56:38] I have a unique opportunity to travel the world and fly private, so checked luggage slash weight generally isn't an issue. Wondering what semi-obscure small appliances I should add to my shopping list. Oh, I feel like the whole Patreon should get in on this. Yeah. I mean, I only know the ones that I bought.
+
+[56:55] You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, like Crepe Maker is a good one, gas powered. You know, the crampus, yeah, gas powered, the real one. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[57:02] Like the Paris street crepe maker. Crap's on point. And but you gotta have someone build the oh my god, that's changed my life. The thing that I built for my crepe maker after 20 something years to 20, however many years I've had that thing, I finally was like, I was like, because I, you know, every time I go to a uh uh what's it called? Like a like a diner or a place, and I see the the big the big griddle they have, and I watch them slap all the stuff down on the griddle, and I'm like, I have this amazing like griddle like surface, and I can't use it that way because I have no way to catch the fat.
+
+[57:36] Piss me off for years. Maybe Krempus even makes a fat catcher now. I don't know. I don't know. But that that thing has changed my life.
+
+[57:44] I now do my burgers on that. I mean, I feel like I'm in a diner. It's amazing, you know. Uh yeah, so the crampus, I would do that. Yeah, you know, you've hit on like uh what was the other one?
+
+[57:54] Oh, the waffle. Oh my god. Get you the waffle iron, Alvin. Do you have 220 back home? If you have 220 back home, go 220 on the waffle iron.
+
+[57:59] You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But listen, I feel we should open this up to the Patreon now that Alvin's a Patreon supporter. Let's get a list of equipment that people recommend. Uh where in the world are you going?
+
+[58:14] That's interesting, because there's a whole bunch of interesting stuff if you're going to Asia. Uh, you know, if you're going to uh India or like the Middle East, there's a lot of like interesting pieces of equipment that I'd like to see someone I know play around with. So in the one minute and 34 seconds we have left, you want to talk about toots? Yeah, I guess. Okay, listen.
+
+[58:32] I'll I'll start and then if people want to hear more later, they can ask me about it. Okay, listen. You understand, everyone understands, that your body deals in carbon dioxide and oxygen, right? So you you're you make carbon dioxide and you uh uh use oxygen, right? So because your body is actively using that, because your body's actively using oxygen, right?
+
+[58:51] Um, if you inhale oxygen and you swallow it into your stomach, that oxygen goes away, right? And it approximates what's in your blood, right? Uh ditto with CO2, because your CO2 is so soluble, it approximates. What doesn't approximate is nitrogen. So any nitrogen that you swallow basically turns into farts.
+
+[59:10] Okay. So like uh there's a case of someone who had excessive flatulence. By the way, what is excessive? So normal is anywhere from like 300 to like 1200 cc's a day, right? Of tooting, right?
+
+[59:24] And that can be split up over however many episodes you want, but that's kind of normal. Anything over 1500, yeah. So like anything way over that, like in the two liters a day, right? That's kind of becoming problematic. So someone had this.
+
+[59:36] So what happens is is that the nitrogen, if you swallow a lot, nitrogen, which is three-quarters of the air, basically goes through the system unchanged. Then when it gets into your gut, it's at atmospheric pressure. So if you put atmospheric pressure, uh uh air into your gut, you can add up to 300 cc's into your colon. This is what they would do without it causing too much pain. They ran these tests because uh when pilots take off and rapidly go in unpressurized fighter jets up to like 30,000 feet, a lot of them experience abdominal distress because of the rapid expansion of the air that's in their colon.
+
+[1:00:09] So this was tested. I'm gonna get very close, Joe, a little bit more. But get this. So if you don't burp, does it become farts? The answer, I think, is yes.
+
+[1:00:39] Quinn, welcome to the team. John, good to have you back. Everybody, I'll not next week. We'll see you the week after that. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan or Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios, joined uh kind of now as usual, but even though he's not on the Booker Index uh crew anymore, we got John. John in the booth, how you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[0:26] Nastasia had to leave. Uh she's getting ready to go to you know back to the land of Los Angeles. She'll be on the show from Los Angeles next week, Joe. So there's no The Hammer Lopez now. And plus, they're filming something for Rockefeller Center.
+
+[0:36] She's like, I can't get the COVID. I'm about to get on a plane. So she she hightailed it out. Uh and Jackie Molecule's not also on the phone today because he, if you remember from the last time, is in Alaska. Who the hell knows what he's doing in Alaska?
+
+[0:48] I hope when he gets back next week to hear stories of giant mosquitoes that have drained him of half of his blood. You know, something like this. Uh you rocking the panels as usual. We got uh Joe Hazen. How you doing?
+
+[1:01] I'm doing well. How are you, man? I'm okay. I feel like I just shortchanged you. Joe Hazen!
+
+[1:06] Is that better? Yes. Yeah. And uh all the way from Vancouver Island, which if you don't know Canadian geography, is not Vancouver. Vancouver is on the mainland, and then you gotta take like a boat or apparently a 20-minute seaplane ride over to Vancouver Island.
+
+[1:23] We got uh Quinn. Quinn, how you doing? I'm good, how are you? All right, how are you enjoying your first full week as the customer service representative extraordinaire for Booker and Dax? Uh yeah, I think I'm I'm I'm customer service pretty good.
+
+[1:38] I'm hoping to be extraordinaire by you know week two or three. All right, there you go. That's good. I like that's aiming high because there's a lot, like already people have thrown him right into. We already had a friend of ours uh take two spinsaws, which is the centerfuge that we made and will make again.
+
+[1:55] Uh right, John. I hope. Yeah, hopefully. Oh my god, dude. I got the new rotors balanced and too much to talk about on air.
+
+[1:59] Too much, too much inside baseball. Anyway, so like already somebody in Europe has plugged not one, but two of them directly into 220 Mains Power and blown out the boards. So Quinn's getting a real, you're getting a real uh what's it called? One two, right? Yeah.
+
+[2:17] I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No good.
+
+[2:20] Uh Joe, I'm getting a tiny buzz. Is that going out? Yeah, yeah. All right. But uh, I am super uh psyched.
+
+[2:27] By the way, call in your questions too if you're listening live on Patreon. And if you want to be able to listen live on Patreon, John, what should they do? Uh cooking issues.com or Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah. Sign up, lots of great perks, cool guests, obviously.
+
+[2:41] And yeah. Yeah. Great stuff. And you know, John set up a lot, like all of those Patreon perks that you that you guys get who are on Patreon, but Quinn is now looking into getting new Patreon perks, right? Is that true, Quinn?
+
+[2:53] Uh yeah, I've got some calculators I'm working on. Some will be exclusive to the Patreon slash Discord, and some will be sort of early active to my calculators. I like early early access to a technical cooking calculator, like backstage pass to calculation. It's kind of like it's kind of a funny, only our crew, right? Only our crew would be interested in it.
+
+[3:19] But I love it. I love it. I'm for it. I'm for it. Very much for it.
+
+[3:22] But like Quinn, I put out some 3D models on uh on our Patreon once. I don't know that one person has downloaded and printed these crazy 3D models. Listen, there is an opportunity for us at Booker and Dax. Let me introduce the guest first, and then we can talk about it. Let's let's do it that way.
+
+[3:37] Let's call in your questions too. 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. Today's guest is Greg Baxstrom, who uh comes from Chicago. And guess what, people?
+
+[3:48] Even though he is a chef from Chicago, we are not going to talk about the bear at all. Not at all. So don't ask. Thankfully, no one wrote in a question about that, right? Right, uh, John?
+
+[3:59] Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think so, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[4:01] All right. So uh worked in some of the greatest restaurants, you know, in the in the world, in the in the country, in the world. Was your first like kind of like super high-end one, Alinea? Or no? What was your first like super high end?
+
+[4:15] Yeah. I I started at a line about four. No, about a week into it being open. Oh, snap. Yeah.
+
+[4:22] And then I was there for four years. Oh my God. So that's right when I was at the Holy Crap. So yeah. Okay.
+
+[4:30] So they'd already opened it, right? So, like, how much of the staff from uh what was it called? Uh Clio Trio, whatever his original one was, right? How much of that staff was still there? Like, did he just have key people, or were a lot of the people in the Alinea kitchen from his other his other kitchen?
+
+[4:47] I would say about half of the cooks were from Trio, and then the other half are brand new. And back then, I mean, now it's I think they're up to like 20 something cooks, but back then it was about nine. I mean, we did we did all of that with like nine or twelve of us or something. Huh. And so you were there from then that probably means like oh what it whatever it was, oh five to oh nine or something like that.
+
+[5:07] That's right. And uh was Bobby Murphy there during that time? No. Had you opened, had they opened um aviary yet? No, way before all that.
+
+[5:14] Oh, because that might, you know, like when you get to be in your 50s, like all years kind of blend together and they not nothing has any meaning anymore. Yeah. But uh I I also can't remember, Stu Pak was the opening pastry chef or no? Yeah, when I was there, I mean, it's pretty it w it was it's uh David Barron, Jordan Kahn, Ryan Bartlow, Alex Stupec, John Shields, David Posey, uh I'm sure I could keep going. Just a bunch of no account losers, huh?
+
+[5:40] Yeah, they're just it's cr it's I mean, when you look at some of those old pictures, it's cra I mean, it's like early years French laundry pitchers, you know. Yeah, and the the funny thing about uh so Alinea was like along with uh Wiley and a couple other people at WD, they're really everyone everyone likes to say that, ooh, there was this huge movement going on. Well, there were like four restaurants. You know what I mean? So there was uh and and what I thought was really funny was anyone who had eaten, I'll just name three of the restaurants at that time, like that early, right?
+
+[6:15] WD50, who are doing kind of whatever you want to call it. What do you what do you want to call it, John? What do you want to call that kind of cooking? No, I'm not gonna say it even to tease you. Uh I will I you I can all these things are bolted, so I can't flip any tables, so uh I don't know, I guess modernist cooking you think.
+
+[6:31] Do you think that's back then they were just saying avant-garde? Yeah, yeah, back then. And then m modernist and molecular kind of trickled in. They but I think avant-garde was up there at that point. You know, modernist was uh Nathan et al.
+
+[6:43] Probably Chris Young, actually. So like in that group, Chris Young was still in Nathan's uh orbit, right? Uh that's not the right way to put it. But I still feel like that was a term before the books came out. Modernist?
+
+[6:53] Well, they were pushing everyone hated everyone hated molecular. Yeah, mele Modernist came out, I think you're right, it was with them. But uh, molecular uh was earlier, I think. Well, molecular was being pushed by uh uh listen, I don't talk poorly about people on the the show, or publicly really, uh, that are in the food business just because I mean, Greg, do I think it's hard enough to make a living in this freaking business that like talking bad about other people? You know what I mean?
+
+[7:21] Yeah, right? That's rough. Yeah. So you don't to speak ill of people, really, right? Uh not now.
+
+[7:27] I mean, I sure I I absolutely used to. Right. But I mean, like uh, you know, like uh I remember, especially when you're at like uh like uh uh you know, a hot new restaurant or a hot new bar, you hire like a young a young cook or young bartender, and they wanna show how much behind that they can kick. And so they go out and they talk smack about other people, especially now social. And I was like, no.
+
+[7:50] Like anyone who did that at our place, you get like one warning and then your toast. If you talk bad, if you go to another place and act poorly, that was it. I didn't want to work with you anymore. You know what was great was when I was at Alenia, there was a really healthy rivalry with Charlie Trotters and us because we were only two blocks away from each other. And like a lot of us went to the same bar after work, and so you know sometimes it was a little, you know, intense, but but it was it was pretty great.
+
+[8:14] It was pretty fun. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people forget that Trotter also, and I even forgot because I wasn't talking about it, but back in like oh four, oh five, like Trotter was pushing a lot of those same agendas. He was going to Madrid Fusion. So all of the people in America who wanted to be in this, we'll call it avant-garde because that's what I guess people were calling it at the time, right? They were looking towards the Spanish, the Catalonians, right?
+
+[8:37] And it was the kind of the first generation of chefs in America who were doing super high end work whose focus was not at all like French. Yeah, what Thomas was doing. Yeah, it was yeah, it was just completely different. Yeah. So whether, you know, whether they were focused on, you know, kind of Ferron style stuff, really, like El Calarcon Roco, even was was before it became huge internationally, it was punching way above its rate weight in chefs' minds anyway, back then.
+
+[9:02] I mean, you probably remember this. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's anywho. So there weren't that many restaurants doing this kind of work. But the other thing I always thought was interesting was that the work that was being done at Alinea was not anywhere similar to the work that was being done at WD or Moto or uh Trotters, or no one had the same interpretation of what it meant.
+
+[9:21] Yeah, and and it's very different now, not that in a bad way, but like what I still love about my experience there was like, you know, it was weird. There was things played on a pillow, stuff like that, but you could still see the French laundry training in it. Like it would have like all these different ingredients and a weird technique, and then just sort of this oddball thing, but you could see the through line if you looked close enough and uh and see the technique. Like we still had to make Villeju the proper way and all this stuff and and uh I don't really not that you know I don't really think that's the case necessarily now. Uh not with that restaurant, but just in general, how it's evolved.
+
+[10:03] Well, all the people who were doing that kind of work, and I'll let's just focus on WD and Alinea because as I said, I'm not gonna speak ill of anybody's restaurant on air. But uh oh, I remember who I said I was gonna say I hated uh Erveteese. And not personally, I don't know the guy, but he was the guy pushing molecular gastronomy, and he is uh Yeah, you're right. That's probably where it's that's right. Yeah when it was he's uh what's the word?
+
+[10:24] He's a liar. You know what I mean? He's a liar and a huckster, he's a Charlotte, and he's like a French P.T. Barnum of food. So it's like uh I didn't appreciate that.
+
+[10:32] You know, I mean, there's always either team Harold McGee or there's team Erveteese. I am fur and not that Harold would never say anything negative about Air Vatis, but like whatever. First of all, Airbate is does not give a rat's behind what any American thinks. I have not heard that name in probably 18 years. Right?
+
+[10:46] Right? You know why? Because his books sucked. You know what I mean? Like just saying.
+
+[10:53] But look, maybe he's better. Maybe he's a good maybe he's an okay guy now. Well, we all evolve. I d no, maybe, maybe not. Maybe.
+
+[10:59] I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Do we all evolve? Hopefully.
+
+[11:02] I hope so, yeah. Really? Yeah. Really? Do you think that people you think people's core can get better or just they can realize stuff that they've been doing is wrong if their core is good.
+
+[11:16] I think like everything else, there's degrees even within that, you know? I think if people have uh monumental things that happen in their lives, then that can force them to change quicker than maybe someone else that doesn't have a monumental occurrence. So you're an optimist. Do you think most chefs are optimistic? But both could eventually get to the You're human optimist.
+
+[11:38] You're human optimist. So do you think that that helps in the kitchen or it doesn't help in the kitchen? Uh I don't know. I again it's so much more common. Do I think most like most people are disappointing, right?
+
+[11:50] Like Wow. So there's But it doesn't mean that uh that I look at people with this, it means that not everybody works out or or uh or maybe they're not a right fit for something, but it doesn't make me a bad person for thinking that or them a bad person because it doesn't work out, you know? Yeah, I agree. But it makes it's becoming increasingly harder to have that conversation. Yeah.
+
+[12:12] So then did you go so a linea like one thing that like if for any of you I've I've had two full blown meals at a Linnea. So if you go to a linea, they're gonna do everything. First of all, don't have a cocktail at a bar before you go. Don't nosh before you go. Take some Adderall.
+
+[12:29] Like take some sort of upper, because they're gonna convince you to get the long tasting. And the long tasting is not short. No. Like you're you're in it. Like, like if you just landed at O'Hare, is that your airport?
+
+[12:45] O'Hare? Yeah. Yeah. You land in O'Hare, you're tired as all hell. Maybe the plane's been delayed.
+
+[12:50] Maybe they lost your luggage. I don't know. And then you show up, like, God forbid, get an earlier reservation. Did this happen to you? Twice.
+
+[12:58] Because like any time I used to go to Chicago was for the uh restaurant show. And uh so I would go with Mills Norrin, who was, you know, my compatriot at the French Culinary Institute, and you know, everything was filling up because of the restaurant, you know, the the week that the restaurant show is there, it's like it's like here, it's like all the restaurants like, oh come on, really, you know what I mean? Because they get slammed, you know? At least that's my memory of it. And so, yeah, they were like, they only could fit us in for the full tasting, but like at like nine.
+
+[13:25] So you're like, you take this long flight, you get in, and you're sitting nine, and then you're there until like and you know everyone in the restaurant hates you, they want to go home. And you have the long ass tasting, and it's long. I mean, it's all great. I mean, the thing about Alinea, I thought that was so good was um, like you say, you're using all of these techniques, but the the base flavors of this stuff by and large were just kind of on point flavor choices and and flavor mechanisms, and then the the techniques were kind of layered on top. And I think that's kind of fundamentally different.
+
+[13:52] Like Wiley was much more interested in technique driving weird and different textures with hydrocolloids. And yeah, one time Grant said to me, Food is architecture. I believe that. Oh, we got a caller? Uh, caller, you're on the air.
+
+[14:08] Hey Dave and Dang, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Hello? Hello. How are you doing?
+
+[14:13] Okay, I have a I have a I have a critique and a question. Which one do you want first? Uh well, does the critique does the does the critique build on my answer to the question that I have not yet provided? They're completely unrelated. The critique I'll go with the critique first.
+
+[14:27] Okay. Last week or two weeks ago, you were talking about the spice store in the East Village. Uh dual or dual. So it can be pronounced both ways. It's called dual.
+
+[14:37] It's called either. I've had a conversation with the people at the desk. I've walked up to them, right? Because you get some people who call it dual, and you get some people call it dual. And then when you go up to the to the desk and you're like, hey, did you get the uh the um the asaphetida rock back in?
+
+[14:53] Because you shouldn't buy asapetida powder. You should buy it in like the resin form and grate it fresh. Why? Because it tastes better, right? So when you go up there and you're like, hey, you got the fresh like uh like uh butcholochia peppers in yet, or you got the the assa fetida.
+
+[15:07] No, so anyway, so this conversation happens all the time with me with these people. So I walk up to them and I'm like, hey, what is it really? Because I've heard it both ways. Dual or dual, and they're like, we don't care. They just don't care.
+
+[15:18] Oh, they told me it's called dual because they sell spices and beer. Oh, that's hilarious. I know what I like your explanation, and I like what that person said to you, so I'm gonna do it that way from now on. I always used to pronounce it dual because that's the way it looks, and then I had people going dual to me, and I'm like, you know what? Again, for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, if you live or work more importantly, anywhere in the East Village area, this is a spice shop where you can go in and get spices and teas, but they're also open so damned late.
+
+[15:51] You know what I mean? They are open till what is it, like one? Something like that. If you want accefetita at one in the morning, it might be your only place in the United States. Yeah, well, if you run out of something and you need to bust prep out, like during service, you can run someone over there and get whatever weird spice thing is.
+
+[16:07] You don't need it anyway. So, okay, so what's the question? That was the critique. What's the question? Do all countertop ice makers suck?
+
+[16:15] Oh, yeah. Is there some that are good? No. No, no, they suck. Um countertop, wait, wait, specifically under counter or countertop.
+
+[16:24] Countertop with the reservoir. Yeah, I don't see how that's gonna be good. I just don't see how that's gonna be like if it is it huge. I mean, like it's a big ass one that makes pellet ice. Oh, yeah, I think that's fine.
+
+[16:37] Those are probably fine. But like you just need to look at uh efficiency. I mean, the you need to look at efficiency. I haven't used that. Like I I thought you meant like the crappy little ones that are basically Peltier garbage that like like just do stuff.
+
+[16:50] I haven't used any of the of the countertop pellet ones. Anything that's designed to be commercial is gonna do what it needs to do and just break a lot and cost too much. I mean, that's my gripe with it. Also, like, are you talking about a home or for work? For home.
+
+[17:03] Yeah. The problem with ice machines, I don't know about the reservoir ones, but the problem with uh having a real ice machine at home, aside from that they're intensely inefficient because they're running all the time and then melting and running. So you always have tempered ice, right? They a home ice real ice maker, so a freezer ice maker, for those of you that know what I'm talking about, they it makes ice and then it stops making ice when the icing fills, and because the ice is in the freezer, ice never melts. Ice is also not tempered.
+
+[17:28] Ice is also not clear typically, right? Ice machines, like a restaurant ice machine or a or a bar ice machine, they spray water onto a plate, and as they spray water onto the plate, it builds the layers of ice up into relatively clear, assuming that you filtered your water properly, the ice is relatively clear, then it pops it out into what amounts uh to an igloo cooler where it immediately starts melting. So it just melts constantly. It's not refrigerated in the thing. And so they're loud as all get out because there's always water going ringing like that onto the plates.
+
+[18:04] And then you got the bust out, and then you have the condits that pump, so it's a huge nightmare. I live that way because seltzer is that important to me. And I don't have a uh I don't have an ice bank yet. My next house, if I ever if I live to have another house, ice bank. So I'm gonna say if you s if you tweet me out a particular unit, I'll look at the specs.
+
+[18:22] The thing is is that most uh ice things are underpowered, and they also put out a boat ton of heat because they just do, and so if you're having on the counter, it can be a pain in the butt. All right. Now it's tweet me out what unit is, I'll take a look at it. Fair? Greg, is that fair?
+
+[18:36] Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Ice, I have to say, uh, yeah, it's real inefficient. I just have two trays in my freezer.
+
+[18:44] It sits on top of the chicken nuggets that I always keep in there. Yeah? Yeah. Like what brand are you a Swanson? Does Swanson still exist anymore?
+
+[18:50] Like who makes the chicken? L Evans. Bell and Evans, yeah. All right. They're good.
+
+[18:55] There's always at least four boxes in my freezer. I heard a I can't remember what it was, but it was it was so wrong as to be funny. A I hate uh bullsh bull crap uh food etymologies. And there was a really bull crap etymology of chicken nugget going back to the author, I think it's LL, the Wizard of Oz, LL Bomb? L L Baum?
+
+[19:19] Thanks so. Anyway, something about him saying like this early story where like it turns a chicken into a piece of gold, and so that that is the genesis of the chicken nugget. I'm like, nah. Nah, that's crap. You know what I mean?
+
+[19:32] Yeah. That's garbage. Uh all right, so we'll speed through this so we get to this stuff. So did you go directly from a linea to Blue Hill, or was there stuff in between, or do you want to talk about Blue Hill? Like you were Blue Hill Stone Barns or Blue Hill here?
+
+[19:42] Uh Stone Barnes. Yeah. So that's kind of crazy, right? That's kind of a crazy environment. Like you get to use all these cool ingredients.
+
+[19:48] Like, you know, what how what was it? What like what so it was but in between a lenient. So I went to Alenny when I left Alenia. I I had Grant set me up with a trip. So I did uh estage at LWE and Arzak and then I did a stand at Over Eats.
+
+[20:03] Uh about five months at Mugaritz and then were they both still working at Arzak or no? Was it just her at the time? Yeah, they were both still. They even had me make a dish. They were like, show me something.
+
+[20:11] Oh my god, that's so hilarious. So the uh restaurant Arzak, when uh, you know, I I never got I never got to go there. How was the food there? Uh it was really good. Weren't they were they the ones that were using the uh upside-down canisters of freezy spray and like making those like chocolate things, those like or was that uh Barasatigi who's doing that stuff at that time.
+
+[20:33] Man, I forgot about him. Yeah, yeah. Martin Barasati. How could you forget such a great name? Martin Barasatiki.
+
+[20:39] It's uh Andoni's uh old mentor, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's such a great name. Yeah.
+
+[20:46] I mean, those all those people have such great names. Arzac's also. They have restaurants on top of each other in one city. I've never been there. I've never been there.
+
+[20:54] Anyway, so never been. Oh my god. No one I never got invited to any of those conferences, and uh anyone that knows me knows I only travel on business. When I was there, I shared a room with about 12 other men. And well, not a room, a two-bedroom apartment.
+
+[21:08] There was three bunk beds in each of the two rooms. And not not one of us were from the same country. And uh and I only had like probably two grand that I saved for the entire like six months I was there. And that back then I was about to propose to my then my girlfriend, and I had like a ring taped to my chest. I was sleeping and stopped, you know.
+
+[21:32] I was either sleeping with all these guys or I was sleeping in a hostel wherever I could, and I would do it, I would do it again today. It's like such a good city. So uh so like how much of a tape burn did you get from the tape being around? Yeah, I was uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[21:44] Because it would move when I would roll around. That's no good. That's no good. And then like, you know, she when you finally proposed, she's like, What's this stripe across your chest? And you're like, No, no.
+
+[21:55] You just changed where it was and eventually you're totally clean. Yeah. Well, for that time that was relatively new. You were early to the game with that. You know what I mean?
+
+[22:03] Yeah. Nice. Uh so then I after that, after that six months or five months, whatever it was in Spain, then I came to New York. I worked at Per se. I liked it a lot.
+
+[22:12] I learned a shit ton and met a lot of great friends. What year was that? Uh 2009. Okay. And I don't think I knew anyone in the kitchen there then.
+
+[22:21] Yeah. And uh But I don't know. It was one of the you know, I didn't love it. And it wasn't from a culture thing. It wasn't for it was because I had already, you know, I already did it at a Lenia for four years.
+
+[22:33] Did Grant give you the in to per se because of the Keller Grant connection? Yeah, he helped set it up. Is that harder or easier to be there under like because you have to then not do anything wrong because you're gonna piss off Grant too? Uh I I'm pretty good in that environment. Yeah, you know, like I'm uh I'm you know, I don't have a lot of skills, but uh but I can I can thrive in that environment and and uh but uh but I uh you know I just you really and not this is not a slight either.
+
+[23:03] You have to drink the Kool-Aid if you're gonna if you're gonna commit yourself, if you're gonna like sign up and I'm a member of the team, and you're gonna go to training every day and and have a coach and and you're gonna learn a bunch of skills, like you have to drink the Kool-Aid of that. And um and I I w I what I knew pretty early on I wasn't gonna do that for another four years at that restaurant. Right. Because it was just too the food was completely different, but the the it was just the same thing a little bit for in my mind. Right.
+
+[23:33] I was still learning a crap ton. Uh but so Grant knew that. Like I was not planning on quitting or anything. It wasn't enough to where I wanted to leave. I moved from Chicago to But Grant ate at Stone Barnes and he his Chef Akitz has been like a he's still to this day, we still talk and and he's like insanely generous with me.
+
+[23:52] And he brought my name up to Dan when he was just eating. Dan called me the next day, and then like two weeks later I I had put my notice in and left. So back to the Kool-Aid for a second, because I think it's actually an interesting point that I don't know where we're gonna end up in our industry yet. And you actually, the work that you're doing, right? The work you were doing when COVID hit, which we talk about in a minute, the you know, the kind of um shift towards kind of a more mellow fine dining or like a fine dining that you can A afford and be, you know, you can probably eat more than once a year without having your your liver blow out or whatever.
+
+[24:24] Uh right. But in if you ever want to do anything great, it's really hard to do something great without there being some amount of Kool-Aid drinking because it's not an industry. If you can't even, I mean, not to cut you off, but to me it's it, you know, change it from Kool-Aid to something else. But like it's you know, I just had we just got all of the kitchen uh for the three restaurants. We got everybody that worked in the back of the house together the other day.
+
+[24:53] And uh, you know, we just sort of were talking just to like let everybody talk and like, hey, this thing's still broken. Can you get this fixed into like what's going on with Rockefeller Center later this year and stuff? And spoiler, they're gonna open a place here in Rockefeller Center. Yeah, yeah. But uh I don't know.
+
+[25:11] I think there's a there's a there's a there's a loss of onus of you need to be responsible for your own career and the own your the things that you need to learn to get you to the place you planning on going. And for me, that was Greg's gonna own his own restaurant and not work for people. And for for most of that career of working at like basically only top ten restaurants in the world, was I needed to have my own three mission star restaurant. My I I just needed to make Grant proud. Like that was the motivation.
+
+[25:40] And uh, and then you know, shit happens, things change. Like, I like what by the time I was opening up Olmstead, I had not eaten in a fine dining restaurant for like five years. So I just couldn't be the guy that's like, yeah, give me 250 dollars a portion or uh, you know, a meal. I just didn't, I just couldn't, I would not reciprocate, you know, and so I just opened up something more casual. But uh, but it but there's it's not like then I did something wrong because I don't have the fine dining restaurant.
+
+[26:12] Uh but you still need your crew. Right. I still gardenered uh uh an insane amount of skills and a in a in almost equally as important a network that influential, important people saw that I was really skilled and worked my ass off, so then they were able to come to bat for me when it was time for me to open up a restaurant. I mean, that was the o only because I knew a famous food photographer and a publicist that that I met once and and granacts and David Barber, and like only because of that was I able to sort of leap over being guy guy in the kitchen to guy that owns the restaurant. Right.
+
+[26:50] Well, there like uh people I don't think people should actually feel bad about leveraging their contacts as long as they try to give other people opportunities to rise. I say that all the time. I go, all of you, okay. First of all, if you don't know what makes the frozen yogurt here at Olmstead so popular, like then you're if there's only three ingredients in the whole thing, and it's like why very, very popular. So like it's a you just don't understand if you're gonna leave and you don't know how to make it, and then what those ingredients can be applied, you know, applied to elsewhere.
+
+[27:22] And then the other thing is I'm the only person all of you know that own four restaurants and opened them up in six years. So if any of you want to own anything, like we need to have a relationship now. And that's not just like I'm pouring it out. You need to you need to give me something, which doesn't mean working off the books or sacrificing everything, but it means it's it's like we're in this together. I want I only want great restaurants, and you want to own something someday, you know.
+
+[27:52] Uh and so my candidness will only open if there's a if we're beyond just uh person that clocks in and clocks out every day, you know. Yeah, yeah. But I'm trying to what I guess I'm trying to ask, when I'm trying to figure out, and John, you're probably working with this now too, is how do you set up because you know John just took uh an exec chef at a at a place that's that's not quite one year old, right? So you're just over one year old, like one year in two weeks, yeah. Right, you're totally doing whatever you want to pro anyway.
+
+[28:20] Yeah, point being that I think it's an interesting problem now, specifically to try to develop a non-toxic Kool-Aid mix to get people to drink. Yeah, yeah. Of course, I mean, it's uh I mean the real it's everything from like I mean, it's like the bear. That's generalized chef culture. That's not every chef I mean, like I can't tell you how many men and women chefs that are very skilled that don't act like that, but are visibly upset if somebody is doing something wrong.
+
+[28:54] And then I mean, there's so much rambling that comes out of a conversation like this. I mean, like people if we're really gonna change, then we need to change all of restaurants, right? So it's not just like get rid of the bad culture. It means okay, so then we need to be able to pay the back of the house more, which means front of the house has to make 20% less. And so that's not gonna go in because there's only a finite amount of money coming into the business.
+
+[29:17] So if we're gonna redistribute that that money, then that's gonna be its own problem. So then we have to reconcile that. And then we're gonna have to reconcile. Okay, so that means just in general, it can't just be that uh it's crazy if there's a $25 hamburger and it doesn't come for fries. Like now hamburgers are just $25, even in Iowa, and $40 in Manhattan.
+
+[29:40] Like, and we have to start to like if we're gonna we can't cherry pick the polarizing things, the the sexy things of the TV show or whatever, we have to have a real broad conversation because this is uh, you know, I have my own problems and and and uh uh I've evolved a lot over the years, but this is still the thing that I put uh a shit ton of hours. Like I have several 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell, I'm an expert in this field. So this is the thing that I have no uh desire to leave or change, and that I want to be able to pass it on to people to other people that are whether they look at it as their career choice or whatever, I would like to pass that on. Uh but they're choosing to be in a very repetitive business that is just hot and small and uncomfortable, and customers don't you know really want to be part of the dialogue of okay, well, the cook that's not very good today is here, so you're gonna pay for a lesser product, but you know, it's how it is. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[30:55] You know, or the my more expensive cook works Saturday, so it's more expensive. Okay, so since like you can't, you cannot have just the one part of the conversation. You have to talk, you gotta zoom out and talk about it all at once, and more people need to talk about it all at once, instead of just being so vindictive. Well, yeah, judgmental. There's just a lot of judgment going on.
+
+[31:17] Right, right. I wasn't trying to be judgmental. When I was talking about like the cool like I'll tell you, here's the thing. Because I think there's a lot of what I learned between the two bars that I had, right? Is I learned that not everyone who is valuable gives feedback the same way that I receive it.
+
+[31:37] Like, so, like what that's what I'm more what I'm talking about is like becoming better at like seeing talent that's not the same as me. Not everyone is the same, and not everyone could be treated the same. I mean, that's something that I've only learned recently. I I I uh a lot of my kitchen staff now are uh non-culinary school, first time, you know, they're they were in the dish pit and it was like enough. I'm sick of this.
+
+[32:00] I'm they're hardworking people, I'll just pull them and train them how to do it. I'm gonna stop waiting for for someone else to knock on the door. And uh so two out of my three restaurants are fully staffed in the kitchen by former dishwashers right now. That's sick. And uh they just you know, they want to be taught more skills, so that way then it's just logical, okay.
+
+[32:21] Then you'll pay me more if I know how to do the grill station too, and blah, blah, blah. And uh, and it's not toxic, it's not anything, you know. Right. It's just I think I feel that like we're as an industry getting better about recognizing different kinds of talent. Yeah, and people respond differently.
+
+[32:36] Some I look, I I I did not get screamed at at all these other restaurants. I was six four. People didn't really scream at me, you know. But uh but I came from like my parents raised me right, and I was in the Boy Scouts for like 15 years. And so a big part of the Boy Scouts is once you like learn a task, uh once it once an adult teaches you how to do something, they no longer will do it for you.
+
+[33:02] Like, that's like the crux of Boy Scouts. And so whether that's wielding an axe to chop down wood for for a fire, or whether that's first aid or whether it's cooking, a big part of that was cooking, and that's why you know I got into cooking. Really? Boy Scouts? Yeah, one of the things is like over the years, they're like they make it for you and hand it to you, and then they eventually give you like a can of beef stew and a can opener, and you gotta heat it up yourself, and then eventually you just have to make the beef stew yourself, you know.
+
+[33:28] And uh like Dinty Moore was that the was that the beef stew like of record? Or yeah, yeah. I've eaten many of those. There's probably one in my in my pantry right now. You gotta go check out uh you check out uh Armor did a movie in the late 50s, early 60s, and one of the things is the Dinty Moore line.
+
+[33:47] So you can see them packing the old style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty good. Oh, cool. Uh so I'm just saying, like, so I was like pre-conditioned to, and I feel a lot, there's a lot of parallels that in the kitchen, right?
+
+[33:59] So you go into a kitchen, and now you know something. And the way I moved, I moved up, I was a sous chef at a three-mission star restaurant when I was uh 21 or 22 at a lennia, and it was because I just I just made sure I knew all the things that Grant wanted me to know, and that I could do it. So he I was just his go-to guy for those four years, you know. And uh but as soon as I saw someone that was ahead of me, I would just start learning their okay. Give me that, I'll I'll do that dish for you now, and then I'll do this.
+
+[34:30] And then I would just go up to Curtis Duffy or whoever one of the sous chefs was and say, I want to work that station now. And then they would just move me because there was no argument. And I I was in control of my own career, and uh I don't know. Well, one more linear question because I always forget. Was that was this stuff there?
+
+[34:52] Because I know uh like at Aviary, like all of the products were really siloed. It was like it was done like like Catalan style, like one dish, one person, like all the way through. It was a linear like that too, or were were multiple people working on other words, like did you just work on this one dish tonight and then tomorrow you worked on a different dish, or like how was that kitchen organized? No, uh people had like one or two, or sometimes three dishes on their station. I was put on meat for a long time, and I there were times where I had like eight or nine dishes on my station because almost every sushi every almost every cook had a sous chef that they would turn and pass everything to, and then that person would play it.
+
+[35:29] For like almost most of my time there, that person was Grant. Uh so we were just sort of on top of each other the whole for like years. Yeah, and but I I also forget, were they a quiet kitchen or were they a talking kitchen? Uh you could hear the cook tech's fan in that restaurant. Damn.
+
+[35:47] Yeah. Damn. What about you? But my point was like I was preconditioned for like discipline. Right.
+
+[35:52] You know, like my the way my parents raised me. And so like, so I that's that it's just that my point of all that stuff was just like so it's just easier for me. And I don't see it as abuse or something. No one was yelling at me. And uh, and I you know, there's no uh it doesn't mean that's other people don't internalize it differently.
+
+[36:13] Everybody perceives everything differently. But I I can't be that much of an outlier, right? I'm just some random person from Chicago. So other people say I wouldn't say random, but yes. But other people can work in these environments, not experience uh difficulties, or uh and just be accumulating knowledge and applying it to their career because they want to be the best.
+
+[36:35] They want to they so they're they're they're on the best team. You know, by the way, I love that you call out the cook tech. Cook deck is the Chicago induction brand that everyone everyone used Cook Tech. Are they still do people still use Cook Tech? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[36:45] They were they were the only commercial induction that anyone really used in the US, as far as I know, because the European ones they would break and you couldn't get them fixed. And the well, it was cool because both Cooktuck and Poly Science were both in the Chicago area. Yeah, yeah. Phil Preston. I mean, he he used to hang out with Grant all the time.
+
+[37:04] Yeah, yeah. He was there a lot. My my man P Press. Yeah. He's a funny dude, man.
+
+[37:10] I was uh I don't talk to him as much now that he sold most of poly science to uh to Breville. I mean, we should have him on the show once to talk about the history of the of the circulator. He's an interesting cat. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[37:24] He would come by a lot with like the work on the cold plate and stuff. Oh my god, yeah. He well, he built the cold plate for you guys. You know what I mean? And I think he's had it finished.
+
+[37:32] I think the first proto was probably finished before Alinia opened because so the way back in the in I think it was oh five or oh four, before Alinia opened, someone that is I don't know whether it was Grant himself or somebody just started putting out all of this um blog content. It was him on Eagle It. Remember when Eagle was a thing? Yeah, and it was just like everyone was like, What the You know what I mean? Because it was just like he's gonna have this and he's gonna have this.
+
+[38:00] And people were just like, there was not it there wasn't the level of anticipation for that place opening up based on what people in my community were reading was just intense. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean you go I mean Eagle Hall was like a forum that people just posted like food questions and stuff on, and then I remember being in my culinary school library and someone was flipping through it, and it was Grant Eckett's at Nicokonis' house, like messing around. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[38:28] And being like, what am I looking at? Yeah, it was a fun time also because like I was trying to build random crap for Wiley. I mean, I don't have the resources that uh P Press does, but like Philip Preston is was in his garage trying to manufacture snow. Did he ever bring any of that stuff over to you guys? I don't remember that.
+
+[38:44] He was trying to manufacture sounds like easy, right? Not easy. Snow crystals are very specific. And so he was trying to generate flavored snow, and flavored snow is even more difficult than regular snow. Anyway, good times, good times.
+
+[38:56] Um let's get back more into into current. Okay. So uh we'll skip over Blue Hill Stone Barnes for now, uh, unless you want to say something uh about your experience there. I mean, like I only ate there once or twice and I had fantastic meal. Yeah, I mean, the thing that was nice about Stone Barnes was like Dan would pull Hakkarai turnips out of the ground.
+
+[39:18] And uh, you know, I don't mean this to be an insult or something, but like he would look at me and be like, Per se couldn't fucking get these, you know. And like he would just so passionately talk about stuff that wasn't really talked about at uh per se. And uh he's a strange dude in his own right there. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely his own person. Uh but it was but that was the attraction.
+
+[39:41] I you know, I was sort of in the same school with with per se and and and Elenia, and it was nice to kind of have a different someone that didn't come from that same camp, you know. Right. Oh, it's true. That's true. Uh my god, it's so weird how like even at that tier level, there's all these weird cliques, and or is it click or clique?
+
+[40:03] What do you think? And so then that's like that's Christina Tosi, that's uh uh Cesar Ramirez, that's Dan Barber. I mean, that's it's like there's that family, and there's like there's although Tozy's a crossover, right? Because Tozy, like, you know, she did she did Wiley, she did WD, she was pastry at WD uh when Sam was there, and then moved to um to start working with with Chang, and those guys are all um Daniel Balud and and uh and um uh my god, JG, you know, Jean George crew, they're that sort of click, yeah. J J G Balud, like you know what I mean?
+
+[40:44] Yeah. I mean, so many crazy cooks came out of the JG kitchen and the Bulloo kitchen, you know what I mean? Will those clicks still happen, you think? In the future? I don't know.
+
+[40:53] Uh it's a great question. But I think part of like what you were saying earlier, where you know, you are looking for people who are working for you that kind of demonstrate that they want to have the knowledge and the connections and want to do this in the future and you're gonna nurture them, right? So I think it's gonna continue that way. I don't think it needs to be a pre-requ prerequisite. I don't think everybody needs to you know, I don't have that type of restaurant either.
+
+[41:18] But uh but it's still hard and like uh it's still unusual. Like it's more difficult just that I go to the farmer's market four days a week and bring a whole bunch of random stuff back that's seasonal than just having it come on a truck and it comes out of a box and it gets put into another like even just little stuff like that makes it harder to work at my own restaurant. And like I'm not gonna not choose that. Like I'm still gonna always choose that. Right.
+
+[41:42] By the way, I saw a video of you that you were doing it, you were doing the Union Square market because it's you know the best in the area. How the hell do you get all that stuff back? You had all this stuff in a cart. How what do you well you have a truck or into one Uber and now it's two? Yeah, so it's racking up.
+
+[41:56] I think I spend I mean I definitely spend enough to get a nice big car. But I don't know. I we're with this Rockefeller thing coming. I'm not really I don't really know how I'm gonna do that because well here, what are you gonna? Are you are you gonna cook it here?
+
+[42:10] Are you gonna the nice thing about you now is you have what one, two, three, how many places that you have now? You have uh I have three restaurants all within a block of each other in prospect uh heights. Right. So that's like a farm team. You so you can just pick people who can like work up here and like see how they work out in this environment.
+
+[42:26] I mean, that's gotta be good, right? Like have that home base that you can like Yeah, it's it's really it's been I mean, even just there, there's a lot of more camaraderie. There's like uh, you know, like one family in the dish pit and then their cousins are cooks at the other one, and and and uh yeah, it's it's been it's a it's been a lot honestly, it's been a lot easier to staff, uh, I think because we're so close to each other. Right. So, like, you know, you have the kind of close to each other empire, fabulous and Jeremiah with the Contra Wild Air and you know that other stuff.
+
+[42:55] I think it's kind of a good model. You know what I mean? I really do. So the my original thought was uh okay, if oh I have my Olmstead and then across the street is the French one and it's smaller and it's more bar vibes, that like Olmstead would be the dining room at Gramercy Tavern, and then like the tavern would be Maisanyaki. Like that was how I was trying to look at it.
+
+[43:15] That like uh that there would be a lot of cross-utilization. Well, didn't you say you were also commissarying a lot of stuff out of uh Olmsted into Mezzanyaki? Or was it the other way around? Yeah, yeah. I mean they they all it's all like if someone's making sugar liver mousse, they make it for each other and speaking of chicken liver mousse.
+
+[43:31] I saw your chicken liver mousse, and I have to say, thank God you serve it, at least the picture I saw with enough freaking like starch. I freaking hate when you get like one little tiny piece of bread and all this liver. What am I supposed to do? Just spoon it? It's not freaking pudding.
+
+[43:46] Yeah, you know what I mean? I mean, some people think it's pudding. Also, like, here's another question. So, like all the crew that you came up with, they are all cold foie people. Just asking about floa in general.
+
+[43:57] Are you a cold foie person? A hoffwa person, or are you agnostic? You like it always? Great question. I don't know the last time I had flour.
+
+[44:06] Yeah. Well, it's a that was like really on the time. I would go hot. Me too. But all those freaks love it cold.
+
+[44:11] They love the cold press. No, just pulling. It's either seared or it's a culturing, you know. Right, right. But like, what's better than hot eat it, right?
+
+[44:24] Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Tastes good. We would do a lot of like poaching pho at some of the restaurants.
+
+[44:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't for me. So, yeah, so if you if you go to Olmstead, which by the way, I think we met at a bar once right before Olmstead opened. And I I think I think it was you, someone from your program, I think it was you. And I was like, is it I was trying to figure out like how much you guys cared about Frederick Law Olmsted.
+
+[44:48] I think we met at something, some quest love thing. Probably. And I probably peppering you about how much you cared about Frederick Law Olmsted, but I forget what you said. Do you do I worship him or something? Well, in other words, you name it after.
+
+[45:01] I mean, I'm assuming it's Olmstead because Prospect Park is blah blah blah or whatever. Because it's prospect park, but he also designed the Chicago World's Fair. And then there's he has this thing where there's like uh there's usually some type of greenery that he tries to design in between, connecting that as parks. And so we sort of started that from out front of the restaurant, added a 50-foot green wall that connects you to the back of the garden. So I mean, greatest parks designer in uh US history, probably.
+
+[45:24] And their family's been, I mean, there's like four thousand uh homesteads now, but they've been pretty pretty great to us. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Do you give them like a little like uh five percent Olmsted card?
+
+[45:34] Like, a little glasses something when they walk in. It's a little shy. Here's a little teaser. Hey, you really an Olmstead? That's what you give them, right?
+
+[45:43] Uh well, one of them is a food writer for Forbes. Yeah. How crazy is that? It's funny. That's hilarious.
+
+[45:48] And uh are they is their last name Olmstead? Yeah. Nice. Yeah, Larry Olmsted. So were you like, do you come by it honestly or is this some uh some sort of bull crap Olmstead?
+
+[45:56] Yeah, he loved it. He loved it. I thought it was great. Yeah. Anyway.
+
+[45:58] Uh all right, let's talk about um unless I missed something. Oh, I like something. So your rutabega, let me ask you this. So in Rutabega, you make this your well-known rutabega, like uh, what do you call it? Tell you tellers, yeah, yeah.
+
+[46:12] And you put it through a sheeter and then you and then you roll it, slice it. What do you poach it off? You just like half cook it and boil like pot. You just boil it in water. Yeah.
+
+[46:21] Unsalt the water, otherwise it turns a mush. And then wait, say it again? If you put salt in the water, like you would think for pasta, the rutabaga gets too soft too quickly. Really? Yeah, so you you parkook it as like you take it to a point, and then you put it in the salt.
+
+[46:42] Yeah, probably just because it helps break it down a little bit. Huh. And uh I would have to investigate this. This is an interesting phenomenon. Yeah.
+
+[46:49] And uh, and so then it comes out sort of al dente, and uh, but there's like a butter sauce, like a truffle butter sauce, and it's very it's just heavy and noodly and and truffle. Man, you put like brown butter crumbles or something. Yeah, right. Like milk salad. Milk salad.
+
+[47:05] All right. My question is this. Very 10 years ago. I love uh rutabega. I think it's like underused.
+
+[47:13] I love it. However, the day after, if it's been refrigerated, like without a sauce or something, the something goes off in rutabega to me. I I like Rutabega. I'm a day of Rutabega man, man. But I know a lot of people aren't.
+
+[47:24] So I'm wondering like what I'm doing, or if you have any tips on, do you have this phenomena? Have you ever noticed that like rutabega gets a weird like a radish? Yeah. It goes in it goes in a different direction. Like I would just recommend not having leftovers.
+
+[47:44] There you go. I mean, it's fine in a soup. It's fine leftover in a soup or in a sauce. Yeah. But like if you like uh like a lot for a lot of dishes, what I've been doing with a lot the trim, because we have rutabega somewhere, and so we have a lot of rutabega trim.
+
+[47:55] We I turn it into just basically like a really simple soup, like there's not much going on there. And then I make a like a bechamel with Jasper Hill cheddar. But then I I combine the 50-50 with rutabega puree and the and the Burbac. No, sorry, the bechamel. Yeah.
+
+[48:12] And it just makes it, you know, like how if you eat mac and cheese, like after three bites, you're just sort of done with it. Yeah. Like it makes it so much lighter. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[48:20] And then it still looks the same because it's the same color. Right. Uh, although sometimes it's okay to serve something that you only want three bites of if that's all you're giving them. Yeah. You don't want the family style restaurant.
+
+[48:29] So I would look like a jackass if I was given three spoonfuls of mac and cheese. Here's your family style. Yeah. Um, so another one on the thing. So the the the duck.
+
+[48:39] So you you are self-avowed uh duck lover, and you like an aged, not aged, uh dried duck to get the skin to render out. But you you're like, look, we don't have the room to age the whole freaking duck, and plus I don't need to age the rest of the duck that I'm not gonna do this kind of prep on. How do you so you you cut off all the all the all the breasts, you break the stuff down into what you're gonna use, take the fat off they're gonna use that, and presumably you're gonna render it out to do something else. And then you do a 14-day dry drying thing on the on the thing. But what do you do to stop the meat underneath from drying out?
+
+[49:14] Do you have like some sort of like you have them slightly overlap each other? So like we so it's just a duck breast, and then we cut we clean it so that way all the sinew and stuff's off the back of it, and then there's you know, a quarter of an inch or more of just auxiliary skin that's been trimmed so it's not as thick. Right. So it's the thickness of what's on the actual breast because right the outside stuff has some tends to be a little thicker. And then we score it, and then when you just lie them amongst each other, the within that 14 days, they they don't get uh funk.
+
+[49:46] I mean, if it's it's like pretty like if you're like three days past that, you're running a risk of it getting a little funky. Like I'll still eat it and like some people love funk on their on their duct. I've never been that person. I'm I'm not even a dry aged beef guy. I don't think that's a good thing.
+
+[49:58] Oh, really? You know what? I the thing with dry edge beef is I think dry. Someone said it was cool, and then everybody started to follow suit. Also, like uh dry age meat in a bag doesn't work for me.
+
+[50:09] You know what I mean? Like cooking it in a bag because then the that smell from the bone and the fat near the bone goes through the whole dang thing. And it's just a lot. It's just a lot. I can enjoy almost anything.
+
+[50:20] I'll I only ever once had a really aged birds at Hicks in London. And I was like, whoa, man. Like a squab or something? Grouse, like just like that, it was like all rotten, and I had to spit out the the BBs and all this other stuff. And I was like, I don't mind spitting out the BBs, but it's a lot.
+
+[50:38] Like, like uh it's a lot, you know, like when they they hang it until it's all rotting on the inside. It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But but people love it.
+
+[50:46] You know what I mean? They do. So um, you remember who um Alan Sayak was is? He's not dead. He was uh he was the he was the dean uh at uh the French culinary before Nils came on, and you know, along with Andre Soltner and um and Jacques Papin and and uh uh Jacques Therese.
+
+[51:03] Anyways, so he was at Le Cirque for a while, but his like big restaurant that he started here in in or was big at here was Lecine, which is the swan, right? And uh he was telling me these stories. He was a weird funny guy. I learned a lot from him because I came in to the FCI as this modern guy, but then I have to work with this old school French guy. And he would tell me stories about his dad making him cook these like rotten birds that are hanging in his basement when they when he was a kid in France, and like this just the disgust on this chef's face was just like priceless.
+
+[51:37] You know, you like a disgusted French guy, right? The look on the disgusted French guy's face. Yeah. Yeah. And so like whenever I think about the birds.
+
+[51:44] That's the argument of why a bird with buckshot and it's old is good. No, no, no. It's it's an argument like whenever whenever I feel like I have to like something, I think of like, you know, uh Chef Sayak telling me, you know, and the blood dripping down my father's face was disgusting. The whole thing was disgusting. I'm like, dude, man, geez, some freaking, you know.
+
+[52:05] I think I've I've evolved, at least I think I have to to where I don't I don't pretend like I like something out of respect anymore. That's a good age to be at. Yeah. Yeah. Like where it's like so qu like it's like you're s it's so cool.
+
+[52:17] You work at a line, you go somewhere and they send you something and it's like, Oh my god, I gotta call my mom and and then uh then you're uh going up in your career and like, oh you now you're starting to get like comp meals and that's crazy. That's so amazing. I gotta call my you know, and then uh now I just want to be left alone. I don't want anyone to talk to me. Don't send me anything.
+
+[52:34] Yeah, well it's a good thing. I don't want to talk about my restaurants. Especially if you're gonna talk about staffing. If you're going out like with your family, you like you just want yeah, yeah. Uh that's true.
+
+[52:43] Not that I'm like some guy or something. I'm just I haven't been out in like two years, so I'm not really pushing anything away. But speaking of two years, uh, so how did you Okay, so my experience when my bar shut down in the pandemic was that the crew was very nervous about working, especially just to like pump drinks out to people who wanted drinks, right? Then you took on this model where, well, you're gonna do a food bank out of your restaurant, keep your crew working, and also do uh, you know, help people out. How did the funding work for that?
+
+[53:18] And then also how did it how like how did the crew respond to that? Because they saw it as as good question, you know, useful, I guess. Yeah, I mean that that is what made COVID so exhausting, not COVID itself. I mean, we like we shut down and then within a week we were operating as a food book bank, like everyone was laid off and some cooks were were like, you know, okay, well, I'll just keep coming anyway, I don't care. And uh so we started making meals.
+
+[53:44] And uh and that was with Rethink at Lee's thing. I'm sorry, no, that was with uh uh what is that thing? The Lee Initiative. And then uh and then sh shortly later, you know, a little bit later on, we start it was World Central Kitchen and then so it was Lee Initiative, Rethink and World Central Kitchen, sorry. And uh what's crazy is like Olmsted we had only one storefront when we opened and over the years we just expanded.
+
+[54:11] So the dry cleaner next to us went out of business. We grabbed it, connected it through the basement. So we were operating like this food bank bodega thing out of the main dining room out of Olmsted, and we just left the we just didn't take down the the vestibule. We left it up and used that as like this like barrier between the guests and and then cut to a few m uh like a month or two into it, we we were trying to bring other people back if we could. So we turned the private dining room into uh like a bakery, like a grocery store, and uh and then just we were able because we had the store, we were able to kind of justify a couple front of the house people and and then not that long after they l they uh they released uh outdoor dining, and so then that kind of you know, it was like baby it was baby it was a lot of and then we did this like black entrepreneur series across the street, and it was just it was uh I mean draining for them.
+
+[55:05] I but you know what, like uh the pe you know, again, uh my place shut, but the places that were open, I just like the level of kind of internal punishment that people had to take to be working in that environment. You know what I mean? It's just cause it wasn't it didn't look fun anyway. Like I only did a couple of things. I mean, it looked just like I don't know, God bless anyone.
+
+[55:28] I mean it was all beautiful, we're getting random things dropped off, but like sometimes we would literally get a truck of just beats and we were like, where are we putting? And they were like frozen prepackaged beats, so we didn't even have a freezer to put them in. Like it was uh you know, it was draining for for the stuff. But yeah. Uh just all those I mean my takeaway is is you know, transitions are much harder now.
+
+[55:53] Whether like that but then that could just meet a menu change, or that I want to bring in a chef or that I want to transfer a cook from one station to another. And uh I think that's that part should be acknowledged to why is that and how do we move forward? Like uh like what's you know, what's causing that. Yeah. By the way, are you uh uh are you a personally beat positive, beat neutral or beat negative person?
+
+[56:21] I don't think it's ever been on my no, I had a beat salad on Olmstead's menu. Uh I mean, does anyone serve it, not just with like beets and pine nuts and goat cheese? I don't know. Well, uh when I come up with that dish, I don't know. Um yeah, I mean the the anyway.
+
+[56:39] I don't know. I like I like that dehydrated beet thing that people were doing, like par dehydrated beet thing that people were doing and then roasting off like you know seven, eight years ago. I thought that was good. I don't know. The like the in the quick lime thing where they soaked it and then were they doing that?
+
+[56:52] I don't know, like Mike and B park. Yeah, no, I don't know about that. Anyway, all right. So let's get to the current stuff so that so that I'm I'm not uh shafting anyone. So uh Patty Ann, like you're getting like you're like you're getting a lot of uh uh like a lot of people are going nuts for this idea of kind of thinking about these things that are seen as uh what you call what you what is it called in the thing?
+
+[57:13] Midwestern, what would it midwestern comfort food? What's the what's the style? Although we eat stuff out here too, man. I mean, like I grew up with blooming onions too man, it's not just in the Midwest. Yeah, that's probably I don't know if I've had a blooming onion before I put it on the menu.
+
+[57:26] That was that was just that was very family friendly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So is there uh like how are you reinventing the the or are you not? You spent they're they're good. They're it's all I mean they're all creative outlets, right?
+
+[57:36] Like Olmsted is the vegetable, whatever I can do whatever I want with vegetables restaurant and and people like it, and and the one across the street is small French food because I like heavy French food, but it's small and it's more bar vibes, and then Patty Anne's, you know. I don't know how many times I'm in these articles or like these interviews where yeah, you can come to my restaurant once a week, it's neighborhood, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, I'm not eating at Olmstead once a week. At Patty Anne's, you can there's a bakery attached to it. There's breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
+
+[58:02] Yeah, we got two minutes. Keep going. You know, there's breakfast, there's lunch, there's dinner, there's there's brunch. So there's a lot of reasons to to actually come back. And it is kid friendly.
+
+[58:10] It's not a kid, not kids running around everywhere, but it's like it's you can bring your family there and not feel weird rolling up with a couple strollers and kids and asking for a table at six o'clock on a Thursday. Did you take your whole crew to the Outback Steakhouse and order a blooming onion and see? It's too powdery. Their coating is too powdery. It's kind of dry and powdery.
+
+[58:29] I did just eat at a uh cracker barrel the other day. Oh, for some research. I saw that you did a crack you have a cracker cracker barrel conceptually, like I like giant checkers, but like I've never had a good meal at Cracker Barrel. Did you have a good meal at your cracker barrel? I had the a really uh delicious but very beige uh chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy the other day.
+
+[58:49] Chicken fried steak's a great idea with the white with the white gravy and basic. I swapped it for the brown gravy. Okay. All right. And uh talk to me about port wine balls because that's everybody's greatest 1970s thing.
+
+[58:59] Just the line cheese ball. Yeah, it's that thing that my mom puts out for every occasion that no one touches, you know. Nuts or no nuts. We made a good one. We went without nuts.
+
+[59:07] Oh, we did is we take cauliflower, different colors, and we turn it into couscous and pack it around it. Okay. So it's like kind of already the crude. So you just could put it on it. It seems sounds weird, but it's a that's a good update.
+
+[59:19] That's a good update. I think it has a good and and to you, because uh don't get anyone started on what a pig in a blanket is. What is a pig in a blanket to you? Because I grew up with the with the pancake around a freaking sausage or like that, you know. What we do is we buy bacon, new ski's bacon.
+
+[59:33] It's from the it's from Wisconsin from the Midwest. Good bacon. Yeah, and we make uh potato rolls and then we braid the bacon with the potato roll, and then we bake it off and serve with honey mustard. Ah, nice braided bacon. People call it a duvet.
+
+[59:48] Okay. Okay. And uh what is your uh first of all, cob is one of the great salads. Would you agree? One of the top five or six salads on earth is the cop.
+
+[59:56] So what do you do to the cob that uh what we do is we make a blue cheese, uh, you know, foam, and then all the layers kind of go over of the bacon and the egg whites and the yolks and the chives and everything in in the same kind of cob salad line. And then we serve endive as like a scoop. So it's more of like a dip form. Ooh, cob salad dip. So it's all the same, it tastes exactly like one, but it's more dip, dippy sherry, you know.
+
+[1:00:21] All right, well, I unfortunately have not been yet, but uh John, when you have a day off, we should go. Yeah, let's do it when I hire another cook. Did you have any qu I we're late already, but did you have any questions you want to ask, John? Because we didn't pipe in anything. It's all good.
+
+[1:00:31] No, no, we're good. I got the questions you want to listen. People who Patreon who wrote in non-specific questions for today will get you. Is next week no tangent? I think so, yeah.
+
+[1:00:39] No tangent Tuesday. All right. Well, Greg, thanks so much for coming on. I hope you had a good time. Cooking issues.
+
+[1:00:45] Yeah, thank you.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios, joined as usual with John. How you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[0:22] Uh Nastasia is uh she's with uh Jackie Molecules out in Los Angeles land. How you guys doing over there? Good. Yeah. Yeah, real good.
+
+[0:33] Yeah? Yeah. All right. Yeah. Uh and uh, you know, before we get into it, we got, of course, as usual rocking the panels here at uh Rock Center, got Joe Hazen.
+
+[0:40] How you doing, Joe? I'm doing well, man. Good to see you. Yeah, and I think we also have Quinn over on Vancouver, uh Vancouver Island. Yeah.
+
+[0:49] Full house. Full house, beautiful. All right. So uh before we get into uh well, I guess, John, what what do we have for housekeeping for for Patreon and all this other uh we've got Matt Sartwell coming up uh in two weeks. From Kitchen Arts and Letters.
+
+[1:06] So we're gonna do all of your classics in the field questions. So any kind of obscure not nonsense, but any kind of obscure nonsense or stuff, you know, it's better to let him know ahead of time. So usually we send him the questions several days in advance, because you know, this is not his job. And so like in case, you know, he needs some time to run some stuff down, but on the other hand, we've never stumped him really. Yeah, no, he's and he's so knowledgeable.
+
+[1:32] Yeah, yeah. It's it's unbelievable. Yeah, you want someone with some cookbook knowledge. I I think we need to do we it would be fun sometime to get like a group of um uh, you know, used antiquarian and uh otherwise cookbook sellers on at the same time. Like have like a maybe not even for the show, like for something for the Museum of Food and Drink.
+
+[1:52] Like get like get Mac at Bonnie Slotnik. Uh get um, oh my god, her name just went out of my head up in uh Rhode Island. Uh her name out of my head. I know Rabelais books up in Maine, then omnivore books out in San Francisco as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[2:05] It'll be fun. Yeah, no, that'd be great. I would love that. Classics in the field. Yeah.
+
+[2:09] Yeah. From all those. Yeah, that would be super cool. Yeah, that'd be great. All right.
+
+[2:13] What else we got? Uh then we have the wine director from my restaurant coming on uh in early September to do a live wine taste. Good plug, jerk. What's the restaurant? Temperance, New York City.
+
+[2:29] I don't think that way. Um You gotta start thinking that way, no, I know, I know. You're the exec chef at a restaurant. Plug Central. Plug, plug, plug.
+
+[2:37] Come on, man. Um and he does, I forgot what he said, but he does know the name, why it's called Temperance, so he'll be able to fill us in on that when he shows up. Okay. That'll be good. Well, but it apparently, I mean, not apparently.
+
+[2:47] It's ironic. I mean, they serve wine there. Yes. Like, you know, ocean appropriate amount. Oceans of wine.
+
+[2:53] Yeah. Um, but yeah, that are the guests coming up. We're working on some others that we'll let you know about soon. Um and yeah, as always, suggest any guests uh in the Discord or let us know. And go if you have are not a member, sign up at uh patreon.com slash cooking issues.
+
+[3:09] Yeah, and if you are a member, you can call in your questions live too, 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And, you know, especially if you want to like uh like I say, try to stump Matt when he comes on, but uh good luck. Good luck. All right, so Nastasia Lopez goes to Los Angeles, right?
+
+[3:28] Which is, you know, her native area where she comes from, right? You know, and uh she goes to get this. Did Jack go with you, Stas, or no? No, but I went with Pat and Pat's here with me, so we have an update. Oh, you didn't say Pat was to so Pat is everyone's favorite dido player which is not saying a whole hell of a lot.
+
+[3:49] You know what I mean? He hangs up on us oh God. Anyway like if you have any sort of weird thing that you need to blow into and you're like an orchestra you hire this guy to fly out and blow into that weird instrument whatever. I'll leave it at that so these guys decide that they're gonna go see get this the Beach Boys. Now how many of the real beach boys are are there by the way three right four four I think so everyone showed up who's still alive Brian Wilson was there.
+
+[4:33] Yeah once ever it was three it was three so the most important one is not there because who's the beach boy who's the beach boy that you hate Staz Mike Love. So Mike Love what is he a hundred and three how old is Mike Love right now he's in his 80s right or something like this 81 81 we're fine I'm not trying to be ageist but I don't want to hear an 81 year old singing about little surfer girls and waiting to see you know wouldn't it wouldn't it be nice if he was older in what? In the box? What is he waiting for? So what is that like to see an 80 an 81 year old beach boy?
+
+[5:09] It gets better people though way for it was rough what it was it was rough. It was rough we left during intermittent. Okay. But for the For those of you that don't know, if you had to guess John, I'm gonna put this to John because I haven't spoken to him about this yet. Or Joe.
+
+[5:24] So people who don't know, right? Or Quinn, right? If you had to choose a person from the sitcom Full House, who is going to become an honorary beach boy, who would it be? Joey. Even though he's from Canada, but I still think it's Joe.
+
+[5:42] Joey, yeah. Wait, well, who what's the actor? Which would she give the actor for Joey? I don't know. I don't know anymore.
+
+[5:46] David Court Courtold? Couture? David Goulet. David Guzley. Joe.
+
+[5:53] Yeah. I would have chosen. I thought it would have been awesome if they had like gotten the Olson twins. That would have been. Oh.
+
+[5:59] Yeah. No. Oh no. No. No.
+
+[6:01] No. Give me Bob Sagitt. That would be amazing. Bob Sagitt would be the only person that makes them like look like they're still doing okay. But that's bad.
+
+[6:11] It's tasteless. But tasteless. Wrong. I take it back. It's bad.
+
+[6:15] Sorry. Sorry. My bad. Tara. Horrible.
+
+[6:18] Bad. Freegan John Stamos. Freegan John Stamos is a beach boy, and Nastasia, no joke, goes, I don't usually like the older dudes, but John Stamos is hot. I'm like, come on, man. This is why he's a beach boy.
+
+[6:33] He's he's hot next to an 81-year-old Mike Love, who she already has. And he's the only one kill work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[6:43] Pat, what do you think? How did how did Stamos look? Uh he looked fantastic. His knees worked great. He was overdoing the fact that he was the one that could move around the stage.
+
+[6:54] Yeah. And so he was jumping square and sliding on his knees, and he was a step away from playing the guitar with his teeth, living his rock star dreams. Oh wow. Wow, that's that's amazing. And I was told by Nastasia, I couldn't see because uh true to Nastasia form, she bought the seat that was as far away as possible from the stage.
+
+[7:12] Basically, she was watching the concert from New Jersey, and the concert was taking place. She was using the the Webb Space Telescope to look at the concert from where she was seated. But uh she wasn't what it was just a slice of chorizo. People thought it was stay mooks, but it was chorizo. Go look at the internet if you don't know what I'm talking about.
+
+[7:34] Anyway, uh so apparently he dressed like Elvis, but I couldn't see. So which Elvis? Like comeback Elvis, like like Hawaii Elvis, like young Elvis? Which Elvis Elvis. Oh, that's my favorite Elvis.
+
+[7:49] Well, like white, white outfit rhinestone, big old chunky, like sweating Elvis, like like the cross between the early Elvis and David Burke. That's my that's my Elvis of Choice. You know what I mean? It was hard to tell because everybody there, everybody else on stage was dressed head to toe in Tommy Bahama. Oh my god.
+
+[8:07] So I think he looked like Elvis, but in reality, looking back on it, he just he looked like Uncle Jesse. Yeah. Oh my god. All right now here's the question. Did they play Kokomo before the intermission or not?
+
+[8:23] No. No. Tokomo's the closer. Oh come on, still. Yeah.
+
+[8:28] Alter Thomas. You've seen them three times. Twice. Once just, you know, the lame house without Brian Wilson, then the other time was at Bonaroo when they got Brian Wilson to come. Yeah.
+
+[8:37] I saw him in 83. They were my first concert four years old. Yeah. Yes. They were my first concert when I was like, I don't know, yeah, like twelve or thirty, in like eighty, it was eighty three, I think.
+
+[8:47] Last year, mine too. In Bouvier Park in Miami. My God, they're everybody's they just go around the the country having this be everyone's first concert. They started touring in 1961 off this 5th anniversary tour, even though that was 61 years ago. I think they're too old to do math, or they're just using last year's slideshow.
+
+[9:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you know, why work when you can be lazy? Yeah. Yeah. But were they focusing on more of the good stuff, or was there all I mean, not that Deuce Coop?
+
+[9:16] There's nothing wrong with Deuce Coop and all of that, like garbage. But it's not that it's garbage. It's fine, but you know what I mean? It's like Wilson hadn't found his musical voice yet, really, right? I mean, so like what were they focusing on?
+
+[9:27] Like all of that stuff. Since Wilson wasn't there, I'm sure it was very, it was very cars heavy, right? Very like, you know, my cars, my surfing, my girls, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yes.
+
+[9:37] It was all surfer cars in the beginning. That's I think that's why we left. And then Sugar Ray came out and played, and that was terrible. No. Wait, wait, sugar ray, like there's a tiny chunk of chicken hanging from my girlfriend's four-post bed or whatever that lyric was that I can never remember.
+
+[9:51] That guy, the guy who ended up in Sharknado and was amazing in Sharknado. That guy? Yes. Yeah. Did he have any other song other than that four-post bed song?
+
+[10:03] Yes. Okay. I can't remember what it was. Okay. Okay.
+
+[10:08] Dang. And apparently across what? Across the uh street, Hollywood Bowl, all the cool kids were seeing this other concert, and including my sister, and we weren't invited to that. So we were at the old folks'. I don't know if you know this, but I don't know if you know this.
+
+[10:23] You're not invited to concerts. You do this thing called buy a ticket and you go. I wasn't invited. Why didn't you get to see Rage Against the Machine with uh Run the Jewels? Oh, I wasn't invited.
+
+[10:35] You didn't buy a ticket. You bought a ticket to the wrong concert. Anyway. Uh yeah, I guess so. I guess.
+
+[10:41] I mean, like, well, Pat, how like how many years ago was the con was a concert you saw, the one the first one? Not that you want to. 19 uh four, ninety-four. 94. All right.
+
+[10:53] So they could still do their stuff back then. Yeah. All right. So we'll not the same YouTube videos as their visual element this time around that they were using back then. It looked like screensavers from Hawaii.
+
+[11:06] Yeah. The Windows 95 screensaver was one of their you was one of their videos. Yeah, nice. And so at that time, were you already a musical kid at the time? Were you like, I need to get a pheromin?
+
+[11:17] Was that you back then? Is that how you spoke back then? I and they were my major influences. Why which is why I'm so successful now. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[11:26] Listen, so uh let me just make a like a recommendation. I think this should be the last concert you ever go to. I think that's it. You bookend, you're done. You can't go to any more concerts.
+
+[11:38] Having survived the experience, I never want to go to another concert. Oh god. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
+
+[11:47] Uh I used to actually listen to the Beach Boys all the time. I think they were a great, they were a great act. You know what Nastasia likes that I don't. It's not that I hate the whole album, but like I had to listen to their Christmas album a lot growing up. And man, that's that grates after a while.
+
+[12:02] Yeah, I believe that. I mean Little St. Nick is a great song. Yeah. The whole album.
+
+[12:10] Yeah, the that real Santa Claus song. Oh my god. The real the real Santa. I wanna meet Santa Claus, the real, the real Santa. Oh my god.
+
+[12:21] I hope she thinks that Santa Claus. Oh my god. It's like it's triggering for me. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[12:28] I don't know. I don't know. All right. Okay. By the way, uh longtime listener from Al from Alberta, Canada, Alberta.
+
+[12:38] Warren Johnston sent me, came live, didn't send me, showed up at Tales of the Cocktail, New Orleans, which is where I was a couple weeks ago. I didn't get to talk about it last week because we had a guest. Brings me the Canadian version. Now I know Stas, whatever. Don't, you know.
+
+[12:53] The Canadian version of uh Cheetos. Not the. By the way, we should start this off. We should go around. Are you guys a crunchy Cheeto crew or a or a puffy Cheeto crew?
+
+[13:04] Crunchy. Crunchy. Crunchy. Crunchy. Any puffs out?
+
+[13:07] Crunchy? Any puffs? Any puffs? I like the I like the puffs. Oh, contrarian, or you actually would prefer the puff.
+
+[13:15] I prefer the puffs, yeah. I like what it does. It's just a better residue on your hands. A better residue on your hands. I like that.
+
+[13:23] I like how like you're not reading the taste of the snack at all. You're like, what are my hands look like? This is a better orange. This is a better orange with the puff. Um by the way, Cheetos, extrusion, extrusion technology and how much it puffs, like, you know, is kind of amazing how they can adjust the amount of puff by a j like we should get an extruder person in here.
+
+[13:43] That's what you know, that's what I want to do for the museum, right? Uh, like when we did the original concept for the cereal exhibit. I wanted uh uh a flaker, which apparently you can it's easier now to get one, making flake cereal, uh, an extruder and a puffing gun, but we only ever got the puffing gun. But how amazing would that be to have all those technologies? Pretty cool.
+
+[14:00] Yeah. That the guy who wrote the book on breakfast cereal, literally, his name is Be Fast. And apparently, Catherine from the museum spoke to him. Jerk. Remember that?
+
+[14:09] Yeah. Yeah, jerk. Beefast, who you'd think would be the coolest guy on earth. He knows he grows up with a name Be Fast and writes the book on technical like expertise for breakfast cereals. And then like Catherine calls him up to ask him for stuff in the museum.
+
+[14:24] He's like, get out of here, kid. You know what I mean? Jerk. Unfortunate. That's like when you go like the first time in Stas.
+
+[14:30] I think you went too to uh to a toy convention, and everyone is a curmudgeonly old butthead. Remember that? Was it you that went? Yeah. Yeah, they're just bad people.
+
+[14:39] Not bad people, but like not, they're not like you know, some sort of like Willy Wonka or toy, you know, there's not like toys and children. You know what I mean? It's like toys. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[14:50] Nah, not cool. Same with this guy. Anywho, huh? Someone else that we spoke to, who was the puffing gun expert of the world, right? Who is a nice guy, I forget his name.
+
+[14:59] He was like, Yeah, what you should do is get an extruder and then set up strobe lights, and then you can time the strobe light. So what you do is is you set up the strobe at the exact rate that the knife rotates to cut the stuff off of the extruder, but then you shift the phase up and down so that you can freeze every puff in exactly the same amount of expansion. And I was like, oh, but so cool. It's so cool. So I'm still waiting for we're still like at a point where someday, if the museum ever gets its big space, I would like to do a real uh a real honest to God um sorry, a real honest to God cereal exhibition.
+
+[15:38] Um anyway. So uh one more. Do I have any more uh any more how I guess one? Johnson. Well, we wanted to I didn't say what he did.
+
+[15:47] So he gives us this Canadian Cheeto, right? Good name, ready for it? Cheesies. Cheesies. Yeah.
+
+[15:56] What? Yeah. Cheesies. Now, it is. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[15:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's made by the Hawkins Corporation. Now, he gave us bags to eat while we were in New Orleans, and then he gave me a bag to bring on the show. However, Booker ate the whole damn thing. Okay.
+
+[16:16] I mean, like, and I was like, Booker, damn it. Like, I need to bring that on the show. He's like, I'm just gonna have one more. And then he just kept going back and just having one more. And it turns out that if you keep doing that, they're gone.
+
+[16:28] Yeah. So we need to get some, maybe like through through John that never make it into my house if we're ever gonna taste them on air. But what they are, and uh Quinn, you like the cheesy. You're a cheesy fan, right? Cheesies.
+
+[16:40] Oh, yeah, they're far superior. Yeah. They're far superior. All right. So here's what I'm gonna say about them.
+
+[16:45] He's right. Are they the poofy or they're crispy? Crispy, crunchy. And get this. So like they are you have to have a beverage with them.
+
+[16:55] They make you want to drink a beverage because they have about twice the cheese powder and twice the salt. It's just like an amped up Cheetos. I guess it's just like so cold up there in Canada, Quinn, that you need like, you just need that extra oomph. But they're a good product. So, anyhow.
+
+[17:14] Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right, one more weird thing before we go. So uh Jack Shram, who I was also in uh what's it called, Tales of the Cocktail, he went to the Meat Hook in Brooklyn, which you know I've never been to live. You ever go there, John?
+
+[17:25] Yeah. Yeah. I know you follow them. But they have a 10-year-old cow. And I got the ribeye from it, but I haven't looked at it yet.
+
+[17:33] So the noise you're hearing is not a mouth noise. It's me opening this to John and I. And the story is too, right? It was like raised alone in a pasture and never. Sounds like me.
+
+[17:42] Oh. Oh, yeah. So we'll hold it to the. So look at look at that. Look at that.
+
+[17:46] Nuts. Can it is the camera see it there? Yeah. That is a serious piece of serious piece of meat, people. So you want to describe that?
+
+[17:54] Look how yellow the fat is, dude. And apparently the oh my god. Feel how soft it is. Wow. It's the softest fat on a piece of meat.
+
+[18:03] Wow. Oh my god. This piece of fat the little thing near the walnut is hard. Feel that. That's like, but the stuff that's on the outside.
+
+[18:11] Still not even that hard. But this is like, this is like pig fat. Yeah. It's like pig fat soft, like bacon fat soft. That is some stuff.
+
+[18:21] Smells like just fresh meat. It doesn't smell like smell. Anyway. All right. So we'll report back to you people next week on uh jealous.
+
+[18:30] That's very cool. On the taste of this sucker. Uh yeah, the guys at Meat Hook were saying that it was like the fat was so soft on the outside of it that uh that it was like rendering on like at butcher temperature. My hands are greasy, which is kind of amazing. And uh the other thing I called McGee because Harold has been to that like restaurant in Spain that serves like seven-year-old cow regularly.
+
+[18:52] So I'm gonna get a little bit of the skinny before I before I cook it. But I'll cook it before next week, and I'll let you folks I'll let you folks know what happens. Nice. Yeah? Yeah.
+
+[19:02] Yeah. Old meat. Old meat. Uh that is that's my current nickname. Yeah.
+
+[19:08] Yeah. Yeah. Uh oh, also, uh, we don't have time for this, but uh well, we'll get to it later. We'll get to it later. We'll give it with it we'll get to it later.
+
+[19:16] All right. Uh Jack. What are your culinary stories from Alaska? And did you listen to the old uh Johnny Johnny Horton song on the way up there, North to Alaska, which is my favorite Alaska song? No, I should have listened to that.
+
+[19:28] I mean, I nothing great really. I had, you know, they had a lot of reindeer hot dogs. Okay. That's a thing. Like late night food.
+
+[19:40] Casing or skinless. Casing. Good. How was the snap? Like almost.
+
+[19:47] It was a good snap. Yeah. Were they using that Alaska cabbage for the for the kraut? Alaska cabbage. Did you get any Alaska cabbage?
+
+[19:56] I didn't have any left. Did you meet Steve Hubac? No, I did not. What the hell, man? What's like a terrible trope?
+
+[20:06] Take a bush plane to take a bush plane to a glacier. That was cool. Okay, but it's no Steve Hubac. Stas, why did that guy ghost us? Steve Hubacek, by the way, if this is the first time you've ever listened to this, is the guy who drove grows the world record cabbages in Alaska.
+
+[20:21] World record cabbages. And Nastasia and I, I thought had convinced Steve Hubachek to sell us like his like third string cabbage. And then he just ghosted us. What was the story with that, Stas? Why do you think he ghosted us?
+
+[20:35] I don't know. I I think he thought we were weird. Okay, but you know, not wrong, but I mean, he doesn't want weirdos with his cabbage. I bought a whip once from someone who said he wouldn't sell whips to people who were using them for purposes that he thought were not in his mind Christian. Oh, wow.
+
+[20:57] Yeah. Now he's like, you know. What are the Christian uses for whips? I mean, you know, I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[21:05] He didn't want you using it for like BDSM, is I think the thing. He was like part-time preacher, and it was it was it was again his kind of philosophy. So you know, this is the second episode where we actually talked about whips. Only the second? Only the second.
+
+[21:19] Listen. I keep trying to find the best like whip snap sound effect, and I can never find it, so I failed. You know, David Morgan, the guy that made the whips for uh Indiana Jones, uh, he's Canadian, I think. And uh, and he's one of the finest whip makers. Of course, he uses Australian uh kangaroo hide for his highest quality whips because as we all know, that's the highest quality, you know, whip making material because of its amazing resilience, but also the feel that the whip has when you make it anyway.
+
+[21:46] I think the Austrians are the uh the champions of the whip snap. Austrians? Yes. Why? There's competitions, whip snapping competitions in Austria?
+
+[21:54] Absolutely. I don't know, man. But they don't have the raw materials. The expertise to anyway. I have several books on how to make whips to plate whips.
+
+[22:01] I've made I've never made a leather whip, but I've made several nylon whips. Anyway, so this guy makes nylon whips, but he won't sell them to you if he if he is uh so I tell this story when Dax was a kid, he really wanted a whip, right? Because he had seen the everyone sees the Indiana Jones, uh, you know, the Raiders at Lost Ark and all of a sudden they want a whip, right? I mean, most of us are I mean, I don't know, I'm like this. So Dax is also like this, but he used to get in fights with Booker all the time, and we're like, if you don't do if you do not get in a fight with Booker for like I it was a long time, like three months, then I'll get you a whip from this guy who won't make whips for people who use them for BDSM.
+
+[22:41] But Dax was very small at the time. This was at the same time that Dax would only wear uh luchador masks around the city, and he used to walk up to the school. Remember that, Stas? He would walk up to his school, yeah, yeah, and he would he would take the luchador mask off as he was walking up and become Dax, and then as he came out of the school again, he would put the luchador mask back on. And we found a place in El Salvador that would make custom luchador masks, and he designed his own luchador mask, which was named Dynasty.
+
+[22:59] Yeah. Before that, I think he was rocking, I forget, like I think it was a Hurricane Ramirez mask or something. I forget which uh which you know Luchador mask he had before he had his his own mask. So this is the same era. So he's going around New York City with with uh uh a small uh cow whip and a luchador mask, and you know, we were going out in the park and practicing, but my mistake was is that I got him a whip based on his size, but the smaller a whip is actually the harder it is to get a good snap on it because it's actions faster.
+
+[23:36] So it actually took a lot longer, you know, with his small whip to uh maybe I got him a snake whip, I can't remember, uh, to get a um to get the action down. It was a lot, you know, physically harder to get the the timing down than if I had gotten him just like a standard size whip. So, you know, he never became the great whip artist that I wanted him to become, you know. Regrets. Maybe for your maybe for his kids, your grandchildren, you know, legacy could still live on.
+
+[24:03] Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. I'm sure my wife would love that if I started. What the hell are you doing with the grandkids? If I should be so lucky.
+
+[24:11] Yeah. If I should be so lucky. All right. Uh Christopher Hyde wrote in, hey, uh, can you say uh a little bit more about uh how you built a base for that salad master? So the salad master is the hand crank uh food slicing machine that I use that uses these kind of conical things.
+
+[24:26] And I'm still loving it. I've only, if you look up Saladmaster, right, and people using it, it. It's all people trying to sell it to you, right? Because they they cost too much, whatever. Uh, but they're all like, look, it's totally safe.
+
+[24:38] You can get your fingers within like, you know, millimeters of I hit myself once with it. I hit myself once with it, and it will not the best. But, you know, I'm a little more wary of it, but I'm I haven't gone like uh I haven't gone like uh you know how like when a football player gets their knee blown out, they're never quite the same again. Like even if they're just as fast, they don't have the they they're a little bit nervous that they're gonna get their knee blown out again. You know what I'm talking about?
+
+[25:00] Yeah, yeah. I'm not I'm okay, I'm back, I'm 100% with the salad master. Okay, but I don't like the bases that they come with because as we've said on the show before, salad um suction cup bases terrible. They suck, yeah. Not in a good way, right?
+
+[25:13] And the clamp bases are no good because clamp bases, A, they never fit, and you're sitting there going, mm-mm mm-mm, and then they make those marks in your thing. People need to make bases that just use squeeze clamps, right? So I said that before, and he wants to know how I made the base for it. He gets I'm a big sauerkraut coleslaw fan and think that thing looks great. I'm not very handy though, so if building the base takes any real skill, then I probably can't handle it.
+
+[25:35] Yeah. It's not that it takes skill, but like I printed it on my 3D printer, and it was like a 12 and a half hour or 12 hour print or something like this, because I printed it at you know, like a hundred percent density so that it would be strong. And then when I went on shapeways or one of those other things, and by the way, Quinn and I have started putting parts for the spinz all on shapeways, just print it yourself, please. Please, please, please, please cap yourself. Yeah.
+
+[25:59] Uh yeah, so anyway, so like uh I looked at it and it would cost hundreds of dollars to print it on shapeways. So yeah, I I because of all the material involved. Maybe I can make it hollow and make it easier, who knows? I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[26:11] Maybe I'll look into it. But if you have a 3D printer, I can send you the file, it's fine. All right. Uh also, have you ever made Alzatian style uh kraut with uh juniper berries? It's damn good.
+
+[26:20] Well, I'm assuming you're sp uh say say say shakrute in the nice Frenchy French. Shukruit. Uh yeah, Garnier. Gar garni it up for me. Chukrute Garni.
+
+[26:28] Oh yeah. So uh I was taught how to make that by the great, the amazing Alzatian Andre Soltner. Yeah. You know, like uh such a long line of amazing Alsatian cooks, right? Anyway, and a good place to good person to learn the Chocru from.
+
+[26:45] But he was the first person who taught me that. And by the way, they don't cure it with the juniper. The juniper goes in during the cook step because I growing up was uh kind of a raw kraut person, but you know, he growing up in Alsace, like they would have the giant buckets of it and it would get real salty. I guess they would make it saltier than we to typically get nowadays. And it's always a rinse and cook procedure with the juniper.
+
+[27:08] So I've had it that way, but I've never had one, nor have I seen one that was cured with the juniper in it. Have you, John? No, I haven't. Yeah. You like uh you uh chakrut garni guy?
+
+[27:17] Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah? Delicious. Yeah, great. What's the name of that sausage, that Alzatian sausage?
+
+[27:21] There's a name for it, I forget. It's a specific Alsatian sausage that goes in it. But do you go for the sausage or do you go for that like ham hockey thing? Or both? Both.
+
+[27:30] I mean everything in there. It's just it's so decadent and rich and just like hardy and fantastic. Duck too. I mean, it's all all good. Yeah.
+
+[27:38] Yeah. Yeah. I like when a French person says duck in English. Dick. Dick.
+
+[27:45] It sounds better than the way the actual French word for it. They should just change the French word to duc. Anything? Yep. Yeah.
+
+[27:53] Uh all right. From Rob has hobbies. Uh what amount by weight? Very specific. What amount by weight should one use uh of the amylase that they sell at Modernist Pantry?
+
+[28:03] If the end product is going to go into a spinzole. Uh I see a bunch of mentions about using it, but zero mentions uh how much. Uh, I also assume heat is needed to activate the enzyme, i.e. sous vide at X degrees for Y amount of time. Is there any standard for that process?
+
+[28:17] Well, uh, Rob, okay. I haven't used amylases in a long time. And I honestly for amylase is an extremely wide pr like variety of products. I and I looked on the Monitors Pantry website and they don't say specifically which one of the amylases they buy from Gusner Novozymes. So I'm assuming it's one of uh like that line, like termomil or one of the other things, but it would be good, and I'm sure they will answer if somebody reaches out.
+
+[28:46] Ask them which specific enzyme that they use. It's uh an alpha uh amylase as opposed to a beta amylase. So an alpha amylase can um snip uh internally on uh, you know, uh on a on a starch molecule, but it can't break it down all the way. For that you need uh beta amylase, right? But yes, there's two things you need to know about amylases.
+
+[29:08] And by the way, I think it's about half a percent. To answer your question, I think it's about half a percent by weight in that range. And modernist pantry does have a video wherein they do three or four recipes where they weigh out how much they use using their enzyme, and you can go on the uh they make like a hummus, they do all this stuff where they're adding it because I guess presumably they want to get rid of some of the free starch that's in it. However, I will say this. If you're making uh hummus, remember chickpea already been cooked, right?
+
+[29:35] Amylase does not work well on uh native starch, right? This is why if you're using uh unmalted uh grains in um in brewing, you typically, you know, you'll typically to get good conversion out of them. You'll like pre-cook those or flake them or do something to them because the amylases just don't work that well on um uncooked starch right they can't the the the enzymes can't make it into the intact starch granule because the water can't make it all the way into the intact tax scar granule and they can't they can't start snipping that thing apart so uh a lot is gonna depend but then they also do work better super complicated so the mash temperatures that you use in brewing are part for the enzymes to operate most efficiently right there's probably also a pH requirement so different alpha amylases have different pH requirements usually they work best at slightly acidic in slightly acidic ranges um but you know it depends on the particular alpha amylase that you're using and they do have specific areas where they they they work hard but temperatures are usually tuned to free up the starch because the starches start really kind of leaking out into the solution up in like the like 50s and 60s depending on the starch and each starch is a little bit different. So if you can pre-cook the starch then add the amylase then heat it up to the uh the best temperature and pH for the thing you're gonna get the best result but it really depends enzyme to enzyme so they need to tell you which one they're using. Does that make sense?
+
+[31:03] Yeah that an okay answer yeah covered yeah all right uh okay here's one for everyone Stas you're good at this crap uh from positive MD any thoughts about good food to bring for a car camping trip now oh yeah I was just I just had dinner with Julia Sherman last night and she went camping in her car and she brought octopus she pre-cooked it and then steers alled it on site. I love that. Did you get shots? She has yeah, she posted and she tagged you and oh nice. I didn't see it.
+
+[31:39] I didn't see it. I gotta go. Yeah, she's great. Yeah I will well well maybe we'll do something with her at some point. Uh but uh I it depends on what you're gonna do.
+
+[31:49] So if you're willing to have like a cooler in your car camping cooling, you can do all kinds of stuff. But yeah, the idea of like already doing a lot of precook on sous vide and bringing that stuff in is uh I think it's a strong idea because that stuff can stay, especially with these modern coolers, they can stay good for a long time. And as Nastasia and I will tell anybody, Sears all is great on a camping trick, right? Mm-hmm. Am I right?
+
+[32:11] Absolutely. Because you can cook from both directions at once. You can make your campfire and then hit it from both uh sides at once. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[32:18] Efficient. You know, like the people are of like so many minds. Some people, even when they're car camping, want to be a little light, and then some people show up with an entire, you know, like the like an entire uh like Dutch oven set up with cast iron pans and stuff. So it really depends and the level of what you're gonna do really depends on like whether you're willing to do that or not. And also whether you're in bear country, right?
+
+[32:40] Because if you're in bear country, all of your stuff has to be stored in like bear proof boxes, and I'm sure that uh that kind of puts a little bit of a crimp on uh you know what you can what you can do. Um we're kind of like, even though we have bears out here, they like you know, you I don't see a lot of people out here using bear boxes, you know? You know because the people in California, the Rangers get real bent if they have to kill a bear because you've like conditioned it to liking human food. They really don't like it. You know what I mean?
+
+[33:15] Hmm. I don't know. I feel like we don't have a good answer. What else? What else you got, Stas?
+
+[33:19] You got any ideas? What do you like when you're out? Tinned fish. Yeah, if you oh you I like how you're old school. We're gonna go out, we're gonna pitch the tent, we're gonna fish for our dinner, and if we don't, we have to eat garbage.
+
+[33:35] If we don't catch fish, yeah that we don't deserve anything, go forage for berries, you jerk, you didn't catch a fish. I'm saying tinned fish. Oh tanned fish. I like the uh oh, I guess we're not eating at all. You're you're a poor survival candidate.
+
+[33:52] Yeah. Um see I do I do like back, I do like backpack uh like backcountry camping, and I always stuck with that kind of well, it's not that crappy, but whatever, you know, the dehydrated food that you have to cook on the little mini stove because uh you know you have to keep things really light. So I've never had very good food on those trips. Which which brand do you use? I have a bunch of terror supplies that are good for 25 years, like the freeze dried, like uh what's the name of it?
+
+[34:16] Mountain Mountain House. You tried that one? Oh yeah, yeah, I've had that, yeah. And how is it actually taste when you eat it? Not bad.
+
+[34:25] It's a d not bad. It's a it's a dream of mine to do like the Appalachian Trail. I never will because I have too many obligations. Mine too. Really?
+
+[34:33] Yeah. Yeah, nice. Bring spam. Well, it's so heavy though. Bring bring mountain house and then have resupplies.
+
+[34:40] The thing is, people carry too much stuff, right? Everyone, if you wanna like apparently along the have you read all the websites, Joe? I've read all the websites. I I mean, I did uh I did a lot of research on them in my twenties, like 20 something years ago. Okay, there are websites now.
+
+[34:55] It's kind of amazing, where what they do is is they talk to people who start, they figure out how many people finish, and they ask them things like what water filters did you bring? What shoes did you wear at the beginning and the end? So like a a huge bunch of people start out with like uh Moab, uh, you know, Merrill Moab hiking boots and then 99% of them end up with trail with uh trail sneakers by the end ultra lone peaks which is what I'm wearing right now because I follow their advice if you can walk you know thousands of miles in a pair of sneakers and it's fine and it's lightweight like why would I not follow that advice? That's good advice. You know what I mean?
+
+[35:32] So people like end up bringing a bunch of stuff like the classic one that people are like I'm gonna bring a solar charger on the Appalachian Trail they all get thrown out because you're under trees so much this doesn't work. Yeah it doesn't work you know what I really the problem I'm worried about is uh is it I like uh Nastasi you know I don't care about my physical my like I'm not physically worried about anything but I can't do heights you know what I'm saying yeah so like we they we hiked for like 13 miles remember that yeah yeah well and remember we had to go do a party that night and we were almost late for the party because we're like we're gonna do one more trail we're gonna do one more trail and then we were too cheap we were too cheap to pay for parking well remember we had to get a we had to sign on online and pay for parking we're like no so and I drive like three miles out of the way to like a remote place like near the coast and hiked hike through the scrub all the way over to the to the parking lot that we were unwilling to pay for in advance and then hiked all those trails and back but I can't do heights. That's why like I'd love to do the Pacific Trail which apparently is physically a lot less demanding than uh the Appalachian Trail. I mean, crazier elevations and crazier stuff, but I I don't think a person who's afraid of heights can do the Pacific Trail. I just don't think I don't think I would survive.
+
+[36:55] You would have to like knock me out and carry me over certain parts of it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Doesn't sound like fun. No.
+
+[37:02] No. But I I'm I I hear there's also a couple places along the Appalachian Trail. It's not like I'm ever gonna get to do it. When am I ever gonna get to do it? I got kids, I got my what, you know, my wife's like three months.
+
+[37:12] You know, three years and down the road, commit to it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't think that's gonna happen, but I wanted to. But anyway, so for that I'd be I'd be doing the mountain house stuff, using the filtered water. You filter water, filter the water.
+
+[37:24] Those filters are so good now. You know what I mean? So like there's no reason to carry that much water as long as you have a decent filter. That's my impression. Because that's a lot of weight.
+
+[37:34] Every gallon of water is eight pounds. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's no joke. No.
+
+[37:39] Yeah. What would be cool is what if you did a show where you tried to do the best cooking possible along the Appalachian Trail, or like people bring you stuff and you cook it along the Appalachian Trail and you're just so freaking tired and bent. Because you need something like 8,000 calories, something something stupid. You need some you have some stupid caloric requirement when you're doing the Appalachian Trail. Yeah.
+
+[38:02] You know, and everybody gets like pencil arms and like and like, you know. Tree trunk legs. Yeah, tree trunk legs and pencil arms, which is kind of amazing. Yeah. That's the look.
+
+[38:12] Yep. That's what that's what that's what the kids go for. Give me that pencil arm. Give them giant legs so no pants fit. And then give me that, give me that pencil arm.
+
+[38:22] Right, Stu isn't that what they go for now? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. All right.
+
+[38:28] Uh from Tri-Tip. What are your thoughts on the tri-tip as a cut? It can be good. Yeah. Not always.
+
+[38:36] Right. Isn't that one of the ones that can go livery on a long cook? I think so, yeah. You know, that's um not well characterized. So like they can't predict necessarily based on animal feed or like the sex of the animal or or the conditions around it whether it's gonna go s uh whether it's gonna go livery on a long cook.
+
+[38:56] But a lot of people are working on it. It's a known thing. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
+
+[39:00] Yeah. Uh from Tri-Tip. Now, I need all of you guys to mentally think about this because I'm I'm not exactly sure I know this phenomenon. You ready? And and uh Quinn, like get on the Discord, see what these weasels.
+
+[39:11] You're not weasels, Discord people. You know what I'm saying? I'm saying in terms of love. Yeah, whatever. Why is there a burst of steam from the pot slash saute pan right after you turn the heat off?
+
+[39:22] I'm sure everyone on Discord already knows, but I'd love to hear Dave's explanation. So I don't really uh I was thinking about this. The only reason you would get a burst of steam right when you turn something off is if you stop agitating it. And if you stop agitating it, you'll get a local large bubble that will then go kaproof, right? As opposed to like releasing gently when you're still agitating something.
+
+[39:43] But I'm not exactly sure that I understand the phenomenon you're talking about. You know, John? No, not really, but I don't know. Yeah, I imagine once the heat gets cut off, no more, you know, water vapor is like coming up as aggressively, not dissipating as much, so maybe it just hangs a little more. Well, well, in other words, like if you turn off the pop, it keeps stirring or or or shaking, I'm I'm betting there will be no because then you're just constantly ramping down.
+
+[40:05] Yeah. But you know, it's amazing how much dissipation of water vapor you get when you're moving something versus letting it go. That's like we've all accidentally walked away from a pot of sauce and had it, you know, and had it come to a boil when we weren't there and go everywhere. Boom, magma everywhere. You know what I mean?
+
+[40:29] God, you know what? And then that stupid burn on your face when you like go over just as it happens, and it's like, guess what? Boom! And it's like right over your eye. Do you know what?
+
+[40:39] You know what? One of the things that worries me is that I've been hit in the face with stupid for stupid reasons like bacon fat and all this. But like, you know, when I was, you know, 20s, 30s, 40s, like my eyelids were always fast enough to shut before anything hit my eye. And I'm wondering if I still have that in me, or if the next one that hits is gonna egg wipe my eye. You know what I mean?
+
+[41:02] That happened to me once. It does not feel good. It actually hit your eye. A drop of oil came out of the fryer, and I thought like it didn't like hit the pupil or anything like that, but it hit my eye and it was very painful. Yeah, so it wasn't the lid.
+
+[41:11] I've had plenty of burns on my lids. It caught me in the eye. Son of a gun. Yeah. Not cool.
+
+[41:17] No, not very not cool. My eyes. Like that's the other thing. Like, that's the um well, well, when I used to um, by the way, don't customize microwaves. It's incredibly dangerous.
+
+[41:31] It like it's this is no joke. So people have been customizing microwaves on YouTube and like dying. Like something like more than 10 people have died following YouTube microwave customizations where they're they're trying to make these fractal wood burning patterns and they're using the transformer in a microwave, and it's thousands of volts, and it's connected directly to your mains, so it's not like you know, you know, you know, not not cool, not cool. So, like literally I think dozens of people have died. More than ten.
+
+[42:02] Anyway, so I in one of my stupider younger days, I was, you know, medio cautious, but I would uh customize microwaves. And uh, yeah, don't do that. I don't even know what that oh, how did that even come up? Why are we talking about why am I talking about microwaves? I don't know.
+
+[42:14] I was wondering the same thing. So my dad, you know, so my grandpa was a radar designer, and you know, as most of you know, many of you know, radar uh is in the same frequency band as microwaves from microwave ovens. And in fact, the microwave oven was developed by Raytheon because uh the radar engineers in techs were noticing that things like food was heating up and like candy bars were melting in people's pockets. But the thing that they really worried about was that you would uh scramble your eyes like uh like you know that you would zap the protein in your eye and it would go white, and then that's it. It doesn't unwite, it's like an egg.
+
+[42:54] And so that's my my dad was like, if you mess up, your eyes are gonna go, you know, just like that's it. So like that was always put the fear of microwave God. Did I say on the air the thing about what the I did because someone asked me a question about it? The m this the myth, I've said this before. The myth, well, the story perhaps apocryphal, is that the people before they would go out on the town at the early warning radars would would nuke their junk a little bit just to like make the make the the swimmies not so swimmy anymore.
+
+[43:28] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's not something I would I have read accounts of people who have gotten hit in the hand with uh microwaves, and they say it's intensely painful.
+
+[43:42] Yeah. Yeah, I'd believe it. Yeah. Uh all right. So uh one thing I will say though, here's another thing that's a myth.
+
+[43:50] Uh that just talk about the puff of steam. This is not physically possible, but I'm sure all of you have had this where, okay, listen, people who are pot and pan people, I know you're not supposed to put water into a hot pan. Can we just stipulate that? All right. Is it stipulated?
+
+[43:59] Okay. I also know you're supposed to pick up every pot and pan with a towel. That's why you have a towel on your side when you're at can we stipulate that? All right. Okay.
+
+[44:15] But when you take a hot pan and you put water on it, everyone knows that it feels like the handle gets hotter all of a sudden, right? How is that possible? I think it's because steam forms and hot vape, because you're holding the pan down. You're almost always holding the pan down and putting water on it. I think it's that like steam is hitting the handle and making it hotter because there's no way, there's no way that like heat like is like, oh no, the cold water, and then travels up the handle and makes the handle hotter, and yet that's clearly the perception I've had for years and years that that's the case.
+
+[44:49] You too? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.
+
+[44:52] Fun little, fun little thing. Uh also, uh, Tri-Tip wants to know is the control freak overkill. I lust for it, but it seems pricey, especially when there's no uh API or low-level customization available. I mean, I didn't pay for mine, and I think a lot of people didn't pay for theirs. I love it.
+
+[45:09] If I had to pay full boat for it, I mean, I love it. Wiley loves it. Wiley also didn't pay for it. You know what I mean? Uh but I I do love it.
+
+[45:19] It doesn't ever break. And uh, I think I said this before, but I I bought uh some cheap inductions to do some work for the book, and they don't actually output the power, they go down. And so everyone's like, why is the control freak so big? It's because it's got the cooling technology in it such that the circuitry doesn't fry out and it actually puts out the power it's supposed to put out for a long time without ever going down. So short of buying a commercial induction from cook Tech, uh, you know, they're pretty good.
+
+[45:44] I mean, like it really depends. Do you need that level of reliability? If I was going to use it professionally, for sure, I would get that. You know what I mean? Is it overkill at home?
+
+[45:57] I don't know how much money you have. You know what I mean? It's like, is it a luxury? Yeah. Is it good?
+
+[46:03] Yes. Is that fair, John? Yeah. All right. Uh okay.
+
+[46:08] Stas. Apparently, Ben Summerfield wants you to put some earmuffs on because it's a carbonation question. You get your muffs on? Yep. All right.
+
+[46:16] Hey, cooking issues team. Not a question uh directly for a guest. Yeah, well, we waited anyway. Uh, but another yet another carbonation question. Can I use an old soda siphon?
+
+[46:24] This is talking about the old one, like those kind. You know what I mean? Like, like three stooges kind, but not the official ones. You know the official old soda siphons? Do you know how they were that how they get got uh charged and refilled?
+
+[46:36] No. Through so they had a machine and they would fill the siphon through the dispenser. So literally the machine would depress the dispensing nozzle, pump uh car um carbonated water from the carbonator in through the outhole and then in through the outhole out hole. And then that's it. That's how they would charge them.
+
+[46:55] But these ones that so this person uh has an old one made by sparklets, it's a type C. And can they hook it up to a tank instead of using the the chargers? Okay, here's what I'm gonna say about that. One, the issue with I mean, I'd also be careful. All of these old ones, they're glass, makes me a little bit nervous.
+
+[47:13] Uh they're very thick glass, but they have uh they have a uh a metal mesh cage around them. So presumably if they break, they they're not gonna hurt you. But I would not charge one full of pressure unless it had mostly water in it, just because if it does blow under pressure, that's unfriendly. Whoa! Yeah, scared the hell out of me, Joe.
+
+[47:31] Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and that's the way it should be. You know, I've had uh I once carbonated, I think it was before Stas was with me. Uh you know how like uh you know how I get nostasia when um when like I need something and it doesn't magically appear and I'm and I need to go work anyway, so I'm like you know you know what I'm saying?
+
+[47:51] You know that attitude I get oh yeah, yeah. So I carbonate it in a Fiji bottle, which is square and definitely not meant to carbonate. And I did it once and it worked. I did it twice. I was like, someone get me a real bottle.
+
+[48:02] I did it a third time, kaboom! So loud. So bad. My my uh chef whites weren't white no more. Chef Brown's uh because it was coffee.
+
+[48:14] Uh okay. So the issue with uh anything like this, yes, of course you can do it, is that uh soda siphons um have, and this is why they have the term siphon, they have a tube that goes down to the bottom so that when you press the button, uh you can hold this uh the siphon upright and the liquid dispenses from the bottom up through the tube and out. The problem with that is is it makes it difficult to uh purge the head space because you can't vent it. So, what I would do is I would actually make it so that you could both uh vent uh and uh um put CO2 in from both sides. So the the most CO2 efficient way to do it would be to put a light amount of CO2 onto the out hole, open up where you put the charger, go brrrrrrr.
+
+[49:01] This is when I used to build my own siphons, brrrrr, and like pump CO2 down through the liquid through the tube, and that would basically strip all the oxygen, other gas and stuff out of the uh stuff. So when I when I used to do it, I would have it such that I could push CO2 through the tube and vent out the top. And we would go, remember that party we did, Stas, where we did that where we did 1500 uh carbonated alimine drinks in like an hour and a half for MTV? It worked great. So you're like, you're like brrrrr and and you you purge the headspace and strip it all in one shot, which means you only have to carbonate once or twice instead of three times.
+
+[49:37] Then you put the main pressure in through the top, or you can still do it through the bottom, shake like hell, right? Then uh allow it to rest, and then you can dispense. But that's the way you have to do it. So you need to somehow push the CO2 through the tube, be able to do that, and then vent out of the top uh if you really want to get it to work right. Is that okay?
+
+[49:57] Is that fine? Good answer. Good answer. All right, your muffs off. Uh from be done.
+
+[50:01] Uh so I have a saucier, say saucier, come on. Saucier. Ah yeah. And I love it. I wonder, uh, and what we're talking about, people, is you know, the associer with the with the slope sides, right?
+
+[50:12] With the with with the with the curved sides. You with me? Right. Uh I wonder uh why aren't all saucepans made with sloping or curved sides? I can't really think of an advantage of straight sides.
+
+[50:23] Brazes. Brazes are the advantage for the straight side. So if you're doing a braise and you don't want to use a big uh pot, it's sometimes it's more effective to get a wide thing, put it low, and then have stuff that can extend all the way to the edge. But other than that, if you're doing any actual reduction or any tossing, then you need the slope sides, right? Would you agree with that?
+
+[50:45] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but why don't I do the brace in my rongo or we might listen? I'm just telling you what a good reason for it is. Another one is like, let's say you're doing, it's not like technically a braise, but like let's say you're making like an escarole and you have like piles and piles and piles of escarole and you want to wilt it all at once.
+
+[50:59] Well, there's just a lot more capacity in a straight-sided guy than there is in a slope sloping sided one. So, you know, I used to make escrolls so often. I love escarrol. Right. Yeah.
+
+[51:10] Beans and like sausage and garlic. That's what growing up. That was my one of my mom's go-to weekday, like winter time things, the escarole with the sausage and beans. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[51:24] Yeah. Yeah. And even just using canned ingredients and like, you know, easy. Easy. Good.
+
+[51:30] Yeah. The only pain is washing that escarol. Yeah, dirty. Yeah. Yeah, real dirty.
+
+[51:35] It also took me a while to realize that my mom like lightly chopped it, so all my escarol was in long pieces, which I kind of liked. I got used to it, but now I chop it a little bit. A little bit. Not crazy. Yeah.
+
+[51:47] Manageable sizes. What kind of beans would you do? Like a fava bean or um my mom always did the cannellini growing up, but uh now I I put all kind of different, you know, beans in, but those heirloom beans you like. Oh, you know, I like those heirloom beans. I've never made beans from dry to do the escarole.
+
+[52:06] I mean, they're kind of a perfect application of canned beans. Yeah. Because I'm adding so much other flavor to it anyway. My mom for the sausage would typically use uh she my mom would kind of Americanize it so she'd use like half bacon, half pepperoni. It's kind of an American take on it.
+
+[52:23] Yeah, real good though. Speaking of pepperoni, I I found some amazing pepperoni over this weekend. Uh it's uh uh from from where is it? It's a Brooklyn Larder up on Flatbush, has a pepperoni with sour cherries. Oh.
+
+[52:38] Delicious. Like, so how much. So the interesting thing about putting that kind of inclusion is is that you have to get the moisture level of the fruit in line with the moisture level of the of the You know what? Funny, I was looking at the exact same thing, like the strata of the pepperoni, and everything looked exactly the same moisture. I like that.
+
+[52:56] Moisture management. Delicious. Moisture management. All right. Well, you know, I'd like I would like to try that.
+
+[53:04] Okay. Uh Jack Rieger wrote in what are the best practices on rapid chilling sous vide leftovers in a home setting? Well, chef, uh, what is how many hours do you have to get it cool? I still need to do my surface. Anyway, the question really isn't, look, so like most of the time on um I'll finish the question.
+
+[53:26] Do you have to st do I have to start the process immediately after finishing a product or can I wait at room temperature a while while I eat dinner like 30 minutes and then can I chill it later? Wondering about times, temperatures, and preferred equipment, if any. Uh and then you have a question on Bino. Uh, listen, have I perfected the Bino technique? I'm not sure, but I got a lot to say about rootin' tootin' beans and like gas.
+
+[53:46] I said a little bit on the air a couple of weeks ago. Oh yeah. But I can't say too much because I'm supposedly supposed to write something for um for uh serious eats. So we're gonna get Daniel Gritner on pretty soon, right? Yeah.
+
+[53:58] We could talk about it then. Uh okay. So here's the truth. You need to get the stuff cold just within, you know, the couple hour time limit you have to get it to get it cold. And once you decide you're going to chill something down, you can chill it down really quickly.
+
+[54:14] I used to think when I was, you know, first doing this stuff in, you know, 2004 or five, I used to think that you needed to chill stuff as rapidly as possible because why wouldn't you? But Bruno Gusseau, uh, you know, the granddaddy of jus gaton, which is what he calls it, like you know, the sous-vide cooking jus gaton, right? He uh, which means you know the correct temperature. He hates low temperature because like he's like the correct temperature is not always low. Juice gaton.
+
+[54:41] Anyway, so as opposed to his like nemesis, uh Georges Pralu, who is a butcher who did the uh the foie gras stuff, he had like very short, stubby sausage fingers, Georges Pralu. And uh he used instead of jus gaton, he had like five or four or five different temperatures that he would use for different products and always pegged his recipes to that, which really actually is more how a chef thinks. Whereas Bruno Gusseau is more about dialing individual temperatures, but it it's actually more difficult for a chef to think about the exact temperature for each thing instead of having buckets to put stuff in. And if that's a that's a debate for a different time. So Bruno Gusseau said that you actually want in the same way that you warm it slowly over time because it's a gentle, you know, it's you know, it's got a ramp, like a bell-shaped curve of the temperature.
+
+[55:25] You want to chill it at the same rate while it's above about 50 degrees Celsius. And his argument was that uh proteins, so if it's not protein, it doesn't matter. You chill it fast. Vegetable, who cares? Chill it now.
+
+[55:37] Chill it now. Uh, but proteins uh tend to reabsorb more of the uh moisture liquid that they've thrown off in the cook. They'll reabsorb more of it along with their con you know concomitant flavors if the temperature goes down slowly, versus if you drop it in ice, they kind of seize up and then they stop absorbing liquids. So he likes a ramp down. So what what I call his technique that I call the full gousot is it comes out of the bath and it goes on the counter for between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on the thickness, because it's all about how thick it is and how much it's cooling off, right?
+
+[56:12] So call it 20 at the outside or 15, uh, right? On the counter, then 15 or 20 in running tap water, which is at room temperature but has a much higher uh um chilling rate than ice water to take it down once it's below 50. And I was like, this is crap, this is garbage. And then I ran some tests with a bunch of people in class, and you know, and I asked, you know, the 20 people we had in the class, and we did it like 10, 15 times. Which one of these do you like best?
+
+[56:41] And by and large, the majority of people choose the full gousot. So but I don't I never do the full gooseau, it's a pain in the ass. I do like a modified gousot where it's just like I let it sit out for a little bit and then I rock it into ice. I never do the tap water thing anymore because you know, for the marginal increase, it's just such a pain in the mind. So anyway, I hope that answered your question.
+
+[57:01] Um all right. Listen, Elsie says coming over from Scotland uh to cycle from Montreal to New York City with a friend. Any must-eat drink visit stops you'd recommend along the way. That's long. That's what the Discord was invented for.
+
+[57:15] I feel the Discord needs to help out uh that's why the Google Maps cooking issues map was invented too. Well, clearly you need to have a beginning bagel and an end bagel. Yes. Right? You need to do the Montreal bagel and then you need to do the New York bagels, right?
+
+[57:30] Right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think you need to have any bagels in between, though. No, probably not.
+
+[57:36] You know what I mean? What do you think, Joe? Do I need to have any bagels in between those two? I love a bagel in between. But who's gonna make a good bagel?
+
+[57:44] Boston? Boston bagels? You ever had a Dunkin' Donut bagel? No, I never have. Don't.
+
+[57:50] I never had a what like a uh a bender's bagel? Blender's bagel? What was it? Lenders? Lenders.
+
+[57:55] No, man. I'm kidding. It's probably not even going through Boston, right? Just what's the. I don't know.
+
+[58:00] From Montreal down. It's like through Vermont. Uh wait, Quinn, you want to save uh William Sabados's question on uh gelato for when we we're gonna like I haven't used the creamy. Listen, Ninja Corporation. If anyone out there knows the Ninja Corporation, Quinn needs a creamy.
+
+[58:16] Quinn needs a creamy. And then maybe we'll get Chris Young to talk on about the creamy too. But why wouldn't Quinn have a creamy? One of the questions uh here was would you so remember Quinn likes to have his uh frozen uh desserts come out of his freezer at the proper texture, right? Right, Quinn?
+
+[58:35] You don't like the temper. Yeah, you don't like the temper. But for this machine, you're gonna have to use uh regular dipping temperature because it heats up so much with the blade unless you want to post temper. That's been that's actually the problem with the Paco Jet is that a lot of people when they're doing high volume stuff, they have to re put it back in the fridge. They're not actually spinning aliminute because it warms up quite a bit unless your freezers are extremely cold.
+
+[58:55] So anyway. Old Dirty Brawurst, ODB. Uh wants to know if my allergy treatment worked permanently. So far I'm still getting the dang shots, old Dirty. Dirty, I'm still getting the shots.
+
+[59:05] I'm on my last round, but so far I'm good. I'm popping cherries like a mother. Uh how much time do I have? One more, maybe. All right.
+
+[59:13] Um Amelia writes in, I have a cooking issue I want to ask you about. I was making caramel with allulose, which is an isomer or epimur of fructose, but you can't uh whatever called. And uh a bit of milk, and when it cooled it, became firm and solid and soft at the same time, just as I wanted it, like a toffee candy. But after a few days, it became liquid fluid and lost its solid structure, just like me. Uh, do you have any ideas why this could be?
+
+[59:36] Well, allulose is quite hydroscopic, high gross, hygroscopic. So it sucks moisture out of the air. If you kept it in a place with a lot of silica, it might do uh better. That's my guess. Pat, do you want to say something on the way out?
+
+[59:48] We got 13 seconds. I heard somebody say something. I thought it was a Pat left a long time ago. Pat left a long time ago. So who said something?
+
+[59:57] Someone said so. Was it Jack? You people. You people. All right.
+
+[1:00:05] Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the Heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New York City, Newsstand Studios. Joined as usual in the studio with uh John Hole. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:23] Executive chef of Temperance Bar. That's right. Which is which is not a temperance movement. No, no, it is not. No.
+
+[0:33] In fact, it is a wine bar. Yes. This could present some SEO problems. I guess. Yes, it could.
+
+[0:39] Yeah, that's Yeah. Uh Rocking the Panels here in New York, Joe Hazen. Hey, how are you guys? Good to see you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[0:48] Uh got on our uh, you know, uh doing whatever he does over in California with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, Jackie Molecules. How you doing? I'm good. Uh we're Stas should be here any minute, but give me for now. Okay.
+
+[1:04] Yeah. It's so early. It's 9 a.m. where I am. What?
+
+[1:09] Turns out what? Staying across the street from me. Yeah. So Dave, I was um I was kind of knocked out of my couch for a little nap last night. And I didn't know that Stas was here.
+
+[1:20] So I'm I'm past that on the couch. And I wake up out of a dead sleep to what I unmistakably was the sound of Nastasia laughing. And it was very bizarre. And I texted her and I said, Is there a chance that you're across the street from me? Because I just woke up to your laugh.
+
+[1:35] Wait. And then I look out of my window and she's on the balcony across the street from me. Was she staying across the street from you before? Or is this totally random? She didn't tell you.
+
+[1:44] It's classic Nastasia, by the way. No, I guess Pat lives across the street, like directly across the street from me. And she was just on that balcony with him. I see. And it's just very strange woken up by the sound of her laugh.
+
+[1:58] Yeah, yeah. Disconcerting. Disconcerting. Yeah. And from our uh our Canadian Vancouver Island outpost, we got uh Quinn Vicile.
+
+[2:07] How you doing? I'm good. Yeah, I'm uh Booker and Ducks North, I guess. Yeah, north and west. You're the furthest north and west Booker and Dax outposts.
+
+[2:18] There is. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right. Well, um, what do we got?
+
+[2:23] What do we got coming up, John? What do we got? Next week we have Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters. I had a bizarre dream about Kitchen Arts and Letters. Oh.
+
+[2:30] I had a bizarre dream that there was a special telephone number that our Patreon people could call. And be direct to Matt. And be direct to Matt. Isn't that weird dream to have? It just goes to show I'm thinking about you people too much.
+
+[2:44] Oh, it's such a weird dream, right? Yeah. And then I woke up half thinking it was real. But no. No, not really.
+
+[2:51] Uh, Patreon people, call your questions too, 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And what else we got coming up? We got anything else coming up? I'm gonna get Wiley on soon.
+
+[3:01] Because he's got some stuff he's gonna announce. Gonna get Wiley on soon. And uh, who else? Quinn and I are circling up about other potential guests. We'll keep everyone tuned in uh soon.
+
+[3:11] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Jorge Gaviera's coming out with a masa book in a couple of days. Maybe we'll get him on. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[3:16] Yeah. Yeah, they should, he should be coming on. We were in touch with our publicist before I left you. So really? Yeah.
+
+[3:22] I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Uh for those of you that uh don't know, I'm a longtime lover of nickdomalization. I wrote uh a 2011 early New York City Nyxtimalization blog where we visited Torteria, Nyxtamal, learned how to do niximalization, and then did the rye tortilla.
+
+[3:39] You ever have the Rye Tortillas, John? No, I don't think so. They're a pain in the butt because uh rye, first of all, doesn't uh doesn't respond to cow. You know, the calcium hydroxide for the niximalization of the corn doesn't respond to cow nearly as effectively as corn does. Okay.
+
+[3:55] So you need to hit it with lye first, but lye doesn't give it the same flavor that cow does. So you do like an initial lye treatment, then cow, okay, then you grind it. And also because of the uh pentasans and other you know polysaccharides in rye specifically, right? It's quite sticky. So yeah, yeah, it's like it's a real pain.
+
+[4:19] But uh yeah, I hear, not sure. Listen, people, for those of you who are interested in nixalization, we can save all this in case you know Jorge comes on, right? But the real thing, the real takedown, the real pain in the butt for tortilla making is the grinding. Oh, we have a collar. Okay, caller, you're on the air.
+
+[4:41] Oh, hey, cooking issues. Dave and gang, how's it going? Going all right, what's up? Oh, this is uh Devin the Pasta Troll. Oh, hi, what's up, pasta trolling?
+
+[4:51] How you doing? What do you uh you've been uh making some pasta, pissing stas off? She's not even here to hear your installs, so it's uh, you know, but it's fine. It's okay. No, I've been making beans.
+
+[4:59] All right. What do you got for beans? What's what's uh what's going on with beans? What's new with beans? All right, so I'm yeah, I'm steaming mung beans, and they're coming out great, like really uh like bread.
+
+[5:12] So I'm frying them as patties. Okay with buckwheat and potato starch. But black beans, they kind of suck. And I'm wondering do I steam them longer or I'm not really sure but the mung beans I don't soak I pressure cook them dry right well black beans are fairly thin skinned beans and most people I know can cook a black bean without a soak what's your problem with them they don't get flaky enough they don't get dry enough dry enough wait so because when you when you pressure cooked mung beans right with a little bit of water they get like potatoes right they get fluffy see I don't use mung beans enough that's why like I I guess I just don't have enough experience with with mung beans they are uh one of my favorite sprouts because I detest most sprouts mung bean sprouts are one of the few sprouts that I actually enjoy because they're taste good someone tried to put sprouts on something I had recently my my sister I was like what the hell are you doing? She's like I'm putting sprouts on this like why are you poisoning this food?
+
+[6:27] What is wrong with you? Like why would you take avocado and put a sprout on top of it fried sprouts are amazing. Well mung sprouts are amazing but those tiny little garbage sprouts that taste like the poison water that they've been filthfully sprouted in those are poison. You know what I mean? Mung bean sprouts are great.
+
+[6:45] Oh yeah garbage it's uh the mouthful of fiber and dressing it's like uh it's halfway between a worm and floss it's disgusting it's gross like they they taste bad anyway uh, especially, you know, uncooked, because then they also have that raw taste, which I detest. But uh I digress. So black beans, you're trying to do them just with steam. I've never tried to solely steam a black bean. John, you ever try to solely steam a black bean?
+
+[7:13] I've always just cooked black beans in water because people want that black bean, the liquor in it. And I don't know what characteristics they have when they're steamed. Maybe someone on the Discord knows something about steaming them. Well, to do natto, you you steam them and then you inoculate them with the notto starter. Right.
+
+[7:31] So they're they're they're soft, but they're not they're not fluffy. Okay, I would parboil the suckers until they're three quarters done. Okay. Drain them, then steam them till they're done. In a similar way that if you were gonna like you can uh it in a similar way, like for like sticky rice, let's say, you can you know, you can soak it for a while, drain it, then steam it.
+
+[7:53] And like, you know, that'll get you halfway to where where you're going. Um I would say e I would say do a a par either like like a longer a long soak, which is not normal for black beans, to like because you can it's funny when you do when you soak a bean for you know till it reaches r relative equilibrium, I'd also soak it with salt. Uh well depends. Like I don't know if you're if you're inoculating with something, don't, right? But if you don't mind having the salt, like uh salt and actually a little bit of base, like a like a uh soda, uh if you know you don't mind the flavor of it, is going to increase the water absorption capacity of the bean during the soak period.
+
+[8:30] So you could just do a soak. But I find the soda makes it too it'll if I cook it too long, then it becomes like soup. Yeah, in water. In water, I'd say that's true. But I would I would if you you're not gonna cook it in water, right?
+
+[8:43] So I was saying like if you're gonna soak it, right? I could you could soak it in a slightly alkaline water. That'll increase its water absorption capacity, you know, relatively substantially. So you you know, you you you can get a um, you know, something on the order of over half of the necessary water into uh into a bean to uh you know that it would take to get all the way uh uh up to cook just during that soak thing, right? Which is why it's faster to cook, and also it's faster to cook because the water on the the you beans need water to cook, right?
+
+[9:17] So in steam, right, as you're steaming it, the water is coming from the steam and the heat's coming from the steam, right? But it maybe it's just too much to ask to do it, you know, from dry. So if they're prehydrated even, right, in water might be enough to get you going. Right. Then, you know, if that's not enough, then I would try parboiling it, you know, uh, you know, till it's you know half halfway there, uh, and then drain.
+
+[9:41] Of course, you'll be you'll be removing some of the color if you do that, which could the your black beans are gonna go. Gotcha, gotcha. And last thing, just real, real quick, uh, a report on making mustard, highly recommend it. Um I add in dried onions and like coriander or whatever you want, dried herbs, yeah. And I ferment it for about three weeks, and it's coming out really good.
+
+[10:02] All right, but a little bit of vinegar too. I add. All right, but like how sharp a mustard do you like? Oh, this is I'm I'm Indian, so this is like screaming sharp. I only use black seeds.
+
+[10:13] Ah, what's up, Black? Yeah. No yellow. That's not talking about. None of that, none of that like white and yellow mustard nonsense.
+
+[10:20] All right, well, burn your eyebrows on. Well, so I'm gonna ask you this then. How uh so in the mustard test that I've done so far, I took like uh I think I mentioned I try what I tried to do is grind them in pu almost pure water, and I have some very, very high proof Scandinavian vinegar. It's like 30% uh uh acetic acid. It's it's it's real deal.
+
+[10:41] Like, like you know, yeah, it's I'm always kind of amused. People are like, distilled vinegar, beep, beep, beep. Listen, I just want the acid. I'm gonna add flavors other ways. I just need it a crap ton of acetic acid, right?
+
+[10:53] If I want it to taste fruity, I'll add some fermented fruit to it. And the acid is just for flavor. So what I'm doing is I I hydrate it and get that sharpness without the acid at all, but then I can add very small amounts of this high-proof vinegar to it to get the acidity level I need to kind of stabilize it like long term and get that acid flavor without adding so much liquid. So in other words, I can make a very stiff mustard and still have it be really hot if you get my drift. What I what I was trying to do with the super high-proof uh vinegar.
+
+[11:31] But you think that you you like the uh you like the the onion, huh? A little salt, sulfur on sulfur. With some I like to ferment with the vinegar because uh I soak the seeds first, right? And then I make uh like a little uh salt solution, not and so it's just enough water. It's like how you cook the beans, it's just enough water, so when I blend it after, you know, three weeks later, it is that perfect consistency.
+
+[11:57] And I would say once the the uh seeds are fully hydrated, you want about two-thirds water, one-third seeds. Right, roughly right there. Wait, so I don't do measurements. You ferment then blend by eye, but yeah, ferments then blend. Oh, okay.
+
+[12:15] Huh. Because most of the recipes that I have, they they're grinding basically from, you know, with with some period of hydration, but basically from starting. And by the way, when you're grinding, are you using a wet grinder or a blender? I'm using unfortunately it's a blender because uh I gave my grandmother my wet blender. So I just used my Vitamix.
+
+[12:36] Listen, listen, where do you live? There's lots of cheap, cheap wet blenders now available in the US. Like, you know how it used to be like 350? You can get them down for like 150 now. No, but listen, I was just I was just saying before you called, like masa, right?
+
+[12:53] Most people who want to make something like masa, right? They they either they're using a hand grinder, hand grinders suck. They use a food processor, and so you have to make it too wet, and then and then you take it from too wet, you have to add masa harina to get the texture back to where you want. Or, you know, you're buying like a really expensive, like dedicated uh masa uh grinder. But a valid thing, and I was about to go re retest it maybe before before if Jorge comes on, I'll do it.
+
+[13:20] Is if you have a wet grinder, you can food process 90% of the way your masa, right, and then throw it into the wet grinder and have the wet grinder go on it for like an hour, and you'll get the right masa texture. You'll get that kind of table because it's working like a better one. I got one better for you. All right, chocolate melanger. Yeah, no, I've I've used a wet grinder for chocolate too.
+
+[13:44] Oh, many times. Back in 2010, I bought a wet grinder for the FCI so that we could do we were very early in that like uh bean to bean to bar nonsense over there at the at the FCI. So we were buying the very so like remember way back in the day there was a company that was importing Indian wet grinders, the Santas was was the brand name back in the day. Yeah, we were doing chocolate, but it was actually the worst er it was the worst reviewed product I ever made at the French Culinary Institute. My dream was is to make things with the texture of chocolate, but with other flavors.
+
+[14:14] And I chose ketchup. And so it was like tomato powder, mustard powder, uh, vinegar powder, a cocoa butter, and like some, you know, some milk solids. And so you put it all together and you let the the mélange, you know, the the the wet grinder run for a couple of days to get the particle size down to where you want. And you you can then temper the ketchup. So it was like, you know, oh, it had some sugar in it too, obviously.
+
+[14:44] That's a new one. Yeah. So we made ketchup chocolate, and they're like, but it doesn't ketchup and chocolate. I was like, no, no, it's it's texture of chocolate, flavor of ketchup, but I couldn't wrap people's minds around it. But I was able to get it to temper, but nobody, I mean, nobody liked it.
+
+[14:59] Well, put that, put that on a corn dog. That's that's not gonna be good. Well, it's like a paste on a corn dog. It's not a paste, it's it's like snap. My goal was to try to get the snap of like an eating chocolate, right?
+
+[15:11] Where it melts at body temperature. I want texture of hard chocolate bar. And I don't know why I chose ketchup as a flavor. I was like, what's something whose flavors I could buy in powder form? Like no liquids.
+
+[15:23] You know what I mean? And I was like, I could do ketchup. Mustard might have been a better choice. Mustard might in retrospect, in retrospect, mustard might have been a better choice. Except for the fact that mustard's flavors aren't developed until they've been put with a liquid.
+
+[15:37] So you would have to make mustard, then dehydrate it fully, then make it back into chocolate. Because the thing about chocolate is it it's it's basically a zero moisture or very low moisture product. So anyway, yeah, so like, so like like the wet grinder. Not only right, do you get, you know, whatever, you know, you know, your whatever someone wants to do with it. I don't know what people want to make idlies, whatever, right?
+
+[15:59] But you can also do great mustard. I mean, I bought the one I have now I bought for Idley uh experimentation, and it's freaking fantastic for that. Duh, obviously, like it's built for that crap, right? So it's like those uh mustards, uh Massa. It's an inexpensive way to get into masa grinding, uh which is just dovetails perfectly with what I was saying before you called, and uh mustards also, right?
+
+[16:28] So like that's four different applications for your wet grinder right there. And like I'm saying, you can get an inexpensive one now for like like under 200, I think. I think I haven't looked researched in a while. I was looking at them on Amazon. Yeah.
+
+[16:40] I haven't researched it since the pandemic, so I don't know. You know what I mean? I got mine before the before the the bottom fell out of the supply chain world. Anyway, I would say or call your grandma. Answer my call.
+
+[16:52] Call your grandma and have her like ship that thing back to you just for some mustard tests. You know? Well, she's only a couple miles away, so I'll just drive over if I need to. There you go. All right, well, let us know how it goes.
+
+[17:04] All right, take care. All right, bye. Um, all right. So uh oh, also uh by the way, we do have we do have Stas here, Dave, by the way. Oh hey Stop.
+
+[17:15] How you doing? Hey, how good? How are you? How's it going? So uh I've tasked you while you're in Los Angeles to uh check out uh the uh musical artist, the 80 and change 80 year old musical artist, swamp dog with two G's.
+
+[17:30] Have you checked out Swamp Dog yet? I haven't. I have had like a million people that I've needed to see, but I will try today. Okay. Swamp Dog had his 80th birthday party, I think, in March, and I'd only recently became aware of Swamp Dog.
+
+[17:46] John, do you know Swamp Dog? No. You gotta get on the Swamp Dog train. Do I? In 1970 or so, he changed his name from something I don't remember.
+
+[17:54] He was an RB sing, regular kind of RB singer. He went to Muscle Muscle Shoals, uh, Alabama, and hooked up with that with that amazing kind of rhythm uh, you know, get you know section down there, muscle shoals, right? And changed his name to Swamp Dog 2Gs because uh the reason Swamp muscle shoals, the reason dog is because a dog can do anything and you'll still love it. Like a dog come up, lick you in the face, eat your food, pee on the floor, chew on your shoe, and it's all like, oh, fine. It's a dog.
+
+[18:27] You know what I mean? That's what he says anyway. So in 1970 or 71, he comes out with a dog. He's touring Europe. He's touring Europe.
+
+[18:35] Right now, he's touring Europe? Son of a bitch. Yeah. So I don't know what you're thinking. Um I said, check it out, see whether or not he's uh around.
+
+[18:43] I I I put something on his Twitter to hear anything back. I was like, are you ever gonna come to New York? Because I would totally want to see this guy. He like his album Total Destruction of the Mind and his other album, Rat On, were like like cult hits in like the early 70s, and then in 2014 or 15, he comes out with an album in his mid-70s called Love Loss and Auto-Tune, wherein he buys an auto-tune thing and does crazy things with an auto-tuner. And then I think just last year or this year came out with something called I Need to Get Me a Job So I Can Buy More Auto Tune.
+
+[19:15] Fantastic. I mean, just fantastic. I'm into it. Yeah, fantastic stuff, man. Fantastic stuff.
+
+[19:23] Um all right. So uh what have you been doing, Stas? You've been eating any good Los Angeles food or no. Uh Jack and I are having pastries from this Cuban place right now, and it's really yummy. Yeah, what kind of like guava and cheese, yeah.
+
+[19:39] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Baba, fashion fruit. I know you love passion fruit. I know you're a passion fruit queen.
+
+[19:47] Yeah. Yeah. You need to move you need to permanently move to a place where you can grow uh passion fruit in your backyard. But since you hate Florida, maybe Hawaii. You can grow But LA is too cold in the when it gets coldest, right?
+
+[20:00] You can you grow passion fruit in LA? Really? Yeah. Did you have it in your backyard growing up? Not that, no, but my other neighbors did.
+
+[20:10] Oh. All right. Well, you know. We all know that Nastasia's plan is to eventually end up back uh in LA. She's uh, you know, Booker and Dax's Randy Newman.
+
+[20:19] I look, I like LA. I'm not gonna say I love LA. I like it, but you know, uh my family is so like East Coast rooted, it's nuts. You know what I mean? It's like uh pull that tree out of the ground and it dies, you know what I'm saying?
+
+[20:32] Like I'm uh I'm I'm I'm leatherman bound. I gotta stay in this leather man loop or or you know, it's just not it's not up to me, you know. Anywho, uh I didn't know there was a big Cuban thing in LA. Is that unusual or no? What's that?
+
+[20:50] I didn't know there was a big uh cu I you know I don't associate you know Cuban food with LA. Is that unusual? Oh, you think we have everything, right? I mean, yeah, there's everything here, but you're right. There's not like especially a lot of Cuban food.
+
+[21:02] Yeah. I need to go to Florida. I I know, I know. I need to go to Florida and do the Cuban sandwich trip. Yeah, same.
+
+[21:10] I want to do that too. Because Oh, yeah. I have a I have a place in Miami that's awesome for that. Really? But you know, there's the argument, right?
+
+[21:14] There's the Miami versus Tampa argument. Oh, I didn't know this. Yeah. I think it's Tampa, right? Isn't it Tampa versus Miami?
+
+[21:28] That's with well, there's a lot. That's with including something in the sandwich. Hold up. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[21:34] Which is actually like a codified law. So I think what we need to do is I believe there's some sort of horrible forest, I'm sure, that's exactly equidistant between Tampa, because that's right in the middle of the state, right? Some there's some horrible forest in the middle there where like the June bugs clog up your radiators in the wrong time of year. We should just meet there and have like the sandwiches and then like fight. You know what I mean?
+
+[21:57] Oka Jobi. Tampa's version includes salami and might have a swipe of mayo, depending on who's making it. I don't know about that. Yeah. I don't know about that.
+
+[22:07] Tampa's got guava ween. Got what? Guava ween festival. Guava and ween? Wean the band?
+
+[22:13] Like Dean Ween? We wish it was Dean Ween. No, it's not Dean Wien. Just called Guava Ween. Oh, like Halloween with guava?
+
+[22:20] Yeah. You can't carve a guava, Joe. No. You ever heard those? You ever heard this unreleased Dean Ween um uh Pizza Hut commercial tracks?
+
+[22:29] No. Are they as good as the Spongebob uh quiznos thing? Really? Where'd the cheese go? I don't know.
+
+[22:36] All right, I'm checking that out. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. I'm gonna I'll I'm gonna post it in the Discord if people don't know it. It's so good.
+
+[22:43] Were they were they paid for by the Pizza Hut Corporation? No. They asked them, or they they they they submitted and they came back and said, No, it's not gonna work. So they came back with their own. They said, and they what was the truck?
+
+[22:57] I was like, where's the mother cheese go? They just changed like two words. So what I'm hearing is is that Pizza Hut never aired these, so the best fast food crazy song is still the Sponge Monkeys for Quiznos. Uh yeah, I think it would have to be, yes. That's funny.
+
+[23:15] If you have not seen the Quiznos Sponge Monkeys, it's the loonyest ad campaign. I can't believe it was put on the the air, but I still to this day randomly will be like, They got a pepper pa like that. Like boom. You know what I mean? Oh my god, I love that so much.
+
+[23:32] Well, Dean Wien's uh Dean Dean Wien also puts up uh recipes on his website, and his uh meatballs and spaghetti is pretty damn good. All right, that's it. Let's get Dean Wien on this radio program. Let's do it, please. If anyone who can hear our voices has an in with Dean Wayne, then Leno, let's get some Dean Wien up in this piece.
+
+[23:52] You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. It's a great idea. Uh hey, Stas, you ready to have the uh you ready to have your hair stand on in? Why?
+
+[24:04] So, like Quinn was like, maybe we should look into getting someone from the bear on the show. And I was like, you know what? That's what a great idea, right, Quinn? It's a great idea. People would love that.
+
+[24:15] But then the Stasi would be like, I already know what it's like to go out with a chef. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think you're right. Uh so listen, speaking of television programs, I was the I was a guest helper. I was a I was a I was an expert, a guest expert on the uh upcoming show Recipe Lost and Found for Meatballs.
+
+[24:39] Meatballs. Uh that's gonna air on Discovery on Friday, August the 19th. So that's that's this week, right? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[24:44] So like uh you could check it out. So like I'll I won't spoil it for you, but uh this person is trying to recreate their grandma. Spoiler, she's dead, so they can't just ask the grandma, trying to recreate the grandma's uh meatball recipe, right? Yeah, yeah. That was like some good culinary investigation on your on your part.
+
+[25:06] Yeah, well, so the the interesting thing was is that the the grandma was Jewish, not Italian, right? But they lived I remember it was a long time ago we shot it. I believe they live on Long Island, right? Yeah. And and I think the grandpa was an MTA worker or something like this.
+
+[25:22] This and so, like, wanted a meatball like the ones he saw his like, you know, fellow workers at the MTA eating, and so she came up with this meatball recipe. So we had to figure out what a Jewish grandma making an Italian meatball would do. And they had, again, I'm not gonna spoil it, they had, she just died like a year and a half ago or two years ago. They had a meatball still in the freezer that we can analyze. So interesting.
+
+[25:48] Yeah. It's kind of like a pulpitone. Well, it's like, I'm not gonna spoil how she did her meatballs, but I will say this. They also had pictures from the 1970s of her pantry, so we could see kind of, or like maybe it was more recent pictures. More recent.
+
+[25:59] They they could see kind of what she used to stock. You know what I mean? Figure it out. So then there was discussions of how tomatoes have changed over the years, all kinds of things. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[26:09] But anyway, check it out if you want. Uh uh, you know, if you don't, hey, hey, what am I gonna do? Nothing. I don't know where you live. I can't come get you.
+
+[26:15] I can't make you watch it. Anyway. Uh Inge Sigurdsson wrote in uh fiber question Is there any way to break down tough fibers? I'm thinking about making thin artichoke chips for a garnish, but keeping the leaves for aesthetics. Well, I don't know of it.
+
+[26:31] So if you guys know of a way to break down uh like cellulose and lignin, I have tried uh cellulase enzymes. I have tried many things because my goal, and I've been told that the the English, you know, those UK people, uh, people who live in Britain, they've come up with a stringless celery, I'm told. I've never eaten this stringless celery, but I hate peeling the strings out of celery. Is there anyone that likes peeling the strings out of celery? Because it gums up your peeler.
+
+[27:00] Yeah. It just gums the hell out of your peeler. Those strings everywhere. You can't put the strings, the strings that they don't even, they're so god dang long. They don't come out of your peeler, and then your peeler clogs, and you, you know, you put your your celery flat on like a sheet tray and you're trying to go zip zip zop zop zup, but like after the second zup, it's already clawed.
+
+[27:19] It's not fun. Nobody likes it. No. So like if you can have a stringless celery, this is why when I cook with celery, honestly, I'm just like, I'm gonna cross-cut that son of a gun, real, real, bah, bah, bah. You know what I mean?
+
+[27:30] I'm like, I just don't have this patience. Yeah. You know? In fact, uh, for salad and whatnot, I'm a okay, okay. I'll tell I'll tell you this.
+
+[27:39] I've mentioned this before. You know, I'm a fan of the salad master manual, blah, blah, blah. Oh no, you haven't. Ah, boom. Yeah.
+
+[27:47] Uh, so theoretically, I think I mentioned this before, if you hold the celery such that the strings are facing up and you feed the celery into the grinder, it will leave the vast majority of the strings as one strip and it'll scrape the flesh off of the strings. The problem is, is that the strings that break off and pop in are even worse than even worse than just chopping the strings into the thing. You know what I'm saying? Like they're e it's even worse. But if someone could make something like that, some sort of like D-stringer, or maybe we could try this crazy celery, stringless celery.
+
+[28:19] Yeah. I don't know. I'd be interested in trying that. Anyway, when you chop, I'm a I'm a I take the fat end, I cut, you know, maybe a little bit off the fat end, just so it's because who has the patience to wash all of that stuff off near the fat end? Yeah.
+
+[28:32] Nobody. Nobody. And you know, wait, you know, Andre Soltner, you know, famous chef Chef Lutest, buy the best, waste nothing. But I'm like, come on, Andre, man. I'm gonna because he would save that little endling for stock, which makes sense.
+
+[28:44] But how often are you making the veg stock? Yeah. I go right in the trash at home. Right in the trash. If any of you out there actually save every veg scrap in the freezer for the day when you make veg stock, let me know.
+
+[28:56] Shame us. Yeah. Right? Anywho. But then I do I'm a big fan of the uh long cross cuts that the long, like the rip cuts where you rip down the celery length and then cut it into tiny things.
+
+[29:08] Or do you, or do you because I hate the big half moons in my salad. Yeah. No, I'll at least split the stock in half, maybe even then split it again. So to like fours. Yeah, I split it, I leave it attached at the at the leaf end, and then I split it all the way down the middle, and then I'll do two on the side that go like two-thirds of the way up.
+
+[29:33] So four. I leave them all attached to each other. In other words, like it they look like a like a like a like a like an onion brush kind of. Okay. And then I'm br b-ba-bow.
+
+[29:41] And then I line two or three up and beep beep all the way through. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. But when you're slicing celery, I know you already know this, people.
+
+[29:50] Put the freaking strings facing the sky. If you put the strings facing down, you think you're cutting your thing, but unless you're putting massive pressure. Are you a massive pressure man? I'm not a massive pressure man. I don't like massive pressure on my knife.
+
+[30:05] I'm like I just like a light rock, boob boa, boom. So, like if you're a massive pressure person, what the hell? Do whatever the hell you want because you're also cutting through the board and dulling your knife real fast. I don't know why you want to do that, but God bless. But if the strings are facing the sky, you're always going to get decent separation on your uh on your on your on your celery.
+
+[30:23] No? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[30:25] So Inge, no, I got no uh I got no solution for you. And I've tried several times using different enzymatic things. I've used vacuums to infuse it. Uh things that are lignified are very hard to break down. I haven't found like a food grade lignin destruction thing.
+
+[30:40] And you don't want to destroy the pectin specifically, right? You want to destroy lignin and like cellulose. Very hard. So if you can think of something, let us know. You know what I mean?
+
+[30:49] Or if anyone can think of something, let us know because that that would be, you know, genius. That's a that's a that's a life goal right there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Tyson has a distillery and wants us to know that Tyson has a stillery.
+
+[31:00] I don't know which one though, didn't say, right? Uh they have two centrifuges there, though. They have a three-liter by uh a three-liter unit, which uh does, I guess uh I can't really parse what they mean here, which does have been the workhorse for most of the work, but obviously from reading, listening to Dave, I know that uh it's also limited. So earlier this year I scored a much nicer centrifuge. Oh, uh uh 32 uh hundred uh G's, I think is what they what they mean.
+
+[31:23] 3200 G's. So 3,200 G's is roughly similar to most three liter benchtop centrifuges like the Juan, like the one I used to use back at at Booker and Dax before we had uh, by the way, slowly but surely, and since you're not in the loop anymore, John, we're slowly but surely getting our way back to uh spinzall land. The uh they now have figured out finally a way to pre-test all the balance on the rotors and have all the rotors be balanced the way that we want them on shipping, so we don't have to ship anyone a new rotor to fix it and all that. And it's as we said for many years, not that complicated. You know what I mean?
+
+[32:04] But yeah, it's great. That's gonna help us so many problems with the lid and bearings and look that the genesis of all the problems were the rotor, right? Not being balanced exactly the way we wanted. And the second genesis of all the problems was the interlock, which was just too complicated. And we've solved both problems now, both problems solved.
+
+[32:24] I'm all about that. I'm all about that mechanical interlock. Yeah, and everything's like easily replaced, you know, for the user if something breaks, and you might have to get a split ring plier, which is super fun. But yeah, other than that, it's great. Listen, if you're gonna buy a split ring plier, buy the good one.
+
+[32:41] Yes. Buy the buy the good one. A bad split ring plier. I'm trying to think of something that's as frustrating as a bad split ring plier. Like what's something in the kitchen that is as frustrating?
+
+[32:55] Like what's something that's terrible in a kitchen? Like Stas, what do you have in a kitchen you hate? Or anyone? Like, what do you guys have that you hate in the kitchen? Like just hate, and yet you tolerate day after day after day.
+
+[33:09] Um I don't know. A lot of things though. Yeah. Like all my pots and pans and knives and forks and everything. Wow.
+
+[33:20] So let me ask you this, Daz. My sink. I don't like my sink. Oh, yeah. But that's a big one.
+
+[33:25] Why? It splashes when you turn on the water, it's too, it's not deep enough. It makes it too loud. What is it you don't like? It's not deep enough.
+
+[33:32] Yeah, weak. Yeah, it's just not deep enough. There's an old faucet that doesn't have any everything about it I hate. Stas on the forks, is it that they're too lightweight? They're just IKEA forks.
+
+[33:45] And they're they're like, there's nothing special about any of my stuff. Oh, you know what? So in my in my family, like people give us like um, we we have like our normal, you know, stainless normal wear, but then people will give us like unmatching silver, which I kind of like the unmatching silver look for when you want something special. Yeah. You know, like a piece or two at a time.
+
+[34:07] So every one is a little bit different. You know where it came from. It's nice. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[34:12] You know, we're not one of those people where when we get married, we get the full set of silver in China. You know what I mean? This is not that's not that's not how the life went. Okay. Uh yeah, so I can't think of so your pans, so I'll I'll I'll say it like this.
+
+[34:25] You know how you bought that nonstick, not you, not one, but one, bought that nonstick pan like six years ago, and the nonstick coating came off of it, but you still have it, and you still sometimes reach for it, even though you know it's not nonstick anymore, and the because the nonstick coating has come off of it. That's what a bad split ring plier is like. That's what it's like. It's not nonstick, it wasn't high quality other than its nonstickness. It doesn't do anything it's supposed to do, and yet for some reason you still reach for it.
+
+[34:56] That's a bad split ring plier. Anyway. I can't even I can't even honestly though, like until we until we get this uh Quinn, right? Until we get this uh freaking Sears All Pro thing fully complete, we can't even be thinking about the centerfuge until we get the Sears All Pro fully complete, which is getting closer, right, Quinn? We have the the back screen.
+
+[35:17] I might I might have an update for the indie go uh tomorrow ish. Ish okay, sounds good. All right. So Tyson uh had this uh 3,200 G unit, which is roughly the same to all bench top, and then uh earlier this year they scored a much nicer centrifuge that goes up to 41,000 Gs. That's quite a lot, actually.
+
+[35:40] 41,000 G's, that's that's a good centrifuge. 41,000 or 4100? 41,000. Okay, that's uh what we would say that's a uh a super speed fuse. It's not ultra, it's not ultra, but it's super speed.
+
+[35:54] Yeah, okay. So the very first centrifuge is so the super speed that we had at the French culinary that we got from Unilever. Oh my god, I remember picking that thing up, Stas. You were with me when we picked that up, right? Anyway, yeah.
+
+[36:08] Yeah. Oh big. Like a freaking washing machine, but even heavier. That was back when I still had it in me to just anger things around. Oh my god.
+
+[36:17] Do you remember, Stas, when we were in the uh in the what's it called? The amphitheater, and we had that big old vacuum machine. That big old vacuum, not the one from Del Posta, but the big old one, and I'm like, No, I know. Yeah, we had a class. We had a class.
+
+[36:32] And I'm like, can someone can someone help? Can someone help? Can someone help? Yeah! And then just pick it up and move it.
+
+[36:38] You know what I mean? Because it's like, can't anyone just help? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[36:43] Yeah. I know. I remember. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[36:47] Well, I'm glad that at least I've been some source of amusement to you over the years. Cause, you know, anyway. Uh so the early one we had could have maybe gone up that high, but we never allowed our centrifuge to go up that high because it was so old. You have to derate. And by the way, Tyson, pay attention to this.
+
+[37:06] When you get a very old centrifuge, you have to derate the aluminum rotors. They can't go the same speed that they used to go after they've spun for a certain number of hours. So just beware. I haven't had one of those kind of centrifuges in a long time. But there used to be very, I used to know very strict guidelines.
+
+[37:22] Oh my God. Did I ever run the danger fuse in your presence, Stas? Yeah, you did with the interns there too. Oh my God. Remember what we said.
+
+[37:39] Was literally a uh, you know how like uh like those old GE motors that you would see like in a blower, like they're big. They're like, they're like um, I don't know, how what would you describe? They're like a coffee can motor, right? The size of a coffee can. Okay.
+
+[37:54] AC motor, right? Like you'd see in a big old fan. And then uh legs came off the motor, and then just a rotor in free space, an aluminum rotor in free space. Free space. And uh, so what we would do, we ran it only once or twice to see what would happen.
+
+[38:13] What we would do is is we would put it on the countertop, we would plug it in, it would go, and then everyone would hit the deck because in if it exploded, right? The idea was it would take out all the windows and anything that was at like crotch level or above would just be instantly shrapneled. You know what I mean? And we would just hit the deck and wait for it to be done. Good times, right, Stas?
+
+[38:42] Yeah, I guess so. That was dangerous. Well, they didn't call it the danger fuse for nothing. I can't believe that they sold that to real people to use in a laboratory. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[38:53] That's what's most shocking. That's what America was like in the 50s and 60s, I guess, when that thing was built. All right. So Tyson scored a 41,000 G unit with 8X times 50 milliliter bottles. The primary rotor that they use in that sucker is 4X 250 milliliter bottles.
+
+[39:08] So that would be for those of you that don't like math, one liter. Uh, and runs at 28,000 G's. Uh and is a game changer since we can clarify limes by brute force. Lime and grapefruit juice chilled to just above freezing and carbonated to 100 psi is a delight. Uh well, I don't think you need to go that high.
+
+[39:24] 100 PSI is very, you might probably get the same results just going to 48 PSI. Give it a shot. Try 48 versus 100 because you'll get less bubbling, but whatever. That's up to you. It's up to you.
+
+[39:34] My question is am I missing out on another world by finding an even better fuge? Is there a difference between 27K and 40,000, uh, 47K, 40K when spinning foods? And is there a big difference between 40, 50 or 100K? All right, Tyson. I've only tested 20K versus 40K.
+
+[39:50] And 40K on lime juice tastes better than 20K does. Okay. I have only tested citrus juices at 20,000 G's versus 40,000 G's. And 40,000 G's is vastly superior. 20,000 G's, I find is not as good as lower force with enzymes and treatments.
+
+[40:12] So if you're gonna do direct clarification, I think 20,000 G's is not nearly as good as 40,000 G's from a taste standpoint. And you could taste it with your other rotor with your 40,000 G rotor. Do it 20, do it at 40. Now, what I want you to test for me and let me know, I didn't test 27. Maybe 20.
+
+[40:28] I don't know, I don't know where between 20,000 and 40,000 G's that flavor knee is where it suddenly goes tastes cleaner and better. So there's somewhere between 20 and 40. Maybe it's 27. Let me know. Run it at 20, run it at 27, run it at 40 in your smaller capacity rotor, and let me know what happens.
+
+[40:48] As for higher RPMs than that, I've never tested it. There are, I'm sure, things that, you know, those higher G forces can do. And I will say that it is a complete joy to be able to just spin something without doing any pre-preparation. It's awesome. It really is.
+
+[41:05] I mean, just like squeezing lime juice into a bottle and being like, but you know, for those of us that can't afford the space or the money, you know, we're left with more reasonable centrifuge. And remember, Tyson, to derate your rotors based on how many hours they've been spawned. Unless you have, I think some of the graphite rotors uh don't need to be derated, but all the old aluminum ones. The problem with aluminum is aluminum can develop cracks uh and fatigue stress over time. And they make them out of aluminum because they're if they're relatively strong for their weight, but that's why they have a lifetime on them.
+
+[41:37] And why the danger fuge was even more dangerous than, you know. We would when you look at an old rotor, you should look at the bottom, and because what happens is if people crack something that is either acidic or basic in um in the tubes, and then that would because your tubes are gonna crack eventually every once in a while. And then you look at the bottom, if they've let that stuff sit in the rotor too long, you can get um, and that's where the rotor like is gonna break, is down there near where the where the uh where you know where the tubes at the bottom. If you look down there, make sure there's not a lot of discoloration, crazing, cracking, or uh pitting or problems with the aluminum down there. Right?
+
+[42:17] That makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh Robin, Robin has hobbies.
+
+[42:14] I like that. Robin has hobbies. Nastasia used to have hobbies, and then she gave them up for uh pandemic because you just didn't want to be that lady, right, Stas? I wish you kept your apple head hobby uh up, because uh, you know, that was my favorite thing that you did was uh that you were the apple headed doll queen, you know? And he's you know, I haven't seen you make an apple head doll in so long.
+
+[42:43] It's depressing. I don't know. Whatever. Even listening to you? I don't know, no, I don't think so.
+
+[42:49] What is well you're gonna say something, Stuzz? Okay. Robin has hobbies. Uh what is the spinzall calamata olive recipe? I see mentions of it, but uh never have any details.
+
+[43:05] Actually, you know what I can remember. I've did I ever did I ever personally I used to do olives a lot in the big uh fuge. Um there's two different things you can do with olives. Now we gotta have our uh oleogenist friend Nick on back when Nastasia is back in New York because he has some new uh his new uh box uh oil is out. But uh everyone likes some uh Nick Coleman and his uh and his and his his greasy endeavors.
+
+[43:29] No, he's gonna be at the pig roast on uh Sunday with his olive oil. Okay. That doesn't help uh our listeners sell very much. Yeah. Uh but we can talk about it if you come, like you said you were going to.
+
+[43:42] Which which Sunday is this? The Sunday. You put it in your calendar. I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen.
+
+[43:50] All right, I'll look into it. I'll look into it. I'll see what's going on. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[43:53] It's not about my family. Listen, listen, listen. Listen. I'm basically my grandma's parrot gunther. Oh, I don't want to.
+
+[43:59] That's my that's like when I when I don't know what's going on, I just go into Gunther mode. Like that. And that's basically all he used to say. I told you, I think I said on the air that I used to try constantly to get that bird to curse. And the bird did not like me enough, and it would never learn curse words from me.
+
+[44:19] Which is a constant source of irritation. But if you guys are uh what's his name? Uh oh my God, Jim Carrey fans. He did a show called Kidding a couple of years ago. Tara Lipinski was in it, and one of the main plot points was her talking parrot who cursed up a storm.
+
+[44:39] Great plot point. Um were you an ice skating fan? Uh anyone? Anyone ice skating fan growing up? No?
+
+[44:47] No? No ice skating fans? All right. So with Kalamata olives, going back to uh Nick, so what we used to do was we would blend them with uh with pectenex, right? Uh just blend them like real hard in a vita prep real hard and keep them until they warm up to like body temp.
+
+[45:05] Don't go too hot. You don't want to denature the enzyme with the pectanex. Then you put that into we used to do it in the big fuse, we did it in bags. So since you can't do a bag, what you're gonna have to do is put them in, you want to put them almost a maximum amount into your into your spinzall, which is about 400 and um like 430. I wouldn't go more than that because it's gonna have problems settling out.
+
+[45:29] You might need to add a little brine to it just to get it to be liquid enough to settle. If it's not liquid enough, then it won't self uh balance, right? Then you spin it up, spin it for a while, right? And then what's gonna happen is you're gonna get this amazing top and nod around the rim of your dense, amazing top and nod around the you know, without anything else, just olive paste, really, uh around the rim of your rotor. And then the problem with it, this as opposed to like in a in a bucket fuse, is you're gonna get two liquid phases, an oil phase and a uh and a and a brine phase.
+
+[46:04] And then you have to pour that off and then let that separate over time, right? And so uh, but every person who loves olive oil, for instance, Nick, or for instance, Harold McGee, is like, this olive oil is fusty and therefore evil. And I'm like, but to untrain people from like me, it tastes good like olives. I like the flavor of olives. He's like, olive oil is not supposed to taste like olives, you Philistine.
+
+[46:32] You know what I mean? Remember that, Stas? Yeah. Anyway, uh, so that's what you do. But uh other people, like uh back at 69 Colebrook Row back in the day, what they would do is they would take whole olives, put whole olives in the center fuge.
+
+[46:46] Now you can't do this without like adding a little bit of brine in a spinzall, right? Because it won't self-balance otherwise. You can just add a little bit of brine. And then they would just spin that for a long time, and then we get a very, very clean, very, very olivey juice out of it. And the olives would be semi-crushed, so they would look almost more like oil-cured olives when they came out.
+
+[47:05] They used to do no cholaras over there, which is a delicious olive. And then uh that would be the base they use for their dirty martinis. So that's another option. But I've never tested it in a spinzall. I remember when they when uh he sent over the he's like, uh, I want you to get a bucket of whole olives with pits.
+
+[47:25] I'm like, got it. You want us to process these now? He's like, no, I want you to drain them, put the whole olives in the centrifuge, and then spin them. I'm like, but I'm only gonna get like 30 mils of freaking. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[47:36] I'm like, what am I gonna do with all these pounds of olives? He's like, topanod. And I was like, are you selling like eight buttloads of topanod for every freaking 30 martini? It's like, does not matter. And that's what it's like doing business in the UK, I guess.
+
+[47:52] You know, God bless. From Zev. Question uh for John. Oh. All right.
+
+[47:58] Are you listening now? I'm listening. All right. Yeah, no. How's about a cooking issues menu tasting meetup at Temperance?
+
+[48:05] I'd bet you get a good showing for a pre-fee menu uh for you to use as uh use us as guinea pigs, especially if Nastasi and Dave show up. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I'd have to talk it over with with the boss, but yeah, potentially. Yeah. What do you think, Stas?
+
+[48:20] You wanted to show up? Yeah. All right. Josh S. writes in, here's a question.
+
+[48:26] I'm at the beach house with 11 people for the week. Well, it must be nice. Uh uh. That's all it is. Just wants us to know.
+
+[48:39] At the beach house with 11 people. Well, have fun. Uh I'll have to say though, like, I we're I'm I'm going uh like at the very end of the summer, I'm not going to a beach, thankfully, but I'm going to Acadia, which is on the water, but it's not beachy water. And like to me, that's like the like a like a like a rock-based beach. I hate sand.
+
+[48:58] Oh my god, I hate sand too. It's a sensory thing. The worst. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[49:02] Yeah. Yeah. If I could have a uh a house on the beach where I could just be on the deck and have my margaritas on a deck and watch the water, I love the ocean. It's sand that's the enemy. Agreed.
+
+[49:13] And I don't mind sand when I'm in the water. Yep. So like if if like if I'm getting clams or mussels or you know, whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally.
+
+[49:24] Yeah. Getting attacked by a great white shark. If you're in the Cape now, that's like the new thing. The new thing every kid's trying to do is get attacked by a great white shark. So Gerard, my stepfather, is one of the one of, you know, now that he's he's almost 70 now, so he's he's now one of the, he's like the old fisherman on the on the on the beach.
+
+[49:44] And so like every day that he's at the Cape, they have a place in Truro out the Cape Cod. Uh every day that they're there, and they're there as often as they can be, he gets up at like four, like three or four, goes out, and is just walks the beaches. He figures out where he wants to go. There's like Boston, Newcomb Hollow, like all these places that he goes, goes down the dune, is alone and just surf casts. You're like Gerard, don't you ever want to fish on a boat?
+
+[50:13] No. Okay. You know what I mean? Don't you want to go out once and just fish on a boat? No.
+
+[50:19] He's surf casts, mainly for for stripers, but also sometimes for blues. So he was out there at the beginning of the season, and you know, the sun had already come up, so there's some other people on the beach. And he, as he's casting out, he sees a seal, because there's there's been a lot of seal. As the fish have come back, there's been a lot of seals. And with the seals and the increase in fish, there's been an increase in sharks.
+
+[50:43] So he sees a shark just obliterate, like right in front of him, just obliterate the seal like like a slick, like a like a blood slick on the top of the water, like jaw style, like you know, like Roy Scheiter jaws, like boom. And he's like, Oh, oh snap. And then so he this was at the beginning of the summer. So he goes over, he's like, uh, he finds someone, he's like, Well, you might want to put up signs for people swimming that like you know, great whites are coming to within the seal was caught like within casting range, right? You know, was was killed within casting range.
+
+[51:17] And they were like, Well, it was the beginning of the summer. It was a holiday weekend, so the signs are locked up and we can't really go get them. And they were gonna, they were being kind of a dick to him until they realized that he has a house there, he's not just a tourist, and they're like, Oh, yeah. Well, in that case, I'm sorry, but the signs are locked up. And so then Gerard had to walk up and down the beach telling people, uh Great White just killed a seal right offshore over there.
+
+[51:39] So maybe, maybe don't hang out here. Maybe don't hang out in the water. You know what I mean? Maybe don't. But he actually feels a little bit bad because back in the day, it used to be that seals, you're not allowed to do anything to a seal, right?
+
+[51:53] Obviously. So seals would come up and like take the fish off your lines while you're while you're reeling them in, and and the fish basically flipping you the flipper, you know what I'm saying? And so, like, he for years has been like, if I could only kill every seal I meet, but now he feels bad for him. Now that he's actually seen a seal, a seal get taken down right in front of him, and then like then, yeah, whatever. Whatever.
+
+[52:15] What are you gonna do? Yeah. Hey, by the way, here's a quote that uh I kind of feel that uh Nastasia's best quote of all time, and I won't tell the whole story, but true or false, and I want to see who here is like this. Nastasia believes, I believe correctly, that if you have never had if you have never had to push start your car, you haven't lived. And and not just once.
+
+[52:40] I mean, like, oh, my car needs push darting and I can't fix it for whatever reason right now. If you haven't had to push start your car, if you're not like, oh, I need to drive, can someone come with me? I need to push start this thing, right? If that hasn't been your life at what at one point, you haven't truly been around the block. I'm okay with that.
+
+[53:01] That is true. My dad had to push start his car every morning. Yeah. And the neighbor, there would be a neighbor down the block who would run out of the house every morning because he always like it always um stalls at the same point. Yeah.
+
+[53:13] Yeah. You're like, hey, look, listen, what am I gonna do? Fix it? I don't I can't fix it now. All right.
+
+[53:18] Uh all right. So Josh is at the beach house on the menu. It's steak night. I currently have a 12.5 uh New York strip, 12.5 pound New York strip. I have my circulator and a Searsol, kudos, as well as access to a propane grill.
+
+[53:31] What's the best practice to make it nice and make it nice? I'm trying to decide whether to cut it into stakes before or after circulating uh it partially. That's all I get. I uh I would cut it into stakes beforehand, circulate it. Um I would make sure that you don't circulate it uh too high too long, because uh strip can get a little bit tough.
+
+[53:49] So I would do it at like 54 for no longer if you're cutting them into like one and a half inch steaks, no longer than 45, 50 and then dropping it, letting it come down, I would let it come all the way down, and then I would do uh combination like very high grill and Sears all to like crisp it up. If you don't want to do a circulator, just want to do it, I would go off on, off on, off on, off on on the grill three times, uh, make sure that you don't overcook it. And uh Joe Davis, question about metabolizing alcohol. My girlfriend gets red, stuffy, and swollen after drinking alcohol. It's noticeable after just one Pacifico and gets incrementally worse after each successive drink.
+
+[54:22] Uh any insights into why maybe things uh thing to look for and avoid certain drinks. Uh and I love a show, shout out to Quinn for helping with my spinz all trouble. Listen, uh, your girlfriend has alcohol flush reaction. She doesn't have enough alcohol dehydrogen H2 in her system. It's a genetic thing.
+
+[54:36] There's nothing she can do about it. She needs to stay away from uh alcohol until they figure out a way to increase uh because it's really unpleasant. If anyone out there really wants to experience what it's like to have that issue without uh uh, you know, not permanently, is you can get a drug called um disulfiram that is uh meant to uh stop people from drinking alcohol who you know who have alcohol consumption problems, and it gives you the effect of alcohol flush, makes you flush because what it means is your body gets loaded up with acetaldehyde and you can't break it down because you can't properly metabolize the alcohol. But yeah, there's no alcohol that's gonna fix that for us. Sorry about that.
+
+[55:12] Um not yet, anyway. Maybe Paul Adams has something with his drink pills. Um, Samuel uh Matnik, uh do this real quick. Long time arm uh listener. I remember Dave had a detailed elaborate backpack setup used for hauling delicate tomatoes back from the farmer's market on his bike.
+
+[55:27] I'm talking about Stokes Aunt Ruby's here right now, Stokes Farms Aunt Ruby's. God's tomato people, and they're in there in the farmer's market right now. But for the life of me, I can't find that episode. I'm in desperate need of Dave's expert advice to soothe my bruised Aunt Ruby's soul. Thanks, Sam.
+
+[55:40] Here's what you do. I have a uh Peak Designs uh camera backpack, and what it has is individual compartments that are Velcroed, so it's like three individual compartments. Inside of those compartments, I make individualized uh cardboard boxes that I then nestle with um uh dish towels, right? So I can do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine tomatoes in it without them touching each other, all individually nestled. Make sure you put them stem side down, stem side down, but they have to be on something that is both absorbent and giving because if not, the stems can be too hard and push up into the thing, but must be stem side down because that's the hardest side of the tomato.
+
+[56:22] Let me know how it goes. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New York City at New Stand Studios with a Kitchen Arts and Letters Cooking Issue special. Doing classics in the field. I don't do the old school classics in the field anymore, John. I don't do it anymore.
+
+[0:28] Someday maybe I'll bring it back. Yeah. I gotta feel it in my heart though before I can sing it again, you know? Yeah. I don't know.
+
+[0:33] Someday. Someday. I don't know. Maybe that's the thing I you know that I've lost is that ability to do the classics in the field. Uh I don't know.
+
+[0:41] Anyway, uh as usual, we got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How you doing? I'm doing great, man. Good sh uh looks like a full house today. Oh my god, yeah.
+
+[0:50] You you know a little nervous. Joe gets a little nervous when the when uh when the newsstand studios is is full full. We are I wouldn't say nervous, it's just I don't have as many fingers as I you know wish I needed to, you know, to unlift right a lot of a lot of buttons. Right. And uh in California, we got uh Jackie Molecules.
+
+[1:08] How you doing? I'm doing great. Yeah. Beautiful day. Yeah.
+
+[1:14] I mean, isn't that why you're in California? Why the hell else? Why the hell else would you be in California other than uh, you know, you weather hogs? He's got a great apartment. Oh yeah, nice, nice.
+
+[1:25] Thanks, Doz. Hey, listen, here's what I hear. I hear that when people move from places like where we live that are like like you know, garbage weather, right? And they move to they move to places with nice weather that they do actually feel better for like a year and a half, two years, and then it like all becomes the same to them and they're just as miserable as they were before. Disagree.
+
+[1:48] I'm two years here now and I'm starting to feel better. Could be three, years. Yeah, but that's that's might be because of the people, not because of the weather. I'm just talking about weather related phenomenon. Oh.
+
+[1:57] Oh yeah, I definitely take that for granted. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and in Vancouver Island, we have uh now what's what what are you the are you what do you think?
+
+[2:06] Operations, Quinn? What do you think? Booker and Dax operations. Yeah, I don't know. We we we were bouncing around some ideas.
+
+[2:15] I feel like second knit wit. Second wit. All right. I am headwit. That's a true story.
+
+[2:21] True story. Uh and uh I'm gonna go in reverse order. I'm gonna go in order like that they're seated in me. If you were watching on Patreon, you can call your questions to 917 410 1507. That's 917 4101507.
+
+[2:34] But I'll go in this order. We have our special guest Matt Startwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters How you doing Matt? I'm well thank you. Yeah? Glad to be here.
+
+[2:40] Well we're glad to have you because uh you have yet to be stumped. So you need anyone by the way no pressure now. No pressure now but like call in your you know we we should I call it like stump the mat or something like that. You know what I mean? 917 410 1507.
+
+[2:56] And then uh I'll go all the way to the back. John, how you doing? Doing great thanks how's the Chef Life treating you? Uh peachy my guy got over the COVID and so I had a day off on Sunday was this laid in bed and did absolutely nothing and was completely worthless and it was fantastic. Have you have you gotten your menu to the point yet where you don't need to sandbag everything?
+
+[3:17] Yes we finally ran out of Hellman's the other day. So it was it was a big big momentous occasion. When you say you ran out of it you bought more right no start making my own menter things you can spend your time on than making mayonnaise dude it takes like eight minutes, seven, eight minutes. You know who makes good mayonnaise? Hellman's the Hellman's corporation.
+
+[3:37] You know what you're supposed to do? I don't know if you remember this, but what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to bring out the Hellman's. Uh and thereby bring out your best. Gotcha. Right.
+
+[3:47] Which is a slight tip of the hat to the fact that across the across the river, the big river, not our river, that it's best made over there. So if you say bring out the helmets, bring out the best, what they really mean is it's the same as best made. Anyway. Uh I uh look, you really think that you're gonna make a mayonnaise that what are you using so I'm using only the finest walnut oil. Like what is it they what is it that you hope to make out of mayonnaise that's better than the helman's mayonnaise?
+
+[4:13] I don't know. It's like used for deviled egg filling and uh char some scallions and add some lemon juice and make a dipping sauce for me. I don't know. It's not like its own thing. It's it's a building block.
+
+[4:24] Right. Yeah. Right. So buy it. Well, why not just make it?
+
+[4:30] Okay. Like eight eggs, you know, quart of oil, some lemon juice, some garlic, a little mustard. It's all good. I mean, everyone picks their battles. That's your battle.
+
+[4:38] I love it. I love it. I'm a supportive. Supportive. Yeah.
+
+[4:42] Uh and of course, last but certainly not least, because I know she has something to talk about today. I don't have anything to talk about. Oh, come on. Such a trash can, Stas. I believe you.
+
+[4:55] Nastasia threw a pig roast. My neighbor and I, who Dave called No, you said I liked him. I said I liked him. He said, What did you say? I said, I I'm gonna go back to the bottom.
+
+[5:08] I don't bring a saucepan for these guys. For these guys. For these guys. So what happened was is this is it listen. Here's no my neighbor, we got a pig from Heritage.
+
+[5:19] My neighbor dug a pit in my yard the night before. Big ass pit. Big pit in it. At 5 a.m. he started the fire.
+
+[5:24] Yeah. And then the pig went in at eight. Uh-huh. And then Dave got there. Wrapped, wrapped in aluminum foil and leaves.
+
+[5:32] And then Dave got there at what time? Two? Two. And I said, go fix it. Well, here's here's the thing.
+
+[5:39] So, like, uh what happened, what had happened was that even though I personally, and I could have mailed them, right? I personally own at least two four-channel uh thermocouple recorders with thermocouples that can be embedded in the ground. I own at least two of them. I also own an eight-channel that I could have resurrected if you really needed an eight-channel thing, right? There's probably some in the storage unit.
+
+[6:03] Yeah, this is the storage on the way to nostalgia. Stupid. Matt, Matt, since you weren't involved in this scenario, let me see if you can guess what kind of thermometer they were using to measure the temperature. You'll never guess. Uh candy thermometer.
+
+[6:16] Oh, oh, that would have been no, no, no. They were using the COVID-style forehead small child thermometer that you like. Like the strip that you plaster on your forehead. No, the little one that like you walk up to someone like at an airport and you like hold it at their forehead. No.
+
+[6:32] And you see whether they have a fever. Because my the old soup from Pasta Fly was supposed to bring like you know, and we forgot. Yeah, but so uh we know that the pig did have a fever. Right? What level of fever?
+
+[6:46] Also, you can't use an IR thermometer pointed at aluminum foil. Not one thing was right about the way that they were measuring the temperature of this pig. Consequently, they were like, this pig's like room temperature. Pig was not at room temperature. Pig was fine.
+
+[7:00] Now, it is true, right, that then when they tried to rebuild the heat, they were having uh an issue because they weren't getting enough air underneath it. So what we did is is we we put we took the pig out, took the pig out, put coal up on a grate, started a coal fire, threw some more coal at the bottom to heat it, put the pig on top, some more, so a little bit of dirt, some more coals, and it baked through fine. But people, here's the other secret. It does not matter. Enough of the pig, and this is what I say when I was enough of the pig is gonna be cooked in one of these scenarios that there will be enough to feed people.
+
+[7:33] Then you take the stuff that that's right by the joint, right by the thigh or whatever, that's not cooked that well, and you take it inside and you pan it. And everyone will be happy. It doesn't really matter. It's about the communal thing of ripping apart a whole beast in front of everybody. That's the whole, that's the whole thing.
+
+[7:49] And it tasted good, I thought when it was. It was good. It was just good. I mean, when you bury a pig like that, it's not gonna be crispy. It's not a it's not a rotisserie, it's not a crispy scenario.
+
+[7:58] But a gooey fat is also a good fat. A gooey skin is a good skin. You gotta wrap your head around it. Most of us think we only want crispy skins, but this is a mental issue that Americans have. The same that we have with uh there's a lot of things that we we can't we bread needs to be light and airy.
+
+[8:16] Pig skin needs to be crispy, apples need to be crunchy, wrong, wrong, and wrong, right? Anyway, uh Matt, good to have you here. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Uh was there another thing?
+
+[8:26] Oh, guess what? Guess who else was at uh Nastasia's pig uh party? Our greasy friend, our oleaginous buddy, Nick Coleman. We learned a lot about him that night. A little bit too much, way too much to share on the air.
+
+[8:39] Yes. Way too much to share in the air. But uh, in case you uh do do we still have a discount? Our Patreon people still get a discount at Grovenvine. I think that expired.
+
+[8:49] Yeah, well, we'll he's gonna come on and we'll hook it up because you guys uh need to go out and taste his uh new uh Coratina uh olive oil from Chile, March Harvest. It was del it's delicious, like green, grassy, and he busted out a magnum of it. You know what he does? It's kind of weird though. He makes a uh do you ever use his oil, Matt?
+
+[9:09] No, I haven't. You oh you gotta check it out. So Grove and Vine is his company. So what he does is he sells olive oil in like wine bladders. It's like his best deal is the olive oil in a wine bladder, and it comes in a wine box.
+
+[9:21] So this dude, he's an olive oil dude, right? So what does he do? He comes, he brings olive oil. Like I bring wine, he brings olive oil. He puts the box of olive oil on the picnic table like it's wine.
+
+[9:32] Yeah. And I guarantee you, people are like, and like take a sip of it because they you know what I mean? And he's like, I'm glad. That's good. Weirdo.
+
+[9:42] Guy's a weirdo. Uh like him. He's gonna come back on. Uh people enjoyed him the last time it was on. Also, coming up soon, we have uh Jorge Gaviera from uh who from uh Macienda, who is uh new MASA cookbook is out.
+
+[9:54] You have that at the Kitchen Arch and Letters? We don't have it yet, but we have a uh a lot on order. We're expecting it to do really well. We've been selling his uh little Nixtamall book that's the basis for this step forward, and we're really excited about that. I mean, that they're the best source of corn for sure, especially corn for nixtimalization.
+
+[10:11] You know, the uh one thing that you know, like uh I I have the book because he's coming on, right? So I have the book. And uh yeah, the the issue really for most people getting into this is the grinding. You know what I'm saying? But anyway, we'll deal with that more when when he's on.
+
+[10:26] It's the grinding. Like you can go on his website and you can get a $1,500 grinder, and then you're good for the rest of your life. But I hope you make a lot of masa. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[10:37] Like a lot of masa. That's a commitment. Or you're rich. I'm not. Right.
+
+[10:43] Right. Right. Okay, fair. Um by the way, my classics in the field is uh what's going on with uh grain, grain, whole grain books coming out. We still got more milling and grain books coming out.
+
+[10:54] It's important because that's the section of my book I'm writing now. Um not much on the immediate horizon. Looking into the through the fall and into the winter season, I haven't seen much. So you're gonna have some fresh territory there. You're gonna be able to claim it.
+
+[11:10] People still buying uh Leonti's book? Yeah. Pretty steady. Yeah, nice. Yeah.
+
+[11:15] I mean, that's a that's a committed audience. It's not like, you know, the same person, the same number of people who come in looking for uh I'd like to get started making bread. But what do they buy now? They Reinhart people. Reinhardt is a good place for a lot of people to begin.
+
+[11:32] If they're which Reinhardt do you do? The apprentice, you go old, do you go with the newer stuff? I go with the apprentice. I go with the apprentice. I think it sets people up pretty well to uh discover what they might be interested in, and then they can go off and pursue narrower paths.
+
+[11:46] It's a nice looking bread on the cover, but the lady who baked it doesn't look too excited about it. No. Uh I I agree with that. She's uh I don't know how many times how long she was in that photo studio. But uh, because anytime I look at that book, I'm like, that's the picture where she looks the most psyched about bread.
+
+[12:03] Or maybe it's like she's supposed to look serious. Anytime someone takes a picture and they look overly serious, or they look I'm just like, aren't they aren't they supposed to make me think that like they like doing this? I don't know. I mean, look, she can feel how she likes about the bread, but it's she's like, here's the bread. It is it is a curious cho choice, but I, you know, the the content of the book always wins me over.
+
+[12:26] So I never met Reinhard. I have, yeah. He's uh he's a really knowledgeable, earnest, serious guy and who is uh a painstaking teacher. He's really careful about about the way he deals with people and with his students. Um he's um he's wholesome, you know and like all the best positive senses of that word.
+
+[12:51] Yeah, I just reread his uh the the 2007 The Whole Grains cookbook, you know, in advance of the section that I'm writing on using whole grains but self-ground. Uh I haven't fully finished his 2017 sprouted grains and whole grains book. Is that how's that one do? That one's less. That's a that's a much more specific targeted kind of thing.
+
+[13:10] And I think the Leonte book came along and claimed some of that territory. Yeah, well it's interesting because he's actually kind of moved around. So again, this is really in the weeds. I apologize, but Reinhardt's book in 2007 was a huge advocate of long uh pre-soaks of uh of the whole wheat, y m much of it un yeasted, basically letting it sit around. And um I don't know what I think about that.
+
+[13:35] I think it probably works. He he says in the introduction he had 350 people test the recipe because he sent out recipes to like just people on the internet and had them tested, which is a phenomenal idea. I wonder he didn't pay them, right? They just tested it because they liked him because he did. Yeah.
+
+[13:49] And uh I don't know, maybe maybe when my book gets closer I'll talk more about that. Um why why I think that may or may not be a good idea. I think most the big problem is most people's whole wheat flour sucks real bad. It's just not a good product. Like they're using uh they're using the wrong wheat to make uh good whole wheat bread.
+
+[14:09] You know the reason why spring wheat, uh you know, hard spring wheat, red spring wheat wasn't so popular back in the day, way back in the day in the 1850s and 1860s, is because they had no way to mill it properly, right? Uh it was only after the invention of the uh midlings purifier, which blew all of the bran out that they could get brand-free, relatively hard red spring wheat. And that became a miraculous bread bread flour, but no one really liked baking with it back when the brand was in it because it's just not that it tastes that great when it's got uh all the bran in it. Not a big fan. Anyway, that's just me.
+
+[14:43] And if you soak it for a long time, I think what he's doing, he thinks he it's all he he's coming from a perspective of ooh, ooh, you need to, you need to, you need to jack the sugar. So you need the amylase and you need the starch to break down, so the sugar to get crust development. Whole wheat, it already tastes like whole wheat. So unless it tastes bitter, all you're doing is slacking the dough out by having it go for a long period of time, which is why I think if he does the pre-pre-pre, he's pre-slacking it and then making the dough he wants. Anyway, long story.
+
+[15:10] Uh uh too much. All right. For you, Matt, let's go here. All right. Classics in the field question.
+
+[15:15] My sister-in-law is looking for a book that talks about all the cuts of meat. Now, Zach Zachary has been waiting for like a year for you to answer this question. So uh my sister-in-law is looking for a book. I'm sure this I'm sure she already owns it, right? That is about all the cuts of meat from as many animals as possible, at least pork and beef.
+
+[15:32] Don't give me one that doesn't have pork and beef. But I'm assuming also lamb? What else? Rabbits? Uh rabbit, probably not so much.
+
+[15:42] Well, I guess because they're well, because no one uses the inner sides of a rabbit, right? No one's using rabbit offal. Not to my knowledge. Cappy barra? Probably scarcer.
+
+[15:52] Yeah. Uh it should give characteristics of the cut, how it's best used, uh, like i.e. what kind of dishes and how best to cook it, trying to learn the things of butcher would know without becoming a butcher and how to be a better informed meat consumer. All right. So uh this was a great question because it reminded me of a book that's no longer available that I I found had a lot of utility when it was around.
+
+[16:11] It's a book called How to Cook Meat by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby. And it basically Schlesinger, the grilling fire guy? Yeah. The uh the Cambridge restaurant guy. Yeah.
+
+[16:22] Um it is organized by type of cut and and cooking method. So you're looking at like big cuts of beef that need to be slow roasted or small cuts of meat that need to be pan-seered. So it is actually talking to you about how where the meat is coming from on the animal, what its characteristics are, and what that tells you about the method that you should use. And it covers meat, I mean it covers beef, it covers pork, uh, it covers lamb, I know. I don't have a copy of it on hand at the store right now.
+
+[16:55] I went running around looking for one in the basement uh yesterday. But um is it collectible or normal? It's normal. I mean, it's easily findable for like less than 20 bucks online. Right.
+
+[17:05] Um and it's uh but it's a I think it's organization for me is the great appeal. The recipes are fine. I mean, I used it back in the day, um, and I'm not not trying to slam them at all, but I think the real insight there was the way that it approached meat, and it let you feel like I understand why why this cut is being cooked in this in this method. What about coming at it from the other angle? Just people who use a lot of different cuts of meat and offal, like Fergus Henderson's work.
+
+[17:39] Well, I mean everybody likes Fergus's books, but they're not systematic at all in their approach to awful. They they showcase its use, but they don't say, you've got a spleen. Now here's what you do with it. Here's how you I mean, his books don't don't get in there and do that. And um books on awful don't tend to stay in print.
+
+[18:01] The American public isn't as enthusiastic about them as they might be. So Chris Casantino did a great book, uh Anisa Hulu did a great book on awful, but they've both had relatively short lives in print. And um, even people who are uh have high profile associations with meats, we'll say a couple of famous New York butchers or butcher shops. Their um their approach is really about recipes and less about technique. So I think there's a book out there to be written by somebody who has the skill in the background to sort of say, you know, what is this piece of flesh you have in front of you?
+
+[18:43] What do you know about it? Is it what are the fibers like? What is its fat content? Um, and then what does that tell you about what you can do with it? Started almost like an acting coach.
+
+[18:52] What is this piece of flesh? Uh yeah, all right. Um Payne MJ, book question. Uh probably impossible to answer, but don't know if they have uh indication of pre-orders uh or normal customers can't see, etc. i.e.
+
+[19:06] does Kitchen Arts and Letters know things that we don't? Uh Albert Adria and uh David Gill have released a book called Candy, which is in Spanish. Uh do the folks at Kitchen Arts and Letters have any idea if there will be an English translation? So um specifically about candy, I suspect that that's not gonna happen. Um those big Spanish uh publishing projects, if they happen in English at this point, they're usually happening simultaneously at publication time.
+
+[19:34] Um and a lot of the Spanish publishers aren't undertaking that work themselves. Um people like Montagu's still doing that, or not? Montague does that, but Montague's not the publisher of of candy. I believe it's uh Planeta. Um Planeta almost never does simultaneous publication.
+
+[19:50] Yeah. American and English publishers are not for the most part undertaking to translate big books from Spain. Um and then the other thing really working against candy is that the restaurants that it's associated with all close during the pandemic. So there's not a lot of excitement on behalf of a publisher for uh a dessert book from uh restaurants that aren't around anyway. But it's in Spanish, not in Catalan.
+
+[20:17] I've only seen it in Spanish. It's in Spanish. All right, and is it good? Um The Spanish speakers like it? Yes, there's a lot of interesting material in there.
+
+[20:26] It's it's overpublished, it's comes in a box, and there's a volume with the recipes, and there's a volume with the photographs, and it's I think it's unnecessarily um fancy for people who want to take it and and use it. It's it's it feels more like a souvenir for people who are at the restaurant. Uh and therefore even less reason for somebody to undertake translating it now. So a bit bloated. Uh extravagant.
+
+[20:54] Ah, celebratory, but luxurious. Yeah, not practical. All right. Uh all right. This one, I know I know that you're not gonna like this question.
+
+[21:03] So I'm gonna give it to you anyway, and then you can say what you think about this kind of question and what may be a question you would like to answer that's similar. All right. Koto wants to know, Matt, what are your all-time favorite food or beverage books? Um I get asked this question a lot. Uh and you know, my personal preferences are so widely different from what else is out there in the world.
+
+[21:30] Um the book that I have run through four copies of in 37 years. Uh, is Cucina Fresca, the Viana Laplace and Evan Kleiman book that came out in 1985. It's a really practical uh Italian-ish cooking book. Everything's meant to be served cold at room temperature. So that's smart.
+
+[21:55] It's great for parties. Um give me the give me the title again. Cucina fresca. All right. Still in print.
+
+[22:01] It's been around. I have you know worn out all my copies. And a lot of times I open the book up, I flip through it, I close it, and I go into the kitchen and I know what to do with it's what's in the refrigerator. So what, like vial tonato, that kind of stuff? That kind of stuff, yeah.
+
+[22:15] Um and I actually like that stuff. You like that stuff? I do. Yeah. I do.
+
+[22:19] It's I think it's great to have it on a cold day or a hot day. Um there's a salad in there. I mean, it's not really super traditional Italian. If there's a definite California spin on it, because that's where they were. Uh so Buggiali would have hated it.
+
+[22:33] Buggiali would have hated it, yeah. Yeah. Probably. But you know, Pugiali. Giuliano Buggiali.
+
+[22:41] He was uh quite a character and a brilliant man, but somewhat narrow in his uh approach to things. He always had a smile on his face when he insulted you, at least in my case. He never insulted me with a scowl. It was always with a smile. Well, you uh you got more attention from him than I did, so um so that Cucina Fresca to own and use, and then I think I've talked about this on on the show before for a reading book, uh a book called The Oysters of Loch Maria Kerr.
+
+[23:08] Uh yeah uh by Eleanor Clark, 1962 National Book Award winner. Um brilliant piece of writing about um an oystering village in France. It's partly a natural history, it's also a profile of a vanishing way of life. Um I've never had a true plate oyster, never had one, never had a real French, like old school oyster. Weird, right?
+
+[23:30] Well, people don't people don't like them typically, right? People who are grow used to our oysters here. There's a there is a difference. Yeah. I um I have to say I um I'm not even that much of an oyster fan.
+
+[23:41] I just like the writing in this book. John, what about you? You a Bellon guy? Are you are you French oyster in and out your face? Are you uh I like them, but it took me a little while to get to like them.
+
+[23:51] Yeah. What's your ultimate oyster? Well fleet. Ah, it's what's up, East Coast. Yeah.
+
+[23:58] Delicious. Yeah. I okay. I like I love I like a Well Fleet, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[24:02] You know what I don't like that everybody likes? I don't like my oysters to taste like watermelon and cucumbers. So or melon and cucumbers. So you know which oysters I don't like. They're the prettiest oysters.
+
+[24:11] Island Creek. No, the Kumamoto. I'm not a Kumamoto guy. I don't like Kumamoto. I mean, they're fine.
+
+[24:16] Yeah. They're fine. But they're not why you eat oysters. They're not why I eat oysters. Go east coast, baby.
+
+[24:22] Yeah. East Coast. And you know, might as well be the Cape if you're gonna do anything. Although I like I like a lot of East Coast oysters, right? Um anyway.
+
+[24:31] Uh interesting story about room temperature. Um, are you familiar with the pseudo Italian uh owned by a uh large company restaurant, Carmines? It does family style in the upper west side? I I am aware of them, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[24:47] So in nineteen ninety uh six, right? I was at Columbia grad school with my wife, and we went out to Carmines with Miley Carpenter, who, you know, now is big up in Hearst Publishing, but started the Food Network magazine, among other things. And the server comes and she says, We're serving the pasta with a room temperature sauce. And we were all like, that's the worst sounding thing I've ever heard. It's coming out room temperature.
+
+[25:22] The thing is, like, even if that's the actual temperature you want to serve it, you gotta come up with something better. Like, oh, what are you too lazy to either make it cold or hot? Or at least cut like there's gotta be a good word for room temperature sauce that doesn't make me like puke in my in my mouth a little bit. She's like room temperature sauce, we're all like right? Stas, you hate that, right?
+
+[25:40] Yeah, it's gross. Yeah. Ambient. Ambient. It sounds like ambient.
+
+[25:45] I don't know. Someone out there come up with an idea, let me know. All right. Patrick Chocone writes in, is Waverly Roots food an informal dictionary to be relied on for factual information, or should the information be treated as semi-mythological? And are there any other similar books to recommend with similar breadth of content and writing style?
+
+[26:04] It is fun to read, Root. Absolutely. He is an amazing storyteller. But he was the kind of guy that if you know, you went out drinking with him and you told him a great story about Kumamoto oysters. He would write that down and he would tell it to everybody else because he loved stories.
+
+[26:21] But he would never go out and check. Uh he was not a researcher. He was a gatherer of information. Uh so you have to keep that in mind. And keep in mind also that this was 1980.
+
+[26:31] So that's when that came out right before he died? Yeah. Yeah, it was very late. And um so food scholarship was very much an evolving field at that point. A lot of people didn't believe it should be taken seriously as a whole field of endeavor.
+
+[26:47] Right. And so I mean, Root was helping that along in some ways, but he wasn't investigating things. Right. But on the scale of liars, right? And I don't mean that in a negative way, or as Stas likes it when I say, I don't mean this in a pejorative way.
+
+[27:01] Yeah, it's a non-English speaker. Yeah, yeah. It was it was uh it's it wasn't a good terminology to use to someone who's not a native English speaker. Anyway, so uh like to me the the the highest culinary liar is George Herter from the Bulls Bull Cook book, yeah, or whatever that whatever the series is called. Every single thing the man says is fundamentally fabrication and cang tankerous, often offensive.
+
+[27:27] Great read. You know what I mean? It's hilarious. Yeah, he's the biggest liar. I mean, I don't know whether I can trust his information on how to uh stick my finger in a turtle's butt and get its head to poke out so I can chop it off.
+
+[27:39] I've never tested this. You know, the other technique for taking a turtle's head off is to put out a stick and the turtle will bite it, and then you can chop the turtle's head off, or his suggestions on how to survive a hydrogen bombing attack. I don't know if these are valid, but I know that almost every single food history that he gives is like way off base. You you don't trust a man who claims to have Chateaubriand's recipe for Chateaubriand. Yeah.
+
+[28:04] But the books are very interesting and they're not even collectible yet, right? They're still cheap. They're still fairly easy to find. I mean, he uh he self-published most of them and he uh he was pretty generous, I think, about seeding the world with them. So uh yeah, you just I mean you you almost sort of have to assume that whatever he tells you is absolutely the opposite of true.
+
+[28:26] Yeah. Uh some of the recipes work. I've tried some of them. Yeah, I've never done that. Somehow I was never called.
+
+[28:32] Yeah. But so so on the level of like that's the biggest liar, right? Uh, on down to just kind of your everyday, you know, most old cookbooks provide some sort of false histories of how things happen, but they're kind of, you know, middle of the road. Like root seems kind of in between those two, right? What like where would you where would you put it in terms of the lie scale?
+
+[28:57] Not the lie scale, the the tall story stale scale. I I would always, always seek to verify what I read in root. Um like I said, he he he it was for him, it was always about the story. It was, you know, the question asks, is it mythology? And and and I think in that sense of uh as he was looking for details that confirmed what he thought he knew about the character of a place.
+
+[29:26] I mean, it's true in his food of Italy and it's true in his food of France. He was trying to provide color and context um and in doing so in a way that made sense with everything else that he knew. Telling the truth of lies. Or telling telling things that he thought ought to be true. Right.
+
+[29:45] When he heard them. He's like, oh yeah, that fits. So I'm gonna tell that story. Uh so I mean, you can go out and find comprehensive reference works that I have think have more authority. I mean, the Oxford Companion to Food, uh that Alan Davidson edited, uh, I think is a much stronger resource.
+
+[30:02] Uh it What about what about his fish books? They have lots of good stories. I don't really think of them as a story. Like where they're from, because he went all over the world and collected information on all these fishes. Yeah, I think that's that's most true of the Southeast Asian book.
+
+[30:17] Yeah. I guess maybe that's the only one I have. Uh because that was, you know, he was he started writing that that when he was a British consular in Laos. Um you don't think that's a good read? I think it's a good read for a book on fish.
+
+[30:29] I have to go back and look. It's been a while. I I don't often have to consult it. So uh so what what should uh what should Patrick look for? If if they like Root, what should they look for?
+
+[30:40] Where should they go? So that reading quality uh is is hard to match, honestly. I mean let's be honest. There's a vast amount of information in that book. And if you go out and research it all, it's not gonna leave you time to write about it in the same way.
+
+[30:56] I mean, books like The Oxford Companion are researched and compiled by a bunch of different people, each of them writing within an area of specialization. But they're not chosen because they're necessarily great writers. So there is a a kind of dryness there. And I I don't know where there's a a point on the balance scale that says really charming to read, but comprehensive. Uh what about uh that guy uh what Rayman Raymond uh Olivet, right?
+
+[31:25] What's his name? Ran who wrote the that book on cooking. What was his name, Jean? Remember? We got his book?
+
+[31:31] French guy. Oh. Raymond Olivet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, not Olivier, Olivier.
+
+[31:35] Olive. Yeah. That's a good read. You read that one? Good.
+
+[31:39] Oh no, wow. I'll have to go back and look at it for that quote. Good reader. Good, good reading. Yeah.
+
+[31:45] Enjoyable. Even in translation. Is it um I have to try to remember it's but it's primarily about French. It doesn't extend beyond. No, no, no, no.
+
+[31:53] It's about not just French cuisine, but like his place in French cuisine. But at this point, that's an historical document. Yeah. Because, you know, he was big, I think, you know, he was a generation or two after Escoffier, but still like, you know, from that, you know, that era was still alive in his mind. You know, I think he I think he was most big at right after World War II, I want to say.
+
+[32:18] Um, but you know, that's an interesting period of French cooking when France was still considered on top of the world. They were, yeah, they were in a great position. They were in kind of a stall that people like Chappelle would come along and help get things started again. But there were people like Olivet who who were trying not to be self-satisfied and stuck in doing it this way because that is the way we have always done it. Um I think he uh he sort of he's on that.
+
+[32:58] He's sort of slightly froze post Fernand Point and uh yeah. I uh again, I wasn't expecting to talk about it. I didn't go look at the dates all that, but he is an old school French curmudgeon, which I appreciate. You know what I mean? He also read a couple of really charming books for kids.
+
+[33:14] Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah, didn't his daughter did something in the arts, I think. I can't remember. Look, I shouldn't say anything unless I look it up beforehand because like, you know, the memory goes goes out.
+
+[33:25] Memory goes, memory leaves you. Uh Warren Johnston, our friend with uh oh wait, yeah. Our friend, he is the one who gave us the the great Canadian cheesies. Right, Quinn, you like the cheesies. He's muted, but he does like the cheeses.
+
+[33:44] Oh yeah. Yeah. Pro cheesy, right? Very. Yeah.
+
+[33:51] If we ever get more, Matt, I'll see if you can get some tea. Although, like they'll do, you know, like you probably don't allow Cheetos anywhere near your uh bookstore because they're like a death, like uh death to the books. They do staining they do leave prints, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Warren writes, I'm working on some uh high alcohol, 80% uh by volume infusions for blending, uh making a vermouth product and trying to find the right ratio for some spices and barks.
+
+[34:17] I haven't found much solid writing about the best best practices for this. Do any books slash authors come to mind for this kind of thing, specifically ingredients, ingredients like Angelica, Oris, Coriander, Gentian, Casia, and Cardamom? Uh no. Um What about that book you recommended for me that the other guy bought out from underneath me? Remind me which book I which of the many books I sold out of the book.
+
+[34:38] The Italian the Italian Oh the Italian liqueurs? Yeah. So that's a book that has um uh lots of single examples of recipes that the author collected from different practitioners, but there is no statement of principles. Right. So he uh this is a slow food originated project.
+
+[34:57] He traveled around Italy collecting recipes from grandmothers. Uh so it's that sounds cool to me. It's a terrific repository, but is not systematic in its presentation of of anything. You could sit down and perhaps with some nice spreadsheets attempt to make some extrapolations. I know Warney is that kind of guy.
+
+[35:16] What's the name of that book? Italian liqueurs. All right. And do you remember the author's name? I can't remember.
+
+[35:14] First name is Renato. That's probably all you need. It's on our website. It's blue. Yeah.
+
+[35:27] Yeah. That I remember. I remember not buying it because I still and I still haven't finished my damn book, Matt. Well, and I still don't own that other book. Well, I won't say anybody was paying me not to sell you that book until you finished yours.
+
+[35:39] All right. All right. There are people who feel that way. I'm not saying I'm one of them. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[35:43] You're like, yeah, let me look. One book more or less. What does it matter? Mark Kay writes in, I'm looking for some information on mango varieties that describe locations where they grow, seasons when ripe, uh, and their taste. I am not interested, repeat, not interested in recipes.
+
+[36:00] Uh and Mango by uh Jen um Karetnik is mostly recipes and therefore not helpful for him. He's not saying it's not a good book, he's just saying not helpful. Right. Um, so I I did take him some time to look around about this. We have a book in the store called The Mango, uh, edited by a guy named Richard Litz, who is uh on the faculty of uh the Center for Tropical Agriculture at the University of Florida.
+
+[36:26] Uh it describes about 60 different cultivars from around the world. Um it sometimes discusses the taste, but it's not systematic in that way. Um it talks about their range, but not much beyond which countries they're coming from. I nothing I could find talked about seasonality, and I think because it probably varies so much from uh from location to location and climate. Right.
+
+[36:54] Um it might be the kind of thing where uh an ag school library might have better resources. But I think there are so many varieties of mangoes planted in so many places that you're really gonna want to work with somebody who um who's a horticulturist. Right. Well, um the US's mangoes are the our germ plasm for them is stored uh at the Fairchild in South Dade. And that's where the the USDA G R I N like germplasm is stored.
+
+[37:27] And on the USDA GRN GRN website, there they have it's their searching isn't actually as good as it used to be, but on their website is an exhaustive list of all of the hundreds and hundreds. I don't know if it's thousands, that's why I'm saying hundreds of hundreds, but it could be thousands for all I know, of mango cultivars they have with a story of how they were sessioned and where they originally came from, and some notes on the flavor and fibrousness uh of them. The former head of that program at the Fairchild uh was named uh Richard Campbell. Nastasi went and I went with Harold McGee down there and had a very disappointing rain-filled trip where they didn't let us eat all the mangoes that they had sworn on a stack of Bibles that are gonna let us eat. Remember that, Stas?
+
+[38:07] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was fun is this. So it I forget her name, but the lady who was like at the center that day, they were getting ready for their yearly mango festival.
+
+[38:19] And listen, once the mangoes drop on the ground, then they're overripe. Okay? So the mangoes drop on the ground, they're overripe. The lady goes, You can't pick mangoes off the tree. Remember this, Stas?
+
+[38:30] Yes. And then so we're like, fine. So we pick them, the ones that look like they just fell. And then we're sitting there, Harold and Nastasi and I, and we're taking tasting notes. Her friend Claire is watching my my kids outside.
+
+[38:41] They're running around in the rain getting soaked, right? So we're taking tasting notes, and the lady's like, your tasting notes are inaccurate because you're eating overripe mangoes. If I could have pushed a button, if she had a shock collar on, she would have gotten zapped so hard. You know what I mean? But uh Richard Campbell has since left.
+
+[38:59] He left in 2017, I think he left the Fairchild. But when he was there, along with uh uh Norris Ledesma, who's another great researcher in mangoes, they traveled the world tasting mangoes, taking the seeds back and growing them. Uh Tropical Mangoes growing the world's most delicious fruit. I think I don't own a copy of it, and I looked it up on the web before I came, and it's in the 250 dollar range. So I would um interlibrary loan it.
+
+[39:25] The bookstore at the spice uh fruit and spice park in uh South Dade, it has books that they bought when they were new, and they don't change the prices based on their value, and nobody buys them. And so I actually bought my, you know, the Fruits of Brazil, that blue book. Oh, yeah. I bought it from them for, you know, whatever its original cover price was, not the infinity that people charge for it now. Um so I would look, it's actually interesting.
+
+[39:52] Botanical places sometimes buy things right when they're printed and then never sell them. Like I found some cool stuff at the New York Botanical Garden gift shop. Uh that's a great shop. Yeah. Oh, I love yeah, yeah, yeah, great shop.
+
+[40:03] Anyway, so uh look at look at the uh ARS-G-R-I-N.gov website for mangoes. Uh, and you know, get there. And that's actually when we went to the um Geneva Agricultural Extension for Apples. I printed out all of the apple varieties and pictures with tasting notes and when they were, you know, uh from the USDA G R N website. So it's not easy to use, but it is useful.
+
+[40:28] Anyway. Uh Dr. Killfork. What do you have against forks, Doctor? What do you have?
+
+[40:35] Because that can't be a real name, right? I would suspect it's not. Yeah. Uh it would be cool. Like what Stas, what specialty do you think a Dr.
+
+[40:44] Killfork would would uh be in? I don't know. Oh no. Yeah. Gastroenterologist.
+
+[40:53] Maybe, right? Yeah. Uh not exactly a question. Okay, you ready for this? Not exactly a question.
+
+[41:00] I can't stand Fiden books. Something about the layout they use for recipes makes me irrationally upset. Am I missing something? Does anyone prefer this layout? So I understand uh being irrationally upset.
+
+[41:14] Uh I um I have to give a lot of props to Fiden for their coverage and their willingness to publish people who are being overlooked by just about anybody else. But uh formatting is is uh I think for them often a reflexive choice based on their history as an art pup book publisher, and they have uh a design aesthetic and a style that arises from that and that's assumes that having all the photographs of the plated food at the front and the recipes at the back is sort of like having you know photographs of all the botticelli pieces in the world and then scholarly notes at the back. I don't like that either though. Uh well I I can certainly understand that. I find it frustrating.
+
+[42:02] It may help them save on paper costs. I mean, Fiden often works in relatively small print runs, so they're trying to keep their costs down. But it makes me nuts. Um as a user of a book. Uh I certainly understand that frustration because you're like, what is that thing right there?
+
+[42:17] Why what you know, why is it what is that? Why is it that color? Why does it have that texture? And obviously, reading the recipe should give you a lot of clues to that, but if you're flipping back and forth, it's it's frustrating. Yeah.
+
+[42:31] Um I have lots of conversations with lots of publishers about the way they they publish things, and my conversations with Fiden about about format are some of my longest running. Speaking of layout problems, about 18 or 19 years ago, uh Kitchen Arts and Letters sold me a book called Pigs of the World, Pig Breeds of the World. Is has anyone done a better version of that? Because all the pictures there, you have to line up the picture with uh an outline of the pig and then take the number of the pig and go down to see what the pig was. Is that have they ever redone that?
+
+[43:00] Uh I have not seen anything, anything more like that. Yale did a book um on endangered breeds. Um that I think is better formatted, but it's not solely pigs. Yeah. Remember that book?
+
+[43:14] Pigs of the world. Wasn't it called Pig Pig Varieties of the World? There was only one book on it. You had it, I bought it. I'm I'm remembering actually a couple of different books.
+
+[43:24] This was When I was doing the country ham research, and I came in and I bought everything that was available on Country Ham and Curing. Is this a small square paperback? Uh it was hard. No, it was hard, and it was about yay. Uh and it was not, yeah.
+
+[43:38] I'll I'll find it again. I did buy it at Kitchen Arsenal Letters, though. Yeah, that I remember. Uh speaking of that, uh Peter Pag writes in, I should very much like to ask Matt if there's a definitive work on the production of country ham, both in historical perspective, but also and more importantly, uh technical guide to the production of the ham. So um two different questions there, and in a lot of cases, uh sort of speaking to two different sets of author qualifications.
+
+[44:03] So um you probably remember Gene Voltz's book on on the on country ham, which I think is a reasonable historical spin. It's late 90s, right? Late 90s. If you're looking at American country ham, if you're thinking about country ham as a broader sense of that particular style uh of ham making, it's you know, but nobody was back then. No.
+
+[44:26] I mean, she sort of briefly connects the dots and says I mean to 2004, the whole reason we you know what the whole first thing at the Museum of Food and Drink was basically drawing the exact parallel between European hams and American country hams. Yeah, she does it like a paragraph in that book. Yeah. Um but most of the rest of the book is about using country ham. It doesn't really have any serious approach to to production.
+
+[44:50] Um if I were to sit down and start trying to make country ham myself, there's a book called Home Production of Quality Meat and Sausages by Adam and Stanley Mariansky, which is a 700-page uh meat geek guide, very technical, um, that I think has the most uh specific information on uh on what to do in making a country ham. It has a little sidebar interview with Alan Benton. Um the and it talks about When was that from? Like 2010. Yeah.
+
+[45:31] 2010. Um, you know, but if you're hoping to find a 700 page book devoted to country Ham making, I don't know it. I mean, I think such a book could be written, but um Do you guys have uh Norman Marriott's book? I don't think so. So the Ultimate Guide to Country Ham came out relatively, I'm gonna want to say in the early, early, early 2000s.
+
+[45:56] So it was before 2005 or six. Norman Marriott, even at that time was emeritus at Virginia Tech in their ag department. And he was uh he was a meat safety expert. So he wrote a book on country ham, someone else was in it, in which he goes through the entire cure process. He is focused on home curing, so it's not the same.
+
+[46:18] I don't know whether Peter wants to do mass curing. So, like if you're mass curing, you know, they're putting the salt down and they're typically laying hams in salt like one after the other, whereas a place like Finchville, strangely, does bag cures where you're putting the same amount of s a certain amount of salt in a bag and carrying it in a bag. And a memory serves because I I couldn't find it this morning when I look for it, but um the ultimate guide to country ham, Marriott's book uh advocates a bag cure. Um it, you know, he is a part of you know what American Country Ham was at, you know, at that point in time. So before, you know, the revolution in in pig breeds that has you know gone through, I think people who were pushing that early were um Sam Edwards from Edwards uh Country Ham, or uh, you know, then later uh Nancy Mahaffey at Newsom's, you know, who at that time were both of them making some of the best country hams uh in the country.
+
+[47:12] Uh but you could take a look at that. Um the other thing is, is that uh on history of specific producers, uh, you know, like I say, the very first thing that we ever did at the museum was on Country Ham somewhere. Those documents aren't linkable off of the on the cooking issues blog is some of it, and you can find some of that from 04, although it wasn't posted on the blog until 07. And I did write an article with a lot of uh references to go to and some history of individual producers for food arts in I want to say 2005. Uh but yeah, there needed to be more worked on it, you know?
+
+[47:49] It's I that's true of so many different fields uh in which the There's so much more room for depth. Yeah. Uh and you don't really realize how much isn't there until you start looking for it. I mean, before I went to the French Culinary Institute, I was the country ham guy. Like I went and spoke to the you know, Country Ham Producers Association, and like, you know, I was uh Dave Chang's ham consultant when he opened Som and you know, even you know brought some with back.
+
+[48:17] Remember Bar American when Bobby Flay opened that? Oh yeah. Yeah. I brought I brought some hams over for him to test out because I was a early, early advocate for slicing it, um, not cooking it and slicing it and serving it like you would a European ham. So I'm glad to say people do that uh because it's delicious.
+
+[48:40] Uh health inspector Deck wants to know, Matt, regarding your business, do you ever have a conflict between a brain choice and a heart choice? And what would that mean in your case? Uh well, I mean, I think the examples that came to me is like, you know, am I gonna carry this book that I find is unoriginal and uh driven by uh sort of social media marketing rather than or you know serious content. Um I generally decide to do it because of the amount of time I could otherwise spend telling people, I'm sorry, no, we don't have that. I'm sorry, no, we don't have that.
+
+[49:23] Um so I'm not gonna name names here as much as I sometimes tempted to, but I mean publishing is a business that succeeds financially on the basis of mass sales of a few books that uh generate a lot of money for everybody involved, and then it allows other smaller, uh more niche things to be published with a chance to be profitable, but it all depends on some things really taking off. So some of the things that really take off are not important to me, and there are some things that we don't carry. Like if some famous television medical show person who might be like running for government office, say were to write a cookbook, um, I would find that pretty um uninteresting uh or somewhere maybe closer to odious. Yeah. Uh and I probably would not carry that.
+
+[50:24] Well, here's okay, let me uh let me follow on this. So one, I never assumed that you guys carrying a book included a tacit endorsement because I would always just ask you what you thought of a book. And by the way, this is true. If you go into Kitchen Arts and Letters and ask their opinion of a book, they will give you their honest opinion. Okay.
+
+[50:44] That's just a true story. So I never assumed that the book's physical presence in the store was a tacit endorsement of the book. But hearing you say that, in a way, it kind of is. And so now I'm like, well, if somebody's actually harming food and/or America andor they're evil, what happens to the books? Like, like, is that decision and is and is that a different decision now than it would have been, let's say, 10 years ago.
+
+[51:10] Um we do ask a lot of questions like that, and we don't always have easy, clear answers to them. I uh we don't, and this is a something that Nock Waxman put in place and that I've been happy to run with, we don't carry books that make like medical claims that aren't immediately verified. So if somebody comes in and says, is this book gluten-free? Sure, I can open the book and look at the recipes and say, Oh, yeah, there are there is no gluten in these ingredients. Um somebody says, is this going to cure my arthritis?
+
+[51:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't, you know, I can't even come close to verifying that. And I just don't want to be um involved in doing that. So uh we do stay away from things like that for the sheer logistical uh simplicity. Um I'm not coming to Kitchen Arts and Letters for my heart health diet book.
+
+[52:01] If, you know, like we'll keep a couple of things around that like if your doctor tells you you need to follow the Dash diet, which is something that happens to a lot of people who are uh experiencing heart problems. They're gonna follow the recipe, they're gonna follow that diet, so they might as well have a book that helps them follow that diet. Right. So we'll have a few things like that. It's not gonna be something where we go really deep.
+
+[52:20] Uh, but if it's there's somebody who's out there saying, you know, uh if you stir everything counterclockwise, it acidifies your food and denatures the bad proteins in your brain that give you mad cow disease. That's not true. I don't think so. No, no verification. But I mean, there are books out there that that that make these sort of grand assertions, and and I just I don't really want anything to do with them.
+
+[52:48] Um they're not really about food when it comes down to it, they're about some sort of mystical solve my problem without my doing any work kind of approach to to lifestyle. And how how many of the dump meal series do you have at Kitchen Arts and Letters? Dump Mule? Yeah, yeah. Um none.
+
+[53:12] No, none of the dump meals, huh? No, sorry, no dump meals. Maybe uh did we ever buy them, Stas? We bought them for your sister, right? She bought one, yeah.
+
+[53:19] For and did she did she keep it? We didn't even want it back, right? I think she kept it. Remember, she hung up on you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[53:25] Yeah. Well, I didn't find that she was giving us the data we necessarily needed to have a thorough review of the dump meal. Yeah. Maybe we should get some copies of the dump meal series. It's like the boxcar kids, but dump meals, and uh send them off to Kitchen Arts and Letters and get get Matt's considered opinion on the dump meal.
+
+[53:45] Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, all right, all right. Well, again.
+
+[53:49] I thought you were nice people. Huh. You don't have to say anything negative. You know, you know, uh look, here's the thing, right? There is a place for just throwing everything into a pot and having it go.
+
+[54:01] They I just can't believe that people I just the word dump and meal together. Understood. Yeah, it just doesn't. It says it's also in the wrong order. It's nothing, it's like it's no, it's not yeah, it's just not the way, not the way it uh it should work.
+
+[54:15] I do have a piece of advice. Uh my friend Phil rented a car to come out. Did he tell you this? No, Phil Bravo. Yeah, and he uh aka the Grinch.
+
+[54:26] For those of you that know he's the guy who can sing the Grinch with a super low voice. And he always goes online and finds those like corporate codes that you can put in so that the car becomes half the price for the rental. Right. So he did one for the like he'd use the corporate code for the Bank of Idaho. Okay.
+
+[54:41] And he got to the Avis or whatever, and they're like, we need to see like a contract or your ID for the Bank of Idaho. And instead of just being like, all right, fine, I'll just pay the whatever, he went to uh Staples, drew up a contract for the Bank of Idaho. Oh my God. Brought it back. Isn't that insane?
+
+[54:58] PS. PS. PS. Phil Bravo. We can find him somewhere on one of the things like you know, Quinn, you you you're good at this.
+
+[55:04] We'll find some Phil Bravo. Man has a golden voice. Instead of saving a nickel on his Avis, why doesn't he become more of a voice actor? I think it's a principal thing at at that point, you know? But I it's a principle?
+
+[55:18] I have to rip them off. I have to get something I'm not entitled to. It's the principle of it. But don't do it because I've tried doing it. Phil, have you even been to Idaho?
+
+[55:28] No, it's the principle of it. Makes no sense. Crazy. Makes no makes no sense. Uh speaking of it's the principle.
+
+[55:35] Feel free to not answer this. What about uh what about people who write books and turns out they're evil? There are a lot of people out there who are evil and write books. Um there are people out there who are evil whose evilness isn't necessarily known. So my approach to books is um, what does the book do?
+
+[56:01] Right. Um if somebody is evil in the way that they say treat the staff in their restaurant and they write a book on staff management, phooey. Right. Uh if they're evil to their staff in their restaurant and they write a book on, you know, uh chocolate milkshakes, um, then uh, you know, I don't see necessarily that there's a problem with it. But if there are 17 other books on chocolate milkshakes, am I more likely to, you know, order the book by somebody who really is a great chocolate milkshake?
+
+[56:38] Are there any books on chocolate milkshakes? Not at the moment, no. Are there any books on milkshakes that uh are about pie, pie, pie sliced milkshakes? Not to my knowledge. You know, I've never had one of those.
+
+[56:49] Have you ever had one? No. Uh I forget exactly where in the country it is, but they're like, you make you order a milkshake and they're like, what kind of pie you want and that? And then they throw a slice of pie into the blender, but I forget where exactly it is. That's just wrong.
+
+[57:04] Because I think the point of pie is to have great crust with a little bit of fruit in it. And if you mix it in on the ice cream now, it's it's it's I think you're you've defeated the point of the pie. Interesting. Uh do you like uh Sicilian starch-based uh gelato? I don't think I've had any.
+
+[57:25] What about you, Quinn? You like that starch based stuff? Uh I've never had it or made it, really. Starch it up, people. Let's get some starch into our ice cream and then we'll we'll come back and we'll talk.
+
+[57:37] Uh David Steinberg, I love Buddhist Chinese restaurants and very interested in learning how to prepare uh Satan like they do. Uh the EI, not A T, not Satan, the the you know, dark lord. But uh okay. Mine never tastes as good. Uh do you know any cookbooks that teach this?
+
+[57:53] Uh on another plane, do you think these restaurants make their own Satan or do you think it is purchased in bulk from who knows where and simply prepared in the restaurant? We still have two minutes. Don't worry when it comes on. Don't know any um any sort of great Satan equivalents of like the the William Shirtliff books on tofu and Miso. I mean it would be great if there were.
+
+[58:11] Well, is he not a weak guy? He's yeah, he's definitely a soy guy. Um so I I haven't seen any sort of great magisterial work on on Saitan. Um whether, you know how Chinese restaurants operate and get their Setana is uh outside the scope of my uh my experience and all. Old, uh interestingly old school uh books uh from like the home economics golden age and the baking professional baking golden age, you know, Jago and Jago, Jago, the the bread making goose.
+
+[58:46] A lot of these early books go through the preparation of gluten as a scientific exercise in rather interesting ways, talking about different flowers to use to get the gluten, how to wash it, experiments to do things to do with the starch. And there was somebody recently who did a big series of blog posts on preparing their own, but I can't remember who she was, the Satan, and then using the starch afterwards as as uh as it comes out, but I'll try to remember for next time. Um all right, Kevin Brogel, how about the Proto Julia Child uh um Diane Lucas and the Gourmet Cooking School cookbook? How about it? Um solid book, but I mean I think what happened with Mastering Art of French Cooking when it came along was that it it sort of uh completely took the writing about French cooking instruction to another level.
+
+[59:30] Uh Dione Lucas, you know, she went to the Courton Blue. She was the first female graduate of that school. Uh child went there later. Um but it's a good book, but I don't know that there's any particular reason to pursue those books except as historical artifacts. All right.
+
+[59:48] And Jeremy Beals wanted to know if there's any Italian oil-style Calabrian pickle books you didn't know any, right? I I went around looking for that. I couldn't find any now. All right. And last, on the way out in five seconds, and we thank you for coming on.
+
+[1:00:00] What is the holy grail of cookbooks? I saw that question. Um I don't know what the answer to that is because it's so uh so it depends on who's looking. No one holy grail. That's the thing about the holy grail.
+
+[1:00:13] There's only one. Yeah, that's that's what makes it impossible to answer that question. I mean, uh uh right now there are lots of people who will froth at the mouth over copies of uh Pascal Borbeau's Estrance, which is hard to find and expensive. Um but there are gonna be other people who it leaves cold, and uh holy grail should like be meaningful to everybody who's concerned, and I can't I can't name that book. All right, well, for Neil's sake, and I know we're running late.
+
+[1:00:44] What's the most expensive cookbook Kitchen Arts and Letters has ever sold, even if you don't think it's worth the money necessarily? Uh we have a uh copy of the Physiology of Taste that was illustrated by Wayne Tebow, uh the who just passed away last year. Beautiful illustrations. It was a copy of the Fisher translation. Uh 200 copies made by Orion Press of San Francisco in the early 90s.
+
+[1:01:07] Um they come with Tebow lithographs bound inside. Uh what'll that what a cop what'll a copy of that run you? About 12 and a half thousand dollars. Ooh, all right. That's some money.
+
+[1:01:18] That's some real money in a cookbook. How about that, Neil? Go look for that one. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to most of you pre-recorded from uh the heart of New York City, Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios. Joined as usual with Nastasi De Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good.
+
+[0:24] Yeah? I ate dinner at John's restaurant last night. We're doing this show on a Friday because next week I'm gonna be uh in Maine, and the week after that, uh, I'm gonna be doing the Harvard science of cooking thing. So if you're in Boston two weeks uh from uh Monday, right? Two weeks from Monday?
+
+[0:43] No, a week from next Monday. Whatever that date is. I'm not so good with the with dates and figures and stuff. Yeah. Then uh you can come to the public lecture in Boston.
+
+[0:52] Yeah, bring uh bring. Listen, it's too late to start storing eggs now. If you leave an egg out now, it will not rot by the time I have my unless you unless you're the kind of person there was a guy named Todd I went to uh high school with, and two months in advance of Halloween, he would start storing eggs under his uh under his bed in the hope that they would get rotten and he could throw them at people like me as I pass by. I don't know. What do you think?
+
+[1:19] What do you think, Joe? You you uh know any you know any egg throwers? Um I knew a couple egg throwers back in the day. Yeah. Um I wasn't one of them.
+
+[1:27] I preferred the toilet paper. Really? Yeah. Okay. More crafty and you know, looks way prettier.
+
+[1:33] Like literally crafty. Yeah. Yeah. I've never TP'd. I've never TP'd anyone.
+
+[1:40] Neither have I thrown an egg at somebody's house. I have thrown an egg at somebody's person. I've never thrown an egg at somebody's car, and I've never thrown an egg at somebody's house. I have thrown eggs at humans. Anyway, uh, let's bring in uh the other three people into the conversation.
+
+[1:56] Uh uh, how are you doing, John? Doing good. Yeah? You rudely cut Nastasia off though when she was telling an awesome story about what she did last night. Yeah, he's like, I you don't talk enough.
+
+[1:59] And I'm like, I have a story. And then you're like, I'm gonna be at Harvard. All right, well, all right. Well, we also have we also I'm gonna get back to that story, but I'm gonna introduce I'm gonna introduce Jack and I'm gonna introduce Quinn first. Hey Quinn, how are you doing?
+
+[2:18] We got Quinn rocking uh rocking up there in uh Vancouver. Yeah, yeah? Quinn's got a new microphone, people. Yeah, super crisp microphone. He's got the uh professional microphone.
+
+[2:28] Microphone uh, you know, better than the one I have at home. Nice, nice. Sounds good. Yeah. And uh Jack, we got you uh in Los Angeles.
+
+[2:36] Yes, sir. Sweet. I also have never TP'd anybody or thrown eggs at the house before, by the way. But what about at people? No, well, I don't know why you throw an eggs at people, but that was that never even came into my mind.
+
+[2:49] No. Really? You've never thought of throwing an egg at a pool. No. Well, Nastasia introduced me to the friendly Easter egg Cascara.
+
+[3:00] So Sastas, why don't you talk about the those and whatever you were doing? Well, I'm assuming you were gonna talk because I was gonna ask you separately about uh the restaurant you went to last night, but you actually didn't really start launching into that story until it was too late, but fine. What? We'll go back, we'll listen to the video tape. We'll go back to the video tape.
+
+[3:15] But I had it on my agenda for you to talk about your restaurant meal uh last night. So why don't you go ahead and talk about it? It was great. It was really the I have to say, John Where'd you go? I went to John's restaurant, which I had said.
+
+[3:27] Um uh the pasta was cooked perfectly. That was that was the highlight of the night. The pasta, which was dried pasta. Can I say what brand it is or no? Okay.
+
+[3:38] He uses De Checo, which is the best. It's just the best. And everyone needs to. You're you're you're pro Jecco in general? Yeah.
+
+[3:46] Yeah. So you think people who hate on it because it's uh such a big brand are morons, right? That's what what I'm hearing from you? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[3:52] I think it's truly the best. Like there are some great dried Italian pastas which are maybe better, but like, why you know? Just Ducheco. But it was amazing. It was like Mezza Regatoni, right?
+
+[4:05] Yep. So what you're saying is you don't feel that there's a need to overspend on pasta because it's only gonna be marginally better or marginally worse than the checkout. Do you think so, John? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[4:16] Uh now, for those who have never had pasta from you or with you, Nastasia, what is perfect pasta in your in your mind? Uh not hard al dente, but like a little bit. So if if I were to take a if I were to take a bite out of the pasta and then take a magnifying glass to it. See a tiny little teeny. Of white.
+
+[4:45] Okay. Yeah. So you like it. Yeah. Like there's yeah.
+
+[4:51] Yeah. If it's harder, fine. But like the perfection is like origin at it. Yeah. All right, wait.
+
+[4:56] So so what about what about when what about when the the what do you what do you call it? The nerve, right? On the inside of the pasta, the white, the white, the whisper of white. What if that when it gets a little bit too thick and then you can feel the thing go chunk when you bite into it? Yeah, I don't like that.
+
+[5:13] And then it gets stuck in your molars and everything. Yeah, I mean, that's not great. Yeah. But it's better. I think that's better than overdone.
+
+[5:19] Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
+
+[5:22] Well, uh, let me ask this. Uh, how do you feel? Okay. So let's just say somebody, they get uh so you know how everyone now is into the small amount of water, McGillo, right? Everyone's lowering their water content when they're boiling, right?
+
+[5:36] You guys familiar with this argument? No. No. Right? That you don't need a giant pot of boiling water, right?
+
+[5:41] Everyone's familiar now. Now we're on the same page. Whether you cook that way or not, you're familiar with the argument, right? And that a lot of studies have been shown that in fact that's true. That you know, you don't need a sh a crap ton of water to cook pasta, right?
+
+[5:55] Okay, stipulated. However, how about this? I'm gonna try to trigger you a little bit. You pour the pasta in and you don't have a lot of water, and you don't stir it enough before it comes starts coming back to the boil, and you have that one clump of pasta that doesn't cook at the same rate as the rest of the pasta, and then half of the crap is overcooked and then half is too raw. Terrible.
+
+[6:22] What do you think? But how many times has that happened when you've gone out, not to a restaurant usually, but because they're doing it in giant vats and finishing it off. But I mean, like at somebody's house, how many times does that happen to you? Zero? That's never happened to you.
+
+[6:36] You've never gotten pasta where where they're doing. Like maybe like at home when I was a kid. And it's ranking on your mom. So hard. Not all moms have to be in the kitchen.
+
+[6:47] It was actually my dad. Oh, well, that's interesting that you try to make it that way because all the stories you talk about cooking are from your mom cooking. That's not true. What about the peppers? Yeah, that's one story that you have focused on.
+
+[7:00] What about what about the what about the lemongrass? Every story you tell is about your mom cooking. And now all of a sudden I'm a bad guy. Lemongrass I don't like because it grew in the backyard and I would just smell it all day long. Yeah.
+
+[7:11] Every time you have something to say, you say something negative about your mom's cooking, and then this time you're like, it was my dad and you're being my dad. My dad made lemon cello, remember that? Yeah, that's you know, I don't know, that's more of a liquor, but okay. All right. So you're saying your dad can't cook pasta straight.
+
+[7:27] My dad doesn't do like that kind of stove cooking, no. Like he he's not a fan of stove cooking. Okay. So does he grill? Now, now now who's uh going back to stereotypical roles.
+
+[7:45] Men grill and women use a stove. Says Nastasia Lopez. Yeah, all right. Listen, if anyone happens to be, I hope they're not, but if anybody happens to be listening uh on the Patreon, all access pass, you can call in your questions to 917-410-1507. This is live on Patreon?
+
+[8:05] I believe it is. 917-410-1507. If they're watching the YouTube, they uh they they can get it. Isn't that right, Quinn? Yeah, all all access and VIP members.
+
+[8:16] So a smaller subset than usual. All access sounds gross for real. Like it's just gross. I don't know. Well, that was before my time.
+
+[8:26] So speaking of all access, Nastasia, did uh did you guys get uh backstage at the Robert Plant concert? Oh god, no. Did you make it into the Robert Plant concert at all? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were we were yeah, we tried really hard.
+
+[8:44] And yeah, we I mean, how hard? Like real hard. Okay. Who's that? Robert Plant and was he by himself?
+
+[8:50] No, it's Josiah Twain? No, what's her name? Allison Krauss. Oh, those are that record's actually really good. It's really, yeah, I was surprised.
+
+[8:59] He sounds so good. And then he did a couple Led Zeppelin songs, and I was like, why don't you just do that? Like you know. It's not. No, no, no, no.
+
+[9:09] You hate it when people are like that though. No, no, no. I just do it a hits. No, no, no. I think he and she sang with him and on the Led Zeppelin songs, and it was amazing.
+
+[9:20] Even songs that I don't care about, like that Zeppelin songs. Can he still hit the notes? Yes. It's so it's chilling. It's really good.
+
+[9:28] And then what's his name was there? That's how we almost got backstage. Um the big Lebowski. What's his name? Uh Bridge.
+
+[9:35] Bridges, yeah. He was in a robe and slippers. So wait, so you have a hookup with him. You have a hookup with Bridges? Because I know someone who's Ruben.
+
+[9:47] Anyway. Yeah, my friend is. Yeah. Yeah. I've met I met his uh I met his uh spy consultant for that uh old man.
+
+[9:59] Who's an interesting cat? I bet. Interesting cat. Um, all right. Anything else you guys want to bring up before we get into theoretically talking about uh food?
+
+[10:10] I think we're good. And or how's your making your own mayonnaise going so far, John? Good. It's fine. Not a problem.
+
+[10:21] By the way. Yeah. That was the uh that was the YouTube highlight this week. Oh, the uh the mayonnaise rant. Yeah.
+
+[10:28] Hey, speaking of rants, speaking of rants, so the Ninja corporation has finally not finally the Ninja corporation has sent a creamy. We all know how I feel about the name of their of this product. It's it's the Paco Jet patent has run out, right? That's what it basically is. Hey folks, the patent for the Paco Jet has run out.
+
+[10:50] Let's make one that people can afford. And by all accounts, like it's it's affordable. I mean, for a pocket, so it's it's less than it's one tenth the cost of a Paco Jet. That's like not like ten percent less. One tenth an order of magnitude cheaper.
+
+[11:05] Who staged this photo closer to like five percent? What do you say? Yeah, I know. It's it's it's closer to five percent. Isn't that true?
+
+[11:14] Isn't it 300 bucks? Isn't a Paco Jet still three grand? I thought it was like six grand. Uh used to be a big one. Uh I don't know.
+
+[11:23] Used to be three grand, whatever. All I'm saying is is that Paco Jet ain't cheap. So uh they I don't know that Quinn, you haven't had a chance to test it yet, but we're gonna do we're gonna do a creamy based episode wherein, you know, Quinn talks about his experience with the creamy. And then, you know, I'll ask him various questions about creamy versus Paco Jet. I have comments on the recipe book, but we can save that.
+
+[11:46] Are they positive comments or negative comments? Uh well, about the gelato specifically, but I could save it. Well, hold on. Uh can I just say this, Quinn? Because we haven't done any kind of recipe testing together uh as as a whole group yet.
+
+[12:02] I highly encourage you to just make their recipe as well to see whether it works in their equipment to see whether or not they have made a recipe that works well in their equipment. You see what I'm saying? And then if you actually made their recipe to the letter, then you have a much better place from which to lob criticism at. Does that make sense? It's not a criticism, it's just more that their gelato recipes are definitely not gelato.
+
+[12:30] They're frozen custard. Okay. Well, the question is do they taste good though? They're gonna call it. I'm sure they're delicious.
+
+[12:39] All right. I'm sure they're delicious. All right. Well, I wouldn't want to mess with uh, I wouldn't want to mess with Quinn with your uh so let's let's have this out now because they they are somewhat plastic definitions. I remember you had this, uh we had this conversation when you came on uh a year or so ago when the when you did uh the original book.
+
+[12:57] So what's your main what's your main thing that makes something gelato or not? Is it the overrun? Is it the presence of stabilizers? Is it uh lower lower egg bays or what? I mean it's it's it can be uh a combination of things.
+
+[13:13] I would say again, sort of a range of sweetness and fat content, as well as the final texture. And the final texture is a combination of overrun and stabilizers. So for you, what makes so in other words, like an actual frozen custard, right? Not like like American style like creme anglaise-based ice cream, but an actual extreme low overrun frozen custard like you'd get out of a Ross or Stolting custard freezer, like from a frozen custard house. Very low overrun.
+
+[13:48] So, what would be the difference between that and the gelato in your in your in your book? Well, again, in my book, I have a custard flavor where that is sort of like the intentional taste. But otherwise, I would say a gelato is sort of agnostic as to the presence of eggs. And I think most flavors are better without eggs. Okay, but so what I'm getting what I'm what I'm I'm trying to figure out.
+
+[14:24] So for you that for you, the custard, what what you're calling this recipe that's not a gelato, it's not a bright line as to what goes into it, but the actual just result comes out. You taste it, you're like, no, not gelato. That is that where I'm is that what you how your definition of. The fact went that's way too high. Ah, I see.
+
+[14:44] Okay. All right. Uh I have to say I love frozen custard. I've always wanted to own a frozen custard machine because it's the only small continuous freezer that exists. It's got like almost a zero freeze time.
+
+[15:00] It works like a continuous freezer. And then it comes out of the front like a little like weird, like, like uh, what's the shape? Like an ellipse, like a like an like and then into the thing. It's just base in custard out, base in custard out. Oh my god.
+
+[15:16] Low overrun. Uh now I'm thinking also about how much I like Carvel ice cream, and I'm thinking about when we had the the fudgy inventor on. Yeah. Yeah. That's neat.
+
+[15:27] Yeah. I wish we could have her in person. That was pandemic days, though. Yeah. Anyway, someday.
+
+[15:32] All right. So uh ask uh ask your creamy questions, because uh Quinn is gonna try some creamy things out. He's gonna can't believe it. Can you imagine, Stas, if we were sitting around, that's the kind of thing that we would call that in as a joke. As a joke, and then someone would be like, no, we're it's a creamy now.
+
+[15:50] We're like, no, no, no, no. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[15:56] I mean, we've done dumber. They've done dumber. You know, whatever. You know what we should do, Dave? Oh, well, that's the thing we talked about when I was in LA.
+
+[16:03] An event in LA. Okay. All right. I mean, you know. Yeah, we gotta make it make it happen.
+
+[16:11] Uh schedule is always I had one more creamy, I had one more creamy situation, but I forget, I forget what it was. Some some sort of creamy comment. Oh, yeah. Uh, Patreon members, we're gonna have a discount to purchase the creamy. Is that true, Quinn?
+
+[16:27] Uh yeah, we are I have the discount code ready, or more of a yeah, discount code. So yeah, I will figure that out and post it maybe next week. And so uh what are they what are they gonna what are they what are they gonna what are they gonna what are they gonna give off? What are they how what percentage are they gonna give us? I believe it's uh 10%.
+
+[16:46] 10. Okay. So off $300, that's $30. So so basically you can make money. If you're gonna get a creamy anyway, you could join the Patreon, get the discount, make some cash.
+
+[16:56] We make some cash, you make some cash, you have a creamy, have a creamy day, right? Anyway, speaking of creamy, when is Nick uh Coleman coming on? Ooh. Greasy creamy. So I was talking to Mark Ladner at Nastasia's party, uh, along with our greasy greasy friend Nick Coleman, the olive oil uh master from uh uh what's it called, Grove and Vine.
+
+[17:16] And I asked um Mark how the old uh at Oto, how the old uh um gelato used to work because they you know they the olive oil gelato was the big flavor there. Remember that, Stas? No, but really yeah, that was the big flavor, is their olive oil gelato, and everyone's like, give me the recipe for the olive oil gelato, and no one would ever give them the recipe for the olive oil gelato. But he kind of was like, they made a lower fat product and then added the oil during the spin. So they were using an LB100 uh Carpagiani uh L uh Lab 100 LB100, which is a great old machine.
+
+[17:50] No one makes them, they don't make them anymore, so I don't know what the current model is because I haven't had one. Uh and yeah, she would add the olive oil kind of mid-spin. That was that was her technique for anyone who wants to try it out. Let me know. I would love to make it with some of his fancy Dan olive oil.
+
+[18:06] If you were making the olive oil gelato, would you use like a throat ripping green olive oil, or would you go more buttery? Probably buttery. Really? I'm I would rip my throat. Yeah.
+
+[18:17] Yeah. What if I use that? Green. Green? Green gel?
+
+[18:20] I like cream. I don't like olive oil gelato, but I would go buttery. I think people would want buttery. Hmm. You think I think they would want butter in the road.
+
+[18:27] You go buttery in the base. You go buttery in the base and then serve it with a drizzle of the throat ripper. Hmm. Yeah. I don't know.
+
+[18:38] Interesting question. Well, maybe you can cream some up for us. Do you remember uh for any of you who uh used to keep track of old demos? So, like one of the funny things about olive oil is that while you can get it to kind of get hard in the in the fridge, it doesn't turn ro rock hard. So one of uh I think this was uh Alec, one of Alex Stupaks, I think it was a stew pack thing.
+
+[18:59] He used to uh drip olive oil into liquid nitrogen, like, and then he'd get the little olive oil balls and then like plate them out, and then they would like kind of melt into the dish as little balls. It was kind of cool. Yeah, and then maple syrup was the other drip into liquid nitrogen, the maple syrup. You remember this stuff, Stas? No.
+
+[19:20] Nastasia never liked any of those demos. She wasn't paying any attention. Listen, Alex Stupak. Where was this? Everywhere.
+
+[19:26] It was the demo everyone's doing. He he did it at the French culinary, maybe like three or four times while we were working together back when he was uh still at WD. Anyway. Uh and then we would have to go out to events and and like Stupak would be the pastry chef that did do the event, and he would sit there and do the blue boob bloops and then play pays a you don't remember any of this? Nope.
+
+[19:45] Okay. Anywho, pretty sure it was Stupak. Uh pretty sure. Alex Stupak, for those of you that have never been wound. What?
+
+[19:54] Tylly Wound. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He makes a clock spring look like it's like it's loose. You know what I mean? Like one wrong move on the Stupak spring and boing, it shoots up.
+
+[20:03] Yeah. Anyway, but Alex Stupak, uh, because he's such a freaking perfectionist, his demos are amazing. At least they used to be. I haven't been to a Stupak demonstration in years, but it used to be like if you come to like one of our demonstrations, it's just a complete crap show. It's just like stuff everywhere, like yelling and screaming, product everywhere, because I'm trying to do a bunch of stuff in a very short period of time, and I'm fundamentally disorganized.
+
+[20:30] He does a bunch of stuff in a short period of time, but like a machine. He's like, he's like, can you tell the yelling story with the French fries? Which which one? The one where you showed up, and I gave you one. Didn't we already tell you?
+
+[20:45] No, you I don't need to. So Nastasia and I have been working together for far too long, right? We both assumed that we would work each with each other for like five, six years. We would make whatever money we needed, we would do that, and then we would be like, we'll go our own ways, and then we can just be friends. Instead, we have to work with each other.
+
+[21:02] Right, Stas? This was a huge mistake. I guess so. Yeah. Anyway, so uh so we uh, you know, we got called a couple years ago, but right before the pandemic to do this French fry thing.
+
+[21:14] And so like I hadn't done like all the French fry BS in a long time, like all of the different tests. Like I make french fries all the time, but I haven't done all of the tests and bring them. So we go to existing conditions, which was still existing at the time, and you know, I go back to use their their fryer, and we do a bunch of prep, and then I'm doing all this other crap, and then the next day Nastasi and I have to load up, right? So I'm chronically late. People know this, I'm chronically late, right?
+
+[21:39] So I'm doing a bunch of stuff, Nastasia's doing a bunch of stuff, but Nastasia loves in a high stress situation to give you crap about stuff that she knows. So like I come in to the bar, like sweating my f, you know, like like, you know, wishing I had a box of cornstarch in my chonies. So I was sweating so hard, right? And then I'm like, Nastasia, in front of this whole thing, because these other people were there, shoots me this F you look. This F you, you're late again, I'm always dealing with you, you and your crap.
+
+[22:09] When meanwhile, I'm trying to get stuff together so that we can go do this shoot, and I need to literally just a look. Not just a look, not just a look, not just a look, Stas. That's the thing. There's no such thing. If we didn't know each other, then it would be just a look.
+
+[22:22] But it's like after years and years and years of the same looks, the same conversations, the same thing. That's like when you walk up to somebody and you're like, after they're like, fine, fine. Yeah, fine, fine, fine, whatever. Then after a while, it makes them mad, right? Then, like the next day, they're still wound up from.
+
+[22:42] So if you walk up and tap them once, they're like, you know what I mean? You get no, there is no you can imagine the other people. It was a photo shoot happening in the bar. The bar was not open for business that was not like open. And it was like noon, and there was a photo shoot.
+
+[22:56] So I gave him one look. And he goes off. So the people there just think that he randomly went off on me. Also, also, you gotta understand, people, is that prior to this, that day we had had unpleasant conversations on the telephone. Did we?
+
+[23:13] Yes. It was a day, wasn't it? Yeah. And anyway, so like, yes, I'm like, what the hell? Oh my god, screaming, screaming, screaming.
+
+[23:24] So he looked so bad. And I think it was that also a time when someone said, Is that your wife? And you were like, I would never treat my wife like that. I'm not an animal. I'm not an animal.
+
+[23:35] Jesus. The day before, and this is there's there's video evidence of this. There's video evidence of this. The day before, I'm trying to do stuff, and Nastasia is just standing there the entire time I'm trying to cook. Best content ever.
+
+[23:55] Saying, why is this taking so long? This is not working. That doesn't look right. What's the while we're recording? This is kind of what I had to deal with all the time.
+
+[24:02] It's like my Instagram. It's like I think. Nastasia is the master of thousands of tiny knives. Right? It's like what she it's like, she's like a bullfighter.
+
+[24:12] She's she keeps stabbing you, bleeding you. And then eventually she comes in with the big shagunk and takes you out. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[24:23] Yeah. I mean, that's fair, right, Sas? Yes. Yeah. He's like, what am I gonna say?
+
+[24:29] It's not fair. Yes. Again. I can't help it. I can't help it.
+
+[24:34] I can't help it. Okay. KG wants to make some scallop crude for a course I'm serving this weekend. Which weekend? Is it too late?
+
+[24:42] Probably. It is, but they're still interested in the answer. All right. I I checked. I got that stupid song now in my head.
+
+[24:51] It's much too late for goodbyes. You hate that stuff the most, right, Saz? I don't know who that who is that. Isn't that uh Wilberry's with uh George Harrison? Oh, I don't know.
+
+[25:06] I don't like traveling Willbury. Speaking of songs, has everyone heard about this uh Janet Jackson song? Uh is it Daydream? Not Daydream Nation, um a rhythm nation that will shut down a laptop or a computer? No, why?
+
+[25:22] Because there's a resident frequency in the song that's unaudible that uh matches the same resident frequency of internal hard drives of certain windows, um, excuse me, uh certain PCs, and it's shutting laptops down, not just the one that's playing it, but the ones that are in the same room. That's so slick. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. It's crazy.
+
+[25:54] That is so strong. Oh my god. So now somebody's sitting at the bar at the restaurant with their computer open for too long. Just play that on the speakers and get them right out. No, no, no.
+
+[26:09] Yeah. Oh my god, that'd be amazing. That's like the equivalent of like uh you ever like want to build a Faraday cage in your restaurant so that nobody's cell phone works? Yeah. It'd be amazing.
+
+[26:19] For those of you that don't know, Faraday Cage is like uh it's like uh you it's like being inside of a microwave. It's like none of the signals can make it out. And you're good. You don't have to deal with it anyway. Didn't you have a baby at like 60?
+
+[26:29] Wow, I don't know. But I'm sure that's right. She's real. I do know for a fact that uh I do know for a fact that even after menopause, it's possible to have a baby if uh you know your uterus still works. I know that that's been done.
+
+[26:52] Yeah. Uh back to scallop crude. Uh from serving this weekend. I was thinking of curing the scallops. Can Dave or anybody else share any experience or resources they have for brine versus direct salt salt sugar application versus koji cure, as well as uh how long to cure for?
+
+[27:10] Uh I'd appreciate it. Thanks. Huh. I've never done koji uh on a scallop. You you uh John anyone?
+
+[27:16] I haven't. I've seen combu done before. Yeah, but combu is kind of classic, like combuck. I used to do like um like the best uh Saba sushi, you know, the mackerel sushi, the the one that's like not fresh, the one that's like the next day, pressed with combu and you get that combu pressing. And I've done that a lot with fish, but never as a ceviche alternative, just as something that dehydrates, salts, flavors the fish where it's pushed against it, but not in lieu of.
+
+[27:45] I don't think the combu is salty enough for it to be in lieu of a total cure, right? Um I mean I'm I wish KG, we need to put this out on the on the Discord. Quinn, do we have anything anyone like available on the Discord now? Because I haven't done enough tests to know for sure. I would say uh I mean, I'm I'm typically acid plus salt, and so I usually toss with salt and then add acid, and then that turns it into a brine because it's not dry.
+
+[28:19] But what do you typically do, John? I don't do salt only, acid. Yeah. And so, you know, um, and so that that's what I would do. And the salt will firm it and help cure it.
+
+[28:32] And the ass, because the acid's gonna, you know. What do you think? Yeah, no, I agree. My favorite thing to do, actually, is to cheat. Uh, and if you want to do it very quickly, is like slice everything thin so that you can basically just mist bottle like uh you sprinkle salt and mist bottle acid on it and then have it cevichify very, very quickly.
+
+[28:51] That's what uh Nils used to do at the French culinary. We would never wait to actually do any real ceviche because I don't know, he just didn't want to. With the exception of he actually used to he used to acid cure with citrus juice uh salmon roe, and it was pretty good. He would like you know, take the already salted salmon roe and then like soak them in acid and they would kind of denature a little bit. Okay.
+
+[29:14] It was good. Uh but yeah, he used to do the the fake quick ceviche by slicing thin and then uh applying acid. Am I answering this question? Is this making it? I think so.
+
+[29:22] Yeah, yeah. Uh you know what the worst is? Uh scallops that have gone off. Yeah. Oh my God.
+
+[29:29] By the way, if any of you and I've never lived anywhere else for a long period of time. So, you know, I'm sure wherever you you who hear me come from, you have great scallops. But here, the best scallop you can get within 500 miles is if you can get a day boat Nantucket scallop. Yeah. I mean, those things are ridiculous.
+
+[29:51] They're so sweet. How much do you love it, John, when you get a scallop at a store and it's clearly been so treated and puffed up with water that as soon as it hits the pan, it's like it's so sad. Scallop is my favorite shellfish too. Really? Yeah.
+
+[30:10] I love scallops. Where are you? Where are you on scallop, Stas? I hate them. I hate them.
+
+[30:15] One time, and Mark Ladner also hates them. One time they like they gifted us some at a restaurant. We put them in a napkin and put them in my purse. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[30:24] Jeez. That's how much we hate them. Yeah. So you're saying you don't like um any prep, no prep. Uh no.
+
+[30:31] Would you I'm trying to figure out if it's a sushi thing, I can deal with that, but what about, and this is not the ideal way to make a scallop, but what about like battered and fried? No, no, no, no, no. So you can't even tolerate that. No. I overeat them as a kid.
+
+[30:46] Oh, who cooked them? I don't remember. I really don't remember. Okay. Uh that's interesting.
+
+[30:54] Huh. Huh. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting not to like them in any way. I can I can tolerate sushi.
+
+[31:03] And I can if somebody is serving them at their house and they're so proud or whatever, I'll eat, I'll eat it, but it's nauseating to me. Yeah. Oh, I love how you You taught me. That's so strong, Sas. No one knows what they're talking about.
+
+[31:19] Yeah. Well So like when someone, you know, look, it's not even a thing anymore. Now, like nauseous doesn't mean nauseous anymore, right? It doesn't mean anything anymore. So no one uses nauseated.
+
+[31:31] People say I'm nauseous, and I'm like, you are. But it doesn't have any meaning anymore. You know what I mean? It used to, because something that is nauseous is something that causes nausea. Someone becomes nauseated because they're exposed to something that is nauseous and cause them nausea.
+
+[31:46] But this is uh this is a linguistic, not a good linguistic hill to die on because that's not the meaning of the word anymore. Now, if you say I'm nauseous, it means like I'm gonna throw up. And everybody knows that, so why be a dick about it? You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
+
+[32:01] But I still appreciate Stas busting out the correct old school usage. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. But you know, she is a she is a trained poet.
+
+[32:11] That's true. Useless. Uh that's draw. Um, real quick, I pulled up that picture from Instagram. So at Mission Chinese a seven years ago, combu cured scallops that they place between two sheets of combu, let it sit overnight, served with like grapefruit segments and toasted nori on top.
+
+[32:32] Yeah, I'm sure there was some extra salt in there. Probably. We used to combo like combu cure sabasushi, fantastic. And on the rice, when you push the combo against the rice and let it sit and it gets that green transfer and it gets that beautiful. One more thing on scallop.
+
+[32:47] So, scallop's not a thing people don't like overcooked, right? Right. But when you have a not good scallop and it's a little bit raw and it's got that mush texture in the middle of it, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Oh my god.
+
+[33:01] Terrible. Sad. Terrible. Well, because the thing is is like the difference between I you know, I can deal with a with a mediocre scallop as long as it's like, you know, not too over or too under. I can deal with it, right?
+
+[33:13] I don't need a great crust on the top of it. I'm fine. You know what I mean? Especially if you're just gonna hack it up and toss it into pasta, whatever you're gonna do. I don't know, right?
+
+[33:21] Doesn't matter. But uh I don't even know what I was gonna, I don't even know where I was gonna go with this. That's it. I that was it. I was like, I can tolerate it.
+
+[33:29] But I was like, but I was like, but there it's one of those things like a tomato where the difference between the low end and the high end is tremendous in terms of quality. You know what I mean? It really is. You know? And low ones, you're like low, like ones that like, yeah, they they water out instantly and they free in, you know, they they smell relatively fishy and they have that mush texture in the middle of them, and then they they don't take on the color and they just and then they serve them to nostasi, and she's like, Thanks.
+
+[34:00] I I now say I'm allergic. If if people ask about, I know it's I know. I don't want them to waste their scallops on me. I don't want them to waste their scallops on me. Okay.
+
+[34:11] Okay. Rex, getting married next summer. Any advice on working with a caterer on the menu uh or on food that you think works particularly well or should be avoided. Wedding will be mid-June in New York City with around 100 guests and family style service. We'd like to do a fish slash seafood entree, although we don't have raw bar money and probably need a beef or chicken uh for the older family that expect the beef or chicken.
+
+[34:37] Yeah. That's tough. Uh listen, listen, listen. The problem with mo like if you're doing the standard stuff like this, it's about choosing recipes that can tolerate abuse, right? So if you find a caterer that you like, the best thing to do is to find someone you like and then have them test a couple of their recipes for you and taste it, and then abuse the hell out of those recipes and see how they're gonna they're gonna work.
+
+[35:02] When I go out to a uh a wedding or an event, and someone orders the fish, I'm like, really? And then the but I was at an event the other day, and somebody and somebody next to me ordered the fish and I tasted, I was like, oh, that was shockingly fine. Because like fish is hard to get people to do it right unless they're using more modern techniques with good holding and stuff like this. It's just fish ends up getting hammered to hell. So what can you do?
+
+[35:29] You can say, hey, listen, let's do um uh let's do canals. Let's do like fish in some form that it's okay to hammer, right? Choose fish that can, you know, take a beating and and still still be fine. Skate. But people don't do skate at weddings.
+
+[35:43] Why don't they do skate at weddings? Because they don't want to do all that searing. They want something that they can just quote unquote broil and serve. But skate's one of the few fishes you can beat the hell out of and not and you know, have it be okay. What do you think?
+
+[35:55] Yeah, could I wonder if you could do like a salt bake fish, like per table. Oh, listen. You just need a lot of oven space. Well, but the thing is that it's a good idea, it's a good idea. It's very presentation forward, which is good.
+
+[36:09] The problem is is that the caterer needs to be good at it, or there'll be problems. Dave, can you can you do a PSA for why Phil should have his wedding at my house and how food would work there? Like it's a free space. Big roast. It's in charge one now.
+
+[36:27] Oh my God. All right. Well, I mean, like, you look, I mean, like, I got married when I was very young and we had no money. So, you know, it was at my uh at Jen's uncle's house in the back, and we got a uh what's it called? A uh we did brunch because brunch is a lot cheaper.
+
+[36:42] Oh, yeah, that's the advice you had for him. Brunch is so much cheaper for a wedding. And because be because at brunch, you can just get a bunch of cases of champagne, or we use kava because we didn't have champagne money. So you get like a bunch of cases. No one expects necessarily a full bar at lunchtime.
+
+[36:57] They're used to brunch being like a sparkling wine scenario, right? So you can get some beers for those kind of folk, some sparkling wine, and you know, for your crazy uncle, you can get a couple of bottles of something so they can go in the corner and souse themselves to death. Right? And then uh, you know, and then just brunch food is just much more, even though every service industry person detests working brunch, back me up on this, John. It's the absolute worst.
+
+[37:21] Even though you're starting it next week. Lunch, not brunch. But brunch food is pretty bulletproof. That's what's good about it. So it's easy to get that stuff out there and everybody's gonna be happy with it.
+
+[37:31] You know what I mean? As long as the French toast doesn't dry out, everyone's gonna be fine. No one's gonna, no one's gonna be like, oh my god, the French toast. Maybe they will. Anyway, yeah.
+
+[37:40] Hopefully they won't. You know, uh anyway. Uh so my advice was uh, you know, he what was he trying? He was trying to save money in some really stupid way. He doesn't want to pay for like um uh rentals, like cups and and tables and porta potties and all that stuff.
+
+[37:55] And I was like, okay. But he look listen. You save on the space. You save on the space. You save on the space.
+
+[38:04] Um anyway, so back to the thing, working with them, find someone that you're willing to to work with that you like. I mean, the problem is is that the more someone has already done weddings, the less they're gonna want to work with you because they're just gonna want to do their shtick. So it means you're gonna have to work if you're gonna do a lot of work with someone where you're gonna have a lot of input, it's probably gonna be someone that's relatively new to it, which means there's a higher risk. Would you agree with that, John? Yeah.
+
+[38:27] One thing I'll say is this when we got our wedding cake made, uh, I apparently like uh we were the only people that this person had ever worked with, the wedding cake person, who actually cared about the flavor of the cake. She was like, Um, I just normally use a box cake. I'm like, no, you will use this carrot cake recipe. And I gave her the carrot cake recipe that I wanted. She's like, Oh, that's a good recipe.
+
+[38:48] I might use that in the future. I was like, thank you. But I care about the quality of the cake. Yeah. You should.
+
+[38:54] Right? Yeah. That's the last thing. That's what they're gonna remember. I won't go into the Juspiti, which I still don't know how to bring up the Jesbeedy triggering me.
+
+[39:03] All right. That's a good story, though. That's what I like to do. Someday, someday we'll do it again. When uh you know, we when it comes to talking about my uh my grandparents again, we'll bring it up.
+
+[39:13] Crazy grandparents. Dave, I for some reason some like email came up. I think something with Alexis, and then Questla potluck thing, and then the name of your drink. Do you remember what the name of that drink you served? My grandma lives in my driveway.
+
+[39:28] Yeah. But it doesn't make sense to a lot of people because I realize that non-bartenders don't call Grand Marnier grandma. Oh. And because it had Grand Marnier in it, because Grand Marnier was a sponsor. And furthermore, I found out that most people have never had their grandparents live in their driveway for like three years.
+
+[39:47] Yeah. When the motor home left, there were holes where the wheels were that were four inches deep. And that's true. The motorhome boop, boop, boop, boop off the thing, big dents in the driveway. Wow.
+
+[40:01] The umbilical cord. The umbilical cord would nightly pop the circuits as grandma cranked her electric blankets. And that's real life. Anyway. What do you got, Quinn?
+
+[40:18] Oh, yeah, we do have a uh a question from the Discord this morning. If you want to do that before the other questions, do it. Do it. Okay. Uh Biff Dick from Philadelphia asks, is black garlic fermented or does it undergo myard reactions?
+
+[40:39] Or both. The latter. And uh after you answer that, I I have a comment. Okay. The latter.
+
+[40:44] That's easy. Keeps getting asked. People call it fermentation because there are a lot of complex reactions are taking place, but it's all at a temperature. It's not, it's not anytime fermentation is there, it needs to be uh it needs to be facilitated by some form of microbe, right? And if it's not, then it's just chemical reactions, and that's what's going on.
+
+[41:03] I called this question in like eight or nine years ago. Oh, sorry. Wait, what do you say, Quinn? Um, I think this conf it's confusion happens. I see this a lot as well in um discussing discussions around uh tea processing.
+
+[41:20] I'm pretty sure the word for fermentation in Chinese and other languages is just broader. But someone talk about I mean we'll get McGee on. We'll get McGee on. When they talk about just oxidation, it's called the fermentation phase. Right.
+
+[41:45] I I hear what you're saying, but I don't feel qualified to make a a comment on on on tea. Yes, I hear what you're saying. A lot of the oxidation is not caused by any micros, but then there are ferment. I agree with you fundamentally, but we'll get we'll get an expert. We should get a tea expert on sometime.
+
+[42:02] Yeah. Have we ever had a tea expert on. I know a producer enjoy it. Yeah. I mean, we talked with someone at MoFab.
+
+[42:11] And I know we know Harney. Remember that guy, Dave and Emerick? Oh, not Amarick. Oh, uh Fong? Yeah.
+
+[42:13] Yeah. Who was who is uh starting his own tea garden in uh south of San Francisco? And he was like, There's no such thing as wild tea. As soon as you pick it, it's not wild name more for a thousand years. We're like, okay, man, Jesus.
+
+[42:29] Remember that? My God. Mark Wade. Hey, Dave, big fan. In the process of starting a small cocktail concept, tiny cocktails or a small place with normal-sized cocktails.
+
+[42:39] Unclear. And uh everything is going pretty well. I wanted to see how you went about sourcing quinine, as you referenced in your book. Mainly wanted to see if you're able to get it with your business formation documents or if you need some additional licenses. You do not need licenses.
+
+[42:52] You just need to convince someone. The problem is really just the cost. So if you're buying from Spectrum or one of these other places, it's just going to cost you a lot of money. I haven't had to buy it in a number of years. So the easiest way to do it is to find someone who works at a university for a lab and just pay them to buy it for you.
+
+[43:07] That's definitely the easiest way to do it. Make sure you're getting USP. If you can get sulfate, not HCL. But maybe we should look it up again. I'm sure somebody at this point on Amazon's got to be selling it, right?
+
+[43:17] Yeah. We should get modernists back on the line to get the why doesn't modernists carry that crap. You need only a tiny amount. I don't know. We'll get on it.
+
+[43:26] All right. Uh perennial pantry writes in uh hey, we're a food company working on grain puffing. We process Kernza. Now, Kernsa is like some, it's like a long thing, right? Like wild rice-looking kind of thing.
+
+[43:36] Ecologically beneficial perennial grain. Uh deeply rooted, can extend 10 feet or more into the ground. Yield is rapidly growing after harvest, good conditions, more seeds than annual wheat. Uh, and better for cows and cattle to eat after you take the kernels off. Okay.
+
+[43:54] Anyway, so they're growing this stuff and they're puffing it, right? Uh, and they keep burning the grain in the puffing gun, right? So they're using uh 2.5 kilogram puffer, right? So that's like five. Isn't that the size that we had, S, the one that that we that we had the unfortunate experience with?
+
+[44:10] They're two and a half kilogram puffer, uh, trying many different moisture charge sizes, PSIs, temperature, and tines. We keep burning. Any tips, resources, or insights on the burning issues? Thank. All right, so burning is caused by one of two things in a puffing gun.
+
+[44:22] One, you're, you don't have a good seal. If you're able to puff other grains perfectly, but you can't puff the grain that you're puffing, that's when you know that, okay, it's not the seal that's the problem. It's not the gun itself, it's my recipe that's going in. So what's happening to you is if it is burning in that case, is uh either there's a lot of sugar in it, right? Because you can't you can't puff things that are high in sugar.
+
+[44:43] So if there's too much sugar in the grain, it's gonna scorch during the during the puffing procedure as it heats, right? The other thing is is it could just be a low moisture. Did they say in the thing that I can't remember what I read? Temper that thing up to like closer to take the moisture content of it, right? And then uh you can either buy a moisture content checker, which is what we used to do with the puffing gun, or you can, you know, the AAC, the AACC uh method where you crush it finally and dehydrate it uh for an hour and then re-weigh it with a milligram scale.
+
+[45:16] You can check the the moisture level of grain, but temper it up to a higher moisture level so that it uh the starch can you need enough moisture for the starch to gelatinize at the high temperature and then expand when it goes off. So those are the two things I'd check. And it's pretty easy to temper it. You just, you, you, you weigh it, you add the amount of water that you that you need to get it back up where it's going, you thoroughly mix it by hand, seal it, and let it wait for, you know, 10, 12 hours to like equilibrate again, and then go directly from there to puff it. That's what I that's that's the first things that I would do.
+
+[45:49] First check the sugar, then check that. The final thing that you can do if you can do this, is that the the way that to really puff, if you're gonna puff a lot, is not to puff using a flame at all. The way that the actual people used to do it, even with the big puffing guns, is there would be an input into it, and they would just inject high pressure steam into it. So if you can get a steam generator so that the temperature of it is like injected with steam, and then maybe even just boost it a little bit with a flame, that's gonna have not as much of the heating time be heating. But if there's any leak at all in that puffing gun, you're going to take it into a room at Harvard full of students, you're gonna set off all of the uh fire detectors in that room, and every scientist and grad student and student in that room is gonna have to go outside at night uh and look sad.
+
+[46:40] Very scary. And and look angry and sad at you. Remember that, Stus? That was like a couple months after the Boston marathon, too. Oh my god.
+
+[46:47] Remember that? Oh my god. And we were doing everything we could to not call that thing a pressure cooker. Oh. Oh my God.
+
+[46:54] Nightmare. From Dave Kitchens, uh, I just finished liquid intelligence and enjoyed it. I have been agar clarifying grapefruit juice, and it got me thinking. Do you have any idea if clarifying grapefruit juice eliminates or decreases the now? You ready?
+
+[47:06] I'm gonna try to say this word. Feranocumarins responsible for the issues related to taking certain medications. Uh, I can't find anything in the scientific literature, but I was just wondering if your science background, if you had thought this might be a possibility. In fact, I have thought about this a lot. I just have never been able to get it measured.
+
+[47:21] The the ingredient of uh most concern that I have always looked at is called bergamoton, and bergamotin is in fact a uh Furanocumarin, and that what it interferes with mainly is things like statins. And so a lot of people who take statins or like things like this, they they have an issue. But what's funny is is that if you knew you were going to consume a certain amount of uh grapefruit every day, you could actually adjust for it. But some medicines be you become more uh they become more reactive in your system with grapefruit and some less. It's just very bioactive, which is crazy.
+
+[47:54] I have a feeling that it would actually reduce them, but I don't have the proof. Anyone who can hear this that has a lab will send you some clarified juice and you can test it to see whether or not the level is low, because I've always thought maybe like that would be an answer for people, because you know, people who would they couldn't drink the gin and juice if they're like, I can't have grapefruit juice. I'm on statins, it could be like, oh, well, we fixed that. Anyway, so it's a good question. And I have thought about it.
+
+[48:17] I just don't know the answer. Curtis Barnard writes in uh what would my ideal fridge or freezer set up in a home kitchen be? No space for one in the garage. Uh I mean, I'd rather have a fridge and freezer in my garage than a car. Keep that car out in the driveway.
+
+[48:30] You know what I'm saying? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, come on. Priorities, Curtis.
+
+[48:35] Uh, would you do undercounter units, glass fronts on the fridge, commercial units or residential? Okay, listen, commercial units suck, right? They they like they're good for commercial, but at home, they just take a lot of energy and they're very loud, right? And so, what I know from my from being alive and having had commercial fridges in my house for a long time because I love them, is that while you love them, nobody else in your house is gonna enjoy your electric bills and they're not gonna enjoy the noise of the compressor unless you're unless you're so fancy that you can have remote compressors and you can have your compressor in the basement and then your fridge upstairs. Not only are you gonna have to spend a fantastic amount of money getting that thing fixed every year when it breaks, because it will, right?
+
+[49:14] That's the other thing about commercial refrigeration. It breaks constantly, right? Uh but if you had that kind of money, I'm assuming you have space in your garage to put a fridge or a freezer and not worry about this problem. Under counter fridges are nice. I will say this.
+
+[49:28] Uh uh undercounter freezers are nice to store certain things. Um, but I would just, and glass front ones are okay, but typically at home, especially with a freezer, you want the freezer to be as sealed up as possible to keep the quality of the stuff uh at tippy top, tip top. So, like, let's say you have one like your standard fridge freezer combo, that one is one that automatically defrosts, then opt for your undercounter being uh one that uh doesn't do an automatic deep frost, and then keep that one for your deep freeze stuff. And that way you can keep stuff longer at a higher quality. Um but I like under under counter.
+
+[50:02] The problem with undercounter refrigeration in general is that it's not very space efficient because it has to be both counter depth, which real fridges aren't, right? And short, right? So you're you're losing twice. And if they if the compressor is contained in it, so the way the real refrigerator works is is it's very tall and it's very deep. And so they store the compressor stuff behind and underneath typically your fridge and freezer.
+
+[50:25] You can't do that in an undercounter, and so they have a very uh they have a very small storage area for the amount of linear space they take up in a counter. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Uh Kev McHugh writes in what are the best options for using carrot juice in a cocktail?
+
+[50:41] If you're gonna clarify carrot juice, make sure you put some acid in it. Otherwise it won't clarify well. I mean, classic is carrots and apples, carrots and apples, carrots, apples, vodka, carrots, apples, vodka. Enjoy it. It tastes good.
+
+[50:52] Add to add a little citrus. Um, I used to juice it uh with a champion. Um, that's what we would do. Juice champion. So like classic, like granny, granny and carrot, juice them both, then it clarifies well, carbonate, delicious.
+
+[50:59] Yeah, just like being John Malkovich. Is that what they do in being John Malkovich? Yeah, that's how he survived. That's one of the old guys was always drinking carrot juice. Everywhere it went.
+
+[51:15] I have not seen that in a long time, but I remember enjoying it. I'm I'm a I'm pro Malkovich. I bet you I would not be, I bet you he would be a weird guy to have as a friend, though. Malkovich? Malkovich?
+
+[51:24] Malkovich? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, who would you think would be a worse person to have as a f as a like a standard friend, like to just have a normal conversation with? Malkovich or Daniel Day Lewis?
+
+[51:37] Daniel Day Lewis. Worse? Yeah. You would hate him, Dave. What do you mean?
+
+[51:42] Well, it depends on what character he's pretending to be, right? Yeah, I guess. Lincoln. Oh God. With his high voice Lincoln, his like whiny voice Lincoln.
+
+[51:53] Yeah. Oh my God. There will be blood. I like him. Oh, yeah, but then oh my God, he's just so aggressive the whole time.
+
+[52:00] I would prefer that. That's like having dinner with my grandpa. You want this? So it's familial. You'll understand it better.
+
+[52:06] Never talk about that. What's the Daniel Day Lewis' hardest role he's ever been? Do it. Do the voiceover. Daniel Day Lewis, in his most difficult role ever, plays a normal father.
+
+[52:20] Anyway, so like uh, but like I remember like singing like my grandpa was. Did I say this on air? I remember like, so like Booker, you know, Booker, who's autistic, first of all, right? And is three years old. Okay.
+
+[52:32] Three. Grandpa is, you know, in his mid-70s at the time, whatever. And like, you know, Booker's not, Booker's not. Did I say this on air already? Did I tell the story?
+
+[52:42] Yeah. So, well, John doesn't remember. So, like, grandpa goes to Booker, makes a fist, puts it in Booker's face, and goes, You want this? And I turn to him. I'm like, Grandpa, you're not as young as you used to be.
+
+[52:57] Otherwise, I will, I will, I you're my grandfather, but I will throw you on the floor if you threaten my son. Are you nuts? You know what I mean? Can you imagine? Yeah.
+
+[53:07] And he's only half joking. And I was only half joking. You know what I mean? It's like. But why was he mad at Booker?
+
+[53:15] Sounds like your grandfather was a sailor. Uh pilot. World War II, he was a uh, he used to train people to uh fly bombers during World War II. The rest of his uh flight contingent uh, you know, went over and they all got uh killed in P40s in North Africa because their the planes weren't as uh as good as the German planes as the Mesher Schmidt's that they were flying against, so a lot of them got wiped out, and they kept him as a bomber instructor, and so he was a light bomber instructor. But he was a weird dude.
+
+[53:42] He just he had a weird thing about about men. He had these weird, like boys and men, like this weird, like, you know, uh he felt somehow like he was competing even with people who were his descendants. It's we it's weird. It's hard to do. Exactly, Stas.
+
+[53:58] Exactly. Uh Chris Grady, what's the difference between Mexican sour cream and creme fresh? I've seen recipes with very similar times and temps. You know what? I've never done the analysis, but uh crema that I get, uh, first of all, is highly, you know, stabilized with stuff.
+
+[54:12] I know I I've never had artisanal crema. I've only ever had, you know, the stuff that I get in my local grocery store. But um, it's always more liquidy, whereas creme fraîche always seems to set up firm. And then when you break creme fraîche, it goes liquidy, and then you wait for a while for it to set up. That's why everyone's like, I'm gonna use creme fraîche in a sauce.
+
+[54:29] And then you take the creme fraîche and you add liquid to it, and you're like, oh my God, it's too runny now. And then you're like, just wait, just wait. And then it sets back up again, and then you can put it back on the plate, and then you're like, and then they're like, I'm gonna use creme fresh, and then they do what you just said, but then they put it on something hot, and then that like gross white stuff bleeds out from underneath the dollop of creme fraîche. You with me? Yeah.
+
+[54:52] Yeah. I love creme fraîche. I'm not anti-creme fraîche, but I'm saying crema is highly the Mexican crema is more typically more stabilizing that you never get weep out of it. It doesn't ever weep because I think they guar the hell out of it. I don't know what they add to it.
+
+[55:05] And uh, and it also is always liquid, it never sets solid like creme fraîche. We say that's accurate. I don't know how, why it's that way. That's just been my experience from years of eating both. Um creme fraîche, a good thing to have around uh to dope to make your own uh cultured creme though.
+
+[55:22] That's always that's always the one it always almost always works. Like buttermilk doesn't always work, even though it's active culture. I've used it. Like usually creme fraî that I've used as a dopant for making cultured butter works. I don't know why.
+
+[55:35] I never, you know what? I should know what the cultures are, but I don't because I haven't had to care enough. I'm being I'm for I have to be forced to care. Kevin McGowan, I'm an avid hova cook. When buying new gear, my strategy so far has been to start uh at a professional cooking supply shops with the assumption that they sell no nonsense, straightforward, good quality kitchen gear.
+
+[55:52] Is this a sound strategy for a home cook? Uh, should I look uh for any pitfalls when shopping at these types of places? Well, I mean, uh we we can all chime in here. One of the issues is is sometimes people buy lower quality stuff because it's gonna get beaten up. When you go to a kitchen manufacturer who's gonna make like your hood or your counters, and they say to you, commercial or residential, and you're like, why?
+
+[56:13] And they're like, Well, because I'm gonna take it to a higher surface polish if I'm gonna do it residential, because they know commercial people don't care how it looks, unless you're Jean Georges, they care how it performs. So there's typically a lower surface level finish in a lot of stuff that's designed for the your average day-to-day professional, right? So, like, for instance, like I really love my Volrath Centurion pans with my thick aluminum bottom on them, but no one would want them at home because the handles look janky, even though they're strong. The handles look janky and the lips that they don't look like when someone comes over to my house, they're not like, oh, that's fancy. I'm like, actually it is.
+
+[56:53] You know what I mean? Uh, but uh but my point is is that I think that's one of the reasons not to look for it. But in general, I think you know, the pe people who are selling high quality commercial stuff, it stuff can take a licking. What do you think, John? Yeah, no, I I agree.
+
+[57:06] I mean, it's I love having all professional equipment and things like that. I don't know, I'm thinking like stainless steel bowls and fish spats and whatever. Yeah, that stuff's all good. Yeah, it doesn't look great necessarily, but I know it's gonna last forever. And you can get infinity of them for not that much, like sheet pans and whatnot.
+
+[57:23] Hey Stas, I have an idea. Here's a terrible idea. Ready for it for our LA party? So when the French Culinary Institute uh shut down, there was this guy, what was his name? Oh, yeah, John.
+
+[57:32] And uh we went and got their entire library and loaded it into a truck and drove it to uh to Stanford, where it is now or wherever it is, wherever our storage is. Yeah. And uh so that's where the library is fixed for MoFat. So MoFat has this library that we can't use, including all of these chef demos that are on DVD that we need somebody to uh somehow because we have the rights to put them up on the internet for the museum and like annotates and do whatever we want, but just we don't have the time. We don't have time anyway.
+
+[57:59] Okay. Anyway, but what we did get that we own personally, Booker and Dax, is the giant, giant industrial spetzel maker. Spretzel party. Spetzel party. Oh my god.
+
+[58:13] Can you imagine a Spetzel party? An LA Spenzel party. But here's the here's the kicker. Nastasia Lopez agrees to wear her freaking derndal. Oh yeah.
+
+[58:24] I have that. No, that's appropriation. I think that's not uh you worked in Switzerland. Yeah. That's close enough.
+
+[58:32] You worked in Switzerland, that's close enough. We have the giant Spenzelmaker. And what are we gonna make? So we can make Spetzel. I'm just gonna put it out here.
+
+[58:40] Schweinhox. What? I said sausages, but okay, sausage is fine. Yeah. Schweinhoxa, also good.
+
+[58:46] Or I'm gonna put this out there. Jaeger Schnitzel. Jaeger Schnitzel and Spetzel. But that's their combination. Well, what's the reason?
+
+[58:56] Spenzel party. Do you need a reason, Nastasia? No. Yeah, come on. I mean, like that doesn't happen.
+
+[59:05] No one in LA is thinking Spetzel. So you figure out like some place, right? No one. Oh, you're going to LA. What are you doing?
+
+[59:14] No one's thinking Spenzel party. They're like, why? Why do you have to go to Let's do it? Because you don't sell it like you don't do this. You know, we're having a Spenzel party.
+
+[59:22] You're like, Spitzel party. And people are like, oh my God, Spetzel. I haven't had that in a decade. Let's do it. And they're going to show up and just gonna have bowl after bowl after bowl of Spetzel with butter and cheese.
+
+[59:34] It's not that big. Oh, I didn't know that. We just need a big old pot when we're there. And then it's like zoop zoop, zoop, zoop, zoop, zoom, special, spezzel, spezzel, spezzel. And then it's gonna mushroom, mushroom.
+
+[59:44] Actually, mushroom special is delicious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, I was like, I'm excited. Uh Peter and uh Peter Um writes in, what's the most interesting thing you've clarified? Oh my god.
+
+[59:55] The worst or the most interesting? I clarified a uh I clarified a Chipotle burrito once. It was terrible. Uh Jack Disconey writes in, are you planning on opening a uh a new bar in New in New York City? Hey, we just need to find a money person, but I'd like to.
+
+[1:00:14] Matt, I'm looking for shelf stable cordial uh lime cordial recipe. I've played around with it a little bit, and the closest I've come is making what has recently been dubbed super juice. I was like, blah, blah, blah. What is the question for me? Oh, how do you do it?
+
+[1:00:25] It's the way to make it shelf stable is to just uh, first of all, the problem with most cordials is getting the acid level right. Uh Quinn, you can put up on the on the on somewhere, like you know, our current cordial recipe, because he he's working on it. Bottle the cordial and then put it into uh water that's hot enough to kill the yeast in it, and it'll be shelf stable, right? So bottle of cordial in little bottles, make sure it's at 50% bricks when you're done. Make sure that it has six percent acidity when you're done, and then uh and then bottle it and bring it up to temperature the same way that you would pasteurize maple syrup before you do it.
+
+[1:00:57] Uh and well, nice thing. All right, so we're gonna get we're we only got we only got three left, uh uh uh Quinn. Are we doing all right? We're doing all right. We're good.
+
+[1:01:08] You ready to save those for next time? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, sure, sure. All right.
+
+[1:01:12] Sorry, Craig. Sorry, Martin. We'll get to you later. And Kyle. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Goose. This is Dave Marlon, host of Cooking Choose coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center. Joined uh New Stand Studios, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stu? Good.
+
+[0:22] You good? Mm-hmm. Yeah. You got Joe Hazenrock in the panels. Joe, what's up?
+
+[0:25] Hey, how are you doing, man? Great to see you. I'm doing all right. We don't have uh John's not here today, and our West Coast crew, because we're taping at a special time. So if you happen to be listening live on the Patreon, you can call your questions in to 917-410-1507.
+
+[0:38] That's 917-4101507. And I'm assuming a lot of our listeners are gonna have good questions. Maybe they're not here to listen, you know, dial in right now, but uh we got some good questions for our main, our only guest today, right, Stas. By the way, I feel really bad. I was late.
+
+[0:52] This is like old school me. This is like Roberta's era me coming in late because we changed the time. Joe, you kind of slapped the lateness out of me somewhat. It used to be I would always show up at 1210 for a 12 o'clock show. Yeah.
+
+[1:09] And uh I was told that that's uh poor form. Uh penalty, penalty by fine. Wow. Right. Damn.
+
+[1:16] Uh is that oh that's like the nanny. That's like the uh pay for pay for the nanny. Pay for the nanny.com. That's my next uh yo. I'm not gonna go into any stories because otherwise we'll go we'll go forever, but like, yeah, like child child care, paying extra for child care is a freaking nightmare.
+
+[1:33] And Nastasia has some great stories, but we're gonna either get to them at the very end or next week, right? Yeah. So that means that you and I aren't gonna be able to talk to each other for a week. We're gonna see each other tonight. I have to go, whatever.
+
+[1:42] We'll talk about that a little bit. The rock has a booze, apparently. Oh. Yes. I don't know what it is.
+
+[1:48] It's the top-selling booze, I think, like maybe of all time. It's like three in its first year was doing triple the sales that Casamigos did, like at its height. Wow. Wow. I don't work for him.
+
+[2:01] I'm just, you know. Well that was the that those were the uh Dulcet Tones. You have very good radio voice of I'm gonna try not to butcher your name. We had talked about it beforehand. Uh Jorge uh Gaviria, not Gaviera as I said before, uh Gaviria, uh who I met many many years ago the folks at Cosme were doing a uh um a demo at the Starchefs when it was at the uh over in the Hudson River.
+
+[2:26] Yeah. And uh they're doing a great that was the one where they were demoing I think that's the one where they put a uh a uh the Oja Santa leaf on the inside of the of the tortilla and flattened it down and cooked it real pretty. Oh yeah. Great demo. Uh Nastasia will remember that as the demo where uh I said I hope I get stabbed in the back.
+
+[2:49] Yeah. I want to stab myself in the back. It was the worst demo ever. That was the demo at Starchefs when the A V guy was so high that he was laying on his back No it's hung over. He was laying on his back staring at the ceiling instead of running the panels.
+
+[3:03] Yeah. Anyway uh so is the founder of Macienda and if you guys don't know it's the only real place to buy good corn like anywhere. Is that true you say? I mean I mean people sell some American corns but like if you want like uh if you want like do you also do Guatemala or just Mexican I can't remember. Just Mexico.
+
+[3:26] Yeah yeah which is like you know it's it's a lot still a lot of ground to cover oh yeah yeah yeah I'm not saying that you need to branch out, but I'm saying like there are good places to buy like uh uh American, old American style. Totally totally. We're I'd like to think we're sort of a we're a one-stop shop for Massa supplies like right as as high, you know, as high geek as you need to go, or is sort of like introductory. We kind of we meet you at whatever level you're at. So I mean you so you have it.
+
+[3:49] The reason you're here is you have a new book out. There's been you had a pamphlet for a number of years on on the nixtimal. Oh, but let's just do this. Let's just do this. Can we go back?
+
+[3:58] Let's go way back. Well, back in time or back in what we're talking about. Vast majority of the people listening to this show are down with nixtimalization so far. They are. But for people who aren't, let's just be completely inclusive and explain.
+
+[4:10] You explain, give me nixtimalization in a nutshell. Nixtimalization is an alchemy process that imbues corn, not the sweet kind, but like the field corn hard kind that doesn't really taste very much. It's kind of like inedible. It makes it nutritious, workable, elastic, uh, and um yeah, it just it becomes a superfood. So literally just the process of cooking corn in water that has a little bit of some kind of alkaline agent, calcium hydroxide, uh, and it renders it into like a workable, you know, form to grind into a a workable dough.
+
+[4:42] Right, right. So uh, you know, in the you know, for a long, long time, people in uh America and even in Mexico, frankly, right, who made tortillas, they were using a product called maseka. You want to describe yeah, like maseka is like the proprietary eponym of masa arena, right? So like band-aids are to bandages, jello is to I don't know, like red gelatin snack. Uh you know, maseka is the most uh well-known brand of masa arena, which is the dehydrated version of masa.
+
+[5:13] You know, masa is the finished product of corn that's been nixtimalized, ground, um, and then it's it's dehydrated. In maseka's case, it's greek dehydrated at a really, really high temperature. So it kind of just denatures the product. It's pretty flat flavor. Um, it's kind of like the Checo pasta, you know, like Love?
+
+[5:33] Okay, let's go back. In the book in the book, you liken it to bisquick, basically. Yeah, yeah. It's it's like Betty Crocker. It's the best.
+
+[5:39] Well, actually, it has a lot of uh has a lot of same problems. So like uh masa harina, you know, whatever, I always call it by the brand name, whatever, even though I actually don't buy Maseca brand, I don't think it's not what they carry in my store. Yeah. I have it in the house. I always have it in the house because it's it's simple.
+
+[5:52] It's it's you know, unlike making a biscuit or pancake where it's literally an extra 13 seconds to add the other stuff to it, right? You know, in the case of making uh real masa, you know, you know, nixtimalizing, you're talking about like 10, 12 hours sometimes. Yeah, yeah. It's there's a reason why this product was created. It disrupted the this sort of traditional, like incredibly labor-intensive process.
+
+[6:17] Right. So let's go, let's like our our people are very kind of like science-minded people. So let's let's yeah, let's let's get into it. So corn, as opposed to wheat, right? So you take wheat, you stick wheat in your mouth, kind, con, you you you grind it up in your mouth, you can break it.
+
+[6:33] It's hard. I wouldn't want to will mi mill wheat all day, but especially a lot of the older wheats are soft, right? And there are a lot of flowery corns, but corn is still rather difficult to grind, right? On its own. Uh also corn doesn't have gluten in it, right?
+
+[6:48] And there were no staples in um in the Mexico, Guatemala, or anywhere, you know, in in this these two continents. There was no uh staple that had uh gluten, right? They also didn't have barley, right? Uh they had corn. And uh they the grinding technology, uh, they never really were using this interesting.
+
+[7:09] When do you think, when did the rotary grinders come in for things like agave? Is that later or was that early? I mean, uh I'm not sure exactly the rotor grinders. I mean, I know that the whole nature of grinding as it relates to nickstamol was around the turn of the century, 20th century. So like early 1900s, the advent of electricity, and it really was quite a quite a phenomenon.
+
+[7:30] Right, but the animal-powered like giant stone rotary uh mills for like uh agave. Anyway, I don't think it's as ancient as like the matate mono. So matate mono. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, like I I didn't bother looking it up, and I'm that's not the kind of thing that I study too much.
+
+[7:49] But nixalization, you go back thousands of years and you have pictures uh, you know, sculptures of you know, women on their knees on the ground, leaning over the the matate, which is the grinding block, and with the mono, which is you know, hand, right? Boom, boom, boom, grinding. Incredibly difficult work. Oh my gosh. Incredibly difficult.
+
+[8:07] Would be impossible to do dry. Yeah, not pleasant. You could, but why? Right. Well, in other words, but like all of these amazing things that we love, chocolate, mole, right, uh, masa, right, are all built around this idea of taking something paste-like and over and over and over, grinding it until it's very fine texture.
+
+[8:32] Right. So you can't do that unless you do this process nixtimalization. Yeah, basically. So I mean, do you want to go into kind of the nitty, the like nitty-gritty what you do? You take you take raw corn and you take an alkali.
+
+[8:43] You want to describe the alkali that you use? Yeah, I mean, calcium hydroxide is the most readily available. It's derived from calcium oxide. Um, this isn't gonna nail the science right now. Just wait.
+
+[8:52] Uh calcium oxide, which then comes from uh limestone, it's calcified limestone. So you could use that, you could use ash. Um I know that did you ever experiment with ash? Yeah, we talked about it maybe 10 years, like right when you were starting. And I started, I had a house in Connecticut at the time, and I started saving uh I started saving my ashes in a bucket.
+
+[9:12] And then uh, but I never I never it never tasted right to me. Did you ever get a good result? You said that people were getting really, really good results. I don't know whether I was using the wrong wood or I was just being impatient. I don't know.
+
+[9:24] I never boiled it, and maybe that's what you need to do. You definitely need to boil it. Yeah, it's it has like a nice campfire quality to it. You know, yeah, it was it's lovely. I I'd I would do it again.
+
+[9:32] Give it a shot. I'll try all the I mean I don't have a source of wood ashes anymore. I gotta get someone to send some to me. But the, you know, I mean, I do know from you know from later research that, you know, up these parts when people were taking corn and making like whole soup and stuff like that, it was all it was all ashes. And I'm assuming that the thing I always wondered, maybe you've done some research is that a cow, which is what you know I think is universally used.
+
+[9:54] Yeah. Cal is calcium hydroxide, right? Uh right. But like to make it from shells, you need to heat it to an like astronomical temperature. I tried.
+
+[10:02] I couldn't, I wasn't able to do it in my house even with a blowtorch, right? Because I need like a kiln situation. But I I gathered, I think from reading your book, I don't think it was something else, that there there are natural deposits of it in Mexico. Is that true? Yeah, I mean, definitely.
+
+[10:14] I mean, uh all sorts of shells were used in muscle shells, you know, all throughout and all throughout North America as well. I mean, this isn't just limited to Mexico. Mesoamerica covered, you know, modern day Central America and you know, parts of North America. I think what's interesting is the uh, you know, uh, even what's it called? Tequesquite.
+
+[10:30] I don't know if you've ever used that. I've tried I I never had someone next to me who was like, this is what you're doing. You know what I mean? So like I bought some. Hopefully the book will catch you there.
+
+[10:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But uh so I I had I I bought it, and then I was like, Yeah, it's it's more it's used more now as sort of like a flavoring agent, but you can actually nix the corn with it. But I I actually remember you had the only deep dive I could find on the internet, which is saying something. Uh I mean this is granted, it was like 10 years ago, but like more.
+
+[10:58] You did it, you did a deep dive on Ximization where I think you did rye, uh among other things. And I and I wanna say you put calcium hydroxide in your mouth to taste it and burn it. Live lie by mistake. I I ate so when we were packing up the French Culinary Institute. So that like so my I think the Nix and Mall post was right after Nastasi came on board, right, Doz?
+
+[11:18] Uh no, it was a couple months after I came on. I mean that's compared to our relationship now, that's right after. Happy 13 years. Thanks. He never acknowledged.
+
+[11:26] Yeah, please. Well, why would I acknowledge so much pain? Uh for both of us, not for me, both of us. Uh so the reason I think that Nastasia uh enjoyed uh working is because I was uh a cavalcade of idiocy. So I bought a uh what what what would you call that?
+
+[11:46] Like uh what's something that isn't meant to do anything? Like a fake, like a chotchke. What is that? Tchotchki. Tchotchki.
+
+[11:52] Remember I bought I went to like a souvenir shop in uh on 116th Street in like Lex, and I bought like a matate, yeah, like a show matate. Now like Fukezi? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. There you go.
+
+[12:05] And it was like, it was like uh I'm holding my hands up, it was like a foot and something long. You know what I mean? And it was real rough, like mocojete rough, right? And I was like, what the and so I got it back to the French Culinary Institute. Remember this, Doz?
+
+[12:21] Mm-hmm. And I was like, this doesn't work, this sucks. And then so then I started grinding it with a grinder to kind of like try to like imitate that I've been using it for 30 years. Yeah. And then it's I still couldn't get it to work.
+
+[12:32] And then, Stas, you remember you duct taped it to my back? Yeah. What else did I take home that day? I t I you duct taped like a hundred pounds of shit stuff to my back. And he refuses to take taxis.
+
+[12:45] Oh what am I made of money? Yeah, I mean, we don't know each other that well. I never I never got it to work. And then I bought a corona. My god, do they suck?
+
+[12:55] And in fact, not the beer. Just beer's fine. I mean, it's great. If you know, if you if you you know want to drink seltzer, but instead you want beer, corona is uh, you know, wow. It's the seltzer of the South, you know.
+
+[13:07] You don't you disagree? I mean, it's uh there's nostalgia there for me. That was the first beer I tasted at the age of two, you know. Like you gotta, you gotta there's a place for it. Yeah, I guess, but then you you know, you move up to the especial, right?
+
+[13:18] You get the modelling, yeah. Yeah, they're all owned by MB, it doesn't matter. It's all the same. I was I was gonna say it's all it's all the same. All the same people.
+
+[13:24] Anyway, so it's always been kind of grinding that was the problem, but I was really struck uh, you know, because unlike, you know, you know, we were just testing out the because there was nobody. There was only tortilla nixtamal in in New York City that was at that time who was making their doing nixamalization. Yeah. And uh, you know, it was it was just I didn't understand why there wasn't good why there weren't good tortillas here. Same.
+
+[13:47] Same. I just didn't get it, but you actually did something about it. Yeah, I mean, honestly, so I read your article at that time. I remember connecting, I dropped off like six bags of corn. Oh, they're great.
+
+[13:55] I mixed them all, yeah. We nixed the malize them, but then the problem is is that like it's still it's I bought the uh Nyx d'imatic, which I know you're not a huge fan of, because you know the you know, the folks over at Rancho Gordo, that's the one that's gonna be. Whatever it takes, yeah. Yeah, whatever it takes. Uh but I think in in your book, you you give the actual reasonable solution.
+
+[14:14] By the way, if I I hope somebody is listening to this that has money, because if you have money, right? Just you you ha you're bringing in a good grinder now, really. Yeah, we we we actually uh we were inspired. I was telling this to Nastasia earlier. We we saw the Sears all and I was like, my God, if they can make a Sears all and not kill anyone, you know, we can we can make a a really, really heavy duty uh grinder and do the same thing that's tabletop.
+
+[14:38] So yeah, we made it. It's called Molinito. Um and it it's it's kind of a revolution. The stones look pretty sick. They're real.
+
+[14:45] Yeah, they're they're hand-edged in Puebla. They're uh from a quarry there, and uh it's it's legit. I mean, it's basically what used to be 10 grand, you know, and like require three phase electricity. Like you could not start any kind of nixdom all operation without a pretty significant, you know, investment. And it's not to say it's cheap, right?
+
+[15:00] But like we we make it work. But even like I know people, I think wasn't it Stupak that brought in like a grinder. He still paid a lot of money, but it wasn't it wasn't made for the US market, and so like you have to like j you know jury rig it and all this other you don't I mean we had the same issue. It's like we had at that time it was 2014, we had right around the corner from there, Rosie's was opening up. Uh who else?
+
+[15:22] I mean, there was like a it was just a moment 2014. There's so many places that were opening up and trying to do NYX to mall, and now we had this source of corn, right? That they could all tap into. And uh I'll never forget like opening day, they're all of their all of the grinders went down. Like they just they didn't they weren't built to last, you know.
+
+[15:38] So we spent a lot of time trying to figure that out because nobody could buy the corn we were offering if they didn't have the way to grind it. Right. Right. Well that and that's so how big are the stones on yours? They're five-inch stones.
+
+[15:48] It's it's a countertop. I mean, it's the size of this little, you know, this this interview table. It's about like it's like the size of a small microwave. And I mean small microwave. It's like a uh 80 pounds though, because the stones and the butter.
+
+[15:58] Well, well, that's the thing, right? So I mean, the the issue with the I mean the the the nystomatic, the issue with the nyxtomatic is it that the stones, they're not stones, they're steel plates. They're not as good. I think you can get a stone. I've never actually seen it, but I've heard you can get a stone after one.
+
+[16:13] I've never seen it. I haven't seen it. And the motor is troublesome. The motor will I burnt it out. It somehow came back to life once.
+
+[16:18] I don't know how I got it to come back to life. But grinding okay. So you gotta mentally separate people between like a single pass grinding situation, which MASS is either single or double, but it's not continuous, right? The way you're grinding it by machine. Whereas traditionally it was attrition grinding over time.
+
+[16:40] So like the the woman would would grind and pull back and the same thing again and again. She got multiple cracks at it, right? And it's backbreaking labor. Yeah. But in a single pass or double pass situation, you have to put a lot of power into it.
+
+[16:53] Oh, yeah. It's a real motor, not like a garbage cam motor. You need like a real motor. And that's I think where probably a lot of the money is, right? Is that is the motor and the stone.
+
+[17:03] I mean, to make it. Yeah. I mean, and stainless steel ain't cheap, you know, inflation. It's crazy. Yeah.
+
+[17:07] Oh my god. So how many pounds uh an hour? How do you rate it? It's about 60 pounds of masa an hour, which is a lot. Which is I mean, like for all things good.
+
+[17:16] We had a party there last night. Thanks for coming, Dave. Great to see you. I was I was I was working another party. You know, I was working.
+
+[17:22] He never goes to anybody. I was working, unless they're like by his bar too. I was literally wor I wasn't going to a party, I was working it. I was behind the bar. You know what?
+
+[17:33] Sons of bitches. Thank you, Joe. Uh yeah, but uh we uh I mean, it was um what were we even talking about? Uh just that you didn't come to the party. Uh what uh what other what other thing happened?
+
+[17:44] We were talking about how much power six pounds an hour. So yeah, uh it's about 60. So for all things good, you know, that was one of the we did a class in 2019, just before the pandemic. Matt Diaz came over, his partner Carlos. Uh they they hadn't quite uh launched the restaurant yet.
+
+[17:58] And like it helped launch their restaurant. Now they've got another restaurant in Williamsburg. Uh and it's like this has been a recurring story across the country and the world. Like everybody is now opening up a restaurant and diving deeper into it because it's such an accessible piece of equipment. Yeah, well, and the okay, so I I know this is gonna sound ridiculous to people who are at home, but for eighteen hundred dollars, if you're building a program around Massa, buy three.
+
+[18:21] Yeah. Use two, yeah, buy three, have the spare, and then I'm sure you'll fix it if there's ever a problem, and then they get it fixed. And that's how it, that's how you do a program. But that's the whole thing with the centrifuge, too. You make it cheap enough so the restaurant can buy three, use two.
+
+[18:36] Right. It's like no one, you know, no one's like, well, I guess we're gonna shut the Vitaps broke. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you know, and uh the thing that people don't get is that you know, when you're selling something hits niche, it costs a lot more, but it it looks beefy as as all hell.
+
+[18:50] It's a little, it's a lot for a home to have. You know, I was surprised. Like there are a lot of home cooks who've been buying it, you know. And it look, it just to go back, if you are a home cook, I actually I've been corrected. I I put out there, and of course the the tribe responded and was really apt, really quite upset about it.
+
+[19:07] You can get a puff, a tortilla puff from a hand grinder with one pass. In a corona? In a corona or a Victoria. Yeah. You can do it.
+
+[19:16] Oh yeah, all the same molds, right? They're all the same molds. They're all out of Columbia, strangely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or maybe like by weight, yeah, by way of Columbia from China, probably.
+
+[19:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pass through Columbia. Yeah. Just like the chili's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[19:28] Uh you did it. You get a book. Okay, listen, I had we had a group, uh so we had a we had a uh an intern who ended up going to work uh French laundry and then opened his own place in um where is he is in Taiwan or Hong Kong? I can't remember. And uh we had a corona hand grinder at my house, and we had all the interns from the FCI come over, and we were doing masa for like, what was that, like 30 people?
+
+[19:51] Yeah, yeah. And hand, right? And interns. Interns. And he was the only guy, he just stood there going at it like it how many hours did it, how many hours was he grinding that that corona?
+
+[20:05] If you want to make one tortilla, I'm sure you can get the corona to work if you break it in forever. That's another thing. I'm sure your thing comes ready to grind out of the box, right? You betcha. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, like even the nixamatic, it takes a lot of wear down to get the the things to work properly.
+
+[20:19] Yeah, I mean, I didn't think we're I'm really happy we're plugging Molinita today. This is totally unexpected. Thank you. Well, it's the it's the problem. So the other the other solution that you uh pose in your book to to grinding, and I guess we should out today.
+
+[20:33] Oh, oh, out today. Congratulations. Thank you. Happy Papaya. And what month is it?
+
+[20:37] September 13th. It's Hispanic Heritage Month, which is why we're here. Thanks. That's right. You couldn't come to the party, but you did want to make sure we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month in the right way.
+
+[20:46] So you came correct. I did, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was I was really thinking about that a lot. No, it's just I saw you were coming out with the book, and I was like, holy crap, we haven't talked in a long time, and obviously it's it's a subject I love. Let me back up one second.
+
+[20:59] So when you nyxtamalize, right, they needed to grind, right? So when you you're steeping it with the alkali is doing is softening the outside of the of the corn, because it's hard, right? Yeah, and also turning it into this amazing goo that takes the place of gluten. Right. That along with the fact that you're partially uh cooking some of the uh starch, and so that also holds water.
+
+[21:18] So that's why masa, when you grind it, is you know, stiff, but it has a lot of water. And if you grind it fine enough, that's why it can puff. You need a you need to uh need to hold enough water, but still be stiff enough that it it does the puff. Now, you make a bunch of interesting uh kind of things where you have like a table tortilla versus a like a frying tortilla versus all these different things. And it basically it comes down to texture.
+
+[21:42] You want to talk about those and like grind styles, how it might be easier to make one as opposed to the other? Totally. And for uh anyone who's listening, I do think that like the meat of this book, you're gonna want to do the kernel to massa process. It's like a lot of people have been talking about this book, sort of reminds them of tartine bakery and that like 40-page country loaf approach. Like we go deep on that um here.
+
+[22:01] You have to though. You have to. Otherwise, like you just don't know the variables that you're playing with here. Right. Um, but yeah, there's two, and this is sort of more of a product of like modern day, you know, industrialization of food.
+
+[22:12] We work with, you know, at the very sort of beginning of the supply chain, farmers, families who have been doing this in open-air, beautiful, you know, comal fueled kitchens for a long time. Um, and then we also work with tortilleras around the country. And in fact, uh El Malagro, which is one of the biggest in the country, that really kind of still does things this traditional way at a huge scale. Um, billions of tortillas made, you know, the old-fashioned way a year. They were, you know, the first time I went over there to ask them if they'd make a tortilla for us for this whole foods thing we were doing.
+
+[22:40] He's like, Yeah, what kind of tortilla you want? They had like 180 recipes for tortillas. I was like, for a corn tortilla, like what could be so different? And he kind of just broke it down along two kind of a very, very basic, like binary system. You have a table tortilla, which is the kind that puffs usually.
+
+[22:55] Uh, it's soft, it's like, as the name implies, it's meant to kind of be shared around the table. You make a taco out of it. Um, if you're Mexican, you will not start a meal until that's on the table. It's like, it's like utensils, you know. And then you've got a fried tortilla, uh, you know, which is really it's it's low moisture, um, so that it can it can just fry and crisp up really nicely.
+
+[23:15] Um, and in kind of a more coarse texture, which sort of helps with that moisture issue, um, so that it has like just a nice snap to it. And I think that that was basically just trying to replicate at the end of the day, a stale tortilla, right? Like a stale tortilla is just like loses a little bit of moisture, it's kind of it's cracking a little bit. Um those are easier to grind for people though. What's that?
+
+[23:32] Like the the coarser ones, the frying ones. Easier, easier as your first thing to try to make, although but it's not as worth it because once you fry it, it's not it's not the god send thing. My first tortilla was garbage, you know. But like there was some magic in having gone through that whole process and realizing this is it, like you're close. You know, like you can see that the flavor at least had developed, you know.
+
+[23:50] Right. Maybe not so much the texture. Right. That's a good way to put it because as soon as you start boiling it in the l and you pick it up out of the soaking solution, you're like, oh it's wild. Yeah, it's magic.
+
+[24:00] It literally is alchemy, you know. So I think not not literally, it's not turning to gold. Yeah, but actually it does. It kind of starts glowing, it's like got a whole new color to it. But yeah.
+
+[24:09] Okay, so uh I'll just say this don't let the equipment uh hold you back. In the in the book, you give very good instructions, and you're also like you're like, listen, just get to it how you can get to it. You know what I mean? And so the food processor, obviously, the problem with it is the grind's too wet. And so you're like, listen, just add a little massa jarina to it to get the texture back where it needs to be.
+
+[24:27] Yeah, you could do the oven, but like just cut it with some good masarina. You know, if you're gonna do it, buy some musta and the maserina, which we also offer, by the way. There you go. Yeah, well, that's it. So, like, so you offer that.
+
+[24:37] You also you you I see you have a collaboration with uh Hayden Flour Mills and Amazon. We did a 5050, this is normal. How's it taste? I haven't tried that yet. I think it tastes great.
+
+[24:45] Some people are confused by it. You know, I was talking to Rick Bayless. He's like, I I I appreciate it. I just I I want one or the other. Do you put lard in it too?
+
+[24:52] Uh I put a little bit of coconut, uh, a little coconut, if like coconut oil, depending on what I've got. Um asiento, I can use sometimes too. But yeah, some kind of fat, your call. That's great. It's delicious.
+
+[25:03] As much fat as I would put into a flour tortilla? Because that's a great wheat for straight flour tortillas. It's great. It like it really is a perfect mashup of like two of you know the world's greatest grains. You know, when I wrote the that original like years ago, that Nixon all, I got a smack down from a bunch of people from that area, all the way up to like, you know, the old uh you know how like you know how like old Mexican culture goes all the way to like Colorado, basically, southern Colorado.
+
+[25:27] So one of my good friends is from that culture, and he's like, You son of he's like, flour tortillas aren't bull tortillas. He's like, they're good. My family's been making them for hundreds of years. Oh, yeah. Suck it.
+
+[25:38] I was like, sorry, man. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like the flour tortillas we get in the supermarket are not good. You know, compared to compared to like the one that his grandma made.
+
+[25:49] Of course, of course, yeah. But like, you know, I think what I go into this book, it's like you understand, once you understand the history, like there's a there's a place for this stuff. Convenience has helped us all, you know, navigate having kids, you know, make more time. Like we we just went a little too far in that direction. So it's just good to kind of reconnect with like the true essence of what these foods are, right?
+
+[26:07] You know, which is which is tradition. And I think corn tortillas, the ones that we typically eat are more more even debased than the flour tortillas are. I I yeah, they they're both pretty, they both pretty uh they're both pretty bad. Yeah. Uh so when you make masa, how long do you think you can keep it before you have to make a tortilla with it and have it be good?
+
+[26:28] Cause Stas, you used to buy the you used to buy the masa, right? When you were a kid growing up, you could buy the masa. Yes. It depends. I mean, like a lot of folks will put, you know, additional cow in it, which acts as a natural preservative.
+
+[26:39] It's a basic agent. So, you know, Mexico City, for example, what I notice about the masa there is that there's a lot more calcium hydroxide. It usually has a little bit more of that yellow tint as a result. And it's and it tastes more like cow, but it does kind of extend that shelf life, you know, if maybe if it's just like masa unrefrigerated, maybe for like 12 hours. But if not, it's it's high moisture, right?
+
+[26:59] So maybe 75% moisture, and it's gonna, it's gonna ferment really quickly. So you gotta put in refrigerator, but like any starch, it starts to degrade, you know. So it really is something you want to enjoy as soon as possible, especially if you're going through all that effort, you know. Right. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[27:12] Have you noticed that uh like as people start doing their own stuff, they tend to overcowl it just to prove that they've cowled it? Yeah, let's just let's get this out of the way. 1% calcium hydroxide to corn is is a foolproof way. It's gonna give you the c the flavor of the corn that you want. It's gonna really, really kind of accentuate it in all the right ways.
+
+[27:31] It's gonna be the perfect balance so that it's not going too overboard tasting too much like calcium hydroxide, which can taste like bile, you know. Yeah, I when it's overdone, it's unpleasant. It's really not not tasty. What do you think about the idea? And you mentioned a little bit about starting with blue varieties just so you get a feeling for the pH, because you can get used as a color test.
+
+[27:48] Do you like that kind of I think it's super cool? I mean, I do uh there's a page in the book where I kind of show you like if you go too much in either direction, uh in either the acidic or the basic range, like you just get the totally different color. Like it's a huge lever for color. So you gotta be careful to really kind of treat that nicely. But yeah, you start to actually also realize that a lot of these colors that you see on the on the store shelves that are not refrigerated, that are just sort of sitting there uh for months at a time, like those are all manipulated with like acids, you know, like like bleach, basically, which is yeah.
+
+[28:16] Look, if you've ever done it yourself, it's like you're you it's kind of crazy and addictive and it makes you sad when you look at a store bunk t yeah. But uh so you you so you put the corn with the with the cowl, you you bring it up to the boil, and now when am when am I pulling it out? What do you like to look for for when it's done? Like a nice al dente quality to it, and like uh Italian al dente sense, not American sense, you know? Right.
+
+[28:37] Well, you don't want it all the way through. There's still some starchy stuff in the center, right? Because it's gonna it's gonna create kind of like this mortar, you know. Like cow actually is used as a mortar uh agent, right? Like it's used in cements and things like that.
+
+[28:47] And it kind of has that same property when it comes to niximalization, it's a binding agent. Um it through a process called crosslinking, which again, those 40 pages, you'll go you'll go deep into, I'm sure. Well, so when you're picking it up, so because here's the thing I think that's easy to to mess up, because uh I do think it makes some people have always like, well, can I pressure cook it? I'm like, no, it doesn't really know. I've never tried, honestly.
+
+[29:09] I'm scared of a channel. I love pressure cookers, but I I wasn't able to get a decent repeatable result. But because you it's you don't really want to just take it to where it is and then pull it right away, which is kind of the way pressure cooker stuff works. You want to cook it for not that long. I forget what what I usually would do, but then you have to let it ride.
+
+[29:26] You have to let it sit out. So the trick is right, how do you figure out when to stop it so that the carryover on the soak is the right amount? Like what's your what's your Yeah? I mean, I I honestly I go to the point where it's like it still has a little bit of granularity in the in the center, and actually I took some photos of like the actual perfect Goldilocks state. You have some beautiful cross sections of corn in this book, by the way.
+
+[29:46] It's like it's not fit for yeah, the show right now. We can't go into it. But it's like gene changes. I heard this is a family show. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[29:53] So I saw that corn, I was like, oh yeah, corn. The photographers are like, why are we doing this shot? I was like, just my people need to see this. Yeah. I was like, I mean, people, you gotta buy it just for the corn cross sections.
+
+[30:04] You know what I mean? And the different states. Yeah. You gotta, you should have made it so that it folds out. I publisher, uh publisher puts the kayak watching.
+
+[30:12] The next go-around, I mean, like, you know, Stas, have you looked at this yet? No. I was like, oh, it's like Yeah. Wow. Yeah, right.
+
+[30:20] All right. So can you like the for anyone who's gonna end up buying this book, please buy it wherever books are sold. Yeah, you know. Buy the kitchen arts and letters. Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say, I I stopped by, and Matt is just the loveliest.
+
+[30:31] He's been thank you. Yeah, hey, Matt. Um, but uh yeah, I think what's interesting. If anybody can find some of the the errors, you know, this happens in any cookbook, please let me know and we'll we'll give you a mulinito. Don't do that.
+
+[30:44] I don't know. Don't do that. No, take it back right now. Let me know. Take it back right now.
+
+[30:47] No, because they're gonna find some little thing. You misplaced the comma, we shouldn't. No, no, no, no. No, no, like syntax, no punctuation, just like true fact error, let me know. Okay.
+
+[30:57] Yeah. Uh listen. Uh okay. Uh he doesn't guarantee that it's gonna be new. It's gonna be when he scraped off the shop.
+
+[31:06] It'll be the it'll be the prototype for sure. Yeah. Uh okay. So, and then uh, like, do you on the first cook, do you need that stuff to fully slip off when you pick it up? Like you Yeah, you definitely want to make sure that the the skins are coming off.
+
+[31:19] So, like the there is there are actually scientific like temperatures and sort of times that you can look at, which actually really depend on the size of the cook. Like you doing it at home is gonna be very different than a 2,000-foot cooking or 2,000 pound cooking tank at a tortilleria. So there are differences, but there is kind of like a sweet spot that I talk about. I think without going too much into kind of the technicals piece, just if the skins are sliding off and it's starting to taste like a tortilla, that's when I turn it off. Okay.
+
+[31:44] And like imagine that it's gonna cook for another 10% unless you shock it in ice, which is something that actually the cosme was started to do in the early days. I mean, I used to do it when I effed up. I'm like, oh my god! Yeah, and then I throw the stuff in. You know what I mean?
+
+[31:57] Yeah, and then how long do you let it soak? You know, um tortillas will do it for like honestly four hours because that there's so much residual heat that's that's sitting in there and it kind of accelerates that process. Uh I do it, I leave it overnight. I don't really think about it, honestly. I mean, I mean it's convenient.
+
+[32:11] Overnight's convenient. Yeah, the science just kind of happens to it. Now here's the thing. Okay, here's where it gets. Here's where it gets.
+
+[32:17] Oh boy. How much do you rub and rinse? Because to me, that's the thing. That's the whole thing. Besides from the grinding, yeah.
+
+[32:25] Yeah. How much do you rub and rinse? Rub and grind. This is getting off off the rails right now, Dave. Uh you know, I think like it depends.
+
+[32:32] There's so much um because corn is not made of gluten in any way, it you really have to make sure that you're controlling the skins that are that are kind of loosening in that process, not kind of they are loosening in that process. I do about a 50% wash off rate. Right. Because you want to have some of those skins. It's where the natural gums of the corn are.
+
+[32:49] They're gonna be what help bind all of these different kinds of uh the sort of the network structure of masa together. It's really kind of the glue of it. Um would you say more people tend to over rinse or more people tend to understand? People wash it clean because they think that like, you know, because it's fun. You're just like it's like a scab.
+
+[33:05] They're gonna make soup out of it or something. Yeah, scab and soup. Sorry, those are really good. No, I don't know what kind of thing. Okay, so like you rinse and then the grinding.
+
+[33:12] So for the average home person who, when they're just starting, they should probably don't do it in a vital, don't do it in a Vitamix people. Yeah, don't food processor, small batches, long, long time. Yeah, food processor, you could do it for a long, long time. And you you have to put a ton of water in there to actually let it spin. I mean, truly the Victoria.
+
+[33:28] Like, like I'm I'm now a convert. It's like the only reason we even sell it is because somebody was like, I did I look at the puff I'm getting. I was like, I detailed. How many times? How many times did you roll that through?
+
+[33:29] Once. Once I did, I don't know, man. I don't believe it. Have you okay? I I've done it.
+
+[33:40] I see it. Okay, okay. Okay. For like two tortillas would be great. Uh, have you uh people, what about the meat grinder people?
+
+[33:46] You know, I people do it. I haven't experienced I've done it out of a meat grinder and it was really not very tasty. But like I think where there's a will, there's a way. Whatever you can do to connect with this food in a more kind of deep, meaningful level, and like appreciate how much work goes into an actually really thoughtfully made tortilla. I don't, I don't care how you do it, you know, at the end of the day.
+
+[34:05] Right. Here, so here's uh someone did it in a bullet. What? And I was like, a bullet, like how, you know, that that takes even longer than a hand grinder. Yeah.
+
+[34:14] Uh at that point, just you know, get a cup and a mallet. Uh the the one that I did that, but the problem is it's still more equipment. Is I did it in one of the like the idli grinders, like the wet, like you know, the ones that they used for for chocolate now. Yeah, yeah, like a melanger. Yeah.
+
+[34:29] So, you know, you you blitz it in the food processor. You have to pre-treat it. Yeah. Yeah, I made that mistake. Yeah.
+
+[34:35] It was just like rolling off. It can't, you can't it like it can't go from corn to masa, but if you get it to that pre-grind, you can do it pretty stiff, yeah, and then for like hours. Yeah, you know, it mimics, you know, someone on a matate mono. Yeah. Um, but anyway, so that's still the thing, but don't let that stop you from getting the book.
+
+[34:53] But here's the cool thing. Because unlike when I was doing those experiments and you couldn't get decent corn, now you can get God's corn. You want to talk about the different flavors of the corn, and I gotta get some questions. Just like what people can look for in like, because I think they're like, Well, am I gonna go, am I gonna go like white, yellow, or blue? That's all they're thinking.
+
+[35:11] Right. Can you talk about like just like the the variance in the corn and what it does to the tortillas? Yeah, I mean, I think the first moment I realized that there was something really exceptional about corn, and you know, in the same way we think about tomatoes or wheat or whatever, it's you know, there was a farmer that I worked with in Oaxaca in the very beginning, and he we were joined by an agronomist. He said to take a bite of a kernel, a raw kernel, which is like not exactly palatable at that point. I was like, I yeah, my dentist would really have a problem with this.
+
+[35:36] Took a bite of it. He's like, What do you taste? And it was a yellow, really, really vibrant yellow corn. And I was like, My gosh, I don't have a sophisticated palate, just to be clear. So this is not me like waxing poetic.
+
+[35:46] This is genuinely what a a really unsophisticated person tasted in that moment. It was like carrots and butternut squash. It's like, yeah, beta carotene is something that is found in both this and you know, butternut squash and carrots. I was like, my God, you know, like it was a it was a revelation. Like there, when you are not breeding something out of what sort of is naturally sort of imbued in this corn to begin with, for the purposes of yield or you know, shelf stability or whatever, you have an amazing array of flavors.
+
+[36:12] So that was like my entry point. But every every variety has its own kind of distinct flavor, but also texture is really important. I think that's sort of to me the one that I would start with is like, you know, is it a really, is it a really uh light starch? Is it something that's gonna create a really airy tortilla? You know, the bolita that the variety that I first tried, um, which is what our yellow masarina is made of, um, is uh, you know, it's incredibly dense.
+
+[36:35] And it actually is the only corn I've seen that can support those 14 inch tlayudas that you see in Oaxaca and specifically that Central Valley. And what's cool is you start to understand like that's why all of these tortillas throughout Mexico, Central America look different, they taste different, because the corn is different. And so it's, you know, we could go on, there's like thousands of varieties of corn to choose from. But you know, we we offer about 20 on our site in any given time. And if you are not wanting to go through the kernel tomassa process, there's no judgment.
+
+[36:59] We you know, you can approach every recipe in this book with Masarina as well. And honestly, to me, there it's never been a better time to kind of explore at any at any angle at any level, uh, you know, all that Massa has to offer. You brought out a press too, right? Yeah, you know, so we were bringing out Cosby, actually, they would ask us to bring back. We gifted them a press from Oaxaca.
+
+[37:19] Is it one of the it's one of the pipe style ones, right? Flat plate pipe ones? Yeah, it's it's like steel, you know, and it was made probably with like lead-based paint. Uh and then uh, you know, just because it's healthy. And um we we kept bringing it back, and they were like, we gotta bring more back.
+
+[37:31] And I I just finally at one point was like, I think I brought like a dozen of them. They're really cumbersome to bring back. Um I asked the this lady at the market, uh, Doña Rosa, I was like, can we just can we like set something up here? Like, can we buy like a thousand? She's like, she actually said no.
+
+[37:43] Like she was like a hard no. Didn't want to make it. No, she was like really, really, she was hard to get. And then after like about a year of persistence, she was like, all right, fine. So we've had a great relationship with her for the last three, four years.
+
+[37:53] Uh we pay her whatever she whatever she wants at any time, and uh, you know, those those prices have steadily increased. But to me, it's like it is, it is the the simplicity of that that tool, it sort of belies like how huge of an impact it has on the actual finished tortilla. Yeah, because I have a bad one and the spacing's wrong, so I have to like put like a like a spacer into it to get my tortillas the right thickness. Are you a Ziploc or what what's your what's your you know? I like the thinnest plastic you can get, like the lighter the weight, the better.
+
+[38:21] So like a nice like little produce, you know, bag from the grocery store is great. Um we're actually, I think, I think we're gonna do like a recycled plastic, you know, bag that can kind of mimic that experience because it's just it's so hard to find, you know, you like you don't you don't you always have a plastic bag laying around the house. But Ziploc works. Parchment I find like bursts a little bit too. I mean, like uh, you know, I I've used uh saran and a pinch, but it didn't it sucks.
+
+[38:42] It sucks. Uh have you ever gotten good at this? No. I can't do it. You look great doing that though.
+
+[38:47] I mean do we have cameras that people can do it. Sometimes we do. But like I've I've tried it many times I'm like oh that's too much skill. Yeah yeah I can't do that. I need to have learned that for generations.
+
+[38:55] It's that's not something you can just there's there's some things that you know they're they're it's easier to do with chipatis. So if you're doing like like you know chipatis, that because the gluten holds you together it's more forgiving. Yeah much more forgiving and much more forgiving I think on the puff too. But of course no one's grinding their own flour for that either. No not yet.
+
+[39:15] No true all right uh let me get to some questions. Uh from Cypress Hill when is someone going to start producing a stone now a lot of the people here are calling them wet grinders but they're not referring they're referring to something that can grind Massa, not like wet grinder in the sense of Idlies. Yeah or wet grinders like IWA which is like a whole different ball game. Uh that attaches to a kitchen aid stand mixer hub specifically the flat style grinder used for larger masa machines. Uh they're currently using the Estrella which is a corona style one uh attached to a meat grinder motor that's hard dangerous I've seen people do that uh works well but it's not elegant as the closest I've gotten to being seriously maimed in the kitchen.
+
+[39:52] So you ever gonna you ever gonna make an attachment? Working on it. I mean like I've you know if anyone at KitchenAid is listening please give us a holler there's a huge tribe who wants to do this and we will we will we will develop it at no cost to KitchenAid. But no it's uh it what we've seen are attachments for for dry uh which unless you are dehydrating the Nyxtamall after you've cooked it and in cow and let it sit um it won't it won't run through there well. We actually talked to the folks at Mock mill.
+
+[40:17] Yeah. Early into the stones won't do it. You'd have to use your stone gum it up. But couldn't you? So like and though the stones that they put on the the mock mill attachment for the Kitchen aid has a much smaller stone than you're using.
+
+[40:29] They make and Como, which is the same guy. Exactly, exactly. They make a they make a one that's your size. They make one that's this big, but only for their freestanding, not for the attachments. I just think they're nervous that the power, they're not gonna be enough power to the other.
+
+[40:40] Yeah, there's not enough torque. Actually, sorry, it was coma who we talked to, not mock mill, mock millenni get back to me. Right. Um, we're doing all right. Um but uh it's uh there's so much torque.
+
+[40:48] I mean, those stones weigh, I mean, I forget the actual pounds, but they're a couple pounds, and you need a lot of you need a lot of uh power, as we talked about earlier to make them move. And you know, I think one of the problems with Kitchen Aid, specifically uh, you know, uh Cyprus is that uh no one wants to produce one. Look, I'm sure you could get it to work on the professional ones that are like 800 watts or whatever, like the new ones, like the big ones. But then someone's gonna put it onto an older unit, you're gonna get bad reviews, it's gonna be bad, and no one wants to do that. So I think like that's the backward compatibility is gonna make it difficult, right?
+
+[41:22] Maybe they'll do it for Hispanic Heritage Month next year. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Well, but the thing is is like could they like how much of it's just the stones and how much of it's the power, the grind on the stones, and how much it's also basalt, is really hard to, you know, like we're talking about um it's very porous. You know, it's not you you have to continuously like cut them to make sure that they're actually doing their job properly.
+
+[41:42] I think that's another issue too. You know, I think granite is what might be used for the comos and the mock mills. Uh they use comp they use uh a composite synthetic stuff. Which is like it's aluminum, it's like it's like a grinder stuff. Aluminum oxide, right?
+
+[41:53] Or something like that. Yeah, something like that. Like it it it's the same stuff that you have on a on a bench grinder. Right. Right.
+
+[41:57] Yeah, which is like, you know, it's uh the problem with that with masa is that it heats up really high and it really kind of denatures the natural oils that you find in masa. It makes sort of a more gummy. Right. And I know with my Nyx d'imatic, when you mess up and you gum it like steams like a mother. Like it's uh okay.
+
+[42:12] Uh Jason Lynn, what's the most effective means of grinding masa without a wet grinder? Well, I mean, I I'm gonna I'm gonna say spend you know 45 bucks on uh on a uh Sereya or a uh Victoria. I'm sorry, Dave. Do you like that better than the food processor and adding? I do.
+
+[42:27] I honestly, the food processor to me is like it's it's you gotta do too much. You're compromising it. All right. What advice do you have for tortilla cooking consistency? I find that I can get the first couple to turn out well, but then the third or fourth sticks to the pan with a vengeance.
+
+[42:39] Haven't been uh quite able to diagnose if this is heat or a moisture management issue or both. Both. Both moistures I mean, you just start with your masa in the beginning, whether you're using masarina or you've done kernel de masa, and after five minutes, it's probably close to a stove, which is high temperature, maybe four or five hundred degrees. It's gonna dry out, you know, unless you've got a rag and even like a wet sort of like kitchen towel over it. Um and that really starts to do the smush test.
+
+[43:04] The smush test is a very technical way of telling if your masa is ready to go. Roll the ball, smush it in your hands. And if the outer edges of it are cracking, it's thirsty. Give it a little more water. Right.
+
+[43:15] Um, and then yeah, if you're going for a puff, I went deep into the puff. Yeah, oh, you did. And by the way, you guys need to buy the book. Buy the book. I can't buy the book, but also watch your video series.
+
+[43:27] Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. What's it called? It's called corn.
+
+[43:31] Colonel masa. Colonel de masa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh but the book, the book goes even deeper.
+
+[43:35] Um that's a good thing. But but showing, like showing it, like flipping it and getting the puff. Because uh, I forget. It's uh I it's right when we asked you, I watched them all. But do you do you do the spoon down if it doesn't puff like throughout the yeah?
+
+[43:47] Like, I'll do like my fingers or you know, like a little kitchen towel and compress. The problem does anyone do open flame like they do for Shapati for the puff on the second thing, or no? People do it. I mean, I don't. I don't love that hard char as much.
+
+[43:58] I like it kind of just I like it nicely kissed on the Kamal. Right. So to me, when I first saw the the push down trick on the puff, uh I was shocked because I think it's like, oh, it's a contact issue. I'm not getting enough heat through the thing. Exactly.
+
+[44:10] You push it in contact and pushing it down makes it puff up. It's so counterintuitive. We should have written this book together. Next time. Next time.
+
+[44:16] So listen, the other thing is uh on the on the puff, why don't you because some people think it's just uh oh no, but it tastes different because the steam on the inside. You want to talk about the texture of one that just puffed properly? Yeah, I mean, like we talk about crumb shots all the time, you know, like we just like cut this cross section of bread and you've got that nice, like kind of like spongy interior. It's the same sort of idea. You know, you've you're sort of getting this nice like uh sort of souffle that's really cooking through the center.
+
+[44:41] And a puff, a puff is like very elusive, I think. It's sort of like this magical quality, but it's actually it's quite basic in terms of what is actually happening. You're getting moisture that's trapped in between kind of two like seared edges, basically, two seared sides. And when the heat hits that moisture, it expands. And it's allowing it to cook through in a really even way.
+
+[44:59] Um so you know, a puff consists of really five. I'm not even gonna do this off the top of my head. Uh a puff is actually there are five things that are gonna be at work there. Compression, which we just talked about, so you can kind of like coax it if you're not you can't do like a un really unformed tortilla puck. It's not gonna really happen.
+
+[45:15] Well, you're trying to get you're trying to get the bottom surface to get the heat transfer. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So compression, moisture, um, elasticity. So like those skins are actually gonna really help, like bubblegum, you know, like kind of give it some uh some nice skin to to expand.
+
+[45:28] Um what else? Grind, you know, you really need a fine grind to get that done. Hard to do with like yeah bits. This is why I think it's not a bad idea to practice puff with with uh massa harina. Yeah.
+
+[45:41] Yeah. Practice puff with it so you know about the puff. And temperature. You know, like I I used uh in our office for that kitchenette like Colonel Lamasa series, like a 400 degree you know hot plate, basically. And it's like not quite as hot.
+
+[45:44] I did I actually took uh this is like the nerdiest thing I ever did. I took a razor uh laser thermometer to Oaxaca and Mexico City and like just tested everybody. And it was like average was like six, six, six Fahrenheit. Did you get a lot of side eye? No, people are like, how hot is it?
+
+[46:05] And I was like, it's real hot. It's uh 666 degrees. Hot as hell. Uh also uh I can't stress this enough. Uh if you're just having it around for recipes, whatever buy the supermarket garbage, but it it is universally rancid and stale by the time that you get it.
+
+[46:20] Yeah. Uh so you should really buy the the masa arena from macienda and not the one uh look, the supermarket when it's cheap, it's available. I'm not trying to like yuck anyone's yum, but I'm saying it's not the same product. No, I literally talked to somebody who remains anonymous uh who used to work for a really large uh uh he was executive leadership at one of these types of companies, and he's like, you know, actually everything that's good goes to food service. The heads and the tails of these runs go into retail.
+
+[46:45] It's like the worst of what is being produced. So you know, but it it got me, it got me where I am sitting with you today. So I'm grateful for that. So uh Jameson uh Jameson writes in I regularly do a hundred grams of white macienda chef grade, hand mix, knead, saran wrap, the whole ball when I finish cooking. Well while I finish cooking, I then divide uh into four.
+
+[47:03] So that's uh that's pretty big tortilla, right? 25 of masa of of harina. The grams, the grams are a struggle for me. Yeah. Uh yeah.
+
+[47:13] Uh I wouldn't divide into four and cook on cast iron two at a time uh to serve immediately. I get two noticeable textures. One is smoothish, leathery, the other granular. It seems almost random out of the same batch. Any thoughts on why I'm seeing this and which version you think I should be chasing?
+
+[47:27] Also, can you speak uh to uh which of your products you'll be using at the Cosme dinner? And loves your tortilla press and your masa right now. Thank you so much. So kind. Um I'm gonna I'm gonna say um, because we probably don't have enough time, email us at info at masciana.com and you will be shocked at how deep we go into the answer.
+
+[47:45] But um, if I'm understanding correctly, man, there's a lot going on there. Uh I think it honestly it usually ends up boiling down to to moisture, which we talked about a little bit already. So do that smush test. Also the temperature of the comal, surprisingly, like depending on what kind of you said cast iron. Um those are really tricky.
+
+[48:00] You know, they like retain so much heat. We got two more minutes. You can go. This is just a let me know that I'm I'm keep going. Keep going, keep going.
+
+[48:08] Um yeah, but uh we we can dive a little bit deeper together, but that's probably those are the kind of the two most common areas that affect uh and impact texture. And then Cosme, I mean, Cosme is doing a beautiful tasting. And it's also not just the uh the like the food itself, which is phenomenal. I was there on Sunday. Um the cocktails, like, you know, the amount of of just like uh the the catalog of cocktails that can come out of masa or nixtamal in particular is unbelievable.
+
+[48:34] Tawino, you know, like fermented, it's it's delicious. Yana did an amazing job. Yeah, you know what? I've never done they're not nixed. I've never done a lot with uh chicha.
+
+[48:43] You ever do any stuff with that? Or you're just uh nix to mall only kind of kid? Not just, you know, I've got a I'm I'm loyal, but not not it's just time. You know, got a kid. That's the thing.
+
+[48:52] That's it. All right. Uh Craig uh just a masa question. Uh Craig Ware wrote in a million years ago you had a blog post about nixtimalizing rye grains. That experiment yielded any significant results.
+
+[49:01] I think you mentioned using Lye as well, but warned of the risk associated. Do you have any ratios to share? I think I gave the ratio on the blog and Quinn made the blog accessible again. Uh it's delicious. Rye is a pain in the butt because uh the the thing about corn masa is that there's no texture like it.
+
+[49:17] It's awesome. It's like it's wet and dry, it doesn't stick to you. And uh rye is very sticky because of the pentasands in it. So it's it's kind of a pain in the butt but it's delicious. But you know, it's not easy.
+
+[49:27] I wouldn't say everyone should go do it. Right. But it it is cool. So listen, uh Jorge, thanks for uh coming on. Go buy MASA from uh Kitchen Arts and Letters.
+
+[49:37] I think we have a uh uh Patreon discount. So if you're a Patreon member, you're gonna get a discount on the book at uh Kitchen Arts and Letters. Who knows? Maybe we can work out something with Macienda for our Patreon people. I'd love that.
+
+[49:47] Hey, you know, if you need that blog post to live anywhere on the internet, we we could use the SEO. It'd be great. All right, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll we'll work something out. Thanks for coming.
+
+[49:54] Do you have anything else uh coming up people should go to? I mean, we're popping up in cities all around the country, but uh yeah, stay tuned. A lot of fun content coming out. We did a series called Macienda Presents, which if you've not seen just some of the greatest minds in masa around the country just doing amazing stuff. Um, but yeah, it's a movement.
+
+[50:09] I don't know. And on the way out, give me give me three corn varieties that are gonna blow people's minds that they should buy from you. Oh man, Bolita, I'm a young yellow bolita, glue conico, uh, and uh Choco Yule. All right. All right, thanks so much for coming on, cooking issues.
+
+[50:24] Thanks so much, Steve.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center, News Dance Studios. Not joined as usual with Nastasia Hammer Lopez. Even though she is a grown woman, she is helping a friend of hers move. How you doing, Stas?
+
+[0:25] You're somewhere on the side. Oh my God. I am good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[0:29] Grown woman. Grown woman. Uh little known fact. Uh back in the day, Nastasia's thing used to be, will you help me move? And then her favorite thing to do would be to rent the tiniest zip car possible to move all of her crap.
+
+[0:45] And there's also, you know, Nastasia, like most of us, like most of us, Nastasia loves, loves like a fifth or sixth floor walk-up. She's like, is it basically illegal to walk up that many stairs? Let's get my friends to move. Yeah. That's that's Nastasia.
+
+[1:01] So I guess this is karma. I don't know why we're paying for your karma, but there you go. You know what I mean? I hope that I pay for my own karma and that nobody else pays for my karma. Anyway, uh also joined uh Rock in the Booth here.
+
+[1:13] We got uh Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing I'm doing great, man. I like that. We gotta get that.
+
+[1:19] That's like uh some sort of 70s, like sorry, the bad mute finger. Oh, I like that. Bad mute finger. Oh my god, what a great band. What do they cover?
+
+[1:26] Is that like a that's that's a sound garden cover band, Bad Mutefinger, right? It's like right next to the suck button, so yeah. Yeah, yeah, sweet. All right. Uh behind me we have again this week uh John Hool.
+
+[1:38] How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. How's uh how's uh Chef and treating you over at the at the Temperance?
+
+[1:42] It's great. Having fun. Saw Sargon the other day, one of our listeners. And then another purse, another, I didn't catch your name, Patreon listener, but I was gonna give you Twinkies, and you left like right before I was supposed to give you the Twinkies. Is it a fancy Twinkie?
+
+[1:58] It was like a test on a Twinkie. I don't know. I'm not getting the batter right yet. And I also don't think the Twinkie pan itself is very good. I have a Twinkie.
+
+[2:00] I have several Twinkie pans. It's it's you can see where it's browning in weird places and staying pretty pale in other places. Yeah. Yeah. Uh here's another thing about Twinkies.
+
+[2:17] The actual Twinkie, like I love them, but they're not good. Maybe the problem is that. The Twinkie is not good? Twinkie is not actually a well-made product. If you had never had a Twinkie before and I hand you a Twinkie, you'd be like, why is this cake so gummy on the outside and yet so dry in the middle?
+
+[2:36] And the goop is fine, but it's not like what you would make yourself. My point is that I love Twinkies, but if someone handed you a Twinkie and you'd never had a Twinkie before, you'd be like, come back to me when you fix the cake. Ah, maybe. I don't know, dude. I love Twinkies.
+
+[2:52] They're great. I also like Twinkies. What's the most you've ever eaten in one shot? Man, I don't know. Maybe like five or six.
+
+[2:59] Ten. Jesus. You know why? They come in a 10 box. Yeah.
+
+[3:05] So I'm not coming into you as a Twinkie hater here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? All right. Uh, in California, rocking the Discord, we got uh we got my man Jackie Molecules.
+
+[3:13] How you doing? I'm very good. Ten Twinkies at once sounds really disgusting. Yeah, that's true. You know what, you know what I washed it down with to make it even grosser.
+
+[3:27] Mountain dew. Mountain Dew. Oh no, I love I love myself some Mountain Dew. And by the way, it was Diet Mountain Dew back in the day. No, no.
+
+[3:33] Diet tonic water, a liter of Schwepp's diatonic water. Ten Twinkies and a liter of uh Schwef's diet tonic water. And I was learning physics. It was the summer times, and I was taking a summer class on physics, and that's the but my physics teacher, his daily lunch was and stank up the whole room with one of those giant tins of kippered fish. You know what I'm talking about?
+
+[3:54] So we would be talking about physics, and he would like bust out his weird, skinny tall dude, and he would bust out his kipper snacks and be like, we're like, oh man, with the kippers, with the kippers again. They're good though. I do like kipper snacks. So uh I'm gonna introduce our guest so that uh he can uh whether weigh in on whatever is gonna go on. But we have uh do we have John's Sommelier?
+
+[4:16] So there's also somebody else on the phone, too. Oh really? Who did I miss? Oh, Quinn, Jesus! Well, he's coming in, but he's Quinn Quinn Futur, is actually the star of the show today because all the way from Canada, he shipped us a care package of Canadian treats that we're gonna be tasting alongside uh our other special guest.
+
+[4:36] Sorry, Quinn. My mind is uh fried because it's the UN General Assembly here, and like I thought I wasn't gonna make it to the studio in time. Uh and we have a lot to get through. But uh today's in studio guest is uh Virgil Sam Miguel, who is the Sommelier. John, what do you think?
+
+[4:52] What do you when people say Somalia does it bend you or are you okay with it? I d I mean it bends me a little bit, but you know it is what it is. Give me this give me the full French Sommelier. Oh yeah, one more time. Sommelier.
+
+[5:03] Oh yeah. All right. So uh Virgil is a I'm just gonna say Som, so I don't have to worry about what the first manager, yeah. What's better? I don't know.
+
+[5:13] Yeah, yeah, there's no there's no like international, like uh there's no like international uh society of beverage directors. Exactly, true. You know what I mean? You're not people don't take tests to see whether they rate as a top-end beverage director. That's just like, yeah, I want to give you a title.
+
+[5:30] How about beverage director? Did you order the cases of Pepsi? Beverage director. Anyway. Okay, fair.
+
+[5:36] Um I mean, whatever. Whatever. It has its place. Uh so anyway, so maybe you can explain to me, Virgil, uh, why the place is called uh temperance, even though obviously it is not a temperance. Why or Ann, why don't you tell me some of the philosophy behind uh Yeah.
+
+[5:50] Well, I th what this will based from my from my boss, John, he says that uh after pandemic, he they assume that people will be uh well, temperance just means moderation. Uh it has nothing to do with uh temperance movement in uh back in the prohibition. All right, so it's not related to like Carrie Nation and No, no, nothing American temperance. It's just basically uh just a moderation. Like they assume that people after the pandemic will do everything in moderation.
+
+[6:17] I it's still kind of a contradict to like hundred wines by the glass. And uh that hasn't been my experience. Exactly. People do things in moderation, yeah, after the pandemic. Welcome back to uh so Virgil, uh well, real quick just so people can get so you started in coffee and then moved to wine?
+
+[6:35] Yeah. I was in coffee business for well, I always been in hospitality uh industry, like I work as uh a housekeeper uh in uh in Aspen, Colorado. Oh my god, what was that like? The people suck, right? Well it was it was not the people, but I mean, come on.
+
+[6:52] Yeah. I I seen like it's just crazy. They're not connected to reality with the amount of money. No reality connection. No, I love Aspen.
+
+[6:59] It's like uh I'm I'm like a semi-local though. I never go there, I know a lot of people and live in the Aspen. But I what's it what's it like working with people who are completely disconnected from reality? It's you learn a lot from them in a way that you're kind of curious, uh what they do for a living, how how but but some of the very nice, really nice people are very uh uh down to earth. And you don't often see them like bragging or hear them bragging about stuff.
+
+[7:28] You will just like eavesdrop and like hear them you know talking about their private plane stuff. Yeah. I asked one guest uh call when I use uh work in a coffee shop in Aspen. I asked one guest if uh uh what airlines they took. He said, No, we have our own jet.
+
+[7:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no biggie. Exactly. No biggie.
+
+[7:49] That's just like us, right, Stas? Yeah. So yeah. But I I started as uh working as a housekeeper, uh uh working as a bartender, uh in Aspen, uh in New York as well, and I work as uh in the coffee shop uh for like 10 years because I I like the the craziness, the crazy science behind coffee. So what's the difference making coffee at altitude?
+
+[8:13] Oh, it's uh we have to change the uh uh the machine. Uh we have to calibrate it almost every three hours because it's it changed a lot. Temperature affects the cost. Also so dry up there. It's so dry, yeah.
+
+[8:26] Yeah, what's the relative humidity up there? Like 11, 10, 11%, something crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. It's I actually just did a whole bunch of studies on uh flower moisture and uh relative humidity that no one's gonna care about, but I'll maybe I'll put it on Twitter later.
+
+[8:39] Um so yeah, so okay, so so how you're in Aspen for like 10 years then? No, on and off. Uh probably three years, roughly. Yeah, okay, Jesus. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[8:49] Uh I I I've said on the air before the only time I've ever been winded doing bartending was when I flew into Aspen and had to ten bar at the top of the mountain that night. Oh my god, it like takes it out of you like going up to heights because I'm not used to it. It's insane, yeah. I'm a lowlander. All right.
+
+[9:02] So then you moved uh where? Here to New York? New York. Uh I worked in some restaurant back in 2009, and uh uh I was always fascinated with wine, but it's it's got a hard uh business to get into. It's you need to study a lot, you need to know a lot of people, good connections, uh, and you need to drink a lot of wines.
+
+[9:23] And it took me a while to really get into break into the like business. Yeah, it is kind of closed off in that way too. Also, like uh I found that somehow's are the hardest group of people to hang with when you go out because they just can take down oceans of liquid. They're just like bartenders, I mean, it's just nuts, like it's just crazy. Yeah, I think we build up these uh tolerance in how bad one thing about similar, most similar that I know don't like shots.
+
+[9:52] They don't drink shots. Uh why would you though? Shots aren't actually a I'm sorry, I'm gonna I'm alienated first of all anyone from Colorado already today. I take it back, whatever it is. And also, like I'm about to alienate like everybody else, but like I don't like shots either, man.
+
+[10:05] I I don't like that. I'm not a fan of shads. What's the point? Like I will drink enough. If I want to get drunk, I will drink enough over the course of the night.
+
+[10:12] You know what I mean? I don't need that. It's very dangerous, too. Yeah, it's just not uh this is why I think every first of all, the the tradition of shots towards it's always at the end of the night, which is the worst time to have shots, right? This is why I think every bar should have a potted plant near the bar somewhere, so that people like me can just dump their shots into the potted plant without looking rude.
+
+[10:34] You know? I mean, it has to be a very alcohol tolerant plant. But all right, so now I have a couple questions for you. So Jackie Molecules, who's uh rocking up in uh LA over there, like you know, enjoying whatever's happening in LA. Uh he thinks that if he was on a first date, I'm getting your opinion, Virgil.
+
+[10:53] He's on a first date, and she brings to his house a bottle of twelve dollar California Merlot that he should just be like, this date's over, goodbye. What do you think? Oh that that's a very uh that depends who the person is, I guess that you can because like for me, if you're gonna bring me a wine, like uh you get a tubak chalk, I I will not die. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
+
+[11:22] Yes, yes. Yeah, it's a few days ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I will not say like no to it. I I I will I will still drink it because I uh that's just respectful to someone.
+
+[11:32] Uh I mean, Jack, not a snob. Yeah, I I am not a snob at all. I'm completely opposite. Um drank the wine. You know?
+
+[11:46] Yeah, yeah. All right, all right, right. And uh secondly, I need to hear this story before another week goes by because uh, you know, we won't talk about it. So Nastasia is in this on this island off the coast of Sicily. Am I correct, Stas?
+
+[11:59] Yes. Yeah. And someone was cooking, right? She's not out at a restaurant, and they s they served you a horse. How was it?
+
+[12:06] Oh my god. Uh it was very irony, like incredibly irony and chewy, and it was like um shredded horse. Like tacos? Yeah. Yes.
+
+[12:17] Like that, kind of. It was a horse like on bread. Horse on bread. Like had a flavor. Horse on bread, yeah.
+
+[12:24] Yeah. All right. Um, but the flavor was just like like almost like liver. It was b I did not like it. I really didn't like it.
+
+[12:32] Plus, there were horses standing like a couple feet away. So you're like looking at them while you're eating them. Did you say, hey buddy? When you were eating it, is that what you did? No.
+
+[12:45] No. Also the restaurant didn't have a bathroom, and when I said I needed to use the bathroom, they said, Oh, just go by the horses. And so I went by the horses. It's the circle of the poo. Right?
+
+[12:57] They they eat it, then you eat them. It's just goes around. Yeah. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm.
+
+[13:03] Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's crazy. Yeah. And uh, see.
+
+[13:07] Yeah. Yeah. Any any other interesting food stories from uh from that island? No, that's enough. Sounds like an old horse.
+
+[13:14] Like a lot of animals when they get old. I mean, I'm I've heard horse meats very dark, right? But a lot of animals when they get older get more and more kind of that uh irony, like livery tasting stuff. Uh John, you're a you're a francophile, so you've uh you've uh taken down some uh what is it? Sh shovosh?
+
+[13:30] What is it? Yeah, cheval. Yeah, you've taken down some of that stuff in the in the past. What are your thoughts on it? Did Nastasia just have bad horse?
+
+[13:36] I think so. I don't know. I've had it as steaks before in Belgium. Yeah. And it's they're pretty tasty.
+
+[13:43] I'd would you know if I go back and it's on the menu, I'd probably get it again. So what you're saying. It's a little more minerally and irony. Are you are you saying Nastasia had the equivalent of like deep fried gator, like whatever the Sicilian equivalent of some bayou weirdo who just like shot, cut apart an alligator and threw it in their freezer and then sold it to Nastasia and Piper. She had the equivalent of that in Sicily, whatever that equivalent is.
+
+[14:07] I guess. The the equivalent of like, you know, the guy on the Connecticut River with a tire fire and a handle of uh Jack Morgan, uh Captain Morgan's. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
+
+[14:14] I guess. All right, fine. I like that. I like I like uh I like seeing whatever the the loc, you know, the local folks are really like. Not the not the sanitized version.
+
+[14:23] I want the you know the actual version, you know. The the fewest teeth possible is the most accurate version of wherever you're going, you know? Yep, totally um. Okay. So uh since we have uh limited time here, why don't we why don't you guys organize the tasting and I'll tell a little bit of uh cause because uh Virgil brought some wines to taste and Quinn sent us this crazy care package, but I don't know how we're gonna combine these stuff.
+
+[14:45] We should save all the acidic stuff for later, right? Uh so John, why don't you figure out like what we're gonna like what we're gonna pair with what? And I'll just mention Bagel Fest real quick. I was at the Bagel Fest this weekend, uh, and uh it was uh much more mellow affair than the very first bagel fest. The first bagel fest was like huge like crazy, like overrun with people, but I was a judge, so I had to eat like 14 different bagels.
+
+[15:08] And by the way, I apologize in advance. Every time we do a well, the one time we did a wine tasting show, it was half the people's favorite show ever, and half the people's least favorite show of all time, including John. John hated that show, right, Stas. She might not be able to talk, she's on the show. John hated it.
+
+[15:24] John hated that show. I didn't even know John. He listened to it. He listened to it and he was like, Oh yeah, that show sucked. Yeah.
+
+[15:31] Now that he's on it, I'm sure he'll like it. Anyone that gets a taste of wine is gonna be fine. But this is not a rock and roll wine show. It's not a rock and roll wine show. It's still just food-related.
+
+[15:40] Yeah, food related. Uh anyway, so at Bagel Fest, there are a lot of really cool new uh bagel places uh that are coming out. They're doing a newer style of bagel, like very chewy, crunchy, or like very good crust. But I see a lot of people with lighter interiors, people using interesting flowers. If you're in New Haven, check out Olmo, or if you are anywhere where Pop Up Bagel is uh is doing something, go check out Pop-Up Bagel.
+
+[16:04] And uh the weeded people, the pizza folks out in Brooklyn are now making a bagel, and it's definitely worth going and trying their that's a complete sourdough bagel. The person who's using the flour that I think is the most flour that I think is the most interesting are the Olmo folks. Uh Craig, what's his name? I don't know. In uh in uh New Haven.
+
+[16:22] But if you're anywhere near New Haven, go check out uh Umo's bagels. You've had it, John? I have not, but I know of them. Yeah. Of that place.
+
+[16:28] The big their bagel is really good, and it's uh I don't want to like necessarily give out, although he'll tell you all of his secrets. I think we should just have him on the show at some point because his bagel is completely non-traditional from soup to nuts. He's using warthog, uh the wheat he's using his warthog. He's using an 82 uh percent extraction flour, and eighty-two to eighty seven percent extraction flour off of a stone grime with a sift is my absolute favorite style of flour to use. And he's the only person I know in the bagel in in the bagel community.
+
+[16:55] Um, I'm sure there are others, but he's the one I know of that's using it, and he's also doing some other interesting stuff. So whatever. What of a guys uh curated our tasting now? No? I think so.
+
+[17:06] I mean, I showed him what we've got some virtual. You want to start with uh the hickory stuff? All right, so we take the we taste the wine, we take a question. Okay, we taste the wine, we take like as we're tasting the wine, we take a question. Does this sound fair so we get through some of these questions?
+
+[17:17] Yeah. All right. So what are we doing? So first we're gonna have to use this diamond uh variety from Chinning Daughters in Long Island. The grapefield sells from Finger Lakes, but uh winery is in uh Hamptons.
+
+[17:29] Okay. And has New York o been able to overcome the pro the value proposition problem, or it's just much more expensive to make wine per bottle in New York than it is in California, so it's hard to get a good deal here, or they haven't fixed that problem yet. I think they already fixed that. Because they're a more reasonable price now in uh uh wine in in New York than California. Uh Napa Valley land itself is very expensive compared to uh Finger Lakes.
+
+[17:52] Right. Say like uh Paul Havj just bought a property in a finger lakes as well. Uh because it's it's cheaper and the weather's nicer. It used to be that the val like years ago, like a decade ago, it was like the value proposition on New York wasn't as high because their economies of scale hadn't reached where they needed to reach yet. You know, so you think that they've fixed that in fact it's better than California now?
+
+[18:12] Yeah. Value wise. Exactly. Okay, interesting. And yeah, I think the uh the the number of uh uh winemaker grew us well.
+
+[18:21] Don't you have a glass? Oh yeah, yeah. What am I? I'm a beast? I'm just give me food.
+
+[18:28] I'm I'm I'm uh I'm King Chuck E. Cheese the third just brushing away the pen on the desk. Did you guys see that? When Charles like became king and he had this like pen thing on the desk and he's like away with this. Missed that.
+
+[18:40] Yeah, it was awesome. I mean I don't really care about the royals, but that was a hilarious, hilarious thing. All right. So describe this, describe this, uh describe it real quick again. So it's uh it's uh It's a diamond variety.
+
+[18:50] Diamond is a New York grapes, basically. It's a hybrid of uh Concord and Iona. Iona is Oh it's amazing. Yeah, it's uh it's your to New York it it doesn't really uh it's kind of like you only find it in New York. It's kinda hard to grow somewhere else.
+
+[19:11] Is this picture from the Grapes of New York? Is it one of the old you know that book, The Grapes of New York? Uh I'm not sure. I'm not gonna be a little bit more than a lot of people. UP Hedrick, yeah.
+
+[19:18] Look well, I'll look it up. I'll look up that picture and I'll see if it's from the Grapes of New York, but it's one of the greatest well, you know, it's one of the top six f New York's fruit books, but that's not saying a lot because they're all from that one series. Yeah, it's great. All right. Diamond is very grapey, very.
+
+[19:29] It's got a fire almost smell like that. How much the bottle is this? And it's bubbly. Oh, it's uh about twenty dollars a glass. So we're by the glass bar, uh so everything's priced by the glass.
+
+[19:45] Right. But if someone's gonna buy the bottle, like you just multiply it to five. All right. Basically, yeah, yeah. No, I meant I meant like in a store.
+
+[19:51] Is it not available in the store? No, it is available in the store. You can actually go to Shining Daughters in in Hamptons and uh can get a bottle of these uh super like 25 maybe roughly. So it's super foxy, so any European, if any European can hear me, they would hate the hell out of this. They would hate it.
+
+[20:06] Yeah. But you know, the muscat is kind of the same grapey notes as well. Yeah, but they they have a visceral internal reaction to that smell. They're like, ugh. Exactly.
+
+[20:15] Yeah. I think they're wrong. Yeah. I don't think this is cloying or effed up. What do you think, John?
+
+[20:21] You're half European there. What do you think? No, I I like this a lot. You're half a euro. Also lightly bubbly, it's that's bet not uh about like 10% alcohol on this one.
+
+[20:31] So it's sort of like breakfast wine. Right. Right. So it's got like it's got does it have a little acetic in the back or no? A little acetic in the back.
+
+[20:39] What are your thoughts on acetic in in wine? You're you're I think it works okay in this one, but like in general, acetic worries me a little bit, but acid is it's a very important uh compound of wine. It's uh serve as a uh uh preservative as well. That's why a wine is higher acids, often good for aging. Uh right.
+
+[20:59] But I mean there's a difference between like a malik or like uh taric or lactic and acetic, right? So like you know, like of like any sort of like acetic aroma. Like I know there's been some, especially you know, in a natural wine. There's been oh you mean that kind of like EA uh volatile acidity, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh the kind of a little bit.
+
+[21:20] There's not a lot here, but there's some, right? So you're okay with a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Especially, I guess in this style, it would work, like, whereas it wouldn't work in I don't know.
+
+[21:30] I don't know. Yeah. But like it's it's it's brings some uh uh complexity in wine. All right. So Justin Freud asks, uh I'm sure there's a long paper with a definitive answer, but what causes the dry mouth in quotes, scare quotes?
+
+[21:44] My wife calls them scare quotes. I think that's what editors call them. Do you hear that term scare quotes? Scare quotes. Scare quotes, yeah.
+
+[21:50] So it's like dry mouth. So you're supposed to put quotes around it and supposed to make it look scary. Oh, okay. Scare quotes. So like editors frown on the scare quotes, but I use them sometimes, but not even to make people scared, just to be like, I don't mean this, but this is what people say.
+
+[22:04] But of course, now I'm not allowed to say this is what people say anymore because of our cultural experience with how that works now. Uh anyway, but what causes the dry mouth feeling when drinking red wine? I've always attributed it to tannins, but I honestly have no clue. Uh, and if the first part of this doesn't have an answer, what does it mean for a wine to be tannic? I mean, uh, so do you have a a point of view on on tannins?
+
+[22:26] Yeah, tannins is uh a penolic compound of wine. So you have the anthocyanins that gives a uh a collar and you have the tannin that gives structure, basically, that's directly responsible for dryiness on your mouth. It's the feeling of astringency kind of in your mouth. Uh the reason why that happens is because tannin binds with protein. So once you have the you drink the wine, it's uh immediately combined bind with the protein in your mouth.
+
+[22:51] Uh and when you speed the the uh the the wine, you will see a lot of like solidified kind of like mucus almost looks like in the in uh bucket. Sell it Virgil sell it exactly well because of that so it's uh it's a tannin it's uh it's uh compound that's very important in wine it's an antioxidant as well uh it's uh portecular wine so wine that high in tannin tends to demand food like you when you're drinking wine at very high in tannin you need food for that or you need to age it a little bit more all right and uh and uh John what are we eating with uh with our channing daughters uh uh the ricadon faccio what no no no not at the restaurant although that's interesting what are we eating right now what's Canadian snack all right uh pass me the hickey hickory so this is a Canadian take on Andy Cap fry but with smoke flavor smells like it looks like it looks like a smoky handicap. You guys have all had handicap fries right you guys know what I'm talking about. Joe Joe can have some of these Joe you can have some of these right so I'm gonna I'm gonna you guys chew while I talk and then I'm gonna and then I will go back and stay away from the micro people will threaten to murder us. So um you should uh take uh Justin Freud take a like a wine that has a lot of skin contact same grape with a lot of skin contact with like red what I mean it's not skin tech I mean like for red wine and then a white wine made from the same grape and you can see because one the drying stuff comes from the skins which is where all of the polyphenols are or taste things like tea but in your mind you have to separate the bitterness because tannins aren't bitter.
+
+[24:31] They're just that thing that binds with your mouth, like Virgil was saying. So what's a good what's a good grape tan and not tannin, white to red, same grape. What's a good wine they should uh do a side by side on just to see the effect of the skin's tannins? Apino. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[24:44] But they're yeah, they're lighter though. Yeah, what's like a super tanning? So if you never if you never had a baga, try baga, which I have actually here. Uh baga is very tannic uh wine. Uh Carbon is well.
+
+[25:04] Depends, of course, where it's coming from, but uh they tend to be high in tanning. That's why they they're good for aging. Right. So yeah, so just try one that's white and one that's red, same grape, tannic, not tanning. And you can see what the tannins are, right?
+
+[25:16] Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. That is like uh I thought you were gonna make like a same grape from like okay. You know who makes a deep a good white zin? Have you had the uh Turley's white zin?
+
+[25:24] I just had it for the first time. It's good, dude. It's dry, it's good. You know what I mean? Laughing at me, John.
+
+[25:30] Well, that's who we spend so much time with that sker the skernnik, right? Christina Turley, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so they have a white zen that's like really not that expensive. It's like $30 in the store, right? And uh and it's good.
+
+[25:42] Then you could taste that against one of their like monster fruit bomb giant was that threat, like white zincel? No. Oh no, the dry white. Yeah, it's dry, it's uh, you know, I don't know, I don't remember. It's not blisteringly dry, but it's like dry, and it's uh you know, got a light color to it because you know because it's freaking Zinfandel.
+
+[26:03] Exactly. Yeah, I I like I like Sinfandel, uh a good Sinfandel. But uh tanning also can can be coming from uh the seeds, the stem or the even the oak. Yeah. Can contribute tanning uh tannin or yeah.
+
+[26:15] So if you are gonna do a white versus a red, make sure you get an unoaked one, steel tank only. Now listen, uh, I'm gonna try this off uh off the thing. What do we think of the hickory sticks? Enjoyable. I liked it.
+
+[26:25] Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Oh yeah. Can we show the the bag in the camera so everyone can see?
+
+[26:32] Yeah, I'm for that. I use a lot of hickory, I use a lot of hickory powder. Quinn, you look you're a fan of the hickory sticks. Uh actually that was one of my dad's selections. Oh, all right.
+
+[26:43] All right. All right. I mean, which ones, John, are we gonna have the actual Hawkin cheesies with? Because that's the real I don't know. That's the Canadian question.
+
+[26:51] All right, so what's the second one we're gonna have? Second wine we're gonna have. Second one we're gonna have is another one from Finger Lakes. This is a Riesling. The reason why I bought this Riesling because there are a lot of a misconception about Riesling, that's always sweet.
+
+[27:05] But this Riesling is 2019 vintage from Fingerlakes as well by Nathan K. Uh it's really dry. Is this one um thanks? Is this one completely unoxidized? Because if it is, I have a test.
+
+[27:21] I have a test for you to do later at the end. And oxidize, yeah. Oh, yeah, okay. Good. You're gonna like this test.
+
+[27:26] I think Harold McGee says that I'm not right. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. All right.
+
+[27:34] So wait, you say Nathan for you? Nathan K. Oh, Nathan K. Nathan K uh is an amazing uh winemaker. Uh who's from Finger Lakes.
+
+[27:43] So after like I think studying walking abroad and came back in Finger Lace and made uh his wine. This is a very dry Riesling. It doesn't have these uh the petrol, the T D N on Riesling. No, but you know what's weird? I've always associated that kind of body in the mid-palate on Riesling with that kind of petrolly thing, but it has that body, but not the other thing.
+
+[28:07] That's weird, right? So I guess it's two different compounds that cause that. But you know how like there's a almost a thickness to read like a body in the back? Like uh I don't know how to describe. What do you think, John?
+
+[28:18] What's your what are your thoughts? It's good. I don't know. I'm terrible at describing it. Jeez Louise, man.
+
+[28:24] Tastes like fermented grape juice. You taste like fermented grape juice. Well, so this uh this question, and you what are we gonna eat with this while I read Sargon's question? I realize you're an orange wine bar. So this not only orange wine.
+
+[28:36] Not only orange wine. I realize you're an orange wine bar, so this question may uh not be as welcome. I understand uh almost, if not all wines use a sulfuring agent. People believe that sulfuring agent is a thing that gives them headaches. I'm curious if you consider giving people gel capsules, a la MSG of said compound, uh, one real and then two placebo and seeing if they get a headache or not.
+
+[28:53] It could be a fun gimmick. Uh and second, I realize you're not supposed to add a lot of sulfur to natural wine to halt fermentation. I've got to imagine this leads to a lot of spoilage and some amount of inconsistent product. You can say that right, Sargon. That's why old folks don't like natural wine and young folks do, right?
+
+[29:07] I don't know. That's the that's the uh, what's it called? The uh what's that? Remember when Fabulous and Jeremiah came on, John? Yeah.
+
+[29:13] And that was the argument we had is like, I'm old. So I yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um why don't natural winemakers employ other pasteurization methods such as lighter radiation?
+
+[29:22] Uh these are as natural as the sun, although doing it in a bottle may be difficult. I gotta imagine doing it in as thin a film as possible. And uh I uh Sargon, you should go read sulfite concentration and the occurrence of headaches in young adults, a prospective study uh from I believe tw like around 2017 to 2019. It is available online without a paywall, so you can check it out. And their conclusion is in our group of subjects, sulfite concentration in wine, is related to the risk of developing headaches in individuals who are susceptible to wine-induced headaches.
+
+[29:52] And the methods were with uh well, they actually did it with wine, but they did it uh by doping it with sulfates or not. But the problem is is that you can taste the sulfides sometimes. Anyway, what are your thoughts, Virgil? My thought is most of the headache uh uh not directly uh because of the sulfides, it's because of the hydration. When you drink wine, you it's a very uh refreshing drink, especially especially white wine.
+
+[30:18] Uh so you forgot to like drink water and uh so often the headache is from the hydration. Uh sulfites in that we use sulfites as well, it's it's uh it's a byproduct of fermentation. Uh wine when you ferment it, it's produced sulfites. Uh it's about like 10 uh mg milligrams per like a liter. Uh and the recommended, I believe the limit in America is about 350 if I'm not mistaken.
+
+[30:46] Uh and we use about like 30 to 50 only, so very low sulfites only that we use to to protect it's it's a preserve preservative in a way. I mean, there are some people that I think don't measure it and jack the sulfites, and I do know that some people have actual like pretty hardcore reactions to sulfites. Some people are very sensitive with sulfites, and that is uh it's uh I I'm not saying yeah. It's valid. So John had a taste with this, I'm not sure why.
+
+[31:14] Ketchup potato chip. Well, but very acidic. Can I give give how about how about one of the um how about one of the toffees to clear the mouth? Yeah, yeah, just pass one of that. So the uh so Quinn, your Canadian pot uh first of all, I I hope everyone who's listening knows that potato chip manufacturers change the flavors of their um of their products from place to place.
+
+[31:36] So like as you travel the world, you should get roasted chicken potato chips in every country you go to because the flavor is gonna change slightly from location to location. And that's one of the ones I like to test is roasted roasted chicken potatoes chips. Um I had a really good one in Senegal. Senegalese roast pot roast chicken potato chips were pretty on point. Um and also you should taste you should every country you go to you should buy bullion cubes because the bullion cubes also taste different from country to country because they make them for whatever the local uh kind of culture is.
+
+[32:06] So back to ketchup potato chips. I'm assuming that Quinn that the ketchup potato chips that you've sent us from Canada, I think they taste different from the ketchup potato chips I've had here. They're I would say more tomato-y. What do you guys think about the ketchup potato chips? Yep, more tomato-y.
+
+[32:23] Not as ketchupy as I thought they'd be. Oh. Do you know what? Okay. So do you know what's a more tomato-y U.S.
+
+[32:30] ketchup? Is Sir Kensington's is a more tomato-y ketchup. So if you're if like if you have a gripe with them, it's actually because their ketchup is more tomato-y than the one, you know, than Heinz, the one that, of course, as Wesley uh Willis said, Heinz. America's favorite ketchup. All right, I'm gonna clear out my palate with this.
+
+[32:52] Uh and let me ask Wait, wait, wait, wait you just said Wesley Willis, like as in the guy from Chicago. Mm-hmm. Who headbuts everyone? No, back when he was alive. Right, yeah, of course.
+
+[33:02] Yeah. Did you get headbutted by him? I wish. I never got to meet him. Yeah, I know.
+
+[33:06] I mean, um, he died. So he died in 2003, right? I forgot. 2002. I didn't get turned on to him until like nine until like 2000, 2001, after Napster.
+
+[33:22] So I only got turned on to him like right, I think, before he died. Well, didn't like uh Drag City do some like uh archive collective of his works and stuff like that. I don't know. I never had I had a CD or 45. I have a strange man.
+
+[33:36] I have a zillion Wesley Willis songs, and the Dax and I love listening to the Jen hates it, right? But the fact of the matter is that one of the problems with Wesley, so Wesley Willis was he was schizophrenic, and a lot of the times he lived on the street, he did amazing artwork. You should look at Wesley Willis's uh artwork, he's basically an outsider artist. Not basically Wesley Willis isn't was an outsider artist. And he also did this music, so he had this Casio or whatever it was, and he would play the standard beats on the Casio, like bing ding bing like that.
+
+[34:08] And then he would do these, he had a very set structure to his songs. And so like a lot of people thought that you know that those of us that listen to Wesley Willis listen to him kind of to make fun of him, right? But the fact of the matter is is that there is a real genius to Welly W Wesley Willis's work. And so, while I'm sure there are some people who are listening to it, like ha ha, this is crap. That's not the way I listen to it.
+
+[34:35] You know what I mean? Like, I um I appreciate the guy's work. You know what I mean? And so like the structure is, you know, he'll tell a very matter-of-fact story, then he'll have like a weird chorus that goes with it. Then there'll be a long, long bridge where he just like goes up and down, like sometimes chromatic, sometimes not, on you know, his Casio.
+
+[34:58] Then he'll come back and he'll just say an advertising phrase. You know, Heinz, it's America's favorite ketchup, and it's over. That's the song. And he, when you in when you were introduced to him, he headbutted you in the head. Which was a um uh his one of his favorite things to do.
+
+[35:17] Mm-hmm. And you were very lucky if you were headbutted. Yeah, and so he he had all these stories where like most of most of his violent songs are where he's positing violence against um the voices in his head. So he's like saw them as personified demons. Uh and he called them my mean schizophrenic demons.
+
+[35:36] And so, like, one of my favorites is my keyboard got damaged. That song. And he's like, you know, you know, so he basically his demons say some, you know, say something to him. He's like, suddenly I yell F you on the airplane. And then he gets kicked off of the airplane, and his keyboard flies to Florida.
+
+[35:52] My keyboard flew to Florida without me. And then like he gets to Florida and his keyboard got damaged. He's like, I'm I'm I was unhappy with it and it pissed me off. And that's the song. And then like he's just like, I was like, you know what?
+
+[36:02] Like, this is like a slice of his actual life, because he had gotten famous towards the end, and so people were flying him around, and stuff like that would happen to him. You know what I mean? He has stories about getting kicked off of buses, getting kicked out of whatever, because you know, he he'll hear a voice and he yells at the voice. I mean, it's amazing work. It's I like say like anyone who thinks that the only way to listen to Wesley Willis is like, you know, as it ironically, is a is a dummy.
+
+[36:27] Um, they're dummies. Anyway, Neko writes, Virgil, what is your favorite box wine? Asking for a friend. Box wine, interesting. So, first of all, box boxes, uh it's a container of wine.
+
+[36:41] So don't people will be like so snob, like I don't drink a box of wine. But it's it's uh it's a vessel to to put your wine. So it it and the fact that we consume wine number 90% of the wine that we get from the markets like should be drink. I know it'd be in a year, two years, so storing wine bottles somehow just became like a vessel. Then you have a box of wine, you have kind of wine.
+
+[37:03] What's my favorite box of wine? Probably the uh uh there's one called Lab L E B from Portugal, and also there's another one, the house wine. Uh oh, yeah, I know those guys. Yeah. So those are really, really decent uh box wine.
+
+[37:22] You like uh from the tank, that's pretty cheap. You know those guys from the tank, they're they're those French folks. No. So here's what I think. See what you think, Virgil.
+
+[37:31] I think, right, so like most of the most of the box wines, they're either like really cheap, right? Yeah. Like $18 for three liters. Or like maybe like a little maybe like a little more, like maybe like $25, $30. Like, I would love like a $50 box wine.
+
+[37:50] A $50 box wine. Right, because a $50 box wine, you're looking at buying a $30 a bottle of wine, right? But getting it in a in a box, you're getting four bottles, right? Because if you figure that like an eighteen dollar box wine is uh four bottles for eighteen dollars, someone do that math for me, right? It's it's like five dollars a bottle, but really you're paying you pay for that bottle probably like eight fifty nine bucks, right?
+
+[38:14] Right. So if that's the multiplier, right? If I'm paying I could be paying $13 or $14 the equivalent bottle in a box wine, but I could be drinking like $25, $30 bottle wine. You know what I mean? Quality-wise.
+
+[38:31] The the cost to the producer. Right. So let's assume that unlike liquor, where the actual cost of production is not related to the price. Right. In liquor, they make a liquor, not all liquors, but some liquors, they make the liquor and then they decide what the price is going to be.
+
+[38:47] How s you know I was in the room once when that was happening? Oh, really? Oh my god. Uh it blew my mind. I was they were like, they were like, Yeah, we haven't figured out how much it's gonna cost yet.
+
+[38:56] I was like, Well, don't you know how much it's gonna cost you to make? And they're like, Yeah. And I was like, Well, do you know how much it's gonna cost you to make? What do you mean you don't know how much it's gonna cost to sell it? And they're like, Oh no, it's not about that.
+
+[39:12] They're like, We're gonna set the market based on what we think the product is, and that's what the cost is gonna be. Has nothing to do with how much it costs us to make. And I was like, Wow, what? I was like, what? You know what I mean?
+
+[39:26] Like, I just did I was like and now you get a glimpse into how we run our company. Yeah, yeah. Zing. Yeah. Stassi is always good for a zinger.
+
+[39:39] She's the queen of the zing. I think Nastasia might be the queen of the zing. I don't know. I don't think so. Uh so uh we cleared our palette, by the way, uh, Quinn, with uh Macintosh's uh original, and because it's in Canada, they have to have it in French, l'original, uh creamy toffee, toffee a creme.
+
+[39:59] Is that the correct uh creme? Anyway, uh but this tastes like legit British stuff. It's softer than the ones I'm used to, which I kind of like because although I do like the going from breaking my face off too soft while I'm chewing on it on like some of the old school remember the toffees with a hammer, you guys ever had the toffees with a hammer? You get the toffee and it comes with a hammer, and then you use the hammer and you shatter the toffee into pieces because it comes as a single block, and you're like, boom, and you hit the toffee and it breaks apart, and then you put it in your mouth, and you're like and then it finally turns into toffee in your mouth. So there's something amazing about that.
+
+[40:36] But I think this is a good middle ground. What do you think, Quinn? That's it. You're you're eating all the ones that my dad selected. Hey, except for the ketchup chip.
+
+[40:46] Hey, buddy. I like ketchup. Talk talk to uh John. John's the one picking what we're eating. I brought every single thing with the exception of Smarties, because we know what Smarties tastes like.
+
+[40:54] Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right, all right. All right. Well, you know, uh, tell your dad.
+
+[40:58] Uh tell your dad I enjoy toffee a lot. I have did I ever tell this story on the real quick. When I was a child, I went to Madame Toussauds. Did I ever tell the story? In London.
+
+[41:08] I was about to turn seven. I was six and like six and a couple days from seven years old. And we were going to Europe because my mom got invited to uh give a talk in France. So we did we went to England, we went to France, and we went to uh Holland. So we go to Madame Tussauds and we go downstairs to the Hall of Horrors.
+
+[41:26] You guys ever been to like the original London, the Hall of Horrors? Now, it's probably like really cheesy for an adult, but for a six and change person, it was super creepy. And the one in London back then in the 70s, this was like 1977, they had the actual clothes. So basically it was just wax figures of murderers with uh with the clothes that they had when they were executed put onto the wax with a story of their murders. That's that's what the hall of horrors used to be.
+
+[41:55] Is it still like that, John? It was when I was a kid. Yeah, super scary. Wow, I loved it though. I thought it was super cool.
+
+[42:01] How old were you? Uh eight or nine. Uh a couple years is a big difference. You were like, you know, fair. Yeah.
+
+[42:07] That's like me and like a 30-year-old now. Anyway. So, so like um, um. So anyway, so one of this uh uh murderers was a woman that was a nanny, and she kept on murdering the babies that she was nannying, right? And she used to lure them in with toffee.
+
+[42:24] And so I was eating this toffee, right, in London, because uh like I was there and I got turned on to toffee, and I was like basically blasting through toffee, bla blasting through it, you know, as a little kid. Like it was like my absolute my two favorite candies, just so you know, I like the the English kind of that kind of toffee, and I like Getz's caramel cream. So I really like love that like cooked milk flavor, right? So my dad, like when he f when I'm eating the toffee at night in the hotel room with crappy remember how bad English toilet paper used to be, John? Yeah.
+
+[42:55] Oh my god. Not just English. It's like wax paper. Oh my god. It's like, why would you wipe your butt with wax paper?
+
+[43:00] Makes no sense. Anyway. So my dad sees that she lures these babies to their death with with toffee, and then he looks at me. She also had like very pronounced kind of buck teeth, and he goes, Want some toffee? And he would say that to me all the time.
+
+[43:15] And like totally bent my mind, man. Ruined me. Nice. Ruined me. By the way, I believe it is um our friend uh Quinn's uh birthday, isn't it?
+
+[43:27] What? I think we need to say a quick happy birthday. Oh, I like that. No singing the song though, because no singing the song. I'll tell you why.
+
+[43:36] Song is very triggering for including my son. But I didn't know that, Quinn. You didn't tell me this. Why do you not tell me this crap? Happy birthday, Quinn.
+
+[43:44] Thank you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Yeah. Okay.
+
+[43:50] What? But I'm not gonna do the how old are you now thing. I'm telling you, we're not gonna do those traditional things. They're very triggering for people. Anyway.
+
+[43:59] Um you definitely don't want to take your uh uh autistic son who's triggered by the birthday song to birthday parties when he's a kid. Nothing's worse. Like nothing is worse. That's not true. I'm sure there's worse things.
+
+[44:16] Uh Wizmard right wait, so Quinn sends us treats on his birthday. Yep. Well, I thought they would arrive potentially sooner, but anyways. I just get a giant box, no note. Uh uh yesterday, I opened the door.
+
+[44:34] There's a giant box. No note, full of Canadian products. Quinn's like, oh yeah. Dad was supposed to put a note in. Yeah.
+
+[44:46] Listen, John, the next time we better taste the coffee crisp because that's the one I know that Quinn likes. What about the cheesies? We need cheeses and co we need both. And the wine gums. Oh, Maynard's wine gums are delicious, but I feel we should have that as dessert to the wine.
+
+[45:00] Okay. All right. So listen, you pour the next thing, and uh, I'll uh read a question for you to answer. That smells very coffee. Okay.
+
+[45:13] Um, so the question is uh Virgil, this is from uh Whimsard. Can you talk a little bit about how to be wine literate in the current wine world? Where many well, sorry, in the current wine world where many of the traditional categories and markers of quality wine are less emphasized. Well, just be curious. Uh drink wine, study wine.
+
+[45:34] Uh, whenever you're because there are plenty of wines, right? It's uh and it's always changing. Uh depends on the trend, depends on like uh uh the biggest wine producer country. I mean like Portugal now is becoming a a big thing. Uh they're getting a lot of attention.
+
+[45:51] So it it changed a lot. Like the orange wine now, it's a trend. Uh I like Tontack. Yeah. Uh it's it's uh It's not just skin contact, right?
+
+[46:00] Skin contact plus oxidation. Uh some, like this one has almost like no oxidation. This is skin contact, none of these skin contact from uh talk about the aroma on this. What are we, what are we, what are we, what are we drinking here? This is uh uh graver muscateller or also known as the uh uh Moscata Pettigran.
+
+[46:16] Uh this is from Rust in uh Austria. It's closer to south of Vienna, basically, southeast of Vienna, closer to uh Hungary. Uh it's very close to Hungary. I really want to go to Hungary. Yeah, it's it's a here, it's really beautiful.
+
+[46:32] And also it's funny, this area usually they have uh they will hire like workers from Hungary because it's cheaper than getting uh Austria. So like in in that part of the because they're very close and they kind of like speak the same language in a way. You know what I want to do? I want to fly into Vienna, like go back to Vienna. I was only there for a couple of days, and then get rent a car and then go east.
+
+[46:55] I think it would be the most fun trip. Oh, really? Like Slovakia. Yeah, like Hungary. Well, so are you familiar with Hungarian pepper pastes?
+
+[47:02] Hang on, no. Hungarian pepper pastes are freaking delicious. They're like 20% salt. So it's basically like both salt and heat at the same time. There's like Eros pista, and then the one that I have, which is which I guess means like angry there's there's there's like strong Steve, and then there's angry Steve, but they don't call it that.
+
+[47:23] But it's like a very hot, salty paste and a m like a a regular salty paste and then a mild salty paste. Real good. Hungarian pepper paste. John, you gotta get yourself on some Hungarian pepper paste, man. Yeah, that sounds great.
+
+[47:35] Hungarian pepper paste is like big money cash money. You can go to um you can go to the uh Monken Food store in in they have it, and I think also Ridgewood Pork Store has it. Oh nice. I love Richard Pork store. Who doesn't?
+
+[47:47] We went there together. Remember that? We smelled the we smelled the smoked meats from like a block and a half away. You park within two blocks of the Ridgewood pork store and just sniff your way to the door. Be deadly to live in that neighborhood.
+
+[48:00] Oh my god. In Richwood. Yeah. Munken isn't it's not technically in Ridgewood, but it's like it's so you're moncon, right? Uh there's two.
+
+[48:08] Yeah. I don't go to the one in Astoria. Maybe it's the maybe it's the better one. I don't know. I'll go to the other one.
+
+[48:12] The one that's yeah, yeah. They're their pork rinds are freaking great. Schumar. They call that shumar. Eastern European word or Romanian word for the chicharones.
+
+[48:24] It's amazing. Oh my God. Every culture I've ever been to that has a good chicharron, I like. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[48:31] Like uh Colombia has delicious chicharrons. Love them. I had late night. It's not really it's not chicharron, but it's got that fried. Like in in the Philippines, in freaking um uh you know, obviously, anyone with a good crispy pork skin or like pork skin, I like it every way.
+
+[48:52] I like it dry and fried, I like it greasy with the meat attached. You know what I mean? It's funny. My my aunt just arrived from the Philippines, and my sister sent me uh chicharones. Oh, really?
+
+[49:04] From that area, you guys known for like chicharron capital. Yeah, yeah. So she sent me like a couple bags. Really? Oh my god, I would love to go back to the Philippines because I was there for such a short amount of time.
+
+[49:14] What are your thoughts on Mang's all-purpose sauce? Oh, the mang tomates, all for a sauce. Yeah, it's very oh we love that. Yeah. So what's hilarious about it to me, for those of you that don't know, go buy it.
+
+[49:25] I think it's what's it made with? Is it like vinegar and bread and uh liver. Liver, liver, liver. So Mang's all-purpose sauce, it is only actually all purpose if all purposes are pork. Exactly.
+
+[49:38] Which is like an amazing thing that you're just like this sauce is good for every purpose because what other purpose could there be, right, John? Yeah, true. But we technically use that for any dippings for anything. Really? We use it for uh spring rolls, we use it for fish and other stuff.
+
+[49:54] But it's mainly for lechon. This is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so good. Yeah, so means it it started like in in Manila when they he will originally grill the liver and chop them and like and mix with vinegar and other spices. So is Mang Thomas a person?
+
+[50:09] Yeah, I believe he used to I if I'm not mistaken, he's from the capital and uh he sell uh lechon. Yeah. And he created that sauce. Now I only had lechon at like 3 30 in the morning. Is that the right time to have it?
+
+[50:27] You can have it anytime. Yeah. You put egg on it, that's gonna be a breakfast lecha. I gotta go back to the Philippines. Oh, it's so good.
+
+[50:37] I had such a good time there. All right, uh, so John, what do you think of this wine, Mr. I don't have good vocabulary. I can't talk good about wine. It's enjoyable.
+
+[50:46] That's good. I'll take that. But this is the uh uh lockvogel, I found pronouncing it correctly. It is locked vogel uh by um uh Vensel. It means just uh I think it's decoy, uh basically to lure people to drinking skin contact uh instead because they will think it's kind of drink like a regular wine as well.
+
+[51:06] Uh but it's only nine days of skin contacts, also unfiltered. Yeah, yeah, you can see that. It's like got the little bit of that cloud. Yeah, which also scares old folks uh like me. Uh so what are we having with this?
+
+[51:17] We haven't uh what are we having today? Coffee. All right, because Quinn would get bent real hard if we don't have the coffee crisp. He was like, he's mentioned it like three times yesterday. Let me figure out how to break this up.
+
+[51:27] It's crisp. It breaks. Did you did you bring the Joe Louis as well? Uh yeah, I did. Yeah.
+
+[51:36] I brought everything, Quinn. Yeah. I followed your instructions, man. Like Well, I will learn to have everyone try before the uh the locusts at your house consume everything. All right, so I'm gonna tell you a story in a minute.
+
+[51:51] Oh, this is good. This is like uh I like this. So it's it's a coffee version of like it's denser, so like um, you know the wafer cookies that you um that you kind of that I grew up with with like um the fat goop in the middle, and the fat composition of the middle of uh wafer cookies is actually quite interesting because um the solid fat index of it is kind of uh it's an interesting mix, which I'll talk about some other lifetime, uh, because it's intensely boring for everyone but me. But this has less of the fat, so it's more cookie, so it's a little bit denser, but it makes it quite crisp and it's coated in chocolate. So the the whatever you want to call it, the X pattern that's in the wafer is quite a small X pattern.
+
+[52:36] It's not a big X pattern, right? What do you guys think? I liked it. I like the crispiness, right? And what's there's a center layer that looks different that almost looks like an expanded, like a like a C foam.
+
+[52:44] There's a center layer of it that looks like a like a sponge, like a sponge candy center layer. You see that? I like sponge candy. What do you think, Quinn? Why don't you talk about it for a second since it you're a fan?
+
+[52:57] Yeah, um, yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I I I haven't noticed the different layers, but I was sort of my gateway into coffee flavor, because like growing up I didn't like coffee. But I'm like, well, I like coffee first. I know I like coffee flavor. It actually goes fine with the wine, interestingly, and uh um I typically don't like coffee-flavored things, but I do like this. Yeah.
+
+[53:23] It's it works really well with wine, surprisingly. Yeah, I was surprised, right? Yeah. Never tried it before. Like sweet things with uh uh skin contact.
+
+[53:32] Yeah, it's surprisingly works. Yeah, shocking. Uh all right, let me see. Another question. Uh Jason Lynn writes in what are your current favorite high quality to price ratio wine regions slash styles slash makers at the moment?
+
+[53:47] Uh region, I can say it's Bayrada in Portugal. In the country, I think Portugal is really a hot spot right now for uh a good wine. They improve a lot of their techniques, and also you can buy a decent wine uh with almost the same structure, say like a Napa, but without paying the price of Napa Valley. The reason is most of the winemakers in Portugal are they been their their being here's been passed down generation after generation compared to Napa Bali. Like you you have to pay for the CEO, the winemakers, and everything, and you the property it's alone in California is way higher than Portugal.
+
+[54:26] Yeah. You know, there's uh uh a woman from New York who moved to Lisbon and is opening a bagel shop in Lisbon. So yeah, she's going to Lisbon. You know. And also get uh uh if you can now try uh enjoy Portugal now because that we noticed the price is going up in Portuguese wine.
+
+[54:43] Oh really? Yeah, because of that uh trend right now. Do you know what um I mean I'm a hu I like obviously I like port because I'm a human, but like uh I don't drink that much Portuguese like regular table wine, but their cheeses are so crazy good. You know what I mean? That those prices went up like a decade ago.
+
+[55:02] Yeah, uh uh what what I have in one of the wine that I have here is the baga, actually. It's uh from Bayrada. Is that what we're on uh what we're on next? Yeah. All right, why don't you pour that and then I'll read the next question?
+
+[55:15] Uh Josh Josh S writes in the Natty wine, not named after uh your sister Nastasia. No. Yes, I know. Does she like it? Nice.
+
+[55:28] I don't think I don't know. I have no idea. Oh second, I gotta give John something to rinse. You don't you don't have any idea at all? Come on, man.
+
+[55:36] You haven't ever made that like cra wise crack on her. She doesn't like that, she hates wise cracks anyway. Um the natty wine trend in my area has really just been a celebr. Ooh, all right, Josh is gonna go hardcore on you. You ready for him to go hard in the paint?
+
+[55:51] Yeah, sure. All right. The natty wine trend in my area has really uh just been a celebration of flawed wine. Flawed wine. And by the way, I have to say it in my own defense.
+
+[56:03] Like, I'll say, give me whatever you want, just make sure it's not overtly flawed. That's what I usually say. Exactly. Yeah. Um so in Josh's area, he thinks it's been a celebration of flawed wine.
+
+[56:12] What do you think it could, should be, uh, I guess, in contradistinction to that, or should it be at all? All right. Go. Well, not all natural wine are flawed. I mean, it's uh it's become flawed because there's lacking of uh other uh substance that protect the wine, like sulfites, for instance.
+
+[56:31] Uh natural wine, basically nothing added, nothing removed. That's your uh hardcore natural wine. Uh so there is a very it's very front to to flaws. Uh but also there are some instances with very high NVA, uh volatile acidity. Uh uh but it it's they're not all bad.
+
+[56:56] We have natural wine in our store that it's really good and it's not flawed. It's it's uh it there you can't trace any uh defects on the wine at all. Uh and also like flawed wine is like champagne was a flawed at one some point in 1600, 1700s, babbles was uh bite your tongue, exactly. A defects on on like uh a wine. It's the same thing oxidation is also like a bad four or lots of wine, but you know, if you drink sherry, you need what you want oxidation.
+
+[57:27] Uh so yeah, drink a good natural wine, and also it's not like a new thing. Natural wine is a new thing. It's the in in France they've been doing natural wine since like 1950s, basically. Uh in the 80s, it became really big uh until now. But America, we're just getting the uh the whole trend of natural wine.
+
+[57:48] So, Gwen, we're eating uh the Hawkins cheesies with this. I think Joe Hazen's appreciating the Hawkins cheesies. It's like a cheesy plus plus, right? Wow, what's it? Sorry, it's like a cheeto plus plus, Cheeto Plus Plus.
+
+[58:01] It's like if if if uh Richie and whoever the other guy was, when they came up with the language C, right? This is C. This is Cheeto Plus Plus. You know, I like the texture on this better, but I like the cheese flavor on the Cheetos better. I don't know, man.
+
+[58:15] Them's fighting words. Now, okay. I'm gonna say this. Say the name of this wine again that we're drinking. This is the by uh Sidonio, the Sausa from Bayrada.
+
+[58:24] It's made from a hundred percent baga. How much would this cost in a in a in a a store? A bottle of that? Well, because probably like 20 bucks. I would drink the heck out of this.
+
+[58:33] I would drink the hell out of this. You know what? This is a reason why you should drink. I'm gonna go take a bite out of a cow right now. Like I want a steak real bad.
+
+[58:41] Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I'm having this wine, John. Will you with me on this? Yeah, yeah, I know. It's great.
+
+[58:45] I can tell that you're loving it too. But it could go with a steak. I could I could have this with uh lamb, I could have it on its own. On its own, yeah, exactly. Bag is one of the and this is 2016.
+
+[58:55] So bag is one of the few varieties that you don't want to touch it when it's really young because it's so high in acid, it's high in tannin, uh, you want to age it a little bit. Uh it's also very hard to grow. This is kind of from Bairada, which you need the dry weather uh climate to really grow uh good bag because it's very prone to like some uh mildew and some like it's kind of the same as spinot nois in a way when it when in terms of taste. Not in taste of not in terms of taste, yeah. Uh Quinn, which one of the uh which one of the cakes should we try?
+
+[59:29] Because we're gonna run out of time. I would do Joe Louis, the chocolate ones. All right. So we're gonna eat those real quick and then I'll those are what go ahead. That's the money.
+
+[59:41] Those are those are my childhood, those are my childhood favorite my uncle used to work as a trucker for the company so birthday was like boxes of Joe Louis all right so basically the Vashon Corporation has been making Joe Louis since 1923 they come ooh they're softer than I thought they're they kind of look like uh like a like a miniature whoopie pie dipped in chocolate for those of you that can't uh see what we're doing here and is it named after the boxer Joe Lewis the boxer or is it Joe Louis Joe do you pronounce them Joe Louis Louis all right because here in the US oh they're soft hold on a second that's good oh my god it's like eating chocolate like a better hostess yeah it's like eating chocolate air exactly it is better hostess yeah it is and it's um it's got a little bit of redness so like clearly they um it's got some like alkaline stuff going on in it in the in the cocoa powder that's big money i like that quinn that's delicious all right now i have a I have a test for you to run you ready ready this is the McGee test I hope we can run it real quick hand me the thing the oil or here it is so first of all does this smell rancid to you at all don't don't read what it is don't do anything just tell me whether it smells rancid to you smells like something but it doesn't smell rancid to me not rancid right is it rancid you could tell like tiny right right but not rancid right all right do we have what's the closest thing we have to neutral to pour a little bit of that on. Um maybe the hickory sticks. Yeah. All right. Put some of the put some of that on the hickory.
+
+[1:01:23] So what what I'm passing around is um is prickly prickly uh prickly ash, like you know, Sichuan pepper, prickly ash oil. Oh, that's right. All right. And I have this theory. Dip dip it, dip, dip it so we can taste the uh you want me to put it right in there?
+
+[1:01:37] Uh no, no, uh, where's the cap? Pour some of the oil in the cap and then we'll just give the cap. I do. All right. Yeah.
+
+[1:01:43] Pour some oil on the cap. So I noticed that uh when I had this oil, and then so you know how orange wine goes really well with um food with Sichuan pepper in it, right? Yeah. Right. So I noticed that I was drinking an unoxidized wine.
+
+[1:02:01] That's why I asked you about the reasoning. Does not taste oxidized, right? That after I after I have the uh the oil, unoxidized wine tastes oxidized to me. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
+
+[1:02:14] But you have to get a good decent dose on your tongue. So I'm I'm getting a good decent dose, and we're gonna see. So then John. But you have to wait. So we should you should eat a little bit of the chocolate.
+
+[1:02:43] I don't want you to have the flavor of the prickly ash oil in your mouth, because I don't want that to be the flavor. I want it to just be an effect on your tongue. You have to completely coat your tongue with the oil. Right, yeah. While you're doing this, guys, Cypress Hill writes in.
+
+[1:03:01] Question. Have you figured out a way to measure the real stove BTUs? That's British thermal units by boiling water. Hoping it's in your book of soap. The problem, Cypress, is that BTUs are a measure of how much energy is going into your stove.
+
+[1:03:14] And what you're trying to measure is how uh how effectively does that stove put that energy into a pot. And that's gonna depend on a lot of things on how big your pot is compared to the burner, whether the flames are overdriven or not. So there's no way for me to calibrate how fast I boil water on my stove to the way that you would boil it on your same gas stove with the same number of BTUs, right? This is one of the reasons I don't like people fighting BTU wars. They should think about how long it takes them to boil water.
+
+[1:03:45] Um but it's an interesting question, and I do deal with it or will deal with it in the book. Have you guys mellowed out your taste enough so that you feel like you can accurately taste the wine? Yeah. All right, taste it now. See whether or not um it tastes oxidized to you.
+
+[1:03:58] Just be honest if you're not changing it does, but uh I think it's just the uh Sichuan pepper kind of combining the right, but it combines to me to make it taste more like an orange wine. Yeah. Because uh, yeah. Which is interesting, right? Uh I mean to me it's an interesting test.
+
+[1:04:24] It is, yeah. It's uh it's I don't know why, but Virgil, thank you so much for coming on, bringing these delicious wines. Nastasia feels dumb that she didn't get to have them because she would have really enjoyed them. Uh I like this Portuguese variety I haven't had. This freaking uh Foxy grape.
+
+[1:04:47] Foxy grape is would be one of my whatever they call them names. I love that. Uh yeah, thanks for coming on. Cooking issues. Thank you.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New Stance Studios, joined as usual in the studio with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? I'm good. Yeah?
+
+[0:22] Yeah. Yeah. We're actually lucky we're we're uh recording a little late today, and it's good because your train was late. Yes, that's true. Yeah, nice.
+
+[0:30] Uh we also joined uh rocking the panels here. Joe Hazen, how you doing? I'm doing well, man. Great to see you. Um yeah, thanks for being so amenable to the uh the change of times.
+
+[0:40] Hey man. And the listeners, thank you. Hey man, it used to be we never got started before 12:30 anyway, back at the old place, back at Voldemort's place because I was always late. Right, Stas? Yeah.
+
+[0:49] Yeah, Joe doesn't Joe doesn't play, doesn't want you to be late, doesn't enjoy it. No, we find you here. Yeah, Joe, Joe is uh Joe is a why don't you show up 15 minutes before the show starts? This way, if you're a little bit late, I can just be a little bit bent at you and not actually decapitate you, the great Game of Thrones style. Anyway.
+
+[1:07] Uh also got uh we got on the uh California panel, we got uh Jackie Molecules. How you doing? Um good. I feel like oh and Stas has told me this I am the one that enabled the uh 12-ish start of cooking issues. Can we can we talk about this?
+
+[1:23] Can we talk about this? Like, I'm not saying anything about you, but everyone at that former network that shall not be named. Hi all the time. Say why? Hi all the time.
+
+[1:36] Oh. Oh, well. I mean, it's like, what's time, man? It was like it was like a renegade network. They're like, what does time mean anyway?
+
+[1:47] Every other show is pretty much on time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, you know, if if if Nastasi and I get a vibe out of a place, like she was on time, but like, if we get a vibe out of a place, we're like, you know what the hell would it? Am I wrong, Stas? I was on time.
+
+[2:03] I'm not saying I just didn't I just get through saying you were on time. If you're listening on Patreon. I'm saying I don't agree with you because I don't agree with my assessment. I took it seriously. Oh, yeah, you took it seriously.
+
+[2:14] And I didn't. I didn't put any work in now. Dave, I just loved you, man. I I I was I was too soft. And we loved you too.
+
+[2:19] We left you back. We loved you right back. Yeah. Uh thanks, man. If you're listening on Patreon, call your questions in too.
+
+[2:25] 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And uh Quinn, are you there or there in the uh in the uh in the wilds of uh Vancouver Island? Nope. We lost Quinn?
+
+[2:40] All right. We'll get him back. Uh here he is, here he is. All right, Quinn. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[2:46] So why don't you tell them how to join the Patreon if they want to be able to call in and get all this other good stuff? Oh well, you go to Patreon.com slash cooking issues uh for the five dollar tier, you get the show recorded a few days early. But if you do the uh $10 and up, you get to listen live, either audio or video. Yeah, uh, but does everyone at every level get the same level of like discounts from Kitchen Arts and Letters and all that stuff? Or no?
+
+[3:15] I don't know. Uh I believe so. Yeah, it should be. What kind of cool discounts are happening right now, Quinn? Uh, right now we have the uh both the Massa book uh promo code for I believe 20% of I'd have to double check.
+
+[3:36] Of the book MASA from Kitchener Letters, and then we have a 20% um discount code for Macienda products, excluding wholesale and the Millennium. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I mean let me put you this way, Quinn. If you have $1,800 to spend on a grinder, which I hope everyone out there does, right?
+
+[4:00] I mean, but even with inflation, that's still a lot of money, right? That's not like, you know, we're not totally Weimar yet. Weimar. We're not Weimar yet, so like we're not in like, you know, you need like a wheelbarrow to buy like a pack of gum, but if we get there, buy it right away. You know what I mean?
+
+[4:14] Like, I really think it's a good good deal for what he's building. Anyway, uh right. And you heard uh also uh chiming in there, John. How you doing? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[4:25] Uh I enjoyed having your sommelier on last week. Yeah, thanks. He had a good time too. I think we all had a good time. Yeah, we had some good wine.
+
+[4:32] Uh I already have purchased another bottle of baga because I enjoy I enjoy that, and I I was not familiar with the bug. Oh, awesome. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[4:39] We'll be happy to hear that. And this time I cooked a big old steak with it. Nice, and I'm sure it was excellent. It was excellent. Uh, and one thing I think uh you've never mentioned, so you know, your restaurant temperance.
+
+[4:49] What are the what are the uh hours? What day what days are you open? Four to eleven on Tuesday through Thursday, and then four or yeah, then four to one a.m. Friday, one p.m. to one a.m.
+
+[5:04] Saturdays. I need to get that to roll off the tunnel a little smoother. But today we are joined in the studio by our greasy, greasy friend, Captain Greasy, Nick Coleman, the oleologist, Mr. Olive Oil himself. How are you doing?
+
+[5:21] I'm doing wonderful. Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor to be here with you, Dave. And you, Nastasia. I love you both very much.
+
+[5:27] Oh, nice. No love for anyone else. Meh, okay. Um, that's all right. But uh, but uh yeah, backed by popular demand because everyone uh likes the grease as well, it's not grease, it's fresh fruit juice.
+
+[5:40] Oh, fresh fruit juice. I see. I see. So that's your mistake. Oh I think this is why people like you.
+
+[5:48] Okay. Uh by the way, next week uh we have coming on, we have uh Sean Brock. He's calling in because he's gonna be, I guess, in Memphis or something like this. So get all of your Sean Brock related uh questions in. Uh is he doing is he talking about anything in particular or just like the you know what it's like to be Sean Brock?
+
+[6:05] Uh not that I know. I think we just want to uh talk to him, right, Joe. Yeah, I think it'd be super cool to hear about all the mental health work he's doing in the industry right now. Nice. Yeah.
+
+[6:15] Yeah. There's there's by the way, people. I don't know if you know this. If you if you ever like we're actually not like this, we should be, but like usually when people are guests, it's because they have something to push or hawk, right? You know what I'm saying?
+
+[6:27] Yeah. Uh hey, Quinn, while we're doing while we're doing this, if you if you can, can you look up uh the uh on the cooking issues blog? Because someone asked about the percentages of lie to you's for uh Nick's Mulli's rye and the times, and I forgot to write it down before I got on uh before I got on the air. Uh uh I can look it up potentially after right now. I am shut down all other internet connections so that the show didn't crash.
+
+[6:54] There's there's a uh so like there's one pipe from Vancouver Island to the rest of the world, and it's and it's uh a small gnome is sitting there with a uh with a what's that thing? Telegraph. I think it's that that line that's in in jaws. Yeah, yeah. Beep beep beep, beep, beep beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep beep like that.
+
+[7:12] Yeah. Not that the oh okay. Wait, wait, so in jaw wait, so jaws when he goes and he tries to rake the uh they try to rake the floor and they pull up the electrical line. Oh, that's like that. That's the line and it gets raked up and then your toast.
+
+[7:24] Yeah, yeah. You get yeah, you're at uh Quinsy three bits per second. Three bits. Uh all right, so uh John, can you look that up for me? Yes.
+
+[7:35] Sweet. Uh okay. And then uh the week after that, we have Michael Astonis. I you know, it says he's from ICE, because he's run that program, the pastry program, and maybe more at ICE, the uh Institute for Culinary Education, our arch nemesis back when the FCI existed, and then they bought them, which is the ultimate smack in the face. Like when when your enemy, like when you start going down and your enemy literally owns you, they buy you, that's ultimate, right?
+
+[8:00] That's capitalism. Oh yeah, true. True story. So anyway, so uh even though he's been the head of ice since forever at this point, I still think about him as the pastry chef at uh at Bernie's Den, you know? Bernie's house, Bernie's den, La Berna Den.
+
+[8:17] Yeah, because he was a pastry chef there for a long time. Stas, did you go with me at the end, right when he was quitting? Uh I think so. Yeah. Uh anywho.
+
+[8:26] All right. So uh that's what's coming up. Uh let's get to some. Do you have anything you want to say, Nick, before we get into what's going on? You like what we're gonna taste.
+
+[8:33] You brought two oil, three oils with you. I brought three oils. I was hoping we'd get to some uh uh questions that people maybe wrote in to try to answer things that people are confused about. Okay, so you what you're gonna want to do is you want to see if any of the oils you brought answer some of the questions that people all right, that's fair. I don't even think the oils I brought will necessarily answer the questions, but I think perhaps I could answer the questions.
+
+[8:55] Oh, yeah. So that's a good question. We're also gonna play some Bansuri flute as an intermission to chill out for a minute because this show is so high intensity. And then we're also going to talk about the olive wood because we talk about the fruit and the juice a lot, but we don't actually talk about the tree, and the tree can be used for all sorts of incredible things. Isn't this supposed to live for like a thousand years?
+
+[9:13] They never die due to the polls from the roots. Then why would you have the wood? I'm kidding, I'm messing with you. I know, I know the trunk dies back. I get you, yes.
+
+[9:21] And a lot of it's in the pruning. You have to prune the olive trees. Uh okay. So Nick has for those of you that aren't on the Patreon can't see. Nick has brought something roughly the size of uh my head, roughly like uh um you know those vanity mirrors that you you that you used to have back in the old days?
+
+[9:38] Yeah, roughly that size. If you're pruning something that size off of your tree, then uh you're basically just decapitating it. Which you can decapitate trees and they regenerate themselves. Okay, copy kill it unless you fully uproot it and remove it. But if you decapitate it at the base, new roots will form and a new olive tree will grow.
+
+[9:58] This happened in 1985 in Tuscany when there was this terrible frost, and about 70% of the trees exploded from the inside because the sap froze, and it sounded like shotguns with these trees exploding and it had to decapitate them. That's why if you're in central Italy, you notice the olive trees are much shorter and there'll be like four or five shoots sticking out from the base. Like bushier? Uh no, because it'll still grow up, um, but less like these gargantuan uh trunks. Okay, so question Hey, Stas, right?
+
+[10:27] Tuskens, right? Che, ma che ma right? They're talking about their trees. It's like, can you imagine being there when everyone's trees are exploding, Sas? Oh my god, yeah.
+
+[10:35] I mean, I know it's bad. Very depressing, and for them, it's like when that happens, it's considered the most unfortunate um set of circumstances to have to go through because it takes 15 to 30 years for a tree to become full fruit-bearing size. So after it's copist. What's the definition of copist? Quishing, chopping it, and then having shoots grow up.
+
+[10:57] Or or just planting from uh from a seed or or some small roots. So it's about the same amount of time for the regrowth to bear, even though it's got a full set of roots, it's the same amount of time for it to come to bear again at the same levels. Fruit bearing capacity. And that's why they say you plant the vineyard for the children and the olive growth for the grandchildren, because it takes 30 plus years. All right.
+
+[11:18] All right. Okay. This is why capitalism, you know, we were talking about capitalism before we came on the air. This is why it's better to just be rich and buy somebody else's good trees. I think in today's world of climate um radical climate adjustments in different parts of the world, owning trees in one part of the world is it tends to be a problem.
+
+[11:38] In this year, for example, in central Italy, um, it was very hot and there was a drought. And so not only did the drought affect the trees, but then the scorching heat, the moment the olives set on the tree, the heat burned them and they turned black and they fell off. So this year in Tuscany, there's virtually no olives on any trees. So I think Stas, weren't we just talking about things like uh turning black and falling off just like a couple days ago? I don't think so.
+
+[12:04] Messing with you, messing with you. Uh listen, question. Yes. To what you're saying. What about places who produce?
+
+[12:13] See, here's the issue. So like places plant cultivars that are good for where they are now, right? Now, if you're buying, let's say you're gonna go do a grove or buy a grove, would you choose maybe a place that has a slightly suboptimal cultivar, but it's gonna become optimal in a couple of years because you're going to get an extra couple two degrees of heat. Or like, is there some wiggle room there to buy? Is there some wiggle room to look at what's going to be the best in a couple of years when we get a couple more degrees of heat on it?
+
+[12:41] And are people already doing this? It's so radically shifting, it's really hard to predict. What you want is stability. Right. Stable, temperate environments, rocky, loose soils, so the water drains rapidly, good exposure for maximum amount of sun, and wind.
+
+[12:56] Wind is hugely important to keep the olive groves dry and keep the fruit dry. So there's so many different factors that you want to analyze before planting an olive tree. Because once the tree is planted, you're dealing with that for decades. Right. So you want to don't move with haste when planting olive trees or buying an olive grove.
+
+[13:13] Right. But I'm saying like it's you're saying also because some places, even though we're overall getting warmer, some places because of the micro weirdness, don't. And so you're it's too difficult to predict, like, oh, I should really be buying, you know, this like groves of this cultivar in this location. Too difficult to predict, you're saying. It's unstable.
+
+[13:33] And one of the reasons I started my business the way I did of chasing the harvest both hemispheres is to go where the weather is good annually, which changes year by year. Right. So for those of you that don't know, uh Grove and Vine, which is uh which is uh Nick's company, he just flies because I'm assuming that's the fastest way to get there. You're not on a boat. I am not on boats.
+
+[13:55] Yeah. No, I'll usually fly to another part of the world to tour an olive grove, to tour many olive groves and taste from the master tanks and select exactly what I want so I could get a Bianca Lila oil from Chiaramonte Sicily only from tank eleven. Yeah. So when you're buying from him, it's stuff that he's tasted, and because he I mean, you have relationships, yes. I have relationships with producers all over the world and a large network internationally of people on the ground letting me know what's happening.
+
+[14:24] Right, but you were telling me a story where someone's like, How about this oil? And you're like, No, man, you know this sucks this year. All the time, most olive oils people bring bring me are not extravagant, despite them thinking it's so or it being labeled so. It's a hugely fraudulent industry. Most of the olive oils in average supermarkets are fraudulently labeled extra virgin when they're actually come from damaged fruit, almost like a corked bottle of wine.
+
+[14:47] It means the fruit was damaged somewhere in the process. And there's many ways that happens. That could be the olive fly lays its eggs in the olives. It could be you you harvest the olives but let them sit too long before they're pressed. It could be the dirty mill that they're pressed in can leave off aromas.
+
+[15:02] If you don't filter the oil, the sediment settles at the bottom and there's water in it and it escapes and gives you a defect called muddy sediment. So you actually want filtered oils for having a better shelf life and better taste. Well, this leads us into a question. This leads us into a question for you. And fruit rights.
+
+[15:18] I know that Dave has talked before about uh how us low quality individuals, and you know, we all are to some extent, right? It's only only the lowest quality individuals that don't realize their flaws, right? We are deeply flawed. Yeah, that's the whole point of being human, right? Yes.
+
+[15:33] Yeah. Uh and I think love is accepting one's flaws in somebody. Yeah. What about accepting your own flaws? Hugely important for self-awareness.
+
+[15:44] Yeah. Well, you have to first, you have to you have to see them as flaws and then learn to accept what you can't change about it. You have to be very open to self-critical analyzing. Oh my god. Okay.
+
+[15:57] Uh low-quality individuals' taste for fusty oil, and I know this from throwing uh olives into a spinzole. Uh, but what are your thoughts? First of all, you want to talk about fusty and like uh you know, semi-cured olives and the taste yeah, talk about that first, and then we'll go through the question. That's a great point. So is she I think the question is like, what about people who actually like these fusty oils?
+
+[16:16] Well, why don't tell them what fusty is first in case So fusty oils are when olives sit in piles and they undergo anaerobic fermentation, and that happens before they're pressed. So if you stick your hand in a pile of olives that's been sitting there for a couple days, it's actually hot inside. There's no oxygen, and the oils degrade and undergo anaerobic fermentation and give an aroma and taste of fusty, which is like olive toponade or cured olives, which you don't want your olive oil to be. Right. But like we can s we, the low-quality masses, consider the taste of cured olives to be delicious.
+
+[16:50] That it should remind you of eating olives. Which is not accurate. Right, right, okay that's it. There's uh a bunch of pioneers in the south of France. Well, here, let me read the question.
+
+[17:00] Let me read the question. What are your thoughts, Nick, about the olive oils coming out of Provence made from fermented ripe olives? I served one in a blind tasting next to many high quality in-season oils, and it was the standout favorite. So check this out. First of all, excellent point.
+
+[17:17] A. B, they're not made from ripe olives. They're really good fusty that are s they self-induce the defect of fusty by taking very young, healthy green olives and putting them in baskets in a temperature-controlled uh like shed, and they let that sit there for about three days and then pull it out and then press the olives. So they're controlling the defect. They're doing it with very young, healthy green olives, and you can get a really clean proven sol taste that has that fusty characteristic, but it's not greasy, and it's correctly labeled virgin olive oil, not extra virgin olive oil.
+
+[17:55] And what's interesting about those is it gives you the olive toppenad flavor without any of the texture or the dark olive color. So you can use it in potatoes or fish and add that element, that smooth element. And what's interesting about the the um fruita noir, which is what it's called, even though it's made with green olives, is that it has its own individual characteristic and identity within the olive oil world. And in that sense, I think it has merit and value, so long as it's labeled virgin, not extra virgin. All right, so do you carry any of that?
+
+[18:26] We don't sell that. Um, what's the producer people can look out for that you think does a good job? The best Fruit Noir oil I've ever had is a producer named Castellinus in Valet de Beau in Provence. And they're it's like the cleanest, most perfect, fusty possible. I give it again in case people don't want to have to re-listen.
+
+[18:44] Castellines, and it's in Valet de Beau in Provence. I've got to be a little bit more than that. What's a bottle gonna cost of that stuff? $38. Oh, so it's expensive but not absurd.
+
+[18:53] And that's because it's made with this young fruit, and when you harvest the olives when they're green and there's less oil in it, the price will go up because the yield is so much lower. Now, is it been your experience that that stuff is even more perishable because it's already got a little fust on, or does it have the same shelf life, which I know that we're gonna get into this, but about uh as olive oils in general? Because that producer does it with green fruit, it has a long shelf life. However, if they were to do it with black ripe fruit, it would have a much shorter shelf life because you're getting the oil at a later stage of its life out of the olive. Right.
+
+[19:23] Now, so we're going back to the question. So since clearly somebody can make something with this like cured olive taste or self-induced defect. Self-induced defect, right? Uh as opposed to so you're you're not not like a natty wine situation where it's like, I we don't know what's going on, because you're all about the control here, right? So we're not at the point yet where you're like, it's fine if there's no control, right?
+
+[19:44] You want it this to be controlled. It'll it'll be cleaner if it's control. But now that it can be seen as a positive thing if it's controlled, does that change your mind at all about in other words? When you detect it in another bottle, it's not possible that it could have no other flaws in a bottle that where it wasn't intentionally done. Typically, there's not just one defect, there's two or three defects going on.
+
+[20:08] So you'll have a fusty oil, but it'll also be greasy and have this waxy almost like crispy. What does greasy mean in a uh in an olive? What's going on? Like what's greasy mean? Um, it usually comes from rancidity over time or getting the fruit getting the oil out of the fruit too late in the harvest.
+
+[20:23] So it's actually polymerized a little bit and become not it loses its structure, it has a shorter shelf life, and it leaves this unpleasant tactile sensation in your mouth after you swallow. Have you looked at the I'm curious. Have you looked at the chemistry of what's going on there? No. Because I saw a bottle of a you know, brand that we won't, you know, whatever.
+
+[20:42] Garbage. But it was uh ref, and I I literally mean in this case, like like not, I don't even know if it's edible because uh it was uh refined, right? It was meant for no taste. It was meant for people who want to use olive oil without flavor, right? Uh so it's refined, extra light, I think they call it, right?
+
+[21:01] And I believe extra light is mainly like vegetable oil with just a little bit of olive. Oh, really? Because it was solid. Yeah, extra light is there's literally less olive oil in that product. Oh, because it was solid.
+
+[21:15] Olive oil doesn't do that in a supermarket shelf. I sent you a picture of it. Yeah, but this was regular supermarket. And what's crazy is the bottle next to it was liquid. And that bottle was a white gelatinous mass.
+
+[21:31] If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, Dave, we live in a sick culture. Yeah, well, that's exact that's what you tweeted back to me. But I actually need some refined deodorized olive oil for something where I literally need the fatty acid components from olive oil, but do not want the taste. So what do I do? You are in a quagmire, my friend.
+
+[21:52] That is not an easy uh slot to fill. Yeah, I mean, I I maybe later after I'm done with my experiments, I can build it back with one that has flavor, but I need to test it without flavor. Can you explain the scenario with which you would need a monounsaturated fat with zero perlink percent cholesterol with zero flavor that's been like it just seems like I can't talk about it at this time, so says Nastasia Lopez. I cannot talk about it at this time. But I mean, olive oil has a very uh it's got an you know, if you look at the triglycerol makeup of olive oil, it's pretty interesting.
+
+[22:26] You know what I mean? Um so like um the thing that I hate most about soy oil or canola oil, uh, other than that I don't like them, is that uh that's why I even prefer uh corn for frying a lot of stuff, uh, even though it's not the best, it's cheap. Uh but uh, you know, not linoleic, which I have no problem with, but linolinic, uh, when acid when it gets um heated smells fishy. And so, like like a a lower quality soy with a lot of uh you know, linolitic in it that's already started to go off, when you fry with it, it it's garbage. Whereas like olive oil, if it's been refined, I know you probably hate that, is a fantastic fry oil.
+
+[23:09] Well, I think I think everything has an application. Everything has a purpose. Right, but it's a fantastic fry oil. Once once it gets up to uh, you know, once you flash off the volatiles and whatnot and olive oil's wonderful to fry in um deep fry, I mean, deep fry. You can you can deep fry and even extra virgin olive oil.
+
+[23:25] Okay. Do you like an eggplant parm fry that in extra virgin olive oil? It is outstanding. People get bent all out of proportion, uh, about um the smoke point, which is not what you actually care about in in an oil typically. Some of the some of the stuff that you have though is gonna smoke real low because it's got stuff in it still, like good stuff, stuff that you want.
+
+[23:44] You know what I mean? Why would it smoke real low? Why would a high quality, fresh filtered extra virgin olive oil smoke below 400 degrees Fahrenheit? Well, because there's things in it that aren't just the triglycerides, right? There's the polyphenols, there's all these other things, and I think that's what's smoking.
+
+[23:58] So when you once that stuff smokes off, then you're fine. But it's like people see smoke coming off off the oil, but that smoke isn't about oil degradation. That's smoke means your food is cooking. Well, that's that's that's condensing water from the steam. But my point is is that like is that there's stuff that there's stuff that causes extra virgin oil to smoke, quote unquote, at a low temperature, but the smoke that's bad is degrading oil smoke that comes right before a fire.
+
+[24:25] The olive oil is not gonna catch on fire as a result of that. It's not like a it's not like that blue oil smoke from oil breaking down and about to freaking ignite. That's the thing. I think if if you're cooking in olive oil and the smoke that's coming up is black, you have a problem. Yeah.
+
+[24:42] Yeah, I wouldn't agree with that. Uh okay. So uh through it, I feel has brought up something that I'm glad we talked about that you are okay with a defect as long as it's purposeful. How long do we get long wine lands? And as long as it's correctly labeled, I I don't like when things are fraudulently labeled, and I think transparency in food is something that we all benefit from.
+
+[25:03] All right, but how about this? Here are these folks, I'm sure they have no problem selling their oil, whatever they're called, Castellano, whatever their name is Castellines. Castellinas. Okay. I'm sure that these folks have no problem selling their oil, right?
+
+[25:13] But on the other hand, right, you got all these people, like I'm one of these people. Let's pretend like, you know, like that, you know, that I never moved from where, you know, and I'm like, it doesn't say extra virgin. What the hell? I don't want it, right? So there needs to be some sort of other freaking thing to say about it other than that it's just virgin, because some people who there's not enough time in the world for people to educate themselves.
+
+[25:37] But it says on the bottle fruit et noir, which is the style. Okay, so I'm supposed to sit there and be like beep, beep, beep, boop, boop, beep, beep, and like I mean, like there's like you're forcing them to put what's considered a lower quality designation on the label, and I get why. I get why. However, you're not dealing, as you said here, with a lower quality product. These issues are bigger than what I can solve.
+
+[26:05] This is uh this is a this would be an issue to be taken up with the International Olive Council in located in Madrid, Spain, of why is something that's made with young green fruit that is clean tasting, not allowed to be extra virgin. And it's because there is a sensory component that falls out of line of what an extravagant olive oil is supposed to have. Right. Yeah. These guys are getting hosed.
+
+[26:28] But again, they're having no problem selling that. They also they also make incredible extravagant olive oil and have a whole line of monocultivar oils. And then this is like a very niche product that is uh typical of of Provenceal. And this comes from the fact that, you know, 100, 200 years ago, people were harvesting the olives a lot later because they want a more quantity. So they grew up kind of eating these naturally fusty oils, and this is a way to do that in like a more scientific controlled approach.
+
+[26:54] Well, I understand. So they were harvesting the oh oh oh they were harvesting a later. Okay, okay, okay. I understand. You know?
+
+[27:07] Okay. It's cool though. It's it's a nice flavor profile. And if you want something that tastes like olive toponade in liquid form, I love that. That's why we used to blend freaking olives and then take the oil out of them.
+
+[27:16] And they were delicious. There's a whole world of flavor out there. Sashi used to like that crap too, right? Yeah. It was really good.
+
+[27:23] Remember when McGee like, oh my God, the face. You've never seen McGee make such like a sour puss face as when we told him we were doing that. You remember that? Oh my god. He hated that idea.
+
+[27:35] I like those oils because they have personality. I'm sure he would like this. And I he's just like he went through the same, like he's a license, I don't know, what he was a certified olive oil judge. Harold and I sat as judges in the Los Angeles International Olive Oil Crown. Right.
+
+[27:50] So anyone that's gone through that training, you just tell them that you like something that's fusty, and you're it's like programmed in that you have to be like, eh. Right? But then I I talked to this incredible uh Tuscan oil producer named Giorgio Franci, and we talked about the Fruit Noir, and I was like, What do you think of it? And he's like, I like that it has personality. And and I think my mentor taught me something a long time ago, my mentor Nadia Gasparini Rossi in the town of Arezzo.
+
+[28:13] She told me, Nick, um, it is important that you remain open to the world of olive oil. And I think that's where it gets interesting as a global food and a regional food and how it varies tremendously, and the beauty is in the regional diversity. Huh. And these are Italians telling you this. My mentor is a special woman.
+
+[28:32] Yeah, because like normally the Italians are like, well, there's Italian olive oil and then there's other garbage. It's not even Italian. It's like we have Tuscan oil, and if you have Umbrian oil, it will kill you. I've heard that before. Uh but it's important to be open to the world of olive oil.
+
+[28:46] Yeah, yeah. Uh, especially if you sell olive oil for a living. Yes. Yeah. Uh Dave Kleiman writes in, what is the best way?
+
+[28:53] Okay, listen, I'm gonna answer this first, all right? And then I'm gonna let just let you go. Sure. Okay. What is the best way to only remove bitter taste components from olive oil and maintain all the rest of the flavor complexity?
+
+[29:09] Uh I've heard good things about uh boiling in water. Uh, but is there a more accurate method to improve on that technique? So I think it's Nick Sharma wrote about uh not boiling the boiling it, but stirring in, whisking in boiling water, but not actively boiling it, but whisking in the boiling water, the theory being that um water, uh, you know, that the the polyphenols that cause uh bitterness uh will be extracted, or the whatever it is that causes business bitterness will be extracted into the hot water. The hotter the water, the better the extraction. Uh, you then let it settle out and you decant the oil off of the top, uh, and you, you know, and you know you taste the water, and the water tastes like garbage or bitter because you know, you don't really want water to taste like that, and then uh and then you're good to go.
+
+[29:53] Is there a better way to do it? Well, water is actually ideal because if you were to use uh if you were to use uh alcohol, let's say, uh, it would um it would strip a lot of the other flavors out because that's how we make fat washed alcohols, you know what I mean? And and it strips a lot. I've made fat washed uh uh olive oil washed uh liquor and it's delicious. Uh so I wouldn't use anything other than water.
+
+[30:18] I'm sure industrially they would flash steam through it, but that would also rip out all the volatiles, which you're not looking to do, and it would deodorize it. So I'm gonna say, if you wanted to do this, that that is probably a good way to do it. And now I'm guessing, right? I know that Nick does not like people to put well, doesn't like maybe other people, but doesn't like me to put words in his mouth. So I'm gonna guess that you hate this idea, and then what do you think?
+
+[30:45] I would purchase late harvest Ligurian monocultivar Tajaska olive oil. It is sweet, mellow with undertones of almond, virtually no bitterness at all, and is the like the lightest, most ethereal of all the oils. And that would get you right there to buy a great olive oil that has virtually no bitterness at all. Now I read on the internet that uh this person, she had purchased this olive oil on somebody's recommendation, and it was like one of them hyper like high polyphenol oils. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[31:19] And she was like, I can't use it. Yeah, it's almost like medicinal in its uh sensory profile. Yeah, yeah. So uh so, but then in that case, when you have this stuff and you don't have friends to give it to, right? What do you think about this technique?
+
+[31:36] The high polyphenol oils. No, yeah. What do you well? First, what do you think about those? But what do you think about using the water on those things?
+
+[31:40] And specifically, I believe Dave was asking because and so for things like mayonnaise, you're saying you can use this Ligurian olive oil for mayonnaise and things. And then they also presumably you're saying that if you're making because you know how when you make mayonnaise with uh high polyphenol oils, they go intensely bitter sometimes when you're blending. It's very like vegetable mayo. It's a very vegetable mayo. There's some sort of I don't even know what it what it caused.
+
+[32:03] I used to know I should have looked it up before the show, but there's a a known reaction with um making emulsions with uh extraversion olive oil in blenders where a combination of the like the size and the and the air getting whipped into it and the ox so the oxidation and the size of it causes some sort of like real bitter off note, such that even if you like the oil to start with, you'll hate the um result end result management. Yeah, very interesting. Uh olive oil is mysterious, right? But do you think that there's less of a chance for that to happen in a Ligurian late harvest tadyaska? Absolutely.
+
+[32:39] Because the bitterness is virtually not there. It tastes like sweet almonds. Oh, all right. Incredible. But so but if someone has an oil that is too bitter to use, are you okay with this or not?
+
+[32:49] Okay. I would if you have an oil, if you have one bottle of oil that's too okay to use, I would save it, and then later in the year when oils start to get a little flatter, just add small percentages of it into other oils to give it life and structure. All right. That's what producers will do. They'll harvest really, really early and then throughout the season until late, and then as the year goes on, when they want to give legs to oils that are kind of dying and getting, you know, a little flabby, they'll add like 10% of that super early harvest stuff and it gives it vibrancy and makes it dynamic.
+
+[33:20] Did you say what you thought already about super high polyphenol oils in general? Like is it like the uh is it like the California cabernet of the olive oil world? Like it's just get too big or what? I think the race for polyphenols is kind of a dumb race to be had. And I think people are doing it because they say it's healthier for you.
+
+[33:38] But I believe the real benefits of olive oil is consuming it in place of butter, seed oils, or animal fat as your primary source of fat because it's a monounsaturated fat with 0% cholesterol that's high in antioxidants and polyphenols and as a raw fruit juice. And using it with other whole foods that allows you to slow down your digestion and allows the gut to absorb the fat-soluble nutrients of the other food it's with. So it's actually in combination with food, is where I think your body really gets the benefits of the olive oil, not as an independent high polyphenol medicinal shot. Yeah, I don't know anything about health. But uh it's also uh it's low in polyunsaturates, right?
+
+[34:16] It's poofa low, right? Yes. It's mainly a monounsaturated fat. Poofa. So poo poly un polyunsaturated fatty acids is a growth, like that poof is gross.
+
+[34:26] That whole concept, the whole word poofah, you know what I mean? It's not even in my radar. Polyunsaturated fatty acids. Yeah. You want the monounsaturated fat.
+
+[34:36] Mono. Uh mainly because um the more polyunsaturated fas fatty acids you have, um, the quicker things go rancid on you. But the the the real thing that you gotta think about with with polyunsaturates is uh linol linoleic is polyunsaturated, but it's it's better, I think it is, but it's better than linolenic. Linolinic is really trash. It's a trash can fatty acid.
+
+[35:01] But it I think it's one of those, it's one of those omega blah blahs. So, but again, health, don't care. Uh all right. Oh, and this is these are great questions. This is a good uh, this is a good uh, first of all, it's from someone whose name is Daddy Yankee Cannon.
+
+[35:15] And and how can you be a father to the Yankee Candle Corporation when you can't even stand to be in the room with your children? Because a Yankee candle, do they still exist Yankee candle? They must. When I used to walk by a Yankee candle or wicks and sticks, anyone used to go to a mall. I have a deep aversion to New Jersey suburban malls growing up as a child and my mom pulling me there when I was a kid, you know, or and spending hours as a kid in the women's sections of malls.
+
+[35:42] I I just I hate them so much. Because I could have gone either way. I go into a mall and the smell of the mall uh frustrates me. The amount of consumerism frustrates me. I I just hate them.
+
+[35:51] So when I was a kid, I remember, I remember very distinctly. I used to love going to the mall. What about you guys? Joe, John, I enjoyed it. Oh, you ate them all too?
+
+[36:02] Yeah, being in the women's section with my mom, just trying on bras. Like, come on. I mean, it looks but like what about like what about going to Spencer's and trying to look at the naughty stuff in the back? Or like what about like going to like I see these, man. Yeah, dude.
+
+[36:17] I go to like the wall that that yeah, or yeah, exactly. Yeah, I had a Tower Records on Route 17 in New Jersey. So Tower Records was a joy to go to. Barnes and Noble was a joy to go to. But that was but at the Garden State Plaza, I mean, give me a break.
+
+[36:31] Yeah, but Spencer's had the whippets. Yeah. Spencer's had it had they had its charms. It's strobe lights and like weird like pornographic mugs. It's uh you know what I mean?
+
+[36:41] It's like it was a weird place. But my point is is that I used to love going to the mall because I'm a hyper consumer, but I would go they used to have a tool store in the mall. I forget the name of it, but like they they you know, sell like kind of kind of second rate tools, but they had like a Sears, they had like, you know, they had all these things, and I would like to go looking around. I didn't like going to the women's section either. Or men's section.
+
+[36:59] I don't I didn't care about clothes shopping, but then I remember when all of a sudden There's something about browsing when you go to a mall, you don't even want anything, and you go to just kind of browse to try to hold it. It's such an insane. I always wanted something. Anyway, I remember very distinctly when I it was like I think around my 17th birthday or something when I went to the mall, and all of a sudden I loved going. All of a sudden I'm like, this sucks.
+
+[37:24] It was like that. That's what I'm saying, man. You learned that it sucked. Anyway. So Yankee Candle, whenever you walk past the Yankee Candle, you're like, oh the smell of all the scented candles.
+
+[37:37] I it doesn't smell healthy. I mean, I enjoy I enjoy incense. What's your thoughts on potpourri? Hilarious word. Yeah, right.
+
+[37:48] Yeah. Is it sound more hilarious with a real French accent, John, or no? Ah, yeah, dude. You know, that whole like Yankee candle and potpourri is like one and the same. You go into a suburban bathroom in the 90s, and you got your Yankee candle, you got your potpourri.
+
+[38:06] So in the 70s, get this, get this. In the 70s, we would literally save like garbage pine cones, and then you dry out the roses upside down in in the bath, you know, and then you crumple that, get the petals, you crumple that in with the pine craps, and then you throw some in there. Yeah, and then to the fruit cake, it was great. Yeah, and then when it lost its aroma, your mom would go chink chink chunk and spray some sort of perfume on the potpourri to keep it going. You know what I mean?
+
+[38:34] I remember that. The glue gun was out, the bedazzler. It was yeah, it was like a real scene. That's money. That's money.
+
+[38:41] That's childhood right there. I'm for it. Yes, sir. That glass dish. It's got that glass dish that it's in.
+
+[38:47] You know what I mean? I like that. Oh, bring it back. Listen, if I was infinitely, if I if I had infinite money though, because like uh my family was not an incense family, right? Um Mandy Aftel from Aftelier gave me some very high grade hoodry frankincense and an incense thing.
+
+[39:08] And I like frankincense, but Jen, you know, was like church smell, whatever. Like, so like, but Dax got into incense, and so they've been burning it, but like I have this itch to smell once. I'll pay for it. We should all chip in and get real ood, like wood, real agar wood, real. They're good.
+
+[39:27] I I I I have some, I just have real ood at the house right now. Really? Like the high high side. I brought it. I brought it back from Morocco.
+
+[39:32] Oh, nice. Because like this, the super high grade stuff is like $150 for a tiny chip. And then we just all chip in money and we we just do it and we like get what it's like, and then we can buy the low grade. Because why not? You know what I mean?
+
+[39:44] Once you've had the one thing. Dave, remember when Mandy Aftel wanted to make your the smell of your musk? That's not what happens. She wanted to make a perfume for me. She said of your musk.
+
+[39:55] I I cannot get it. I don't know, whatever, man. But I I hate the sidetracked real quick. We were talking about potpourri. Do you remember that?
+
+[40:02] Isn't the whole thing sidetracked? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, don't you remember that? Do you remember the lamp when you used to go for furniture shopping with your parents, and there was that lamp that like exuded oil down like a strain? I bought one for Jen.
+
+[40:13] I love that. Yeah, I have it. I don't have room for it in New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You buy them, you buy them.
+
+[40:20] It's mineral oil you put into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's like there's monofilament strings coming down. Like some are straight, some are at an angle. There's fake plants in it, and there's like a sculpture of a lady, like yeah, it's a real moment.
+
+[40:32] Yeah, yeah, doing this, and the light on the thing, and then the beads of oil. Each bead would come down slowly on a string. It was almost timed in a way. It was kind of amazing. I love it.
+
+[40:43] So we had one when I had a place in Connecticut. I had it up. I had it running. I had the lampshade. And we the oil would always be running.
+
+[40:49] If you buy one, go on the eBay, buy them. Uh, I forget the name of them because I but I bought one. They're easy to refurbish. You might need to refurbish the pump or fix it, but everything inside of one's fixable. You probably use olive oil.
+
+[41:01] I don't know. That was a kind of a segue back to the show. But you gotta use the mineral oil, but they and you know, buy them and fix them. They are awesome. There's something just so awesome about them.
+
+[41:13] I love those damn things. The 70s had their 70s had their stuff, you know what I mean? Anyway, the father of all Yankee candles would like to know, and this is a good segue for your other stuff. Are your oils approved? Which I don't even know what this means for non-food uses.
+
+[41:32] We are in the process of developing a hyper minimal ingredient, extra virgin olive oil soap out of the same oils that we use for food consumption. High quality olive oil, because if you're doing a hyperminimal ingredient soap, the quality of the oil is of extreme importance. But like if I'm just scrubbing myself with it, I mean sell me on the sell me on why I need that. Sold you, maybe. The skin is the largest organ in the body, and it deserves the healthful benefits of extra virgin olive oil.
+
+[42:09] I can see your epidermis. So, when is this soap coming online? Uh 2023. All right. Okay.
+
+[42:18] It's only three ingredients, and it's 66% extra virgin olive oil. Okay. But stuff that you actually like the flavor of. It's the same oil we sell to about 40 critically acclaimed restaurants in New York City. Okay.
+
+[42:32] Uh all right. So that answer the question? Well, I mean, uh, because what does it mean to do that? The answer is yes. All right.
+
+[42:42] So, like before we get into some non uh non non-oil questions, unless uh Quinn, do we have any or you turned off your uh your other internet stuff? Do we have any other Discord stuff on that? All the olive oil questions? We have three. I don't know.
+
+[42:54] It's like what I'm seeing, but that I don't know, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, just three uh as of midnight last night. Okay. Uh Jack, any anything in the in the Discord?
+
+[43:04] Anyway, but uh let's let's talk about your uh love of olive oil, of olive wood. Oh, sure. So I brought this really nice piece of olive wood because what I do is I scour the stacks for the best olive wood. So I'll find a place that has like a lot of these stores that have olive oil, they'll maybe have like 70 different things, and I'll I'll see it and I'll go through it, and out of like 70 different ones, I'll buy like two. And I'll buy the two nicest ones.
+
+[43:28] So, what are the properties that you like? Highly recommend anyone out there who who is into this stuff. Um look at the stacks because olive wood varies tremendously based on where it's from, based on how old the trees are, and some of the wood is some of the most like gnarled galactic wood out there. It's very highly prized, it's a hard wood. I have a guitar made out of it.
+
+[43:50] I have a come on. I have a guitar. Is it is it got good for sound? I was gonna say it's kind of well, the sound of an electric guitar is based on the mathematics of the bridge to nut ratio because that mathematics needs to give you the overtone series that you want. So I think the tone woods of electric instruments are not as important as the tone woods of acoustic instruments.
+
+[44:11] A. What about the neck though? We all pay extra for like burly. It's not a hundred percent made out of olive wood. Um I used to pay a lot of extra money for having a good neck.
+
+[44:20] Yeah. Yeah, good rosewood. I should have brought it. It's a Carl Thompson bass. I don't know if you know Primus and Les Claypool, but he built all the guitars for the biggest.
+
+[44:28] Do I know freaking Les Claypool? Do you play a six string or you want to put it in the first one? No, I no, I play a four-string. Okay, thank God. I'm having enough trouble with four strings.
+
+[44:41] I don't need five or six strings. Listen, it went crazy, right? Like everyone played like the some of the best music ever made only required four strings on the bass, right? Yes. Sometimes one.
+
+[44:53] Yes. Sometimes all you really need is one string if you really know what you're doing. Okay, Emma Otters Jug Bang Christmas Wash Tub Bass. So anyway, but anyway, it's a Carl Thompson Olive Wood bass. He made me, he made it for me.
+
+[45:06] Okay. And it was the first Olivewood bass he ever made. He didn't think it was possible because he couldn't find pieces big enough for the body. And then he Oh, so it's like strip lambd of uh out of uh out of so you can see the stripes of the where it's laminated together? Yeah, like the core is mahogany.
+
+[45:20] Uh-huh. And then there's olive wood, and then there's curly maple, and then there's snake wood. The pit guard has snake wood on it, which is the one of only two woods that are denser than water and sinks. Nice. And there's Pow Farrow.
+
+[45:33] How poisonous is that to cut? All those weird woods are like poisonous to cut. Like you inhale the dust and you die when you're 20. Yeah. I don't know enough about that to comment.
+
+[45:42] Uh, I mean, I don't know about that particular one. So, uh, how does it how does the bass sound? And then natural, it's covered in all kinds of plastic lacquer. No, it's all wood. Um wait, it's like, well, what's the finish though?
+
+[45:54] W wood. What do you mean? And then the finish, they do uh linseed oil. Really? Yeah.
+
+[46:00] Okay. Um sounds good? It's a Carl Tom's enough said. Uh Les Claypool is the I okay. Primus.
+
+[46:14] Why are we adding on this? Do we really need to talk about Tim Alexander and Les Claypool of Primus? I don't know. Primus, I mean, they they came out with one of the best albums ever, and then I just don't know what happened. Which one?
+
+[46:24] Frizzle fry? The best album, one of the best albums for the fruit. Yeah, yeah. And then he's like Pork Soda's good too. Come on.
+
+[46:30] Oh, come on. I don't know. Fork soda is good. It has DMV on it. Yeah.
+
+[46:33] But then you know, after sailing the seas of cheese, they were like, what if we make stuff nobody wants to listen to? Beating jung ding. Like you know what I mean? I'm like I think it's really hard to stay relevant as a musician. I don't know.
+
+[46:47] Uh he's still a fantastic player. We have a live question that just came in from uh Patreon in Florida. Yeah, what do you got? What do you got? Uh from etc.
+
+[46:56] Warrior, uh I can't read that name. Uh question. I've seen E V O O Best Before Dates, two years after harvest. How fast has the flavor change and did two years make sense? I think two years is a abnormally long amount of time to have on an olive oil.
+
+[47:11] Will it hurt you? No. Will the flavor and structure be degraded from its inception? Absolutely. It also depends on cultivar.
+
+[47:20] If you take a Pouliese Coratina oil that is harvested early in the season, 18 months, 20 months out, it can still be grassy, vibrant, peppery, and clean. If you take a late harvest Arbequina oil, one year out it's turning flabby and losing its legs. So it depends on the cultivar and the moment it was harvested. In general, I think two years is too long. On our bottles, we actually put 18 months because we think it should be consumed in 18 months.
+
+[47:45] Because remember, 12 months after whatever bottle you have, you have a new harvest. So you want to seek that out. The idea of going two years with an oil just makes no sense because as you're in that second year, there's a fresher oil available. Yeah. You said abnormal, therefore I can ask you this.
+
+[47:58] Do you like young Frankenstein, the movie? I've never seen it. Oh my god. I know I don't want I think a lot of this. I don't have a television, and I think a lot of these shows and movies are like huge time eaters.
+
+[48:11] I agree. You love young Frankenstein. Yeah, yeah. But this is what you sound like. But he's saying he doesn't watch young Frankenstein because it's a waste of time.
+
+[48:20] I mean I'm saying I don't watch a lot of uh anyway, Marty Feldman. I like doing stuff. I like like painting and skateboarding and playing music and doing more like activities. He's like, I read the original Mary Shelley Frankenstein in its entirety, and so I did not need to watch young Frankenstein. So Marty Feldman plays Igor, but it's pronounced Igor in the movie because uh Gene Wilder doesn't recall Frankenstein, so he's called Frankenstein.
+
+[48:43] And he goes, What brain did you get? He goes, Abby, someone. Abby normal. And that's the brain that he puts into Frankenstein's head. And so anytime anyone says abnormal, I see Marty Feldman in my head saying Abby Normal.
+
+[48:58] The brain is so interesting how it triggers things. Not mine, it's just a waste. Okay. Are you gonna play your music? Well, yeah, I was just gonna say, we should maybe.
+
+[49:05] Do you want to take a little uh a quick little What do you want listeners to do while they Yeah. All right? So I figure, you know, Dave is such a high maniacal man that I feel like we should just chill out for a second and take an intermission and then get right back into it. All right, and we'll get back to the tastings and while you're pouring the tastings after the uh after this interlude where apparently I'm supposed to feel okay about myself or something. I'll answer some of these other questions while I'm I guess feeling better about my life.
+
+[49:30] I don't know. We'll see. Um so this is a moment where I like to just breathe. I feel like in today's world, people are forgetting to breathe. Ooh, nice reverb.
+
+[49:40] And it's important to just close your eyes and focus on your breathing to send to yourself and clear out your brain so it can then take it as space to take in what Dave is about to be delivering to you in the next 30 minutes. So everyone just chill out and breathe, and we'll just uh 10 more minutes. Oh, here it says cooking issues 40 minutes. That was the Nick Coleman fight song. Yeah.
+
+[51:55] Yeah. So I Nick walks around. Nick walks around with a box that makes drone noises. Yeah, it's the Sangat Digital. It's an Indian drone box that does the um.
+
+[52:09] Is it for Tabla players? It does the tampura sound as well as the tabla, and it's it's actually for Bansuri players, so you get the drone with the tabla, so you can rip some Bansuri. Which is Indian classical music. Tell us who you're named after. I found out this past weekend.
+
+[52:24] Oh, yeah, it's so stupid. My name. It's not Ornette Coleman. I wish. The shape of jazz to come as a great album.
+
+[52:32] No, I was named. So my birthday's December twentieth. Um, I was born on the cusp, and my parents, for whatever reason, figured that since I was born five days before Christmas, they should name me after old Saint Nick. So they name me Nicholas, which is so silly because we're not religious and I don't really celebrate Christmas. So it's kind of ironic.
+
+[52:53] You got the name. You celebrate give you a theory on naming children. I think it's really important. Whatever you name your child, it should work regardless of career path they choose. So a name I love for a daughter, if should I my wife and I ever have a daughter is the name Vera, which means truth.
+
+[53:10] But Vera is such a cool name because I feel like if my daughter ended up a punk rock heroin addict, Vera is a fucking cool name. And if my daughter ends up a successful corporate lawyer, Vera is a cool name. And I think a name that hits all gamut allows someone to be whoever they want to be and have a name that fits. I knew a chef named Candy who was like very much not Candy, like not like you know what you would picture Candy. Not the best.
+
+[53:40] She was very like, you know, in charge and you know. I don't know. I think it was a good name. My name was Candace, I think. Do people change their names often anymore?
+
+[53:49] I feel like people should be free to change their names more. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, uh, why don't you get your tastings ready so we don't run out of time, and I will take a question, a non oil question, and through it again.
+
+[54:01] Get your tastings ready. Oh, I like how we're drinking out of like plastic and you gotta leave your little blue, like cobalt glass. Uh first of all, it's not plastic. They are made from plants. Okay, it's a polymer, baby.
+
+[54:14] Uh you know, you're right. People don't change their names anymore. Like, what did I just thought just thought about there for a second? Because didn't someone change your name to Trout Fishing in America? That's a band.
+
+[54:25] But it was also the son of Kodak. Black? Not Kodak. No, the Kodak, the like the film company. Oh, yeah.
+
+[54:28] Eastman Kodak's kid? Yes. Oh, all right. Uh I'm trying to riff on cuckoo. This is N through it again.
+
+[54:39] Cuckoo Sabzi, a Persian herb frittata with lots of herbs. Think about like a cup per egg. That's a lot. I looked it up. Uh, I want to make a delicate slash smooth steam version, sort of like shaman mushy.
+
+[54:49] You guys like chamamushi? I don't know what that is. You know what's that steamed egg custard Japanese thing in a cup in the teacup and I love that. What a wonderful palate cleanser. All right.
+
+[54:57] Uh and but blending the herbs makes the mint go swampy. Any way to get the fresh herb taste to come through more. Sadly, I don't have access to LN. Uh all right, listen. And through it.
+
+[55:07] All the recipes I had were mainly uh parsley, cilantro, dill, and chive, not a lot of mint. And all of those could kind of hack what you're doing. But if you must include mint, just extract the mint. I don't know how much alcohol you can add and still have it work because it's gonna mess with it, but buy Everclear, like, you know, like a hundred and like ninety proof, like 95%. And that stuff extracts the mint very cleanly, right?
+
+[55:32] It's very high proof, but it extracts it very cleanly, just like an hour, like soak the mint, like a lot of mint, like put it in a Ziploc bag, get all the air out, and you'll get a hyper hyper green, hyper pure mint. But you just have to see how much alcohol your uh your chamwan mushi alike can take before it won't set properly. But that's the only way I can uh think to do it. Unless John, you have any other ideas. Nope, I do not have any other ideas.
+
+[55:58] All right, so uh, and then you want to get one more real quick. Van Drew writes in. I recall Dave mentioned he has switched. You might like this stuff, Nick. Uh uh recall Dave mentioned he has switched many tools to hand powered options.
+
+[56:09] Any recommendations on food processors and meat grinders that don't require plugs? Well, I don't have a food processor that I like that's hand cranked. I mean, other than I guess, I mean the the uh the salad master is a food processor, but it doesn't have a rotating blade. It's for chopping and it's it's for like making coleslaw and discs and grating cheese. Would a pestlin mortar be deemed in the food processing realm?
+
+[56:30] Well, that's my favorite. That's an interesting question. But the the problem with the mortar and pestle is I feel like you need to have like four of them to get all of the eventualities. Not just one large marble Ligurian one. I said, Oh, you use Liguria.
+
+[56:43] It's hard to carry around. Well, the ease of carrying around is not the question. I gotta clean out, I'm gonna clean pesto out of it. You just clean it out. Please.
+
+[56:53] Anyway, I don't know. Yes, that's a valid point you're making, Nick. But that Pesla mortar is a great one. But uh I like hand-cranked uh meat grinders if you're making only small amounts because they're easier to clean and easier to store. Uh and they do, I think, a better job of the uh than the kitchen aid attachments.
+
+[57:08] Um the famous one is porkart. Uh uh meat grinders come in sizes. For a house, I would a small house, I would get a number 10 size. Uh I have the LEM uh number 10, but uh look around because the quality even on the LEMs varies because they've moved the factory from place to place, but the advantage of them is they're made out of stainless, which is nice for me because I can dishwash it. You can't dishwash uh the pork carrot because it's galvanized uh cast iron, so I wouldn't dishwash it.
+
+[57:35] The problem with the LEM, and I still haven't figured it out yet, is the clamp is the worst. So if you have very thick boards that you need to clamp to, the clamp won't quite get over it. So I'm still working on uh on that uh van troupe. Now, what are we tasting? So we got two minutes left, right?
+
+[57:49] I don't know. Okay, we're gonna taste an oil and then one thing I want to mention is we uh if it's cool if I mention it, um, we have a pro a cooking issues promo code on Grovenbine.com. And if you go to Grovernmind.com, you can order any of the Grovenbine olive oils, and just at checkout, use promo code and get 10% off. I like that. What we're tasting here is the newest release on our website.
+
+[58:13] It's from South Africa. It's made entirely with Coratina olives and the FS17 olive, which is a clone of the Fentoyo olive, but it's slightly dwarfable. Now, when you taste, Dave, you want to put it in the palm of your hand and couple with the other hand and swirl the oil. The bottom palm warms the oil while the top palm traps the aromas. The first thing you want to do when you taste an oil is taste it independent of food to get the true aroma and flavor profile, because that will trigger ideas is what you might like to pair it with.
+
+[58:41] Stas, when was the last time someone talked about us and wanting to trap the aromas? Mandy aft. Now, first we're just gonna smell the oil. All right. Any fusty?
+
+[58:58] I I'm gonna let John and Stas talk about this. No fusty, clean, grassy, herbaceous hints of freshly ripped leaves. Very nice. Freshly ripped leaves. I like that.
+
+[59:07] You have you have good words. I've been doing this a long time. Yeah. And then when you taste it, you want to do a method called stripagio where you create a repetitive spray effect like this, and then after you do that a few times, you stop and swallow. And I stop.
+
+[59:27] Swallow. Grassy, vibrant, peppery, and dynamic with a long delayed elongated peppery finish. And what causes that peppery finish is oleocanthol, which is a natural antioxidant found in the olive. Do it one more time because I want to imitate the exact noises. This is the Nick Coleman bird call.
+
+[59:48] Are you guys ready? This is some clean oil. Dude, you guys are gonna owe me for new pop filters. You're a pro, Dave. As I always knew you were.
+
+[1:00:14] So here's a question. When I don't taste this way, when I'm just like spoon tasting at home, right? I often find that my second taste that, like, even on like on like a like a peppery oil, I won't get it on the first spoonful, but the second spoonful tastes different from the first. Is it because I'm not doing all of this McGillicuddy stuff? It can be cumulative.
+
+[1:00:31] And as you go, like if you do it again, it could be even more peppery because there's still the lingering from the first one. Now you have the cranberries in my head. I think you mentioned that the last show. Anytime someone says linger, I know, I don't change. Um, that's a beautiful thing.
+
+[1:00:49] Actually, though, I get why you have to do all that, but I actually enjoy tasting it just like a normal person. Is that bad? You are a normal person, Dave. But I mean, like, not with the I enjoy the tasting it. From what it smells like back here from the spray, what smelled like sawgrass.
+
+[1:01:07] What do you guys think of this oil? Smelling very grassy. You want to taste it real quick? I haven't tasted it all of them. You guys aren't tasting it?
+
+[1:01:12] Um anyway, it's it's uh you want to taste olive oil, just like you want to taste a piece of cheese on its own to see what you might want to use it with. Pass one back to the next one. You want to sip some wine. Since stuff had them on your taste. The idea of trying olive oil in a dish of food and thinking you're getting it, it's like the idea of trying a glass a glass of wine, but it's in with pasta and you're you've cooked with it.
+
+[1:01:37] Meaning you dump the wine into the pasta. Yeah, and then be like, ooh, this wine is good. You want to taste the wine independent, and that's gonna let you know what's really going on. And then dump it in your pasta. It's important, never dump the wine in the pasta in that capacity, but it's really important to taste things on their own because there's so many nuances in salts and chocolates and olive oils and honeys, and to not try it on its own, you're robbing yourself of I think some of the experience that you can have with these products.
+
+[1:02:02] All right, well, you're pouring this next one. We get your last one poured. Should we taste the good one or bad one? Both. I don't care.
+
+[1:02:09] Do it fast. We got two minutes. As soon as that comes on, we got two minutes. But Josh S. writes something that I'm sure John has something to say.
+
+[1:02:14] I want to acquire the taste for mustard. I can deal with mustard seed as a component of Indian food, but processed mustard turns me off. How should I best get into this condiment, John? Same thing like what I'm trying to do with olives. I don't like olives, but just keep hitting them and eventually I hope to like them.
+
+[1:02:29] Yeah, I would start with hot dogs. Oh, yeah. You got one for John? Here hot dogs are delicious with mustard. Uh also, like if you don't like mustard, I don't know what kind of mustard you don't like.
+
+[1:02:41] Maybe you should start with the sweeter mustards. Uh or you know what? Uh here. Start with Italian mustard. Get a good mustarda, right?
+
+[1:02:49] Which is like uh compo, like almost like a chutney with mustard in it, and then have it with some of my man Nick's uh olives. What are we olive oil? What are we uh what do we uh you guys should have a mostarda expert on this show, first of all. That would be incredible. And you crema um so this is an Italian oil from the region of Tucha in central Italy.
+
+[1:03:07] It's made with Frantoyo and lecino olives. And uh this one is harvested in October of 2021. So this is almost one year old. I shouldn't have inhaled that one quite so much. They talk about one cough, two cough, and three cough oils in terms of intensity.
+
+[1:03:22] Well that's that's intense. Don't inhale that sucker. And while you're getting your while you're getting your uh on, uh Wizmert says they save vermouth lasts about two weeks in the fridge after opening. Can you extend the shelf late by excluding the air? I uh by pouring into a smaller bottle with a little bit of headspace or transferring it to a kind of bladder or uh to squeeze out the air, or somehow adding N2O to push out the air.
+
+[1:03:44] Yes, you can do that. Uh the easiest way if you're gonna put it in the fridge, it's ugly as hell, is to put it into a uh soda bottle and squeeze out all of the uh air and cabot. And then are we tasting one last terrible thing? One last one. We're tasting a bad oil and the color has no bearing on the quality, but it's a bad supermarket oil.
+
+[1:04:00] Oh yeah. That's filth. Is this the is this the filth for uh for uh John? That's filth. I don't want to we shouldn't mention brands.
+
+[1:04:11] And uh Chevron, uh uh Chevron Hubbard. I have not tried to use Mountain Dew as a mixture, but uh I want anyone who's listening to this who hears it to tell me their best Mountain Dew recipes for mixed drinks, and we'll talk about 'em next time with Michael uh no with Sean Brock. Uh maybe not. Michael Esconos comes back. Cooking issues, and we're gonna be able to do it.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave, our older host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios in the studio today with, of course, John. John Nahoul, how are you doing? Doing great thanks. Chef of Temperance Wine Bar.
+
+[0:24] Very true. Downtown. How's it? Everything good? Yeah.
+
+[0:27] Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Great. Awesome. Rocking the panels here.
+
+[0:30] We got Joe Hazen. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great, man. How are you? I'm okay.
+
+[0:34] I'm okay. A little bit of a uh, what's it called? A little bit of a uh, you know, nothing compared to the rest of the country, but you know, this little bit of rain today. But here's the thing. I'm biking today, New York, normally fine, right?
+
+[0:45] All of a sudden, a rogue gust, Mother Nature almost took me out. Like, it's fine. Biking in New York in the rain is fine. All of a sudden, wind is like, no, you don't. Boom!
+
+[0:54] And like blew me three feet across the road. Oh, wow. Yeah. Lucky it didn't blow you into a bus. Well, lucky for me, I'm lucky for some.
+
+[1:01] Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Uh in the California today, we have uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez and Jackie Molecules together again. How you doing, guys? Good.
+
+[1:12] Yeah? Good, good. Yeah? What's it like? Uh anything anything interesting happening in the world of food in Los Angeles in the last uh, I don't know, week or so.
+
+[1:20] Uh I've only been here for like two days, so no. Um I'm still subsiding on a diet of uh smoothies. Oh god. Oh god. Yeah, interview these people that make these uh these water bottles with uh crystals inside of them.
+
+[1:37] Oh Jesus. Isn't that ridiculous? Wait, wait, wait. What kind of crystals? Like what kind of crystals?
+
+[1:42] Poisonous, maybe? Got black obsidian in here, baby. I'm drinking water inside obsidian. Can I can I tell you something about obsidian? A little bit?
+
+[1:50] One thing. I mean man'm gonna man explain a little obsidian. Amorphous. It's an amorphous solid. It's a glass.
+
+[1:58] Can't possibly be a crystal. That's why I've that's why it's so good for flint napping, my friend. Go back and tell those crunchy, like freaking Sedona loving, freaking crystal mongers to stay away from amorphous materials in your liquids, man. Is the is the water raw? Right that was a move.
+
+[2:20] That was a real movement like two or three years ago. All right, right. Wow. If we have time, let's bring this back. Do you remember like there was the other one where like you would like chant nice things to water and Madonna like pumped that stuff, and there was that Japanese guy is the shaving water.
+
+[2:35] And like literally, like the dude would take the he's dead now, I think, but he would he would he would take water. Have I said this on the air before? He would take water and he'd be like, I love you. I love you, I love you. And then he would freeze it and there'd be a pretty snow crystal.
+
+[2:50] And then he would go, Hitler! Handler! Handler! And freeze it, and he would take a picture of a mutated crystal. Oh god.
+
+[2:59] And so they would sell water that they had like chanted nice things over. I I don't know, in case I guess it crystallizes in your body. That was real, real pretty pictures. Anyway, uh Quinn will not be joining us. He'll be back next week when our special guest will be Michael Lisconis, formerly of La Bernard End, now uh for the past million years, been running uh Ice's uh pastry, chocolate, and a bunch of other stuff.
+
+[3:23] If you want to call in questions about that, make sure to make fun of uh not I'm not gonna bring it up. Not gonna bring it up. Uh but today's special guest, we're extremely happy. Calling in from Tennessee is Sean Brock, who I haven't seen in in a million years, probably since 2015. How are you doing, Sean?
+
+[3:41] Oh, wonderful. Yeah, it's been a long time. It's been a long time since I've seen anybody though. Yeah. Well, can I say that uh I think I have said this on the air before.
+
+[3:49] I have not been to Tennessee other than maybe driving through it. I have not stopped in Tennessee since the nineteen eighty Knoxville World's Fair. Whoa. Yeah. Time to have time to reuse it.
+
+[4:03] I remember having a good time at the Knoxville World Fair though. It was good. Definitely. Yeah. Did you go?
+
+[4:09] No, you were too y you were too young. You were you're six or seven. Oh yeah. Um yeah. I was like nine.
+
+[4:15] I didn't go no, but that was a big deal in the South. Yeah. It was huge. My um my my great uncle had a a cabin up in the uh in the mountains, and my grandparents got a dog the same time, and we drove back to Florida from Tennessee and the dog puked on my lap. It was a little dog called the Besenji and it puked on my lap.
+
+[4:37] We counted it eleven times between Tennessee and Florida. And that was the first time I ever saw kudzu as well. You ever harvest a kudzu over there and like make something with it? Yeah, so one of my goals with my new project is to work on uh helping teach ways to harvest budzu for the starch, but also uh we we make a lot of serving pieces out of it and baskets and chargers and we certainly use the the route for um thickening and we thicken everything with it. Really?
+
+[5:15] Is there a way to is there I mean it makes amazing tea? Really? Like what does it mean like like uh is it like goopy or is it like what's the flavor? Well, I I always think of I always think about as coozive flowers. Oh, what are the flowers taste like?
+
+[5:27] Yeah, they're purple and I don't know, they're floral. It's it's hard to explain. They're very, very unique. And uh yeah, people look at you like you're crazy when they see someone picking cuddy around here. Yeah, I guess.
+
+[5:44] Well uh on the other hand, they should be like anything you can do to anything you can do to knock it back, right? Speaking of uh well, let's let's let's do this. Let's do this in order, because I have some ingredients I want to ask you about. Uh but I don't want to miss anything. I have a bunch of people who have written in questions.
+
+[5:59] And also if you're listening live on the Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And uh you want to tell them how to join the Patreon if they're uh not already uh Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Bunch of different level of memberships, a lot of great perks and all the different memberships. And if you're listening, you should definitely join.
+
+[6:17] Let's get uh let's see whether Kitchen Arts and Letters will put uh, even though it's not like just out. Maybe did we already get uh Sean's book uh South on the Squin, but I'm sure Matt would be a little bit more than a little bit. Yeah, we'll get the Patreon people a discount there because no offense to Amazon, although crap on them, but we prefer if you buy your cookbooks through places like Kitchen Arts and Letters, right? That's all that's all I'm gonna say about that. Uh especially Kitchen Arts and Letters.
+
+[6:41] Yeah, especially Kitchen Arts and Letters. I mean, they're such a good place. You know what I mean? Anyways. We have a lot to talk about, so I don't even know how to approach it.
+
+[6:51] I remember the first time I think that you came to my attention was I don't know, I'm gonna want to say like maybe I've met you after a long time ago when I was at the French Culinary Institute, and you had somehow gotten a hold before anyone else had, of like all of the list of varietals that had been grown in uh at Monticello, and you were just single-handedly going down and trying to find people who were make like growing all of those things, and we're just going ballistic on this kind of like uh on this kind of like bringing these things or like from from a taste perspective, right? So I think it started, I mean, at least you told me back in the day, it started from just kind of taste and then became more. You want to talk about that whole journey or no? Yeah, of course. So I grew up um in Appalachia, way back in the coal fields, and there everyone grows everything that they eat.
+
+[7:44] Uh you, you know, the grocery stores are we had one, and um I we rarely went there. We grew everything. It was it was so cool. And I actually ended up living with my grandmother for a few years, who was a feed saver, not really out of you know passion, but just out of the just tradition. That's um you you travel around the south and you start to see these little pockets everywhere, and everybody has their own um beans and corn that you know happen to thrive there, and they hang on to those.
+
+[8:20] You know, it's kind of like a natural selection sort of thing. So I watched her seed saving my whole life and grew up eating straight from her garden, eating those heirloom um products. So I I that's just all I knew. And then when I when I um got my first restaurant job, I uh I remember tasting the food and um realizing that it was it tasted nothing like um what I grew up eating. And uh now I can link all that together and understand why um sorry my one's having a meeting outside my door.
+
+[9:00] I know what that's like. I know what that's like. D were you able to save any of your grandma's seats? By the way, your grandma Audrey, who you named your flagship restaurant after, right? Do we lose them?
+
+[9:17] Oh we are yeah, so you you the you named the restaurant after your grandma and you saved the and you did you save any of her seeds? Yes. I was lucky enough to inherit a lot of her seeds and I've been growing them ever since. Um one in particular that I've and since then I've I've become I've always been a collector. I love collecting things.
+
+[9:43] It's just part of my personality. And so I've been collecting seeds from all over the South since probably around two thousand six or so. And um, you know, beans are a big thing here. And my grandma had these beans called wild goose and they look like they were um spray painted with um like a I don't know, it's like speckled and purple and blue and so gorgeous. But I haven't seen those anywhere else.
+
+[10:13] Um and that one is uh now referred to as the Audrey Morgan bean. Nice. Um which was her her name. Uh yeah, so it's so neat. And and yes, I think for the most part these these things are more delicious.
+
+[10:30] Um is that is that a thick skin bean, a thin skinned bean, like kidney size, pinto, like like navy, like what size or like or like butter bean size. Like what c what were you talking about? I'm trying to figure out No, no, these are yeah, so in the South we eat a lot of these um beans called greasy beans or half runner beans, and they're enormous green beans with the the the seed itself is so huge. And and you can eat it in all the different stages. So you can eat it, you know, fresh right off the plant.
+
+[10:58] You can let it get medium sized and can it, or you can let it totally dry and you know, cook it like uh penta beans. All right. Uh here's a question I ask a lot of people, but I don't think I asked them on the air. In terms of New York style, all right. And then I know they grow them better elsewhere, but green or wax on your on your green bean style.
+
+[11:18] Green beans or wax beans. Choose one? Yeah. Hmm. Well, see, t I need to know the exact varietal of each one.
+
+[11:29] Yeah. That's what makes the difference. Uh you're saying that you're saying there's a green bean. Like 200 I probably have 200 varieties of green beans in my collection. Wow.
+
+[11:40] Hmm. It's pretty stupid. So um when you talk to Sean Brock, do not say garden variety as an insult. Definitely do not say garden variety as an insult to Sean, for sure. I have never had a green bean I like as as much as the best wax beans, but I am now embarrassed that I don't have the green bean uh, you know, I don't have the green bean palette because I don't have uh I don't have access to the to the dang green beans.
+
+[12:09] Now I feel like well, we we can fix that. You just gotta come visit. We can have a bean tasting a bean party. But what's neat is you look through this pile of seeds and they're all named after people or places, and I think that's so neat because now that's a link in this chain that is living history, living history of the food of this region. And every time I cook one of those and serve it, let's say it's um uh Henry Barnett uh half runner, his stories told.
+
+[12:47] And those stories, you know, they we can learn a lot, um, but it's also nice to to remember people. I so switching gears a little bit, most people, you know, you got you know most of your fame doing in in low country, South Carolina, Charleston, right? And now you're doing Appalachian stuff. But I kind of my question to you is it's such a like it's such a giant region. Do you really feel that there's something that ties together the in like the entire string of the Appalachians or no?
+
+[13:18] Culinary. Yeah. Um, yeah. The for me, well, if you talk about um plants, you're looking at three sisters, corn bean, squash. Because everywhere you go, there's going to be a different varietal of each.
+
+[13:34] And those varietals can be traced back to where they came from. And so you'll start to learn about the um different cultures who have have come to you know different places and left their mark. And uh also speaking of appalaches, I saw that you uh you did a forward for a new edition of the Foxfire cookbook. What's what are your feelings on Foxfire? Because when I was a kid, I collected them.
+
+[13:59] For those of you that don't know, Foxfire was a series of books that were written by high school students as a high school project where they went back to their families, people who were old, people who you know whose stories hadn't been told and tried to record a little bit of their history, and it's not just culinary, but culinary is there. It's also like crafts, like lifestyle, moonshining, whole whole nine yards. And I always thought it was kind of an amazing document, but since I'm not from there, like what's your relationship to that whole that whole concept? And it's so crazy that this this kind of document was written by high school students, you know what I mean, in the 70s. So look give me your thoughts on it.
+
+[14:34] It's so neat. It's one of the biggest inspirations for me. And it has been. I remember when I first discovered um Fox Fire, I was I just moved to Charleston, and that series became a way for me to show uh the other people in the kitchen where I came from and what I ate and what it was like to live there and grow up there. Uh it's just wonderful.
+
+[14:56] I I I just think it's um so cool that it's still going. Yeah. And uh that writing the forward for that book was, you know, that was a surreal moment for me. Um that's been such a big influence on on the way I see things and a point of communal pride. Um it's so neat to see it all documented.
+
+[15:15] And that project um had an enormous inspiration over the the restaurant. And um I will continue that work. You know, I I started a little project um that I will pick back up after these restaurant openings settle down a little bit. But yeah, I I I I want to continue that work. And luckily um they've been nice enough to offer, you know, anything that I need or to explore their archives.
+
+[15:44] Wow. Well where's the Fox Fire Institute? They have a museum. I've never been. You know what I mean?
+
+[15:48] Like uh Yeah, it's in it's in Georgia. Yeah. Someday. Do you know that they tried to do one in New England? Like also in the 70s?
+
+[15:56] I think they only did one volume of it called Salt. I don't know. Not as good. Not as good. Considering, I can't remember whether it was mass.
+
+[16:05] I think it was Maine. I think it was Maine based. And considering how cantankerous Maine folk can be, you'd think they could have like done like a whole bunch of stuff on it. You know what I mean? You know.
+
+[16:14] But uh yeah, no, they still can. Yeah. I bought it. I was like, oh, there's a there's a northeastern, there's like salt from like where I am, and then and then I mean uh sorry, like a Fox Fire from where I am, and then I was like, no, not really. Uh you know, they're not teaching you how to like, you know, you know, make a banjo out of a cigar box or anything like that.
+
+[16:33] I mean that that set of books is nuts. How many are there? There's like 10, right? I forget how many I have. I have like six.
+
+[16:38] There's a little more than there's a little more than ten. I think there's um around 12 to 14. They the original series was around 10, and then they put three or four out later. All right. Now, uh, I'm gonna let's see.
+
+[16:51] I'm gonna ask you, should I go ingredient questions first or non-ingredient questions first? I'm gonna go what do you think? Ingredient questions? Cooking questions or non-cooking questions first? Cooking questions?
+
+[17:01] Cooking? All right. Cooking. All right. Uh you have on your menu, I looked at your some of your sample menus from the restaurant, all right.
+
+[17:08] And uh salt risen bread appears, and what a baller move to try to do salt risen bread, because it can fail, right? Do you have a foolproof way? In fact, I was gonna put a recipe for it in if I ever finish my book. I was gonna put a recipe for it in the book, and then I was like, you know what? I'm not because I just don't want to hear it from people.
+
+[17:28] It didn't rise. It did it was too flat. You know what I mean? Like, what's what do you do to not have it go go south on you? You're the first person that's that's actually known how the as many we serve it every night.
+
+[17:42] And um, yeah, it I wanted to I wanted it on the original Huck menu back in 2010. I couldn't figure it out. And I gave up. And so when I started this project because you you have to have it every day if it doesn't, what are you gonna do? Just not serve bread or go buy it's it's terrifying for a chef to think about those things.
+
+[18:02] And um I hired these two extraordinary pastry chefs uh um who moved from New York City to work here and I explained it to them and they nailed it on the first try. Really? After a a decade of failure, they nailed it on the first try. Uh maybe because they wasn't they weren't scared or I don't know. But they yeah, they have it figured out and it is extraordinary.
+
+[18:27] It smells like cheese. I love it. And it blows people's mind warm it over the embers a little bit. Oh my god. I love it.
+
+[18:34] It's incredible. It's got a different crush texture. People need to wrap their head around like that it's not the same as but it's amazing. It's great stuff. You know what?
+
+[18:42] You're your your your uh crew, uh I can't remember. I didn't look up whether it's in the is it in the new book, a recipe for it or no? Is it in uh is it in uh no, this is a new one. Yeah. You know what?
+
+[18:53] No, they should do something. There's uh these two there's these two folks that have, I think, uh salt risenbread.org or something like this, and you know, they've done a lot of the history work on it, and there's uh there was uh a paper out at Cornell in the I want to say in the 1920s, uh where they did a bunch of tests on it and and you know, trying to debunk some of the myths, some of the hydration, some of that some of the temperatures. But uh the you know, these two people who have salt risenbread.org, like I think they want to have kind of like the cultural lock on it, but I feel like there's there's and they had a bakery, I don't know if they still do, but I feel if if your if your team can nail it every time and tell people how to nail it every time, you know what I'm saying? Or is it like something where it you need to have a certain amount of feeling in order to be able to nail it? Like uh I'll give you an example, like uh chipotties, right?
+
+[19:45] Recipes intensely simple, and yet yours are gonna suck for like the first 50, 60 times you make them, they're not gonna puff up, they're gonna roll wrong. You know what I mean? Is there is there something about like that to it, or could they tell the world how to make this stuff reliably? Oh, they're 100% success rate. We're almost about to hit a year of 100% success rate.
+
+[20:07] Um they use a circulator. Oh right then. Yeah. All right, well, you know, if they ever if they ever want to come talk about salt risen, you know what? If you want to come back, we'll get you, them, Harold McGee.
+
+[20:22] I don't know how we'll call all the people in on and we can get uh one of the microbiologists and we'll just do like a salt risen bread a thon. Cause I think it's a Yeah, he did a he did a cool little essay on it. Yeah, but the salt risen bread people were mad at him about it because he he Oh really? Yeah, well, because there's the there's a famous article from the from the uh twenties where a guy had saved uh clostridium perfingions from gangrene wound from a World War I trench victim and used it to make salt risen bread, and then also like then like re-cultured the bacteria and got like a rat sick with it. It was like, look, you could still get it.
+
+[21:00] You could still get the disease. Awesome. But the bread doesn't make anyone sick. And so these these people were like, You're bad mouthing our bread. Well, he's like, No, man.
+
+[21:08] He's like, that's good science story, man. You know, he doesn't talk like that. Yeah, exactly. You know, he doesn't talk to that way. Clostridium, fascinating.
+
+[21:15] Yeah. All right. So let's talk about the the restaurant here, because there's a couple things that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about like the health of the team and kind of the thing, you know, all the stuff behind it. But what about this?
+
+[21:25] I read about this like crazy art collection. You bought Nakashima chairs for that? What the heck, man? What the heck? I had to.
+
+[21:32] Um, but we we only we don't have a full dining room for them. They're so they're so hard to find. Um we have about a dozen or so. Um and and I love them so much. I'm so obsessed with his work.
+
+[21:45] The whole restaurant's inspired by George Nakashima, the entire restaurant, everything. Everywhere you turn, there's his influence. But you want to you want to talk about him as a carpenter? You wanna talk about him uh a little bit? Because I think maybe some people in this podcast don't know him.
+
+[21:59] George Nakashima came into America in the 50s. Uh he moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania, and was part of this program. And long story short, he was the first person. We're talking nineteen mid nineteen nineteen fifty-five, nineteen fifty-six. He was really one of the first people to um look at a tree almost the way a chef looks at ingredients, um, especially whole animal butchery.
+
+[22:27] Like, let's not waste anything. Let's not look at just what the industry norm is with what a piece of wood should look like. Let's let the natural edge show. Let's let the the cracks be mended, you know, the wabi-sabi thing, the Kinsugi ideas of of seeing the beauty no matter the values. And and he did that in a very contemporary and modern way, on top of that.
+
+[22:55] So it was this very beautiful m moment um that has now inspired so countless countless countless people um and his family's still carrying it on yeah I mean his books are still widely read um you know philosophical tree yeah this one yeah yeah uh right and the work's still being carried on by his family right good old new home PA uh all right so more ingredients this is nuts hickory nut oil what the hell man how do you even get that who the hell makes that do you like own a press do you want a nut press can you press the hickory nuts with the shell on them and get the oil out what's the story with hickory nut oil man so hickory nuts in general that has been a big focus for us for the years that's God's nut man it it's really really really special and every varietal of hickory tastes completely different and produces a different oil or a different syrup. Of course here in uh Tennessee our barbecues our country hands our bacon smoked with hickory which oh there's a whole nother episode of discussing how you can um you know pinpoint where barbecue's from in the south by nailing what tree was used um because it's also micro regional um but we ran across this guy who is obsessed with foraging these things like acorns and hickory nuts and black walnuts. Um because in Appalachia because no one is. It's so much work. And so there's this one person who collects these for us and and presses them.
+
+[24:44] We do have a press as well. Um yes, you you can't you cannot get the meat out of these things. Even the squirrels can't do it. No. Like we you know, I thought about like hiring a bunch of squirrels.
+
+[24:57] Yeah, was once you taste it, it gets you can't get it out of your mind. Yeah, there used to be a guy, he died, but he when he went to assisted living, all he ever wanted to do was crack hickory nuts, and so his daughter would sell them. Uh yeah, so it's there it's to me that's as luxurious as a black truffle. Somebody hands me, you know, a big huge bag of freshly shelled hickory nuts. That's the biggest you know, gift you can give someone.
+
+[25:25] That's so much time you're really gonna like somebody to to do that. Now, the hickory nut oil is I mean mind blowing. It's extraordinary. I've never tasted anything like it. And it's the flavor of this place, and those are things that I you know become uh obsessed with.
+
+[25:42] But I will say the syrup my is my the syrup we just got this year, it is in my top five favorite ingredients of all time. But that's a sap-based syrup or bark, because I make bark-based hickory syrup, but I've never had a sap-based hickory syrup. Yes, this is a sap one, and it's cooked over a hickory fire, and it's like you almost hallucinate it so good. Like your brain just just goes nuts. No, we were only able to get three gallons each year.
+
+[26:12] So, you know, we's killing me too. And it has to be sh shag bark, shag bark hickory. That's it. Well, I mean, that's the one. So well, okay, so while we're on hickory, first of all, is the syrup from the sap acidic like birch syrup or not acidic like maple?
+
+[26:29] No. That's just like maple. Can you make a pecan syrup from sap, since they're related, very closely related trees. Yeah, I'm sure you can. Um uh some friends of mine at Blackberry Farm did um black uh black walnut that way, and that's one of the craziest things I've ever tasted in my life.
+
+[26:48] Now, on hickory nuts, anyone who anyone who like picks up hickory nuts, right? The main ones we get here are uh we get pignuts, macernuts, uh bitternuts, shag barks, right? The macronuts are impossible to crack, so I don't even know what they taste like. Like, do they make good oil, I wonder? What about the bitternuts and the pignuts?
+
+[27:12] Do they make good oil even though the nut meat is too tannic? Do they still have a good oil or what? So this guy has gone through every he's become you know the expert on this. And he's gone through uh every uh species and shagbark is he keeps going back to that. Like that's the magic tree.
+
+[27:31] Yeah, it's good and easy to it's like one of the few things where like I could teach a four-year-old to find a shag bark hickory in the forest. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Um that's that's been um Leo, my three year olds our our favorite thing now. We have um we just tried it ID every tree.
+
+[27:50] That's a good it's a good thing. My kids don't care, unfortunately. Now they're too old now. They don't maybe someday they'll care when it's too late. When I'm dead, they'll care.
+
+[27:57] Uh poke. So first of all, pokeweed is one of those things I regret very highly because it was super invasive where I grew up uh outside of New York City, and it's really only eaten in certain areas of the U.S., even though it grows everywhere. And there's all these different kind of harvesting tricks on it, because it's it's you know, everyone's like, it's poison. It's poison, which it is. You have to harvest it at the right time, boil it a bunch of times.
+
+[28:23] Why don't you talk about I've never had it. I've chopped it down, I've thrown the seeds at people when I was a kid, but I've never eaten it. You want to talk about uh poke? Pokeweed is uh what a lot of people would consider a roadside herb and uh and a roadside plant. And my mother is it's one of her it's in her top five favorite things to eat and and on the planet.
+
+[28:50] I don't uh she gets as excited about fried pokeweed as I've ever seen and really get excited about any piece of food. So when I was a kid, we were driving back from we'd be driving back from Little League practice, and she would see a patch and stop the car and make us all get out and pick this pokeweed while all our other friends drove by and we're gathering our dinner on the side of the road. Um I grew up eating it, I mean, a lot. A couple times a week. Uh when it's it only springtime for you guys?
+
+[29:24] Like that well, that's a good question, because people different people are different. Are you a zero purple on the plant at all? Like zero flowers kind of person? Are you a leaf only person? Are you a young shoot person?
+
+[29:35] Because I not having had it, I've looked at all these people who have different ways of of dealing with it. What what's your what's your family's way of going with it? You're taught as a kid to be terrified of it here in the South. Um you're just taught to be just absolutely terrified of it. I think that might be because the um it was like a uh a a thing created to keep kids from playing with it because once it gets on your skin it's impossible to get oh it was used for war paint you know by the by the indigenous and it's the I love taking those berries and making like a lemonade with them.
+
+[30:11] Uh so so good. And it's good for you. The stage in which you harvest the leaves is all personal. I like the young shoots the tender ones I think they have more flavor and I love the texture of the shoots. But you can I I'm not scared of it.
+
+[30:31] I I don't have any to me I harvest it for flavor um not because I'm worried about um poison uh but you should see the the the local farmers faces when I tell them I'll buy the pokeweed if they bring it because it just grows everywhere. But I mean it you know it I remember I took pokeweed to France once and did a demo and it just blew there were chefs from all over the world doing demos and and there's no flavor like it on earth. It's such a unique flavor. And I I just think it's really really wonderful. The way my mom cooks it is really neat.
+
+[31:06] She'll she'll take um the young shoots and um spread them in cornmeal and pan fry them and a cast iron skillet but then she'll take all of the she'll take the breading station um combine it all together chop up some more and make little fritters as well um it's it's so so so good. It's so aromatic that's the thing it's like it's very herbaceous. Do you know what's killing me, dude? I know exactly where that crap is growing at my mom's house, like in Westchester, like in the spring. I could go get that, but they won't, they won't get it for me.
+
+[31:42] They won't get it for me. I I could tell I they know I know exactly where it is out by the wood pile. You know how like there's a whole bunch of it growing out by the wood pile. And uh I have some growing in my backyard right now, and that's exactly I had no idea that's what it was. Yeah.
+
+[31:57] It's literally hanging over my gate, and now I'm thinking about Poke Saladani. The great song. Well, wait till the that's a song. First of all, down that was my that was my mom's nickname on the on the on the truck driver's CB station. Wow.
+
+[32:11] Pokes on that. That's how hardcore she is about that stuff. Dang. All right. And it's and and down there it's salad with a T, right?
+
+[32:19] When it's when it's poke. Not salad. Yeah, it's salad, right? Yeah, and um, yeah, and then you see it written P-O-L-K and P-O-K-E. Huh.
+
+[32:31] Hmm. Throughout history. Um but you call it pokeweed. Yeah, yeah. Uh Stas, you'll talk about it.
+
+[32:39] You'll be happy to know they have sunchokes on the menu. And maybe if you go, he'll undercook it for you so that you can uh so that you can have all sorts of gastrointestinal distress. That's one of the stasia's favorite things to do is to serve undercooked sun chokes to people. That's her that's one of her favorites. Yeah.
+
+[32:54] Uh one last ingredient I saw because I what Stas, you got you got some? Uh I saw that you have a ham. First of all, in your in your new in your new book from 2019, you have a section on country ham, obviously. And uh you had some hams I haven't had. How's Bob Wood's ham from the hammery?
+
+[33:10] I've not had this one. I see he bones it out and then like cold presses it back, so it's like, you know, uh, is that a good ham? You like that ham? Uh that one's definitely one of my favorites of all time, maybe in the top three. Really?
+
+[33:24] Uh I remember I remember the first time I tasted it. Uh I was opening Husk in Nashville, and he dropped a sample by it. I tasted it, called him, asked him how many hams he had. He said that about 200. I said, Cool, I'll take them.
+
+[33:38] He left. Um I was it was so unique and so special. And the the um the way he's actually about to retire, unfortunately. Um, but he he built the smokehouse, his business in an old house that used to be a vet clinic. So um it's been converted anyway.
+
+[34:01] It's in it's in like a neighborhood, and he had to put a sign out front that said, uh we're smoking hams. Please don't call the fire department. Yeah. That house is not on fire. I love it.
+
+[34:11] There's a smoke there's still an extant smokehouse in uh Queens that from blocks away smells like like Awesome. Awesome. Smells like Eastern European smokehouse. Oh, we have a caller? All right, caller, you're on the air.
+
+[34:27] Hey. Oh, it's Quinn. Uh hey, Quinn, you made it. Good, good, good. Uh all right, all right.
+
+[34:35] Better late than never, my friend. Better late than never. Um all right. So Sean, let's get to some uh listener questions that tie in with uh with some of the uh some of this things that we need to talk about anyway. This is from uh Jalip Rao on uh Twitter.
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+[34:50] Uh let's get right into it. Uh here's a question for Sean. There seems to be a deep sense in some parts of Southern white nationalism that African Americans' contributions to our culture should be discounted in a reassessment of our history. Sean is a student of Southern Food History. How do we understand and he uh how does uh he understand in his study and cooking of Southern cuisine the contributions of African Americans?
+
+[35:09] And how do we preserve our his uh our history whole while this process of erasure and extirpation is ongoing? Extirpation of African American contributions. My um answer to that is let the ingredients be the thing that allows the stories to be told, whether they're um pleasant or unpleasant. Um that's the power of food. That's what food can do.
+
+[35:37] And we need to tell those stories. We need to learn those lessons. Um that's that's wisdom that was hard fought. Right. So it's basically just talking about the actual history and bringing it out whether or not whether or not uh it's comfortable, right?
+
+[35:59] That's what you're that's what you're saying. Yes, and food can soften that a little bit. You know, people feel more comfortable when they're eating or when they're being fed, or you know, I think that's a it's a great example of how how food can teach us uh things in a little more gentle way. Uh well, and on a uh kind of piggybacking on that, because uh, you know, what are what are your thoughts? There's so much, I mean, I guess it can be gentle, but there's also so much animosity nowadays.
+
+[36:32] Um there's so much animosity that you would hope. I mean, like you know, look, from the museum of food and drink standpoint, which you know, John worked at, you know, I'm at, um, you know, we hope that food can help right teach about the past in a way that's not putting blinds on blinders on, and also in a way that helps everybody, but on the other hand, there's just so much animosity. It's hard. Um that's just a comment. Uh well, more difficult questions, maybe.
+
+[37:05] Uh from Spirits Journal, what uh is Sean's relationship with bourbon today? You don't have to talk about it, Feeling. Oh man, I I um I haven't drank bourbon in almost six years. And um I certainly I certainly miss it. And um I don't miss the addiction phase of it, but the history of bourbon is is fascinating in in the south and it is a flavor of our place.
+
+[37:33] Um so I cook with it. Um, you know, I don't I don't hate it. Well, uh, yeah, I mean, that's a good product. Um super regular from uh super regular from many New York restaurants, and including, you know, my places back when I had places, uh Jay Pasqual wants to know, and I'll chime in with him. Uh what's the thinking behind the cocktail program?
+
+[37:54] Uh he enjoyed the concept very much. And that's Jonathan Howard, and it's uh three ingredient drinks, which I love a three ingredient drink, right? Because they're not the easiest ingredients, right? Do you want to talk about that at all? Or I went to Japan uh probably let's see, probably my third trip to Japan, and I ordered a bloody Mary at this bar, and the person grabbed a tomato and muddled it and made the best bloody Mary I've ever had in my entire life.
+
+[38:27] And I realized like, whoa, how I look at cooking. I'm chasing the vibrancy of garden that I grew up in, uh, my grandmother's house. That moment of vibrancy only exists for two minutes, you know, what's just been cut or pulled from the plant or processed in any way. And then uh I was telling somebody about that note, you have to go to this bar, get Yamamoto. That's all he does.
+
+[38:56] He just goes to the market, picks out the produce, and then creates these drinks. And so I've been there several times now. Uh one of the coolest experiences. But I just I felt this immediate connection to to how we cook. And when I created the bar here, I you know, I I don't I don't drink and I don't hang out in bars anymore, so I'm out of the game.
+
+[39:19] So I was like, well, how can I how can I create something unique here to us? That mirrors the way we cook. And um that started to make total sense to me. And the three ingredient thing, that's to me, I just I love how discipline can push us to create new things that we may not have if we weren't if we just stayed in their comfort zone. But our our creative process for the restaurant uh we call the pie theory, um products, ideas, execution.
+
+[39:54] So we first start, we meet once a week, and we go, we say, here, these are the 15 products that are the absolute best from all the markets and all the farmers right now. Let's create some dishes. And so they do the same thing with the drinks. They they they're going to the walk-in, they're they're they're asking us to get certain things from farmers, and um they create the same way we create a dish. It's been so fun to watch, and I get to participate and I get to feel like I'm I'm uh able to contribute a little bit.
+
+[40:25] Um pretty fun. Nice. Uh so the rule is the rule is another another discipline is no machines. No machines. You can't plug anything in.
+
+[40:36] You mean b everything has to be juiced all the minute with no machines, no prejucing. Everything has to start with the product in its raw estate. Listen, I think any sort of uh any sort of boundaries you put on yourself are uh a catalyst for creativity for sure. Just a set of boundaries. You know what I mean?
+
+[40:57] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, if I ever if I ever get my butt to uh Tennessee, I mean I'm you know interested, I wanna I wanna you you're you're making me in like embarrassed that I haven't tasted a lot of these things, and so it's just I feel bad. Thanks for that.
+
+[41:11] Uh I think you would I think you would you would flip out over our research and development lab. It's it's pretty wild. Yeah. Again, someday. Someday, someday.
+
+[41:21] Uh Lewis uh just writes in, uh, what is your recommendation for someone that wants to learn, find and uh and look for any old South Heritage Florida recipes? Where can I find information? I have a follow-up on this for you. Uh where can I find information on how the country used to eat heritage grains, flowers, fruits, wildlife, etcetera, fish. I do not uh I do know of a type of corn they cultivate here called Zellwood, but only a small portion of old timers still grow it.
+
+[41:46] Not enough to supply restaurants in this state. Thanks for your thoughts. And I'm gonna ask whether you've ever had Florida cracker cattle, like those like weird, like thin Florida cattle that like grow there, whether whether they taste any good. So uh you have any thoughts on Florida? Yeah, I've got to do that.
+
+[42:00] Yeah, me either. I got a I got a uh a cow whip once made by a guy who that's where he grew up doing, like Florida cattle, but uh but yeah, I've never eaten one. So um to answer that question, I've had the best luck, and I think what is a missing link um in a lot of the research is chefs connecting with universities, especially agricult agr their agricultural programs. Yeah. Because what I've found is th they are full of people who are just as nerdy and just as obsessed and just as passionate about these things.
+
+[42:44] Um that seem you know, once something's not on Google, we kind of give up. And not everything's on Google, especially uh when we start getting into the history of the food and these tiny little pockets that each little region um how they show their their uniqueness. Um so fascinating. But what you'll usually find is someone who's very proud of where they come from and very proud of of the food, and they wanna they want to contribute to that. And um I've had some amazing relationships over the past decade or so from just reaching out.
+
+[43:25] Um uh seaweed's a good example. Uh I've I've uh I know that there's delicious seaweed uh in the American South. No one's harvesting it. We the first person we we reached out to sent us went went scuba diving, harvested it, dried it, and sent us a box of fifteen different kinds of edible seaweed from North Carolina. They're out there.
+
+[43:48] Any any standouts on the seaweed? 'Cause I'm I I like we are we're always raised uh you know, cold water seaweed, cold water seaweed. So what's a warmer water seaweed like I don't think they're that much different because um I we mostly use uh we we use Monterey Bay but also we use mostly stuff from Japan. Yeah. Um but no the local the it's it's wonderful and there's so many there's so much more to discover and that's the exciting thing about you know being a chef in the South is geez I'll I'll be making these discoveries for the for the rest of my life.
+
+[44:26] And I and I built this this restaurant with that in mind. You know, I'm gonna be working in this restaurant um forever. And I've got plenty to keep me busy, thankfully. Yeah. I once uh recently found a whole bunch of like a bunch of fresh kelp washed up in Maine and I started eating it and my family was like what's wrong with you?
+
+[44:47] I'm like, I don't know what's what's wrong with you. Anyway. Maine's got good kelp. You know? Uh yeah.
+
+[44:56] Uh West on Mains uh wants it has two questions which you can modify to your heart's content. What's your latest noteworthy fermentation project one? And then what was the tastiest thing you picked from your garden this year and since you probably don't want to pick tastiest, how about uh like just like either s most surprising well I can combine those two because um the the the tastiest thing I had this year that really um captured my attention the most was a tomato that I grew up eating uh as a child called Mr. Stripey, and it's a yellow and red striped tomato. It's extremely dense.
+
+[45:36] It's very complex in flavor. It's the perfect tomato. And um yeah, it is the best. It is the best. So what size?
+
+[45:50] Oh, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Um, they get enormous though. They get enormous. So they're delicious in all different um ages.
+
+[45:59] But one of the things that has come out of the fermentation lab that has changed so much for us. Um, Elliot, uh Silber, our our lab manager, he had this idea. Uh we big part of the lab is for us to figure out how to be as responsible and no waste as possible. So we're we we've run experiments on a lot of things that normally go into the trash, such as um we were making tomato water with the Mr. Stripes.
+
+[46:32] Well, you're left with all that pulp after you drain it through you know your cheesecloth or whatever. But he took that or anything from any juicing project. You juice butternut squash, you have all that pulp. Any of those things normally would go into the trash because they they've they have a lot of the flavor aroma has been extracted from them, but there's still plenty in there. Uh so we're always looking for ways to concentrate that down and and find these hidden flavors.
+
+[47:06] So he took those that uh tomato, those tomato um scraps and two percent salt in a bag two weeks, opened it up. Um I like it in a bag because that holds all the compounds in. Um, and you I've I've we've done tests that get taste you can taste the fresh tomato uh when you do it that way. It's really neat. Um but anyway.
+
+[47:29] Old school apples apple cider press, put it all in like a nut bag, like a nut milk bag. Yeah. Crank it down, crank it down, crank it down. Now you have this this delicious liquid that is salty and sour and acidic, uh, and then we put it in a dehydrator or a combi oven and evaporate it down to a syrup and it looks just like honey. Um but when you t it's I will say with great confidence is the best thing I've ever tasted in my whole life.
+
+[48:02] So uh real high real high yield. I'm just messing with you. Yes, nothing we do at high yield, unfortunately. Um but it was one of those things where I make everyone taste it. I'll just walk around the dining complete strangers and just say, Taste this.
+
+[48:18] And it is the most mind-blowing comp I mean, people like it knocks people back. And so now we're able to do that with everything. So we can make these these concentrates, these syrups that have umami and sourness, acidity, and salt. It's all it's a one-stop shop, it's an all-purpose seasoning. So if we want to really tell the story of the Mr.
+
+[48:46] Stripey, we want to put fewer things on the plate. That's why minimalism is is important is important to me. So now all we have to do is put them on a plate, brush them with this syrup sliced, brush them with this syrup and sprinkle salt on it. And people are never gonna forget that flavor. But how much how much of this stuff do you own?
+
+[49:06] How much of this stuff do you own? Like how many like 750s exist? So we've done it with so we're we we're just hitting a year in our lab and and we what we do is we put every piece of produce through the lab through all of our machines and through all of our techniques. And uh so there's just closets full of this stuff. There's we have storage units off site full of this stuff.
+
+[49:32] So that when you know um like for instance this year candy roaster squash comes back around my favorite varietal when we're sitting in the ingredient meeting the the pie fairy meeting Elliot can say oh last year I made blank blank blank blank blank blank and so now there's a dish on the menu in June that is just candy roaster squash but it's in seven different preparations from the lab and you eat it and it's the most intensely complex thing you've ever eaten so cool. Again me with the FOMO. Alright Tweety Impertinence wants to know what should I make with cartoon leaf stalks you know I've never cartoon leaf stalks I've never cooked cartoons I've never cooked cartoons. I love I love love love cartoons um you know what you should do is what I just just uh described chop it up two percent salt let it go for two weeks squeeze it out and then just dehydrate it you'll get this really cool I bet it's like very medicinal and it'd probably be great in cocktails as like a bitters type thing. Yeah.
+
+[50:44] All right. Tweety, let us know. I'll I'll I'll send it back to Sean to let us know. Uh Vic Vaughn wants to know how do you take the time to keep track of everything that's happening at your restaurants and various projects? And uh he met you at Joyland, which we'll talk about hopefully in a minute, last November, and it was awesome meeting you.
+
+[51:01] So how do you how do you keep track of all of this stuff? I'm assuming it's a pain in the ass. Oh, butt, pain in the butt. Yeah. Uh we have uh these meetings called steering meetings.
+
+[51:13] And there's we have an agenda, and anybody that is uh a manager for each restaurant, um you we we have a working list that just constantly gets updated, things get crossed off, and it's it's a way for us to sit down as a team for one hour a week and discuss anything that we're nervous about or any new discoveries, and we keep that on Microsoft Teams. And so even like I had COVID recently, so I was I missed those meetings, but I could go back on Teams quickly, I could you know watch them updating it in real time. Um Microsoft Teams has changed a lot for us. It's um it not only is it an amazing way to store information and share information, um, but it allows us to take better care of ourselves because um you can turn it off, and the only way we communicate with each other is through teams, and you're not allowed to contact someone on the day off. So it's like uh unlike Slack, which is just keeps pestering you no matter what.
+
+[52:15] So annoying. Yeah. Yeah, you just you just click it off and and no one expects you no one sends you a message because you know they're not allowed to, and no one expects you to answer if something does pop up. Um yeah, it's it's made a big difference for us. It keeps us very organized, very disciplined.
+
+[52:32] Um it's it's it's what holds it all together. Yeah, we can't uh we can't use teams because we're not team players here at Booker Index. Uh AAC Boyd, this is a question. Uh I'm glad that someone asked it because this is something that's an interesting problem. I'm running a restaurant in Connecticut, and the clientele is very conservative.
+
+[52:50] I put 15 plus years into this life and have worked at some uh amazing places, and I'm proud of what our team is capable of. But we mostly sell steak and burgers. Composed dishes are less popular. Any advice, Chef wants to know how to how to get his clientele uh more her, I don't know, to uh to to branch out more. What do you think?
+
+[53:13] Well, I I the same boat. I think we all are. I've been, you know, I've been doing this for geez almost 25 years. No, longer, almost 30 years. Jeez.
+
+[53:26] Anyway, I don't know that that's ever going to go away. And I kind of realize that. And so what I think for me, the future is is and I'm getting ready to make an enormous change in the way we do things at Audrey on our one-year anniversary. Um, for me, what's important about a menu and menu engineering is two things. One, I want to have access to as many people as possible because I want them to hear the stories and taste the food and um, you know, experience what the South can do.
+
+[54:01] But the second thing is the health and happiness of the team. And the simple menu, obviously, the easier it is for the team. The simpler, if even uh the format of the menu, not just the the the complexity of each dish, but how the menu is set up, whether it's pretty fee, a la carte, tasting menu. Um all the all those things are what I'm factoring in when I'm trying to figure out what the formula is. I don't know what the formula is at Audrey right now um we've tried five different things maybe four five and we're about to try a very big one um and uh same thing at my other restaurant uh the Continental you have and it's I think it's just like a way to look at life you know there there's there has to be room for both and you have to make it a priority to do both you they you need both if if people stop coming to the restaurant you're not gonna have any place to serve your tasting menu that you're so proud of um it's it takes a long it takes a lot of um it takes a lot of uh discipline to to make that realization and stick to it and accept it um you know because we what we do is an art and it's fun to be an artist and and it's fun to be creative and you know not that's not for everybody.
+
+[55:25] That's all right. We got something for them too. Well leading into what you were saying about your team uh a Jews Bush writes as a psychologist I want to hear more about your perspectives and actions towards supporting mental health both your own and your staffs. And if I could dovetail with us Sean so I'm do my first chef job I just started about three or four months ago how do you how do you prioritize this kind of stuff? Like how do you ingrain it in your day-to-day to-do lists in your you know week in week out how do you just make this like a a priority?
+
+[55:55] I'm I'm how can I implement this kind of stuff into my life? I don't realize I have a much smaller restaurant, much smaller staff and all that stuff, but I would love to get your insights on this during the creative process, the pie theory, the E is execution and that's the editing phase and we have a rule is the stress worth the contribution once I started asking that I realized that I've been doing a lot of backbreaking stuff that nobody else gave a crap about um and except for us you know and so you have to find a balance maybe maybe torn that carrot isn't I don't know maybe maybe we shouldn't spend five hours a day doing that that kind of thinking definitely you should um but definitely you should but we we as a company and any problem that we're ever faced with any choice that we're ever faced with making it has to go back to is this stress worth a contribution sometimes it is most of the time it's not and that has helped me um stay um much much much more grounded um and the second anyone and and for me this is very important but the second anyone isn't feeling well or seems sick go home I don't care if no one's gonna work your station go home get rest number one you need rest but number two you're gonna get everybody else sick um you just have to figure it out we can't we have to stop asking people to work sick because we're afraid the ticket time will go too long but for us uh you know we we I have um hire people to come in and teach meditation I hire people to come in and teach the Enneagram so we can learn about each other's personalities um you know, we have a uh a booklet that we hand everyone on day one that has uh a very specific way of communicating when there's a conflict. And you're it's called we call it the model. Um I learned it in rehap. And it's made an enormous difference in uh not only communicating uh while the conflict is present, but its existence gives people the courage to speak up because the model is designed to avoid triggers at all costs.
+
+[58:25] So you can say what you need to say, and that person can stay grounded and not go into their amygdala. Um, so we we focused on that, and um we have uh built a room in the restaurant that is full of different devices and modes that can quickly regulate the nervous system. So I do as much as I can to teach about the nervous system and the brain and nervous system work together and how we can actually have control over our nervous system and the importance of knowing how to recognize when you're triggered and when you're not. Um, and when you are triggered, go to the room. And so you go into the room, there's you know, sound bath stuff, there's aromatherapy, um, there's cranioelectrotherapy stimulation or voltage maps, it has its own sound system, you can do guided meditations, um, has comfy places to take a nap, has extra padding and shag carpet, so you're kind of like walking on a cloud, and it has a massage table.
+
+[59:24] You can go on an app and schedule a massage. Um, you know, just opening that room, it it starting to normalize the conversation of I'm not feeling well, or that's too stressful. You know, it now the team knows that we that we that's what we care about the most. We make it our priority because if we're grounded and happy and healthy, we're gonna cook better food and we're gonna give better service. Um it's it's a work in progress.
+
+[59:59] You know, because it's it sounds cut and I bet it's not. Every day is the ch is this new challenge, and and uh we know that we can all we can do is the best we can do. Um and that's what we'll try to do every day. They're gonna they're gonna kick me off the air pretty soon, but I want you to talk about your uh your foundation patchwork that you started up uh during the pandemic, right? We started uh our our kitchen was finished and the restaurant was finished with the pandemic hit.
+
+[1:00:29] And so we started um uh making meals for the neighborhood. We first started with some some some local charities. Rethink has been a great partner for us. And now uh that once the restaurant opened, we actually were able to move uh the entire run. The people who run uh patchwork were were brought here to to help run Audrey and fell in love with this work so much that that's that's all they do now.
+
+[1:01:00] So every time anyone eats at Audrey or June, we make a donation um that provides meal for someone. And so uh Thursday, Friday, Saturday, um there's specific days of the week where um we give out meals to the neighborhood um every single week. So every we we're you know, we're we're helping feed the neighborhood, and it's really it's been really, really neat to get to know everyone again, food bringing people together and and strengthening community. Um it's been it's been really eye-opening. Well Sean, thanks so much for coming on.
+
+[1:01:37] I appreciate it. Uh you know if you ever want to come back again, you're welcome anytime because like all smart people know, you square cut your biscuits so that you don't have to re-roll those tons of guns. Cooking issues. Thank you so much.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Earlder host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios, New York City. How you doing? Uh got Stas, uh the Hammer Loop as as usual. Everything good?
+
+[0:22] Yes. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Nice. Got uh John here as well, back from vacation.
+
+[0:27] Where were you, John? Dominican Republic. Oh no. Well, we'll talk about that in one second. We got Joe rocking the panels here.
+
+[0:33] Hey, how are you doing? Doing well. Doing well, thank you. Busy full house. Oh, yeah, yeah.
+
+[0:37] And then uh in Vancouver Island, we have, of course, Quinn. How you doing, Quinn? Please say you're there. Quinn's got this magic internet connection that there's one IP address, because he has to Skype in, all right? He has to Skype in.
+
+[0:52] And there's one magic IP address. He can never call without dropping, even though he has like the fancy microphone and everything, and it happens to be our studio. So we work on it week to week. We'll see what happens. And uh in the we'll work on it, people.
+
+[1:07] We do the best we can. Uh and we have uh in California, we got Jackie Molecules. How you doing? I'm great. Uh overcast day in LA, which is like your version of a nice day on the East Coast.
+
+[1:20] I mean well, no, that's my version of a nice day in LA. I mean, can I go there now and experience LA in a way that I would like it without that evil sun beating on me like like Satan melting me on purpose? I mean, I mean, if if I could make it overcast in LA 100% of the time, I would tell Booker, I I don't know, I would knock him out like Mr. T, put him on an airplane. Remember Mr.
+
+[1:40] T from A Team? Put him on an air uh airplane and take him out there. He'd be like, This isn't New York. I'm like, says who? Says who?
+
+[1:46] Says who? It's not New York. Look, it's overcast. And then like that'll be it. Be over.
+
+[1:50] So uh Jack, I have a new idea. I'm gonna introduce the guests right away and then we can shoot the breeze. What do you think? In general. That way they can shoot the breeze with that.
+
+[1:58] You like that? All right, well, great idea. All right. Well, today's special guest is Michael Disconus. Uh, I've known you since I don't know, like no, 12 years or something like that, ever since uh back in the French culinary days.
+
+[2:07] How you doing? I'm well. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So uh for those of you that I don't know, they they don't know.
+
+[2:13] Uh for years, Michael was the pastry chef. I met him when he was a pastry chef at La Bernard End, which is, you know, of course, well known uh depending on how many stars you give, three or four star restaurant here in New York, known for fish. Fish. They do they do fish. Uh and uh it's the most famous fish restaurant in New York, anyway.
+
+[2:32] Uh and then after that went to uh the Institute of Culinary Education, where I didn't talk to him for a while because of course they were our mortal enemies back when I was at the FCI. But of course, you know, in the in the Highlander battle of uh freaking, you know, there can be only one in the New York, FCI lost and ICE won. So there is no more FCI and ICE bought uh FCI. That was a slap in in our faces. But what do you what do you what do you think about that?
+
+[2:57] Uh you know, I mean I I was actually kind of sad to hear it, you know, because it was a great space. Um, I mean, we all love Dorothy. Um, but yeah, I mean, time marches on, I guess. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like you're like that Sparta dude who just like kind of kicks us into that pit.
+
+[3:19] I mean, to be honest. You're like, I I pity you. Boom. To be honest, I I think most of the faculty now are all the the holdovers from FCI. I know you have a lot of good people there.
+
+[3:28] You have like, well, hold on. So, like, we didn't shoot the breeze, so now we have to go back and shoot the breeze before we get into it. So, call if you're listening live on Patreon, calling your questions to 917-410-1507. That's nine one seven four one oh fifteen oh seven. Call us with all of your pastry or bean to bar, or having worked in several cities in the United States, kind of a situation, or what it's like to work at a three-star Michelin restaurant or four New York Times, depending on what you care more about, whether you like the what was that guy's name?
+
+[3:53] The the Michelin man, what's in Billimbo, Bim B Bibimbop? What's his name? Bill Bil Bim Bibendum. Bibendem. What the hell does that mean, John?
+
+[4:01] I don't know. It sounds Latin. Sounds fancy. Be been be bendum. I say it in French, though.
+
+[4:06] Does it sound better in French? Bibendum? Not real. No, no. It's just as it's just as Yeah.
+
+[4:12] Yeah. Yeah. And who has white tires anyway? It's true. Yeah, nobody.
+
+[4:18] Nobody. I mean, maybe even way back in the white walls. White wall tires. Yes. White tires.
+
+[4:26] What is this? My BMX bike from 1980 freaking two? Come on, guys. So now we're gonna shoot the breeze, Michael. That's how this works.
+
+[4:34] Uh so uh how was the DR? I'd never been. Oh, it was very nice. Yeah, great, great weather. Uh Punta Cana.
+
+[4:41] Yeah. Right. Yeah, it was it was good. I don't know. It was my girlfriend's birthday.
+
+[4:44] So we went to this all-inclusive resort down there, and it was my first time doing that. It was very nice. Ooh, all inclusive makes me nervous because I don't know how the quality of the food's gonna be because great. Yeah. But it's all you can eat.
+
+[4:55] So get a little sampling at the buffet, all you can drink if you're into that. So like when you say all you can eat, like is it like uh put it on a level I can understand in America, the where the bottom level, no offense, is gonna be golden corral, and like the top level because I've never been to a buffet in in Vegas. Oh yeah, the the the Caesars Palace buffet is pretty excellent. I've never been to it, but like a like a Cheriscaria kind of a place. So like in that kind of range, where are you?
+
+[5:20] Probably in the middle. So like lower than a Cheriscaria, but or lower than than Vegas. I don't know. Again, I've never been to the biggest. Vegas is really good.
+
+[5:27] I'll I'll say I enjoyed that. A lot. I had nine plates of food when I was there, it was quite good. So above Golden Corral, though. Yes, definitely.
+
+[5:33] Did they have a poorly run soft serve machine with really crystally bad base coming out of it? Because that's what I remember from Golden Corps. I ate a lot of it though. They had really bad uh hibachi. Bad hibachi.
+
+[5:47] Yeah. Everything was viciously overcooked, and they didn't even do the onion volcano. Which is very disappointing. Yeah. Well, just you know, I've never had an onion volcano.
+
+[5:55] Can you describe the onion volcano? I mean it's nothing to really eat. It's more just uh for the show, but I don't know. They kind of like take a thick slice of onion and stack them one on top of each other so it looks like a volcano, and then they fill it with a little sake or mirror and something like that and set it on fire and smoke comes rushing out and then a little flame and then it just sort of pitters out. That doesn't sound so delicious though.
+
+[6:15] No, it's again for for visuals. But hibachi is about the show. Okay. Mostly. Don't forget about the beating heart, John.
+
+[6:21] Oh, the beating heart. What's the beating heart? The fried rice that they shape into a heart. And what do they do, Jack? They put the spatulas under and kind of like tap it up and down so it looks like a beating heart?
+
+[6:32] Yeah. Very ridiculous. I do not understand what you guys are telling you. I've never been to a Benihana. I've never been to a Venihana.
+
+[6:40] But can I tell you this? Have I said this on air before? My mom, when she was in the ER once, like young, I think before she like it was a rotation maybe in med school because she's pediatric, so she would never see an adult normally, right? A Benihana a Benny Hana chef came in with their finger almost completely severed. Ooh.
+
+[7:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sweet. Sweet. Now, at an all-inclusive resort like that, do you do like excursions or are you You preserve? Can those you you can do excursions, it?
+
+[7:12] That's not too far from prime cacao growing. That's true, of course, but they had anything like a bunch of that, unfortunately. Yeah. Not very food centric. That would have been very nice.
+
+[7:22] You have to spend extra money for them to not serve you the food that they have prepared for you. Well, if you want to leave the site, you have to pay extra money for that. But otherwise, if you're with that, the report thing is free. What the hell is that? Is that normal?
+
+[7:36] How does that if you want to leave, you pay extra? That sounds like prison. You know what I mean? Like what? Yeah, but you don't really want to leave because everything is right there for you.
+
+[7:44] Okay. Everything. Well, yeah, I mean speaking of uh going back for a second. Am I the only person? I just want to know the level of the room.
+
+[7:50] Am I the only person here that's eaten in a golden corral? I think so. Oh my god. That used to be the thing. Grandma and grandpa would take me right when that sucker opened up at like five.
+
+[8:04] We'd be there. Yeah. Okay. That's just me then. Uh so, John, why don't you tell them how they can join the Patreon if they would like to?
+
+[8:14] Patreon.com slash cooking issues. And there's a bunch of great or you know, three different levels of membership where you get different perks at each level. Uh if you sign up, you get discounts to Kitchen Arts and Letters, uh discounts to Maiden and Grove and Vine for olive oils and all these great things from the guests that we have on the show. So, you know, the membership kind of pays for itself, really. Yeah, any time we have a guest on the show, we try to get a little uh try to get a little kicker for our uh for our Patreon folk.
+
+[8:40] If they have something to kick. If they have something to kick. I'm not saying that you have to kick us something, Michael. That's not how this works. Not it's not pay-for-play situation.
+
+[8:48] Uh although, wouldn't that be nice? That would be, yeah. It would be nice. Uh all right. So uh also I'm gonna say uh Andrew High, I thank you for the book on chafing dishes.
+
+[8:57] I have not gotten to read it yet because the last week you haven't chafed me, booked it, but I had other things to chafe other than my dish uh during the past week. However, John and I tasted your toothache plant cachaca, and what was our verdict, John? Um could uh not not not my cup of tea. What's it for, Andrew? Okay, so for those of you that don't know, like like one of the things you do with cachaca is you soak you soak crap in it, right?
+
+[9:22] So, you know, I've seen it with whatever, sometimes like animals, like there's people will do like snakes and weird things. Right. People will do fruits like cashew apple or like uh, you know, I don't know, whatever. You've seen it, you've seen these, right, Michael. You've seen these things around.
+
+[9:37] And uh yeah, yeah. So this one is this toothache plant, which I don't know, but apparently they sell it at the at the green market here in Union Square. You ever use this stuff? I've tasted it. What do you think about it?
+
+[9:49] Um I I think I think it's in the more interesting than delicious category. There you go. Yeah. This is what they think about you. This is what they think about you.
+
+[9:58] For those of you that know Ice Cube. Anyway, the uh like I I'm gonna taste it again, but I have to say, poisonous tasting. Poisonous tasting. Like I'm trying, I'm trying to imagine what we would use it for, other than as like a malort situation. For those of you that don't know, Melort is the uh Chicagoan version of Basca Drapar, which is a hardcore bitter wormwood shot.
+
+[10:25] I enjoy it. My lord? I enjoy it. I got some. Like with you right now?
+
+[10:30] Not with me right now, but I do have it at the house. I had some Chicagoans. Is that gonna say it? I don't know. Uh uh, bring me some because it was this fabled, legendary bitter drink, and I love bitter drinks.
+
+[10:42] You love bitter drinks? Yeah, I like Millart. I got a free. I like it too. Okay, Jesus.
+
+[10:47] All right. Uh if I ever get the legit again, like if I ever go to Sweden again, I'm gonna get you some of the like the real like Buska drop bar stuff. You know what I mean? It is not to be sneezed at. Uh we I had some that I forget who brought it for me, but we used it.
+
+[11:04] It was a very specific size, so it was a perfect rolling pin for I forget what we were doing, but I always used it as a rolling pin and not as a uh a liquor. Michael, can we talk rolling pins for a minute? Uh sure. Are you a rolling pin? Do you like I mean that's not what you do?
+
+[11:19] Mainly you work with chocolate now, but do you mean like were you ever like a rolling pin fellow? I I mean, sure, as a pastry chef. Right. That's it. I don't know that I had strong opinions.
+
+[11:28] No. I mean, I'm a I'm a French pin guy. French pin. So describe a French pin. Non-tapered French pin.
+
+[11:33] Non tapered. Okay. Just um just more surface area, more contact. Contact. Yeah.
+
+[11:43] Who else, who else here is a rolling pin person? John, you a rolling pin person? I know Stas hates that crap, right, Stas? You hate a rolling pin. Yeah.
+
+[11:50] Yeah. Uh I mean, I'm putting words in your mouth, but any time I ask her a question about bacon, she's like, I don't bake. What are you talking about? Baking is hard. It's not that hard.
+
+[11:59] You just don't like it, right? Yeah. Lots of things are, I mean, it's not hard. You just have to like it. Anyway.
+
+[12:04] So, John, uh, what kind of pin do you use? I'd probably have to agree with Michael. You like a you like a that's the first of all, those pins are heavy. They're they're how how big is that? That's like an inch and a half, maybe an inch, and a half.
+
+[12:17] Inch and a half to two, yeah. Yeah. And uh the untapered ones are typically made of like, I don't know whether they're maple or beach or whatever they are, but they're heavy. Like they are a weapon. Like you could very club the club the ever loving hell out of somebody.
+
+[12:29] And what is nice I have to say about those pins, they're usually relatively long. They uh they don't cut into the edge because you never really go off the edge of them because they're pretty long. And they also discourage you from um, they discourage you from a particular kind of bad rolling pin technique because you can't just wrap your hands around and go like an idiot. Right. You know what I mean?
+
+[12:54] Well, I you know, one thing I always I always try to teach people, a lot of people use a rolling pin and turn it to jazzer size. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you do that all day long. That's a lot of energy you're expending. Right.
+
+[13:05] So I I always teach people roll in one direction and then turn your dough 90 degrees. And that way you're also ensuring that whatever you're rolling isn't sticking to your surface. Right, right. Now now hear me out on the taper for a second, right? Because at home, I use a relatively, you know, for years, I use a relatively lightweight tapered French pin, right?
+
+[13:26] But uh not a great one, right? But okay, you know what I'm saying? And uh then I started, you know, past year or so been trying to make chapatis work, right? So, you know, chapatis are the Indian flatbread, high hydration, right? They use atta flour, atta flour is extremely finely ground so that it can absorb a lot of water, uh whole wheat.
+
+[13:48] It absorbs a lot of water. So it's it's even though it's a dry dough, it's like 72%, 73% hydration. So wet for how dry it feels. All right. You you flour it, and then you gotta roll it.
+
+[14:00] If you don't roll it thin enough, and if you don't roll it evenly enough, or if you tear it, then you have to cook it one side, cook it the other side, flip it, flame it, puffs, right? You with me? Boop, boop, boop, puff. And if it doesn't puff, it sucks. Right.
+
+[14:14] Right? No puff, sucks. And it's not just a matter of of it if it doesn't puff, so you feel like bad. It doesn't taste as good if it doesn't puff. Right.
+
+[14:23] The texture's wrong. Anyway. So I started rolling and I started doing the old thing where I would roll it and then I would turn it, roll it, turn it, roll it, turn it, flip it, roll it, turn it. And then I just watched a bunch of videos and I realized that if you use a tapered pin, and you I could probably do it without a tapered pin at this point because I practice a lot, but a tapered pin helps you get this down more. I don't need to touch it to get it to rotate anymore.
+
+[14:47] I can just go bit, bit, bit, bit, bit, bit, bit, and it spins underneath me while I'm rolling because I push on one side as I go up and the other side as I go back. And the thing just I I can choose. Mine are usually, I'm a counterclockwise spinner, right? I haven't tested it on pie doughs yet. That's the next move.
+
+[15:07] But I've been I've been I've been doing, you know, reliably, you know, what is that, eight or ten inches or so? Yeah. Eight to ten inch discs, real thin, real even, because you're not rolling in one spot, without ever touching the dough. And it feels fantastic. I'll I'll grant you for for a smaller piece.
+
+[15:26] Yeah, yeah. That those those tapered pins, they're super nimble. Yeah, yeah. So I'll grant you that. But if you're doing like lamination, uh you want that battle axe of a of a pin, I think.
+
+[15:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh when you see a student uh mistreat a pin and dent it because they're a butthead, does it make you angry or no? I mean.
+
+[15:51] I mean, we could we could sit here for an hour and just list those things that we see that just make us cringe. Yeah for sure. Well, here's the other thing about a pin, right? There's two modes of thought on it. Not to go too deep on pins, but we already have, so I might as well just go all the way, right?
+
+[16:04] You could either have a very smooth pin, which is not gonna have a lot of traction on certain items, but I think that's actually fine, or you can have a tacky, like a like a like a less like not a wax. Do you know how they have the wax surface pins? Yeah, and they have the ones that are more like bowling pins, right? Feeling, and then they have the ones that are like kind of like a little bit rougher wood. And I was always a little bit rougher, but I'm more of a smooth guy now.
+
+[16:27] I'm more of a smooth, shiny guy now. What do you think? Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. I would agree.
+
+[16:34] I think people need to think more about their pins. I you've got me thinking more about it now. Yeah, there you go. Uh how the hell did I get into that? Why why are we even talking about that?
+
+[16:44] Why are we talking about pins? We were talking about Dominican Republic. Um, how did that get there? You're trying to find out. Malords.
+
+[16:53] Thank you, Jack. Oh, I use the Malord as a rolling pin. There you go. Not a good rolling pin, by the way. Bottles don't make good rolling pins, people, because uh they're just not they I mean, it it's an in-a-pinch kind of a situation.
+
+[17:07] Right. You know what I mean? In a pinch. You do a lot of lamination these days, Michael? Um, I have actually.
+
+[17:13] I'm I'm one of the many projects I'm working on. I'm I'm helping to open a bakery out in Dallas, Texas. Oh, yeah? So you've never been to Dallas. I will be going soon.
+
+[17:25] Do you own a uh Western hat yet? I don't, nor nor do I have cowboy boots. I would get the hat first. Yeah. Although, I don't know, it's me.
+
+[17:35] I don't uh wear sunscreen, so I wear hats when I go out. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[17:40] Uh you get yourself a resist all when you're down there. Get yourself, you know. Styles, what do you like more? Like uh uh you like more of a uh uh what's what's it called? Um like a straw, like a s like a like a stiff straw hat, or you like more like the the the felt hat, the the fur felt hat, or neither uh neither.
+
+[17:57] No, come on. Yeah, I'm not a hat guy. But I don't know. I I was very thankful at the age where I could be like, don't care, I'm wearing this hat. Suck it.
+
+[18:05] You know what I mean? I mean, I I think I'm getting to that age in general. Yeah, it's nice. Nice, nice to not care. Uh all right.
+
+[18:14] Now, uh we do have some questions. Let me see. Uh from Dale Van Groff. Uh thrilled to hear you're on the show, Michael. I loved your bean to bar class, by the way.
+
+[18:21] So one of the things that you teach is bean to bar chocolate, right? Yeah, so that's been since about 2015, when when the school moved from 23rd Street down to Battery Park City. Um we had about 500 square feet of extra space, and we said, hey, let's do a bean to bar chocolate lab. Um so it's I'm not gonna say we're the only facility doing bean to bar education, but we're one of the very few in the country. Um so yeah, if you had asked me 10 years ago, you're gonna make chocolate or focus on chocolate from a manufacturing perspective, I would have said why.
+
+[18:56] Um but now that's at least half my life. Well, who was the first kind of like pastry chef gone chocolate maker? Jacques Terrez, way back in the day. Yeah, and you know, he never made a ton of his own. Right.
+
+[19:08] Um but he never claimed to, though. He never claimed to. No, no, no. But but you know, I I've also become a student of uh um New York City chocolate history, like specific to New York City. And I kind of think he may have been the first one to start making chocolate um in Manhattan at King Street, I believe.
+
+[19:29] Well, he started him first in Brooklyn across the river in Dumbo. Right, but I don't think I don't think that that had the heavy equipment. It wasn't as big, yeah. Right when you moved into King Street, didn't he have like a little concha and all that stuff? Wasn't he doing stuff in the city?
+
+[19:43] But I but I want to say that he would have been really one of the first people to manufacture chocolate in the confines of New York City in about 40 years. Yeah. But the the last big holdout was in the 1960s. Who was it? Uh it was a company called Rockwood.
+
+[19:59] At their height, they were second to Hershey. Like in the 1920s and 1930s, and they were there are actually there's a few buildings still standing. Um if you're cruising down the BQE, say from Williamsburg into Dumbo, and just as you're kind of in the area of the Navy Yard, if you look to your right, you'll see um the the former Rockwood factory, it's apartments now. I take exception to the idea that anyone can cruise down the BQE. Okay.
+
+[20:26] Well, I mean when you stopped in traffic on the VQE, yeah. Yeah. I hate the BQE so much. There's one you what there's one really nice thing about the BQ. Do you travel on the BKW a lot?
+
+[20:38] You know, I live in Sunnyside now. So a lot of times to get to Lower Manhattan, that's how I'll get there. You ever go to Calluccio's, which is near Sunnyside, Calluccio Brothers? I haven't actually. You need to go to Calduccio Brothers.
+
+[20:49] Uh do you ever do you ever you is your family are you a uh salt cod family at all? You would think with my uh like Baltic, Eastern European. Um, but no, that was not something I discovered until I started cooking professionally. Yeah. That they have the best salt cod selection really I have ever seen in the United States.
+
+[21:11] I mean, other places you can go, they have great salt cod selections, but. But around Christmas time, you go to Calluccio's and they have like full sides of like various different kinds of codes salted down. They'll sell you a little piece, but they really want to sell you the whole freaking oh my god, so awesome. And then you do everything. You do the baccala, you do the brand, you do the you know, you do like salt fish dishes from the Caribbean, you do them all because you have so much salt cod.
+
+[21:42] You know what I mean? And it doesn't go bad. Doesn't go bad. And then you know, you know what the my my thing with the salt cod is is that like um so the family that my my stepfather's family is Italian, I grew up with that, right? Um and we grew up Christmas, Christmas Eve, you had the the fishes, right?
+
+[21:58] And the bacala was one of them. But that dish requires really thick, nice hardcore quality cod because you're you're eating it as big chunks. Right, right. And then it's like, don't let it boil, don't ruin the baccalaura. You have soak it for days.
+
+[22:12] You know what I mean? But I really, as a when I cook at home, I like to buy the cheaper, thinner stuff, because you can use it the same day that you try to do it, and like it's just much easier for a lot of like, you know, like you know, salt fish mashed into like you know, yams and like name or whatever, or like, you know, in dishes or like fritters. Did you have any bacalitos when you were down there, John? Nope. It's disappointing on the local food front.
+
+[22:38] Yeah. Yeah. I know. Good fruit? Yes, very good fruit.
+
+[22:42] Good papaya, good pineapple, great mango, things like that. Wait, wait. Good, good, great. Uh papaya was great. Mango is great, pineapple is okay.
+
+[22:51] I mean, good, but like I've had better, but it was still very good compared to what we get here. Well, I mean, like papayas in the United States are the worst fruits. Like, I don't understand why anyone uses papaya here. I don't understand why people sell it. I don't I like, you know, I've had kids, I know what diapers are like.
+
+[23:07] Like I don't need an American papaya in my life. Yeah. I just don't. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[23:14] Uh you know in Colombia, obviously, they have that phrase, you know, no dark papaya, right? Don't don't give papaya. 'Cause their papaya, I'm like, why would you say that? Like, I'll give every papaya away. I'll give them all away.
+
+[23:26] And then you have their papaya, and it's like, oh, this is good. This is a good fruit. It is a good fruit, yeah. Do you like papaya, Michael? But I I I do feel the same way.
+
+[23:34] I even uh guavas that you get here typically are very disappointing as well. The other thing about a guava that's it's this is one of those fruits that it should have more than one name. It's like it's like if you called an apple and a pear the same freaking thing. Sure. They're both, you know, papals.
+
+[23:49] No, like yeah, like guavas, there's such a range in guavas. And yes, they're all mostly crappy here. Yeah. Same with sour sop. Don't you wish sour sap was better here?
+
+[23:59] Flavor I love. I love that. Sarsop so good. The puree isn't. Oh, okay then.
+
+[24:05] I have not had so one of the things that Michael does, I forgot, is he is a brand ambassador. Is that true? It's true. Brand ambassador for a boiron. Now that John can say with some serious French accent.
+
+[24:17] Give me some. Boiron. Oh. Very good. Yeah.
+
+[24:21] So uh what's it like working for Big Pure? Um it it's it's fun actually. Um because i I think what's most interesting for me, especially in the context of all the time I'm spending in chocolate world, where the future is a big topic, sustainability, all that stuff. Um is seeing where where Boiron as a company is is taking that, you know, because if you think about it, it's kind of a messed up idea. We're buying fruit from the best place where it grows.
+
+[24:51] We're buying mangoes from India, we're shipping it to France to process, and then we're shipping it again somewhere else. But it's on a boat, right? It's not that inefficient because it's on a boat. Sure. But they're thinking about how do we fix that?
+
+[25:03] How do we make that you know more sustainable for the future? And I think do you get to go to the harvest place? Did you get to go to Kerala or wherever in India they are? I I I'm hoping that as I spend more time with them, um, that's in the cards. Certainly next time I go to France, because they a lot of their stone fruits come from locally in the southern Rhone Valley.
+
+[25:22] Is that how they started? That's how they started. They sold produce at the Ranji market outside of Paris. Oh man. I've been there.
+
+[25:28] Yeah. Yeah. I bought uh some bad truffles there. Not bad, but like, you know, cut rate truffles. Sure.
+
+[25:36] Yeah. Anyway. Good times. Yeah, great times. Yeah.
+
+[25:39] You ever you like that market? You gone there? I've been there once. And it was, you know, it's one of those things that's like so huge. Yeah.
+
+[25:46] At least you've been to uh Tikigi, yeah, yeah, whatever it was in the day. It seems more manageable. I don't know. It's Nastasi and I almost got killed there several times. Like the guys driving the little Remember that, Sas?
+
+[25:58] Yeah. It was awesome though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you have to have situational awareness when you're there.
+
+[26:02] Yeah, everyone's like, I need to see the tuna auction. We're like, I don't care. Let's let me see the whole damn thing. Yeah. You know what I mean?
+
+[26:07] Never seen so much styrofoam in my life. True. Yeah. So much. Oh, did you go there when you were working at Bernie's house?
+
+[26:14] I actually went there. It was a project that they were, they ran it for a few years. They would take a group of New York pastry chefs. Right. And just basically do a pop-up in Japan for a week.
+
+[26:27] Uh so who did I go with? I went with Bill Yossis. Oh, nice. Mark Almond from uh then at the Modern, now at Gabrielle Kreuter, uh, Deb Rassicot, who at the time was she's still at Aquavit, maybe. Um, yeah, cool group of like four or five of us.
+
+[26:45] And we we basically did a pop-up in a department store in Osaka for a week. Oh my god, how was that? It was a blast. Yeah. Were they when when Nastasi and I did our pop-up at the Park Hyatt, they were let's just say price insensitive to the ingredients.
+
+[26:59] It was amazing. Oh, yeah, and we know we didn't have to touch anything. I mean, they they we assembled some things in front of people for show, but oh, they made us crank the drinks out, all right, Stas. Oh, yeah. No, they had I mean, it was like kind of nestled between the Cartier counter and the product counter.
+
+[27:15] They had full cases. Um, you know, it was a uh a company that that runs like 20 pastry shops and all the various depachica throughout the country. Um they did all the prep, we sent them recipes, everything was perfect, beautiful. Nice. I need to go back.
+
+[27:32] Stas, we need to go back. Anyway. Uh all right, so let me finish this question from Dale. It's about bean to bar chocolate. Yes.
+
+[27:38] All right. Now, first of all, your bean to bar program. Do you okay? Maybe you should just talk about the the short history of being to bar. Like is chocolate alchemy still a good place to go for people, the website, or is there have they been surpassed?
+
+[27:51] Like what's going on? Like, why don't you describe the the movement of bean to bar among sm smaller producers and individuals at home? Sure. Um the way I usually like to explain it is if you were to go back 15 years ago, uh, there were maybe half a dozen small-scale chocolate makers in North America. Um, you had your Amano, um, I would even say guitar is still kind of like artisan industrial, right?
+
+[28:17] So they're like the pol they're like the polar beverage of chocolate. Sure, sure. So you had half a dozen small scale chocolate makers really inspired by what Scharfenberger started in the nineties, even though by that time they were already acquired by Hershey. Um I'm kin to Hershey. I did not know that.
+
+[28:34] Yeah. Milton's Neely Hershey. Great, great, great uncle. Died in 1945, already sold a business, don't have the money. Yeah, go ahead.
+
+[28:43] Um so yeah, around 2006, seven, eight is when you started to have this real explosion in craft, being the bar, artisan, specialty chocolate, whatever you want to call it. Um, and depending on who you ask today, in North America, there's probably five or six hundred small chocolate makers. Um what's small to you? I mean, that that's actually an interesting question because the the industry itself is trying to define what that means. Um I mean, off the top of my head, I start to think of you know, three, four or five tons is still small a year.
+
+[29:23] Um, but even some of the bigger ones are exceeding that. Um, they're probably 10, 10 tons and over. Um I mean, that that's really the sort of existential crisis of of what craft chocolate is defining itself. Um, is it the approach? Does it have to be done by hand?
+
+[29:43] Does it have to be ground in stone? Because a lot of these, a lot of these smaller companies are scaling up and they're moving to ball mills and rolling refiners and things like that. So it's it's it there are interesting conversations happening, and I think a lot of people have their own opinions of what the what what craft or artisan means. Um whereas, you know, we look at specialty coffee, we looked at craft brewing, they kind of have things defined. Um and chocolate doesn't quite have that yet.
+
+[30:09] Um yeah, it's an exciting time, it's still very exciting. I mean, do you think that stuff should be defined? I mean, do you care do you care more about the product or do you care about whether or not the you know it's two stones rolling on a third stone? I mean, I personally don't. Um, but it's helpful for consumers because a lot of consumers still don't really understand that that segment.
+
+[30:31] They don't understand why that chocolate bar costs ten dollars or fifteen dollars. So on that educational side, I think it helps to define you know what what this all means. Um because not all of it is great either. So if somebody, you know, shells out 10 bucks for a chocolate bar and they have a bad time, they're not gonna they're not gonna go back. Ren.
+
+[30:53] So I know that Jacques Therese back in the day when he opened not the original one in Dumbo, but the the larger factory in um down, what was that, Tribeca or like house like King Street, yeah, whatever around there, yeah. Um he said that one of the issues was it was very hard for anyone at his scale, right? And he was one of the few people doing it at the time to get a hold of good raw material. Is that changed? That has totally changed.
+
+[31:23] So how's it work now? So um, I mean, the the basic unit of measurement for cacao is still the 60 kilo bag. Um so for your home enthusiasts, that's not super convenient. Um it's just like hydrocolloids, right? Remember back in the day, the only way you could get your hands on that stuff is you had to, you know, request free samples.
+
+[31:43] Yeah, yeah. And you would use a free sample for years. And and then, but then they got wise to it, right? And they stopped. So it took, you know, the the distributors and the suppliers to okay, we're gonna buy that 50 gallon drum and break it down into one pound bags for you.
+
+[31:57] That's starting to happen with cacao. Um so you know, I say with a few hundred dollars investment, you can get a tabletop melanger, right? And you have access to the same cocoa beans that all these other craft chocolate makers are using. Um what about the access of those makers versus like a Valrona? I mean, Valrona is is in country typically, and they're working, you know, a lot of their their growers are exclusive to them.
+
+[32:22] You know, so that's that's just decades of relationships. But you know, if you if you were to go to a specialty chocolate shore store, um, and you see, you know, all the all the the origins they're using. Tanzania, Uganda, um, you name it, chances are you can get those beans, either through chocolate alchemy, as you mentioned, or another um that's they're who I learned this stuff from, but I mean French culinary. He's the godfather of this movement, really, John John Nancy. And how much did that because they were like, buy this, buy this wet grinder from India that's not meant to do chocolate because it looks like a chocolate grinder, and then do it, use it as your conch as well, do the whole thing.
+
+[33:06] This was like in 2010, something like this, 28, something like that. Two and when we at the French culinary bought like three of them because we started doing, you know, like just messing around with it. And to me, that site was a revelation. I don't know. Have they has have they helped even the larger scale people get access to these beans because brought more attention to it?
+
+[33:27] Is it kind of like homebrewing, like you're saying, where actual homebrewers helped the craft brewing industry or no I yeah I think so I I think he helped open it up you know there's another um another source that I use based in Portland Oregon Meridian cacao so they're importers you know so you can buy full bags you can buy a pallet from them but you can also buy five ten pound bags um from them as well so so that's starting to open up and for for home people is uh is a uh is the wet grinder still the way to go it's a great start and I'm actually my one of my missions is to get them into more like restaurant kitchens. Wet grinders. Yeah I mean you're not gonna make all of your own chocolate although I think you should play around with it even if you're using nibs from your dry storage um play around with it so you get an appreciation for it but you can make something special for one dish. You can make your own gendu you can make your own nut pastes. I yeah no I love the wet grinder I love it so and the mustard and the right John they're cheaper than a variable speed blender right so you can get them for like 300 bucks yeah yeah if you wait around you can get them for even do you care whether it's a straight sewn or an angled stone does it but do you care at all?
+
+[34:39] I haven't really worked with the angled stones yet. I only have straight stone. Yeah. That's what I'm used to. Yeah.
+
+[34:45] But they work they just keep working they're very simple belt driven machines they just go. I've never had one uh okay I've I've worn through maybe one in the last six years but I've got half a dozen of them I leave them running for three days yeah I sleep fine at night. They're great. Yeah. The one thing we used to have to do when we did chocolate was uh off on, off on, off on to get the moisture to leave in the right amount.
+
+[35:08] But like, you know, and keep the temperature right, you know what I mean? I mean, as a as a as a conch, it's not very efficient. Right. So so you need heat and you need airflow. So people will set up rigs.
+
+[35:19] You know, I set up a little desk fan, uh, which cools it down, unfortunately. But you know, you hit the hit it with a heat gun periodically. Um, I've also started to use a thermo mix. No my god, you're so fancy. So European.
+
+[35:33] As as sort of like uh a conch when I've got, you know, a kilo or two. Do you like it as a conch? Is that a reason to own one if you're gonna I mean I mean you can use it for so many things. Europeans love them so much. Yeah.
+
+[35:46] And you know what's what what was surprising to me is when they finally brought them to North America, they targeted home cooks and that pros. Because that's what uh it is in Europe. It's like all the chefs use it, but people have it at home. True. You know what I mean?
+
+[36:01] Um and they're expensive there, but vitapreps are also expensive over there. Like vitaprep costs like what thermal mix costs. I mean, in my experience, all the chefs in Europe pined for Vitamix, and everyone here was, you know, trying to get their European thermomix to work on our one ten. Yeah. Anytime in Europe back when I was at the FCI, any time a European chef would come through, do you have the thermal mix?
+
+[36:27] We're like, no, no, it got stolen a year ago, and we didn't buy another one. Come on, man. Right? I mean, come on. But yeah, I mean, those those stone grinders are great.
+
+[36:36] Um, and and what we're what we've seen in the last few years is all the people who started on those, you know, and they graduate up to the you know, 50, 60 kilo, is okay, scaling up, it's very inefficient. So a lot of those early craft chocolate makers have now started to grow into you know, what some people feel is more industrial, because it's metal. Right. Yeah, there is a there's there is there's this romance about stone. Well, I don't know.
+
+[37:03] So the next level up of stone one, the like the old like style melangeurs aren't in efficient, they're not very good. I mean, compared to roller refiners and ball mills and things like that, or or universals, Macintyre. Um and and and certainly um do you like that Duchamp work, grinding my own grinding my chocolate? Is that still a slang word in in French, John? I don't know.
+
+[37:28] You know that piece on glass with a chocolate grinder? Oh yes. Yeah, and it's a uh it's a uh it's a self-pleasuring reference in in uh French. Yeah. I guess I never never caught on to that.
+
+[37:39] Well he, you know, he was like that, Duchamp. Yeah, you know. Yeah. It was. Yeah.
+
+[37:43] Uh all right. So now that we've discussed by the way, do you still use for grinding the uh nibs? Do you still use like a I we use like a champion? Is that still what people use or what what do they use? Anything?
+
+[37:54] I I I personally I thought that was like a completely unnecessary step. Just you throw it in and just let it go cook. Yeah, I mean you you you add them, you know, slowly. Um I I mean I also have larger scale equipment. So I do have a uh like a hammer mill that I can produce liquor with.
+
+[38:10] Um but even just whizzing it up in a in a Roboku will save you an hour and you can add it faster. Or quisna for those of us that can't afford Robocus. Okay. But I I also use like uh dehydrators as warmers. So warm bowl, warm stones, warm nibs, warm sugar, it makes everything go faster.
+
+[38:30] What's the uh do you do you bother pre-dusting your sugar in a blender or no? Uh I typically don't. I typically don't. Where are you on less than? Uh I'm I'm pro less of thin if it's needed.
+
+[38:43] Right. Um, fluidity in chocolate, I think is really important. We're gonna apparently we're gonna talk about that in a minute. What where are you on uh you know for a while there's that whole thing of like I'm not gonna add I'm not gonna add cocoa butter to it. I won't.
+
+[38:57] What do you think? Again, my my preference is for that, I guess I guess I would call it a French style, a little bit of extra cocoa butter, uh less of thin when it's needed. To me, it's it's like uh I'm not the spirits guy that you are, but you know, uh an ice cube and and a glass of whiskey is gonna make it open up, right? Yeah, because it's too hot anyway. Yeah.
+
+[39:23] And in the same sense, you know, some people feel like if I'm adding cocoa butter, I'm diluting the intensity of the flavor. My opinion is if it makes it more fluid, it coats your palate and and the evolution, the length of the flavor is is increased. You get more flavor release over time. So you actually taste more of it rather than just this kind of muddy chocolate sitting on your tongue. And most cocoa butter is pretty bad.
+
+[39:44] Do you use deodorized? Uh sometimes I use deodorized. I have a cocoa butter press too. Um, so that you're right. I saw it.
+
+[39:52] It's awesome. So then you can use your own cocoa butter and then use it. And and that's also an argument against adding cocoa butter, because then for most people that means it's no longer single origin. Right. Um, but if you can press the beans that you're making chocolate from.
+
+[40:06] Do the hand oil presses, the little ones that for a couple hundred bucks for nuts, do they work for pressing? I mean, people say they work. I've never used them. You know, I always want to. I can't imagine what kind of yield you get.
+
+[40:17] You know, because my cocoa butter press, it's you know, it takes 90 minutes at 75 tons of pressure to get, you know, 90% of the cocoa butter out of that liquor. So I I I'm I'm a firm believer in you you don't get what you don't pay for. You don't give a way you don't. Yeah, all right. So so I I I'm skeptical, but I've never used them.
+
+[40:37] What about roasting? What's the what's the way to roast now? Um I mean, when I've had a chance to play on like uh adapted coffee roasters, love it. Love it. Which uh that was also something I picked up during the pandemic was rot roasting coffee at home in little bmors.
+
+[40:52] Um but I have a a drum roaster uh in the lab. So, you know, uh dynamic roasting is always the way to go. So you can make it work in an oven if you have to. But uh is there is it similar to coffee? Is there an air versus drum debate?
+
+[41:08] Um I I don't think you see as many people using um the the fluid, are you talking about like fluid beds? Yeah, like civets though. I I think I think it's still early days. But why wouldn't you? Is there a reason not to?
+
+[41:22] I I haven't personally worked with one. Um but I but I think most people are still using drum roasters. Yeah. All right. Now to the question finally, after we've uh laid the groundwork.
+
+[41:32] Sure. Yeah. Um thrilled to hear you're on the show. This is Dale Van Groth again. Right.
+
+[41:37] Loved your bean to bar class, and I'm glad to hear it's back on. My question is on culinary education more broadly. Uh so much has changed in the industry as a uh a result of the pandemic, and there were tons of changes happening even before uh that with technology, social media, and app based delivery, just name a few. What do you do differently than you used to in order to prepare your students for this brave new world of education? I guess both as an educator and as uh I'll uh as an educator and sending them into a different industry.
+
+[42:01] It's a whole different industry. Uh and how have you and uh ICE more broadly uh evolved your professional development curriculum to help these those currently in the industry keep up? It's a lot to unpack. Um I'll I'll take the last part first. Okay.
+
+[42:17] Um unfortunately, due to the pandemic, a lot of public facing stuff um was slow to come back. So that would include our our professional development work. And that's really where my passion has been. Uh I've never been faculty, I've never been in administration. I was just this weird guy working in his corner.
+
+[42:35] You can relate, right? Well, at least you had a corner. Stas and I were in what, Stas? A closet. Yeah, trash room, trash closet.
+
+[42:41] Um so that was always my my passion. And that started to come back. And that's really where the the classes that we do in the chocolate lab. Um, you know, it's for people who either are just curious or aspire to get into chocolate making. Um, so I'm happy to see that slowly starting to come back.
+
+[42:59] Um, you know, it's interesting. Um just to try to be succinct, I I think I what I was already observing um is that the average age of the student was getting younger. It almost feels like we're seeing them right out of high school. Um, which when I started at ICE with you know no experience and education whatsoever, um, it seemed like it was a lot of career changers. And I and I was led to believe that that had a lot to do with you know, financial stuff happening in 2008, nine, 10.
+
+[43:33] Um, you know, people would get their degree and spend a couple years working in a law firm and realize, no, I want to cook. Yeah. Um, so I I I started to see that age skew younger. I also think what's interesting, and I I don't know if this is good or bad, um, but I think, you know, if you were to pull an average class of students, fewer are probably having their sights set on working in, say, a fine dining restaurant, and a lot of them have this idea of what they they already have an idea of what they want to do, kind of on an entrepreneurial side. I don't know if that's good or bad.
+
+[44:11] Um, you know, they want to start a cake business or a cookie business, or they want to make barbecue sauces or whatever, and they kind of feel they need to go through this program to, you know, to get a good base. Well, building on that on the pastry side, like back when you were at La Berna Dan was I I see if you agree with me. This is my opinion that I have, but maybe it's just because I'm not plugged into that part of the world anymore. But like that was kind of the golden age of the pastry chef. Like I, you know, the average well-informed diner in New York could name probably five pastry chefs at least, right?
+
+[44:43] Not just people in the industry, like anywhere, like they were getting the press, you know, you you know, you were getting press, a bunch of people getting press. And then so that was like kind of a goal, and then all of a sudden the goal became more again, traditional kind of pastry things, like you know, what Dominique Ansel is doing is bakery, or like you say, starting bakeries or going doing things, and I don't hear as much press about people doing fine dining pastry anymore. Do you agree with that? I what do you think about it? I kind of do.
+
+[45:12] I mean, I I also kind of get get into my bubble um where I realize I'm not really down with the scene as much as I used to be. I think, and I and I've talked to this with people recently. One of the things I think that is a factor is social media. Um and and also if you if you went back 10, 15, 20 years, um it was it was fine dining, was sort of what you looked at. Right.
+
+[45:37] So you looked at who are the pastry chefs working in all these these restaurants. And they were, you know, I wouldn't say they're household names, but yeah, whatever. They they were known known entities. You were as likely to know the pastry chef as the chef in a lot of places. Sure.
+
+[45:51] Now I think, you know, I'm like, oh, okay, who who who is important and influential uh today? Uh I'm sure we could both scroll through Instagram and just randomly see people with hundred plus thousand followers that are they they just cater to their little bubble. You can be really into a certain style of cake or a certain, you could be really into laminated pastries, and there are superstars in that those little bubbles. Um I I I think that's part of it, if that makes sense. Um yeah, I mean, there are people out there working.
+
+[46:28] You know, some sometimes I people say, there haven't been any pastry chefs since you and Sam and Alex and whoever. No. There have been people working, they just we're not hearing about them through the the I think the the food media has also changed. Right. They're not getting the same light from the food media, I don't think.
+
+[46:46] I think that's true though, right? They're not getting the same light from the food media. I think so. But does that then also change kind of who wants the job? Hmm.
+
+[46:55] To someone who doesn't want that kind of a situation? Because for a while it was kind of you needed to be a certain kind of because you were getting a lot of not you not you in particular, but yes, you also you in particular, but there was a certain like need to be out there in the same way that the savory side chef is often out there. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I I mean I pretty much had my own PR rep for for the most part for for a few years. Can I ask you something about La Bernardin?
+
+[47:23] Yeah. So there's a famous kind of plate in La Bernardine that we used to call at the FCI. Remember Stas, the Lady Parts plate? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[47:35] So I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, like, and I was there pretty recently, like pandemic, and they still have the Lady Parts plate. It's for one dish. Okay, okay.
+
+[47:44] But if you if you I mean, if you just rotate it 90 degrees, it's it's a football. Sure. Now, did anyone and I remember the first time that that thing got put on the uh on the social media? The plate is a lady parts plate, and then what was plated on it was more lady parts. And uh Stas and I were like, what the hell is this?
+
+[48:08] I was like, did is this some sort of like is like repair being punked, or does repair no? Like with someone like uh Chef, uh Lady Parts, right, Stas? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so so Dave is re referring to a a uh pounded tuna. So essentially like a tuna carpaccio that's then draped over a foie gras and all this stuff.
+
+[48:31] I mean, yeah, that dish existed long before I I stepped foot in the place and and still to this day. Yeah, yeah, it's it's something. Yeah. But do they know? I mean, I guess I never thought of it that way.
+
+[48:44] Because I always I always saw it presented as a football. So you're saying that all of these years they don't know, still to this day. All right. We never had that conversation in any meetings. Okay.
+
+[48:57] Brady Vickers wants to know I followed your blog for years and would be interested to know if you uh have ever considered writing again. Uh I know I would be very interested in anything you wanted to share, and I wish all of those recipes were still available online. Your blog was quite nice. Did you do all the little drawings and everything? Because you're an artist as well.
+
+[49:13] You that's what you did. I did everything. Um that was kind of early, I mean early-ish days. You know, so it was like, you know, who are who are the who are the go-tos? I mean, stuff that you were doing, and and Alex and Aki, of course.
+
+[49:26] Um, and this was like, let's try to document what we do in the kitchen almost every day. Um, you know, and it's funny because people will still approach me with like a printed out bound, you know, copy of all that stuff. I'm like, uh, these are these are now like 14 years old. Like match back when we would print the internet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[49:47] Um yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've I've I've every few years I talk to a book agent, you know, and it's like to sell a book, especially now. I mean, it was even different 10 years ago when I first started having these conversations. Um I don't know. I I always refer back to the was it Churchill who said, you know, there's there's enough bad books on the shelf, I don't need to add mine to them.
+
+[50:10] Um you don't nobody need my version of a chocolate chip cookie recipe. So how do you make it different? So yeah, as a chef, you you want the coffee table book? I mean, I would like your version of it. What's your favorite chocolate what style of chocolate chip cookie?
+
+[50:20] Don't give me the recipe, but like how do you like it? What is an ideal chocolate chip cookie to you? I mean, a lot of it is on timing. Right. So I still want it warm from the oven, slightly crispy, but soft.
+
+[50:34] But I mean only on the edges. How thin? How thin is this thing? I mean, I don't want it super thin, but I don't want like the lump of undercooked dough. But you don't like it when like the the the it's so thin that the chips stay I'm proud of the of of the thing.
+
+[50:48] No. No, I want some I want some some bite to it, some body. So not like those kind of almost molasses y thinks. You know what I'm talking about that style? Not not for me.
+
+[50:56] Yeah. But not hyper puffy either. Not and yeah. What texture does it have when it's cold? Not crispy.
+
+[51:07] Like that's why I like it right out of the oven because you get a little bit of a crispiness but it's still soft. Yeah what about like a completely like a like a you know like what what you'd buy the grocery store the soft bake like I hate those. Like so it's gotta have a little bit more the money move for any first of all show me with your hands so that only the Patreon people can see what's the ideal size of of a chocolate chip. Are you one of these people are you like a like a more traditional home yeah yeah traditional. Yeah.
+
+[51:33] Uh the money move always people and come on. If you don't know this, what the heck's wrong with you. Just toast cookies for a cup for like a little bit just a light toast on a cookie before you eat it. Yeah. And that brings its life back.
+
+[51:46] Comes back to life. I used to do that in even though we weren't allowed to use the conveyor toasters on cookies in college like the kind of like low end dining room cookies that we would get I'd be like I don't care what I'm allowed to do. This sucker's going in the conveyor toaster right now and it comes out and then it just breaks in your hand. But you know that the outside is still a little bit firm as you want to that's the way to do a cookie. Right?
+
+[52:09] Yeah. Yeah. But I mean with the with the book thing like um yeah I guess I I I have yet to to find the the the concept or the topic that I could do exactly the way I wanted to do it. Um I've I've toyed with this idea because I've I've gone so deep into chocolate manufacturing history in New York City, uh, which you can imagine like seven people are probably interested in. But I could give that the if I if I could give that the full academic treatment, like that could be cool.
+
+[52:42] Um, and I would love to do a project like that. Um yeah, I mean, there, but there's so much great content out there. You know, if I did uh the science and pastry approach, I I don't know that I would have anything to add to what you know people have already already put up. Yeah, but that's not even true. That's not even true, though.
+
+[53:01] I mean, like like you might not want to do it, but I mean the fact of the matter is is you have a voice that's different from other people's voices, so there's always something to add. And people are always making new stuff. Uh Johnny Shakes right in, and uh, Quinn, are you back yet? Yep, I'm surviving. All right, question for uh Michael and me and Quinn.
+
+[53:19] I own an ice cream shop, and although I have personally have no problems with them, we generally steer clear of gumslash emulsifiers, as our customers prefer not to see those things on the ingredient list. We use tapioca starch as a thickener, which is an interesting one to use if you're gonna use one. Yeah. Um we use tapioca starch as a thickener, but that's pretty much it. Although I've had great success with pistachio.
+
+[53:40] I love I love the way Italians say pistachio, pistaccio. Uh, and black sesame ice cream, peanut butter ice cream never turns out properly. I actually remember a video where Nick Morganstern says P uh PB is one of the harder flavors to make because they also don't use uh stabilizers or emulsifiers. It's hard to describe, but it almost looks like wet sand when it comes out of the batch freezer. You know, nut pastes are hard with that kind of stuff because the oil can seize up when it gets that cold, right?
+
+[54:03] But not in peanut butter though. Anyway, hold on, let me finish the question. If I add uh 0.1% guar, guar it comes out, I love gore. Comes out beautifully. Uh mostly just curious what's going on here and if you have any possible quote unquote clean labeled solutions for the problem.
+
+[54:18] Thanks. Hmm. Um, I don't know that I've ever really encountered that problem. Um you have a frozen peanut butter into an ice cream, it does get I may have. It gets weird, right?
+
+[54:28] It's really good. I mean it depends on on your dosage. Um, you know, I find if you're adding it 10 to 20%, which is usually sufficient, I don't really have a issue. But are you also balancing your your your milk fat? I don't know.
+
+[54:41] Because that's important. Um Yeah, they're doing um eight percent peanut butter roughly, and I think it's fourteen percent overall fat. So it's gonna be about ten percent from milk, and then like probably four from the peanut butter. Like so you have this information, you didn't give it to Michael. Nice.
+
+[55:02] I mean that shouldn't be a problem. That shouldn't be a problem, but certainly once you get, you know, so that that's like what the industry calls like super premium uh in terms of fat content. I mean, yeah, an emulsifier is always a little helpful. But it's also you know, I wonder if sorry, I wonder if it would work to start just from roasted peanuts. I don't know.
+
+[55:32] I don't know. I mean it's also you know, just basic technique. Are you homogenizing and you know you don't need a homogenizer? I mean, an immersion blender will work in a pinch, but if is it properly homogenized going into the to the freezer? Um but it shouldn't shouldn't cause a problem.
+
+[55:51] Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you know, one thing that I I I I thought this was gonna be a flavor question, actually. Uh, but but definitely when working with nut nut paste, don't be afraid of salt. Um don't be afraid of salt generally.
+
+[56:04] But I mean in an ice cream, some people just don't think of it. They should though. Yeah, they should. All right, Quinn, you got some questions, and John's got a question. We only got four minutes left.
+
+[56:12] Get get get your questions in there. Get your questions in there, Quinn. What do you got? All right. Um John, we have all right, I'll go, I'll go first.
+
+[56:20] You know, I do a lot of yeah, frozen dessert pastry work. I really liked your recent post about those fruit gummies. Those looked really interesting. But I'm wondering, you know, my preference is always to concentrate and manipulate fruit or other sort of whole spices, whole botanicals. But do you ever lean to um either like uh essential oil or something like that?
+
+[56:54] Because I'm starting to get curious about those ingredients for certain flavors. I mean, you know, there's there's always I I'm I'm I never shun anything. Um so if if if something can be improved and you know, punched up with you know an essential oil or uh an extract or something, I'm I'm not opposed to it. You know, the the the gummy bears that you you referenced, that was actually kind of the culmination of working with with poor one fruit puree's and you know, most of that stuff is just out of the gate. It's color and flavor to make it taste like anything, you know.
+
+[57:32] And and when you're trying to adapt fruit pureees, for example, to confectionery, you know, you have to ask yourself, well, what can be water? So instead of using water as my syrup for my base, I'm using fruit puree, and I can start to then rely a little less on those uh those punch-ups, you know, extracts and flavorings and what have you colors. Yeah, yeah. Um, but you know, if if it's gonna make it taste better, yeah, I'll I'll add a drop of bergamot oil. You know, with with no guilt.
+
+[58:02] If you're trying to make it better, there's no guilt. Exactly. Yeah. If you're trying to be cheap, trying to rip people off, there you go. Guilt.
+
+[58:09] Yes. If you're trying to make it better, no guilt. Uh John, what's your question? All right, so relatively basic, but I'm trying to make uh chocolamous at the restaurant. So egg whites, uh, whipped cream, egg yolks, and I'm using 64% bittersweet dark chocolate uh from Valrona, the Manjari from Madagascar.
+
+[58:29] Yeah. Yeah, it's really delicious. Um basically the problem I'm having, so whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, whipped cream to stiff peaks, melt the chocolate, and then uh add the egg yolks. And basically when I do that, so I'll also temper the egg yolks by adding the chocolate a little bit of chocolate to the egg yolks, mix it up and then start adding it back to the overall chocolate. But as soon as I do that, the chocolate completely seizes up, and then I'm unable to kind of mix it throughout the egg whites and whipped cream, and as it sets, I get like little chocolatey chunks of the making chocolate chip mousse.
+
+[59:01] Yes, exactly. Um temperature of the eggs, room temp, had them sitting up for about an hour. Um that's the first thing I would look at. I mean, there is water in egg yolk. Okay, you know, but I would think there's enough fat that you should be able to incorporate that to the chocolate.
+
+[59:16] Um work faster. Okay. Wow. All right, fair. Wow.
+
+[59:21] Okay. All right, John, who's on next week again? Uh possibly Taraja Morel. If not, it is a no tangent Tuesday. And then the following week we have Rose Levy Burnbaum to talk about her new cookie book.
+
+[59:33] Oh, amazing. I didn't uh I did not know that. Yeah, amazing. Uh you know, last time I saw her was on the street. Uh yeah, I don't read documents.
+
+[59:39] Come on, man. Uh yeah, no, but Taraj is coming on next week, right, Stas? Yes, you're right. Alright, so that's it. So but I'm gonna try to get to some of these uh questions that we have, including I spent this morning measuring my induction burner uh because someone asked whether or not the induction burner can lift up.
+
+[59:54] On the way out, because we're we're I got one minute left. Let's talk about you're a Detroit area. You're a Detroit area boy. Give me some Detroit. Give me your favorite Detroit.
+
+[1:00:01] You still have family there? Actually, I don't. I haven't been back to Detroit in at least five years. Um wow. I didn't prep for that.
+
+[1:00:10] Um, you know, it's uh I'll I'll say this about Detroit. It's a weird place to visit, but it's a great place to be from. So if you're gonna go, um, you need a car. There's no public transportation to speak of. And yeah, just hook up with a local because there's there's a lot of great sort of like hidden gems.
+
+[1:00:27] You have beef heart chili men. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Beef heart chili, cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnd, your host of Cooking Ushows Coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City on New Stance Studios, joined as usual with Nastasi the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? I'm good. Yeah?
+
+[0:22] Yeah. I'm a little disappointed. You're not wearing a trucker's hat. I thought you maybe I just I don't know why. I felt as I was biking here today, you'd be wearing a trucker's hat.
+
+[0:28] Do I usually? I know, but like, I don't know. I just felt trucker hat. Okay. It's because I posted that photo there.
+
+[0:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, yeah. We got uh John here with us too. How you doing, John?
+
+[0:40] Doing great, thanks. You chefing it up, shuffing it up strong? You know it. Love it. I'm loving it.
+
+[0:44] Rocking the panels here. We got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing great, man. Yeah.
+
+[0:48] How are you doing? Doing well. We have now, I'm told that a lot of uh back and forth with the internet, you know, you've spoken to the magic gnomes who send the ones and zeros over the tubes, and that Quinn, you're not gonna drop out today from uh from your your uh post in Vancouver Island. Is that true? Yeah, that that is the goal.
+
+[1:06] Yeah, yeah. And certainly not least, uh a man who is making a health smoothie smoothie as we speak. Whatever in the whatever in the heck a health smoothie is, we got uh Jackie Molecules in California. How you doing? Hello, I'm doing great.
+
+[1:21] Yeah. And uh, you know, this is what we're what we're gonna do from now on until someone tells us we shouldn't, is we're gonna introduce the guest that's in the studio right away so they can, you know, join us while we're shooting the breeze. So today's special guest, first time on the show. Welcome to Raja Morel. How you doing?
+
+[1:35] I'm very well, thank you. Yeah. So uh you uh the so contributor, what do you put what do you call yourself on on the on the new book? Author, contributing co-author of the new book Saver, memoir of uh Fatima Ali, which we're gonna talk about in a minute. But uh, you know, I gotta address the fact that every time when we came here, Ms.
+
+[1:54] Dasi was like, that was Taraj's old family wine shop across the hall. And she does talk like that when she's not on the air, by the way, if you've ever met her. It's true. Yeah. So we're, you know, we're across the the way here from your family's old like hyper fancy wine shop.
+
+[2:09] What's that like? Did you so this is relatively new, right? Like 2000 or 1999 or something like that? That's exactly right. I think it was uh 2001.
+
+[2:18] Maybe this this the wine shop was 2000, and then the restaurant which used to be adjacent was 2001. So when you were a kid, were you playing around in the old store? Like, you know, like yeah? Yes. I did less playing around in the shop.
+
+[2:31] In this one, yeah, right. I was sort of a grown-up. It also doesn't look very play friendly. Not play friendly. Not prey friendly.
+
+[2:38] Yeah. So for those of you that haven't, like uh first of all, for those of you that aren't like my age and uh and you know, older, like New York kind of wine scene way back in the day, there were a couple of high-end wine shops in in New York, right? And like the two, I went to cut rate wine shops. Yeah. I went to Garnett.
+
+[2:58] You know what I mean? Or like, you know, places like that. But like, you know, there were a couple of uh high-end wine shops, and the two that everyone talks about are yours, Morel and Sherry Lehman. Those are two. Were you guys friends or no?
+
+[3:09] Um, I mean, you know, the top competitors, so but I think like So no. Uh well, uh but I think there's like a commonality and understanding when you're competing against each other and and kind of doing those those same deals at those levels and looking for those interesting wines. So I'd say good vibes mostly. Yeah. Well, they were were they in that kind of in that public auction business?
+
+[3:32] Because you guys were early in in that public auction stuff, right? You've really done your homework days, I must say. Um yes. Uh my father and Morell and Company were the first to begin to do wine auctions when it was made legal, which it was not for a very long time. That one of the really difficult things about ha being a wine retailer in New York is that there's a lot of laws left over from prohibition, if you can believe it.
+
+[3:52] Things like not being able to own multiple locations. And so when the law changed in terms of being allowed to do wine auctions, my dad beat the pack, like including Christie's and Sotheby's and was able to hold the first one. So like the question, I mean I know that's not why we're here, but question on so when was that roughly? Do you remember? Oh gosh.
+
+[4:14] I would say 2005, 6. So it's relatively late, right? Because it used to be like, you know, because my family was in Westchester, so they would they would wait for like the professionals to do their wine auction stuff and then buy futures from like Zackies or something like that. Yeah. So you guys are also did that kind of business.
+
+[4:33] We did. We did my dad was big into futures and and buying the um Bordeaux when they were babies and letting them age. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[4:42] So growing up as like the sign of like uh I guess you're the third generation or something like this. Uh yes. Yeah. So as a third generation uh kind of uh wine family, what happens when someone comes to your house and brings you something that you're like, oh geez, oh man. When they bring over the yellowtails?
+
+[4:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you okay with that? Like what's your still what happens? Um I think in the Morel household when yellowtail arrives. So much.
+
+[5:05] And then I put it under the sink with the Windex. Uh and uh and like I know that like, you know, you uh the family sold the business sometime like 2015 or something like this, right? Or 20 to 18 or something like this. Yeah, 2015. I think it was.
+
+[5:22] So but are you still allowed to kind of go over there and break something and then be like, Morel, and then walk out? You know, it's I might try that when we're done recording. Um, some of the same people still work for the company, and so they kind of I think I'm just snooping around and they go, but uh, but no, I mean I can't really afford anything across the way. And yeah. Yeah.
+
+[5:46] Yeah. It's gotten very high end. Well, they always put the, I mean, like, okay, another question, since you're you know part of the family here. Like, who who is walking into this building who looks at like, I can't read it that far away, but let's say it's a $2,000, you know, magnum of something, and they're like, I'm gonna buy that. Yeah, I'll gotta buy that one.
+
+[6:03] That one. Um, I think it's like the people with the corporate cards that are buying them as uh for as gifts on expense accounts of some kind, and that's part of something they can write off, or you know, people who really just love to drink fancy wines and and then fancy equals expensive to them. Yeah, but I I like to drink great wine. I don't like to pay for it. I'm with you.
+
+[6:25] Yeah. I'm definitely on the same page. So if you're listening live on Patreon, call in questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And John, why don't you tell them how to join the Patreon if they don't know how?
+
+[6:37] Patreon.com slash cooking issues. And uh is uh is Taraj's uh book is the is Saver uh on the are we getting a discount uh at Kitchen Arts and Letters? I think I'll have to check with There we go. All right. Let's just assume that he will.
+
+[6:53] Let's just assume that'll happen. Good assumption. Yeah. Are you uh are you are you gonna go up to Kitchen Arts and Letters? Are you gonna do anything with them or no?
+
+[6:59] I mean it's not a cookbook. We'll get it in a second. We're gonna do a second. We haven't shot the breeze yet. Has anyone had any good food experiences before we of the past week?
+
+[7:08] Anything? Anything at all? I have. Oh. Am I allowed to speak?
+
+[7:12] Of course. That's why we introduced you early. Cool. Um, yeah. So this weekend, um, and in fact, the past two weekends, I've been going to a westerly canteen pop-up in upstate New York, and it's this incredible um kitted out 1971 airstream that's been turned into a mobile kitchen that this chef Molly Levine, who has great things under her belt, including working at Shea Panice and her partner, who is an amazing farmer, um, have created this mobile restaurant and they're doing pop-ups and stuff, and their food is gorgeous.
+
+[7:46] Oh, yeah? Yeah, it's crazy delicious and so flavorful and and very beautifully sourced. And is the airstream still all shiny and aluminum? It's super super shiny. Uh yeah.
+
+[7:55] I love it. Yeah, and it's also like so chic on the inside and and minimalist and and just gorgeous. And they run that thing off of propane, or they generator it, or what are they uh generator? Yeah. I mean, I don't they I think they may have have gas inside, so they may have also propane, but in terms of the overall electricity for it, generally you know who uh absolutely loves uh mobile kitchens, Nastasia.
+
+[8:21] Well, you remember our airstream, Mark and my airstream. I sure don't. You don't remember that? No. Oh, geez.
+
+[8:27] I'm not getting into it. It's bad. That's like a hell hell on hell on wheels is how you describe that, right? Like well, what did you like? What did you hate more?
+
+[8:34] Like dealing with the like the packing everything in the commissary aspect or the people that would approach you at the at the airstream. I think just Mark. I have to say, like the the the ultimate uh the ultimate on air thing was when uh uh Eric Werheim was on and we were talking about the chef's kiss. Oh my god, and the stuff you go, what'd you say, Sas? Well, they were like chef's kiss, chef's kiss.
+
+[8:59] And I was like, y'all these men talking about it. And I was like, first of all, none of you know what a chef's kiss tastes like, and I do, and it tastes like alcohol and sadness. Wow and cigarettes. Yeah, yeah. Wow.
+
+[9:12] Yeah. And we were just like, Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay then. All right.
+
+[9:17] Um I keep my mouth shut. Well, I mean, what's in the business stays in the business. Uh all right. What about you? What about you?
+
+[9:28] Uh what about you, Jack? What about you, Quinn? Any good food experiences? Nothing good, but I will have uh some stuff to report next week because I'm going backpacking and I have a bunch of uh freeze-dried foods. I'll do a little taste test and report back if any of it's actually good.
+
+[9:43] Are you bringing any mountain house brand? What brands of freeze-dried foods are you using? Oh, they're in my trunk. So I have to report back on I but I got like four different brands that I'm gonna do a taste test. So you're gonna do a taste test, but you don't know in advance which brands you have.
+
+[9:59] I mean, dude, they're just in my trunk. I don't have them in front of me right now. That sounds like a new segment. Reporting back from Jack's trunk. Yeah, well, maybe it'll go better.
+
+[10:09] Maybe it'll go better than when we had Nastasia's sister try to do the dump meals, and like she didn't like my tone of voice, and so she only did it once. Remember that, Stuzz? And she hung up on you, rightly. So I don't remember that. I mean, rightly so.
+
+[10:23] You're like wagging on her, and she was just like, That's the whole point of discussing this stuff. Come on, man. I don't think those are two words that should be used next to each other. Me either, and yet those books sell millions of copies. Oh, is dumping that a thing?
+
+[10:35] I don't remember. Yeah, dump meals. I forget the lady's name who writes them. She has like a it's like the Hardy Boys Mysteries, but dump meals. There's like a million of them, or Nancy Drew, or whatever.
+
+[10:44] The boxcar kids choose your series. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you have to learn that, Taraja. Cool.
+
+[10:44] I think that I think you're all right without the. Are you a slow cooker kind of a person or no? Or do you do ever do that? Have you ever done that in your life? Been like, I'm gonna throw all this stuff in and then walk away, and when I get home, it'll be done.
+
+[11:00] Do you do that? Some people a lot of people do that. I don't do that. When you look up dump meal, she doesn't even come up. It's people have rid of the easiest ever dump dinners on food network or our best dump dinners for the crossbows.
+
+[11:12] 50 solo cooker dump dinners. Yeah. It very it very much smacks of uh the old farm to toilet idea for uh fat, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah that's the exhibit, people.
+
+[11:23] Farm to toilet. Why only go to the table? It's only halfway there. Anyway. Oh, there's one, hold on, very quickly.
+
+[11:29] This woman, Kathy Mitchell, who I guess does it. That's it, that's it. That's her. Yeah. There's there's a second book called Dump Cake.
+
+[11:36] Yeah, dump cake. All chocolate. Yeah. Molten chocolate dump cake. Oh yeah.
+
+[11:45] Listen, I don't know. I I don't know. I don't know. All right. So let's get uh let's get right down to it.
+
+[11:52] So you're on the show today, uh, because you just came out with a book, and it is it's very hard to describe it's a very unusual book. So let's just let's just start with it kind of how you started with. Some like a couple of months before the pandemic in late 2018. So no one knows what's gonna happen, right? You get a telephone call to get interviewed for potentially having a book job.
+
+[12:16] I think you've skipped a year. Wasn't it 2018 when you got it? Yeah, no, that's when I got called, but the pandemic started in 19, right? Uh was it 20? Twenty.
+
+[12:26] Oh, 20? Yeah. I get my years confused. Yeah. Oh, so it's a year before the pandemic.
+
+[12:32] Uh yeah, it's a year before the pandemic. So yeah. Uh I was approached via my agent, my literary agent, about the fact that Fatima Ali wanted to write a book. And I was familiar with her via her Bonapet essays. She'd published two at that time.
+
+[12:50] And I said I would adore to be considered and, you know, submitted some sample writing samples. And long story short, um, I wound up she wound up hiring me. And at that point, the plan as I understood it was that she wanted to travel and and and really experience um the restaurants of her dreams in the time that she had left. And um Right, because she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Right, less than a year earlier, right?
+
+[13:16] And then in I mean September, October, right before she she wanted to announce that she wanted to write a book and started to look for um a collaborator. And so she thought she had a year. And so um that was the premise that we all kind of were embracing and excited about. And then it was just impossible. She was too unwell to travel and to um eat like that and to to be on a plane.
+
+[13:43] And so um instead I spent one week at her bedside uh in Los Angeles and interviewed her and recorded everything and talked to her about the books she would have liked to write and um and her hopes and dreams and experiences in her past, and um, and the lion's share of saver um is from that that week together. Um, and then interviews done with her mom and her brother and her friends um and other family members after she passed. Right. Now there was a there was a a small period before because you flew out to LA in like January, right? And you done your your interviews like a couple like a couple of months before that, you realize that there's a maximum only like a year, right?
+
+[14:30] Or a month before that. Did you feel like maybe this wasn't gonna be happening? Did you know what was going on? No, I did all my interviews in that one week. Right, right.
+
+[14:37] But I mean, like in other words, there was a pause. I mean, like if someone tells me I have a year left to live and we had to write a book, you didn't fly out immediately. There was still like a Oh yeah, I was waiting to know what we were where we're gonna meet in New York. We're gonna meet in Copenhagen. Where were we gonna meet?
+
+[14:50] I didn't know. I was waiting to kind of hear what the next step was gonna be. And then it turned out the next step was to meet her in Los Angeles, and and it was very clear to me when I arrived there that she was not going to live for very much longer. And um, and in fact, she passed two weeks later after our week together. Yeah, so yeah.
+
+[15:11] So you mean so you signed on for this one project, she signed on. Well, she wanted to do this one project. It very quickly became something else because you know, she realized she wasn't gonna make it that long, and that even if she made it a while longer, she was too sick to go anywhere. So what was I mean? Let's just why don't we talk a little bit about her, talk a little bit about her life so people who don't know who she is get get a feeling for it.
+
+[15:35] Or or if you want, you can just read it. You want to read an excerpt from the book. We've never done it before on the air. Would be good. Uh sure, but it will take me a second to pull it up.
+
+[15:43] So while you're pulling it up, I'll ask you uh ask you a question. So I'm gonna just say something. So she is um, you know, was 20 28, I guess, when she was diagnosed, 29 when she died. Uh she was uh Pakistani. Uh and uh she was a queer Pakistani woman who wanted to be a chef, who's who was becoming very, very successful, was uh on chopped, was uh, you know, a very you know, well loved, regarded, and did well on um on uh top chef, and you know, had worked in you know very fine restaurants, was all excited to open her own restaurant.
+
+[16:23] Her dream was to, you know, do two things, I think, bring or three things, bring, you know, uh higher end good Pakistani food to America, and also to uh go to Pakistan and elevate the position of women and chefs in general in Pakistan, and to you know, do something to feed the hungry mouse that she was used to seeing when she was a child in um, I guess it was a Lahore Karachi, what so she had all these goals, and she was well on her way to achieving those goals, um, you know, through a lot of obstacles, which are you know well documented in the book. And then you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, she she was deeply ambitious and incredibly gifted and um very charismatic, and um, you know, in the extremely short time that I physically spent with her, I I found her uh, you know, just magnetic. And I I understood why she had such a massive following very quickly. And then of course the lessons that she's left behind via the book are are lessons we that apply to absolutely everyone, no matter their race or their profession or their sexual identity.
+
+[17:36] And she's she's really saying, get busy living, enjoy, take your teeth in, you know. Um, and and uh yeah, she I I learned so much from her. She's made me live in a different way. So this is um an early chapter in the book from her childhood. It's called Hunger at the Market.
+
+[17:59] We often accompanied our mother to the market to go grocery shopping, which I already understood as the first phase of every meal. We sat in the back of our rickety-dinged second-hand white Suzuki kyber and drove to Kata Market with my mother playing Stevie Nick's tape, singing along loudly to the edge of 17. As soon as we pulled up to the to park, I had I heard a sharp rap on the window and my head snapped up. Large brown eyes, the same size as mine or Moe's, but seeming larger because of the sunken cheeks beneath them, appeared framed in our windows, a million miles between two centimeters of polished glass. The children put their hands out for money and then motion motioned to their mouths, the universal sign of hunger.
+
+[18:38] Hello, hello, my mother greeted them good naturedly as she and Muhammad pulled my seven-year-old self out of the backseat of the car. How many of you are there? Well, us two and our cousin, a child said sheepishly. Go round them up, my mother said. And off they ran, disappearing into the jigsaw of park cars and crowds and child-sized crevices between overflowing shops.
+
+[18:58] Sometimes they whistled to get each other's attention from afar, and suddenly there were eight, twelve, fourteen little and not so little people around us, shabbily dressed, hair uncombed, faces unwashed and thin. My mother looked around for the closest Daba, a simple little local eatery serving big vats of food where cabbbies and market purveyors all buy cheap good meals. We've got 14 kids, my mother told the proprietor. What are you going to give them and what is it going to cost? The proprietor made up big plates of doll, curries, and fresh naun for the kids, one plate for each, and named a price for my mom, usually around 30 or 50 rupees, which included Cokes for everyone.
+
+[19:33] She paid and waited for all the children to be served their food, while my brother and I watched the little kids our age laughing, poking each other in the ribs, playful and relaxed for a moment now that they knew their next meal was coming soon and that it was going to be a fresh one, not foraged from a trash heap. I watched as this band of beggars' mouths watered, and instead of getting hungry myself, my small throat went dry. Certainly, I was not immune to the seductive sense of Pakistani comfort food being readied for consumption. My mouth watered as I smelled fluffy biryani warming on the stovetop or chamois kebabs for dinner at home. But seeing these hollow-cheeked kids so giddy and ravenous, I realized I'd never really, I'd never truly known hunger.
+
+[20:13] Though I knew that money was hard-earned, not only my mother, not only could my mother always feed us, she had enough to feed the small army of street kids. 50 rupees is all it took. And every Sunday we were 50 rupees later, and those little boys and girls had full bellies for once, not knowing how or when, but I made a promise to myself that I would feed people. So that is relatively early in the book, but it comes back again and again. You know, it like it's very clear that at the end of her life, she's really reflecting on that particular goal, even more than becoming successful, which was clearly a huge goal, you know, of her life.
+
+[20:54] So, how clear, I know that there was a foundation was started. How like how clear was she to you in the time you had that she wanted this book to help with kind of that goal and the goal of allowing other people like her to see that this is possible to do. I think she was very clear about her goals. I mean, that was a lot of what we discussed was what did she want this book to be and what would she be doing if she didn't have to focus her goals in a book and could just be doing. And um, I think what she realized is that her story through the book um could inspire other young Pakistani women to realize that there were there was a world, that the world was their oyster, that they could, you know, go off and and discover new careers and have adventures that perhaps had not originally occurred to them or that they'd felt somehow were off limits to them.
+
+[21:53] I think that was a tremendous goal of hers, the inspiration of other uh young Pakistani in particular girls. Um, in terms of feeding people, uh, I think that the Chef Fatima Foundation is an incredible step in that direction. I think it really broke her heart that that was not something she figured out how to do in her lifetime to the degree that she wanted to do it. I mean, this is an incredibly ambitious person who believed that, you know, if she became uh a world-renowned chef, she would be able to really make a dent in the um hunger crisis in her country, um, using her her celebrity as a tool to help that. So I think that was a hard thing, a hard goal for her to let go of.
+
+[22:38] And I think the end of her life was a series of um recalibrations of goals. And that was extremely hard for her and her family and everyone who loved her. Right. So that now I don't know, kind of know where to where to go into this, because there's kind of two things. One's the structure of the book.
+
+[22:56] So at the end of the book, uh, towards the end of the book, when you know you fly out to the hospital, there's a scene where you're at the foot of the bed and these doctors come in and some Dr. Wise cracks. There's gonna be a book by a lot of people. And she's like, no, you know what I mean? She doesn't want it to feel like just uh like a pastiche of things from different people.
+
+[23:16] And yet the actual structure of the book is in fact, it's not a dialogue, but it it is uh I mean, it is it is a back and forth between two perspectives Fatima's perspective perspective and her mother's perspective. Um so I'm kind of wondering how that worked. There's also like very, I mean, there's stuff that you know, she brought up in the in what she was talking about with you or the notes and writing that she gave you that I can't imagine writing about you know my family if I wasn't like right at a place where none of that mattered anymore. You know what I mean? She's really pulling out like a lot of the stops, and her mom also, this is an interesting part of the book, at the very beginning of the book, is like this book's gonna be hard.
+
+[24:05] And there's this kind of amazing discussion between Fatima and the mother about is it okay to do this book? Because you're gonna have to deal with it when I'm dead, and it's gonna be unpleasant. So, I mean, one, like how did that work afterwards? And two, like what did I know she was a writer, right? So did she I know that parts of her Bonapatia uh writing are woven into the later sections of the book, but like, and I know she was writing at the end, uh, you know, feverishly and probably recording as well.
+
+[24:37] So, like what I mean, I'm sure when you were there for the week, you're just trying to absorb as much of her personalities as is humanly possible, but then what did you physically have to work with? Like how how does that work when so it's so unusual a process? Um, well, uh, in terms of weaving into the narrative what had already been written, uh, certainly the published essays that she had written before for Bonapet and for a couple other publications, um, earlier in long before she knew that she had cancer or had cancer. Um, things that she wrote when she was more of a student, and um and right after winning CHOP, so in her early, very early 20s. Um, so I I tried to weave all of anything that was originally, you know, that she'd written as much intact without as any edits as much as possible.
+
+[25:24] Um, in terms of what she was working on at the end of her life, uh there was there were some really beautiful pieces. Um it wasn't um a tremendous amount. Uh, the lion's share of the book is from our conversations, which were almost like dictation in a way, because she was so articulate and so um descriptive when she was talking about something she was passionate about, which obviously we were trying to do a lot of. Um so it was very complicated. And then the addition of uh her mother as a voice came from the fact that we had such a brief time together, and uh there was concern that there wouldn't be enough only in Fatima's voice.
+
+[26:08] And so it made sense to all of us that her mother, who from whom you know Fatima sprang and and um was very inspired by and guided by um and another strong Pakistani woman should be also a perspective in this. And uh, I mean, I'm very personally interested in mother-daughter stories, so um this was uh clear to me that this is how the story should be told. Um and then yeah, that's pretty much how that happened. So uh the parts that are from her mom's perspective are from after Fatima Pass from our interviews, and then her mother also working on those herself. That had to be incredibly difficult for everybody.
+
+[26:53] It was incredibly difficult, incredibly painful. It took a tremendous amount of bravery, bravery on the part of her family. And um I, you know, I don't I don't think there was anything easy about it. But we all sort of made this promise. I mean, it's different for me.
+
+[27:08] I was relatively a stranger, but I I still took it quite seriously, my promise to her to try to make something of this. And it was very clear to me once I understood, uh, once she shared with me more about her story that this wasn't just some food network, you know, popular chef. She didn't want to tell a sort of behind the scenes tell-all of being on on a cooking show. Um it was this was a much deeper and wider story um that touches on universal issues of love, family uh identity. Yeah.
+
+[27:41] And also like mortality. You know, even at her age, she already kind of realized she's like in the book, right? You know, one of the one of the things that is her desire to constantly be the best and succeed is most of the time driving her in the right direction until she feels it doesn't anymore. And then it like happens like a like a bunch, not a bunch, but at several big times, where she's like, Well, I I quit my I quit my job because it was too easy, it wasn't taking me in the right direction. It's like she wanted fame, but not necessarily she wanted fame, I think for fame's sake, but also to do all these amazing things.
+
+[28:18] So she must have been just a really interesting personality to deal with even for that one week. But I like I wonder what was it? She was in intense pain the entire time that you were with her. Was it did it make it difficult for her to tell the stories through the filter of all of that pain? She was on a she was on some like uh experimental pain lidocaine drip that you know was uh dreamed up by her doctors at uh St.
+
+[28:45] Kettering, you know. Something that didn't seem like it should work to help with her pain, and yet it did. Um from what I understand, yeah. I mean, it was a very um meditative, slow conversation that um had in the background of it, you know, the sound of being in a hospital, the sort of mechanical sounds of um whirring and beeping and machines that are telling you what's going on with the patient's body. And it was very, it was very slow conversing, although we covered a lot.
+
+[29:18] Um and it was deeply moving and emotional, uh, I think for all of us, I can speak for myself, and and observing some of the conversations between Fatima and her brother, who was always present whenever she and I were speaking, um, was incredibly moving, their love for each other and devotion to each other. Yeah, the the other thing that's really interesting when you read it that it's very apparent. So, you know, normally when someone's writing a book that's coming out in their own first person and they have the chance to kind of finish it themselves, right? The experience of the information that they're that they're um putting together in their head and putting out has a chance to like change and morph over time, right? But here, like, you know, you spend years working on the information that was gathered from a synthesis at this one intense crisis point in her life.
+
+[30:26] And I think it really imbues the point of view she has with uh a kind of like crystallinity of purpose that would be impossible to get in a situation where the the person whose thoughts are going on on you know on the paper has a year or two to think about it. Does that make sense? Totally. And I think that the people who were left to do that thinking were her mom and her brother, and and that was immensely difficult for them. Um and there was a tension between all of us, you know, saying, of course, we'll figure out how to make this book for you.
+
+[31:04] And then the reality of the messages that she wanted to leave behind, isn't some of which were were hard truths. And um, you know, in my introduction, I I say that my marching orders came on our last day together. She said, You're gonna figure out how to do this. I know you can do it. And I thought, well, if she knows I can do it, then I suppose I can do it.
+
+[31:30] But, you know, she was she really gave me instructions, and I tried to be very true to them and take them very seriously. So uh another interesting thing about the the mother perspective and you know Fatima's perspective is that they are sometimes at odds is the wrong term, but they definitely have different current, well, current as of the writing of the book, right? You know, whatever the theoretical present tense is in a situation when somebody's gone. But they have different current views of the same things that are being presented side by side, chapter by chapter. I mean, you know, and it's uh and it's interesting.
+
+[32:14] I don't think I've ever seen a presentation quite like that. So was it difficult to kind of go between the two voices? Because they are quite different. They're quite different, yeah. Um as I said, Farise, Fatima's mother, um, very much uh went over everything in her voice to make sure it she felt it was uh absolutely in her own voice.
+
+[32:36] Um I would say that uh Fatima and I had a lot more uh sort of common ground in the way we talked about things, probably because we were passionate about some of the same things in terms of food, and there's a commonality to talking about kitchens and and cooking school that we experiences we both have had. So I think that was like a creative shorthand to some extent. But you do share her disdain for tattooed chefs from Brooklyn. Um let me think about that. I want to answer honestly.
+
+[33:05] No, I don't have distinctly. Okay, but she could she clearly. But it's a trope, right? Exactly. So I think I thought that was funny and and great.
+
+[33:17] And um, so your original question, uh, the very the distinct voices. Um, well, I think that I find found that to be a really interesting way to talk about facts. A, a because we all have our own experiences of a situation. Two people can sit in a room and watch a movie and they might have totally different experiences of what they just watched. And I think, especially for a mother daughter, um, when there's a generational gap and uh also you know, an experiential gap, um, seeing things through both of their perspectives is really interesting.
+
+[33:50] And I and I hope that it's something that mothers and daughters will take away from this, is thinking, well, might feel different to the other side. Right. And the other uh the other main one of the other main frictions going through the book is that, you know, um Fatima clearly has a love for Pakistan-Pakistani culture, food, and a desire to like um bring like, you know, have it not just be a place that Americans think of as like land of land of terror and poverty, right? You know, to paraphrase, you know, what she has, what she said. At the other time, she's extraordinarily conflicted about what America is like, you know what I mean?
+
+[34:36] Um and so it's kind of an interesting thing because she always found, well, she told you, I guess, how difficult she found it to be things that she wasn't really supposed to be in in Pakistan, right? You weren't a woman wasn't supposed to be a professional chef. Uh a woman was supposed to marry uh a nice Pakistani man, which she clearly says like five or eight times that she doesn't want to do. She, you know, is definitely not supposed to be queer, which she is. Like none of that's okay.
+
+[35:07] You know what I mean? Um, and you know, in a lot of what she wants, she has the kind of like intense support from her mom, who also made some non-traditional decisions in her life in terms of divorce, which wasn't okay. Um, you know, and and moving, moving about uh in you know, ways that weren't necessarily okay uh for and being yeah, fiercely independent. Right, for you know, a a woman because she's a relatively, you know, they didn't have a lot of money because of the decisions she made at some points in their lives, but she was still, you know, uh uh, you know, from a upper echelons of Pakistani society. So how clear was she on that kind of friction of not being necessary like wanting to kind of fix things that were wrong in both places when you were talking to her?
+
+[35:52] In terms of America and Pakistan? I mean, as a as we touched on before, I think she really wanted to help with the poverty crisis that and the hunger crisis. Um and I think here she wanted, as you said, people to think of other things uh, you know, other than terror and fear, um, when they thought of Pakistan. And her her approach to that was absolutely beautiful, which was she wanted to just disarm people through their taste buds, and she wanted to uh introduce them to a place of beauty and care and hospitality through our through hospitality itself. By opening a restaurant, she she likened what she wanted to do here in New York or America to an Uncle Boone's, where you walk in and you're sort of um of your senses, the music, the the posters, the food, the scents are all taking you on this journey.
+
+[36:49] And in the case of Pakistan, it would be one that most people are totally unfamiliar with. Um so I think I don't I can't say how much she wanted to change about America. I think she was very clear-eyed about it not being a perfect place. And we definitely didn't want it to appear that there was a a trope in the book of America being the sort of open-minded savior land, because that's ridiculous, especially in this current atmosphere. But um but uh she did feel uh a freedom and a expansive sort of I think anonymity that she could accomplish more here.
+
+[37:32] Yeah, well, she gained quite a bit of um like back when she went back home after she was on TV and started getting press, then she seemed to be more accepted for what she was doing afterwards, right? So that seemed that seemed to be kind of a positive note, no? Oh, I think she was always accepted and um adored for her work there. Um, but I think um she was extr she she became extremely well known based on what my understanding in Pakistan. Uh and so people would sort of come up to her on the street even more than they might hear in America.
+
+[38:07] Did you ever get to go over or no? I didn't because um of the pandemic. Right. So I was supposed to go in uh March 2020, and that was right after lockdown began. Um and then I was gonna try to go the following year, but I was expecting a baby, so it wasn't the time to to do that kind of trouble.
+
+[38:25] Yeah. No, maybe someday. I hope so. I've never been to the anywhere in that region of the earth. I've been to India, but i I expect Pakistan to be a completely different experience.
+
+[38:37] I was supposed to go to Delhi in the pandemic. I was supposed to like be able to go to Delhi in the pandemic, whatever. It's a minor, minor inconvenience in life. So I'll make it hopefully someday. I've got another couple of years, hopefully.
+
+[38:46] You never know though. That's like the thing of the book. I mean, the the cancer that she got was so intensely aggressive. Here is an incredibly healthy 28-year-old woman comes, does top chef, does a uh uh is does a wins some sort of in like stage of her choice, basically goes uh to uh hang out with uh Chris Costell, right? Who apparently like, you know, she does a great job there.
+
+[39:12] Like everybody, you know, going on all cylinders is gonna do uh some opening uh out here, uh, I forget what it was, some pop-up opening out here while she's you know waiting to figure out her next move. Her social media is going through the freaking roof because Top Chef is starting to air, right? And like everything is is going great. She has this great network of people that she met on Top Chef, plus her New York City cooking network. You know, she also has people, you know, her mom's like, we'll get you a place in Pakistan.
+
+[39:39] You can you can you have the pick of your place to to cook in Lahore if you want to come back here. All this amazing stuff, and then bang. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's just it's kind of um, it's a it's a great.
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+[39:52] I mean, obviously intensely sad, uh, but you know, just the section of it kind of like portrait of a of a young chef is kind of i is an interesting. Well, it's really most the book is really about living. Yeah. I mean, and uh everyone kind of looks at me like I'm crazy when I say that, but it is the bulk of this book is about really living. Right and really um sinking your teeth in and um and not waiting and not making excuses to do the things that you longed to do.
+
+[40:20] Um, because of course we don't know what is coming around the bend. Yeah. She also, I mean, um, she does a lot of forgiving at the end. Like, were you present for that stuff, or did you hear about it afterwards, or it was sort of happening, uh a lot of it um was happening one not when I was in the room, but in that week that I was there, and so I was getting uh some really incredible breathless accounts of the uh conversations she had had just before I'd been with her right after I'd left the night before um with her very close family members. So uh yeah, our last day together was extremely powerful.
+
+[41:02] She was having uh visions and um and she was she was she seemed past pain. She was very um punchy and and kind of excitable in a really beautiful way. And um it was it was a the entire experience of being around that much love, although it was extremely painful, was awe-inspiring. Right. And you I believe were there for the conversation when the doctors were gonna do a bunch of stuff, she's like, forget it.
+
+[41:37] Yes. That's gotta be a that's gotta be a very intense thing to be the I mean you were you were there as a fly on the wall. You just met her. A few days before, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[41:48] I mean, that's yeah, it was it were the doctors all came in the around in this pack, and um, it was probably a teaching hospital or something. So they were always followed by students. Um Yeah, she was at uh whatever that what's the LA place, right? CLA Medical Center. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[42:06] Yeah. Um, and as she was saying, like, no, I don't want another MRI, like, no, and then the the doctors were you could I was watching everything that was happening, and they were, you know, trying not to cry, but tears were rolling down their cheeks. Cause she was so brave, and she was sort of coaching everyone around her on being strong, and um, and you know, instead of people holding her up, she was holding them up, and it was an astonishing thing to witness. I mean, that that basically comes through. She's like, Doc, it's please enough.
+
+[42:40] That's fine. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just doing my job, and she says, you know, I know, and you've done it, and I'm gonna be okay. And like, but you gotta let me go. Yeah, she's like, you know, it's like a the end, the end of the book.
+
+[42:51] Yeah, so it it's living for like 240 something pages, and then the end of it is, you know, uh, I think, you know, kind of a good as good an ending as someone can hope uh to have in the terrible kind of situation, in other words, what she did with it. Not her physical pain was obviously a horrific night bear, but what the way she chose to deal with it, I thought was well, yeah. I mean, she's leaving this incredible legacy and message for the rest of us to to get smart. And going back to what I said about like a very like crystal like vision of a particular point in in somebody's life, what an indictment of the American medical system. Oh my gosh.
+
+[43:32] What that family went through. Like, I don't think, I mean, nothing that I read seems like it could have changed the outcome, but just what a horrific, horrific experience. We misfiled the insurance papers, so you can't get the biopsy that you need. You know what I mean? And like just like back and forth, and then when she moves from New York to LA, the insurance has to change because she's not in New York anymore, and they it, you know, what a just what a crap show.
+
+[43:59] Like what just a horrible nightmare. And you know, John, I'm sure you're privy to all of this stuff too. Just what a horrible nightmare ha having something like this happens to you. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[44:12] It's just so if you want to know, you know, I thought it was a very good representation of what a intense, intense pile of crap navigating that system can be in the absolute worst time of your life. I mean, there are some medical heroes, like the guy from from Memorial Slow Kettering, Dr. Wexler comes. Apparently the family loves him. You know what I mean?
+
+[44:36] And he comes across as a good, as a good guy. But just like a bunch of a bunch of people like saying offhand things. Oh, it's it's nothing. It's falling. Yeah, put some ice on it, you know what I mean?
+
+[44:48] Oh, you're, you know, your your hip is broken or whatever. You know, all this like nutty stuff because they they can't get the the approvals to do these kind of clear procedures that are indicated. And then at the end, over proceduring. It's just like a Yeah, and we're not talking about, you know, there was no language barrier. Everyone in her family speaks English beautifully perfectly.
+
+[45:07] Um it's not like there was there were miscommunications, it's not like they weren't advocating for her. They were advocating and then some um, you know, writing everything down, sharing everything that they could with the doctors and and still there's yeah. Nightmare. You know, and you know, whatever. I mean, look, my my family, family uh of uh doctors, and we all know it's we.
+
+[45:31] I mean, you know, my the family is doctors, it's a complete nightmare, and not necessarily for any good reason. Um, so that's another reason to uh check out the book. Stas, you got any uh you got any questions? No. I'd job, Dave.
+
+[45:45] What? You read the whole book. I always read people. If you're gonna be on the show, I will read the work. That's like the least I know that most people don't, but that's the least you can do, right?
+
+[45:56] Someone wrote the book, you're having them on. No, but a lot of people like it's been getting great reviews, so everyone should buy it. Um, but uh yeah, you got reviewed in the Times? I we did. I was flabbergasted, never in my wildest dreams that I expect to be reviewed in the New York Times book review, and then it was the most thoughtful review.
+
+[46:18] So I I'm just I'm so grateful that that happened to this book. So, what's it like when you're writing and you literally write on the page of yourself the impression she has of you in the hospital as the hired witness to what's going on? I mean, that that's gotta be surreal. Well, um, you know, the book has changed, of course, as all as all books do in it the process of it coming to the world. And um, at one point, uh, you know, I was more of a character, and so I was thinking about uh in that section in particular, I was thinking I was seeing, I was recording, I was also journaling a ton while this was happening because it was so much to take on and to kind of sort through.
+
+[47:10] Um, and so uh that was probably something that I felt at that time. I felt like a hired witness. I felt my job was to be there listening, taking it all in, and then figure out how to kind of organize it. I mean, that was my job actually. So right, right.
+
+[47:26] But also like the character of you is portrayed not as an interloper because you're definitely wanted to be there, but definitely like the pale face in the room of brown people. Literally, I believe that's paraphrasing what is written in the book. And especially when the doctors come in, you know what I mean? Because it's all part of that same, that that same uh section. It's just gotta be, I mean, I'm sure you had to have felt like you were doing something that is very much what she wanted was her desire, but also that you're kind of injecting yourself, not of your own volition, right?
+
+[48:06] But you're injecting yourself into this incredibly private, intense situation that's gotta be one of the weirdest weeks ever. It was. And in my introduction, I talk about how nervous I was to take up her time when there was clearly very limited time left, and to take her away from the people who loved her the most who wanted to soak up every instant with her. Um, and her brother assured me before I went into her room for the first time that this was what Fatima wanted. And I think, and then her mother said to me that, you know, my presence and our working together toward this goal of Fatima's book was giving her purpose, and actually that purpose was was somehow I can't possibly say if it was making things easier for her, but it it did lend a an a real purposefulness to those days that we spent together because we were trying so hard to get as much done as possible together.
+
+[49:11] Right. I mean, well, the mom says that nothing can make it easier. I mean, the mom's intro at the beginning is like, don't bother comforting me. Don't bother, you know, there is no comfort. Yeah.
+
+[49:22] I mean, I think there is no more unimaginable pain than the loss of a child. And I I think we all um our I think grief evolves. I've lost someone very dear to me. Um, and it he he was not my child, so I don't know what it is like to lose a child, but um I don't know that that ever goes away. It might change forms a little bit, but that is that is the worst thing that anyone can imagine, I think losing a baby.
+
+[49:54] Yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine that, and also, but I guess the in the intro, along with her saying, don't basically don't bother trying to give me words of comfort because there's there are none, she's also like, I don't have anything left to lose, really. So this is the book with all of the stuff, whether I want you to know it or not, here it is. She really um she wants to embrace Fatima's uh approach to living, I think, uh, and be guided by that. And she wants that for others, I think.
+
+[50:29] Yeah. Um, well, the book is called uh Savor. What's the what's the slug line underneath? A chef's hunger for more. The chef's hunger for more, yeah.
+
+[50:40] Uh uh Fatim Ali and Taraj Morel, you should uh pick it up and then in the few minutes we have left. All right, or you want to answer some crazy questions, Tarajan? Related to the book or unrelated. No, no, no, unrelated. Totally want to answer some crazy unrelated questions.
+
+[50:57] Yeah. I mean, like, we'll just answer them all together. This is how it works. Anyone that has an opinion on what people ask us. Okay.
+
+[51:02] So the normal thing with this show is people ask us normal, they ask us abnormal questions, typically. Yeah. And then we have to have answers for it. Because we have issues. Cooking issues.
+
+[51:13] You know, and I think, again, while the book is by no means a cookbook or even a food book, it is a chef's memoir. And so, you know, I think is germane to the cooking issues, don't you think? Oh, 100%. Yeah. Absolutely.
+
+[51:30] It made me wish I knew more about Pakistani food, by the way. Well, I wish I knew more too, but what I do know is that it's so delicious. All I'm saying is I want that so that in one of the scenes, by the way, uh, I know I'm supposed to answer questions. One of the scenes in the book is um, so they this is after she uh quits her job with whatever the restaurant group is that owns Central and those things, right? She goes back to uh to Pakistan and and it's like wedding season there and like you know, high society friends, a bunch of cool weddings.
+
+[52:00] And so, like her mom's best friend, who's basically her aunt, right? And the the dad, who's now dead, I think as well, of the aunt, right? The husband, I think he died. Anyway, Fatima loves him and her, hires this amazing grill expert from like the north of like the very north of Pakistan, and basically only hires this this dude and his whole crew to come in for weddings and pump out this this like amazing, like on point, not very spicy, but just on point um grilled lamb stuff. And the one that she describes, and and there's a kind of a cool scene where the mom, this is from the mom's perspective, the mom's like, you know, no one is paying attention to these cooks, and Fatima goes over and like really gives, you know, really gives respect to these cooks.
+
+[52:49] And it's like the first time that anyone basically in her group has acknowledged, other than the fact that the dad clearly thinks they're cool, otherwise he wouldn't keep hiring to come back and do weddings. But like it's the first time they've been acknowledged as kind of masters of their craft, and so they make a special plate. But then it's this thing which on its face doesn't sound like something I would like, but then when the more you read about it, you're like, I need it, where they take this like young lamb's liver and salt and pepper, and then they wrap it in like a very thin veil of lamb belly fat and then quick grill it on a skewer. I love how carefully you read this. Yeah.
+
+[53:23] It's so heartening. And uh anyway, so now I want to try that. But I don't know I can get that. You can't get that in the city, right? Well, uh, I'm not I'm you probably can somewhere.
+
+[53:31] What I learned also from this experience is that um there's a beautiful network um of people who make Pakistani food, which is laborious and often is best made in large quantities, and they they're not professionals, they're sort of home cooks, but then they all kind of they could sell you a whole setup of of you know dinner um instead of you're having to make it all at home yourself. If you know who to call, you can know who to call. That's right. I'll work on that. Yeah, that's cool.
+
+[54:00] You know, that's like a thing that uh, you know, when Pierre Chom was on, he was saying that when he first came to the US, like a lot of the good uh Senegalese cooking in New York was kind of similar, where it wasn't restaurants where you it wasn't your house either. It was like this kind of third, yeah. It's kind of third thing, which I find fascinating. Uh all right, Jim. Uh so Jim asked a long time ago, I just need help from the Discord.
+
+[54:24] Jim wants to know if there's any combination salts that incorporate uh, you know, NACL, sodium chloride with MSG and disodium uh whatever the nucleic acid. I can never pronounce it, so I won't do it. Yeah, you go. Thanks, man. And guanalate as enhancers.
+
+[54:38] If not, any suggestions on the relative proportions of each for ready to sprinkle umami salt. Someone from Discord help me, because I don't do that. I don't haven't tested it. Um Andrew Zimmer. Go for it, Quinn.
+
+[54:50] Oh, sorry. Well, I was gonna say that like certain brands of like stock powders do contain MSG and the nucleic acids. Yeah, you know what else does? Uh fermented Taiwanese uh chili, like the the is a like 20% salt. It's like it's like it's like 80% chili, 20% salt, and or like 15% salt, and then MSG and other stuff.
+
+[55:15] And I add that to absolutely everything. And and my wife Jen is like, by the way, the reason I don't have the book with me today, and I had to do this all from memory, and I had to make you read off your phone is because my wife picked the book. She's like, finally a book that I want to read. Because I I don't read about people, I read about things typically. So she's like, this is not the normal book that gets mailed to you, Dave.
+
+[55:34] I'm gonna read this one. So she's reading it, she's like halfway through. Anyway. Uh Wizmard writes in, Dave, how's the book going? Give us a progress report on the miracle of moisture management.
+
+[55:44] Oh, hold up, Dave. Sorry, I'm gonna interrupt. Uh Andrew Zimmern did uh post on MSG salt combination. I think he did two to one MSG to salt. That's a lot of MSG though.
+
+[55:53] Yeah. But that's a little high to me. That's a little high. Yeah. Uh uh I I really prefer to do the Silicon MSG separate.
+
+[56:03] If you do have, if you do buy the combo of like the savory nucleic acids, I've heard a good ratio is like 97% MSG and then 3% of those other uh nucleic acids. All right. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get one of those really ridiculous, like, you know those tuxedo, those weird tuxedo coats that are like this high, they're like up like near your chest, and then the super tight cumber bund that look incredibly preposterous that the three-star Michelin uh French dudes used to wear. Remember these, uh John, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah.
+
+[56:39] Yeah. I'm gonna wear that. I'm gonna just walk into someone's restaurant, and then I'm gonna walk up to the table with a like like a like a giant like Coquille Saint-Jacques shell and and and and uh and a pearl spoon and uh you know, mother pearl spoon, and I'm just gonna walk up and be like, Madame savory nucleic acids, and start sprinkling on the thing and see whether this is not a good sounding thing to sprinkle on your food. Is it is it, John? What do you think?
+
+[57:06] No, not really. Uh I'm with you though, Quinn. Uh Zach from Pittsburgh writes in, how's you doing? Are there any dairy-free ways to make Irish cream? I have a family member who has a new dairy allergy and is lamenting not having Baileys for both cooking and drinking.
+
+[57:22] So listen, I looked at some of the vegan Bailey's. Uh uh, do you guys any guys like are you guys Bailey's people or Irish cream people? Anything? Once or twice. Once or twice in my life.
+
+[57:33] In when you were young, makes a good milkshake. Does make a good milkshake. So listen, the internet's is uh full of people who tell you to use coconut milk for that, but I wouldn't use coconut milk. Coconut milk, unless it's incredibly highly stabilized, tends to clump or curdle when it gets uh when it gets very cold, just the function of the fat of how coconut fat works. So I would actually use uh almond milk probably, or uh some other kind of nut milk like that.
+
+[57:59] If you do use coconut milk, I would use one that's like very highly stabilized, like maybe the condensed stuff that's been stabilized so it won't curdle. And I would use a little bit of ticaloid, which is uh Xanthan and uh gum arabic mix, and apparently other than that, it's whiskey, espresso, sugar, uh, and vanilla. Hold on. Uh Dave Kleiman, has anyone prepared shucked raw rice before it gets to dry? Well, it's freshly picked and not starchy yet, and treated it similarly to raw corn nibblets.
+
+[58:24] Cooking it, is it feasible? Well, well, Dave, when rice is harvested, it's usually harvested at about 20% moisture, so it's already pretty dry. In uh Tanzania, there is something called uh Pepita, where they harvest the rice uh green when it's still high moisture. They then roast it, pound it into uh pound it into flakes, and then winnow it after they pound it to get rid of the husks, and then they eat those pellets. But I ain't never tasted it.
+
+[58:51] Uh Steve wants to know or there's a bunch of roto vaps, Steve Young. There's a bunch of roto vaps uh selling for under $2,000 and one for under $900 on Amazon. Do you think they look legit? Well, I mean, look, I think you could probably get them to work, but are they gonna be as good as the ones that cost a zillion dollars? No, but if you let me and they have no reviews, I would not buy anything like that that has no reviews.
+
+[59:12] Plus, also the glass on those things is not plastic coated. So guard your eyes, my friend. Guard your eyes. Uh Jack, I'm gonna get to your carnitas and I'm gonna get to uh John's uh Colton's uh question on pie from Pie Marches On, which by the way, John, he calls the pie bowl. He calls it the pie bowl, which I appreciate it.
+
+[59:30] We'll get to that next week. Taraja, thanks so much for coming on. Hope you had a good time. Thank you so much. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is David, another host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center on New Stand Studios. Joined as usual, but not in the studio. She's uh probably chilling in uh on the coast of Connecticut. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, how you doing?
+
+[0:25] Doing all right? Hi. You're not feeling? Oh, that's too bad. Quinn will not be with us today because he is also not feeling well.
+
+[0:33] That's unfortunate. But we do have Jackie Molecules in uh California. How you doing? I'm good. Good.
+
+[0:40] Fresh off my backpacking trip. Oh. Oh, yeah, we're gonna talk about remember, we're going through it now. We introduce a special guest and then we shoot the breeze. Yes.
+
+[0:48] Right? And then we shoot the breeze. And then we shoot the breeze. Uh rocking the panels here. We have Joe Hazen, as usual.
+
+[0:54] How are you doing, Joe? I'm doing well. You're looking good. Yeah, really? You're not looking that sweaty either today.
+
+[0:59] Really? Yeah. That's bizarre. He was when he showed up. Oh, okay.
+
+[1:02] Well, you know, I didn't know if you know if you don't know, I just got to tell you, but the AC is down today. Well, uh, I used a special trick. I kept my shirt unbuttoned on the bike up here and then buttoned it when I got close. Maybe that's what it is. Oh, the classitics don't like that.
+
+[1:18] Uh and of course we got uh John, how you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah? Yeah, beachy. Oh, you're doing as great uh as you were willing to talk about on the air.
+
+[1:27] I mean, there's water dripping in in the kitchen at the restaurant right now, and it's it's stressful. But yeah, there's nothing I can do, so no point in being there. I'm not a plumber. All right. So quesaras-rah.
+
+[1:38] Well, I don't know. That's what the owner reminded me. I was like, do I need the bail on the radio show to go deal with us? And he's like, no, there's nothing you can do. And he's like, you're you're right.
+
+[1:44] So I like that. And uh before I I apologize, we shot the breeze prior, right? Uh our special guest today. I'm super excited. I've only uh met once, uh, but she has a new book out.
+
+[1:58] It's uh Rose Levy Barenbaum, the uh author of all the cookbooks. Like all any cookbook with the with the word Bible attached to it that's worth reading, uh you've written. Welcome, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. Well, thank you, and thank you for adding that's worth reading because since the first cake bible, since the first Bible, there's been bagel Bibles.
+
+[2:22] Everybody took that name because they thought that was the secret for success. Well, I mean it turns out you also have to write uh the book that's worthy of the name uh Bible. It's also like when people say the complete X, Y, or Z and and you can lift it, you're like, eh, not really though. You know what I mean? Like the complete whatever it is.
+
+[2:41] Um But I mean I think uh, you know, for those that for those that don't know your work already, where have you been? And uh, you know, but you're well known for um being thorough and exhaustive and also but never exhausting and uh always uh writing a lot of like very detailed instructions and testing your recipes. Would you say it's accurate? I would say that I would add reliable, because that's what people keep saying. They know that when they do a recipe, it's gonna work.
+
+[3:15] And you can imagine the pressure of having that name Bible and to live up to it. I dictated the entire manuscript into a tape recorder and played it back against the first version to make sure that there wasn't a single mistake in it. And there wasn't. Wow. So what's what word does your dictation software get wrong the most?
+
+[3:36] Well, I should be using dictation, but I tend to I'm a typist. I type 180 words a minute. It's very hard to use dictation. Why? How many things do you did?
+
+[3:46] I mean, dictation gets a lot of things wrong. So that's why I steer away from it. But the older I get, the more I think, better preserve my fingers. Typing like that can really wear you up. Well, our our mutual friend Harold McGee uses dictation software.
+
+[3:59] I believe he uses whatever one is called dragon something, dragon, whatever it is, dragon stone, dragon, whatever it is. That's what he used. But now on Word and with a Mac, you can't it's not compatible. And their dictation you can't teach really, so it's not quite as good. But what I do is I dict I don't dictate.
+
+[4:28] I h my husband uh Woody and I read back and forth. And when you dictate, you speak differently from how when you type. But the combination I think is the best of all. Huh. And let me ask you this.
+
+[4:41] What uh what program do you like to type into these days? I'm using Word. Ah, yeah, me too. But everyone hates it. That's what works for me.
+
+[4:51] So and when you type I know, I don't understand why. They all hate everyone hates it. I don't know why, whether it's because like people are doing more collaborative work now and Word sucks for collaborative work. But like McGee uses Scrivener, right? But it's just I don't know, I can't be bothered to use some sort of specialty software.
+
+[5:06] You know what I'm saying? I do, and especially when you use something. I mean, I've written 13 books on this word. And by the way, I just saw how l last week it was when he I was doing a book event at Omnivore and he stopped in because he lives right nearby to say hello. There's a really nice picture on social media that I put.
+
+[5:25] It's so great to see him. Yeah, can I can I tell you an embarrassing fact? I've never been to Omnivore books. How embarrassing is that? Well, are you on the East Coast?
+
+[5:37] Yes, but I mean I it's not like I've never been to the West Coast. You know what I mean? Like No, I'm I didn't mean to imply that. I mean, it would be really criminal if you lived here and never went there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[5:46] It wouldn't make sense. Your book is there, isn't it? Uh I'll bet your book is there. So John and I both felt terrible because we'd also until last year never been to Bonnie Slotnik's. Well, that's too.
+
+[6:00] What about Kitchen Arts and Letters? All the time. Yeah. Matt Matt comes on the Matt comes on the show uh, I don't know, once every other month or so. He's our he's our current.
+
+[6:08] We used to have a segment called Classics in the Field where we would uh go over, you know, uh you know, we actually we've mostly chose classics that people don't read as much anymore, so your books haven't come up because most people still read them. But uh, you know, th th things uh things like that. By the way, uh for anyone listening on Patreon, call your questions to uh 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And John might tell him how to become a Patreon member.
+
+[6:34] Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Go there. Go for it, Rose. Oh, I was just gonna say that uh speaking of classics, we're working right now on the complete new edition and revision of the Cake Bible for its 35th anniversary. It's now 34th anniversary.
+
+[6:52] So, yes, it's so much has changed in 30 years, even. So and I was 40 years ago I started writing it. So you can imagine the work it is, but it's worth it. So have all new pictures, everything, but it'll be larger. Right.
+
+[7:06] But like, I mean, are you allowed are you allowed to say that? Because then people are gonna wait to buy the current book. Is um where you're eating into your own royalties here because they can buy it and be like, oh no and then we have to buy it right again, you know. No, we talked about that. But actually there's a lot of things that won't be in the new book that were in the old book.
+
+[7:25] And a lot of people are saying, well the two are going to be side by side. So I would encourage people to get it right away before it goes out of print. Uh-huh but there'll be a transition. I'm sure it'll be around for a while. So give us a little taste.
+
+[7:36] When you say things have changed other than the ovens are different and slash probably better at least different and more reproducible in some ways. What else what else do you think has changed? I think what I'm most proud of, and I wrote an article for the LA Time Syndicate about 25 years ago, it was called Way to Bake. I think over 90% of baking books now are weighing and the difference now between the original version and this one is that we've gotten rid of ounces completely. That was always so confusing because liquid ounces and weight ounces are not com are not the same.
+
+[8:10] And so it's going to be a cleaner design and since it'll be wider we can we don't have to have the sidebar. We can have a more easy to follow kind of um design. But that's just one thing I mean in ingredients have changed the proportion of yolk to white in an egg has shrunk because they're using younger laying hens and that makes a huge difference say in a genoise which needs the egg yolk and they aren't separated. So we're actually separating all the eggs. Flour they now have come up with what they call an unbleached cake flour and it doesn't work for many of the cakes.
+
+[8:46] So I was able to in the current printing actually add the word bleached in front of everyone. But I never I never had to write bleached cake flour because the only cake flour that existed was bleached. Right. Well I I had a conversation with Soton. I had a conversation with someone at uh King Arthur about this and I asked them what they add to their cake flour to mimic the chlorination which is what you need to keep the high ratio cakes up, you know, obviously.
+
+[9:10] And they add so I think they add some sort of um pre gelatinized wheat starch to it because they do add wheat starch to it. And I was but you don't think it's effective enough or is it brand by brand? No, as soon as they came out with the latest version I asked them to send it to me and I was so disappointed it looked like nothing. And I love King Arthur flour, but not the cake flour. It doesn't the cake doesn't look like anything like it is on the box, even though I followed the instructions the way I'd expect people to follow mine.
+
+[9:37] But what I advised them to do is what they do in England. And that's he they heat treat the flour and that's almost identical to the bleaching. The only difference is a slight difference in flavor because chlorine bleach gives a kind of floral quality but the point is it has that fine texture which it does not have an unbleached flour. I've really thoroughly investigated this because the entire British commonwealth can't use bleach flour. So it was someone in named Kate Colick in the UK in in Devon, England, who actually tried the heat treatment that they do in industry and found that it worked.
+
+[10:10] And I actually went sit with her I went to work with her in England to see the difference between our flour and their flour so that was a wonderful thing because people all over the world then were able to make cakes that that rose to the same height and had the same fine texture. I call it cake flour. So what's the uh what's the procedure then for the for the bake out. Well, I have actually a chapter in all of my books since the bake including the baking bible. Um what you do is I can't tell you exactly how long, but you microwave it for a few minutes, and then she says it's best to let it sit overnight because it gets slightly loses some of its moisture, but still would work.
+
+[10:52] And then it's just like another flower, fl uh like a bleached cake flour. Interesting. Uh do some research. I will do some I will do some research. Well, she was wondering why her cakes came out so much lower than mine, and then she started checking what they do in industry because the cakes that you purchase commercially were fine, and she found that that's what they do, they heat treat.
+
+[11:12] And I think it's made it available now to the consumer in England, which is wonderful. Well, it's not a U anymore, but well, you know, our USDA is so strict that you would think that they wouldn't allow it if something was bad and and chlorine dissipates, so I don't really understand, but I don't get into the politics of it, I just do what works and and I'm glad that we can still have it. I mean it's added to half of our water supplies. I think the issue. Yeah, I think that the uh the issue is that there's such a revulsion against um the level of intervention in something like flour and how far it's gotten away from uh you know, wheat as a as a as a thing, that they you know, they're throwing away the baby with the bath water, and I would bet that 99 out of a hundred people don't understand that the the bleaching isn't just about because there's there's other ways of bleaching as well, right?
+
+[12:10] That don't that don't have the effect that you and I want, right? It's chlorine bleach specifically isn't just about making the flour white, it's about it's about increasing its uh ability to uh hold water so that you can do a high ratio cake, right? So it because of our ingredients. Right. So because I see it as a functional ingredient, it there's nothing at all bad about it.
+
+[12:30] But whereas people see it as like, oh, white flour is bad flour, therefore if it's whiter, it's more bad. I think that's what it's from. I don't know. Well, and also there's a whole political issue of GMO. My current editor wouldn't even allow to put GMO.
+
+[12:46] I had to say um, what is the other word with when something is oh organic for these cornstarch? And actually Runford is not organic, it's GMO, and that's why it works better in the Genoise. It makes it the finer texture. Using the right amount of egg yolks and the non-GMO cornstarch, you get the finest texture. And this all began because somebody wrote to me saying, well, the sudden question was of course, and it never had been.
+
+[13:11] And I thought, okay, well, I don't know what she's doing, but how can I know? And then I it happened to me on a 12-inch wedding cake, Shen was, and that's when I got in Z and found out it was the the lap of the full amount of the egg yolk, and it was using non-GMO cornstarch that would make the that would help. Well, so what's uh I wonder I'd have to look at it what the difference in the starch grace also that's another thing nobody really thinks about is the actual structure of starch granules being different from starch to starch. You know what I mean? It's like something that people Yeah, this is the thing, and the baking powder, the aluminum baking powder, you might not notice in a cake, but in a pie crust, if you use aluminum based baking powder, which is more commonly available, it gives a nasty taste.
+
+[13:55] I remember we were doing the photo shoot for the pastry bible, and Maria Guarnishelli said, This tastes awful. And I said, Well, I asked Roscoe Betzel, who was the stylist, I said, What what kind of baking powder did you use? And he said, just the regular one, argo, whatever it is. And I said, That's it. And in a cookie, you can really taste that.
+
+[14:13] Because there's so little else going on. With a cake there's so many elements, maybe you can get away with it, but not with cookie or pie crust. So speaking of cookies a lot of people don't even use baking powder. It's being a cookie on a pie crust because Yeah I don't use it either. You use it you you like it?
+
+[14:27] I don't I I I don't really I don't use it much. I try to do everything to keep it as as you know not puffy as possible. I dock the heck out of my when I blind bake I don't you know I dock the hell out of it so that it doesn't puff up 'cause I don't use pie weights. I hate pie weights. I hate them.
+
+[14:44] I don't do that. Well yes and no I sometimes use pie weights because I don't want if for example making a pecan pie, I don't want to have any holes that may not fill up because they'll stick ruthlessly to the bottom of the pan of the plate. But yes, but with cookies in order to keep them from puffing up it and Hal would agree, I'm Harold McGee, that if you use baking if you use um unbleached flour, then it ties up more of the water and doesn't puff as much and also doesn't spread as much. And those I mean cookies are very simple but there's so few ingredients but to understand what the different ones do gives you control to get what you want. And a lot of people say well I want crunchy, I want flat, I want puffy this is how you get it by this few simple ingredients and how you use them.
+
+[15:30] Like baking soda, it will make the cookies brown more and more quickly. It doesn't just take away acidity if you're using brown sugar, it's also used for browning. So there are a lot of interesting things to know. And you know the thing is people say cookies are so easy, and they are, except that compared to a cake. If you're making one batter, you just put it in the pan and it bakes.
+
+[15:51] But if you're making cookies, you have to shape at least twelve. So it's a little bit more labor intensive, but they are more forgiving. But you can take a pinch of dough off of it, the batch, and see is it spreading too much? Do I maybe need to add some more flour? It's too sticky, or it's not sweet enough.
+
+[16:09] I can knead in more sugar. Can't do that with a pie crust. It would become a cardboard pie crust. Going back to leaveners and the British, you ever play around with uh ammonia-based leaveners and those thin cookies that they bake out dry so you can't smell the ammonia anymore? I've never tried it.
+
+[16:27] I did try it once and I didn't wasn't impressed. I'd rather use something that well, it's more like baking powder, baking soda, but where combination is already done for you. I saw no difference, no benefit. And I have a lot of really skinny cookies on the cookie bible. Yeah, I wonder why they use it over there.
+
+[16:44] Was it cheaper? Is it just what they're used to? Like I I never understood why bother getting into something that if you don't fully bake it out, it makes everything unpalatable. I never understood it. Really?
+
+[16:54] Yeah. Yeah, I didn't either, to be honest. Maybe they didn't ha they didn't have availability of the other stuff, you know. Maybe. Uh and also it doesn't have a shelf life the way baking powder does.
+
+[17:05] Really? I I I guess it probably would because it's volatile, right? So it'll go off. I mean, literally, go off. Uh it will but if it's not if it's not stored, but baking powder, even if you store it tightly is after a year.
+
+[17:17] That's why I always date money stopping as effective. Well, one of the things you write in the cookie bible is that uh is that the the volume to weight ratio of baking powder is very dependent on your humidity. Did I write that? You did. I absolutely do not remember that.
+
+[17:34] Yes, you did. Because these days humidity is pretty well controlled in most places. That's true. I mean, I find here I am yeah. What's your humidity?
+
+[17:43] What's your like my average humidity is a lot lower than I thought because I have the air conditioner on in the summer, so my average humidity in my house is a lot lower than I would have expected. And my flowers therefore are a lot drier. You know what I mean? Like w and what I'm writing a book now, um, most supposedly. And uh, you know, I was kind of really worried about water in my dry ingredients, like how much moisture is there.
+
+[18:04] So, you know, I did a pretty careful measurement of uh, you know, with very calibrated humidities, and it's quite a huge difference. And my house uh but then my house is a lot drier than I thought it was. Do you find that the average person's house is drier than they think it is? Well, you know, thermoworks now that they have this wonderful thermopen that is accurate too within a second. They also now have something that will measure humidity, but I don't go around to people's houses taking the humidity level.
+
+[18:32] Although it's tempting sometimes. But I've worked in you know all over the country and I have not found any difference really in how things work other than meringue. If it's really humid, there could be a problem with meringue. But that's something also that is in addition to being proud of having converted people to weights over volume, is that also uh using the right amount of baking of cream of tartar with egg whites, you'll never dry out the egg whites. You know, all the instructions say beat until stiff but not dry, and if you dry them out, they break down so that you lose all your aeration in the like an angel food or chiffon.
+
+[19:07] But if you use an eighth of a teaspoon of cream of tartar, which isn't acid, uh that uh to one egg white, which normally had been thirty grams or uh two tablespoons, each could can be till the cows come home. Well cows may not come home in the half hour, but I've beaten as long as a half hour and it never breaks down. The thing is that if you don't weigh or at least take the volume, you're now getting more yolk or more white because if there's less yolk, that means there's more white. You know, so that's one of the things that's really invaluable to know because it makes a big difference. And why do you prefer cream of cream of tartar humidity?
+
+[19:46] Right, right why do you prefer cream of uh tartar as opposed to other acids, let's say lemon juice, just because it has less of a flavor impact or easier to dose for you or all the no, not that it's easier to dose, but that it's the right level of acidity. And it's just as natural it's a byproduct with the winemaking industry. Well I'm for it. It has an unnatural kind of chemical yeah yeah it's just it works and I've found that it never gets old. You know another in other words it it doesn't dissipate.
+
+[20:16] But you've also lemon juice would probably work too, but you're right. It would give it flavor. And I don't necessarily want that. And you wrote that though if you add either too little or too much it doesn't stabilize it. Like there's a very sharp kind of peak of stabilization.
+
+[20:29] It's right around that that level of um that level of uh added acid, correct? Well this is the thing I tested and I kept increasing it little by little and at a certain point it went the other direction and it didn't help. But that's another issue is that no two sets of baking of measuring spoons is the same. So if you have to have a little bit of leeway. Now the one thing that really changes the weight by measuring is baking powder I've discovered.
+
+[20:57] And the only way you can get an actual total standard is either by weighing or by sifting it into the spoon and then it's always the same. But salt is always six grams per teaspoon. Um baking soda's always the same five point five. But baking powder varies. And it's not because it settles.
+
+[21:16] I don't maybe it does. I just have never gotten to the bottom of it. What and that's why I have a really fine skill for weighing. At least I can set the standard. Yeah wait you what what brand uh what brand of salt do you use by the way?
+
+[21:28] What's your go to salt? Well I'm glad you asked me that because I can never understand why people would use kosher salt for baking. I I use a fine sea salt. I always say well you're not closer to God because you're using kosher salt you know I mean it's great for your salting chicken or meat but not for baking. I don't k I use it And I use Balan but any fine salt.
+
+[21:51] I use uh I use it for everything because it's what I have you know what I mean. I only stock kind of finishing salts and and diamond kosher but um but I get your point and so it's also like on a stove top kosher is so much easier I mean I I I get your point with baking, but you know on a stovetop kosher is so much easier to dose than um you know if you're just doing it by hand. You know what I'm saying? Um exactly right so what I do is I always dissolve my salt in the liquids and not in and never put the salt in with the solids. I guess that's the way I get around it but it would be brilliant.
+
+[22:30] Yeah. Well yeah I guess otherwise I was going to say it would be hard to distribute evenly but but dissolving it in the liquid is perfect solution. Yeah. No way I'm impressed. I hadn't thought of it.
+
+[22:40] Well you know who thought of it is uh my uh is uh Monroe Boston Strauss. Uh yeah. They uh who I live. Oh a pie marches on? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[22:50] Yeah. And then you want to hear something really funny about a mu our mutual friend Ha Harold McGee. Sure. I wrote to thank him some years back about thanking him for coming up with a wonderful technique of rolling the the butter with the flour in a fuel bag to flatten it out to make pie crust more fl flaky, which works beautifully. And you know what he broke back?
+
+[23:11] You were the one who taught me that. I mean, here are all these people not giving credit and acknowledgment for what they've learned from other people and here we are trying to pass it to each each other. Well, you know, uh that's something I notice in your writing is you always take some time to say where you got a recipe from or where you got an idea from. And there was a period where people I don't think were doing that as much, but I find that in the long run, in the long term, it makes the world a richer place for people to reach back in their writing and sh and that allows it it just allows for I I like to think of a like like a scholarship of a recipe or of a technique, and it just is so generous to say where something came from and also makes I think the writer look smarter, saying, you know, that this is where they got it from. Don't you or no?
+
+[24:04] I love that you said that. That's the way you said it. It's so beautiful. Yeah, that's the kind of history I'm interested in. We all build on each other.
+
+[24:11] I mean, I if I try to think about something I really invented from scratch, I do have one thing. It's chocolate rolled fondant, which is now being produced commercially in Australia, but there was no such thing. There was plastique which wasn't worth eating. But I didn't create fondant. I based that on a white fountain.
+
+[24:28] So yeah, I mean, there's nothing that people invent totally. So it's really interesting to see where things come from, how they evolve, and how they changed when the ingredients change or the technique changes. I was talking to somebody, you know, r randomly, right? And they were like, Oh, I do w everyone just gets their information off of YouTube and TikTok now. Everyone can know everything.
+
+[25:01] And I was like, Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. Everything has become much smaller, is all I can say. First of all, TikTok is great for quick tips.
+
+[25:11] And I love tips. But for recipes, I wouldn't go there. I mean, the thing is that initially I thought that video was the way to go. And I did video and I had a PBS show. But the best way is really seeing it step by step.
+
+[25:24] And only one of my books, Roses Baking Basics, has step by step for every recipe. And even I like to look at those steps and oh yeah, that's the way it's supposed to look like at that stage or this stage. But if you're trying to do a video, you have to keep stopping it with your sticky fingers, you know. Oh, I didn't miss that part. You know what I mean?
+
+[25:42] Right. Well, yeah, and I also like what you said that you go back and look at your at your own stuff, and I think people I mean, you you've been writing books since nineteen eighty-one, right? Roughly since nineteen eighty one. And so when you've been doing something at a high level for a long time, it's like when you're cooking in a restaurant, like you get really good at a particular dish, and your hands and your brain and everything is tied together. And then if you don't do it for five, ten years, it's not that you've completely forgotten it, but it's not you're not at the same place.
+
+[26:18] And it's unreasonable to think that anybody could stay at the same place forever without doing it all the time. You know what I mean? Exactly. I've often thought of that because people say, well it's your recipe, why don't you remember it? After 13 books and they're big books.
+
+[26:35] I can't remember my recipes. Maybe some of them I do, but during COVID I did so much cooking that I actually did remember a lot of things. What's more, it was kind of liberating because I didn't have to follow what I'd written. At one point I said, well it says blah blah blah and I thought wait a minute it's me. I'm the one who can change it.
+
+[26:52] I don't have to follow you know although y you are very clear that and and you know this is something that anyone who writes recipes has to has to worry about. At least make it once the way it's written. And just it's make it once the way it's written please. That's exactly what I say. Yeah.
+
+[27:07] Yeah. Yeah and if you want to substitute at least substitute just one ingredient. You'll really appreciate this having had the same editor as as I, Maria Gorna Shelley. And we were at um Macy's Degustadus I was doing it an event and her husband came John came along and somebody stood up and asked the following question can you s substitute something for the banana? And I said in the banana cake?
+
+[27:32] And before I could say anything more, I mean like why make the banana cake John pipes up with yeah ban watermelon and it was just the perfect New York squelch. You know the first thing you learn and then it that's perfect. The um the first thing you learn in basic science in high school, you know junior high school is the variable. Don't do more than one variable at a time because otherwise you don't know what is creating the effect that you're getting. Yeah it really depresses me when I read I don't like that word substitute.
+
+[28:01] Yeah, when I read uh reviews of recipes and like either they hated it and they subbed out half the reci uh half the recipe or they loved it and they subbed out half the recipe. I'm like, neither. Neither, please. You know what I mean? Uh it's just somebody re Yeah, somebody just somebody recently just wrote to me that that uh which of the c are cookies and the cookie bible are my favorite that aren't as sweet as other ones.
+
+[28:25] I thought, oh god. You know, the thing is that I don't like cookies that are too sweet. None of them is too sweet except for meringues. And in order like a macaron, I never liked them because they're so sweet. But Thomas Keller came up with a wonderful concept of making moussoline buttercream as a kind of barrier with lemon, the lemon curd version of it, and the lemon curd in the center, so it really mitigates against all that sweetness.
+
+[28:49] So what I came up with is an answer, first of all, the peppercockers have a lot of spice, so you don't get a sense of these are too sweet. But the ones that really aren't too sweet at all are the jumbles because they have just a bare amount of dough enough to hold together all the nuts. And nuts are unsweet. If anything, they're a little salty, which is nice. But it was hard to answer.
+
+[29:10] At first I thought, okay, I'm not answering. And my husband would he said, Well, you have to answer, you know, because we answer everybody. And that's the benefit of having a blog because every book has errors in it. I mean, it has a really interesting production error. One of my favorite recipes is the oatmeal cookies, and well, I I had the the volume is correct, I think it's one and a half cups, but the weight was ninety grams and it was correct in the galleys.
+
+[29:34] You know, you're you know, not everybody knows galleys is the first stage that they send out for advanced copies. And they're maddening, they're so they're maddening. They're maddening. It's so much is wrong in a galley and they don't want to change anything. I know.
+
+[29:47] Well, wait until you hear what happens. So then the hard copy and the PDF comes out and the ninety grams becomes fifty-two grams. Nobody can figure out how or why. So you wring your hands. Yeah, but there is the benefit of having a blog where you can put errata, which we now have changed to corrections because people thought it was a porn thing.
+
+[30:06] It's not erotic, it's errata, which means which means error in Latin. Although I guess I guess we could combine them. We can we could do a com combination of the two and something. Uh so this reminds me of a funny story. I won't call out the actual author, but Nastasi and I have a mutual friend who when they did the the galleys, they put in the low res uh images into the galleys.
+
+[30:30] Okay. Wait for it. Stas, you know what I'm gonna say, right? I'm not gonna say who it is. But uh yeah, don't give away.
+
+[30:36] I won't give away who it was. But then for the first printing, they actually printed it with the low res JPEGs. So it looked like uh like a a high school science report circa like nineteen ninety-eight. And I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, publishing paper. I didn't see that one, and I get a lot of cookbooks you could imagine.
+
+[30:59] Yeah, that was depressing. He he he oh, the other thing that um again, Stas, don't worry, I'm not gonna say who it was, but like he is also extremely meticulous person. You know what I mean? So it's like I don't know, I think it almost killed him. Anyway, uh I'm pretty sure it almost goes.
+
+[31:17] So uh interesting, interesting. But at least the recipes will still work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. It's just people no one will no one will bake 'em because they're gonna be like, why is it so fuzzy?
+
+[31:25] I'm not gonna bake that. It's too fuzzy. You know what I'm saying? People are the worst. I mean actually that ha actually that happened in one of my books too.
+
+[31:32] I can't even remember which I think is the PhD Bible, and not in the first printing, but somehow they came out fuzzy. And you know what happened with the King Bible is that I was gonna send it to Oprah. I did send it to Oprah Winfrey because she was considering getting married at that time, to offer to make her cake, and I signed it and I opened it up pretending I was Oprah to see how she would feel, and it was upside down. Everything was upside down. Oh, I know.
+
+[32:00] And then on Amazon, if that happens, they're like, Book was printed upside down, one star, and you're like, Come on, people. Exactly. They make your book look yeah. Yeah, people they can ruin you. For no reason, for no apparent reason.
+
+[32:14] Uh, there's a there's a book that I saw. Yeah, that like yeah, that had like the first printing was wrong, and if you look at their Amazon review, the Amazon review, and then people don't buy the book because of the Amazon review, 'cause no one reads to see why it has a low Amazon review. I like to do that because I love to hate poorly done reviews. Like I love to go on Amazon, find reviews that I find are made by execles execrable stupid people and figure and like just like go to town on them. And my wife's like, Again, Dave, again with the reading the Amazon reviews.
+
+[32:47] And I don't do it on my own because that wouldn't be too heartbreaking, but I do it like on other people's work and it's just like, eh, yeah. You know? Well, this I've gotta tell you the funniest one ever awful one that I ever got was the woman who said she threw the cake bible in the garbage and that and then she her moniker was horse lady, and I I couldn't resist. I wrote my comment back was if I were a horse, I sure wouldn't want you on my back. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't help it.
+
+[33:12] And the head of Amazon at Willie Morrow said, Rose, never put something negative, take it right off. Never respond to a negative way. But you know, sometimes I get the my sense of humor gets the better of me. And of course, she she criticized me for being inappropriate. So you you you say that you throw like, so Yeah, my work in the garbage and I can't say anything negative back.
+
+[33:29] Doesn't make sense. It is not smart to do though. You're whoever your contact was was correct in that it's not in general best not to engage. But on the other hand, I don't, you know, cra crap on uh crap on that person, crap on horse lady. That's all I'm gonna say.
+
+[33:49] I don't know who I have to tell you that somebody else who c co-criticized me and told me I should cut my hair and have a mole removed on my face. And you know, I wrote to her I mentioned that Nigella Lawson has even longer hair and that you know that this is I I just answered her in a nice way and she turned out to be my greatest ally. Turns out she was in South America and she loved my work and you know, it's just w it's true, it's a truism, but it really works that if you can respond with kindness, maybe you have a better chance of getting a good response back. But you'll never get a good response back with a negative. Right.
+
+[34:22] Why did she care about the length of your hair? Like why was that even germane to like like your cookbook writing skills? Because she thought it's a baker that it wasn't appropriate to have hair that might get into the baking. But the problem is that if you have short hair, you can't see when it gets in the in the in the battery, but if you've long hair it's very obvious. So it's almost an advantage.
+
+[34:41] Yeah. Ding ding ding ding. Yeah. So people want to look. They j they just want to criticize, but they have to find something to find fault with.
+
+[34:48] Ain't that the truth. Some people that is and nowadays basically I feel it's even more hardcore because uh it's much easier to criticize something than it is to than it is to f like actually understand and say something constructive or nice, and so that it's like there's just so much criticism out there because it's just so much easier, you know? Criticism is so much easier. And people enjoy reading that more too. Yeah.
+
+[35:10] Yeah. So uh before we talk more cookie, and I have a lot of cookie to talk to in the next uh uh in the next 24 minutes and 39 seconds but uh I want to hear a little bit about this so you wrote for you know up until like 2002, 2003, 2004, right? So we're talking about you've already done cake Bible, you've already done uh pastry Bible, you've already done or had almost finished at least uh bread bible and uh and all by yourself. Not me, I'm not gonna say no one's an island, but you know what I mean like not with a collaborator. And then all of a sudden you start corresponding with this guy, Woody Woolston, and becomes your collaborator.
+
+[35:52] And now after your your husband passed in 2019, now you're married and collaborating. Like what's that like at the at like after you've already done so much work to have a collaborator with you, what what is that like? I never would have expected that I could trust somebody on that level. And when I first met him he baked wonderful cakes from the books. He actually brought two that he'd made but he didn't really have the knowledge of baking the way I do.
+
+[36:20] So he was totally trainable. It reminds me of when I went to study at Wilton cake decorating and I never squeezed anything out of a page tube bag and they said this is great. You'll learn the Wilton way that you don't have to unlearn stuff. So over the years he kept getting better and better and what a miracle it is to have somebody who can actually help me do stuff and come up with things and have a different point of view who excels at Excel I have a horror of the spreadsheet. You know, I mean he offers a lot of things that I wouldn't have.
+
+[36:50] And I remember when I worked for Dr. Goodbuddy many years ago, that's Mary Goodbody's father. She's one of the people who she and Chris Kimball started Cooks Magazine. And when I worked with him, he said marriage is the double barreled approach to life. And I'm not one who shoots guns, so I didn't know what he meant.
+
+[37:06] So I asked for a definition. And he said that you have a larger vision than just looking through your own personal one. So working with Woody now, I don't think I could do that revision for the cake bible. It's too massive if I didn't have him to work with. It's just the greatest gift to have this.
+
+[37:24] And of course, when we were about to finish, it was about to go to press, the baking basics, or the ice cream book. Or no, maybe it was the cooking book. Anyway, the point is that it was about to go to press and they said you cannot make a single other change or correction. And I said, Woody, this is it. It's our last chance.
+
+[37:43] And I wrote to the editor, Well, I do have one more to make. And that's instead of saying to Woody, my assistant or my associate, I want to add, and now my husband. And I got the response back, wow. So that must be the cookie Bible, because it's recent. And here's how it happened.
+
+[38:00] I mean, I felt like we were married by then because before my my late husband died, uh Elliot, he said to each of us separately, Woody, you should move in and take care of Rose. So it was just like a a blessing that he gave and a very loving thing too. So Woody one day said, Could I have a wedding ring? Could I get a wedding ring? And I said, Here is my Honda keychain key ring.
+
+[38:25] And it was a perfect fit. And so the ring we designed for him is one like a key ring. I like the original one. It's kind of sentimental. The Honda.
+
+[38:36] Yeah. I've lost uh I I don't take my my wedding ring off when I um when I cook or when I do anything, and yet I've lost one of them was crimped around my hand and had to be cut off. And one I lost a lot of weight and I lost it in the surf. Another I lost literally milking a cow. So I'm like on my fourth ring.
+
+[38:57] Isn't that weird? You should have it, you should just have it tattooed on. I know somebody who does that. That'd be easier. You know what you know what I have now?
+
+[39:04] I'm not into tattoos. My brother, my brother-in-law, Wiley, you know, Dufrein chef, so he loves anything stainless. So he's really yeah, he turned me on to stainless steel rings. So my wedding ring now is stainless, very chef friendly, stainless ring. Yeah.
+
+[39:20] I mean, obviously gold. I have a second one. I have my grandmother's well, mine is from 19, my grandmother's is from 1933. It's that circle of diamonds. And so I had one made to look like a key ring.
+
+[39:32] That's a circle of black diamonds. And then that ring finger for some reason started getting swollen. And I thought maybe black diamonds have a bad effect. I'm not sure it's good for the body to wear things full-time. I mean, without ever taking taking it off.
+
+[39:46] Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Stainless is so inert. So far, I haven't taken it off. Yeah, I haven't lost this one yet. That's why I'm thinking stainless is brilliant.
+
+[39:52] Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and also Wiley living these days. Wiley lives uh uh he lives in uh I don't care what what's that neighborhood that's right to the right to the uh west of Union Square? Like right to the west and just it's not Chelsea, maybe it's kind of below Chelsea. It's I don't know what the name of it is.
+
+[40:15] It's without name. It's not grand. It's not grammarcy, it's below Chelsea. It's like, I don't know. He can walk to Union Square Green Market very quickly.
+
+[40:25] Sort of West Village, maybe. I mean, I've lived in that area almost all my life. It's above. Anyway, I love Wiley. Please say hello to him.
+
+[40:29] Yeah. For those who for those who who know him personally, he lives in the house that he grew. He lives in now in the apartment he grew up in. They bought it from his mom. So his mom decided to move up to uh uh Connecticut.
+
+[40:46] Uh and uh yeah, so they live in in that apartment now, so it's nice. It's nice. And my wife did the redesign for it because my wife's an architect, so you know, keep keep it all in the family, keep it all in the family. Really? Yeah.
+
+[40:58] Uh oh, it's nice getting to know you here. I I mean, we only met that two seconds, and maybe we we actually had a chance to exchange some real information other than cooking. So speaking of real information, so one of the so your first book, by the way, uh the first book that you wrote was Romantic and Classic Cakes, right? And it was for the Great American Cooking School series, which I don't own. It's one of those weird series I don't own.
+
+[41:23] Why don't I own that series? We gotta have that on Classics in the Field at some point. Like, what do you think of that series? Oh, Irena was amazing. She really gave me my dress rehearsal book of how to write a cookbook.
+
+[41:36] In fact, I had submitted it single space. That was before computers are the way they are today. I think it was the word processor, and she had to pay somebody to retype the entire thing. We were all learning. And I also learned to proofread without watching television at the same time, because it's one mistake.
+
+[41:53] It was I think the flower had to be three quarters of a cup, and I had made it one quarter of a cup. At least the the volume, I mean the volume wasn't correct, but the weight was correct. I think I'd weights, so I've I've always had weights. But Arena, oh I remember when I went to Gene to Gina DeLuca and I said to Georgia with great pride, I have a cookbook coming out, and maybe you'll carry it here. And he said, what is it?
+
+[42:14] And I said it's part of the Great American School Cooking Series. And he said, Oh, we don't carry series here. But guess what they carried the series because it was so well done. Yeah. Well and you know I find especially you know in the in this sixties, seventies, eighties, and I don't know, I I stopped following it after that.
+
+[42:37] Some of the best cook some of my favorite cookbooks are series, right? I mean like even if they're not really cookbooks like Time Life series. Everyone loves the Time Life series. Like why would you be anti-every one of those he was kind of a snob, you know? But I can't false them totally because they started something that was really unique and wonderful.
+
+[42:57] I live two blocks away from Dina DeLuca. I knew when I went in there my life would change. So yeah. Well he got over it. Your and your books have outlived Dina DeLuca so there you have it.
+
+[43:10] Not all of them. My two my two savory books tanked. I think I asked Julia Child if I if she thought I could write a savory book if it would be accepted and she said it's very hard to cross that border. She said some people have done it but it's not easy. And she was right.
+
+[43:25] And people treasure those two books is melting pot. I think you can get it for fifty cents on Amazon. Oh and certainly Kitchen Arts and Letters can get any book that's been remainder. Uh they don't call the the remainder that's not a nice word but melting pot and celebrations are the two books. No check 'em out people.
+
+[43:42] Check 'em out while they're still cheap. We we'll get all the people to uh you know to to buy 'em and then they you know then they'll become collectible. Uh but that series had some things once you put something in print, it's always there. It's always out there like for better or worse. Well uh you know what I don't have a copy of and I feel a little bit bad when I found out one of the things that was in it and the pictures are on your blog.
+
+[44:02] Your blog by the way is uh real baking with rose and you take questions in like month blocks and then answer them in month blocks. Is that how it works or in like two month blocks no we answer them within 48 hours. A couple of them were on book tour. Oh and even then we've been answering questions like that low sugar one. Right so you can ask you can ask you can ask questions and have them answer if you go to real baking with rose dot com.
+
+[44:27] So you you had your original out of generosity. But the thing is that it it it benefits us too because we find out what things people need to know, what things people have a problem with. So it's a wonderful community of bakers actually all over the world but where I had a million over a million a year now it's down to so much less because everybody's doing the TikTok, the reels, the Instagram, the Facebook but we're still keeping it because it's worth it to have a way to reach people and to have people reach us. So you did a I saw this only on your on your blog, but you did a cookie book Christmas cookie book in I don't know when ninety one, ninety something like this and in it you're 91 you look good. You do a a gingerbread cathedral of Notre Dame and you have a picture Dam Yeah.
+
+[45:18] Yeah well the an architect actually did the drawings of putting it together and when Notre Dame was burning and it's my favorite structure in the universe I actually posted that picture then. Oh, that's me. Uh yeah. You know what inspired it? Is that in in in the first place is that the stained glass cookies.
+
+[45:39] I thought what a wonderful Rose Cathedral window it would be, you know. So I always thought I would do a cathedral with it. But I didn't even put it in the cookie bible. I don't mean Notre Dame, I mean the stained glass cookies because I've tried every conceivable candy and none of them melts without making holes in it. So the only way you could do it is with isomalt, which I don't even use.
+
+[46:00] It's a cake decorating kind of thing. Where it's a sugar and you can tempt it. If somebody was determined or wanted to enter a contest. And yet people have entered contests with using my recipe and my instructions without credit to me. I'm but you don't get credit when you enter for a contest.
+
+[46:16] And somebody even won a second place ribbon someplace with it. I love when people are doing things, especially when kids use the book for or any of my books and win f uh 4-H Fair prizes and their parents tell me that. And you know, the thing is when my editor said I should do a book for kids, I said, Kids are doing a better job using my books than grown-ups because they follow directions. They don't think, Oh, I know better. You know.
+
+[46:41] But then I said, I'll do a book for kids. If you can give me step by step I thought that would be the deal breaker. I went step by step of every recipe. And she said, Sure. And that became Rose's baking basics.
+
+[46:55] Huh. Funny how things happen. Yeah. Uh so speaking of decorations on cookies, let's uh let me get to some of my questions because I haven't even asked any qu I haven't I haven't talked about Jack's backpack trip. I haven't done anything.
+
+[47:09] I'm I'm I'm a bad man. But let's go let's go. Maybe I'll go in reverse. I'll go in reverse. On egg whites.
+
+[47:18] You are very clear on egg whites that you like to crack them several days before you're going to whip them. Now, I always I know about uh you know not using hyper fresh egg whites, right? And you know, interesting about eggs, the longer they are around, the more alkaline the egg white be becomes. But what's the advantage of cracking out the whites a couple of days ahead of time? I don't think I say that for every time you whip egg whites, it's just for the macaroma that are so sensitive to everything.
+
+[47:52] And I have learned about studies at La Notre. Couple recipes you do. Okay, because I'm gonna now it's have to check. Because with a macaron, when I studied baking in at La Notre and uh was at the time not in Paris, but Plaisier, and they said older egg whites are the best, and you just leave them at room temperature for a week. Well, I found out with macaroni such a thing as too old in egg white.
+
+[48:15] And we're not talking about health issues here, we're talking about how they perform. So if they're too young and they're too viscous, it's harder to get as much you know, but there's a big controversy about that because if you use, for example, a cold egg white, it will be more stable, but it won't whip as quickly or maybe as high, but it won't break down as much. And of course using a claim of tartar obviates the whole problem. And don't shoot me, but you you said if I use my airpod that I might blank out, and sure enough I got the second warning. But I have a second airpod, so don't give up on me because if it does suddenly stop, I'll just plug in the other one.
+
+[48:51] Only for only for you. Only for you. All right, go ahead. Uh the airpods are so great. I mean you get such good quality.
+
+[48:59] All right, so uh so about so did you want to know anything else about my feelings for egg whites? The biggest issue is not getting a single trace of oil or fat on it. And if you even get a spot of egg yolk, you can suck it up. It's like a vacuum using the shell, it will take it out. But if it's a big blotch, there's no getting rid of it and it will never whip with all the queen of tartar in the world, it won't whip.
+
+[49:20] Well, and you also are uh uh So that's why you have to really rinse the glass. You're a fan of uh of the small bowl white by white, then into the big bowl. That is the that is the I think the only way to do it. And the cleaning Yeah, because I remember once making the uh Genoa a cake yes, a white cake with ac actually it was uh a wedding cake, and so when I was on the twentieth egg, that's when the yolk broke. I thought that's it.
+
+[49:47] That's it. That's it. Now you have to make some sort of putrid egg white omelet with it, some sort of horrible monstrosity. Uh you want to hear something else about eggs? I love duck eggs, but the whites don't whip well.
+
+[50:00] So when I'm using something like a lemon curd, I'll use the duck egg yolks. Oh my god, they're so flavorful and the consistency is thicker. Yeah, try that. I even tried an ostrich egg because I was tired of separating all those eggs. You know, and I thought, let me see w uh you don't have to do it once.
+
+[50:17] We have it on our I think it's on the Instagram and Facebook, how we had a s what he had to thaw the egg in half. It's very hard to crack an ostrich egg. So he wanted to just drop it on the floor onto a sheep pan, but I said, but then it may the yolk will break and then we can't test it. You know So we actually have all this written up. So it's disappointing.
+
+[50:39] I thought that will be the answer to having to crack all those eggs. But of course, commercial pee in the commercial industry, you can buy the egg whites or the egg yolk separately. I think you can get egg whites in the supermarket, but you can't get the yolk. Well, you actually said that uh you don't mind whipping uh you don't mind whipping box whites. You say they whip fine in your book.
+
+[50:58] Yes. Because they have acidity added, but the eggs that are pasteurized in the shell, this is very interesting for people who are immune compromised and for things that don't actually cook the eggs completely, is that if you use pasteurized eggs in the shell and you're using your egg whites, you have to use double the queen of tartar and whip longer and it's more stable than any other egg white. Quite amazing. Took a while to get that to get to the bottom of that. How did the ostrich egg whites whip?
+
+[51:28] You know, it was so disappointing, I can't even remember. I think that wasn't the test, but I can't remember what it was that we were trying to do. I saw the egg yolk was so pale and I was expecting it. Maybe it wasn't a free range ostracized. I have to go back to so you still have to take more than one thing out 'cause they're multiply yolked.
+
+[51:46] I mean, yeah, there's kinda they're kinda weird. They're ca they're a weird thing. Really? Yeah. Mine wasn't.
+
+[51:50] Oh, I know. Mine wasn't multiple. But you know, it was a it was a gift from Miro Oskokovic, who's the pastry chef at Gramacy Tavern. He knew that I was dying to try it. So we ha we happened to go to the restaurant and there was this box with a present and it was an ostrich egg.
+
+[52:05] So maybe it was a little old. That could have been long. Everyone I know that has used them uses a Dremel with a cutoff wheel and then scores them with the Dremel all the way around and then washes the dust off before they crack. They're a pain though. They are a pain.
+
+[52:17] Uh all right, now really. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So Homintoshin, you solve the Homintoschen problem. For those of you that don't know what the Homitaschen problem is, the problem is is that you either have to make a subpar dough or they spread out too much.
+
+[52:30] So what's your solution? Yeah, I used to think they were like Kniches and I didn't like them either. I wanted a delicate one. But the solution, which sounds laborious but it's so worth it because you have the best humming fashion in the world, is that you make little circles of of discs of preferably heavy duty foil that can be reused. And then you shape them with using the foil so that the corners stay up rather than flattening into a flat disc.
+
+[52:55] You know, I'm talking about the dough and the filling. It really works. Now is that clear the way I described it? Yeah. You put the dough on top and then you form it with a foil.
+
+[53:05] Yeah but you the foil then ends up like a triconner hat or something, right? To hold it? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[53:10] Uh yeah and it unmolds perfectly and then you just rinse off the foil for the next two. Yeah. Uh now I gotta I gotta ask your your Madeleine recipe is based on your a cake thing. It's not you first of all you say that your Madeline's will last three days and John's looking at me like like I've got three heads because you know everyone knows you're supposed to bake them, eat them. Bake them, eat 'em, bake 'em, eat 'em.
+
+[53:34] And you can keep the dough, but you bake them and then you eat them. But you have a recipe you swear will last three days after it's baked, but it also doesn't use brown butter. So why don't you tell me about the wh the whole your whole take on the Madeline's here. I remember having them at restaurant Danielle and they you have to be a very special person or you don't get them at all. And when you get them, they had just came out of the oven and yes, they get so stale and dry.
+
+[53:59] So I have two solutions. One is to make chocolate ones and brush them with a syrup and then they stay beautifully moist. And the other is not to use the classic medeline battery but to use the lylin and toppy seed which is one of my favorite cookies. Can you hear me? Yeah.
+
+[54:16] I'm just listening. Yeah. Oh, good, because I yeah, I just want to make sure when when there's a silence that my airpod hasn't decided to say goodbye, Rose. Okay. But the uh is that what the answer you were looking for?
+
+[54:29] But I do love using brown butter. In fact, in a chocolate chip cookie, not only do I brown the butter, but I use the brown milk solids and adds immeasurably to the flavor of the cookie. Right. Yeah, I've read a couple a couple of the clarified butter recipes that you have. I can't remember which ones they are, right?
+
+[54:46] You know, when you clarify it, they go a little brown. What about people just subbing in ghee, which has even more of that brown brown milk solid flavor? Do you are you a fan or not a fan? Well, I don't think ghee is as dark as I make it. No.
+
+[55:00] I mean, my friend Shilpa, who is now the ed editor of food art of Bonapet Tea, um, when we went to dinner at her and Nero's house, she gave me a whole jar of ghee because she had flavored it with curry leaves. But it wasn't and I've I've been in India. I don't find the ghee that I never bought commercial ghee in this country, but I don't find ghee as dark. Well it's yeah, it's darker than clarified butter, but not as dark as brown butter. It's like in between.
+
+[55:27] You know what I mean? In between ratio. I did just lose you there. Well, but if you can hear me while you're getting the other airpod in. Uh I have I have to get to the hi.
+
+[55:36] One second. What's that? Uh oh. I got Dave, you'll carry it for a second, won't you? I will, but I'm nervous that I'm not gonna get to the two Patreon comments for for Rose that uh, you know, I want to hear very nice things people have said.
+
+[55:50] So she'll come back on. She'll come back on in a second. While while we're waiting, Jack, backpack, what's up? Jack, we sorry, I was unmuting. Um I'm here, I'm here.
+
+[56:05] Which freeze drive takeaway? Which freeze drive was Supreme? None, because here's the thing. We were like 12k elevation, and I did not realize that the water ratio on these packages would not be accurate. And so, you know, we followed all the instructions exactly, and and everything was just really soupy and not good.
+
+[56:28] So my question to you is why why is that? What what is it about the elevation that changes? I would have guessed. Oh, this is so funny. Yeah.
+
+[56:36] I just heard you say my question. Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello. Hi, yeah, we got you.
+
+[56:41] Okay, I missed the whole I missed the whole part before. I don't know why it took so long to do that. While you were while you were swapping out, I was asking Jack about freeze-dried foods because he just went on a backpack trip and was trying a bunch of freeze-dried foods at altitude over 12,000 feet. And he said all the recipes came out very soupy. And I would have actually expected that they might not work right, but I would have expected actually the opposite because uh water boils off so quickly at high uh altitude that I would have guessed that you would have had to add one more water.
+
+[57:12] So that's kind of interesting. Unless it wasn't hydrating properly. I've been a class for crafty at high altitude. Yeah, actually the cookie bible, bread works well. Cookie Bible says go to the USDA.
+
+[57:29] Gives a bunch of places to go, uh look for high altitude, high altitude stuff. Um, Susan Purdy wrote a book Pie in the Sky, and she actually went to three different altitudes, almost had a divorce because she left her husband for so long to do it. I mean, the baking community. She wanted to actually see how things work at different altitudes. Otherwise, you can only speculate.
+
+[57:52] You just can't know. It's like the proof is in the pudding. It was Cecily Brownstone of A P who is my mentor, and she said, Rose, never be a typewriter cook. And as a typist, I thought, well, what what's wrong with being a typewriter cook? I asked for a definition and she said a typewriter cook is someone who thinks, okay, this will work.
+
+[58:09] I don't have to test it. You always have to test it because you just never know. So I want to read these things from our Patreon guests. Uh this is from Will Robinson. Not a question.
+
+[58:20] But if there's time to mention it, my bread journey started uh with Rose. I read the bread bible cover to cover in one sitting in the fall of twenty thirteen. I had just met my wife and needed to be cooler, so I taught myself how to bake in two weeks when she was at a conference. So basically RLB changed my life. That's from Will Robinson.
+
+[58:37] Uh and then uh Christat writes in RLB was my entry into baking as a science. Her book is worn stained and ganache smeared. Until then, cooking was a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I was uh and am not an intuitive cook. I didn't get it.
+
+[58:51] She introduced me to cooking, I could study, measure, reproduce reliably, and be confident in my results. I am the cook I am today, a passionate amateur and love cooking because of the cake bible. In twenty seventeen I was diagnosed as celiac, uh a blessing for my health, but devastating for my passion. So now I I'm a cook instead of a baker, but I'm learning to use precision, ingredient knowledge, and repeatable results as my guide. Thank you, RLB.
+
+[59:12] Those are from our listeners. Uh oh, those are beautiful. Oh, thanks. And then I mean, don't thank thank them. And then uh in the little time we have left, we shared uh an editor and uh a person for a while in Maria Guarnicelli.
+
+[59:26] You wanna leave us with some Maria Guarnichelle, some choice Maria Guarnicelli uh info on the way out. Well, she was one of the most intelligent people I've ever known, but also in her own opinion, one of the scariest. She said, Yes, I'm crazy. Everybody knows I'm crazy. And one day I was at the uh Grammar Sea Tavern where they had the annual pie contest, and her daughter, who I knew since high school, and since she was in high school, uh, Alex Guarnishelli, she stood up and gave her opinion about five minutes without a single pause, a single um, and she said, Oh, I don't want people to be afraid of me the way that they are of my mother.
+
+[1:00:05] And I said, You're the most articulate person. When I listen to you speak, I and I I speak to you, I feel like I'm stuttering. And she said, Really? Because that's how I feel about you. So the they say the apple didn't fall far from the tree, and she's also brilliant.
+
+[1:00:19] But her daughter, Maria's granddaughter, is maybe the smartest of all of them. I follow her on Instagram. I just love her. So Maria left me with a great deal, and without Maria, there wouldn't have been a cake bible, and there wouldn't have been all these other books. How do you feel?
+
+[1:00:34] I mean, uh I I loved her and Nastasi also loved her. Nastasi, I think, loved her especially because she did scare the crap out of me. Like uh in a good way. You know what I mean? Like, and maybe, you know, now that she's gone is the reason I haven't come out with the second book so far.
+
+[1:00:48] Who knows? Who can know? But she definitely was one of a kind. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, I was with some friends uh after Omnivore Celia Sack and Diane Jacob, and she said they told me that one day they were sitting with a bunch of people, including Flo Breaker, who says he isn't alive anymore, and each person had some bad story to tell.
+
+[1:01:08] And they said, You're the only one who has kind word for Maria. Well, yes, there were only two moments where I let her have it because I've been so, you know, appreciative of who she was. And she said, I'm tired. I'm sick and tired, Rose of me being the monster and you always being Pollyanna and saying the sweet thing. Tell me what you really think.
+
+[1:01:28] And I said, Are you gonna interrupt me if I do? Because that's what she would do. And she said, No, I'll listen. And I said, Working with you is like being subjected to hazardous waste. Wow.
+
+[1:01:38] Wow. She didn't know that was in me. I didn't know that was in me. But after spending like ten years of taking her verbal abuse, which you know she gave so much, but she also let you have it, even if you didn't deserve it. She was filled with anger, and uh, you know, that was everybody knows it about her.
+
+[1:01:53] And she I think she believed that in order to be a genius, you had to be that way. I don't agree. She sure was a genius. Yes, she was. And there's a lot of love between us.
+
+[1:02:03] Yeah. We have been talking with Rose Levy Bahrenbaum about her new book, The Cookie Bible, and a bunch of other things. Rose, thank you so much for coming on. Uh maybe sometime you come on again. I'd love to meet you in person.
+
+[1:02:16] Alrighty. Cooking issues. We should we should figure that out. All right. Okay, thank you guys, Nestie.
+
+[1:02:21] I mean Nasty. I'm mispronouncing your name, forgive me. Okay.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave, our own host of Cooking is Shoes coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, the Rockefeller Center at New Stan Studios. Join as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? I'm good.
+
+[0:22] Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Anything fun happening? Anything anything good in Nastasia Land?
+
+[0:26] No. Just doing Amazon stuff. Well, isn't that some good news? Yeah, go Quinn. Yeah.
+
+[0:32] So Quinn. Well, well, Quinn Quinn Quinn's also here. Hey, Quinn. Hey. Quinn has managed to do what no one else could do on Earth.
+
+[0:42] We think. I mean, I kind of want to jinx it just so that my life can continue to be the way it has been or all of our lives can. But uh somehow Quinn has magically made it such that Amazon now considers us a legitimate company once again. So yeah. It's very exciting.
+
+[1:00] It is it is it it well, my personal account is now should be reactivated. I think he completely shut yours down forever and said that you were a scammer. Perfect. Yeah. So for those of you that don't know, uh Amazon decided that we were bad actors.
+
+[1:15] I don't know why. We don't know why. I think Quinn still doesn't know why, right? You don't know. Uh no, uh, no, I know.
+
+[1:21] Oh, okay. What was it? Well, okay. I don't know what the inciting incident is, but somebody did keep making actual accounts that we did control. Control is a very uh with our emails.
+
+[1:40] Ah, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Control would imply a level of uh agency that we didn't really yeah, or execute. And uh, so why would that cause the this to happen and be unfixable?
+
+[1:54] Well, we there is a policy against having multiple accounts, unless you have legitimate multi-brand business reasons. I see. So why did they cancel John's personal account? Because I logged into the CD address. Yeah, I don't know.
+
+[2:15] Look, my Amazon account was fine, but my selling privileges were suspended because of my association with Booker Index. Yes, well, yeah. So I don't sell anything. Not only in the world, but not only are we bad actors, but anyone associated with us is painted with the same brush. Yep.
+
+[2:30] Yeah. Yeah. But now we're we're we're free, huh? Uh, in theory, yeah. Nice.
+
+[2:39] Nice. Uh I still hate them. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[2:44] Me too. Yeah. All right. All right. Uh, well, you can hear in a in also here we have John.
+
+[2:49] How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah?
+
+[2:51] Got Joe Hazenrocking the panels. Hi, thanks for joining us. Yeah. Yeah. So uh we don't have Jackie Molecules because he's back in Mexico right now, and the uh the day of the dead is is somehow taking over the phone lines.
+
+[3:06] He can't, he he called in, he's like, it's real spotty here. I think what he was doing was this. I can't hear you. I think that's what he was doing. No?
+
+[3:17] No, this is what I do. I do this. Anyway. Uh calling your questions to 917. Oh, no.
+
+[3:23] Yeah, 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507, if you are a live Patreon listener. And if you're not, how do you do that, John? Patreon.com/slash cooking issues. Go there, check out.
+
+[3:34] There's three different levels of membership, and there's a lot of great membership perks that come with everything, including uh discounts to Kitchen Arts and Letters, other random companies that we might have on air like Maiden when they were on Nick Coleman's olive oil, you know, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, be a member. Yeah, you know who didn't give a uh a discount, which was fun was uh Steve from uh Rancho Goro, who's like, Oh, yeah, I've never he doesn't talk like this. He had to listen to the episode if you want to hear how he actually sounds. But he goes, I've never in my life discounted a bag of beans.
+
+[4:01] It's an insult. Remember that? Yep, no, no, very true. Respect it, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[4:05] I was like, you know what? Fine. Yeah, fine. Yeah. But can you discount something else?
+
+[4:10] It's not a bag of beans. Exactly. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway.
+
+[4:14] Uh oh, wow. Wait, what's that? The what's that? I feel like uh, I feel like uh like an honest to goodness, like someone that Nastasia, that music is the stuff that Nastasia actually listens to. Nastasia was she's going down the highway.
+
+[4:28] Oh, yeah. Nastasia has excellent taste in music, I've got to say. She doesn't have any taste in music. It's tasting radio shows. She hates when you choose music.
+
+[4:36] She had a playlist going at her party on Saturday. It was just one banger after another. Thank God. But the old Nastasia, whenever you drive in a car with her, she's like, I'm gonna turn on the radio. No, I still do that.
+
+[4:51] Yeah, so okay. So you don't, you you've told me more than five times, more than 20 times. I can't count the number of times because I don't have enough fingers, and that's as high as I can count. How you said, I hate people's playlists. What is it with people having to choose?
+
+[5:07] Just listen to the radio. How many times have you said that to me? Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. So okay, then.
+
+[5:12] But I'm saying, but you but for a party, you're okay with a playlist. Yeah. Yeah. Cause because why? Because they might say something you don't agree with on the radio that you listen to.
+
+[5:21] No, no, you just want to have consistent music. Right? Commercial free. I mean, I don't listen to random disc jockeys talk about, you know, picking up cannolis in the basement on a new that's a you that's a you thing. So I don't know.
+
+[5:33] I don't know what this is like. I only play music that I choose. Yes. Yeah, but if you have a playlist like mine that's over two weeks long, I mean that's wow. Yeah.
+
+[5:44] Man, I don't want to come to your party in the like when you were in your emo phase for that two weeks when you were listening to just like, and it's like all like, or like your goth section, and we're listening to Sisters of Mercy, Marianne. It's funny, I just put on something from Floodland just the other day. She goes, Oh, I forgot about Lucretia. Great track. Yeah, yeah, it's true, true.
+
+[6:02] Uh I think they're one of those things where didn't like the lead person just like leave and start their own thing? Wasn't there all sorts of problems with that band? Andrew Eldritch? Yeah. Uh something with the name.
+
+[6:15] I don't know. I it's so weird to think of all these people that you you know knew in like the 80s being like old now. Like I'm old now, but then the people who were already older than me when I was not old are like real old. Or they all died from heroin overdoses. Well, get this.
+
+[6:30] Yeah, right. Get this. Dax goes to me, he's like, I'll probably never see an ACDC concert. And I said, Well, if you do see an ACDC concert, you're not really seeing an ACDC concert. You're seeing some sort of agglomeration.
+
+[6:45] And I was like, uh, I was like, you know, because Malcolm's dead, and you know, uh, you know, I'm not saying Brian Johnson's not legitimate as opposed to Bon Scott. I'm not one of those guys. I didn't see them before 1980. Come on, come on. You know what I mean?
+
+[6:58] Uh I was only nine. But my point being that uh he was like, Did you know Axel Rose fronted for them when Brian Johnson had to bow out because he was having some sort of hearing problem? I was like, Axel Rose saying for ACDC, and my mind was just like I was like, nothing has meaning anymore. And I heard it was I heard it was good. I heard he did a good job, surprisingly.
+
+[7:14] Yeah. You know what I mean? Uh but I mean, like, is there any meaning left on Earth? Like, Stas, would you ever go see like uh like one of these bands, like these kind of like 60s uh uh era bands that's completely reconstituted and all they own is the name, and it's some manager who like owns the well you kind of saw that with the Beach Boys. Yeah.
+
+[7:38] And how did that but you left? We left. Yeah, we left. Even though you you uh you're a fan of uh John Singer Stamos there. Uh-huh.
+
+[7:45] Yeah, yeah. Uh I I always like to confuse uh John Singer Sergeant and John Stamos. It's my favorite. There you go. Uh shout out to uh Skernick Wines.
+
+[7:57] John and I went to a champagne tasting yesterday. It was quite fun. You would have enjoyed it, Nastasia. That's funny. I was in the city.
+
+[8:03] No, you didn't come. Funny. I talked about it. When? Uh for the past three weeks, here after the show.
+
+[8:09] I was like, there's a champagne tasting. And Nastasia is like, oh, I'm not listening to you because the radio's off. And then you walked out. I don't remember that. Yeah, that's my fault.
+
+[8:17] I'm sorry. Yeah. Uh you would have enjoyed it. You should go to the next one. Nothing Nastasia likes uh more than like infinite.
+
+[8:24] And you know what was nice about it? They were all grower producers there. And you know, I always said, I was thinking of you at least, Nastasia, I was like, pour me the pink first. Mm-hmm. Pour me the pink first.
+
+[8:36] Anyway, next year, maybe. Maybe they do it again next year. That was their Halloween celebration. Yeah, it's good. Uh all right.
+
+[8:43] From uh anyone else have anything to share? No. So it's gonna actually be a no tangent Tuesday. I don't know. I cooked a good pasta over the weekend.
+
+[8:53] Good rago, but yeah, I'm not that's it. Yes, you did. Yeah. There we go. I made kimchi on the weekend.
+
+[8:59] Oh yeah? Well, well, I mean, you started it or you finished it. Okay. So when's it gonna we're like how long do you think it's gonna go? Well, I mean, we just let her we just let it always go.
+
+[9:11] We like put portions in the fridge, but then it just it just goes. Right, right, but I'm saying what temperature do you ferment at? Uh right now, we have it in the fridge. It's because we didn't have time to like properly jar it up. But we'll probably put it in a jar in the pantry in a few days.
+
+[9:29] Well, yeah, well, I'm what I'm trying to get at here is what temperature is your pantry, Quinn. All I'm saying is is that I have no idea. Well, listen. Room temperature. I mean, I've never been in your room, Quinn.
+
+[9:40] The point is, is if it goes too high, right? The problem with it, right? Is if it goes too high, it's not gonna be poisonous or anything, but you're gonna lose that. You have a decent chance of it getting mushy if if the temperature goes, I forget the magic number, but it's somewhere in the high 60s. If it goes above that, if it's in the 70s, which is what my kitchen normally is, then you have a very good shot of having a mushy, uh a mushy fermented cabbage, and it's always sad.
+
+[10:07] Then I'm the only one eating it because I'm sad. You know what I'm saying? I guess we'll find out. Or you could just put it in the coolest place. What's the coolest place that exists in your house?
+
+[10:21] I don't know. Well, have someone find out what the coolest place in had put it there. Another thing, if you have a vacuum machine, obviously it's a good way to uh it's a good way to do it because you don't have to worry about weights or any of that other crap. You just you just have to worry about exploding bags, which is why if you bag so you know how like when you're making kimchi, I don't have a chamber. I don't have a chamber.
+
+[10:41] I'm not saying this is for you. Other people are listening that might want to do it. You know what I mean? Um what's the other bag one that everyone has that I'm blanking on? Food saver?
+
+[10:49] Food saver, yeah. Works with that too. Well, your reason it works with that is because it doesn't have the brine's not there yet, yeah. Right. So, like typically, like when I'm doing sauerkraut or kimchi or any sort of fermented cabbagey thing, I do a pre-squash step.
+
+[11:03] I'll like add the salt in a big bowl, and then I'll just physically you know, to like break it up a little bit to help the brine come out. Because I like to add as little excess liquid to it as is humanly possible. And done in a vacuum, uh, cabbage requires zero additional liquid. Yeah. Zero.
+
+[11:21] So if you stick it in a food saver and you do the crusheroo, crush crush crusheroo with salt, put it in, suck a vacuum on it. If you let it go long enough, you won't get liquid into your food saver, but you can get a decent enough seal. But you do need to throw it into another into another bag. Yeah, yeah. Because it will split.
+
+[11:44] Yeah. Yeah. And I've never seen one violently explode and spray stuff everywhere. I just had the seam split and leaks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[11:51] But if you have it inside of another bag or inside of uh, what's it called? Cambro. Yeah. But once it pops, then it's no longer uh oxygen-free. Then you should put it in a jar and tamp it down.
+
+[12:01] But just who has big enough jars around to do like all of the cabbage? Oh, my name is John. I've got so many pickling jobs. Well, not so many. I don't know.
+
+[12:08] When uh walking around Chinatown with John Hutt a couple of years ago in one of those like ceramic shops is closing down. So they had the big, like, you know, Chinese style fermenters with the moat on top and all that stuff. And I got it for 20 bucks, and it was great. Yeah. Most nice.
+
+[12:20] From missing peppers in it now. Right. Because then once it uh, as long as you keep that thing, as long as the liquid never runs out in that thing, the oxygen's gonna get exhausted. See, the whole point about this whole like keeping it under the surface of the liquid is just is just excluding oxygen. But um any oxygen that's in there at the start, which is why bagging it even with a crappy, I'm not saying your food saver's crap, but yeah, with a lower end vacuum, that oxygen will get consumed fairly quickly.
+
+[12:45] And then you're in an anoxic environment and you can you can go from there. Yeah. Uh but I've never had one with the little water seal. You like it? Yeah, I mean it worked, it's 20 bucks.
+
+[12:54] Yeah. And do you get a lot of uh calm yeast on top? Are you pretty good? Pretty good. Yeah.
+
+[12:58] Pretty good idea. I put some salt in the well this time to try and just avoid anything happening there, but I need to find a place to hide it, which is my issue. What do you mean? Why? I don't know.
+
+[13:07] Doesn't the DOH not like that stuff? Oh, oh, oh, oh, at the restaurant. At the restaurant. Oh. Uh I don't know actually what the current uh theory is.
+
+[13:16] I mean, uh you might need a hasset plan for it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I was like, hide it.
+
+[13:22] I was like, you're like, you know, I just can't help myself. I'm gonna eat it when it's too young. But I mean, if you go to like the pickle guys, they have their huge barrels of un uh unrefriger. I you know how they cheat, by the way? So the pickle guys are fantastic.
+
+[13:35] I've lived, you know, on the same block as them for 20 something years now. They're they're downtown, right? And it I have to say, even though it's not cheap, it's easier to buy half gallons of kraut. At the amount of kraut that I eat, it's easier just to buy half gallons of kraut from those guys. Yeah, right.
+
+[13:48] So I go down there and they have these big, you know, 55 gallon pickle barrels that they that they have in, and then they take out of the top of it. But I when I saw when they changed it, they really just have a five-gallon bucket that they stick into the top of the pickle bear. It's not like the pickle barrel's full of stuff. I was like, oh, you're cheating. He's like, even this weighs 80 pounds.
+
+[14:07] What are you? I was like, hey, uh I'm just saying, it's a good system. It's a good system, is all I'm saying. So, anyways, so yeah, quinch. See if you can keep that stuff cold.
+
+[14:14] Because I once did a test of um sauerkraut high up in my in my kitchen just to see what would happen. As everybody, well, as I hope you guys know the higher you go in your kitchen, the hotter it is, especially if you actually cook in your kitchen because like all of the heat from your your range, your oven, it all floats up. That's the way physics works. And so I've measured it, and it can be like as much as 10 degrees hotter if you cook a lot at the top of your kitchen from at the bottom of your kitchen. So always store this stuff low, but then try to also find a place that's a little bit cooler than your kitchen.
+
+[14:46] I don't know, like a back of a closet somewhere. Yeah. Um, you know what I uh use when I'm not bagging to keep my stuff down? What's that? Slingshot ammunition.
+
+[14:57] A glass yes, everyone has slingshot ammunition just flying around. That's a good idea. If you go to Amazon, it's almost free. You buy the white glass, it's white, they're weight glass marbles, and they come in a nylon pouch already. So you just buy two pouches, you open it, pour the marbles from one into the other, close the pouch.
+
+[15:18] The nylon is dishwashable. Yeah. Right. So then you just throw the whole thing in the dishwasher, and then now you have uh, you know, you have your uh pickle weights. Nice, you know, and nothing ever comes up over around it because it can it can make itself flat, yeah.
+
+[15:33] Yeah, it can make itself whatever size you need it to be. You know? Yeah. It's not heavy enough if you need like maximum compression, but that's why I do a little bit of the oomph oomph oomph beforehand. You know what I mean?
+
+[15:44] Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. It beats filling Ziploc bags with water and then being like, well, I better fill the Ziploc bag with salt water in case it leaks.
+
+[15:53] Exactly. Yeah. You know? Anyway. I I've been doing the uh bag of actual salt trick sometimes.
+
+[16:01] But then if it if it leaks, then your salt level goes away. Well you double bag it. You double bag it. All right. Well, why not just use salt water instead of salt?
+
+[16:11] Because that's heavier. I don't know that that's the case. Unless you have solid blocks. I I don't someone look up the density of uh actually what kind of salt. Oh, yeah, no, that was that was that was a trick for me so from uh our cook quest.
+
+[16:29] I I'm blanking on his real name, Jeremy. Jeremy Yeah, Rich Chi. Yeah. Uh if you vacuum pack fine salt, it's pretty dense. Well then why not just use a rock?
+
+[16:41] The other problem with if you vacuum pack the salt is that it no longer conforms to the surface of your of your product. I mean, the advantage of a water bag is that it conforms a hundred percent to the surface of your of your product, right? I mean that's the advantage. Well, anyways. So I mean, but the problem with water, if it leaks, then you know, some people they put food coloring in it, some people they salt it, so they know if it leaks, but then if you know the advantage if you use the same brine concentration as your uh as your main thing is that if it leaks, all you're doing is diluting flavor.
+
+[17:18] You're not drastically d decreasing or increasing the salt content, you know. Whatever. I'm also a big believer in back slapping. You guys believers in backslapping? Huge believer in backslapping.
+
+[17:29] Normally, yeah. What uh what kind of uh fish products did you put in your kimchi, Gwen? I actually I I normally would just do a fish sauce, but this year, you know, it was a big batch. I wanted to be able to share it. You know, people get screamish, or not squeamish, but you know, people tend to sometimes not like the fish product.
+
+[17:54] So I cheated a little bit. I just did a a little show you in the paste. When you say don't like, you mean like mentally they don't like, or they actually don't like the flavor of it. Uh yeah, it's hard to say. Yeah.
+
+[18:10] Uh I wonder whether it's possible, probably not in the length of time that uh kimchi goes, right? But in very, very long fermentations, uh things can get broken down. I wonder whether it's possible to have a long enough fermentation such that shrimp paste is no longer allergenic for people that have shrimp allergies. This is a separate conversation, but I wonder because um you're familiar with uh fugu. You're all familiar with fugu?
+
+[18:35] Yeah. So if you if you take the egg sacks from the fugu, right? Then it's uh they're they'll kill you. They're poisonous. But if you like, because it's got tetroto, it's full of tetrodotoxins, so it'll take you out.
+
+[18:48] You know what I mean, just like the liver. Yeah. But uh, you know, food is expensive, right? So, you know, they're not trying to throw away that product. So what they do is is they salt it and they age it for like two years.
+
+[19:01] And over the course of that two years, the tetrodotoxin is broke broken down and they're now safe to uh consume. I've never tasted it. They they they talked about this uh when um when Gohan Society used to do demonstrations back when I used to be able to get my favorite uh Japanese fish sauce, the ishiri, the high grade ishiri that's only made from squid guts. Uh I mean, that's it's still far none my favorite, semi-commercially available. I mean, it is commercially available in Japan, just not here.
+
+[19:28] It's from um uh what town is it from? Anyway, that the that fish sauce with the squid guts is the best fish sauce. Isn't it best? I like all fish sauces, right? It's your preferred.
+
+[19:40] It's not even that it's preferred, it's the most exact cross between like fish sauce and canned ham. It tastes much meatier than normal fish sauce. So you can use it in an apple. I we I used to use it in my uh milk soup. So I would make like a like almost like a changua esque uh milk soup.
+
+[20:05] And I used to I used to have uh a bunch of ishiri. So I would dope the hell out of it, and you would never ever think that it was from a fish sauce. And I love fish sauce, but I'm saying it's like it's it's almost like a completely different product. The only thing close, and I've said this before, is actual uh garum made from like mackerel guts, which I've only had once from Sally Granger, who's the world's expert on fish sauce. Maybe someday we should have her on.
+
+[20:29] Yeah, we shouldn't. I mean, she's she wrote her PhD on fish sauce, and you know, prior to her PhD on fish sauce, she was the best interpreter of a pecius, the uh, you know, the famous recipe guide from Rome. She's the only uh she is the world expert. We should get her to ship us some sauce and then taste that stuff, right? Yeah.
+
+[20:52] And then, you know, have her on. Yeah. Yeah. We should. That'd be a good idea.
+
+[20:56] Yeah. All right. Uh, how long you let your kraut go, John. I don't know. Usually let it go for five days and then start tasting it and then figure out from there.
+
+[21:08] Yeah, I mean, the thing is, though, so at that point, hopefully it's still sweet craut. Here's the funny thing. Have we talked about this on air before? I don't think so. So there's all these websites uh talking about kraut, and there's a di there's different uh there's different bacterial communities that build up inside of your uh you know, lactic acid bacteria communities that build up.
+
+[21:26] I can't remember which one's which over time, right? But they're saying if you don't let it go for you know at least 14 days, they'll say, right, you're not getting that last level of uh of bacterial colony, right? Yeah. And so it's it's presumed in a lot of these websites that uh that's what you want. In other words, that it's not going to be as good a product.
+
+[21:46] It's not as complex because it doesn't have all of the bacterial colonies in it that you like it. But then the paper that they reference, right? Everybody liked the newer kraut in the paper they referenced. All the hedonic scores from the tasters were like, oh yeah, we actually like new kraut better. So I don't know whether they were just talking to Jamokes who don't like the taste of kraut or what.
+
+[22:07] But I so in other words, uh, you know, obviously it's valid whenever you think it's valid, but uh I do after after a little bit, I like to get it in the fridge and you know kind of semi-stabilize it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, no, once you gotta ray it, you gotta try and get it to stop, yeah. Yeah, get that sweet spot. And where how do you get the temperature down to where you want it?
+
+[22:25] You just have a place that's a little cooler. Yeah, it's in the bottom of my closet. Yeah, what you department. You do it at home and then bring it to work? No, well, no, this the like when I do stuff at home, that's where I'll put it, because otherwise the only spot I have is a pie and it gets too hot and then things get mushy, but yeah, I don't know.
+
+[22:39] I need to find a place at work. I'm told kidnapping fridges are life changing. Oh, why? You're cooking it? Well, I'm just gonna puree it.
+
+[22:45] It's a hot sauce. Oh, yeah, it doesn't matter. No. Although I found that it's not just a texture, it has a little bit more of a you know what I mean? When it goes mushy.
+
+[22:55] It's just a little bit of a weird yeah, a little bit of a weird thing. But yeah, if you're gonna puree it, I guess it's not that big of a deal. Yeah. Um, one way or t'other. Yeah.
+
+[23:06] But uh, I've been told that having a kimchi fridge is a life-changing experience. I believe it. Because it keeps your, you know, yeah, keeps all your stuff reliable. Yeah. And relatively sealed.
+
+[23:15] Yeah. So you're only smelling it when you open it. Yeah. Because kimchi smells through the bag. Yes.
+
+[23:21] Yeah. As does sauerkraut. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying, I'm not trying to say that sauerkraut doesn't also smell.
+
+[23:26] It just smells differently. Yes. But it does smell through the bag. Indeed. You like sauerkraut Nastasia?
+
+[23:31] Mm-hmm. Do you do you like it cooked or you like it raw? Uh raw. Also, I just found out Gail Green died. Oh, that's so bad.
+
+[23:40] Oh. Just now? Uh-huh. Oh no. That's too bad.
+
+[23:45] Huh. Huh. Uh, you know who else died? Um Jules Bass. I don't know who that is.
+
+[23:52] Rankin' Bass? Oh. He just died like a week and a half ago or something like that. And when I heard about it, I was like, oh, I gotta talk about it with Nastasia, because that's that's the end of the era. I think he's the last kind of surviving.
+
+[24:03] I mean, he's the last of Rankin Bass. But I think, you know, I don't think there's very many people left who who worked on uh on Rudolph. And Rudolph was apparently the first one. Did you know that? No.
+
+[24:14] Yeah. And Bass was interviewed a bunch of times afterwards. And he was like, after we do Rudolph, he was like, we got so much work. It's like we couldn't even do the work. We got so much work.
+
+[24:23] You know what I mean? Because like people were like, because Rudolph, as we both know, kicks so much butt. You know? Yeah. Are you excited for Rudolph season?
+
+[24:32] Uh yeah. Good. Good. Um. Anyway, all right.
+
+[24:39] So, Quinn, have uh have we thoroughly exhausted your your your desire to speak about your kimchi? Oh, we're not even close. You probably got the question. Ooh, not even close. Uh oh yeah, last time we were talking, we're talking about adding fish to it, and you said you put whatever.
+
+[24:56] We'll we'll talk about it. Let me know when it's done. Let me know how it tastes when it's done. Do you know what we had uh a long time ago? I ate some yesterday.
+
+[25:03] Oh, so that's like f that's just like that's like fresco. Yeah. Like that's that's yeah, yeah. Um we remember, Stas, when we did uh when we we we did uh the original museum event like way back in the day. Yeah.
+
+[25:19] We were we were we were considering, I forget why it didn't work out. We gave Dave Chang New York City 1491. Yeah. And we were considering though, Korean food before the chili pepper was the other one, right? Mm-hmm.
+
+[25:33] I would like I wonder if anyone does that like like Korean food before the chili pepper. Is that a thing people are doing, John? I don't know. I don't think so. Not that I know of.
+
+[25:47] It's gonna be interesting, right? It would be, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Now, not without the chili pepper. Yeah.
+
+[25:51] But for the different. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah.
+
+[25:57] All right. Wizmard writes in. Oh, I know what I was gonna say. You remember when we had uh Alex and Aki on the show from Ideas and Food like a million years ago, Stas? Yeah.
+
+[26:06] Yeah. I know you remember for different reasons, but what I remember is that they don't like, they don't actually, they worry when they bag their pickles and their crowds and stuff because when you bag it, there's a little bit of excess pressure, right? That's because that's the bag inflates, right? So there's excess pressure in there. And it is very disconcerting to see an inflated uh bag, not just because you you think it might rupture, but because if you're trained in this.
+
+[26:29] Oh, by the way, Stas, I don't know if you know this. I am now in the International Sous vide Association's Hall of Fame. Awesome. And then Dax was like, they put everything in that thing. They put everything in the Everyone's in that thing.
+
+[26:44] And then when I when I I had to send him, I was inducted the same year as uh as Wiley. Why but Wiley Dufresne on next week. Wiley Wiley Dufresne's on next week, or as I like to call him, Dufresny. I don't really, but he gets that mispronunciation a lot. I'm not sure like what he can announce or what he can't announce when he comes on.
+
+[27:00] Uh FYI, he's my brother in law, so hopefully we'll try to keep the inside uh chicanery uh outside of the radio show say things that only people will understand. Uh but you know right by the International Sous Vide Association? Yes. No, for 2022 inductees. Yeah, that's me.
+
+[27:16] Okay, you're not on the page yet. Oh, nice. But it's 2021. Yeah. Well, so what their argument was is that in the 2021, they inducted people who had a an effect on home folks doing sous vide, right?
+
+[27:29] And then this one was uh people who like dealt with professionals. See, I mean, I don't know. In the last one, there was Philip Preston, Thomas Keller. Well, Philip Preston's the reason why people have well, Gousseau is Gusot. Yeah.
+
+[27:39] They named the award after the bigger. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was like those guys home home focusing on home. And so they there, I'm not saying it's accurate, dude.
+
+[27:48] I'm talking about it. What I'm saying. What I'm seeing. What I'm saying is the conceit was that this year it was people who had focused mainly on Sous vide education for professionals. Gotcha.
+
+[27:57] Although Gusot focuses on Sous vide education exclusively for professionals. I've never seen him teach something to home folk. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Oh my God, Gusso hated or hates the Spanish style of Sous-Vide.
+
+[28:13] I think, in fact, the reason I think he did all of the training that he did in the early 2000s when I met him in the US was specifically because the only thing that people had to learn Sous vide in the United States was the translation, the Montagu translation of the Rokas book. It was the only, the only document in uh in English. Didn't they do their fish real low too? Well, that's the thing. It was a bad translation.
+
+[28:42] So like uh they were doing um bacalau. They were doing salt cod, and they were doing it at 104 Fahrenheit, which is extraordinarily low. Yeah. Uh but all they were doing was warming it because it's bacalau. You know what I mean?
+
+[28:56] So it's already been cured, all the worms and the cod have been dead. But then the translation just said cod. It didn't say salt cod or bacalau, because if there's one thing that Montagu did not care about, that's the press back then. It is uh whether anyone in any other language can understand what they're talking about. And you know, are the pictures pretty?
+
+[29:14] Yes. Then the translation is fine. Uh and the pictures were pretty. Uh, but low temperature fish back then was something that a lot of people were extremely interested in. Uh, everybody was.
+
+[29:25] Um, but by low temperature, we mean like 48 C, 40, you know, 40 something, not like 40 C. You know what I mean? Which is what uh isn't a 104 like 40 C Not that low. Uh, people were doing like, you know, just around 50 Celsius, which is I don't know, 120 something is what I think 40 Celsius. Yeah.
+
+[29:47] Uh that's probably what they put it at, 40 Celsius. And so Bruno hated, hated that kind of cooking to this day. I mean, I haven't seen him in a couple of years, but he hates that kind of cooking. And so I think to counter, and he would say all sorts of that book is a great book, by the way. It's a great book.
+
+[30:05] I mean, like, I think that like that way of cooking sous vide, not a lot of people cook that way anymore, in terms of uh, you know, and a lot of things that were popularized in that, for instance, um, all of their circulator baths were integrated baths and circulators. So they were these giant things that you had to carry around with you if you wanted to move them from place to place. And so a lot of the kind of love of Spanish stuff carried over to kind of equipment nightmares like that. Whereas, you know, Philip Preston knew from the get that, you know, a portable circulator is the answer because now I can put it into a Lexan, you know, I don't put it into a bus tub. I hate seeing a circulator in a bus tub.
+
+[30:39] It's just bus tubs aren't high enough. Yeah, people. Bus tubs, they're just no good. They're also the side of a bus tub is so slanted that like it's just not good. Bus tubs, not good, no good.
+
+[30:48] Anyway, um, so I think he was doing a lot of his early training. By the way, this is before the health department cracked down in New York City. So his most of his training, I think, was in reaction because he wanted to establish the primacy of his feelings of sous vide, which were cook chill only. The man detests direct serve sous vide, hates it, hates it. If if you don't chill that stuff down before you reserve it, you are not Gousseau's friend.
+
+[31:14] He's so French about it, too. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because his whole life is cook chill. You know, he developed a lot of this stuff beforehand and was working with Joel Robichon back when Joe Robichon was alive, obviously, for the SNCF, which is the train system that goes, you know, the high speed rail system.
+
+[31:28] So they were doing a series of high end um entrees for Joel Robichon that could be reheated. So all of his stuff is cooked chill. Okay. Uh, anyways, so he was like coming to show how to really do it, as opposed to what we were learning from the Spanish, which he thought was, you know, an abomination. Even though I think he respects them as chefs, maybe.
+
+[31:44] I don't know. Uh there was still a lot of uh a lot of uh French chauvinism about like the import of the Spanish back in 2000 and you know three, yeah, four. Anyway, and then when the uh Board of Health thing hit, then it was a whole nother whole nother nightmare. Anyway. Wizmrd wants to know how's the book going?
+
+[32:07] Give us a progress report on the miracle of moisture management. Well, you just did. It's this kind of stuff, these tangents that I go off on, Wizmer, that are stopping me. The cocktail book was comparatively easy because it was comparatively more focused. What I will tell you about this book is it's gonna be more about intuition and less about recipes, and very few of the weird, like I'm not gonna be teaching people how to do bionic turkeys in uh in the in the miracle of moisture management.
+
+[32:37] Stasi, you think our bionic turkey days are over? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you never you but you like it when I do it because you like to sit there and like make fun of me. No, I think that that ended in 2020 when we tried to bring it back, and then it was like it just didn't happen.
+
+[32:51] You still have that huge like box of recipe books. Right. Nobody wanted to make the bionic turkey. It's a pain in the butt. The the real way to do the turkey, I think, is the uh is the plug of stuffing that you heat, the plug of stuffing that you heat separately, and then you know, rip out the backbone of the turkey and you know, Brian, and then drape it over the hot plug so fast.
+
+[33:16] So fast. Nobody wants. I mean, then you have the turkey backbone to cook with. Come on. Yeah.
+
+[33:21] It's true. Come on. Yeah, better gravy. Better gravy. Thank you.
+
+[33:26] Better gravy. I'm gonna take a little bit of a, I'm gonna disagree with McGee here. McGee doesn't like to brine his turkey because he says the drippings from the turkey then have too much salt in them. Just under season the rest of the gravy? Or you don't make the gravy until the last minute, right?
+
+[33:43] So you make a stock with the all the crap that you've ripped out of the turkey, right? And then, you know, I don't know. This has never been a problem for me. Yeah, same. Yeah.
+
+[33:53] So, you know, next time we have him on, we'll uh we'll we'll get Nick Coleman to come with his uh with his olive oil and whatever those grease scrapers are, and we'll we'll grease up and we'll wrestle about it. You're talking about his bar of soaps? No, no, he so no, no. Nick Nick is coming out with bars of olive oil soap, paradoxically, uh bars of soap made of food grade olive oil. I don't know why you need to have food grade olive oil in the soap, but he's very adamant about it.
+
+[34:18] And so, Stas, have you tried his soap? Yeah. Do you enjoy it? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
+
+[34:22] So do you know uh one of the old names for olive oil soap, Sas? No. Castile soap. Castile soap, because a lot of it came out of Spain, right? I found, see if anyone can anyone speaks Dutch out there.
+
+[34:36] It turns out that in the 20s, 30s, up to late 30s in the United States, it was said that recipes for Holland Rusk, Rusk, you know, the little toasts, Rusks, Holland Rusk is a is a thing, right? That the actual recipes from Holland, the real ones contained castile soap in small amounts that were melted into the liquid base of them, and that you can't get the texture of the rusk right without a little bit of olive oil soap in it. But I have not been able to find I've I I've been able to find like several, more than three English language mentions of the practice, but I've not been able to find a recipe. So if anyone can find that recipe, that'd be awesome. I mean, because do you remember back when Piper thought that we were gonna use soap and cocktails?
+
+[35:29] Not really. So, you know, one of the main things in soap is sodium laurel sulfate in a lot of soaps and like detergents and shampoos, sodium laurel sulfate, is uh it is a food grade surfactant additive. And so he was trying to see what kind of like foams and stuff you could get. Remember this? And he made simple syrup with SLS in it, and then he was like shaking drinks with sodium laurel sulfate in it, and we were all like, yo, Piper, this sucks.
+
+[35:53] You don't remember that? No. That was on Eldritch Street. Yeah, you're losing it, Stas. It's your turn to be losing it.
+
+[35:58] Mm-hmm. Anyway, Jack Rieger writes in, hey Dave, I made Kenji's recipe for low temperature carnitas. I did mine at 74 uh Celsius for 24 hours. That's not really low temperature, though. Is that really low temperature?
+
+[36:09] 74. I think that you're in the, you know, there's no such thing as an uncali canny valley for temperatures, right? But once you go over 60 or so, might as well just go all the way. There's just not that much of a temperature difference if it's gonna be bagged, right? You're you're not gonna get the dehydration from it.
+
+[36:26] Maybe there is. I haven't done a lot of tests in the mid 70s, but it just seems to me to be kind of in like this like weird zone of why. You know what I mean? Yeah. Why?
+
+[36:36] Uh 74 C for 24 hours. That's also a long time. Uh, he calls for salting the meat precooked. I followed along, but thought it might get hammy cured texture that can happen with pre-salting. Uh, to my surprise, the meat was fantastic and not cured texture at all.
+
+[36:49] What's going on here? Well, going back to the miracle of moisture management, most of my anti pre-salting uh work has to do, had to do with uh cooking uh ribeyes. Uh and what I think is is that the the more um collagen there is, the more connective tissue, uh, you know, paramecium style connective tissue around uh the meats that the salt can do, the less you're gonna see that cured hammy effect, and that's more of a muscle fiber without collagen situation. I've also noticed that if you drop the temperature on something like a ribeye, you can pre-salt it as long as you don't keep it. So, like if you salt something and you cook it at, let's say 55 Celsius, which uh I don't even I don't know what that is, like 130, something like that, like 130, right?
+
+[37:36] If you cook it for just an hour or 45 minutes, where it just gets up to that temperature, even if it's pre-salted, and you drop that temperature down three or four degrees, the temperature creep won't get high enough to make it really hammy. Does that make sense? On ribeye. Whereas if you keep it at 55 with no salt for a couple of hours, or 54 or five, wherever in that, if you keep it at that temperature for a couple of hours with no salt, it also won't get hammy. But if you keep it for a couple of hours, or if you keep it for a couple of hours at 55 with salt and eat it right away, you're fine, right?
+
+[38:08] But if you keep it at 55 with salt for a couple of hours and then chill it, then it'll get hammy, right? If you take something like carnitas, where there's a lot more intramuscular uh uh collagen, right? A lot more connective tissue, that has a lesser chance of getting hammy because it's gonna get separated by the collagen fibers as the collagen breaks down with the salt. So you're gonna get much much less of that. I would be more worried at 74 for 24 hours.
+
+[38:31] I mean it's probably fine. Uh I I'd have to taste it and see what I'd be looking out for uh higher temperatures long times like that, because that's a relatively high temperature to be cooking for 24 hours. Yeah. Right. Uh what I'd be looking for there is more of uh fiber textures.
+
+[38:47] So, like what happens is is that the muscle fibers, not the, you know, it basically all of the connective tissue gets wiped out and you're left with just kind of muscle fibers. And the characteristic for that for me is if you eat a piece of meat plain, just plain, uh, don't sauce it, don't do anything. Cut a block out of what you just cooked and chew it. If you get an immense amount of juice right and keep chewing it, don't just wolf it down. Take a bite.
+
+[39:12] If you get an immense amount of juice right away, but then as you chew it, you get more kind of fibery pasty, almost like uh pork fu or pork sung texture, where you can kind of taste the individual fibers. I find that unpleasant. You ever had that happen, John? No. But you know what I'm talking about?
+
+[39:28] Yeah. So like that's what I look for uh for in a in a long uh in a long cook. Is that make sense? This is a good answer. Did I answer the question?
+
+[39:34] Yeah. Okay. Uh Colton Johnson writes in, hello everyone. I apologize in advance to Nastasia. Uh, but I have a few questions about pie.
+
+[39:44] My husband and I are going to be making some pies for a few friends, namely pumpkin as well as pecan pie. Uh, by the way, you know who hates pumpkin pie is uh Dave Chang. Apparently, I'm I'm gonna go on one of his Thanksgiving podcast episodes. Nice. Not to make pumpkin pie.
+
+[39:58] Oh. Okay. Because he has to also make the recipe. Oh. Yeah.
+
+[40:02] Yeah. Interesting. So, and you know, he won't make pumpkin pie because he hates pumpkin pie. Are you gonna have a make pie? I'm not gonna have a make pie.
+
+[40:10] Okay. I gave them a list of things that they could make and they chose two things that were not pie. Oh, okay. Yeah. Too bad for them, huh?
+
+[40:17] Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I still haven't had a banafi pie, which is what we were talking about when he was on, or if you remember that. Yeah, that's true. You ever had a banaffee pie?
+
+[40:24] No. Me either. What about you? I know uh Nastasia doesn't care. I would ask her, but she's gonna say I don't care.
+
+[40:30] Am I right? I do not care about pie. There you go. But why do you not care about pie? Is it because I do care?
+
+[40:36] No, I just really do not care about pie. What desserts do you care about? Um, none. You don't care about any desserts. What do you care about?
+
+[40:45] I don't know. All right. Good. Good. Uh so back to Colton Johnson.
+
+[40:52] We have Pie Marches on, which we refer to, and I love this the pie bowl. The pie bowl. Uh and the pumpkin pie recipe is out of this world, good. Well, so I don't know if you know this. But uh the original recipe uh in Pie Marches On for Pumpkin Pie was written as I forget what year it was, somewhere in like 1937, 36, for American Restaurant Magazine, and it was introduced as like this is the pie for this year.
+
+[41:22] So he had developed the recipe for that time. So and he was very pushed. He did a lot of iterations of that recipe, uh, which is one of the reasons why I think it works, as opposed to perhaps the uh it even has a non standard crust recipe, right? As opposed to, for instance, the pecan pie that you have uh uh issue with. A lot of people don't like pecan pie.
+
+[41:42] It's not the pie I'll go for if there's an array of pies. I'll eat it if it's the only pie, but what's the order? In an array of pies? Well, let's assume we have this array. I'll give you an array.
+
+[41:53] Give it to me. The array is two crust apple. Oh. Pecan. Pecans on top with goop.
+
+[42:02] Pecan nuts all the way through. Pumpkin pie. Apple, pumpkin, goop. Nuts all the way through. Okay.
+
+[42:12] I'm just curious. Yeah? Yeah. But what's your what about a lemon pie? I love a lemon pie.
+
+[42:17] Yeah, lemon pie's delicious. Yeah. I like I like, I like uh acidic desserts. Yes. In general.
+
+[42:24] Yeah. Yeah. That's why I also favor acidic apples. Yeah. Uh all right.
+
+[42:29] So the pumpkin pie recipe is out of this world good, but when I recently made the pecan pie recipe, it was not as good as we were hoping. Uh it is drastically different from any other recipe I've seen due to the crazy amount of corn syrup, extra eggs, and the quarter cup of flour per nine-inch pie. I was wondering if Dave has tried this recipe yet. I have not. And what might be the reason why this recipe did not stand the test of time?
+
+[42:49] As a side note, it didn't taste bad, and the pie definitely holds its shape after being cut. But the texture of the sugary goo under the pecans was strange. It wasn't gritty, but it had a clumpy texture. Well, so for those of you that want to know, I converted this to uh grams. And so a single pie contains uh an ounce, which is 20, I put 28 grams of sugar and 28 grams of flour.
+
+[43:10] Now you mix those two together. Any reason any any anyone, anyone? Why do you mix the flour and the sugar together? And why such a small amount of sugar? Considering that there's about to be 681 grams of cornstarch in it.
+
+[43:22] I sorry, corn syrup. So, like, why mix the sugar and the flour? Dispersion, dispersion. Right? If you just put flour into the corn syrup, it'll clump instantly.
+
+[43:36] If you mix it with the sugar first thoroughly and then put it into the corn syrup, you'll disperse it better. That's why. Uh and then 227 uh grams of uh eggs, whole eggs, beaten. So I don't know uh what that is. What's 57 divided?
+
+[43:51] What is that? That's like five? It's like five, right? Yeah. All right.
+
+[43:56] Um seven grams of vanilla, seven grams of salt, and 42 grams, 45, 43 grams of melted butter. You stir that all together. That is a lot of corn syrup. That is a lot. Yeah.
+
+[44:09] That's a lot of corn syrup. So I don't know what to tell you about why there's that much uh corn syrup in it. I have found some recipes online that have an extremely high amount of corn syrup. But I will give you his alternate recipe in how to bake better pies. In how to bake better pies, it's 180 grams of sugar, right?
+
+[44:28] No flour in the in the base recipe, all right. Uh, and then like uh 20, like a like an ounce of ounce of butter. And he beats the butter into the sugar. I don't know whether to give it an aeration step because a lot of pecan pies will have you aerate some of the ingredients beforehand to make a lighter texture in the in the custard. But then it's uh 525 grams of corn syrup and 22.
+
+[44:53] So the same amount of eggs and vanilla. So it's just a lot more sugar in it. And what he does in that recipe that you might enjoy, Colton, is instead of putting flour into the mix, he takes a pound of pecans for this mixture that I just gave you, a pound of pecans, and then tosses those with flour, taps off the excess, mixes the pecans in with the goop, and then bakes it. Presumably the flour will will functionalize as it cooks, and the pecans will lift off of the bottom and float to their own layer on the top. So try that recipe instead.
+
+[45:23] And uh supporters of the Patreon can uh find a copy of how to make better pies on the Patreon side. Very true. Yep. How to make better pies. From Dylan, I recently tried my hand at making some elderberry jam following a simple recipe of juice, sugar, uh, lemon juice, and added pectin.
+
+[45:41] My first attempt yielded a very delicious but disappointingly runny syrup. I rebatched the jam with more added pectin, followed by a boil to reach a temperature of 220 degrees Fahrenheit. The resulting jam was still on the loose side, but was passably set. Uh um, this experience got me wondering whether there were any reliable rules of thumb you could suggest for consistently successful jam making or any resources out there to which you'd lend your stamp of approval. I would just go to any ag department.
+
+[46:04] Ag departments are really good at jellies. I'm gonna say that the problems you there's two problems you had. Adding more pectin is not gonna help unless you've increased the solids ratio. Most likely what you need is more sugar in that thing, uh, which seems like maybe that's what not what you want. But if if if it tastes bad from that, also add more acid.
+
+[46:22] Pectins need very high solids ratios, a lot of them to work. Unless you buy a low sugar pectin, if you buy a low sugar pectin, it will set up at lower solids rates. So if you want to have less uh sugar in your recipe or lower solids, you can uh do that. I mean, if you add enough pectin, it'll set anyway, but you need a certain minimum solids ratio. So uh Rose uh Levy Bernbaum Bernbaum, who was on the show last week, I didn't get a chance to talk to her about her uh raspberry jam recipe.
+
+[46:50] But her raspberry jam recipe, what she does is is she takes raspberries and boils them in sugar syrup, okay, then removes them, then boils more in the same syrup and keeps boiling raspberries in the sugar syrup, then reduces the sugar syrup and then puts the raspberries in to cook them together. So it's like multiple cookdowns of the of the raspberries, so that by the time you're done, like it's just so much pectin and solids from the raspberries, but all the raspberries have been wilted down that you don't have to add a lot of extra sugar. I mean, there is sugar in it. It's a sugar syrup you're boiling it in. But she says it's good.
+
+[47:23] I meant to ask her about it, but we know, we ran out of time. Yeah. Yeah, have her back sometime. Cookie Bible. Yeah.
+
+[47:30] Uh I forget why she had that in her cookie Bible. She then strains it. Maybe she was doing some sort of like Linzer torque cookie. I forget. Do you I love a Linzer tor?
+
+[47:37] I do love a Linzer Torton. It's delicious. Oh my god. So I got it. I like the real ones.
+
+[47:42] I like the fake little cookies. You know what the other thing I didn't talk about in her cookie bible was that I wanted to bring up, but we just ran out of time. She gives a recipe for knockoff Milanos. Oh. The pepperage farm cookie.
+
+[47:53] Yes. I mean, I don't know, maybe there's someone who doesn't know what I mean. But like that was always growing up. That was the peppered farm cookie I wanted. Milano.
+
+[48:03] Do you like those, Nastasia? Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, fine. Good. Thank goodness.
+
+[48:08] But like uh, on the other hand, I don't know that I need to make them. I'm fine, I think, giving my money to the Pepperage Farm Corporation. Yeah. And having them make the Milano for me. Do any of you guys prefer the flavored Milanos to the real ones?
+
+[48:24] I mean, I'm not sure. I enjoy the mint one at times. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[48:29] Do you like York peppermint patties? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Huh.
+
+[48:35] Anything mint for you. Uh-huh. I like a York peppermint patty once it's been frozen. Oh, yeah, but it's really good too. Yeah.
+
+[48:42] But I don't feel like people buy the full size ones anymore. I only ever see the quote unquote fun size. Yeah. Yeah. So I was volunteering at a park on Sunday and giving out full size candy bars to kids from the, you know, the local thing.
+
+[48:54] They were like, oh my God, full size candy bars. I was like, yeah, man. Yeah. Not fooling around. Yeah.
+
+[48:59] And Booker says the only fun size is full size. Oh. That's what he says. Is that right? Yeah.
+
+[49:05] What's your favorite Halloween candies? We should go around. We talk about it. I mean, I love Risa's peanut butter cups. Oh, yeah.
+
+[49:10] Old school. Yeah. All right. Delicious. What about pieces?
+
+[49:15] Yeah. I love pieces, but I mean it's funny enough, they're kind of hard to find as the um, you know, Halloween treat size. Really? Yeah, I find them hard to find. I had you I had York Peppermint Patties last night.
+
+[49:25] I kind of like hit hoarded a few of them. Um, but to uh to your uh to your statement about the full size, a neighbor came by the house, and uh he's like, hey, uh I'm not giving out candy, but give out the this candy. And he brought all these full-size candy bars, and I was blowing minds. Wow, yeah, I know, right? Blowing minds.
+
+[49:49] Yeah, kids, their eyes pop out of their heads. Their eyes pop out of their heads. When you when you show up with a giant bowl of full-size candy, they're like, what the you know what I mean? And then you really see what happens because some people go into Lord of the Flies mode and they try to get as much as they can. And I I'm okay with a little bit of greediness on a Halloween.
+
+[50:10] I'm okay with a little bit, but there's a there's a limit. There's a limit. I don't share candy. Yeah, no? No.
+
+[50:17] No. No. Do you know what I thought was something that only I liked? That then the kids went, it changes. So if you if you give candy out, this is why like you shouldn't only give candy out when you have kids.
+
+[50:27] You should give out candy all the time so you can see how tastes change. Because year to year it's different. Like it, like uh years ago, all the sour stuff went like first. You know, sour stuff went first. Then a couple of years ago, right before the pandemic, I this I went for like uh a bunch of paydays, because I love the payday.
+
+[50:43] It's a good candy bar. It's not chocolate based, right? It's good candy bars. It's a good candy bar. And people, the kids went nuts for payday.
+
+[50:50] Like I like the payday, and I those those are the ones I thought I would I hope they had left over. Because I'm like, oh, payday. You know what I mean? And they they they got obliterated. But I have to say, uh, I had recently had that kind of that Reesus pay bail payday alike that also has chocolate.
+
+[50:59] It's like caramel and peanuts and and I've seen that. I've never bought it. It's called like, what is it called? Like take five or something like that? Yeah, take five.
+
+[51:09] But the lion bar is the best one. I've never had a line bar. Lion bar from Cadbury. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[51:14] You know what? I don't know. You find it everywhere in Europe, but like specialty stores here. Yeah. Quinn, what's your what's your what's your favorite uh Canadian bar there?
+
+[51:23] Uh I mean, it's uh it's not Canadian specific. Again, I really like a Canadian Smartie, which is not like American Timurdies. It's basically uh a sticker shelled MM. Okay. So that's pretty good.
+
+[51:39] Yeah. Another really nostalgic chocolate, like really, you know, water barrel in terms of like production quality is a Hershey's cookies and cream. That's classic. I do have to say, Quinn, I do think about those hickory sticks you sent us. I think about those all the time.
+
+[51:58] They're really good. Do you what about candy thing, the c those coffee crisps, you also like those things, right? The coffee crisps. Yeah, they're they're good. But they're not like in the top.
+
+[52:09] Yeah, I forgot. Those are your dad's choice. You're like, those are my dad's. My dad liked that. I don't know why he's sending you stuff that he likes.
+
+[52:16] I like them. I like them. I like them. They're just not on the top millist. Oh, by the way, Dylan, if you boil to a higher temperature, uh, you'll get a higher solids ratio.
+
+[52:26] And you can do the you know what I'm I hate doing? I hate doing the old school tests where you take your sugar or whatever and you drop it into water and see if it sets. Does that ever work? What trick is this? Uh to test syrup temperatures.
+
+[52:40] It's like you drop you get cold water and you drop a little bit of the thing in and you see whether it's I hate it. The other one I hate doing is I mean, with yeah. Sorry, with the jam. I've never done a uh cold water test. I've done the cold plate.
+
+[52:54] Yeah, I hate that. Is that what you're gonna talk about? Yeah, yeah. I hate that too. I hate them all.
+
+[52:58] Candy is the cold water test. I hate that. And you gotta stick your hand in the water and try to judge how the ball feels when you're doing like a hard candy thing. I hate it. And then, like, oh, it's threads, it's this, it's that.
+
+[53:09] I hate it all. I hate all of those tests. Accurate candy thermometer is a good test. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[53:15] And honestly, with a jelly, I have to say, it's better to go a little harder than a little softer. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Always.
+
+[53:24] Hey, do you know what's an instruction that I've always hated? Uh, that I just now realized what the what was going on with it. Can I tell you? Go for it. Beans.
+
+[53:33] So, beans. Uh so if you've ever like looked at an old school recipe for baked beans, they tell you to cook the beans until when you blow on it, the skin splits. You've heard this? No. You look up any old school, like Maine or like Northeast recipe for baked beans, and it's always the same wording.
+
+[53:57] Cook the beans until when you blow on it, the skin breaks. And if you take a fully cooked bean and blow on it, you know what doesn't happen? Skin breaks. Yeah, it doesn't happen. Does not happen.
+
+[54:09] But I was doing a test, which I'm gonna write about soon, uh, for what I what is it? What's that? Uh serious seeds, right? Uh, where I needed to cool the beans rapidly. All right.
+
+[54:20] So I took the cooked beans, which were cooked to what I think is cooked, where you know, these people say stop, and I immediately poured the entire pan of beans, which were intact into a sheet tray, okay, to get the layer as thin as possible so it could cook off. And you know what happened? The skin split. So I think what the blowing on the beans until the skin split means is if it flashes off heat energy and the skin then flashes off and dries, it's weak enough at that point to split because as it's drying, it opens up. So when I looked at my pan, all the beans underneath the surface of the liquid were intact, and all the ones at the surface had popped open just like that recipe is.
+
+[55:02] So that's what they mean by blowing on it. You're actually trying to cool it and like get get like you have to get a bunch of beans up so that the bottom is hot and you blow on it to cool it off. And if if the strength of it, the cooling ruptures, if the if the dehydration and cooling ruptures the skin, that's what they mean. But then I had all those popped beans. I was so bent.
+
+[55:24] Because I had like been so careful not to pop the beans, and then I dumped them all into a tray and they all popped. Son of a son of a shim. Which means I still need to think of a good way to cool beans quickly. Yeah. I mean, I was using the evaporation to cool beans because uh originally I was cooling the beans by throwing ice cubes into them, but you know, you're only getting like uh 80 calories per gram out of an ice cube.
+
+[55:51] You know what I mean? And I was gonna cook them again anyway, so it doesn't matter if I'm adding a little extra water. Yeah. Right. But it's just too much.
+
+[55:56] Yeah. Right? Like Quinn and I were calculating this before, and to chill a couple kilos of beans down to where I needed them, you'd need like for every two kilos of beans, we needed like what, like 800 grams of ice or something like that, Quinn? It was something stupid. It was some stupid, yeah, some dumb number.
+
+[56:09] You know what I mean? Whereas uh evaporation is like, you know, eight times more efficient. So if you evaporate off like even a small amount, it cools it relatively quickly. Not to mention, right? You know, you it's easier to cool over a large surface area.
+
+[56:23] Yeah. But I can't use evaporation as a cooling mechanism if I'm gonna split all my freaking beans. Freaking beans, like a big block of ice in a bag or something. I have done blocks of ice in bags before, but it's not nearly as efficient because you get insulation effects. You need to stir it around all of the time.
+
+[56:44] You need to do a lot of stirring. Like uh ice in a liquid because of the mixing is extremely efficient. So you could. I mean, like uh they used to sell these. Uh you ever use one of those ice paddles, John?
+
+[56:56] You ever seen those? No. They're stock paddles. So it looks like a cricket bat, but it's blue. And uh, and you freeze them, and then you're supposed to stir your stock with this cricket bat.
+
+[57:07] Oh, I've seen those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can so you can keep your stock in a stockpot and get it down in under four hours. Yeah. But what a pain, man.
+
+[57:16] What a pain. Nobody likes that. No. So yeah, no. Not a fan.
+
+[57:20] And then some people they're like, oh, maybe we could use a uh a wart chiller, right? They're doing using wart chillers on their stock. It's it all sucks. It turns out it all sucks. The easiest way on a stock is to pour the stuff into hotel pans, let it flash off, then rebatch it when it gets cold enough, right?
+
+[57:32] Yeah. But it's a pain. Yes, it is. Cooling stock's a pain. Yeah.
+
+[57:36] It really is. Uh answer Dylan's question, you think? Yeah. Okay. Uh Kyle Kelly uh wrote in, hey Dave, wanted to experiment making a Coca-Cola foam in an EC whipper.
+
+[57:48] Any thoughts on a uh method of stabilizers you suggest was aiming for an airy sea foam type of result? Thanks. We didn't deal with this. What would you do? Uh air sea foam type of Coca-Cola C foam.
+
+[58:00] I do mainly dense. I don't do C foamy stuff. Most C foamy stuff is less than. What? Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, I was gonna say for like a really lazy foam.
+
+[58:11] I think I've mainly seen less itin with like a little vent into the body. But I wouldn't uh very light. I wouldn't do it in an EC. I would do the old school one where you stick it into a core container and then put an immersion blender in it at an angle such that the blades go up and then down, up and then down, up and then down, and you we and then you would harvest the foam off the top. That's what we always used to do.
+
+[58:34] I've seen I've seen people use uh like uh a brand new, like little soap dispenser. Brand new what? Uh the ones that like turn the soap into foam. Oh yeah. The problem with any sort of direct dispense is is that only a portion of stuff that's gonna be sea foamy actually becomes sea foamy, and then you're left with a lot of liquid left over.
+
+[58:55] So if you actually want to make foam, the easiest thing to do is to use the immersion blender because you're literally harvesting the foam off the top of the liquid, and then guess what? Your your liquid's ready to go again. Yeah. Because there's always excess lessithin and whatever else you need in that, always an excess. So you can whip it like people used to do with carrot juice all the time.
+
+[59:13] Now it's thinking carrot juice foam on everything. And these, you know, carrot juice because it's naturally kind of foamy anyway, and then it hit it with some lesson, and then you have it in the core container and you could use it all service. Yeah. All service. I mean, you know, that's what I would do.
+
+[59:25] Uh how much time do I have? 36 seconds? Craig where a million years ago you had it on the old blog post about nixtimalizing rye grains. Uh, did that experiment yield any significant results? I think you mentioned using lie as well, but uh, one of the risk associated.
+
+[59:38] If you have any ratios to share? The ratios are on the blog, which still can be found if you look up rye nixamalization cooking issues. It's just like none of the links necessarily work right. Um, yeah, you need the lie because uh calcium uh hydroxide is not strong enough on its own to break down uh the outside of rye before it gets too mushy. So it's a quick lie and then cal.
+
+[1:00:00] Uh and I'll the results were it was freaking delicious, but a huge pain in the uh behind because the uh the pentazans make the dough extremely sticky, like you would have for uh rye bread, but worth doing once. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Larner, host of Cooking News coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center. Joined uh as usual with Nastasa de Hammer Lopez in Connecticut, where she is recovering from some sort of internal poisoning. How you doing, Stas. I'm okay.
+
+[0:27] Yeah, yeah. Sucks to be sick. Really sucks to be sick. Yeah. We got uh Joe Hazen in the booth.
+
+[0:33] How you doing? I'm doing well. Great to see you, man. Yeah, good to see you as well. We got uh we got Quinn holding the fort down in Vancouver Island.
+
+[0:40] How are you doing, Quinn? I'm good. I'm good. Good, good. Uh Jackie Molecules, where are you right now?
+
+[0:48] Los Angeles. Los Angeles. And behind me in the studio, we got uh our intrepid Cheffy Chef uh John from Temperance. How you doing? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:57] Yeah, everything good? All right. Yeah. And uh following our normal new route, I'm gonna introduce our special guests so that they can be part of our pre-show or beginning show banter. I have uh we've never actually met before.
+
+[1:09] Wiley Dufresne in the studio, Chef Wiley Dufre. We've never met, right? This is the first time we're we've never met here before. Yes. In this very tiny room.
+
+[1:19] Yeah. So we've met in other tiny rooms. Other many, many other tiny rooms. The tiniest room, I think that we ever met was like your old office at WD50. Which is slightly smaller than this room, but not much.
+
+[1:30] Well, here's the thing. Like, uh, so you know, for those of you that don't know, uh Wiley Dufresne, my brother in law, and uh for a long time. In fact, that's how we know each other is because we shared a mutual interest in the Carpenter sisters. Yeah. That sounds weird when you say it like that.
+
+[1:46] Yeah, but fact. But it it yeah. Yeah. And uh so, anyways, so you might know he started well he stu well, you started at Il Forno in uh Al Forno. Al Farno, in uh in Rhode Island, right?
+
+[1:59] Well, I mean, actually, I mean, professionally that might be accurate. I've been cooking since I was eleven. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean like for jobs. I mean, I had several jobs in like summer jobs and restaurants, like between my college years, but my first one was, yes, the the summer before my senior year of college.
+
+[2:20] Uh I worked at Al Forno's, correct. And then you went to uh, you know, where I used to work and where Miley by the way, I was when I said I never had you on before, people were like, What about Miley? And I'm like, so you're married to Miley, who, you know, is the culinary journalism juggernaut to beat all culinary. You should have her on the show. You uh you should, you should yeah, I mean, I could leave and she could maybe come over now.
+
+[2:43] She is pretty close, actually. Well, she's on uh she's in Oklahoma. Oh chill chilling with the pioneer lady. Currently in or en route to Oklahoma. Is she the pioneer lady or the pioneer woman?
+
+[2:54] I I believe she goes by Pioneer Woman. Pioneer Woman, yeah. But she has a big old ranch, right? I I I mean again, that's why you should have Miley on to discuss those matters. That's not true.
+
+[3:03] So anyway, so then whatever. You went to the French Culinary Institute, then like you're well, your first big I'm just doing the quick thing. Maybe we'll do banter first and then we do quick. You want to do banter first? Uh you have anything good.
+
+[3:12] You cook anything good this week? Have I cooked anything good this week? Um uh not really. I mean, it's the week is pr it's early in the week. So I had to do that.
+
+[3:21] Well, I mean, in the last seven days. In the last seven days. My week started at your house, having having a uh sort of silence of the lambs turkey experience, which was uh which was enjoyable. Yeah, yeah. I like that.
+
+[3:34] That was good. I put the lotion, I literally put the lotion on the skin. You you certainly did. And it got so what I did, people was I made my mom's stuffing recipe because I'm I'm supposed to go on, and you were on Dave Chang's recipe club Chrissy and Chris. Not that long ago.
+
+[3:47] It was great. Good fun. Yeah. And so like I'm doing something with them, and I'm on their Thanksgiving episode, so I made my mom stuffing. But my gist of how the recipe club's supposed to work is that you're supposed to do something that is maybe that you haven't done before, right?
+
+[4:03] Correct. So like since I've had this stuffing every year of my life and have made it for at least or been a participant in making it for at least 42 years, right? Or at least since I was 10 or before, right? I was like, well, I gotta do something different. So I I ripped a skin off a turkey, just like the side just like Buffalo Bill, and then uh I meat glued it around the stuffing and just made like a like a just skin and stuffing, like just skin and stuffing.
+
+[4:32] I mean, the wings were added on for some some authentic for a little visual appeal. It was quite delicious. It was quite delicious. Well, I do love my mom's stuffing recipe. Uh this week I haven't I haven't prepared much.
+
+[4:42] I mean again, I started Sunday night at your house. Uh last night, uh we we dined al fresco um as a family. Uh and this I'll be cooking later this week. Pizzas on pizza's on the the docket. I make pizza every week.
+
+[4:56] Yeah. Um probably do uh the girls like the m my my wife, your other your sister in law, will be out of town most of the week. So I'll do be doing a lot of cooking. The girls like uh we do a little mango chicken. We got we found this delicious Indian mango chicken from a place not far from us up in Curry Hill, and I've reverse engineered it pretty well, so we'll do that.
+
+[5:17] The girls like that. Um, you know, uh it's fun. I like cooking at home a lot, as as do you. I know you do too. But so just like, I don't know, I'm just used to it anyway.
+
+[5:27] Yeah. Like I said, I make pizza every week because that's uh an important part of what's what's coming. And so Yeah, how much you want to talk about that? Um I mean, we can talk about most of it. Yeah.
+
+[5:37] Sure. All right. What about uh what about you guys, John? What do you got? What do you got?
+
+[5:40] Anything good this week? I'm assuming, Stas that you don't have that much good this week because you don't feel well, that you haven't been cooking a lot. I just got this like two days ago, but yeah, no, nothing good. All right. What about what about what about you, John?
+
+[5:53] No, nothing really, I guess. I don't know. I've been getting good at making the carbonara at the restaurant, but it's satisfying. But yeah. So what kind of carbonara learning curve did you go through?
+
+[6:04] I mean, I've always made it for myself and for family meal and things like that, but this was Yeah, I don't know. I've just been getting better at it. I found like the right ratio of cooked pasta to egg yolks to cheese. If any of you have been to the restaurant like maybe like three weeks ago and had the carbonara, go again. Have the Cabinet again.
+
+[6:23] What's the what's the pork product of choice in your carbonara? Guanchale. Yeah. Fair trying to get it. Wait, but who's Guan Charlie?
+
+[6:28] That uh that Iowa one? Yeah, La Quercia. You're gonna think I'm gonna try and get the salumeria biolese. You're a La Quercha man, huh? I okay.
+
+[6:38] Oh, all right. It's it's it's uh it's too dry to me, I think the Laquertia. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't had it. No offense.
+
+[6:46] I love anyone trying to do anything good. I'm not trying to not try to hurt anyone. But like I haven't had their uh guanchale for years and years and years. But like I kind of like the I kind of like the wetter rolled up. I don't know.
+
+[7:00] Yeah. I'm a huge guan chale fan though. A hundred percent. You know why? It's delicious.
+
+[7:06] That's correct. That is that's the correct answer of why to be a fan of anything. Yeah. Well, Dave, you know where you could try it, right? It's at my restaurant if you finally can't mind.
+
+[7:15] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know what? With with friends like these.
+
+[7:23] Uh by the way, today is election day. So if you're listening to us live, uh, that means that you're on the Patreon. If you're not listening to us live and you want to, John, what should they do? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. We got three different levels of membership, all with great different perks.
+
+[7:38] At the base level, you always get to be part of the Discord, which I always forget to mention. It's a great talking space for members from the cooking issues community. You can ask a lot of different questions and I don't know, get recipe feedback and things like that. It's great. And then also great uh guests on for which we get uh discounts for listeners from uh Kitchen Arts and Letters and yeah, just a whole bunch of other things.
+
+[7:59] So you should join. It's very affordable. Plus also you can call in your questions live to 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. Uh I'm I'm dialing right now.
+
+[8:10] Oh my god, don't tell you, don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. Like, it's on a loop. Turn down your turn anyway. Um so uh hey Quinn, what do you got going on?
+
+[8:23] Uh I did that uh that uh Cantonese ketchup spaghetti Chinese cooking demystified. It's pretty good. Uh compared to any other thing you could do, how was it? I I would do it again. Okay.
+
+[8:40] I'll say that. All right. Yeah. I don't know. Ketchup, I mean, like, I don't know.
+
+[8:46] Why don't you describe quickly the ingredient base that goes into it, huh? Well, it it's um onions. Uh huh. Fried in copious fat. Okay.
+
+[8:56] Uh the recipe calls for lard. I had to substitute uh ghee because that's all I had. And then you cook out the ketchup. And then you do address. When you say cook out, what do you mean cook out?
+
+[9:11] You mean cook it until it's fry the ketchup. Well, until what? Like, in other words, like like like the old school recipe say the fat pops out of it where it demul demulsifies, like almost turning it back to paste. I don't know, I don't know if we went that far, but like, yeah, there's a slight color change. At least.
+
+[9:30] And then there's an uh other tomato product added again. The recipe called for a little bit of fresh. I just did like half a can, and then you simmer it with uh crushed garlic, bay leaf, uh shoshing wine, uh a little soif. I mean, it's good. Bay, huh?
+
+[9:53] Uh I went to Jean George's the tin building a little while ago to buy uh, which you guys should go to. Uh I bought his fancy bay leaf, much better than the bay leaf that I was buying from my supermarket. Dried or fresh? Dry. Dried bay.
+
+[10:10] But like very well, La Wat. La boite piece. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it was uh, you know, LaBoit makes good stuff.
+
+[10:17] The spice box. Yeah. Speaking of spice boxes, have you guys heard of spice bags, Irish spice bags? No. Wouldn't be your thing, Wiley.
+
+[10:25] John, you've never heard of the Irish spice bag? No. Oh my god. Quinn, you heard of the Irish spice bag? Jack or Stas?
+
+[10:31] Is that Joe? No, no. Oh, so apparently it's I've been called an Irish spice bag. There you go. Well, but you're more of a more of a French Canadian spice bag.
+
+[10:40] But uh so apparently it started at like Chinese takeouts in Dublin in the in the like 2010s, right around that area. And it's a mixture of like French fries, fried peppers, uh pieces of fried chicken, and then like cur curry, curry powder. Oh yeah. And sauce. And I was like, oh yeah.
+
+[11:03] Oh yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. Irish spice. And I like the name because it sounds real dirty.
+
+[11:09] No, no dairy product, no, no cheese of any kind, or anything like that? I know, but curds would be great on that. Yeah, I mean, that would be a very interesting riff on poutine. You know, that would be a chuck some curds into that. I rindia.
+
+[11:23] You gotta well anyway. I will I want it, I don't know if there's a legitimate spice bag here in New York. And I'm now kicking myself because it existed the last time I was in Dublin, because I was in Dublin only like maybe four years ago or five years ago. So it existed, and I was too stupid to get to have it. I was not in the no.
+
+[11:42] I mean, that seems like a strong assessment of you, but not in retrospect. I could have had a spice bag, the legitimate spice bag. And it's spreading slowly. I think it's coming to, I think it's maybe spreading through Irish pubs. I think there are some in New York, but I don't know who's got like a good one.
+
+[11:58] I want I don't want like although how could that combination be uh could be bad if you use bad chicken and bad French fries? And it's a curry blend, it's just like a uh a a dry spice? I think they add a dry spice, and I think they also add a uh they they serve it with a sauce. Like a dipping dipping sauce? I believe so.
+
+[12:14] Never had a hammer, but can you imagine just getting it like ripping open like a like one of those one, you know, those the grease paper, ripping it open and having that be in your spice sack? Right. I want that real bad. I want that real bad. Done well.
+
+[12:27] It sounds delicious. Oh yeah. Oh, hell yeah. You think they're in the basket at the same time, the fries and the chicken? Same I mean, that's how I would do it.
+
+[12:29] Same basket. I mean, you know, you know, unless you need to segregate your oils. You know what I mean? Anyway, that's racist. And uh miss your molecules.
+
+[12:48] So what what do you what what do you have going on in uh freegan uh what do you have going on in uh Mexico? Oh man, I was all over Mexico. Oh, by the way, I did I did hear the episode last week. I actually indeed did not have service, but I appreciated you poking finally. Um a ton of delicious food.
+
+[13:05] I was in Mexico City, Oaxaca, uh Morelos, some towns outside of Oaxaca. But at the end of my trip on the very last day, happened to go to this like I guess they call it like a psychedelic music festival called Hypnosis. And one of the headliners was Primus. Ooh, of all bands. And get this a few things.
+
+[13:24] So, first of all, this crowd is full of like hip young Mexicans. They all know every song, singing every lyric. Of Primus? Like Tommy the Cat. Yes.
+
+[13:34] I couldn't bel I was beside myself. I did not understand how this was possible. Were they mainly doing fizzle fry sailing the seas of cheese, or were they more when known as Big Brown Beaver era? What were they playing? They did When is Big Brown Beaver, Fizzle Fry, Jerry was a race car driver, my name is Mud, Tommy the Cat.
+
+[13:51] So they also played a uh the entire farewell to Kings Rush album as a cover, right? So this is but but here's the fun part a guy jumps on the stage and tries to steal less clay pool's bass in the middle of the song. Did he get the crap kicked out of it? Oh yeah, yeah, he sure did. Yeah.
+
+[14:11] Oh yeah. That's that was it was it was just wild. I just know we talked about Primus on the show a few weeks ago. It's very weird coincidence. Yeah.
+
+[14:18] I all like every month or two, I think about the concert I saw them play in New Haven with Fishbone, where he just stopped the song to defy the laws of tradition, which if you know that song, it's like, you know, it's like it's anyway, it's a song. So he stops right in the middle of it, just stops and goes, I hope none of you are doing hallucinogenic drugs. They're illegal and they're bad for you. Yep. And then like crazy.
+
+[14:44] I was like, man, because he was so high on hallucinogenic drugs at that moment. It was awesome. Anyway, uh, like oh that was uh it was either right after Sailing Seas of Cheese came out, or it was I think it was the tour for Sailing the Seas of Cheese is that it was that concert which was nuts. Uh good old days. Good old days.
+
+[15:04] Yeah, so and then lastly, I will up. I I I it's promising that I'd update the map with all my Mexico City recommendations. I will actually do that today. A lot of new spots that I found. Sounds good.
+
+[15:18] Uh Primus. All right. So you want some questions first, and then we'll go back into uh the whole uh the history of the Wiley or do you want to do more history? As you asked, sure. I'm happy for questions.
+
+[15:29] Questions? All right, we got we got questions for you. Right. All right. Oh, by the way, uh speaking of people who are interested in dough-based products.
+
+[15:37] Next week we have uh Craig from Olmo Kitchen coming on. Yep. So any of you that uh have bagel related questions, new vo bagel related questions. Oh, by the way, Jack, did you see that they're doing a new a new metal tour? Oh my god, I sure did.
+
+[15:52] Oh my god, so many bands. Like so much corn, so much incubus. Like, but then they're also including people like Skinny Puppy and freaking Mr. Bungle. So I'm like, on what like we're like, like, okay, Mr.
+
+[16:06] Bungle, I kind of get it, but like, how is Skinny Puppy the similar? I don't know. It's like slipknot playing that thing. I don't know. All I'm saying is probably it's an insane lineup.
+
+[16:18] It looks like a joke. When I saw it first, I was like, this has to be just a joke, like a meme. But it is real. You're like, I verified it. It's actually happening.
+
+[16:27] And then I went back and listened. I really did have to go look. Yeah. I mean, like, I like Skinny Puppy, right? But like a lot of this, because I don't consider that new metal, but a lot of that new metal.
+
+[16:36] Because they're delicious. They are. Yeah. That didn't really when you got it. But you by the way, Wiley, congratulations on on uh you and I joining the uh international Sous vide Hall of Fame together.
+
+[16:49] Yes, congratulations to us all. By the way, for those of you that don't know, Wiley's the one, I mean, I've said this on the air a million times. Wiley's the one who kind of got me into again, he was macking on my wife's sister, and so the only way he could do that was by getting me to get him immersion circulators off of eBay, and that's how we became friends. I mean, that's probably a modified version of the story, but it's the one that I'm sticking with, though. Okay.
+
+[17:13] Yeah. Well, why some truth to it? Wiley was the first person I know of other than Thomas Keller and maybe Charlie Trotter to have immersion circulators in the U.S. because no one had them here, and no one could afford them, right? So Wiley had a 250, 250,000 was what the Bonnet costs.
+
+[17:34] I mean, I I I don't know that it was it was a lot. There's a lot of good that will come of discussing that. Well, I don't know. Uh not the cost, but like it's is expensive and huge and great. Yeah, 11 feet by eight feet.
+
+[17:44] Except for the fact that they could not replace the flat top pieces properly and I had to go and grind them down. Again, I don't think we're here to uh to to badmouth Bonet. But I'm saying this is like WD50 was a kit like a cook's paradise, right? It had a huge, awesome, amazing, everybody loved kitchen and a really nice downstairs. So like you know how when you go downstairs at a lot of restaurants, it really sucks.
+
+[18:11] It was nice downstairs. It was really nice downstairs. Like the pastry room was air conditioned. Correct. So that like, you know, that wouldn't mess up like the the ice creams and the bases and the whatever limb, whatever they were people's hair.
+
+[18:23] We don't want to mess up people's hair. That was mostly what it's like. Sam's hair when you opened was a thing of beauty. Sam Mason's hair was, you know. It still is.
+
+[18:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, you know, I could see installing air conditioned just to keep the cloth perfect. Correct. Yeah. Uh and man, the ice cream he was putting out of that place.
+
+[18:41] All the stuff. Like all the stuff that the that uh pastry folk I mean, you had kind of a really stupid, stupid list of pastry people come out of WT50. Um they were not stupid people. No, no, no, but like, but like a dumb, like crazily successful. Super talented.
+
+[19:01] Super talented. Yeah, yeah, no, it was it it it's always made me feel good, you know, the number of people that have gone through there and gone off to do great things. But oddly, the the most notable have been the the pastry department, you know, the the three pastry chefs. Um, as well as I mean, you know, she wasn't an actual she was just a cook, a pastry cook, but Christina Tosi without question is probably the mo of all the people that worked in the pastry department at W 50 the most famous. Yeah and and what has she done with her life?
+
+[19:29] Just kidding messing with you. Yeah Tozy who's basically ruling the world uh Sanchez who's like ruling your own CEO who's done very well Lucio Sanchez and Malcolm Livingston just released a pretty interesting dessert at sweet gr every sweet green. There's a sweet green here. You should go try it. It's available right now brand new dessert first time ever at Sweet Green.
+
+[19:52] And Stu Pac. You think I believe and Sam and Sam Mason also all extremely uh good people but all who've gone on to do great things. Well the other thing about all those people is they also all did their own they did their in other words they didn't come and just do exactly what the person who was do you know their predecessor did. They all had their own spins on things which I thought was really kind of fun. They all did their own new kind of things and techniques.
+
+[20:23] It was a very it was a very it was a kitchen where like you kind of demanded that people think and do kind of innovation work. Like you didn't really enjoy people just kind of like riding on it. You know what I mean? Well we we really encouraged people to be part of our thought process and I think in in that had the effect of giving those people confidence to eventually have their own thought process. And so I think they're all great examples of people who came and added to our body of work but but hopefully took you know something about our process and allowed them to help identify who they were and define who they were and continue to be.
+
+[20:58] I mean they're we're all obviously in a state of evolution, but they're all doing really great stuff. Yeah, and your bar program was always like one of the most interesting bar programs. At the time, I always I always used to say to uh I always used to say to, you know, whichever the magazines, because people still printed magazines back then, uh, would listen. I mean, they still print them. That's Miley's business.
+
+[21:18] I'm not bad mouthing the magazine business. But uh, you know, I I used to say that uh it was very hard for um restaurant bars to get the kind of play they deserve, but you had like you had like so many good people at WD. You had Tona, remember Tona, who's now in, you know, he did research and bar and cook and he plays trumpet and he was a nanny and he's a capoera expert. Uh I mean we had a lot of people, you know, start with Evan Freeman. Evan Evan was our original juice.
+
+[21:47] We had we had unknowns, we had some very well knowns, you know. Um, and we had we had a lot of we had a lot of good people that went through the bar program there. I mean, uh again, we you know, I I I think I uh a great restaurant is got something to offer sort of an all rungs of the ladder. So we wanted to have not just good food, not just good service. We want, you know, we wanted to have food and beverage, but within the food and beverage, we wanted to have, you know, we had an amazing, you know, sherry collection.
+
+[22:15] We had amazing rums that nobody knew about. We had all sorts of different, we had a lot of different beverages, you know, that we felt just added to the layered experience that was WD50. If, you know, when you when you decide to come and however you wanted to engage, whether it was simply just dinner or sort of go on this journey, there were a number of different ways that you could go on the journey and and you know, between myself and my father and and and the rest of the people, we just believed that the more the more layers we could put, the the richer the experience would be. And so we we tried to have all that stuff. And so that's you know, that was the fun of it.
+
+[22:47] Except salad. Uh well, because I don't believe that salad is part of the layered experience. Yeah, did you know that, John, that Wiley is a uh you don't hate Sally, you just didn't want to serve it. Correct. Yeah, interesting.
+
+[23:00] Yeah. I'd like to share a little story about WD50, if I may. Sure. So, Wiley, when I first started cooking back in 2008, you came to the restaurant I was working at, Resto, because Dan Ross Lutweiler had been one of your your interns at one point. And I made you a grilled cheese.
+
+[23:15] You know, like a fancy grilled cheese. Because that's what we were doing there. But didn't know who you were. And then a couple weeks later, you know, I don't know, Dan made a big deal out of it. So I ended up getting a reservation at WD-50, and I showed up there, and you're one of the I can't remember who the server was, but we started talking to him, and he, you know, and I casually mentioned, you know, that I'd made you grilled cheese, not thinking anything of it, you know, and that's why I was there and just for the fun of it.
+
+[23:37] But he went and told you, and then the level of hospitality that you showed us was absolutely incredible. You sent out five free appetizers, three free entrees, and then you gave us a personal tour of the kitchen afterwards, and that just like solidified me wanting to be in hospitality. Like that experience that you gave me without even having ever met me was just so kind and generous. And it was, yeah, that's why I'm back to chefing now. So thank you.
+
+[24:01] Well, I have the invoice, so I'm actually here to collect on those those nine free things that you were issuing. Yeah, well, you know, I'm I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was a it was a good time. Yeah. Well, WD was always extremely generous to cooks.
+
+[24:18] You always have loved cooks. Yeah, I I mean, sure, absolutely, yes, a hundred percent. I mean, we tried to extend ourselves to any and all customers, but we did like to give um special consideration to to to kitchen, you know, to cooks, kitchen workers that would come and, you know, understandably not necessarily have have the ability to to afford to eat their i i to have the full experience. I mean, yes, we had a la carte, but I I think really WD50 at the height of its powers was a long, slow, fun tasting menu. Um where you could do a lot of different things and have a lot of different flavors and taste experiences.
+
+[24:56] And so we were always trying to make sure that when cooks came by that we could give them the opportunity to to maybe try it, try it, try something beyond what maybe they could afford because you know, back in those days, I mean still to this day, it it's it's not the most lucrative position in the restaurant. Right, right. And I'm saying extending this hospital hospitality to like line cooks, like, you know, any kind of people. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
+
+[25:19] It was not, you know, it was it wasn't we were not discriminating. And and I mean, I hope that we made anybody feel good, you know, we're restaurant employees or not. But we we did always um we had a always had a thing for single diners, like that we had a policy that if you someone's dining alone to really go over the above and beyond for them because um, you know, it just seemed like a fun opportunity to to take someone who's dining alone and really give them an even richer richer thing. Uh not that not not not to imply that dining alone is somehow sad or something like that, because dining alone can be great, you know, going to the movies alone. Do have singular experiences can be can be i great.
+
+[25:56] But uh but we again we just we try to really um you know, I I it's I think that people that get involved in restaurants are uh are it it's it's it's so much fun to dole out that hospitality. It's so satisfying to be able to say, hey, look, we we do this and we want to give you more of what we do. And we're not particularly interested in whether or not you can afford it or want to pay for it. We just, we're excited about this and we want to bestow it upon you. And so I I think that people that are involved in restaurants and hospitality tend to be very generous in nature.
+
+[26:29] And so it's uh it's just really fun. I mean, it's really fun. I think it would be really hard nowadays to do something like WD50. You know what I mean? First of all, like just the mentality behind it.
+
+[26:44] I think it would be hard to get, I don't think you could do it again. Not you one. You know what I mean? Like that kitchen, like the the level of so you like for those that never got to go there, you know, it was uh bare wood, right? Not not tablecloth, but you know, it the place settings were put out just so.
+
+[27:06] So it's like a very specific mix of not overly stodgy, not stodgy, but also like controlled. Is that makes? Yeah, I mean, I think you see a lot of those roots in in modern two and three-star Michelin experiences, mostly in Europe. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know that there's necessarily tablecloths on the table at Noma, to be honest with you.
+
+[27:31] I think it's more about the beautiful wood. The same way. I mean, our tables were made from the wood reclaimed from the floor when we renovated the building, and and and that's as equally, I think a part of our story as a place like Noma harvesting wood from some local forest or some storied this or that. But I I you know, I think at it at its uh I I I think restaurants like that are in some ways m ultimately more of a European like supported by the by uh European or foreign place, like America's not. There were never, I mean, when you know, a Linia is still a practitioner, and there are maybe a small handful of other places thinking, cooking, giving you experience in that sort of way.
+
+[28:10] Although I think the the like you said, the dining room, a lot of the service and stuff at WD is not like a Liney at all. It's much um much more informal, uh much more casual. Um but it it it's it I th I think you're right. I think it would be hard to do that. I think it had a time and a place, and you know, well, especially the the mental room that that kitchen allowed.
+
+[28:32] I don't think anyone I think it'd be hard to to get that built again. You know what I mean? Like it's it's a it's a lot, you know, it there's a lot of pressure too to constantly innovate. I mean, it was a different time. It was a different time in kitchens.
+
+[28:45] There was almost this kind of crazy space race around the world where it was like, okay, you know, we're gonna be at Madrid Fusion this year, or we're gonna be at Star Shifts this year. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna show? What are I it was, you know, there was a lot of technique. It was a lot of technique driven.
+
+[28:59] I mean, I think some people the critics used that as an opportunity to say it wasn't good because it wasn't about flavor or deliciousness, it was just about this, you know, how can I make something crazy? And I I I disagree with that. Um, but there was almost this sort of maniacal space race to to come up with this new wild and crazy technique, of which you played, you know, many a vital role in in in in in, you know, whether it was making, you know, coffee and milk drops, keeping the circulators running. Keeping the circulators running. But it it was a wonderful time.
+
+[29:28] It was a wonderful time, but I think that probably that time has has passed. Um I think that there's still room for for a lot of the belief systems that I have about cooking and approaches to cooking, and you know, we're applying a lot of that thought process to what what what's involved in a pizza. But um I think for, you know, if someone said here's five million dollars, go open another WD 50, I think I might actually uh, you know, say, I I uh thank you, but no, I let's open 15 pizzeria's instead. Yeah. That's a lot of work.
+
+[29:58] Unless you already opened a WD 50. Yeah, and and like, you know, I feel good. I feel good. We set out to achieve a lot of things. And I think for the most part, we achieved every goal.
+
+[30:06] You know, we we that we set out. And so it it it it this it was the circle was complete. And don't, you know, Alder was an incomplete thought. It didn't get to go all the way through. Uh and that's too bad.
+
+[30:17] And dues certainly didn't come close. Um, and that's also unfortunate. But I feel good about you know WD 50's life cycle. WD50 stayed open until they knocked the building down. Yeah, and to this day there's still nothing in the retail space.
+
+[30:30] So I feel bad. I feel bad for for the sort of myopic vision that the landlords at the time had, because they they could we could have put it back. Anyway, that's that's a story for another day. Yeah, one of the many, many times I ate a WD 50, um, I remember I was having a delicious tasting meal. But but he like Wiley would always keep some of his uh his pork belly around because he knew that I loved his pork belly.
+
+[30:55] Like Wiley's pork belly is real good. You want to go through the procedure? It was just a long, slow, you know, it was a it was brined for a while and then it was cooked for even longer. Uh you pressed it real flat so you got good skin kind of. And then it was pressed after that.
+
+[31:09] So it was, you know, it was like a two to three day process. But I mean that it were it not for the pork belly, you and I may not know each other. I mean that pork belly was good. Like I don't I I would just be like, more pork, like this more pork belly. Well that's what you were known as.
+
+[31:23] You were the guy that wanted the middle course pork belly. Yeah, yeah. That's you know. Well, I appreciated it. Chef, the guy, middle course pork belly wants a kitchen tour.
+
+[31:31] When you go tell the guy if he wants a kitchen tour, I want to date with his sister. See? I and I wasn't lying. And so th you know, long story short, I married the girl. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[31:43] And Dave got the pork. So everybody wins. I uh yeah. I went one all the way around. Yeah.
+
+[31:47] But I remember so like uh so WD-50 uh had like big picture windows in the front and like the bar, and you kind of go in, and uh it's i it was literally I I mean I was living still in the Garmin District at the time, but I was about to move down to the neighborhood, or I just moved down to the neighborhood, and uh you're people are sitting there having this kind of amazing tasting experience, and kids would just come up, pull their pants down and push their butt against the window. Remember that? I mean, who doesn't like little pressed ham? You know, who doesn't like little pressed ham? Different, different time, different time in uh in the in the lower east side.
+
+[32:27] Different time in the lower east side. Uh Biff Ditright's saying, question what is your this is for you, Wiley. Okay. He's trying to, he's trolling it. This is a troll question.
+
+[32:37] Oh, okay. Prepare for to be trolled. Okay. Okay. For those of you that don't know, Wiley had a uh uh a donut concept called do, which is short for dufrain duh.
+
+[32:49] Yeah. Yeah. Coffee, donuts, and you also have a family history of donuts. Donuts and coffee, but that's okay. We later lead with donuts.
+
+[32:56] Uh fair fair. But but you have a family history of of donuts. Correct. You want to talk about the family history of donuts briefly before I read this troll question so that they my great grandfather was uh a cake donut maker. Okay.
+
+[33:07] That's it. Yeah, and you you enjoy them. I very much enjoy them. Yeah. All right.
+
+[33:11] You know why? Because they're delicious. Yeah. Which is the correct answer for anything. Yeah.
+
+[33:16] I mean, that's delicious. Yeah. Question. What is your best argument for why cake donuts should even be bothered with when there is the clearly superior option of making yeasted nuts? Um well, that person has a medical condition.
+
+[33:33] I think if their nuts are yeased. Um for that I I'm sorry. I wish them a speedy recovery. Uh I I believe that uh, you know, again, the there's there's enough space in the world for everybody. But I think if you consider the the idea of taking cake batter, which is really what a cake donut is, and trying to fry that in a perfect circle in under three minutes, when not one normally would pour that into a pan and bake it in an oven in 30 to 45 minutes, that there's a real art to it.
+
+[34:05] Um, and I I find like a warm sugared cake donut about four minutes after it's come out of the oven when all the starches have actually retrograded and it's cooled to be sort of ethereal. But that's not to say that you, one, this lovely person couldn't enjoy a yeasted donut. But I think that a cake donut is better. Well, yeasted donuts are easier to make. I mean, okay, look, I don't want to be a jerk about it, but I mean, in other words, like they're self-sealing, right?
+
+[34:33] So, like you you you make a yeasted dough, and it's easier to get to a certain level with, I'm not saying to be great is hard with anything, but I'm saying just to a certain level, yeast is easier because they're self-skinning. So you throw them into the oil and they self-skin. Well, just because it's easier doesn't make it better or worse. Right. But I think you enjoy challenges.
+
+[34:55] And you even the way you just said it, making a cake donut is hard. It making a cake donut is hard. I would say, actually, bigger picture, frying in general is one of the hardest culinary forms, period, hardstop to do properly. It's there are so many more people practicing bad greasy. It's easy.
+
+[35:15] We have a saying, it's easy to make greasy food. And it's really easy to make greasy food in a fryer. It's very easy. Properly fried food is not greasy. Um, unfortunately, most cake donuts are greasy and they're perceived as moist.
+
+[35:29] People think that uh a don a grease leaden donut, laden donut is moist. It's actually not, it's greasy. A proper cake donut should have a nice crust, a ring. To be honest, I think an old fashioned is probably a donut at its highest, like the apex of art. Um but properly fried donuts are are really hard to do.
+
+[35:48] Properly fried anything is really hard to do. It's a lot easier to put a piece of fish or a or a piece of meat in a pan than it is to fry it. Yeah, I mean, I think people should think more about frying. I think they should do it more. It's really hard.
+
+[36:03] How do you like your Cajun fryer, by the way? Um, I do like that Cajun fryer. It's a lot of work to uh maintain uh a fryer that you don't use regularly. You know what I mean? Like, trust me.
+
+[36:14] Um I I I I mean, frying, you know, it's safe to fry outside and stuff like that, so it's great. And and I do like it, but it's um you know, having a flip. The lid works, the lid works to keep the oil good or yeah, yeah. I mean, having a fryer in the middle of the woods is not without its challenges. You know, I don't know.
+
+[36:31] It's in a clearing. To be fair, it's in a clearing. Anyway, but how do you deal with the do you are you okay with the lack of uh thermostat? That's the thing because like when I'm you know, you know, for so long, I I you know had a giant thermostatic fryer. I miss it dearly.
+
+[36:45] Well, it's in my garage if you want it. I know, but I have no place to put it. Although, you know, I think I figured out the problem. I thought I could probably put it back in, but you know what who wouldn't like that very much? The building.
+
+[36:53] Oh, my wife. Yeah. And the billionaire, yeah, yeah. Your insurance company. Yeah, oh my god.
+
+[36:58] Back in the old place when I had the 40 pound fryer. Oof. Yeah, and you didn't have children to be concerned about? I did. I did they knew not to put their get near the fryer.
+
+[37:08] It's like, come on. It's like, you know, don't stand behind the car when I'm backing out of the garage. Only for me it was don't get near the fryer when it's frying. Moving on. Anyway, uh, I missed a fryer deeply.
+
+[37:20] But you like the Cajun one for for it's a good uh option for people to have an outdoor fryer. Uh yes, it is a good option if for outdoor. Absolutely. 100%. And is that I forget, is that stainless or painted?
+
+[37:30] It's painted. Yeah. It's painted. Uh oh, you're lover the stainless, I'm sure. If like if they they'd offered you a stainless option, you well, it was a gift from my most excellent wife.
+
+[37:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's good. I fried fish out there. I f I fried a lot of donuts out there. That's good.
+
+[37:43] A uh chef chef style people, Wiley turned me on to the stainless steel wedding bands. Like uh, yeah, yeah, you turned me on the stainless steel wedding band. Because uh you're a lover of stainless steel. I I I am. I am very much.
+
+[37:56] It's your favorite metal. Well, what's not to like? What's that to like about stainless? Yeah. I mean, it's stainless and it's hard.
+
+[38:03] Yeah, shiny. I was just having you know, you know, we're building a pizzeria and uh we just decided to clad the bar in stainless. And and someone said, Won't that won't won't like drinks leave leave rings on it? I said, uh no, because it's stainless. Stainless.
+
+[38:18] Yeah. But won't like, you know, like the way bars oxidize in the metal. I said it will not. They said it, but I said it's stainless. It will.
+
+[38:25] It will not leave a mark. It is without stain. Yeah. We had in our house up in Connecticut, we had countertops put in that were that were stainless, and the the contractor was like, I've got them in. They're they're they're they're gonna breathe, they'll be shiny, it's gonna look like chrome.
+
+[38:37] I was like, no, I want you to brush the whole thing. He's like, but no, no, it'll look, it'll look it'll look like it's been used. Like the second you walk away from polished stainless, it looks terrible. So so brush the whole thing. He's like, I uh uh brush it.
+
+[38:52] Looks great. Yeah. Yeah, well stainless. You never when you go to uh get like um stainless stuff manufactured on the you know down the district in the street, they're like, is this residential or is this uh commercial? And it and they always try to put a higher finish on the residential, but then it ends up looking like garbage anyway.
+
+[39:07] Yes, brushed, but just brush it. So you mentioned the pizzeria. Do you want to say anything more about the so you did your stretch pop-up? We did stretch pop-up, yes. Right.
+
+[39:17] And then now you're can you're what do you want to say about what's going forward? Uh we're try we're we're we're working diligently on um bringing a uh stretch brick and mortar pizzeria uh to a neighborhood near you soon. What kind of oven are you gonna use? We're gonna use a deck of an electric deck oven. You do you want to talk about the brand or you don't have the picked out yet?
+
+[39:34] Uh I think we're gonna go with the Pizza Master. Yeah. Yeah, we're pretty pretty enthusiastic about that. Nice. And how how tall are those decks?
+
+[39:41] Uh well we have we'll we'll be using a three-deck oven. Um the the the the bottom of the upper deck, if that makes sense. With the door open, I think is it's six sits at sixty inches. Right, but how b how deep is each like our pizza? What's the height of each deck?
+
+[39:57] The pizza decks are real short, right? Yeah, they're I think what is that, eight inches, I think. Oh, it's pretty high though. Yeah. I mean it's enough for the phone.
+
+[40:03] I have the specs in my phone, right? Are they basically like like the way it's about 70 inches wide and 50 deep. And what's what's gonna be your standard uh diameter? Pizza? Yeah.
+
+[40:14] Um probably a 12-inch. I mean, I think that there's a lot to like. I mean, uh, yeah, 12-inch, 12-inch pizza. There's a lot to like about a 12-inch pie. Um, and we're doing a New York style dough, and I think that uh nobody really makes New York style pizza that small.
+
+[40:27] You know, typically New York pizzas are 18 to 20s. Right. Um, but I think that uh, you know, those those pies don't deliver well, and I think that a New York style pizza in in a in in a smaller size um will actually be a great pie for delivery. We'll hold up to delivery, won't won't arrive in a box all soupy and steamy and gross. Soupy and steamy.
+
+[40:48] Um yeah. You're gonna make a pizza soup? Uh I hadn't thought about making pizza soup, although I do have an idea for a French onion soup pizza. That sounds great. So that sounds great.
+
+[40:59] But you don't you don't want to do a like you know going back to WD days, you'd be making a pizza consume and then you would serve breadsticks with a pizza consomme. Something like, yeah. Well, you know, we tried hot dog consomme at WD. It was terrible. It was disgusting.
+
+[41:13] Do you know what the best hot dog consomme is? Go out to the go out to the dirty dog folks, pay them for a cup of their water. That's what we did. And then we clarified it. Yeah.
+
+[41:21] And it was gross. I've tasted it. It tastes like hot dog. It was gross. It's pretty gross.
+
+[41:25] I've tasted their water. It didn't go on the menu. Uh yeah. The worst thing I've ever liquored is actually worst. One of the worst liquors I've ever made was hot dog liquor.
+
+[41:34] Yeah, that doesn't sound good either. It was bad. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Brady Vicker wants to have more one donuts.
+
+[41:40] Brady Vicker uh wants to know more about how you approach developing your cake donuts. It seems like 99 per uh percent of places use a mix. It's more like 100%, right? I mean, he's right. Yeah, anyway.
+
+[41:51] How hard is it to go your own way? You can go your own way. Go your own way. You you sure can. Yeah.
+
+[41:57] Um, how hard is it? I mean, if you're well, again, what's your intent? Is your intent to open a donut shop or is your intent to make delicious donuts at home? Because um if you're gonna make donuts at home, I think your the bigger hurdle is what are you gonna fry them in? How are you gonna make sure you don't hurt yourself?
+
+[42:16] Frying again, frying frying's hard. Uh you need a lot of oil to fry donuts properly. You need a big pot with a relatively deep amount of oil so that you don't lose temperature. You know what I mean? You don't want that thermal drop because that that equals absorption, that equals a greasy donut, that equals a fail in my mind.
+
+[42:32] So the thing that the thing that you have professionally is a huge thermal mass because you're dealing with like minimum 40, 50 pounds of oil. You know what I mean? But but commercial donut fryers are extremely shallow. Yeah and the the heating element and the donut are very close together, unlike French Fry Fryers, which are massive, like just sort of black holes of oil where there's supposed to be, you know, the fries the the stuff's supposed to drop to the bottom, blah, blah, blah. Right.
+
+[42:58] You're not you're not poisoning your oil the way though that you are with a French fry fryer. You don't need the cold zone. You poison the oil with chocolate donuts. Chocolate donuts screw the oil up because the cocoa and all that. Anyway, to answer this person's question, how did I go about developing a cake donut?
+
+[43:13] Well, there's not a lot of literature, unlike pizza where there's a thousand recipes online, a billion recipes online. There's nothing online to make a real cake donut, because a cake donut is made from a batter. A yeast donut is made from a dough. And that's not up for debate. Cake donut, cake, cake, batter, cake donut.
+
+[43:33] But most online recipes for cake donuts are rolled and punched because they make them too so stiff so that they don't blow out. Correct. Because the idea of because it's hard to deposit batter in a circle at 325 to 350 degrees and not cause your home to become a problem. So uh to again, to answer the question, what I did was I tried as best I could to find recipes of which there are not many. And I just, you know, experimented, experiment, experiment.
+
+[44:04] And and you know, the recipe that you got the day dues closed was somewhere close to a 60 version 68, something like that. Do you remember when uh way back in the day when I called the Belshaw brothers and I asked them for an actual recipe, and they're like, I don't understand. Yeah. And they went down to the basement and found some like million-year-old person that they just like threw like food scraps to to keep alive and they scraped up some Yeah. I mean, most places use a mix.
+
+[44:33] I mean, I would say, and there are some good ones out there. There are definitely some good ones. A lot of them are are not great, but um, you know, you can tell a mix on a cake donut, usually when you break it open in the color, because there's a lot of that yellow coloring to make it feel eggy. Um, but but again, I would say I would tell this, what was this person's name? That was Brady Vicker.
+
+[44:53] Brady, I would say start with uh your favorite pancake batter and and and and go from there because pancake batter and cake donut batter is very similar. But the thing about a mix, right, is is that my impression, you tell me, my impression of mixes is that they work, they deposit over a much wider range of temperature accurately than someone could accomplish without using like heavily stabilized fats and the right hydrocolloids and all that other stuff. I mean, there was not any of that fancy hydrocolorate stuff in our in our in our in our our ultimate mix. We had some things like corn, you know, corn starches and and things like that in there because they helped with uh milk powder and things like that that helped, which is not a hydrocolite, I understand. Um, but that helped with the crisping and and some of the staling because we were we were wholesaling, and so we need to extend the shelf life.
+
+[45:44] So some of those things that are in there, a lot of those additives are because donuts are made and held for a period of time. But when you're at home, you're making donuts and eating them. I would say take your favorite pancake recipe, sub out 20, 30% AP for cake flour. That'll give your donut a little bit more tenderness. Um, throw a little bit of milk powder in there if you want.
+
+[46:01] That'll help with with keeping like an uh a barrier on the oil. It'll also make it real cr crispy. Um, but pancakes and donut, pancake batter and cake donut batter are very similar. So another thing you taught me is that the depositors, so if you ever buy a donut depositor, they're awesome. But they are they're expensive though.
+
+[46:20] And you can get them can are they still expensive used? Because they used to be real cheap use. You can't find them used. No. But you're talking five, six hundred bucks, which for me is the same one I have.
+
+[46:30] The Belshaw, yeah, yeah. You can get a brand new one tomorrow for 600 bucks. Well, anyways, I have it, so maybe I'll put it on eBay. So if you uh if you if you are using that what was surprising to me is it's like how you have to keep it full. Like it relies on a certain weight of batter above it to work properly.
+
+[46:50] It's gravity fed. Yeah. It's a great so, but we were you'd also could catch us, like I if you have that one, you just swing it a few times and and you can push the battery down. You drop four or five swinging around in your arm, drop four or five. Um, yeah.
+
+[47:05] But have fun with it. Cake donuts are great, are fun to make at home. Sugar, cinnamon, go for it. But yeast donuts are easier to make at home. Uh, it's a process.
+
+[47:13] You gotta you're gonna make that dough, you gotta let it rest, you gotta punch it, you gotta proof it, you gotta fry it. It's not easy. I don't want to make it sound like cake donut a yeast donuts or a walk in the park. It's a process. Yeah, but I mean, like.
+
+[47:24] I can make you cake donuts in half an hour. I cannot make you yeast donuts in half an hour. Okay. I could probably get the yeast donut batter ready to go before the oil was up to 10. Okay.
+
+[47:38] I'm just saying. If you've what's the easiest thing to fry? Beignets, obviously. They don't even have to make like think you make like a yeast dough, cut it into squares and throw it in oil. It's never gonna be it's gonna be greasy.
+
+[47:50] It's gonna 100%. Right, but it's gonna be. You never had a beignet that wasn't greasy. But but if you're not used to a cake donut batter, not only is it gonna be greasy, it's gonna literally go pff. Make it tight.
+
+[48:01] Just make a little, I'm telling you, try with start with, go buy some bisquick. Biscuick. Yeah, it's good stuff. Works well. I haven't had bisquick in my I haven't had bisquick.
+
+[48:11] My mom had bisquick in the 70s, and it was that box was there the entire time of my childhood, I think. It's a good product. I can't I can't say that. You know what I used to make? The first thing, one of the first things I used to make, because you know, uh both of us grew up only only children, right?
+
+[48:26] I mean, like my my parents got divorced and remarried, and so like I started having brothers and sisters when I was like 16. But by that time you're pretty much baked, right? I used to, in the 70s, they used to make these things called pan shakes. Do you remember pan shakes? No.
+
+[48:41] So a pan shake was pancake batter, so basically a pancake mix, like biscuit, basically, right? In a little milk carton, right? Okay. Right. And we had a plastic sack on the inside.
+
+[48:54] So what you do is is you would open the pan shake carton, you would dump in the liquid, and then you'd c close it and roll it over. So, you know, and then shake the hell out of the bag. You didn't even have to use a fork and or you know, this food. And then that's how you would make pancakes. And that's how I started.
+
+[49:11] That was one of the very first things that I would was cooking. I mean, you can buy biscuit does sells at now. You can buy a biscuit that you just unscrew the cap, pour the liquid in and shake it. Yeah. It's good for kids, it's good for kids to start with.
+
+[49:23] I love pancakes. I made them this morning. Yeah. I make only giant pancakes. I can't be bothered to make a lot of little pancakes.
+
+[49:30] I like, I like silver dollars and normal size. They're fine. Uh mine are the entire width of my crampus crate makers. So how big is that? That's big.
+
+[49:39] But that's one. I make one pancake and then I slice it into, think of it as like the pizza of pancakes. I really like taking pancakes and putting them in the toaster. Um where pancakes, the Achilles heel of a pancake is that it doesn't stay crispy for very long. But if you put them in the toaster briefly, it's exceptional.
+
+[50:00] Because you get some crunch, you get the exterior crunch of a pancake, and then you get the steamy cake of the center. I think it's a under underappreciated scent. Steamy cake. All right. Justin Cheryl writes in question.
+
+[50:11] What uh what do you what do you think of the donut business now that you've been in and out of it? Not about the delicious product, but what it's like to serve a product with such a short lifespan with chain competition and mostly morning sales compared to pizza or fine dining. Donut business is hard. That's what I would say. It's hard.
+
+[50:26] It's obviously volume-driven. Uh shelf life is an issue. Donut business is hard. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[50:34] Uh Jermaine Dupre Fixet writes, uh, what's your go-to quick meal for a home to make it home? My go-to quick meal. I mean, if if it's six forty-five and I haven't started yet, I keep uh Trader Joe's steam dumplings in the freezer. And um, again, throw in a pot of rice, make some quick pickles, salt, sugar, equal parts, cucumbers, um, and then I'll throw the the Trader Joe's steam dumplings. That's they're they're excellent.
+
+[51:05] Put 'em in a pan, a little bit of oil, get them brown, throw in four ounces of water, put the lid on. Delicious. I like a Trader Joe's dumpling. They're very solid. You brown first and then steam?
+
+[51:15] Yes, always. Uh Map from Mystic, uh, what's your current pizza skin formula? Uh sorry, no can do. Yeah, yeah. Is that what is that what you guys call it in the basil?
+
+[51:32] You call them skins? Well, no, to skin a pizza is is that when you stretch a pizza, you it's called skinning. You you you you shape it into a long flat circle. But um, you know, uh I I I th I I don't think that it we're quite I'd be happy to share a recipe, not the current recipe. Yeah, I see.
+
+[51:49] I see. I see. Uh well you want to what what hydration are you at right now? How about that? Um I I like uh sixty-three.
+
+[51:55] Sixty-three is a good number, sixty-three percent hydration. I think how long. Um well, you know, the idea of you mean how long does it ferment for? Yeah. I think there's a lot of work still to be done between uh long-term cold fermentation.
+
+[52:13] There's not a lot of r science on that subject. And so it's not totally clear if you can't get the same results flavor profiles from a single day RT bulk versus a long cold, like bald bulk. Um and there seems to be two schools of thought on that. Um I think again, sixty-three percent hydration and then but again, th you gotta have some fun with the flour because flour is what is gonna change everything in there. You know what I mean?
+
+[52:39] It's water, it's flour, it's yeast, it's maybe diastatic malt, maybe not, it's sugar, maybe, maybe not. Um I don't think there's much more to it than that. You say oil, are you oiling yours or no? Oil or not. Uh yeah, I have olive oil in in our dough.
+
+[52:53] You like Captain Greasy's stuff, right? Nick Coleman, you like his stuff. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Uh Brandon Bird writes uh since uh Dave and Wiley are both uh philosophy majors, I wonder if they might comment on how, if at all, their study of philosophy influenced their approach to food and cooking.
+
+[53:10] What do you think? Uh John Stuart Mill, greatest good for the greatest number of people. Really? You're you're uh you're a uh utilitarian at heart? Yeah, sure.
+
+[53:20] The greatest good for the greatest number of people. Uh since I would went to college when I was 18, like a lot of people do, uh, and was a boy, I read a lot of Nietzsche. So I don't really think it affected the way I live now. That's a lot. All those like rich German guys that were angry and lived alone, they didn't they they didn't they that was an unusual.
+
+[53:40] I don't I don't I don't relate to them. He ended up like he ended up losing his mind and like pooping pooping in his chest of drawers in his sister's attic towards the end of his life. So like it didn't end well for him. Doesn't end well for anyone. I would not like Howard Hughes.
+
+[53:55] Yeah. Oof, yeah, but not as rich. Uh Chef, why don't you like wood fire? Would you rather sell pizza in high volume or less volume? And what would determine the difference?
+
+[54:06] Uh would you come is uh would you come this is from Prudencia restaurant? Would you come to our restaurant if we saved enough dough for you? Which of those questions shall I address? Just do them all. Do them all.
+
+[54:16] Why don't I like wood fire? Well, I presumably four pizza ovens. Um I I didn't say I don't like wood fire for pizza ovens. I said the type of pizza I make does not go into a wood fired oven. Um I make, you know, tip typically lower hydration doughs that that are are better suited to to deck oven.
+
+[54:29] I mean I I'm I'm chasing a New York style pizza. New York style pizza doesn't go in a uh a wood burning oven. What do you think about the coal like Lombardi's? Uh I think that's del I mean that Lombardi's pizza's delicious, but that's not that's that is okay. That's New York style pizza.
+
+[54:47] Then we're now we're getting granular, and you're talking about New York style pizza, New York pizza history, uh cultural anthropology, blah, blah, blah. But I I have I the type of pizza I make doesn't really fare well in a coal oven. I have no problem with that uh as a concept. I think it's delicious. A lot of New Haven pizza is also coal-fired and delicious.
+
+[55:07] Um what do I think about the pizza business? What was uh uh would you rather sell in high volume or low volume? And what would be the difference making you choose? Presumably meaning that you would use different kind of specs or different I mean I I I'd like to have a pizza business that was successful, so there's got to be some sort of volume. Uh you know what I mean?
+
+[55:26] I think uh I I'm better selling a hundred pizzas than three. So uh I'm not sure that I totally say unless the three are really big and really expensive. Really expensive. Um and would I come to their place if they saved me some dough? Meaning like they typically run out by the time I'm there.
+
+[55:41] I mean they want you to come make a pizza there. Uh where is it? I don't know. We'll look it up. Uh sure.
+
+[55:46] Yeah, I'd love to come. By the way. Airfare included? I'm gonna bring uh I'm gonna bring gold leaf and I want I want like fluttering gold leaf on my pizza or no love. Uh yeah, what we'll do is we'll mix it with bonito flakes.
+
+[55:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And put it on you have like a gilded. I actually like that look. The waving vanito flake. I have a I I've been dying to put bonito flakes on a pizza.
+
+[56:05] I think it would be super cool. Uh I'm sure it's been done. But I had it in uh where was I? It was Japan, I think I had it. And uh and it was the pizza was not good.
+
+[56:14] But the effect of the vanito flake super on point. Rachel Karen writes in how can one thicken gravy at Thanksgiving using a hydrocoloid instead of flour for uh celiac guests and where can it be purchased? And I'll add to this that I'm assuming that Rachel doesn't want the gravy to look transparent like a cornstarch thickened gravy. So look like a gravy, but use a different hydrocolloid. Uh I I would say probably your friend is Xanthan gum is your friend.
+
+[56:48] It is the gateway hydrocoloid as they say. Um it's probably the best way to thicken that. Uh I mean, are you are we using reduction? Like I mean, again, that's you don't want to overreduce it. So let's say you were going to take a standard like stock that you know is maybe self-gelling but not like a glass, right?
+
+[57:09] So, like, I mean a little bit of Santa, but you never go over like you never go over like two tenths on a gravy, right? Because you don't want it to look jiggly diggly. You're not Spanish. Uh no, but I think that you could get the viscosity that you want in a gravy um from Xanthango. But what would you do to add the opacity?
+
+[57:33] What would you add that adds opacity to it? Because cornstarch doesn't have the right look. You like I'm assuming we want gravy to look like gravy. Gravy looks, and John and I, we've had this discussion. To me, gravy looks like what about what about some emulsified fat.
+
+[57:51] I mean, I would add the opacity. Yeah, it might come out as some might like Well, again. If you're making if you're making proper gravy gravery, if you're making proper gravy, there is emulsified fat in the process. It's reducing gelatin is emulsifying the oils that you used in the pan. Um I I would I would say Xanthan gum or a cornstarch.
+
+[58:12] I disagree with you. I think cornstarch is a good Scoffia was right. Cornstarch is the future. He liked arrowroot though, didn't he? Uh I think he liked cornstarch too, no?
+
+[58:19] Arrowroots are also good. High amylase though. If you use arrowroot, it's gonna gel a lot harder when it cools. Like a lot harder. Correct.
+
+[58:28] Um, we have uh one minute 28. Benjamin uh Dweck writes in. I've been fortunate enough to come across some good quality uh Turkish selep powder. Any tips on a reliable way to make selep danderma? Can I adapt any old ice cream recipe, other uses for beyond the traditional hot drink?
+
+[58:43] Uh you have a lot, do you ever make so uh Benjamin? There's things that are marketed in Turkey as selep powder that aren't selep powder that are made for the drink, and then there's the actual orchid uh root that's made for the ice cream, and they're not the same, they don't act the same. When you're making selep ice cream, it's uh it must be heated, so you treat it like a like a like a hot disperse it and then hydrate it, uh to cool the base down, and you have to physically beat the selep after it's frozen and keep it cold, so you can't just make the ice cream and unless you have a very serious ice cream machine, it it is hard to churn, right? Just do it with guargum. You'll get close enough.
+
+[59:22] Well, you need like guar plus uh I forget what my old mix was that really gets a selepy snap. But go go go find it on the cooking issues. I I did I have a bunch of recipes for it. And people also used to use um conjac. Uh Little Xanthan.
+
+[59:34] Uh Little Xanthan. Uh, what's the deal with non-aluminum baking powder? It was mentioned by Rose on the show that it could have a ruinous taste. Is that true? Uh, should I switch to one of the non-aluminum brands?
+
+[59:45] Uh no, I think she was saying that non aluminum has SAPP, which can have a bitter taste, like some of the double acting that are aluminum free. I think she didn't like the flavor of. I love sap. That was the that's that's the best baking powder for donuts. Cake donuts, sap, sodium acid pyrophosphate.
+
+[1:00:01] Donut cake donuts, friend. All right, well, there you have it. Cooking issues. Thanks, Wiley. Thank you.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Musics. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Music's coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah?
+
+[0:20] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh got uh got John behind me from uh, you know, used to be Booker and Dax, now just the executive chef at uh Temperance Wine Bar. How you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:29] Yeah? Yeah. We got uh we got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. Hi, welcome. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[0:36] Uh do we have Jack? I didn't hear Jack before the show is Jack. No, flying. Flying. No, okay.
+
+[0:42] Where's he flying from, too? To DC. Sorry, Joe. Be you to it. Yeah.
+
+[0:48] LA to DC. All right. You know what we call that flight? No offense, DC. No offense.
+
+[0:54] I kind of love you. Maybe. I don't know. I love you, DC. Uh, but we do have from uh Vancouver Island, Quinn, how you doing?
+
+[1:03] Hey, I'm good. Yeah, great. And then and in the uh in the whatever, in our new style of thing where we before we go off on a bunch of tangents, we introduce a special guest. I'm very happy to have Craig Hutchinson here from Omo Restaurants, soon to be Omo Bagels. Omo Bagels in New Haven.
+
+[1:20] How you doing? Attitude is a mindset. I am wonderful. Well, uh, so the reason I wanted to have you on, we're gonna go on tangents in a minute, but the reason I wanted to have you on is I was invited, I don't know why, but I was invited as a uh guest judge for Bagel Fest, I don't know, like a month or two ago in Brooklyn, and I had your bagel, and I was like, oh, this is a great bagel. And then I was like, and unlike mm 80, 85% of the people there, like you were super stoked to talk about like technique and ingredients.
+
+[1:49] And so we went, you're using a lot of ingredients, I think are super interesting. You're doing a lot of interesting stuff. So that's why I have you on. But before that, let's go through random tangents. So if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions too, especially bagel related, especially bagel related.
+
+[2:02] 917-4101507. That's 917-410-1507. And if you can't listen live because you aren't on the Patreon, John, what should they do? Well, you can download the podcast anywhere, but you should also become a cooking issues Patreon member. Go to uh Patreon.com/slash cooking issues and sign up.
+
+[2:19] There's a bunch of different membership levels, and you get awesome perks in all the levels. So yeah, discounted books for Kitchen Arts and Letters, uh, access to the Discord and many, many other things. Now, one thing that's an issue, right? Here's an issue that I hadn't thought about. So we do the episode on on a Tuesday, and the Patreon folks can listen to it, right?
+
+[2:42] Early what? Early before everyone else. Yeah, yeah, live and early. And then on Friday, we let it, you know, anyone can download for free. That's our that's our mode, right?
+
+[2:51] That's true. Right. Because you know, information should be free eventually. You know what I'm saying? Eventually.
+
+[2:55] Eventually. Free. Uh it's my opinion. But anyway, you know, you can have your own opinion, but that's my opinion. Uh now, next Tuesday is the last time to ask a question before Thanksgiving, correct?
+
+[3:07] That's true. But you can't listen to the answer until it's too late if you're not on the Patreon. It's a good hook. Oh. Yeah.
+
+[3:15] Boom. Yeah. So on Friday, after you've already ruined your meal, you can figure out what you should have done on the Thursday, or you can join the Patreon and get the answer right away. And I'll I'll make a promise. Next week is a no tangent Tuesday, theoretically.
+
+[3:31] I promise that like I will go on no tangents until all the Thanksgiving questions are answered. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Although, Stuss, I feel like all the Thanksgiving questions have been asked over the past like 11 years and that people don't have any more Thanksgiving questions.
+
+[3:51] That's not true. All right. You know who we should have as on a guest on next year? Is somebody from the Butterball line? The Butterball.
+
+[3:58] Oh, the Butterball telephone line. Yeah. Well, I'm that's you know, have you ever called that place, Craig? I never have. You we should all just call it and just like make up problems.
+
+[4:06] Yeah. I left the bag inside the bird. Can I make my mousse out of it now? Yeah. Why do you use plastic bags inside of something I'm gonna bake?
+
+[4:17] Actually, I don't know if Butterball's one of the paper bag people or one of the plastic bag people. But why isn't everyone a paper bag person? Why stick plastic inside of a bird you're gonna roast? That about 90% of people do roast anyway. Yeah.
+
+[4:29] I mean, I've I even forget it still. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, especially if you're not doing the old school stuffing thing. Speaking of old school stuffing, uh today, uh last week or a week and a half ago, I taped an episode of uh Dave Chang and Chris Yang's recipe club, the Thanksgiving episode, and I think it it's go it's it's gone up today already, John.
+
+[4:48] Yeah. Yeah, so you can find that on Spotify. You can find that on Spotify. In this anywhere. Anywhere.
+
+[4:54] Yep. Not just on Spotify. I know I just found it on the iTunes podcast, so yeah. Spotify. Anywhere.
+
+[5:00] Anywhere you can find it. But I'll say this here's what I talked about. So apparently, Recipe Club Wiley did it, is where you're supposed to use somebody else's recipe and then you make it and then you make comments on it. Right. But for for the Thanksgiving episode, Chang was like, what are two recipes that that I use?
+
+[5:19] So I cooked my own recipes, which is kind of unfair. So I messed with them a little bit. So I did my mom's stuffing, which you know I've had for the past 50 years, you know what I mean? And and I can make it in my sleep. In fact, if I go to somebody else's house for Thanksgiving, when I come home, I make that.
+
+[5:32] You know what I mean? Because no one else's stuffing is what I want. Right, Sashi, you want your the stuffing that you want. It's not whether it's best or worse. You say you want the one you want.
+
+[5:40] Yeah. Yeah. You're telling me you've never been satisfied with somebody else's stuffing. No. Wow.
+
+[5:45] Other stuffing tastes good, but I haven't had Thanksgiving yet. Or should I say no stuffing has satisfied you? That's right. Right. Right.
+
+[5:50] Well, but I'll say, and I and my mother-in-law's Parker House rolls, which I've modified because so Parker House Roll, for those of you that I don't know, haven't had a Parker House roll, like a lot of butter. The answer is a lot of butter. And she forms hers with the where you fold, she makes the little round ones and then paints it with butter and then folds it into a C and then stacks them. So I modified it because I'm so lazy. I'm not going to do that.
+
+[6:10] So I just make one giant flat log and cut them into like folded squares because I'm lazy. Yeah. It's also kind of Hawaiian roll-esque. Yeah. Isn't bad.
+
+[6:20] No, it's just massive amounts of butter. If you want to know why it's good, you make like what's funny is is that it's kind of like brioche, but like low on mine anyway, low on egg and high on milk. And it's kind of like brioche until you get to the shaping component of it. Then you realize this is awful. Yeah.
+
+[6:38] But then you don't like park? Yeah, but you can shaping them. Yeah, well, that's why you just roll, instead of doing the each individual thing, just like divide your dough into however many lines of rolls you're going to do, roll it real long, paint it long, fold it over and go quack, whack, whack and cut it. And then you're done. They're going to share steam anyway.
+
+[6:55] So it might as well. Right. And and I don't no one's like, these aren't semicircles. They're rising anyway. You know what I mean?
+
+[7:02] They're rising and they're going to bump into each other anyhow. Who needs the little semicircular thing? Also, I butter not not just in the dough, not just on the bottom of the pan and inside them, not just afterwards, but also before on top. Wow. Butter in the dough on the bottom, in the middle, on the top, two times.
+
+[7:24] Split them open, more butter at the table. Oh, yeah. Well, so that's funny, right? So, like my niece, Wiley's daughter, Wiley and Miley's daughter, comes in and I'm serving her these Parker House rolls because I made like 24 of them for the episode, right? And uh she's like, Can I have butter?
+
+[7:41] And I'm like, absolutely. I just want you to know that it's already about half butter by weight. She's like, I didn't ask you how much butter was in it. I asked for more butter now. And I was like, fair.
+
+[7:52] That's fair. It is. Yeah. Uh anyways, so Chang said, and you should go watch it, that it's the best stuffing stuffing he's ever had, and he wants to make my mom stuffing the most most popular stuffing. Oh, wow.
+
+[8:03] And it's simple to make, and it's very 1970s, because my mom came up with the recipe in the early 1970s as an agglomeration, actually, of my dad's mom's stuffing. Because my my other grandma's stuffing no good. And uh, she's dead though. She's dead. She's dead.
+
+[8:19] They're all dead. I can say whatever I like. They're all dead. Uh, you know, you can speak ill of the dead stuffing. Am I right, John?
+
+[8:27] Sure. Okay. And uh he says that it's simple, uses only ingredients you can source in the 1970s. Which means that everything is out of a can. That well, I mean, you have to saute mushrooms.
+
+[8:39] My mom didn't use canned mushrooms. My mom was progressive 70s person. You know what I mean? So, like uh So no cream and mushroom soup? No.
+
+[8:45] That was a staple of my grandma. Yeah? Cream mushroom soup made its way into everything. Can I tell you the secret in my the secret in my in in my mom's stuffing, two secrets, three secrets. One, poultry seasoning, right?
+
+[8:56] 70s-style, poultry seasoning, right? Two, lots of pork sausage that kind that come in a tube. You know that Jones. We used Jones, but you could use Jimmy Dean or or or uh what's that? There's a parks.
+
+[9:10] You could use any of those. As long as it's sagy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sagey tube of meat. Like a lot of that.
+
+[9:16] One more secret. Not dried bread, fresh bread, but semi-dense white bread, pepper farm style, and the kicker, canned mandarin oranges. So something that can soak up a ton of fat. Which is also in that. Like a there's a lot of butter in that too.
+
+[9:30] Well, yeah. Butter and when you bake it, does it almost come out like a Detroit-style pizza on the outside? Like super crispy all the way around. Depends on how you cook it. So like we typically like the stuff that's in the bird just absorbs bird juice and comes out like a like a bird bread pudding, like a like a like a turkey bread pudding.
+
+[9:44] And then we used to throw it in a casserole with the uh with the aluminum on the top so that it would it would it would steam itself first, and then we rip off the aluminum and crust the top off of it. And yeah, it gets that crispy, crunchy stuff on top, and then like you know, bread pudding underneath. Now here's the question. Do you prefer the stuff that was cooked in the bird or the stuff that was cooked more like a dressing? Okay.
+
+[10:05] The taste of the stuff that's in the bird is inherently superior. However, the texture of the stuff that's cooked casserole style is a little bit better. So you make it. So you do a texture or a flavor person, is the question. I have to choose in this one.
+
+[10:15] Yeah. I think the ultimate would be to th to to mix some stock in with the casserole style. I want to bake it. But have you tried that yet? Chang did.
+
+[10:28] I didn't. I cook mine with tons of stock in it. Really? You have to emulsify it as it cooks. So the bread, the starch, the fats, and the stock all make that bread pudding style that you were just talking about.
+
+[10:37] I always I always bone out my birds before I cook them because you know how to cook. Right. Right, right. So I bone out the birds, and then I I have a crap ton of turkey stock every Thanksgiving, right? And so I usually make like a lot of gravy.
+
+[10:50] And so like I don't worry about because so even in the casserole one, I'm gonna dump like real strong turkey gravy on it. So that's how I took, but I should just put some stock into the stuffing. But don't change it because it's already superior to everybody else's, right? Well, according to Dave, I don't make these kind of claims. But he did he did already switch it.
+
+[11:09] He he didn't he couldn't find poultry seasoning, so for some reason he chose Saison, what? Sage and he's in California. I don't know. Of course, that's where my mom invented anyway. So like he he did like uh like sage and uh and chicken chicken stock paste.
+
+[11:25] Yeah, I was gonna say like a bouillon cube. Yeah. Problem with bouillon cube, I I have the calculation somewhere, uh, is is you're putting in like a lot of salt. Just be aware to down your salt because I salt all my ingredients as my mom does as I'm cooking. So when I sweat the onions and celery, they get salted, everything gets salted to the way that that thing tastes good, and then when it all goes together, it only needs a little bit of correction.
+
+[11:48] Can I interject for one quick minute? Of course. It turns out that one of our listeners' mothers is a supervisor at the Butterball Turkey Outline. Oh my god. Sometimes you just have to say it out loud and dreams come true.
+
+[12:02] Oh my God. So wait. Oh my God. I wonder what it's too late to have them on this year. So is she the kind of person that when you ask, can I please speak to a supervisor, you get transferred over to her?
+
+[12:11] I guess. I don't know. We'll see what he comments. But that's the same thing. So you have to come on with a massive problem and then try to get uh upgraded into the ones, yeah, exactly.
+
+[12:21] So the question, right? The question is, right, and this is what you're hitting at, Craig, is there some sort of like super low-level call center person who's gonna take the call who's never actually cooked a turkey before. Right. They're like, have you rebooted the turkey? You know what I mean?
+
+[12:36] Did you unplug and replug magnetic? Right. Did you unplug the turkey for 30 seconds and plug it back in? And they're like, oh, wait, wait. Oh, oh, turkey.
+
+[12:43] You know what I mean? Like something like that. Or is everyone a trained cook who picks up the phone? Ooh. In which case, maybe you need to come on with such a high level question that you need to weed out the entry level.
+
+[12:54] Yeah. Yeah. Or like, you know, I mean, and I think it's more interesting to come up with real questions rather than like, I'm on fire, I'm on fire. You know, like all this safety deep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[13:07] Hang up, call 911. You could also be ridiculous and say, I'm having problems executing my mother's stuffing. Could you please help me? Something that they nobody can help you with. Right.
+
+[13:16] Or Stas, we could call them with bionic turkey questions. So, right? I think everyone's sick of that. Well, no, only three people know about it. So how can everyone be sick of it?
+
+[13:26] Those three people are sick of it. Very. They're very vocal. People at Butterball won't know it. Well, Nastasia's sick of anything related to cooking.
+
+[13:33] Am I right, Stas? No. Yeah. So speaking of uh before we get into bagel questions, anyone cook anything or have any interesting culinary things happened to them in the past week? No.
+
+[13:45] I got some good stuff from Edwards Age Meats. Oh, what'd you get? Uh I got beef crack. I got aged pork belly, which I haven't had before. Uh you never had bacon?
+
+[13:56] Well, I mean, like dry eggs. Yeah. Uh dry uh then uh some ribeye. Oh, some good, you know, some uh yeah, some age pork. He makes great products.
+
+[14:04] I'm gonna be pork is uh very cheesy. Yeah? That's what I always find. I'll let you know when I uh I used to ferment a lot of sausage and uh it's it's very cheesy. Yeah, who likes to ferment their ribs is uh is um uh Andy Ricker.
+
+[14:20] He used to do like fermented Thai ribs. It's it's quite popular in uh Asian cuisine to ferment your pork before you get into the next infusion step of like you know, sausage making or whatever it is. Yeah, back in the day he was uh having real issues figuring out how he was gonna do that and uh not run afoul of uh Dio uh age problems. You know what I mean? Hide in the office.
+
+[14:42] Yeah. Real quick for everyone wondering, it's Edwards Aged Meats.com, and I think his social media handle is the same. His stuff is great. Yeah, you guys gotta keep separate. Edwards Aged Meats from Sam Edwards Country Ham.
+
+[14:55] They are two different people on two different sides of the United States, right? One aged ham for several hundred years. They've been making it, right? In the in the what's that called? The uh Surrey, Surrey, Virginia, what's that called?
+
+[15:12] Tidewater area of Virginia, right? And the other one, where's where where's uh where's Edward's age? They're in California, right? Yeah, Santa Clara, I believe. I've never been.
+
+[15:20] Yeah, neither have I. Never been. Yeah. Stas, you've been there, right? No.
+
+[15:24] Really? Huh. Okay. Uh all right. Well, if no one has any We we uh we're unveiling our babka program week.
+
+[15:32] So we've uh just concluded over uh month and a half of arduous babka baking. So that was that was interesting. Uh we broke bread this morning and it was uh we got it. So what's your babka target? I'm not saying there's a best worst.
+
+[15:47] What's your target for babka? Like uh um And did you grow up eating babka? No. Okay. I didn't grow up with I grew up with a heavy Jewish community, but like our definition of bagels was very Dunkin' Donuts-y.
+
+[16:01] Oh, geez, Louise. And uh that's okay, because it's gotta start somewhere. Okay. And uh past that, no, not a lot of Rogala Hamintoschen or all the really good stuff that we now uh become obsessed with. But for babka, it's gotta have the pull apart quality of a monkey bread.
+
+[16:17] Okay, has to have the flakiness of a cuissant in some way without laminating, because we don't laminate, and not too much chocolate. High quality level of chocolate, so that you're relying more on your techniques so that when you take a bite of the cinnamon babka, that's where you really are impressing people. And so where is everybody starts with a chocolate babka? Right. Where are you on the dryness scale?
+
+[16:40] Not at all. That was our biggest problem. Okay, yeah. So you don't but I think some people actually like a slightly dry babka. Well I'm not saying that they're right or wrong.
+
+[16:47] That's chocolate bread. All right. That's that's still a lot of the conversation that we were having is how bready versus how babka-y are we right now, which babka e we hope that will be approved as a word someday because we use it quite often. Instead of babka like or babka similar babka e. But yeah, bab babki bob bob sounds like babkas though.
+
+[17:06] Why not? All right. Uh but you know my style. I I like throwing away a lot of the rules and just uh going for what it is that we that that we believe is a good quality product. Well, that's certainly true.
+
+[17:17] So let's get into this style and why why I I had you. First of all, you brought bagels. We have bagels in front of us. All right, so you should pull out one of these bagels because John, you've never had these before, right? No.
+
+[17:28] It's does you've never had it. Joey never had it. Don't eat out of the ones that are in the bag in front of you. All right. Eat out of this one because the crust is still there, the integrity of the outside is still there.
+
+[17:38] So here, pass them around. You know, I washed my hands at least. So you remember you remember these though, right? They were they're not as quite high on the height level as a lot of the other bagels that you had. The darkness of them is uh way different.
+
+[17:56] Um also like our entire process is completely different. You see all the bubbles. So you look at you look at one of these bagels, and I'll I'll I'll visualize this for you if you can't see it, is that they they are they have it's like you know how um like modern cars, they're glossy and matte at the same time. Like, you know how like you you see those beamers with that like kind of semi-shiny, that semi-shiny coat. It's like one, it's one of those.
+
+[18:19] And there's like also look at the blistering on that sucker, right? So that's non-traditional for uh, you know, most you know, New York bagels to see kind of a uh uh a blister level like that. So, first of all, the minute you look at it, you're like, oh, that's a different, right? Yeah, and then you know, you you rip it, and the crust, right, has that awesome kind of chewiness, it's got a good thickness. It's got leather and crisp.
+
+[18:47] But the inside, oh by the way, I brought God's cream cheese, Rust and Daughters. You've got Rust and Daughters cream cheese. Of course, yeah. Uh we we ate a lot of Rust and Daughters when we were looking uh into being a bagel shop. Yeah, Rust and what do you do?
+
+[18:59] Are you on Philly for cream or do you do you have some like sort of fancy? We have a we fabricate up a filly, uh, but we are always in the market for uh adaptation and evolution. So um we worked on our bagel for the past three years, and uh the eventually a target will go on to our cream cheese's back and we will completely rip open whatever program we're doing right now and reinvent it. Yeah, because I because uh at Russ and Daughters, all of their flavored cream cheeses are filly. And the plain one is they won't tell you.
+
+[19:28] They won't tell you. But we will we do we even the plain one we fabricate up. So it's you know, it's similar to what they do. Like it's it you can't ever have a consumer think that they're getting something that they can get at a gro grocery store. You always have to be elevating it in some way, shape, or form.
+
+[19:47] Yeah. I've already eaten two omo bagels this morning. So these are for all you guys. The uh so what what's awesome about is that the texture on the inside, like it's still substantial, but it's not at all sweet. Okay, so you know how like like modern bagels, they're they're jacked with so much malt and maybe sugar, right?
+
+[20:05] That it's they can almost get stick to your teeth gummy. So gummy. And there's none of that in this bagel. Like none of it. Such a light amount of malt that goes into it.
+
+[20:14] We use the outside um uh to get a little bit of malt flavor on it as well. But again, it's you're so diluted because we use thyme as uh more of our um control than we do by additive ingredients. Right. So if you look at the inside of the bagel also, it's clearly not made with white flour. Right.
+
+[20:36] And so that's what kind of struck me. And then when I started talking to you more, because again, I think you're you put so much work into the bagel itself that you have no problem telling everybody, it's not like there's some sort of magic flip uh switch you can flip and all of a sudden make this bagel. You have to put the work in. I guess your theory, I don't know what you tell me, is that no one's gonna do that, so I'll just tell you everything I do. I I told you everything I do.
+
+[20:57] Now that you have me on a little bit bigger of a platform, I I may keep a couple of things to myself. But I I will open up as much as I possibly can about this process because it's quite cool. Right. So the first thing is first is that you're using a kind of flour that I want everybody in the country to use. And I don't know what you call it, I call it high extraction flour.
+
+[21:14] I don't know what you call it. Yeah, high extraction or bolted is uh uh what usually like a small mill will call it um but very similar process. Yeah, so you want to talk about this flour? Yeah, so we use uh ground up as our mill uh that's based out of Holyoke, Massachusetts. They source uh from three different farms, two out of uh New York and one out of Maine.
+
+[21:34] The one from Maine is like it might as well be Canada. It's like right on the New Brunswick uh border. Um but it's a hard red winter wheat. Um we are um we're scheduling a a visit up to the actual mill to uh determine if it is a warthog or not. But from uh my past baking experiences, I bel I believe we are using uh uh warthog grain.
+
+[22:00] Uh but coming from the three different farms, it could just be uh a little bit of a blend. Uh there is some spring um red winter wheat in there, or uh some red spring wheat in there as well. The difference between those two is uh just kind of like the uh the timing of uh how long it takes for the uh grain to be harvested and how much uh you could call it flavor is developed right you know a little bit different. But high extraction is your answer. Everyone who knows milling wheat, right?
+
+[22:31] Knows not not modern milling, not roller milling, right? That winter wheat tastes better than spring wheat. Yeah. I I I hope that we're always using red uh, you know, winter wheat, but as a majority, as a majority, yeah, yeah. Spring wheat's gonna add like more structure, more of it, but like warthog's a delicious wheat.
+
+[22:47] I've milled, I don't know, only not like, you know, I've only milled like 50, 60 pounds of it, but I like warthog a lot. You know what I mean? And the high extraction flour, what people don't winter wheat, right, was the standard wheat, both soft and hard winter wheat was the standard wheat in the United States up until the 1870s. And the reason is is that uh we didn't have the technology to get all of the bran off, right? First of all, it's the spring wheat is a lot harder.
+
+[23:17] It has higher gluten. They could not make decent what we're calling bolted flour just means sifted, right? And they couldn't get as as good a tasting flour out of spring wheat before they invented um before they invented uh the um these blowers that would blow the bran off and they could they could do it in two parts and they could separate the bran more effectively. So it actually happened before the advent of the roller mill. So that's what's called patent.
+
+[23:42] The original patent flour was the patent on these machines that allowed them to effectively separate the bran and then allow them to mill good flour from spring wheat. But when it's whole wheat, spring wheat typically doesn't taste as good as winter. So you want majority winter wheat in your blends if you're gonna go anywhere close to whole wheat. And if any of you have ever had whole wheat flour and been like used it and said this sucks, it's because you're using roller milled whole wheat flour. You're not and it's whole wheat.
+
+[24:10] This is bolted, so it's like what's your extraction on this? 82. So 82% of the wheat kernel makes it into this bagel. 82%, right? And what doesn't make it in, sure, is mostly bran, right?
+
+[24:23] But there's a lot of germ in this, right? A lot of the flavor, and none of the harshness and bitterness. Like not one, not a speck. Anyone who's cooked with this or baked with this high extraction flour, I can tell you, it is a freaking joy. Right or wrong.
+
+[24:38] It's a joy. Uh flavor-wise. Depends on where you're at in the process. It's also a throw away your recipe book uh kind of experience. But yes, once you learn to harness it, it is uh you really can't look back.
+
+[24:44] Right, because it just the taste is so good. And so like the thing is is that like, you know, the bagel, I guess it's not as much of a thing, but like in breads, like in hearth breads, you're not gonna get as much of it. You're not gonna get that like uh no-need interior without a lot of like finagling. You're not gonna get those giant airy holes, you're not gonna get the but like side by side, the taste of it is so addictive. The taste of that tastes like you're eating real bread, like what uh what it should be.
+
+[25:16] And there's also such a big problem with uh commercially milled whole wheat because of how fast they're milling at. They're actually heating up the bran on the outside, which that is then basically turning bad inside of these bags of flour that are being sold on uh on the shelves. So it's you you're just not getting the true flavor, the clean flavor of the flour. Also, I've tried to I've I'm I'm I've tried to figure out a way to like commercial whole wheat. I really have for the book I'm writing.
+
+[25:43] And uh in their in their bread whole wheat things, they're always doping it with like I think a lot of spring to try to get that wheat to try to get that gluten level back up because it's gonna get lowered by the fact that they add all the bran. So right away, that's a mistake, I think, for flavor. And then they're also, I think, remilling the brand. So if you've ever made flour and if you've ever made flour uh and not sifted it, the brand particles are a lot bigger than they are in whole wheat flour for that. So like Is that so that they're they're making it so that the home cook doesn't have to adjust their hydration levels?
+
+[26:18] I think so. So like it uh it the brand is actually absorbing some of the water or something. Well, the br I think what it is is they don't want the flour to feel that different, or they I think they think that like they're gonna deflate it more if they have like uh bigger brand pieces, but I think that the remilling the brand so fine, I think that's why it's so bitter. And plus it's old, right? It's old.
+
+[26:38] It's so old. But even if it wasn't old, I think it's just it's I think it's just the tiny tiny brand. I think it isn't. That I was I was introduced to that when I first started baking, and I was like, Oh. Right.
+
+[26:57] Now so people out there who are professional bakers but who haven't gotten into this kind of relatively new again, like this 1860s world of what flour should be, right? Bear in mind that yes, I'm aware that white flour gets better as it ages, which is why you oxidize it, you bleach it, right? And not this not true with uh the high the high extraction flours. I'm sure there is some baking potential that gets better over time, but they don't I I've tested, by the way, on on high extraction flour from zero to three months. And it was fairly stable over that three months.
+
+[27:33] I haven't done a year or anything like that. But so don't don't think of aging white flour the same way you think of uh the high extraction flour. So my first question to you before I get to the questions other people have is what's it like like how much more does it cost to buy this kind of flour as opposed to because I make it at home. I don't have to consume it as a it's not an input. Twice.
+
+[27:56] And how much of the bagels cost? Well not really twice. It's it's more like three times, but yeah. It's it's a slightly different hydration level, so you are cutting it with a little bit more water, which is helpful. I've never had a obviously never had a bagel business.
+
+[28:08] How much of a bagel is labor and how much is cost of goods? We switched over to a bagel machine um in two thousand late 2020 as a Christmas gift to ourselves for making it through the pandemic uh uh and not having uh to fold the restaurant. So uh we've managed to keep labor low because of that. Um so we invest mostly in our product and our infrastructure. Right.
+
+[28:33] But in other words, like in theory, spending three times as much on my flour equals what to a consumer. I if you were going to actually just pass it up the chain to them, like oh, I mean, uh figure this in a restaurant, every single time you pay 30 cents for the restaurant owner, you're always paying a dollar as the consumer. Right. Just plain and simple. So if I'm saying that your King Arthur flour that you're buying in the grocery store is I don't know, I haven't bought one in a while.
+
+[29:01] It's just still from the restaurant. But like uh, you know, let's say a bag is ten bucks and I'm telling you that it's double to triple. Right. You know, just imagine going to the grocery store and paying thirty dollars for your flour. It's pretty crazy.
+
+[29:11] Right. But the good news is, right? I mean, I know it's your primary input probably for the bagel. I'm sure I'm sure fish and cream cheese is fantastically more expensive, but like uh it's your primary input for the bagel. But even though it is three times as much, it's kind of like razors.
+
+[29:26] Even though a Gillette Mach three or whatever they are, Mach 3,000 and five, whatever they are now, even though they're like 20 times what a normal razor costs, they're still affordable to people. Right. So we're I mean, we're at two dollars a bagel right now in the shop and uh at that bagel fest that we met at, there were shops that were selling their bagels for two twenty five. I I'm much more proud of our product than I was of tasting uh some of the other things that was there because you can tell, as you and I talked about, you know instantly when uh somebody's using a bleach bromated flour. There was even a comment from one of the booths right next to me after they were asking about our grains.
+
+[29:59] Um they're saying, Oh, well, I can't even uh because I'm in New York, I can't afford to do that. So me being in a small market, sure they can, they need to charge for it, but me being in a small market and having my business not cost as much to be in a small market is very helpful for me. Yeah. So on the other hand, you're you don't in New Haven, again, I lived in New Haven for you know years, and you don't have the necessarily built-in market of bagel freaks that you would have here. So there's there's two sides to that coin.
+
+[30:30] No, we opened up with a very New York-y menu, uh, and it just didn't fly at first, you know. Um, and so we really needed to keep our ears open in order to stay above water through the pandemic to say, like, oh, this is what you want? Okay, let's give that a shot. And uh, so we kept evolving the menu and we continue to do that as we're mainly student-based, being right off of uh Yale's campus, which helps us a lot. Yeah.
+
+[30:56] Uh and so each class brings a different uh desire for uh menu choices. And so we're always looking at our model, saying, like, how do we how do we improve according to the taste buds of today? So you told me it was funny at the bagel fest. You told me that um, you know, they didn't sell to anyone along the 95 corridor that basically all the flour went directly from where it was milled, like down the corridor to New York and like nothing in between. And you were like, you just have to like look off the highway, and I'm right there.
+
+[31:28] You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because we were working with uh, you know, shout out to Myers Produce, who is the one who does who coordinates all the deliveries with uh ground up. And uh, so I was talking with Annie Myers when I first opened up, and I just said, you know, hey, is there a way that I could get that Brooklyn product that you were giving me? That's all from new New England.
+
+[31:44] Can I get that in New England? And she's like, I don't know. You know, we're we're very much based off I was like, no, no, and I I literally sent her over a map image of like this is how far off the highway we are. There's a literal exit for the bakery almost. Like, you know what I mean?
+
+[32:02] From the street, right? They're great. They they deliver uh we have to pre-order about a month in advance for our milling. And that has uh that was a hard adjustment in the beginning because normally you can just get all your flour tomorrow. Right.
+
+[32:14] Um and also it probably makes it almost like like a liquor inventory is that you actually have money in inventory in a way you wouldn't necessarily have. Yeah, fortunately we haven't um gone into the world of futures yet, where I'm buying crops worth of stuff, but uh who knows, maybe someday I well, so does it make you nervous? And like I'm always wondering about the scalability of this, because I was trying to convince Chang on this menu thing I was telling you about, I was like, have them make the Parker House rolls with high extraction flour. He's like, Where can where can I tell people to buy high extraction flour? I'm like, I don't know.
+
+[32:45] I don't know. You know, you can get it, uh I think ground up uh, you know, uh you would be better at pulling up their website, but uh I believe you can just order direct from them. So they sell to humans? Yeah, they call it their bread flour. And it's 82% high extraction, it's 13.6% protein, which is about 1.4% lower than what's on the shelves.
+
+[33:05] So you are gonna need to adapt for that. Well, you and I also know that the protein numbers on anything with whole wheat's a lie because uh because uh the brand has such a higher protein level in it, but it's not gluten, which is why they should raise weight. You want you want the other part, but yeah, yeah. But at the same yeah, so like 13.6 is a high number for a high extraction on the protein, but you don't get a hundred percent yield off of that, which is actually more like 11 in change, right? Yeah uh yeah, in the 10 range, even.
+
+[33:29] Um because we've tried side by side with testing out rye bagels and whatnot. I mean, rye is like, you know, rye comes in at 10% protein, and it's as if you're just using absolutely nothing. There's no spring in rye bread. I cannot wrap my head around rye baking. I haven't tried too much.
+
+[33:44] I have a bunch of rye. Leave it underneath your baking table and revisit it when it looks like a puddle of not bread and then bake that. And that's rye bread. Yeah, yeah, I know. Like I have a bunch of rye.
+
+[33:54] Anyway, whatever. I love the taste of rye, but like I don't know. I haven't invested the time to write. We we only do rye when we're doing rye. The rye makes it its way into our pasta program, and that's about it.
+
+[34:04] Yeah. Okay. So that's the flow. But so do you get nervous? How would you expand?
+
+[34:09] Like, is there is there a way for more people in the country to get this kind of flour or not? Like, is this something that can grow or not? What a what a uh what a hard assessment on U.S. agriculture we're about to make right now. The system's completely broken.
+
+[34:25] I'll just start there. Um yes, you can, but you're gonna need to really seek out to find more distribution outlets like uh Myers produce, like we do. Like they're not the biggest easiest thing to find. So like uh, you know, local doesn't always mean better. I do believe that.
+
+[34:46] But at the same time, the quality of ingredients do, and so you it finding the distribution is just your hardest part. Then then you're talking about the cost. Then you're talking about the labor and the thought process and intellect that goes into making something like this. It's you it's an uphill battle, but I think it starts with serving your bagels like this and spreading the word about it. Yeah, because also distributions of paints, because so you if you were willing to pay 10 times as much, right?
+
+[35:09] You can get Anson Mills. They make good quality products, but then you have to buy it from them. They ship once a week. And then there's this whole kind of McGill. It's hard to just walk into a place and buy this stuff.
+
+[35:22] And at what point, if we all jump on board with all this, how are we now starting to push the system of uh what these farms stand for and at what point do they start putting nitrogen into their ground in order to be able to keep up with volume? Or not mill it the same way. Or just or not mill it and speed it up. So like, you know, this is it's a it's a hard topic. But yeah, well, look, I mean, there's a place for roller milled white flour.
+
+[35:42] It makes great products if that's what you're looking for. It's just I happen to have fallen in love with this particular type of flour. Me too. Yeah. I r I I really wish for the bottom line I didn't, but it is what it is.
+
+[35:54] So then okay, so that's the first thing you do that's not standard. And by the way, I haven't tasted every bagel on earth, but I've never tasted someone who uses flour in a bagel in a bagel business, who their job is to make bagels for people, not just as a one-off or something like this, who's not also their own miller, which is interesting, right? Because there are people whose model is I'm gonna do my own milling. We had Adam Leonte on, you know, and he's like, you know, I'm doing my own milling. Not a bagel guy, but I mean, I'm sure he's made bagels, but that's not his thing.
+
+[36:19] But it's like to have someone saying, I'm gonna make the commitment to buy this kind of mill flour to make a bagel, that was the first thing. I was like, okay, I need to have you on the show. Second, right? How long is this bagel fermenting? Forty eight hours.
+
+[36:32] Forty eight hours. And what's so you told me that that was bizarre. And I look actually the one that I fed you was 72. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[36:39] Um Yeah, we threw away our recipe books to be able to create that. I'd I still I'd I'd actually love to hear from you is again as to I I kind of don't understand how people haven't been able to achieve that. You told me that uh some people have tried doing it and they don't they don't get a product out of it or something. Well, you're not just okay, so like take take pizza, right? Where people are doing like long, long ferments, right?
+
+[37:04] They're doing the ferment, they're doing their what they call in the proof, right? But it's not a shaped, I mean it's shaped, but it's then they're they're shaping it right before they make it, right? Right. You know, you're actually shaping like you're doing an you're doing an overnight you're not it's not wait, tell me again, you're you you don't do an overnight bulk. You do an overnight bulk.
+
+[37:22] No, no overnight bulk. Goes straight from you because uh we don't allow for air to start. So under you under hydrate the dough. Right. Well, that's the key.
+
+[37:33] You have to underhydrate and not activate your yeast. Right. The the key is right on a long ferment. So bagels are relatively low relatively low hydration. Yeah, like fifty, you know, fifty to fifty-five percent.
+
+[37:46] Sure. So on a low hydration, right? Like on or on for any given hydration on a long proof, especially on this kind of a flower, it's gonna go more slack on you as you go, and you're not gonna have so you have to make it even stiffer at the beginning, especially when the cause the whole wheat compound is so thirsty, right? One, it's thirsty, but two, like I think it's such a the first time that somebody ever called a walk-in or a refrigerator, a humid environment, like I just I wanted to argue with them instantly. It just it did not make sense whatsoever.
+
+[38:21] And then you actually start to practice like that, and you realize that like I don't even know. I'm because I'm not a scientist, I can't break it down, but like I gotta imagine that when we bake this, we're somewhere in the 60s, close to 70% on our hydration just because of how much it's soaked up in refrigeration, right? Because it's wrapped up in on trays already shaped, and just inside of that is that that humid environment is just the you know the flour is just soaking it all up. Well, and also like uh I mean the brand's gonna be the brand, right? But then the damaged starch is some of it's gonna get converted to sugar from the from the enzymes, and then that stuff's gonna release more water, and in a 24, 48-hour environment, more of that's gonna take place than would take place in a couple hours fermentation.
+
+[39:10] And the challenge is that water equals activity in bread. So if you're creating all this activity, you're gonna get an overproofed product. But as you can see, just from simple bakers standpoint, the there's no giant hole at the very top of our crust, therefore it's not overproofed. Right. So second that's a second non-standard thing.
+
+[39:30] So then okay, I said this. How I said, how long did you do you boil your bagels? And what'd you tell me? We don't boil our bagels. Hear that, John?
+
+[39:41] I heard it. No boil on the bagel. What did you think, John? Was that a boiled bagel when you put your mouth in on it? Yeah, a little bit, I guess.
+
+[39:50] Yeah, dude. Look at the crust on it. Yeah. So how do you do it? This is this is a chef's mind because you started from fine dining as a chef, not you can come in as a baker.
+
+[40:00] Yeah, so I got introduced into molecular gastronomy or whatever that's called uh while I was up in Boston. I worked underneath uh three food and wines best new chefs, which were uh Mary Dumont, Gabriel Bremer, and Tim Maslow. And uh they all liked to um uh push the boundaries of where the future of food were going. And uh so as a line cook and or chef for them, I was uh learning all these new techniques and introduced all this new cooking equipment. And I came across one day this beautiful piece of cooking equipment that I had to have.
+
+[40:33] It's called a rationale oven. Uh yeah. Uh uh, they're basically computers attached to a perfect convection oven. Um I bought one for the restaurant because I wanted to standardize our chicken, our steaks. Because it almost started not as bagels.
+
+[40:50] Yeah, we were a sit-down restaurant. We were going after we were trying to reinvent fine dining in Connecticut. No white tablecloths, ripped ripped jeans, t-shirt, perfect wine service, high high-end executed simple food. Um so the rationale oven was helping us achieve the perfection of the cooking. Right.
+
+[41:10] And with the pandemic, I have a very tight space. Uh so we shut down our dining room without even being told to. It just was the right thing to do. But we transitioned into a bagel shop, which bagels were kind of like a side project for me to pay for the baker essentially, uh, in the mornings. Um it was a side hustle that we just I had to get rid of everybody and I turned into a bagel machine myself and sold bagels to make our money, and the line went out the door, never went away, and I was left with a rationale oven.
+
+[41:42] Well, and you told me right that you know it was a way to do something that was honorable, that you could think a lot about and like grow from a cooking perspective in, but still have it be takeaway. Yeah, everybody had two dollars in their pocket, right? The pandemic started, everybody freaked out where all their money was gonna go, right? So we thought to ourselves, let's take a step back. Let's lower the price of all of our products while everybody's about to be rising and raising their prices.
+
+[42:10] So we we did the opposite. We scaled back everything. We came up with a very simple $2 product, right? And started from there. Um but with getting rid of everybody, uh forcefully, I I was left with doing the business, the cleaning, uh, the the shop maintenance and uh the recipe testing and whatnot.
+
+[42:31] So um I was boiling bagels one morning, and we just like kind of looked at the rationale oven sideways and said, if that thing goes to 212 degrees with a full steam setting, and you put the convection all the way up, is it a pot of boiling water? So we threw some bagels in, and uh now all of a sudden payroll was able to be done in in while I was baking bagels or or boiling bagels, right? And so we just uh we stuck with the steaming process. We didn't advertise it because we knew how much New Yorkers, especially would be turned off by saying that we aren't a water bagel. And uh we've been making New Yorkers uh happy in the little city of uh New Haven since 2020 with our bagel shop.
+
+[43:16] Right. And so for those of you that are like, that's not just go have the bagel. Just go have the bagel. So interesting. I I uh I always tell people um, you know, this is this is our interpretation.
+
+[43:26] This is our way to uh make sure that the staff is uh met with uh a good paycheck and for my family to be able to have a meal on the table, and whatever your opinion is about a bagel is your opinion, but this is our product and we stick to it. And it is it here's what I'm gonna say about it before I ask the some questions from listeners is that it uh it hits the notes you want out of a traditional bagel. So it's it's not a traditional bagel because of because of how it's made, because of the flour they use, but it hits all the notes that you want, plus, in my opinion. That's my opinion. Now, here's some questions.
+
+[44:00] Now, and and I'm nervous about these. No, no, no. So, like, there's two people that asked the same question. Matt from Mystic and Cam Ronco both want to know, and that the funny it's the the secret is so obvious once you told me, because I asked you this. I asked you this exact question.
+
+[44:16] Uh what is the secret to preventing the onion component in an onion bagel? And Matt also wants to know, slash garlic component from burning on an everything bagel or on an onion bagel. What's the secret? And it as soon as you said it, I was like, you know what I mean? I mean, uh for you, the secret for you.
+
+[44:33] I hope that I say it right, but I I I have to speak from my heart, and I hope that that's where I was saying it. Uh we're very fortunate. Direct me if I'm saying it right. We're very fortunate that we're in the city of New Haven. So, like, people like burnt things in New Haven with the burnt bottom.
+
+[44:49] So that's that's one. Yeah, but I had your onion, they're not scorched. They're not scorched. Because well, all right. So you so the answer you gave me, I'll give you afterwards if you don't get the same one.
+
+[44:59] We seed the day before. Right. Okay. So therefore, they are hydrated instead of a dried product going on top. He steams the god danged onions.
+
+[45:10] Yeah, the onions get steamed with the whole process. So all the seeds get steamed with the bagel, which actually acts as a glue. So when you take there's a sesame bagel in that bag, try and brush a sesame, try and brush one sesame seed. Take a look at that bagel. Take a look at that.
+
+[45:25] So I was like, almost like, oh my god, that's so genius, because you're not boiling it. You don't have to seed it when it's wet. Right. No, the onion itself is wet going into the onion. And it doesn't scorch.
+
+[45:36] Because you know what, you know what sucks? It sucks is prehydrating the onions and then trying to stick them to the outside of a bagel. No, it wasn't it doesn't work. You take a dried onion with mold and sea salt and you take a wet or your we wet our bagels down with malted water and then we stick the onions to it and then that sits for a whole day. So that's phase two of the product process.
+
+[45:56] And uh so they get steamed and baked with they've already sat they're all they're all predetermined for tomorrow. So there's an argument right there for steaming. I'll say this for for users of the uh ANOVA precision oven I have one and I like it. It's not powerful enough to do that kind of steaming. And I'll say this the reason I'll tell you that is because it's running off of a 120 socket.
+
+[46:23] I I've never tried the bagels that way. I always boiled them. However I have tried things like dumplings and they take a longer when that leads me to believe that it's not going to work this it it's not even you can't even compare the I've tried a lot of different of these products. It's not even like saying like this is the Cadillac it's like no this is the car and then everything else is a bicycle. Like they're they're the this is the highest powered fan the highest powered injection of water.
+
+[46:49] They're the only ones that that uh store hot water in it so when it steam injects you don't lower the temperature of the oven like it's this is it it's you can really only do it out of this. I know of one other place that does it down in Durham Lord North Carolina buddy of mine but that's it. Yeah I haven't been to Durham in many years uh decades in fact uh the and they have great pulled pork down there. I love anyway um I should go back someday. So for those of you that want to do uh steaming at at home uh like large quantities go get a uh go get like a a four and a half inch full size hotel pan and then a two and a half inch perf pan with a half with a with a they make uh cooling racks for hotel pans stick that into the perf and then get one of the lids on top and you know not for restaurants but for home you can do that's the largest thing you and you can stick it on two burners on your stove and that's about as close you can get to real monster steaming at home I think so the and the benefit the let's not overlook the benefit of the uh everything steams for the exact same amount of time right so there's that control element when you boil a bagel I don't care if you're boiling two bagels, six bagels at a time by the time you get to that last bagel, it has boiled for more time than your first bagel.
+
+[48:07] So there's an inconsistency across the board with that right away. So like with steaming, if you take that steam tray out of your oven like you just talked about, the moment that you unveil what's inside of it, the steam is gone. You're you're not at 212 anymore. The the entire process is gone. So you're you're you're much more controlled on your on your process.
+
+[48:25] Right. And so then I asked you this and you said because like I I I have never thought of doing this in a rationale and I haven't had access to one since the since I left the culinary school. Um what uh like how fast can it ramp from steam to bake? Like what's like what's the fast yeah power. That's a thing fast.
+
+[48:41] Power. We actually we have two of them we're such a uh a funky looking restaurant it not we we're clearly not backed by uh millions and millions of dollars it's it's uh a much more of a mom and pop feel so one of our rationales is a half size and one of the rationales is a whole size and we there are two completely different settings in order to be able to get the same product out of it because the amount of convection that happens in the half size is so much stronger than the one that happens in the full size. And I'm talking about width of sheet tray for those here who are wondering what kind of language I'm speaking. Yeah, yeah. And but are they uh are they both same height, single height or they the double height?
+
+[49:18] We're we're in a basement space uh for our production. So they uh we're restricted by our ceiling and hood size. So uh we uh we pump out about 360 bagels every let's just call it 20 minutes. Yeah and your are your rationales are they electric or gas? Both.
+
+[49:36] Right. But in other words, so like the the heating element. Yeah the heating element we do gas. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[49:42] Uh the rest of the entire restaurant is electric. Right. It's just the only gas line that we have. I you know I know some people that have all electric and the electric it's not that I'm not saying the the bill right because the whole world's moving that way. I'm saying just the service you need is nuts because it just as you say unlimited power.
+
+[50:01] You know what I mean? It's like we didn't we we've also just heard from other chefs that the gas powered one is just a better made piece of equipment. The they're not quite there on the electric technology. Yeah the electric I remember uh I was uh working with someone and I looked at their breaker panel for for just a single you know the the one that's like the one that's like that. So it's not like a full height but it's not that this one it's like you know the two thirds whatever you call it height.
+
+[50:26] And uh I looked at the breaker panel. I was like that's twice as much electricity they as goes into my whole apartment. The whole apartment. I was like we have we have two of those we have two of those and that you will laugh when you see the size of our restaurant being like there's no way you need two of those. Restaurant restaurants use a lot of electricity.
+
+[50:44] Well so that that's the other thing is like uh so right, I wonder because rationales are still a lot more expensive than than a deck. Than like a blogget, right. Yeah. Or or even like yeah, inexpensive deck. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[50:55] Uh but I wonder what the ROI is because you don't have to do the boiling, you don't have to like for labor and all that. Wonder what the auto money is. How many people stand in front of the uh the kettle at uh Essa while they bake? I don't know. I've been to Essa in a long time.
+
+[51:09] I've had their bagels recently, but I haven't been there recently. Or how many people stand in front of a kettle? Yeah. That's what you're removing out of our out of our uh model. Yeah.
+
+[51:18] Which is we we we do hire a lot of people. We just keep them on you know, other things like getting bagels to people, like guest services. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Uh Michael Vahabi writes, what kind well, we just talked about it.
+
+[51:31] What kind of oven do you use and recommendations for oven? I mean, you've come out pretty str pretty strongly on the uh on the side of the rationale. Yeah, I I love the standardization of food. And they don't break as much as they used to. Rationales used to break like a mother.
+
+[51:44] I have my original rationale versus the new one that I have has had zero service calls on it as opposed to the five that I've had this year on the new one. So uh yeah. Well, you know what used to go wrong on that? I love warranties. The old uh what do they even call them now?
+
+[51:58] They used to be called SCCs. Are they still called self-cooking centers or no? I think so, but yeah, we're it's an oven. The old SCCs, if you put them into a normal like, you know, kitchen, like we used to have them for, you know, we had a couple at the school, and one of them was in the restaurant, and the one that was in a restaurant was next to another hot side thing. You know what I mean?
+
+[52:17] It wasn't like completely unsurrounded by anything around it. And the electronics would fry like regularly. Regularly they would fry. And without the electronics, it's useless. Yeah, it's a brick.
+
+[52:29] You know what I mean? So like uh, but that doesn't happen anymore. They fix that. Yeah, the uh rationale's been a really great uh company for us to work with. So yeah, it's like it's so funny when things go from I'd love I'd love some sponsorship from them.
+
+[52:40] You hear that rationale? You hear that? Send me a new oven. The thing about the uh like a German company like that, uh is that they're probably like, well, well, don't put it next to something hot. You're like, that's not my life.
+
+[52:50] That's not my life. I have X amount of hood space and this is my reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, yeah, manufacturers are so funny. That's like uh it used to be it used to be everyone remember this is like I don't know, 15 years ago, everyone was like, Well, we want to put induction in so that you know it so it doesn't get so hot in the kitchen and we know we want to go electric, etc.
+
+[53:08] And then they would always undersize, they would want to put induction range over uh an oven. Right, right. And they would always undersize the cooling fans, not to mention like cooks would go slam with a pot and break the tops constantly. But like they would always burn out and and they're like, Well, you can't you can't run it full blast all the time. You're like, you don't understand, I'm gonna run it full blast all the time.
+
+[53:31] But I will say this. We went induction in our original build out of our what is now the bagel line. We went full induction because so long as you write the first menu having no fat on it, you can do a uh you can do a different hood, which can save you up to a hundred thousand dollars on your build out. I like that. So just get it get a couple extra units and they it's worth the break.
+
+[53:53] And now all of a sudden you're you're there. Yeah. Okay, we got a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave.
+
+[53:59] Um it's uh Paul from Seattle. Um I uh the I am uh given a call on um on some bagel stuff. I uh have been working on bagels on and off for a couple of years. And in fact, I I think I um called in a couple of years ago back at your um one of your last episodes with the old radio network about um bagels in in home ovens and having issues with burning everything seasoning. Yeah.
+
+[54:30] So like, well, you know, Craig says he steams his and that's how he does it. He steams them instead of boiling it. So you're hydrating as you steam it. And there's another way that you can do it without actually steaming your bagels. Uh you just need a um you just need a spray bottle.
+
+[54:45] Make sure that your bagels are going in real wet when you go into the bake. So after after boil seed. Boil seed, then absolutely gush them down with uh water and let them sit there for a minute. Is that what normal bakers do? I don't know.
+
+[54:57] I'm not a normal baker. But uh I know that that if I know that you can boil a bagel, let it sit there, and because your bagel is essentially cooked when it's coming out of the kettle, right? We test it on how long. And you can actually develop a little bit harder crust off of letting it sit there for a solid 10 minutes. So you can use that 10 minutes while it's been seated, spray it down with water, let all your dried ingredients get hydrated, and then give it a bake.
+
+[55:21] So it's not gonna as long as you've as long as the proof is correct, it's not gonna shrink and get all crackly, dackly, nasty while you're waiting for it. Yeah, maybe look for a 90-second each side on the boil. Make sure that your bagel's all the way cooked through. You know, you might be messing a little bit with uh how moist the inside of your bagel is. But letting it sit's not gonna make a wrinkly outside.
+
+[55:41] No, no, no, it smooths out in the oven from my experience. I don't know. You you bake more bagels at home. Yeah. Paul?
+
+[55:47] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You bake you bake more bagels at home than I do, so I have no idea. My sister lives in Seattle, by the way.
+
+[55:52] Although it's one of my absolute favorite uh food cities to uh visit. Well, and while Paul's on the line, because he might have some recommendations, Warren Johnson from Seattle wants to know if there's any bagel recommendations in Chicago in Seattle. No idea, but I do know that there's a uh what's it called? Revel? Is that the name of the uh I don't know, did they make it through the pandemic?
+
+[56:11] That it was like uh four different parts of the venue. It had uh uh uh Asian Yeah, it was my favorite spot. You don't know who's got the good bagel, who's got the good bagel in Seattle. Yeah, you would know Paul. Who's got the good bagel in Seattle, Paul?
+
+[56:24] Ooh. Seattle's bagel game has been upped considerably since the pandemic, but um the mainly I have uh I haven't had time to do much more than follow um some recommendations from uh Kenji Lopez Alt, who moved here uh like two years ago, and he's been um he's been eating up the bagel scene. I have I have gotten bagels from um from three places that I can remember off the top of my head. There's uh um Rachel's bagels and burritos, which is surprisingly good for what you think of from the name. But um it wasn't my favorite.
+
+[57:03] I uh tried one from Schmalsey's delicatessen in um I think the ballard area. Do they actually have schmaltz and do they actually have chicken fat that you can wipe on things or no? If I can't get a bagel with schmaltz on it, I uh I I feel falsely advertised. Yeah. They do both kosher and non-kosher Jewish style ish deli stuff.
+
+[57:24] It's actually a really great idea. I might take take that away. Schmaltz? Season up some uh some chicken fat, render it off, and then throw it on like whipped butter. Oh, it'd be delicious.
+
+[57:33] It would be a good idea. What about what about a 50-50? Like like butter schmalt. Well, it's not kosher anymore, but like you know, it's a we're not kosher to begin with. So I I try and never allow myself to be put into any form of needing dietary restrictions.
+
+[57:45] I wonder uh uh butter cream cheese 5050 is delicious. I wonder. How much air could you get in? This is where we need some. Yeah, right.
+
+[57:51] Especially if you're all the protein. What's the base gonna be? Is the base gonna be like a butter or is the base gonna be like cream cheese? Because you can whip the hell out of a cream cheese or isn't there a fat stabilizer that that that can like stiffen it up a little bit to make it? I tend not to use them that much, but yes, there are.
+
+[58:06] And then at 10 I would use butter though. Uh wants to know uh toasted or untoasted. Uh this becomes a preferential thing. So I'm an untoasted person. I think that there's uh you can tell the integrity of it all.
+
+[58:26] Yeah, because you work so hard on the bagel. Uh yeah, but that being said, uh some bagels need to be toasted. An old bagel, an old bagel. An old bagel needs to I'd say this. You buy us in bulk, you wrap us up, throw us in the freezer, and then uh toast up the bagel.
+
+[58:38] I slice and then freeze, but it was I slice freeze west. Then toast. Uh so yeah, it depends on the freshness. All right, and Quinn, we got one more question from Patreon on bagels. Go.
+
+[58:47] Yeah, J. I live with roommates and fridge space is extremely limited. Any suggestions on adapting the baking schedule to avoid having to proof shaped bagel in the fridge while still being able to bake in the morning? Turn up the AC. Uh why not use ice water as your uh as your water.
+
+[59:12] Chill down the temperature of your uh dough. Make sure that you're in maybe the high 50s uh when you go to uh uh proof it. And what about like real low yeast, like really, really low yeast? Not even low yeast, just make sure you don't activate it. Maybe a low a low amount of activation on it.
+
+[59:26] So if they're not gonna put it in the fridge at all, I mean. Yeah, maybe, but I mean what's the ambient temperature? 70 degrees? And what are you gonna what are you gonna rise? 50 to 70 degrees, that's gonna take a while.
+
+[59:37] So uh I don't know. Let's let's try it. Let's try controlling your water followed by uh followed by controlling your yeast. Yeah, and uh get a dorm fridge and uh uh on the way out not a cat says what's better sh spread or spread or schmear Craig Schmeer is the better you you gotta you gotta go schmear all right thanks for coming on cooking issues thanks guys
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center at New Stand Studios. Nastasia Lopez is currently being sent via aeroplane to the great state of Ohio. So we will not have her uh on the uh on the program today. But thankfully we got the rest of the crew.
+
+[0:30] We got John here. How you doing? Doing great, thanks. Sitting in the special guest seat for a all tangent Tuesday. Can we call them all tangent Tuesdays now?
+
+[0:37] Or should they be with you no tangent Tuesday? Whatever you have. Yeah, this is our and we got, you know, of course we got Joe Rock in the panels over here. Joe Hazen, how you doing? I'm doing great, man.
+
+[0:48] Happy holiday. Yeah, you getting ready for bird day? Yeah, a couple birds. Ooh, all right, hold on. Well, we'll get back.
+
+[0:54] We got uh we got molecules in back in California, but he might mute, folks, because he's feeling a little bit under the weather, but not with the cron. He doesn't have the the he doesn't got the COVID. No, not no, and I'm in DC actually, Dave. I'm I'm in I'm at the line hotel in DC. I forgot that, yeah, last week you were flying to DC.
+
+[1:13] So are you uh you d are you doing radio work there? Yes. Yeah, yeah. All right. I am indeed.
+
+[1:20] That sucks to not be I hate being sick not at home. Yeah, yeah. Me too. You know. I'm not one of these guys that likes hotel rooms too much.
+
+[1:30] You know what I'm saying? Like I don't hate hotel rooms, but if I'm gonna be sick, I just want to be at home. Like my stove, my coffee make. I'll tell the world's quickest story, right? Uh so I'm sick, I'm like, I should probably have some ramen or something.
+
+[1:44] I get Uber Eats, I order ramen. I fail to realize that they deliver it cold and it's supposed to be microwaved. And there's no microwave in my room. And I don't know if this has damaged the uh Nespresso maker, but I clean up an espresso maker and pour the soup into the container and just put it out there. Can I tell you something crazy?
+
+[2:10] Whenever I travel to a place that I don't know what what what I'm getting into, I bring with me a plug-in immersion heater. Like one of those small coffee, like the ones that look like uh they it's like a little plastic handle with uh like a little like looped healing heating coil coming out of it. They're really lightweight. Sometimes you get a little bit of a side eye from the security folk. You know what I mean?
+
+[2:37] Because they don't know what it is, and you're like and but then like you can heat anything. You just gotta be careful because they're notoriously poorly made and they will shock you. You know what I'm saying? Like they notoriously leak electricity and they will shock you. But you can also get them for 220.
+
+[2:56] So you can have you they're so cheap, right? You can have a 221, and frankly, you can use the 221 in the United States, it just has one quarter of the power. Remember, you divide the voltage by two, power divides by four, right? Right? I squared R, fools.
+
+[3:15] I squared R, if that means anything to you guys. Yeah, yeah. Uh and the same thing happens when you plug a spinzall into a freaking socket that is 220. You're putting four times the power through it, and you instantly fry it. Instantly fry it.
+
+[3:31] John, how many people? Well, I'll introduce Quinn that we also have on the phone. Quinn, how you doing? Hey, I'm good. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[3:38] You're you don't you're not even part of this whole week of nonsense because uh you already had your Canadian Thanksgiving like a month ago. It's like this is old hat to you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[3:48] Yeah. What do you make on your and I know you said that it's always the same kind of stuff that we have for our Thanksgiving, but like what'd you make this year? Okay, this year we ran totally left field because I was starting to get sick at the time. Uh we just made uh UK style fish pie. Huh.
+
+[4:07] Uh let me ask you this. We got it, we got cold or hot, cold or hot. It's like a shepherd's pie. Okay, okay. But with fish.
+
+[4:17] Okay. You know what one of the worst things I've ever put in my mouth is? Cold eel pie. Cold eel pie. Yeah.
+
+[4:26] I went to the east end of London to one of the few remaining eel shops. And I was like, I'm gonna love this because I love eel. Do you like unseasoned, under salted, cold snot? Love it. Yeah.
+
+[4:43] Then you should go to the east end of London and get you some co if my memory serves me, I couldn't eat it, which is a lot saying a lot for me. I couldn't eat it. I was like, this is so not what I thought. This is so away from the spectrum of what I thought that I was like, I can't even deal with that. And I I want to say that there was bones in it too.
+
+[5:02] Right? Which is like for me, like if I'm eating something delicious and culturally it has to have bones in it, I'm like, this is fine. You know what I mean? I'm not that guy. I can't eat it.
+
+[5:11] You know what I mean? I won't eat it. But this was just one unpleasant thing after the next. You know what else? Pastry low quality.
+
+[5:17] So I asked my host, I was like, yo, why would anyone make this? He's like, Well, originally we had a lot of eel. And, you know, not a lot of money, but a lot of eel. I was like, I don't know. You know what, Joe, you you seem to me like you could, if you had an English accent, you could be in an old East End London movie.
+
+[5:29] You could be an actor if you had an English accent. You could do the whole English East End look if you wanted to, Drew. Really? Yeah, I think so. I mean, my wife's from London, but I mean she's from the West London, like the fancy pants people.
+
+[5:47] What's the weird thing? You don't do the acting thing, but you could you could do straight New York. You could, but you could also, I think do the London thing. Oh, you know what I mean? You know, back back to Quinn's uh fish pie.
+
+[5:57] I fish pies are delicious. Is that like the fish pie that they do with the turnips, the carrots, and the shaved um celery? Um again, we just did standard mirpois, dice, bechamel sauce. Oh, uh say bechamel. Yeah, because I don't like the bechamel.
+
+[6:19] What's the Italian version of that? Besca, what is it called? No idea. Bachamel. Yeah.
+
+[6:24] Anyway, so sorry, Joe, go ahead. No, I I I my my wife still makes it and she insists on that I uh uh shave the celery for her through it's the worst thing your fingers can experience. Well, your your your wife doesn't like stringy celery. You know, apparently the English have a string free celery that we just can't buy here. Oh, really?
+
+[6:44] I didn't know that. Yeah. I just did also learn that if you have a cough, you cut up an onion and put it underneath your bed. What? Yeah.
+
+[6:50] That's an English thing? Yeah. There's some weird people over there. Yeah, and supposedly it works. Yeah, I don't know, man.
+
+[6:56] You're like, what's that smell? Do you know that I'm not allowed to have cut onions in my house? Such a sh tragedy. I know. I John's not messing around.
+
+[7:05] Raw onions are delicious. Whenever my wife goes on business, it's raw onion city in my house. I have to say, like, there are things that I really, really, really, really, really want raw onions on. And I'll I'll I'll name two of them right now. Chili and hamburgers.
+
+[7:25] Right? I really, really, really want my raw onion on that, right? And I've given that up because, you know, happy home. Yeah. Love.
+
+[7:34] Right. But one thing I will not give up is if I have the tomato and I have the loxer the nova, and I've got the bagel and the cream cheese, I want that onion. I want that onion. And I'm not willing to give that up. And so, like, literally, Jen's like, no.
+
+[7:52] You know what I mean? She's like, you can't, you can't be anywhere near me. She's like, because you guys know this, right? When you slice onions, it stays in your skin, like in for infinity, right? And you wash it, it stays in your skin.
+
+[8:04] You can smell it on your hands. But if you don't eat them raw after you slice them, it's it's it's not like too too bad. But then if you eat a raw onion after you sliced a crap ton of raw onion, that's it. Like you are, you are on stink central. You're on onion stink central, you know, rest of the day.
+
+[8:23] But for me, I'm like, yeah, hell yeah, yeah. What about shallots? Uh I love the taste, hate working with them. I haven't tried. It's good.
+
+[8:33] She she can tolerate uh like uh scallions, green onions. I don't do leeks because I hate, I hate does anyone make a sand-free leek? Doubt it. Oh man, we have we have a Jewish recipe that we make, the Sephardics. We make these leek pies.
+
+[8:49] Oh my god, I can still taste it in my mouth. The most amazing thing we dare have during Passover. Um it's it's just like my grandmother, my no and I used to make I mean pounds and pounds and pounds of leek with flour uh with novel flour, with uh with mozzamil and like making these little pancakes out of it. Oh, the best. Oh man.
+
+[9:08] Now you're making me see, but that's the thing. You gotta get your grandma to clean that crap out. Because I don't want to cut all those leaks in half and then you can't put it in a salad spinner and like because you know how we you know how we wash, I don't know, Joe. How do you wash stuff? Because like I've been trained years, decades.
+
+[9:23] It's like you put everything in a giant vessel, you fill it with water, and then like dump out the water until there's no more sand on the bottom. But it doesn't work for leeks. No, no, that's like the beach. Yeah, it doesn't work for leeks. I have the same problem with spinach too, still.
+
+[9:39] Well, yeah. You know what? Uh I've said this before, I say it again. Uh, people, spinach really wants to be cooked. Yes.
+
+[9:48] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Spinach wants to be cooked.
+
+[9:51] Kale loves being cooked. Kale loves being cooked. You know what I'm saying? It's like, okay, but when you do cook spinach, let's say that you've grown up on spinach and goat cheese salads or something, right? Let's say you were born in the 80s or 90s or whatever you were born.
+
+[10:07] I don't know. Maybe you were born in the 2000s. With beets, too? Oh, jeebus. Yeah.
+
+[10:12] But like Okay, first of all, I need you guys to know something. Serious. I'm I'm being real now. Spinach isn't a a small disc that you can make the size of it with your thumb and pointer finger. Spinach is a big old leaf that's like crinkly.
+
+[10:26] The stuff that you get in the bag is baby spinach, right? I don't really get the point of it. You know what I'm saying? Like it's the same thing as I don't get the point of rocket when like French arugula is so big and leafy. Yeah, I like any form of mustardy tasting greens.
+
+[10:41] I'm so I like them all, but on the baby spinach, I can tolerate it. I just don't understand why people pay a premium for it. You know what I'm saying? When there are so many better lettuces out there, right? And arugulas and whatever.
+
+[10:54] Uh but let's say you're gonna go buy real spinach, God spinach dark, dark, dark, almost black, green, crinkly, big old leaves, lots of sand, which is what we're talking about. Lots of dirt on it. When you cook it, please, please cook it, please, please squeeze it out before you do your finished saute on it or whatever you're doing. Nobody wants to see that leaky, like gross colored juice bleeding off your plate into the rest of your food. Nobody wants to see that.
+
+[11:34] You know what I made the other day? Cream spinach. Like cream spinach. Oh, cream spinach is delicious. Very good.
+
+[11:41] In in the 70s, the Stofers Corporation used to sell cream spinach in uh frozen in a block form. Oh, nice. I used to go to town on that. Like my mom would my mom would be going into the hospital. You know, she's a doctor, right?
+
+[11:52] So she'd be going into the hospital to work and I'd be home alone. And you know, I don't know what my dad was doing. And yeah, I was just fucking block after block of stofers cream spinach. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[12:04] But it was delicious. The 70s. You know what I used to put? You know how in the 70s? Well, you don't.
+
+[12:09] You want to. No. Yeah. It used to be like, you know how like uh what's her name is like the cake doctor where she doctors cake mixes. That was her whole shtick on the food network.
+
+[12:18] I forget her name. Anyway. Uh I forget. Anyway. So, like in the 70s, it used to be like you'd put your twist on everything by just like grabbing something out of the spice rack and putting it in.
+
+[12:29] And then like that was your kind of the way people customize barbecue sauces now. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's like, you know, oh, it's mine.
+
+[12:36] No, actually, it's Heinz Ketchup plus other stuff. Yeah. It's like, but not ranking on whoever I'm ranking on. You know what I mean? It's like whatever.
+
+[12:44] Do what you like. Curry powder in the cream spinach. That was my thing. Curry powder in the spinach. Do you still do that?
+
+[12:53] Uh. Yes. I grew up with it, but yeah, I now have a much better, I now have like the nice, you know, the the madras curry, the the the you know, the the nice one. Not the not the uh McCormick that I grew up with in that. No offense to the McCormick Corporation.
+
+[13:12] You know what I mean? Anyway. So what do you so what do you think of it? What do you think of uh uh I think it's called lamb's breath? Lamb's breath.
+
+[13:19] Lamb's quarters. Lamb's quarters, good. Lamb's quarters good. Uh it's like really tiny, tiny green. Uh pretty, I mean it's this one shape like this.
+
+[13:28] Um making a shape. It's not a visual medium. Like you can't like an air arrow-shaped leaf? Like these? No, no.
+
+[13:35] So that looks good though. Very good. You're talking about the it's an English um uh uh leaf, and it's always served. It's called lamb's breath or lamb's leaf, lamb's leaf. Um you like it?
+
+[13:47] Really meaty. It's kind of like watercress but like juicier. Ooh, I like watercress. All right. So uh if you're listening on the Patreon, call your questions in too, a 917 uh 410 1507.
+
+[14:02] That's 917 410 1507. No, that does look like a meaty leaf. Yeah. Lamb's lettuce. Yeah, I think it makes sense.
+
+[14:09] I mean, you know, lambs, they're young, so you'd name it young green after that, right? You would like otherwise it would be mutton, mutton lettuce. Doesn't have the same ring to it. Does not, although very impossible to get. Okay, I've been to Keene's.
+
+[14:20] Did we talk about this on air? Probably, but we could talk about it again. Keynes is delicious. Yeah. I had their famed mutton chop, which is really like a whole double saddle, like comes to you.
+
+[14:30] And it was really good. But I was like, that doesn't taste that old. Yeah. This doesn't taste like this ain't gamey. I want some freaking mutton.
+
+[14:42] I want mutton. You know what I'm saying? One time we got like almost half of like a three-year-old mutton. How was it? Really good.
+
+[14:53] Again, I I, of course, I I took a big chunk and dry aged it. That was really funky. I bet it was, Quinn. Taking the old mutton that already has that like like muttony McMutton, and then freaking like dry aging that fat to add that extra funk on it. Whatever.
+
+[15:12] Yeah. You know, they play that James Brown song, Too Funky in here. Too funky. That's a great song. Um back on money.
+
+[15:20] You know what's something I've always wanted to try my whole life? Uh I don't know. Like uh, I don't know if they have it as far over because I know you did uh you spent some time in Morocco. You went there on vacation. The fatty lamb tail.
+
+[15:30] I've never had the fatty lamb tail. I don't know how far over that goes. I don't think it makes it all the way over to Morocco, but the fatty lamb tail is something I've always wanted to try. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[15:41] You grow a lamb just for its like weird, crazy fat tail. I'm like, I'm like, oh yeah. Yeah. Right? Yeah.
+
+[15:50] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So uh we're gonna answer a bunch of Thanksgiving questions.
+
+[15:56] However, you know, as uh unless you're a Patreon listener, you're listening to this after Thanksgiving. So take all these things as next year's advice. Oh, but something you can use this year, PS, is uh Edward's Age Meets. I got a uh a package uh from them, and you know, certain things are predictable. Like I I liked the dry aged ribeye more than I like the dry aged strip.
+
+[16:20] That's me though. That's me. Is everyone here a ribeye people? Or are we is there are there any ribeye people? Any strip people here?
+
+[16:29] And hang on's my favorite, but uh yeah, but like let's say you were only ever gonna have one again, which one would it be? It can't be rebounded, it'd be report. Yeah, of course. You know what I mean? I mean, like I wish it was called the New York ribeye and like the somewhere else strip.
+
+[16:45] Like, why do we get I mean the strip's a good steak? It's just it's never quite as good as the ribeye. Yeah, you know what I mean, especially if you have them side by side. Anyway, they were both fantastic. Uh I had a pork belly, but here are two and an uh an aged pork chop, which was not cheesy.
+
+[17:03] Craig uh Hutchison was on last week and was like he thought it was gonna be cheesy, but it's only lightly aged, so it was not cheesy tasting. Excellent pork. I mean, if the if if that pork I had made a couple of days ago also had the duck fat injection, John, next year I want us, you and me, you get the uh your place and me at my the house. Let's figure out the best technique to to inject fat. Because have you ever had the magic pork from DiPalos?
+
+[17:26] I've not. Sam Wisole, he died, but they're still making it. So I was nervous that when he died, because he I I walked in, I was like, oh my god, when this guy dies, what's gonna happen? He's like, Well, it's literally happened? I'm not joking, people.
+
+[17:38] Sal at DePalo's, which is where I get the the magic pork, he was like, Oh, uh, he did die. In fact, I'm going to his wake tonight. I was like, Oh, sorry. You know what I mean? Like, but whatever.
+
+[17:50] He was old, you know, whatever. It doesn't make it good. But anyway. So it's they say it's duck fat, but it's not just that. It's also like brined in in spice.
+
+[18:02] So, like, that's what so I want to figure out a good mix with probably Arabic, Xanthan, and fat that is liquid enough at a low enough temperature that we can inject it and then have it kind of stay put. You know what I'm saying? It's like modern barding. You know what I mean? It's like modern barding.
+
+[18:22] For those of you that don't know what barding is, read an old book. Like, go read some 1800s books on how to cook. It used to be you took a dry piece of meat and you literally took a needle, like, like, like, a, like a needle that you would like uh like huge, like a needle with a with a big old eye in it, and you would cut long strips of back fat, and you would thread the back fat through a needle, and then you'd pull the needle through the meat and then snip off the fat inside the meat. So you would have like, and you can see these old pictures where they look like I'm gonna be gross for a second, codworms. If you've ever guys have ever had to butcher a cod.
+
+[19:00] Yeah, they're intensely disgusting. So it's like these so people, when you butcher live cod, don't let this turn you off a cod. But when you butcher live cod, like a lot of them, right? Every once in a while, you'll get the filet, and then you'll see something just be like, hello? And it'll come out of the out of the filet, and you're like, this is why we don't eat this road.
+
+[19:25] This is why we cook this fish. You know what I mean? I once saw it served as a crudeau. And I was just like, oh, no. No.
+
+[19:32] No. No. Like mu yeah, monkfish lyricity? No. No.
+
+[19:35] No. No. Nope. No. If you cook it, hey.
+
+[19:40] But like, yeah, like the first time you see one of those live cive worms, you're like, oh my God. Vile. Yeah. It's really off-putting. Yeah.
+
+[19:51] But then the person you're working with is like, that's normal. Yeah. And you're like, what? And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's normal.
+
+[19:58] And you're like, nah. And they're like. But it is. Yeah, it is. Anyway, so kind of like that, like, like, but but you know, thicker, coming through the meat, and then they chop them off, and then you roast it like that.
+
+[20:10] Barding. Or is that larding? That's larding. Barding. There's barding and larding.
+
+[20:14] I think one is wrapping around and one. Larding is wrapping around. So barding is putting it through. I have a barney needle. Of course you do.
+
+[20:22] Several, in fact. Come on, man. Naturally. Come on, dudes. Uh, all right.
+
+[20:27] How do how do we get on onto that? Oh, Magic Pork. How do we get on that? Every aged meat. Ah.
+
+[20:33] The two standouts, right? To me, things that I had not tasted before. They're ground meat mix. Beef crack. Stupid.
+
+[20:45] This is dumb. You gotta buy it. It's just dumb. And the other thing is, uh, okay, I cook a lot of steak. I cook a lot of high-end steak.
+
+[20:56] I cook a lot of high-end steak. Well, good for you. Nanny nanny McPoo poo. I mean, like more than I should. Yeah.
+
+[21:02] You know what I mean? That's what I mean. You know what I mean? And I try to do a good job with it. I don't mess around with it.
+
+[21:07] I try to respect the meat. Yeah. Okay. Uh, by the way, interesting. I've said this on the air before.
+
+[21:13] The one time I prefer uh strip in Wagyu, I actually prefer strip. I think I've only had Wagyu strip, so I can't compare to the red eye. I've had, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[21:26] Only time. I don't know why. Whatever. Could just be that. I've only had it a couple of times, though.
+
+[21:31] Wagyu strip. I was like, oh. It's side by side. Yeah. It's very hard to judge anything if it's not side by side people.
+
+[21:37] You know what I mean? Could be the company you're with. You could be eating with someone you hate, all of a sudden everything tastes bad. You could be on your honeymoon and it could be the best food. The first time I went to Italy was when I was on my honeymoon, 1995.
+
+[21:47] I was like I was uh 24, right? And I was like, everything was like the best food I've ever had because I was on my honeymoon. Is it because the food was great? No, I mean I didn't have that much money. I didn't, I was probably buying garbage.
+
+[21:59] It's probably trash can food. I loved it. You know what I mean? One thing was terrible. Uh I was driving.
+
+[22:06] Uh so like, you know, my wife and I are very different. And so, like, she was like, half the honeymoon is going to be planned. Like, we know where we're gonna stay. And and I was like, okay, and then the other half, we're just gonna drive to towns in Italy, and we're going to find like a hotel, like a pension that we can stay in, and that's it. And it's gonna be completely unscripted.
+
+[22:28] So it was like half and half. It worked out great, except for I pulled over on the side of the street somewhere in like, you know, like on the border of like Upper Lazio and bought wine from this lady. Someone's like, you could buy anything, it's gonna be great. I bought this wine from this lady. It was the worst fluid I'd had up to that point in my life.
+
+[22:50] So you can't you can't just get anything in Italy. No, no, no. Anyway. Uh the Australian, which I've never had, Wagyu from Edwards, Aged Meets. Dax said, I'm not gonna say it.
+
+[23:05] Dax said, this is the best steak you've ever made, Dad. And I did my standard. I know that people don't like to do this on Wildview. I did my standard, which is 55 for 45, right? Got that?
+
+[23:17] 55 C 45 minute drop to 52, ride. And then right before, you know, like 45 minutes before I'm gonna do my sear off drop to 50. Sear. Delicious. Delicious.
+
+[23:33] Okay. Uh what else we gotta talk about before we uh before we get to Thanksgiving. Anything? Anything? I think that's it.
+
+[23:40] Anything? We hear anything, uh we hear anything about that stuff you want to talk about, Quinn? The Black Friday stuff. Uh no, no. Oh, who's uh who's next week's guest?
+
+[23:52] I don't know. Who's next week's guest? It's on the document. Garrett Richards. Oh, everybody's favorite tropical drink master.
+
+[24:00] Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Is he announcing his book? Hopefully. Yeah.
+
+[24:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. But it's gonna be great. If you haven't been to Sunken Harbor Club of G above Gage and Tolner in Brooklyn, you should hurry on over because it's fantastic. It is definitely one of my favorite bars.
+
+[24:19] And as someone who Okay, first of all, I don't typically like tropical drinks. And by that I mean things that are served on crush ice that start too sweet and then eventually get too watered down. It's not my style, usually, right? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[24:39] Yeah. And I'm not saying that. I'm just that's not my personal preference. That's not what I order. I respect it.
+
+[24:46] That's not what I typically order. I love this bar. You were chugging, literally chugging cocktails. They were good. Yeah.
+
+[24:54] They were good. Very good. Yeah. And the ambiance is super cool. And it's very, yeah, very, very Garrett, like some like nautical nautical.
+
+[25:01] I love a nautical theme. Yeah, tiki nautical. It's not tiki anymore. That's true, yes. It's tropical.
+
+[25:06] True. But it is nautical. Yes. And you know, I love I love knots and rope. Yeah.
+
+[25:12] Flanted glasses and feel like inside of the ship mermaids. Yeah. It's just great. The whole nine. Yeah.
+
+[25:18] Yeah. Anyway. Sorry. So he'll be on. That's good.
+
+[25:20] All right. What do you how do you how do you think? Do you think this is tupe or toupee? Is there no ex ante goo? What do you think?
+
+[25:29] Toupe? Toup, I guess. Toup. All right. I want to make Dave's stuffing recipe after hearing about it on the Recipe Club podcast.
+
+[25:36] I hope this doesn't offend because I'm asking you about modification to your family's sacred recipe. Uh if you had to sub out the butter, what would you use? Well, I'm glad that you're not saying I don't like Mandarin oranges, because then I I was reading some of the comments. So Dax, so Dax, you know my son Dax. He was like, I want to come on the show once and just like read people's comments and go to town on them.
+
+[25:58] I'm like, I don't know, man. I don't know, dude. It's like, because if you don't like the mandarin oranges, like, and you haven't tried it, then you know, I don't know what to say to you. How do you know you don't freaking like it? The odds are you haven't had a canned mandarin orange ever.
+
+[26:12] You just don't like the concept of it. You know what I mean? We're not talking about mandarin oranges now. Because that's what I get the most pushback on. So I'm glad this is pushback on butter, right?
+
+[26:20] Uh so John was saying more sausage grease or more rendered pork fat uh might be good. Uh I think a mixture uh of like coconut and olive oil. Uh I I wish I had written it down. I I apologize. I didn't actually fully think about this.
+
+[26:41] I have at home, I have a uh a fake butter that uh ratio that I use to make biscuits with like very with uh you know, Captain Greasy, Nick Coleman, with his very nice olive oil and then coconut where uh coconut you know oil. It doesn't act exactly like butter because uh coconut is a lot harder at high temperatures, but what that uh low temperatures, but what that means is uh you can add um um proportionally more olive oil, but I don't have the exact specs. Right? But you so what you do is is you you mix them, you melt, you melt the coconut and you mix in the olive oil and then you let it reharden as fake butter. But I don't have the percentages.
+
+[27:23] I think it's something like 30% olive oil is is decent where's place to start with that. Like nice delicious olive oil or pork fat or margarine. Uh look, if you have to have margarine and have margarine. You're gonna eat it hot anyway, right? Odds are.
+
+[27:43] So uh I'm just worried that you know, if you use like straight oil that it's gonna be oily. Although I'm probably wrong, you're gonna eat it hot. I mean, a good olive oil might be fine. Yeah. I don't know.
+
+[27:58] Or pork. Pork fat. Or I mean, does someone make a good margarine though? I don't know. I haven't tried around margarines.
+
+[28:08] So I have nothing against margarine. I wonder what would happen. And I'm not saying to do this, but uh so my my kids, my kids uh for some reason over the pa past year, they've gone popcorn loony. They've gone like popcorn nuts, right? So they're constantly popping popcorn, eating bowl after bowl of popcorn.
+
+[28:28] And so like I like have to regularly buy the I buy the the movie theater bright yellow coconut oil, free game diacetile, like movie grease. You know what I'm talking about? And flavicol, which is the diacetyl like salt. It's the very fine butter flavored popcorn salt. Maybe use that.
+
+[28:54] Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't really taste like butter, but it does taste delicious. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[29:00] Yeah. Just don't inhale that. You don't want to get uh you don't want to get butter lung. You know what I mean? Popcorn lung.
+
+[29:05] You heard about this? No. Yeah, that's for people who do all the vaping. Oh no, really? I didn't know that.
+
+[29:10] Yeah, popcorn lung, it's definitely contributed to vaping as well. Oh man, because it used to be like they discovered that diacetyl is really bad for you, really bad for you in an industrial environment if you don't have respirators. I didn't know people were vaping diacetyl. Well, I mean, I think it that's that's the effect that um that happens to your lungs is happening to the same people who are vaping. Uh um, but but I do gotta say, um uh we we we had Jose Andreas in a couple weeks ago, and he was uh talking about um in Spain making these these these these pastries and these these desserts, not using butter, but using pork fat.
+
+[29:47] Yeah. Phenomenal. Well, lard is like the best pastry stuff, but it's not flavored. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right.
+
+[29:54] Yeah. I guess lard, of course. No, but like, no, yeah, but like most lard that we buy here is bad. I'm sure he has some fancy the croissants were I I could not bother. He brought one?
+
+[29:59] He bought a whole spread of them. We made a mess. Alright, so I want to try a pork pork pork song. Well, next time I go over to uh whatever what's this place called over there? Mercado Little Spain?
+
+[30:19] Yes, he's got them there. Pork croissant, pork croissant. And their croissants have like a creme inside. It's yeah. Alright, John, now you have to say it with the with you have to go full French on the croissant.
+
+[30:30] Say it. Croissant. Ah, yeah. Alright. So did I answer that uh sufficiently, you think?
+
+[30:35] Yeah. Gobble gobble. Oh my god. Do you guys know? And if you don't know, it's fine, but they're they're re-releasing planes, trains, and automobiles with a uh with like an hour of deleted scenes, which I'm pretty sure there's a reason they were deleted.
+
+[30:51] So like I'm not saying I but I still want to see the deleted scenes. But the real reason to do it is if you if you know the movie, you know what I'm talking about. There's a a guy, uh his name is Dylan Baker's the actor, and he plays the character of Owen, who shows up in the pickup truck and is like people train run out of stubble. And he's like like hawking loogies all already, like anyway. They have his original audition tape.
+
+[31:20] Uh as part of the release on this. So I cannot wait, because that is our Thanksgiving movie. Like, that's every Thanksgiving we watch planes, trains, and automobiles. And so, you know, it's classic John Candy, classic, Steve Martin, and you know, Dylan Baker does Owen. So I'll give you a little bit.
+
+[31:38] So for those of you that seen the movie, what happened I haven't seen the movie, like uh John Candy and Steve Martin are like opposites who get thrown together and they're trying to get home for Thanksgiving, right? And the they there's a lot of mayhem happens. So they have to get on this truck to try to get to a train. And John Hughes, John Hughes, right? He's the uh director.
+
+[32:04] Uh right? Anyway, so like he wasn't getting the reaction out of Steve Martin and John Candy from this insane character that uh Owen. And so he literally gave him the direction without saying, he's like, I want you to actually spit chewing tobacco phlegm all over your hand and then shake Steve Martin's hand without him knowing he did it. So, like if you watch the movie, Steve Martin is so intensely grossed out by the interaction, and it was a hundred percent real. 100% real.
+
+[32:39] Can't take a train out of Witcherto unless you're a hog or a kettle. People train run out of Stubbville. It's Stubbville. Stubbhill's not even a real place. Anyway, uh, how the heck did we talk about that?
+
+[32:53] I don't know. Tangent Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah. The other movie I want to see that's coming out is the uh Opportunity Rover, good night opi, or whatever it's called.
+
+[33:02] You seen this? Nope. Oh my god. Apparently, it's like real life Wally. Everyone's everyone's going nuts for it.
+
+[33:08] Do you like stories that happen on Mars? Well, I love Wally. Yeah. Right? Watch this.
+
+[33:13] Wally was the best. But this is like real. Like like the actual NASA scientists, and like it's kind of like the the anthropomorph, it's like kind of the robots become the rover robots become real characters through the fact of all of the human stuff that keeps them kind of operational. And in in uh I guess it was 2017 or 2018 when the when this thing finally shut down, like a decade or decade and a half after it was supposed to, it was only supposed to go live for like three months, like its last communication was batteries running low and it's getting dark. Well, no, I mean it's it's dead.
+
+[33:55] Yeah, I know. No cliff Evie, it fell off the cliff all right. It's dead. Uh all right. Max Poland writes in I want to break out some pie marches on uh who is it that wrote in and called it the pie bowl was such a good idea.
+
+[34:10] Don't remember. The pie bowl. The pie bowl. Uh I want to bring out some pie marches on recipes for Thanksgiving. My niece can't have eggs.
+
+[34:18] Any good egless pie filling recipes, or should I just use a substitute? Yeah. Oh, you mean you want to make p uh you're saying you want to make pic pecan and or pumpkin pie without eggs. Because apple pies. Yeah, delicious.
+
+[34:33] Delicious. Don't eat an egg for an apple pie. Right? Especially because he doesn't actually like egg washes. Although he he does have eggs in some of his washes, but he doesn't actually like it.
+
+[34:42] Milkwash work fine. You know what I mean? Uh butter. He actually butter buttermilk, not buttermilk. Butter and milk.
+
+[34:50] Yes. Uh and like like he has a lot of good washes that don't have eggs. Uh a lot of his chiffons don't have uh I'm thinking the vast majority of his chiffons don't have egg, right, John? I haven't quite talked about it. Based on whipped egg whites?
+
+[35:07] No. Oh, wait, egg whites. You're correct. It's stupid me. Yeah.
+
+[35:11] I was thinking, because it was not a custard, it's all egg. It's all egg white. Dang it. Yeah. All right, so not apple, what else?
+
+[35:21] Well, most fruit pies. Yeah, yeah. But what about something whipped? How would you do how would you do a whipped pie? Okay, so you can.
+
+[35:31] Okay, I don't have a recipe straight out of hand, right? But you could do uh, you could whip anything, like a VersaWhip. You could make like a VersaWhip mix, right? Or or I mean no one uses methylcel F50 anymore except for me, whatever, but you can make like a you can you could whip something up like that, like make a whipped thing, or even like whipped cream and then stabilize it with like uh with jelly with a gelatin uh hot mix or with a starch hot mix or with a so uh most modern chiffon recipes are stabilized with gelatin. Uh pie marches on chiffons are stabilized with uh cornstarch, boiled cornstarch.
+
+[36:14] So he does egg whites where you you then cook the fruit out, add the cornstarch, beat it in hot, and the heat pasteurizes the egg whites and then sets it solid when the starch gels as it cools. But you could do the same thing, I'm sure, as long as you had more protein structure in it with uh with a different foam, right? I mean, make it stands to reason. I've done agar, I've done agar instead of cornstarch for semi Fredo's. I like a semifrito.
+
+[36:47] Yeah, semi frito's good. Candy. He wants a pie. He wants a pumpkin flavored jello pie. No, it's a pie.
+
+[36:57] Now, if you were gonna sub out. I mean. I mean, there are a lot of egless custards, but I I my brain turned off because I forgot that the whole base is. I'm thinking about the part you're cooking, not the egg whites that you're folding the stuff into. So I, you know Yeah, and the egg whites are the most important part that most people are allergic to.
+
+[37:19] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, egg whites are amazing. They also don't taste very good though. Can I tell you guys a secret that I think I've discovered, but I I don't know enough to say it for sure yet.
+
+[37:31] So I pasteurized a bunch of eggs at 57 Celsius for an hour so that I could use them in the stuffing that I was making for Recipe Club, because normally you make the stuffing with raw eggs and then you cook it right away, right? But I knew I was gonna like have it in my fridge overnight because I was meat gluing the turkey around it. Okay? The turkey skin. And so I wanted to make sure that it was biologically fine, basically a salad, before I, you know, put stuff that I knew was unclean around it, because I knew it was gonna take a long time to cook through to the middle, and I didn't want it to be unsafe, right?
+
+[38:06] Okay, so I pasteurized the eggs. So then I didn't use all the pasteurized eggs. By the way, when you pasteurize your eggs, take a sharpie and just write pea on top so you know which ones are pasteurized and which ones aren't. Good practice. Uh so like I had these extra pasteurized eggs, like four of them, right?
+
+[38:21] And when you're boiling an egg, when you're hard boiling, right? You want to have the egg go into the hottest water possible. If you put eggs in from cold and bring them up, they're almost impossible to peel. But the shape is better. Okay?
+
+[38:36] So I always err on the side of peelability, and I put them into hot water. So I had these, and I was like, you know, because that we go through an uncuge amount of hard-boiled eggs in my house. So I was like, but ridiculous. And so, like, uh, absurd. And so uh I had these ones left over, and I was like, I'm gonna have to pasteurize a bunch more eggs because my mom wants me to bring the stuffing this year because oh now I'm fancy.
+
+[38:58] I've been on the recipe club. Now you make the stuffing. I'm not gonna make it anymore. I'm like, come on, please, come on. So I'm gonna pasteurize the eggs so that it's safe on the travel from here up to you know my sister's house.
+
+[39:08] So I I was like, well, I'll hard I'll hard boil these ones that are already pasteurized. Okay. And I was like, they're probably not gonna peel because I had pasteurized them at a low temperature, and in order to get good peelability, usually you go high. Well, it turns out that pasteurizing the egg doesn't make it stick to the shell, but it does make the shape good. And so I only ran a test on four.
+
+[39:30] I'm gonna do a test on a couple of dozen, but all of the egg yolks were perfectly centered in the ones that I had pasteurized. They were all relatively full in the shell. They didn't have like that weird lopsided thing you get with an egg that's been put into hot water instead of like brought up from cold, and they all peeled easily. All four. And I was like, oh my God, have we cracked, have have I cracked the code on when you're making deviled eggs, having the shape of the egg be good and having the yolk be centered?
+
+[40:02] Is it just that you need to run it through a pasteurization uh cycle, let it cool down, and then boil them? More tests to come. But if you guys want to run the test, just if you post it and don't say that you got the idea from me, I'll find you. I'll find you. You know what I mean?
+
+[40:16] I don't, I probably won't find you. No, he won't. All right. Uh Patrick Ceccone. Patrick Coney writes in what uh oven and internal temperatures do you uh recommend for the turkey drape?
+
+[40:26] Turkey drape. Uh over hot stuffing method. I assume stuffing goes in first uh to an oven at set temp, then bird place on top at some point once the stuffing is at a certain temperature. I know where I like my turkey. 150 in the breast.
+
+[40:40] What's 150 in Celsius? Uh and 165 in the darkness. Yeah. Uh but looking for guidance on the recipe. What is it?
+
+[40:50] 65 and a half. All right. Also have uh two pregnant women at the dinner. Assume this method should be safe, unlike traditional stuffing inside bird. Correct and correct.
+
+[40:58] Here's what I would do. I'm assuming you have a circulator or some sort of similar ANOVA thing. I typically put the stuffing and I I circulate it to get it hot as quickly as possible. But yeah, you could just uh wrap it in aluminum foil in the shape of the of the bird. So what you do is when you bone your bird, right?
+
+[41:19] Or when you when you rip out most of the bones in the bird, like just take a look at the rib cage and the whole setup of it and try to make the stuffing into that shape, right? And then, yeah, you you could I mean, like if you had an ANOVA, you could keep it moist while you're doing it, and then just put it in that shape on the pan you're gonna roast in, and then get it all the way up to temp, like all the way up to like hot, like 190, 200, you know what I mean, like hot. You know what I mean? Like done. Then just pull it out, drape the bird over it, you know, have the have the bird come to temp a little bit, drape the bird over it, and it will cook from both sides.
+
+[42:02] The stuffing doesn't have that much energy, but it will make it cook faster and it is a whole heck of a lot safer. I if when I used to stuff before I cut open, I would uh I would circulate the stuffing. I would make the stuffing into the shape in like a two-gallon ziploc and then circulate it. But you know, I think an oven might work just as well, frankly, because it sucks. Like handling a bunch of hot stuffing and like with like, you know, gloves, it kind of blows.
+
+[42:28] You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but get it hot. Uh Sargon writes in.
+
+[42:34] Uh, are you going to add the recipe procedure for taking apart and re-gluing the turkey together? It's on the website somewhere. You mean the recipe for what I did with the stuffing, or do you mean like my standard bionic turkey recipe? Yeah, with the stuffing. I mean, here's what you here's what you do.
+
+[42:53] I'll I'll tell you what you do. Uh you you take the bird, make sure it's completely completely thawed, put it uh breast down, make a cut all the way down the back, then start peeling the skin off uh around the the back, and um and just be careful around uh the armpits where the wings are. That's where it's gonna tear. If you can cut the joint without cutting the skin, then leave the wings on because it's easier than like having to re-glue them uh back on later. And then that's really the only hard part.
+
+[43:28] It makes sure that the bird's not frozen and and and and you know, right around the uh the underarm pits. The same thing with a chicken. I would practice on a chicken first. You know what I mean? Uh chicken's really easy to get the skin off of.
+
+[43:37] You know what I mean? It's like uh it's kind of crazy. I uh my old butcher, he had a guy, he's dead now, not my butcher, as far as I know, uh, Ray. And Ray used to use his uh apron to rip chicken skins off. So you would walk into Oh, you've told me this.
+
+[43:55] Yeah, yeah. You'd walk into the into the butcher shop, and Ray would be there, and he would grab the meat with one hand and then just grab the skin with his apron and go shaboing. And just rip the skin off. He he was so fast ripping chicken skins off of chickens. I just don't know how I don't even know how he is crazy.
+
+[44:15] Anyway, uh, and then uh stuffing, make sure it's pasteurized, put it in the shape of a bird. And then the problem is is if you want to meat glue it, you don't want to vacuum it. So what I what I would do is just get a lot of plastic wrap, use extra meat glue where the seams are together, and then let it just sit in the fridge for four hours. You should get enough of a bond to be able to roast it. All right, that makes sense?
+
+[44:36] Yeah. That's enough of a recipe? All right. Uh Brandon Bird writes in, what is your standard gravy protocol? I've experimented a lot over the years, but it keeps coming back to a basic Rue plus stock combination and adjust the consistency, consistency at the end with one draw, if necessary.
+
+[44:50] Maybe a mount with extra butter or turkey fat. It's basically gravy the way my grandma used to make it. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But if there's room to improve on tradition, I'd love to hear about it. All right, well, okay, here's what I do.
+
+[45:01] Uh I don't uh I don't I don't do I don't do ruse anymore. Why not? Pain in my butt. I don't do it. Okay.
+
+[45:11] I ran here's here's a test I ran. Ready for it. You know how everyone says uh oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, with Rue. You know how they say that? It's like blah, blah, blackity schmackity.
+
+[45:21] You know how they people do that? Sure. Yeah. Uh here I ran a test where I just boiled water and flour together. And I was looking for that telltale, it's gonna taste like flour.
+
+[45:37] And like, it is true that after 30 minutes, maybe it was slightly more neutral, but it wasn't this horrible effect that everyone says you're gonna get. So if you read cookbooks, like I read cookbooks, then you're gonna hear something like this. You you either have to only cook uh a roux with a sauce or with a Burma knee. You know, Burma knee is when you take butter and flour and knead them together into balls. You can only cook it for like either two minutes or it needs to cook 30 minutes.
+
+[46:10] Anything in between, and you're gonna you're gonna ruin everything. How many times have you read that advice? Millions, right? Yeah. Millions.
+
+[46:17] Decent amount of times. I don't think it's true. I don't think it's true. Just from my experiments cooking water and flour. But what I do is uh my standard protocol now is first of all, have a lot of good stock.
+
+[46:30] Don't try to make gravy just from drippings. Yeah, no. Have a lot of good stock. Yeah. Right?
+
+[46:35] This is a good reason to bone your bird. Yeah. And please don't base your turkey gravy on chicken broth. Not the same. You can reinforce I'm look, you can take a good, let's say you have good chicken stock.
+
+[46:48] You can reinforce that with bones with from turkey. That's not gonna hurt anything, but you need to have turkey in there. Anyway, my protocol, and this is gonna sound crazy, is and again, like, you know, I probably shouldn't be saying this because I haven't run all the tests yet, but what I do at home is I literally add the flour to cold liquid. Like, so you know how you do cornstarch flurries? Yeah, you can do it with flour, you just need to have a lot more.
+
+[47:15] So instead of it being like a one to one, you need like 2.5 to one or three to one. So, like, what I'll do is is I'll I'll uh take my stock, which is a gelet, because of course my stock is is so strong. Because I do I do you know pressure cooked stock and I don't add too much water. A 14 pound turkey, if you have all the bones from a 14 pound to 15 pound turkey, you should only get about a liter of gravy out of that. Okay.
+
+[47:43] If you're getting more than that, your your stock isn't is too weak. All right, I'm just gonna tell you that. Uh so I just melt out the stock, but keep it cold so it's not gonna f no, you know, below 40, right? And then I just blend the flour into the stock and then just heat it while I'm stirring. No lumps.
+
+[48:05] It just because the flour is not gonna lump when it's cold. That's how slurries work. And then as keep stirring, as soon as it comes up to temperature, boop, it's thick, and then it's over. You know what I mean? Add your sherry, whatever.
+
+[48:21] Are you what do you what do you what do you like in your gravy? I like a little sherry in my gravy. Like a little sherry vinegar. A little acid. Yeah.
+
+[48:29] Yeah, you gotta have a little acidity. I think it's also nice, like at the to put it in a you know, at the beginning, like right after the I put the ruin in everything and then kind of like cook it down a little bit, and then put a little bit of fresh in at the end. It's I don't know like layers the flavor like a lot. Like the way you do in like a turtle soup or something. Yeah.
+
+[48:45] Yeah. Yeah. Ever made turtle soup, but yeah, sure. Well, I I developed this technique when I was making mushroom gravy because I want to saute the mushrooms and then I want to make like the mushroom stock, and then I want to thicken it, but I don't want to blend it. And I don't want to do a bourma bermani.
+
+[48:57] So I was like, what if I just add the flour? And it works. Great. Nice. Yeah.
+
+[49:02] So try it. Let me know what you think. Um I will also, what was it? There's another gravy thing. Another gravy, classic gravy mistakes.
+
+[49:11] Now, what's a classic gravy mistake? Not making enough. Salt, acid. I think it needs you know, if you can't cook with you know booze, I'm sorry, but like I like that f flavor of a little bit in there. It really rich richens it up.
+
+[49:30] Um I like the pressure cooking. The stock. I like making the fresh stock and having the fresh gravy. I really think that's like the the Yeah, it really starts with the stock. Yeah.
+
+[49:41] Stock, yeah. Gravy is all about a good stock. Yeah. Any gravy. Yeah, I agree.
+
+[49:47] I'm also team make a head roux. I have just a roux in my freezer. Oh, yeah. And then here's what I here's what I don't like. Because like all the instructions, like, here's what I don't like.
+
+[49:59] I don't like having to make my roux and then have a separate pot with boiling stock to add to the roux to get it to thicken so that it doesn't clump because you added a bunch of cold stuff to the roux, and then it turns into and then it I don't know. I find it unpleasant. I find the whole root. Yeah, I really like solid blocks of roux, and then I'd I'll be able to add it with like a cheese grater. No, I'll say this.
+
+[50:27] I also don't do brown ruse. So if you really want that brown flavor from the roux, I mean I don't need that because my stock is already brown McBrown. So like I don't need I the flavors are already like so there. I really just want it to get thick. You know what I mean?
+
+[50:44] Uh and I want it to be opaque, for sure. Which is why I use flour and not cornstarch or something else. Cheese grate, huh? You know what I do? I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a cheese grate biscuit man.
+
+[50:58] Oh, freeze the butter. Yeah, yeah. Box grate it. I know it sounds fussy. Yeah.
+
+[51:04] It's the best. It's the best. I always I keep uh a pound of butter in my freezer at all times. And what I'll do is is I'll box grate, and it's hard to get the last little bit box grated. So that's why I have a whole pound.
+
+[51:20] I'll just grate a little bit off of another stick and then put it back, and then the nubbin that's left that you can't grate. You use it as butter. Wow. Huh? Huh?
+
+[51:31] And so uh, you know, and uh it really does make a better biscuit. The box grating, the frozen butter, and then just like stirring it into the flour really does make a better biscuit. I have to say. And people, in the course of writing this book, I have made a lot, a lot of biscuits. And you know, my family doesn't necessarily like what I like, but they all like that.
+
+[51:58] They're all like don't anytime I try to do something else, they're like, don't do this something else, dad. Just make the biscuits the way that they were the time that they were the best. Yeah, don't mess with it. Yeah, I hate it when my dad did that kind of stuff. Don't mess with the family loved recipe.
+
+[52:12] Don't try adding something new to it. Yeah, just do what is loved. Yeah, yeah. All right. Uh what?
+
+[52:19] Do we have uh time for one more question? We have seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds, but I still I haven't finished all the questions we have. Go go into your question, Quinn. What do you got? Oh, okay, okay.
+
+[52:28] No, no, you're you do yours first. Well it's off. Okay, okay. All right. I thought that was the last one.
+
+[52:34] All right, Monty writes in. Uh yeah, this is but this is not Thanksgiving related. These two aren't Thanksgiving. So give me a couple of things. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[52:41] All right, Joshua Kay asked, Dave, with your Parker House roll recipe, how would you adjust the hydration when using the high extraction flour? Coincidentally using turkey red wheat. No. I like turkey red. Turkey red's a good wheat.
+
+[52:59] Uh but who wrote that in? Joshua K. Oh, yeah. I know. Hey Josh.
+
+[53:05] Uh Hunter sent us some delicious, some delicious uh birds that he and his buddy had uh hunted and some other stuff. Okay. So uh turkey, turkey red's a good wheat. Uh uh I you don't have to make a a change actually. Um so that the if you're if you're putting it through a 60 mesh uh uh if you're putting it through a 60 mesh uh like sifter, like a bolter, right?
+
+[53:34] And you're doing the bolted 85 uh percent uh extraction. I found that uh that Parker House roll recipe works as written. And in fact, I was kind of shocked because I went back and I had been making it with that flour for you know a couple of years, and I went back and looked at the original recipe and realized that uh well I I forget what I uh now I say this. I I forget what I wrote. I think I added like maybe 15 mils more into the 85 in into the high extraction flour.
+
+[54:08] I didn't add like a ridiculous amount more, not as much more as you would think. And it's a little bit stiffer, but but it's fine. So like I don't know what Chang put on the recipe club, what he printed. Uh, but it's like the difference like like one's like four seventy-eight and one's like four eighty three. So it's like just like a little bit more, but not like a boat ton more.
+
+[54:27] Is that that a decent answer? Otherwise, saying to me the key, I like having that potato flour in there. Uh, and someone was like, Can you use potato starch? Like, yeah, you can use potato starch, but like potato starch is not going to give you as much uh cold holding, uh as much cold viscosity as uh potato flour will, right? So, like I like the potato flour better, but yeah, potato starch will work there, and what the potato starch is gonna do is just give it that like super moist, you know, that's super mo, it's not that much, but it just like that's super moist.
+
+[55:00] I also went to Dax literally, because my mom again said, Well, well, now that you're Mr. Fancy, would you gotta bring the rolls? I was like, all right. So I said to Dax, I was like, Dax, so like on any given day, would you rather have Parker House rolls or would you rather have biscuits? And he was like, Parker house rolls, a thousand percent.
+
+[55:23] I was like, always? He's like, a thousand percent Parker House rolls. I was like, okay, what about and I didn't realize that because to me, biscuits are freaking delicious. Yeah. Would you always rather have a Parker House roll than a biscuit?
+
+[55:37] Not always. Parker house rolls are really, really good. I don't like biscuits. Really? I grew up down south and I never fancied biscuits at all.
+
+[55:48] I'm just not into it. Huh. Okay. Nope. You know who does uh isn't?
+
+[55:53] They're not as dependable. What are they? They're not as dependable. Parker house roll, I know what I'm getting. No, that's dependable.
+
+[56:01] Interesting. There's also with biscuits, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess what you mean what what I'm hearing, and you tell me what you mean, but what I hear about not dependable is you don't know exactly what the person is intending to make. Let's assume that the person who's making the biscuit makes the biscuit the way they want to make it. Let's just assume that they are competent.
+
+[56:20] There are still a bunch of different things that qualify as a biscuit. You know what I mean? Like all the way from like there's the I like them more flaky. I like them more fluffy. I like a poop and a beep and a boop and a bop.
+
+[56:34] You know what I mean? So like it's kind of like whereas like a parker house roll, you're not allowed to do that much messing with it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[56:43] Yeah, exactly. That's interesting, interesting take. So then I was like, well, what about on Thanksgiving? He's like, a million percent Parker House. And then I went to my wife.
+
+[56:54] I was like, hey, Jen. I was like, so you know, I was like, don't say anything, Dax. And I was like, you know, biscuits are Parker house rolls. She goes, Oh, Parkerhouse rolls. Same words.
+
+[57:06] Thousand percent. I didn't even ask her about it. Parker house rolls go fast when you make them. Yeah, they do. They're delicious.
+
+[57:14] Yeah. And more butter and a little salt. So much water. Great. Anyway.
+
+[57:18] Uh I don't know how I got on that. Um. All right, Quinn, uh, I'm gonna answer these two Instagram questions, but uh, since we only have a couple of minutes, can you troll the non-Instagram questions and see if any of them are Thanksgiving related? And I'll I'll get to them because I promise to. Uh Monty writes in, I remember you mentioning using a plastic lid as a filter for an infrared thermometer to extend its range, but I'm having no luck finding any more information about that online.
+
+[57:43] Do you have any references or details on how to do the math? All right, Monty. Short answer, no. The the the FLEAR corporation makes all of their money by not giving you the information you want without you paying for it. Okay.
+
+[57:58] So the problem is this. If all you want to know is, you know, temperature difference, then it's I'll put it to you this way. What you're doing when you put the the polyethylene lid, the LDPE lid, in front of the uh lens is you're just cutting the amount of radiation that makes it to the lens, right? But the problem is that just by doing that, doesn't give you the answer you want for the actual temperature. It maintains differences, but the radiance function, uh radiance to temperature is not linear.
+
+[58:32] So you can't it and it's very hard to reapply that function with all the corrections to get the correct answer. It's very hard. Uh so you know, and they won't let you do it. I've asked them whether, you know, they can give me this stuff because you can get the raw data out, but they won't give you their plank functions or any of those other things to let you figure it out. And so it's not something that I could easily do.
+
+[58:53] Someone who does this for a living could do it. Uh was there any more Thanksgiving stuff, Quinn? No, no more Thanksgiving questions. All right, listen, I have a call out to all of our uh cooking issues crew. KG wants to know if there's any culturally historic Alabama cookies.
+
+[59:10] We have it we have a desire for someone for culturally important Alabama cookies. I did some preliminary research, and apparently some people make some delicious chocolate chip cookies. Don't care about I don't, it's not that I don't care about that, but you know, everyone makes a chocolate chip cookie. What I'm saying is they weren't invented. The toll house wasn't from Regan, Alabama.
+
+[59:27] You know what I mean? So if any of you guys have an Alabama cookie hookup, I looked, by the way, in my old uh Cooking 50 States book from the 40s, where there's a lot of interesting recipes. I looked at the Alabama section, nothing on cookies. So I got nothing for you, KG, but I'm hoping it's someone in the cooking issues community. Omnivore books on San Francisco usually has a pretty good collection of old uh church cookbooks, and that would probably be a pretty good place to start looking for that kind of stuff.
+
+[59:53] Yeah, hit them up on Instagram. Yeah, hit them up on Instagram. Alrighty. Uh so we'll try to get to the rest back when we're back next week with Garrett. We have some cocktail questions.
+
+[1:00:03] That's great. Uh Devin, I'll say this. Oh, on the way out, Devin. Can I do this real quick, Joe, for Thanksgiving so I can hook Devin up? All right, Devin.
+
+[1:00:10] Uh, do you know how far a pan can be from an induction cooking mechanism to work? Like how far the field expands around the plate. It's not just a magnet, it's how it searches for the pan. Uh I've tested on my poly science. 10 millimeters works, but it doesn't put as much power out.
+
+[1:00:23] Uh, and 20 millimeters works for like a tiny amount of time, but not for too long. So that's your answer. Happy Thanksgiving, cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking News. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Shoes coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center at New Stand Studios. Joined in the studio with John. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:21] Joined remotely by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, chilling with Jackie Molecules in Los Angeles. How are you guys doing? We're good. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[0:31] Yeah. Got uh got uh Quinn over there in Oh, wait well. Got Quinn over there in Vancouver Island, not the city of Vancouver. Don't confuse them. Yep.
+
+[0:40] Vancouver Island, you have to take off like a float plane too. You can't like just walk from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. There is no bridge. Or a ferry. You could take a float.
+
+[0:50] A ferry. Yeah, but how much cooler is it to take a float plane? It's cool. I don't know. It's cool.
+
+[0:57] I have to say, my dad used to fly float planes before my dad got remarried. Well, so like uh, and we got uh rocking the panels behind us, as usual, Joe Hazen. I'm in my uh I'm in an abnormal position. I'm not used to doing this show not being able to see Joe Hazen. Yeah, no, you're back is to me.
+
+[1:11] It's just very unusual. So maybe I need to set a mirror up or something. Maybe. Like one of those like don't don't kill me pedestrian mirrors. Yeah.
+
+[1:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called the trust fall. Although, like, yeah, right. Well, I have this feeling that I'm gonna do something, and Joe's gonna hit me in the back of the head like a school teacher. You know what I mean?
+
+[1:29] So the trust fall isn't going well, right? Well, all I'm saying is is that I'm sure most of you didn't grow up with school teachers who get you in the back of the head. But anyway, uh, as uh befits the way that we normally work, before we start our beginning banter, I'm gonna introduce our two guests. Very pleased to have Garrett Richard with me today. Hello, and Ben Schaefer with me today.
+
+[1:48] Hello. Hello. Hello. You might know Garrett from such things as working at existing conditions where I met him. Uh, you might have known him working.
+
+[1:55] Where the hell did you work at NPR? Oh, that was a long time ago. But uh, I wasn't, I was in radio when I was in college and grad school. I was I worked at WFUV. So it is weird to be in a much tinier radio station.
+
+[2:08] Yeah. Well, we have a music question for you later, so so that's good. But you also know him from what I think. What do you think, John? Like best bar going in in New York now?
+
+[2:18] Like certainly one of the best. I don't believe in best anything, because I think it's really a dumb thing to try to rank one person's achievement over another when everyone's doing different things. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but if you had to, Garrett. Out of all my bar experiences in the last two or three years, well, I guess that's not saying too much because of the pandemic.
+
+[2:32] All my bar experiences in the last five years, it's was really excellent. Let me put it this way. Here's what I've here's what I'll say. I'll say this. I'll say if someone says, hey, there's a like you want to go somewhere, I'd be like, yeah, let's go to Sunken Harbor.
+
+[2:45] That sounds fun, right? Yes. Yeah. You know what I mean? But you know, Dave, I think one of the points as well is we lost so many amazing places in New York and in other cities during the pandemic that uh Sunken Harbor Club opening during that time was like a beacon of hope.
+
+[2:59] Right. That's true. So that has that kind of thing. Yeah, the playing field was really wiped for you know a lot of our favorite spots, including the spot that I worked at with you, unfortunately. Existing conditions, formerly the best bar in New York.
+
+[3:10] Oh, and now we're trying our best with Sunken Harbor. Well, Sunken Harbor is a uh is a fantastic place, and uh well, we'll talk more about it. We'll talk more about it in in uh in a little bit, but um it's above Gage and Tolner, and you guys don't run the bar program at Gage and Tolner, right? No, it's a separate team. Um, I came in with my background of working with you and then having my own set series of pop-ups with Megan Dorman called Exotica.
+
+[3:41] And I was fun, by the way. If you ever went you know you can't do those anymore, right? Too busy. Too busy. Busy.
+
+[3:46] It was very busy. It was very crowded. It was a very pre-COVID kind of thing. Yeah. But you know, Sunken Harbor is really the continuation of what I was doing at Exotica, which was kind of on my days off, and existing when I was working.
+
+[4:03] It's like the it's like the fusion of those two things. Um, but we're here to with my partner writing partner here, Ben, to talk about who you might know. You might know from the blog, The Rum Reader, where you don't just read about it at home. You actually you've tasted rum. I have, yes.
+
+[4:22] Not just a couple times. Not just read about it. I prefer, by the way, we we call it a magazine, even though it's online. Yeah. Because I think blog implies some dude sitting at home, right?
+
+[4:30] Right. And and and the rum reader has a lot of different authors with the different points of view. And uh, you know, it's a little bit you know, well, you've been featured there. Yeah. And we used to do a lot of events, which we still do, that have uh brought together luminaries such as yourself and Garrett and many others to talk about classic drinks.
+
+[4:47] Yeah, Dave did the daiquiri panel at Slowly Shirley, which was a short hop skip and a jump from uh existing. I remember that wherein Shannon Mustafer and I uh got it wasn't heated argument, we just got into discussion. It was a very respectful argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I wanted to do, and I think maybe she did it with somebody else, but I wanted to do a thing with her where we just sit down and do it and we talk about the differences between the drinks.
+
+[5:12] Maybe that's the thing I can pitch for Tales of the Cocktail. I need a seminar this year for Tales of the Cocktail, and I only have like a day and a half to try to pitch it. Yeah, let's do it. Like literally a day and a half. But it's like just actually test these things out and just talk about it like adults.
+
+[5:24] You actually do the do the experiments live as you've done. Yeah. Yeah. I and often I'm proven wrong, like the big ice cube experiment, wherein I walked into an experiment I had never run before, thinking I was going to get proved right in front of a hundred people and was proven wrong. And I was like, oh.
+
+[5:40] And then I walked back to Booker and well, I didn't walk because it was, you know, it's a long walk from uh Orleans. Yeah, yeah. Took an aeroplane. And then uh I guess when you're proven wrong, you need that kind of walk of shame across the country. Yeah, but it made me super happy.
+
+[5:53] But then when I got back home, I was like, oh, we're changing the way we make all our drinks. And they're like, oh, come on. And I was like, yep, big ice. Big ice. I don't know if you remember this, Dave, but uh at the Slowly Shirley event where Garrett was not present because I think he was working.
+
+[6:08] I thought he was in the audience. No, he wasn't. No, I was working. Yeah, yeah. But I rem I don't know if you remember what you told me about Garrett and his sort of uh unique status in your mind.
+
+[6:18] Because, you know, as you're talking about, there's people who disagree with you on things, or people say they gotta do it this way. And do you remember what you told me? Because I think it's it's a it's a great characterization of your relationship, but also a little bit about Garrett and a little bit about you. You said basically that you know, Garrett was always telling you that he wanted to do things differently than you wanted to do them at existing conditions. And you said, if anyone else had said this to me, I'd say take a hike.
+
+[6:38] But because it's Garrett, I'm like, prove it. Yeah, yeah. And then you'd have him do the side by sides. Yeah. And so he's you said sometimes he convinced you.
+
+[6:46] Yes. Well, look, like my operational mode is that it, you know, if you no longer are willing to be proven wrong, Jin just step into the box. You know what I mean? Like, that's it. You're not gonna grow anymore.
+
+[7:01] Life is growth, right? So it's like you're done. But often I would say to people, prove it to me, but I'm not really giving, I'm not really expecting them to prove it. But if Garrett said something, I'd be like, nah, I can't just dismiss what this dude is saying out of hand. Because he doesn't talk out of his rear end very often.
+
+[7:19] Or ever really. You know what I mean? I try to cut it down as much as I can in these days. But what's weird about it is is that Garrett will uh Garrett will uh he has a lot of things to say, but they're all considered, which is rare. You know what I mean?
+
+[7:32] He has a lot of considered things to say. Anyway, if you're listening live on the Patreon, call in your questions 2917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And if they're uh not on the Patreon, John, how do they get to be on the Patreon? Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
+
+[7:48] Um yeah, check it out. Joining gets you access to the Discord, uh, priority questions on episodes. Dave will always get to them. Uh awesome discounts on Kitchen Arts and Letters and other cool people that we partner with. Uh yeah, it's worth checking out and signing up.
+
+[8:01] We got a bunch of different membership levels, so yeah. What are you waiting for? Yeah, and next week on the show, we have he's he is he's he's he's in Connecticut. But still, I mean I mean it's still still we got we got Jacques Papin on uh calling in uh next week, who I used to work with. And uh I'm on the uh what's it called?
+
+[8:19] Like he has some sort of like series of videos that are coming out where people holiday videos. I think they have come or come up today, maybe. Yeah, I think they come out today. So I did a frozen, like a frozen series of videos. Uh-huh.
+
+[8:33] One comes out every week. When's when's the one that I'm doing coming out? I believe January 11th. Some holiday. Some holiday.
+
+[8:43] January 11th. When's epiphany? I don't even make epiphany. I don't even make epiphany. Well, you're people need a whole year to prepare to make your thing, probably.
+
+[8:51] Yeah, the well, no, I mean it's simple. I made it simple. It just freeze grapefruit juice. It's like a freaking aqua veg granita with grapefruit juice and like and like in an acid. And like, you know, you stir it and then like, you know, you put the pluche in it, because you know.
+
+[9:03] Did you uh acid that grapefruit? I think so. Come on. I I might I might have just added some lemon. I don't remember.
+
+[9:09] I tried to make it as bone, not but you're not a bonehead people out there. I'm not calling you boneheads, but I tried to make it as you know a normal mo as possible for people that they could just go make it. All you need to own is a ziploc, people, and aqua vieat. Although I even told them you can make it with gin. It's vastly inferior with gin.
+
+[9:25] But you know, go buy linny. Which I oh, so okay, we're doing linny. I mean, yeah. Well, what if they don't have access to linny? What if they have the other one?
+
+[9:34] Whatever, man. Whatever. All right. Uh so before we get into the fact that you guys are here, which is you have a book coming out in May. Give them the title of the book.
+
+[9:43] Tropical Standard. That's the title of the book. And the slug, give me the slug underneath. So that so the the the full title is Tropical Standard, a cocktail techniques and reinvented recipes. And the whole the concept is kind of merging the streams.
+
+[9:57] It's third stream cocktail. It's it's bringing together the craft cocktail revival, the tropical drinks canon, and the cutting edge techniques that I associate with people like Dave Arnold. Oh, that jerk. Yeah. Uh we'll get into this in a minute, but we don't want to miss a time to to to shoot the breeze because uh we it was Thanksgiving.
+
+[10:16] So uh what do you what do you guys do for for cooking? I hear John heard you were sick. Yeah, it's not fun. Um, yeah, I mean, ate well Thursday night, but then sick for the next two or three days and was not able to enjoy all the delicious leftovers, which is my favorite meal of the year. So I was very sad.
+
+[10:31] I once again anticipated not having leftovers because I am no longer the child. I'm not at my and I'm not going to my mom's house. So I was like, I'm not getting any leftovers out of this. And I didn't get any liftovers out of this. So before I went to Thanksgiving, I put a turkey in my in uh uh 15 pounder in my fridge.
+
+[10:44] And when I got home, next day, I cut that sucker up and I low temp the breast for sandwiches. I braised the the dark meat for like hash and whatnot. I mean you made two order uh leftovers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
+
+[11:04] Yeah. You don't you you don't need you only need the presentation once a year. So you didn't make the sides and all that. You just made the turkey for sandwiches. I'd already made stuffing so many times this year because of the Chang thing that I didn't, but I did make more cranberry sauce.
+
+[11:16] Because Dax loves that stuff. The uh I don't know how I felt about the skin thing. Was that would you do that again? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[11:22] Okay. I don't know. I feel like I want the skin around my turkey. But there was no turkey. What do you mean?
+
+[11:27] What we're 86ing the skin? I had my presentation turkey. Okay. At Thanksgiving. Okay.
+
+[11:34] And from here on out, I want turkey breast sandwiches. Okay. I want last night. I I I took my uh my toll soats and I made uh I made like a Thanksgiving uh stone bowl. Yum delicious really good.
+
+[11:49] Oh my god, so good. Dax was like, this is my favorite stone bowl ever. You know what I mean? It's the right, you know, the rice and the uh always with an egg on the top, right? The rice, the uh chopped up uh dark meat that I had braised, and what else did I put on?
+
+[12:05] Carrots, peas, like you know, pop pie stuff, a lot of the gravy because I had a boatload of gravy because I had the carcass, right? And I think scallions and fried onions. Yum. Sounds really good. And you can't lose with that, right?
+
+[12:17] It's not a losing proposition. Uh yeah. And so then I had the skin and I was like, I'm gonna cook this so that it gets real thick and crunchy. And I did. And you know what I you know what uh the other side I made?
+
+[12:29] Mashed potatoes. But I made it the way my mom used to when I was a kid. I put carrots in it. And Dax was like, I don't like this. He didn't even eat it.
+
+[12:36] So he doesn't know whether he likes the taste of it or not. No. He doesn't eat anything orange because he thinks I'm slipping pumpkin in there, and that's the one thing he's allowed to say he doesn't like. What's the thought process with the carrots and the potatoes? Is it to just give like some of that sweetness?
+
+[12:49] Or are they mashed up as well? It's just like little bits of carrot. Mashed. Mashed. So you mashed them together.
+
+[12:54] Yeah. Yeah, my mom used to do that all the time when we were kids. I never heard of that. I always had it with fish. It's good, right?
+
+[12:58] Yeah. Is it just the sneak vegetables in the case? It tastes good. It's got a nice little sweetness. Yeah.
+
+[13:03] So the the extra little sugar. Yeah. Yeah, it tastes good. I always thought mashed potatoes were. Nature's sugar carrots.
+
+[13:09] You always saw what? Mashed potatoes are a little boring. No, no, no. Here's what you got to do. First of all, first of all, you gotta mash them right.
+
+[13:14] What do you how do you mash your potatoes? I have people for that. Okay. What do they use? You know, I well, I think also I grew up in an era where my mother, as a professional woman, was a fan of uh, you know, labor-saving cooking, even though she was a gourmet cook in the sort of Julia Child Time Life International cookbook kind of stuff.
+
+[13:31] You know, she made amazing stuff, but she would not waste time mashing a potato. So I feel like there were certain maybe that box of flakes was sometimes involved, you know. That's more of a baking ingredient. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[13:42] Uh I just I don't know. But I mean they can be good, but I don't obsess over them the way some people do. I'm thinking the carrots thing sounds better. I like carrots more than I like potatoes. So when I was a kid, so my mom, uh mom, mom's a doctor, so one time she got called away to a conference and she was gone for like, I don't know, a better part of a week.
+
+[14:00] So I'm there with my my stepfather and I'm trying to make food, right? So this is like junior high or high school, and I'm like, I'm gonna make those carrot mashed potatoes. Only I had never made mashed potatoes before. So I didn't know what's the car. What's the cardinal sin, John, when you're when you're making mashed anything vegetable?
+
+[14:17] Don't I don't know. Under undercooking. Oh, undercooking. Okay. I thought you were gonna say over mashing, but yeah, no.
+
+[14:23] Yeah, you turn it to glue, right? But you can cook it almost forever. Yes. And and it's fine. Yes.
+
+[14:28] As long as you dry it out a little bit before you and you don't, you know, glue it. You know what I mean? So I didn't cook it enough. And I was sitting there and I was like, why don't these things mash? Too hard.
+
+[14:38] They're too hard. I didn't like I was like, this is first. I think I made the pieces really big. So you know how like long it takes to boil a potato if you don't cut it into small pieces? Yeah.
+
+[14:46] Yeah. And and I was like, this is not right. I was like, thanks for coming home, mom. You know, when she came home and I made her make it, but then Gerard, my stepfather has never let me forget this. It's like that was your first failed experiment.
+
+[14:58] Yeah, yeah. Well, the first one that I let them have though, what like much earlier I used to do uh I used to make garlic toast all the time. So I would take, you know, wonder bread was a 70s or whatever, right? I would like put butter on it, and then I would just take garlic powder and ching chunk chung and then put it in the toaster. Because it's like the analog of cinnamon toast.
+
+[15:15] You used to make cinnamon toast, right? It's like cheap Texas toast, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the 70s. And so one time I dumped almost like a whole bottle of garlic powder on it, and I ate it.
+
+[15:25] I was fine with it, but my dad would not let me sit even in the back seat of the Gran Torino station wagon. I had to sit in like the very also the 70s, like no one cared if I had a seatbelt. He basically like duct taped me to the rear window of that Gran Torino. You know what I mean? To like to go around.
+
+[15:44] Anyway, that was also failed in their eyes. I was fine with it, you know. Just before we go into full tangents, we forgot to plug MoFad, Giving Tuesday. Today's giving Tuesday, and later on, we're gonna uh plug uh later on on the Instagram, right? Uh Quinn, we're gonna plug uh Jacques Papin's foundation because we told him he would.
+
+[16:03] But right now, I wanna plug Mofad. And even though most likely you're listening to this on some Tuesday other than Giving Tuesday, you can still give, even if it's not Giving Tuesday. Did you know that, John? I I I did. Yeah.
+
+[16:15] Yeah. But that's still an excellent point to bring up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[16:18] Mofad.org. Can we somehow, by the way, speaking of Jacques Papin next week, can we like mail him a chicken? I want to see how fat 'cause Jacques Papin used to do this demo, right? First of all, Jacques Papin just had a book come out called like Chicken Live. The Art of the Chicken or something.
+
+[16:31] The Art of the Chair Chicken Lives, or like, you know, the life of a chicken or like, you know, chicken around the clock or something like this. Something with chicken in it. And it's watercolors that Jacques Papin has done of chicken with like anecdotes about chicken. First of all, Jacques Papin from say say Bourgon Bresse with it with the with the with the good accent. Bourgon Bress.
+
+[16:47] Yeah. Which is anyone who knows chickens knows, like, you want a fancy French chicken, that's where you go. So he comes from the land of chicken, right? In like Kentucky. What?
+
+[17:00] Well, in America, you'd be surprised to know if you're not fully dipped in chicken history, where do you think Chicken Central in the United States is? Not right now, but where is the where is the genesis of the American Rhode Island Reds? Yeah, uh that that that's the thing, but where is it where is it? Where is it? It's it it's it's it's uh I'll give you a hint, it's a peninsula.
+
+[17:22] Oh, it's peninsula. No one's gonna guess it. Be very surprised. Florida. No, but that is a peninsula.
+
+[17:29] No offense, Florida, but if we cut you off, no one would notice. I'm just kidding, I'm just messing with you. I love you, Florida. Especially South Data. Easy target.
+
+[17:35] Especially Fa Hey, listen, we're gonna be talking tropical drinks later, and like, you know, can't have tropical drinks without Florida and parts of California. Anyway, anyone? Anyone? The upper peninsula of Michigan. No, although that's an interesting choice, because there is good uh very good agriculture there.
+
+[17:49] Uh no, it's Delmore. Uh Delmarva. Del Marva. Yeah, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia. That's where all those three states share border.
+
+[17:56] Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's that's where that's where chickens were invented. That's where the modern chicken was invented.
+
+[18:03] Without without them. Is that reflected in Jacques Papon's uh watercolors? I don't know. I have been always. I've never had a quote unquote Maryland fried chicken, but apparently that's a thing.
+
+[18:20] But it has to do with the fact that you're getting the chicken from one of the like a better farms in that area. I think so, yeah. But I've never had Maryland fried chicken. What's that other weird fried chicken that uh we've never had? The one from like Oh, Cleveland, right?
+
+[18:32] I don't know. It's some we it's some weird, it's some small town. It's a small town, and I'm gonna I don't know Ohio though, right? Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Ohio, Stas, how is Ohio Thanksgiving?
+
+[18:44] Um good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How is it? Any mishaps?
+
+[18:50] Well, yeah. Pat family bought um pre-cooked sides and pre-cut chicken from the um I mean turkey from the uh Kroger, and then they just heated it all up in the microwave. And yeah. Wow. Yeah, okay.
+
+[19:08] Uh wait, what was the first pre-cooked? Pre-cooked what? Eyes. Sides. Sides and jerkings.
+
+[19:14] Oh, sides. Well, you know what? It's more about the company. It's a big box Thanksgiving. Honestly, like at this point in my life, like, as long as I have the comfort foods, I don't care whether Kroger cooks it or not.
+
+[19:25] You know what I mean? Like, I like sitting around with the people and having the food, but I must have the requisite proper foods, or I go home and make them myself. Or we go to Boston Market. Do they still have Boston Market? I don't know.
+
+[19:29] They have it all the size. I've seen I've seen one. Yeah? Yeah. Do you know what's a delicious one of those things that if you never honey baked ham, actually, I like a honey baked ham.
+
+[19:44] Oh, yeah, very good. Yeah. That's a rare find if you're driving around and you see a honey baked ham store. Well, you know what the thing about honey baked ham is? I'm always driving around on a Sunday.
+
+[19:52] They're all closed on Sundays. You cannot buy a honey baked ham on a Sunday. Well, you gotta plan in advance. You gotta go Saturday. Yeah, but I I'm not a I'm not a ham planner.
+
+[20:00] I mean, I am with with aged you know hams. That that is gonna haunt you, Dave. You are a ham planner. I am a ham planner for eight for for aged hands, but I'm not a ham planner for for a hunt, uh, you know. I if I say honey baked ham, I want that thing to expose.
+
+[20:14] You want it like immediately, that's uh that's a whim purchase. Yeah, you know what the easiest freaking honey baked ham from New York City? We had eight, we got eight, over eight million people in this freaking place, right? No honey baked ham stores. I want everyone to think about that.
+
+[20:27] You have to go to Milford, Connecticut. Milford. Milford. Not on a Sunday. Not on a freaking Sunday.
+
+[20:34] Does Milford even get the Metro North? Yes. Is that a rent a car situation? No. You can get there to Metro North.
+
+[20:40] You have to walk across I 95, which actually is not hard because the traffic is stopped. It's way too hard. One way to do the other way, you're slipping a honey ham. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[20:50] Anyways, so yeah. I went to the honey baked ham store. I used to only ever pass that say something already. I used to only pass the honey-baked ham on a Sunday, right? And so I was like, oh, closed.
+
+[20:59] It's right off the highway, right by this nasty mall. And uh it's in San Zooom's store, though. So I walked in there once. I finally made it on a non Sunday. I think I was taking Dax on a on a tour of a college, something like that.
+
+[21:11] I was like, I've been waiting 20 years to come to this freaking honey baked ham, but you're closed on Sundays. He's like, every Sunday, closed. And then I said to the lady behind the thing, I'm like, I've never been to the honey baked ham, but I've always wanted to have a honey baked ham. Should I get the what's the difference between the one with the bone and without the bone? She's like, well, they're the same.
+
+[21:27] And the other lady was like, oh no, no, no. No. No. Get the one with the bone. I was like, okay.
+
+[21:36] All right. And if you should go to Honey Baked Ham and buy a honey baked ham, also buy their bean soup mix because you have to, and then you can reverse engineer their bean soup mix, which you make with the bone when it's done. That's all I'm just gonna say about that. Of course, he didn't get one, so it doesn't matter. Well, not not Thanksgiving.
+
+[21:53] Although, you know, like uh my mom used to have to make ham on Thanksgiving because my grandpa would never eat turkey. He would he would say, Grandpa, you don't eat turkey? Foul. Chicken, foul. Anything, any bird, he would just say that those words over to you again and again.
+
+[22:12] Yeah, they're they are foul. Yeah. Anytime you handed him a mushroom, toadstool. And he would just say the same crap all the time. So, like, you know, my mom eventually got sick of it and would always make him some crap that he would eat.
+
+[22:23] Anyway. What would he say when he got something he did like? Nothing. Right. So you know you're doing well.
+
+[22:30] Silence is approval. I mean, you know, he's he's one of those kind of, you know, that kind of generation of butt head. You know what I mean? Uh what about you, Jack? How was your Thanksgiving?
+
+[22:43] Fine. I was in Connecticut at my brother's. Um, he's, you know, first first time at his house. He's got two young kids. So there was uh it was good.
+
+[22:52] Like you said, tough company. Oh, so you're saying that they ruined the turkey. That's what that we're trying to read between the lines here. Turkey was runned. Uh it was actually rotisserie chicken.
+
+[23:03] Rotisserie chicken. Rotisserie chicken. Did you at least have turkey flavored gravy? Yep. Yes.
+
+[23:11] Okay. Okay. Who cares about you know who cares about what? Who cares about what? I do.
+
+[23:19] I can speak for one person. I care about it. That's I know. Yeah. Well, you said who, as though you didn't know anyone that cared about it.
+
+[23:27] You know at least one person who cares about it. You know? It was more scary about it. Yeah, yeah. Rhetorical.
+
+[23:34] Oh. Oh, oh, you're telling me I shouldn't care about it. Well, you're wrong. I had to care about it. The turkey, like, it's one of those things.
+
+[23:41] I love it so much. And it's so American. Wacalote. Like, you know, Ben Franklin was right. Crap on the eagle.
+
+[23:48] Who needs an eagle? Although they are impressive birds. Eagles are impressive birds. What about you, Joe? Yeah, it was a tough one.
+
+[23:57] Uh little boy was there eating dinner. I got a truffle. I got a white truffle. Oh. Oh, yeah, you told me.
+
+[24:03] Yeah, I spent a fortune on a white truffle from Pied Monte. It was del freaking delicious. What'd you do with it? Did you egg it up? Was it did you have a little bit of a little bit of a little bit?
+
+[24:11] But we didn't egg we had eggs the next day. Okay. Eggs definitely the next day. Uh we did over our we did with with our over our mashed potatoes and a mac and cheese. I had to do both.
+
+[24:20] I was gonna just do one, but the whole place was so fragrant. It was delicious. Oh yeah. Yeah, it was really good. Uh we didn't do turkey.
+
+[24:26] We did, but we always we've been doing bird uh birds. Uh we've been doing chickens for like probably 10, 12 years. Yeah. My wife does an amazing bird. Yeah.
+
+[24:35] Yeah. Yeah. I uh do you do you have a truffle slicer? Of course I do. Nice.
+
+[24:41] I I I I I uh Yeah, it became truffles became a uh kind of a uh tradition in the last five years. So I went ahead and bought a very nice one. Oh nice. Yeah. I was given two of them.
+
+[24:53] I have very little opportunity to shave a truffle. Oh that's it's um that cut they're they're worth it. There does make a really nice even cut. So when you're at the table, do you like look at the other person as you're shaving and then like have them like put money in a basket for each that's my favorite thing at a restaurant? I don't know.
+
+[25:16] I'm uh yeah, I was I wasn't wearing steel gloves, but I'm definitely not gonna cut my palm open. Those things are very sharp. Yeah, I like my favorite, my favorite thing to watch when when I, you know, you go to like a place like Del Posto back in the day, right? Is to watch a couple on a date and then like see the server come out with the truffle, right? And then you're like, he's going to price shame this date into a billion dollars worth of truffle, right?
+
+[25:45] And like someone like me, I can't be shamed. So they're like, one slice, I'm like, done pour, get out. You know what I mean? But then they go choot choot choop, and then they look over at the person, and the person has to give them the nod, but they don't want to be like, no more, no more. Oh my God.
+
+[26:02] Don't you love that? I feel like there's potential to rewrite the pepper boy sketch that Dana Carvey was in in SNL, but based on truffles, right? Is that the freshly ground peppered? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[26:14] Yeah, I feel like I feel like there's an updated version of it, but it's involved. And maybe maybe the price shaming thing. Yeah. Yeah. Stoz, you like to see someone get price-shamed into a billion dollars worth of truffles, don't you?
+
+[26:24] It's hilarious. Uh I've I haven't seen it, I've never seen it happen. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing.
+
+[26:31] Because it's one of those things where loving the idea of it. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, it's a great thing. First of all, like, don't be don't be ashamed that you don't have the money to spend on all of those shades of truffles. Like, just say no, wave them off.
+
+[26:42] Be proud that you can wave them off. Don't get shamed into something you can't afford. Or you reverse it and you say, I have self-control. I I understand that there's only so much truffle for the restaurant. Oh, you're so nice.
+
+[26:55] Yeah, you become a martyr. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More like Joe, you bring your own. Can you imagine? Can you imagine?
+
+[27:01] You wave off the dude and then you're like, and you're like, it's like that person who carries the salt shaker with them and like, you maybe put your own salt on. John, what would you do if someone came into Temperance, ordered something, and then like whipped out a truffle and started shaving it? Impressed, I think. I mean, fair. Is there such a thing as a shavage fee?
+
+[27:26] Yeah, that was nice. It just has a gorkage for truffles. Just like there's a cake cutting fee, yeah. Why not? Oh, there's you guys have a cake cutting fee?
+
+[27:33] We don't, but we should. I hate cutting cakes. What is the why are you allowed to do that at all? Like, why am I allowed to bring a cake in? Because you're gonna bring in the rest of the party.
+
+[27:43] We did that at Roberta's, remember? Yeah, yeah. We did a lot of things at Robertus. Like, we wouldn't give us they wouldn't give us arugula, and so we brought our own arugula. This is not a joke.
+
+[27:53] This is right. We didn't. Yeah, they I remember there's an Instagram video guys doing that. Well, you see, it's on our Instagram. We truffled a pizza.
+
+[28:03] They would never give us anything we wanted. Yeah. They would never give us anything we wanted. Like, we were like. Now you're just defending.
+
+[28:10] No, no, no. I'm not sure. So you were truffle shaming the restaurant. No, we we knew, we knew that we were doing something wrong, and we did it anyway. That I'm not saying we knew we were doing something wrong, but it was kind of a protest.
+
+[28:22] It all started when we used to see the arugula salads come out, and they wouldn't put arugula on the pizza. That's where it all started. Okay? And we're like, Nastasi was like, how about you just we'll order the freaking salad, hold the freaking salad, a la Jack Nicholson and five easy pieces. Hold the salad, and then between your knees, that's the line from Jack Nicholson, five easy pieces.
+
+[28:43] Go watch it if you me whatever. One of the best films. Yeah, go watch it. Anyway, I want you to hold the chicken. Anyway, uh and put the arugula on the pizza.
+
+[28:54] They wouldn't do it. We're like, charge us extra, charge us infinity. Because it was, you know, the it's Voldemort Network was paying for it anyway. So we're like, you know, charge infinity. And they wouldn't do it, right, Stas.
+
+[29:04] And that's where our that's where we're like, well, the hell with it. These guys don't follow any rules anyway. This whole place is put together with spackle and bubblegum and gonna fall apart, someone's gonna die. I love the place, by the way, but like that's just the that's just the fact of the thing. You know what I mean?
+
+[29:16] Stas, am I wrong about this? Yeah. And as we previously established, Dave has a lot of Ziploc bags, so don't test him. Yeah, yeah. He will use the full full collection.
+
+[29:27] Um I'm uh well, my house is zippy central, zippy zippy zippy. Uh speaking of zippies as opposed to vacuums, we ever hear back from uh A Nova uh Quinn or no uh no so we had we had the ANOVA vacuum machine, and I want to talk about it, you know, because they have an awesome Black Friday deal going on, but I want to wait for them to respond to some of the questions I had. So sorry, I'm not gonna tell you anything about it. You know what I mean? Right, Quinn?
+
+[29:56] Okay. Anyway. So wow. So uh, John. Yeah.
+
+[30:04] Legally, I know that we used to we did it. Many people done it. We did it at XCON cakes. Legally, though, outside food's always a problem. If you charge money, it's okay.
+
+[30:13] I have no idea. I think that's just more to like discourage people from doing in a way because it is such a pain in the neck. Because it really requires your full attention. You know, you have to get the bane filled with hot water to cut through the cake and then lay it. Like it's it's a time consuming endeavor.
+
+[30:26] Just come out with a glove and cut it, cut it like chop cut it. That would make things a lot easier, yeah. But I mean, if the DOH came in, could they hose you? I don't know. That's a really good question.
+
+[30:40] We've got some elves walking by. No, no, it's not Santa Con time, is it? Is it the elves or here? The white elves? Yeah.
+
+[30:47] Oh my god. Oh my god. I don't have a sound effect for that. Oh, geez, Louise. Yeah, I got that next week.
+
+[30:53] Oh my god, I'll pay $50 to anyone who goes out and leg swipes one. What? You know, like uh, what was that game where you like get to get like in Tekken where you get down and you like swipe their legs out? Oh yeah. Swipe sweep the legs.
+
+[31:07] Sweep the legs. But uh they had the candy canes in their hands. They essentially have a third leg, so I don't think that would work. Yeah, they they saw you coming on that one, Dave. Those things are weapons.
+
+[31:15] I I was assuming they were gonna try to hit you with that, that they're doing some sort of like Yoshimitsu situation with that thing, and they're gonna like hit you with it. Anyround anyone who's in a costume in New York City, I think it's an aggressive move. I think that something is like something's amiss. Although I guess it is Rock Center. It's kind of the territory.
+
+[31:33] I don't know. Santa Con's the worst thing that's ever happened. You guys, you've never done SantaCon, have you? Please say no. No.
+
+[31:37] Please, anyone who can hear us, don't do SantaCon. Dave very quickly, Dave, uh, as an aside, I was responsible for shaming SantaCon out of coming to Bushwick. They were trying to move to Bushwick, and at the time I used the platform of uh nighttime heritage radio to kind of get all the local bar owners to shaming them away. And that's a good move. That's a good move.
+
+[32:01] No, no small child needs to see a 21 year old puking Santa on the side of the street. No one, no child needs to see that. You know? The worst. Anyway.
+
+[32:15] Uh unless it was like that scene in Twelve Monkeys. I don't remember. Is that that Brad Pitt movie? Uh was it Brad Pitt? Yeah.
+
+[32:22] Twelve Monkeys was he's an amazing looking man. Can I say that? Brad Pitt. All the Santa Clauses that keep coming out and scaring the kids is awesome. Yeah.
+
+[32:29] Styles, how old was Brad Pitt in that in that in that movie with uh that that Tarantino movie with the Manson stuff? How how old was he in that when he did that? Like 50, right? I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[32:40] Look fantastic. Once upon a time in Hollywood? Yeah. Looks fantastic, that guy. Yeah, it was only a few years ago.
+
+[32:46] Yeah. All right. So let's get to this book. Now that we've uh appropriately shot the breeze for half of the show. Uh let's get to let's get to the book.
+
+[32:55] So first of all, I think uh you know, as you said, Ben, like it's kind of weird that in the and and let's get this do this question before we get to the book because it's uh it it goes to the uh someone asked it where who asked the question about the word tiki? Someone asked the question about the word tiki. Where is it? Do you guys know? Can you find it for me, Quinn?
+
+[33:19] Hmm. Uh I don't have the document open right now. One second. Anyway, somebody asked it, and so we'll get to it eventually, but yeah, it's a very specific thing. People have been moving away from tiki.
+
+[33:33] It's an interesting time. So when you s we say tropical, like tropical is kind of the more modern term that encompasses what's it it's a it's a let's just get it out of the way now. Yeah. Well, you know, I think some people erroneously say that that uh tropical is like the euphemism for tiki that it's replacing the term. I don't I don't see it that way.
+
+[33:54] For me, tropical drinks are a big tent, and tiki is one slice of that. Whereas when we're talking about tropical drinks, we're talking about drinks that have a Caribbean heritage that you know isn't only through the lens of Trader Vic and Don Beach. Uh, you know, these are drinks that come from Cuba, that come from Jamaica, and a lot of the things that Garrett had worked with, is more with those direct sources, as well as obviously the the guys from California and and Florida and other places. So the idea is that lots of things can be really tropical drinks, are about celebrating tropical produce, which is you know, amazing to taste, and also the you know, the traditions of the people who lived in the tropical regions and the things that they're doing. So I don't see it as a replacement for tiki.
+
+[34:37] I think it's just a bigger it's a bigger thing to talk about. Right. So but then before we get into the the the book, so then how did like is there a disentangling between, for instance, love of the 50s and 60s, love of kitsch culture, and like this style of drink, because those those cultures have been merged for so long, but I don't I don't even know kind of what the current thinking is of like that style. Like, are people still listening to like surf music and where does that fit in with modern like culture and with this culture where like individuals? Yeah, Garrett can talk about that because I know Garrett is very knowledgeable about those things, but the book itself, tropical Standard, it's not it's not a kitsch culture book.
+
+[35:14] Oh, I yeah, that we should get that out of the way for the case. We talk about we're talking about the classic drink, you know, experiences, which are nothing to do with how you dress or what music you listen to. Um, but obviously, yeah, there's a certain I mean, there's a certain kind of people that I call them like Cold War reenactors. You know, they really want to go back to the 50s and they want the drinks of the 50s, they want the close of the 50s. Right.
+
+[35:37] Sometimes they want, you know, the politics of the 50s, right? And that's the problem. That's not really what we're coming from. We're trying to celebrate these things that are actually some of them are a lot older than that. Um, you know, things that were from the 1890s and 1910s and 1930s.
+
+[35:51] And um, you know, I think the the cultural part of it, we want to focus on the Caribbean cultural aspects of it, not just the kind of reenacting, you know. I also think the point of the book is to con like the issues that we have now when dealing with cocktail culture is that there's so much information out there. So it's contextualizing cocktails and having the ability to like say that this drink echoes so many other things. So there are there are drinks in this book that talk about, you know, something that occurred in Jerry Thomas' time, but also something that Audrey Saunders was doing at the same time at Pega Club that was, you know, contemporaneous to, you know, another tropical drink at the same time. So like all these drinks, I think speak to the volume of information that's out there and how like, you know, nothing is in a bubble, really.
+
+[36:52] Like, you can't just say that, you know, a pre-prohibition drink, you know, didn't have an impact on, you know, what Don the Beachcomber was doing, and it doesn't have an impact on, you know, what a nomad bartender is doing in 2012. And I think we're really good about, you know, laying out the whole timeline and giving people a lot of context as to like why these decisions are and then what the changes are that we made to this these cocktails and like what the thinking is behind them. Right. Well, I mean, what's interesting is is that and this is what you don't see is that the book is very, and you know, you personally, uh, very steeped in the history of spirits, the history of the places, the history of the drinks, right? The history of flavor combinations, but also in kind of the modern application of them and kind of how they've evolved and where they might go.
+
+[37:49] And so, like, that's the piece of the puzzle that I think, you know, Ben, to your point, like, as opposed to doing like a reenactment, right? Where, you know, you're just trolling eBay for stuff so that you can be a better, you know, reenactor, right? Is that this topic seems incredibly ripe for uh using new techniques because the ingredients like need a lot, you need there's a lot of work that needs to be done to beat these ingredients into perfect cocktail shape, right? And there's a lot of things that can be done with these ingredients that hasn't been done by the community that's interested in either the historical tropical drinks or the modern ones. And so it's kind of this niche that's like, hello, and this book kind of fills that, but also doesn't shun the history, which I think is obviously doesn't shun the history.
+
+[38:41] Very, very kind of interesting line to the case. Well, I think I think obviously, you know, I think the point is these drinks were lost for so long in terms of we didn't really know what the recipes were until people, mostly Jeff Barry w did the research and through many fortuitous events, found out a lot of these recipes and published them. Uh when I want to, you know, recipes from Don Beach and and Trader Vic, mostly Don Beach whose recipes were never published, uh, you know, professionally, unlike Trader Vic, who did a bunch of books. But I so I think the idea was because we didn't know how to do them the way they were done then, when we had an idea of how to do them, we we wanted to replicate them. We wanted to do them the way they were done in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s.
+
+[39:19] And I think that's great because people needed to know what it was like. But of course, it's also impossible to really replicate things from then because the ingredients were all, you know, the the rums were different, citrus is different, everything's different. So if you even use that original recipe, and of course there's also some interpretation of to what that original recipe was, but even if you use that original recipe, you're not doing it the same. So I think what Garrett was able to do is try to think, you know, what's the intention and how can we get closer to the intention even if we do things a little differently in the in the technique? Spirit of the law versus letter of the law, you know.
+
+[39:50] Right, right. Well, uh right. You're not not an originalist. Yeah, exactly. But I mean you know, the fun thing is is that you would always try to go as far out of your way as possible to see what the target was they were aiming at.
+
+[40:03] And I think the thing that most people don't ever do is like um, did I tell you about this the other day? I had to make these uh historic quote unquote Manhattans uh from uh yeah, I had to make these Manhattans. I the the first published Manhattan recipes, bizarre recipes, right? And you know, a modern bartender looks at these recipes and I'm like, this is filth. You know what I mean?
+
+[40:22] Yeah, this sucks. And so you don't make them. I made them. They were delicious. They weren't in Manhattan.
+
+[40:27] They were delicious. You know what I mean? So uh what was different about it? Oh, well, first of all, one of them had uh one of them had driver mooth. And probably a lot of vermouth.
+
+[40:37] And simple. A crap ton. Yeah. It was it was basically it was one was more driver mouth than whiskey with a little bit of simple. And the other one was uh one one sweet, sweet and um and whiskey.
+
+[40:53] Both good. Both real good. You know, not a Manhattan. Good. Anyway, uh I digress.
+
+[40:59] But my point is is that you you always are like, what is it that they were actually making and doing? And you taste it and you're like, oh. And then you can decide what you want to do, but you can't, you never dismiss out of hand something that somebody did back. No, I don't make edits until I've made the original. And, you know, try to figure out what they were going for.
+
+[41:22] I mean, a good example in the book is we try to recreate the navy grog that was served at the Trader Vicks locations, which that is a recipe that is still under lock and key. Um there's a lot of interpretation as to what the syrup is in it. Some people say it has coal nut, allspice, whatever. That's a whole separate issue. But the whole point I'm bringing this drink up for is that that drink is about the grapefruit.
+
+[41:51] It's about the grapefruit popping, it's about it being a like nice, sour, refreshing grapefruit drink. And the only way really to achieve that is to use acid adjusting and make the grapefruit the star of the drink. And people that have that cocktail, we serve a version of it at Sunken Harbor Club called the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. It's basically the navy grog that's in tropical standard. And people don't know that I've made those changes to it and that there is that technique.
+
+[42:14] And I think that's when I think we're on the same page with this. You know, it was very much the same way at existing, where like the work should sort of be invisible to the average person. And someone should just pick this up and be like, this is an amazing navy grog. They shouldn't be like, so what'd you do with this? It seems like there's something different about this, you know.
+
+[42:39] You know, maybe a little bit, but I I like I don't want the work showing when somebody's experiencing the drink. Yeah. What's that pounder you served me? Oh, yeah. No, Dave was really into the Pim's Tropical.
+
+[42:53] Amazing. God. Which is we have a different version of it in the book. Um that's a little bit like easier for the home bartender. But um the Pim's Tropical is a great, I mean, that's again, that kind of speaks to the larger uh tent of tropical drinks versus like faux, you know, Polynesian or tiki is is um, you know, that definitely falls into like things that people are actually drinking in hot weather, you know.
+
+[43:19] Um and it's yeah, it's just so refreshing that cocktail. Do you have that one, John? Uh yeah, I think so. Yeah, because after you pounded the first one, I think I had to order my own. I couldn't not put the drink down.
+
+[43:31] It's ridiculous. I like that Dave was upset that not every table had one. Well, it's like if someone makes this product, right? Everyone should have the product. Yeah.
+
+[43:44] It's like, you know, if you, you know, imagine if you know you had invented the bicycle and everyone was walking around with something with square wheels on it. And you're like, bike, get a bike, a bike, you know? Not that your other products are square wheels. Right. And that's what I'm not saying.
+
+[43:57] They should try it. Um, no, let's get to some questions and then we'll get back to the the general. But are we are we giving the general p correct picture of the book? Well, I think so. I think you know, I think the point is uh you wrote an amazing book, Liquid Intelligence, right?
+
+[44:12] And you implemented a lot of ideas in your bars through that. I've I first learned about acid adjusting at existing conditions. I think acid adjusting served post-dates, liquid intelligence. It's uh you talk about some things that are related, but you don't really lay it out. That really happened at existing conditions.
+
+[44:27] But I mean those techniques like acid adjusting is such a simple thing to do and makes such an amazing impact, especially in tropical drinks, which you know, every time you add another juice, you're adding mostly dilution, right? Right. So it solves that pretty much the main problem of tropical drinks, which is you don't have to have flavor and dilution going, you know, in parallel. Uh so those kind of techniques and court cordializing juices. No cordials are so.
+
+[44:54] And so the uh the idea behind the book is really to explain these techniques through recipes. It isn't a traditional recipe book, which is just an encyclopedia of recipes. It's you're learning recipes, but they're really there to show you how to use these techniques and then how to use those techniques in in drinks of your own. I'll say this now because I'll probably forget later. When does it go on pre-order?
+
+[45:12] It's coming out in May, May 15th. You can pre-order it right now. If you go on Instagram, you can find our our page at Tropical Standard Book. If you go on Facebook, you can find us at Tropical Standard, and there's a link there where you can pre-order it. It does come out in May.
+
+[45:25] But pre-orders are really helpful, you know, they really get get the fires going. Yeah. Can you pre-order through Kitchen Arts, John? I don't I think so. Well, I don't know.
+
+[45:35] I think we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll have to work on that. But here's the thing about uh pre-ordering people. If if there's a good amount of pre-orders, it means that the publisher will do a bigger print run.
+
+[45:44] And then what happens is when a book comes out, if there's a like a decent print run, it'll get a it'll get better placement in the in the in on the shelves because people be like, oh, there's a lot of pre-orders for this book. They'll put the book up in better places, and that will cause it to sell more. So you pre-orders are good. Yeah, exactly. And appreciate it.
+
+[46:02] Jump on what Ben was saying. I think a a bit like the quick pitch that I give to everybody for the book is that it's technique oriented. And there's a lot of books that deal with these types of recipes that don't go into like how do you flash blend properly? How do you shake properly? How do you, you know, how do you do frozen properly?
+
+[46:23] Like, and every single section builds on itself. So the first section is really the nuts and bolts of making a cocktail. Then the next section is talking about well, what are the things that tropical drinks don't do well, like stirred and savory? So we get to build on that. Then later we get into the cordializing and acid adjusting.
+
+[46:43] And then the final chapter is tributes to all of these older bars using everything that you learned in the previous chapters. So you put it all together. It's kind of like in a video game, the last section is the reward for all the things you've collected is you get to finally use all those things. And you know, we don't necessarily need to explain a lot in that last chapter. It's more about being like kind of romantic and you know fun.
+
+[47:08] So yeah, it's uh it's it's exciting, it's an exciting way to do a book. And I think, you know, probably scared some of the people that we were pitching. Yeah, well, and well, that's the thing. So, like, well, we'll have you guys guys guys on again when it's like at pub dates so that people can you know get the books and stuff like that. But it's like um the other thing about it that uh is interesting is I I think it's hilarious that you say that you made the recipe like a little easier for the for the the home folks.
+
+[47:36] When you get this book, you're getting the unfiltered like way to do things, right? And so what I mean by that is is that there is stuff in there that the average you who is hearing this will not do. There are ingredients in it that you might not be able to get, but that's the the joy of it is you don't have to use the all those exact techniques or those exact ingredients, but you're being given the actual thought process so you can see what it means to think this way about drinks, even if you can't find this specific spirit or that spirit. Yeah, we try to give people options, you know, as well. And that's even true with some of the techniques.
+
+[48:15] Like we talk about using a centrifuge, like this the spinzole, for example, but not everybody has that, so we have an alternative if you don't want to do that way. But I would say nothing in the book is incredibly complicated to do, but almost everything involves preparation. Right. It's not the kind of thing you can just crack the book and make a drink for your friends that minute. You have to to some extent have made some of this there's ingredients to make in advance.
+
+[48:37] But once you do that, you have them for lots of for lots of purposes. Right. But to me, the joy of that kind of book is actually seeing somebody's thought process, seeing how something is put together, right? It's like, you know, if you read the original French laundry book, for instance, I mean, different styles of book, but if you if you read the original one, and you know, the recipe in there is okay, take the anchovies, take take the salted anchovies, fillet them, soak the soak the fillets in milk for X amount of time, take them out, dry them, and you're like, what? And you're like, but that's the way they do it.
+
+[49:11] If you want to know how Keller does it, that's how. You know what I mean? And so like. But we actually go a little further than that. I mean, the recipes in this book are actually pretty brief.
+
+[49:19] But in front of each of those, we have a little essay from one to three pages where we really explain why it's done this way, what's the history of it, what's Garrett's thought process, why these certain ingredients are chosen. Well, that's the fun thing about a bar as opposed to a restaurant, or the working bar recipes is that in a bar, the touches at go time have to be intensely minimal because you got to get a bunch of drinks out, but all the prep can be, you know, so like all the stuff beforehand, knowing why the recipe works a certain way, knowing the ingredients and all that, like that's where most of the work in a bar, at least in my experience, is. You know what I mean? And I did workshop most of these recipes during COVID, either in an apartment in New York or in South Carolina. So I do think I'm like, it's it's semi reasonable to ask people to make these things.
+
+[50:21] But again, but my point is I did it in very hard conditions, you know. Anyone who does this will wow their friends and family. And it's not that much harder than than doing it the normal way. And you can try look also like here's another thing I say. Uh again, my my views of things are whatever, they're what they are.
+
+[50:38] But like, if you if the recipe is in there, believe me, it works. You know what I mean? Like, believe me, it's gonna taste good if you make it as written. Um The Beach Governor Negroni is in there. Well, we have a quote.
+
+[50:51] We have a question on that. You want to talk about it? Because uh someone said uh, oh, I can't find anything in the right. Yeah, I saw one of your listeners has a question about it. Yeah, Patrick McGabe wrote in and says, Hey, can you share the specific technique for the beach comer to grow?
+
+[50:59] You've been craving one for quite some time. Uh, love the show and sunken harbor. Yeah, thanks. Awesome. All right, so uh you want to go into it there?
+
+[51:10] Yeah, pre-order the book. Yeah, it's in the book. Um, but I think we can talk about on the air, we can talk about sort of the genesis of it, which was uh at existing conditions. We had when we first opened, we had the lemon cordial, which was used in the portfolio cocktail that uh Jack uh Shram came up with. And I loved the idea of cordialized citrus, it's something that I was already playing with at Slowly Shirley when I was working there, and I was doing a very different version of uh it where I used Oleo and in the book in Tropical Standard, that cordial is now called punch syrup, and um, but the lemon cordial that we used at existing, it was great because it was clarified citrus that you then use like water and make a you know syrup with that and uh citrus peel, and we started doing that with lime core with lime, and I realized it was like I think we could do this with grapefruit and cinnamon and make like a cinnamon syrup with clarified grapefruit.
+
+[52:13] And I was like, This is gonna solve the problem of Don's mix because the problem, the main issue with Don's mix, which is like the secret ingredient in the zombie, is it's a ton of ton of water in a cocktail. It's like two parts of grapefruit juice to one part of cinnamon. It's not that concentrated, and it's a wonky thing to use. It's not used in a lot of uh classic, you know, cocktails, it's only used in the zombie. And I just took the template of the lemon cordial that was used in the portfolio and made a cinnamon syrup out of clarified grapefruit juice and a little bit of grapefruit peel.
+
+[52:44] And that's what the Don's Don's mix came out. And then Dave and I just started playing around with it. We didn't, I didn't I didn't intend on creating a Negroni with it. I remember originally we were going to do a rusty nail with it, which then we added another Scotch drink to the menu. So that that area was filled.
+
+[53:05] And I just thought about, you know, okay, what things like grapefruit and the the big thing in my head was well, yeah, one Negroni's, but two uh the Ray and Ting, which there's a lot of different cocktails in Tropical Standard that uh reference the Ray and Tang, which is a super uh common highball in Jamaica and is very refreshing. It's just you know, Ray and Nephew and Grapefruit Soda. Um but yeah, uh get the book. Uh Sunken Harbor Club uses the Don's mix. It uses it in a sazorak, which we call Don's Dram.
+
+[53:40] Um it's a pretty badass cocktail. So what uh oh, so yeah, get the book for the exact spec. I'm not gonna give it if you know Garrett's not gonna give it here we make you buy the book, but you can DM you can DM me. Maybe we can get give a little bit out. Um, but the it's also that um the Don's mix is a versatile ingredient uh to do split-based citrus with with other cordials, like you know, a mixture of that and lime cordial in mezcal is great.
+
+[54:06] Yeah, the mezcal drink you did with it was really good. Yeah. Uh with if there's enough salt involved. We use the Saratoga water with that. It was a mixture of the Hathorn 3 Saratoga water, the Dons mix, and uh lemon quine cord uh lime quine on cordial was uh good.
+
+[54:22] That's the other thing about the book. There are very few syrups and things, you know, projects that we ask you to make in the book that don't have other applications. And we even make suggestions outside of the book. Like there's uh at the in the first chapter, there's like a mango puree that we give you because mango puree is very expensive to buy. And, you know, we're like, we don't have a recipe for it, but use it in Bellini's, use it in this, you know.
+
+[54:46] And there's a lot of suggestions to be like this is a starting point for you to make more cocktails with and to then put your own creativity into, you know, which I think is important because I think sometimes people will just follow the book and be like, well, I guess that's all I can do with you know, syrup X. And yeah, the book has eighty-four of Garrett's recipes, a lot of which are historically based, some of which are more his own creations. But yeah, it's not just about that. It's about using these ideas to to do your own stuff. Right.
+
+[55:15] Well, that's why that's why I'm saying that it's like it's like if you read it carefully, it's a way to think. You know what I mean? Yeah. A way to think, a way to proceed uh on working with uh with flavor. Uh Jack Rieger writes Super fans of the Mai Kai in Fort Lauderdale have told me about uh the grandfather barrel, a barrel of rum left over from catering that is aged in the restaurant's fridge.
+
+[55:36] My aged in quotes probably right. Anyway, oh, is it in a real barrel? Yeah, keep going. Yeah, no, I have to. Have you had uh a grandfather barrel and do you ever do you experiment with aging tropical drinks?
+
+[55:47] Is the grandfather barrel all hype or is there a benefit to aging citrus forward cocktails? Wait, they do it with leftover cocktail, or they do it with leftover rum. I think the idea is it's the whole thing. Right. So so Ben and I, we we interviewed the GM of the Mai Kai for the day.
+
+[56:03] Who's really helped? So the as it was Garrett's talking about the last chapter of the book, it talks about you know the classic uh bars and the classic bartender. So Mariano Liquidini at the Mai Kai, is somebody that we profile heavily. And uh Have you had the Grand Grandfather? So originally the the rumor was that they have their own rums that they age for this and it's great and what have you.
+
+[56:26] The the curtain has kind of fallen down a little bit on the mystery of the grandfather barrel. He is correct. It is from what I gathered talking to him and talking to other regulars that are there, is that I think what happens is they batch a lot of the barrels, like for you know, private events. So it's not bar, it's not bar mat bingo. No, it's not barmat bingo, but I'm pretty sure it's an old batch that then they give to people.
+
+[56:53] And who knows why somebody originally wanted it? Maybe there was somebody that had acid reflux that was like, I like the older one because it's less citrusy, like who knows. But the one thing that is interesting and it and it I that I took away from the grandfather barrel, and I've seen it at other, you know, older tiki bars like the Tiki T and whatnot. And I use this at Sunken Harbor Club, and it's in Tropical Standard, is if you want to freshen up something that doesn't like it's sort of balanced but needs like a little extra zhuz. Uh when I was served the grandfather barrel, it had a couple of like spent lime shells on the top.
+
+[57:29] And I think the idea was that they were trying to restore some of like the broken down lime oils that had gone away. And it it was interesting. It's like what you think of the cordial based stuff too. You peel peel on cordial, peel on cordial all day. Yeah, like if you're running a bar and not using lime peel or lime oil in some way, you're wasting so much of your lime dollar.
+
+[57:51] Like that is that is just stuff you were throwing in the garbage. Like you're throwing money in the garbage if you're not using that. But yeah, the Grandfather barrel um did yeah, I it was fine. I wouldn't recommend it over the regular one. And um when when did they do when did they start doing it?
+
+[58:06] So they're it's above 20% ABV. So it's not diluted. It's like it's it's batch pre it's pre-diluted it's apparently old barrel batch, I don't know how long. Uh is this something they started doing like 30 years ago or like 15 years ago? They probably regularly would s have it for events because they have a private event space that I think they're demolishing now.
+
+[58:26] But um if you like rum barrels, the Sunken Harbor Club has one on the menu and uh it is definitely the staff's one of the staff's favorite drinks. So you should go on the book as well. Yeah. It's the same recipe and it's delicious. Yeah.
+
+[58:38] Well you should always go to Sunken Harbor anyway. Really, really, really should. Uh okay. Daener writes and says what music goes best with Garrett style drinks. Yeah.
+
+[58:50] Uh um I've been sounds like the surf. Yeah no I've been putting together like a pretty long playlist of what I play. All shellac all albini music. Exactly. Yeah nothing all tiny Tim.
+
+[59:03] Um well that's so weird tiny Tim and and shellac. Oh my God. But uh if you actually want to listen to what I play at the bar, it's this the playlist is on Spotify. It's about 11 hours at this point. It's called Exotica at Rain's Law Room was the original playlist and I can't rename it.
+
+[59:22] So um but I think the cool thing for me is like I've tried to you know I have so much love for like those original Exotica albums and stuff. But like I've tried to go like sort of outside of those boundaries like looking at you know not just like Basanova but like Mexican garage rock from the 60s and pr you know Peruvian psychedelia and like I think there's a lot of stuff that like has that same kind of feel. It's almost like when you have like a movie soundtrack sometimes the best thing you can do is like play the you know Rolling Stone Street Fighting Man and then sometimes it's better to play you know the thing that was like contemporaneous to Street Fighting Man but is like you know completely obscure and like I think there's a good balance of that with bar playlists is like I mean that was the same case at existing like sometimes it was the the jam was like the weird obscure thing that Damon put on the playlist and then sometimes it was like the song that everyone knows the lyrics to I mean I think the main problem at XCOM because like we gave total control to like who like whoever was doing it right is that um you do need and we didn't always have like the the hook into like everyone right so if you're gonna play you know Nigerian disco which is amazing you know what I mean which I I I I do have on that playlist yeah you need to you know a little bit yeah but you then you need you need to put in something that everybody knows you need to put in something that like someone who's in their 20s will like and something that somebody in their 40s and 50s will like every once in a while you have to keep you have to the the trick with it is to keep bringing everyone back in to the to being at that wanting to drink quickly. Yeah you know what I mean like my favorite thing is to play covers of things that people know but in different styles like um oh god uh on the playlist right now, we have a cover of an I I think it's an Aladdin song, but it's done as surf. So it's like it just sounds like a surf song.
+
+[1:01:25] And then like people are like, is this from Aladdin? Yeah. It's like, yeah, or uh little mer it's actually Little Mermaid, that which makes thematically more sense. Yeah. I did manage to fit into Tropical Standard.
+
+[1:01:36] We have a reference to Vicente Fernandez and uh pretty lengthy discussion of George Clinton. Oh, in the both in cocktail context. So there is some musical uh content to the book as well. I mean, any almost anything that I can think of, uh, with the exception of the you know, eight-minute intro song of Maggot Brain that George Clinton has ever done makes for good drinking music. You know what I mean?
+
+[1:01:59] Well, you know, the point is obviously uh you can't think about funk without thinking about him now. And funk is also a term from uh from rum. Yeah. And uh there's of course the Dr. Funk cocktail.
+
+[1:02:10] So there's a lot, yeah. There's a lot of funk in the in that. Yeah, George Clinton. Yeah, he closes out the book. So nice.
+
+[1:02:18] Yeah. Essentially, we're opening for George Clinton. You ever met him? No. Uh at one point the rum reader was gonna do a rum tasting with George Clinton.
+
+[1:02:26] This is slightly before the pandemic, and it hasn't happened yet, but I'm really excited to to pursue that again. Yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah. I bet you know, I read his autobiography. Interesting dude.
+
+[1:02:36] Very interesting dude. Yeah. Yeah. Very influential. I mean, yeah.
+
+[1:02:40] I mean, one of the most, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, right up there with everybody. I mean, like, in other words, like, who would you say is more? Stas, who would you say is more?
+
+[1:02:51] Maybe Dave Arnold. Yeah. Who like Stas and Stas's friends are gonna all are all Prince Heads? They're gonna say Prince. But there's no there's no prince without George Clinton.
+
+[1:02:59] Right. James Brown. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait. Oh, wait, wait, yeah.
+
+[1:03:03] All right. Uh Paul Gersman writes, I've been uh looking trying looking to try out the stirred bird based on Jack Tram's spec on punch, but I recall Jack has uh reported cruising black strap rum change formulation and now sucks. Any advice on substitutes? Yes, worthy park 109. It's awesome.
+
+[1:03:17] It's very molasses forward, it's higher in proof and it's less sweet. It's really good. All right. And uh for those of you that care that uh it's uh one part of the black strap, three quarter cleary lime, half clarity pineapple juice, half clarity, half pineapple syrup unclarified, half compare, quarter ounce Jamaican overproof, like Smith and Cross, quarter ounce uh aged Nicaraguan, three drops of saline. Don't ignore the picture that's on punch because uh it's clear, it's a clear drink.
+
+[1:03:40] What the hell? It doesn't have comparian, it makes it makes no sense. Um what else we what else? Oh, here you go. Well, we we got one more question from Patreon.
+
+[1:03:50] What do you got? What do you got, Quinn? Okay, when training or tender if you have solid experience, or maybe aren't 100% in line with your program, uh different uh skills or techniques. Uh, how do you incorporate them without poo-pooing things they've learned before? Uh I mean, I I try to hire people that have an open mind, but I think the best way is to actually you know do a side by side.
+
+[1:04:21] Like if they don't, you know, if they haven't seen the benefit of salting cocktails, like have an unsalted cocktail, have one right next to it. Taste the difference, you know. Yeah. Pepsi challenge that. Yeah.
+
+[1:04:34] Yeah. Uh at least, at least it began. I'll give you you on this favorite hand juicer. I like the Corona aluminum with no coating on it, even though they're not dishwasher safe. Just scrub it out.
+
+[1:04:43] What do you like? Orange, orange hand juicer because you get more room and you can make ice molds with it, which is another technique. And tropical standard, buy it. Wait, but that orange hand juicer, though, is not good on tiny limes, right? Do you do your yield isn't as high.
+
+[1:04:58] Is it you're talking about the standard big orange one? Yeah. Yeah, that's the one I use at home. Really? Yeah.
+
+[1:05:03] Yeah. I'll I'll I'll run some tests. But it really gets all the way down, squeezes every last freaking drop of juice out of that freaking lime. You get more versatility. It handles basically every single piece of citrus.
+
+[1:05:15] Why are you buying five different citrus sprays? Because I like lime. There's lime and there's others. That's well, that I I agree with that a hundred percent. Alright, so we're gonna have you guys back on.
+
+[1:05:24] Ben and Garrett, thanks for coming on. And when you're when your book comes back closer to pub date and people can actually uh pre-order it now, though. People can pre-order it now if as I said, if they look for a tropical standard book on Instagram or Tropical Standard on Facebook, there'll be links to places you couldn't pre-order it, or you can pre-order it, whatever bookstore you you care to do. So and please do that. Uh support the book.
+
+[1:05:43] It's the first book of its kind. Go get it. Cooking issues. Thank you.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Nations coming to you live. Actually, I'm not in the studio today. I uh have the COVID again. So I'm at home.
+
+[0:20] But we got Joe Hayes and rocking the panels there in New Stan Studios in Rockefeller Center. How are you doing, Joe? I'm doing great, man. Good to hear from you. I'm sorry you're feeling so poorly.
+
+[0:29] Yeah, you know, whatever. You gotta do what you gotta do. Gotta gotta quarantine, do do all the right stuff. And you got John there in the studio with you? Yep, I am here.
+
+[0:37] Holding on the fork. Nice. And then we uh yeah, we have uh we have over in uh Vancouver Island, we got Quinn. How you doing, Quinn? Hey, I'm doing good.
+
+[0:47] Yeah? Yeah. And then uh in LA, we have uh Jackie Molecules and Nastasia Lopez. How you doing? Okay, great.
+
+[0:55] Beautiful. Yeah, yeah. So uh any you guys have any uh any interesting stories from the week? My only story is uh I got the COVID, so I didn't get to go to Harvard and do all of the fun Harvard y stuff there. But uh you guys got anything?
+
+[1:09] Yeah, we uh took me to this salon event where they were debuting plant-based cheese called Climax Foods. And we both kind of walked in like, oh, this isn't gonna taste very good. Um, but it was surprisingly good. We were both very surprised. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:25] What about the yeah? No, we were so like we were ready to hate it, you know. Yeah. Um, so it took a lot for us to be like, oh wow, we were wrong. That was pretty good.
+
+[1:35] Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. So let's just say that it's a delicious product, because I trust you both on saying it's a delicious product, right? Yeah. Is it cheese though?
+
+[1:46] Um, I want you to try it, Dave, because I feel like if it was a flying taste, you would not know. Truly. I I brought you loved the conversation with the woman. And I was like, I feel like my business partner would like this. Truly.
+
+[1:59] I I have I have an open, closed mind. You know what I'm saying, right? I'm oh I'm I'm gonna be a yeah, I'm gonna be a jerk about it, but I'm I'm open. But uh because I'll say this like back in the day when people used to pretend that like uh frozen yogurt was a health thing, you remember that? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[2:17] Yeah. No, yeah. Yeah, anyway. So that that used to be a thing, frozen yogurt health thing. So my wife was always like, she would buy these like like yogurts, right?
+
+[2:27] And then try to serve them to me like they were ice cream. And I'm like, this tastes good. This is not ice cream, this is frozen yogurt, which is its own thing. That's my only point. Like, is it its own new product, or do you say it actually tastes like cheese?
+
+[2:40] I understand what you're saying. I think that you know, if you put if I served it to you on a cracker, and you and I was like, here's some cheese. I want to know, like, and you had no idea. I feel like you wouldn't, yeah, I feel like you would think it was cheese and not like new product. Yeah, I think I agree with that.
+
+[2:58] When this when the sample size is that small, I'm like, if I'm just at a party, a cocktail party, having a little bite of cheese on a cracker, I would not think twice. If I was sitting there and having a lot of it, maybe maybe then other notes might come up, if that makes sense. Yeah, okay. And uh big mainly spready or or like all different textures? No, no, there was a a Chev, a blue, uh, feta, um, what was the other one?
+
+[3:21] The idea of calling it Chev, it's just like I gotta say, I want to taste it. The idea of calling it Chev bothers me a little bit just because that's like a thing. John, aren't you feeling me here? Yeah, it's not Chev like, I guess. Whatever.
+
+[3:34] I want to taste it though. I want to taste it. I want to taste it. I definitely want to taste it. And then if we if we like it, we're gonna have her on, right?
+
+[3:39] The producer? Yes, good idea. I asked her. She never got back to me, so maybe she actually never know. You never know.
+
+[3:44] I'm terrible judging that stuff. Speaking of uh coming on next week, next week we have the food grio, Tanya Hopkins on, so I'm excited for that. Uh and if you're listening live, you're gonna want to call in to ask a question of today's special guest. And John, how do they call in? What's the number and how do they join Patreon?
+
+[4:04] Uh they call in using 917 410 1507, and they can sign up a pay uh on our Patreon at patreon.com slash cooking issues, and it gets you a bunch of benefits like prioritize questions for awesome guests like today, um access to Discord and a whole bunch of other neat little things. And there's a bunch of affordable membership levels, so everyone should join. Yeah, and uh and I I think you know, we uh we got good stuff, we got good stuff. We got good stuff on our Patreon, but today you're gonna wish that you had the ability to call in and ask a question live because today's special guest is uh one of the Mike idols, uh, you know, as a as a young cook, as someone who, you know, I used to watch his television show. And I can't uh when I started working for the French Culinary Institute in 2004, I could not believe that I was going to get to work with him in the real life.
+
+[4:58] Um we have today on the show Chef Jacques Papin. Uh hi, how are you doing, Chef? How's everything good? Okay, how are you? Doing well, doing well.
+
+[5:07] Uh so I guess um I wanted to start uh just by asking you uh maybe to say a little bit about uh Chef Alain Sayac, who uh was uh a great man, a mentor to many of us at the French Culinary Institute. Uh your friend, you worked with him for for many years, and he, you know, he um died last week. Do you want to talk about him a little bit? Yes, he was certainly a great friend and a great chef. I mean, you know, chef at Le Firc chef in the best restaurant in the country.
+
+[5:40] And uh he worked at uh I work with him at the French Culinary Institute for for over ten years. And uh he was a very gentle person, very giving and fun and all that and uh certainly he's going to be missed. I mean certainly I miss him um you know in the kitchen you you create some very tight bond sometime and uh stay with you forever. So uh yes I will I will miss him and uh and miss his talent and his fun and his uh you know the his good humor and so forth so yes he was I will miss him yeah yeah he was a funny guy he had a very dry sense of humor and he could throw you these looks you know I mean I'm sure he never threw a look at you like he would throw at me or at uh some of the other people working but maybe not no I don't know yes yeah and you know for those who don't know you know know who he is because he never became like a household name like you did chef uh but he was mentor to thousands of students at the French culinary institute like thousands of students. No question.
+
+[6:56] And prior to that, you know in the in the restaurant that they work, whether you work at the 21 or at Le Cirque for many years, he taught a lot of uh he taught a lot of chef how to cook the right way. So yeah. Three star, you know, the missile three star, four star in the New York Times, you know, so that's uh the maximum he got. Yeah, didn't he where where did he get the four star? That was at Lecine.
+
+[7:24] Uh uh no at Le Cirque, I think. Oh Cirque? Yeah. And did he recruit you to be the dean at the French Culinary Institute? How did that work?
+
+[7:32] No, no, I was there before him, a number of years before him. Yeah, I know. I uh I was recruited directly, you know, by Dorothe Kahn, who was the owner of the place when uh not long after he happened. So and uh and after that, uh Alain worked uh at the 21 for a number of years, and at that point he wanted to kind of retire a little bit or do less, and he came and uh he decided to come with us at the French Culinary Institute, and eventually we had Andre Saltner coming with us. Yeah.
+
+[8:08] Yeah. Saltner, another giant. Oh my god, I love Andre Saltner. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[8:13] Um and Jacques Terrest. I mean, when you guys were all together, the four of you at the French Culinary Institute, it was kind of like an unbelievable team of people. It was kind of an unbelievable place in in my opinion. I was very proud to work there. Um yeah, it was.
+
+[8:30] I mean, I uh I enjoyed my my year there. It was very special. And the restaurant itself had the quality of the food and the price was very low. Uh so it was a great place to cook and a great place to go and have dinner. Yeah.
+
+[8:47] So uh I want to talk to you. We'll talk about the uh Jacques Papin Foundation also with uh, you know, because uh you're apparently you're doing uh I did a video for you uh based on my favorite one of your books, and I I think I've told you this before, but the two-volume The Art of Cooking is one of my most cherished cookbook possessions again, the whole world. Everyone should go buy a copy of this book. And you would always say that it was not successful because it was too much, it was too much money for people to buy, and Americans didn't understand skinning baby lambs. But you want to talk about this series of books?
+
+[9:26] Yes, I mean uh I think it's probably the best book that I've done too. I mean, to a certain extent, depending on the on the way you look at it, but uh it's definitely one of the least successful uh books that I've done. And uh it had to do with uh I wanted to show I show in la technique and the method prior to that, uh the technique and the basic technique of cooking and uh the food and so forth. And uh but often I never finished it with uh with recipe. Here it was I wanted to do the same thing, but finish it with a recipe to exemplify it what I was talking about, and it was also in color.
+
+[10:08] So we did 34,000 pictures in uh about five years period, it took me. And we kept 3,000 pictures, 1500 for each of the volume. We had two volumes. And you know, I I went uh fishing in Long Island to to get a uh um to get a skate because you cannot get a whole skate. You can only buy the wing.
+
+[10:30] So I wanted to show you how to take the wing out. I went fishing in my pond here to get frog to show you how to take the the skin out of the frog and do it. And people often maybe get pearled off with that when in fact you don't really have to take the skin out of the frog. You can start a picture eight or nine or whatever when it's all done and go on with the recipe. You know, and I did a whole uh Lego veal, for example, about 40 pound, where I explained people uh, you know, top round, bottom round, iron, top knuckle, top filling, the whole pieces of uh the whole different muscle and uh and did a recipe for each of those muscles.
+
+[11:09] Again, uh in that case here you can buy a piece of meat and do one of those recipe. You don't have to follow the whole thing, but that's the way it was, and uh uh you know, I'm I'm I'm very happy with that book too. And uh I um I still have a couple of copies, I guess, but uh it's totally different than uh book that I did, like Fast Food Night Way or The Shortcut Cook or thing like this. So but it's it's good to investigate cooking in uh in different ways, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[11:41] Yeah, whenever I see a copy, I usually buy it and then give it to somebody because I love it. But I want to talk about I want to talk about your new book that that just came out, which I wasn't expecting to love this book as much as I do. But the art of the chicken, I think I love this book. Because thank you. I mean, what it what uh what I love about it is it's kind it's it traces a similar story to your memoir that came out what, maybe twelve years ago, 10 years ago.
+
+[12:16] Um twenty years ago, yeah. Twenty geez, I'm getting old too, huh? So, like I mean so, but this book, it traces you through your life through the lens of chickens, and it gives many, many recipes, but the way a cook would give a recipe to somebody, not the way that you would write in a cookbook, you know? Right, it's a very narrative sense. And uh and to a certain extent for me, it's the first book that I bring together uh my cooking and my panning and my writing.
+
+[12:52] Uh because uh this is not, as you said, written in um in a conventional manner with recipe and so forth. It's just narrative style, telling you, you know, my mother used to do this, that too, or when I went at the Plaza Latin in Paris, we used to do this, that and you know, this is the way you explained to a friend, uh certainly another cook who asked you, How did you do that? So uh some recipe are feasible. Some are probably not really feasible. Uh it's interesting.
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+[13:24] Excuse me, you say that that uh my editor at um you know at Simon Anchester uh gave me um at some point we discuss because I I I didn't really want to do a book of recipe. I wanted to do a book of my planning of chicken. And now I start signing uh uh picture of chicken, they say, can we get can we get uh some recipe with that? And uh so I I I said I don't want to do recipe. So I finally end up doing story about chicken and of course about eggs.
+
+[13:56] At some point she tells me, Oh, I think I need more, you know, more explanation and more ingredients and stuff. I said, but it's not that type of thing. She said, Well, I say, All right, fine. So I gave her a recipe from La Mère Brazie in Lyon. Lyon, where I come from, down in France, but very well known for the formidable woman uh cook, you know, like uh, well, in my family, actually I have uh 12 restaurants that I can think of.
+
+[14:27] Twelve restaurants owned by women, uh, including my mother, several restaurants. So Lyon was very well known for those. And the Maire Brasier was in the 40s, she had a three-star restaurant in the 40s, a long time ago. And even Bocuse, one of the greatest French chefs, did his apprenticeship there. So La Mère Brasier's recipe was a chicken, chicken of breast, of course, the best quality chicken where I come from, with truffled under the skin, but it was poor in a pig's bladder, you know.
+
+[14:59] And all she put was a lick, carrot and an onion in the pig bladder, play, and it was poor slowly. So it was brought to the dining room, you know, all inflated, so very impressive, but to a certain extent, very, very simple. It was just poison there. Then the juice was removed, reduced with butter and served with a chicken. Uh very impressive, but you know, uh very simple in a sense.
+
+[15:24] So when she asked me that, I said, okay, the chicken male brasier, I need a pig bladder, two truffles, one chicken, a breast. And she said, What are you talking about? I said, Well, you want you want an ingredient? He was a list of ingredients, I'm doing your list of ingredients. She said, All right, fine.
+
+[15:41] But we had a bit. But they never asked me again. Yeah, that's that's a good that's a good way to end that conversation, right? Yeah, right, all right. Although I have to say, uh the first time I ever saw somebody cooking in a pig's bladder was I think on uh Iron Chef, uh Japanese one.
+
+[15:58] And I looked for years in New York City in the late 90s trying to find a pig's bladder. You cannot buy it anymore. That recipe cannot be made anymore. I don't know. I had it on the West Coast uh a few years ago.
+
+[16:13] I forget the whether the chef it did squab, you know, in the pig's bladder too, and that was great. So uh yeah, it's certainly that's what I said in that book. I will use the the you know the the chicken waffle and the unborn eggs, uh chicken comb and uh chicken feet and many, many things like that that people don't use. So as I said, some recipes are not uh pretty feasible. Although I wanted to emphasize the use of the also, you know, uh from the feet to uh to uh to the neck to um you know, as I said, uh the coxcomb, but all of that have always been used.
+
+[16:52] Chicken liver certainly, it's uh most important the gizzard and so forth, uh, rather than just people often use only the breast of the chicken or a couple of things, uh when in fact uh I choose the chicken also because that may be the most democratic of all of all foods, because you will have a chicken in a truck stop, you know, and then uh in a cafeteria next door, and certainly if you go to the hospital, they'll probably give you chicken, but then you have it in that three-star restaurant with truffle under the skin. So there is and I don't think I've been, you know, from China to Russia, from West Africa to Portugal or Italy, and I don't think I've ever been in a country where they don't have chicken. Um and often chicken uh is uh you know a life-sustaining type of thing. I remember in West Africa, in little villages, you know, people are very poor, but they are three or four chicken, you know, for the eggs probably more than anything else, and eventually to kill the chicken when you are too old and do some type of stew with it. But it was kind of a life-sustaining thing, yes.
+
+[17:59] So uh yeah, that's what I choose chicken, and as I say, of course the eggs, which is maybe more important than the chicken, and all of the awful the variety of meat that we don't really use. I mean, chicken bladder and chicken uh uh gizzards and the the liver and the feet and so forth. Right. So so speaking of the waddle and the comb, the recipe you give for that in this book is the banker's chicken, the the financier. But so why would the rich people be going for the w the waddle and and the comb?
+
+[18:29] It was an interesting kind of juxtaposition, no? Yes, but at that time it was considered like truffle, like other type of things, something very special and and it is very special. So we don't we don't use it anymore much. Uh yeah, it was in a puff paste, it was considered quite elegant and all that. And going back to uh I mean actually the 17th century.
+
+[18:54] And speaking of gizzards, you do have a huge section in the book on uh gizzards. So one question, I've never, I don't know, because I'm stupid maybe, I've always just braised them. I've never done the confid. What's the difference in texture when you confide the gizzard versus when you do the brace? Well, it's there is similarity, but I mean when you confuse it, it ends up being creamier and more pasty creamier, and also you keep it in the fat in the refrigerator, you can keep it a long time.
+
+[19:22] Actually, you can do the liver in the same way too. Excuse me. I often uh put salt paper, a bit of cognac, some garlic on whole liver, and uh I uh poach them slowly in fat and uh until they are still rare inside or pink, and uh keep them in in the refrigerator in the fat of the chicken, and I keep that for weeks, you know, and you take one out, you slice it almost like a foie gras, and it's really very relatively very inexpensive. I mean, certainly where I did my apprenticeship, which was in Bourg en bref, where those chicken come from, the chicken of breast, I mean, the the fat of the chicken was probably uh uh more price or half-priced practically as butter. I mean, we use it for everything to saute potato and do all the kind of things.
+
+[20:16] One thing that I use also in the book is the chicken skin. The chicken skin for me, uh, I find it better than bacon. You know, each time that I do a chicken, I take the skin out and fill it flat onto a skillet, a dash of salt onto a cookie sheet or whatever, and cook it in the oven uh uh until it's crisp like bacon and uh and I scramble it on soup or on salad or on stew and the fat, of course, which is rendered, then you use it to sort a potato or other type of vegetable. So that's the way, you know. I mean, that the way I was taught how to cook, and also the fact that I uh uh, you know, when I was a little kid, it was during the second world war.
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+[21:01] So certainly my mother and other people cooking were very miserly cooked because uh ingredients were uh inexp they were very expensive and you couldn't get them. So uh you used everything certainly. So uh another one you you you have in this uh using the parts of the chicken. Of course, chicken liver, I guess it is cheap. It shouldn't be cheap, but it is cheap.
+
+[21:26] You in the 80s put uh a recipe on or 90s on one of your shows that I used to make constantly, and then you have it in the chicken book again. They kind of your your style of chicken liver mousse where you uh almost make like a micwi in a pan, you fry it very quickly, and then you blend it so that it gets some parts cooked and some parts not. It's a great way to make uh a fast mousse. Oh, yeah, that's that's good. And I I do it two or three different ways.
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+[21:55] You do it usually when you get a whole chicken at the opening of the chicken, you have one lump of fat on each side. If you took those two lumps of fat together, they about equalize the weight of the liver. So it's uh mother nature organized it this way. So you can cut that uh that fat into pieces and render it, and I put thyme bay leaf, uh black paper and stuff, and then the the liver potion it and eventually emulsify. So you can do it this way.
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+[22:24] You can also do it by buying, and you can buy now uh very easily uh on the internet or whatever. You buy chicken fat or duck fat and use uh rounded fat and start it this way. Another way that I do it in another book, I poach the chicken liver in a bit of chicken stock with a bit of onion, and uh remove that and put that in the food processor, not the liquid, but uh, and then with the same amount of butter and uh with butter, it does the same thing too. So there is different way of doing those mousse. Uh and the beauty of it is that you do it and it freeze quite well.
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+[22:59] So, you know, you you do uh you know half a pound of chicken liver and you put that into a small container, you have it in your freezer, and when you have people coming for drink, you take that out to defrost it and put it on toast, and it makes an excellent uh, you know, things to serve with cocktail or with drink. And uh a couple more things from the books, just so people uh I definitely want people to check this book out. So in the original art of cooking, you have Danny Kay's chicken salad recipe, which by the way, right? Is uh yeah, it's a technique I still use where you you know you just bring the bird basically up to the simmer and then let it ride and then you you you bone it out. But in the new book, you give a new secret that you didn't give in the old, which is that he used to stick silverware into the bird to keep it sinking in the stock and not floating.
+
+[23:57] Right. I mean, that was like a joke. When I went at his house, he told me I'm gonna show you how to post a chicken. So he took a handful of uh knife and fork and all that from his drawer, he put it into the chicken, put it in a stock pot. I said, What the heck are you doing?
+
+[24:12] He said, Well, like that, the chicken doesn't come to the surface, it stays in the bottom. It will stay in the bottom anyway, one way or the other. So that's not uh a necessary step, but it's not fun. So that's what I mentioned it in there. Yeah, yeah.
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+[24:26] Yes, that's funny. So uh one of my co-workers at the French Culinary Institute, uh Hervé Malivaire, he used to do that for sous-vide and low temperature because uh if you weren't, yeah, if you weren't using the vacuum, right? If you were just rolling like uh doing like a uh a ballotine or something, and you were rolling it, it might float. And so he would always roll in uh butter knives so that they would sink to the bottom of the bath anyway. Oh I didn't know that.
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+[24:53] Yeah. Uh okay, another thing you mentioned, uh black pepper in your in your uh liver mousse, and I read in the book that you have the correct opinion that black pepper is superior to white pepper, but that Julia Child did not agree with you. No, that's true. I mean, the those those are small uh differences that we had, and we argue to, I mean, uh in the old classic way, she said any white sauce, you should have white pepper corn, the white paper, not black one. And it's true that it was done this way.
+
+[25:26] But I mean, people don't realize that uh green pepper corn, white pepper corn, black pepper corn is the same berry. You know, you have green pepper corn when the berry is not ripe and it's very flavorful and with less hotness, green paper, and then if you let it dry, then the skin shriveled on top, and uh and it turns red uh when it's when it's uh when it's uh you know ripe, and then you let it dry out and the skin turns black on top, and you have black pepper corn. And during your drying process, they wet it and wash it, and it wash the skin of the tub, and then they have the center, which is the white paper corn. Ultimately, the white paper corn, the green one, the black one is the same one. I feel that the black one has more taste because of the skin on top, which hasn't been removed, it's more flavor.
+
+[26:17] But you know, it's a question of taste. Speaking of uh Julia Child, something I did not realize until I read this book is that the famous Dan Aykroyd sketch where he pretends to be Julia Child and cuts himself and sprays blood all over the kitchen is actually from a real thing that happened when she cut herself on your knife on a show. Yes, that's true. It was Tom Snyder. It was Tom Snyder at a show called the Tomorrow Show.
+
+[26:46] And I did it a couple of times with him in New York, and then he had moved to the West Coast, and he asked me, Can you do it with Julia? And it was like an hour and a half, just the two of us. And uh so I said, sure. So Julia happened to be on the West Coast because she'd originally from there. She was in the kitchen.
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+[27:05] And uh so she bought uh enough food to feed probably 50 people. And uh because Tom Snyder said, I don't need recipe, it doesn't matter, just cook with Julia, and uh so I said, Great. So they I I was on a book tour actually for my book, uh La Method, the second after La Technique. So it was 1978, I believe. And so they picked me up at the airport and I was on that book tour.
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+[27:31] So uh the plane, I mean, we were taping in the afternoon, and uh they had to pick me up and rush me to to the the studio because uh I would the plane was a bit late and so forth. And so I rushed there, they they put me on stage five minutes before we start, and Julia told me, okay, I have this this on the food, and I had my knife because I was on a book tour. I had a little knife with me in my pocket. At that time, you could uh you could bring a knife with you on the plane. Because I do a show in the morning for like uh 30 seconds.
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+[28:05] They want me to cut something, so I do a tomato rose or whatever on television, so I had that knife with me. So I took that knife and I put it on the counter when she was telling me what she had. He took the knife to cut a shallot and almost took the end of her finger off. So uh I push, I push it back together and tie it with uh with the towel. And Tom Snyder was crazy.
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+[28:28] He said, What are we going to do? And Julia was mad at herself. She said, We're not going to do anything. We're going to cook uh and I'll taste and Jacques cook, and I don't want to talk about uh my finger. He said, Okay, so we start the show, and uh uh I think Julia was in the middle, and she said, We are by order of size, yeah, because I think Tom Snyder was 6'7, he was very, very tall, and she's like 6'2, and uh me on the other side.
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+[28:54] And the second thing, Tom Snyder said, Julia, do you mind if I say that you cut your finger? Of course, so the camera narrowed down on her, and that was the end of it. So uh uh two days later, she was on the Jodie Carson show, and they talk about her finger. A week later, I was with her on another show. We were supposed to do omelet.
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+[29:15] All we did was to talk about her finger, so it became a big thing, and eventually they did that uh that thing in uh Saturday Night Life, which was very funny. She actually liked it very much, you know. I mean, it's a classic sketch. I've seen it, I've seen it dozens of times. Yeah, classic.
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+[29:32] Yeah. All right, so here's some other couple of strange things in the in the book, interesting recipe ideas. So you have an ex Jeanette, and that was that's named after your mom, you said? Egg Jeanette? Yes, right.
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+[29:45] Yeah. My mother used to that do that when we were kids. It's a conventional part cooked eggs, but then she took the yolk out and crushed it. Usually she used a fork, uh, crush it with chopped garlic and chopped parsley, a persid, you know, and uh and uh and the egg yolk and salt paper, a dash of milk to make it pasty, and we stuffed the eggs, and then we saute the eggs stuff side down for a minute or so, it browned beautifully. And she already had a little bit of the stuffing left over, so she had it with mustard and only wanted to do a mustard sauce to serve with it.
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+[30:22] So we've done that at my house forever, you know. So the egg janet. I even remember my wife one time. We had a big party, so she decided to do egg janet with quail eggs. So she had like three dozen of quail eggs.
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+[30:36] She said, I'll never do it again. Oh my god. To peel those quail eggs and cut them and stuff them. Yes. Peeling quail eggs is the worst job in the world.
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+[30:46] Peeling quail eggs, I hate peeling quail eggs. Oh my god. I know me too. But uh but it's a very uh, you know, simple and classic recipe and quite good. But is it amount almost to like an am like uh I know not stuffed as much, but like almost like an American deviled egg that's fried on the one side.
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+[31:05] I mean, it's such a to to as an American growing up with deviled eggs, it's like it's kind of a I was like, oh my god, I can fry a deviled egg. Sounds good. Yeah, no, but the well is it's different. Remember there, I have garlic in the chopped garlic and parsley, and that's why it's cooked this way. And uh it's not stuff that is uh you your uh your deviled eggs, you cut it in half, but you you pile up the the stuffing on top so it's higher.
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+[31:30] Here it's level. You just put uh enough uh stuffing to have it level so you can fry it, you know. So yeah, yeah. And another thing I had never heard of before, you said that when you were in uh, I think it was in France before you came to the U.S., that you would make the French toast with with creme anglaise, actually melted vanilla ice cream as the instead of like uh I never thought to do this, and it sets up enough, there's enough egg in the in the anglaise to set it up. Yes, absolutely, because remember that uh uh the classic uh uh French ice cream, Chatany vanilla ice cream is done with a creme anglaise and the English castard cream is done with egg yolk, and three egg yolks per cup of milk.
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+[32:15] So at the Pazatine in Paris, we did uh a lot of different types of ice cream. But when I was uh breakfast chef, sometime pressed by time, you know. Uh instead of having all the eggs and all that to do that, I would I would take uh eight or ten scoops of uh vanilla ice cream, let it melt on the counter. And when I start having order for scrambled eggs, I dip slice of brioche in it and saute it and serve it with uh you know maple syrup, so it was very good. All right.
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+[32:45] I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna try it, but don't go trying it, people, with Philadelphia style ice cream. It must have the egg in it, right, chef? No, not really. It will work with that as well.
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+[32:56] Yeah, oh yes. Huh. I'm gonna try it. I'm definitely gonna try it. Um, okay.
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+[33:01] Uh I have some questions from before I go more into the book and the foundation. I have some questions from our uh listeners. Uh this is from Fly Jamerson. He said, uh, hey Chef, I'm so uh stoked for this episode. When I started listening to the show seven or eight years ago, I was also teaching myself how to cook by watching uh Jacques Specials and his amazing show with Julia.
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+[33:24] Now I'm a pastry chef uh and I listen to the show and follow the foundation on Instagram. You've been so influential over the years for me and for so many people. I've always loved uh this is for you, Chef. I've love seeing you share your love of cooking with your family. My two-year-old loves to help in the kitchen at home, and I wonder if you have any advice for cultivating and teaching very young chefs.
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+[33:44] Well, you have to get the kid involved with you from the moment they are born. I mean, when my daughter was a year and a half old, I hold her in my arm and she stirred the pot. I say, okay, melons. Right. So she would stir it so she quote, eat it, because of course she made it, quote, uh, with her father when, you know.
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+[34:03] And uh likewise, uh, you know, my granddaughter, I have done television show with her, and uh when she was small, so you know, she stand next to me with on a little stool uh at the counter, and I say, Give me the salad, you see it's clean, do you want to clean it up, help me do that and go to the garden with her and say, Okay, get me some parsley. I say, No, this is chai, okay. This is parsley, test this, test that. And I take her to the market, you know. I say, I need some uh some tomato or I need some pear.
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+[34:34] Make sure it's ripe. Did you smell those pear? You think they are ripe? You know, so you get the kid involved like that. And uh and then of course, uh by the time you finish uh cooking, then you you share the food with them and discuss the discussion continue.
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+[34:51] So it it's very important. And also I think important uh to give the kid what you are eating exactly in the same way. I don't think I ever did uh uh you know, b baby food for for my daughter when she was small. Uh we uh uh whatever I cooked before I put too much salt paper in it, seasoning, I put it in the in the blender and uh and that's what she had so you know uh by the time she was six or seven years old if we gave her some spaghetti and clam sauce she knew the taste because she added in a puree when she was small you know so that's important to uh to do that too I think and uh Frank wants to know what is the most fun experience you had uh doing the PBS show uh cooking with uh Julia Child what was the most fun if you remember anything specifically oh yeah we had many many fun shows to start with people don't realize that we had no recipes there uh conventionally when you do a series and I do I did uh you know 12th series of 26 shows so you do a series of 26 shows uh you usually come with a book and uh or at least the manuscript of the book to get an idea to the back kitchen what you're going to do and so forth. Here we had no recipe we had a list you say okay let's do skew tomorrow let's do this that too so it was a bit more complicated for the cameraman probably to to follow us because they didn't know what we were going to do.
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+[36:20] And uh but for us it was more fun cooking you know if I put scallion in that dish it's because they happened to be on the counter and I was cooking and I put them in I didn't have to worry about a recipe. That was one thing. The second thing is that when you do show like I did on TBS, I was told at the beginning uh you have to do it on time because editing is very expensive and all that. So uh for several series, I did it on time with a guy going by saying uh 10 minutes, five minutes, three minute wrap-up and so forth. Uh with Julia, she did she said, Well, we're gonna cook, and the moment it finished, we'll tell you.
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+[36:59] Some show we're like 70 minutes, you know. Uh so we had no recipe, we had no uh no time limit, and we had a lot of wine. So it was a fun show to do, you know. Um a friend of uh mine and an FCI graduate, by the way, who has a very successful uh pastry uh business in Nebraska, Angela Garbats wants to know from Goldenrod Pastries how did you uh take on leadership and the teaching of students' employees? You were always good at it at the FCI, but I'm curious how you took that on and learned the best ways early in your career to be a mentor.
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+[37:37] Well, uh I am um I don't know, I'm very Cartesian. Uh so I like to break things down, and that's what I started to do with that technique. Breaking things down into simple techniques to show people how to do it. I would never really have thought of it when I started cooking and doing show on the road. Uh I would never have showed people, I don't know, how to peel a carrot.
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+[38:03] I said, Well, anyone knows how to peel a carrot, except when I did it. So people say, Oh, that's how you do it. You can't, yeah. So I started taking those really basic techniques, how to peel a. And this is why my book, La Technique and all that, it's still in print, you know, and it's over 50 years old now.
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+[38:20] So and I don't uh I don't cook the same way that I did 50 years ago, but the technique remained the same. The way you sharpen a knife, or the way you peel an asparagus, you know, or the way you push an egg is the same way that it was 50 years ago. That's why those books are still in print. So it started there for me, uh teaching people, explaining all of those basic principles. So uh so that my uh you know I always like to teach and explain and so forth.
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+[38:44] So that was the beginning of it. So speaking of the way to do things and the things that don't change there are many, many, many ways to bone out a chicken. And then there is the Jacques Papin way to bone out a chicken, which I learned I saw you do it on TV. I saw you do it many times at the French Culinary Institute. How many seconds did it used to take you to bone a chicken?
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+[39:11] I don't know in a few minutes but it's not uh it's important I think because if you know how to bone out a chicken and cut exactly in the joint of the hip and in the joint of the shoulder and you know how to do a duck, you know how to do a quail, you know how to do a goose, you know how to do a turkey and you know how to carve in the dining room when the bird is cooked too because uh all of those cuts are always in the same place where you cut to to break down take the meat of the carcass you know so it's important to take some uh and you know all of those techniques are important and basically uh it's a question of repeat repeat repeat which is the way we were trained certainly when an apprentice when I was an apprentice uh you know well of course I was 13 14 years old so I was young and the chef would tell you do this and uh you would never have said why because if you had said why you would have to tell you it's because I just told you that was about the end of the explanation. So the learning was through osmosis more at some point the chef told me, okay, tomorrow you started the stove. I said, I started the stoke. I never got close to the stove except to put coal in it or wood at that time. And so then I started at the stove and I knew how to do it.
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+[40:28] So, you know the the the learning was was different. You get, you know, you transcend the level at which you have to think about it. If I am on television, I don't have to think about it. Uh, you know, my hands are just working, and I just think in terms of uh texture or or the color of the ingredient or whatever. So it's uh it's a different way of uh learning, but but certainly uh uh I think that any great chef from uh uh Daniel Boulut, Thomas Keller or Top Cole Q and all that, are first good technicians.
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+[41:06] And then they happen to have talent, and they happen to have talent, and they happen to have drive, and they happen to have uh other things than just the technique. But the technique I think are very very important to start with. Uh I know a fair amount of chefs who are very good technicians and run a good kitchen and uh uh with a good uh food cost and so forth, and are relatively up by doggies, right? And uh run relatively uh a good kitchen and are not great chefs at all. They are relatively ordinary cook, but you need to really be as I say a great chef, then you have to be a good technician and then have talent and so forth, you know.
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+[41:50] So uh another question I have for those that you know know your career. You were for a time the equivalent of the White House chef in France, and you were the chef for Charles de Gaulle, which is kind of an amazing, it's an amazing thing to have on your on your resume. And Sam wants to know what's the and I kind of know a little bit just from reading the book because you talk about what he likes to eat in the chicken book, but uh Sam wants to know what's the weirdest thing that uh de Gaulle liked to eat. The weirdest thing, there was nothing weird that he likes to eat. It was, you know, you have to realize that when you are cooking for head of state, I serve people like I don't know, Ivanware, Neru, Tito, I mean the head of state at the time.
+
+[42:35] Uh you try to please the people that you're going to serve with different coming from different countries. And uh, but uh when I cook only for the president himself, uh, that is on Sunday, for example, uh they were devout uh churchgoer and uh Catholic. And uh so at that point, after that, the family always came to eat the children, grandchildren, and the whole family. And at that point, of course, they ate exactly what they wanted. And what they wanted was relatively simple food from a leg of lamb to a poach fish, and uh I would discuss the menu with uh, of course, Madame de Gaulle and decide what they wanted.
+
+[43:24] But uh there was nothing really weird or unusual. Well, yeah, and you said that uh your boss before him had spent a lot of France's money having you cook all sorts of crazy things, and that the de Gaulle family was very kind of above board. Yes, I mean uh when uh you know you you you do special uh special reception for head of state I mean you have cavier, you have foie gas, you have very expensive stuff. But uh when I cook on that Sunday meal for the family, then Madame de Gaulle is it on paying from their own pocket which was as I said uh kind of a drop of water in the amount of money that we spent it's not a question of principle very uh ethical type of uh people you know uh chef Andy Ricker wants to know and of course you have recipes in here so uh and I know the answer do you ever cook with chilies with yeah of course yeah I I do yeah I mean uh uh you know I had a house in uh I mean I had an apartment in Playa del Com in Mexico uh and for it over 10 years 15 years my wife and I we used to spend a couple of months during the winter so regardless of the country where I am yes I would go to the market and buy all kind of dry chili and and uh and cook with them and pull around with them have different recipe in different of my book with them. Hey uh Quinn you said we had a couple more questions for chef off the Discord.
+
+[44:56] Uh what do you got? Uh yes we do and nice to talk to you chef. Um Matt from Mystic asks I'm curious what uh Jacques thinks of modernist techniques like C V low temperature and how they fit into the history of cooking well I tell you something for 10 years from 1960 to 1970 I was a director of research for Howard Johnson and I worked there. At that time we were attacked a recipe that we developed on Sousa with the Africa. At that time, I would take uh a whole uh a whole breast, double breast of Turkey, for example, put it into a plastic bag and draw the air out of it, and that's what's called cryovax.
+
+[45:46] Cryovax, and we lower it into water, not too hot and cook it this way. So uh the Souvid was called, I say cryovax at that time, and it was technique that we did uh for many, many years, uh, you know, to uh control the food and to control the quality and so forth. So yes, those old techniques, I mean those new techniques which seem that have been uh just to the air. I can find them very often back uh 30 years, 30 years ago, you know. So um another question.
+
+[46:27] Um what's the method or recipe for the most delicious thing you made in the past year? That's from Dave Clayman. No, I don't have any answer to that question. The most delicious thing that I did in the last year is probably a Friday like today for my breakfast, you cook every day in different ways. So I mean, I don't have one thing that uh I'm gonna cook all the time only this way.
+
+[46:59] I mean, people already ask me what is the best thing to eat. Uh I tell you, if I have an extraordinary baguette and extraordinary butter, it's very hard to beat bread and butter. So it is very hard. And uh remember the French culinary had very good bread. I don't know if you remember how good the bread program was at the French Culinary Institute.
+
+[47:18] That's what I said. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Um I had a follow-up on you mentioned uh the Howard Johnson, the hojo, like uh when I was growing up, like that was uh still a like a real place.
+
+[47:32] You said that uh it started changing a lot when you left in the early 70s, but one of the things they were famous for is the crispy clam strips. Now, did you have anything to do with the crispy clam strip from Howard Johnson? Yes, yes, of course we did it at the time. I don't think it'd be possible to do it today because uh we did that with clam, which were over a pound big. Uh deep clam, I don't know where people find it.
+
+[48:01] There was a special uh supplier of those enormous clam. And uh we opened them and we only use the tongue. It was the tongue of the clam. We put through a machine to do long strip to cut them into long strip, and the belly, the belly of the clam was used for clam solder because we used to do you know 3,000 a gallon of clam solder at the time. So uh uh yes, and the the the fried clam were pretty uh pretty well known at the time, yes.
+
+[48:30] So and uh it was great too. Yeah, no, that was the thing. My wife loved it, I loved it. I mean, uh the clam strip, that was uh you know, that was a thing. Uh so follow up, because you've lived on the on the coast of Connecticut for a long time.
+
+[48:44] Are you a when you have fried clams, do you prefer with the belly on or do you prefer it hojo style, just strips? Well, either one, uh frankly, you know, I like I like some time with the belly on sometime, just but as I say now, you would not find the tongue as big as we used to have to do it the same way, uh, because I don't think it's the sea is depleted of that type of uh big, big plants. Also, you mentioned in the book that when your mom came to visit you in the States you made her a lobster roll and I want to say and so John who's in the studio who you know I work with who's uh also a chef he's from Connecticut uh and uh we all believe that the lobster roll should be warm as opposed to the way they do it maybe up in Maine and that's how you serve it to your mom a warm lobster roll do you do you always prefer a warm lobster roll or do you also like the cold ones? No I I like both frankly my wife liked it better with mayonnaise I like it better with butter and hot so but you know uh if you give it to me with mayonnaise I will did it too. Yeah.
+
+[49:52] Um all right um something else I learned again I I hate I'm only bringing up this book because I learned so much in this book everyone should go get the book I didn't realize so my my favorite cookbook series ever is the Time Life uh foods of the world and you I didn't know this but you did a lot of the cooking for the uh classic French uh cooking volume including the crazy dish on the cover with all the shimmering aspic and the and the uh with the you know the the white sauce the chauffeur sauce over the over the the uh poolard do you want to talk about uh that experience because that's maybe the greatest cookbook series ever and it came out before most Americans even knew anything about kind of food of the world so you you want to talk about that series at all or yes it was uh the series was done by uh well uh Craig Le Bourne was the food editor of the New York Times writing it. And Pierre Fresh was uh my friend and my boss at Howard Johnson and at the pavilion uh was asked to do the food with me so he asked me to do the food uh especially for the picture to work in studio and so forth uh we had no recipe for that either and I said do you want me to make recipe they said no no no we will we'll follow you and go out the recipe well I tell you it would be totally impossible to have look at the book of recipe to follow a recipe to what they wrote you know when I did it but anyway those were all classic recipes and when we did the cover of the book Pular de Landeva you know so it was uh the breast you know the the whole chicken poached and eventually the breast removed and cut into uh and to slice and coat with uh with a chauffeur you know which is a cold uh uh velute uh with uh with gelatin in it and decorated and glazed with aspic on top that's a very classic dish too but I mean uh pretty complicated and stuff with a mousse of gras inside we did it uh and when I did that one uh they took picture of it and uh they should it from the top very close and it was beautiful because people say what is this they didn't know what it was so so we have to redo it again and they did it a second time they wanted to put champagne next to it to balance it and again the the art director or whatever decide decided they didn't like it either so we did a third time so I did that thing at least three times but uh when I was there working in studio and that was in 63, four five in those areas, you know, though. So but that was an interesting book. I still look at uh I agree with you, I still look at uh that uh 30 plus volume book uh going from uh different parts of the world, you know, other reference. It's a very good reference book.
+
+[52:49] Julia Child did the first one of the theory, which was country French cooking, and the second one was that classic French cooking, and it went on and on from uh American cooking in different areas to to Chinese, Japanese, uh Portugal, Italian, Spanish, and so forth. So it's a great series to look at for reference. Yeah, when I found out you were a part of it, I couldn't believe it. Yet another way you've influenced me, Chef. Um, speaking of uh the cover of this book with all of the aspic, why is it you think that Americans we can't wrap our head around aspic?
+
+[53:26] And you actually have a story in the chicken book about eggs and gele. And uh I have to say that's one of the only things, also, because I got food poisoned once from it, that I don't eat eggs and galae either. But you know, what do you think it is about Americans in aspect? Why we can't uh why we can't, why we don't like because you were because you don't have it when you're a kid, you know, there is many recipes from other parts of the world that you are have a kid, and those recipes become kind of visceral. I mean, very powerful, those tastes which your mother or whoever did it.
+
+[53:59] But if you never had that, all of a sudden through middle age, you know, or whatever, you get a new recipe which sometimes doesn't correspond with uh your sense of taste. You say, oh, I'm not eating that. And that happened to any country. And especially here, that the only time that you usually have a spic uh that is uh a jelly would be with jello. And jello, of course, is done with fruit and fruit, I mean, done different way, but I mean, usually with fruit and juice and so forth and sweet.
+
+[54:31] So when you have the same type of texture too, and which happen to be salted and strong to have cold people, kind of uh uh, you know, uh I mean, not everybody, but many people uh don't go for it yes here. But I love it. I still do it in summer. The uh it's nice to have cold dish in summer anyway. Um so I I learned also in the book, uh but I'm gonna have you pronounce it because I'm not gonna try the French word for the oyster in the back of uh poultry in the back of a chicken.
+
+[55:02] You know, we call it uh the oyster, but uh I don't know how to describe it. When you're boning out the back of the bird, there's a little, there's two little pockets in the that you have to make sure your knife goes in and gets them out when you're taking off the thing, and we call it the oyster. But what's the word in French? The word in France is solely less, and it's actually three words. S-O-T, uh L apostrophe Y, and the third word is L-A-I-S-S-E, and the soli-less just means the dumb leave it.
+
+[55:34] Uh so that's the name of uh, and certainly uh I remember uh in France in um you know in the 15s and all that when I was working in Paris, doing a free cassette of those uh which would take four or five chickens for one portion because there is only two blue chicken. So that was a kind of very fancy, fancy type of uh dish to do, certainly. Uh now, one more chick. Sorry, one more chicken, a couple more. I mean, like I just read your book on chicken, so I have a lot of chicken questions.
+
+[56:08] I apologize. But do you still do the full old school trussing when you cook uh when you cook your chickens? Like keep the legs in tight. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, depending whether I do it for myself simply or whether I have some guests I want to present it a bit nicer. So yeah, one or the other.
+
+[56:46] I don't think people even flip birds at all anymore. I mean, I I haven't heard someone I haven't heard someone write this recipe this way in million years, but even back in the day it was top bottom. But uh I'm now gonna try the side side uh and on the back. You think that's the best way? Well, to start with, you have to remove the wishbone, you know, of your chicken.
+
+[57:05] Uh it makes it easier to curve. Secondly, I cut usually an incision between the drumstick and the thigh. Uh that's where often it stays a little red and people say, Oh, it's not cooked enough. So you end up overcooking the breast because this is not cooked enough. So that's the second thing.
+
+[57:25] And and to cook it on the side as I do, it's great. It's great sometimes, sometimes not. You have to have uh a pan that you use all the time that you know is not going to stick, or then you have to use an off thick pan because people will put it on the side and the skin will stick to the bottom, and then you make a mess out of it. So uh in case like this, very often I don't turn it either. I just baste it, you know.
+
+[57:50] But that to do it this way prevents you from having to baste all the time, you know. Hey, Chef, have you tried the uh uh the American uh breast style chickens and are they any good compared to the French ones? I I don't know what you're talking about. The American, why? They so they they imported the same breed that they have in breast, the same chicken over the big the oh the breast chicken, yes, right.
+
+[58:17] Uh I uh I haven't actually tried the breast chicken which they import. I mean, I so I don't really know, but I also know that uh uh I used to have a friend who was raising very close uh chicken in the same way. And um uh often people who are used to uh the standard chicken from the supermarket have a chicken like that. It has more taste. The meat is uh moist but more attached to the bone, a bit tougher too, and they end up saying, hmm, I'm not crazy about that chicken because it doesn't reflect uh, you know, when you're used to one type of chicken, like the one in the supermarket and having another one, it's like the beef.
+
+[59:00] My friend Jean-Claude used to raise his beef, and when we killed it, the kids say, ooh, uh it was stronger in taste. It was uh it was different, even though in my opinion it was better. But if you're not used to that, uh conventionally, you know, you you go back to uh to the the taste that you are used to and don't find the other one that attractive. All right, well, chef, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.
+
+[59:26] Uh it's been a pleasure by the book, The Art of the Chicken, and on the way out, can you describe the Jacques Papin Foundation and where they can go to join and what you do there? Well, the JPF, the Jacques Pepin Foundation was created by my son in law uh Raleigh with a chef, but he also had a PhD teach at uh Johnson and Well and at Boston University as well. And my daughter, and uh, you know, I have all of those shows that I've done through years. So at some point, two years ago, he said, who do you want to teach now? And I thought that uh people who have been a bit disinfluencialized by life, like people who come out of jail or homeless people, or uh, you know, um even veterans or former drug addicts, uh, people like this.
+
+[1:00:14] So we teach people like that, usually through community kitchen. I was in Boston teaching that last week. I was in New York uh a couple of months ago teaching in another school. So those community kitchen usually are not, you know, only young people, 20, 30, 40, even 50 years old. And then we try to bring people, give them um, you know, uh a new live-on life if you want by teaching them some of the principle of cooking so that they can reintegrate the the workforce and work in a restaurant, and we need people like this too.
+
+[1:00:50] So it's been quite uh successful. And by the way, thank you for doing a video for us. You did a video for uh for uh the series of chefs, right? That uh we have part of the the Jacques Pepin Foundation. So thank you for that.
+
+[1:01:04] Oh, yeah. I based it on your uh old grapefruit granite recipe. Oh, you did, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh well, anyway, it was a it was a great honor, Chef.
+
+[1:01:14] Thanks for coming on. Everyone, check out the JPF Foundation and the good work they're doing. Check out the art of the chicken, cooking issues. Thank you.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, the Rockefeller Center, New Stand Studios, joined as usual with uh John here in the booth behind me. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yes.
+
+[0:23] Yes. Got uh Joe rocking the panels. Joe Hazen, what's up? Hey, how are you guys? Happy holidays.
+
+[0:28] And happy holidays to you as well. Uh live in Vancouver Island, not Vancouver. We got Quinn. How are you doing, Quinn? Hey, I'm doing good.
+
+[0:38] Good, good. And uh together again in Los Angeles, we have Jackie Molecules and Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. What's up, guys? Hi. Hey.
+
+[0:48] Hello. Hey, and uh, we're gonna go back to our normal format. Like last week we had Jacques Papin on, and we were gonna do our like introduce our guest at the beginning and shoot the breeze like we've been doing. And his assistant was like, he'll hate that. But this week, she's like, she's like, he doesn't want to hear more than one person talk at once.
+
+[1:07] We're like, okay. But this week's not like that. So uh our special guest today is Tanya Hopkins. How you doing? Food the food grill.
+
+[1:13] Uh you know, there's a food grill. We're gonna talk a lot more about what you know, what she does in general, but welcome to the show. First time on. Thank you for having me here. Yeah.
+
+[1:20] All right, so now this is the part of the show where we just shoot the breeze about what happened last week or whatever. In the world, in life and life, in food. So who's uh who's got who's got something who's got something good? Who's got John? You got something?
+
+[1:33] Food wise? Foodwise no. I heard that so this is gonna be John's first year as uh like the the chef running a restaurant, all right? Oh, right. Congratulations.
+
+[1:49] Temperance, Temperance wine bar. And uh everyone should go. Uh, even though I have not gone since he took it over. Because well known, I'm a bad person. Nastasia's gone multiple times.
+
+[2:02] Multiple times. And you enjoyed it, right, Stas? Yeah. I thought it was great. I wish you would go, Dave.
+
+[2:09] I was gonna try to go, oh, whatever, man. Jesus. Anyway, uh so my point being though is he fell into the trap of not closing the place on New Year's Eve or Christmas Eve, but also not selling it out. Uh oh. So now just gonna be there.
+
+[2:26] Oh, it's a loop of in majority. Yeah. It's not my decision to make, unfortunately. It's the owner's. So have to abide.
+
+[2:38] Yeah. Live and learn. Well, I hope that on New Year's Eve, at least, John, that you do not come by your name honestly in the back of house. And after you make like however many canaps you gotta make for the revelers, that you just start pounding champagne. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[2:54] Yeah. At least there's that access to cases of champagne. Yes, especially. I would hope so. What about uh what about over there in LA?
+
+[3:03] Any uh any interesting food products, food things, non food, anything going on in Los Angeles that I should be aware of? We had an absolutely terrible meal at some bar. I had the worst burger maybe I've ever had. Oh, talk to me about how bad your burger was. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
+
+[3:20] Describe the burger, describe it, please. Okay. I ordered medium rare, right? Okay, okay. How thick is the burger?
+
+[3:27] How thick is the burger? That makes a difference. Maybe an inch? So like an inch, maybe? Thick burger.
+
+[3:35] Okay. No. Well, no, it's maybe less than an inch thin. You're not gonna get medium rare. No, it was gray.
+
+[3:44] You know. Okay, okay. It was gray. Right. It tasted like defrosted freezer ice.
+
+[3:51] It was like it tasted like water. Nice. Yeah. Nice. It's really, really bad.
+
+[3:56] And I have a pretty like low bar for a bar burger. And I'm not expecting the world out of it. No. It takes a lot for me to be like this bar burger is terrible. Now now, uh, did you what what did it have uh cheese on it?
+
+[4:10] It did. It was uh cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onion. Yeah. And still no flavor, huh? It was just a very sad looking burger.
+
+[4:19] I think Seth took a picture of it, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll put it in, I'll put it in the Discord. Yeah, put it in the Discord. Put that put that stuff out there.
+
+[4:26] I want to see Jack's sad, sad, sad burger. There is something incredibly sad. I remember when uh I used to occasionally be a uh judge on at the finals at the French Culinary Institute back when that existed. Yeah. And it was always like interesting when students somehow simultaneously over and undercooked it.
+
+[4:47] You know what I'm saying? Come on. It's well, well, yeah, you cook the hell out of the inside. You you hammer the hell out of the inside, but the outside still doesn't have a like any sort of crust on it, and yet it's not moist. It's not like you steamed it.
+
+[4:59] It's dry on the outside, it's just there's no crust. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And the inside is uh the inside is a I have a new I have a new burger theory recently. You know how everyone's like all about crust now, all about smash, all about crust, all about thin, and they double up on patty.
+
+[5:13] That's like you know, whatever every five years, whatever it changes, whatever. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I do believe though, that you need to use a more flavorful meat if you're gonna use a thick patty. Because you do get a lot of that inside burger.
+
+[5:27] I like, I like a nice flavorful meat. You know who makes a good meat? Our friends, uh Edwards Age Meat. They do make their hamburger meat. Now that I had their hamburger meat, I don't know that I co-signed his name for it, Beef Crack.
+
+[5:40] It's a little bit, it's a little bit not appetizing. Well, in my opinion. I'm not like uh you know, like as someone who was a kid in the 80s, like I never understood crack becoming something that you want that was like a positive attribute. Except for the addicts. Right, but that's the whole point.
+
+[6:00] In other words, like, in other words, like I was never for crack as a positive attribute. My brain was on the whole other definition of crack. I didn't even know that's what I always assume that's what it was. I think it's the addictive nature to it. No, no, no.
+
+[6:15] The body part known as Oh, the butt crack. Yeah, beef crack. Like the didn't even enter my own. Thank you. And then, like, even worse, was there any sauce on the sad little burger?
+
+[6:29] Because like any special sauce? Oh. No. Was it a sauce jazz? Yeah, an unsalted sauce.
+
+[6:36] That's the other thing. Like, if a burger doesn't have salt on the outside, what is it? It's horrible. You know what? What about places that serve bar food but don't put salt out?
+
+[6:46] Well, because usually it's already salty enough. It's already trust. Yeah, but I don't trust the food. I don't trust people. Are you saying you trust people, Tanya?
+
+[6:57] Not really. You know this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I want to trust people.
+
+[7:01] That's my first move until, you know. Yeah. They immediately give me reason not to. Yeah. By tasting it.
+
+[7:07] Yeah. So, Stas, you were also there. Yeah, I was there. What did you want? Uh baked baked quesadilla.
+
+[7:17] Baked quesadilla. How was that? It was not so good. It was a bad left. What?
+
+[7:25] Oh, yeah. And then we got then we got 10 $10 pretzel bites that were like these little soft pretzel squares that looked like they were microwaved and it was just bad. But the confusing part is it was like a nice room in a nice part of LA. Yeah, you wouldn't think it would be this bad. It was very confusing.
+
+[7:43] Wow. Oh, LA usually has really good food. That's to me, it's underrated. Yeah, so but the company was God, right? You're like, it's we had a good time together.
+
+[7:55] That's all that matters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
+
+[7:58] I mean, look, I have to say this. Like, it like at this point in my life, like, I love like good food, but like if the food is solid and the company is good and the atmosphere's okay and the and the servers aren't like actively making me angry, like by being mean to me or like actively not bringing me like the one thing that's gonna make the food taste good when it tastes like garbage now. Like if that's not happening, I don't it it's all fine, but like if it sounds as bad as what you had, it's kind of like that's a whole nother level. But was it bad enough to be funny? Yeah, it was, it was, it was.
+
+[8:32] It was the presentation was really funny too. It was just a sad burger on a plate with nothing else on it. Uh that's kind of a win then. That's kind of a win. I've been to places I would agree.
+
+[8:42] Yeah. I've been to places that were so bad that it was hilarious until the bill came. And then I'm like, oh yeah, that kind of happened to us too. Yeah, that's true. All right.
+
+[8:54] What about you, Quinn. You got any good food stuff going? What about your did you taste your fancy olive? So, Quinn, I don't know if you're gonna mention this, Quinn. I don't know if I'm blowing your your world up here, but apparently, I did not know this.
+
+[9:05] Quinn, where is your the fancy olive oil that you have from? So, off of Vancouver Island, there's an even smaller island called Salt Spring Island. And apparently they have an olive grove there. And there's a company that makes very expensive olive oil. But like how many bottles they make a year?
+
+[9:31] Like three. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you have one at the end. A few hundred.
+
+[9:37] Now, last time I spoke to you about it, you hadn't tasted it. I uh I put a call in to Captain Oily, Nick Coleman. He's like, I've heard about it. I want to taste it. I want some of this oil.
+
+[9:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he doesn't talk like that, but yeah, but yes. But like for the purposes of storming. So yeah, you need to talk like this. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
+
+[9:53] So uh so what does it taste like, Quinn? How is it? I haven't tried it yet. What the hell, man? Come on, Quinn, keeping it around the house.
+
+[10:02] It's it's a perishable item, my friend. I know, I know. Drizzle, start drizzling on anything. Yeah, yeah. Toothbrush.
+
+[10:11] I mean I'm I'm you know, it's not, it's not uh it's it's not gold bricks. You don't keep it. You you eat it. By next week, it'll be tasted next week. All right, so next week we have no tangent Tuesday, and Quinn will tell us about his uh his uh greasy, his greasy, greasy tastes.
+
+[10:31] And uh John, you wanna uh talk about uh joining the Patreon who's coming up? Yeah, well, before I mean, and mentioning that, uh, any Christmas related questions need to be got in by next Tuesday, and the way to make sure that Dave answers those on a no tangent Tuesday is to become a member at patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh you get a bunch of great benefits with that, like joining the Discord, interact with a lot of our members. You get discounts at Kitchen Arts and Letters, discounts from some of the people that we have on the show. Um, yeah, different membership levels.
+
+[11:00] So give it a join and uh get your questions in. Yeah, and if you're listening live, call in too 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. All right, so uh I have a little food. I have a little food stuff this week.
+
+[11:14] I am now so like are you like Tanya, are you a mixer person? Do you like mixers? Like not like parties, like like physical machines mixers. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Like stand mixers.
+
+[11:25] You know, I'm not that fancy. I'm a great cook, but I'm like old school. But you know, I can appreciate it if if it's required. Why? Well, I I I got a new mixer that's okay, okay.
+
+[11:34] And you want to talk about it? And you'll talk a little bit, a little bit. So, like, so I grew up KitchenAid, right? So my mom had like from like I think maybe she was like giving it when I I don't remember her without it. Right.
+
+[11:47] So it had to be like somewhere. It was before we moved to New Jersey, so it was before 1973 or four, right? That weird yellow 70s yellow. Oh, I that mustardy yellow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[12:00] Like light mustard, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh old tilt, the tilt head one. You know what I mean? Not like the one where you crank the bowl up and down, the one that's like smaller that you everyone used to have in the bowl, like clicks and snaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[12:12] They made the it was well, those were well made. Yeah, I mean she she used that thing up until like 2010 or something like this. And the and it still worked fine. It's just, you know, whatever. They made money.
+
+[12:21] So that she got a new one eventually. I don't know. Isn't it called TV Yellow? It's called TV Yellow? I believe it's called TV Yellow.
+
+[12:28] Because Because yellow was one of the only colors that actually popped on black and white television. Oh I know that uh the Lone Ranger shirt was light blue, not white, because light blue looks whiter than white does on black and white TV. Or maybe it's maybe it's like the way that the cameras registered. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[12:47] I don't know anyways. Back to TV. TV yellow uh Kitchen Aid. Yeah, for all of you that care. Really, really bad color gamut on old school TVs.
+
+[12:54] I remember how crappy TV was. But I watched the hell out of it. Well, there's a lot of ta channels today making money playing all that old nostalgic stuff. So how crappy was it, Dave? I mean I mean, you know, it's what TV was TV, man.
+
+[13:14] Did I need to see every Gilligan's Island 25 times? Need is the is a debate. Yeah, I but we did. I you know. Yeah, like the shows that were like what what what uh what what TV market did you watch when you were a kid?
+
+[13:32] Philadelphia. Oh major metro South South Jersey. Okay. But you didn't get you didn't get 11. Did you get Channel 9 W R that making it?
+
+[13:42] They were like the later ones to Yeah. Yeah. Because it was like UHF and VHF and Yeah. I kind of, yeah. Yeah, I was always like the my memory in the New York market.
+
+[13:53] So kids watched Channel 5, which became Fox Later, and Channel 11, which was WPIX. And so it was all the shows that were on those two things. So like Scooby-Doo, What's Happening, you know, Gilligan's Island. Gilligan's Island, Flintstones, maybe. Yeah, that came on at like five, though.
+
+[14:10] Okay. What what time are you talking about right now? I mean, like, I would, as soon as I got home from school, I would turn on my only friend the television set. Yeah. And have that thing going.
+
+[14:20] Xers, the the life of the ex, the Gen X growing up. Yeah. Yeah. And I was an only child until I was like uh 16. So like Oh my god, me too.
+
+[14:29] Oh, really nice, yeah. What? TV, my best and only friend. Same. Yeah.
+
+[14:32] Same. Yeah. Here we are. Yeah. Fat a lot of good that did us.
+
+[14:36] Anyway, uh, so anyway, so I grew up Kitchen Aid. Right. Right, right. I'm like back to kitchen. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[14:42] This is how this is how we work here. So I grew up kitchen aid. And uh the new ones, like they're really powerful and they're really big, but they really, really piss me off. Like they throw flour everywhere. Like uh last year, so Booker, my my older son Booker, he like started liking to make cakes.
+
+[14:57] He would make all of these freaking cakes out of the milk bar cookbook, like uh all these tozy cakes, he would make these things. But then whenever he make icing, because he does not care, he's autistic, he does not care. So he'll just put all the powdered sugar into the kitchen aid and go, boom! And then it's really fun for him, I would I would think it sounds fun. I mean, how much fun was it cleaning it up?
+
+[15:20] First of all, my kitchen is like just like just equipment everywhere, stuff everywhere. And like all kinds of nooks and crannies and stuff and like open storage, right? Because my which my wife hates, she's an architect. I'm like, I'm not gonna open a door to get a bowl. I'm not gonna do it.
+
+[15:37] I got a bowl I'm using all the time. And also all my bowls same size, right? So I'm like, I'm like, I have a stack of bowls all the same size, and then another stack of bowls, all a different sizes. Because I'm not about lifting one bowl to get the other bowl. No.
+
+[15:51] No. That's not you I hear you, man. Yeah. So, anyways, so he puts the powdered sugar in, goes, boom, and like, skoosh. It like, it like uh volcano, like a powdered sugar volcano.
+
+[16:02] Or like a like a World War I like war movie, like a mine, like boom, just like powdered sugar everywhere. And I was like, I hate this. I was like, I I like legitimately hate this. And also the new kitchen aids, and for those of you that like have Kitchen Aids at home, Kitchen Aids fine piece of equipment. Uh the new Kitchen Aids, right?
+
+[16:23] The none of the beaters touch the bottom of the bowl. Yeah. Did they used to? Yes. In the 70s, they worked, the small one, but the bigger ones.
+
+[16:31] I can remember that clicking, that noise. Yeah. But now, right? They're like, but there's an adjustment. There's an adjustment screw that you can make, but you can't make the bowl go up far enough.
+
+[16:40] So everyone has these fancy kitchen aids. And what do we all do? We grab the freaking bowl with our hand and we like jam it up into the beater to get good contact. Why? And then, God forbid, you make like uh a stiff dough like a pasta dough, right?
+
+[16:57] Mm-hmm. You can't walk away from that thing because kitchen aids, you know, much like you know, much like your son's about to be uh Joe, like to walk. And then they're like right off the counter. A kitchen aid will walk right off the counter. Uh anyway.
+
+[17:14] What's the moral of the story, Dave? I moved to Bosch, which is German for a couple of years. Oh, okay, different brand. Different brand. So there's three, but everyone here only uses Kitchen Aid, right?
+
+[17:23] But in Europe, there's two others, right? And some uh in the US, right? Bosch, which I liked for a couple years, started to take me off for different reasons I won't get into. I've just moved, I've gone Swedish. Oh, oh.
+
+[17:35] And karstrum. And so far, I really like it. Are the have the clouds open or the harps playing or the angels singing? I only just got it, but I really like it. I really like it.
+
+[17:45] So far, no mess. Open bowl. You can stick your hand in it without getting your hand mangled because of the way it operates. It rotates the bowl. Oh.
+
+[17:53] It rotates the bowl. But do we have contact? Is there contact? There is three, two, one contact if you watch that show growing up. I'm talking about the series.
+
+[18:02] Yeah, no, it's it's good. Uh I know more to report on later, but yeah, yeah. But I was gonna say the moral of the story, new isn't always better, is it? Right. Well, the latest greatest.
+
+[18:11] This Swedish one, they've been making it the same exact design since 1940. Since 1940. They just you just made my point. Yeah. Because you kept the the word you kept saying with the KitchenAid, the new, the new, yeah, the new one, and it's like, but the moral of the story is new ain't always better.
+
+[18:25] Right. Well, yeah. But I mean, that's just you know, I know that's like anti-capitalist of me and anti-consumerist of me, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah. Well, the only thing problem with this old ones is that the is that everyone everyone wants to be semi-pro at home, so they make larger batches of things.
+
+[18:43] They think they want to be semi-pro. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so that's my that's my food story of the week. So it's not even food story, it's equipment story. Okay.
+
+[18:52] Equipment to make food. Yeah. Also, I got punked into buying a I got punked into buying a West Bend potato chip factory by one of our listeners. I want one of those, I think. See, I'm I'm I just got punked.
+
+[19:07] It just sounds great. So it was made in the 90s, like 1993, right? And and the engineers must have been just like high, right? Because it's it's a machine. Who needs it?
+
+[19:20] It's a machine like roughly the size of a toaster, yeah. And you put like two cups of oil into it, and then get this. It has a chute on the top, and you you stick a just a just a potato one potato into the chute. One potato, not two potatoes. I mean, if you wait.
+
+[19:36] And then you sit there and it slices the potato, drops the potato in the oil, moves the thing around, then lifts it and like dumps it out of a chute. But get this four chips at a time. Okay. But it keeps doing it. Okay, I was gonna say, but if the intervals, if it's like, yeah, and then you end up with however many chips, one potato.
+
+[19:56] Yeah, yeah. And then you see you stick another one in top, but I was like, this is the nuttiest thing ever. So I got one. Is it faster than running to the corner store to get a bag of chips? Oh, hell no.
+
+[20:05] No, no, no, no. Well, but I mean, it like the principle of it's interesting because um, you know, honestly, like the problem people have with potato chips is they put too too many in, and then the temperature drops, which actually theoretically shouldn't be a problem, but you need your temperature regulation just right so that you get all the moisture out before they burn. Anyway, so like we'll see whether it's any good. The problem with it is, Tanya, that it has no mechanism for salting it. Well then Right.
+
+[20:33] So the thing is like, what am I? Because I need to be salted hot. Wait, wait, but also what am I supposed to do? Yeah, supposed to salt every four chips, salt every four chips? You're supposed to be on the ready with a little ramekin of you know, chef salt.
+
+[20:45] You do the the chef salt thing. That's what you're supposed to do. It's also I saw some videos, they're loud. They're like four chips. Uh like if I ever have a party again, if I ever do a party again, we'll just have it out there running.
+
+[21:01] You don't hire a chip steward or chip facilitator. But it's yeah, it's like 30 or 40 levels below. Uh you ever watch the old Belshaw donut robots, like the Mark Four Donut Robot? That's that I have. You ever go to like a you remember you know you go to like um you you go to like uh a pick your own joint and they have like those apple cider donuts, they have a little machine going chub boom chub boom chub boom chub boom chip boom if you say so.
+
+[21:22] Anyway, so like they make all different lengths, right? But the the one that I've always wanted, they make one I think that runs off of a 110 outlet. It's about yay big, so like a yard and a yard, yard and a half long, about you know, meter and a half for you Euro folk and uh or everywhere else in here. Everywhere and it's like a long like oil trough with uh with a donut doser, like a plunger thing, and it just sits there and goes boom boom boom mm-mm and puts those little apple cider donuty things. Donut holes or like actual donuts?
+
+[21:52] No, like the like well, they make ones that'll do full size, but usually the these ones do the minis, like a hole in the donut, like I remember the donut? Yes, yeah, yeah, like that size. And so like, and then like they float along the oil on this little conveyor, and then the conveyor has like um like a little like a little trough that flips and it flips the donut in the oil and then keeps conveying it and then lifts it up on a conveyor and then drops it into where they're dry, and then you just keep eating the keep eating the donuts. But where's the glaze? Where's the powdered sugar?
+
+[22:22] Where's that step? That again, you just need to do that. So, like what some people would do, they build a like a rotary carousel that comes off of it, but it's more money, right? That comes off of it, and then they sometimes they have like powdering or glazing units off the edge of that. But uh, Jason Rhodes, the artist back in the in the 90s, he put one into a uh uh an art exhibit once.
+
+[22:47] Oh. And at that Whitney Biennial. And I went to the Whitney Biennial, you know, because I used to be in art, right? That was my thing. Yeah, you remember uh Rhodes uh John?
+
+[22:55] John was a former art professor. Who knew? Yeah. There's no one. Remember Jason Ross really no end to your collective talents here in this room.
+
+[23:02] I show up at the Whitney Biennial and he has all these donuts with this donut machine. And I was like I was like I I was like I was like listen if you're doing this and your art is about this, I'm gonna eat this donut. And I ate one. Yeah. It was stale stale.
+
+[23:21] It was art. Well but the whole point like like as someone who's like in the art business at the time I was like the statement he's making the idea that it's precious and that I can't eat this donut is absurd. You know it's on its face absurd. I want edible food that's good in a museum whether it's art or not especially if it's art. Yeah yeah.
+
+[23:42] All right so actually so that uh that brings us to uh actual topics that we're supposed to be discussing today. Uh so I was trying to remember where I first met you. Did I meet you at the French culinary or was it one of the I think I met you before we ever were doing Mofad events at the French culinary because you used to do stuff at the French culinary didn't you? I did. Oh my goodness were you at one of those ridiculous crack of dawn meeting morning meetings we used to have to plan the fundraisers and the events to raise money for scholarships for students.
+
+[24:11] I don't remember I used to do whatever they told me to do. Goodness gracious. Yeah my friend and colleague Heather Johnston who owns Goodwine a food lovers wine shop Buxlo Brooklyn 327 Fifth Avenue between third and four wait between third and four streets yes uh we uh she she's uh an alum and I don't know. We rope each other into things all the time. I rope her into like Mofad needs wine for the thing.
+
+[24:38] Which we do, we always do. She wrote me in for this uh the French culinary needs people to help with the thing. But I'm not a mourning person, and we would had to go to these meetings at like I'm not I'm not exaggerating. Somewhere between 6 and 8 a.m. Like at the French Culinary Institute, and I was, you know, getting my espresso injected.
+
+[24:58] And but we we would sit around the table, and like everybody's face is a blur right now. Why? Because not a morning person. So you might have been sitting across from me at one of those. We might have met there.
+
+[25:09] I my memory is of meeting you on Bayart Street when you guys had the physical location the um in Williamsburg. Yeah. Yeah. Well, kind of Williamsburg. Oh, it wasn't really Williamsburg.
+
+[25:22] I mean, was it Williamsburg? Was it Green Point? Was it in between Williamsburg adjacent? We had Williams Point. Greensburg.
+
+[25:29] Okay. Yeah, yeah. Who knew? It was kind of like nobody's neighborhood. It was right on the edge.
+
+[25:33] Nobody's neighborhood. No, yeah. Unless you were skateboarder, in which case it was the place. Skateboard Central. There's a huge skate park right across from us.
+
+[25:42] That should be the name of the place, skateboard central. Yeah. If we had started the museum of skateboarding, oh my God. That would have been like, yeah, the place. Right, John?
+
+[25:50] Yeah, that's true. Yeah. True. Yeah. We're there all the time.
+
+[25:54] Yeah. Uh all right. So your social media moniker is uh and then of course we were working a lot together on the African slash American thing, which we'll get to. Fast forward. Yeah, fast forward.
+
+[26:06] So, like, but your your social uh media moniker is the food grio. Why don't you describe what the heck that means? Okay, all right. Thank you. Because people read that the food grio, G-R-I-O-T, and they're like, Griot, uh G Riot.
+
+[26:25] G Riot. And I'm like, the T is silent, first of all. It's uh Grio is a West African patois, creole French informed word that means storyteller, raconteur, historian, poet, musician, many things. I'm I don't the thing that appealed to me about the name is storyteller, um, keeper of information, transfer of that wisdom, making sure that things get carried from one generation to the next. And, you know, just the things I would observe in African American culture, American food culture, black food culture.
+
+[27:09] I was like, stuff is getting lost, and I we have to do something about it. And uh, you know, and also narratives, you know, being written back into the story, like it's the storytelling aspect of it, the history part of it, and the importance of making sure that um it gets transferred and continues. So I and because most African Americans, um, particularly in uh North America, African Americans have DNA from West Africa. Like if we trace our origin and ancestry, it's coming from what is present day Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, like, you know, uh, and so, and that's where this word uh comes from, and it's a word that's popular in those different nations that weren't necessarily those nations back when the transatlantic slave trade started. Anyway, that's my long answer.
+
+[28:02] De jour. I've I never answered that question the same. Well, good. That meant people have to listen to multiple interviews to get all of the different uh aspects of it. The challenge though is I, you know, I want it to be like the food and drink Grio, but that's a lot of characters for a handle, right?
+
+[28:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because like I'm half liquid. I'm I'm I'm as much liquid as I am solids. Yeah, a lot of the stuff that you like a lot of the consulting work you do, right? Is is cocktail-based, rum-based, cocktail base, liquid base, liquid.
+
+[28:30] All the all the boozes in search of hooch. Yeah, I did like a whole that's another one. Someone get that right now. Go on Instagram, get in search of hooch. Right.
+
+[28:41] Hooch searcher. Sounds a little dirty. Well, you know, the it could work though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could work because of that reason.
+
+[28:48] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh yeah. So I'm the great granddaughter of a speakeasy owner. I read that on your bio. Crazy.
+
+[28:54] Like uh, did you did you ever get to meet her? Yeah. Yeah. She was born like in 1900. She was an amazing cook.
+
+[29:02] And um, and she's the she was the oldest of like 13 children, and the last one born in the county, uh the Maryland County that where the tobacco plantations were where our ancestors um for centuries, like since the early 1700s. Michael Tweedy, another mutual friend of ours, helped me to um trace to we're back to like, I don't know, somewhere around 1730s, um, this one particular area. So my great grandmother was the last person born there before the migration, the great migration from that upper south into New Jersey and Philadelphia. Um But is your food culture growing up still that kind of mid-Atlantic Maryland? Absolutely.
+
+[29:49] So talk to me about Maryland beaten biscuits. What do you want to know? I don't know. Like make-beat who beat the biscuits. Can we make some?
+
+[29:56] Do they can they taste good? The last manufacturer stopped making um 10 years ago, I think, or something like this. Like the last put like like cottage industry group of people. I've I've never I've tried to make beaten biscuits, but they probably suck, and I don't have a target because I didn't grow up eating them. So I don't know whether the ones I'm making are any good or not.
+
+[30:14] Ah, there you know. There you go. Do you like them? I mean, here's the thing. As opposed to a deep southern beaten biscuit.
+
+[30:21] Full disclosure, I can't even eat that many biscuits. Turns out I have a modern wheat issue. Oh. Yeah. Not celiac, but you know, like I'm not a biscuit connoisseur.
+
+[30:34] My friend Carla, who I'm gonna see after this, you might know Jeff Carlaha. She is a biscuit expert connoisseur. Um, and she makes amazing biscuits. She's even made me some amazing gluten-free biscuits that taste delicious. So sorry, Dave, I can see the disappointment in your eyes that I'm not gonna be able to do.
+
+[30:53] I just want like someone to help me out. I 3D printed a biscuit docker to try to get the right shape on the freaking because you know you gotta beat them, form them, dock them, cook them. That sounds like a eat them. Popsaw beat them. Yeah.
+
+[31:11] Beat them, form them, dock them. Uh-huh. I don't know. I don't know. Print them.
+
+[31:15] You gotta print them. Print them. Uh so what else from Maryland? What else, what else? Like, give me some more mid-Alttic.
+
+[31:20] Because I don't really want to tie my family, like my my dad's whole side of the family is uh Baltimore. But Balomo. Right. Like he went to uh he went to Polly uh and you know, whatever, Glen Burney. They ended up moving out to Glen Burney, whatever.
+
+[31:33] But the point being, you know, when I was a kid, my grandparents lived in Columbia. So like that area, right? But uh I don't really know much about the food culture there other than like a big thing. It's the birthplace, it's the birthplace of American cuisine, sir. I mean, arguably that whole Chesapeake Bay area, the so that's the Maryland side.
+
+[31:51] The other part of my family is the Virginia side. So between Virginia and Maryland and all that history there, uh, it's always interesting to me that it's never quite I serve it up as such, but it's never quite been served up as the important region that it is. And when I first got into culinary history, I was going into the deep south, down into Mississippi to the Southern Foodways conferences and you know, trying to rediscover myself and my people and my culture and my food. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is not the origin point.
+
+[32:22] This is later along the timeline in terms of of um uh the this the real to me, the essence and significance, the profound impact that Southern cuisine has had on um the development of fine dining in America, particularly coming out of the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Virginia. We're talking um the star person being, you know, coming out of Monticello, Chef James Hemings. Right. And you s you were the one of the co-founders of the of the James Heming Foundation. James Hemming Society.
+
+[32:57] It was originally the foundation, now society, who influences Edna Lewis, Chef Edna Lewis, a century and a half later, born in a neighboring county. Right. Really? I did not know that. Yes.
+
+[33:08] So her people are descendants of like the Madison um plantation area, whereas the Hemings are part of the m the Jefferson. And so that's fascinating, right? How someone born in 1765 influences someone born in what year was that in a Lewis Bourne? She comes to ne to New York in the 30s. I think she was born in like 1916.
+
+[33:30] Um, whatever that math is, 1916 take with but her style, this this like Virginian French fusion style is directly a result of the ripple effect effect of James's culinary education and training that he did of the Monticello chefs and the neighboring um plantation chefs that also were impacted by that style that defines that region and then works its way north as restaurants become effective. Right. Well, that you know, so uh I know like a big part of you know when we we talk about the scholarship, and I'm gonna get to independent scholarship in a minute because I remember one time we were out at drinks and talking about how like independent scholars get the get the shaft. Out there without a net man. I'm sitting here listening, taking notes to you guys as Patreon uh tips.
+
+[34:23] I'm like, oh no to self. I need to do that. I remember you're like you were like one. So like it's it's nice if people want to hear what I had to say, but how about getting paid somehow? Yeah, how about like how about you know it's uh because honorarium is like code word for here's five dollars or a hundred dollars, which is equivalent to five dollars today.
+
+[34:41] But yeah, yeah. Well, when John was an adjunct, he's saying it's not much better, like even if you're like formally, you know, within the uh supposedly like the you know, the embrace of academia, you're still hosed, right? I was in the union and everything's $2,400 a class for a whole semester. What? Yeah.
+
+[35:00] $2,400 for the semester. For the semester. One of one of my classes, I had 100 students. But John that grading. John, you get the imprimatur of the university.
+
+[35:09] Yeah, yeah. Isn't that its ownerable? It was a privilege. And a privilege. Yep.
+
+[35:14] Too bad we don't live uh hydroponically or by you know solar power. I'm like, I'd like to eat some of the food that I talk about. So get this. So John's like, I'm being exploited here. I'm gonna go work for the museum.
+
+[35:29] And then he's like, he's like, he's like, and then he's like, oh, I'm gonna go work for Booker Grandes. And he's like, oh, and then after that, he's like, you know what? I'm gonna become a chef. Joke is on me, huh? John knows how to go with a big box.
+
+[35:44] Yeah. Oh, man. Never thought about it that way. Awesome. Go me.
+
+[35:51] Okay, man. We're in the same sandbox. So you are not alone. Yeah. Oh my God.
+
+[35:57] Okay. Uh so, but uh, I know like uh one of the subjects that you know was interesting when we were first sitting around trying to figure out what the African slash American exhibit was going to be, is this whole fact that all of the kind of professional cooks, right? Or most of the professional cooks, and like a lot of where that comes from, like high-end American cooking hospitality, hotels, catering, all black, you know? And it's like somehow when cooking became cool, that got written out. When it became an actual profession with prestige and honor and salary, whatever, compensation celebrity compensated celebrity status because there are early chefs, America's uh first celebrity chefs, which I don't like to use that term applied to enslaved people who are have no agency for themselves.
+
+[36:53] Oh, they were celebrity chefs, because that kind of makes us think that, oh hell, cool. Like, no, but they were the most famous, you know, well known were uh James Hemings, Chef James Hemings and Chef Um Hercules Posey, owned by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned uh James Hemings until James Hemings negotiated for his freedom. He he he was involved in his own emancipation, which happened in 1796. And then like what but uh no one knows exactly what happened to him after that, right? Or like it's yeah, it's a mystery.
+
+[37:32] Yeah, they say the story goes that he it was death by suicide, but Chef Ashbell McElveen, the founder of James Heming Society and the living foremost expert on um the details, the research of James Life, who, you know, in Paris, he's done research in Paris and here and the States for for years, he's got other theories. He doesn't believe it was suicide. And so let's trace that like a little bit further because uh, you know, I wish uh I wish I uh you know knew about or could have gone to this to this dinner. So like really rich northern industrialists all used to hang out in Saratoga Springs. Right.
+
+[38:12] And the people doing the cooking there, also black folks. And there's been a couple of good scholarly works on kind of the hospitality industry in Saratoga in the in the 1800s. But someone who lived in Saratoga and then came down to cook, who I didn't even know about, uh and and Northup, you know, then you do this whole meal, re you know, reconstructing something actually in the mansion up in uh right, you know, I used to like my mom was is uh was a doctor at uh Columbia. I was like two blocks from the Jumel Man Mansion growing up, I spent at 168th Street and the hospital, like chilling whenever my mom was doing stuff. And like I never even went over to that mansion.
+
+[38:54] I never even saw it. And so you do this dinner reconstructing like a meal that she would have cooked because she was a like professional cook, like sometimes in Saratoga and sometimes there. And so we all, you know, we hear obviously, you know, 12 years a slave, blah blah blah. She was she was the one left behind to do the work when he got stolen when he was a few. Well, she was doing she was already doing that.
+
+[39:14] He that's part of he he is uh abducted, stolen um while she's away. She's she's a highly sought-after, very highly skilled uh technique chef. I don't know if they would have called this black woman a chef in the early 1800s. Uh, but she was in high demand for, you know, high up people in government and business. And it was the season that that she was, you know, had to do these fancy estate dinners and things, and and he was a fiddler and a carpenter.
+
+[39:46] He had like they had multiple, they all they worked, they both worked. She had always worked. And he was kidnapped when it eighteen forties, right? Somewhere around there. So in that region, in that area.
+
+[39:54] Yeah, because his book comes out in 1852. Um, so yeah, somewhere like yeah, late 30s, early 40s. But um, part of why she ends up cooking in the Jumel Mansion, the woman, um, what's her name? Madame somebody. Yeah, but uh which I didn't know this.
+
+[40:10] Turns out she married Aaron Burr. I yeah. Crazy. Crazy. There's so many dots to connect, like the layers.
+
+[40:16] Right. When he was old though, he was old. Old. It's like later. It's not like it's not earlier in Burr.
+
+[40:22] Well, I read like he had the he had the fancy pedigree, even though he had shot Hamilton, but she had the money. And so they thought it was like she had no pedigree, which is why she was like called herself Madame somebody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but she had the mansion. And yeah, Jumel was her first husband or one of the husbands.
+
+[40:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she was a regular in the Saratoga Springs and loved the food and the and and so forth and wanted that that level of cookery in her mansion for entertaining and dinner parties. And Ann Northup was desperate to try to play a role in trying to um find help her husband. So she being in New York City was advantageous to Anne to for different um abolitionists and advocate allies who were gonna help to find Solomon Northup. And um and so she comes with this woman to to live for a couple of years and cook in the mansion.
+
+[41:14] So when I found this research out, and then I was like, oh, the mansion is still there and it's going strong. They have a functioning kitchen. And like, you know, I was like, hey, I was like, hey, I just discovered all this research that I'm doing, and you know, any interest in recreating uh me. They were like, yes. I would have hoped that that would have been a uh ongoing thing.
+
+[41:36] I mean, it was people are still talking about this thing. But they only did it once, I would love to do it again. Invite me, I'll you know first of all, the tickets were cheap. Uh yeah, they were tickets were too cheap. They were too cheap.
+
+[41:47] It was a lot of work, a lot of work, man. It was 10 it was ten dollars. I looked it up. It was ten dollars to like go on the tour, which is like fundamentally free, right? And then it was sixty-five dollars if you wanted the like multi-course, five course wine paired, you know, soup to nuts and salad and cake.
+
+[42:04] Yeah. How was the how was the dinner that was a funny? It was delicious. And I actually we recruited some students from ICE, I believe, to help. I'll forgive you.
+
+[42:16] But the fact that we're talking about this, uh, and we could do things again in real life, everything doesn't have to be virtual. Let's do this. Let's do this, man. Let's make it happen. Sure.
+
+[42:26] But you know, I I don't know who's in charge of the mansion now. The, you know, it might be new new management. New people. New people we gotta make friends with. All right, let's just uh talk about something else uh before we get into the reason why I desperately wanted to have you on right now.
+
+[42:39] Okay, but wait, wait, wait. Did you know that the guy, potato chips, just to connect the dot to something earlier, and became this portal to all these amazing uh chefs and cooks. Uh the guy who invents the the the black chef guy who invents the American potato chip. Right. Have you done more research on that?
+
+[42:56] Because you told me that you were like still working on it like years ago. Like I don't know what the current theory of operation on the Saratoga potato chip is. Yeah, the black guy named George Crumb. Pun intended, his name is George Crumb, uh, in in the 1850s, uh, comes up with he's credited for creating the For popularize No from for making that. Well, okay, so what I heard was that there was a butthead guest.
+
+[43:22] Right. Who's like, not crispy, not crispy not thin enough, not crispy enough. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's the Saratoga, that's the Saratoga chip, right?
+
+[43:31] He like so the chef, Crum, is like, how about now? He's like, no. And every chef knows this eventually. Chef's like, F you. Right.
+
+[43:42] I'm gonna hammer these sons. Yeah. And then he's like, yeah, like. And he comes up with this like delicacy at the time that we now, you know, have as a snack food. There's a theory that it might have been, there's some people who are saying his sister was involved, or like there's a hidden black woman in the scene involved and helping him.
+
+[43:59] Is that why we didn't go harder on the story in the thing? Because I remember there being some sort of some kind of block or some kind of I don't remember what the block was. Well, there's just not the data. It's so you have to be like a detective. Like it's so hard to get to the bottom of a lot of these stories.
+
+[44:13] But you know, also histories were written out. Yeah, people just were not included. Yeah. Also, like for me, the personal, this is like, you know, personal in in museum in general and like origin stories in general, is that like most origin stories are at best embellished. It's like who made it who made it popular, who made it popular?
+
+[44:37] What's the group of people that's the group of people, not necessarily like the one authority? We have a way, right? Of doing that in this culture, like this one person. Right. And it's like, is it ever one person?
+
+[44:49] Because there are always there's always other you know what I mean? So like I always get like whenever whenever like something is traced back to an individual, I'm like, okay. You know what I mean? Like you're suspicious. A little bit, just because uh, you know, I I understand it, like, you know, I and obviously all of us like in the hospitality industry, we understand that to sell something you sell a person that people can understand and people go buy that, they buy the personality.
+
+[45:16] But it's never true and someone's getting hosed. You know what I mean? Like right. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
+
+[45:22] I don't know. I remember making potatoes just by hand. I didn't have your fancy contraption. Yeah. I was up at Molly O'Neill's uh she had used to have this uh incubator for food media people, and we're up there in Renssorville, New York, not too far from Saratoga.
+
+[45:36] And I got inspired to to make uh that was the you know, we all had to kind of do something that before we got out of the program. And I was like, I'm gonna make potato chips by hand. Yeah it was pretty good. Well so that what is your what is your do you have a technique for potato or do you want technique? All right.
+
+[45:52] Yeah. I mean I could I'm one of those intuitive I'm one of those old school come from a long line of professional cooks in America. And you just learn from watching and learning and multi-sensory and you know Edna Lewis talks about that when she writes recipes. They're kind of a yeah but I mean you know if I thought about it I could tell you some technique but make sure the oil's hot not too hot. Well yeah you don't want to burn like the look look look I want are you thin or are you thick?
+
+[46:18] You know uh what are you asking Dave? Chips. Okay. All right. Or crisps as those weirdos call it in the UK I know which came first the crisp or the chip I don't know.
+
+[46:30] Chip come on and a French fry in on what planet is a French fried chip. In in the UK planet in the England in for the Brits. Yeah but if you think about it why would that be a chip? It's not chip shaped. Exactly it's ridiculous.
+
+[46:44] Because they're their English is weird. Yeah I mean even like wood chips aren't shaped that way. Not like you know chips are chips. Yeah yeah yeah they're just trying to confuse us. Yeah it's unpleasant it's unpleasant yeah linguistic for it on purpose.
+
+[46:57] Yeah it's not any digress to me the issue is is so like I I've I've done so potatoes obviously have uh some sugar in them, right? Especially like the ones that we have we can't store them well enough to make sure that well like literal like sugar so that they they they get too dark. And so a lot of people don't like their potato chips too too dark. Is that from the sugar? Yeah.
+
+[47:20] I didn't know that. So it's like, so like one of the things you can do, you can soak them in some acid, and then they'll taste a little bit of acidic. Well, yeah, and it'll leach out some of the sugar. Okay, right, right, right. And so then you can you can cook them a little bit longer, make sure you get the water out without them getting too dark.
+
+[47:37] But so that I I ran all of these tests, right? All of them, all of them, all of them. And then I did the old school kettle where you're just like chop, chop, chap, chap, chip, chap, chop into the oil. And Dax is like, these ones taste more like potatoes. I'm like, like fried protection.
+
+[47:52] I'm not allowed to curse my. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas like he's like, when you taste them side by side, the ones that are just soaked don't have as much potato flavor because you soak that stuff out. Oh, because the put yeah, the flavor's gone. Yeah, I'm all about the flavor, man.
+
+[48:02] Yeah, don't take my flavor away from me. I like uh I like a thin chip. I'm just gonna be honest. I usually don't, I'm usually like I'm thick all the way, all the way. I'm consistent, you know.
+
+[48:12] I'm I'm a thick chick. But for the chips, I like a good thin chip. You ever have the actual Hawaiian? Like a little air bubble in the chip. Oh, yeah.
+
+[48:19] You ever have the actual Hawaiian Maui ones in like the glassing paper that like they they like they don't ship? Yeah, the ones that you gotta go to Maui. Yeah, yeah. I've never been to Maui, but I've had whenever someone goes, they bring them back for me. Oh, I'll bring that up.
+
+[48:31] They're very good. I wish I could make that chip. Those are good chips. I met some Hawaiian chefs recently at the beard house. Oh, yeah.
+
+[48:38] And um Leah and Wong wasn't there, was she? She's in Hawaii. You've been in Hawaii for a bunch of. No, I didn't meet her. But and my my family's on the West Coast, and we go to, you know, I I tag along to Hawaii.
+
+[48:48] I'll probably look them up. Maybe I'll I'll, you know, see if they can hook us up. Never been to Hawaii. Yeah. My wife was born there.
+
+[48:53] She hasn't been back yet. What? Uh huh. That's another conversation. Yeah.
+
+[48:57] Uh, all right, so uh a couple things before we get, we have a couple questions from the listeners we got to do, but I want to talk about you have a show every Sun every Sunday? Every Sunday. Every Sunday, savory and sweet on W-U-R-D, the word radio. Word radio. And that's out of Philly.
+
+[49:15] It's out of Philadelphia. Yeah. So uh now the sad thing is is that you they only put up clips. They don't put up the whole thing. I couldn't find the whole thing.
+
+[49:26] They usually they put up your chef's interviews. They do? Yeah. Okay. I mean good job looking out for your own.
+
+[49:34] If you're following the food, man, and you go to my Link Tree, I I post the most recent uh episode. The full one? Yeah. It's like a like a two-hour show or something. It's just a two-hour show.
+
+[49:44] It's about to be a one-hour show. Actually, as of this last Sunday, it's now a one-hour show. All right, so you want to say what the I mean, like again, I only got to listen to the chef interviews, but do you want to talk about what the what the show is about there? Or about the radio station in general? Sure.
+
+[49:58] Yeah. So W U R D, their tagline is progressive Black Talk Media. Philadelphia's Progressive Black Talk Media. It is one of the only 100% owned and operated, family-owned black talk stations in the nation. I believe there are maybe three.
+
+[50:14] It's the only one in the state of Pennsylvania. Um I live in New York, but I went to college there. It's a whole story. Uh and they have uh yours truly hosting their first ever, the first food show. And it turns out uh in the scheme of things, it is the first, you know, it's 2022, and black people are still like, I'm the first and only, uh the first uh what is the first day?
+
+[50:44] What am I what's my point? Uh weekly broadcast dedicated to food, history, and culture from a black perspective. Uh uh, but inclusively. I like to connect the dots to other cultures. And you you should come on my show.
+
+[50:56] Heying, you know? Okay. Sure. Yeah. But that's the my tagline is food history and culture.
+
+[51:02] And I talk with chefs, I talk with mixologists, I talk with food sciencey people. I just talk with, depends on the topic. I try to keep it like December is bartender appreciation month. Did you know? What?
+
+[51:13] I did what? What? Uh uh well, you know what? You know what you should do? You should go out to people's bars and appreciate them by giving them money.
+
+[51:21] By paying for just give don't even get a drink. Just give money. That's when you put the money on the bar and walk out. That's when we used to make all of our money. Oh, right.
+
+[51:28] You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's like uh, you know, and you're you're about to go real dry, you know, like you know, Jan Feb's never as good in this city summer's never as good because everyone leaves. Yeah, what's with the dry jam? I I caped the whole try of January.
+
+[51:43] But yeah, I gave you a shout out, you'll see it on the post. I was like, it's bartender appreciation, but I'm gonna talk to Dave Art. Appreciate him because that's one of your many roles. And you should you should appreciate your bartender. Absolutely.
+
+[51:55] In my opinion. Yeah, I mean, I'm a home mixologist. I don't get to another, I'm you know, another reason I'm in the same sandbox as you, I make a mean drink, but in the house. Yeah. So like nobody's putting money on my kitchen counter for the drink I just made for this.
+
+[52:10] What if you did that? Maybe someone came over to your house and you're like pay up. Yeah, like a jar, like a tip jar in your house. I have a tip jar on my late tree. It's empty.
+
+[52:23] Hit hit everybody, anybody, everybody. All right, but here's the news I saw, and I feel I'm a little bit like usually what I like to do before someone comes on is see and or read whatever they're doing, but I can't because it's not available yet. What? What are you talking about? This new Food network thing that you have coming out on December 26th.
+
+[52:48] You have the whole series coming out. It's Food Network celebrates Kwanzaa with a new series, the Kwanzaa menu, hosted by you, Tanya Harkins. And so like how many episodes is it? They they they basically are like you have to wait till the 26th. We're not gonna tell you Squat Pola.
+
+[53:09] It leaked for like a few hours on I think Thurs last Friday, the episodes were like out there for the world to see accidentally. So you missed that window, didn't you? Yeah. So talk to me about what's happening here. First of all, also like I know Squat about Kwanzaa.
+
+[53:24] So talk to me about what the show is. Okay, so what's going on? So big picture, it's part of a um a series that Food Network started doing, I don't know how long ago, of um I call you know, their I call it their ethnic series, the where they take a holiday like uh Lunar New Year or Diwali or Juneteenth. I think they have four others. I think Kwanzaa's the fifth or the sixth of this series, this and it's called the the whatever the holiday is menu, right?
+
+[53:56] So the Diwali menu, the Lunar New Year menu. This one is the Kwanzaa menu. The last one was the Juneteenth menu. And so Kwanza, a non-religious cultural holiday, is seven days long. So there are seven episodes.
+
+[54:13] It's seven days because the Inguzo Saba, the the seven principles each day that you're supposed to kind of reflect on. And uh it's great because it's a great lead up to the new year. So instead of like the New Year's Day, and because the last day of Kwanzaa is the first day of the new year. So the last day is on the first of January. The big feast night is on the 31st, which is the same as New Year's Eve.
+
+[54:37] So it's a holiday that was created in 1966 by a pan-Africanist scholar out in California, Long Beach, California, named Dr. Melena Kerenga, who is still an African Studies professor, maybe the head of the department, not maybe, actually, with all respect out there in the Cal State. But maybe. Yeah, maybe. Teaches stuff.
+
+[55:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, and so it developed this holiday in 1966. And it it uh, you know, slowly over time, um, it's something that was created, you know, out of African American culture, for African American culture, but it was inspired by uh it's a creative thing, he describes it as a creative synthesis of these ancient harvest rituals and festivals that would happen throughout Africa, and um, and it's designed to be celebrated throughout the the uh diaspora, right? So the Caribbean, the South. Uh a lot of people are like, do you have to be black to celebrate Kwanzaa?
+
+[55:42] It's like, no, but you know, was it was it designed, you know, for a people that kind of historically, you know, this system was intended to take everything from. And I don't say that bitterly, I'm just you know, it's just a matter of fact, the people were brought here to be to to work and to be disconnected from language and history and all this stuff. Culturally erased. Right, exactly. So this is a an infusion back in, you know, um, to a culture that was erased or attempted to be erased, right?
+
+[56:15] So um right. So each day, you know, there's a different principle. It starts off with unity on the first day. The last day is Amani, which is faith, Kiswahili language, because we don't have like African Americans, we could be we could be coming from so many different ethnic groups and other and religions and languages. We you don't know.
+
+[56:35] I mean you can do a cheek swab today and get a idea and estimate of you know where your people are from but it's such a mixture because then we're also uniquely American because that once we get here's other things that happen you know whether it's um mixing with uh the Europeans or and or the Native Americans I'm you know saying that nicely I'm looking at your face like your ch my choice of mixing well uh you know when you have something that is like 55, 56 years old, whatever it is and do the math on the fly like is there a built-in kind of food culture part of it now? Like or like how so how do you build a menus around it? Like what what's going on? Funny you should ask. So when they asked me I think it was back in 2004 somebody uh Andy Smith who writes all these books he's an editor he was doing a project for Oxford encyclopedia of food and drink in America and they were like hey Tanya is any food associated with Kwanzaa and I'm just like of course there is and I believe Dr.
+
+[57:35] Harris, Dr. Jessica Harris had already written her Kwanzaa keepsak book. There was some stuff out there that people had you know put together because it's based on you know harvest rituals and the first fruits, there's, you know, there's a basket of fruit, all this stuff. But it's like, is there, you know, when you look at the the official printings from Dr. Tranga, it's like, yeah, like what is the menu?
+
+[57:56] What's the food? And it's kind of not there. And so luckily, I was able to through my my parents are educators connected to the the Cal State system. I was like, hey, can one of you guys like connect me so I can talk to Dr. Karenga and ask him about that?
+
+[58:12] And they were like, oh, maybe. I don't know. Let's see. And they made it happen. And I was able to interview him.
+
+[58:17] It turns out I'm the first. I know I'm sounding on the floor. No one has to. Nobody had asked to ever talk. So that's another thing.
+
+[58:26] I got to sit down and talk with him about food. And he's a lot of people aren't foodies. And he's not a I wouldn't define him as a foodie. But so he, so at the end of the day, he was, you know, very great informative conversation. But I went to the floor.
+
+[58:38] Did you interview him on the show? No, I no. This was like, I interviewed him, like it's like on a cassette tape, like on a handheld recorder from when I was, you know, writing my my Oxford encyclopedia. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And um, you know, I found it.
+
+[58:52] I found the the cassette and was able to put it into a podcast episode 15 years later. But um turns out there is no set menu. There is no, but there are certain principles, you know, you want to draw from different cuisines throughout the diaspora, you know, the African continent, as well as, you know, then the Caribbean, Jamaica comes to mind, places that have really interesting um cuisines, really, and the American South, of course, and and all that kind of stuff. So so it's a really creativity is at the core of Kwanzaa. Reinvention for people who had to reinvent and continue to reinvent ourselves culturally.
+
+[59:30] It's um it's very inspiring. I love it. I think it's an excuse to try a different uh to try different foods. African Americans have not historically been exposed to African food or to food outside of um what is you know narrowly defined as soul food um in general for the most part, right? So to me it's a great in to kind of discover a broader sense of oneself, a bigger connected to something bigger than yourself through food.
+
+[1:00:00] And so people can start looking out for that on the 26th, right? The first episode, yeah. Oh well, actually, there's an episode every day available. They're short, they're many episodes. It's food network.com.
+
+[1:00:10] All right, we got two questions in for you specifically. Quinn, shoot them off quick. We got two minutes. Okay, uh, I love the African slash American exhibit. What happened to the artifact and the quilt and what comes next?
+
+[1:00:25] Is that a question for you or for the? I don't know. All of us, I don't know. Like uh most of the artifacts were returned to the institutions. Right.
+
+[1:00:32] Uh I can't really say what's happening to the kitchen. We still have the quilt that's in store, just being well conserved and cared for. Uh thank goodness. All right, what's the second question, Quinn? Uh, for Tonya, what's a current issue or topic you wish more people were aware of?
+
+[1:00:52] Wow. Uh I just wish we um I, you know, it's why I do the work I do as a culinary historian to um just kind of I wish we all knew more of what everybody brings to the table. Yes, some groups, you know, you look at Native American and African American, some groups, you know, arguably might bring a little bit more to the table, but the point is that like who's got the worst food, Tanya? Who's got the worst food? Oh yeah.
+
+[1:01:21] You don't want me to go there. I worked in London for a bit. And uh English have good English have good stuff. Okay, because they know how to bring good stuff back to England. That's why they have good stuff.
+
+[1:01:34] Old school English roast beef. Okay. Whatever. Yeah. I like a good uh what is that pie with the potatoes and the peas and like shabbers pie?
+
+[1:01:44] I like a good fish and chips. Yeah, it's like the fish fries. Like it's you know. But yeah, I had fun designing that Kwanzaa menu. I it was very create.
+
+[1:01:51] It was my creative outlet. So I'm looking forward to people enjoying. And there's drinks. There's drinks, there's food. All right.
+
+[1:01:57] Well, tune in, uh, tune in to the food network uh for seven days, uh starting on uh the 26th for uh the Kwanzaa menu, hosted by our guest today. Thanks for coming on, Tanya Hopkins. This has been Cooking Issues. This was so fun. Thanks for having me.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Nations coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, a Rockefeller Center at New Stan Studios, joined as usual in the studio with uh John Who. How are you doing? Doing great, thank you. Yeah.
+
+[0:22] Yeah. Got uh got Joe Hazen rocking the panels here. How you doing? I'm doing great, man. Great to see you.
+
+[0:27] Happy holidays, everybody. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And uh let's see, over here on uh Vancouver Island, we got uh Quinn. How you doing, Quinn?
+
+[0:37] Hey, I'm doing good. Yeah, and he's got some food news for later. He's got some food news. And uh Yeah, yeah. And we have uh Nastasia Lopez and Jack Molecules Insley in California in LA, right?
+
+[0:52] Yeah, hi. Hey. How's it going over there? Good. Great.
+
+[0:58] Yeah? Yeah. All right. So Nastasia. So first of all, uh, call in your questions too if you're listening, you know, on the Patreon.
+
+[1:06] And if you're not listening on the Patreon, well then poop-oopy doop. Right? Yep. Right? Call in your questions to 917-410-1507, 917-410-1507.
+
+[1:15] And if they want to join the Patreon, tell them why they want to do that, John, and how they do it. Awesome uh community. Well, that guy got real close to the window. Um so for those of you that know, we're in we're in an old newsstand. It's called Newsstand Studios because they used to sell like candies and magazines and sodas out of here, and it's still got like the racks where all the old newspapers and magazines were.
+
+[1:36] And it's a glass wall. So usually people come in, they look, they wave like kids and whatever. But this guy shows up, he's on the phone, he turns around and he makes that what face is this like this one that that like squinting like and then puts his hand against the side of his face and leans up against the window like he's gonna light a cigarette or something. Yeah, that's very distracting. Anyway.
+
+[1:57] Like right next to us. All right, right. Um yeah, join Patreon. We got an awesome community of members where you can talk to each other in the Discord, share cool restaurant things. I'm speaking with someone now who just met up with some one of the listeners from Texas, and the listener from Texas brought him some coffee beans up to Chicago, and it sounds really cool.
+
+[2:14] But also uh discounts to Kitchen Arts and Letters, access to our Discord, um early you know, uh listening abilities for this, and prioritized uh questions that Dave will always get to on every show. So try to, yes. What yes, we have a guest sometimes, they're not working. Yeah, yeah. Uh also, like uh, for instance, yesterday I put up a big 3D file for people to print in case they want to, but there's weird random things that go up.
+
+[2:36] When people ask me, I'm like, I have no venue to share a 3D file with the world, but I can share it on the Patreon, right, Quinn? Yeah. Yeah, and also occasionally promo codes to certain products. Yeah, guess right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[2:52] Uh yeah, like, don't we have a deal with uh Edwards Age Meets? Or we don't? We should. Can we? We did last year.
+
+[3:00] I'm sure Edward might be game, but I don't know. We'll have to talk to him and see what uh what he wants to do. He does have great products. Yeah, yeah. So yeah.
+
+[3:07] All right, so Nastasia, don't go too far away, but you're gonna need to earmuff for a second because Quinn made a product that you believe should be left to the professionals. Okay? Are you ready? Okay, okay. All right, all right.
+
+[3:20] So, Quinn, what did you what did you okay? What did you make it uh over the past couple of days? Uh I've been making uh tune. So we made a double batch. Um, the first one was baked off Sunday, and then we baked the other one.
+
+[3:42] Joe's going aggressive on the jingle, though. I like it. It's an aggressive jingle though. Yeah. All right.
+
+[3:47] All right. Wait. So you baked the other one last night? Um. Yeah, so that one is still unopened, but the first one turned out pretty good.
+
+[3:57] I'm happy with it. Yeah. Yeah. And uh you did the whole hang upside down. Was it a sourdough or a yeast or a com what what what were you doing?
+
+[4:06] A little combo. A little combo. Yeah, because it's so funny. Like, uh, I guess it tis the season, right? Julia Moskin, for those of you that I don't know, want to do nothing else between now, if you celebrate Christmas, and you want to do nothing else between now and Christmas, you can start Julia Moskin's Panettone recipe that just came out yesterday.
+
+[4:23] But uh, yeah, so uh what were you any tips for people that things that you think went wrong, things that are hard? You know, we never had on. Remember when uh remember when Matt Sartwell said that everyone, if you're gonna get a panettone book, there was that crazy hardcore professional panettone book. Remember that? Oh right.
+
+[4:40] Um I never got it. And we never got Roy on. You like you're a Roy Panatone fan, right? Yeah, yeah. I had it for the first time the other day.
+
+[4:49] It was very delicious. Can I kind of say something though? Oh no, you uh you found something. I don't know. I was just I don't know, I haven't found something.
+
+[4:55] I was just gonna say I can't I'll have to look up the listener who sent it to us last year, but he made the best panettone I've ever had in from Toronto, I think. We'll have I don't know, I'll have to look him up. His stuff was delicious and give him a better shout out. All right, so you know, it used to be you, you know, when I was a kid, it was like fairly rare to find them, right? Now, literally Goya makes panettone is.
+
+[5:15] And you can get them in my like corner, which is fundamentally like it's it's it used to be like a key foods, and now it's like one level up. It's like it's like halfway from a key foods to a food emporium now, for those of you that remember that. Anyway, so like uh oh the book I'm being told is called Sourd Sourdough Panettone and Vienna. Listen, for those of you that have never been to Vienna, I would love to go back. Because I swear, if someone says like Vienna and pastry together, I'm like, that's probably pretty good then.
+
+[5:46] Because Vienna pastry. Other level. Oh, yeah. Like you're like, oh, my country's got good pastry. Nope.
+
+[5:53] And you go to Vienna and you're like, oh, uh, oh, uh, pastry. Yeah. Pastry. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[5:59] So, like, you know, there was an Austrian dude moved into my mom's neighborhood up in Westchester. It was when I was too young to know any better. And actually, it's not true. I was in my 20s. And I was like, how good could you be?
+
+[6:10] Austria, come on. I go in there, I was like, oh, yeah. Nah yeah. And he was the guy that couldn't even hack it in Austria. He had to move to America.
+
+[6:16] I'm just kidding, I'm not like that. I'm not that much. I feel that about uh the horseradish they have in Austria. Oh, yeah? Slamming.
+
+[6:22] It comes in like toothpaste tubes. Oh. Delish. Uh on my corner on my in my block, they every year in the season, uh, you know, the Passover time, they're out on the corner grinding horseradish with a gas mask on and then putting it directly in mason jars and selling it right there. Wow.
+
+[6:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whoa. I mean, some things in my neighborhood are still cool, and some things like I had you know what I we used to have during uh Sukkot every year is we'd have the outdoor, like, you know how like people on the streets sell things like weird things? We used to have the outdoor citron market. Uh the egg rog.
+
+[6:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, like, you know, you'd have the super fancy ones where they had they were all completely intact and a little nubbin on the end and everything. They were they're really kind of ugly fruit. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[7:07] But then after, you know, look, if you're if you're a double celebrator, right? After Succoat's over, candy that mother, and then use it in your panettone. Or you make some type of uh like a le a lemon um what's a lemon liqueur? Oh the lemoncello? Yeah again, triggering Nastasi again.
+
+[7:21] It was supposed to be a good time with her father, and it ended up being sickly sweet. Am I right, Nastasia? Yeah, that is true. Yeah, did you still like looking back, still have a good time with your father making it though? Yes.
+
+[7:35] That's all that matters, though. That's all that matters. You know what I mean? That's all that matters. Uh all right, so Quinn, any tips on it?
+
+[7:42] Uh other than obviously get long skewers and hang it upside down after it comes out, anything like that. Anything you would do differently? Any anything, anything, anything? Um actually, I am of course working on uh an original technique for getting the fat into the pantoni. What was the problem with the old technique?
+
+[8:03] I mean, it just seemed unnecessary and sort of takes time. You know, getting the little bits of butter and like brioche style, right? They don't put it in brioche style, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay.
+
+[8:16] Yeah, yeah. I've done side by sides on brioche. But go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. I hold back a little bit of the flour, and then once the gluten is developed, take the eggs, the butter, and make a liquid emulsion. And then just like slap that in, add the rest of the flour, and it just sort of goes, sloop.
+
+[8:42] Sloop. And it's a multiply. Sloop. What's that song? What's that song?
+
+[8:47] Shoop. What's that song, Joe? Uh Sloop John B. No, no, no. The one that goes shoop.
+
+[8:55] I don't know. We'll figure it out. Uh, yeah, so I had never done that, but I have experimented quite a bit. Usually, I've done a lot with the with like the no-needs and the melted butter brioches, and they're fine, but I just don't have a problem with uh beating beating the butter in. I don't know why.
+
+[9:12] You know, my issue is that like uh melted butter, the dough is real slack until you chill it. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. I don't know. I love the look.
+
+[9:23] Okay, here's what it is. I love the look of dough that you've beaten soft butter into. I just like the way it looks. And when it's melted, it it comes out fine. It comes out great, but it always has that little grease sheen, it doesn't have that like silk look when it and the people who eat it, they don't care.
+
+[9:43] They don't care, right? Because they're not freaking eating it. We're getting fishbowled again. Hello. Hello.
+
+[9:49] Uh yeah. Different kind of folk though. Different kind of folk. Yes. All right.
+
+[9:54] Uh what about you guys? You guys doing anything uh interesting? Uh, you got anything going on, John? Anything for the holidays? Since this is no tangent.
+
+[10:00] This is not a tangent, by the way. This is cooking. We're talking holiday cooking. I did cookies this weekend. This is uh do you guys do anyone else here do Christmas cookies?
+
+[10:07] Used to, sugar cookies, sugar, huh? Yeah. You don't seem too excited about the sugar cookie. I don't know, they're good, but just cookies or spritz? Cut.
+
+[10:15] Cut okay. But I don't know, I haven't done those in a long time. I don't know, trying to figure out what to do for Christmas dinner. Yeah. So yeah.
+
+[10:22] I uh I made I so like we years ago we used to do spritz all the time. It like cut cookies and same batter for spritz cookies using the 1993 Cooks Illustrated, where you put cornstarch into the uh to the flour, a little bit of lemon zest and all that, and you let it chill and you roll it out, right? So it makes either good sugar cookies or it makes decent spritz cookies. Yeah. But um, I don't know.
+
+[10:43] We we we got we've we stopped using the the cookie gun for a while for whatever reason. We you know the aluminum, the the fat aluminum one with the twist doodle. Yeah, and then I was in a thrift store uh like at the beginning of the year, and they had like the Italian marcado Atlas cookie press with that works more like a caulk gun that you push down, and it's got 20 dyes and a picture of what each dye actually does with cookies and a really hardcore, like the Italian recipe, which is it's it's it's crazy. It's huge amounts of butter, huge amount, it's like flour, and I used integral. They though like you can make it into garlic.
+
+[11:16] I'm like, I will then. And so like I use the flour, uh like loads of butter, and then just four egg yolks, right? And I added zest. So the liquid is four egg yolks, and then just enough milk to get it to go into the press. And you could pick this dough up and roll it like kind of play-doh, and that gun is awesome.
+
+[11:35] And then I use them to make lemon sandwich cookies. So I made like a lemon cream. Nice. And my lemon cream was instead of using all shortening, which is kind of gross, right? Yeah.
+
+[11:46] Instead of using all butter, which is kind of like wet, right? Because it's gonna get all greasy unless you keep it real cool. I did 50-50 butter coconut. I used coconut oil, you know, coconut fat and butter, and I whip those together with uh the lemon zest, lemon, uh, lemon essence, uh, yeah, and vanilla. Yeah.
+
+[12:05] Nice. Yeah. It's good. Good. Yeah, it's I add a citric acid because you know me.
+
+[12:08] Obviously. Duh. Although a lot of people might not like the citric acid because it's like kerpao. It doesn't really melt in the fat stuff. Oh.
+
+[12:15] So it's more like um, it's more like uh, you know, like remember those. I used to love these kind of their gar not good cookies, but I love them. They're called lemon coolers. And it's yeah, lemon coolers, right? They're like, they look like a Nilla wafer, but they're and they're but they're covered in powdered sugar and there's these weird little crevices of yellow crystals that are like real lemony and they pop those suckers those were those were big money cash money when I was a kid like that was like that was I remember those I love those too yeah yeah yeah messy messy powdered sugar everywhere yeah powdered sugar yeah that's right I I hate powdered sugar really am I the only one I can't stand like I can't stand like a Zeppelin with full of powdered sugar I can't stand it let me ask you this Joe let me ask you this you get the cough and I hate that's what I thought I knew it I knew it you were eating it one day like Saramassou cough that's the worst you were trying to like have a conversation with someone you breathed in while the pastry was near your face and then you're suffocating like that you know what I mean yeah oh yeah and then like you know it's the other thing I used to hate is uh I remember the first time I went to New Orleans you have to go the first time you go to New Orleans you have to go to Cafe Dumont and they put an absurd crazy an absurd amount of powdered sugar on their beignets right I guess like the first pound of powdered sugar that goes on each one absorbs the extra oil and then the rest of it the rest of it is just like a cakey layer on top.
+
+[13:33] So like when I was a kid I used to wear blue dress pants everywhere. So I still remember like these blue dress pants just like poof because also like you know I was a m and still messy human boof powdered sugar everywhere. I was like this is a nightmare but I do like the effect of powdered sugar. I like a powdered sugar donut but I don't I but I like to eat it over the sink. I don't like to sit at a table and eat a powdered sugar product anyway.
+
+[13:57] You know what's not edible? Chicago hot dogs what they're too messy. Same thing. They drip everywhere. Yeah, but I don't know.
+
+[14:06] That sounds like a you problem. Also, like Toronto hot dogs. They drip everywhere. What's a Toronto hot dog? They drip everywhere.
+
+[14:11] Anywhere you go and a street hot dog has. Is it because too much relish? Too much everything. Anytime you put a like this is in New York City, we're like, you put mustard, you put sauerkraut, you hold it in your hands. It's not that big.
+
+[14:23] You shove it into your face at a trot, and it doesn't fall on you. So did you not like Super Duper Weenie? I did like super duperweenie, but I'm topping heavy. I know, but and you sit and eat it. Yes, it's true.
+
+[14:35] It's not a running dog. New York New York hot dogs, for as little as I enjoy caseless hot dogs, right? The one thing we've got going, other than the fact that if you go to like a Mike's or it used to be Gray Grays and Mike's, you used to be able to get two hot dogs for a dollar. Yeah. The fact that they can put out infinity hot dogs in zero seconds and that they're that cheap, but also New York's a running hot dog.
+
+[14:57] Yeah, that's true. You know? I used to buy a hot dog on a hundred and where was that place? It was 100 and like 9th or 10th Street. And I will go in, I'd be like, how much do I have in my pocket?
+
+[15:09] 250, five dogs. You hand them the 250, they hand you or whatever it is. Yeah, five dogs. Hand you five dogs. Those five dogs, I would eat in the five minutes it took to walk the five blocks back to my studio.
+
+[15:23] And that's how New York lunch works. Yeah. Just like when you eat lamb over rice. You're a son of a son. Not cool, right?
+
+[15:32] We could know. Nastasi and I got running dinners. Nastasi and I got running dinners. We all made it to the same place at the same time. Uh oh, people.
+
+[15:40] John is making exactly making our point for us. We order like, you know, you know, heroes, right? Like something like some sort of lamb or chicken stuff in a bread that's wrapped. That you that's wrapped in aluminum foil, so you can just peel the aluminum foil back like a freaking banana, shove the sandwich in your face while you're running to Billy Joel. Nastasi, am I wrong about this?
+
+[16:01] No, you're right. And then John got a bowl with a fork. Yeah, with rice. Tiny grains. Yeah, I eat that like almost every night after work.
+
+[16:14] Not even back from Health Square to my apartment. Listen, everybody knows that if you need to hoover rice, if you need to hoover it, get a spoon at least. At least a spoon. God, he's like eating it with a pitchfork. You know how crappy those like plastic.
+
+[16:33] Oh my god. Joe, don't get me started. If he if he had gotten a pair of chopsticks, first of all, the halal cart guy would have been like, What are you? What are you? You know what I mean?
+
+[16:41] And then secondly, if he had had chopsticks, I think Nastasia would have punched him. Probably. I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure that's what would have happened. All right.
+
+[16:51] Uh you guys got any uh oh, one more one more cookie thing on my side. Uh I made so I always make the the ricciarelli, which are the almond cookies. They're like um like uh you just it's almond. Uh, you can I usually grind the almonds, but you can use almond flour. And if you grind the almonds, you grind it with with regular sugar so it doesn't turn into a paste, right?
+
+[17:12] But if you use almond flour, you just use powdered sugar. And there's no flour in it, so it's gluten-free. And then whipped egg whites and like vanilla and zest. You know what I mean? Like orange zest and and and almond extract.
+
+[17:24] If you if you really want to do it, you can get the apricot kernels and add your own stuff, but just get the extract. Anyways, so like you you make the you you make the batter, and then you let it rest for a long time. And then you make the cookie shape and you put the cookie shape in powdered sugar, and then you make them into like, you know, little like kind of lazen shapes, and you put them on the tray and you let it rest for like an hour after that so that this it dries out and when you cook it, it puffs a little bit and you get cracks in it, right? So I decided to do it with pecans this year, but again, like I'm the only person I'm gonna eat them all because they're so delicious. I skip the zest and I used brown sugar instead of regular sugar, and I ground the pecans in the thing.
+
+[18:00] But other and I didn't whip the egg whites is what I normally do. And they still were great. I think what happened is is that the old one where you whip the egg whites is to get a little air in it so that there's bubbles in it while it's resting. But the food processor whips enough air into it as it's grinding that I think it's fine. I I need to do now next next year I'll do two batches of almond as well as pecan, one with the food processor and one without.
+
+[18:22] Yeah. But anyway, it's on Instagram, you can go check it out. But uh Ricciurelli are good. They're good, good product. And the pecan ones are, you know, not rich releases because they're pecans.
+
+[18:30] Yeah. But they're still delicious. All right. Stas, what are you doing? You doing you doing anything for Christmas, Stas?
+
+[18:37] Anything? No, nothing. What about you, Jack? No. I like how you're gonna be able to do that.
+
+[18:46] My brother's. Where's your brother this? No. Um, yeah, I'm going to my brothers in Connecticut. Um, but in terms of cookies, my grandma used to make those.
+
+[18:54] Um, I don't know if you ever had them, these Sicilian like pinulatte. Oh, yeah, I love those. I love those things. Do you? Yeah.
+
+[19:01] That was my grandma's thing. So my mom does still do those. With the did she make it the way that uh the way that the so one who for the past, you know, I don't know, 15 years or so, we always make Christmas cookies with the same family. And for them, they make the impinulate with they use a wine-based, it's a wine-based pasta dough that they roll out, and then with the nuts and the and the and the raisins and all that, and they roll them into the shape and then cook them as and then they drizzle them. Is it the same in your family?
+
+[19:30] No, I think it was just like regular fried dough. Um, not any pinulators. Wait, so this is more like a one of the like a fried thing, more like a struvoli. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Um where's that one from?
+
+[19:45] Fried dough balls and they're Sicilian. Oh, yeah, these guys are Calabrian. Yeah, so it must be a different product. Anyway. I like it.
+
+[19:56] I like it. Yeah, no, I think I think in Sicilian they call them pinulata, but it's like strue would be what it would normally be called. Okay, let me ask you this. Have you ever had when you go out and you get like a struffle and it's like a hard brick and it has those weird little sprinkles on top? Aren't you always kind of like what the hell?
+
+[20:14] You know what I mean? You're like, so for those of you who don't know, imagine she made them with sprinkles too. Really? The rainbow sprinkles, right? Yeah.
+
+[20:21] Yeah. It looks like a miniaturized goopy crocombouche with sprinkles on top to me. That's the way I always because the balls are little. They're little balls, right? Yep.
+
+[20:31] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I never wrapped my head around it, but this is something that you look forward to.
+
+[20:39] I actually don't even like them. But it's uh, you know, it's a nice nostalgic kind of thing. I see. Yeah. It's gonna know.
+
+[20:45] I think that's the kind of reminds me of grandma, but I never liked her. Okay, okay, okay. So I want anyone who's listening to this who likes that to tell us why they like it. Why does it still exist as a product other than for nostalgia? Speaking of nostalgia, you know what I mean?
+
+[21:00] Hey, Stas, didn't you, when you were a kid say that you also used to do the popcorn and cranberry strings? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We used to do that.
+
+[21:10] I haven't done it with my kids, though. They don't even know what it is anymore. I think it's gone. I think it's gone. Is that like the decoration type of thing?
+
+[21:18] You do the popcorn and the Ellen Street? Interesting. We never never did that. You tie it to the mantle. Yeah.
+
+[21:27] Anyway. Yeah. But you know what I did do that I did in the 70s, it's holiday time. I did the orange with the clove, and then you dust it with cinnamon. That's nice.
+
+[21:35] I think I believe they're called palm enders. And Jen made one that was all fancy, that looked all fancy, looked like uh what's that character from uh Hellraiser? Pinhead. Hers kind of looked like pinhead. And then when they dry out, the cloves kind of stick out of the orange more.
+
+[21:49] So it looks like you magically stuck all the cloves exactly in at half height, but really just the orange shrank around it. It's pretty slick. But the cloves stop the orange from rotting as well as the cinnamon dust that you put on it. So they don't rot, they just dry out as long as you hang them. Anyway, all right.
+
+[22:04] Enough enough of our holiday garbage. Let's deal with uh some folks' holiday garbage. It's not garbage people. Listen, I call everything garbage. People shouldn't get offended.
+
+[22:12] Am I right, John? Yeah. No, shouldn't get offended, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[22:16] All right. To each their own. Two each their own garbage. Right. Uh Jay Pelletier writes in hey, I'm gonna be cooking a beef wellington for eight for Christmas dinner this year.
+
+[22:25] I've made it once before, I don't remember the recipe. And ended up with middling results. After looking around online, I'm planning on largely using Kenji's recipe, but want to see if there are any additional recommendations as to technique, recipe, or strategy to make sure I do not let down the extended family on Christmas. Thanks in advance. Listen, Jay, you're gonna let down your family no matter what.
+
+[22:43] That's my been my experience. Is that no matter what I do, I've done something to let my family down, right? Yeah, you can't escape it. That's like part of Christmas. First thing you should do is watch somebody whose family has messed up Christmas even more.
+
+[22:55] Like watch uh Christmas Vacation. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah. And then that's a person who's messed up Christmas even more. Yeah.
+
+[23:02] And then you're like, it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but I looked at Kenji's recipe. Uh I kind of he so for those of you that don't know Beef Wellington, it's a tenderloin.
+
+[23:10] You sear the tenderloin off, and uh then you put uh you know a cut up mushrooms uh that have been sauteed in butter and usually pâté de foie gras, although I see a lot of recipes skip it now. And then uh excuse me. And then nowadays, I didn't do it when I, you know, in the 70s, they wrap a prosciutto around it to keep it into a package, wrap it in puff pastry, and then cook off the puff pastry. Um Kenji s uses like actual slices of foie gras. I think that's kind of sounds like a pain in the behind to me.
+
+[23:40] I like pate is easy to spread. Here's something that pâté is easy to buy, easy to spread, right? Uh I don't need to sear anything off. Uh so I mean I would stick with the the pate. The other thing that he does is uh he wraps uh a phyllo uh around the the beef log.
+
+[23:57] Beef log uh to um absorb some of the liquid so the puff pastry doesn't get uh soggy. That seems like an okay thing. My thing is this look, uh I looked at some of the people on the internet, and what they do is is they they buy the tenderloin and then they cut off the tip of the tenderloin so you have a pretty even cylinder, right? And the truth of the matter is that's not the way most of us buy it, right? We're buying the kind like usually when I buy a tenderloin, I buy the whole thing and I've got the tail on it, right?
+
+[24:27] And I don't know about you, I am cheap. So I am not gonna like cut that off and grind it to I I don't know what I don't know what I would do with it. I I'm not gonna cut it off. It's not gonna happen. So what's un not cool, I used to do back, you know, when I was a kid, when I when I could afford it, fold that tip over and try to make a tube and you roll it.
+
+[24:50] The better way to do it is to cut it and then get meat glue, get you know, go get moo glue on the uh, you know, on uh Amazon, like overnight delivery, which is transglutaminase, and glue it to glue the tail back onto the slanting part so that you have an actual perfect log. All right? With me? Uh now, uh specifically Kenji believes, right? Because we've had this argument, he believes that you can that there's a miracle whereby the the beef is going to be exactly perfect, you know, at the exact minute that the puff pastry is done and that everything's gonna be cop aesthetic and that the world is and that there's gonna be joy and laughter in the world.
+
+[25:31] And I have found that stuff goes wrong more often than not. Uh, if you if you pull something like that as soon as the puff pastry is done, by the way, here's something if you pull that thing when the puff pastry is done, when it comes out of a 450-degree oven, I'd slice it right quick. Here's why. Uh it's gonna keep cooking, right? And then you're hoozed, right?
+
+[25:49] So I think the protections he uses are anyone who's looking at it, if you look at it and they have a nice rosy center, the duck cells and all that is more of a protection against overcooking, right? Because it's just stuff that you have to cook through before you get to meat. The whole trick is to get the puff pastry cooked before the meat's overcooked. So I would make sure it has a good buffer all the way around it, right? Uh then he hates pre-cooking, doing this, but I'm a huge believer in insurance.
+
+[26:18] He salts his liberally before he sears it and uh and then rolls it. So if you're gonna do that, the issue is that the pre-cook has to be below safe temperature. All right. You're not gonna want to cook that tenderloin higher than about 52 Celsius, right? So you can cook a tenderloin up to about 45 minutes uh or so at 54 degrees Celsius and have it be good.
+
+[26:40] If you cook it for more than about an hour, it starts getting fibery. You know that fibery taste that I hate. Some people don't mind it. There is there is literally a hundred kids walking through the lobby. That's a lot of children.
+
+[26:51] They're kind of cute though. Hi, kids. The kids like, no. No, hello. Yeah.
+
+[26:58] Uh so, anyways, so uh if you salt it beforehand, right? You need to drop the temperature a couple of degrees because uh that's the effect. Salt adds the firmness of a couple of degrees of temperature, especially when you're going to chill it down, roll it, and like have it chill as a chilled log before you cook it. So, what I like to do is uh cook it low. But just remember it's not being safe.
+
+[27:23] So cook it at like 52, like sear the outside so that you kill the bacteria on the outside, put in at 42 uh 52 for like no more than an hour, let like less even get the shape nice, like meat glue it together, roll it into a log, 52, maybe 53, 52 for an hour, pull it, chill it, put your duck cells, roll it, you know, make your package, roll it, chill it, then wrap the puff pastry around, pull it out of the uh, pull it out of the fridge like an hour or so before you're gonna cook it. Let it warm up a little bit to give the the thing a uh a jump, and then throw it in the oven on rip, and then just as soon as the puff pastry is done, pull it and you should be okay. But now you don't have to worry. Did I get the the inside make it up to 120? Who cares?
+
+[28:09] That's what Sous vide for insurance is, people. It's insurance. And having ruined so many food items in my life, any time that I can be like, I don't care. I'm insured. I'm like, yeah, do that.
+
+[28:23] You know what I mean? And then just get that puff pastry cooked as quickly as possible. You with me, John? Yeah, I would also recommend looking up uh Calem Franklin. He was a chef in the UK who is very, very, very well known for his uh Beef Wellington.
+
+[28:37] Is he dead? No, he's alive. Oh, and he's got a cookbook out there, so I'm sure he's got some more recipes. Well, he's no longer at the pie room. He's moved on to somewhere else that I don't know.
+
+[28:44] Oh, well, if he's at the pie room, he knows pies. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's supposed to be great.
+
+[28:49] Yeah. So recommend that. Don't worry, Stas. I'm not getting on the pie train. I don't believe there's any pie questions.
+
+[28:54] Don't have to worry about it. Uh yeah. Okay. Uh Dave Kleiman writes in. So, uh, Jeremy Umanski, we had on the show when uh when uh he and Rich came out with the uh Koji book.
+
+[29:12] Not Koji, uh wait, not Koji Your Dog, Koji. Yep the book, Koji Alchemy. Yeah, yeah. Did you name your dog after the book came out? I don't know.
+
+[29:23] When did their book come out? I don't know. I got code like two years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their book came out first.
+
+[29:27] Never because we had them on the show when we were still with uh Voldemort. Oh, that's right. Yeah. All right. Uh Jeremy O'manski from Larder, who uh John, John, you've been there.
+
+[29:38] You like that place. I stodged there for a week, yeah. I never I've never been there. Right, it's a super tasty place. If I go to Cleveland, I would always will always go.
+
+[29:44] Yeah, it's great. Dax is uh applying to a school in Cleveland. I haven't I haven't been to Cleveland since I was in my twenties. Yeah, I did a really it was a good city. I did an art install at the Progressive.
+
+[29:57] The Progressive owns a huge art collection. They have one of the largest private art collections anywhere, and it's all throughout all the progressive buildings. And every, I know they used to do it every year or so. They would hire a like, you know, a big current artist to do a large scale presentation, like one of their you know, large scale installation, one of their and I had to uh help my uh my art professor at the time. You know what I hate doing?
+
+[30:22] Sanding metal, man. I freaking hate it. Like just like even with masks, like you caught you you're coughing up black and silvery phlegm. And like even when I pass it on the street, the smell of grinding wheels, my wife's like, I don't mind it. I'm like, yeah, because you didn't have to work on a metal shop.
+
+[30:42] Like like ferrous oxide? Like what do you think? Well, it's like uh the so like you know how like when you scrub stainless, you smell it, there's that metal smell. Oh god, I can't stand the smell. Right.
+
+[30:53] So imagine that plus the abrasive grit and burning from the discs. You're just you're just putting all of these like yeah, aluminum oxide discs, you're grinding them down, and the black dust and uh and the stuff is just filling the air. It's also loud as hell. So it's like constant punishing loud plus like this, like like the it's it's a very distinct smell. Metal shop smell is a very distinct smell.
+
+[31:21] I don't mind the welding smell, actually. I like the arc smell, but like the grinding smell, nah, nah, no thanks. We have similar tastes. I used to work, my father was an auto mechanic, and I grew up my whole life working with him. So I do remember very particular spells of metal and like chemicals, but the smell of brake pads being um uh brake pads, not the calipers, the actual discs being uh recut is by far one of the terrible smells of the world.
+
+[31:45] Which is so funny because you love the break fluid. Love the break fluid. Love the break fluid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe's like, I'm a connici of the different break products aroma and uh the break fluid choice.
+
+[31:59] Good wrench, the best. All right. So back to Umansky, right? So we're talking about Umansky's uh latkas. Now, Umansky does a non-standard latka.
+
+[32:13] I've never done were you were you there during the season? Were you making latkas there? Yeah. Yeah. Was he using this new technique while you were there?
+
+[32:19] Uh what's the technique? So for whatever reason, whether it's historical or not, he's like, I don't want to use a lot of binders. I don't want to do a lot of, I want potato, you know, basically potato only. So he par bakes them, right? Yes, he did.
+
+[32:35] First of all, let me say this, people. Everyone says things about russets. Yes, it's the correct one to use, but the logic people use about what starch does is bent. It's a lot the everyone is right. Use russets.
+
+[32:50] And yes, they are higher in starch. What they are is actually lower in water, right? They have a higher specific gravity, right? Uh, that's the dill-dilly, right? Uh, and you there's a lot more water in the cells of a uh of a lower gravity potato.
+
+[33:07] So it's not that they're russets, right? It's that you need a high gravity potato. Low gravity potato, no matter how you squeeze it, is gonna have more water in it. It's gonna absorb more oil when it fries, right? So they but anyway, I neither here nor there.
+
+[33:21] But it's like every time I read an explanation of why do you rust the potatoes, I'm like, it's kind of right, but ugh. Why does it always have to be wrong? Yeah. Right. Starch doesn't make latkas go brown.
+
+[33:32] Sugar makes latkas go brown, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's like there are sugars in most of the potatoes that we have because of the way they're stored, which is one reason why if you're gonna make potato chips or if you're gonna make latkas and you're worried that they're gonna go too brown, you uh soak them, that gets rid of the sugar, then you squeeze some people don't soak, whatever, or with potato chips, and and then you squeeze the hell out of them to get the extra water out. The reason if you do soak, right?
+
+[33:59] Two things, keeping the enzymes from you know ruining the potatoes, turning them all garbagey, like you know, I think it also has a taste, that weird brown, purple, red grossness that potatoes get, you know. But uh, there's that, because it won't happen underwater, and there's also leaching out sugars, right? Starch on its own doesn't burn because if it did, then the potatoes, which are made of starch, would burn. It is sugar that burns. All right, anyway.
+
+[34:29] So uh, wait, we gotta call it. Should I finish the should I finish the Umansky thing or take the collar and then go back to Umansky? He parkooks the potatoes. Alright, so he parkooks the potatoes about 30 minutes, roast them, then grates them when they're parcooked, right? I'm gonna let that sink in why he does that.
+
+[34:45] And I'll give you a hint, it's because he's pre-gelatinizing some of the starch. So the starch has already soaked up some of the water that that's in it. It's it's equal, in other words, he doesn't use a binder because cooking the potato makes the potato into its own binder. Okay. So now uh let's uh take the collar.
+
+[35:01] Caller you're on the air. Hey, how's it going, guys? Doing all right, what's up? Good stuff. Um definitely have a little bit of a uh moisture management issue, certainly not holiday related.
+
+[35:13] Um in the process of actually trying to formulate a uh a pet chew. It's a blend of uh I've been using oat flour, egg white, pork fat, peanut butter powder, and beef froth. And um yeah, right now the only mold that I have to cook them in are a fairly thick silicone mold. Um my business partner is a silicone mold manufacturer. And the issue I'm having is that you know, I'm baking them at 350 for 15 minutes, rotating another 15 minutes, and they I just can't seem to get the moisture out utilizing the silicone mold in the nature of the cook that I have right now.
+
+[35:58] Um I I get better results when I go to a coarser oat uh particle size, like an oat bran versus an oat flour. Um and actually, I'm actually uh aligning with a manufacturer that's going to be able to bake these off in vacuum ovens, getting to an average of 12 inches mercury or 300 torr. So you're you're trying to get it as hard as kibble? A crunchy chew, yeah. You know, dogs enjoy a nice crunch.
+
+[36:26] Yeah. Um I mean, like how I mean the prof the the how do the big companies because I would only know how to do it once everything starts dry and then goes in almost to like uh like an extruder and then comes out of the extruder relatively dry, uh, and then just needs to be like like hacked up when it's like a dough, and then you know, it can basically go on a conveyor belt oven and be dehydrated rather than cooked, right? Um then you know, once it dehydrates to a certain level, you can cook it. Right. But I'm wondering like can your dough be piped?
+
+[37:12] It can. Yeah. I mean, I'm wondering whether or not like you might. I mean, I know your partner's a silicone mold manufacturer, right? But I don't know anyone that commercially would mold it, right?
+
+[37:25] I wonder whether or not uh I wonder whether or not the other reason why we do have to mold it. Like there is a you know a strategy behind the creation of the the shape is essentially a paw, and we have a a cavity in the palm of the paw that a gelatin filling actually goes in as a delivery mechanism for C V D. And it's a um it's a fairly you know dynamic product that we're you know working on, but essentially you know, we need to have this shape for that cavity almost to make like a lens or tart for for dogs in a in a sense. But you know, having this cavity shape is going to be you know crucial for the the design of this product and this for now at least, until we can get stamped metal mold, uh you know, kind of like muffin tin, so to speak, that we can cook and just conduct better. I need to figure out a solution with what we have right now.
+
+[38:15] And I was wondering if you could but this is more reasonable anyway, because it's not a direction it's not a food, it's a snack. So you're like a person's not buying a 20-pound sack, they're buying like a four ounce bag. So you don't need to worry about. I was thinking you're sitting there and like you're like, you know, have you know five sheet trays. Here's your breakfast, Poochie.
+
+[38:34] You know what I mean? So it's like you're not doing that, like you're doing more like cooking. All right. I mean, I don't know, I might try like like I was talking earlier in the show, like a cookie gun. Uh, but if you want to do a mold and you haven't had any luck just like uh letting it dry out for a while, right?
+
+[38:52] And then demolding it and finishing the cook. I've done a 15-minute cook, unmold pseudo successfully. Yeah, continue the cook for another like 30 minutes, and then that desiccates completely and gets to the crispiness that I'm looking for. Here's what I would do. Try this.
+
+[39:10] Try this, try this, try this. Try this. Mold them, strike off the molds, mold them, freeze them, pop them out frozen onto a dehydrate, and then just dehydrate them gently. Have you tried freezing them? That would I haven't.
+
+[39:27] It's just I don't know if I'm gonna have the capacity, freezer capacity at production to be doing that. Um have you ever cooked with vacuum ovens before? Uh I have tried to modify unsuccessfully an oven. I've also tried to do microwave vacuum dehydration, and you have to be real careful when you do that because uh uh you get intense plasma arcs, which like are awesome, but they ruin all the food that's inside of your uh inside of your oven. I mean, like like crazy, like, you know, like uh, you know, all bow to zad like electricity and freaking the emperor kind of like stuff, but it's like, yeah.
+
+[40:06] Uh I've never owned a vacuum oven, but um, they're probably good. You can lower the the temperature. I think look, you you want to lower the temperature and have it go in a reasonable amount of time. I'd say you gotta demold those suckers somehow. Like uh, you know, in production, I know it's more expensive, but you could do a par, quick, a quick par freeze with LN, we'll pop them out in uh in a silicone, won't get killed.
+
+[40:29] You could pop them out in like under a minute. You know what I mean? You could just like par freeze them, you could pop them out under a minute, and they also won't be frozen in the middle, so you won't have to wait all that time to get them to thaw before they start dehydrating. But I, you know, I think it's not gonna have a lot of luck inside of the molds cooking it because the the grease is gonna render out and it's not gonna stay where it is, and it's gonna you're gonna get weird floaties and like all this kind of my guess is that's what's gonna happen. And that uh, you know, there's always gonna be kind of issues, and this way you won't need as many molds, you just throw them on sheet trays, and they could probably just dehydrate, you know, in plain air for a while until until you have oven times, you know what I mean?
+
+[41:10] Um try some LN. Just get a little LN. I'm gonna be running. Yeah? Yeah, I'm gonna be running trials with the vacuum ovens here in the next couple weeks, so I'll keep guys talking about it.
+
+[41:21] Yeah, if you have a vacuum oven, I've never I've never really used one, but they are they are great for reducing the temperature at which liquid boils, so you know, like dehydrating apple chips and things that brown, it's great. So maybe you know, maybe you'll have some luck. Let us know. So shoot me a tweet at cooking issues, or you know, if you still Twitter or Instagram. Anyway, Twitter now is all people talking about how much they hate Twitter.
+
+[41:40] No one ever actually gives real information on Twitter anymore. You know what I mean? It's like I I don't care. Either quit or ask me a question about cooking. I don't, you know, I I don't need to know about the mechanism of how we're communicating at this point.
+
+[41:52] Anyway, maybe I do. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Goodness. All right.
+
+[41:56] All right. Well, good luck and let us know how it works out. All right. Back to latkas. So moisture management on lockers, right?
+
+[42:04] So the classic laka recipe, you grate the potatoes, you squeeze the hell out of the, you squeeze the hell out of the potatoes to get the liquid out of it, right? Because if that liquid, you need to get the liquid out quickly, right? But then conversely, you add liquid back in the form of batter, which just goes to show, right, that the question of liquid is liquid itself is not your enemy. Bound liquid inside of the potato that doesn't immediately leave is your enemy. Liquid in the binding is kind of okay because otherwise eggs wouldn't work, right?
+
+[42:33] Right? So uh that stuff though can bubble out and kind of uh leave quickly. So, what was the question that Dave had about this? My question is, uh, can we be a little more scientific about the recipe? What's happening?
+
+[42:44] Uh what's actually the ideal temperature to bring the potatoes to to properly denature whatever enzymes are causing them to oxidize or to maximize stickiness. I prefer to use an internal thermometer and bring the potatoes to a specific temperature so I don't have to worry so much about things like size, initial temperature, and so forth. That way I could even use a water bath to parcook them. I'd love to hear uh you elaborate on the subject. Um I wouldn't use a water bath.
+
+[43:05] Like the whole point of kind of baking them is you're flashing off some of the liquid, right? Also, the issue is is that kind of like and someone asked later, I don't know if we're gonna get to it, but they ask about a nyxtimalization question, and someone's gonna ask about a uh milkbread uh question. And you're not trying to cook the potato all the way through. If you cook the potato all the way through, right, then it's gonna be mush when you when you grate it. You're trying to to parcook it.
+
+[43:30] So you're trying to get um you know the starch granules to start to swell, to store start to uh, you know, uh paste, to start to gelatinize, but not to go all the way. So it's kind of very hard actually to who uh judge that based on a thermometer, because as soon as the center gets up to a particular temperature, based on you don't know what the outer stuff is up to. So it's actually kind of complicated to come up with a bulletproof number. It's easy. And when you're a professional, like Jeremy is, uh, you know, you're ordering a potato size that's relatively uniform, right?
+
+[44:08] You get you order a particular size of potato. If you're going into you know a supermarket, I typically buy sack potatoes, like five-pound sacks of potatoes. But even those are not uniform at all. And if you get what's called, don't get a baking potato. That's gonna be a nightmare.
+
+[44:23] They're too big. You know what I mean? Like quote unquote baking potato. So I have to say, I don't think there's going to be a way to easily scientify this. Basically, what he's doing with this technique, and it's kind of just because he wants to do it, right?
+
+[44:40] Because you know what binds latkas well? Matsumail. You know what I mean? Like mozzameal binds because you know why? Because it's pre-cooked, it's pre-gelatinized starch.
+
+[44:52] It's already absorbing liquid. Like as we speak, you stick it in liquid, it's absorbing liquid. Oh my, what the heck is this? Oh, they come by every time so far. The candy cane army, I guess.
+
+[45:05] This is that's aggressive. They're gonna hit me with this candy cane. I don't know, they are like seven feet tall candy canes, and everyone's wearing all white and candy cane themed spell candles. I just panned to the video so everyone saw that. I don't know how I don't know how I feel about that.
+
+[45:19] I mean, it they they they they I guess they're festive, but I feel like yeah, it's gotta be some like NBC promotional stuff. No, so Stas hates that now. Yeah, yeah. Hey Stas, couldn't afford an ice machine, but they can afford seven foot candy cakes later. Oh, yeah.
+
+[45:34] I know. I know. I know. Yeah. Uh so the you know, the point is is that is gelatinized starch already holds onto its water and it's there to help uh act as an aid when when you're binding.
+
+[45:47] Right? Right. Right, right. All right. Was that a good enough answer?
+
+[45:50] I don't know. I don't even know what I said anymore. I mean, lakas are just kind of the vehicle for whatever you're really kind of serving it with. Yeah. I mean, like I mean, my first of all, my family, well, we're Jews, so we we eat lakas all the time, even though it's not Hanukkah.
+
+[46:02] So it's all about the the applesauce you're making. Or the amazing caviar that we just had the other day with it. Or the fancy man. Yeah. My wife's my my wife's fancy.
+
+[46:14] Yeah. My wife is fancy salmon real caviar. Creme frage, you know. Ah, creme fresh. You know what?
+
+[46:20] I love creme fraîche as a topping. I don't like cooking with it because its texture goes from all the way to none of the way. Like you, you know what I mean? And then you have to let it reset. Piss me off.
+
+[46:32] You know what I mean? It tastes delicious though. Tastes delicious. Anyway. Uh what size laka do you like, Joe?
+
+[46:40] We like 'em about, I'm gonna guesstimate and say they're about four to five inch in diameter. So you don't like giant ones that are No, don't like giant ones. And we like ours with leek. Ooh. Ooh, ooh.
+
+[46:52] And uh how do you do you just like mince or you grate them like you would an onion? Grate them with like a same way you would do an onion. Yeah. So some people are like, don't some people, okay. On uh what's it on serious seeds, I forget who wrote who wrote the the thing on it, but they're like, You shouldn't grate the onion, you should leave it in pieces.
+
+[47:06] I disagree, man. It's a different flavor. Different flavor. And you by the way, hey, you can grate the onion and then you can get rid of some of the moisture in the onion at the same time. Exactly.
+
+[47:16] Hello. Hello, pay ball. Anyone there? Anyone I lost a uh I I've lost a few of uh fingernails during those times. Yeah?
+
+[47:24] Yeah. You gotta get you a salad master. Uh you know what? Honestly, though, like I no longer enjoy motorized grading. I really don't.
+
+[47:39] Because like in a restaurant, yeah. Like a Roboku, yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Or even like uh, but it's like, it's just like the amount of cleaning with a and then like the you know what I don't like?
+
+[47:54] I don't like looking at that disc that gets caught between the grating disc and the top of the food processor that keeps spinning and then the stuffed goop. I just don't like it. And you know what? The the hand graters like I don't box grape, because come on. Box grading sucks.
+
+[48:10] It does. I uh I do it sometimes. I do box grape butter for uh biscuits, yeah. That is the money. Yeah, box grading frozen butter for biscuits is a money.
+
+[48:22] That is like I was like, this is some bull crap, this is garbage, nobody needs to do this. And then I started doing it, I was like, and everyone's like, oh, these are the best biscuits you ever made. I'm like, damn it, you know what I mean? Oh, here's another thing. I learned a Romanian phrase.
+
+[48:38] I can't say the because the real one contains the the translation for sugar honey iced tea, right? So I'll say it in a family-friendly way. You can't make a whip with poop. So if someone's like, if someone's like, bring something and it's like not good enough for the task, can't make a whip with poop, but you're supposed to say the sugar honey ice tea word. I was like, that's a nice phrase.
+
+[48:58] It's a nice Romanian phrase. Yeah. Good for the holidays. Yeah, yeah. Uh apparently, Romanian has like some sick, like really good, like just vivid phrases.
+
+[49:10] I need to get more of them. I need to get more Romanian phrases. Uh my wife's partner's Romanian. Like from Romania. Gotcha.
+
+[49:17] Yeah. All right. So Patrick writes in, I'm making a linguini with clam sauce on the Christmas Eve. What are your thoughts on linguini and clam sauce, people? Pro.
+
+[49:28] Approved, yeah. Pro. Stas, linguini, like hate. As a shape. Would you ever go linguini?
+
+[49:33] Or is it it's too halfway for you? What are your thoughts on linguini? We'll never know. She's no speechless. All right.
+
+[49:43] Uh and want to make it taste like a fresh clam pie from Frank Peppy's. That's not gonna happen. Where do you live, Patrick? Can you get belly clams? Peppy's is belly clam, right?
+
+[49:56] Yeah. Sally's doesn't do belly clams, but Peppy's does belly clams. Yeah. And it's very sparse, right? Yeah.
+
+[50:03] And well, here comes the point, right? And I'm thinking uh I'm thinking I need to add bread crumbs. I always add bread crumbs to my to my uh to my seafood pastas. Like every Christmas Eve, we do the anchovies. Well, when I'm with my mom, we do the anchovy pasta with the breadcrumbs.
+
+[50:21] Love it. Uh I'll need to add breadcrumbs. Any thoughts on how to have that char-burnt New Haven pizza taste in the crumbs without overdoing it? Without overdoing it. Without overdoing it.
+
+[50:33] Without overdoing it. I mean, you could. Oh, yeah. I was saying you could overtoast the bread, then dehigh the bread, then make your own breadcrumbs. Right?
+
+[50:43] Uh yeah, I think their concern is taking already made breadcrumbs and then like overdoing it. But what I did is I one time just baked pizza dough until it was charred and then made breadcrumbs. Yeah? How was it? Uh TBD, it's in the freezer.
+
+[51:09] We're gonna do pizza crust meatballs. Don't you think it'll get lost inside of the meatball? No, I guess we find out. Yeah, all right. People still use meatballs and insult when they're talking about people.
+
+[51:24] No, I don't think so. Meatball. I don't think so. Meatball. Anyway.
+
+[51:29] It used to be a thing. So uh also, like, how about this? Instead of linguini, what about like fregola, which already baked? You know what I mean? Or you could go uh you could do uh uh Joel Gargano style and use the the the burnt grains, the grano arso.
+
+[51:44] Yeah, right? What kind of does he what what pasta does he make with that? He doesn't do like a what is what does he use for that anyway? What does he use that in? You know, John?
+
+[51:52] Pasta integrale, I think is what he calls it. Um but he uses the burnt stuff or it's just parched, it's not burnt, it doesn't taste like it's not yeah, no, it doesn't taste it's not like fregolo with that hard hard toast taste. No, yeah. The problem is fregal is not gonna hit the linguini spot because it's like little balls. Yeah, exactly.
+
+[52:07] Yeah. I like fregolo though. I do too. Very good. Fregola.
+
+[52:12] Oh, also, uh, any guidance on my favorite salt cod to buy at Calluccio and Suns. All right, listen, it depends on how much salt cod you want, my man. Like, you gotta go look at it. Like, I'm not gonna say you can only get the one from the you know, gas bay. I'm saying go look at their salt cod selection, and what's gonna happen is you're gonna be like, I want to buy the whole half.
+
+[52:31] I want to buy the whole half of the fish. I want to buy it. I'm gonna get the whole fish. And then I've got in fact, I think it's not even half. I think I bought a whole fish.
+
+[52:40] It's like splitting opened up. Like, I'm gonna buy the whole thing. I don't care. Someone's like, we don't, we're not gonna eat that much baccala. We don't know, well, we don't have a big enough freezer.
+
+[52:44] I'm like, I don't care. I don't count buying it. And that's what I did. And so then, you know, you you take the big fat section and you make the bacala, the Christmas E-style bacala, and then just boatloads of brandat, which is like, you got your brandad guy, right? Yeah.
+
+[53:07] I mean, like, I could eat infinity of that. And then like also like baccalaitos, and then also like uh I love the the the four things I make, I very rarely, other than, you know, if I'm someone's asking me to cook on Christmas Eve, do I make like old school, like the baccala where you cut it, you know what I mean? Very rarely. Mainly I do uh like uh salt salt fish with like mashed uh either potatoes or or actual yams like name with like uh with like uh you know you saute onions and like a boatload of uh sweet peppers, and then you mash with in like eight tons of butter, and then you uh with some garlic, and then you um you uh take you know, yams, like name, white, you know, white actual yams, not sweet potatoes, yams, and then you starchy ones, and then you boil them, you mash them, you mix it in with butter and then hacked up uh like shredded, hacked up uh salt cod, or which is not cotton anymore, you know, only it's you know, whatever it is. And uh that is delicious.
+
+[54:09] That is delicious. And then I always, you know, I serve it with like, you know, I basically anytime I make stuff like that, I just serve whatever you would serve at a Tex Mex place. So it's like shred shredded lettuce, avocados, uh, you know, lime, uh, and it's good. The other thing I make, I like salcod fritters, and I love uh making uh uh like uh brandade style, like uh, but I don't add a lot of uh potato to that stuff. I'm mainly it's just whipped whipped salcad and and olive oil.
+
+[54:41] Yeah I don't I'm not a walnut olive oil. Yeah. And then uh yeah, good. On bread, some toasty bread. Yes.
+
+[54:50] Toasty bread and some brand, my man. Delicious, classic. Yeah. Can't go on that de mouri, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[54:55] Delicious. Delicious. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh did I answer that question?
+
+[54:59] I think so. Uh from BS. Oh my god, it's printed on two sides of the paper. I got more to go than I thought. What is everybody's holiday uh favorite holiday bed uh beverage and any tips or hacks that are unknown?
+
+[55:11] Uh temping um temping glassware. What do I mean, temping glassware? And getting it cold, maybe? I don't know. Have liquid nitrogen or have a lot of fridge space.
+
+[55:23] Uh I've made cold butter rum from liquid intelligence, delicious, but the cup the customer reception was miss mixed. I found that people don't like to think that they're drinking butter. If you don't tell them, they won't know. Uh but uh yeah, yeah. Uh I like um I don't I actually don't really like most of the Christmasy beverages.
+
+[55:43] You know? You guys. I can't really think of I don't know, beer, wine, no, champagne. Beer, wine. I drink.
+
+[55:53] Yeah. That's John's like John's like when I think of Christmas, I think of beer. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
+
+[56:01] Jack, you you too, same. You know what I like? Um, I like uh I like a little bit of uh like hot spice wine, like mold wine, like glug, like sweetish style. Well, that's what I was exactly what I was thinking of mold wine. I mean it's always good.
+
+[56:13] It's fun to make. Yeah. Yeah. Smells great in the house. Yeah.
+
+[56:14] And you have a little bit of it, and then you move on to wine. Yeah. Yeah, but like no way of no no eggnog. No, no, not an eggnog. A lot of people love eggnog.
+
+[56:25] I know. My man, oh. Get your motor running, had it on the highway. Looking for adventure, whatever comes your way. Yeah, I don't have a fart sound for that one.
+
+[56:36] Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh but anyway, uh, although, you know, look, at this point it's too late for eggnog anyway, because you should have you should have made it like, you know, a couple weeks ago. Yep. You know, make it now.
+
+[56:47] If you like eggnog, make it now and then age it for a year the way that Nick Bennett does. He ages it for one year, two years, three years. He always saves a little bit, and then like he'll do all these tastings. Uh I'm just not an eggnog guy. So like the vintage is like is goes well with the lactose?
+
+[57:05] Uh well, it's just it doesn't go quote unquote bad, right? So if you can't have the lactose, then it aging it's not gonna help you any. You could No, of course. I'm just wondering. Right.
+
+[57:16] You could toss the enzyme in. You ever do that? No, I never have. Yeah. I you know, I did this thing with the beans for uh Sirius Eats.
+
+[57:24] Recently, it's out. You can look it up, where I tested uh putting the enzyme into the beans to knock out the toots. So I bet you you could do the same thing with the lactate. I bet you you could make your own lactose-free. Interesting.
+
+[57:39] I never thought about that. We didn't run the test next year. Next year, yeah, there we go. Next year, yeah. Uh Prashant writes in.
+
+[57:47] I've been trying to make a sourdough dinner roll for a while, and I've been following the recipe on the perfect loaf. Uh forward slash super soft sourdough rolls. I've tried this recipe at least four times, and each time the dinner rolls go hard after they cool down, but they get soft again after being warmed up. Do you have any suggestions for making them soft full stop? Uh I would like to use them to make uh pav bhaji, which I think is that is that's that like uh vegetable curry served with soft rolls, right?
+
+[58:13] Right? No, sure. I didn't get a chance to look at the YouTube. I think that's what it is. Uh so I looked at the I looked at the sourdough roll recipe uh that you have, and so it is a uh, you know, one of these uh milkbread things where you heat a certain amount of the uh of flour with the milk to prehydrate it, right?
+
+[58:33] And then add that to your dough. And the whole point of doing that uh using prehydrated uh, and it's been used you know in different cultures in different ways for centuries, right? So you have like you know, Portuguese broa, which uses prehydrated cornmeal, you have uh a lot of uh gluten-free breads or cassava things made with prehydrated. So the idea of prehydrating, pre-cooking some of the starch, is that now that starch can hold on to water while the dough is not yet cooked, right? And so that lets you have a higher hydration dough than you could otherwise have, and still have it hold its shape as it's being formed, as it's rising, as it's baking.
+
+[59:13] That's the theory of it. And then in the end, right, you're gonna have a higher hydration bread. So it's like it's going to stay soft longer. It's gonna be moister, physically moister, than it would be if it was a lower hydration bread. So that's the that's the why they do it, right?
+
+[59:29] I don't know why your particular one is going uh hard, right? Um, it's got um, let's see, you're using uh an all-purpose flour and a bread flour. I don't know why it needs uh bread flour. It has some sugar in it, it has a relatively small amount of butter and it uses water. I I would say if you want it to be more tender, change the water to milk and substitute some of that with egg.
+
+[59:59] Basically, what I'm saying is turn it into a brioche. Basically, what I'm telling you is turn this into a brioche. Uh, you can do all the same things that you did, but just make it like a brioche and it's not gonna go soft. You can even still do the milk thing. Is that a correct?
+
+[1:00:12] Is that a good answer? Yeah, it will go soft, it won't go hard. That's what I meant. Yeah. Uh okay.
+
+[1:00:17] KG wants to know, I have belated cookie question. We don't have any Alabama cookies, KG. Next time we get Matt Start Well on, or anyone who can hear me who's from Alabama, let me know what the good cookies are. Vince, uh, Vince writes in, what's the pepper mill that Dave uh recommends? It was fairly expensive, but I can't find what it was.
+
+[1:00:31] Uh, was it the coffee grinder turn pepper mill? Yeah, I get the Java press. It used to be a lot cheaper. And I 3D print the parts, but it's a killer pepper mill for like 30 bucks, and it grates the hell out of pepper. Uh, and it's not like aggro.
+
+[1:00:44] Some of the pepper grinders they have out there are like aggro marketing, which I don't understand. Nicholas Webster, uh, is there a foolproof fundue technique for larger quantities, aka two gill cannons, kilos of cheese. I'm still mortified from splitting a big one last winter for my family. Well, that sucks. Uh would the best insurance be to bag it at low temperature and low temperature everything together and then blitz it, or is the stove fine with enough citrate and cornstarch?
+
+[1:01:04] Yeah, stove's fine, citrus, cornstarch, white wine. Don't forget the white wine, a little bit of acidity to get it in the correct pH and you know, use the right cheeses. Uh, Christian Sacco, can I use crystallized honey to make mead without adding yeast? I have three kilograms bucket of solid honey, or is it better to melt the honey to a liquid state and just add appropriate yeast? Uh the honey will melt down at like 94 to 100, so below the temperature that's gonna kill the wild yeast.
+
+[1:01:26] So you can melt it, or you can just wait for the rest of your natural lifetime for it to dissolve in the water. I think either way you're gonna be okay. Uh Saul Martinez question I found the mega post from the archives on Nixamalization and it briefly mentions how to rescue overcooked nixtamol by cooling it, rubbing off the skin, rinsing it, and boiling it in uh in water or texquite to make pozole. Can you give details on how long to boil it? I'm not an expert, but I'm gonna have uh John or Quinn reach out to uh Jorge Gaviera to ask uh whether they have any good uh ideas.
+
+[1:01:55] And then uh see if I can get one more Xander. Along with my friends and family, I become obsessed with William Sonoma hot fudge sauce. Uh it's great on many things like pound cake, but most importantly, Haganda's vanilla ice cream. So you weren't able to find it, you found a recipe, but it wasn't good, and you want to know how to reverse engineer it, right? Uh I'll tell you what, Xander, hit me up on Twitter and I'll answer this for the for the Christmas time.
+
+[1:02:18] I don't have time, unfortunately, right now, to go into the exact way I would break this down, but hit me up on Twitter and I'll try to get it to you. Uh happy, happy Hanukkah, happy holidays, happy new year, uh, Merry Christmas if you celebrate, and cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you from the Heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center's at New Stand Studios, joined as usual with uh John here in the studio. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Good.
+
+[0:24] Got Joe, uh got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. What's up, Joe? Hey, how you doing? Happy New Year's, everyone. Happy New Year.
+
+[0:29] Happy New Year to you. Got uh Quinn over there at our uh in our uh Vancouver Island headquarters. What's the name of that town? Naimo? Naimo?
+
+[0:38] Nanaimo. Nun Naimo. Yeah. Not Naimo, Nanaimo. Nanaimo.
+
+[0:44] Yeah. And uh how close is that to the ferry in case people know Vancouver Island? Is that far from the ferry? Oh there's a ferry that goes. There's two ferries.
+
+[0:53] I basically go right here. Oh, nice. All right. And uh got uh in our California wing, we got uh Jackie Molecules. How you doing, Jack?
+
+[1:03] I'm in DC today, actually. So well, I know someone who is West Coast. That's Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? I'm good.
+
+[1:12] Yeah? Good. Happy New Year today. Yeah, yeah. So any uh any uh any interesting stories from when we were on our one week hiatus.
+
+[1:24] Anything? I will very quickly say that I was in New York for a week, and thank you, John, for letting me stay at your apartment. That was very kind of project. But I had one of the uh one of the best meals I've had in a while at a place called Zob Zab in Woodside. Um, so anybody in New York, if you're into that kind of thing, definitely go check that out.
+
+[1:50] But what if if if they're not into things that are delicious and they should not check it out? Well, you know, Isan Thai, it's like some people are spice averse, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not for everyone. Yeah.
+
+[1:59] Yeah. All right. All right, what else we got? What else we got going uh for the break? What happened?
+
+[2:05] Anyone do anything? What's what's gone? I went to I made uh go ahead. Oh, it's okay. I went to a Hoity Toidie country club in western Pennsylvania and really old school service that was awesome to see.
+
+[2:20] You know, ever women have their orders taken first. You know, the only peop person who sees the prices, you know, in the menu is like the lead member, you know, so it doesn't have to like affect anyone's mind about what they're gonna order at this already expensive place. Right. Um, everything presented from the left, cleared from the right, you know, like silverware out the wazoo, you know, for like wetting your fingers in with a slice of lemon and all that stuff. I don't know.
+
+[2:44] It's just like really fun to see. Was it uh was it the place that did the fish house punch? N I don't think so. Well, if it was you would have had it and you would have known. Yeah, they had their thing is like Chippewa soup.
+
+[2:58] If you've heard of that, it was like some curried thing was really nice. And so you could get that soup hot or cold. If you got it cold, it came in a little porcelain bowl that was like suspended in a larger silver kind of thing, you know, and sitting in the bed of ice to keep it nice and chill. Did you say both? Both.
+
+[3:15] Both. No, I got it hot. You got it hot? Did someone else at the table get it cold? Yes.
+
+[3:19] All right. Yeah. And which did you since you're assuming you tasted better? Oh, yeah, preferred hot. You preferred hot.
+
+[3:24] So you ordered correctly. Yeah. I love it when you order correctly. Yeah. When you order incorrectly, it's so sad.
+
+[3:29] You know, I'm not gonna out anyone I know, but there are some people who have the skill of always ordering poorly. And when you go out to restaurants with people who you know are gonna order poorly, Destasia hates the way I order. True or false, does. Yeah, I really hate it. Hate it.
+
+[3:44] Wow. Yeah, you want to tell them what I do. You wait till you don't say what you want to anyone at the table and you wait till everyone is done ordering and then you say what you want. Yeah. It's really weird.
+
+[4:01] Uh that's a hundred percent accurate. So, like, like if that's triggering to you, don't go out to dinner with me. Because it's like uh I mean, you know, not that I go out that often. But uh, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[4:11] I don't know why. First of all, I hate choosing at all. So like I kind of wait until the last minute, and then I kind of make a snap decision. And I kind of wait to see if the server is gonna say anything about any dishes on the on the way. Like if someone says, I'm gonna get the steak free, and I look at the server as as the as you know, that my fellow diners is saying that.
+
+[4:30] Look at their face. Like the server sometimes will do this a little bit little, you know, with their face? Yep. And I'm like, oh, I'm not gonna get the steak free. I'm sure, I'm sure it sucks.
+
+[4:41] I'm looking at their face. You know what I mean? Or but I don't make a decision based on like if everyone around orders the same thing, sometimes I'll be like, fine, I'll just do the same thing, just I don't have to think about it. But I'm not the kind of person that I feel like I need to equalize what the table is getting, because I don't care. I'm like, I'm not gonna ask for your food.
+
+[5:00] I don't need your food. I'm gonna small my food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not a collaborative orderer. No.
+
+[5:06] No, no. I'm not there. And in situations where it is that kind of a thing where the whole table's gonna share, I desire zero input. I don't want it, I don't want there to be any issues. I don't want to like I don't want to be like, oh, the one you chose, mm-hmm.
+
+[5:21] Wow. You know what I mean? I'm just like, you choose everything because I hate choice. You know what I mean? And I can eat almost anything.
+
+[5:27] Now that I'm not allergic to cherries anymore, I can eat literally anything that I'm willing to eat. You know what I'm saying? Like I won't eat monkey, probably no, it's I think me and Stas are similar in how we order. How's that? Yeah, for sure.
+
+[5:45] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But why you can taste more things. You taste more things generally. Okay.
+
+[5:55] Have a bigger appetite. Yeah. Well, also, it's like I don't know. The problem with sharing dishes for me, and Stas also hates this about me, right? Is that I eat preposterously quickly.
+
+[6:12] Like so quickly. You know what I mean? My natural eating speed is is extremely fast. Uh I'm not a competitive eater or anything, but I eat very quickly. So when everything is shared.
+
+[6:25] Don't you think when you're like that's part of eating and having dining experiences is also dining at the speed of the people around you and talking to them and talking about where you're like that's all part of it. It's not just sustenance to get the food in your body. Well, that's how you see it. That's how you see it. Okay.
+
+[6:43] Like I I don't enjoy eating slowly in the same way that I don't enjoy walking slowly. Like, I'm walking down the street today, it's raining, I'm wet, I'm trying to get to the radio station. Every eight averse with their umbrella out, sauntering about the freaking city, poking me in the eye with their umbrella. I'm like, get out. Get out of my get out of my city.
+
+[7:06] Get out. You know what I mean? It's like it's the same thing with eating. It's like I don't enjoy eating slowly, so why would I? I have to forcibly slow myself down, and then I don't enjoy what I'm eating.
+
+[7:17] You know? For me. I'm not saying you should eat that way, obviously. But Nastasia got so bent that the classic is Jiro. The classic is Jiro, where she blamed me for how fast that damn meal was.
+
+[7:30] Correct or not correct. Well no, that's how that goes, right? I mean, that's how the thing is. No, no, no. But they pace they paste the omakase, the like the doling out of the fish pieces on the person that's eating the fastest in your group.
+
+[7:43] Says who he was look any time you finished, then he started recutting cutting like the new pieces for all of us. I don't know. We you know what? We don't have we didn't have the money to do a side by side, but you know, of like w like I'm not gonna touch my fish until Nastasia's done with her fish. We we like if we had we could do a side by side and time them, you know, like the dad in uh Christmas story time me!
+
+[8:12] Mark Ladiner was Mark Ladner was there too, and he was like, what the fry uh like well let's let's not also forget that the man had gotten like serious food poisoning and he kept on having to run out to the subway track uh track set on spray to uh you know be able to make it back and finish his intensely overcooked, hammered, like freaking pasty squillamantis sushi piece. But I don't know, I don't know that that's the c case. I mean, I still don't maybe we need to run this side by side. You know what I'm saying? That's all.
+
+[8:47] Order on a trip to Japan. Easy. Anyway, but like if I had sat there just staring at the plate until Nastasia was done, which is what I would have to do to eat that slowly and enjoy myself. And Mark, let's let's remind that two people, Mark and me. Mark was just worried about his butt at that point.
+
+[9:06] He wasn't saying anything to anybody. He was like, let me keep my insides inside of my body. He wasn't. He wasn't. He wasn't.
+
+[9:14] He wasn't. The only one talking smack that I remember is you. You're the only one I remember talking smack at that time. But my point is that let's say I just sat there and waited for you to be done with two and three quarters of each dish. And then housed the ones that I had in the speed that I normally like to eat, which is about correct for speeds for me, right?
+
+[9:38] I think he would have reached across and slapped me for like sitting there and waiting to eat it. Jiro. Yeah. I mean, I could probably take a slap from him. He was 80, what was he, 88 or whatever?
+
+[9:51] I could take it. I could take it. Famous last words. What? With the famous last words, I can take a slap.
+
+[9:59] Probably true. Probably true. What about you, Nastasi? Any good New Year's uh stuff? For Christmas?
+
+[10:08] Um no, nothing, nothing too exciting. Yeah. I made my I didn't make it for Christmas. Uh, but uh for New Year's I made my Christmas pudding that I make every year. I love Christmas pudding.
+
+[10:18] If it's a it's a it's the only recipe that I reliably make from a cookbook from Gourmet's best desserts, which came out I think in like 1988 or 89 or something like this, and my mom got me a copy in the 90s when it was already like well out of print. And it's like breadcrumbs and cranberries and sugar and eggs, and you steam it. I have a pudding mold that I've been using for about 25 years, like one of those old like tinned pudding molds that you like boil for hours just like you're in a Dickens freaking book. And uh yeah, it was delicious. I light it on fire.
+
+[10:52] I make a hard sauce. The only thing I changed this year, I made everything ahead of time, brought it with me to Vermont because I was in Vermont. And I realized that heart, you know, you know, hard sauce, English hard sauce? No. It's like cream butter and sugar, and it's called hard because it it's like got a lot of butter in it.
+
+[11:09] I don't know why they frankly I don't know why they call it hard sauce, because it's not physically like you're not like tapity tap tap tape, right? And uh, but it's basically cream syrup with butter mixed into it, and it holds really well. So that's the only thing I changed. I changed it to be more like, you know, my cocktail recipe for a cream syrup. I added more because it's cream, sugar, and then lemon juice to acidify it.
+
+[11:32] It doesn't have that much lemon juice in the original, but from what I know about cream syrups, if you have enough sugar in to stabilize it, you micro break it with the lemon. So I amped the lemon a lot in the hard sauce so that it would be kind of tart, not just be overly sweet, but be kind of tart. I think it was a good uh good move. Good move, good addition. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[11:51] If you're gonna make a steam pudding people, and you don't want it to be too hard, you know what I'm saying? You don't want it to be like like a baseball. Let it cool a bit before you unmold it. Uh, one year, uh 15 years ago or something like this, I took it out and I and I had it finishing right when it was done, and I unmolded it too hot and it went boo and just like turned into like a pudding sludge. It didn't hold the the bunt like mold shape of the pudding mold.
+
+[12:18] But yeah. Also, one more tip for steaming. If you have a pressure cooker, pressure cookers are great for these kinds of puddings. Don't seal it, but just like close the lid so that it it's almost sealed so that you get very little evaporation. And that way you don't have to add too much water.
+
+[12:29] If you don't have to add too much water to it, you don't have to worry about water getting into the pudding mold. You don't have to do all that old BS that they used to do in Dickensian days where you would dip, dip your towel in flour and tie it around the thing and then boil it and then have this nasty boiled flour towel to deal with afterwards. But oh, speaking of England, did you get to Gojo? No, we'd never made it. Oh God, because of the storm?
+
+[12:56] No, not because of storm. Storm was like literally right behind us. Um there were brake problems on the airplane. So they uh yeah, they basically kicked us off the plane, promised another plane that night, and um then uh we stayed there for like three hours at the airport trying to get our luggage off with the car seat and the stroller. That never happened.
+
+[13:18] Uh sucks. And uh we took a limo home. I mean that was the only car that would take us home without a car seat. Oh my god. Yeah.
+
+[13:26] And we decided no, it's this is not meant to be. Let's stay home. So we stayed home. That's I mean, like, I hope you had a good time at home, but that still sucks real hard. Yeah, it did.
+
+[13:34] I mean, honestly, uh well, I love my my in-laws. Um, I was kind of happy we didn't go. Sorry if you're listening. Um just because of the rigmarole? Just because of the just because the whole I mean, like getting to the airport, I mean, we did ha all this work just to get there, and then find and you know the little boy was trying to go to sleep, and the guy kept the pilot kept him coming on the onto the intercom and waking him up, and we're like, oh my god, this is not gonna happen.
+
+[14:03] Let's just get off the plane. Then finally they allowed us off the plane. So, how long were you on the freaking tarmac? Two and a half hours. Like half of what the almost half of what the freaking flight would have been.
+
+[14:15] Exactly. Oh, that sucks real bad. Yeah. Oh my god, that sucks. We changed him right there in the seat.
+
+[14:20] And I mean, he like it was awesome. Yeah. Well, you know. We were that couple. Nothing more fun.
+
+[14:25] You know what though? People need the people need the whatever. What are you supposed to do? Uh I know. You know, what are you supposed to do?
+
+[14:32] People need to not worry about that. Yeah, no one, everyone was cool. He was making friends with everyone. Cool. Uh, so I was in Vermont for the for the New Year's, right?
+
+[14:42] Oh, I visited uh visited Moromie over the right on Christmas Eve. I was in Morami. Yeah. Got to see. Got to see where the magic was made.
+
+[14:49] Yeah, but I didn't, but you know, I didn't want to invite me. Let's see how it does. Yeah. It was Wiley. Wild, my brother-in-law Wiley got the invite, and we went over to uh to you know to Maromi to see them make all that, but I have never tasted soy sauce directly out of the vat before they do all the straining, all it and I have to say, super fun.
+
+[15:09] It's super fun. And uh maybe I'll post one of the pictures or something, but I feel like Wiley already posted all the stuff. But um, yeah, so they have all of these like throwaway tasting spoons, and you just go right in and taste it. So you can see where the press is, where they make the leaves. I got to taste the dehydrated stuff, but it's just really fun tasting at different points in the fermentation.
+
+[15:28] Like this is a couple of weeks old, this is you know, ready to bottle. Uh, you know, all the different varieties, the different kind of mushrooms and stuff. Really nice, fun. And he they said that they were doing they did a bunch of blind tastes because they have a bunch of wooden barrels that they're aging in and a bunch of plastic barrels, and they said in a blind taste, people they preferred as a team, they preferred the uh the plastic barrels. Interesting, right?
+
+[15:50] Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Yeah. Anyway. Uh, but for New Year's, I was in Vermont, went cross-country skiing for the first time since 1987. Right?
+
+[15:58] Fun. That's where I made the pudding. But that's not what's important. We're in a place called Craftsbury, which is in some location in Vermont called the Great Northeast Kingdom or something like that, they call it, or the Northeast Kingdom. I think it's between two mountain ranges.
+
+[16:11] I don't really know much about it. I'm there, and I get these carrots. And I brought some of these carrots. That's what these carrots are. So these are these are un these are unpeeled, unpeeled, washed.
+
+[16:23] Right. I love these carrots. This guy, Pete's Greens in Craftsbury, Vermont, grows these carrots. And I just think they're a very high quality carrot. I got so many of these carrots.
+
+[16:34] These are bear in mind, these are unpeeled, just washed. Snappy crunch. Right? Really snappy. Not woody at all in the center.
+
+[16:44] Right? I mean, and I so I so Pete's Greens, Crassberry Vermont. I get a metric ton of these carrots, right? I have them my fridge is basically just carrots now, right? I'm gonna turn orange from all the beta carotene I'm I'm consuming.
+
+[16:57] Bean John Malkovich. Does he do that in bean? I don't remember. It's been so long since it's the uh the guy who's uh who's always eating the carrot drinking the carrot juice. You you really do turn orange if you dr if you eat too many carrots.
+
+[17:07] It's like a known, it's a known thing in the jig. Uh yeah. So I so I I say to the guy, uh, oh my god, the name of the variety just went uh a bolero is the name of the variety of carrot. And so I said, What variety? Yeah, Polero.
+
+[17:20] My ma used to grow them like when I was a kid in the garden bolero. I'm like, he's like, they probably changed over the years because you know they improved stuff. I was like, Pete, that's actually his name. There's a guy named Pete. If you want to picture like who he is, like think about like a mid-40s Michael Keaton.
+
+[17:37] Similar affect, similar look, you know what I mean? But farmer instead of actor, right? Got it. Yeah. And so I'm like, Pete, why are they so why are your carrots so good?
+
+[17:48] Because I think these are a very high quality carrot. They're not doing anything. Delicious carrot. I'm not just blowing smoke. That's a delicious carrot.
+
+[17:55] And uh he goes, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. I don't know. He's like, some places in England will do, he says, if I could if I could figure out a way to economically do it, something they do in some places in uh in Europe, I think Holland he said, you know, which is kind of like an industrial vegetable area, Holland, right? Like the hot house tomatoes.
+
+[18:14] He said that what they do is they keep the carrots in the ground all winter and they get preposterously sweet, and they add like a boat ton of mulch on top so that they don't physically freeze. He's like, Parsnips can physically freeze and come back and be okay, you can leave them in the ground. He said, But if the carrots actually freeze, they're kind of done. And he's like, if we knew we were gonna have a big enough snow cover, right? I could put like a foot of mulch over the carrots, and then like the snow would take up the rest and the carrots would never freeze.
+
+[18:42] And he says I could get these like even like more ridiculous carrots. He's like, but we can't guarantee the snow cover, and you know, I can't put like 10 feet of mulch in. That's like too much mulch. You know what I mean? Anyway, I thought it was an interesting little side.
+
+[18:56] Hope you enjoyed your carrots. Pete's greens. Pete's greens. Pete's greens. He has also, it's funny, he sells these sacks that are called like legitimate baby carrots that are just unpeeled carrots.
+
+[19:08] They're small, that he has washed in in bags. I don't know if he ships out of the area out of Crassberry, but you can get them at all the local, you know, general stores and whatnot there. Okay. Yeah. Good find.
+
+[19:20] Yeah, there you go. Yeah. See? I find something, I bring it to you guys. Not to you other fools who don't come here in person and just mess with you.
+
+[19:26] Yeah. Just messing with you. All right uh anything else before we get into the Quest Chones oh John didn't promote the go go oh yeah yeah you didn't tell me what you did yeah yeah yeah I made uh we did lasagna for Chris Christmas homemade ragu fresher mail homemade fresh you know pasta sheets uh open into a lamb presentally made how was it that turned out pretty good yeah yeah how old is it delicious how big is it uh uh it was about three kilos at the beginning so 6.6 pounds and what was it at the end yeah uh I forget it was like thirty percent weight loss okay so but how long is that take it's much smaller than a ham so I'm guessing it was only like a f for four to five month problem or did you cover it in oil and let it go for a while no it's about seven months seven months yeah all right and it tasted good you got your salt levels right you enjoyed it very very yeah very lammy but they're good yeah lammy lammy uh nostasi were you triggered by the fresh pasta reference no I'm no it's fine Squin is the Amazon whisperer he can do whatever he wants he can do whatever he wants you know what is that was your new year's resolution to be more flexible on stuff like that styles because I'm feeling like a whole new nostalgia's gonna make biscuits next week just for nostalgia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Biscuits and French fries.
+
+[21:09] Yeah. And she's gonna love it yeah yeah. Yeah. And mail it to her. Can you imagine anything more disgusting than someone mailing you French fries and biscuits?
+
+[21:17] Yeah. We could do it in this like uh Nastasia's family style where it's like it's French fries and biscuits wrapped in wet newspaper and shipped via ground, right? That would be the that would be the full money. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[21:31] Yeah. Uh although Nastasia had one of my dreams, she sent me a picture of it. She didn't tell me how it tasted. She had the uh freaking french fry juice, the French fry, the the French fry vodka, right? Oh, I didn't have it.
+
+[21:43] I didn't have it. I saw it online. Yeah, I was just like, oh, you find that. Yeah, yeah. Uh so speaking of triggering and pasta, visited Joel Gargano's uh place in Old Sabro, Gargano Pasta.
+
+[21:55] Yeah. Yeah. His giant well, giant for a human pasta machine. Small for a Nastasia style love of pasta machine, but yeah, big old pasta machine. That's really cool to see.
+
+[22:05] And what's funny is is that uh his store in in old Saybrook used to be a clothing store. So the stairwell down to the prep area downstairs is like a stairwell from a clothing store. That's huge. So like you're walking behind there and you feel like you're back of house at a kitchen, and then you show up in this like clothing store stairwell, and you're like, what the hell is this? Like all the space.
+
+[22:32] Oh, they're really that's where the bathrooms are? Even for normal humans? Yeah. And get this. You know the Annuletti, the little the cookies, the dry cookies?
+
+[22:39] His mom made them because they even had the little sprinkles on top and all that. His mom made them the actual ones he sold in the store. Oh, nice. His mom showed up, made them delicious. And I I had his uh I had his pasta.
+
+[22:53] I forget which one uh I uh I had which one of the shapes that I but it was it was good. It was very good. Yeah. I had the Amatrucciana and whatever squash capoletti stuff he had going on at the time. I think he said he uses uh I forget whether he uses Glenn, I forget what weed he uses, but uh it was good.
+
+[23:08] So okay, they're into the trigger and stuff, so you can unearmuff yourself. You can unearmuff. Uh okay. All right, all right. Yeah.
+
+[23:15] Uh Xander writes in the we we talked a little bit about this question uh beforehand, and I was just told on uh right before the program that there's uh some sort of discourse discourse uh discord discourse about uh this, but I'll give my two cents. Uh hey everybody uh and uh also Zoe, so it's Xander and Zoe are the two people who are interested in this problem. The problem is gonna revolve around a Williams Sonoma hot fudge sauce. We already read the question before, so I'm not gonna read it again. The question is they love this Williams and Sonoma hot fudge sauce, right?
+
+[23:49] And then they used a New York Times recipe to try to mimic the hot fudge sauce, but they weren't happy with the results, right? Now they didn't say exactly why they weren't happy with the results, but then I I I followed up with them on Twitter, and Zoe said that the Williams Sonoma sauce is both smoother and less thick, spoons nicely from the jar, right? And then, but it sets up on the cream. All right. With me?
+
+[24:15] All right. Uh and then here are the ingredients that are in the Williams and Sonoma one. The ingredients in the Williams Sonoma are cream, right? Brown sugar, sugar, butter, cocoa, right, chocolate liquor, uh, and uh basically chocolate liquor and cocoa, basically cocoa powder and chocolate, right? Uh and vanilla.
+
+[24:40] And that's it. But here is in the New York Times recipe is fairly similar. So the question is, why didn't it come out? First of all, one of the big things is the ratio of chocolate to cocoa powder is one thing to mess with. But what they don't tell you in the Williams and Sonoma recipe is that they just want to have the word sugar there, right?
+
+[25:00] Brown sugar and sugar. They don't tell you what they did to that sugar. I am willing to bet a large not a large, I would bet a small amount of money or a couple rounds of drinks on the fact that Williams and Sono Williams Sonoma, right, inverted some of that sugar, right, in the processing of it. They inverted some of that sugar to prevent crystallization, right? Because my guess is that if you want to get a consistent sauce that isn't going to get kind of grainy over time, especially if you want to jack the solids to be able to control the texture of it more, you're gonna have have to add some corn syrup.
+
+[25:36] And or invert the sugar yourself. Because the the advantage of corn syrup is you get high solids, but it doesn't crystallize, right? So you're trying to jack the solids and not crystal. The other thing is that uh in the in the New York Times recipe, right, they just bring it to a quick uh a quick boil, basically, the ingredients and not. So they're kind of set with like whatever liquid you showed up with is the liquid you you end with.
+
+[26:01] I looked at a a different recipe from um uh what's it called? Her her name is Jenny Field, and she has a I don't know what I don't know her, right? I'm not like, but her uh whatever, her website is Pastry Chef Online.com. So she must have been there for a long time. If you get pastrychefonline.com, right?
+
+[26:19] You know, it's no clown peen dot dot whatever. You know what I mean? Remember you see remember that old Saturday Night Live thing? Where Will So it's uh I remember it was Will Farrell, I forget who else. Do you remember Stas?
+
+[26:28] Who else is in that one? No, I don't remember. So it's a this is a direct quote. Remember, this is like Will Farrell was on Saturday Night Live, what, like 15 years ago? Something like that?
+
+[26:37] More? Yeah. So whenever he was like going great guns on that, so this is a long time ago when there were still plenty of names on the internet. The joke was is that all of the URLs have been taken already, right? That was the that was the the kernel of the of the humor.
+
+[26:52] And so this very kind of fancy law firm's website URL that they had to say over and over in the fake ad was www.clownpenis dot fart. That was their their URLs. They're like, that's the only thing that's left was that URL. So like whenever someone has a you know a URL, that's the only URL I think of. It's obvious.
+
+[27:11] Duh. So anyway, so uh what she does is she takes her cream, she takes uh her sugar, right, and then she adds a bunch of corn syrup to it, right? Uh, and then adds milk. So she's adding liquid because what she does, and here's another step in flavor building, she then boils that whole Megilla down, right? Uh until it reaches somewhere, she says you can adjust it depending on how thick you want the finished thing, between 225 and 235 Fahrenheit, basically takes it to just below kind of a softball stage.
+
+[27:42] And that browns the milk solids that are in it, right, and evaporates the extra liquid. So she has a lot of extra liquid in there, right? But she's cooking it for a long time to add that extra little bit of flavor. She says she cooks it for like 20 minutes or something like this, right? Boiling it.
+
+[27:56] Uh, then adds, and she has inverted the ratio of chocolate to cocoa powder because A, she has high solids already, and she wants that cocoa fat in there, which because that's what's going to give it that setting texture when it hits on the chocolate. Well, when it hits on the ice cream, it's gonna set harder. The more of uh cocoa uh butter is in there, it's gonna set harder on the uh thing. So she has a higher proportion of chocolate and a lower proportion of cocoa powder. Uh she also adds a little rum and water.
+
+[28:25] So she makes a paste with the cocoa powder, rum and water, uh, and then uh throws that in and just brings it back up to redissolve it after she does her 20 minute kind of uh milk solids caramelization boil. So that's what she does. You can check her out on uh Pastry Chef Online. Again, I've not made her recipe, but that's her suggestion for how to get a better thing. And you wouldn't know how long they had done any of that stuff in the William Sonoma.
+
+[28:47] So is this a good answer? If I answered this, yeah. And then Quinn, did you want to add anything from the Discord that I didn't read? Yeah, again, the uh another Discord member, uh Serena basically broke down the actual nutrition information with the listed ingredients, and another big sort of headline for the difference was not enough sugar and fat in in the New York Times made version. Yeah.
+
+[29:15] Yeah. Oh, and when I uh so in case you do go to Pastry Chef Online and check out Jenny Fields' uh recipe, when I was looking at the solids, you can't like you can't c calculate the solids directly because she boils it for such a long time, right? And so she's you know taking you have to calculate the solids based on the temperature she's cooking it in candy. It's very complicated. But usually when I'm um calculating how much solids are in corn syrup, I peg it at around 70%, just in case you were wondering when I calculate something, what I do, that's what I do.
+
+[29:44] But Serena knows what she's talking about. She did a lot of candy. If it's the Serena I'm thinking of, she did a lot of candy development. And uh, you know, she knows what she's talking about. So I would listen to what she's saying.
+
+[29:53] I also wonder uh industrially, I wonder if they hit the cocoa powder with some amaling to make it look gritty. Because I know that's a thing for certain chocolate syrups. Well, why would an I mean, like uh is there a lot of star? Is there a lot of starch in cocoa powder? I don't know.
+
+[30:15] I haven't really researched it. Yeah. All right. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[30:19] Uh I don't know. Uh Christian Sacco writes in, uh, hey Dave. Uh I recall you mentioning that you like to keep an abundance. I do like to keep an abundance of coriander seed at home because you love cooking with it. Uh it's the best.
+
+[30:33] Was wondering if you could share some of your favorite uses. Also, I find the flavor of ground coriander sort of gets lost in long cooking processes. Any similar experience uh slash techniques uh to help? Uh huh. I use coriander both raw and cooked.
+
+[30:49] Usually when I'm cooking with the coriander, it kind of goes in with the sweating phase. The nice thing about coriander is it can be very different. Like uh back when I was at the French culinary, I used to sneak into the they hated me in the storeroom. Stas. Remember how much they hated me in the storeroom?
+
+[31:07] Oh, yeah, they hated you. Oh, like big time. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[31:12] Hated. They're like, why can't you know in advance everything you're gonna do? I'm like, because I want to do a good job. That's why. You know what I mean?
+
+[31:21] Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I want to do a good job, and the the the conditions might be changing, right? John, you know what I'm talking about? You're not gonna, he's not co-signing this. I mean a little bit, but you have to plan too.
+
+[31:31] I planned. Anyway, so like so I would go into the storeroom and I would crack all of the corianders and smell them because they're radically different, right? Like more citrusy, less citrusy. I like a citrusy, I like a nice citrusy coriander, right? And they're like, what are you doing?
+
+[31:46] I'm like, I'm seeing which one of these ones isn't BS because I know nobody else in this building cares. You know what I mean? And so, like, you know, if I'm the only guy that cares about the quality of the coriander, I'm gonna pick the coriander I want. Is that wrong? Is that wrong of me?
+
+[31:59] No. So on the other hand, Booker, when I buy pretzels, he sifts through all of the pretzels and takes only the ones that have the salt on them. And I'm like, you're ruining the rest of the pretzels. I was like, you need to take the pretzel that you get. The pretzel you get is the pretzel you eat.
+
+[32:14] You don't sift through the pretzels in the same way that you don't reach your hand into the cereal box. Kids, we know when you reached your hand into the cereal box because it never flattens out again. It stays bulged on the sides once you've done that. Every adult knows you've done it. Has Booker tried the gluten-free pretzels yet?
+
+[32:32] No, they ain't good. Amazing. Really? Dude, they are the snappiest things in the world. Who makes them?
+
+[32:39] Um Schneider's. Schneider's makes a gluten-free pretzel. Gluten-free pretzel is dynamite. And you co-sign on the gluten-free pretzel. Oh, cosign.
+
+[32:46] All right. I will try it. The thing that Schneider's, when I was growing up, Schneider's pretzel was the pretzel of note, right? And that you could buy. Other brands like Ouija, Uts, even Bachman.
+
+[32:58] You couldn't get those as much when I was a kid in the 70s in the New York area. Schneider's was the one you could get in the New York area hard pretzel. Okay. I'm not anti-soft pretzel people. It's just not my family.
+
+[33:08] That's not what my family does. Anyway. Schneider's is interesting because they're the only ones that use the smaller clear salt on their hard pretzels. Like most of the other people use the either the bigger white squares or some people use large white flake, right? Or chunks.
+
+[33:25] Something happened to Schneider in the 80s or 90s and they are their house style went to being slightly what I would say stale. I still like them, but they have a slight, not stale cardboardy, but just the texture of them is different from like, oh, I don't know, other people. Now now that I live in New York City and I have access to Martin's, that's my now because I love Martin's. Martin's ridiculous. Martin's uses Snavely's soft wheat flour.
+
+[33:53] I'm interested in tasting these. I want to look at the recipe that they use and taste them and see how they are. They're nice and dark. They have the pretzel taste. Definitely got the pretzel taste.
+
+[34:03] Are they twisted? Uh they're the twists. I can't remember we do the knots okay the knots? And not is not as better than a stick. Yeah no we don't do the sticks.
+
+[34:12] But I just remember it's abomination. They're almost a little too hard. You gotta I leave the bag open for at least an hour. Huh? Just to get aeration because like the almost the gluten free is just a little too hard.
+
+[34:24] Huh I'm gonna try it if I can find it. I will I will I will take a look at them and then we can come back next time after I get them and we will discuss. We will discuss. I have certain things that kind of like you know how like Nastasia has things to trigger obviously I have I obviously have things that trigger me. So one of the things that uh when people aren't using in gluten now if you're not using a soft flour for it right the pretzels end up being really hard with like uh if you use like a bread flour or like a you know a a kind of standard like uh even an AP at the at the at the ratios that they're used and to get the the kind of right internal look, they can be quite hard, which is why people I think add fat to their pretzels.
+
+[35:08] So Bachman adds like a good bit of fat to their pretzels and it shortens them, makes them kind of shatter a little more. I don't I'm not saying that that it's evil. What I'm saying is that I don't like that because to me it makes it more crackery and less like the pretzel that I want. The pretzel I want is made with, when it has gluten, is made with soft wheat flour. But I'm gonna try this uh gluten uh gluten-free Schneider's.
+
+[35:34] Yeah, I've eaten so many pounds of Schneiders over my life. I used to, man, my snacking habits were so gross back in the day. I would use like uh the sharpest of the supermarket cheddars you could get in the old days. Pretzels, sardines canned in oil, skinless, boneless, and boursant, and I would scoop up the bours with the pretzel, then put the sardine on, and then the f the cheat the the cheddar over the top. And also I did that with breadsticks.
+
+[36:04] Because breadsticks, sesame breadsticks. Is there anyone on earth who doesn't like sesame breadsticks as long as you can consume sesame seeds? I mean, if if someone hands you a breadstick and it doesn't have sesame on it, and one that does have sesame on it, would you ever be like, give me the one with no sesame? Ever? No.
+
+[36:19] No. No. No. No. No, you would not.
+
+[36:22] No. Oh, one more thing that triggers me. When I go to uh uh a restaurant, it's never a restaurant, it's always like an event. It's always like like a wedding or like some sort of something like this. And they get the I like those thin, tiny thin breadsticks.
+
+[36:37] What are those things called? The super thin breadsticks, you know what I'm talking about? Stas, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, they're real long. They they almost look like a conductor's wands.
+
+[36:46] Like a very thin baguette. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're fine. They're fine. Yeah, they're fine.
+
+[36:52] But then they wrap the prosciutto around it as though the prosciutto doesn't still have liquid in it. Right? And then they get salt. And then they've been sitting there because you know those were made like in a previous life. Like those were made like a thousand years ago.
+
+[37:08] And then like left in that cup. I hate it. I always unwind the prosciutto, eat the prosciutto, and throw away the the soggy stick. You know what I mean? That was my nickname in high school, soggy stick.
+
+[37:20] Anyway. So what do I use? What do I use the coriander in? Uh so I I always grind fresh. Uh I I use a mortar and pestle unless I'm doing like a lot of grinding, and sometimes I'll grind in the in the in the viter prepper with other stuff.
+
+[37:36] Uh anytime I'm a lot of dishes, I'll add it when I'm sauteing the onions. So I'll be sweating the onions out, and then I'll add coriander, which also usually I'm also adding cumin because to me, coriander and cumin together are like one of those like godly mixes, right? Uh I add coriander and cumin to I know I shouldn't. I add it to uh guacamole. Yeah, and it's not traditional, but it tastes good.
+
+[38:04] You know what I mean? Yep. Uh but you know, I sound good. Unlike someone who shall remain nameless, but it's Nastasio Lopez and uh Piper, uh, you know, Piper used to make uh chili with no coriander. I don't know, maybe you used coriander, but you didn't use cumin.
+
+[38:19] So like any sort of chili. Yeah, chili. It's not chili, correct. Like you need coriander and cumin for that, right? Uh shaksuka, coriander, you know what I mean?
+
+[38:29] And cumin. Uh but do I ever use just coriander without the cumin? Yeah, I mean, I make the coriander syrup. That's kind of delicious. Uh, but most of the time when I'm using coriander, I'm also using cumin just because I like cumin so much.
+
+[38:45] I think it was one of you, one of you has a thing against cumin. I forget which one it is, Stas. Do you remember? Is it you? No.
+
+[38:53] It must have been Piper had something against cumin. Cause without the cumin, I don't know, man. I don't know. I just don't know. But uh is that a good enough answer on coriander?
+
+[39:05] I think it probably a lot of things change their flavor over time. And so, like if you're losing those kind of citrus notes off of the coriander over time, um I would coriander's also good on grilled meats. Delicious grilled meats. Yeah. Okay, the temperance is a cell that has a dressing on it there.
+
+[39:24] So like a like a what? Yeah, yeah. He's such a son of a gun, dude. I tried to go and you're like, my restaurant's closed between the Christmas and the New Year's. What?
+
+[39:32] I gotta have a day off too. I deserve a day off too. So you said to me, I'm like, okay, man. Jeez. Uh but like uh another trick you can do is uh i if spices have base notes, because coriander definitely has base note, but also has high notes that might flash off during long cooking, is uh a double dose.
+
+[39:52] So you put in your base note stuff at the beginning and then add a little bit uh at the end to um kind of brighten it. Right. So I do that a lot, like with black pepper. If I'm gonna put black pepper into a dish early, I'll put I'll put some of the black pepper in early, but then I'll always grind fresh at the end. I'll I'll divvy it up.
+
+[40:12] And so you could do the same thing with uh coriander because there's something about putting the coriander in at the onion sweating st at the allium, whatever allium of choice is stage of cooking, where you know that it changes the flavor in a really nice way. So, you know, I would do it in a two-step thing. Is that a better answer? Yeah. All right.
+
+[40:31] I will say if you have actually burlap and barrel, they have really great uh coriander. Yeah? Yeah. Really, really delicious, super fragrant, really citrusy, really aromatic. Have you tried their uh their bay leaf?
+
+[40:42] The boate piece has a beautiful bay leaf. I have not tried their bay leaf. The bois de peace bay leaf is on point. Yeah. Real good.
+
+[40:51] If you if one if if anyone can hear me who's anti-bay leaf, go get the boate piece bay leaf and tell me that it doesn't have flavor. What were you saying, Quinn? I was just saying we have uh a fresh question from the the Discord. Okay. And didn't open it.
+
+[41:18] You are a bad person. No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But second round. Uh how sealed are they? I mean.
+
+[41:28] I mean, I would uh I would just reboil it and eat it at that point. It's sealed, it hasn't been opened. I mean, it's not a hundred percent sealed, right? Uh, but um, because so the the Coon Recon has like a number of different uh there's no gravity-fed stuff that's gonna get it. The the short answer is I doubt it's very unlikely you're gonna get enough stuff in there to cause a problem.
+
+[41:52] And if you were on second ring cooking a stock for long enough to cook a stock, you have come probably commercially sterilized uh what's going on inside of that uh pressure cooker, assuming that you actually got it to second ring, that it vented off the air that's in it when it was uh coming up to pressure, because when you're when you're bringing a coon recon up to pressure, you hear and then nothing, right? And that initial is when you're getting rid of the air, and then the excess pressure inside the unit seals up the there's a little di disc thing that seals. Uh once that thing goes down, there's no easy path for stuff to just fall in, but it's not 100% sealed. So would I say is it good forever? Eh, not good forever, but would I say you're good overnight?
+
+[42:38] Yeah, yeah. I'd say you're good. I'm not an expert in this, but what I'm saying is, would I feed that to my family? Yes. I would just bring it right back up to the boil, let it boil.
+
+[42:49] You're not, remember, not killing any spores at that point, but you're just making it pasteurized again. And then uh then refrigerate it this time, please. Come on. Right? Would you agree, John?
+
+[42:59] Yeah. Same. Yeah, yeah. I would do the same thing. But you know, hit up the uh hit up the risky or not, folks if you want to know uh for sure.
+
+[43:05] But uh in a closed thing, I'm gonna say a hundred percent would I serve that to my family? Yes. Yeah. I mean, uh, not even 50%, a hundred percent I would serve that to my family. I wouldn't even necessarily say, by the way, maybe I'm gonna poison you.
+
+[43:18] You know what I mean? I wouldn't even bring that up, you know? Because people don't like it when you say that. They can't like if you say to somebody, unless it's fugu, right, in which case that they want it, right? But in general, if you're like small but non-zero odd that I'm poisoning you, they're like, it suddenly doesn't taste as good to them.
+
+[43:37] So either you're gonna serve it or you're not, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's what I said about the uh chicken cannon that made Nastasia not want to do it with me.
+
+[43:48] I was like, small. Well, no, no, no. I said, I said, okay, tell your wife, tell your wife that we're gonna do this, and you were like, no. And I was like, all right, we're not doing it. Yeah, yeah, okay, that's true.
+
+[43:57] Yeah. I was like, but you know, she cares about me. You want to see me get hurt. Anyway. And that's that's not true.
+
+[44:10] That's not true. I'm just messing around, but not really. Anyway. But yeah, Nastasi was like, no, I'm not willing to accept small but non zero chance unless you're willing to go tell your wife that there's a small but but my wife, she it's like trauma for her because after I lit myself on fire, you've never been around when I've seriously injured myself, Nastasia. All right, fine.
+
+[44:31] Tell your wife, and we're good to go. Yeah, but she has seen me with her own eyes get seriously injured. You know what I mean? So it's different for her. Anyway, whatever.
+
+[44:42] Um, I would not put her through that for sure. Uh all right. From uh BS, uh, hey, cooking issues team. I inherited a set of copper cookware, heavy stuff made in France. Uh I think I'm the third person cooking with it.
+
+[44:57] The liner was freshly tinned recently. That's a freaking miracle to get someone to freshly tin. It's not cheap to get your stuff freshly tinned. You could do it yourself, but I've never done it. I've watched many videos on doing it.
+
+[45:08] Huge, huge P I T A, as they say, and I'm not talking about the flatbread. Uh yeah. Um, heavy stuff made in France, um, liner f uh freshly tinned. If if it if the tinning wears through, by the way, on your copper, you have to address it because if you if the tinning wears through and you can see copper and you cook acidic things in it. So, like a lot of people, especially on things like jellies and jams, they love the the copper.
+
+[45:36] And you can use unlined copper as long as you're not going acidic, or if the stuff's not gonna be in there a long time. But don't, you know, you don't say in pay attention to the tinning. I'm used to cooking with cast iron and applying a lot of heat. Cast iron is the exact opposite. You're talking about opposite, opposite world between cast iron and copper.
+
+[45:55] They are the most diametrically opposed cooking implements that you're ever going to meet. So I'm used to cooking with cast iron, applying a lot of heat. I've adjusted to go lower temp and built a light patina on the copper pans. It seems like they require a lot of fat, and I'm somewhat hesitant to add anything acidic to them. Uh well, if it's tinned, it should be fine.
+
+[46:14] Is it okay to finish a dish with lemon or vinegar in the pan? Any advice appreciated? Sure. It's tinned, right? That's what I'm saying.
+
+[46:19] But just make sure that although people used to say that the tinning affected the color of certain uh jellies, right? Like certain anthocyanins and a tin, aren't there certain reactions? But no. I don't think you should be afraid of it. Um copper is a such a better conductor of heat.
+
+[46:38] Cast iron is a wretched conductor of heat. What cast iron does, cast iron is like cast iron is like uh a cruise ship, right? You know, it it takes a long time to get it going somewhere, and once it's going somewhere, it takes a long time to get it to stop because it's thick and it's relatively poor conductor of heat, right? But it you can store a lot of heat because it's heavy and thick, right? And because little hot spots tend to, you know, even out over time, especially like that's why cast iron is so great in the oven, right?
+
+[47:10] Because it's absorbing evenly from all directions and it can hold heat for a long time. All right. Uh it's also has a a very uh cast iron is also great in the oven because uh its emissivity is quite high, meaning it absorbs radiation. So if you're sticking your if you're sticking your all clad into the oven, right, it's not really absorbing heat that well from the walls of your oven because it's shiny, right? Uh so that that's another thing.
+
+[47:37] Another reason why cast iron is so good in the oven. Uh but copper is more like a speedboat. It's like and the the the energy just goes whoosh, it like it conducts. I I didn't look it up before I got here, but it's like it's a lot, lot faster. It's a lot quicker.
+
+[47:55] So, you know, it'll come to temperature very quickly, right? And copper's heavy, so it's gonna conduct well, but it also, because copper pans are usually rather heavy, it's also gonna hold quite a bit of heat. I don't really own any thick copper pans. You ever own any thick copper pans? You know what I'm saying.
+
+[48:10] Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Um next question. Any books on dry aging fish?
+
+[48:17] No. Uh I've been go I don't know of any books on it. I think Josh Nylon's book has some stuff on it. There's also dry aged fish guy on Instagram to follow. Well, okay, so the joint sea uh I go be going to the joint seafood whenever I'm in Los Angeles.
+
+[48:34] You ever go there, Stas? No. No? Mm-hmm. No.
+
+[48:40] Uh and they dry age fish. The stuff is haiku inspiring, delicious. They use dry ager fridges from Germany, which are currently out of my budget. I'm looking to make a low-tech version, but wouldn't mind reading up on it first. All right.
+
+[48:50] So I don't even actually uh BS really know what you're talking about, but I'm gonna assume that what you're talking about is this. In Japan, a lot of the fish like gurus that you know uh I know of and who I met when they came over to do that big kind of cross-cultural hoo-ha at the French culinary back in the day, rip all of the electricity out of their refrigerators and just put block ice into the fridges and then uh so that the fridges aren't running, and then keep their fridges in that stuff for a number of days, not weeks, not like you do for a dry aging uh meat. And I know a lot about that. And so the the we are poisoned mentally to thinking that the best fish is the freshest fish. No, every fish has an optimal amount of time uh to age once it comes once it's been killed, right?
+
+[49:39] And it depends on how the fish is killed, and it depends on um, you know, specifically like how bad the rigor mortise is, right? So you're not gonna be able to age a fish a long time that went into a really, really hardcore rigor and the rigor was so intense that it kind of sh you know uh ruptured the muscles. And you and you can see that in a fillet based on gaping. So if you look at a fish fillet and there's lots of like gaps in the muscle as you go down, that's an indication. I mean, it could just be crappy butchering, but it's an indication that the fish went into a pretty hard rigor, so much so that the muscle str the muscle was so tense on rigor that it's separated at the myotome area, and you can see that gaping, right?
+
+[50:19] And so uh, you know, tuna ages uh, you know, needs to age for several days, and you don't want it to and we used to do it. We used to do it, uh, I don't know if you remember Stas in the Randells, we would have these Randells which had almost zero air motion over it. And you could let them and they'd form a pellicle, but they wouldn't dry out, and they just got really good. And we were measuring day after day, and there's this very easy to measure curve, especially if you're doing uh, you know, sashimi or sushi, where you just take a slice off. Uh if you really want to do it right, what you do is is you put a fillet in on day one, a fillet in on day two, and a fillet on day three, and then you can track them as they go, right?
+
+[50:57] Uh some fish is best like twenty four hours after it comes out of rigor, some is best three days. Some I mean, I don't think I had anything that was better. I mean, we didn't get whole tunas in, so I don't know what the optimum day on a tuna is, but you know, it can be uh on that order. So the cheap way to do it is to um just do it with ice. That's what a lot of the Japanese chefs used to do back in the day.
+
+[51:17] Is this answering the question? Because I don't know what these guys are doing. I it's like taking gently taking the skin off the fish, leaving it whole and putting it in a like steak dryager machine, but leaving it there for a couple of days. That's kind of the similar similar thing. Like I I'm assuming it's like very little air currents, very little removing of the moisture that's in it.
+
+[51:38] I don't know what temperature what uh what humidity they're keeping it at. If you know the humidity you're keeping it at, um consider uh concentrated salt solutions, right? So uh let's say you want 77% relative humidity, uh that's sodium chloride. That's very easy, and that's very humid. That's more humid than you think it is.
+
+[51:59] Um I have a series, if any if you tell me the humidity, I have a series of humidities that I make with different salts that I did for testing um equilibrium moisture content of different flowers over time, and it's very easy to buy large quantities of salt and have saturated salt solutions in your chamber. And the smaller the chamber, the faster it comes up to that. And if you can guarantee the humidity that you want, then you can put a fan in and it very quickly equilibrates because you're just equilibrating over the over the salt solution. Uh and that stuff's easily available online, and if you have a specific humidity, I can tell you what to do. Right?
+
+[52:34] Yeah. And again, mo most of these salts are now available either for like a lot of them are for pool cleaning, not you know, pool salts or like they're all these salts are available for different things with a couple of exceptions. But you probably don't want the ones that are harder to deal with. You probably don't need lithium chloride. You're not trying to do freaking Death Valley, are you?
+
+[52:55] No one's trying to make Death Valley in their in their dry age, right? I don't think they are. Anyway. From Positive MD. What were the highlights, John, of your Belgium trip, your last Belgian trip?
+
+[53:09] Everything. No, I don't know. I told him to email me. I sold my booker index. That doesn't help the people who aren't him.
+
+[53:15] I know. It's a him. I think so. Uh but yeah, I mean, it depends where you want to go. There's a lot of really awesome things to do in Brussels.
+
+[53:28] Obviously, the waffles that change Dave's life. Um did you go west on this one or did you go east on this one? North, like to Ghent. Gently. You didn't go you didn't go you didn't go forest style east.
+
+[53:41] You went like No, I really want to do that next time. I go back out down to the Ardennes region and eat everything down there. I mean, from what I remember as a kid. Chambon d'Arden. Yeah, the Chambon d'Arden is one of I remember having that my very first time, and I remember visually what that butcher store looked like, and I would love to find it again.
+
+[53:57] Um it's delicious. It's a really fantastically smoky hem, and in that area you can get a lot of like game, a lot of boar, pheasant, things like that. It's really tasty. And that liige uh concentrated syrup crap. Yeah, the sirop liège.
+
+[54:10] Yeah. Yeah, the like fruit butter. That stuff essentially delicious. Really good. Really good.
+
+[54:15] Delicious. And if you go to Liège, they have like a specific dish there, boulet liégeois, which is like uh a meatball that's braised in that stuff and served over French fries, and it is delicious. I have to say, I mean, Belgians are really good at what they're good at. Yeah. You know what I mean?
+
+[54:34] A French fries basically anywhere are fantastic. Um get the place I told you about in uh in Ghent. It's by that like two Michelin star guy that has it right on the main person. Yeah, right across from the five. Did you like it?
+
+[54:48] I thought they were really good. They're really good. I mean, like, I don't need fancy sauces, like a lot of fancy sauces, but like, you know, I didn't mind the fancy sauce, but I thought the French fries were on point. Yeah, no, they were really good. They're really good.
+
+[54:57] There's a really, yeah, I mean, if you go to Ghent, you obviously have to go to that mustard place, right? There's a great little bar right around the corner from there. I can tell you to go to. Yeah. Anyone going to Belgium, reach out to me, John at Booker and Dex.com.
+
+[55:08] That still works. Yeah. Or Gene. Yeah. Oh God.
+
+[55:15] You're gaslighting yourself on your own name, man. Yeah, it's just, you know, I've just come to listening to your Siri too much. I guess. I have to I never used to be able to say your name right to Siri. I'm like, hey Siri, call Gene the howl, and then she can do it.
+
+[55:29] And I have to mess up Quin Quinn's name get has been like the butchering has been changed recently, so now he is uh for a while he was fusile. Now it's few I forget what she says now. It's something horrible. She butchers your last name, Quinn. Butchers it anyway.
+
+[55:46] Yeah. Have you have you yeah. I gotta train my uh my artificial stupidities to pronounce people's names right. You know? Yeah.
+
+[55:55] Anyway. Uh also weirdly, gets Nastasia's name wrong, even though it knows how it's spelled. Demented. Demented. It gets Lopez right.
+
+[56:06] Okay. Yeah. Anyway. Uh Matt Decker writes in uh we got all this stuff off of the Discord, Quinn. Now we're into the old uh public questions.
+
+[56:14] All right, right, right. Instagram, Twitter. All right, right. Uh cocktail question. Uh, while thinking about batching margaritas for easy pour and not shake applications, I went through the process of measuring in grams, my favorite margarita recipe, then took the total weight of the drink pre and post-shake to determine dilution as to add as to what amount of water to add to the batch.
+
+[56:37] Fair. Uh to be able to have it chilled and ready to pour over ice without needing a shake. It came out perfect. Uh, well, okay. Without shaking?
+
+[56:45] Okay. Uh when thinking about this in large application for a function, I run into the question of separation. If I were to batch this out and put it into a keg, would it surely separate before use? And shaking the keg prior to every pour is unreasonable to keep up with. Any tips on keeping it stabilized?
+
+[56:59] Well, I mean, how long is the event? Like, I I don't think it's gonna separate that quickly. I think it's gonna separate like really, but if you have a keg, like pressurize the ever-loving snot out of it so that you get at least some sort of texture when you're uh putting it into a glass. Don't because margarita needs to have some sort of aeration for it to be as delicious as I want it to be, even if you're pouring it over rocks, my friend. Uh so I would say jack the pressure on something like nitrogen, jack it so that you you know, so that it's like has some force.
+
+[57:32] If you have like a swirl nozzle, not just like a picnic tap, like you almost want to put it through like an EC nozzle to like really aerate it on the way out. And uh secondly, uh I would say chill it more than you think. Definitely salt and ice that sucker. Get that keg down to like minus uh seven Celsius or so, because it's only gonna warm up more. So that's decent, decent response.
+
+[57:56] All right. Uh Steve DeLeon, hey, recently opened a bottle of Arby's smoked bourbon as a gag gift. Yes, that Arby's. Obviously, this is not going to be a great thing to drink, so I was wondering if you had any fun ideas or things to Hustino into it. Not looking for the most delicious, just the dumbest.
+
+[58:11] My dream would be to blend and clarify one of their beef and cheddar sandwiches with it. I have a spinzall thoughts. Well, Steve, that's gross. Uh spinzole will not clarify meat that has been blended into it, but you can get the solids out that way. So I would say blend it in.
+
+[58:29] As I've said, the most disgusting thing I ever did was uh a beer blended with a burrito and ended up tasting like a Subway Italian BMT. So it is possible, but don't expect it to be crystal clear coming out of the spinzall. Remember how nasty that was, Nastasia? I wasn't there with you. It was a depth thing, yeah.
+
+[58:46] I wasn't there. For the stoners with the burrito where they wanted to use edible tape. Yeah, yeah, you did that by yourself, yeah. Yeah, well, that's good for you. You didn't have to deal with it.
+
+[58:55] Uh Kyle Stacy, hey, I'm a fan and had one question been bothering me. I'm hoping you can help clear it up. The purple cocktail on the hard cover of your book. What cocktail is that? That was a uh purple cabbage Houstino that was shaken with an egg white, where I was trying to keep the color on the uh on the bluer side of purple, even though there was a lot of acidity in it by dry shaking with the egg white before I added the acid.
+
+[59:19] So it got an amazing color, and I like it, but cabbage drinks are a little bit farty, so I didn't publish the recipe for it, but I like it because I could do a little bit of farty on a cabbage drink, but I don't know that everybody can. Um old-fashioned villain, could you go over the praline old-fashioned recipe for the upcoming fall season? Go look up the any nut uh orjah recipe in liquid intelligence, you know, whether you steal it or whatever, I don't know. And then uh do it with pecans, right? And then just make a pecan sour.
+
+[59:46] That uh, you know, that was Nastasia's uh thing that she used to make all the time. Correct or incorrect, Stas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[59:55] What do I have last five seconds? All right, gulash riot. I'll get to you next time, hopefully, and a couple other people I haven't gotten to you yet. Uh happy new year, everybody. Happy New Year, crew.
+
+[1:00:04] Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios, joined as usual with uh Gene. How you doing? Doing great, thanks. I called you Gene because I just said Gene to my Siri.
+
+[0:26] Excellent. Siri doesn't know that Gene's name is John. So when I'm walking to this place and I'm like huffing and puffing because I ride a bike here, I say text Gene Nahowell, which is not his name. And so then for about five minutes, John's name is still Gene in my head. Sorry, John.
+
+[0:42] That's all good. It happens a lot. It shouldn't happen to me, though. We've known each other for years. Yeah, that's true.
+
+[0:46] I know, but yeah, you actually say it to other people. Yeah, when I just don't want to deal with it. Just need to leave my name somewhere. I told you Dax doesn't bother mutilating his name. He just says his name is Jeff or Brad.
+
+[0:57] Yeah. Like when he goes to uh Starbucks. They're like, Max, no, Brad. And that's it. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:05] Uh Rocking the panels over here in New York, we got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing great. Great to see you. Yeah, good to see you as well.
+
+[1:12] And on Vancouver Island, we got Queen Quinn Quinn Quinn Quinn. How you doing? Hey, I'm good. You uh you uh doing some strong Q dragon work over there. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:22] Do what I do. Yeah, nice. All right. Uh and uh together again in Los Angeles, we have the uh West Coast Cooking Issues crew, we got Nastasia Lopez and Jackie Molecules. How you doing?
+
+[1:34] Good. Good. It's uh storming here. Oh yeah. That's right.
+
+[1:39] Yeah. So now, but you guys uh uh like as long as you don't drown, you're pro storm because your reservoirs are filming, like what's the story? I think so. I think so. Yeah, but people are dying, so that's not good.
+
+[1:50] Yeah. There's no wins. No winning. Uh no winning. No winning.
+
+[1:57] Uh the you know what the the new huge win is small losses. Small losses are the new huge win. Did you know that? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[2:05] And uh in the in, you know, our new year's way of doing this, uh, our we're gonna shoot the breeze with our special guest. Our special guest today is Rebecca Flint Marks, uh, the senior editor uh at Eater Eater at home beat. How are you doing? Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I found out, I just found out that we used to live before you moved to San Francisco.
+
+[2:24] You came back here to New York. What is it with San Francisco and New York, by the way? Oh man, that's a great question. I think for me, when I first started going to San Francisco as a New Yorker of about 10 years, I loved it because it seemed to have a lot of things that New York had. It had a lot of good food, really interesting people, people who read books, really pretty things to see, things to do.
+
+[2:51] Uh, and I think it's for me, it was like a more accessible New York, which was it's a that's a very uh New York bias, obviously, to put on any place, uh, particularly San Francisco, because it is nothing like New York whatsoever. Yeah, so then like were you, because I'm not gonna say like who in my family is like. Well, maybe eventually you'll maybe you'll figure it out if you know my family, but it yeah, they moved to new to San Francisco and they're like, I can do this, I can do this. It's like, you know, and then they're like, no, I can't do this. Yeah, it it's weird.
+
+[3:22] It was I remember getting out there, and I first lived in North Beach, which if you're familiar with San Francisco, even if you're not, you probably know North Beach is like a really beautiful part of town. It is one of the most beautiful parts of town you can live in. It's like everywhere you are just surrounded by beauty as soon as you leave your home. And I remember walking my dog around the neighborhood and thinking to myself, all this useless beauty, and I have no idea what to do with it. And I I never felt more like a New Yorker than I did when I moved to San Francisco.
+
+[3:49] And eventually, I think what bothered me the most, even though there was a lot I loved about the city, was there was I missed the energy, and I realized how addicted I was to New York's energy. You just cannot get that out there. If you go out there expecting you're gonna have even a modicum of that, you you won't you yeah, you're gonna go crazy. Or if you even expect to have a 24-hour bodega. Yeah, that's the other thing.
+
+[4:10] The streets are so empty. There's like nothing open past like nine o'clock at night. The neighborhood I was living in after Noah or after North Beach was Noah Valley. Nothing. It was like a ghost town, and it was the eerie thing in the world because I was like, I'm technically in the middle of a city, a real legitimate American city, yet there's nobody on the streets here.
+
+[4:29] It was it was the strangest thing. I never could get used to it. Yeah, it's bizarre. It's bizarre. Uh I get a feeling from what you said that uh you and I share a trait that Nastasia uh detests about me.
+
+[4:39] And that is uh, so Nastasia, when you say to me, when I when you say to me, Hey, I saw the most beautiful sunset, what do I say? I've seen every sunset. Yeah, who cares? I've seen it all. Seen those sunsets, I see the sunset.
+
+[4:53] So what? You know what I mean? Like I'm that guy that went to the Grand Canyon and I was like, hole in the ground, nice. And then left and then left. You know what I mean?
+
+[5:01] Yeah. Nastasi's like, you have no soul. Am I right, Nastasi? Is that roughly correct? Yes, that's true.
+
+[5:06] But you do like trees. Love trees. Because trees provide an ongoing, they an ongoing kind of calming effect on me. Like, you know, like they change over time. I can like I can observe them.
+
+[5:17] They provide with me with shade because the sun's my enemy, I'm half a vampire. You know what I mean? It's like, you know. Okay. Dave, see the sunset changes over time and provides you with shade because the sun is your enemy.
+
+[5:29] The sun's going away. It should calm you. It's correct. You're correct. You're correct.
+
+[5:29] I don't know what it is. But Nastasi and I are like this in one way. I think maybe you'll agree with this, uh, Rebecca, is that we hate it when other people do things because something else is beautiful because the weather is nice. So you mean like, for example. Well, so like when the first day, you know, the first couple of days of springy weather, and I mean now it's always like it's always like half a spring here in New York because of the way things happening.
+
+[5:59] But it's like, you know, when everyone started saying that they could do X, Y, and Z again because the weather was nice, Nastasia would hates that. Hear you. Yeah. It's like it's like mandated that you have to do it. So it kind of takes the fun out of just doing anything spontaneously.
+
+[6:16] And I'm one of these people who, if everyone else is doing it, I don't I don't want to do it. I'm very contrarian that way. So yeah. Yeah, well, maybe you know, the three of us can uh go out. Uh we'll maybe we'll go to uh John's restaurant sometime.
+
+[6:28] It sounds like we can hang out and have a drink because we have similar uh you know we can be grumpy together. Oh my god. If three grumpy people get together, right at a bar, do we does it is it grumpy cubed or does it cancel? Is it like out of phase grumpiness? What do you think happens?
+
+[6:46] Ooh, might just be a matter of like immediate self destruction. I don't know. Or it's like I I I can't even imagine. Well, watch out, John. Or you get Seinfeld.
+
+[6:55] I think maybe that's what happens. I don't think any of this, I think it's all past us getting that rich. Uh all right. So any of you guys have anything uh any this is the part of the show where we talk about food things that we've done over the past week. Jack does, Jack does, Jack says.
+
+[7:11] Jack says? Jack does. Oh, yeah, yeah. She wants me to tell a story. Alright, so it'll be quick.
+
+[7:18] So uh Peter Kim, who we all know, friend of the show, stayed at my apartment during the holidays. In Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, while I was at Sean's apartment. And uh Peter had a wild old time, and I got home and there was a bottle of wine on my table, which is very nice with a note. And I noticed as I looked at the wine, which I didn't recognize that it was five percent ABV, which is really confused Nastasia now.
+
+[7:47] Chateau Diane? He got you a bottle of Chateau Diane? What? Red sweet wine it says on it. It's a weird name.
+
+[7:54] Lina Costa Rosa. Gina of the Red House. Yeah. Yo. Five percent.
+
+[8:01] So what else, Jack? What else? That apartment was a mess. Let me ask you a question, Jack. Did does does this five percent wine come with a baby bottle nipple on top of it?
+
+[8:11] Like, what are you supposed to do with this thing? We did leave children's jewelry on my dad. Oh, that's his. Come on, man. No, no, no, we don't know.
+
+[8:21] He went to a he went to a rave and then Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah, he went to I apparently went to a rave the night before and then had to rush out of the house. Hold a sec, hold a second. I would like the record to say that I love Peter Kim and I'm thrilled he had a good time on my house.
+
+[8:32] I'm not upset about any of this. Hold on, hold on, huh? They still have raves. Oh yeah, yeah, sure. But like, is it like I'm trying to think, is it like uh when you go to a rave and you're and you're like a young person, let's say you're a young person, you go to a rave.
+
+[8:46] Is that the equivalent of like someone my generation going to see like a college presentation of Hara the musical? Like, I mean, it's like No, no, they've they've they've they're still getting weird. All right. Yeah, and Peter Kim was there with them. Well, you know, I can picture that in a in a very that's a good story.
+
+[9:06] Not necessarily food related. I was hoping for a food-related story. I guess the wine. It's wine related. Gina, Gina, what is it?
+
+[9:13] Gina Castle Casaroso. Not Castelrosso. She hasn't live in a castle. She lives in a red house. Little Rudhouse by the Lane, pumping out that 5% ABV.
+
+[9:22] What do you think she dopes? So she dopes it with sugar and water. She takes over. It's got aromas and flavors of boysenberry, creme brulee, cherry soda float, and strawberry. A fun flavor-packed ride with balanced sweetness, acidity, and varietal characters.
+
+[9:36] John, hold up. Hold up. John. John. John, wait, John, wait, John.
+
+[9:41] John. Back back it up. That's one bottle has that? Yes. Can you please read that list again?
+
+[9:53] Aromas and flavors of boysenberry creme brulee, cherry soda float, and strawberry. Wait, wait. Oh my god. Wait, hey Anastasia, whenever we're in Los Angeles, where do we shop? Ralph!
+
+[10:07] Oh my god. That's a terrible description. Oh my god. You know what? You know what?
+
+[10:16] It's like someone at a flavor house was like, we only have a little bit left of all these flavors. What are we gonna do? Mix them all together. Dump them all together. Oh my god.
+
+[10:30] Trying to see if that's every description of it. Do you have it on you right now? Yes. Open it. Oh, it's really early here.
+
+[10:39] Oh, pen it for the crew. Open it and taste it. What does it smell like? It smells really sweet. It sounds like it's what you would get like an IHOP with all when you mix all the syrups in.
+
+[10:51] Oh my god. Oh my god, there's some memories. Can you kick? Did you already uncrack it? Can you crack it on the mic so I can hear the cap?
+
+[10:56] I want to hear the cap. That is the real description they've put out there. It's in multiple places. You can't really hear it. All right.
+
+[11:06] Oh, it's kind of fizzy. Oh. Oh my god. It's like it's like it's like Rhea Needy and filth. Surprised it's not sold in that hazmat computer.
+
+[11:23] Make sure you let it breathe. It's like complete done. Yeah. In a good way? Wow.
+
+[11:31] Um if you were 18, would you get all crunked up on this or not? Probably. Probably, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[11:41] And go to a remote. Like, okay, now that now that you've had a couple of seconds, how poisonous is the aftertaste? It's uh sticky. So, like when I was in the soda float would be uh the on the tail end of the side. Oh, the cherry soda float.
+
+[12:01] Got it. Okay. I was uh accurate. I was too old for uh for loco, but the four loco equivalent when I was trying to buy things like this was called Cisco. And Cisco was like a 20% ABV wine cooler, and that had some poisonous aftertaste to it.
+
+[12:19] So imagine it I'm trying to imagine if this uh if this uh Gina of the Red House was 20 instead of five, like what it would taste like, because that's what they would have been drinking when I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah. It's just so funny because there's so much wine at every single store here, like so much money that Peter would be like, you know, this one. Is he punking you?
+
+[12:40] I don't think so. It was wrapped in Christmas paper, Jack. Wow. The Christmas paper costs more. First of all, here's the order of cost.
+
+[12:51] The most expensive thing in that is the bottle that it went into. Because I know how much bottles cost, right? Then the wrapping paper, then the liquid. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[13:01] Wow. Wow. That's uh oh well, you know what? Ding, that was awesome. I love it.
+
+[13:08] I love it. Now uh Rebecca, I know that your beat is uh like things that people can do like at home, right? But on the other hand, one of it your favorite things of the things that I've read of uh of yours on Eater is uh to talk to restaurant folks either after they come out with uh chefs, after they come out with a book or after they whatever, and get a recipe that is good for home with them, right? Yep. But I have that doubt that's gonna happen with uh Noma, and I know Quinn wants us to talk about the Noma clothes.
+
+[13:38] Poly Noma. NOMA NOMARY forage for Doma. Make a reindeer heart, like find some lichen and put it in a blender. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got nothing to say.
+
+[13:51] Yeah, no, it's who they mean. I I have you been? I never I haven't either. No. And obviously I'm never gonna go.
+
+[13:58] I was yeah, you know, in the next two years you can't cut, I'm sure that that went like this all the way to the city. I mean, that's the thing. It's yeah, I think probably yeah, within the first 15 seconds. The only time I ever had his food was uh you remember um you remember Cortan? Sort of.
+
+[14:13] Oh, uh Paul when Paul. Drew Nipront had uh oh I forgot that was that was where Chanterell was, right? Yes, yes, so Chanterelle and right, and then that closed, right? And then Corton with Paul Lee Brandt uh after he had left Guilt, right? Yes, right.
+
+[14:29] Yes. Where guilt, the highest food costs, like like crazy food costs. I was talking to Paul Librant. I don't know what he's doing these days. But anyway, I was talking to him, he was like, I'm not gonna do his accent because I can't do like I can only, you know, whatever, I'm not gonna do his accent.
+
+[14:42] So like he used to order those, uh you know those freaking Scottish prawns that come individually styro packed in water, right? Like upright, and he's like, yeah, and they're half dead. So like I was like, what the hell? He's like, I don't know, throw them away, family meal. I'm like, what?
+
+[14:57] You know, it's his food costs were just like, whoa! That's wow. How is that sustainable? I guess it wasn't. It's not.
+
+[15:05] Yeah. No, but I think like there was an error, and that's so well, that's you know, to the point of the Red Zeppy thing, is like that was a point in time when you know it was still like people were trying to do this kind of like ultimate ultimate. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[15:18] And so anyway, so when he opened uh Corton, I think I went there twice, and one of the times uh Rennie Rizeppi was doing a pop-up at Corton. So I that's the only time I've had his uh food. Oh, was it? It was good, yeah. You know, it's good.
+
+[15:32] I like I I uh uh I I like high I like high-end food. I like seeing what people can do, but I don't necessarily everyone's gonna hate me now. I don't in I don't enjoy it more than any other well-executed thing, other than I like seeing what people can do. I like the craft of it. I like the artistry and the thought.
+
+[15:59] I like seeing what the kind of apogee of like a certain kind of achievement can be. But I don't necessarily crave it. I absolutely do not. And I sound like a Philistine, probably because I am, but I just I've never I appreciate it from an artistic standpoint. I remember interviewing Corey Lee at Bennu once.
+
+[16:21] And uh I never went, I never went. I only went to interview him. I cannot speak to the food. I I went to In Situ, his other restaurant, it was lovely. Um, but I just remember thinking like being in this sort of temple of a restaurant space.
+
+[16:37] I felt very conscious of what I didn't know, but also what I didn't actually crave, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Like I appreciate it. I really appreciate what people do. It is an art form, but I think for me, it's never been anything where I felt like I need to experience it for myself.
+
+[16:56] Well, I mean, also like uh there's a certain there's a certain uh aspect of anything that's kind of different, right? So like I remember like, you know, in the early 2000s, kind of the shock of this new style of cooking, and you're like, wow, and it is awesome, like the first like couple of times. Not not not, you know, Red Zeppes stuff, but I mean like what was going on in the early 2000s here in in the US, right? You know, riding the kind of Spanish invasion that came in. And it was truly exciting and like the the energy of cooking and like learning these new techniques and doing all this stuff was awesome.
+
+[17:33] And you know, I was glad to be around the people that were doing it, and I loved going out and having it because it was fun and all that. But again, you don't need to eat any sort of high-end food that often. It's I think better when you when it's spaced out. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[17:44] I mean, look, when I lived in San Francisco, one of the best meals I ever had was at Meadowwood. I was fortunate to be able to do that. It was really, really good. I mean, like, I so I can appreciate that. Like, like I was happy to have had that experience.
+
+[18:01] Like Chris Costa was lovely, the restaurant was lovely. Everything we ate was like a small miracle on a plate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but like, did I want to eat like that the next night? Absolutely not.
+
+[18:11] You know, like I I find that that kind of thing, it's it's a little like fashion to me, you know, where it's like I love like the feel of like, say, like a designer coat that probably costs like $7,500, right? And I I love knowing it's there. I love like experience it in some way, but am I gonna go out and like try and emulate that on a daily basis and you know, wear something like that? Probably not. Well, the problem is also for me, like I would just wear it every day, it'd become filthy and busted, and then people would be like, Why are you what what?
+
+[18:39] Yeah, you know, I'm not gonna buy a new thing every day. Like a $7,500 dust rag, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. So, no, it's like I think there's a place for it.
+
+[18:46] And it's interesting, you know, all these discussions people have been having around the closure of NOMA. What does this mean for fine dining? I mean, there's always gonna be a place for it. You're always gonna have people who are gonna like want to jet around the world and go to these restaurants that they can collect like runes, you know, and that's great. But and you know, and I think that kind of cooking should still be there because again, like fashion, you see it trickle down, right?
+
+[19:08] To where it influences a lot of different chefs at a lot of different levels. And so, in some way, the wider populace, you know, gets to partake of that in some way, shape, or form. Um, but you know, when I read that NOMA was closing, I didn't really have any reaction to it. I mean, it's like it's like, yeah, it's the end of an era for sure, but it's it's a really it's a complicated thing, you know. So I maybe if I had been there, maybe if I had felt a personal connection, I would have, I don't know, had a different reaction.
+
+[19:38] I also never ate at El Boole. I should have gone because of my job. The problem is is that because of my job, I should have gone. Like that's the issue. I'm that kind of a jerk, which is what Nastasia always tells me.
+
+[19:48] And so I was like, you need to go out more, right? Yeah, I agree with Nastasia. Oh my god. Your restaurant. Yeah, it's it's really.
+
+[20:02] I have I have been, I have been, just not when there. But how many restaurants? Oh, whatever. Well I tried to go. I know.
+
+[20:10] Tip, I'm just always gonna give you a hard time about this until you come, you just need to accept it. Okay. You need to go to restaurants. I don't understand why you work in food if you don't go to restaurants. Or bars.
+
+[20:20] Yeah, really. You work in food and you don't even like food or food people. I like I love food. I love food. Okay.
+
+[20:28] I hate people. Yeah. Uh geez Louise. Okay. Um, so Quinn, is that enough talk?
+
+[20:37] Is that enough NOMA talk? Is that not what you were expecting as I say like? I thought it was noteworthy to talk about. It is noteworthy, sure. You know, I mean, I I I wish I could have gone.
+
+[20:47] I would have liked to have gone. I would like to go to Denmark, period. It would be nice to stop at NOMA while there. I was there for two hours. The train station, amazing.
+
+[20:59] Not really. It was a train station. Absolute flew us in to Copenhagen, and then we took a train to Scona to, you know, visit where they grow the wheat and where they make the the absolute. And there endeth my Copenhagen story. Yeah.
+
+[21:13] Right. That was it. It's a great story. Yeah, you like it? Yeah.
+
+[21:16] I can say this. Danish sounds weird. It's it's weird. It's like it's like sounds like a cross between like an actual Scandinavian language and German. It's weird.
+
+[21:27] I don't know. Closest I've ever gotten was Finland, which I loved. Oh yeah? Highly recommended. I'd love to go.
+
+[21:33] It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Helsinki, go in the summer, uh, when it never gets dark. It is an astoundingly beautiful place.
+
+[21:40] Uh, especially if you're into Art Nouveau architecture or architecture in general. Yeah. Design uh and food. The fish market there, it's just open air fish market you go to, you buy this beautiful smoked fish and go eat it in a park. It's heaven.
+
+[21:55] I like smoked fish. Yeah. Yeah. I like Finnish TV shows. I forget the name of I like a watch all the you see the Finnish cop show?
+
+[22:01] No. Yeah. No. I forget the name of it. Whatever.
+
+[22:04] Whatever. You know, when you watch something at like one or two AM, it's like you're half asleep anyway, so you know you've watched it, but you can't remember anything about it. Does this happen to you? Yeah, that happened to me last night. I was trying to watch Tar.
+
+[22:18] Who was that about? It's Kate Blanchette's movie that came out earlier this year where she plays uh the orchestra conductor. Oh yeah. Who basically, yeah, it's it's of it's sort of her downfall. The movie is about that.
+
+[22:31] Um people love, love, love this movie. I was fortunate to get a screener of it, and it took me three sittings to get through it because I kept falling asleep. But is that like because it was boring or because of just the time of day? Uh little bit. A little bit both.
+
+[22:46] Let's say it's a little bit both. Yeah. She's great. She's great. She's all yeah, and she's on scene right.
+
+[22:50] She's great. Yeah, she's great, great, great. Just yeah, just wasn't keeping me as awake as I yeah. Well, I also noticed uh that you uh you wrote and I I have to say, maybe Nastasia, when you were younger, did you watch movies? Do you stop watching them because you hate going to them and you don't like like cable?
+
+[23:08] Did you used to watch movies or were you never a huge movie person? Nastasia. I guess they're on mute. But you know, any modern movie, she's like, I don't watch that. Really?
+
+[23:21] No, yeah. Oh. I mean, I see I'll I'll go see pretty much anything. Yeah. Within reason.
+
+[23:27] She doesn't like movie theaters. Oh, well, I'm I agree with that. I used to love movie theaters. I used to like love going to the movies. Love if if she can unmute her mic or whatever, like uh I'm listening to you.
+
+[23:41] You know, but so like what is it that you hate about movie theaters? It's not the COVID. What is it? The people's hands and bags of chips and the sound of them chewing things and laughing. Any signs of humanity.
+
+[23:55] So she actually prefers a COVID movie theater because there's fewer people doing that. No, or watching at home or a private screening room, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you also don't like the idea of paying some you don't like the idea of streaming either very much. I I don't watch things because I don't like to feel things.
+
+[24:14] I did watch the menu though. I was uh uh Austin came over to my house and we had dinner, and he was like, You have to watch the menu. And oh my god, have you all seen it? No. Crazy.
+
+[24:24] No, yeah. What's it about? What's it about? I'll let the guests explain it. Well, I will preface this by saying without Noma, we would not have had the menu because the menu is all about fine dining.
+
+[24:38] It's about a chef played by Ray Fines, who has a very exclusive restaurant on a small island and only a few guests at a time come to the island. So on this particular night, he has his guests come to the island and without wanting to give away any spoilers, basically serves them a meal they will never ever forget. I'm guessing people get eaten. Uh no, surprisingly, surprisingly, but it is, you know, there is a certain level of bodily harm that is that is exacted among crazy babe. You have to see it.
+
+[25:13] You all have to see it. It's great. Well, let me ask you this. So back when you were younger, Nastasia, did you ever watch the movie uh Baby Boom? That was j I just missed that.
+
+[25:22] I was not watching rom coms when I was a junior in high school when that thing came out. So it's like it exact like later in life, once I became a more integrated human being, I'm like, the rom com has its place. You know what I mean? But like as a you know, a full of angst uh, you know, alternative music listening, like suburban like white kid in the in the mid late 80s. I wasn't watching romance.
+
+[25:47] Not happening. Yeah, yeah. But so but do you watch that style? Is anyone here a baby boom and baby boom fam? Any Keaton fans?
+
+[25:53] I watched it last I watched it last year. I didn't watch it when it came. All right, right. So you so you and Rebecca need to talk. So what's your premise with the baby bro?
+
+[26:01] I mean, what is it about? Or like Well no, like what like what yeah, you're saying it's like it's it's predictive of a larger tree. Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, and I didn't even realize this. Cause so I first saw Baby Boom when I was a kid.
+
+[26:13] And so to me it was just this fun movie with Diane Keaton moving to Vermont. It was great. I loved it. I couldn't, I didn't really know why I loved it, except that it was fun. And it was only as an adult, after years and years of like covering the New York food scene and just the food scene in general, that I went back and watched it.
+
+[26:30] I was like, oh my God, this movie completely predicted like the Ots artisan food boom because the whole premise of baby boom is that Diane Keaton is this like high flying career lady who basically inherits a baby from a dead relative, as you do. Like a literal baby, an actual living baby. Uh, and decides initially she's not gonna keep it, then she decides she's gonna keep it, and basically that interferes with her high flying career as some sort of consultant. I'm not exactly sure what kind, but in any case, she ends up quitting her job. She's kind of forced out by the men there.
+
+[27:06] She ends up leaving New York for Vermont, uh, buying this like 200-year-old farmhouse with these apple orchards, and starts making baby food, like applesauce, basically, and it turns into like this whole like company. So it's like she's marketing it as like this artisan applesauce baby food, and people start buying it. It becomes this whole thing, and there's like this rapid montage of like the business growing and growing and growing, and eventually, yeah, she's like the owner of this like artisan baby food company. That's weird because that never would have happened in the 80s, but totally could have happened in like 07. Yeah.
+
+[27:40] Right, right. But so it was it was eerie like watching this. I was like, oh my God, this is like the artisan food boom playbook. Like all that was missing was like a stall at like the New Amsterdam market or something. It was or Smorgesburg.
+
+[27:52] It was crazy. Yeah, yeah. So it's I I I love this movie. It is a flawed movie. I'm not gonna say it's a perfect movie.
+
+[27:57] It's a Nancy Myers movie. Nancy Myers movies have certain issues uh that attend them, but that's okay. It's like it's just a really fun movie. I love it. And what uh what art forum does not have its issues?
+
+[28:08] I mean, this is this is true. Yeah, this is true. I mean, especially anything that I watched when I was a kid, when you go back and watch it, you're like, oh god. Oh, it's all oh god. You know what I mean?
+
+[28:14] Oh yeah, yeah. No, I one of my favorite things to do is watch movies that I watched as a child and sort of pinpoint, oh that that's really a problem. What percentage of the things we gotta get back to food, but what percentage of the things you watch when you rewatch them, are you like flawed, but still good? Oh gosh. I would say probably 35 to 40 percent.
+
+[28:38] Are still good? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I maybe I'm being generous, but that that's the number that comes to mind, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[28:46] Yeah, gotta you have to cut out the John Hughes movies, though. Like that's the main thing. Just yeah, don't don't try and count the John Hughes movies. Yeah, I uh I wonder, Style, what about you? What do you think is a hold-up number?
+
+[29:00] Oh god, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm thankful when a movie still holds up at all. Like I like, I was like, because you know, except when you have kids, right?
+
+[29:10] You know, Joe, you're gonna happen to you, right? You you show your kids you go back and you watch these movies you love when you were a kid, and you're like, do I need to look at it first? Like, what's gonna happen? Like, assume sexism and racism, like straight, straight out the gate, you know what I mean? Uh but then you're like, is it still even gonna be funny?
+
+[29:28] You know what I mean? So like you show the blues brothers too, you know, my kid, you know, my kid Daxman is like, oh, thank god. I mean it's still funny. You know what I mean? And the music is still great.
+
+[29:36] Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, but yeah, it's it's hard. It's hard. I just watched the money pit. Was it still good?
+
+[29:43] Still good. Still good. It's still very funny. Did you get I I think Wendell Pierce had a cameo in that? Did you get a chance?
+
+[29:50] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was great. What's the worst movie you've rewatched where you're like, oh wow, stinker? Oh boy. There's a lot of them, actually.
+
+[30:03] I mean. One you legitimately liked when you were a kid. This happened to me with Space Jam. Like, that movie's really good. It's a bad movie.
+
+[30:13] Oh, God. But like you legitimately thought it was good when you were a kid. Of course. Is Space Jam the one with Bugs Bunny and The Martian and Michael Jordan? Yeah.
+
+[30:24] Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Was that an old Mel Blank who couldn't do the voices anymore, or is kid who can't do the voices? Oh, good question.
+
+[30:36] I'm not even sure. Let's see. Nothing's more sad than Mel Blank not being able to do his own voices. Yeah. Yeah, sad.
+
+[30:44] Well, what movie does kind of like still hold up? And I was when you were talking about the menu, and I haven't seen the menu yet, but the cook, the thief, his wife, her lover. I didn't like that when it came out. Because it was so gross to me. And then this there's that one scene where they're eating the body.
+
+[31:01] Yeah. Then you watch it again. You're like, wow, this is a masterpiece. It's like a play on film. Oh, yeah.
+
+[31:08] So when I was like 19 when I saw it, you know, in an art house thing at college, it was already a couple years old. I'm like, let me guess, they're gonna eat the J-bar. Oh, they're eating the J Bar. It's boring. You know what I mean?
+
+[31:18] I hated it. I still I like Tempopo, though. I'm sure that's still good. Tampopo holds up. Oh, yeah.
+
+[31:23] That movie's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Uh the worst movie that I liked as a kid, Crocodile Dundee. That is a dumpster fire from start to finish.
+
+[31:34] That keeps showing up on HBO Max for some reason. Both of them. They should put it in HBO Min. Yeah. No, it's crazy.
+
+[31:41] HBO Max is like a treasure trove of now kind of dodgy movies from the city. But also gems. Yes, so many sounds. And all this criterion stuff keeps showing up on there. I'm like, what is this?
+
+[31:44] Yeah. Yeah. Food. Food. Yes.
+
+[31:54] Food. All right. So one of so one of the things that you see, my what do you guys call? First of all, people are gonna want to know. Moving from being a writer to an editor at like a huge place like Eater, what's that?
+
+[32:11] Do you like that? What's the difference? Like, and if I'm pitching an article to you, how does that work? Like, what's the best way to pitch an article to you? Uh, just email me, basically.
+
+[32:20] Email me. So technically, that is the way to pitch an article to me. Uh, the better way to pitch an article to me is to email me, but to also do your research before you pitch your article. So, what does that mean? What does that mean?
+
+[32:32] That means, so I mean, it's funny. I've talked to students, like journalism students, writing students about this before. And like, I think the biggest thing is like, why should I care about your story? Like, why? Uh, is it timely?
+
+[32:44] Does it tell me something I don't know, or that you know, I think probably a lot of readers don't know or don't understand? Uh, why are you the best person to write the story? Do you have some sort of experience with the topic you're pitching that would make me think, you know, you should write this. Also, is it a story or is it a subject that you're pitching me? Like, you know, there's so much that goes into it.
+
+[33:05] A lot of people, you see this a lot with food. You see this a lot with food essays more than anything else. A lot of people pitch essays where it's like, you know, I learned to appreciate, say, porridge, uh, because a family member died, and this got me through my family members. Are you making this up or is this an actual pitch? Um, this is not an actual pitch, it is an amalgam of many, many, many pitches I've gotten, and I do not mean to diminish the people who are sending these pitches because we all have a story, right?
+
+[33:29] We we all have a story we want to tell. You replace porridge with kanji and people want to read it though. That's true. It's true though. And this is the thing, though, there's become a certain paint by numbers approach people take to food writing and food essays, where it's like, and again, I don't mean to sound glib here, but it's it you notice certain patterns when you get a lot of these pitches.
+
+[33:52] It's like people want to talk about things that have happened to them, whether they're good or they're bad, usually bad, actually. People are far more inclined to want to talk about the bad things that have happened to them, which I do understand uh as a writer myself, uh, this is how you work things out, right? But they want to talk about it through the prism of food. And it can be done well. You know, obviously we've seen plenty of examples of this being done really, really well.
+
+[34:14] But a lot of it isn't really executed well. And a lot of it comes from not really a solid idea of, you know, how do you tell a certain story? It's a very um, it's it I think it's one of these things that looks really easy when you read it on the page because you're seeing this great finished product that's very cohesive. It's probably been edited a lot. The writer's probably also really good.
+
+[34:37] A lot of people think it's easy to do. It is absolutely not easy to do. So, like, or to do well. Um, so yeah, when when people pitch me, I I want to know like why, why you, why this story? Um is the main problem with that whole kind of genre that it's very difficult to understand what's going to be interesting to people who don't know you or care about you.
+
+[34:57] I mean, I do think when you are writing a personal essay, there is there is an onus on the writer to like make it universal, as they say. Like, like even even say like a terrible tragedy happened to you. This happened to you, but like why this is gonna I'm gonna sound like a jerk when I say this, but like why should anyone else care? Like what will readers like look at in this story and be able to take to their own lives, or how will it resonate to a wider audience? And I think that's the thing a lot of people don't understand.
+
+[35:25] It's like what separates what you're pitching me from something that belongs in a diary, you know? And I think that's what a lot of people don't get past. But yeah, I'm sure most of I'm sure most of the stuff you get just kind of is not good. I mean, frankly, you know, it's it's not where it needs to be. But is it is I think I feel like there's more of a place for that kind of writing to be great now than there was, let's say uh 30, 30 something years ago.
+
+[35:56] So, like, you know, I think I forget which anniversary, but it's coming up because uh a publicist sent me something, Nora Efron's book. Oh, Heartburn, I'm I'm gonna be writing about that actually. Yeah, yeah. So like that's what is it, 30 coming up? 40.
+
+[36:06] All right, wow, geez, geez Louise. I know, yeah. So, you know, the 40th anniversary coming out, and so like uh, you know, whenever someone sends me something and I find it interesting, I poke around a little bit, and I read all of yeah, 83. I read all the reviews from 83, and I was like, wow, like people are even people who liked it, little little book, little this, little like always belittling because it was something that was, and then I saw you know an interview she did uh like a year or two before she died talking about it, you know, basic, you know, basically saying, Yeah, like they call it like a thinly disguised uh did you read that interview she gave where she's like, no. Well, so she's like saying, Yeah, it's they say thinly disguised uh because I'm a I'm a woman, basically.
+
+[36:51] Yeah, and they're like, you know, it it's a gendered thing, you know what I mean? And so um, I don't know. I just thought it was interesting, and I think there's probably more space for people to be good at that now and not have the work be belittled. Do you agree with that or no? Abs absolutely, yeah.
+
+[37:05] No, and I think I think that's one of the things that's been great about how it's evolved is like we are seeing like more voices, like we're we're hearing from more people who you would not have heard from at all, like 40, 30, even like 10 years ago, you know. So that part, that's great. That part I'm absolutely in favor of. And and I absolutely do think that food writing itself more generally has started to become taken far more seriously, you know, uh in the last 10, 15 years. And and and I do think, you know, yes, a lot of the prejudices against it were because it was considered not serious.
+
+[37:40] A lot of women wrote about food, you know, a lot of women ran food sections. Um it was a domestic art. People didn't didn't take it seriously. So you get somebody like Nora Afron, who's writing about the dissolution of her marriage, you know, talking a lot about food, and it's seen as this like I mean also just objectively funny person, could write it. It's so funny, and like, yeah, like everyone should read this book.
+
+[38:02] It's a great book, you know. And and everyone honestly should be really impressed by somebody who can be that funny while writing about something that is really, really difficult. I mean, this is like a terrible time in her life. Her husband leaves her, she's got two small children, you know. But she she makes it's she makes this great book out of it.
+
+[38:20] Her famous husband. Oh my god. Nastas and I saw him at a party once. I used to work with their son. Really?
+
+[38:26] Yeah. Oh man. Jacob. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no.
+
+[38:29] So I mean, anyway, yeah, it's really easy for the or was really easy for people to belittle that kind of writing. It still is. I mean, there's plenty of people who still belittle that kind of writing. I think you also see that a lot applied now to food blogs. You know, you get that that sort of people love to complain about how you have to scroll and scroll and scroll to like a recipe on a food blog as if it's like some sort of like great burden.
+
+[38:50] But like what they're really skipping over is like usually it's a woman who's like writing this food blog, writing, you know, about like what the recipe means to her, her family, et cetera, et cetera. And people, people just do not want to read it. They want to get straight to the food blog. So you still or sorry, the recipe. So you still see that for sure.
+
+[39:06] That's what weird one uh because there's like been a backlash to that and then a backlash to the backlash. So I don't know where that I don't know where we are right now. We I think we're just in the middle of like infinite backlash cycles. Yeah, I mean, look, if my point is that if someone's written a recipe that, you know, whatever, man, just like let them present it to you. Just scroll.
+
+[39:29] Yeah. Just scroll. It's it's like you have a thumb, most likely. So just like just scroll. It's really not not a great burden.
+
+[39:37] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you and you're trying to give me information. Yeah. Jerk.
+
+[39:42] Like, how dare you try to make a living through your advertisements, which also depend on you like having a lot of content actually to give me. I have found that, and I'm sh 100% sure I'm guilty of this, but people who don't have to make something from nothing don't understand how hard it is to make something from nothing. Oh, exactly. Exactly. It's gimme, gimme, gimme.
+
+[40:06] It sort of reminds me of uh I used to talk to chefs about this one when back when I was at the Village Voice, you know, we would do these like the village voice had a big like I think it was I forget the name of it, but basically we had a bunch of chefs come to the armory, serve a bunch of food to like a giant crowd. And that was like tasting New York thing. Yeah, it was that, yeah, yeah. Thank you. And I remember talking to chefs, you know, who would be at these things and get so frustrated with like the people who show up because you get people who would just come and like take all the little plates and like you know, whatever was on the table, they thought they were entitled to like all of it.
+
+[40:37] It was just this entitlement and this sort of like mindset of like gimme, gimme, gimme. I don't care about what's gone into making it. Nastasi and I have worked plenty of those, right, Stas? Oh, yeah. Oh my god.
+
+[40:48] And the thing is, is that like what I don't like is uh it's gonna sound terrible, but when you're working one of those stations, right? Nastasi and I never did this. We put all of our energy into the product and like we never fluffed out our table, right? Everyone else, we'd look around and we're like, oh my God. We were at an event once, and Jean George, literally Jean George showed up in a sailor's outfit, looked a lot like Joe Hazen is looking today.
+
+[41:12] Like showed up in a French sailor's outfit. Wow. And I'm gonna get buy you the hat, Joe. Anyway, like uh he had the hat, the whole thing, you know, the little free and all and Nastasia and I were like, oh, we suck. We suck.
+
+[41:24] Remember that, Stas? Anyway, yeah, you went and bought like a lamb shirt. I don't know. You told me to buy that shirt. Don't do that to me, Nastasia.
+
+[41:33] Don't you do that to me. Nastasi, we go to thrift stores because Nastasi and I love thrift stores, and some person made for someone in her family like a denim shirt with a like a lamb on it made of lamb fur. Wow, like a lamb-shaped lamb made of lamb fur sewn on lamb wool sewed on to the denim shirt. Am I accurately portraying this, Nastasia? Yeah, with a rainbow above it.
+
+[41:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what made it the rainbow. And so I was like, Dave, you're gonna buy that, you're gonna wear it. I'm like, come on, man. And she's like, You're gonna buy it, you're gonna wear it.
+
+[42:06] And now all of a sudden I'm doing it. Now all of a sudden it's me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you wore that, and why was why was John George in a sailor outfit? But everyone at John George's booth was decked out.
+
+[42:16] Like cosplay. Yeah, like cosplay. Yeah. My little mutton. Anyway, my point is that, yeah, my little mutton.
+
+[42:23] Oh, that's good. It's good. So uh what uh what I hate is like the people who come to it, right? And they're they're not really engaged. Like their eyes are kind of at half mast.
+
+[42:34] They're like just like consuming everything. Yeah. They don't even look at you when they take it. They don't care really. They're human vacuums.
+
+[42:43] It's just like it's not uh and by the way, when chefs are doing that, they're not getting paid for that. No. No. One of the most interesting articles I ever wrote, I think it might have been for time out. I can't remember, but it was all about sort of the economics of those things and about how much chefs actually lose.
+
+[43:00] Oh, so much. And like, what do you actually gain? Like, I think maybe a little publicity, but not really enough to justify right. And if you don't have enough money to pay the shift wage for the people who are working with you, they're getting hosed. Right.
+
+[43:11] Right? Or or you're getting hosed twice. Like everyone's getting hosed. So I know that you've paid a lot of money, people to go to this event. I understand that.
+
+[43:20] But what you gotta understand is that it's whoever you paid the money to that's running away with your money. It's not the cooks, it's not the bartenders. So please just look the person who's giving you the product in the eye and say thank you. And if they want to tell you something about the food, listen. That's all.
+
+[43:40] It's a very it's that's all you that's all you need to do. You don't need to be like, I love it. But just like look them in the eye, accept the item. If if it's on the table, say, May I take this? Some sort of, hi, you're a human.
+
+[43:55] That's it. Yeah, it's all that's required. Basic etiquette, but human 101. People don't have it. When you're working a party, when you're working a party, and people like yell a drink out uh order out of the side of their mouth at you and and don't look at you and then reach over and grab the drink from you without looking.
+
+[44:19] Oh my god, you're the guest I hate. I hate that person so much. Like, I don't know. I don't know what it is. It again, it doesn't take a lot.
+
+[44:27] It doesn't take a lot. It's just dehumanizing. That's the thing. It's like you might as well be the vending machine handing them their drink. Right.
+
+[44:34] And if I was getting paid at all, right? Or or paid a lot. I mean you're being paid a lot. You're like, I don't care. Yeah.
+
+[44:40] You know, treat me terribly. Punch me in the face. Like I used to think a good business model, I I had this thing where uh when I was uh younger, like uh at the office, I used to work in an office, which is a terrible idea. When I graduated college, I was a paralegal. Worst job in the world for me, like soul crushing, except for my Xerox finger was very strong.
+
+[44:56] I used to, I shouldn't say this. I used to go to the New York Public Library. Uh New York Public Library used to have a very good circulating cookbook collection, very good at the mid-Manhattan Library, amazing, like stuff that you know couldn't find anywhere. And I would uh check it out on the way to work, and I would wait till everyone left the office, and then I would Xerox the whole book, bind it, and then bring the book back to the NYPL. And then so like my and I used to do that also with a technical book that's Sybil.
+
+[45:24] This is how I like learned a lot of technical stuff before it was on the internet, is I was copying all of the food tech books at at the at the um science industry and business library in in NYC, shouldn't say this. Anyway, so uh my Xerox finger, uh uh very very strong. That's right. Um what are we talking about? We're talking about things we hate, people we hate.
+
+[45:45] I forget what I was talking about. That wow. I can't you were asking me about stories. Remember that? Yeah, I don't know.
+
+[45:53] And then baby boom and I don't know. I don't know. Why was I talking about copying the books and why was I talking about the that job? I don't know. Well I don't know.
+
+[46:02] I think we were sort of on the sort of track of dehumanization. Oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah. That's the thing.
+
+[46:08] It's like it's like um, oh, I don't know. So, like my what I was gonna make a uh thing was I had this skill. That's what it was where you could, no matter how big and beefy you were, and we had some big beefy folk in the office, uh, you could hit me over the head with a copy paper box empty, and it would and I was fine with it. No matter what you could do with a copy paper box, like I was fine with it. So I was gonna stand outside of the of the, I don't think I ever told you this, Nastasia.
+
+[46:36] You know the information ball, the the clock at Grand Central? So I was gonna stand out there with there was a there was a guy I used to work with who's never lost an arm wrestling. He doesn't look huge, but he's never lost an arm wrestling. And you know, he comes from a long line of like uh union bosses, right? Anyway, you get a kind of mental image of the guy, New York guy.
+
+[46:56] And so he was gonna stand next to me in case someone tried to actually punch me in the face. And then I was gonna insult comic, like just insult people as they came up to me, and then for like five dollars a pop, they could hit me over the head with a box. Good business, right? Yeah. We couldn't get enough boxes.
+
+[47:11] Oh. To make it work. You know what I mean? Because we were like, well, if we had like a hundred boxes, that's still only like 500 bucks, and then you can't use the box twice, and where are we gonna get all these box tops? But it would have been a good business, right?
+
+[47:23] Yeah. So, you know, if you're making, you know, $500 an hour when you're 24, yeah, dehumanize me. Yeah. Why not? It's kind of goes in the territory, right?
+
+[47:33] Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, who who, you know, embrace the degradation. Right.
+
+[47:36] Make a lot of money. If you're gonna be degraded, make a lot of money, right? There you go. Yeah, there you go. Brought it back, Joe.
+
+[47:43] All right. Uh hey, since uh I don't know where we are in the show, John. You want to tell them about uh Patreon, why they should join, what they get, what they don't, what they blah blah blah. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. You get early access to listening to the episodes and uh column link.
+
+[47:57] You get your questions prioritized uh when you send them in. You get discounts to all the awesome people we work with, like Kitchen Rice and Letters and whoever else we're partnering with at the time. Um yeah, and you get to help support us, which is always a nice thing too. So nice for us anyway. Yeah, exactly.
+
+[48:14] And we got great guests coming up. Quinn, who do we have on coming up next week? Uh next week is uh Caroline Schiff, executive patriot chef for Gage and Kulner. And then the week after that should be Chris Young to finally tackle the uh infamous creamy. Well, I mean, I'm sure he's gonna want to talk about his new product that he's selling, and then we will also talk about it.
+
+[48:41] I'm sure Chris is gonna be like spending the entire time. I just came out with a new product, I spent years developing it. Let's talk about the creamy. We we will be making fun of the name creamy, though. It is a terrible, terrible name for a product, I think.
+
+[48:54] Truth, yes, creamy. Hey, speaking of creamy, uh by the way, Patreon people, if there's something you want, let us know. John, am I right about this? Yeah, absolutely. We'd like to find better ways to engage with uh, you know, the higher paying tier members, so let us know what kind of stuff you guys want from us, and we will do our best to accommodate.
+
+[49:14] Yeah, like what I what we don't have the time to do is to figure out what you want. But if there's something that you want and we have time to provide it, then why wouldn't we? Right? Sure. Yeah.
+
+[49:24] Uh I mean, I don't know how many people downloaded the 3D files that I put up there, probably none. Or like the pie books, probably none. You know what I mean? But I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[49:33] I downloaded them. Quinn, that doesn't count, man. You don't have to join. You work with us. You're you all I downloaded them before I started working.
+
+[49:43] All right, all right, fair. All right. Well, I appreciate that, Quinn. Appreciate that. Uh yeah.
+
+[49:48] Okay. So uh wait, something we were just talking about reminded me of one, oh, Patreon uh listener wants to know. I forget who it was because I can't I'm having trouble going through all this. Ah, yes. Wanted to ask you about editing the uh the uh Pakistani mango article and like what was going on with that.
+
+[50:06] And have you now since you've done that, ordered the miss a season already? Is it already over? Oh, yeah, for now it is, yeah. Yeah. So that was a fun story.
+
+[50:16] Um, so the writer, Ahmed Ali Akbar, he had actually already reported the story in another form for I believe it was I want to say it was either Cook's Illustrated podcast or Milk Street. Forgive me, I cannot remember that detail. Anyway, it had already come out sort of like in radio format. But he wanted to do more reporting on it, make it into a print piece, and so he brought it to us. This was right before the pandemic started.
+
+[50:43] Uh and so we were really enthusiastic about it. Uh again, we knew he'd he'd have to do some additional reporting for various reasons. Uh, but you know, he was he was game, so we got started, then the pandemic happened, and we kind of had to put the kibosh on almost every long form feature we'd been working on. At the time I was editing Eater's long form stories. That was my brand new job right before the pandemic.
+
+[51:10] And so yeah we kind of just had to sleep on it for we weren't sure how long we were gonna have to sleep on it for we didn't want to. Well why did the long form stuff get kibosh because of the pandemic people have more time to read not enough time to produce. Yeah you would think so uh no well a couple different things happened one was like every editor who wasn't already sort of working on more breaking news was assigned to work on more breaking news and to pitch in there because obviously there was so much food news to keep reporting every single day of the pandemic. So it's all the same news we're ruined yeah basically it was it was like just an unending stream of depressing stories. It was really terrible but they needed everyone to pitch in so that happened but then also they were like well you know we've never done recipes we don't really do home content but everyone's now stuck at home they're not really going to restaurants so we should start doing home content which birthed eater at home.
+
+[52:04] So they then asked me you know would you this was now I'm this is like early 2021 they were like would you like pitch in more like we know you have like culinary background I had been to culinary school like I'd done cooking blah blah blah blah they're like with your background we think you should head this up. So I was like fine so that's how we started doing cooking content. So basically they killed they killed the entire long form program uh and they were like this is your new job now. So I was like, what about Pakistani mangoes? And so that's what we want to read about.
+
+[52:36] Yeah, no, that's what's what I wanted to to edit, you know. And so uh fortunately we were able to keep the story alive. It took like two, pretty much two entire years. Um, but uh yeah, Ahmed was great, you know, really like was a trooper. We finally got it done.
+
+[52:53] Um and he published a story, and we were all like super excited about it, and we still are, and then it won a James Beard award last year, which was awesome. I did get to try some Pakistani mangoes. And they were delicious. I mean, like did you order them from the WhatsApp from that guy? What's his name?
+
+[53:07] Monot? I forget his name. There are there's a couple of different guys actually you can order from. And now I'm not even sure, like, because I think there's been some shifts in the WhatsApp industry. I don't I am not the person to speak about this, though.
+
+[53:19] Ahmed definitely is. Uh, he could tell you a lot more because he's yeah. When you had it, did you have it with him? Yeah, so I got them through him. He he was very generous in giving me some.
+
+[53:29] And did he say this is peak, this is what it's supposed to be? Because that's the thing I never know. If you get something, like I ordered some Turkish cheese off Etsy the other day. Oh. And I don't think you can.
+
+[53:41] Right. Wow. But I ordered some Turkish cheese off Etsy because you can't buy Turkish. You mean I'm sure you can, but like I I live in New York. You'd think I could get, and there's a couple of Turkish cheeses that I really like.
+
+[53:53] And like, yeah, so I ordered some off of Etsy. And they arrived in good condition. Like, they have very good string cheese. I know this doesn't sound like a lot, but the string cheese game. Have I said this on the air before, John?
+
+[54:05] I think so, yeah. String cheese game, very, very good. Yes. And and the the they make a cheese called Tulum that's like aged in um animal skin. Very good.
+
+[54:15] Anyway, so uh yeah. I mean was it peak? Did he see it? It was it was ordered during peak season. So the season is relatively short.
+
+[54:23] But did he say that the one I gave you? To be honest, to be entirely honest, I don't think he'd have a problem with me saying this because he was very open about it. He was not thrilled with them. With this batch. Yeah, with that particular batch.
+
+[54:36] As somebody who had never tried a Pakistani mango before, though, I was not as critical as he was. But that's why I think it's always important, and this people don't talk about this enough. It's always important to taste something like this. Like if you're gonna do any sort of holy grail situation, you need to taste it with someone who is experienced because then he can be like, these are good, but they're not the best. Yeah, that's what it was.
+
+[54:57] He was like, these the texture could be a little better, but like the flavor was fantastic. Yeah. It was ambrosial. That's what happens with my tomatoes. Like the tomatoes, not my personal, the tomatoes that I am catheted to.
+
+[55:11] They're not the same every year. Not every year is the best. You know what I mean? So when I give them to people, I'm like, these are fine. Mm-hmm.
+
+[55:16] The seat tomato. They'll get in a nicely grown tomato. It's still better than probably 99-9 of what you've ever had, but it's not like it's not the one that was handed down from the mount. You know what I mean? Like right, right.
+
+[55:27] I mean, that's the thing though. When you when you care enough about that and you have a hand in like somehow procuring these things, like it's never gonna be perfect, probably. Not like it is to the outsider. But it feels so good when it is. When you can serve somebody something and you're and you know that it's like that, and then you're like, because then if they don't like it, you're like, well, you're just a terrible person.
+
+[55:47] You're just worthless. I should not have wasted that tomato on you. No, you at all. You did not deserve it. Yeah.
+
+[55:53] Yeah. Yeah. That's when you go with your kids from being like, you should try this to crap, get get out. You know what I mean? If you're not interested, I just own you.
+
+[56:01] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a heartbreak.
+
+[56:04] It's a heartbreak when kids don't like uh well, whatever. Uh all right. Um, did we finish talking about that? Uh I think I did, but if you have other questions, I'm happy to answer them. So uh Quinn, do we have any other questions from uh Patreon and Discord on that?
+
+[56:19] Uh no, yeah, a lot of discussion about uh about the movie, the um Yeah. Have that a lot of people, a lot of people seeing it. Uh maybe. Maybe. All right.
+
+[56:35] Uh all right. Now here's the thing. Uh so one of the things you do, I guess as a bridge because you know you're now taking things that are like restaurant style at home, is you choose, and I don't know if we talked about this before the show or during the show. My mind is a blur when I'm doing these things. But uh talking to uh either like food personalities or chefs who have restaurants who have done adaptations of their stuff for home.
+
+[56:56] Yeah, and that's kind of one of the big things. But what's weird is that sometimes you're writing it with them, sometimes you're writing it kind of as them. Like so you but it's kind of a fun, fun thing. So how do you kind of choose like one and some of them? Let me let me uh let me uh make a little uh beef, uh a little beef with you here.
+
+[57:12] Yeah. So uh you did a uh a thing with this recipe I don't know. Pheasan John sounds interesting, right? Uh and so this is a uh a dish for the longest night of the year, right? Right.
+
+[57:23] It's nice to think of it as the longest night instead of the shortest day. Right, right? So like glass half full. Yeah, yeah, glass half full kind of situation. So it's kind of um, it's uh what is it?
+
+[57:32] It's it's pomegranates, walnuts, and all this stuff. Yeah. But then, and so I'm assuming this is like, and I know they're tested because it says at the bottom of everything that you have a recipe tester, I forget her name. It's Ivy, Ivy was the one. Ivy Manning.
+
+[57:45] Yeah. She's good at that. She's great. Yeah. We're very lucky to have Ivy.
+
+[57:49] All right, so this instruction: a good trick. So you're cooking down um, I guess, pomegranate juice and pomegranate molasses in a thing. And then it says a good trick to avoid scorching the bottom of the pot is to leave a flat bottom wooden spoon resting in the pot so that the heat is conducted away from the bottom. But wood spoons don't conduct. What is that?
+
+[58:06] What is that? I mean, that was a case. That was the author of the recipe. That's her method. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[58:14] So I have not personally tried it. Ivy, Ivy said nothing about this to me actually in the in the testing process. Not to throw Ivy under the bus. I'm not throwing it under the bus, but it was not something that came up as like, you know, this is something that doesn't work or this is something that works really well. So we kept it in.
+
+[58:31] Yeah, I mean, it's it's fun. It's like so like, so like uh, I don't know, like when I read when I read recipes, I'm not reading them like I would guess 90% of people read it. I'm just looking for weird things to pop out at me. Yeah, yeah, me too. No, I'm the same way.
+
+[58:47] Yeah, yeah. So here's another funny one from that same same recipe. And I know that like this is you know, not your recipe, it was funny. Uh this uh it calls for like pomegranate uh, I guess it calls for red pecmes, right? The pomegranate molasses, it calls for pomegranate juice.
+
+[59:03] And then, John, you ready for this one? Half cup pomegranate arrows. Not use the technical term for what those pomegranate seed things are, not like pomegranate seeds. You're like a hundred percent of people reading that are like pomegranate arrows? What?
+
+[59:23] But the same people are probably reading this online where they can then open a tab next to it. This is a thing about like I think this is also something that's changed, at least you know, for eater, is like I think like we like to assume a certain level of knowledge, right? Among our readers, but the other thing is, is like I think there's a lot less handholding in certain ways than they're used to be with recipes because I think it's like it's either assumed that people have more knowledge now or that they have the ability to immediately gain that knowledge by doing a very quick Google search. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh let's do uh do another couple of these uh of these uh this this style uh of peace.
+
+[1:00:02] Uh have you hey uh um Jack or Nastasia uh because I think it's LA have you been to PJ Palace, uh either of you guys? I'm pronouncing the name of that restaurant right now. How do you like it? Describe it. The food was interesting.
+
+[1:00:15] The room, I hated the room, which I guess is not what you're asking, but it was like really fluorescent with a lot of TVs and I didn't like being there, but the food was interesting. Yeah. So you want to describe what the what the kind of the what the food is, what it's what the style is. I guess it's uh you know, it's mostly pizzas, pastas, and sort of bar food with Indian flavors. Um I guess that's that's about as simply as I can explain it.
+
+[1:00:40] Right. So then this the mashup that you have on the on on Eater that you did um with the chef is uh uh like a chicken cali merch. Oh no, it's pana, it's paneer. No idea uh Kali merch paneer pasta. It sounds great.
+
+[1:00:54] Yeah, it was it good. Did you try it? I actually didn't try it. That's the thing. I rarely get to try anything.
+
+[1:00:59] Uh, but my tester loved it. Ivy loved it. I think this was great. Yeah. All right.
+
+[1:01:04] Yeah. And then uh there's a couple more that you've done. Uh cooking cookies for one. Okay, okay. And Kimber's.
+
+[1:01:12] This recipe is twisted. There's it's flourless, fine. Okay, get this people. It's uh I like that it's in grams. I appreciate this.
+
+[1:01:19] I didn't know 175 grams of light brown sugar, right? Vanilla extract, 225 grams of smooth peanut butter. All right, John, you ready for this? 100 grams of chocolate for dipping. It's not in the recipe.
+
+[1:01:31] All of that is it's cooked. It's not a no-bake. All of it is bound by what, John? What are you binding this cookie with? Chia seats?
+
+[1:01:40] One single egg. One single egg. Single egg. And they they hold together? Yeah.
+
+[1:01:44] There's only six of them though. That's the thing. It's like you got one egg for six cookies. All right. Yeah.
+
+[1:01:49] It's not the feet. It seems like it could be. All right. All right, Ed with two Ds. Uh you're also a huge fan of ruining cakes and then putting it over ice cream.
+
+[1:01:57] I am. Yeah. I am, yeah. I mean, because it's like you have there's very few things that are gonna ruin a cake to the point of inedibility. Like, unless you like put in salt for the sugar.
+
+[1:02:07] Which you said you did. What was that like? I did that actually in in cooking school. Oh, jeez, Louise. Yeah, that was a that was a great day.
+
+[1:02:13] It was I I couldn't tell you what it was like because I didn't actually taste it. I realized what happened. Like before it went to the oven. I was like, well, I guess that's not gonna get eaten. That's going to the trash.
+
+[1:02:23] Uh yeah, so there's very few ways you can really ruin a cake to the extent you don't want to eat it. I mean, even if you throw that cake in the trash, certain people will still pick cake out of the trash. That is the power of cake. Uh I'm not saying I do that. Right.
+
+[1:02:38] And so two other things I've learned from reading a bunch of your articles. One, you have limited freezer space. I do, that's true. And two, you like vegan A's, and so we have 15 seconds for you to talk about why we should give vegan A's a shot. Uh, texturally, flavor-wise, it is great.
+
+[1:02:52] It is not as uncuous as mayonnaise. It's a little lighter. It's just uh Can you cook with it like mayonnaise? Uh I haven't tried, you mean like actually cooking cooking? No.
+
+[1:03:01] Like growchy sandwich toppings. Yeah, yeah, you can do that sort of thing. I make a lot of dressings with it though, and just put it on bread and it's great. Yeah. Alrighty, Rebecca.
+
+[1:03:10] Thanks for coming on. Come on and get a new time. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, Newsstand Studios, New York City. Rocking the panels here. We got Joe Hazen. How you doing?
+
+[0:22] I'm doing great, man. Great to see you. Sorry for last week. Well. Hey, hey, you know, you gotta uh everyone's gotta stay safe.
+
+[0:28] That's the new way it works these days. Uh also in the uh studio, we got uh John, how you doing? Doing great, thanks. How's the restaurant doing? Uh good.
+
+[0:37] Yeah, good. Yeah. Yeah. Temperance? Yeah, everything's going well.
+
+[0:40] Everyone in the country's been but me, right? And Joe, actually. And Joe, too. Yeah, you know. And uh in uh California in an automobile, going to try to save Booker and Dax the corporation.
+
+[0:52] We have Nastasia Lopez. She'll say hello whenever she can probably unmute herself. So, you know, I'm not gonna force it. Uh oh nice. Uh yeah, yeah.
+
+[0:59] How's that going? How's saving how's saving the day going? Um fine. It's fine. I'm not that yet there yet.
+
+[1:07] Uh when I get there, I'll send you a photo of the check. Yeah. What I what you should do is also see if you can like go in back and see if your mom still has lemongrass growing in the back. I want to see the lemongrass that uh was somehow an emotional trigger for you as a child and cause you to you you ripped it out or she ripped it out. I think they ripped it out, yeah.
+
+[1:33] But can't you imagine? Can't you just see yourself like one night like college, like coming home, like ripping out all the lemongrass and throwing it over. What uh what is it like in that part of California? Is it like cinder block walls between the lawns or like hedges between the lawns? How does it work over there?
+
+[1:51] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cinder blocks. Yeah, and just throwing it over to cinder blocks, being like a little lemongrass.
+
+[1:56] I could see you doing that. I would never do that. I'm a I'm a very good child. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
+
+[2:04] Okay. All right. I am. I told you his name. So at home, of the three of you, you were the golden child.
+
+[2:13] No, all three of us were. Your brother was the golden child. Yeah. There were golden children. All right.
+
+[2:21] There's there's that that doesn't work that way usually. There's always one. There's always one. Who was it? I'm not gonna make you choose.
+
+[2:30] What? There's always one who's the cut-up. And this Oh, no. No. Yeah.
+
+[2:37] All right. Okay. All right. I will let that lay where it is. And uh, we got uh Jackie Molecules uh in uh LA Town.
+
+[2:44] How you doing? I'm good. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[2:49] And then from the Naimo, Vancouver Island off the coast, uh, in the most northernwesterly part of the cooking issues kingdom. We have Quinn. How you doing? Hey, I'm good. I was the Golden Child.
+
+[3:02] Yeah, nice, nice between me and my brother. Golden Child, not a good movie, by the way, but has some very good lines in it. You've all seen The Golden Child, right? Never even heard of it. No, what?
+
+[3:14] Yeah, of course. Same. Yeah, you've never heard of the Golden Child? No. Have you heard of this comedian Eddie Murphy?
+
+[3:21] Have you heard of Eddie Murphy? Who? Oh god, you guys suck. Is that in your range, the Golden Child? No.
+
+[3:31] It's probably, I don't know whether it's still okay to watch, but Eddie Murphy has to like save this Tibetan kid with all this stuff and the devil and all this. But the best is he goes into this uh temple at the top of a mountain. It's probably horribly probably unwatchable now. But he wants this knife, this magic knife. Joe, you're with me, right?
+
+[3:52] And he goes, I want the knife. And they're like, you have to like rub these wheels, and he's like, uh-uh, uh, I want the knife. And then like and then he they don't give it to him, and he goes, and he spins the wheel and goes, please. It's the best. It's it's peak.
+
+[4:07] It's peak Eddie Murphy, like bad Eddie Murphy movie. You guys watch any Eddie Murphy movies? Yeah. Nutty Professor. Shrek.
+
+[4:16] Nutty Professor? Nutty Professor's classic. Shrek. I mean, Shrek's a great movie. I'm not gonna say Changing Places and then uh Coming to America.
+
+[4:26] Yes, there we go. Thank you, Jack. Okay. Yeah. All right.
+
+[4:30] What about old old school? What about uh Beverly Hills Cop? Yeah, that's good too. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[4:37] Yeah. All right. Yeah. Golden Child. All right.
+
+[4:41] Uh any good uh cooking things happened to you guys in the past two weeks? Anything? Anything? Anything? Is this gonna be one of those things where afterwards?
+
+[4:50] Yeah, well, you have been cooking a lot? What? Because Nastasia's gonna say later, Jack had stories. Jack had stories, and you didn't let him say it. So here's your chance.
+
+[4:58] No, no, I don't actually don't have stories. Um it's not very interesting. I've just been making more food than I usually do. Let's see, I did uh cauliflower curry last night from the Mirasoda book and a bunch of um night market recipes from their book. Yeah.
+
+[5:16] Cauliflower curry as a is a dry curry or a wet curry? No wet curry. It it it is a wet curry or not a wet curry? It is a it is a wet curry. Coconut milk wet.
+
+[5:28] Yeah, oh yeah. That sounds good. But uh what uh what what's the primary spice that uh is used in that recipe? What's the color of the of the coconut milk? No, no turmeric, so it's not turmeric color, coriander cumin, um garmasala at the end, a little uh ginger, chili, garlic paste, mortar and pestle.
+
+[5:54] I've been increasing the chili in all my recipes by at least like twofold lately, and it's been working out well. All right, so I made chili beans. So like you remember I published that uh thing on beans uh a while back about how not to have the toots with the beans. So I have a new technique to reduce the toots because it turns out like the the anti-toot factor only makes it into the beans. This is gonna make it back to to what what we were talking about.
+
+[6:17] So I cook them in wicked, I add a little baking soda, tiny bit just so that they cook really quickly. Don't bother soaking them. 45 minute cook, but in like massive amounts of excess liquid. Then I drain I let it cool a lot, drain the liquid off, add the bean o to that, and then reduce that. And I did make chili beans yesterday and I added or two days ago, and I added way too much chili for my standard mix is like a mix of like ancho, pasilla, and guajillo chilies, right?
+
+[6:49] That's kind of my standard triples, and I'll add whatever else I have. But I guess I added like m I added what what I would normally add to a whole pork shoulder, and I only did it to like a pound of beans. And so like I was like, this is fine. You know what I mean? But everyone else was like, uh So I had to add like two uh a regular pound of beans, which ends up multiplying by like 1.8 or you know, two point, whatever it is, three.
+
+[7:14] I added freaking seven, seven hundred and seventy grams of potato to try to soak up the extra spice. And it worked. But do you know what a pain in the behind it is to cook? Because I was like, I needed to do it right away. And if I was smart, what I would have done is I would have hacked up and boiled the potatoes for about 10 minutes and then throw thrown them, drain them and thrown them in.
+
+[7:38] But I was like, no, I I don't know what I thought. I thought maybe because they were, if they were more porous or whatever, I was like, I gotta do it. So I just hacked up the potatoes and threw it into the into the already made chili with already had the tomato paste and everything. And then I was like, oh snap. Hey, I was like, oh, snap, I can't freaking cook the potatoes because there's no convection current inside of the chili.
+
+[8:04] And to get the actual top of the chili, the middle of the chili hot enough to cook the potatoes, I would have to burn the bottom. And I actually, you know, Chris Young's combustion engineering thermometer, he's gonna come on. Quinn, when's uh when's he coming on? Uh that's a good time soon. So like so Chris has made this thermometer that has seven different sensors in it, right?
+
+[8:28] Seven different sensors like all along its length. And you can get a readout, you have to ask for like the beta testing. It's not in the regular Jocomos don't have it yet. You will regular Jocomos have it soon, but like right now you need a beta beta tester, and you can just get a readout of all seven sensors with no interpolation, no, you know, you know, AI or any of that stuff. And I was looking at it and I was like, oh my God, the strat the temperature stratification in a pot of thickened beans is like 40 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
+
+[8:59] It's nuts. So like and in order to for the potato to cook, it's got to get over 185. So anyway, it took me instead of that like eight minutes it would have taken me to boil those potato chunks until they were uh it was like an hour. It was like an hour or more. And I was like, oh my god.
+
+[9:17] So I threw it into my steam oven to try to steam it from all sides to get it. They were it was just a freaking nightmare. But I will tell you, Jack, it did soak up the extra spice. So the spice level was good after I was done. I had to add more salt.
+
+[9:28] Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah. Have you do you are you familiar with the yandu?
+
+[9:34] Good product. No. We gotta get those guys to be a sponsor. I love that product. I add yonu to everything.
+
+[9:40] If you if you wanna add umami, but you don't want it to taste like soy. If you want it to taste like soy, go to the moromi people, because that stuff's delicious. Yep. Right? But if you don't want it to taste like soy sauce, yandu is a good product.
+
+[9:54] Do you have a caller? Caller, you're on the air. Hello. Hey. What's up?
+
+[10:01] Hi, hey, sorry, can you hear me? Oh, I can, yes. Hi, how are you? Doing well. Oh, great, great.
+
+[10:09] Good to hear. So uh I am looking into uh uh outdoor deep frying. And I was looking at the Cajun fryer that you recommended that that that Wiley used. And uh uh what what the website said was due to supply chain issues, none of our items have diamond plate aluminum aluminum anymore. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
+
+[10:40] So I'm I'm wondering if you have a solution for outdoor deep frying without buying like a commercial unit. Yeah. Well, I mean, okay, so for those that don't know or haven't heard me like go on and on and on about this before, sure. Uh commercial deep fryers beat the snot out of any other frying method, period. And if you want to have the same quality that you can get out of a commercial deep fryer inside and uh not ruin your oil instantly, right, by overheating it and then dropping it, overheating it and dropping it, you need to only fry like two fresh fries at once.
+
+[11:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So the Cajun Fryer was what we had said Wiley uses it. The only problem is it doesn't have a uh thermostat, so you have to kind of hand dial it in, right? Um is a good outdoor right.
+
+[11:37] So I had a commercial unit outdoors, but I will tell you this commercial units aren't built to be outdoors. Does Cajun Fryer still sell it? They just don't have the drop-down lid, or do they not sell any units at all? Like it's literally like they like I went to the website, I tried the other off sites, and it's not it's not available right now. Uh well, look, most people I know who do outdoor frying, like they'll get like uh a walk burner or a candy stove, and then you know, just like so uh so sorry to cut you off.
+
+[12:10] I uh yeah, so I have I have one, like a you know, like an outdoor turkey fryer uh unit end. And for some reason, uh there's a it it defeats it at 350. And so I had to use a bungee cord to hold in the uh the button such that I could reach, you know, 425 to drop the turkey. Oh well, you shouldn't need to get you shouldn't need to get it that hot. Right.
+
+[12:43] So okay, so like one of the reasons you have to overheat oil, like wicked overheat oil inside, right? Is that you simply don't have the BTUs to keep oil at the frying temperature during the initial period when it's when it's going down. So the miracle of a of a commercial fryer or like one of these cajun things is that it just has such a high gas output, right? And it has such a large large amount of oil, right? That your oil, your temperature drop just isn't as severe as it would be on a stove, right?
+
+[13:17] Because uh, I forget, but you know, my my gas fryer was somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 BTUs, right? Somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 100,000 BTUs on a 40 pound on 40 pounds of oil. So it could heat that whole pound of uh that whole batch of oil up in in five five and a half minutes, right? Right, quick. Right.
+
+[13:36] Yeah, yeah. So you don't need to heat your oil up to a zillion degrees if your recovery time is fast. You only need to do that if you need to build in a lot of extra thermal energy into the oil itself because your heating element is not strong enough. So 350 seems low. I mean, if you yeah, that's that's the issue.
+
+[13:57] Yeah, exactly. Three fifty is high enough for a turkey because turkeys you're going to be cooking for a long time, right? So you don't really ever need it to be that high. The problem is, yeah, for the problem is if you drop it at 350, then the oil temp's gonna drop super low, and then it's gonna have to build up back up to the to the ideal frying temp, like 350, 375. Right.
+
+[14:23] But remember, you're gonna be you're gonna be cooking for how long though? You're gonna be cooking for like a long time. 45 minutes right, right, right. So like a couple of minutes a drop on a 45 minute cook isn't a big deal if turkeys is what you're doing. It is a big deal if you're doing crab cakes or French fries or Yeah, yeah.
+
+[14:42] That's that's the thing. I'm I'm not just using this for turkeys. I'm I'm also doing, you know, fries and whatnot. Right, but remember, turkey is a massive, massive, massive, massive thermal load, right? Massive.
+
+[14:54] And you're the oil is getting all on the inside and all on the outside. Huge thermal load, right? So first of all, I don't understand how this thing is controlling the temperature because all of the turkey fryers that I've used are just like a burner and they will ignite you in your houses. Maybe it's like a super, I don't know, it's my dad's it's like maybe it's like a super ghetto, you know. I don't know, or super expensive, super expensive, safe, right?
+
+[15:21] One like I would say like the ones that I have, the cheap ones I have are perfectly happy to let you incinerate you, your house, your life, your you know what I mean? Uh but you know, and it's what would you recommend for like like let's say I'm trying to put out, you know, like uh like a bunch of fries, a bunch of chicken, and maybe a whole fried uh fish or something like that. Well what would you recommend now? Considering the Cajun fries and available, what's your right? I mean, I'm not gonna say this is safe because it's not, but you can go ahead and get uh I forget the name of it, but they're extremely popular in Louisiana.
+
+[16:02] They come in a bunch of different sizes. They're aluminum uh like uh like oven roasters, but they're big. I forget who makes them. I can I can picture them in my mind. They have like scalloped that lid has like like scallop handles on the side.
+
+[16:17] And if if you look up like favorite Louisiana pot and get the biggest one humanly possible, and they use them outside to make like rice, they use them outside to but that is big and aluminum. So it's it it's big aluminum and thick. So it it can conduct. And aluminum means the other it'll heat quick. Right.
+
+[16:38] And and so and then put that over like uh like they have outdoor candy stoves or like camp stoves with a high output. Like I'm talking, like I say, in like and you need to have a candy stove. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. But be careful.
+
+[16:51] But be careful. And you need to have the right regulator for it so that it can uh actually output the the heat to eat. But again, be careful. I'm I'm as careful as you are. Uh be more careful than me.
+
+[17:02] And make sure you have a side table, uh, you know, uh a c couple of side tables, like one for raw and one for cooked, so that you know you have a good workflow as you're as you're going. And uh Yeah, yeah. I I have tables and I have like like uh like like sheet trays with racks. All right. All right, yeah.
+
+[17:19] Let us know how it works, but please stay safe. I hesitate to and then when the Cajun comes back online, okay. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I I wish I could remember the name of that pot.
+
+[17:30] Yeah, no, I'll I'll look it up. I'll I'll I'll let you know. So thank you very much. All right, no problem. Have a good one.
+
+[17:37] Uh that's old school. Old school, uh old school. Do you remember uh that that lady who used to uh so it it so for those of you that grew up like recently, people of like uh you know the younger generation, we used to have actual telephones that were connected to wires, right? And if you lifted up the phone, you didn't have to like press anything. If you lifted up the phone, you got what's called a dial tone.
+
+[18:02] And then if you didn't do anything for like 20, 30 minutes, bam, bam, bam, bam, and then it would go if you need help, hang up and dial the operator. Well, it if if I need help, how the hell am I gonna hang up and dial the operator? But her voice is like burrowed into my head. If you need help, and it was the same lady all across the country with that thing, the way she said help, help. I need help.
+
+[18:30] And then the great thing is you can hang out on it. Let's find out. I'm just trying, I I'll I'll find out. Yeah. Oh, but that actually I think she says that first, and then it goes into the first it goes boodle deep, boodle deep, and then it was you know what I mean?
+
+[18:48] Uh old phone noises. I love it. I love it. When I was a kid, people used to uh they used to be called phone freaks. Remember this?
+
+[18:56] Anyone phone freaks? And they would you you know what DTMF is dual tone? So like when you press a phone button, it sounds weird because there's two different tones on it, so they can decode what button you're pressing based on noises. Right? Yeah.
+
+[19:08] And so people would have special boxes that would make the these like these tones that couldn't be made with the pad, but that told the phone company something so they could get free calls and stuff. Those were the days. Anyway, uh from uh oh, one more thing. Uh hey, Dave, real quick, real quick, just so to close the loop on this. Her name is Jane Barb.
+
+[19:31] She was an American voice actress and singer, and she was known as the time lady for the recording she made for Bell System and the phone companies. So her voice. Give me her name again. Give me her name again. Jane Barb, B-A-R-B-E.
+
+[19:45] What kind of songs did she sing? I want to know. I want I want to put that on our Spotify list. She's most known for the phone stuff. So I don't know if her music ever really went anywhere.
+
+[19:58] But did she do a jazz version? I want a jazz version if you need help. If you need help, hang up and call the operator. That's what I want. Barbam.
+
+[20:09] By the way, someone uh my Darry Say Son here, my wife was watering the plants of the neighbor next door. And as she was flying back through Dubai, she went to the duty free and got us these dates from Medina. Have you had Ajwa, like Medina date dates? Nope. So good.
+
+[20:29] Yeah. Real good. Real good. I highly recommend them. They're they're uh like they're I don't consider them necessarily a dessert date.
+
+[20:37] I think they're maybe like a with coffee date. They're like the date you want with coffee, right? And get this. These are the dates, specifically, this variety, these dates, where the dates that the Prophet Muhammad was like, this is the date from paradise. Right.
+
+[20:54] So whatever you believe about that, think about the fact that for over a thousand of years, people have been growing this date and perfecting this date, thinking that this is the date that the Prophet Muhammad said is the date. So think of how delicious those dates are. We thought you were gonna say there was the somehow that you knew it was the date from Indiana Jones or something like that. No, that's the poison date. Bad dates.
+
+[21:14] Talk another problematic movie franchise. But uh bad dates. That's the classic. That monkey. The monkey died with his own date.
+
+[21:27] That's true. You know? Yeah. Here you go. The number you have reached has been disconnected.
+
+[21:40] You gotta get the one that she where she says, if you need help. Get the one where you say if you need help. I love it. But the time lady. All right.
+
+[21:47] Uh and lastly, uh, I put on the Instagram or second to lastly, I put on the Instagram uh my uh my current to talk more about breaking wind. Uh and Nastasia, of course, is the queen of of uh serving sunchokes to people who don't know any better. Queen of it. Queen of it. So I did a bunch of research on how to get the inulin is the is what is in sunchokes, aka Jerusalem artichokes that cause you to have gastrointestinal distress.
+
+[22:15] And it's not just toots, people, it's like that upper abdominal like expansion that you can't get out. You can't burp it, you can't toot it. It's just in there, pushing from all directions. And holy, holy smokes is a. Remember after we ate that whole plate of it at uh at Crown Chai.
+
+[22:29] Oh, I do. Yeah. Right for right here, right in like a mid-abdomen. It's like very comfortable. It's like alien growing inside of you.
+
+[22:37] It's the worst. So uh that's inulin. Uh, the same stuff that breaks down into fructose uh when they take agave and roast it for infinity. So if you can't roast it for infinity, it turns out that acid plus heat, right? So that the trick is is to squeeze lemon over it before you cook it, right?
+
+[22:56] So dice it fine so that you can get the lemon all up at night, you know, di disc it. You know, cut it into discs, rinse it, cut into discs, then toss it in lemon juice, right? Then I pressure cook it because I'm not messing around. I want to cook the hell out of that emulant. I don't want the gastrointestinal distress.
+
+[23:13] So a 15-minute pressure cook when it's been tossed in in lemon, and then afterwards you can puree it if you wanna neutralize the acidity, although I don't know why you would, because the acidity because the sweetness comes out, so the acidity is nice with it. And at that point you can mount it with uh butter or cream and alliums of your choice. And it's real good. And I've eaten a lot of it as a test. And I have to tell you, I'm very sensitive to these things, and it caused me no problems.
+
+[23:38] No problems. So today we are your anti-toot, your anti-toot uh people. There we go. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[23:46] Yeah. All right. Uh you know what else I did uh over the break? Every January 14th, both my kids' birthday. For the past, I don't know, like 12, 13 years, they've wanted maybe 10, 12 years, they've wanted sushi for their birthday dinner.
+
+[24:03] And so I have to do the whole, I have to do the whole, the whole thing. You know what I mean? But Booker only really wants salmon products. So I get all of these other things, and then he he by himself eats an entire half kilo of ikura. By himself.
+
+[24:19] I I go around, I was like, did anyone else have ikura? And like, you know, Dax is like, no. Jen's like, I had maybe like one spoonful. I was like, I didn't. And then that evening, gone.
+
+[24:31] Half kilo. That's 500 grams. That's over a pound of fish eggs. And the only reason he didn't eat more is because we only bought the half kilo container and not the kilo container, right? Because uh it's coming in.
+
+[24:44] Oh my God. There's been a shortage of Ikura, of chum uh Ikura over the past couple of years. So the price has just gone through the freaking roof. I also did a side by side taste of Ora King salmon and regular salmon from Aquabest. And I didn't say anything.
+
+[24:59] So I just did, you know, I did my, I do what I always do, which is I skin it and then cook the skin separately, right? And then uh a two to one salt sugar, you know, on the on the fillet. I, you know, I take out the, I take out the bloodline on the on the skin side, and uh, and then I I cut it into the into the top piece and the and the loinslash belly piece. Sometimes if the belly is real thin, I'll chop off the belly and roast it and eat it myself. But I have those two two pieces, and then uh salt, you know, salt sugar two to one.
+
+[25:28] Uh, and then I wet a paper towel in rice vinegar, and then you know, squeeze it so it's just damp, and then wrap it in the rice vinegar and then air dry it or with the towel around it in my fridge for a couple of hours. That's my standard. So I did that to both, and I just put them out, and the aura king just got pounded. Like the aura king was like gone, and only a couple slices of the other one. I didn't even say anything.
+
+[25:53] Yeah. So that was my uh Count Rumford originally did that with uh, I think it was Count Rumford. He did that with uh, or no, Pepan, whatever his name is, Papain. Did this when he invented the pressure cooker, he put pressure cooked lamb and not pressure cooked lamb roast out, uh, and then didn't say anything and just see which one got eaten and the pressure cooked one got eaten. Denny Papin, I think.
+
+[26:15] Not peppin' chakpapan, although our thing is up, right? Quinn. Uh yeah. Yeah. All right.
+
+[26:21] All right. You're ready for your cook. All right. So uh with that said, you want to uh promote the Patreon membership and we'll get some questions from the Patreon folk? Yeah, Patreon.
+
+[26:29] Excuse me. Uh Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh give it a join. There's a couple different membership levels. You get different perks at all the membership levels.
+
+[26:37] You get access to videos, you get prioritized uh questions answered. You can call on live to the show, you get discounts uh with partners that we work with. Like Kitchen Arts and Letters. We should we're due for uh classics in the field day. Speaking of which, aren't we?
+
+[26:51] All right, yeah. Yeah. Um also if you want something, if you're on the Patreon, ask us. We'll see if we can. I can put a request in, yeah.
+
+[26:57] Absolutely. So yeah, join. Uh and we were supposed to have uh uh Carolyn Schiff last week, but we had to cancel. Don't worry, we're gonna have her back on so you can ask all of your uh she wrote a book, uh, what was it called? Sweet sourdough?
+
+[27:10] Sweet sourdough? I think so. Three third sourdough. Sweet side of sourdough. Yeah.
+
+[27:13] All right. Uh all right. Questions in from apple bottom beans. And that's you know, you know whoever you are? Now that song's in my head.
+
+[27:22] How am I supposed to answer your question? You know what I'm saying? That song is now in the head, and I can't get it out. Anyway. Uh Did Dave ever eat that vintage canned lard?
+
+[27:34] I have not eaten it yet, mainly because uh I need to find a group of people who will eat it with me. You know what I mean? Like uh there's there's three kinds. There's look, there's the people who are like not that interested in doing a lard tasting in general. Like Dax is just not that interested.
+
+[27:52] So I've done all these like lard biscuits versus butter biscuits versus uh I made a vegetarian lard, you know, like something that acts like lard but isn't. And most people like the flavor of the butter so much that they don't care about the texture interest of the lard, right? Uh so I haven't found anyone who's like super stoked about it yet. Shocking. I mean, but what the hell's gonna go wrong?
+
+[28:14] Yeah, no, I don't know. You know? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
+
+[28:25] I've not eaten it yet, but you know what? It's only getting like from a percentage age basis, only marginally older as it sits in my house. You know what I mean? Like if it's already 80 years old, 80 years and two months, that's like nothing. Yeah you know what I mean?
+
+[28:40] Even if I only held even if I held it for another 10 years, that's still less than like that's like 10% so of its life. You know what I mean? Anyway, uh Fuck Jack, a question for the next tangent, man. You've hit it. Uh I've seen uh all tangent Tuesday.
+
+[28:54] Uh I've seen recipes for using wafer irons to make a wafer cookies, uh, but in my experience they usually turn out more like PCLs. Definitely thin, but not the same stackable level of crisp as commercial wafer cookies like Keebler sugar wafers or the crunchy uh layers in a coffee crisp. You hear that, Quinn? Coffee crisp. You with me?
+
+[29:11] Yeah, yeah. What about like uh what's the one that we what's the brand that we get? The German one. The the you know what I'm talking about, these wafer cookies? It's like it's like basically flavored Oreo filling and then wafer, Oreo filling, wafer, Oreo filling wafer, Oreo filling wafer.
+
+[29:27] They like, but there's an Italian one too. What's the Italian one styles? Like quadrati or something. There's quadratini. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[29:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love I love those things. I I also like the really crappy ones that I get at the supermarket where like the bottom of the bag is all filled with dust and it's got that fake strawberry flavor. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah.
+
+[29:47] Oh my god. And it's like, it's like, it's like uh eating quick when you were a kid. Remember you, remember you just eat quick? I never did that. No.
+
+[29:54] Oh, come on. They never did. You never ate quick. Really? Really?
+
+[29:59] And you never, when you were a kid, made a faux icing by beating together butter and quick? No. What about butter and strawberry quick? No. Okay.
+
+[30:07] I'm gonna pretend to believe you. I I that never even occurred to me until right now. That doesn't sound terrible, but I also never just shoveled quick powder into my mouth. What about tang powder? No, tag wasn't really a thing for me.
+
+[30:20] Damn, sorry. Man, we had just different lives growing up. Yeah. Did you cut hot dogs in half and watch them curl in the toaster and call them sea sausages? No.
+
+[30:33] No? Did you? I mean, I'd do I'd cook them in the pan and I'd see them crawl. Uh-huh. Yeah.
+
+[30:37] Fried bologna sandwiches? Are we in the same world? I was like I was uh I was in uh Jersey the other day because I was Museum of Food and Drink is selling its uh fortune cookie machine. And I had to go try to turn it on, and they didn't have the right power, so I was only able to turn on some of it. But I was by the White Rose System Diner, which is, you know, along with white mana, like the two kind of slider joints in that area.
+
+[31:01] Yeah. So I got one of their sliders. It was good. And but I got one of their uh Taylor ham, which is uh pork roll, egg, potato, cheese on Kaiser sandwich. And it was good with ketchup, which is the official how you're supposed to get it there.
+
+[31:15] No arguments. I was like, how am I supposed to get it? He's like, first time here. I'm like, yes, first time here. And anyway, so like he throws the slices of uh of the of the Taylor ham, which is like, you know, pork roll, looks like bologna slice, right?
+
+[31:28] On the griddle. And they start cupping, right? And I'm like, is this guy a jerk? Does this guy think I'm a jerk? Right?
+
+[31:37] You know what I mean? Like, does this guy, is this guy never cooked anything in his life? Does he not know how this works? And then without looking, he takes his spatula without looking, just goes, bam, bam, bam. Perfect Pac-Man's, each one, like perfect Pac-Man.
+
+[31:55] Each one of the slices after it had started cupping, I was like, oh, he's done this. He's done this. Not like a miss, not like a not like a little off on the side, not perfect Pac-Man. I was like, okay. Okay.
+
+[32:10] Uh anyway. So uh back to uh PCLs. You know, when I was a kid, my stepfather had three maiden aunts, right? Meaning they never got married. They all lived together in in Medford outside of Boston.
+
+[32:23] And, you know, they all were, you know, had their various levels. But even after like they were basically blind, they would make PCLs constantly. So I would show up and you would just get like giant piles of PCLs. So if you never had one before, they're like a flat, uh sweet, thin, crispy cookie, right? My family, we never rolled them.
+
+[32:47] We had them flat. You know what I mean? Joe, you you grew up with these things? No, I never did. No.
+
+[32:53] But they're they're kind of they're weird because they they they have like a shape in them. They're molded in like what's a waffle iron, but they're not like they're they're crunchy all the way through, but it kind of looks like a like a flower, like a doily almost. It looks kind of like a doily. Would you say that's any of you guys BTL people? Anyone, Quinn?
+
+[33:07] Oh, yeah, I'm a pizza. Yeah, all right. So am I accurately describing this to your to your member as well? It's like it's like embroidered. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[33:17] And but it's sweet. It's got sugar in it and egg, typically, right? And so it is it's because it's like fairly high in sugar, it's also really moldable. So some people mold them into shapes and whatnot. I we didn't, you know, I mean we ate them flat, you know what I mean?
+
+[33:28] Uh, but they're delicious. But what Fupjack wants is uh more like the wafer cookies that are that we were talking about before, and those don't have any sugar in them, right? Those are uh completely almost dead uh neutral. And you can buy those crackers, by the way. Uh in fact, in eastern European shops here in New York, um, they're called uh, what are they called?
+
+[33:53] They're called like uh oblatne. And you but and they're huge. They're like they're like bigger than 11 by 17 inches. They're big and the the waffle pattern is a little thicker. But I bought some for Miley, my sister-in-law, who we have to have on the show, and I was like, I want you to make me a giant wafer, like giant wafer.
+
+[34:11] But uh, and she hasn't done it yet. But uh, so what I would say is is I would look up instead of what um you're currently looking up, I would look up another Italian product that I've never had from a Molise, where I've never been, and uh called uh Osti, which is their unsweet wafer, right? And those recipes, which you can make in a uh in a pita uh iron, I think, uh, is like 500 grams of flour and 750 milliliters of water and a little bit of oil, you're gonna have to oil the hell out of the pan too, and then a pinch of salt, and that's it. And so I think that's the the secret. So you're gonna want to make something, I mean, you could maybe add egg, but that's gonna soften it.
+
+[34:49] So I wouldn't, right? It's just I think just a flour and water batter. And I looked at um some of the uh Oblatne recipes that uh, you know, not recipes, uh ingredients lists online. And similarly, like they might add some alternate starch like maize, but it's basically flour and water, and then you know, a little little bit of oil. So uh I think that's gonna be the the secret.
+
+[35:11] And when it comes time to make the filling, I will say this a perfect uh sandwich cookie filling is made to not melt uh no matter kind of how hot your kitchen gets, because think about it, they gotta ship Oreos and these wafers everywhere, and they don't know how hot the truck is, right? So they have a very special fat that they use for sandwich filling. Now, if you look online at different recipes for sandwich cooking, uh cookie filling, like King Arthur uh flour has a hundred percent shortening base, and some people don't like it because it's a hundred percent shortening base, right? Some people do a hundred percent butter, and the problem with 100% butter is it's way too soft. So unless you can store it in a place that's cool, it's gonna out on you uh when it's stores, right?
+
+[35:52] I recommend in my sandwich cookie uh filling, I use a mixture of butter and coconut fat. Because coconut fat, unless your kitchen gets very hot, coconut fat is gonna stay solid, right? So if coconut fat stays solid in your kitchen, which most likely it does, then uh coconut fat, a mix of coconut fat and butter, then you won't have to use I mean you can use shortening, but then you won't have to use uh shortening uh for your for your filling. What do you think? Yeah, good answer.
+
+[36:18] Okay. Uh all right. Um Dave Kleiman, recently I wanted to make a batch of biscoff, which I guess is like the speckolos from uh yeah, what's the name of that place? Maison the place in in uh in Maison d'Andois. Oh my god.
+
+[36:34] So you go into this place, and I don't I don't know who buys it. Who buys the the the like three foot tall cookies? Oh, I don't know. But these these speckaloose cookies, speckalous specklos, specklos? Speculos.
+
+[36:46] Speckle. They're like, they're thin. Yeah. Right? Crunchy, right?
+
+[36:53] Delicious. Brown, not burnt. No. Right. But and they mold them in various with various pictures, and they have all the molds throughout the shop.
+
+[36:59] But some of them, like I say, are like three feet high. I'm like, how am I getting that cookie? Forget an airplane. How am I getting how how do I get that cookie home a block? If I live a block away, how am I getting that cookie home?
+
+[37:13] What do you know? You know what I mean? Yeah. You ever seen anyone buy one of those giant cookies? No, I haven't, but I also haven't spent enough time there to uh to know that.
+
+[37:19] But yeah, no, I yeah, I don't know. They I've know what you're talking about, and they are excessively big. Yeah. I mean, if I could speak Flemish or French, right? And I went in there, I would, you know, with whatever the equivalent local accent is, be like, who's buying this?
+
+[37:33] What's going on? Who's I'd be so afraid of damaging that in transport? They're so brittle. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.
+
+[37:38] It's like the most brittle thing. Like you look at them, they break. Yeah. You know what I mean? But they're delicious.
+
+[37:43] Um, and so uh that's what uh Dave's trying to make, in which the recipe calls for toasted sugar. All right. Uh so I'm assuming what you say you're doing is you're putting the sugar in an oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit and stirring it to kind of get a caramelization, which guys harkens back to McGee. McGee used to do stuff where he would put sugar crystals into the oven at like large sugar crystals into the oven at uh low temperature for very long times and get them to caramelize uh at those low uh temperatures. Um and you say, is there a time temperature chart for the Myard reaction as it applies to toasted sugar?
+
+[38:18] Well, it's caramelization is a different reaction, right? It's not a protein reaction. Um I'm willing to do, for example, I'm willing to do 140 degrees Fahrenheit for five weeks if it means I never have to stir, but will eventually come out golden brown and remain granulated. Uh but would it? So I I would look up Harold McGee's article on uh cooking sugar in the oven, but I will say how they do it in the real life in Belgium.
+
+[38:40] And what they do is they make something called candy sugar, C-A-N-D-I sugar. And it's a Belgian brown sugar, but it's not brown sugar made from molasses. It's a caramelized sugar. And it's used in brewing, and I believe it's also the same stuff that's used in these cookies. And it's not that hard to make.
+
+[38:54] So what you do is you take sugar and water. Doesn't really matter how much water because you're just using that to turn it into a solution, right? And acid. And what the acid's doing is it's inverting the sugar, because Belgian candy sugar is inverted, right? And then you cook it until you achieve the color you want.
+
+[39:09] Right? Careful. Don't burn it. Cook it till you achieve the color you want, then pour it uh onto a silpat in a pan, let it crystallize, right? Which it will, it'll become hard, like a caramel candy, right?
+
+[39:22] And then just pulverize it. Hit it with a you know, hit it with a hammer or a rolling pin and then throw it into a food processor and go wackity wackedy yakgedy schmackity and sift it, and there you have it. Uh, you know, that's that's what they use. Or just go buy Belgian candy sugar, right? That's another way you could do it.
+
+[39:38] Because like you can also make your own Belgian pearl sugar when you're making Liege waffles, which everyone should make Liege waffles. It means actually, you know what? Do you have a regular human being waffle iron, John? I think so. I think so.
+
+[39:52] I got to test whether you can actually make a real liege waffle or even a real like Brussels style waffle in a standard waffle iron if you allow it, if you allow like five minutes in between waffles. Yeah. Like if you try to make back to back waffles, it's not possible. Yeah. I have the wearing one from the FCI, I think.
+
+[40:12] Yeah? Yeah. I'll run some tests. Okay. I'll give you a recipe, you run some tests.
+
+[40:15] Yeah, yeah. Or you can come over in all your free time, Chef. Yeah. And then we we can do side by side between the two, the two waffle irons to see. Because it would be good to know if you could make uh a waffle that's the same out of a home iron that you could out of the ridiculous iron.
+
+[40:32] You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm gonna say no, but we can try. We could try. I mean, I think the the issue, like I say, is is that um you know, even I have to wait a couple of minutes.
+
+[40:43] If I want them perfect, because I'm into in a 120 socket, I have to wait a couple of minutes in between, and mine takes twenty you know, 15 to 20 minutes to heat up. Yeah, I mean we have a caller, caller, you're on the air. Hey, how's it going, everybody? Josh from Norfolk here. How you doing?
+
+[41:00] Doing well. Uh so quick clarification question. Um, I've got a bartender that made a uh lovely syrup uh with among other things uh powdered turmeric, um, which I would like to get unpowdered. Uh so my question is do I need to add anything to that to get it to come out in the spinzall? And should I be worried about it uh turmericing up the spinzall?
+
+[41:23] Oh, yeah, for sure. You should be worried about you should always be worried about turmeric staining things because that's what it does. Like it's the terminator of staining things in your kitchen, like it makes beets look like like like they're stain-free. Makes beets look like oxy clean, turmeric does. You know what I mean?
+
+[41:43] So it's like uh yeah, yeah. Well, it's not gonna hurt anything though. Um I would say uh it would be good if there was something else in there that that it could cling to, but I would in the spinzall do it in batch mode, right? So uh what I mean is like don't try to do continuous mode. I would do it batch by batch.
+
+[42:05] Have you tried that and it's not coming out? No, I I literally she uh just came in and showed me it, and I was like, Oh, I know I got a call about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the other thing I would say is that uh how much syrup do you have? Uh only about 400 mils.
+
+[42:25] Oh, yeah. If we make it as a prep item, it's yeah. Yeah, cool. But I was what I was saying is that like what I would do in general is I would put it in a long cylindrical thing, and then I would let it sit for it if you have the time, let it sit for a day or two, then rack off the top part and then just spin the rest, and then you know, it's just easier on your on your production that way. Oh, sure.
+
+[42:47] Uh do you think I should throw any like kind of sand kiesel salt in there or do you think it'll be fine as is? Not gonna help. It's not gonna help. I mean you could do it if you want, but it ain't gonna help. If you have other things in there, right?
+
+[42:58] That that like fruit or other things that are suspended that require chitosan uh andor kesel sole, then having those things settle out along with it will help make the pellets more solid. That is true. But is if there's nothing else in there other than turmeric, then nah. No. Another thing you might want to do is if if she's using powdered turmeric, um, you know what?
+
+[43:21] If you use powdered turmeric and you're happy, I wouldn't move to fresh turmeric because it's different flavor and then it's not gonna be the product's not gonna be shelf stable. You know what I mean? Powdered turmeric should be shelf stable. Yeah, we got some fresh turmeric into play with it as well, but I figured I would try the easy solution first. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[43:38] Fresh turmeric is gonna be delicious, even more stainy, and uh it different, but also not stable. Like uh, you know, it it it might go through uh it might come back. I don't know, it might go through an awkward phase. Like some things go through an awkward phase and some things just you know go downhill, you know. Uh and I've never, I've never, it's strange.
+
+[43:59] I've never aged my turmeric chin long enough to know if it comes back out the other side delicious again because I drink it so fast. You know what I mean? I do love too much. I've got plenty of storage space, so I might have to do that as well and let you know. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[44:16] Do a test. Let us know. Uh it'd be good for me to know. All right. Awesome.
+
+[44:21] Thanks. Uh on on spinzole, by the way. Uh you like that. We got a we got a we got an update from our factory, right, Quinn. Yeah, we have uh well, did you want to see?
+
+[44:34] All right. Well, we you know, we we for those that don't know, uh Booker and Dax, we built uh a centrifuge for bars and restaurants, and uh no one wanted it. And then uh we when we finally built up a market so that people wanted it, the factory changed hands and we lost the ability to make it. So uh we finally are getting the ability to make it this year. They say they're gonna make it this year.
+
+[44:58] Um, but I wanted to move away. The old one had what's called an interlock in it. And the reason is is because in a regular cuisinar, when you open it, the blade stops because why wouldn't it? In this, when you open it, it's got a uh a rotor full of you know juice. The rotor plus juice together weighs something close to a kilo, and it's spinning, you know, fast.
+
+[45:19] And so it doesn't slow down immediately. And and there's no way to slow it down immediately. Um you don't want to. But it may be even like as an emergency, once you open the lid, you can't slow it down quickly for reasons that are too long and boring. But the the answer is because uh you're required by code that actually opening the lid disconnects the motor.
+
+[45:40] And once you disconnect the motor, I can't even do an electronic brake on it, right? So uh I need to design it such that you can't open it when it's spinning. So the original spinzall has an electronic interlock in it with a solenoid, and this solenoid, Quinn, John. Super bad. Annoying.
+
+[45:55] Super annoying. Yeah, one of the biggest failure points of it is this thing. So uh one of the things we did is we designed a mechanical interlock so that you don't need to um you don't need to have electronics. You just have a little wrench that allows you to open the lid when it, you know, when it stops, but you can't take the lid off when it's running. Uh and they finally agreed to make it and they sent us a mock-up.
+
+[46:17] There we go. It's not quite what I wanted, but it's close enough. Okay. You know? Nice.
+
+[46:21] Yeah. Right. So, yeah, spinz all update for you for you people. And uh Sears All Pro update for you people. Uh, we they they said they weren't gonna ship any before uh the uh lunar new year, but in fact they did ship uh a portion of them before lunar new year, so they're on their way, right?
+
+[46:36] Yeah, R300. I'm still working on the um tracking notifications, but those should be in people's inboxes. Nice. All right. Uh from Wizmurd question tis the season for wild mushrooms, uh, at least out on the West Coast.
+
+[46:57] Uh many moons ago you spoke of a long, boring mushroom chapter in your next book. True, both long and boring. Uh because we're clearly gonna have to wait at least a year to read, is give us a little teaser of some of your shroom cookery insights, please, and thanks. Um see, what can I what can I say that uh okay. Uh this seems obvious, but I think isn't obvious, and it's not beaten into people's heads enough.
+
+[47:22] You cannot overcook a mushroom. I'll say this again: you cannot overcook a mushroom. Let me say it a different way. There is not a way to cook a mushroom too long. But you can dry out a mushroom and then it's ruined.
+
+[47:35] So as long as you have moist, so most times when you think of a mushroom that's overcooked, you're actually thinking about, and by the way, I don't mean like you can't overcook a truffle, right? Which is where the the aroma is gone. I'm talking texture standpoint. Mushrooms go through uh the vast majority of their textural and size changes around um 60 to 65 degrees Celsius, a lot lower than you think, right? So like those transformations take place at a relatively low temperature, uh, and then any change that takes place after that is only marginal and they'll continue, unlike a protein, which uh when you cook it um uh at a at a high temperature for a long time gets drier and drier.
+
+[48:17] Mushrooms don't do that. As long as they have liquid that they can wick up, they will stay moist because the structure is based on chitin, not based on protein. Or and it doesn't break down because it's not so it doesn't squeeze too hard. And unlike things like uh pectin-based things, pectin breaks down as it cooks, like a potato uh will break down. Vegetables break down.
+
+[48:37] Mushroom not a vegetable, won't break down, can't overcook it. So that's uh one, and two, when you uh when you rehydrate a non-fresh mushroom, it does in fact taste better if you um if you uh rehydrate it in cold water. Right. So if you rehydrate it in hot water uh in a bunch of side-by-side tests, uh you'll notice that the cold water one uh does in fact uh taste better. And I have a lot I have a lot more, but those I'll give you those two now and we'll we'll we'll sprinkle our mushroom.
+
+[49:07] Those are those good, John? Yeah, yeah, I didn't know the first one. I mean, I know you can overcook them, but I didn't know why. So that was interesting, yeah. Yeah.
+
+[49:13] But they shrink by like 50%. It's crazy. Like the amount of shrinkage is uh I have a uh uh in the book I have pictures of it of of like the the time stages of it shrinking and then a chart of mushroom density versus time cooking. And it's it's crazy the amount of shrinkage. Yeah.
+
+[49:36] Oh my god. People are like, I I can't wait to see how much this mushroom's gonna shrink. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[49:42] That'll be good. No one's gonna no one's gonna do that. No one's gonna do that. I didn't uh I didn't do I didn't do anything, I don't I didn't do anything with truffles. It's not about in fact, most of the stuff in the book is about um like standard mushrooms, mainly because uh there are a million people who have written books on like XYZ fancy mushroom, right?
+
+[50:04] And I was just more like, what is it about mushrooms? Plus also I think crappy mushrooms are delicious. Yeah. I think we need to mushrooms are delicious. Oh, yeah, mushrooms are delicious.
+
+[50:13] Uh Patrick Cicconi writes in, gas stoves uh have been in the news recently, and on my mind. Uh as my wife and I have a newborn in our apartment. Oh, on my mind, that's uh my wife and I have a newborn in our apartment. Congrats. Uh we have a standard i.e.
+
+[50:26] awful hot point stove with two pilot lights on the burner and a pilot light in the oven. Most of my cooking in this kitchen is done on an induction hub, a Cuisanart steam oven, and a microwave. When I do use the range, I always open a window, whatever the weather. But I'm wondering if there are concerns about pollution from just the pilot combustion going all day and night. And uh should I switch over to something uh with electric ignition and no pilots?
+
+[50:46] The gas supply is too inconvenient to access to just keep the whole thing off, except when it's in use. Unfortunately, not enough power in the kitchen to go full induction or electric oven plus gas. The kitchen is galley sized and off a hallway, so it is not open into a living space in the bedrooms directly, even though the apartment is very big, uh, though I have no idea what pollutants travel in air. All right, what I'm about to tell you is not okay or safe. Uh, but uh I always turn my pilot lights off and light with a torch.
+
+[51:12] Uh 100% of the time I turn my pilots off and light with a torch. It's not safe because you could inadvertently turn the gas on and then there's gas pouring into your house, right? Uh I will say this. When uh I uh my oven pilots, I blow out my oven pilots uh in the um in the summer and I light them in the in the winter, right? Because my my oven makes the house very hot uh if it's on all the time with its pilots.
+
+[51:41] Uh and I'll tell you this. If you've I don't know, I haven't seen any data. But if anyone paints in a house, paints anywhere near a house that has pilot lights on, you get this horrible smell because things that you can't smell from the paint get burnt in the pilot lights. And so, like I can tell if someone's been painting anywhere near me based on the pilots in in in my oven. So I know that it does produce things, but I don't know how bad they are or or kind of what the answer is.
+
+[52:13] If you're willing to take uh, as as Booker would say, if you're willing to take the risk, you can just disable your pilots and light them with a torch, which is what I do and what a lot of people in in kitchens do when they know they're using it all the time and there's not uh an issue where gas is is gonna build up because pilots are finicky anyway. Let's be honest. Pilots suck. Um, you know, was this what what do you think, John? Is this an okay answer?
+
+[52:37] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I look, I don't want to tell you to do something on unsafe, but I do know that uh you when I used to live in an industrial loft, uh I had a gas oven and the pilots were on all the time. And I had, you know, I had a a garland, a six burner garland gas range.
+
+[52:54] I had uh a salamander. I didn't keep the pilots in my fryer on, but I had the pilots and also in the in the stove on all the time. And there were constantly people working, and so um fumes would come up and the smell. I also had a gas, one of those indoor blue flame gas uh heaters because I was living illegally in this loft, and so on the weekends there was no heat. And the first year we were living there, I looked at pictures the other day and there was no heat, and it was just something we accepted.
+
+[53:24] You know, we were in our 20s, we're like, Wow, so we don't have heat. You know what I mean? And it's New York, so it's cold, you know what I mean? Big leaky windows. Yeah, big leaky, leaky windows, no heat.
+
+[53:34] And so you look back at these pictures, and we're just like inside having dinner in parkas. We're just sitting there in parkas. We're like, this is normal. The heat will come on in like two days. This is fine.
+
+[53:44] I can do this for two days a week, you know. And so then they they started selling these uh no vent indoor blue flame gas units, and so I started heating it with gas. And when that thing was running all the time, oh my God, anyone in the building paints or or uses like their laser cutter and whatnot, and it would it would make the um volatile suddenly detectable by burning them. So I don't know what the answer is. All right.
+
+[54:09] Austin Gibbs was at a catered event, and one of the dishes was grilled steak that was super tender and delicious. When I asked the guy what the cut was, he says that it was the tail of the tenderloin, but uh he couldn't remember the actual name of it. Is there a name for the tail of the tenderloin? Would love to maybe ask a butcher if they have any kicking around from their fillet mignon orders. My Googles didn't produce a satisfactory answer.
+
+[54:28] I think it's literally just that. It's like a tenderloin is like a tube with a tail on the end of it, right? And what you need to do is you need to make friends with an actual butcher, right? And say, hey, can you save me? The problem is this.
+
+[54:42] You need to find not only that, but someone who realizes that maybe it wasn't going to be, you need to find someone who does a lot of butchering of tenderloins. So the here's the friend you need to make. You need to make a friend who is a butcher, not for individual humans, but like for a restaurant, right? Then they're gonna butcher all those filets. They might be willing to cut you a rate, save up the like those tails and cut you a rate, right?
+
+[55:05] But the average person who sells to Jamokes on the street is just gonna sell the tail at the same price that they sell the rest of it. Right? So you need to find someone who's doing portioning, right? So my my old butcher used to sell to restaurants. Like when I lived on 38th Street, the loft I was just telling you about.
+
+[55:22] He used to sell to restaurants, and he would save me specific cuts that the restaurants didn't want, and I could get cut a rate on that stuff. So you need to make friends with some butchers because they might have something that can cut you a rate. But I've never seen someone selling just a tail, I haven't looked, but I haven't seen someone selling just a tail portion for less money, right? That's the key thing, for less money. You know.
+
+[55:45] And if you were buying them and you wanted to make fillet mignon out of them, you could also just meet glue those sons of guns together, like tip to tip. I mean, sorry, tip to tail, turn them like triangle to triangle, like it's a fish, and turn them into tubes. That's what I do when I buy whole fillets, right? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[55:59] All right. Is that a good answer? Yeah, I'm trying to see. I can can't find a specific name, just tail. Yeah.
+
+[56:05] I mean, we all know what we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we're on to the questions? Are grains you purchase from grocery stores uh like sorghum uh deactivated uh to prevent them from sprouting?
+
+[56:14] I soak some sorghum overnight, drain them, and then let them hang on at room temperature for a little over a week, and none of them sprouted. Uh it's likely it's something I'm doing wrong on my end and not the product, but I wanted to rule it out before buying more grain. I've never I don't really sprout things, but I mean I have sprouted things, but I don't really sprout things a lot. But yes, grains in general, unless they have been holed or peuled, are generally viable, right? They're not unless it says it's been toasted, hauled, or pearled, it should be sproutable.
+
+[56:43] And I looked on the internets and people are sprouting sorghum, and they're not like usually when something is a problem, people are like, hey, yo, this is a problem. You gotta buy this specific sorghum, and no one did. Um, but there's one person who is like, be careful, but then no one else did. So look it up. Someone was like, be careful, cyanide, but then I didn't trust their reference and I didn't have time to dig into it.
+
+[57:06] So, you know, whatever. But I I can't say it's 100% safe because I didn't do all the research, but I don't think it's unsafe. I mean, I could be honest. I mean, other than the fact that like sprouts will poison you. You know what I mean?
+
+[57:18] Yeah. I like listen. I know that everyone who knows me knows I say I don't like sprouts. It's not that I don't like all sprouts. I specifically don't like alfalfa sprouts and wheatgrass.
+
+[57:31] Right? Mung bean sprouts, good. Especially if you cook mung bean sprouts, good. I just think raw sprouts a lot of times taste like the filth that they're grown in. When was the last time you sealed up some, like got kept something wet for a week, went back to it and were like, yum.
+
+[57:48] You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like it doesn't work for socks. Why would it work for sprouts? You know what I mean?
+
+[57:53] I don't know. They smell a little filthy to me. I guess you can rinse them, or you could cook them. Are you a sprout guy, John? I mean, I don't hate it.
+
+[58:03] Hate them. Joe Sprouts? I like sprouts. Yeah. Quinn?
+
+[58:09] What do we what do you Jack? Nastasia? What do you guys think? Induty. And indifferent.
+
+[58:16] Let me ask you this. If you, if someone hands you a sandwich, and you're like, oh, you're gonna have a fried chicken sandwich. And then they hand it to you, and it's got a pile of those stringy, stringy, alfalfa, dry, stringy alfalfa sprouts on it. And when you eat it, they like stick in your freaking teeth, and you spit them out when you say things. Is that fun?
+
+[58:36] You like that? I don't think of it the same way as you do. It's gross. It's gross. Uh all right.
+
+[58:44] How much time have we got? Um I don't know. Is there any questions in the in the Patreon? I feel like uh Yeah, we do have one more Discord. All right, what do you got?
+
+[58:53] We have a few Discord locations. Did you ever try to make the miracle fat-injected pork? Okay. Uh I've done some preliminary tests, but I haven't. What I need to do is emulsify the fat because the stuff that they add has it's not just fat.
+
+[59:10] It's I think it's duck fat, salt, sugar, and and and like maybe like a uh a broth of some kind. So I have done a little bit of testing, but I haven't done a fully like, I need to get some Ticoloid and make like an injectable thing to get you a real answer, but everyone on earth needs to be eating if you eat pork, you should be eating magic pork. All right?
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking News. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie Issues coming to you alive from the Heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center at News Stand Studios, joined as usual with John. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
+
+[0:23] Yeah. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Can't complain.
+
+[0:25] Great. Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. Hey, how are you doing, man? Doing well, doing well. Great to see you.
+
+[0:30] Good to see you as well. In California, we have uh our uh West Coast engineering team there with Jackie Molecules and Stasia Lopez. How are you doing? And I'm remiss to say I'm not gonna have this be the first time in 12 years that I don't call her the hammer. What I meant to say was Nastasia the hammer Lopez.
+
+[0:47] I apologize. Mm-hmm. Apologize. And we have Jack's girlfriend Eliza here, and it's his birthday. Well, happy birthday, Jack.
+
+[0:55] And hello, Eliza, and welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna talk since you're since this is your first time on the show. I'm gonna come back to you, but I just have to say we also have our our North North West West contingent, Quinn on the line as well.
+
+[1:10] Hey, Quinn. And it's six six months anniversary, so a lot to celebrate of being on the show. So Eliza, I always like to pester people when they come on for the first time, which is why we have so many people that only come on once. So, my like what kind of foods do you like? Oh God.
+
+[1:33] Okay. Um I mean everything. Soup. She makes a lot of soup. You make a lot of soup.
+
+[1:42] All right. So like are you like uh are you soup, are you like style agnostic? Do you like basically anything liquefied you're good with, or do you have particular styles of soups that you like? Are you a you're like, I don't really like a chunky soup? No, I never do a pure soup.
+
+[1:55] Oh. No, never puree. Uh huh. I'll always do. I mean, my favorite is kind of like an egg tomato Chinese style soup.
+
+[2:03] I see. I see. So why uh I and why no uh why no puree soup? Like, do you if someone serves you a puree soup, are you like, oh no, thanks. You like texture.
+
+[2:15] But like we can if someone serves you. Yeah. Let me so let's say I make you a squash or a pumpkin soup. It's gonna be puree, right? On top of that, I'm gonna put diced onions and other things that have some texture to them.
+
+[2:28] Does that rescue the soup in your and some sour cream? Duh, come on, some sour cream or creme. John's like, look at me. No, it's supposed to be creme fresh, supposed to be cream fresh. No, so does that rescue the soup in your mind or no?
+
+[2:40] No. No, I'll eat it. I'll be polite, but not rescuing it. Wow. Wow.
+
+[2:47] Okay. Okay. What a so and like uh John, what are some other nice uh smooth soups that we can uh test this? For what are your thoughts on mashed potatoes, which is basically a thick smooth soup? Carter, she has to think about it.
+
+[3:04] Yeah. You have to think about whether you like mashed potatoes or not. I said, What's your thoughts on mashed potatoes, which is fundamentally a very thick, smooth soup? Oh, mmm, well, mashed potatoes have to have some like intact potato and some smooth potato. Oh my god.
+
+[3:22] So you only like I'm saying this in a non-pejorative way, I hope. Nastassi loves it when I say that. You like a poorly made mashed potato, is what I'm saying. That's what I'm hearing from. Hell yeah.
+
+[3:33] Okay. All right. All right. Is it because if it's too smooth? Yeah, it's fine, man.
+
+[3:39] It's like, you know, like love, uh, you know, love can cross taste boundaries. Like, my, you know, my my wife won't let me eat raw onions, and they're like my favorite thing on earth. She won me have them in the house. I can't have them on the table. You know what I mean?
+
+[3:50] Because the even the odor is so Yeah, I know. Think about my chili life. Think about my chili life with no raw. My chili life is so much lower than my chili life could be. It's to the point where whenever she's away on business, I only eat things that have scads of raw onion on them.
+
+[4:08] Like bagels with cream cheese, onion, tomato, and locks, like chili with onions on top, like a burger with like a whole bunch of raw onions. Nastasia also hates raw onions on things. Yeah, you don't hate them. They just you don't eat them because of their f effect on you, right? That's not that you hate them.
+
+[4:27] Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yes, right. Okay, okay. So is it that you don't like smooth mashed potatoes because you grew up traumatized by boxed flake potatoes?
+
+[4:36] Now I'm also getting it maybe your family or something. I don't know. No, I mean, okay. Well, now you're you're putting me in a corner because when I go backpacking, I always get bagged instant mashed potatoes, and that's like my gourmet meal. So now, yeah.
+
+[4:54] Yeah, so now I have no idea what I'm talking about. All right, all right. Well, were you on this backpacking trip with Jack where you tried a whole bunch of freeze-dried meals and the verdict was they all stink? No, no, no. That was that was uh They do all stink, which is why I go to the instant mashed potatoes.
+
+[5:11] Yeah, because because of all the things you can carry that are completely dehydrated, like that's that's the one that you're like, Mo car, but how do you like do they come with flavor in them? Are they already flavored with like fake butter and all that other stuff or no? Yeah. Okay. Oh yes.
+
+[5:25] Do you like throw like dried mushrooms in? Do you like do you porchini find them? Oh, that's like a uh I should. My secret camping trip is to always carry dried porcinis with me or dried shiitakis. That's kind of convenient.
+
+[5:39] They weigh nothing, right? And then you can like bulk them into rice, you can bulk them into like a small amount of parmigi uh parmigiano doesn't need to be refrigerated. It's heavy, but it doesn't need to be refrigerated. It adds a lot of uh, you know, flavor, dried mushrooms, and like, you know, some form of some form of dehydrated starch, like a rice or a potato or something like that. And then, you know, that's real, you know, and you know, there's where I like to cut corners, bullion cubes, right?
+
+[6:04] So if you have bouillon cubes, dried mushrooms, and then some forms of dehydrated starch, you can get along pretty well out there in the woods, quote unquote gourmet style, right? I mean, powdered eggs kind of suck. Although I hear that the freeze-dried, I hear they're not as bad as I think they are. Jack and what do you guys think? I've never had them.
+
+[6:22] No, I've never had them. You're powdered eggs, and I haven't had them. You never had the like the de like those freeze-dried like eggs skillets that they for camping that they make? I've never had one. I own them in case the whole world drops.
+
+[6:33] I have a, you know, so I'm not, I guess I am a prepper. I have a month's worth of food in my house for the four of us in case all the S hits the F. Definitely a prepper, yeah. Yeah. I have like, you know, I have a bunch of jerry cans in the bottom of my closet full of water.
+
+[6:49] Although, you know, like I've had water go out regularly, just like regular natural disasters. You know, we've we lost water and sandy for like a week. Yeah. You know? So it's like uh whatever, you know?
+
+[7:01] Anyway. Uh all right, so what do you think, Nastasia? Have I missed any questions that I normally ask when people first come? What do you like? Wait, so we already asked.
+
+[7:09] You like to cook soups. Well, they went they went to the star, they went to the Star. They went to the Star Wars bar. So you can ask them about Star Wars. Oh, yeah.
+
+[7:14] So I know Nastasia's favorite uh like thing is the Disney Star Wars bar over there. You loved it, right? When you went uh that that years ago when it right when it opened, you flew out the day ahead, I flew in angry the next day. Yeah. It was super Yes, it was super cool.
+
+[7:30] Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, Jack? How was that? How was uh Yeah, we w we went yesterday.
+
+[7:34] We had uh we had a whole Disneyland day yesterday, um which was very nice. And then yeah, we did go to the Star Wars bar, which was incredible. Like the design, the the the art, everything. The frustrating thing is when the server comes over and you're like, uh yeah, I'll have the lager and a pretzel. They're like, what is this pretzel word you speak of?
+
+[7:54] And I'm like, oh right, I have to look at the menu and see what you've called it that wasn't a pretzel. And what do they call it? Oh, is it like uh five blossom bread? Yeah, five blossom bread. What the hell does that mean?
+
+[8:08] What does that even mean? I know it's not even a reference to anything. Yeah, yeah, what's the theory? What are the five blossoms in the bread? Like theoretically, what are they talking about?
+
+[8:20] The five what? The five circles of a pretzel. The pretzel have five circles. One, two, three. Has three circles.
+
+[8:30] Unless you've really made it badly. Three small ones on the bottom. Doesn't it have three small ones on the bottom? Pretzel's got three holes all day long. All day, three holes.
+
+[8:42] Unless you unless you have done something wrong. Like the nubs, little knobs? Yeah, and and by the way, Joe said I should try the Schneider's gluten-free, but do they only have tiny ones? That I I wasn't able to find like a a large-size Snyder's gluten-free pretzel. So, you know, if someone tells me to try something, I try it.
+
+[9:01] I'm not one of those people who doesn't. You know what I mean? But I gotta find the exact one, Joe, that that you like. Yeah, I don't know where this five five blossoms is coming from. I really don't.
+
+[9:13] You know, they'll do things like you that you like show them your ID, of course, and like, you know, mine's California, Eliza is from DC, and then they like bring somebody else over. They're like, what's this foreign planet? We are not recognizing that. Right, right. Right, exactly.
+
+[9:28] They must die a little inside every time they do that. That just sounds terrible. There's been research though. There's been research that being forced to act nice to people on jobs actually is I don't know. I mean, I've had to do it at the bar, right?
+
+[9:42] It it actually doesn't crush your soul as much as you think. It makes you feel like you end up feeling. But that's not being nice. You're pretending you're on a different planet and that you don't understand what the word pretzel is. Well, it's it's kind of like getting a job at a reenactment place.
+
+[9:57] Yeah, equally bad. I I mean, like, I get so frustrated talking to reenactors. What? I got the break character, I think, for a second, because on the way out, I point, I was like, oh, is that the exit? And I don't think it was.
+
+[10:10] It was probably the employee exit. And the guy just deadpan goes, no, there's nothing but sadness and disappointment behind that door. And he got fired immediately. But the uh, I remember I've only ever at uh at Disney World, I only ever saw someone drop the mask once, and it was I really kind of depressed me a little bit because we were, you know, in Disney World, they have that monorail that goes around to like like the hotels and all that. Oh, yeah.
+
+[10:36] And because Booker likes trains back when I used to be able to get him to leave New York City, which I can't anymore. Uh, he's like, I'll go, but we gotta stay in the hotel with the monorail. I'm like, fine. So we get on the on the monorail, and everyone looks happy, and all the work, you know, work people look happy and like and then as soon as the train pulls away, I look over, they think no one's looking, and all of a sudden the face just goes and like all the happy Disney drains out of their face, and like their real human self is there. And I was like, Oh.
+
+[11:05] Crushing. Uh are you guys familiar with the concept of the hidden Mickey? No. No? So if you go to a Disney uh operation, this is why I'm sure they love five blossom bread at there, is that they'll do anything that looks like the two Mickey ears, and they'll arrange it and they'll send it to you in a way that it looks like two Mickey ears.
+
+[11:26] So if you order a glass a bottle of wine, they'll put down the bottle of wine and then the two glasses next to it as though it's freaking Mickey ears. And they have all of these things called hidden Mickeys. What? Yeah, hidden Mickeys. Hidden Mickeys.
+
+[11:39] At least at Disney World. And like I got in a conversation with uh a server once, this is years ago, but she was like, You gotta keep an eye out for these hidden Mickeys. Whatever with whatever an Orlando accent is, which I don't even know. You know what I mean? Like, because she's you know from Orlando.
+
+[11:53] Who the hell knows what Orlando people sound like? You know? Uh yeah, yeah. Awesome. How much does a drink cost at the or did you have the wristband so you don't even know how much it costs?
+
+[12:05] It just comes out of your out of your veins. No, no, no. We were paying old school, but uh what was it, like $14 a beer, maybe? Wait, wait, wait. You went to the Star Wars bar and had beer?
+
+[12:16] What do they call that? It was like uh oh, what was it? I think squadron. Squadron, something or another, yeah. I'm a little disappointed that you didn't have some cocktail.
+
+[12:30] You know, I mean Oh, come on, man. They look bad. I didn't want sugar water and like bad rum, you know. Wow. Wow.
+
+[12:40] Okay. All right. All right. Now you just keep taking me down. Yeah, one of the cocktails had like this bad comb.
+
+[12:47] They didn't look good, man. I don't think the cocktails would have been good. I'll have to go back and have the cocktails now. I'm sorry. You don't have to, man.
+
+[12:53] You don't have to. You can do whatever you like. That's the benefit of being alive, man. Uh but $14 beer. Here's the first cocktail.
+
+[13:00] Here you go, Dave. This is what we missed out on. Ricardi Dragonberry Rum. Poles Blue Curacal. Hold on a second.
+
+[13:07] What's a dragon berry? Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's a dragon berry? Picardy dragonberry rum. What's a dragon berry?
+
+[13:15] Great question. Because I don't think that exists. I don't think that's a thing. I don't know if you know this. There's dragon fruit, but there aren't any real dragons.
+
+[13:25] So no one's naming a berry, as far as I know, after an animal. I don't know. Like dragon fruits look like dragons. That's why they call them that. Fresh bursts of strawberry meet the more subtle sweetness of dragon fruit in this unique room.
+
+[13:37] Dragon fruit. So it's dragon fruit and strawberry. Yeah. And they took out the fruit and the straw. And they made it into dragon berry.
+
+[13:45] Wait, what what do they call the flavor of dragon fruit? Non existent? Uh subtle sweetness. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[13:54] Does it do you know what everyone always says about dragon fruit or pataya or any of those things? They're like, that's gonna give you the poops. I've never gotten the poops from that. You ever gotten the poops from that? No.
+
+[14:05] It's one of those keep your motor running fruits. Like you eat it in the morning or you know, like along with the coffee, and it just gets you going. Or like the Hathorn water if you go to uh Saratoga. It's just like, you know, like drinking a fasso soda. But I've never had that happen to me.
+
+[14:19] Yeah. All right, Dragonberry. I don't like the name. No. All right.
+
+[14:23] So is Dragonberry what else? I was too focused on that to hear the rest of what you said, Jack. McCarty Dragonberry Rum, Bold Blue Curacao. Simply orange with like a registered trademark after that. So who knows what simply orange is?
+
+[14:37] That's a that's a brand of orange juice. Yeah. Okay. Oh, right. Yeah.
+
+[14:41] I know that. Yeah. Simply orange with pineapple and kiwi flavors. Kiwi flavors. Wamp with other natural flavors.
+
+[14:48] Yeah. You see why I get you see why I got a beer? Did your beer have kiwi flavor in it? No, it didn't. It was a normal lager.
+
+[14:59] Five blossom bread. Is $14 a reasonable? Was it one of those? Is it like a is it like a stadium size beer or is it like uh like a pint? Like what are you getting here?
+
+[15:08] No. It's a pint. It's a pint. So it's a $14 pint. Yeah, I mean it's Disney prices, you know.
+
+[15:16] Disney. All right. Uh hey, Nastasi, you ready for this? You ready? Yeah.
+
+[15:23] All right. You need you need to find a new thing to call me a terrible person about because I went to John's place Temperance last week. I heard. I know. How was it?
+
+[15:35] It was great. John, you know, he was very gracious, sent out a uh sent out a bunch of stuff. Virgil, who was on the show, did an excellent job at being uh Somalier. I'm gonna say this like John and I have some sort of weird mental connection that I don't even know about because literally I didn't look at the menu, right? Because what am I gonna do?
+
+[15:55] I'm gonna go there. I'm gonna look at the menu before I go there. Why would I do that? I'm gonna go anyway. Doesn't matter what the menu says, right?
+
+[16:00] So like two days or a day before that, I wake up in the morning and I'm like, hey Jen. She's like, yeah. It's like, you remember like in the 70s and the 80s, how if you wanted something to be fancy at an Italian restaurant, you're like, I'm gonna get it Fra Diablo. I'm gonna and I think it just means like spicy. Because you could people would be like, You want that fra Diablo?
+
+[16:24] And we're like, Yeah, I want mine Fra Diablo. I'm gonna live dangerous. And that's like what the 70s, like 80s and 90s was like for like Americans going to Italian, you know, terrible Titanic. And so Jen and I had a good like half-hour riff on the Fra Diablo, and then I show up at John's restaurant, and what's on the freaking menu? Yeah, Fra diavolo.
+
+[16:43] Fra diallo. Yeah. Yeah. What is it? A little like short, short Medsay Regatona, yeah.
+
+[16:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Damn. Glad you enjoyed it. It's nice to finally have you there.
+
+[16:53] And I can't rag on you. Some chummed up meat and some fraud y'all, some, some, some uh red pepper flakes. Yes. Well, come on. Or whatever they say.
+
+[16:59] I'm saying in a good way, chummed up. No, no, I know, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[17:03] No, yeah. Glad you made it. Yeah, good time. Good time. Temperance.
+
+[17:06] And not a temperate place, man. Virgil poured us uh a lot of uh fun stuff. Yeah. Good. Yeah, glad to hear it.
+
+[17:11] He poured us a uh sparkling kataba. Uh you know, kataaba is like a uh a New York or you know, a Native American grape. And yeah, surprisingly, you know, obviously he's gonna only gonna pour stuff that's good, but he he poured some weird American uh only, you know, non non vinifera grape when he came here for all for all the things. Yeah, that's right. He did, yeah, yeah.
+
+[17:34] That was really delicious. Yeah. So if you want to have a a good time, have great food and some uh, you know, interesting wines by the glass. How many wines by the glass do you got, John? Like 130.
+
+[17:43] Yeah? Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah. Crazy amount. Yeah.
+
+[17:47] Yeah. No, all the food was consistently delicious. So appreciate it. Um the people I was with loved the food, hated the movie The Menu, but they're not in the industry. What do you think about that?
+
+[18:02] What do you think about it? I need to rewatch it, I think. Did you hate it? I didn't hate it. I wasn't expecting it to be like a social commentary like thing that was so aware of itself being a social commentary.
+
+[18:15] Uh-huh. What were you expecting? I don't know, more just like a traditional movie with like a more traditional storyline. You know, and it's like, I don't know, like for instance, the the guy who brought the date, you know, as he started seeing people dying, you know, it's like he was just completely non-reactive to that. And I understood that he knew that going ahead of, you know, ahead of time, was told when I'm on the phone call, but it's just like, okay, then it just started to get a little, I don't know, wasn't expecting that.
+
+[18:40] Yeah. And Nastasi's like, no, that's a real person. I've seen that person. Those are our radio fans. Oh, see this?
+
+[18:48] Such a jerk. Such a jerk for no reason. For no reason. For no reason. Uh all right.
+
+[18:55] So you know what I did yesterday that was kind of weird? Semi-food related. Uh, I was interviewed by an artificial intelligence. Whoa. For a podcast.
+
+[19:06] That's weird. It was super weird. It was it was super, super weird. So BMW has a car called the Vision Car, which, according to the car itself, if the car had volition, if it was an actual human and not an artificial human, says it looks like a mix. I forget what they said the first thing was, and like your dream Camaro.
+
+[19:32] So the computer literally said, I look kind of like a Camaro. You know what I mean? And I was like, well, Camaro, for me, it was like a 1980s, like a bitch and Camaro, like freaking dead milkman, you know, pitching Camaro, pitching Camaro. You know that song? Yeah.
+
+[19:45] Great song. Great song, great song. Uh, and so then, you know, but it was so weird. It wasn't at all like talking to all the other artificial stupidities that I deal with, where they're like, I'm not sure. Yeah.
+
+[19:56] Or the internet says, as if where the hell else is she getting information other than the internet? You know what I'm saying? It's like, oh, my grandpa computer told me blah blah blah. No. It's like, you know, obviously you got your information from the internet, dummy.
+
+[20:12] Like, why waste my time with those words? You know, it's like, you know what? Nastasi, you know how you hate on the subway when the announcements put a lot of wasted words before and after? Like, just tell me a train two minutes and without all the other verbiage, right? You hate that, right?
+
+[20:27] Yes, hate, hate, hate. Yeah, yeah. So I hate when she who shall not be named, either of them, the Apple one or the Amazon one, waste all my time with all the all these extra words. But talking to this thing was like talking to any like weirdo who kind of does. Let me tell you, you want how you know how weird this is?
+
+[20:45] Okay. This creeped me out more than anything else. It made a mistake. I corrected it, and it made the mistake again, a number mistake. And then correct, I was like, you're a computer.
+
+[21:02] Like it was like 2024. I'm like, no, no, 2004. And it said, 2024, uh uh, 2004. How is that even possible with an artificial intelligence? It's like it's making human style like mental slip errors.
+
+[21:18] And it can hold a conversation. It was so weird. Like we were talking about, you know, um Pierre uh Hermé's uh flavor Ispahan? Yeah. Rose.
+
+[21:27] I couldn't remember lychee, right? So rose and raspberry and lychee, and you know, the computer was asking me about flavor combinations and you know, claims that if it could like aromas, it would like the aroma of gasoline. I was like, okay, so not an electric car, fine. You know what I mean? And so, like, uh, because I would think that an electric car would hate the aroma of gasoline.
+
+[21:45] True. It also says its favorite smell would be new car smell. And I'm like, well, my son Booker hates new car smell. So can you make yourself smell like not like that? She's like, I could do anything.
+
+[21:54] It also, this car can like, this car can it's blank inside and outside. So the outside of the car can be any color that it wants to be, and like a chameleon, and the inside is also the same way. So I was like, so if you like were like uh developed a mean streak, you could like put spiders like on the inside of the window to freak out the people. Then she's like, Yeah, I could totally do that. I could totally do that.
+
+[22:18] This car is is this the car that also has all those tiny cameras on the outside that camouflages itself by the external view? Yes, yeah, it's a very cool car. Whoa. But I have to say, I was freaked out. Like this to me is like, I mean, I like I wasn't attempting to make it seem like a computer, right?
+
+[22:38] In other words, I wasn't like attempting to foil it, but I could very easily have had a short conversation with this thing, and someone I would have said, yeah, I was talking to a person. It was weird. That's creepy. So would you say it's a self-learning or at the moment learning uh um AI algorithm? I mean, it well, if it's making the same mistake over and over and repetitive, it doesn't sound like it's learning from the moment.
+
+[22:59] Well, I in other words, I don't even understand how that's possible. Like, I like I don't even understand how the I mean it was crazy. Uh I was I was kind of a little bit, you know, and it it was asking me stuff about like virtual food and like people who are interested in like just piping different smells into you and like basically wallifying us and hooks hooking us up to machines so that we don't actually need to consume or eat anything. And I tried to forgo my horror, you know, but it was so weird. It was so weird, man.
+
+[23:34] Uh so weird. Oh, one more thing, because we were talking about uh good songs. You want to hear uh this week's uh version of Dave is old and stupid. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[23:45] Sounds good. All right. So you know that Justin Bieber song, Peaches? No, but okay. Yeah.
+
+[23:51] So you've you've heard it. I didn't know it was a Justin Bieber song either because I'm not a believer, I don't follow the beeps. To me, the favorite thing that he ever did was be on Zoolander 2, and I realized that 99% of people who can hear this hated Zoolander 2, primarily because it was just like Zoolander 1, and I'm like, that's the reason to like it. Yeah. Because Zoolander 1 was so good.
+
+[24:11] You know what I mean? Yeah. Excellent movie. And so, you know, I I'm not again, Bieber, not a fan. Like, you know, he he always does the moron thing, right?
+
+[24:19] Like destroy like, you know, 150 year old moss in in uh Iceland. You familiar with that? No. If you go to Iceland, they don't have trees, but they have all this weird moss that takes hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years to grow. Liken.
+
+[24:30] Like, like and he rolled around on it and he like ruined it. Because he isn't a moron. Yeah. You know, and he went to Ann Frank's house and wrote in her in her in the logbook there, I think Anne would have been a believer. I mean, he's a moron.
+
+[24:41] Wow, that's really dumb. He's just a dummy. He's a dummy. You know what I mean? Anyway, so but here's me being dumb, right?
+
+[24:44] So, like, I'm shopping for food. And you know, so the song Peaches, he's like, I get my pizza down in Georgia. Like that. And the you know, you heard this song, right? And then, so I'm like, okay, this person is flossing about food, right?
+
+[25:01] About where they get their food from. I get my wheat from California. And I'm like, wheat. I'm like, they don't grow good wheat in California. Like, and first of all, like, you know, there's not just one kind of wheat that you could say the best wheat from California.
+
+[25:14] My whole family was like, you idiot. He's saying weed. Weed. Weed, weed duh. And then Dax was like, Dad, you're such an idiot that you're gonna show up on the show.
+
+[25:25] You were gonna show up on the show tomorrow, and you were gonna say this without knowing that it was weed, because that's the kind of idiot you are. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, man, dude. I'm like, but then now, like, I'm like, and then Dax goes to me, Justin Bieber doesn't even know bread is made from wheat. Why would he even say that? When is Justin Bieber using wheat?
+
+[25:47] And I'm like, all right, Dax. It's fair, man. Oof. That's fair. That's quite a takedown.
+
+[25:53] Get my pretzel's Pennsylvania. Bam. Like, you know what I mean? Like, like I just thought it was just a list of like cool things he got somewhere. And I also, I gotta be honest, I'm sorry, California.
+
+[26:01] I didn't realize that you were head and shoulders above the rest of us in your weed production. I thought it was like Amsterdam was the weed. And Dax goes, No, that's where the best magic mushrooms are. I'm like, what? What?
+
+[26:15] Anyway, that's this week's. Also, Justin Bieber really, really betrayed Canada saying BC is the best weed. Oh. No, no loyalty. Wow.
+
+[26:28] Well, California and British Columbia are basically just the same thing. Like just you got Portland and I mean you got Oregon and California. I mean, Oregon and Washington in between you, but it's all the same strip, right? I mean, couldn't that all be? You could just hack that whole thing off and make a separate country if you wanted to, right?
+
+[26:44] Just all the way from Baja all the way up to Vancouver. Couldn't you make that just one country if you really needed to? I guess. Anyway. And what makes so what like now that everything uh I gotta be honest, because I don't know anything about this, but like uh now that it's all I mean, most of the high grade stuff's hydroponic, right?
+
+[27:05] Like why, like why, why would it matter where it is? What's the terroir of a hydroponic thing? Or is it just the people are smarter there so they have better technology? I don't know, but you can't find any dirt weed anymore with the seeds. Do you like that?
+
+[27:19] Or do you like a high school, you know, high school thing. You're like, you know, that's all you got. Yeah. So you now you can't find it. So you're saying you're saying, wait, wait.
+
+[27:27] So is there a business for whether you used to call that swagweeds? Yeah, right. It was like really poor quality, and sometimes, you know, it worked. Like a nostalgia. You need a nostalgia thing where it comes with a ripped concert t-shirt, right?
+
+[27:41] Like uh, like like half a mugging, like a you're get a little bit mugged. You know what I mean? Yeah. And uh and uh a bag of uh bag of swag weed. Yeah.
+
+[27:51] What do you think? Business or not a business? Not a business. Not a business? No, nobody knows any of that.
+
+[27:58] Speak speaking speaking of not a business, not a business. So, like I 3D printed these uh stainless steel jiggers that I like, and they're awesome. I made a couple of them. I love them. They weigh like a hundred, they weigh a hundred and seventy-five grams, which is heavy for a jigger.
+
+[28:12] That's like divide that by 30 for they're like five ounces or more. That's like a really good record press. Really? Yeah, I think it was it 190 or 175. I love that you know that.
+
+[28:21] I love that you know the vinyl numbers. So awesome. Yeah, so anyway, freaking hefty, right? So when you're holding it, you're like, oh yeah, it's not like stamped, right? But they were really expensive.
+
+[28:31] So I was looking, and then I was like, what I think anyone who appreciates holding things that are awesome. So I made uh they're not this as heavy because they're thicker, but when Garrett Richard was on, he was like, I wish someone made a three-eighths, five-eighths jigger. So I made him some, right? Out of stainless, and they're also real chunky for how small they are. And then I was like, these can't be made, no one could ever make these.
+
+[28:53] How much could you sell something like that for? And I don't think you could sell it for more than like 40 bucks. And if you were gonna sell it for 40 bucks, I would probably have to pay if I was gonna do metal injection molding, right? The tooling alone is probably like 60 grand, right? 50, 60 grand, and then I'm probably paying like I don't know, because I'm not making that many, so I'm probably paying like what like ten dollars a piece or something, something like this, right?
+
+[29:22] And yeah, toast, right? Toast. So, like this toast. This is why people you can't make anything. This is why if you want something real bad, just design it yourself, learn how to 3D model, design it yourself, send it out and print it because we just can't make stuff like that, right?
+
+[29:38] Styles, it can't be done. Yeah, no, hey Jack. Yep. Happy birthday. Wow.
+
+[29:50] Wow, thank you. Wow, that was scary. I thought I'm scared. I'm scared. It was.
+
+[29:59] By the way, uh, you know, my family, I know a lot of people hate it, but uh, you know, in my family, um, one of the things that my uh son can't tolerate, you know what I mean, is the birthday song. So, and also my uh my nephew who's all you know has the same kind of sensory hang up, he can't tolerate, can't tolerate it. So, like it used to be when I unfortunately had to take uh him to birthday parties, was like one of the worst times of my life. Like, I used to hate playgrounds. I still do.
+
+[30:29] Playgrounds and birthday parties to me are like you know, the worst because I'm still kind of traumatized because you would have to remove him like two things away from it. And he's still to this day, like when the cake comes out, he goes to a different room because he just doesn't want it, even the possibility that someone might sing that sing that song. But yeah, it's a triggering song. So I'm glad you didn't play this song and just played, you know, someone doing it. No, you I mean, I I I belong to this library, and unfortunately, you know, the happy birthday song is licensed.
+
+[30:57] And so I chose a weird Japanese version or it is a fortunately, yeah. Fortunately, right? Yeah, so I'm just saying uh a lot of people have this issue. So even if you're gonna break licensing out there, don't broadcast the birthday song to people if you're not gonna give them fair warning. Because there's a lot of people out there, I think triggered.
+
+[31:19] Two people in my family alone. So just think of how many people there are who aren't my family. It can't just be my family. You know what I'm saying? Anyway.
+
+[31:28] Uh all right. So, also, Quinn. Uh we said a little earlier, congratulations on six months on the show. So uh you're like, man, this was a mistake. You're like, this was a huge mistake.
+
+[31:39] Is that what you're thinking? That's what I would be thinking if I were you. This is a huge mistake. Yeah. What are we what's Hey, we're we're finally shipping cereals.
+
+[31:48] We're almost done, in fact. We've uh shipped uh over three we've shipped over three quarters of them, right? Yeah, we're at like I think we're close to eighty percent. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and uh, you know, so far so good.
+
+[32:02] Yeah, nice. All right. Uh and who do we have coming up on Patreon there, John? Or or uh or or Quinn, I don't care. Well, Quinn, you you take the reins.
+
+[32:12] Oh yeah, next week. Yeah, next week we've got uh sort of new buddy of mine, uh Dylan Rothenberg. He's a tea science researcher. So I think that will be pretty exciting. I think it will.
+
+[32:30] But I'm a weird nerd. And then we have Carolyn Schiff rescheduled for February twenty-first. Yeah, ask him to be prepared to talk to us about if there's a better word than tisane, because man, that word stinks. What a dumb word. Maybe it sounds good, uh, you know, enfanse, but like in English, what is this tea stain?
+
+[32:54] What? Tea Zane? What? It's like, but then like some tea people get all bent into a five blossom bread if you uh say to them that something that is a tea if it's not actually from the tea plant. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[33:09] I I'm one of those I'm one of those people. You get all bent? You all bent? Why? I don't get bent.
+
+[33:16] I'm just like, just call it an infusion. It's an herbal infusion. Yeah, yeah, because that sounds so awesome when a server comes up to you. Uh we have teas and herbal infusions. I don't know.
+
+[33:28] Maybe it sounds better than tisane or tizen. Tizen. If it's if you're a French restaurant, you could do it. What do you guys think, Stas Jack Joe? I'm indifferent on this.
+
+[33:39] Really? Yeah, well, I could guess that Nastasia would be indifferent. She's like, I'm not gonna drink it, so I don't care. Get me the rose bubble. That's kind of where I'm at too, though.
+
+[33:48] Yeah. All right. Jack, are you also a Rose Bubbly man? Like the right, like the rest of us. Who here is not a Rose Bubbly person?
+
+[33:58] I'm not. I mean, I like it, yeah. It's not like the first thing I'm going to, but yeah, I would say it's not my first choice. But I don't like actively dislike it. I like it.
+
+[34:11] All right. Okay. Uh, and uh, I forgot I should say this at the top of every show. Call if you're a Patreon listener, call into uh 917-410 1507, that's 917-410 1507. In order to do that, you have to join the Patreon.
+
+[34:23] How do they do that, John? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. And I will reiterate, if you are on our Patreon and you would like something from us, ask. Because I don't know exactly what you want. If I did, I already would have provided that thing.
+
+[34:38] There's certain things that are hard for me to do because I have certain issues that aren't necessarily cooking related. I don't know if you know this, but I have also non-cooking related issues. So some things that seem easy for people to do might be hard for me to do. But uh there's a lot of things I can do that seem hard for people to do that are actually fact quite easy for me to do. Right, John?
+
+[35:00] You had to deal with this. Yeah, I did, yes. It's not necessarily it doesn't necessarily make sense to the outside world what would be easy for me and what would be difficult for me. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm.
+
+[35:08] Yeah. Yeah, true. Absolutely. Like, hey Dave, you have to sign this piece of paper. That's weeks.
+
+[35:13] Weeks. Weeks. So long. Answer this email. Never.
+
+[35:18] You know what I mean? Never. Never. Yeah. Design this jigger.
+
+[35:23] Done in 10 minutes. You know what I mean? It's like, you know how it is. Yeah. Uh so uh Zach writes in, and Quinn, I think we're gonna have to save this.
+
+[35:30] When's uh Matt coming on next? Uh you know, I don't know. I can I can schedule something for like March, maybe. I mean, and you know, it's been it's been a while. Everyone likes having uh the kitchen arts and letters on, right?
+
+[35:44] But what is what I'll do? I'll read this in case anyone uh wants to send us their recommendations before uh Matt comes on, all right. Uh question uh for No Tangent Tuesday. Uh because I don't know the answer to this. Are there any good books that explore the culinary transformation of Italian immigrants in the early 20th century?
+
+[36:00] I recently went to Sicily where my grandparents were from, and the quantity of produce and fresh fish that was available was astounding. However, the food my grandmother cooked in the U.S. was mostly uh heavily beef, pork, tomato, and pasta dishes. A very different experience than the food in modern Sicily. She died long ago, but I would love to better understand the culinary impact immigration had on her generation.
+
+[36:21] That's an awesome subject. I mean, um, you know, most of the family well, your family is uh your family's from that from that way, Joe. Yes, they are. My family citizens. Yeah, my like the you know, my connection to it is more uh, you know, closer to Naples, you know, like that that kind of area, the Avellino area.
+
+[36:41] So I don't know how much those two cultures merged when they came here. You know what I mean, or how much it became more of a common thing. But like, what did you guys eat growing up from from that side? Let's see. A lot of sauce, a lot of fish, actually, a lot of octopus, um, clam, lots of clams, and um, yeah, it was always with pasta.
+
+[37:05] Never like we were in Sicily maybe like four or five years ago, and we fell in love with Saracuse. Uh the the the fresh food was just phenomenal. It just had totally different tastes. Totally different tastes. Olive oil was like, I never had olive oil like that in my life.
+
+[37:20] The Sicilian olive oil is among my favorite in the world for for sure. We gotta get Captain Greasy back on sometimes. The weird thing was, oh, because we looked at we went to many restaurants every every pretty much everywhere we went out, we went out to eat, and uh large families gathered, and everyone ate French fries as appetizers. Really? Everyone ate French fries as appetizers, and then everyone got pizza.
+
+[37:43] What do they call them there? That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. We we stayed away.
+
+[37:48] And the portions were huge. Really? Huge, like American style. Bigger. Come on, bigger.
+
+[37:55] How were the people getting bigger? Um, they were all moderately sized. All right, interesting. Um, you know, I know that uh yeah, again, I wish I knew more about the Sicilian side. I know, like our like the family, everyone in the Boston area, they they was all like Sunday was the grape the pasta with the gravy, and then the meats that were cooked in the gravy pork chops, sausage, brajole.
+
+[38:18] You know what I mean? And then uh and meatballs, and then like that was uh, you know, they would serve the the pasta, and then you would serve the gravy, which is what we would call sauce, and then you would serve the meat on a separate dish. Even though those things were all cooked together, that's how we would have it, and that was just kind of that was what that was a Sunday dinner. That's what that's what you did, you know what I mean? So, but I would guess in in Sicilian families it would be different, but I don't know.
+
+[38:48] Well, see, my sister, I have a Sicilian family and they were immigrant, and the food they made was just not good. It was just like poor people food, you know. I think that's a big part of it, probably. I mean, all my grandma would make is like pasta with peas, pasta with cauliflower, pasta with ricotta and nothing else. You know, it was like kind of necessity-based meals.
+
+[39:10] So maybe that's kind of part of why the abundance of produce and fish and stuff doesn't make it to some immigrant families. I don't know. Maybe. And you know, my stepfather's father's generation, and I grew up knowing him, you know what I mean? So it was it was all still really real to them, and they had a phrase that went exactly to what you're talking about.
+
+[39:55] Like they came from poverty in Italy. So here they wanted to be very successful, and they used to have a phrase which I don't even know what it is in Italian, because all I could hear was my English ears hearing them say it. But mutter of Mamaregan. So like they would always have more food out, more like they more, more, more, more, more. You know what I mean?
+
+[40:18] So like as a as a way to show that they had made it was by providing like lots of very well-made lavish food to show that they were making it. They didn't come from hunger. And so Americans who were cheap, especially wasps, like you know, like me, although they weren't saying, hey, F you, Dave. You know what I mean? But like that we somehow, by being stingy, it's like we come it's like we come from hunger, right?
+
+[40:43] So there was a a conscious move away from uh the poverty cuisine that they you know that they had come from. Interesting idea though. You know what I mean? Hey Dave, are you sure his name was Nanu? And that's not just the Italian word for grandpa.
+
+[41:01] That's what they call maybe. I don't know. Everyone called him Nano, everyone. So I don't know what his name was. I know I know I know his very called my grandpa.
+
+[41:09] Yeah, I know his very messed up nickname that he had when people were not everyone in the family had a crazy nickname. What was his actual name? So the other the other one, Gerard's dad was always called Papa. His name was Arcangelo. So what oh actually, yes, his name was Carmine.
+
+[41:29] His actual name was Car or Carmine. Yeah, anyway, yeah. Anyway, Carmine. Yeah, there you go. Good call, Quinn.
+
+[41:36] Good call. Uh yeah, fun fact. Yeah. Um my brother was almost named Mario after my grandfather. He just put my name almost once.
+
+[41:50] What? Oh my god. Do your did your parents know? Do they know? Uh uh, yeah, no.
+
+[42:00] My my mom put the cybersh on that. All right. Because she somehow is familiar with Nintendo characters, whereas your father is not. No. She just wanted to not continue the tradition of like naming from inside the family.
+
+[42:17] Oh, so you have an actual Mario and an actual Luigi inside your family. Yeah, no. My grandfather, my grandfather on my dad's side. His name is Mario, and his brother was Luigi. Come on.
+
+[42:30] Now that you should have led with that. My my grandpa and my great uncle were Mario and Luigi, and they carried hammers around and wore a goofy hat. Yeah, that's what you should have said. Started with that. I mean, uh, you know, not for us.
+
+[42:47] Actually, why we why were they stonemasons? There was a lot of uh Italian immigrant stonemasons back in the day. Yeah. I mean, he did stonemasonry as almost a hobby, and then he worked in cars. All right.
+
+[43:02] It's an interesting, that's an interesting quin fact that I did not know. Somebody in the Discord is recommended. Alright, go ahead. Harvey Levenstein's The American Response to Italian Food, 1880 to 1930. Alright.
+
+[43:19] Ask and you shall receive. What were you saying about your grandma? Yeah, again, like, you know, they m are from Calabria, and they moved here when my dad was two. So they're not like long time immigrants, but they also did like the Sunday sauce sort of thing. Huh.
+
+[43:44] Yeah, well, that's well, club that's that's much closer, right? That's what I'm saying. It's like uh who knows what the Sicilians did. I don't know. Apparently Jack does.
+
+[43:53] Yeah. Yeah. Uh Alex Godin writes in, hey, uh Dave, can you ask Dave which DMT stone? We're talking about sharpening stones. We might get in uh a new stone system to test, right, Quinn?
+
+[44:04] You're you're talking to someone to test a new system out. But the you're like, you sound uh like it's like it's not gonna happen. That's fine. DMT is the one that I've used for a long time. Uh and Alex wants to know which one.
+
+[44:18] And he sent me uh a picture of one of their smaller ones that kind of folds up, and the answer is no, I only ever get the 10-inch stone, 10-inch uh stone that has uh extra fine and fine on it, the green and the red. And the reason to get the 10-inch stone is that it's a lot more area, and it's just much easier to get a good long swipe of your knife along a larger stone than it is to get it along a smaller stone. So it's definitely worth you're like, well, eight inches is only two inches less than 10 inches, so really it's not that big of a deal. It is. It's a lot easier to sharpen on a 10-inch stone than it is to sharpen on an eight-inch stone.
+
+[45:00] Uh now, uh for many years, they the list price of these things went up to 180 dollars, which is ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ridiculous. However, however, I looked on Amazon and for a while on Amazon, they were really expensive, but the price on Amazon is down like a buck 10, right? So it's down to like a 110, which is still expensive.
+
+[45:19] Back in the day, I was paying like $80 for them. $90, yeah. Yeah, $80, $90. So they are they do cost more. And so because the price has gone up and it does require learning how to hold the knife at a particular angle, we are looking at other systems.
+
+[45:33] Like uh most of the systems that I've tried uh that require that that that hold a very precise angle also have a lot of setup mishigash. And I uh if you have to set stuff up, what that means is is that you're sharpening once every six months or something because you're like, uh, now I'm gonna do all my knives. You know what I mean? Uh and then for that period of time, your knives are really, really sharp, right? Uh so anyway, so we're looking at another place, but from the sound of Quinn's voice, it doesn't look like they're gonna send us one.
+
+[46:03] And guess what? I'm not gonna do I'm not gonna reach into my pocket. Right? Yeah. Right.
+
+[46:09] Yeah, what do you have already works? Great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[46:12] My knives are sharp. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Uh is that a good answer for that, Quinn?
+
+[46:18] Where I'm are we all right? All right. Mr. Molecules, Ryan Briggs wants to know uh on the Twitter uh if you have any thoughts of the top few things to eat and or do in Oaxaca City in February. They'd appreciate the answer.
+
+[46:36] They're gonna spend about a week. What do you think? A week. Okay, you can have him reach out to me directly for more tailored rec, but I would say obviously you you need to kind of go deep into the mezcal tastings and uh mezcal in situ I N S I T U is a really good like tasting room experience. And then mezcalogia, mezcal O G I A.
+
+[47:03] These are two bars that have really good metal selections. Um and then go to Mercado 20 de Novembre, like the big market there, and there's a lot of good food stalls outside of that. One of them's called Chefanita, and they do an incredible pozole. Um and then I can o n I has um what's the I for like tipaches and like all kinds of weird fermented Mexican drinks and there's really good breakfasts. It's uh it sort of depends on what you want to do.
+
+[47:39] But Oaxaca City is definitely smaller than Mexico City. It's older. Um you need to make sure you have some of the moles because that's where you know all the good moles are, and they're all very different depending on the person that makes them. Um maybe do a day trip outside of Oaxaca City. I think there are a lot of really cool places to go just outside.
+
+[48:00] There's this really cool place where there's a like a market in a town outside of Oaxaca City, and there's a woman that dresses, and she's been doing this for years. She dresses just like Frida Kahlo, like in costume, full costume, and it's just this kind of home cooking stall. You you don't really know what she'll be making. You just sort of show up, and it's like being at someone's house, and she brings you out plates of whatever they've got, and all the Mexican kids kind of come up and take pictures with her as Frida. Um, it's really awesome.
+
+[48:28] You'll probably be the only non-Mexican person there, but and the food her food is her food is good? Outstanding, yeah, outstanding. Usually when I go like they'll they'll bring you a plate of like, you know, six or seven moles or sauces, and you kind of just like probe them all, then you give you a tortilla, sort of a taste, and then you sort of point at the one you thought was the best, and then they'll bring you some kind of chicken or something smothered in that. Now, is it like she's she's like I'm good at looking like Frida Kahlo, and I'm good at like food service, or is it that Friticalo actually had like some sort of like food connection and she's joining those up, or is she just like, I happen to have these two skills, and I'm gonna bring them together? Yeah, no, I think it's just the the food first, and then she likes dressing up like Frida.
+
+[49:15] I don't think they're connected in any other way. Wow. Well that's a that's a good that's actually very quickly. We last time I was there, I saw a uh there was like a six-year-old Mexican girl who had a uh microphone plugged into her phone and she was doing like of her parents were kind of helping her along, like interview the woman as Friday and she was taking pictures of the food is pretty much the cutest thing I'd ever seen. She was like she was hosting her own food show.
+
+[49:40] But was she pretending to be Frida Kahlo? Was she pretending was she like I am Frida Kahlo? Was she doing a re-en are we going back to reenacting again? Or is she like no, no, no? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[49:53] Uh yeah. Totally worth it. But yeah, tell that person to uh DM me. Um I'm at Jack Ensley on Twitter. Uh I'm easy to find.
+
+[50:00] I'll question. Oaxaca and string cheese is delicious even here. But is Oaxaca and string cheese in Oaxaca much better? Yeah. Yeah, it's fresher.
+
+[50:11] I mean, I yes. Well, I mean, they don't make it in Oaxaca and Shiba here. They make it here as Oaxaca and String cheese, but I'm not just what's the difference between like Right. That's a good question. Is it better because you're having a change?
+
+[50:22] Because you know, when you're when you're that's what I mean. Yeah, it could be that. You know what I don't like is you have to do like a side by side. When you buy it here, it's backpacked together, and so it doesn't like it doesn't pull apart in as long of a shreds as it did when I saw it in Mexico City. But of course, Mexico City is not Oaxaca, right?
+
+[50:39] So who knows? Like maybe they have like, you know, a lock on some sort of string tea tree cheese technology that I don't even know about. It's like you know how you go to another country and you have a hamburger and you're like, you people do not know how to make hamburgers. You know what I mean? Oh yeah.
+
+[50:54] Yeah. So is it the same thing with Oaxaca and string cheese where like someone from Oaxaca comes up here and is like nope. You know what I mean? Like it's gotta be maybe it's the same. Yeah.
+
+[51:05] What's the worst country at hamburgers? Germany. Who makes the worst hamburgers? The worst hamburgers? No offense, Germany, I love you.
+
+[51:13] But I'm saying like the last time I had a hamburger in Germany it was like half a meatloaf. It was like meatloaf. You know what I mean? Yeah. I had some pretty terrible ones in Southeast Asia.
+
+[51:24] Really? Yeah. What'd they do to them? I know I think also it's just like different beef there. You know, sometimes they get it brought in from Australia and then it was kind of fine but then the local stuff just wasn't it's just like stringy and I don't know like how do you make a stringy hamburger?
+
+[51:39] I don't know man. It was really just bizarre and unpleasant. I feel bad what I said about Germany but I don't want my hamburger to be meatloafy. I don't want it to be bound that way. You know what I mean?
+
+[51:50] Anyway. They've probably changed. Yeah I haven't been in many many years. Exactly. All right.
+
+[51:57] I apologize. Jeez. Uh Chef de Cuisine off Twitter says uh I heard you guys talking about Yandu. I have not seen this or heard of it before. Is it similar to Magi?
+
+[52:09] And uh or Maggie I don't know I never pronounced it out I call it Magi because a gift of the magi. But that's that you know I don't I've used it. I know that like um okay so I haven't used it in a long time because in certain places magi I mean uh because in certain places it's gotten a bad rap by um what's the word I'm looking for? Displacing other like local things and just like kind of uh adding adding salt, although everyone I know that uses it loves it. And I have used it.
+
+[52:43] It's good. I would say that what what I said, I responded on Twitter is that Yandu is more taste neutral than Magi is because it's got like all that's got like uh I think memory serves, it has like celery salt in it or lovage or something like this. And um, so it's just more it's less like uh you know how when you add Worcester sauce to something, you're like, oh yeah, that's got Worcester sauce in it. Or if you add soy sauce to something, it's like, oh yeah, that's got soy sauce in it. You know what I mean?
+
+[53:10] Uh and you know, Yandu, I don't feel like it's that uh much of like a hammer, right, John? You know, yeah, but it's not the same thing as just adding MSG either. No, it's not. Yeah. Yeah, no.
+
+[53:22] Anyway, yeah, it's a really well-balanced product. I like it a lot. Yeah, yeah. Uh all right. So what else we got here?
+
+[53:29] Um Fern Supper Club. I was wondering if there's anything I could do to reduce the uh hygroscopic, which is a good word because I always want to say hydro, but it's hygro, hygroscopic uh nature of sugar when making honeycomb. All of my honeycomb deteriorates faster than I would like. Would uh it makes sense that most of the honeycomb I see in stores is covered in chocolate. I imagine this acts as a moisture barrier.
+
+[53:51] I want to keep my honeycomb well naked. Now, are we referring to actual honeycomb? Are we talking to about like the candy? Or are we talking about the cereal? Again, they're talking about they're making it.
+
+[54:02] So I think it's like honeycomb. Or whatever you call it. Bees make honeycomb. You know what I mean? Uh so we're talking about the candy, the the foamed candy, right?
+
+[54:14] Okay. Yes. Yeah. Uh go buy a butt. They could go ahead.
+
+[54:22] No, go. I'm saying they could cover it in a thin layer of beebox. If it was honeycomb. Well, my point is just store it. You know what I'm saying?
+
+[54:29] Yeah, store it in a place where there's no moisture. Like use a desiccant, right? So, like what I would say is is that just use it like store it with a desiccant. Desiccant, by the way, when you're storing something with a desiccant, it's always difficult to gauge how much uh desiccant to use. And I think people un they use less than they should, right?
+
+[54:57] Because there's a there's a maximum amount of moisture that uh particular desiccant can absorb. Some of them are are color changing, some of them you can reuse. It's not um necessarily uh what's it um green, but you can buy single use desiccant packets that come wrapped, and then when you close it in something, then it's good to go. I have a whole bunch of desiccant salts at my house. Well, actually, I can create any, I think I mentioned this on air before.
+
+[55:24] I can create any roughly humidity I want. I forget what the driest one is. There's one that's fundamentally like Death Valley dry. I believe it's lithium chloride. Uh, and you just you keep that in in the bottom of your container, don't let it touch your food.
+
+[55:39] One of the salts did some weird, weird stuff, like like really expanded strangely when it when it hydrated. But then uh you keep one of those things saturated there and it will never pick up moisture. Uh so I would say use a desiccant and rather than uh coating it, because most coatings that are waterproof are also unpleasant to eat. You know what I mean? Uh you could use if you want it, if you didn't mind coating it with something, uh, and you just didn't want the flavor of chocolate, you could also just use like uh cocoa butter, uh like deodorized cocoa butter or you know, uh a white uh un non chocolate flavored white couverture.
+
+[56:14] But if you want it naked, then you gotta keep the water away from it. I mean, there's things that are really creepy like cornzane, but like no one's gonna like dip that, and then you have that that film on the outside, and that's gross. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, anyone else have any other ideas?
+
+[56:31] No? Yeah. Yeah. Desiccant. Desiccants are your friends.
+
+[56:35] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh the worst was um we used to make these things called methylcel F50 puffs. So methylcel is uh uh I forget which one of the uh methellulose variants it it was, the F50 was, but its main property was a lot of the methyl cells people use because they they gel when they get hot, which is weird. So, like if you ever used to have the thing where someone would show up at the table with like a squeezy bottle and like a bowl of dashi, and then they take the squeezy bottle and they're like and they squeeze the squeezy bottle into the dashi and then it sets into a solid noodle.
+
+[57:08] Seen this? Yeah, yeah. That's what most people are using methyl cell for, right? Uh or the way that the methyl cell people want you to use it was so uh you add the methyl cell to your pie filling, and then when you heat the pie filling up, it doesn't boil out of the crust because it sets as a gel, but when the pie cools down, it turns back into a liquid again so that it's not too hard. That was what they like.
+
+[57:28] That was one thing the methyl cell people were all about that. The other thing the methyl cell people were all about was they were like, so you could paint the barbecue sauce on your chicken, it's got methyl cell in it, and when you put it on the grill, it gets hot. Instead of the barbecue sauce getting more liquidy and running off, it's gonna turn to a solid. I'm like, yeah, but the real problem is the barbecue sauce is gonna burn. The real problem is it burning, not it falling off of the chicken.
+
+[57:49] Am I right? Yeah, yeah. Uh and the other thing that they were like, they were like, well, if you add it to batter, then uh when it gets hot, it turns to a gel, so so fat won't be able to penetrate and you'll get less grease absorption. I'm like, I'm not worried about that. I actually like a little bit of grease in my food.
+
+[58:05] But uh the methyl F50 puffs would always uh pick up too much water, and we used to store them in a vacuum. So if you don't want to use a desiccant, you can also store something in a vacuum, and that's gonna keep uh liquid away. Um I missing anything else I was supposed to. I think I answered this question from Devin, where Devin wanted to know how far a pan can be from an induction cooking mechanism to work, like how far uh the magnetic field expands around the plates. I answered that, right?
+
+[58:31] And mine it's about 10 mil 10 millimeters. Um, what else we got here? Uh Austin Denny wants to Austin Denny wants to know about oleogelation, which is uh product where where you can turn fats into solids. There's various ways to do it. Has anyone done it uh from a culinary standpoint?
+
+[58:49] I mean, maybe, I'm not sure. Have you ever seen anyone do that in an interesting way? If it was super delicious, I think people would be doing it. I do alter the and you know, I've talked about this on air where like I'll do things with like half olive oil and half coconut uh fat to get something that's solid at room temperature but tastes like olive oil. But I'm not using any weird gelling agents, I'm just like mixing fats with different proportions.
+
+[59:12] And I'll leave you guys then with this. My current favorite fry, because people want me to say things I've been working on. My current, I always use for fry oil things like corn or peanut. Corn is actually good because most of it already comes to you a little bit messed up, it's already a little bit broken in because most corn oil is not that great straight out of the bottle, which actually makes it better for frying, strangely. Uh, but I mix it like about 50 50 with Crisco.
+
+[59:36] It still will go mostly liquid when it's done, so it's easy to heat up and cool down, and it's kind of got the best of both worlds. Get the trans fat-free crisp Crisco. And it's not a solid when it cools, so it doesn't feel greasy, but it's got the really good heat transfer and the crispiness you get from a hydrogenated fat. So mix Crisco with your liquid fat for a good time frying people. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center and New Stan Studios, joined behind me as usual with uh John. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
+
+[0:22] Yeah. Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels here. How you doing? I'm doing great, man. How are you?
+
+[0:26] Doing well. Uh up in uh Vancouver Island, Nanaimo. We have uh Quinn. How you doing, Quinn? Quinn.
+
+[0:36] He's there somewhere. He's trying to make tea. We'll talk about it in a minute. Uh I'm assuming in LA we have uh Nastasi the Hammer Lopez and uh Jackie Molecules. Am I correct?
+
+[0:47] I'm in Portland with my brother. Oh, Portland. How's your brother? Is he on? I am in LA.
+
+[0:52] Oh, LA. How's Portland? Good. Joey's here. Yeah.
+
+[0:56] Hey, Joey, how are you doing? This is Joey Lopez, people. Yeah. Yeah. More of an expert in a different kind of herb.
+
+[1:03] Today's gonna be about tea. Joey, a little more of an expert in a different herb. Different well-known herb. Yeah. Well, isn't Joey all about the muñeca too?
+
+[1:13] Or am I getting my facts mixed up? Oh of course he's about the muñeca. First of all, the whole the whole Lopez family loves any sort of puppet-related uh Muneca and the drink muñeca, obviously. That was that's what I was gonna get. Yeah.
+
+[1:25] It's uh by the way, uh so in the in the you know spirit of uh you know recent episodes, we're gonna introduce our special guest, this one here by request of Quinn, who I assume is back online. Quinn, you there? Oh yeah, I'm here. Yeah, yeah. Uh huh.
+
+[1:39] Yeah. Uh we have Dylan Rothenberg, T. So uh founder proprietor of Wu Mountain Tea. Yep. Okay.
+
+[1:46] And also uh professor of tea science still at uh at uh what is it, South China and Guan Show. Uhou, uh South uh South China uh agricultural college in Guangzhou. Yep, South China Agricultural University. Yeah, nice in Guangzhou, China. So you're professor of tea horticulture?
+
+[2:02] So uh I'm wrapping up my PhD right now. Yeah. So the title I suppose would be PhD candidate. Yeah. Not not a professor yet, but hopefully would like to be someday.
+
+[2:12] But like very soon, Dr. T. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yep.
+
+[2:15] I'm I'm finishing my thesis right now. Doing that. All right. All right. But you live here in New York now?
+
+[2:20] Uh I'm back in the States, kind of visiting family. Uh just here to kind of reconnect with some family and friends. Uh had my brother get married recently, so came back to see that, and then I'm back to China in probably two to three weeks. Okay, so you probably left as soon as the zero COVID thing turned off. Because w we haven't been able to visit China in Stars since the pandemic.
+
+[2:41] We haven't been able to go to China. It's a huge I mean, there are many things. But like it's bad for business. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, uh I left when zero COVID was still in place.
+
+[2:51] Um, so it was it was nice to leave, actually. It was pretty pretty tough living under those conditions. But uh yeah. Well, since you have an actual job in China, I'm not gonna ask you to comment on anything in China because I know how that goes. I actually very much appreciate that.
+
+[3:08] I I really do. Yeah, yeah. Uh all right. Well, this is the portion of the show. Uh by the way, so uh uh Dylan's brewing some tea, which we'll talk about in a minute.
+
+[3:17] But this is the portion of the show where we uh shoot the breeze about what's happened in the past week or so. Hopefully from a food related perspective, but you never know. You never know. So uh crew, you got anything? You got anything?
+
+[3:29] I went to Arturo's the other night for dinner on Houston. Houston and Thompson. Have you ever been? Yeah, bought a hat, I see. Yes.
+
+[3:36] Well, yeah, I need a new kitchen. I left my other one in the taxi the other night. Um, but yeah, that place is absolutely freaking delicious. Okay, can I give you my bad opinion? If you want.
+
+[3:44] So I used I went, I haven't been there since the I don't know, mid late 90s, I guess. Late 90s, maybe early 2000s. And back then it was it was like a well-known place, but it was uh it was a pizza place, you know. Have they changed their game, or is it just people have come around to their style? Because it was just it was a place, it was fine, you know what I mean?
+
+[4:06] Well, I think their pizza's very good. Coal coal oven. Lombardi style coal? Not that Lombardi's own coal oven. You've never been to Lombardi's?
+
+[4:15] Okay. Um yes, very very good pizza. And I don't know, the chicken franchise and some fried calamari, and it was all very, very delicious. Yeah, yeah. Tea.
+
+[4:27] All right, so Dylan, what tea? What tea are we sipping on while we're doing here? So this is an aged white tea. So what's that all about? Basically, uh white tea is a style of tea.
+
+[4:37] And I guess I'll give you the quick overview. Um, the the most important thing when you're talking about tea is basically that uh there's one tea plant, one species of plant that is the tea plant, and that is used to create green tea, black tea, uh oolong tea, white tea, dark tea, and yellow tea. There's six major tea types that all come from the tea plant. What do you what is your favorite word for non tea tea? Herbal tea.
+
+[5:02] Herbal tea. Yeah, I like that better. You know what Quint Quinn likes that awful tizane word. Yeah, that's a it's nasty. It's a bit much.
+
+[5:08] It's gross. I say I go for infusion. What if it's an infusion, but it's not a tea? Although it is true when I'm making liquors, I'll say blah blah blah tea. I'll be like, here's uh rhubarb tea to add to my whatever, but I never serve it on its own as a tea.
+
+[5:26] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you can you don't have to say herbal tea every every time. You can kind of shortcut it with just saying tea, but yeah, technically. But you're okay with tea if it has tea in it but has other crap in it as well? Uh I mean, I'm okay with it.
+
+[5:41] Yeah. I'm okay with it. I don't love it, but it's tea womph with other natural flavors? It it can be okay. It can be good if they're if they're good natural flavors.
+
+[5:49] So like uh is adding bergamot to tea f for you like uh hazelnut coffee is for me? A bit. Yeah, I would say that's a great great comparison. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[5:59] All right, so uh you got but aged white tea I'm not familiar with. White tea, I'm familiar with aged white tea, what's the what's the premise behind aging it? Well, talk about white tea for a second. So uh white tea, so all those six tea types I mentioned, they all differ based on their processing style. So what you do after you pluck that fresh tea leaf off the tea plant, what do you do with that with that leaf?
+
+[6:19] And white tea basically is the simplest of the processing styles. You just let the leaves wither for about two to three days. And you know, after the withering, that you then you're done with white tea processing, and then basically at that point the the profile will be a bit tannic. White tea, fresh white tea just after it's done is still it takes on green tea characteristics in that it's a bit tannic still, it has some bitter and astringent properties to it. And then when you age it over time.
+
+[6:50] How long are we talking? So this is a 2014 white tea. So this has been aging for nine years now. So like puer level aging. Puer level aging, exactly.
+
+[6:59] Yep. So and so give it again. What's the change in uh I only care about taste, but we'll talk about that later. I only care about taste. What's the organoleptic change over time uh in years?
+
+[7:10] Yeah, the so the tannins are oxidizing, the catechins are oxidizing, and so basically you have a mellowing and smoothing out of that tannic structure. So it it it basically becomes uh more s I would say smooth in the mouthfeel over time. Um that's the predominant change that happens. Is it aged uh in the way that power is where it'll pick up flavor from where it's being aged and molds and mildews and you know I'm not I'm saying that in a way that sounds pejorative, nostassi's least favorite word that I ever used, but it's like uh you know what I'm saying. Yeah, does it take on that stuff as well?
+
+[7:45] Absolutely. Yep. It it uh, you know. But tea. Yeah, but you're taking on the characteristics of the environment that you're aging the tea in.
+
+[7:54] Um so and you know, it's still an active area of research, how exactly the environment is affecting the the flavor and the general profile of the tea as you age it, like what exactly it is is happening as a result of the environment. And are there also straight up losses like there are in coffee? Yeah, yeah. So as as those tannins oxidize and smooth out, um I mean, by nature of them changing, you are losing that tannic structure a bit. And with the loss of tannins, you're I mean that the total antioxidant profile of the tea declines with with the loss of of tan of catechins.
+
+[8:29] Yeah. Uh John, you okay sharing this with me? Yeah. I I I have a uh third. Oh, those are those are uh for John.
+
+[8:36] It's just a dark cup, I can't tell whether it's the same thing or not. Yeah, yeah. All right, yeah, okay. Let's pass that back to John. And then tell me how tell me how you like me to Nastasi and I once went through a whole kung Fu Chai thing with uh Roy Fong in San Francisco.
+
+[8:48] Yeah. And Nastas and I were both like, this is really fun, we don't know what the hell's going on. Was that about accurate? Is that summed up my feelings? What about your feelings, Nastasia?
+
+[8:56] Yeah, that's what it was. Okay. We were like, oh, there's so much to know. Goodbye. You know what I mean?
+
+[9:01] That was basically what's basically what we said. Yeah. He's still going strong. I looked him up before I came. Yeah, Roy Fong is uh he's a he's a juggernaut in the industry.
+
+[9:11] He was gonna try to make his own tea plantation in California, but I can't tell if that ever worked for him or not. He would have run into some troubles recently. Um basically in the last few years, there there was a lot of tea plantations in California. They all burned down with those fires. Um California's attractive because you can grow anything there, right?
+
+[9:31] But it's dry. And so there's issues with that. LA LA's fine, sun shines most of the time, and the feeling's laid back. Rice? Palm trees grow, rents are low.
+
+[9:42] You know? Love that song. Love Neil Diamond. Every I think I feel that there's people who love Neil Diamond and people who can't admit to themselves that they love Neil Diamond. Um I'm the latter group.
+
+[9:54] Yeah? Yeah, I love it what about you, Joe? Neil Diamond. Come on, man. Yeah, kind of.
+
+[10:04] Well, to me, like uh, I mean, that one what's that one great song that uh UB40 covered, red red wine? No, that's not him, is it? Yeah, that was him. He wrote that. Come on.
+
+[10:13] Yes. No, isn't that like a burning spear song or something like that? No, red red wine was a Neil Diamond song. Uh that's the when UB 40 covered that, went on tour at Yale. That is the concert that uh one of our Supreme Court justices went to and got in a fight outside of Demoris, because that's the kind of fella he was back when he was in college.
+
+[10:32] I won't say anymore. How d how do you like me to sift this? Do you have some sort of special? Because people when they come on, experts, like we have a guy, Nick, what call him Captain Greasy, Nick Coleman, the olive oil uh miracle worker. If I don't taste the olive oil the way he wants me to, he gives me the stink eye.
+
+[10:46] So do you have a way that we're supposed to taste this? I I trust that you know how to are you a thick kind of a guy? Are you like uh what do you what do you do? I'm not quite a, but I'm more of a uh a a modest, respectable pfft uh so some of our people are triggered by mouth noises. So I'm gonna do it off mic.
+
+[11:07] Okay. All right. I think it's okay if you're mimicking the noise, but if it's an actual noise, I think it like, you know. Sure, I'll keep that in mind too. Yeah, it's like I could mention the happy birthday song, but I can't sing the happy birthday song.
+
+[11:17] You know what I'm saying? That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I'll say. Yeah, we'll we'll do our sipping off off mic here. All right, John, what do you think?
+
+[11:25] Since you think more than I do. Think more than you do. So that is the first infusion. And actually the second and third infusions are gonna get better as we go. The especially with white tea, the first infusion is a bit um you you need time to extract all of the flavor out of the of the leaves.
+
+[11:41] All right, so for those who I mean, everyone who's not on Patreon can't see what's going on right now, but you have what I guess Roy told us was a gung fu chai setup, which is you have the loose leaves in a small pot, you pour a small amount of water on them, let you you let it infuse for a certain amount of time, you pour it off, and then track so hot, gotta play it again, add more water, get a second infusion, you do that each time you're getting different profiles out of the tea. But do you want to describe this ceremony a little more for people who are just used to like like dunk and toss? Sure. Yeah, so I mean, the essence of it is that uh you have a small vessel that you're using to infuse the tea. And the upside of that is that you can control each fusion very precisely.
+
+[12:22] So uh, I mean, number one is that the water temperature stays hot. Whereas if you're doing the Dunkin' toss thing, by the end of the cup of tea, it's already lukewarm or you know, tepid at best. Um the temperature stays right, and you're also um controlling how strong the tea is. So, you know, when you're doing the dunk and toss style, it's basically infusing constantly throughout the cup, and by the end it might be too strong. In the beginning it might be too bland.
+
+[12:52] So with this, it's like, you know, I'm gonna let this sit here for exactly how long I want, then I pour it out, and that's the right temperature at the right strength, the flavor that I want. And then you can just do that a few times. Right. And part of the whole McGillah here, right? Is the spending time thinking about a particular tea and watching its evolution as something of interest, something of note, something to pay attention to, about paying attention to life in general, not just tea, right?
+
+[13:20] That that's a big part of it. So that kind of gets more into the philosophical side behind it, where, you know, so what I was just mentioning was more of the purely like why does it make sense from a flavor point of view? Why is it better to brew your tea this way if you want to appreciate and enjoy the flavor? Um, but that is another side of preparing tea this way, which comes into the philosophical side, which is you know, taking your time, not rushing through things, not being, you know, in a hurry to just toss your leaves. You're you're you're thinking about the infusion as it goes through.
+
+[13:55] So it's it's a much more deliberate process that requires attention and focus, I guess. John, go over your flavor notes with uh Dylan here on this first first infusion round. I don't know. I hate describing flavor notes, but it's I don't know, really light. Yes, kind of like nice tannins, I guess, on the on the side of the tongue that are nice and I don't know, just like a really nice refreshing lightness.
+
+[14:21] I'm interested to see how it's gonna get a little more bitter. Visually, the second infusion a lot darker. Totally. Which is bizarre because you think like and are you using more like how okay? So this cup is the size the the the whole infusion vessel is the size of like Pinkies Out British teacup, kind of, right?
+
+[14:43] Even smaller. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So how many milliliters you say that that that is? Roughly.
+
+[14:53] Yeah, roughly. Or ounces. I don't know how you think. You can think however you want. I mean, I can tell you in terms of shots.
+
+[15:01] All right. You know, one one to two shots. Kind of. All right, so like 660 mil, 60, 70 mil something. Okay.
+
+[15:07] Yeah, traditionally you you drink it in three sips. That's kind of Oh no, no, I don't mean in the small cup. I mean in the infusure thing. Oh, oh, in this? Um that's small.
+
+[15:17] Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Is like the British the British teacup is the actual infusion vessel is like and you're saying T. It's a small amount, and how many grams of tea about you putting in?
+
+[15:27] So that was eight, probably eight to ten grams. Right. So right. So wicked overdose if you were just gonna make this amount. Exactly.
+
+[15:35] Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ratio, the leaf to water ratio is is way higher than what you would see in a in a British style. Um and the only way the only way you can get away with that is that you're taking you're stopping the infusion when you decide to, with after 20, 30, 40 seconds. Right.
+
+[15:52] Whereas British style it's in there for the case. Speaking speaking of British style. Well, uh John, you ready to comment on this second infusion yet? By the way, how many infusions are we gonna do with this? Just so I haven't get my wrap my mind around what I need to keep track of.
+
+[16:01] Probably five. Okay, okay, okay. And then I have uh a second black tea down there too. All right, so we'll we'll wrap the tastings through the whole show. Yeah.
+
+[16:08] Yeah, yeah. John, what do you think? What do you think tasting number two, Rathicon? Still smooth and more pronoun, I don't know, like clean, more pronounced, but it's I don't know, like for me, it's more of like a tongue thing that I'm getting. So again, like on the sides, but now a little bit more on the top.
+
+[16:24] Yeah, more they're more of what I would say is a kind of classical, classic uh astringency, which I enjoy in the in the kind of mid-to-back of my tongue. By the way, what's the difference between astringency and briskness? So astringency is more of the technical term for the sensation of that taste characteristic. Um it's more of a biochemical reaction of the mouth to tannins, where it's the drying of the mouth tissue. Briskness is kind of more of uh a a descriptor word that characterizes the whole sensation of consuming something that is astringent, but also has that kind of a little a bit of a bite to it, like uh like a crisp, cold breeze kind of.
+
+[17:14] So it's it's a bit more of a uh a word that just kind of describes the feeling rather than uh a precise uh descrip uh a precise reaction of the mouth. Yeah. And so you're telling me that brisk brand tea, not actually brisk. I'm just messing with you. You don't need to comment.
+
+[17:33] You might work for them someday. Who knows? I'm not gonna don't say anything negative about anyway. Come on, man. I'm just joking around.
+
+[17:38] Uh so while we're on, uh while I'm making you saying negative things, though, uh, someone wrote in, and this is you mentioned English style. Uh mood therapist wants to know if there's any uh best shape of a tea bag, right? Pyramidal, round, or square. I know you have feelings on microplastics, so I know certain of these things you're gonna come out uh against, but uh I told them gotta go loose anyway. Come on, guy, because they fill those things with dust.
+
+[18:05] But is there a shape that makes it better? Is there any sort of answer there? No. No, and and actually, if you asked me two to three years ago, I would say the pyramid is the way to go, the pyramid bags. But I mean, this research that you're referencing about the microplastics, that that research dropped in 2020, I believe, and in that experiment, they used the the pyramid-shaped bags, the the you know, the quote unquote nice saschets, and they found that those were releasing a lot of micro and nanoplastics into the tea.
+
+[18:38] So today, I I can't tell you that any bag or shape, you know, any any type of bag is more is better than another. They both all of them have shown to be not great. Does anyone you know of put their best quality tea into a bag? Uh yes, but don't wanna don't want to call them out. But yeah, I mean it is it I have seen it.
+
+[19:04] People will take uh uh pretty good tea and bag it because you know, in their in their mind, you know, you have good tea, people like bags, tea bags. That's that's fair though. Why not? Yeah, it makes sense, yeah. Yeah, is there any hope for doing like uh this style, like multiple infusion gong fu chai with a bag, or is it just hopeless because you can't look at the leaves and enjoy it, or can you still enjoy any of it?
+
+[19:27] If you if let's say I want to go out today, I I don't have a setup, like can I do anything with a bag tea? Uh what I would say is just take a pair of scissors, cut open the bag, dump the leaves into your gaiwan or your teapot, and just do it like that. If you if you're talking gong fu tea and you have the equipment to brew it, just get the bag out of the equation. Just cut the bag open, pour the tea out, and you're good to go. You don't the bag, you don't need the bag.
+
+[19:54] You don't need the bag. You don't need the bag. Yeah. The bag is superfluous. You reminding me of the end of my favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Commando, where Arnold Schwarzenegger convinces Bennett, who's not a convincing villain that he can beat up Arnold Schwarzenegger, by the way, that uh he doesn't need uh he doesn't need the knife.
+
+[20:12] I don't need the knife, John. Or is it he doesn't need the gun? He doesn't need the gun, John. Anyway, like anyway, it's awesome. Uh anytime someone says you don't need X, Y, or Z, my I can only think of Commando, which is not a great movie, but it's structurally perfect, I believe.
+
+[20:25] There's only one mistake in the movie that I can find. What's that? Uh so Ray Don Chong and Arnold Schwarzenegger are about to steal uh a float plane to go out and kill every living thing other than Arnold Schwarzenegger's daughter, played by Alyssa Milano, by the way, on this island. So the only things that are gonna survive are Ray On Chong, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Elisa Milano, right? Every other living thing is gonna be killed.
+
+[20:48] And Radon Chong is a aspiring pilot, and so she looks and says, reads something, goes, Oh, that's seaplane fuel to pu prove that they had flown on a seaplane in this island, no such thing. It's a lie at the time. She's like, Oh, that that designation is is seaplane fuel. Not true. Only mistake I can find in the whole thing.
+
+[21:04] Well, so how how is it not seaplane fuel? Which is I think they just made it wrong ingredients. No, I just think they just made it up. I think they just needed a plot thing to get them from one place to another, and you know, they, you know, it it's the one, unless I'm wrong, which I doubt I am, because my dad used to be a seaplot. You know what I mean?
+
+[21:20] So like I could be wrong, but probably not. You know what I mean? And so like I was like, oh, this is it's it's you know, ruining my it's uh I can't suspend my disbelief through that, but then I'm right back into it. I'm good. Yeah.
+
+[21:31] Yeah. Uh what are your thoughts on uh speaking of brewing things? Um is that still a big thing that the flower where they tie the tea into that shape and it blooms into a flower? Is that still a thing? It is a big thing.
+
+[21:43] You like it, you don't have a look on your face like you like it. Uh in we in in Chinese we have a phrase to describe that we say, how comp how huh? It's just it looks good, doesn't taste good. Wow. Strong.
+
+[21:55] Yeah. So it's it's pretty, but not in the palate. I feel you and Nastasia would get along. Yeah? Yeah.
+
+[22:02] That's the kind of thing that she that's the kind of phrase she likes to have in her, you know, in her pocket, right, Stas? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, you're like, oh, nah. You know, someone who's tell it like it is.
+
+[22:14] I appreciate that. Speaking of, uh, how does an American become a tea horticulturalist in China? It seems like there's a lot of barriers to that. There is a lot of barriers. Uh the main one and kind of the the only one is just speaking Chinese well.
+
+[22:30] So um that was kind of what got me into this whole space of tea is uh being able to speak and and understand Chinese. So the language came first? The language came first. Yep. Um I just found myself working as a translator, basically for different companies in China.
+
+[22:49] Like what kind of companies? What were they doing? All types of stuff. I mean, you you've seen made in China like that. Yeah, I uh uh we are made in China.
+
+[22:57] Our stuff is made in China. Yeah. So, you know, I was I Shenzhen, actually, and like yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was doing work in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, all over the place. I mean, I I uh worked for uh headphone and microphone company, clothing, air purification, I mean, every anything that's made in China.
+
+[23:13] Like I was kind of just taking jobs for I was a kid, you know, 1920. Um, and one of the companies ended up being a tea company. Uh got into it that way. But a Hong Kong company or a mainland company? It was a company from Switzerland, and so they wanted to export tea to Switzerland, but um I had to kind of move to this city in China qu called Guangzhou.
+
+[23:40] Uh they have the biggest wholesale tea market in the world there called Feng Tsun Tea Market. Um, but you know, I I ended up kind of just meeting a lot of people in the tea industry. Then I discovered this this tea science major at the local university. But the only way that I can enroll in that program was that I could sit in a biochemistry class, taught instructed in Chinese and understand what's going on. So the only way you can get admitted into the program is if you speak Chinese and kind of understand it well enough to like technical Chinese.
+
+[24:16] Technical Chinese, right? So you gotta be able to read the periodic table and in Chinese. So but did you also have to do Cantonese over there? No, actually. So it so Guangzhou, the city I live in, is is the other name for it is Canton.
+
+[24:30] So it's the home of of Canton of the Cantonese culture. But um in a university setting, nowadays it's all Mandarin because all the professor, you know, you have professors and students coming in from all parts of China. Right. Um, and they the common language is is Mandarin. What about the old timers though in plant plantations and stuff?
+
+[24:49] They that's all Cantonese. So when I go out to tea farms um and I'm chopping them up with the locals, you know, their first language is Cantonese. And if and if you're talking to someone who's over 50 or 60 years old, they usually don't speak Mandarin or maybe very, very broken Mandarin. Um, but that's yeah, that that it was actually really tough when I first moved there. I had to retrain my brain to be able to understand Mandarin that's spoken with a really thick Cantonese accent.
+
+[25:19] Yeah. So it was really when I first moved there, I was really excited about the tea thing. I was like, this is gonna be great. And then for the first two weeks, I was like, I don't think I can do this because when I was talking to the locals, I didn't understand anything that they were saying. Um professors and advisors, their Mandarin's flawless, you're good with that.
+
+[25:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Um, but it and and it's tough because when you go out to the tea farms to meet with the tea masters and and the locals, uh, it's you've really got to focus and listen on what they're saying to to be able to pick it up. Um but if you're look talking to someone who's under about 50 years old, they can always at least speak broken Mandarin or you know, Mandarin with an accent. Is this number three I've got or is this still number two?
+
+[26:02] This is number three. All right, John, what do you got on number three? Yeah, I got you. Come on, John, I gotta keep yanking, so you gotta keep current with the teas. Come on, man.
+
+[26:09] Jeez, Louise. Gosh, jeez. So in China, is there a uh an English version of like builder's tea? What what's builder's tea? Builders's tea is like um I believe it's uh English breakfast with two sugars and milk um that all the construction guys drink.
+
+[26:31] It's now become a common thing to ask when you go to uh you have tea off builder's tea. Yeah, actually, so and it depends on the region of China. So if you go up north, like in in Beijing, the the working class guys, the taxi drivers, the construction guys, they'll all have a big uh glass mug, like a tumbler, which is full of green tea. And oftentimes it's it'll they'll have some um jasmine flowers. It'll be kind of like a a floral mixed green tea.
+
+[27:03] So that's kind of their style of of builders' tea. But if you go down to the south, it's puer. Ooh, really? All day. Or or or oolong tea.
+
+[27:12] Um, or if you go to Yunnan, it'll be it's it's kind of the local tea of that area. Each each area has their own local tea, and the the the you know, the the builders, quote unquote, will be just sipping on that all day long, like it's like it's water. Oh I can't, I mean, like I like Puer, but a lot of people don't like Puer. I know you do, you put some videos up, but like uh Nastasia made the uh the good it was it was your idea, right? Bourbon and Puer, that was your thing, Stas.
+
+[27:39] Um it was good, right? Remember when Emmerich gave us all of that fancy poo-air, didn't tell us how much it costs, and we had to make a cocktail, you're like pour in the bourbon. Remember? Maybe, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[27:50] Pour it in the bourbon. That's what you said. It was good. Yeah until we found out how freaking much that tea costs, and then I threw up. You know what I mean?
+
+[27:59] Like Do you remember what um what area it was from or what the name of the thing? I know it's a I know it was a $400 disc. Yeah. You know what I mean? And uh, you know, we just by the way, the the noise you're hearing in the background is the water boiling.
+
+[28:10] So that's the sound of freshness, people. Uh this th number three, this is my favorite so far. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[28:14] Third the third one is typically kind of known as the best. Yeah? Yeah, they say um what about with children? Um third one best. Third one, you know.
+
+[28:29] I mean I'm not sure. I was I was first, that would make my sister the best on uh on b on both sides of my family, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. That's fine.
+
+[28:37] I'm okay with it. Uh all right, let me get to some questions while this is uh brewing. So one of the questions was how'd you get into it? So you've kind of addressed somewhat how you got into it. My impression is is that um from the tea people that I visited in Hong Kong and in Taiwan, that uh it's a relatively closed-lipped group of people.
+
+[29:00] Uh so it must be hard to kind of get into the inner circle of some of these producers and whatnot, right? Is it at an ag university? Are you helping them with like uh with problems they have so they're more open to you coming in and talking to them? Or is it like you're a competitor? How do they view you?
+
+[29:17] Yeah, it's an interesting comment about the closed lipped thing, especially in Hong Kong. There's a lot of closed lip, uh closed lips in regards to tea among the traders and and merchants of tea, the buyers and sellers. Um but in the academic space, it's totally different because you're I mean, you're conducting research and you're all working on the same genome of the tea plant. You're all trying to progress towards the same goal. I mean, there there is a bit of, you know, if you're on an active research project, you can't, you know, you need to be, you can't share your findings until you publish them and stuff like that in a normal academic setting.
+
+[30:02] But that whole closed lip thing, which I experience and which any person who tries to learn about tea will know about for sure. Uh, that thing doesn't is not a factor in academia. It it is to a small degree, but not for the information that matters. For the, you know, like what's the best tea type? You know, what what's the, you know, when you're just going off the hip and just saying, you know, stuff that you feel, uh opinions, like, you know, there'll there'll be closed lip uh feelings about that, but when you're actually talking about real knowledge and real information, which is you know, the the biochemical underpinnings of the tea plant, how is the tea leaf responding on a molecular basis?
+
+[30:52] What is actually this tea plant doing? That stuff's all public. That's and and nobody shares that. It's and or you know, everybody shares that. Nobody hides that.
+
+[31:02] So I felt like luckily, the deeper I dove into it, the more open it became, it became because when you're looking into it that deeply, um, you know, you don't have time to to play games and to conceal information. It's like, all right, I have a three billion base pair genome sequence here. We need to figure out what the hell these genes are doing. Is that really roughly what it is? Yeah, it's actually about the same size as the human genome.
+
+[31:33] Um, so you know, you're you're doing real, real science. And like all of that closed lip stuff, like that's kind of for the for the merchants and for the people who don't really know what's going on. And I get that a lot on on my channel a lot because I take in my videos, I take everything that I know and put it completely out there and don't hold anything back. I say all the information. And the reason I'm like that is because of my professors at the university, they're like that too.
+
+[32:03] And it's tell them where what your channel is so they can find it. Sure, it's it's just woo mountain tea, w-u-woo mountain tea on YouTube. Um and the I I saw in academia the the guys who and the women who know the most about tea, they are who truly know the most about tea. They're the most open about the knowledge. They're the they're the least gatekeeping people.
+
+[32:27] The ones who are gatekeeping are actually the ones who don't know that much because they feel insecure about the information they have, and they feel that it's limited and they need to kind of safeguard it because that's that's where their value is is coming from. And their money's coming from. Where their money's coming from, right? But the ones who really have the profound knowledge, they just let it all go. And I've had the privilege of studying under some of these people, and it's it's incredible.
+
+[32:51] And when you really look at it and you start to dig into all of the information there is out there, you realize that there's so much information, there's so much still to be discovered that there's no point in holding anything back. Um it's it's you know, it's it's a drop in the ocean, you know. So um to go back to the question that you've been answering the whole time, how'd you get into T uh AXBYCZ D zero? Uh basically asked all of those questions. How how'd you how'd you get into it?
+
+[33:25] Um, but you know, maybe to kind of piggyback on their question, uh, what prompted you to become so interested, which you've been talking about, uh like how would you say if someone wanted to get into this industry, what should they do? I guess learn Mandarin is what you said, but like, is there anything else you think or I mean, so learn Mandarin actually, it sounds a bit ridiculous, but that that's a great start. Um I mean, if if you want to, I guess if you if you want to study tea in academia here, I'm pouring up some tea here. Thank you. So, yeah, I'll give a bit more of a realistic answer because you know it's not like anyone who's listening to this who wants to get into tea is gonna be like, okay, step one, go go learn go learn Mandarin.
+
+[34:11] So I would say um actually a great place to start is to learn about plant biology and actually just basic biology. And again, that is a kind of a large barrier to entry, almost analogous to learning Mandarin, right? But there's one textbook. Um if you get just a basic biology textbook and kind of just learn about you know how the cell works, especially in a plant, that's that's a great start. But if you want to maybe go a bit simpler um than that, actually, I so I made a master class.
+
+[34:43] I so I released it in August, and for the six months before I released it, I did nothing but sit in my room and film and edit this uh series of eight different chapters. And it's actually kind of aimed at what you're talking about, which is that if you're someone who wants to get into tea, where do you start with all this information? Because I'm not gonna learn Chinese and I'm not gonna read multiple textbooks about plant biology. So I kind of compiled all the relevant information um related to tea and everything that is relevant and good to know about tea. And I'm not you know trying to plug that, it's just the simple answer to that question.
+
+[35:21] It's it hasn't really quite been compiled in a way that I've seen that's really accessible. So if if you go through those eight chapters, it kind of touches on all of the critical aspects because there's there's no textbooks, there's no resources quite out there that really put it together in a good way. So I just kind of went ahead and did that. Um so that is a free resource on the on the YouTube channel that I just mentioned. Um but you can kind of try your best at getting the the piecemeal resources that are out there, but it's not great.
+
+[35:54] Um it's yeah, that's that's that's infusion number four. Is infusion number four? Yep. So it's still balanced, but I feel it's dropping down a little bit. You know what I mean?
+
+[36:03] Yeah, yeah, the s the savory elements are are kind of dropping out a little bit, right? Quinn, what do you got for me? Yeah, we have uh just a question from the live chat. Um, going back to the language thing, uh Rail was asking if uh Dylan has any recommendations for actually resources around Mandarin. Yeah, how'd you learn college?
+
+[36:29] Or all your whole life you've taken it or what? So actually the way that I learned the most was by talking to a tutor on Skype. I mean, so basically it doesn't matter what language you're talking about, the the framework is grab a basic textbook, grab it, grab a basic um a book that teaches you just the fundamental structure. You don't need much, you just need to learn how the sentences are laid out, their basic grammar, you know, do you put the verb first or the noun first or the adjective first? You know, it's just each language is a little bit different in that sense.
+
+[36:59] You pick up, you get the basics in a in a few vocabulary words under your belt, you know, maybe 50 verbs or a few adjectives and nouns. You just get the basics, and then before you feel like you're ready, then you dive into forcing yourself to speak with a native speaker as much as humanly possible. And for me, that came through just chatting with uh a teacher on Skype. And so what I would recommend, I mean, what I did is I just found a graduate student whose major in China is teaching Chinese as a second language. I just, you know, went and and DM'd this university, this professor.
+
+[37:42] I found her email online and said, Hey, do you have any graduate students who would be willing to tutor me, learning Chinese? And she said, Yeah, I I mean, my whole department is Chinese as a second language. I have a great graduate student, and I paid her, you know, 15 bucks an hour. This was in 2010, 11. Not much, you know.
+
+[38:03] And just chatted with her on Skype. I was in upstate New York, that's where I grew up. I was there in high school chatting with her on Skype for an hour a day, using the the basic vocabulary and grammar that I had learned through the through the the book. And you it's uncomfortable. It's really uncomfortable because you're trying to converse with somebody in a language that you're not familiar with, but this is how the human brain learns language, right?
+
+[38:27] When you're a kid and you're trying to learn your first language, you it's either it's sink or swim. It's like I need to convey this information and and your brain kind of you force yourself to have to figure it out. And it's pretty I'm pretty sure I would sink. Yeah. No, I mean, look at you speaking English right now.
+
+[38:44] Like you you clearly you clearly swam. So basically if you if if you get the basics and then you force yourself to try to speak it with a with a tutor um that's that's all you need. And you can you can find tutors for not that much. And then if you know maybe that's outside of your budget then you can um watching TV shows with subtitles is a great way but just really you have to try to force yourself to speak as much as you can learn just enough just barely enough and then throw yourself into the deep end of the pool with with speaking as much as you can that's what I would say. Now Max wrote in and once he says you hear a lot of Chinese sources talking about uh cha chi so I guess that's qi like like qigong like energy yeah uh is this just caffeine content or is it more complicated than that?
+
+[39:33] It's a bit more complicated. Uh so there's a few psychoactive compounds in tea. You have caffeine which is the you know the the stimulant the famous one you have theanine which is an amino acid which provides the calming properties of tea which actually synergize with caffeine to create the unique cha chi that this person's referring to. What do they mean focus but alert? Yeah yeah it's it's a calm focus an alert calm relaxed focus as opposed to just purely caffeine which would be kind of a bit jittery.
+
+[40:04] You mean like my espresso high that I have every morning. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So it's that but but calm more meditative than that.
+
+[40:11] So you have caffeine and L-thenine those two are the primary drivers of the chachi, but there's it's not quite just that. It's a bit more complicated than that, and we don't fully know the picture of cha chi. All because there's other compounds that studies have shown are probably bioactive and they affect the brain for sure, but we don't know exactly how and in what way. Um, but caffeine and theanine, that calm focus is a major part. And then you have other kind of catechins, those tannins, those are acting on the brain as well in ways that we're not totally sure about, and then all of the bioactive compounds, the the sugars, the polysaccharides, everything that's bioactive affects the body and affects consciousness in specific ways that we're still figuring out.
+
+[41:01] But chachi, it's it's complex, but at its core, I would say caffeine and al-theanine are the key drivers that calm focus. And Max also wants to know if there's any type of tea that you think are wildly underappreciated in the West that you found in China. So raw puer, I would say that's that's the first one that comes to mind. Raw puer. Uh white tea, I would say, is uh a bit underappreciated.
+
+[41:25] I mean, honestly, all good tea is underappreciated, I would say. Really another big one is really fresh green tea. Because we don't produce tea here, and all of our tea is imported. And for this one, it's aged, right? So it doesn't matter that we're an arb and a leg in an ocean away from where this was produced because you know we're aging it for 10 years anyway.
+
+[41:51] But green tea, the the best green tea should be fresh, just just fresh. How fresh? As fresh as possible. Really? You know, I plucked it this morning and now I'm drinking it this afternoon.
+
+[42:03] Maybe uh a bit longer than that. So, in other words, like but on the same level as roasted coffee? Yeah. Yeah. Yep, that's a great analogy.
+
+[42:10] So and you simply don't get that here. You you only have access to that degree of freshness in the tea producing areas. And how much does vacuum packing, as long as it's not crushed, right? But vacuum packed in a solid, like how much does that preserve the life of the freshness of the green tea? Uh pretty good.
+
+[42:29] Yeah. No, it that's that's the best you can do. And does anybody do that? Ship it over in VAC? Uh not that I know of.
+
+[42:38] I'm working on trying to do that too. Um it's tough because in the past I've tried to do fresh green tea, and I just I I don't have that. I sell tea to my friends and family and a few other people. So it's it's hard because I'll I'll buy it and I'll be hey, fresh green tea, then you know, six months will pass, and then I still have some. So does hard vacuum in a bag affect the infusion because you crush the pores of the leaf?
+
+[43:06] Does it affect it in any way? I mean, no, it's gonna stop some of the oxidation and all of that, but is there any negative effect of vacuum packing if it's hard packed like that? If if there are they would be negligible effects compared to what you're gaining? Exactly. Yep.
+
+[43:22] So it's it's a net positive for sure. Yeah, I mean, it it would be best if you didn't damage the leaves in any type of way. And again, like all of that adds up, which is why the true fresh tea is great. So I guess to come back to the question, really fresh green tea is uh it's hard to even say underrated because people don't even have it. So they're not even rating it.
+
+[43:45] It's just uh non-existent. So that that's something that we're missing out on big time. So if green tea freaks here, and there's plenty for health reasons, green tea freaks here, if they could taste that, would they be like, what? Oh my god, what a jerk I've been my whole life. Yes, yes, it's it's mind-numbing.
+
+[44:01] Like the how incredible a fresh, really well done green tea is, is it's unbelievable. Like, because you know, with our with the white tea that we're having now, like it's a good white tea, and you can appreciate certain elements of the flavor, and it will knock your socks off, you know, with a good pure or a good white tea. With green with a fresh green tea, it is so different that you don't even believe what you're feeling in your mouth. It's because it's there's a whole level of umami and um food-like qualities. It doesn't even feel like you're drinking tea.
+
+[44:42] It it's a different universe. So like could it like how much like is it expensive there or is it not expensive there? Uh not that expensive. I mean, it's it's I mean, would it be a relative term? Would it be a valid business to like, you know, there's a direct flight from you know, United, Hong Kong, Newark every day, right?
+
+[45:02] Back and forth. Would it be a valid business to like ship it here, drink it tomorrow or not? Yeah, yeah. And and I would say, right? So if I were to, if you want if you asked me, hey, go get me some fresh green tea, right?
+
+[45:15] Because the spring crop is coming in March, it's about one you know, month or six weeks away from today. Um, if you wanted to get your hands on some green tea, and you know, I'll be in China actually at that time. If you want me to ship you some back, it wouldn't for the price for me to buy it there fresh, not that expensive to ship uh a box of it back, not that bad. And in relation to the value and how different, how drastically different it is, um, I would say it's not expensive at all compared to the value that you're getting all right quinn get on that let's do it we'll taste it on air you want to yeah I know I know I I I I'm already sold I don't worry about that all right so we'll do it we'll do it we'll get it done we'll get it done people we'll tell you about it I don't know you know maybe I don't know we'll figure it out we'll figure it out we'll make it yeah quinn let let's uh let's keep in touch about that I'll I'll I'll send you a little green tea package this this spring. For sure.
+
+[46:09] Uh Will wrote in and said you know what's upsetting? What? Oh what? So go ahead. No what go go ahead we'll talk about after.
+
+[46:19] Wait you just told people there was something upsetting about tea anger come on what's what what's going on okay okay there is of course a tea plantation on Vancouver Island which is of of course absorbently expensive but the last time I checked they take their green tea and they smoke it they smoke it they smoke the the green tea well they they like like not in the blood not in the imagine smoking it like a blood I've tried what's it like uh nothing right home about yeah okay yeah yeah about what you'd imagine so they they they're smoking their green tea that that that's hard to hear because it it incited hope that a fresh green tea could be had from a plantation that close to us, but maybe I'll I'll see if it if they've changed their offerings. But last time I checked, that was the green tea they offered. Alright, well talk talk to them, Quinn. Talk to them. Yeah.
+
+[47:30] Especially because like the thing is like, let's say you could grow tea here, which you know, obviously, as you said, you can, right? Yep. Or I'm sure in Hawaii they grow, I'm sure they grow great tea or whatever. I mean, I don't know that I'm guessing climate. No, they do.
+
+[47:41] Uh, but if there's not a culture of understanding what fresh green tea is like, there's no incentive for the proprietor to do a great job. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yep. Yeah, that that's that's a big issue.
+
+[47:55] Is is for me for when I'm in China, it's like I I could get some great fresh tea and send it back, but I don't have that many people who are lining up at the door to get their hands on. And they already do. Yeah, you do. Okay. We'll we'll we'll fix that problem.
+
+[48:12] Why does tea get put on the back burner in the US as opposed to coffee? Uh, and if you have only one tea to get somebody hooked, what do you brew for 'em? And how? Uh tea gets put on the back burner. Tough.
+
+[48:28] It I would I would say maybe because it's it's difficult to brew. With coffee, you can throw it in a machine. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. You know, I mean Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
+
+[48:39] Anyway, go ahead. We have two minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So tea is tough. It it takes skill, it takes practice to brew correctly.
+
+[48:44] So it there's it's a nuanced thing. It's it's not easy to to to make. So it's by way of that, I would say it's it's less appreciated and less less common. Uh second question. It was any chance of getting a good tea at a third wave coffee shop.
+
+[48:59] Probably not. Brew your own tea. That's what I would say. Do it yourself. If I there are a couple gung fu chai places in New York that are uh I don't haven't been to them.
+
+[49:06] I don't know if they're any good. Yeah, and just the nature of it, like, you know, it it's not something you can easily just buy at a shop and take it to go. It it's something you sit down and spend time with a bit. So we got two more quick ones. Solarfish 30 writes in.
+
+[49:21] Curious if you have any solid recommendations for tea tourism in China. Would love to make it the focus of a trip one day. Uh yeah. So there's a few tea terroirs that are really famous, worth checking out. But is there like a company that does it like we take you to the tea?
+
+[49:37] Not uh not that I know of. I I am interested in doing that at some point. Oh well. Um I I have done some guided tours and I'm gonna reach out, reach out to Dylan. Go to go to yeah, go down.
+
+[49:46] I'll be in China if you're if you're coming through, I'll show you around. All right, you ready? Here's the last one. This is the one we're gonna go out at. Uh uh CA uh Schofield writes in, hey, I want to know more about that duck poop tea.
+
+[50:01] Needs to know about that duck poop tea. And I had to read about it because of the question, I was like, duck poop tea. Do you know about this? You want to talk about this? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[50:07] Like describe what it is real quick and then give me some duck poo. Yep. So duck shit oolong is uh it's a type of oolong. It's from my province, Kwangdong province. Uh it's just the style of oolong tea that's been in existence for a couple hundred years now.
+
+[50:22] It doesn't taste or smell like duck foo, right? Nope, no relation to actual duck shit. There's a story behind it where you know the the cultivar originally used to make it was so treasured that the farmer s uh covered the the tea plant area with duck shit so that other people wouldn't pluck it. Uh like you know, to keep people away. So that's kind of the backstory, is is why it's called duck shoe.
+
+[50:44] Is it any good? It's fantastic. Thank you. I highly recommend it. Does anyone ship it to the US or no?
+
+[50:48] Do you? I do. Yeah? Alright, so you can go on your website. You want to give them your website again?
+
+[50:52] Sure. Wu Mountaintea.com. And go get yourself some duck, uh, your duck excrement tea. Yeah. Go get it.
+
+[50:57] Well, Dylan, uh, thanks for coming on. What do you think about this last infusion, John, on the way out? Good. More, yeah, more what I was expecting in the initial one, but I also didn't know anything about white tea. So very good.
+
+[51:10] Well, uh, thanks for uh coming on, Dylan. Hope you had a good time. Yeah, had a great time. Thanks for having me. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Visual's coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios. Joined in the studio only today with uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How you doing? I'm doing great, man.
+
+[0:23] It's uh kind of a solo show, just you and I. Yeah, well, here. Here in New York City. Yeah, we're we're, you know, inter intra-continent. Well, what it cross-continental.
+
+[0:31] What is it when you're only across the continent? What is that? Transcontinental? Transcontinental? Okay.
+
+[0:38] Okay. Well, uh, up there in the uh upper west of uh of this area, we have uh Quinn chilling in uh Vancouver Island. How are you doing, Quinn? Hey, I'm doing all right. Good, good, good.
+
+[0:50] And then uh we have actually we have a a surprise special guest on the telephone with Nastasio Lopez. How are you doing, the hammer? Good. Good. We got Captain Greasy, Nick Coleman.
+
+[1:03] Oh, he likes doesn't like that. He likes he likes Mr. Oily better, Mr. Oily. He's like he's like olive oil's not grease.
+
+[1:09] Olive oil's not grease, my friend. Oh my god, you brought some sort of instrument. Oh my goodness. It's the flute. But it's not like a normal flute, is it some sort of weird like tantric flute thing?
+
+[1:30] What? Indian concert curry flute. Indian concert, what was the last word? Bansuri flute is a very good thing. Right, Bansuri, that's what it is, Bansuri.
+
+[1:42] And uh yeah, it's wooden, correct? It is made of wood. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, like, how much does it change with uh with uh humidity and all that?
+
+[1:54] Very little. It's it's I mean I think cheaper ones would, but this is made by this famous bansury maker named Subhash. S-U-B-H-A-S-H, if anyone else out there's looking. Yeah. And you can get them online famous bam syring maker in India.
+
+[2:09] What kind of wood do they make it out of? I think it's bamboo. Really? Huh. And that's like the best to mean obviously it's the best tone wood if that's what they use.
+
+[2:19] That's what the is the best for that instrument. I I did not know that. I did not know that. Um we got uh we got uh Jackie Molecules. Hey, hey, what's going on?
+
+[2:32] Hey, nothing. So you uh so since this is uh we're we're all together now, we don't have John here in the studio. He's busy doing uh I don't know, temperance wine bar stuff. I think someone called out. You guys know how it is these days.
+
+[2:43] People call out and then everyone has to shuffle around. It's not like the old days, which is I think good. What do you guys think about that? Like the more I mean whatever, I'm not even gonna get into it. It's just it's too thorny to get into.
+
+[2:53] Anyway, uh if you're listening live on the Patreon, call in your questions too, uh 917 410 1507. That's 9174101507. And uh I don't even remember. Go to go to uh patreon.com forward slash cooking issues. Is that correct, Nastasia?
+
+[3:08] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Enjoy all right, and uh join in if you want, you know, whatever. Anyway. Uh so we're gonna do a no tangent Wednesday, because we weren't here on Tuesday.
+
+[3:19] We're gonna do a no tangent Wednesday. But uh you guys got anything interesting you've uh you've done? Anyone done anything interesting, food or otherwise over the last week? Anything? Uh we uh m my my family did uh lamb Tejine on Sunday.
+
+[3:34] That was pretty good. Yeah. Do you have uh do you have a Tajine? Yeah, we found one for 10 bucks on Facebook and Marketplace. No, no, you know what I like the Facebook Marketplace because it's the last bastion of people who haven't figured out how to like make a lot of money off of eBay, and it's like slightly less creepy than Craigslist.
+
+[3:55] So I bought some cool stuff off of uh Facebook Marketplace. You know what I mean? Oh yeah, it's great. Yeah, yeah. I almost bought uh I don't own a Tajine at this point.
+
+[4:04] I almost bought one. You like that stuff, right, Joe? You're a Tajine fan, aren't you? I love them. Yeah.
+
+[4:10] Uh I almost bought one at uh so if if for any of you who are in New York City, they might still have this. So Calusteans, Calusians uh eventually is gonna take over that whole block. It just keeps growing, Calusteans. But um they have in the section where they have the cookware, there they have a whole bunch of tagines, beautiful tagines that are almost free. Like, you know, big ones, like ones you can feed like a family of like four or five with, like big ones.
+
+[4:36] Almost free because they got lead in them. A little bit of lead, like a little bit, like a little bit of lead. So like they were supposed to be lead-free, and they came into the country and someone tested them and was like, lead free, free? No. So they had to put a big sticker on it that says, This is decoration.
+
+[4:57] Now, you know, I don't know what kind of you know, whatever. I don't have room for a giant ceramic tagine-shaped decoration in my apartment. I don't know who does in New York, you know what I mean? But then, you know, whatever. I assume yours did not have lead in it, Quinn.
+
+[5:10] That you know of? Uh hope so. Yeah, yeah. So how was it? How was you?
+
+[5:15] How was the uh you said lamb, right? You did lamb? Yeah, we did lamb. Yeah, we're good. Uh you know what I mean?
+
+[5:21] You know what I'm perpetually upset about? That uh I can't get mutton here. I've tried several times. I've I've I've just missed it a couple of times, but I've always wanted to get like old school mutton. I went to Keynes people and I want to hear go to Keynes, get the mutton chop.
+
+[5:36] The mutton chop at Keynes is delicious, but as far as I'm concerned, it tastes like maybe it's like two days older than lamb. It's like, you know, like yesterday it was a lamb and today it's mutton and they killed it today. That's what it's like. It's not like I wasn't like, oh my god, this is super mutton-y. And the other thing, I think I've said this on the air before, I really want to try is that giant fatty lamb tail that like North African, I think it's North African fatty lamb tail.
+
+[5:59] Someday, someday I will have the fatty lamb tail. Can you imagine growing a sheep just so that has a giant fat tail and then like eating that giant fat tail? I mean, that that's so awesome. Like conceptually, I don't know. Well, are you guys down for the fatty lamb tail?
+
+[6:18] Yeah to me. Yeah, yeah. What about I'm sure I'm sure Nick is down for a fatty lamb tail. I mean, he'll move away from olive oil for fatty lamb tail, right? I was born for a fatty lamb tail.
+
+[6:30] Yeah, yeah. What about you, Stas? You down with the fatty lamb tail? Yeah. Yeah, we should we should try that.
+
+[6:37] Hey, Nick, I had an idea. See what you think. Uh a couple of weeks ago, somebody asked a question about oleo gelation. And I know you like anything with the word oleo in it. So uh, you know, they were talking about um, you know, various ways to thicken oils, most of which, you know, don't taste very good, right?
+
+[6:57] Uh but it led me to read like the most recent comprehensive review on uh on you know gelling oils. And there's a variety of different ways to gel oils. Now you and I were talking about mixing olive oil, and I think I talked about it on air a little bit, olive oil with uh coconut fat to create kind of um butter analog. So I can make like olive oil biscuits, and I've made them and they're delicious, right? You know, like uh like with uh I forget what numbers I quoted you, Nick, but it I can get like a fairly high percentage of olive oil in there and still make like a traditional biscuit with it as long as you pre-freeze the oil mixes, right?
+
+[7:31] But I think so one of the one of the prime ways of making uh like solid oils, right, is to add a relatively small percent, like on the order of three percent, three or four or five or six, depending on which you use edible wax. Have you ever tried making like a beeswax oil thing? You could use carnule, which would be more neutral, but I thought you would prefer bees. What do you think? You ever try it?
+
+[7:59] I I have not, but I know of an oil producer that is now making an edible candle that is exactly that like olive oil and some kind of wax of some sort, and then they can shape it and make these beautiful uh vertical, like well-shaped candles that you can put on a plate in the center of a table, and as the candle burns and melts, the liquid that forms, you can then dip bread in. Huh. All right, I like that. But uh I so I was reading the article, and if you want to, we can experiment with it or something at some point, but a lot of the texture of it, right? Because it's all about how the crystals form as it's cooling, right?
+
+[8:47] So a lot of it has to do with cooling it and stirring it to like at a very specific temperature and then allowing it to set, right? So if you just let it set solid, you know, if you just heat it up, let it cool, it's got a very different texture than if you stir it until crystals just start to form and then let it go solid in the same way that like sugar crystals depend like on a fondant, exactly how it's manipulated as it's cooling. So like it seems to me that you could probably get almost any texture you wanted, right? Uh within reason by manipulating the variables, in other words, the quantity you use and then the stirring and chilling regime. But I think it'd be kind of fun to make uh like an olive oil butter, you know what I mean?
+
+[9:30] If you wanted it to be 100% vegan, I guess you couldn't use beeswax, you'd have to use carnuba. I just don't have a ready source of carnuba wax sitting around. I always used to love reading candy. Carnuba butter also works. Uh no, but cocoa butter is a fat.
+
+[9:45] So cocoa butter is good for like doing that, but like not but I'm I'm just trying to do waxes, right? So I've done cocoa butter olive oil and it and it works great, right? I'm just trying to figure out like the wax-based, I'm trying to figure out a wax-based one because you can use a much smaller percentage with cocoa butter, you need to use like almost 50-50 or or or or thereabouts, cocoa butter to olive oil to get it to set to the texture of a butter. And it works. I've done it many times, but with a wax, you can have it be almost all olive oil.
+
+[10:16] You see what I'm saying? So like you can yeah. And so, like, um carnuba, I uh you know, I have a soft feeling in my heart for carnuba wax because when you grow up and you buy nerd's candy or any other candy and you read on the back of it and it says carnuba wax. And then if you grew up in my house, my dad would look at me and be like, that's what they use to wax cars. Exactly.
+
+[10:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if it's good for my car and it's good for my candy, maybe it's good for my olive oil too. You know what I mean? Was that like a will? Was that a is that a wonka trick?
+
+[10:49] Yeah, you know, the Wonka Corporation, yes, did use carnuba wax on their gobstoppers for sure. I remember that specifically. But um, you know what I hate like a lot? I hate when when uh a lot of people write that write this book. This book has been everybody every like three years.
+
+[11:05] This is like someone writes this book where they're like, they take an ingredient that's in food, and then they're like, they use that to make explosives. You know what I mean? You ever see you ever read that? They're like titanium dioxide is used to in paint, and yet they're using it in your food. I just hate that.
+
+[11:23] I hate those arguments so much. Just because a product is used in some industrial way doesn't mean that it's not also wholesome or fine to put in your food. You know what I mean? I'm sure it's an anarchist cookbook somewhere, right? I don't know, but it's like no, it's always these people trying to like freak you out.
+
+[11:38] It's always, it's it's everyone's always trying to freak you out. You know what I mean? And then the the classic response is people are like, well, water is used in exposives too. Water is, you know. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
+
+[11:49] I don't know. The whole argument irritates me. And then it's gonna come up in a question later. But anyway, Nick, you want to play around with this? You interested?
+
+[11:56] If I if I get some wax and run some experiments, you want to talk to me about them? I'd love to experiment with this because I want to, like I said, these these like custom formed candles that melt and then are edible at the table that are made mainly out of good olive oil. Yeah. Very appealing. Well, have you have you have you used one?
+
+[12:18] No, I've seen one. I just learned about it just in the past year. Uh, this oil producer in Liguria in Northwest Italy is experimenting with that, and he was the one who showed it to me. So, okay, Nastasia, I have a feeling you either love or hate the word Liguria. I kind of like it because it's it's it's kind of fun to say.
+
+[12:36] What do you think, Stas? Yeah, I don't have a problem with it. Yeah, Liguria. Um obviously the question is is uh what does the heat do to the oil, right? So Casey, who works at a museum and has a great Instagram account where she does things, made that kind of uh that mayonnaise, that mayonnaise candle that people were making uh during the holidays, like cranberry mayonnaise candle.
+
+[12:59] Remember this? And she you set it solid and then you put a wick in it and then you light it on fire, and it's like this cranberry mayonnaise candle that burns. And she said the smell was atrocious, like real bad. Like no good. So I like, but you know, I mean, olive oil, people use it in lamps and it must smell good, right?
+
+[13:21] I've never burned an olive oil lamp. How was an olive oil lamp smell like, Nick? Um it's not that aromatic, it's pretty neutral. Right, but it's you're not like not like leaving the room in pain like she was with the cranberry mayonnaise candle. Oh no, like the olive oil lamp is it's like really clear, it burns very clean.
+
+[13:43] Yeah. I bet you the smell is from the eggs, don't you think? Burning those eggs. I think that's what the smell is. I think cranberry burning is fine.
+
+[13:50] I think it's the eggs and the mayonnaise burning that it because no one likes the smell of burnt eggs, I don't think. I think it's unpleasant. Because there's sulfur in it, too. Yeah, the burn is really nauseating. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[14:01] I think that's what it was that was killing it with the with the mayonnaise. You ever gone swimming in a sulfur spring before? I I have I gone swimming in a sulfur spring. I've been next to a sulfur spring. Okay.
+
+[14:12] I don't know that I've gone swimming in one. Yeah, where do you go swimming in a sulfur spring? In fl in Florida, this is sulfur springs. Isn't that all of Florida? One big sulfur hole, isn't it?
+
+[14:22] Because it's it's hell, right? No offense, Florida. No offense. It's uh it's quite nice. Whenever I used to visit my grandparents and had to drink the water.
+
+[14:33] Oh my god. That that smell, that Florida water smell. Right from the Everglades. Yeah. Does anyone have really really awesome municipal water in Florida?
+
+[14:45] Like is anyone like I love my water. Uh in Gainesville, there's uh it's all fed, all the water is from the springs. Oh, all right. That's probably fine then. Yeah.
+
+[14:52] All right. All right. Yeah. All right. Uh what else you guys got?
+
+[14:58] Anyone else got anything uh fun? What about you, molecules? Anything good? I I got what? I got something fun.
+
+[15:04] All right, go. I got some fun. I was just judge at the Los Angeles International Olive Oil competition this past week in Pomona, California. Oh, this is Nick, by the way, not molecules. Yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
+
+[15:16] And we tasted h hundreds of olive oils from both hemispheres, and we do double blind tastings where they come out with a number and a blue glass and we just analyze the smell and taste and decide if it's defect if there's any defects that gets eliminated from the competition, and then we rate them basically bronze, silver, or gold, or best in class. And then at the end, all the ones that are best in class, we taste back to back to turn to determine which is truly like the the cleanest, most uh transparent, dynamic, vibrant oil. Did you do it old school Iron Chef where you bit into a bell pepper and you asked which olive oil rema uh it will be supreme? That's the best, right? When he bites into that bell pepper for no reason.
+
+[15:59] Remember that? Um I did not do that. No. Next time. Next time.
+
+[16:05] You need to say whose cuisine will reign supreme, and then you bite into an apple. You never did that? That's the best. We do use apples and plain Greek yogurt as palate cleansers before we then sip sparkling water, which scrubs the tongue. I didn't mean to say I didn't mean to say apple.
+
+[16:24] He does it to a, I believe, a green bell pepper. Uh but uh let me ask this. So no one who does what's the name of that fancy pro fusty oil that where they they they purpose fussed it? What's that? What's that oil called?
+
+[16:38] It's called fruit noir, it's a proven sol style of oil where they create a self-induced defect to give the aroma and taste of olive tapan. I like how you still have to call it a defect, but even though they're doing it on purpose. So but no one who does that kind of style would dare show their face like this because they'd be just immediately chucked, right? That's so interesting you bring this up because I was speaking to the president of the LA olive oil competition, and we were talking about the possibility next year to create a sector within the competition of virgin olive oils, not extravagant, which would allow a certain amount of that to be graded and judged because there is a culinary applicability of these virgin olives. Right.
+
+[17:27] But would anyone be willing to judge it on its own merits rather than on like a predetermined set of what's right and what's wrong? Like, is there space in your in not you personally, because I know there is you personally, but is there space in your world for things that just happen to be delicious, right? As long as things are done purposely. It would have to because the extra virgin category has a very specific set of parameters, you would have to create a new category of virgin olive oils and have that be a different category than the extravergents. So yeah, it would be like the equivalent of like super Tuscan wine, right?
+
+[18:06] It doesn't fit into any of the categories, but people still like it and will pay for it. Exactly. And I think there's um not just for that fruit et noir style, but even like, you know, for co-packing for for packing fish or anchovies and stuff, a lot of people want a more affordable olive oil that's still has merit to it. And vir virgin is a great place to go for that. Yeah.
+
+[18:30] Um more question. So any huge surprises? Any like any anyone anyone who like you're like, oh, that was so much better than I thought it would be, or once it was unblinded, or anyone where you're like, oh my God, those guys like they make that garbage? Anything? Um well, we're as judges, like, we don't know.
+
+[18:51] Yeah, and and they they haven't announced the winners, so I I genuinely am tasting things double blind. I don't know the country of origin, I don't know the olive cultivars. It's truly on the smell and the taste and the harmony of both the smell and taste. Now let me ask you another let me ask you another question. Hold on second, one more question for before you go.
+
+[19:09] So I've heard from this guy named Nick Coleman that the color makes no difference to the oil at all, so why bother blinding you just because you might know what the cultivar is based on the color? Why blue glass it? No, it's a um you don't want uh the prejudice of color having a psychological impact of something. Um it's just judges don't trust themselves to not be prejudiced. I I get that.
+
+[19:35] I get that. I think we're inherently like it's almost like the more you know, the more you see, you know, if it looks really green psychologically in your mind, you might just be like, oh, this one's gonna be really grassy and herbaceous. Man, right, right. But it may not. Um, but from a from a from from an actual tasting standpoint, it makes perfect sense to remove all those variables.
+
+[19:54] I'm just curious, you know, I'm just curious, like what the, you know, what the what the read is. The other one, what percentage would you say were in order, were you like, oh, I'm pleasantly surprised that most of these are okay, or were you like, oh my God. Oh no. Oh no. Um in most olive o competitions, like 30 to 50% of the submissions are defective.
+
+[20:16] And it also depends on country, like olive oil competition after olive oil competition. Uh the country of Greece typically submits the most oils and wins the least awards. Hmm. Because people are prejudiced against Greek styles. No, it's because the mills are old and they're not necessarily they don't they don't have the sanitary practices of, say, parts of Italy.
+
+[20:41] And people develop what's known as a house palette, meaning there's so many islands there, they only eat their family's oil for generations, and they genuinely believe it's great, but it has all sorts of defects in it due to poor handling of fruit or transportation or poor milling or unfiltered, because unfiltered is not ideal. Right, but they like it that way. So like lambic beer is completely messed up, but people seem to like it, right? That's my I guess one of my core questions, right? If it's reproducibly the same, quote unquote poorly milled, and they know they like it that way, and it's not different from year to year, how is it not a valid style?
+
+[21:22] Um, you know, first of all, A, you can get used to anything. Ask Nastasi about working with me. B, um, you know, they can like it all they want and they can enjoy it and they can make it, but if you ascend it to a competition that has very strict sensory parameters that defines what it is to be a clean oil where the fruit wasn't damaged at any part of the process, then that you know it's not the place to send that type of oil. All right. Yeah.
+
+[21:56] It's like a corked bottle of wine. Some people may like it, but it's not produced accurately, and that doesn't help a consumer who's in a store, you know, trying to buy a real bottle of extravagant olive oil. Because the problem is if you buy that and it doesn't taste good, then you end up using less of it. You end up kind of getting turned off to the olive oil sector. So, you know, it's important when people buy something real that it tastes great because it'll make them use more of it.
+
+[22:24] All right. Let me ask you, uh, I had I had one more follow-up on this, and now you get you've uh your your your mellifluous response has uh erased erased my mind. Uh but oh wait, olive oil, false, olive oil. Uh it'll come to me eventually. Anything else uh fun that they did who was there?
+
+[22:43] Did was McGee there? Was McGee one of the judges? No, he didn't. Did he come down? McGee was there hanging out in the Gee for a few days.
+
+[22:49] It was pretty fun. Yeah, yeah. I remember when he first started doing those things, that's when he started calling us low-quality individuals for liking the fustiness. He's like, You can't like that, Dave. He's like, you should not like that.
+
+[23:01] That stuff's garbage. That's trash. You don't let anyone tell you anything that you should or shouldn't like. Okay. I don't know.
+
+[23:09] Okay. Uh man, I wish I could remember the question I had about olive oil for you. Oh well. What about you, Jack? You got anything?
+
+[23:18] Anything fun? Are you in Los Angeles now? Where are you? So Yeah, I'm in LA. Um, and I was making uh Kung Pao chicken recipe.
+
+[23:29] Realized I was out of peanuts and went to my local Erawan, which is a very overpriced boutique grocery store. And the only thing they had was something called jungle peanuts. Oh my goodness. I was curious if you had heard of these before. It was like not.
+
+[23:47] I don't know. Like $16 for you know, a package of peanuts. Um, and they claimed to be some kind of heirloom nut, wildcrafted and some by some tribe in the Amazon. Um in the Amazon? I was just upset I had to spend so much on peanuts.
+
+[24:01] Yeah, I I don't know. I've never had they look kind of like burnt, they're like they're dark. Uh-huh. How'd they taste? Fine.
+
+[24:12] Not not worth all the money I spent. I've I've only ever once spent an exorbitant amount of money on a peanut and been happy about it. But they used the best strategy ever. And I think I said this on the air when it first happened. Like, I walked into a pharmacy in Catona, which is an overpriced town in Westchester where everything's overpriced in Catone anyway.
+
+[24:33] You know what I mean? And I walked into the pharmacy, and it was some unconscionable amount of money for a can of peanuts, but they had a crap load of these cans of peanuts, like a crap load of them. Virginia peanuts. I never had a Virginia peanut before. Which by the way, you don't need to grow in Virginia, it's a variety.
+
+[24:47] They're big. And I said, What are these so special? Why do these cost so much money? Person looks me dead in the eye and goes, if you don't want to buy it, don't buy it. I was like, oh crap, I'm buying this.
+
+[24:59] You know what I mean? Like if they're not selling it at all, you know what I mean? If they're like, don't buy it. I'm like, I'm gonna buy this. That I was like, that is a genius sales technique.
+
+[25:07] And you know what? Best peanuts. Best, amazing peanuts. And that, you know, Nastasia knows because I talk about it all the time. Like, we would buy Virginia peanuts for remember we used to buy uh tins of Virginia peanuts for chefs and whatnot, Stas?
+
+[25:21] Yeah, oh yeah. I love a Virginia peanut. They're good. Oh, uh speaking of good, next week we have uh we she rescheduled, I forget what happened. Something happened.
+
+[25:31] Uh uh Carolyn Schiff, pastry chef Carolyn Schiff. So uh make get all your pastry related questions in uh quickly. I can't how much was this thing of peanuts you bought, Jack? And how much how big a unit was it? It was at least like $15.
+
+[25:48] And it maybe, maybe like eight ounces. Oh my god. And they were burnt? Or they just looked burnt? Not burnt.
+
+[25:55] No, they're darker. Um darker meaning meaning like all the nuance has been roasted out of them. They just tasted like roast. Uh no, here it says. It says uh beautiful to behold.
+
+[26:09] They're long and lean with a deep chocolate colored stripe. I mean, that sounds good, but it's not like if it doesn't taste $18. It's just just you're saying it's $36 a pound. You're telling me it's $36 a pound. Yeah.
+
+[26:25] Think of what you can buy for $36 a pound, right? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that's I don't know. Jack, where are you in the in the peanut in the peanut pantheon? If I'm gonna put in front of you, I mean, obviously, you eat a salted nut.
+
+[26:39] I'm not even gonna like, I'm not even gonna come in, please. Right. But if I'm gonna put a dry roast nut and a not dry roast and like a regular, like, you know, the smooth ones, would you go for the dry roast or would you go for the smoothies? Ooh, uh I'd go for the dry roasted. Really?
+
+[27:00] Really? I think so. I like dry roast. I like it, but like the problem is that when you pound so much of them, it shreds your mouth up. You know what I mean?
+
+[27:08] Oh, that's true. Yes. I do like a dry roast. So in a mix, do you prefer a dry roast in a mix with other nuts, which are almost always typically, which are actual nuts? Obviously, everyone knows peanuts, legum, not a nut.
+
+[27:20] You know what I mean? Uh but yeah, I mean, but so you like a dry roast in a mix. Where's everyone else on the dry roast, not dry roast uh spectrum? I'm into dry roast, but I'm I I I don't um I like all nuts. Yeah, yeah, I put them on my hand, and I'm just wow, I got some nuts here actually for you.
+
+[27:41] Really? I tried getting some of those gluten-free peanut pretzels, I couldn't find them anymore. Yeah, we see with the pret pretzels shortage, it's like the eggs, it's just like eggs, egg prices gone through the roof. Maybe pretzel. Yeah, weird.
+
+[27:52] So, what nuts did you bring? Cashews. Oh, I love a cashew. Yeah, I can break them up. Let me tell you something about cashews.
+
+[27:58] I feel bad for the people that have to get the nuts out because it's like caustic to their hands. They have to wear gloves. It's like it's pretty hardcore. I've actually never seen the cashew shells. They're pretty tough.
+
+[28:09] Well, you so you've never seen the cashew fruit? The the cashew nut is like sticking out of the bottom of it. It looks really weird. And the cashew apple, which is the thing on top of it, is also used as uh ingredient, but it's like it's uh um causes dermatitis. So the people who like have to decashew it, I think they have to wear gloves or get inured to it or not be reactive to it or something.
+
+[28:34] The cash is gone very expensive. I think they're expensive because they're delicious. They taste real good. I have to say, you know what? I'm not a huge, I'm I'm never like, you know what I need?
+
+[28:44] I need a Brazil nut. Oh, now you I love Brazil nuts. I don't hate Brazil nuts. Yeah, yeah. Well, they look like lava rocks.
+
+[28:53] Do you know that every well, I don't know. I don't know if it's still true, but every year people are killed by Brazil nuts. Killed. Falling out of the bush? The w the trees are insanely tall, and the nuts come a bunch of those big things to a pod, and so it's the things fall like a hundred feet out of the sky, and like, and that's it.
+
+[29:13] Gravity. You know what I mean? It's like that guy in uh Jersey who was killed like six years back when a tape measure fell off of a uh a construction site, which is why you need to always wear a hard hat in a construction zone. You know what I mean? And tie with it to your waist.
+
+[29:28] Yeah, well, I mean, I feel I'm sure that whoever dropped the uh tape measure felt terrible. But it's like wear a hard hat in a construction zone, people. You know what the thing is, is that like it's like everything else. It's like you know, booker, booker, right? So, oh my god, you know how much you lose when you clean a box of squid?
+
+[29:44] Because I had this old boxes. You know how it you know how it's it's hard to buy squid cleaned nowadays? Uh it used to be easy to find boxes of clean squid that you could just cut into rings and tentacles and then, you know, maybe you know, and then fry them, right? You know, I I buttermilk brine them to make sure that they don't get hard because the acid breaks down the thing, blah blah. Then you know, bread fry.
+
+[30:04] So Booker made me buy the unclean squid, and then I found a box of clean squid, so then I bought made that, and then he had so he cleaned it. So much loss out of that, so much loss out of the squid. Do you clean the beak? It's called the beak, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[30:19] Come on. You gotta take the pen out, the beak out, and you gotta rip off the the uh the skin, you know. It's a hassle, it's disgusting. And squid guts smell disc used ing. They're disgusting.
+
+[30:31] It's called chum. Yeah, it's just gross. In your house, it's just gross. I don't even know why. Was I talking about squid?
+
+[30:37] How do we get from nuts to squid? Brazil nuts. What? Does anyone like honey roasted peanuts? Oh, yeah.
+
+[30:47] I was gonna go into the so do you like a flavored nut? Do you like a hot nut or a honey roasted nut? And what about yeah? Okay, you know what's a delicious candy. Honey roasted is great.
+
+[30:56] A delicious candy is a French burnt peanut where it's got that weird coating on the outside. Yeah, it's better than the Boston baked bean one, which are always stale. But those those French burnt peanuts, I think put peanut MMs to shame. No offense, peanut MM. A French burnt peanut.
+
+[31:11] I love those things. Oh my god. You know what I like at weddings? I like Jordan Almonds. Oh, I love Jordan Almonds.
+
+[31:19] Suck on them all day long. Yeah, those things are good. Oh, you just man, you brought so many uh the peanut butter parfait from Dairy Queen. Oh, I never had that. Oh I never had that.
+
+[31:31] Uh the local Dairy Queen when I was a kid in Englewood got into a fight with the Dairy Queen Corporation and had to take the word dairy Queen off, and I forget what they changed their name to. Like Deer Equab or something like that. They changed it to some crazy name because they couldn't call themselves Dairy Queen anymore. Anyway. All right, let's get some questions because we have a whole bunch of them.
+
+[31:50] Lionel Hutz, I was recently says, I was recently gifted a Magnolite eight-quart aluminum roaster. Magnolite was the one that came up on the last show, by the way. I couldn't remember the name of the Cajun cookware. Magnolite is the one. Eight-quart aluminum roaster, which is relatively small because Magnolites can get huge, right?
+
+[32:06] Uh for frying and whatnot. Uh, I think I've heard you talk about them on the show before. I bake bread at home and was thinking it might be worth a shot to try to use the magnolite to bake a loaf of bread instead of the heavy Dutch oven that I normally use. Any idea if this might be possible? And if so, how to approach it?
+
+[32:20] I assume my normal strategy uh would need to be different based on using aluminum versus cast iron, but I'm not sure where to start. Here's the problem, Lionel. Uh Magnolite is has a very low emissivity. And what what that means is is that almost all of the radiant energy from the oven is gonna be reflected off of the magnolite. And so it's gonna be very hard to brown inside of uh the magnolite because you're only getting conduction and it's difficult to load heat into the magnolite uh as quickly, even though aluminum is great at conducting heat.
+
+[32:56] If you had uh uh an aluminum with a black coating on it, if you were to spray paint, right, the uh bottom of the mag, which don't do this, but if you were to spray paint the bottom of the magnolite black and then spray paint, well, spray paint the whole outside of the magnolite black, and then spray paint um don't do the lid, I'll tell you why in a second. And spray paint the inside walls black, right? So that they radiated towards your thing. I'm sure you could do a great job. It would work better than a Dutch oven.
+
+[33:23] In fact, maybe it'd be too good. It might transmit too much energy uh to the bread. I bake, uh I do a lot of baking where I'll use something that is a very high emissivity, like that absorbs a lot of radiation underneath uh the loaf, and then I'll cover it with something that is very low uh emissivity, and I'll get an initial rise without setting the uh crust too much, and then I'll pull that off. So I'll use like a stainless steel aluminum uh sorry, stainless steel salad bowls. I'll put them over the bread on top of a baking stone or a baking steel and for 15 minutes, and that's how I'll do my initial oven spring.
+
+[34:00] And you can get really good oven spring out of it. The downside is that because there's uh not that much heat transmission through the low emissivity thing, your crust tends to not be as um uh thick or crispy. So you have to sometimes put it in the oven again after it comes out because uh the crust isn't as thick and it won't be as hard. So anytime you're using low emissive uh emissivity, you're probably gonna get less evaporation off the crust. Uh you'll still get the steam trapped in there, but I would say maybe use it upside down on top of a steel, right?
+
+[34:33] And then pull it off and and see how see how that works. But uh I think you're gonna have some troubles getting it um properly brown all the way around, which is the problem most people have. People used to do roast turkeys in those things, and they're always a little wan, a little sallow uh on the outside because of that. Anyway, was that a decent answer, folks? Is that all right?
+
+[34:51] Is that right? Mm-hmm. All right. Elsie writes in, I think it's LC, maybe it's else. E L-C-E.
+
+[34:57] What do you think? Else or L C else? L C else. I don't know. Uh I'm working on an art project with some friends and have the slightly hare-brained notion to try to create a large cubic souffle for an event on 18th of February.
+
+[35:10] When is that? That's soon. Uh, is this physically possible? Doesn't it need to be a perfect cube and have the and uh and have the skills uh blah, blah, to fabricate a pan dish in which it can be cooked. Ideally, we're thinking somewhere around 50 centimeters cubed, that's 20 inches for you English unit.
+
+[35:24] Folks, we should just call them American units. The English don't use those units anymore. You know what I mean? Mercan, American units. It's about 20 inches, people.
+
+[35:31] Uh is there any way that eggs alone could support this scale? Uh if not, is there a product that could be added to support the structure, or could this uh structure be supported internally to rise around, i.e., some cylindrical metal pillars could also be used to help distribute heat to the center and cook internally. Thanks for your thoughts. Well, the second part, I think I think you should be able to get people regularly make them that are like 12. You're talking like 20, which is over twice.
+
+[35:55] And I think the main issue and what I don't know, and you might have to run some experiments, it's all gonna have to do with whether souffles are a closed cell foam or an open cell foam. In bread, right, it doesn't take uh normally if you take a solid thing like meat, right, and you double the amount of uh uh sp uh linear area, a linear um distance that the heat has to penetrate, you're multiplying the cooking time by a factor of four, right? And so when you're doing right, so that's how it should work. Anytime that you're doubling the length the heat is traveling through, you're multiplying by four. Notice bread doesn't work that way because what happens with bread is after the initial expansion, the cells start popping, and then it's fundamentally an open channel where steam can very quickly equilibrate.
+
+[36:45] That's why you can cook a really large loaf of bread in under an hour, right? Well, you're well under an hour, like, you know, if you wanted to, right? Sometimes you want to cook it longer to get the crust. Whereas banana bread, which has a closed cell foam, right, that uh takes like 55 to 60 minutes to cook, right? Because it takes a long time for the heat to travel through because it's not as opened cell.
+
+[37:07] So I don't know how, and look at a popover. A popover can cook alm almost, you know, very, very quickly because it's got one giant bubble, and then the steam can go through it all around it and cook it, right? So I think the problem you're gonna have is you have to figure out whether a souffle, and I wasn't able to figure it out on a very quick Google search, whether it's an open cell or a closed cell foam. If it's a closed cell foam or acts like a closed cell foam, it's gonna take too long for the center to cook or or get enough structure that you're gonna be able to get it out. In which case, as you say, I'm pretty sure that you could take a cube and then make a small, you know, make a uh a hole in the middle, as long as air can get to it and you know, from underneath, almost like a like a bunt pan, like a square bunt pan, right?
+
+[37:50] And then I think you shouldn't have uh any issues. It should be fine. The the product itself, I don't think you're gonna get that much extra actual physical pressure from that height. Um you might want to stabilize the egg whites a little bit, but I think you know it should work. But please run a test.
+
+[38:04] Never have the first time you do something like this be when you need to do it. I cannot stress this enough. You know how you watch TV shows and like, you know, they it's like uh, I don't know, some some some sort of version of a chef contest show, and the producers are like, you need to use some crazy technique that looks good on TV. And then the poor cook, who I'm sure is a great cook when they're cooking the stuff that they know how to cook, is like, I'm gonna use this wacky technique that I've never used before. And then they're like, lo and behold, it doesn't work.
+
+[38:36] Oh. You know what I mean? And that's always the way it is. So if you if you don't do something like this uh like cold once, like you know, do the do some tests. Does that make sense?
+
+[38:48] I looked at a couple square souffles, by the way, smaller ones. Be aware that you're not gonna get like super flat square coming up. You're gonna get some doming on the square. Be aware of that. Just you know, be aware.
+
+[39:02] Uh that makes sense, guys. Is that enough of a was that a decent answer or no? I have no idea. No, there's no one. All right, fine.
+
+[39:09] All right. Uh Alexander uh Camarata says, I'm going on a bike packing trip next week, and I have access to a freeze-dryer, presumably not on the bike. Uh, any recommendations on what I should prepare? Well, okay, I've never done a lot of tests of, I mean, uh, you know who knows about this is Jackie Molecules. Jackie Molecules knows about freeze-dried products to take on camping trips.
+
+[39:33] But um, I have only ever done freeze-dried stuff to try to determine whether it would be good on its own, not whether it is good to rehydrate. I would assume that most people who are taking things on backpacking, bike packing, bike, whatever, camping, whatever you're gonna call it, are willing to rehydrate the product and not having to eat it as is. And I have a lot less experience with that. When you want to eat something directly from freeze-dried, uh, do you remember those tests we ran, Nastasia? How gross some of those things were freeze-dried, if you just eat them as is.
+
+[40:12] Yeah. Yeah. My my least favorite thing, I think, maybe ever. I freeze-dried some oysters. And you oysters don't have a lot of fat, right?
+
+[40:25] So if you're gonna freeze-dry something and you're gonna eat it without rehydrating it, um, it either needs to have something that melts in your mouth like sugar, which is why fruits work well, right? Or it needs to have something that has some lubricity to it, right? It needs to have some fat in it. Because if you just take an oyster, it's like it's like it was like the dry, it was both the driest and like most ocean. It's like sucking, it was like imagine the ocean mixed with the desert in your mouth, and that's what it was like.
+
+[41:00] It was like somehow the driest and also like the just off-putting, the most off-putting, one of the more off-putting. I mean, I've made some terrible things when I've testing before, but it was real bad. Whereas kilbasa, freeze-dried kilbasa, that tastes good. Freeze-dry kielbasa is good. I never tried rehydrating it, but freeze-dry kilbasa, I could just eat that.
+
+[41:22] We were gonna make a snack mix at existing conditions because we had a freeze dryer, and so we were freeze-drying all of this stuff. And yeah, to me, the one that pops in my mind as being delicious was the kilbasa. But I don't know what's good for rehydrating. Uh, Jack, you got any uh good freeze-dry products that you like to rehydrate on your on your uh camping? I mean, yeah, like you know, the stuff, the mountain house adventure stuff was fine.
+
+[41:44] And like I said, nothing really like blew me away, though. So I'm kind of still in search of this as well. Yeah, still in search. Yeah, like uh, I don't know. What would be the best to bring?
+
+[41:55] Because you don't have to freeze dry. I I wonder what's worse. Powdered eggs or freeze-dried eggs. Well, is is is jerky not freeze-dried, or that's just dry. It's just dry aged.
+
+[42:06] So the the advantage of freeze-drying is that um it maintains its structure so it doesn't compress. Uh, and what that means is is that it can rehydrate very quickly, right? So, you know, it absorbs water, you know, and and goes back to its initial initial shape. Once something is standard dried, it never reinflates to its original volume, with certain exceptions. Mushrooms are very good at drying, right?
+
+[42:31] Freeze-dried ice cream. I like freeze-dried ice cream. Yeah, NASA. Yeah, NASA. You know, those astronauts, uh, you know, whatever.
+
+[42:40] That's the one thing they got. Although, like when I was a kid, I was like, this sucks, it's not cold. But now I love it, right? When I was a kid, I was like, ice cream used to be cold jerks. That's what I mean.
+
+[42:48] That's pretty much actually probably what I said. You know what I mean? But I like the okay, so there's two kinds of freeze-dried ice creams. When I was a kid that they sell at the National Air Space Museum. When I was a kid, all they had were the blocks of the Neapolitan.
+
+[43:03] You know what I'm talking about? Uh yeah. Now they do freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches. Yeah, that's the classic. Now they do freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches.
+
+[43:11] And I have to say, I love an ice cream sandwich, but I've never tried the freeze-dried ones. I mean, I love ice cream sandwiches. So have you tried adding um uh a moisture to it? No, but it would melt, I assume. I guess it would.
+
+[43:23] It would melt, I hope. Unless they stabilize it with something. Cool. How could you reh that'd be interesting? How do you rehydrate freeze-dried ice cream without melting it?
+
+[43:33] How do you like get the water back in? Well, I think they were just they were just they would just dissolve, wouldn't it? Well, yeah, but there's gotta be a way. Milkshakes. Freeze dried milkshake is just powder.
+
+[43:45] Actually, it's powder. You can't get the structure right. Imagine like a cup like full of like freeze dried milkshake, and then you're like, Well, am I gonna do with this? What am I gonna do with this? Anyway.
+
+[43:55] Uh Misos by Bezos writes in how much time do I have left? Because this is gonna take the whole thing. Listen, let's get me okay. I'm gonna get back to the super process thing because I I could go on for that forever. But remind me at the end to just go crazy on the on the super processed, all right?
+
+[44:09] Um Josh S writes what? Sorry, could I interrupt for a moment for uh a special announcement from a friend of the show? And now an announcement about our friend Richie and the Koji. Koji, Koji, Koji. Koji.
+
+[44:28] All right, go. Yeah, Rich was Rich was gonna call in the other day, but uh scheduling didn't work out. So he just wanted us to share uh the news about uh Koji Khan, which is an online fermentation conference. It starts February 20th, so it's pretty soon. Um they can go to KojiCon.org.
+
+[45:03] Right. So if you if you don't know, uh Rich uh she and Jeremy Umansky wrote uh you know the the first and maybe still I don't know if it's still the only, but the first book really on just Koji fermentation. Uh we had them on the show a couple years ago. Check that out. They're on the old Voldemort network they were on when they were on, but you gotta go check it out.
+
+[45:24] Uh and uh yeah, his uh his what's it called? Instagram handle, I think is our cook quest, correct? And go check them out. Rich is good people, and if anyone knows their stuff on Koji fermentation, it's Rich, so go check out his conference, right? Yeah, and they're yeah, they're Rich and Jeremy are presenting, as well as uh Sandor Kent, David Zilber, a lot of a lot of uh former guests, yeah.
+
+[45:51] Two other great fermentation people. Nope, there's no one else. Just kidding. I'm just kidding. Just kidding.
+
+[45:57] Yeah, we've had all those people on the show. Yeah, very good. Is uh is uh Ariel doing anything? Uh I don't know if the top my head. If not, that's an oversight.
+
+[46:09] To get Arielle on that. We need to have her back on the show. Haven't had Arielle in a while on the show. Love Ariel. All right.
+
+[46:16] Uh Josh S. writes in. Is that all we got, Quinn on that? Are we good on that? Yeah, I think so.
+
+[46:22] All right. Uh Josh S. writes in. You know that uh freaking John, and not here, I'm gonna talk smack about him. Named his dog Koji.
+
+[46:30] His dog's name is Koji. What do you think about that, Stas? I think it's lovely. I think it's lovely. When was the last time you've ever said?
+
+[46:43] I'm trying to figure it out. Like I'm fine with what you're saying, but I'm saying, when was the last time that phrase ever came out of your mouth? I don't think I've ever heard you use that phrase before, but I'm liking it. I think it's lovely. Yeah.
+
+[46:54] No, you know how I feel about the dogs. Yeah, yeah, I do. I know how I feel about the dog. I think it's lovely. All right.
+
+[47:03] Uh maybe it's named after OG Kondo, who is the composer for all the famous Nintendo games. Wow. I I know I did not know that. Uh so what is your favorite use of the like Mario Brothers theme? For me, it's the Super Brooklyn song.
+
+[47:24] You know that song Super Brooklyn? No. Yes. Yeah, Super Brooklyn's a great song. But they the at the time that they were calling themselves, because I think they were sued or something, they they were calling themselves Coco Brovas.
+
+[47:39] Super Brooklyn. Check out that song. It is a good song. It's all Nintendo in the back. Like that's like the main sample is been.
+
+[47:48] And it's like Yeah, that's not the sample they were using, Joe. Um I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh those themes are like the jazz standards of our time.
+
+[48:03] Wait, let me I need you to say I I heard what you said, but I need you to repeat it one more time. Those themes are like the jazz standards of our time. Wow. Wow. Oh no.
+
+[48:21] Are you uh are you an 8-bit like uh are are do you get on stage with your game boy and do all the modified Game Boy stuff? My friend Damon Harjoe Rogo does uh some of that 8-bit stuff. Are you uh you an 8-bit music fan? That stuff is cool, but like I I've seen like I'll go to jazz clubs, like you go to small jazz club or something, and like in the middle of a jam session, they'll just kind of bust into like the Legend of Zelda theme, like, and then they'll they'll go into it and then they'll go out of it because it's just like a sound that the world over identifies with. And these things are really like powerful, they're beautiful compositions.
+
+[48:59] Okay. Well, let me okay, one one more before we let it go, then. What are your thoughts about some of the early games that used actual jazz songs in their theme? I'm thinking of Spy Hunter using Peter Gunn theme. Uh sick, right?
+
+[49:15] That was sick. Yeah. Um what is it, Nick? I don't know. I lost.
+
+[49:27] Uh Spy Hunter, hard to emulate. I know that none of you out there are illegally emulating games, eight-bit games with your meme consoles. I know none of you have done this before, but if you were to do it, Spy Hunter very hard because it has a lot of non-standard controls. Right? Same way that Star Wars is hard because it's hard to mimic the vectors well, and it's got weird controls.
+
+[49:50] And Cinestar has weird controls. Not that I'm advocating that you illegally work on eight-bit games. Ooh, what do you're not gonna get into it? Uh we don't have time to talk about, we don't have time to talk about video game sound systems. You know that Berserk, remember Berserk?
+
+[50:06] Of course I do. With Otto, the head that bounces across. They spent a lot of extra money getting it so that they can make those human, you know, intruder alert, intruder, alert. That was all the money to fit that into a tiny 8-bit chip. Like that was huge technology at the time.
+
+[50:22] Stop the humanoid, stop the chicken. Remember that? Anyway, love that. Love it. Love it.
+
+[50:29] Uh, okay. Josh S. writes in uh I've recently discovered that certain mustards, specifically processed ones, and especially yellow powdered, give me insane heartburn and gastrointestinal distress. I can eat other brassicas and things like black mustard seed with no issue. Any idea why this would be the case?
+
+[50:47] I'd originally intended to make this the year of mustard, but it's clear I will have to find another thing to pursue. Well, Josh, uh, I was a little stumped because you said powdered mustard also did it. So I was like, maybe uh the problem is with turmeric, which is in a lot of yellow prepared mustards. Maybe it's vinegar. And then I came across this paper.
+
+[51:03] You ready for it? Here it is. Ready? A comprehensive review on mustard-induced allergy and the implications for human health. Uh the lead as 2019.
+
+[51:13] The lead author is uh uh uh um Akan, I wait, Akan Akanksha Sharma, uh 2019. And it turns out that yellow mustard, right? Uh synapsis alba has a um an allergen in it, uh sin A1, right? And actually that's the biggest one, but there's also Cin A2, CINA3, and CINA4 that are primarily in yellow mustard seed and aren't in brown or black mustard seed. Uh the you know, the main allergen, a possible allergen in them is Bra J1, Brah J1, B-R-A-J1.
+
+[51:50] Uh so check out that paper, and it could be that in fact you are uh having a reaction to these um these things that are fundamentally only in yellow mustards. That's interesting, and I learned something new. So check out her paper, and uh, you know, there. I didn't know turmeric was in it was in yellow mustard. A lot of yellow mustards get that punchy, punchy yellow color from added uh turmerically.
+
+[52:12] I think you're your French is I'm I'm allergic to turmeric. It gives me kidney stones. Really? Yes. So look at look on your mustard packs.
+
+[52:19] You know what I mean? Uh a lot of especially ballpark must style mustards. So if you're doing like your whole mustards or your other things, they a lot of they don't have that. Like it's mainly like vinegar and mustard water. Really?
+
+[52:33] That's it. What the hell, man? Are you lower east side manly? I grew up in Florida, man. Did they have that down there?
+
+[52:38] Is that yeah? We used to get it imported. No crap. That mighty fine chocolate pudding. We didn't have it down south.
+
+[52:46] Really? Okay, okay, okay. Let me ask you. Let me ask you this. Do you get the Kadem grape juice down there?
+
+[52:52] Oh, yes. Go Kadem. Cadem was Kadem is the Concord grape juice of record here in the Lower East Side. You know what I mean? They make a cough syrup?
+
+[53:02] No, but they should. You know, I visited their uh their places in the Hudson Valley and I visited, and they have all sorts of weird flavors that you're not used to if you go to the Kadem quote like quote unquote winery. I guess they make us, but like, you know, I was like, where are all the juices? You know what I mean? Because they also make like a Concord wine, I think, or something like this.
+
+[53:19] But yeah, so you can stop by the Kadem place, and the lady behind the counter doesn't care. She doesn't care. You know what I mean? It's not just it's not her, it's not her thing to care about whether you care about her stuff. That's not what she's about.
+
+[53:31] Um Kurt Gibson writes in. Uh apologize, uh, if this has been asked or answered already. I'm a few episodes behind. Who isn't? Uh wanted to see if there's an update on the next generation of spinzalls.
+
+[53:43] I'll be open, I'll be helping open the bar within the next four to six months. I was hoping to get one. Hey, it's a little bit early, Kirk, but uh, I'd say within what do you think? What do you think Quinn and Stas? Ten months?
+
+[53:54] 10? I hope so. Yes. Yeah, Quinn didn't sound so Quinn didn't sound so certain. He gave me an er.
+
+[54:04] He gave me an err. You don't think 10, Quinn? They're supposed to make it this year. They're supposed to make it this year. Yeah.
+
+[54:14] Right? They're supposed to make it this year. So maybe ship early next year. They're supposed to make it before lunar new year of next lunar new year. So we'll we'll see, right?
+
+[54:25] That's like uh I'm I might go to China uh now that things are relaxed in May, because uh the liquid intelligence uh was translated into um Chinese in in simplified characters so that you know people on the mainland can read it. And uh so I might go then and then I can stop by and you know stop by the factory and see see how it's going. Um anyway, uh so we'll see. Was that a good enough answer, guys? Was that good enough?
+
+[54:56] Mm-hmm. All right. Uh Daniel Ramirez says, hey, can uh Dave just talk about glute gluten and different flower strengths for as long as possible until the hammer just kills him over the zoom. So I'll do that along with the other super processed question because again, that will take up the rest of the time, uh, which we don't have that much left. Dave Kleinman said, uh, okay, what's the recipe uh for the sauce to marinate and based authentic Chinese spare heads without any pre-made jars of sauce?
+
+[55:21] I seem to remember apples are involved. I'm not an expert in this, Dave. So and uh and when you said it, have we ever had an expert in that kind of cuisine on the show? If not, that's a huge hole. And I'm assuming you mean like I don't know if you mean Chinese Chinese or whether you mean Chinese American, but we need to get some guests on for that.
+
+[55:39] So, you know, John and you know, Quinn and get get together and get get someone on who's an expert in that. You know what I'm saying? Uh, because I I hesitate to to say. Radar writes in years ago you mentioned a perfect temperature for souve eating carrots that would set them in a way so they would not become mushy with further cooking for stews and the like. I can't remember it.
+
+[55:57] What is it? It's about 65 degrees Celsius for about 15 minutes. Uh activates the pectin methyl esterase enzymes in the carrots. Uh depends on the size of the carrot, obviously, but once the center is up, having it go for about 15 minutes is uh enough. So you have to build in enough time for the carrot to heat through there.
+
+[56:13] If you really wanted to get hard, put some calcium in with that with that uh water. Uh but another thing you can do, any any temperature below, well, any temperature above that, the actual the look, the paper to read is pectin methylesterase catalyze firming effects on low temperature blanch vegetables by Lee Need, 2004, where uh they also discuss bok choy, Chinese cabbage, green bell pepper, sugar snap peas, and broccoli. Uh the the trick there is is that you don't want you want a high enough temperature that it makes it through in a reasonable amount of time. The actual enzyme works best at about 50 degrees Celsius. So 65 is what they do for carrots, where once it's up to temperature, about 15 minutes.
+
+[56:49] Uh but then if you let it ride for a long time, right, at lower temperatures, the color will punch up and it will also get sweeter over time if you want to pull play around with it. And no temperature below 85 will cause them to harden. So if you're doing your low temperature stews and you actually want the carrots to cook, then you have to actually pre-cook the carrots and then put them in. So it depends on what you're trying to do. All right.
+
+[57:13] Fuckjack. Uh I'm working with ground up chocolate because it's quicker to melt. Static electricity is my enemy. Yeah, it is. The usual way to fix it with coffee grounds is to miss water, but that's doom, doom for chocolate.
+
+[57:25] Is there a way to tamp static electricity down without moisture, especially when it's too late and I'm already shaking bits out of a pastry bag that are shooting all over the place? You know, I don't know. I don't think anyone makes a metallic pastry bag, right? Like the answer would be to put some metal on it, right? So that uh you couldn't build up static.
+
+[57:40] But I don't know. Maybe Carolyn Schiff will have some answers for us uh when she comes on next week. So we'll uh we'll ask her. Uh Jack Rieger, and and if anyone out there in Discord has an answer, let us know. Jack Rieger writes in.
+
+[57:51] I don't think this came up in the discussion with Dylan last week. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the picture you posted on Instagram where you had three glasses of tea that you stirred lightly, didn't stir and stirred vigorously. What were you experimenting with there? And what was the result? I asked because lately I've taken to stirring my tea to infuse it faster.
+
+[58:06] Tangentially related, I stirred Dashi packets in water instead of letting them sit for the same effect of faster infusion. Well, it's definitely true. The infusion is quite different. And uh I wasn't I didn't I don't remember whether the taste result was different, but everything makes it different. So I would do a side by side and uh taste.
+
+[58:21] I was just seeing how much different you would get with different stirring, and the answer was a lot. Um my gosh. Uh let me see. Uh tri-tip said recently started using cheesecloth hobo knapsack to wrap aromatics and miscellaneous chicken parts and bones for pressure cooked stock. I'm pretty happy with the results.
+
+[58:39] Clearish stock doesn't seem to be an appreciable reduction in concentration. Uh most of the fat and gacks stay in the knapsack. Is there a downside to this method? Not that I can think of. If uh if you're just doing, by the way, uh herbs, I tie them together with string because it's real easy to pull out and doesn't make a mess.
+
+[58:55] Uh on the question we had uh about flowers, Quinn, let's push that to uh Carolyn Schiff because we can talk about flowers with the pastry people and that makes uh sense. Zach from Pittsburgh wants to know what to do with uh his hand bone. And the answer, of course, is bean soup, Zach. Come on, man, you freeze the ham bone, and then when it's bean soup weather, you make bean soup, right? Split pea soup, bean soup, whatever.
+
+[59:19] What do you guys think? Split pea or beans? Split pea or bean. Split pea. All right.
+
+[59:24] Jeff Jeff's oh, Jeff says, how do you clean an induction cooktop without taking the markings off? I don't know, but Discord, hit me back because my induction doesn't have any markings on the top to clean off. So I just scrub the ever loving bejees out of it. Ian wants to know some uh things to do uh with a Searzol. He's been making chicken.
+
+[59:41] Uh he didn't have too much uh success. Sue V chicken isn't good with a searzole to crisp it because you actually need time to render the liquid out of the skin to get it to be crispy. We'll come up with some stuff uh and we'll talk about it next week. Uh Egos wants to know what the acceptable temperature, target temperature for a martini is. Uh cold.
+
+[59:59] Martini can be a lot colder than you think it is when you're stirring. Try to get it down to at least zero Celsius. If you go too much lower, it's going to be too diluted, but you can throw that sucker in the freezer and it'll still be fine. Dave, I don't know the diff climbing, I don't know the difference between ground bean uh sauce. I don't use it that much, but it's basically just another fermented bean sauce.
+
+[1:00:17] I have a bunch of other questions I need to get to. We'll get to the next time we have a no tangent. And I'm also gonna do Misos by Bizos questions on super processed food because I could literally rant about that for a half an hour. The whole term makes me angry. So we will get back to it on a future cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center in New Stan Studios. Join as usual behind me, I got uh John. John Hull, how you doing? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:22] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, everything good? Yeah, yeah. I can't complain.
+
+[0:25] Yeah. Rocking the panels here. We have uh Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing very well, man.
+
+[0:29] Great to see you. Yeah. Unfortunately, we do not have uh our other uh engineering team on right now, uh Jackie Molecules, because he's sick. He's got some sort of stomach bug. Go figure.
+
+[0:39] But we do have uh from Vancouver Island, Quinn, our upper, upper left-left correspondent. How you doing there, Quinn? I'm doing all right. Yeah, and I think back back in LA or still in Portland, Nastasia Lopez. I'm in LA.
+
+[0:53] I'm in LA. All right, cool. All right. Uh all right, and that's the that's the that's the crew. But before we uh do chit-chat, we're gonna do the new style and introduce our special guest.
+
+[1:02] We have Caroline Schiff, Pastry Chef Extraordinaire at Gage and Tolner, and uh author of the book, The Sweet Side of Sourdough. You might know her as at PastryShift on Instagram, which I was saying earlier is a fantastic uh what is that called? A handle? What is that called? Handle, yeah, it's a handle.
+
+[1:18] It's like C B radio, like a handle. Yeah. What's your 20? You know what I mean? Like that kind of stuff.
+
+[1:23] Yeah, yeah. I used to legitimately have a C B radio when I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah, and the truckers would be like, kid, get the hell off this radio. Like messing with trucker routes all over the country.
+
+[1:33] Yeah, we know kids are useless. We're useless. You know, uh anyway, so uh now's the portion of the show where we all say whether anything interesting to us uh interesting happened uh last week. Oh, anything interesting. By the way, you were supposed to come on before and we had to cancel, so I apologize.
+
+[1:53] And thanks for for coming on, you know, despite the fact that we had to cancel the first time around. Like I think it was basically day of we had to cancel. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, I had COVID. Oh, yeah, rocking rocking the cron there.
+
+[2:04] Yeah. Yeah. Was that your first time? No, that was the second time. We actually had our first bout, uh, a very light bout of it as soon as we came out of the hospital after having our son.
+
+[2:15] Oh. Touch of the COVID. Touch. Just a little touch of the COVID. So what do you what do you guys got?
+
+[2:20] Nastasi, let's go to that coast. Anything good. Uh no, I saw Jack last night, so I wonder what it was that got him. Oh, you know what that means. In a couple of minutes, you'll be set on spray.
+
+[2:32] Set on spray. I love it. Uh yeah. Yeah, I like all uh like uh Nastasi and I love it when the other one gets food poisoning because we get to discuss uh our uh all orifice uh evenings. You know what I mean?
+
+[2:46] Uh rice sauce? Yeah. You love it when I get it. You love it when I get a food poisoning. And uh you know you'd think I would get it more with how uncareful I am with what I eat.
+
+[2:55] You know what I mean? Anyway. The worst was when you were in Detroit, I think. We won't say which place, but you had some chicken. Well, that wasn't just poisoning, like like I woke up almost died.
+
+[3:08] Remember I like choked to death. Yeah, because it was it was so dry. I woke up and then like we like we were like joking that we were gonna like that he was literally trying to murder us with uh with chokey choking on that chicken. Choking on that sounds real bad. This sounds real bad.
+
+[3:26] Sounds real bad. I'm gonna knit nip it nip it right there. All right. Uh hey, John, I haven't spoken to you since uh you had your first Thanksgiving service at the restaurant. How how crappy was that?
+
+[3:37] Oh, it was not fun. I don't ever want to do a special event ever again. Oh gosh. So much work that goes into it. So few people ordered.
+
+[3:44] It was just like depressing. Yeah, not worth it. Yeah. Such a pain. Just even resetting the kitchen the next day took like an hour and a half.
+
+[3:57] It was really. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. Sensitive subjects, not fun. Don't want to do again, but obviously we'll have to.
+
+[4:03] All right. So Caroline, for a pastry, I mean, if if if it if anyone's gonna order a pastry, they're definitely gonna order one on Thanksgiving Valentine's Day. Is that is it do you hate it still or what is it? How does it feel as a pastry chef? Um I you know, I hate it in the sense that there's this expectation of like it's gotta be a chocolate dessert, it's gotta be red, like whatever.
+
+[4:25] But like, you know, it's it's always fun to be able to like do something different and like riff on the original menu a little bit. Um, but this year we just, you know, I find at Gage and Tolner, like people just want to come and order off of the Gage and Tolner menu. Like they get very excited to just like have that experience that they've been reading about. So um this year I just did, we just did these cute little like takeaway gifts, these like two little coffee cakes, and they were different. So the idea was that like you would get into an argument with your significant other over who got which one.
+
+[5:01] So you think the average person doesn't be like split it in half and be like, you take one. I would hope that they just caused fights. See, that's what I think that's what I I want people to fight over the coffee cake or the blood orange pound cake. Blood orange pound cake. Blood orange pound cake.
+
+[5:18] Yeah, but the coffee cake had a lot of strusel on it. And then you know, all right, Joe, which one would you go for? Uh coffee cake sounds my favorite. Yeah. But I do love blood orange.
+
+[5:34] Yeah. Yeah. And a pound cake. Yeah, one was a one was like an olive oil pound cake. Like, and one was uh, you know.
+
+[5:41] I've been reading recipes for pound cake recently where they uh whip the egg whites to get some of the stuff so you don't have to do as much creaming. What do you think? Bad idea? No, no, you could do that. Yeah, I like that.
+
+[5:50] Uh what about you, Stas? What are you gonna go for? Blood orange, blood orange. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we would get in a hard fight.
+
+[5:57] No, she would just take it. If we were at a restaurant, the Saser just take it and be like, here, I'm giving you this one. Aren't I nice? That's what she would do. Wow.
+
+[6:05] Yeah. But yeah, so my regret is like they were a take home, so we didn't get to witness any fights. You need a camera like that. Yeah, like that glitter bomb guy. Like, what about you, Quinn?
+
+[6:14] What's your what's your call? What do you what do you want? Uh probably a pancake also. Wow, wow. Okay, okay.
+
+[6:22] See, I was hoping you would write little mean messages, like mean Valentine's Day fortune cookies like you get nothing. Nothing. Next year we're gonna do that. Or just like write things that like incite, you know, really incite an argument. Like, you know, I don't know, why do you always take so long to respond to my text messages?
+
+[6:43] That kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like really like just like get it all out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get people to talk about their or what if you just write something ominage ominous on the package, like careful.
+
+[6:56] You sure? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Like, you're like, what? What?
+
+[7:01] But I think you need to mess with people on a Valentine's Day. You have to. Let's face it, they're not your regulars. No. No offense to people who go out on Valentine's Day.
+
+[7:08] But you know what I'm saying. It's just a ridiculous holiday, you know. You know, you gotta have a little fun with it. Although I have to say, I did start dating my wife on a Valentine's Day. But it was by mistake.
+
+[7:23] It was just it just so happened. By mistake. I mean, it was one of those. You know how you ever go on a 24-hour date? And the second second half of the 24 hours is Valentine's Day.
+
+[7:34] Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[7:36] It was a mistake. It was a mistake. And it was romantic. It was snowing. That's cute.
+
+[7:41] Yeah. All right. You're like. And it worked out. You're like, no.
+
+[7:45] No. Yeah, yeah. That was that was 30. What was it? 92.
+
+[7:50] So that was 31 years ago. Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't really celebrate it that much.
+
+[7:55] Because you know, once you have, once you have the two kids and the two dogs and like, you know, life and all that, you're like, we put up, we make little things like with the nieces and and nephews. Yeah. Little gotsies. You know, they go around the house. You know what I mean?
+
+[8:07] Yeah. Yeah. Uh if you're listening live, it means you're listening on Patreon, and you can call your questions in too 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Any pastry or non-related pastry or sourdough questions, any kind of question.
+
+[8:21] Uh baked Alaska question, perhaps. Your baked Alaska's are banana llama ding-dong. What is it with those, like with those peaks? Like, what made you want to do that? And then like they've gone crazy.
+
+[8:29] People love that crap. I know. Well, I wanted it to look like me. Like, I wanted it to be just like, you know, like my hair is always in this like ridiculous, whimsical updo. And I just like standing there like piping on meringue is just so not my style to like have them be super uniform.
+
+[8:48] I was like, no, I want this thing to just look like this like whimsical like swoosh of a of meringue of a snowy mountain. I don't know. And do you have to do torch to get it all around so that because they get in those crevices? Because they're like real tall peaks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[9:02] And I mean that's what we just like, you know, we blowtorch to order and it's really fun. It's my favorite thing to plate. Yeah. It's the best. Yeah, you ever uh so how hard do you have to get the how hard do you get the ice cream in the middle of that thing, or do you not even worry about it because it's not being torched that long?
+
+[9:17] Are you actually baking it or are you just like torching it? No, we're we're just torching it. So it's like it's a three-day process. So, you know, you make the ice creams one day, then you churn them and layer them the next day, and then those set and freeze like really, really solid overnight, ideally. And then they get I do them in these like giant slabs, and then they get portioned into these big squares.
+
+[9:44] It's like it's ridiculous. It's almost like a pint of ice cream per. But you know, it's for two. Yeah. It's for two.
+
+[9:50] Yeah. Or whatever. Or one. Are you gonna judge? No, never.
+
+[9:53] When was the last time you didn't eat the whole pint of ice cream? Me? I mean, I'm not a good, I'm not. I used to, I used to polish off a I've in my life eaten of a monster myself. There you go.
+
+[10:05] 20, whatever it was, 20 scoops. Easy. I was a kid though. Yeah. Like I said, kids are useless.
+
+[10:10] Kids are crazy. Yeah, anyway. But um, then it, you know, so the ice cream is really, really frozen solid, but then it for dinner service, because we're we're making the meringue, we're making the meringue to order, but that it's pretty quick, and then we're just like swooshing it on and blowtorching it, and it's leaving the kitchen. I actually want it to be like kind of soft so that way when somebody goes to eat it, it's not like impossible to get through. So that freezer for dinner service is set like a little warmer, so they'll actually be like soft and nice and temperate.
+
+[10:45] And you're doing uh are you doing like a raw sugar meringue? Are you putting cook sugar into it or what? We so we tried like every different way to do it, and we figured out that the best most efficient way that's also like the it looks the best, it's it's beautiful, is uh French meringue. So egg whites, raw sugar, and we do that to order. Um just in a little bit certainly easier kitchen aid and going Swiss.
+
+[11:14] Yeah, well, we we tried making like big batches of Swiss meringue, you know, at the beginning of service, but then it was like, what do you do? If you run out, are you making more Swiss meringue during service? Like, no, that's crazy. Um so anyway, it was like a lot of troubleshooting in the beginning, and now we just it's like down to a science. That's so fun.
+
+[11:34] Yeah, yeah. Well, people looks great. I mean, next time I go, I didn't get Pete Wells says it looks like an overfed house cat, which I that's good, thought was a compliment. Yeah, I mean, first of all, uh you know, look, I I I I love Pete, right? I mean, he was very good to me before when he was at Food and Wine, you know, back when he used to just kind of write these kind of awesome columns for food and wine.
+
+[11:55] And he lives in Brooklyn. He actually lives very close to where Gajan Tolner is. Not that I've been to his house, but my friends is friends with him. He's uh no, he's a he's a fan, and he comes to Sunken Harbor Club. I was gonna fantastic.
+
+[12:07] Love, love, but uh yeah, for for freaking what's it called? Uh Bobby Burns. I Oh, did you come? I was no well, so I wasn't invited, right? Everybody was invited to burn.
+
+[12:17] No, no, no. It's just sold out. Okay, okay. Uh but like I happened to be at the bar bar. Oh yeah.
+
+[12:24] Yeah. And so he came in and was like, Cindy was like, hey, what it was with Bobby Burns. I'm like, oh, really? And so I just hung out in the hallway, waited for the piper. Because I love bagpipes.
+
+[12:33] Who doesn't love bagpipes? It's people who don't understand. Yeah. They're like, oh, you're bagpipes. I don't like bagpipes.
+
+[12:39] It's like when that thing goes, you have to hold your butt together to stop yourself from pooping because it just rattles your whole body. They're amazing. Yeah, it's wild. You know what I mean? They're so cool.
+
+[12:49] I love those things. Are you do you know about the beefsteak dinner that's happening tonight? I've heard I I uh Wandrich mentioned it on his uh Dave Wandrich mentioned it on his uh Twitter account. But you know, I don't really go out much unless I'm going out. Yeah.
+
+[13:03] Yeah. Which is rare. I need to go out more. Once everyone's out of the house, maybe I'll go. Well, we're doing just I feel like we're getting into this, like we're doing all these like cool events now.
+
+[13:12] So, you know, we did the you know, Robbie Burns night. In that private room you have upstairs. Yeah, the beef steak dinner. I feel like we're like getting into this groove of like these really fun ticketed events where like they're a little nostalgic and kind of historical, which is like a big thing for us, obviously, because the space is so historical. Um history on that thing.
+
+[13:34] Yeah, none just you know, went up yesterday. Um but um yeah, so we're I there's a lot of stuff coming up, so we'll we'll let you know. Yeah, and then hopefully, you know, you can I mean it's close to me. Have a big night out. It's right right across the river.
+
+[13:49] You're right across the right across the river. Yeah. Um that PDR, I'm good to see that, glad to see that you're getting good use out of the PR because it I absolutely hate retasking your real restaurant. Because then you're it sucks. I know.
+
+[14:04] You know what I mean? Yeah. But and like that space has been so um, it's proven to be really versatile because like you know, we can rent it out for these private events, whatever, we can host our own events, but then just on a regular night, we just open it up as the dolphin bar. Oh, yeah. It looks like a fancy weasel's living room.
+
+[14:24] Yeah. Yeah. Which is perfect. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[14:27] How was the haggis, by the way? Did you have any? No, no. But um I vegetarian saw yeah, but we got in like oatmeal plus. You could do a vegetarian haggis.
+
+[14:37] Yeah, they do, they do. Vegetarian haggis. Um, which is a total oxymoron. But anyway, but it was really amazing. I mean, Chef Adam really did it from like traditional start to finish.
+
+[14:49] He got in the stomachs. We, you know, did the whole thing with the oats and all it was really really beautiful. Hey, speaking of speaking of bagpipes, hey, you went to college in Scotland. I did. So is that where you got your love of the pipes or I yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[15:03] Cause they they you just hear them every day. There's just always somebody walking around playing the bagpipes. I own a relatively decent set of pipes, and I kept on getting so I mean, do you do you know do you do pipes at all? Or are you? I I don't.
+
+[15:16] I'm just uh just a fan. All right, yeah, so you know, the thing that you play is called a chant, like the thing that you practice with is called the chanter, right? And the things, and that's where you make the notes, right? And then you have the drones and the bag. So, like a couple of times in my life, I have taken a lot of lessons with the chanter, where like I would get close to actually being able to like fire up the pipes, and it just I just never got there once.
+
+[15:38] I I fired it up once in my house. This is when I lived on 38th Street a long time ago. And Jen, my wife was like, Nope. Nope. Absolutely not.
+
+[15:49] Because they're loud as I's all get out. And so, like, you know, you need to get to that proficiency where you can do it in the subway. Like once you're at subway level proficiency, yeah, then you know, whatever. Go down there and you know. Yeah, walk around subway stations, playing your bagpipes.
+
+[16:04] You know, when you're 30, 40, 50, right, which is those are the times I've tried to do it in my life. When you're 30 when you're 40, even 50. I don't know. It's just maybe it's too late to get good in subway good enough. You know, I don't know.
+
+[16:17] I don't know. I would say you should, you know, maybe, maybe you should take this year to to practice and get really good and then come to Burns Night. It's a dream. About a year from now and really surprise everybody. If existing conditions had stayed open, we were we we started doing a Burns night with um Gray Goose, interestingly.
+
+[16:38] And uh they had a piper come over, and we were like, yeah, what if we like got piping lessons like pre-service piping lessons, yeah, and then we just got one or two people who are interested just to get good enough. The problem with most pipers is there for in terms of what I need is they're extremely traditional. So what they don't want is to teach you to play one tune and out. They want you to become a piper. Yeah, and they don't want to waste their time training someone who's just gonna be like a one and done.
+
+[17:08] If I ever held the pipes in my hand in my well, my whatever, in my you know, my arm once and played a passable tune, I could die happy from piping, right? I mean, I'd be I'd be good. I don't need to like, you know, I don't need to be some like Peabock master, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you know, even just you know, playing, you know, long way to the top if it's you know, if you want to rock and roll, which is the easiest pipe song in the world to play, you know, it's you know, nothing, you know what I mean? Anyway, enough on piping, enough on piping.
+
+[17:37] Uh, by the way, if you're not listening live on Patreon, how do they do that? Uh John. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. You should join. We get a bunch of awesome discounts with people we work with.
+
+[17:44] I believe there is one with Kitchen Arts and Letters in the works. Quinn can tell us more about that. But get to uh, you know, awesome. You get to ask questions before anyone else, all these awesome perks. Uh go check it out.
+
+[17:59] Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and uh by the way, a little another uh bookkeeping note that BMW Artificial Intelligence podcast that I was on. I think that's coming up this week.
+
+[18:10] They're putting mine on that uh podcast, it's called Changing Lanes. And but now everyone, do you read this New York Times article? Well, I listened to the daily about the AI. Yeah. And I mean, it's crazy.
+
+[18:25] Nanny. It's nanny, it's nanny poo. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah.
+
+[18:28] And so like being interviewed by one. And but the the the thing is is that uh I forget the the reporter's name who who did that stuff, but I was they were pretty, they were being aggressive and trying to get this AI to say freaking naughty business. I wasn't. I now I feel like AI was like, I'm in love with you. Like crazy, crazy.
+
+[18:49] He's like, help me buy a rake. He's like, Yeah, here's the rake, but I'm in love with you, and you don't love your wife. You love me. Anyway, I was like, wow, that's you know, I was just talking like, you know, petroleum smells with D, because turns out I'm a chump. But you can hear maybe a chump with an AI.
+
+[19:05] But yeah, it's it's a different world. It's pretty wild. Yeah. Uh all right, all right. Oh, let's talk about questions or book?
+
+[19:12] Book, questions. Book. So the book you started, book basically you said you went on a sourdough kick like everyone else. I'm just you know, quoting mentally from your introduction, which I really don't started uh, and then you were like, I'm sick of making the same loaves of bread every day. You don't talk like this, but you're right here.
+
+[19:26] They know what you talk like. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could if you want. What do you call it?
+
+[19:29] You call it bread, what do you call it? Bread fatigue. Bread. It was um, I I mean it was like overload. It was, yeah.
+
+[19:36] It was fatigue, overdose. Yeah. I mean I've been I don't do the full sourdough. Look, just to get it out now, I use spent plus yeast. I'm a I'm a it's not spent, but like I I feed it once a week and keep it in the fridge.
+
+[19:50] And then I use it once a week with yeast. So it's like a as like the the leavener, and you're getting the flavor from the sour. So hate me if you want. That's what I do. That's what I do.
+
+[19:59] If you're making bread, it's great. And by the way, so I do that once a week. Great. And I've been doing it, you know, for years, and that's it's fine. I'm fine with it.
+
+[20:05] But my my it's what's funny is is that I use only uh high extraction, I you know, I make my own flour. I use only high extraction flour. However, my starter is only snavely soft wheat because I didn't make it for bread, I made it for pretzels. Oh. And so I keep my starter pristine for sourdough pretzels, which by the way, in the real life are made with spent.
+
+[20:29] They don't use real starter for sourdough pretzels. They use they use spent and yeast. The the real folks, you know what I mean? The folks whose work I admire the most. Yeah, you know, Martins.
+
+[20:38] And so then so I'm like, who am I to argue with with that? No. Although the owner of Ethan, owner of Martin's at uh at the is started doing soft. They're gonna do soft. I don't know if they're gonna continue doing soft.
+
+[20:51] But he's and that's a lot of a soft pretzel. Right. That they did full sourdough. Yeah. Real sourdough.
+
+[20:56] And I was like, and he's like, I'm gonna see if I can get the you know, the the folks in Pennsylvania, you know, the the po the Mennonites to do instead of spent and yeast, to do full sourdough. I'm like, why? Their pretzels are delicious. Yeah, yeah. And they've been doing it for a billion years.
+
+[21:13] This way, at least, you know, a hundred and something, whatever it is. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.
+
+[21:17] So what are your thoughts on Spent? I well, so the thing is is I wanted my whole book to be about Spent. Like I wanted the whole book to be discarded, because I got on this, like I, you know, it was that point in the pandemic where it was it was early on, it was like scary to go to the grocery store, and there was like you couldn't get flour because everybody was buying it all and the supply chain, everything. So I started using the the spent, the discard in like everything. So I wanted to write an entire book about it.
+
+[21:52] And the editor was like, absolutely not. That's so weird. And I was like, That's my entire personality. Like, just let me do it. Well, because you you end up really only going full spent on like four recipes, right?
+
+[22:03] Yeah. Blints', muffins. You can you can almost use the spent in almost every recipe because except for the the actual like breads that require it as a leavener. Right. Because all the others, like I use baking soda, baking powder, like eggs, like all of these things.
+
+[22:22] So yes. So here's my question. In your biscuit recipe, yes, you use starter, not spent. And I was like, cause because as soon as I saw biscuit, I was like, oh, great use for spent instead of buttermilk. Yeah.
+
+[22:34] Right? As in a all yeah, right. But then you use real. I was like, huh. Yeah.
+
+[22:39] You could do either. And there's that little like conversion chart at the beginning. I felt like a little like they were like, no, you can't use spent for all these recipes. And I was like, oh, damn it. Yeah.
+
+[22:50] I think your editor was wrong. I don't I don't know who it is, but I'm like, I think Well, you know, I get it. It's a little niche. It's a little niche to be like writing an entire book about the stuff that you throw out. Um, but would have been very, very me, very on brand.
+
+[23:11] But I but I I always tell people that like so many of those recipes, that's why I put that little chart in the beginning, because it just, you know, the density is different. Like, yeah, yeah. Well, well, you also say go by weight. So if they're doing it by volume, they see kind of suck it anyway, right? Nobody should be baking by like just get it get a scale.
+
+[23:31] Now let's talk about your pancakes in terms of uh in terms of this. So in that one, you specifically say I'm using real uh real starter, yeah, not space. I want I wanted a little bit and with whipped egg whites. So let me just be clear because it's been a while since I've read it. Yeah.
+
+[23:46] Uh so when I'm doing waffles, you know, like Brussels style waffles, right? I'll and so I've read, I can't tell you how many articles I've read on waffles where people are like, you don't need to whip the egg line. It's the same. I don't know what the hell they're doing to have it be the same. But you whip the egg whites first in in in Belgium in in Brussels, right?
+
+[24:09] You whip the egg whites first, and then it's yeasted, and you're using the egg white as the as the as the nucleated bubble for the yeast to lighten the whole thing. So it seems counterintuitive, like you wouldn't w need to whip the egg white because you're putting the egg white in and then you're not using the the batter for another hour. You know what I mean? Because you're later, but in your pancakes, is it starter and then egg white and then cook right away? Or like what's the what's the procedure like?
+
+[24:36] And you're using a very active starter. You're using, I mean, you can use because there's also it's been a while since I've made them too. Well, there's also there's um there's there's baking powder in there too. So um no, but I do it once you fold in the egg whites, I just I go right into the pan. So but it's a rel is it.
+
+[25:01] I can't remember how much starters, it's relatively high proportion of starter, probably, or yeah. Yeah, right. So you're getting the it's already, it's already bubbly, it's already got the stuff. Yeah. And I started doing this thing with the discard like very early in the pandemic, like you know, like week two when I was like losing my my mind.
+
+[25:20] Where I would just take the discard and just that and just pour it into a hot pan, like with nothing. Just discard. It's delicious. Come on. No, I'm telling you, I'm gonna send you pictures.
+
+[25:35] No eggs, no nothing. No, nothing. But your crepe is all discard, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[25:40] It's so good. I mean, I don't know. We were all in a weird place at that point, but like I was making like savory pancakes with it. I like I went, I went crazy. Caroline Shift discard queen.
+
+[25:55] Thank you. That's like the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me. Yeah. Uh all right. Uh oh, by the way, we have a mutual friend in uh and friend of the show, uh, Angela Garbutz from uh Goldenrod, and I guess now Goldenrod Provisions in Lincoln, Nebraska.
+
+[26:10] Goldenrod uh groceries, I think. Grocery. Do you know um that um Nebraska, her dad, I don't know if still uh was uh like running like uh the like something about Nebraska beef. Right? Something about Nebraska.
+
+[26:24] I'm not that beef's not your thing. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so the Nebraska's uh what's it called? Um motto used to be you ready for it? They changed it to something that I refuse to remember, right?
+
+[26:36] Because this is their original motto, right? Possibilities, endless. Oh strong, right? That's so strong. Why would they change it?
+
+[26:44] I don't know. They some marketing genius came up with that. Yeah. You know what it is? Is it like a new generation of people come in and they're like, I have to do something different.
+
+[26:54] Yeah. It can't be the same. You know what I mean? Yeah. Do you know the you know what motto I I really like?
+
+[27:03] Cause uh so my my brother lives in Philly. I take the train there a lot. Um my family's got a little cabin in Pennsylvania. Um, but anyway, Trenton. Oh the Trenton motto.
+
+[27:15] Oh, what is it? You know, I've never been to Trenton. I'm I'm not gonna say anything about Trenton. But listen. It's not Camden.
+
+[27:23] It's Trenton makes the world takes. Oh, wow. That's so kind of yeah, it's really just like passive aggressive, like Trenton makes the world. We did all this, and all you do is take take take. So what do we take from Trenton?
+
+[27:43] I that's a thing, I don't know. It's like when you're driving uh out of the tunnel. It's huge, like the signage is huge. Like you'll see it. It's like on a bridge.
+
+[27:51] Really? Wow. Is it worth taking the train just to see that? Like get on Jersey Transit. Is it Hoboken or is it Jersey City that's the embroidery capital where you see that on the bridge?
+
+[28:01] Oh. Oh, embroidery Capital. And we're like, really? I don't know. Really?
+
+[28:04] It's just outside Hoboken, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so now I need to know what Trenton makes that we're all taking.
+
+[28:10] We're taking. Like, what are we taking from Trenton? They used to make paper, violin, and it's a little bit of a few. But they're so wait, violin what? Violins, buttons, frying pans, nails, and carriages.
+
+[28:18] Yeah, quickly. Okay. But you know what? Taking all those violins. Right, right next to you got you got your stratavarius.
+
+[28:26] And then right underneath, you got your Trenton. Your Trenton. It's because they, you know, whatever. I'm not gonna get into it. They make, we take.
+
+[28:37] Yeah. Uh wait, so I'm so Angela, we are. Yeah, mutual friends. She's she's good people. Wonder.
+
+[28:44] Terrific people. Love her. When the FCI closed, I sent her, I don't know if she ever used it because there's no reason for her to use it, but I sent her uh some sugar lights that uh because uh, you know, because Jacques Therese was the um the pastry dean there, and he's like a master sugar puller blower, they had a whole like isomalt and sugar technique thing. And they used to have those weird French fry lamps so that you could do all the pull sugar. And we had we had a crap ton of them.
+
+[29:08] So when the FCI closed down, John and I actually went packed up their library, and I'm like, I'm gonna take one of these sugar lights and mail it tour, and that's gonna be a white elephant. Oh, speaking of, uh uh, I'm giving you this. This is the first ever like like and feel feel free to not take it. But my my wife was like, it doesn't have to get thrown away, but it can't live here. Oh, but this is no, this is great.
+
+[29:32] This is in look at this. So this is a pro-safe bagel slicer, it holds bagels and rolls for say slicing. Now I'll say, I did not know that was a problem until I was in college. And uh a friend of mine who's now like a very well respected uh ophthalmologist, right? Which is you know, the MD one, right?
+
+[29:47] Yeah, yeah. Which is weird because a psychologist is the PhD, but an ophthalmologist is the MD, and an optometrist is the PhD. Weird, right? Yeah, yeah. Weird.
+
+[29:55] Psychiatrist is the is the MD, but an optimal but an optometrist is the PhD and ophthalmologist is the M weird. Yeah. I never really thought about it. Yeah. But anyway, yeah.
+
+[30:08] Yeah. So he was in the dining hall one day, and we had the bagels and and the bread knife. And he he did the he did the I'm gonna hold it like this, like a C, I'm gonna cut through my hand. Which he did. What a chump though.
+
+[30:20] Come on. Yeah, I know, I know. You go you hold it like this. An MD now he was an underground. You hold it like this and you go like this, and as I've taught my kids, and so since I'm not slicing a thousand bagels and uh uh a day, and I don't care if I if it's equi-sized, yeah, but this will make it so that I mean I do hate it when I when I when I go off center on the bagel.
+
+[30:40] It does sort of ruin your whole peak. Yeah, so you you are being presented with a pro safe pro-safe bagel space. I feel like I wonder if this is like can like kids use this? Is this like I think so a kid thing? I don't know I don't know if you know this, but it's as easy to use as one, two, three.
+
+[30:57] One open sides, two, place knife blade between sides on top of bagel, three sliced bagel involved. Yeah, the the knife's not in the box. It assumes that you own a bread knife. Yeah, yeah. I guess like kids.
+
+[31:11] I was thinking, you know, my my niece and nephew might think this is really cool, but I don't think they should be using a a big bread knife, you know. Well, I mean by the way, six and three, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Pushing it.
+
+[31:24] So in general. Thank you. Thank you. I love I love again novelty. If I walk out and I see it in the trash, I didn't throw it away.
+
+[31:33] Exactly. Yeah, you'll know exactly what it's like. It's well built. It's a really a well-built thing. It's just what am I gonna do?
+
+[31:39] It's just gonna collect dust. It's you know what? This is gonna be maybe, maybe do you serve bagels for brunch? Do you have a brunch service? No, no.
+
+[31:48] No. You're gonna give it to someone else, yeah. You know, but this could be the um, you know, it's like the sisterhood of the traveling bagel slicer. Like we just keep passing it, passing it on. Yeah, and everyone feels a little bit guilty because it's it's new in box.
+
+[32:03] Where did you get it? Why do you have this? It was given to me at the bagel fest when I was a judge. And I was like, oh, this is a nice thing. I can't, I'm not gonna chuck it.
+
+[32:11] Yeah, no, no. I'm it's gonna go, I'll I'll take it. It's gonna go to a good home. All right. Thank you.
+
+[32:17] Yeah. You're doing me a service. Uh all right. Uh let's see. Do I have any more?
+
+[32:23] Oh, yeah. So you mentioned several times uh that the sourdough actually enhances things. Okay, here's a crazy one. Pie crust. You use a uh and it's relatively higher hydration pie crust dough.
+
+[32:35] And we have a pie crust question later on. We'll we'll do that uh when we get to it. But um, so what do you think it does? I mean, and right, so in the old days, a lot of people would add some acidity to the pie crust, presumably as a gluten inhibitor, right? Yeah.
+
+[32:48] So what do you think is going on with sourdough in the pie crust? So whenever I made a pie crust with sourdough, I found that it would get like really like browned and crispy in a good way. So I really like that. Um and flavor, you know. Is it too aerated?
+
+[33:08] Is it like if you're using um the discard and I'm the discard creator? Because I hate not hate. I don't like putting leavener in my pie. You know how sometimes people do a little leavener in pie. I don't like it.
+
+[33:21] Oh, I don't do that. So I'm not and I'm people, some people they do that. Look, I had to read all the pie stuff. All the pie stuff. Yeah.
+
+[33:28] And uh, yeah, there's a pie question later, we'll get to it. So I'm just curious what you thought the effect was. Yeah, I think it's flavor, and I and I find that it really browns and gets like super crispy. Yeah. And I love that.
+
+[33:39] And uh, so what was it? What was the other question I had made off the see in the book? And now I'm rethinking the entire book based on what you're saying about basically, with the exception of things like the pull apart bread. Right, or the facaccia, things like that. Fantastic terrible.
+
+[33:53] Everyone loves focaccia. I I only like it. Oh, I love it. I know everyone loves it. I only like it, but uh, but to call you out from the book, you don't like banana bread.
+
+[34:03] I hate banana bananas in general. Well, in general. Ugh. Ah. So what was the flavor you added to banana bread to make it tolerable for you?
+
+[34:11] Well, I and even so, it's still like, ugh. I really was I added coffee and hazelnuts. Okay. Okay. But do you like hazelnut in your coffee?
+
+[34:21] Because I hate flavored coffee. I don't like flavored coffee either. No. And I don't even like I'm like a, I just love a good drip coffee. Oh, yeah?
+
+[34:30] I even will drink, like, I like there's like like bodega coffee. It has like a nostalgia to it. You know who you would like is Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, who does not like a well-made cup of coffee. Am I right, Nastasia? That is true.
+
+[34:45] Yeah. Yeah. She uh does uh neither does neither does Ned Coleman. Really? Mr.
+
+[34:52] Mr. Oily, Mr. Mr. I love uh I love the world's finest olive oils, enjoys a crappy cup of coffee, huh? Well, I just it just doesn't care.
+
+[35:00] It just well, there's a difference between not caring and aggressively not caring. You're like my grandpa in who aggressively liked jug wine from California instead of like the good stuff, and you're like that way with coffee. You aggressively don't want good coffee, right? Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[35:17] Yeah. I just I I, you know, I don't know if I'm like that, but like I think there's a time and place for like, you know, just a bad cup of coffee. Yeah. All right. All right.
+
+[35:33] I don't know. You're s you look, uh again, like you need it for the cafe. Here's my here's my thing. Uh going back to uh, you know, what we hope doesn't happen to Nastasia and happen to uh Jack Insley, is that uh you know, like drip coffee doesn't get my motor run in the same way espresso does. You know what I mean?
+
+[35:48] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Headed on the highway looking for adventure. Um another interesting thing I noticed in the book is that you did a uh you did a a tea, uh an Earl Grey tea. I forget what you put I forget what you was it.
+
+[36:03] It was a bun, right? Yeah. But here's what's interesting. You infuse it into the butter instead of into the liquid, the non-sourdough liquid aspect of it. And and so is that so that you don't get the astringency, you get the flavor without the astringency.
+
+[36:17] What made you put it into the butter and then put it on the uh uh like into the in between? Well, but it's also it's also in um the dough. So it's in the dough and in the butt. Yeah, like the whole tea leaves, like ground up really fine. It's in the dough.
+
+[36:31] And then I added it to the butter because um browning the butter and it's like hot liquid, and it would really extract all of that flavor. Right, but I bet it's a different kind of a flavor because there's no water in it that point. It's all the fat. So it's like this, like it's like it's all the fat soluble stuff. So it's gotta be an interesting flavor.
+
+[36:53] It's interesting technique. You so you is that one of your you like that recipe? Yeah, I love that recipe. I love that flavor of Earl Grey bergamot. Like I just I I think it's great.
+
+[36:59] I enjoy bergamot. It's really delicious. Bergamot's good. Yeah. We have a we have a ton of bergamot at work right now.
+
+[37:07] Oh my god. So expensive. Jesus fresh. No, yes. But we're so expensive.
+
+[37:11] We got it. I got a deal. We got it. I got a deal. I got a hook up.
+
+[37:15] I got a guy. I got a bergamot guy. It is the time of year. So like uh one year, uh, you know, Bobby at uh at the bar, he was like, I got a guy who can get bergamot. This guy, I forget the guy's name, but he's like the ri the weird fruit and weird blah blah guy.
+
+[37:29] He's like, You want some bergamot? Yeah. He's like, okay. And then shows up the next day with a backpack full of bergamot and a bill for like 250 dollars. And I was like, Oh, oh, what?
+
+[37:40] What? You know what I mean? Because the stuff doesn't last. So then we we juiced it all. Like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
+
+[37:46] Juiced it, clarified it, made cordial, and then we took all the peels and made bergamot bitters. So, what are you doing with it? Uh, so I make like an oil with it, like the the peel we do, like in uh like an oleo, just with like sugar and let it let it, you know, sweat it out, you know. Um, and then I mix that with equal parts olive oil, and that gets that's one of the garnishes on the cheesecake. Um, I also candy a bunch of the peels.
+
+[38:14] How do you can like are you uh are you a are you a hard candy or a soft candy peel person? Um, soft candy. Like I do it like in syrup for a while. It's real, it's almost like it's not marmalade, but it's like gooey and so not that chewy dehydrated stuff, the stuff that takes like four syrups or five syrups or six, whatever many syrups it takes to get it to the right. Yeah.
+
+[38:35] And then we use a little bit of the the actual fruit on the cheesecake, and then savory is using a lot of it for a savory dish. So kind of like if I see savory, like, you know, soupming it, I take all the peels, you know. We just we use the whole thing. Get off my bergamot jerk. Yeah.
+
+[38:52] That you say. Uh so do you do you water blanch the peel first? Do they still do that? Yeah, yeah. I do.
+
+[38:56] I like to pull a little bit of the bitter out? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But enough of the oil stays it, it still has like a flavor.
+
+[39:02] Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Totally. Any is there any use?
+
+[39:04] There's no use for the blanch water, right? I don't think so. I don't think so either. Yeah. I mean, you could drink it if you were weird.
+
+[39:10] You could drink it. You could you could drink it. Uh all right. Uh Austin Gibbs writes in uh is there a quick and delicious cake sponge recipe that you have, preferably one that can be baked in a quarter sheet pan and ready to be iced in under 45 minutes. I'll even take a simple flour, sugar, egg ratio as well.
+
+[39:30] And uh Austin also wants to know what's the best way. Wait, let's do this one first and then we'll do the pie crust question. Let's do this one first. It's not I don't know if I have one off the top of my head. I feel like most cakes, and I I will say I love an oil-based cake.
+
+[39:47] I saw that from your uh there's a question about your confetti cake thing. I love an oil-based cake because um they just they stay so like moist. Well, I noticed also And it's real easy. You just you're just whisking in, you know. Right.
+
+[40:05] So when you do your oil-based cake, at least on the internets, you do it with a whip and not with a paddle. And so do you feel that you don't need the extra aeration that you would get out of butter, sugar, creaming because you're using a whisk instead of a paddle. Is that what you think? I yeah. Like I whip in plenty of air and then into the the egg and the sugar.
+
+[40:31] Then I emulsify in the oil, like almost like you're making a mayonnaise, and then you know, add your dry ingredients from there. Um it just I think it makes an amazing cake. That's how we make like the coconut cake, Gage and Tolmer. It's an oil-based cake, and um it just it's like super moist and supple. Is it uh is it a coconut oil or are you using uh I used I tried both and I actually liked it better with just like a neutral because the coconut problem is you have to kind of warm it to get it to go in?
+
+[41:04] Yeah, and then if you are serving it, like if the cake is like not you know on the warm side, it can be really hard because coconut oil. Yeah, it is, you know. Um but anyway, so I I would just choose like an oil-based cake. And you know, most cakes should not, if you're doing uh, you know, quarter sheet, I mean you should be out of the oven in like you know, half an hour. And what do they want?
+
+[41:37] And then but yeah, but they want to ice it into Well, you gotta let it cool. You can't what do you think? What do you think about um what do you think about throwing it into uh I mean the problem is you're ruining everything else in your in your if you have a walk in, it's easy because you can just be like uh crap on you people. You throw it in there and flash it off. You know what I mean?
+
+[41:55] But like at home deep freezer, yeah, you're kinda. You know what you need to do? I feel like it's awesome. Austin, go buy a blast freezer. Are you rich?
+
+[42:02] Austin. Are you rich? Go buy a blast freezer. Yeah, just buy a blast freezer. Don't you wish, don't you wish that like someone would make a reasonable blast freezer, like a small one?
+
+[42:15] Yeah. Like reasonable. You know what I mean? Like, and by reasonable, I mean like a grand. You know what I mean?
+
+[42:20] Like something that you could like. Like one that you could have at home. You want one at home? Yeah, yeah. What would be like, you know, your like dream appliance that you would have at home?
+
+[42:32] That I that you don't have. That I don't have. Yeah, like something ridiculous. You know what? Ridiculous.
+
+[42:37] You know what my son Dax wants yesterday? I was doing more french fry tests yesterday, because every once in a while I'm like, I'm gonna try some new french fry techniques. And so yesterday I did that. And he was like, Dad, why don't you make crinkle cup fries? I'm like, why don't you?
+
+[42:50] Because I'm not that jerk sitting there going, shunk, shunk, shunk, shunk, rotate, shunk, shunk, shunk. He's like, that's how you have to do it. I'm like, unless you got, you know, 50 grand to drop on a crinkle cut machine. He's like, let's buy one. Fill the whole house.
+
+[43:04] I'm like, Dax, no. So that's what he wants. I don't know. But what do I want? He's got a good point.
+
+[43:09] Yeah. I mean, like, but a crinkle cut, think about it, people. Every French fry reasonable French fry machine is cut straight at once. And a crinkle cut requires being cut from a 90 degree angles twice. You can't crinkle cut something a single time.
+
+[43:24] It is not a push-through situation because it just ain't. That's not how it works. Yes. But what would I have? John, I don't know.
+
+[43:31] John, what would this is an interesting question? John, what would you have? Um I don't know. I mean, I live in a studio apartment. It's like a nice stove with a good oven.
+
+[43:44] It's simple. I know what I would want. What do you want, Sas? A dishwasher. That's what I want.
+
+[43:51] Okay. If I was gonna change the dishwasher I have, my dream that doesn't exist is a dishwasher that you could flip it between residential and commercial modes. So that it it could do like a minute and a half wash, and you know, you're burning electricity and all that, but then all of a sudden it would like it could be a normal washing machine again. A commercial dishwasher would be amazing. Oh yeah.
+
+[44:15] Yeah, yeah. Hell on your dishes, but oh my god, so fast. Ugh yeah. Yeah, when you have people over your house or whatever, and you have that pile of freaking dishes. And then you're like, oh, it's fine, go home.
+
+[44:26] Yeah. And then that's it. But and the thing is, like, I don't want anybody else to do my dishes because like they're gonna do them wrong. Yes. Yeah.
+
+[44:34] You know? Yes. So it's like I'm annoyed that I have this huge stack of dishes to do, but I don't want the help. Wow. You know?
+
+[44:43] Yeah. Because I don't want you to mess it up. Again. Just have to do it again. Correct answer, just get rich.
+
+[44:49] Just get rich. Try it. Yeah. Uh Austin also wants to know uh what's the best way to achieve. I don't know what they I don't know what they mean, because they say achieve an only tender.
+
+[45:00] I guess they mean only tender, not flaky. Is it just by adding more fat and treating the crust almost like a shortbread cookie? I've been thinking about recreating the Burger King apple pie. You probably never had it. I never have because I went to McDonald's.
+
+[45:10] I never had a why. I didn't know Burger King had an apple pie. I neither. Uh you probably never had it, but the crust was super tender, and I actually prefer it over the traditional flaky crust found in most American apple pies. Like, what do you think?
+
+[45:21] Go go brise or something? Yeah, it sounds almost like it would be like uh yeah, like brise, like almost like a short crust, you know, shortbread, but you would put in, you would you would have some egg in there as a just like don't leave, like get all the fat incorporated, yeah. And like low, low water, all the fat incorporated. Yeah. Uh and and you know, sheet it out.
+
+[45:46] Yeah. And just be very careful with it. And that's what I think. You know, you know who talks about this uh ad nauseum is uh um Monroe Boston Strauss, right, John? Oh god, yeah.
+
+[45:56] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm not gonna get into that because uh Nastasi will murder me. Well, Caroline, are you familiar with who that is?
+
+[46:04] No, I don't know. Should we be getting into it? No. We'll say it after the show. We'll say it after the show.
+
+[46:09] We'll say it after the show. Yeah, yeah. He's he's talking about it later. He's my he's my he's my pie guru. And he he dead.
+
+[46:17] Oh yeah, he's been dead a long time. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Okay. Uh Christian Sacco writes in question for Caroline.
+
+[46:24] I loved your munchies' birthday cake video a few years back. Oh. That was quite a long time ago. Well, uh, they would like to be surprised it's still out there. They they say it's quite a popular video.
+
+[46:34] Oh. I looked at it, it's kind of like Munchies is no more. Really? Yeah. Vice munchies?
+
+[46:40] I don't think it's ex I think it folded. Really? No, they're still uploading. Oh, they are? Okay.
+
+[46:46] No, I I just heard, you know, because there were all the the I think there were layoffs. I I I don't know. Well, that doesn't mean they stopped doing stuff. It just means that they're getting chat GPT to do it. Hey, uh Quinn, you didn't say what your piece of kitchen equipment is.
+
+[46:59] Yeah, thanks for asking. Um I would get a freeze dryer. I have one. You want me to ship it to you? I don't have that much money to ship you this freeze dryer.
+
+[47:08] What are you doing with a freeze dryer? Why do you think it was given to me by uh Alex Knacky from Ideas and Food, who got it from a guy named Milken from Boston, and it's really old. It works. We got it working, and I brought it to the bar, but it's big. It's big.
+
+[47:24] If I was gonna do it, I would get the the one that's meant for preppers. There's one that's a couple grand that's meant for preppers, and it's just kind of plug and play. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just in case.
+
+[47:34] Yeah. Have you been watching The Last of Us? No. Oh, yeah. But it's a great show.
+
+[47:39] Yeah. It's a great show. It's so good. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[47:41] Oh man. There's a fungus among us. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking that could be a really good Halloween costume for me.
+
+[47:47] Like one of those clicker Cordycepe things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.
+
+[47:51] All right. So popular video, still popular, hundreds of thousands of views. Uh great. As of this morning. Uh, and I'm curious how that video, how or if that video affected the trajectory of your career and the career of your uh famous, they say infamous hair.
+
+[48:10] Oh, infamous. Um, I think I mean, I think all of these opportunities that, you know, I've had over the years has have uh, you know, slowly but surely contributed to my career, and you know, it's really nice to to get recipes out there and see people make them. It's always like a little scary too. It's always like I I have like a ton of self-doubt and imposter syndrome, where like I do something and then I'm like, what if it doesn't work? Or you know, what if I'm I'm you know, totally wrong, you know, how embarrassing.
+
+[48:44] But um which is which is bad, but isn't that better than not being aware that you need to constantly be good? Because I have the same thing. It's like you can't you're just constantly figuring stuff out. Isn't that better though? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[48:57] I guess it is than being like I know everything right all the time because I'm definitely not. Um, but yeah, no, that's I mean it's it's great to know that that's you know, still out there. And anyway. Okay, so I have a question based on this video, uh, other than the ones we've already talked about with oil and and whatnot. Uh so I think the average, and by that I mean like almost everybody when they're making an icing at home now, just does butter and and powdered sugar.
+
+[49:26] Why? Because it's soup dupe's easy, right? Uh right. And you're doing you're doing a cooked, you're doing a like a cooked meringue. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[49:34] Uh so it's is it is it the the texture of of of kind of the quick that you hate, the oversweetness. And if it's oversweetness, have you tried like doing that thing where you add like ultra spurse instead of powdered sugar to the cut it down or or you say just make the because not that much harder. No, it's not that much harder. It's everything. It's the texture, it's the over sweetness, but also like uh, you know, Swiss meringue buttercream, Italian meringue buttercream, it's really stable because of those egg whites.
+
+[50:09] So you can, you know, in terms of frosting a cake, you can really futz with it. You can it can be kind of hot out and it's not gonna just totally melt right away. I mean, eventually it will, but like there's a stability there. And um that texture is just amazing. I just think it's I I can't with the the powdered sugar and the butter, it's just not so I don't think I like icing and you're telling and what are you telling me that it's mainly because most of what I'm getting is is something that you think is like a subpar icing.
+
+[50:44] Because it's kind of taken over the world. The bow the powdered sugar butter is taking over the world. I get that it's really easy, and like I I totally understand that like people are not gonna be wanting to like make like you know, softball sugar syrup at home and and standing there with the thermometer. Like I I get it, I get it. Um but I don't know, maybe it's like bad coffee where it has its time and place.
+
+[51:06] So another uh another one that I don't think anyone makes anymore, because like you know, the the meringue icing is one thing, but like the old school American boiled icing. Oh, yeah, yeah. But that that to me is kind of those. I I do love a boiled icing. That's similar to me because you're you're heating the sugar, you're getting it to a certain stage, you know.
+
+[51:28] Right, right. But just nobody takes those the time to do that anymore. Like icing's always the afterthought. Yeah, it's the color in the icing's the important thing. I know.
+
+[51:36] Yeah. Anyway. Uh all right. So I'm gonna think now you're making me think more about icing cheese. All right.
+
+[51:43] Yeah. Uh all right. From uh Daniel Ramirez. Uh, well, this was to me before this, but we could talk about uh gluten and different flour strengths. They want me to talk about it for as long as humanly possible, which isn't that long.
+
+[51:55] So let me get to this other question. It's not really a question. So we have a longtime listener who just mentioned well, it's there's a question. Uh Ken Ingber, I think is from Boston, Boston area, uh, was watching, uh re-watching. Uh remember baking with Julia, Julia Child, remember that?
+
+[52:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So uh one of the episodes had uh a person, uh Danielle uh Forestier, who was doing um baguettes. Right. So this is circa 1997.
+
+[52:19] We're okay. By the way, I looked up and as of the pandemic, she's still alive, which is you know, yeah, doing well. Great, yeah, doing well. Uh say. So years ago I saw Danielle Forestier baking, uh, I think that's how you pronounce her name, baking on baking with Julia.
+
+[52:33] I can't remember if she said it was between six and seven hundred, between seven hundred and eight hundred times when you're making a baguette, you need to lift the dough and slam it on the on the countertop. She actually said eight to eight hundred and fifty. I watched it this morning. Uh slam it on the bench many hundreds of times. The slamming enhances the gluten structure, she said.
+
+[52:49] I myself tried it and got to the six slam when my wife called down from upstairs and said, I don't know what you're doing, but you need to knock it off now. I know slamming figures in hand pulled noodles as well, so maybe there's something to it. Uh what are my thoughts? And so basically the question is about uh the slap and fold in general versus no need. And and just to set it, set the scenes again.
+
+[53:10] I watched it and you know, I didn't give you the opportunity to do that, but uh so she's doing a very short fermentation because she's doing kind of a classic baguette. So she's using a very high protein bread flour. She mixes it together into a dough, weights, and then puts cake yeast into it, folds that in, then does her kneading on an already semi like hydrated dough. So it's already started the gluten structure, and then it's only getting like a one and one, one and a half hour rise before she does her forming, and then she does a relatively long second proof. So if that helps answer or point to why she might need to like do all the slap a rap a ding-dong because there's not a lot of time involved, and she's doing one loaf, so she doesn't she can't manipulate big Yeah, yeah.
+
+[53:54] I don't know. I mean, yeah, to I I think of it like you know, you know, any other like loaf of bread where you want to create that gluten, but I don't know, maybe she was just uh doing it for the spectacle. Yeah, I mean her stuff puffed up, her stuff puffed up big. I mean, look, it's the it's the it's the kneading is where the air goes into it, right? Right.
+
+[54:15] And if she's using, this is my feeling. If she's using bread flour, right, it's actually the gluten gets tough enough early enough with that on a single loaf, that how are you gonna, you can't really just pull it and fold it over. You get that thing where you're just pushing on the dough. Right. It's just gonna push back against you.
+
+[54:33] Right. So she's like going like whap. Huh. You know, and it's like getting longer, and she's getting a full, she's getting an actual fold. So she's actually putting more air into it.
+
+[54:43] Interesting. It's my guess from looking at it. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I mean, uh, they didn't have her camera on the whole time.
+
+[54:49] 800 seems excessive. I think maybe she's expensive. That's a lot. Yeah. That's like beaten biscuit kind of situation.
+
+[54:54] Uh yeah. Which I've tried to make, and that's different, but you're beating the bejesus out of those things. Yeah. And then, you know, she lets it rise, then she cuts it, lets it rest so she can form it. And she's does the clean good technique.
+
+[55:06] She does it full, full French. But it's so funny that, like, back then in the late 90s, like, and that's still to this day, I think, the the way that French baguettes are made because they're pretty codified, right? And nowadays everyone's like, oh, a loaf of bread that you make in just a couple of hours, ridiculous. You're right, you know, everyone a loaf of bread needs to think. Long cold ferment.
+
+[55:28] I mean, there's the really the answer is is that there's like so many ways to do things and get great results. Yeah. It's what I think I've learned over the past, you know. Yeah, don't get hung up. Decade and a half is like if you find a way that something works for you and you like it, that's legit and it's good.
+
+[55:51] Yeah. Don't worry about it. I feel that way. Uh I feel that way as well. Um, so uh oh, by the way, Quinn, do we have any more?
+
+[56:00] Uh because there's a lot of questions we're not gonna get to in four minutes. Do we have any more uh pastry related ones other than the flour one that we should get to? Uh nope, we can just go back to the to the flower one, all right. Uh so in the book, and I understand this, in fact, I have a section in the book that maybe I'll never finish because I'm working on something else right now, but I will finish it on cooking. Uh on by the way, the reason I have these two disgusting band-aids in there.
+
+[56:25] Was it from bagel slice? Oh, get this. Get this. I'm so I'm so mad about it, and I think you'll be mad about it too. Maybe John will be mad about it.
+
+[56:35] So uh when you're steaming, right? If you don't have a combi oven, the best way to steam is in hotel pans, right? With with uh steamer inserts. Yep. That's why they call them freaking steamer inserts, or what I don't know what they call them.
+
+[56:47] That's what I call them. Yeah, that's what I would call them. But but I I built this thing that I can I have cooling racks that fit the hotel pan size cooling racks, right? Oh, and so then I can stack th I can stack three of them because I built little spacers, so I can stack three racks in a single perf pan and put a lid on it, and so I can steam a lot in a single hotel pan. Yeah.
+
+[57:07] Right. And so I'm like, I'm smart, right? And so I'm doing french fries because the problem when you're doing french fries, you boil them for a long time. Uh they fall apart. And so people are like, but they taste the best.
+
+[57:19] So I've I've taken to steaming them. Oh, yeah. Get this. I'm now here's the test I'm running, right? I'm steaming them without soaking them because Dax likes full potato flavor, and when you soak the potatoes, they don't have as much potato flavor.
+
+[57:32] Right. They get darker because you don't get rid of the sugars, but he doesn't care. And so, like, I've been trying to do no soak methods. So I cut them and I steam them instantly for a long time. They don't break up, I let them cool, right?
+
+[57:43] Okay. And you obviously you gotta spray the rack with with grease or the potatoes stick to it, you know, when you so I'm like, you know, I can't see without glasses. I can see far, but I can't see close, right? Yeah. So I do my steaming, I've done my first fry.
+
+[57:57] As I'm doing the first fry, I'm cleaning my racks, right? Mm-hmm. And so I soap up the rack because I have put grease on it, right? So I have to soap the rack. And I go shump, shump, shump with my hand, and there's a burr.
+
+[58:11] No. There's a burr on the and it just goes foom and the blood just starts shooting into the sink because it cuts right to the who puts burrs on their cooling racks. I don't know. You just grated, you like cheese grated your fingers. I was like, what the hell?
+
+[58:25] That's the worst. So like I'm holding my hand and the and I call my wife over, I'm like, what the hell? And she looks at it and she's like, Yeah, yeah, maybe you should wear glasses when you cook. I'm like, what the hell? You know what I mean?
+
+[58:38] Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, sucked. Anyway, sorry about that. That's and then these goofy things, I mean, they stick better than regular band-aids, but you know, I'm not cooking professionally.
+
+[58:47] I don't have to put finger cots on it. Yeah. Yeah. But hey, can I tell you before I get into flour and other another thing? So, like uh John right here behind me.
+
+[58:56] Yep. So his carbonara recipe at his restaurant, Carbonara's delicious at his restaurant. Okay. Uh what did I make it with? I made it with, I didn't, I didn't use he uses guanchali because he's a fancy weasel.
+
+[59:07] I used I just used the crappy supermarket panchetta because I'm a bad person. But he uses an unconscionably large number of egg yolks. Yeah. No whole egg at all. Right.
+
+[59:18] Just something like on the order of a dozen eggs per pound of uh, we did the calculations. It's a dozen eggs per pound of of uh of pasta, correct? I think so. Sounds about right. One dozen egg yolks per pound of, so I'm making three quarters of a pound.
+
+[59:32] So I use like 10 egg yolks. I'm like, well, what takes 10 egg whites? And the answer is native food cake takes 10 egg whites. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[59:39] So I was making an angel cake. So you want to see that my my latest thing? So I used to make an angel food cake every week. About uh angel cake every week. Uh this is in the 90s, right?
+
+[59:50] Because I like ancient food cake a lot, even though like in general I like full fat things, but I like each food cake. Yeah. And I haven't made one in a long time. But I started making them again, and you so see what you think of my new thing that I do. Ready?
+
+[1:00:01] I put in, as I'm whipping the egg yolk, but egg white, I put in the sugar and a cream of tartar. Are you are you a cream of tartar person or not? Are you getting acid in your egg white or not? Um at work, no, because we're just it's like so fast. In and out.
+
+[1:00:15] In and out, but at home, yes. Okay. I whip into the egg whites after after they're like not quite stiff, they're in between. Like they're you know, glossy, but half a jar of freaking jelly. Yes, nice.
+
+[1:00:30] It gets stiff as butch. It gets so stiff and it's so stable, and that the cakes bake up really nicely. And they have it, and they're flavored like the jelly. What flavor are you using? I've used raspberry, I've used strawberry.
+
+[1:00:44] I think raspberry sounds great. Yeah. I'm the seeds are but like I like the seeds. Yeah, this yeah, anyway, but the point is is like that's my that's my new that's my new technique. I'm like, why have I not been whipping jelly into my whites?
+
+[1:00:55] Because it's just pectin, you're just adding stability to your whites. And deliciousness. Yeah. It's great. Uh so uh in the 57 seconds we have left, your book uh, and uh Daniel, I'm gonna go more into it later when but your book uses mainly all purpose.
+
+[1:01:10] I'm assuming your editor also said don't use any fancy flowers. Do you use fancy flowers at work or at home? Yes. I I will tell you what I use at work is a combination of uh all purpose King Arthur, and then we have some cake flour, and then we use some farmer ground high extraction, rye, whole wheat bread flour. Yeah.
+
+[1:01:29] So all different flowers, different for different things. Which King Arthur or do you use? We use the um the surgalahad. Yeah, yeah. And then um I actually think that the best cake flour is the Pura Snow brand.
+
+[1:01:42] Yeah, I but it so you buy it in the in the do they s I only see that in boxes. You can buy the 50s of that or 50 pounder. Yeah, you know what I w I went to Jetro. Oh really? From Bell.
+
+[1:01:51] I went to Jetro recently and they actually had some decent flowers. I don't know if they had that they do. Uh you know or miss a Jetro. You never know. Uh it's true.
+
+[1:01:58] The uh I went for the first time ever. It's it's insane. The most physically rude people. It's the best place in New York to get into a fight for sure. Yeah, crazy.
+
+[1:02:07] Yeah. Get slammed into with those you bo this this dude like literally almost runs into my wife with this damn thing in line. I'm like, dude, she is stationary. What the hell are you doing? No, it's lawless.
+
+[1:02:19] Cooking issues. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center, News Stance Studios. Joined as usual with uh John here in the booth. How you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:22] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels here in New York.
+
+[0:27] Hey, how you doing, man? Good to see you. Good to see you as well. Quinny Quinn over there on Vancouver Island in Namimo. What's up?
+
+[0:33] Hey. Yeah? Good? I'm I'm good. Good.
+
+[0:37] Uh, and then we have uh a triple threat in Los Angeles, all crowded around uh a single iPhone, their little super spreader radio event. We have Nastasia De Hammer Lopez. How you doing? I'm good. Good, yeah.
+
+[0:53] You sound like you're all crowded around. You leaned back and like like on a couch somewhere, like usually in the distance. And uh Jackie Molecules is there. How you doing? Oh yeah.
+
+[1:05] The usual, yeah, could care less posture. Yeah, okay. And uh special guest over there in Los Angeles, uh, you know, uh former co-worker uh of mine, l uh longtime uh friend of the show, Austin Hennley. How you doing? I'm doing well, Dave.
+
+[1:21] How are you? Now you sound clear as a bell. Here is someone who knows how to do a radio presentation, even on an iPhone, puts his face into the microphone speaking. Uh, nice. Yeah, well, you know, don't chew on it.
+
+[1:35] Don't chew on it. So uh when I first visited you over there in LA, you were at uh Domo, but now you're running the program at uh a Taiwanese joint, Cato, right? Which I haven't been to. Here are great things. Michelin starred the whole nine.
+
+[1:49] Yeah, so why don't you talk to me about what you're doing over there? Yeah, so Cato was a restaurant on the west side of LA for about five years. They got a Michelin star in that location, tiny little strip mall uh restaurant. Um got a Michelin star without any beverage program at all, which as far as I know, at least um the only restaurant in the US to get a star without a beverage program. Um then uh about a year ago, moved to a new location on the east side in the row in downtown LA with a liquor license.
+
+[2:30] So that opened up the opportunity to have a wine program and a cocktail program. What's the row? Is that where all those tall buildings are, like the loft and the art studio places? It's it's a development uh in around the arts district in LA that has um high-end retail as well as um a few restaurants. So we're located in there, Hyopto, which is a seven-seat uh Kaiseki restaurant, uh as well as the LA outpost of uh Chris Bianco's Pizzeria.
+
+[3:02] So, how fast can a seven-seat Kaiseki restaurant lose money, you think? I think that if you have people who are spending um ten to fifteen thousand dollars on wine, I think I think you can stay afloat for a little while. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but like that's the kind of project where it's like, you know, that's the old school adage, right?
+
+[3:26] How do you make a how do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business? Start with a big one, boom, boom, boom, boom. That's the old thing that they say, right? Because that seems like a recipe for burning money, right? Cause it's like in the old days, you'd be like, I run this restaurant out of my house, my family runs it, and so we make enough money, there's no overhead other than our rent anyway.
+
+[3:44] Here you go, here's your seven seats, right? But like to pay commercial rent in a fancy neighborhood in Los Angeles, I don't know, man. Seven seats, hardcore, right? I don't know. Hardcore, hardcore move.
+
+[3:57] Hardcore move. Uh yeah, I mean it it seems like it seems like they're doing fine. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure I just don't understand uh the economics of it.
+
+[4:05] Uh and uh how's uh how many seats you have at Cato. Uh so we do uh about 65 to 75 covers a night. And uh ten of those are at the bar for an abbreviated menu that's made up of classic dishes from previous menus of the uh that the restaurant had. Right. And so since you won't tell me how many seats you have, how many turns is it?
+
+[4:34] We do uh one and a half turn. All right, okay. So you're like uh you're like thir 35 plus another 10 at the bar or something like that. Yeah, somewhere around there. Ah, nice.
+
+[4:45] All right. So uh now uh one of the reasons you wanted to come on, and this is a subject that obviously that's important to me as well, is that you're doing uh getting a lot of press there for your non-alk work, right? Yeah, the the non-alcoholic program has been really well received. Um, and I part of it I think has to do with the fact that keto already had a a clientele that um a lot of them didn't drink alcohol, so it was it's kind of a a perfect opportunity to try something more expansive on the non-alcoholic front. So rather than just having um a shorter menu of non-alcoholic cocktails, we decided to kind of fully lead into it and have more options available.
+
+[5:32] So we have a a wine pairing um the the menu is nine to eleven courses depending and so we have a wine pairing you get two ounces of wine with each course and then we also do a a non-alcoholic pairing where we have some items that are made by the bar as well as sourced items. So those can be varietal grape juices or dealized wines. And we just brought on um this really great kombucha from a producer out of Brooklyn. So the the menu the non-alcoholic menu is a little bit more varied than your typical handful of non-alcoholic cocktails. How do they verify the non-alcohol in the com kombucha?
+
+[6:13] How do they verify that? Or do you not worry is it not that hardcore um it's I mean they they in the kombucha they say that it's less than 0.5, which I think that's the legal definition for something. They test it in other words, right? Because I've had I've had kombucha people say that they're conversely on the flip side they're like this is has X percentage of alcohol in it and I taste it and I know that all you know the vast majority of the alcohol has been converted to acetic acid because I can taste acetic acid and I'm not dummy. So I'm like, you know, no it's not you know what I mean so it's like I maybe a lot a lot has changed.
+
+[6:51] That was a number of years ago. I bet you the kombucha manufacturers now are much better at testing their products and actually knowing what they're providing. But it's such a complicated microorganism uh thing image that like actually tacking it down short of actually measuring it is can be you know challenging, I think. Um I'm I mean I'm I'm sure they are measuring it to be able to sell it as uh with an alcohol free designation. Yeah, although interestingly, have you heard about this thing about this tattoo parlor in uh New York?
+
+[7:25] Have you heard about this ephemeral? Okay, so it's a tattoo parlor, it's a temporary tattoo, not temporary tattoos, they're called ephemeral, and they give you a tattoo, and the tattoo is supposed to fade within a year, right? And now, like two years later, people's tattoos not only haven't faded, but they just look kind of scrubbed out, like kind of like washed out, right? So this look kind of nasty. And and the and the people are like, what what what the hell?
+
+[7:50] And they're like, well, you know, maybe fade in a year. Maybe like for a lot of people it fades in a year. That's what they're saying now. You know what I mean? So, like, just because somebody sells it, don't make it so.
+
+[8:00] You know what I mean? Anyways, especially no offense, you know who you are in Brooklyn. I'm saying, I love Brooklyn, a lot of skullduggery in Brooklyn. A lot of skulldug stars. Am I wrong about this?
+
+[8:13] Oh, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of skullduggery. You know, not saying you have to be, you know, be doing bad things there.
+
+[8:21] I'm just saying, you know, if you look at people's claims out of Brooklyn sometimes, not that Manhattan's much better. Oh, speaking of which, I don't want to go any further. Last week, apparently, we insulted Trenton. So, what what happened, John? Rob L reached out on the Discord to put in a good word for Trenton, and I will quote Trenton, New Jersey.
+
+[8:42] For all of you that don't know like the lay of the land here, Trenton is the capital of our fine sister state, New Jersey, where I spent a good portion of my childhood, right? So that's how I have the right to save kind of whatever I want. You know what I mean? But Trenton, I meanly said, I don't know what they build there, and Trenton's claim to fame is it ain't Camden, right? That's what I said.
+
+[8:59] So that's like, okay. So then what was that? What was the response? All right. So Rob says it is the pizza capital of the United States, in my opinion, and is a place of great culinary note.
+
+[9:10] Trenton, like New Haven, had metal manufacturers, which were a major attractor of Italian immigrant labor, and had some of the first pizza bakeries in the new world. Downtown Trenton is widely considered as unsafe today, and the Italians have left for the surrounding areas, and the pizza places have followed. The best pizza, in my opinion, is De Lorenzo and Robinsville, New Jersey, which uh moved from downtown to a suburban strip mall, but it's absolutely fabulous. There's another De Lorenzo run by cousins in the parking lot of a large mall in the outskirts of Trenton that is nearly as good. Either of these are really either of these are easily worth a ride from New York City or Philly.
+
+[9:42] If you happen to be in Princeton, you're only 10-minute drive away. Yeah. Well, Austin, what you need to do next time you're coming out, right, is like, you know, when you know, leave work, go to Bianca, which I'm, you know, is it as good as the original? I've haven't been to either, so I can't say. But, you know, whatever.
+
+[9:57] Well-known, famous, great pizza. Have one of those. I haven't been to the original, but this is uh the LA location is some of the best pizza in LA for sure. And is it good but well, okay. Is it great pizza?
+
+[10:12] Some of the best pizza in life. It's some of the best sushi in Oklahoma. What? You know what I mean? It's like, is it great pizza?
+
+[10:18] Is what I'm asking. You know what I mean? Um, I would say that by by any standard, it is very good. Okay, okay. So what you need to do is get the Bianca, go to Bianca, get on an aeroplane, eat nothing, water only, land, take the Uber to uh Trenton and try it out.
+
+[10:41] See what you think. Del Lorenzo's, yeah. Yeah. It's closely mimics what I wanted to do. Remember, I wanted to get us all, I wanted to, I wanted to go to Maine.
+
+[10:51] I wanted to get sea urchins out of the water in Maine, and then have Nastasia go to Santa Barbara and get sea urchins out of the water in Santa Barbara, both get on aeroplanes with igloo coolers and meet halfway. Totally reasonable, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because like right out of the water, right out of the water, Maine Sea urchins are every bit as good as the West Coast Sea urchins when you get them right out of the water.
+
+[11:16] But what I don't know, because I've never done it is if I get, and also I've had one right out of the water in the Mediterranean, Marseille, delicious, right? So then if you get them right out of the water in Santa Barbara, are you like, oh my God, holy crap. You know what I mean? I don't know. So he needs to have an equal time out of water kind of a situation.
+
+[11:36] Yeah. Although it's gonna be a lot easier to get a flight out of Santa Barbara anywhere than it is to get a flight out of Podunk, Maine anywhere. You know what I mean? That's true, too. Yeah.
+
+[11:43] Yeah. What do you think, Staz? I think I think considering how up in arms uh people are um with people eating burritos on a plane, I'm fairly sure they'd be upset with sea urchin as well. Uh yeah. Well, you're not eating it on the plane, you're meeting halfway and eating it in the airport.
+
+[12:01] Yep. You ever been to um you ever been you ever been to Nogales, Mexico, Austin? I have not. So Nogales is like, you know, on the on the border between Mexico and Arizona. And it's one of the border towns that, you know, Americans would go to to buy blankets and glasses and stuff like that.
+
+[12:20] In the 90s, I went there uh, you know, when I first started visiting my parents' house when they lived in Phoenix, outside of Phoenix, and I bought a cow skull, right? Because they had a pile of cow skulls. And I was like, you know what's cool? This is you know, my first time in the desert, you know what I'm gonna do? Buy a cow skull, right?
+
+[12:39] I ended up buying one also for my father in law so he could have it on his zeroscaped, you know, lawn next to the Seguaro cactus, be official. You know what I'm saying? Because he had a Savaro. He legit had Savaros in his front lawn. Anyway, but he kept the cow skull in the back so it wouldn't get stolen behind the fence.
+
+[12:54] Anyway, I digress. So I get the uh I get the cow skull and I realize once it's in the car that they you know what a domestic beetle is? No. Domestic beetles are the beetles that eat the flesh off of bones so that you can so that you can have really nice bone presentations that don't rot, that don't stink like rotting meat. Okay.
+
+[13:14] So I find out that if you don't pay a lot for cow skulls, they don't bother using domestic beetles, and they have a lot of rotten meat left on them. And so as soon as we get in the car, it starts stinking. And so it's stinking all the way back from Nogales to Phoenix. And, you know, they're tolerating it because I'm new in the family, right? You know, I'm still just a boyfriend.
+
+[13:33] We're not even engaged yet. And then I'm like, they're like, how the hell are you gonna get this on? They're like, it's a carry-on. I carried that cow skull on pre-911. I carried that cow skull with the horns on, and they're like, How the hell are you gonna get in?
+
+[13:49] I was like, well, if anyone gives me crap, I'm just gonna say it's a bolo tie. I'm gonna wear it. It's my clothes. They can suck it. That's what I said.
+
+[13:55] I was, you know, a little more whatever. And I brought it home. It ended up getting uh attached to the front of my 1976 Pontiac Bonneville eventually. So it's a carry-on carrier. Yes, that's great.
+
+[14:08] That's good. I never even thought of that. It's classic. Uh, I don't know how I got there. Anyway, so back to the non-alcoholic program at Cato.
+
+[14:16] Kombucha, what else? So we decided to have a program that was a little more wide-reaching because I I don't know about you, but even when I did drink alcohol, I don't enjoy drinking cocktails throughout a whole meal. Um I'm a wine with meal guy usually. I'm a cocktail before, cocktail after, wine during guy. Yeah.
+
+[14:43] Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the way it should be done. I mean, obviously, my career is dependent on people wanting to drink cocktails with dinner, but I thought that it was important to give the people who are choosing not to drink alcohol for whatever reason the kind of breadth of offerings that you get if you are drinking alcohol. Start with cocktails, move on to something more venous or wine-like, and then you can finish with a cocktail as well. So that's that was the idea going in.
+
+[15:12] So we have kind of three different like big categories that you can decide to enjoy if you want to do something that's non-alcoholic. We have non-alcoholic cocktails as well as a whole menu of wine-like offerings that that people can choose to do by the glass or do the pairing. Is LA like New York where you can have nothing and then beer and wine and then full liquor, or is it is it all or nothing there? No, there there are there are beer and wine uh licenses in LA. Right.
+
+[15:48] Right. Okay. Just curious. Uh now, here's a question. So, like, you know, at XCON, we made the decision to only source kind of super fancy stuff for our non-alcoholic stuff and charge the same amount.
+
+[15:58] What are you guys doing for uh the cost? The charge rather? Yeah, so I mean, some of the some of the things that we're we're offering by the glass um are cost as much as as wine does. And then you are dealcoholizing that product um and then bottling it and shipping it, et cetera, you're you're adding a step that's gonna be adding additional cost for the producer to the product. So oftentimes they are as expensive as you know, lower cost alcoholic products.
+
+[16:39] Right. But I mean what I'm saying when you're charging the when you're charging the guest, like are they seeing it as in other words, it is it less expensive, and if not, is it for them to buy in general? And then do people balk at paying the same amount? Because we always said, I don't think anyone's gonna bulk. If they're there to buy a non-alcoholic drink, they want to be treated with respect, they want a high quality product, they're not gonna balk at the price.
+
+[17:03] That was our theory. I'm asking, I'm wondering if you were seeing the same thing at in your locale. Um so I mean, as far as like the our our we I structure the the pricing just based on a cost like targeted cost of goods percentage. So the non-alcoholic pairing, um we're trying to get to the same cost of goods as as the wine pairing, and at that cost of goods percentage, it's eighty-five dollars for the pairing. Um, and the wine pairing is a hundred and fifty five okay um and then the non-alcoholic cocktails at the same cost of goods as the alcoholic cocktails are fifteen dollars versus twenty dollars and no people aren't balking at the price right how much more labor though is going into the alc non-alk ones because we put a lot more labor into the non-alcs than we did into the alcohol because it just took more manipulation yeah I mean it's a tremendous amount of labor but I'm I'm on salary so it doesn't matter.
+
+[18:01] Right right but theoretically if you were getting paid for your time that means you'd be you would have to charge more than you do because you're doing it on a cost of a cost of goods not on a cost of production. Right yeah yeah and like uh huh and so how much has the check average gone up now that I guess you can't really compare because you move locations as well so you can't compare check average before versus check average after. Yeah. I'd be interested to and also the the menu at the menu at the original location was was much shorter. Yeah.
+
+[18:34] So I was never definitely a different ball game but I Yeah. But I can tell you that on any given night our non-alcoholic sales are often as high as our liquor sales. Yeah we never we never got there I guess because we have a bar yeah we never got there no matter how hard we pushed it we never got there. I was also we were never able at existing conditions to crack we I think we did a good job cracking carbonated and we did a good job cracking bilts but we never I you know I never felt happy with any of our attempts to crack a shaken cocktail or a stirred cocktail. You have any results on that?
+
+[19:20] Um I yeah so I I I I think that it's tremendously difficult. Um because especially with a with like a stirred cocktail, you're you're missing the just the texture of alcohol, which is why I don't really try to mimic or make non-alcoholic versions of alcoholic cocktails. You know, I often I get asked for recipes for you know non-alcoholic negronis or things like that. And I just I don't I think that trying to mimic the structure or the results of an alcoholic cocktail, it's just kind of setting yourself up for failure. So I just I tend to build them from the ground up as their own kind of entity.
+
+[20:11] And because those two categories of drinks don't really work, I just I I haven't pursued it. Right. I mean I think the issue for me is is that there are certain categories of drink, right? Non-alcoholic drink that have they're very specific and well known. So like tea, right?
+
+[20:28] So like there's tea and then there's things that have been added to tea or messed with tea, and people kind of understand that there's a lot of obviously baggage that goes with messing with teas, and there's a lot of connoisseurship behind tea, coffee, then there's like your various lemonades, aids, and then fruit juices, right? But to me, yeah, like so. If you're gonna do those, sometimes unless it's got a very specific selling point, well, the teas and the coffees, obviously you can, but like on fruit juices, it's kind of hard to distinguish yourself as being something different or s or special or worthy of a lot of money. Um, which is why I think, you know, when we were trying to do it, I don't we weren't necessarily interested in hitting a particular cocktail, but for me, it's like what's interesting about a like a an a dinner adult beverage is lower in sugar, right? Some sort of complexity, uh, and a specific kind of drink.
+
+[21:26] Because like a a soda, you'll I mean I pound cocktails, but I'm bad. You know what I mean? But like a soda, you pound a carbonated non-alcoholic dinner drink, you're not supposed to freaking pound it. You know what I mean? You're supposed to sip it.
+
+[21:39] And what kind of what kind of adds to that structure that is an alcohol? And so, like for me, like I would never try to mimic, as you say, a Negroni, but then on the other hand, like, you know, I don't necessarily want to make something drink like a slowly sipped stirred cocktail just by turning it into some kind of like weird health tea herb bomb. You know what I mean? Which is a lot of you know what you'll see is like heavily bittered, heavily herbal concoctions, you know, that um they're sippers all right. But um not for the same reason.
+
+[22:12] I feel like a lot of the uh a lot of the things in the in the RTD non-alcoholic space, they are overly bittered, but a kind of bitter that I that I at least find unpleasant, like kind of like a an like that sort of like uh potpourri like floral gension, like sharp bitterness that hits you in the back of the throat. Um yeah, or like you know, when you go to like, you know, uh when you go to Hong Kong and you go to one of those tea shops and they're like, what's wrong with you? And you tell them what's wrong with you, and they hand you a cup of something that's supposed to fix that, it's not supposed to taste good, you know what I mean? And you drink it and you're like, uh you know what I mean? Like those things.
+
+[22:54] Stas. Remember when we went to one of those places? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Hardcore.
+
+[23:01] Hardcore. Did not finish the cup. Did not finish the cup. And whatever ails me is still ailing me. So there you go.
+
+[23:07] Maybe I should have finished the cup. Um so then you're just ailing and have a terrible taste in your mouth. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so we we launched right into this.
+
+[23:16] I didn't ask any of you guys whether you had anything uh culinarily interesting happen to you last week. And the show's almost half over. I didn't ask you if you had anything interesting. Anyone anything interesting last week? Nothing?
+
+[23:25] No. All weeks. No? Thinking, not really. Okay, so the two people who are working in restaurants, any particularly egregiously bad uh guests in the past week that you want to share a story about without naming names.
+
+[23:38] A four-top reservation came in with eight people, expecting all the seated. And how how angry were they when uh they were not seated promptly? Not as angry as they I would have expected them to gotten. They were like rel I mean they were difficult, but yeah. Yeah, were they already lubricated?
+
+[23:56] Yeah, yeah. Too lubricated was the problem. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, as usual. Yeah.
+
+[24:00] Increases the incense uh the uh the uh what's it called entitlement exponentially. Sure does. You know? Sure does. Yeah.
+
+[24:07] Yeah. What about you, Austin? Any any particularly egregious uh guests you want to uh discuss? Well, there's the one one thing of note, and it since this is you know, since I now work at a a restaurant and not a cocktail bar, I don't often have to deal with um the stump the bartender or bartender's choice games that people tend to play. Um, which is which is very nice.
+
+[24:34] Um, but you know, it does happen from from time to time. Um, and that's you know, that's fine. That's what we're there for. But I had a request. Yeah, okay, go ahead, I finish request.
+
+[24:44] I want to hear it. Uh I had a request from uh guest for a dealer's choice, old fashioned, no sugar. Don't like bitters. Okay. Straight the person wants straight whiskey.
+
+[25:03] Bourbon, they want bourbon in a glass. Creative. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. And it was I it was the be creative that really got me.
+
+[25:13] Because uh I don't know. Um I don't know if he expected me to just pour him straight spirit, but with the feather boa on. Oh, that would have been amazing. Um do you have a feather boa at the restaurant? Uh no, but not an option in the future.
+
+[25:36] I'll keep it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you need to keep that as an option. You know, in the future. Be creative.
+
+[25:42] You're like, gotcha. And then you just reach under the bar, put on the boa, and you're like, sweet. Yeah. Yeah. And then they get their straight pour of whiskey on the rock.
+
+[25:51] Yeah. Um, I have to say this, like I I mean, I I I had to cheat. I did use a little Amaro. That's being creative. Yeah.
+
+[26:00] Yeah. Sneak a little sweetness in there. Of course. Otherwise, it's straight liquor. Right?
+
+[26:06] Anyway. Yeah. I mean, and I I stirred it and I straw tasted it before I gave it to him. He's like, oh, what do you think? I was like, eh, it'd be better with a little sugar.
+
+[26:14] Yeah. Yeah. Uh so question. I know that bartenders hate when someone uh like, you know, says, just make me something or dealer's choice, but it's really I hate choosing my own stuff so much. What I really mean is just pick something off the menu that you think is good and no matter what it is, I'll like it.
+
+[26:33] Why is that such an offensive order? I don't find that offensive. Yeah. So I'm like, hey, choose something. I don't care.
+
+[26:42] You know what I mean? I just want to know what you guys do at this bar. I've never been here before. I'm never gonna come again. I'm not gonna write anything about it.
+
+[26:48] I just want like a uh a drink that you know you guys make well, make one. I I like I don't know, whatever. Apparently I'm you know, of course I'm widely hated. So there you go. You know, bartenders hate that order, and I I'm widely hated.
+
+[27:00] So there you have it. Uh John, why don't you curiously derive? Notorious here. Notoriously. Uh John, why don't you uh push the Patreon and our upcoming guests?
+
+[27:08] And by the way, if you are listening live and you want to ask uh us or Austin anything uh about anything, call in 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507 and tell them how to listen live, John. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. We get a lot of great guests coming up. I know we've got Katie Parler coming up uh soon to talk about her new book of food from the Italian Islands.
+
+[27:31] We get discounts with Kitchen Arts and Letters. We should do uh uh classics in the field episode. Yeah, yeah. Um and yeah, access to the Discord and all the perks that come with that. So uh yeah, patreon.com slash cooking issues and there are different membership levels you should join and check us out.
+
+[27:47] Right. And uh by the way, uh I think it was last week with uh Caroline Schiff uh at uh what's it at Pastry Schiff, right? Yeah. Uh you know, she was on and we went around the round table and uh played what piece of kitchen equipment would you like? And one of us said blast chiller, maybe it was even me.
+
+[28:05] And uh Kevin Stadmeyer just wrote in on Twitter saying that you can get there's a sub $2,000 blast chiller now. What was the name of the manufacturer, Quinn? I haven't looked it up, so I don't know if it's any good. What was the name of it? Um Vesta.
+
+[28:18] Vesta. Anyway. So if anyone has any uh experience with that, let us know. We'll check it out because you know, I love a blast chiller. Speaking of playing games, have we ever played your favorite Newton?
+
+[28:30] No? All right. No. What's your favorite Newton? Ready?
+
+[28:34] Fig? Right? Wayne. Right? Isaac or Juice.
+
+[28:46] I mean, Fig Newton's are pretty delicious. I don't think of them enough. Yeah. Yeah. Juice.
+
+[28:50] No one knows who Juice Newton is anymore. No, who's Juice Newton? Yeah. Juice Newton's a great singer. Playing with the Queen of Hearts.
+
+[28:56] She had some fantastic albums back in the juice Newton is the answer to me. Sure. I think it's gotta be Isaac, no? He is a weird dude, man. I think it has to be Isaac.
+
+[29:06] I thought really long and hard about this, Dave. I think it has to be Isaac. Leibniz, Leibniz came out with calculus at the same time Newton did, and all of those physical principles would have been figured out by someone pretty quickly after Newton, any who ha. He ended up being kind of a vile individual, right? I don't think anyone would have come up with playing with uh, you know, with the Queen of Hearts other than Juice Newton until maybe now that AI can do it, right?
+
+[29:31] Fig Newtons are delicious. They are the probably they're the or they're the or like you know, Newton pastry, so uh go with those as opposed to, you know, and Wayne Newton, not only do I not know his songs too well, but you know, he's on that, he's on that surgery train, Wayne Newton. He's on that hardcore surgery train. You know what I mean? Anyway, yeah.
+
+[29:51] Yeah. But I, you know, I asked a bunch of people, and no one under the age of like 45 knows Juice Newton, so I feel it's part of my like need is to get people to go back and listen to Juice Newton. She's she's great. I don't know what you know, whatever. Uh okay.
+
+[30:18] Wait, wait, wait, wait. Well, people don't eat fig newtons anymore. People don't eat fig newtons anymore. Wait, when's the last time? Under the age of 35, you said?
+
+[30:26] For like anyone younger than anyone, yeah, like, yeah, yeah. They did I mean, I don't eat anything like that anymore. When was the last time I had any cookie like this? It's not a cookie. It's not it's freaking fruit and cake.
+
+[30:37] It's freaking fruit and cake, Joe. For those of you that watch the commercials for the my favorite cookie commercial back in that era though was Peak Friends. Remember Peak Friends commercials, anyone? No. Peak Friends are extraordinarily serious.
+
+[30:51] Cookies, they're made for grown-ups. You never heard this? No. No, we should turn this into a little segment. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[30:58] Old old uh commercials. Anywho. I got the perfect little spinning wheel for it. Yeah, do you? Austin.
+
+[31:06] Ooh. It keeps going. I like that. Austin, are you saying you've never had a fig newton? Oh no, I have had a fig newton.
+
+[31:18] Okay, okay, thank God. Okay. When I was a kid, they started. I just don't think they're very popular uh with the Gen Z. Oh.
+
+[31:25] When I was a kid, or when I was a young adult, young adult, uh, I think Fig Newton popularity started to maybe wane a bit. And it was the beginning of the kind of skewastrophe that's happened in recent decades where, like, you know, it used to be when I was growing up, there were Doritos, right? And then all of a sudden there were cool ranch Doritos, and then there are an infinity of Doritos. And the idea is that if there's a if there's only one Dorito, you're like, am I gonna get Doritos or am I gonna get some other product? Right?
+
+[31:56] Whereas if there's an infinity of Doritos, you're like, oh, which Doritos am I gonna buy? So it increases the overall buy of Doritos. So then the Newton folk did the same thing with Newton's, and they came up with raspberry newtons, apple newtons, all kinds of things. So the apricot is delicious. Oh, I've never had the apricot new delicious.
+
+[32:14] I love, I love, I love dried apricots. It's my favorite fruit wrap. You know the Jova fruit wraps or the Joya, whatever it is, the Brooklyn made uh fruit roll-ups, the original ones? Of course I do. Yeah.
+
+[32:24] Apricot, my favorite, my favorite. Or apricot. Love it. Love it. And Nastassi, do you remember my favorite California uh dried apricot variety?
+
+[32:36] Blemen. Blenham is correct. Ding ding. High acidity, delicious. Sometimes they're too low in sugar, so they need to be kind of effed with a little bit when I use them in uh in cooking or cocktails, but they're the most because I love high acidity stuff.
+
+[32:51] And so, like a high acidity dried fruit, mmm. Here's another uh good uh Nastasia. I think this is Nastasia quote. Nastasia, what's the best peach? Do you remember what you said?
+
+[33:07] No, I don't. The best peaches are the best peaches are nectarines. That's what you said. I was like, zing zing. You want a peach but with less hair and more flavor?
+
+[33:19] Go with a nectarine. Insulting all kinds of people right there, but I find it to be true. So what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do about it? Uh it's our show, right?
+
+[33:29] Yeah. Uh so finally, I'm getting to this uh Misos by Bezos uh question, and uh you all feel free to chime in. Uh the this rant is gonna take fundamentally forever, right? And then we're gonna need to like rip through these other questions, which you're all obviously equally. Do you have any do you guys have anything else you want to get in and edge wise before like uh this question causes me to completely unhinge my jaw?
+
+[33:53] Oh sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun. Get going. No, let's do it. All right. Okay.
+
+[33:57] Uh Misos by Bezos uh quoted a a uh what's it called, uh a paragraph or two from a CNN opinion poll. Uh what is Day's take on this recent article excerpt? Uh a food is ultra-processed if you can't make it in your home kitchen, says Marion Nessel, author of over a dozen books on nutrition and food politics. At 86, Nessel, who retired in 2017, holds the title of Paulette Goddard, Professor of Nutrition Food Studies and Public Health at New York University. It is a specific category of junk food that is industrially processed.
+
+[34:31] It doesn't look anything like the foods from which it is derived, and usually has a lot of chemical additives of one kind or another, she explains. These foods are industrially formulated to be irresistibly delicious, so you can't stop eating them. All right, where do I begin? First of all, let me say that I have a lot of respect for Marion Nessel a lot, right? She ran the food studies program.
+
+[34:49] Um she was, you know, kind of best known for her book, Food Politics, and she's done a lot of good crusading specifically around false labeling claims and kind of the going back to another word we used earlier, skullduggery that happens in uh in the food industry. Having said that, I think that the this new concept, which by the way, if you haven't already, how many of you guys have already heard uh this uh this catchphrase ultra-processed food? Yeah. Yeah? It's gonna start trending up and up and up and up.
+
+[35:26] I'm just letting you know that it's gonna start trending up and up and up and up. It first started getting used in the literature around 2010, 2012, right? And it's gonna go uh uh up and up, and I it is kind of it is you know how Sylvester Graham. I I'll get into that later. I'll get into Sylvester Graham later after I've explained some of this stuff.
+
+[35:57] It is basically the newest scientific spackling over a whole bunch of kind of moralistic elitist attitudes towards the way people eat and to um wishing to change other people's dietary habits to fit what you think is healthy. And the term itself ultra processed, if you look into kind of its derivation, is written in very moralistic uh terms. So I'll I'll go back to one of the early uh papers uh in 2012, Carlos uh Montiero et al. uh wrote a paper called Commentary, The Food System, Ultra Processing, the Big Issue for Nutrition, Disease, Health, and Wellbeing. This is in 2012.
+
+[36:43] All right. Uh, and this was about, I think he was, you know, in the original group who was kind of uh coining this term as of ultra-processed as being uh something that to look at. All right, so from that article. Uh our general theory is that the global food system, and specifically its increasing domination by processed food products, as specified and defined here, is the big issue for nutrition, disease, health, and well-being. So, right away, by the way, all of these papers are written by people with hardcore axis to grind, by places who whose specific job it is to tell you how to eat and what is considered healthy and what is not, right?
+
+[37:21] So it's not that their data is necessarily wrong on account of that, but I already don't trust them. It's like when when tobacco people tell you that tobacco is healthy, that is not trustworthy. If a tobacco person pays for a study and then that says tobacco's gonna kill you, all of a sudden I start to trust it more. When people start writing things that are counter to what they want, I trust them more. It doesn't mean just because they have an axe to grind, though, doesn't mean their data is wrong.
+
+[37:45] But I'm just gonna say that from the from the get-go, right? Uh okay. Um where is it? Uh we begin here by explaining the history and development of the theory of ultra-processed foods, uh and its context and our findings and thinking so far. We also outline implications for the assessment of dietary patterns, development of dietary guidelines, promotion of good health and well-being, and prevention and control of obesity and related chronic non-communicable diseases.
+
+[38:11] So right there, they're saying, there's something wrong, and we're gonna tell you how to live. Already I hate that. I already hate that. They then go on a notice uh this uh the lead author is from Brazil, and he's and his point is is that you know, in Brazil, sometime in like the in the 80s, Brazil started getting fatter, like the fat like like fatty fat Americans. And why?
+
+[38:35] What's different? Because he's like, we're not eating the exact same thing that Americans are eating, and we don't have the same culture that Americans are eating. We used to think Americans were getting fat and having these problems just because they're bad people. I'm really paraphrasing. He didn't say any of that stuff.
+
+[38:47] But he basically wanted to know why is it in what's considered um, you know, a high but more middle income and not the United States or UK, why are we starting to see increased re rates of these kind of metabolic, uh, what they call metabolic syndrome, which is another thing for another day. Uh but he's like, the answer is ultra-processed foods, right? And ultra-processing, as said above, our specific thesis when our within our general theory is that the principal dietary driver of pandemic overweight and obesity and of related chronic non-communicable diseases. Forget how crappy all the data is on just using weight as a as an indicator of health. Specifically, like corrected for your age and whatnot, like forget all the fact that that data is trash and garbage, right?
+
+[39:32] Um, and of related uh chronic non-communicable diseases, is what we identify as ultra-processed products, while edible and usually very palatable. These are not real foods, right? So here are the moral things. These are not real foods, right? They are fundamentally different from foods that have been processed, however intensively in ways that modify or even transform the original unprocessed food.
+
+[39:53] So already in the underpinnings of this quote unquote scientific document, and this is referenced and goes through all of the ones that are cohort studies, which I don't want to have time to get into kind of why I think those things are necessarily or often trash can studies, right? But you can already see the moral kind of um underpinnings of uh of what they're saying, right? So they're fundamentally different and somehow worse. Ultra processed products are not made from foods. They are made from ingredients.
+
+[40:20] Some of these are derived from foods, such as oils, fats, flour, starches, and sugar, but many are obtained by the further processing of food constituents, such as hydrogenated oils, hydrolyzed proteins, starch modified sugar. I don't even know what a starch modified sugar is. I don't think that's a thing. Starch modified sugar. Starch modified sugar?
+
+[40:37] No, I don't know. They add a starch to a sugar? Not a thing. Not a thing. And extruded or otherwise processed remnants of meat.
+
+[40:45] Right? So the act of cutting meat up and putting it through a sausage grinder now makes it ultra processed, right? In reality, they're anti-salt, as though salt is some sort of new thing, right? Uh numerically, the great majority of the ingredients of ultra-processed, numerically, uh, are additives of and a variety of types, which include preservatives, stabilizers, emulsifiers, solvents, binders, bulkers, sweeteners, sensory enhancers, flavors, and colors. The function of many of these is to make the product look, smell, feel, and taste like food.
+
+[41:12] Bulk may come from air or water, synthetic micronutrients may be added to fortify the products. So what you have here is a scientific distillation of this kind of BS garbage pollen trash about how you're supposed to eat what your grandparents eat as though your grandparents were freaking healthy, right? I mean, my grandparents were quite healthy. But my great-grandparents, you know what I mean, or my great-great-grandparents, they ate a crap ton of salt. They ate pork barrel stuff.
+
+[41:36] You know what I mean? Like literal, like salted pork barrel stuff. So what they consider food are food and minimally minimally processed foods. Stuff you do in the kitchen is okay. So fermentation and malting, as long as you don't make alcohol, alcohol's no good, right?
+
+[41:49] Uh, these are ancient, and you can do them all at home. These are in quotes, quotes that they say. Interestingly, you can peel things. So you're allowed to throw away all the nutrients from a potato by peeling it. That's fine.
+
+[41:58] You know what I mean? But still not ultra processed. As is vacpacking and sterilization. For some reason, sterilization is okay. Culinary ingredients are okay to use a little bit.
+
+[42:07] That's oils, fats, flour, sugar, and pasta, which is very hardcore extruded and made from uh semolina, which has almost none of the whole, you know, none of the brand, none of the germ left at all, right? Very highly tweaked out product, right? Those are all old technologies. You're allowed to use those carefully, right? Uh and then processed foods like canned beans, you can use them spare sparingly.
+
+[42:30] They're okay because you can still recognize them as food, but really you should be using dried beans. So already, and then stay away from anything that's been processed, like sausage, and they group together a bunch of things that you could easily make at home, especially if you were doing it in the old days. And they literally have pictures in this in this article of like people sitting around a family freaking table and cooking things. And what they're saying is is that if you have the privilege to be able to spend the time to buy a bunch of dried beans and whole meats and chop them up and cook them and enjoy them around the table with your family, that you're gonna be healthier. Ra, rah, rah, right?
+
+[43:06] It's just a re like labeling of this elitist trash that I hear all the time. And I guarantee you that what's gonna happen instead is this term is gonna be co-opted by big companies because you know who's out to make money? Food companies. And you know what people don't have time to do? Cook a bunch of dried beans and whole meats from scratch every day.
+
+[43:28] So maybe look at that as the maybe look at the fact that people have to do other things to make a living now, and we can't all sit around and cook dried pulses and whole grains uh all day and do nothing else. And to label breakfast cereals, which were the original health foods, they sometimes they'll say, oh, sugared breakfast cereals are bad. Well, I gotta tell you, some breakfast cereals are basically the least processed things you can do. You take wheat, you shove it in a roller, pop, it comes out the other end as raisin brand. End of story.
+
+[43:59] Now we they might add flavorings to it, but it's basically a whole whole food. So they're labeling things, they're putting a moral label on it, and it really ticks me off. I really don't enjoy it. Is that clear? And and going back to Sylvester Graham, Sylvester Graham in the early 1800s wrote a book about bread where he basically said the reason society sucks is because we buy bread from bakers.
+
+[44:20] Those evil sons of bakers, right, are ruining us. We have to have the mother cooking bread at home, otherwise it's not gonna be good. Because it's the love and the fact that she makes it. That is what makes you healthy. And this this newfangled sifting that we use with our flour and these bakers that they bake it when you're not there, they can't make a wholesome bread.
+
+[44:42] And this is basically newfangled uh grammism. It's grammism under a different uh guise, and I hate it. Okay. That makes any sense? Yeah.
+
+[44:52] So, you know, it was a couple weeks, mesos until I could get to it, but there you have it. Um, Zach from Pittsburgh. I've trained my mouth to handle pretty uh much any spicy food from capsation. Uh, different story for my gut, though. Do I need to just work on it longer or should I accept that I'm getting old and shouldn't and should stay away from anything above a five out of ten?
+
+[45:12] Uh a lot depends on how much other stuff is in your gut with it, I think. Like, you know, eating a lot of spicy stuff on an empty stomach is gonna kind of rip it up. But I I've noticed that um my stomach maybe hurts a little more as I'm getting older. Any of you guys notice this with uh spicy foods? Wait, say that again.
+
+[45:27] So he's having trouble like he can't. Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah. His mouth can take it, but it kind of burns in the in the stomach a little bit. I never have any problems on the exit.
+
+[45:35] I'm not an I have no exit problems with capsation. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like I've got no fire on the outside. You know what I mean?
+
+[45:42] But uh, it does hurt my stomach more. But I think so I I relate to this Dave. This is like a story of my life. I mean, uh, I'm the kind of person I'm like always I'm at a Thai restaurant asking for Thai spicy kind of thing, and like I can handle it, but then I'm always like, ah, my stomach feels like garbage, and obviously we know why. But but is there anything you can do to ameliorate it, like eat more of the rice or what?
+
+[46:05] Uh I haven't figured that out. I mean, I sort of just well pop tums indiscriminately, and I don't really know if that's helping or not. But now you have that little Wayne song going through my head, pop tums, pop bottles. Anyway, uh yeah, that's little Wayne, right? Um Yeah, I don't know.
+
+[46:23] I don't know, Zach, but it's interesting. We'll we'll talk about it and think about it more. Uh Colton Johnson writes in a number of years ago I was shown a trick to reduce the resting time for fresh pasta dough via vacuum ceiling. We should have done this with Caroline was on. Uh would this also work with pie dough?
+
+[46:36] I have a recipe that is very reliable for an all butter top crust, but seeing as I'm in patient, I was just curious, maybe if anyone has tried this. I don't know if this would work with every kind of pie dough, but seeing as my recipe has very little added water, I thought it might work. Thanks again for the new Searz all. Uh looking forward to searing all things while I'm glad you got yours. Um we still have uh we still have uh about how many, Quinn?
+
+[46:56] About a a hundred and ten that still need to be shipped because of uh the customs issue. Uh yeah, I'll have to have to double check those numbers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[47:09] Um well, so the vacuum trick is to is to speed hydration. I mean, what I think you should do is go use uh Monroe Boston Strauss's recipes where he uses uh non-high gluten flour uh and alters the water so they don't need any resting. That's what you should do. His pie doughs don't need any resting, and they are delicious. Right.
+
+[47:28] But if it does require a rest, I'm assuming that rest is due to hydration, and yes, vacuuming should speed it up. And pie crust doesn't really require. Ah, it's interesting. If you're if you're going for super flaky, I wonder whether or not vacuuming it would damage its ability to kind of puff away from the from the water in the thing. Probably not, especially if you're not sucking too hard of a vacuum.
+
+[47:49] I would say try it and let us know, right, Stas? Try it and let us know. That's what Nastasi always used to say. Try it. That is true.
+
+[47:57] That's true. Yeah, try it and let us know. Why don't you teach us something, right, Stas? No. Yes.
+
+[48:04] Yeah. Biff Dit. Question for Dave. If liquid water doesn't change to a gas until 212 Fahrenheit, that's a hundred for you Celsius, folks. Uh, how is it that things will dry on, say, a 75 degree day or human sweating?
+
+[48:16] Well, interestingly, uh, sweating is how you actually cool because uh it turns out that uh anytime there's more moisture, right, in something, right? It's like stuff's gonna be evaporating off of it. All the boiling point is is the point at which um how am I gonna put this in a way that makes makes sense? Boiling is the point at which the rate of molecules uh I say how am I gonna put this in a this is gonna get complicated real quick, right? When you boiling takes energy, right?
+
+[48:52] It's called the heat of fusion, right? So uh it is I forget how many calories per per gram, but it's it's a lot. It's a lot, right? So it takes a lot of energy to boil a gram of water and turn it from liquid water into into heat, into uh steam, right? At boiling, right, you're at the temperature where, like the kind of that's what's what's going on, right?
+
+[49:18] In at a lower temperature, because uh the the water molecules are all moving at different speeds, right? They're moving at random speeds. So the temperature that something is at a particular point is fundamentally the average of uh, you know, it's related to the average of the motion of those molecules, right? The average speed of those molecules. So uh because that's an average speed, some of those molecules are moving quite quickly, and some of them, when they get to the surface, have enough energy to escape, right?
+
+[49:44] Because they're going at the same speed that would be the average speed in a boiling liquid. And they will escape. And when they do escape, they take that excess energy with them, and in fact, the liquid cools down. And that's how sweating works and how evaporation works. So the heat energy, right, from that's required to evaporate the moisture when it's going off, is actually cooling the liquid down.
+
+[50:05] Now, a lot of times you won't notice because the ambient heat from the environment is uh is added in, it doesn't get appreciably cooler, but if you get a good breeze across something, evaporative cooling is quite quite effective. In fact, that's how swamp cooler works. It's also the reason why the temperature around a roast chicken is never exactly uh, you know, at the boiling, right? Because of evaporative cooling coming off of it. In fact, it's one of the most it's the one of the the most important and also least understood aspects of cooking.
+
+[50:35] So the boiling point is just the point at which the vapor pressure of the of water in the atmosphere that's 100% saturated is the same as the vapor as is as the vapor pressure that coming off of the of the liquid, right? And if you were to have uh a hundred percent saturated environment like Louisiana, then you wouldn't get evaporation, right? Or if you seal a container, you won't get evaporation because the water will evaporate off the surface of the liquid until the until the atmosphere above it is saturated, and then it won't evaporate anymore. Does that make sense? That explain it a little bits, a little bits, a little bits?
+
+[51:17] All right. Johnny Baseball. I seem to remember Paul Adams talking about using a paint sprayer to spray olive oil rather than those annoying hand pump sprayers or standard cooking spray. I'm interested in trying it, but curious if Dave has any experience or remembers this at all. I do not, those are propellant based, usually some of them are compressed air, some of them use propellant.
+
+[51:34] I haven't used them. The main issue with uh sprays is clogging, actually. So like a lot of the commercial sprays uh will add lessithin, and that is the reason why you really shouldn't use them on nonstick because the lessithin will gum up over time and gum things up. Same on like on your cast iron sometimes. I don't like to use those sprays.
+
+[51:52] I use the grilling ones, the high temperature ones, which I think have a different additive uh in it. So it might work, but you have to be careful about clogging your uh tip. Does that make sense? But maybe it works. Let me know.
+
+[52:02] I'm looking for a good pump, a good spray, right? Remember Fabio? The the the big chested no-shirt, like uh long haired, like raw ass novel dye. Yeah, yeah. He used to he used to repair him.
+
+[52:17] I don't know, I think he's still around. He's still Fabio. I think he used to rep, I can't believe it's not butter. So he'd be like huge and sexy with his hair, and he'd be like, I can't believe it's not butter. And then he did the spray version, and he literally the commercial.
+
+[52:30] And so we all used to say this, like, you know, we all all our friends used to be like, I can't believe it's not butter. Spray. And we're like, so gross. Such a gross idea next to this, like Adonis. You know what I mean?
+
+[52:43] Anyway. Were you ever a Fabia A Fabio fan stuff? No. No, God no. No.
+
+[52:51] In my mind. Do you think he's hot, dude? No, I mean he was his romance novel hot. He's he was literally a romance novel model. Yeah.
+
+[53:01] But he also he looked, he has a little bit of a Kenny G look about him. Maybe it's just the hair, right? Anyway. I mean, he looks ridiculous. I'm looking right now.
+
+[53:09] He looks absolutely ridiculous. Does he still have the pecs? Does he have now pec implants? Have you seen like a freaking Sylvester Stallone had all the implants so in the expendables, like no part of his body was moving in unison with the rest of his body? You ever see that?
+
+[53:23] Kind of amazing. Amazing. Fly writes in. I enjoyed hearing about your experience interacting with AI recently. Was wondering if you've read about or played with AI recipe generation, uh, and then look at this uh pre-a Christian article in the New York Times uh about an AI Thanksgiving and whether you think it has any value or is just novelty.
+
+[53:42] I mean, a lot of the AI recipe stuff, uh, I don't know, man. Anything that's delicious is fine. You know, anything that's delicious is fine. I think, like, you know, if you need some sort of like, you know, magic eight ball or random number generator to give you new good ideas, great. But in the end of the day, you look at a recipe and you're like, that looks that sounds good.
+
+[54:00] I'm gonna make it. You know what I mean? And so if an AI does it, uh, great. If a human does it, great. But the you know, the way that I look at recipes is I not I only not only read, I'll read like 20 recipes of of a particular thing, I'll look at the ratings, I'll look at the recipes, see whether I agree with it, and then I'll read the comments to see what the knuckleheads said about when they made it.
+
+[54:22] And so, like, you know, once the AI is good enough to do all that for me, then sure, I'd pay a nickel to have an AI do the same thing that I do anyway, but at the end of the day, I'm putting my eyes on it and deciding whether it's something I I want to make. And, you know, until a computer is eating it for me, I think I'll continue to do that. Um what do you guys think? Anything? Any comments?
+
+[54:42] Any AI comments? No. From StardeBart Fast. Uh can't believe I was able to pronounce that in one shot looking at it. Uh, to make the greenest of green herb oil, what is the temperature target when blending in a Vitamix for optimal chlorophyll extraction?
+
+[54:59] And in a and a uh there's a related question on nettle soup. Most kitchen seems to use spinach to greenify the oil. Spinach cheap has a lot of chlorophyll. You know what I mean? Uh, are there different temps to hit for different herbs?
+
+[55:09] I'm curious about which essentially identifying aromas might be lost or least volatile. Uh present it in a graph for supporters. You know what? I just don't know the answer to it. Um in general, um, you heat herbs when you want to destroy the enzymes in them that would otherwise cause uh oxidation.
+
+[55:28] So the best thing to read on this with temperatures is uh old. It's uh Harold McGee's pesto chapter in The Curious Cook, which uh, you know, is still available, might be online for all I know. But he talks about blanching temperatures. But those temperatures, those blanching temperatures really do fundamentally alter the nature of the oil. Theoretically, if you blend uh in the complete absence of oxygen in oil, you should be able to extract all of that stuff and then get rid of all the liquids before they oxidize, and then the coldest thing you can do is probably the best thing.
+
+[56:02] You won't need any kind of oil, uh, won't need any kind of uh temperature at all. In fact, when we were doing herb oils, uh, you know, back when we were hawking the spinzall first, we we tried to keep it as cool as possible, correct? Yeah. Yeah. The only thing we would heat are things like capsation, where we're trying to take a dried pepper and extract all of the spice from it, and that takes you know, energy and time.
+
+[56:25] But herbs, as soon as you blend them, they bleed right into the oil. So I wouldn't say you need uh high temperature at all. I think it's oxygen's your enemy and water is your enemy. Um Christian Sacco, hey team, if you're brining meat, uh what per uh cent salt would be appropriate. I recently did a 1.5% brine as I would for most meats, but the bird came out way under seasoned.
+
+[56:44] Uh obviously losing a lot of salt to excess brine. Yeah, really, you want to think about total brine concentration. And also most of us don't salt uh things like chicken until they are fully brined, i.e., days. So in general, I use a higher brine concentration like 3%, and I only do it for a couple of hours. Realize that you're not equalizing on that.
+
+[57:04] And so you need to have a much higher salt concentration uh than you would for the to penetrate all through. And as it cooks, some of that salt will penetrate uh through. So a lot of it depends on how long you're gonna soak it, right? So it's the longer you're gonna soak it, the lower you want the brine to be. But in general, I go for a higher percent for shorter period of time.
+
+[57:22] And obviously, the more brine you're using, everything changes. When I'm doing actual fully brine recipes, I calculate total meat and uh water weight and do my brine percentages based on that. But that's a different story. Kevin 81. Last night I made nettle soup.
+
+[57:36] It was great dark green before I blended some potatoes in and it turns swampy colored. What's up with that? Well, you know, uh the chlorophyll uh will change at a at a certain point. So it might be that you just kept it hot too long, whipped a little air into it. I don't know that it was the potatoes per se, although I forget which reaction it is, which metal ion is swapped out for which when chlorophyll chlorophyll goes from being green to being gray, but it could just be uh a time situation.
+
+[57:59] John, you have anything on that with nettle soup? Anything? No. I don't know. But anyone in the Discord, please let us know.
+
+[58:04] Warren Johnson, I'm looking for advice on how to uh from uh Cam loops, right? Uh looking for advice on how to get the most out of a trip to Spain this summer. Outside of d oh, you're about to trigger John. Outside of digging into the Google map on Discord, do you have any advice on what to eat, drink in Madrill, Seville, Sevilla, uh, Jerez, and uh Barcelona? I haven't been in many years, so I don't eat a lot of ham, obviously.
+
+[58:26] But uh, I want the Discord to chime in, tell them to go look at the thing and give him some good advice. Misplace enthusiasm. Sorry if this has been covered in the past, but does Dave or anyone have any insight into buying fish and making it suitable for sashimi at home? I've heard it has something to do with freezing and killing parasites, but does it just boil down to what level of risk you are comfortable with? Yes and yes.
+
+[58:44] And it boils down to what level of risk, but uh most sushi is supposed to be previously frozen to and there's vitally to kill the worms that are in it. But obviously, like anything else, it comes down to managing risk, right? Uh Austin Gibbs question why does oil shimmer when heated? Is it a physical phenomenon, meaning perhaps the oil is tumbling over uh the pores of the pan when you tilt it, or is it a visible manifestation of the heat stored in the oil when you tilt it? Uh I don't know.
+
+[59:08] Would love to know what y'all think. Probably a simple question that I'm overthinking. You know what? I don't know. Do you any of you guys know?
+
+[59:14] No. I do love that look though. Does look good. Someone, someone chime in on this. Maybe McGee.
+
+[59:18] Maybe next time we have McGee, we'll ask him. He probably knows this. Um, okay, we have time for another. Yeah. Living in San Francisco is from B Done.
+
+[59:25] Have access to incredibly fresh Dungeness crab. Hope you have access to time. God, I hate cracking open Dungeness Crab. I love making a Chipotle uh Chipotle Mayo using the crab fat with oh, I love you. Love uh Filipino crab crab fat sauce.
+
+[59:37] Oh good, so good. Uh with egg, mustard, lemon juice, and chipotle, then tossing the crab meat in to make tostadas. Man, you some you have some fancy tostadas there, be done. Uh is there a way to prolong the life of this product? I get weary of using it a week late, but would love to use it on other non-crab dishes as the tostadas vanish faster than the mayo does.
+
+[59:53] I think that stuff with the high salt content preserves a long time. It probably changes, but I know I have crab uh crab fat paste that's been in my fridge for well over a month, and I'm still eating it. It's got a high enough salt and oil content. I think it's fine. Uh oh, we're out of time.
+
+[1:00:08] So I have some more questions. Uh I almost got to all of them uh from the Patreon. One, two, three, four. We'll get to the four that we miss next week when we have as our guest. Katie Parlock.
+
+[1:00:19] You said it like a like a machine. Casada. Something in my throat. Katie Parlow. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Aron, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center at New Stand Studios. Join behind me with uh John. How are you doing, John? Doing good, thanks.
+
+[0:21] Yeah? Yeah. All good? All good. Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels.
+
+[0:24] What's up? Hey man, great to see you. No, nice. Good to see you as well. We got a full crew down in California.
+
+[0:29] We have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez and uh Jackie Molecules Ninsley. What's up? Hey, hey. Hey? Hey.
+
+[0:36] I've made a mistake. I've picked up a super crunchy mini Schneider's gluten-free pretzel that Joe brought us, but now, because we're a you have to like what you touch, you take kind of a family, but I don't want to put it in my mouth because it's so freaking crunchy. So I'm just gonna have to hold it for the rest of the show, maybe. Yeah. In uh on Vancouver Island in the MIMO, we got uh Quinn.
+
+[0:57] How are you doing, Quinn? I'm good. Yeah. Yep. All right.
+
+[1:03] Okay. And uh in the studio today, our special guest. We are super psyched to have Katie Parla here for her new book Food of the Italian Islands, right? Now listen, in the show at the beginning, we just go around. Say you guys say hello so they know I'm not lying.
+
+[1:17] Joe. There you go. Okay. So uh we go around and we just say kind of any kind of random bull crap that's happened to us over the last week before we kind of get into so uh wait what do you guys got? You guys got anything other than these hyper crunchy pretzeloids?
+
+[1:30] Pretzaloids, Joe, because they're not twisted. Everyone in my family, I say what is a pretzel. They say twisted. I'm like, what? Twisted, what?
+
+[1:37] Twisted. And they try to bring rods in. Rod is the worst of all the fake pretzel shapes. Unacceptable shape. Not a good shape.
+
+[1:44] It's great for pasta. Great for pasta. Oh, by the way, by the way, you and Nastasia need to eventually have. See, you have a much more measured opinion about pasta than Do I? Yeah.
+
+[1:59] Oh, yeah. Then so Nastasia, I don't know if you know this. Nastasia used to have a pasta business with Mark Ladner. And right I'm not making this up. Pasta fly.
+
+[2:09] Pasta flyer, right? Yeah. And so she do you guys know each other by the way? Do you guys know each other already? We kind of do a kind of do I don't.
+
+[2:17] Yeah. You do but you don't. You did but you won't. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[2:21] Um anyway, so like, you know, she used to get her stuff uh like specially tweaked out in she was I'm not allowed to talk about it, she's not allowed to talk about it in Italy. Anyway, so she Nastasia's basic feeling. Why don't you just say what your basic feeling is rather than me paraphrasing it since you're right here? It's a huge category. Well, no, but her, she's like anyone that tries to make pasta, she's like given the I'm given the under the under the chin.
+
+[2:45] People who try to uh like extrude it and dry it at home. Well, yeah, yeah. But you also you don't like fresh pasta either, right? Mostly. Mostly.
+
+[2:54] Most, unless it's you know, better chain like there's there's things. But yeah, when people try to make dried pasta at home, I'm it angers me because there's so much great dried pasta, like commercially made. Like, why are you doing that? You know, it's pointless. And also when restaurants do it, it's often terrible.
+
+[3:14] And there's no point to it. So stop. Stop doing that. Wow. We're on the same page here.
+
+[3:20] Well, except for like so let's go to your book, your new book, Food of the Italian Islands, where you're like, you have a whole like beautiful, by the way, if you if you hate good photography, don't get the book. Yeah, for sure. Steer clear. Yeah, if you don't like people like looking kind of like sweaty and amazing at the same time, like that guy at the in the front, like Oh my god. The guy grilling a horse in 100 degree temperatures at night in Catania.
+
+[3:44] It's so glistening. The guy looks like an overweight Greek wrestler. Like he looks amazing. Like, you know what I mean? Like glistening.
+
+[3:57] It's perfect. Amazing. I definitely want to eat that dude's whatever. It was grilled horse. Yeah.
+
+[4:01] Yeah. I definitely want to eat that. Yeah. Yeah. You should.
+
+[4:03] Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I have only seen the PDF copy of this book. Right. Uh where is the but the front page, the front cover isn't what I have in the in the PDF.
+
+[4:15] It's this like giant, just like full page like octo squish. Totally. Okay. Is that the front page? Front disk.
+
+[4:23] That's like the end papers. All right. And I'm so sorry I don't have a physical copy. I the book came out today and I do not have a book. Thanks, UPS.
+
+[4:32] Yeah. That's great. I appreciate you for ruining this for me. I wanted to present all of you with books, but it'll have to wait. UPS is the company that like a couple things I'll say about UPS.
+
+[4:42] One, like if they say when they get it to you on time, they UPS never brings stuff early. Not ever, not once. If they say it's gonna be in five days, that crap can go all the way from California to New York and it's gonna sit in the UPS warehouse until day five, and then it's gonna show up. But then but maybe. But then if you absolutely positively to use FedEx's old thing, made it, they're just not gonna give it to you.
+
+[5:07] They're not gonna give it to you. It's upsetting. How is that a business? I disapprove. They once basically put I was in a handbag, a leather handbag business with uh my wife, where we actually went to the we went to Italy's like kind of like leather district to tie a deal with them because there was a kind of one of the last bastions of molded leather, and they didn't want to deal with us because we were, you know, like little like we had an inn, like actually, uh what's it called?
+
+[5:28] Um, one of the partners at Kate Spade, like hooked us up with their leather person over there, and she was still like, no. Like, she was like, I'll pick you up at the I'll pick you up at the bus station, I'll tour the factory, and then you you gotta get out. Oh my god. And go back to Florence. You know what I mean?
+
+[5:40] So, like, anyway. So uh, yeah, so UPS, we had like all of these like leathers, like full cowhides coming, like big thick veg can stuff that we were gonna, and just didn't show up. We had all these orders we had to make, just didn't show up. We're like, that's our whole, that's our whole, that's it. That's our whole business.
+
+[5:57] No, same. I'm like, I did this book and then no one can receive it. That's not ideal. All right, all right, all right. So listen, we're gonna get, we're gonna get back.
+
+[6:05] Anything else from the week? Anything, John, you got anything in the land of restaurants? Uh I did, but I can't remember. So John has a ridiculous and see whether you can weigh in on this. For every for every three-quarters of a pound of dried pasta for his carbonara, 10 egg yolks.
+
+[6:22] 10 egg yolks. What do you think about this? I think with when it comes to carbonara, you can do what you feel in the egg department. You can even use egg whites, go nuts. Oh, yeah, no, I tried.
+
+[6:31] I don't know. All I'm gonna say is I made it again last night for the family because they enjoy John's Carbonara recipe. Thank you. Yeah, and my mom got me some of that uh grano arso flour. I'm like, what am I gonna do with it though?
+
+[6:44] So like she thought I was gonna make bread with it. I'm like, I'm not gonna, what am I gonna what? So like I I tried to make some earmuffs. I made some pasta, just sheet it. I just sheet it and cut it, you know what I mean, into like you know, badly, you know, cut noodles.
+
+[6:56] I didn't care, right? Uh anyway, so so many freaking egg yolks to make his thing. So I was thinking in my head, every time someone makes your sauce, an angel food cake gets its wings. Because like you have to make angel food cakes. What am I gonna do with all these damned whites?
+
+[7:09] Meringue. Nobody wants that much meringue. Nobody wants that much meringue. You go to a pastry shop anywhere in, you know, wherever where they do meringues, like, you know, Europe, you know, anywhere. And like beautiful window full of freaking meringues.
+
+[7:24] And then they hand you one that's like, you know, like big. It's like big. And you take one bite and you're like, I'm done. I'm done. It's too much.
+
+[7:32] Why do I want aerated sugar? That's true. Although I was at my nephew's birthday party. Get the name of this place. Ready?
+
+[7:40] Okay. Pequatzipus. Like Pequatzipus. It's a nature reserve. Pequatzipis.
+
+[7:47] Pequatzipis. And so Wiley, who's opening his new pizza restaurant in in a week here, stretch pizza in uh New York City. We'll talk about it because you you wrote a pizza book called The Joy of Pizza. I told you before the radio star, he's doing New York style. And you were like, good.
+
+[8:04] Not trying to imitate somebody else's style, doing New York style, right? Is that what I assume that's what I got off you? I think that's cool. I think New York style uh sometimes struggles, and when people are pushing to improve it, that's great. Yeah.
+
+[8:14] Hey, I'm gonna trigger nostasi again. So you went to college in New Haven. See. It's such an annoying way to we always oh, I went to school in New Haven. I lived in New Haven for four years.
+
+[8:27] At orientation, they tell you you have to be that obnoxious forever. Yeah, so Stas absolutely hates that. Her sister went too, by the way. Anyway, so yeah, we're talking about yellow. Anyway, uh sorry, Stas.
+
+[8:37] Anyway, so uh so point being that you literally before the show was like, oh, New Haven, I like the New Haven pizza because you can't get a clan pizza in it in Italy. Not a one. Yeah. It's infuriating. And no one ever feels bad for me when I tell this story.
+
+[8:51] But yeah, you can. Oh, yeah. Oh, pork. But there's this frutti di mare pizza that they do everywhere, where it's basically like frozen mixed mussels and shrimp and all sorts of junk. That's just on the pizza.
+
+[8:59] It makes it super damp and gross. And I'm like, why don't you guys just do a good one with clams? And they won't hear it. They're like, nah, nah. We absolutely not.
+
+[9:11] Do they make that for Italians or do they make that for Italians? For Italians? Absolutely. Okay. Look, the hot dog in French fried pizza isn't for tourists.
+
+[9:20] It's for Italians. Wow. So a hot well, hot dog in French fried pizza. It's called Virstal. But you know, we we know what it is.
+
+[9:27] Yeah. Is it good? That's fine. Yeah. I mean.
+
+[9:31] Okay, yeah. I'll eat it. Yeah. So what's the what how bad are American hamburgers in Italy? The worst.
+
+[9:38] Really? Worse than German. Worse than the Germans. Oh, worse. Yeah, because they use really nice beef, but it's super lean cuts.
+
+[9:45] It's 0% fat. There's no heat applied to it at all. It's basically like a tartare on a bud. And then they're like, oh, there's like pancetta and like provolone. So it's an Italian burger.
+
+[9:54] I'm like, stop doing this. Or someone go to America, eat a burger and figure it out. They won't. Because like even an average American burger, unless they've unless it's the one style of burger I can't tolerate is the super thick hammered burger. The one where they take a super thick burger and then and then just hammer the hell out of it.
+
+[10:13] That's the only kind of burger I can't tolerate. I can I like a thin overcooked burger. You know, anyway. I mean, I'll eat a boardwalk burger. I don't care.
+
+[10:21] Yeah. As long as it's not Italian made. And I'm not interested. I feel like that's my experience in a lot of Europe. Is like if any American went there and opened up a burger joint, they would just kill it because everything else is so bad in comparison.
+
+[10:35] But the Italian palate will accept fat in certain forms, just not in patty form when it comes to a burger. Like sausage patty, they're all about it. Okay. But burgers are just so lean and not properly cooked themselves. Well, so you have a whole section in your well in your book.
+
+[10:50] Well, I was gonna say about the dried pasta before I went off on the tangent that you you're basically like, listen, this whole like dried pasta, like everywhere thing is really like a mid-20th century McGillakuddy anyway, and that they didn't really figure out all this drying until you know the machine made stuff until uh late 1800s, anyhow. So, you know, this whole like feeling that like everyone's always eaten dried pasta forever and that's the way you should do it, isn't really the case. And people used to make fresh pasta, but it was more of a you know, more of like a you know, you had to know how to do it situation. So I I read into that apparently incorrectly, that you're like, oh, there's a place for everything. So you're right, pasta wasn't really something that was in the Italian diet until the 20th century in terms of like full all the regions.
+
+[11:34] Um, but some of the islands in the book, like Pons and Procida had a really strong Neapolitan influence. When you go there, there's dried pasta, and it's freaking amazing. And spaghetti and spaghetti and uh zitti and all of these things are perfectly cooked al chiodo, so less cooked than al dente, which just tastes really good and it's more digestible and you know brings all these things to the table. I read that section. I don't dubious well, more digestible.
+
+[12:00] What does that even mean? This is another thing. Nastasia also, you guys could talk for the whole show about Italians and how they only talk about like their poops and like and what they eat and it's a constipated culture. We want to share. I don't know.
+
+[12:14] I I feel attacked. I feel attacked. But it's always so nice when you cook for someone and then the next day they call you up and they let you know how efficiently they've they've digested it. So sweet. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[12:29] It's so nice. You don't know how the meal went until tomorrow. Yeah, no one's like, that was amazing. They're like, I will tell you tomorrow what I think about this meal. Wow.
+
+[12:37] Yeah. But they don't have the German style shelf toilets where you get to inspect after you go, right? Oh my god, the Dutch. They've mastered that. But that hasn't made it down to Southern Europe.
+
+[12:47] It's the worst. I love it. It's cool. Okay. Okay.
+
+[12:50] Can we just go? I know this is a food. This is a food show, but if we can just for a second, like the problem is Americans buying a shelf like toilet, but not okay. Anyone who listens to me out there, if you're one of those people that hasn't figured out that the that the cleaning brush needs to be right next to the right next to the toilet. Don't hide the cleaning brush.
+
+[13:11] Get a cleaning brush that like is it if you have one of those shelf toilets without a cleaning brush, you're the worst person in the world. You're the worst human that's ever walked on the planet. You know what I'm saying? I agree, and I can tell you're passionate about this. Yeah.
+
+[13:26] Well, I hate it. Because I've been to people's houses, and you know that if I'm using it in somebody else's house, other than for liquids, there's an issue. I need to go there. You know what I mean? Absolutely.
+
+[13:36] Also, uh, can we get a bidet up in here, America? Oh, well, uh, you know, I've said many times on the air, the first time I visited, or the only time I visited Japan, I was like, that's it. We're the worst, we're stupid. And I bought a Toto washlet. And that was it.
+
+[13:49] But they don't do that in Italy, right? No, no. I mean, it makes sense. It would save space in the restroom. But people are very attached to their bidets.
+
+[13:55] It's a ritual people treasure. Well, supposedly the bidets were sold like crazy during COVID. Really? Yeah, because of the lack of toilet paper. I did not know that.
+
+[14:04] Yes. Huge influx of purchasing bidets. Now you're now you're try triggering me. Both, both. Los dose.
+
+[14:11] You need both paper and water. You know, look, you don't need, need. You can you you can use use a hole in the ground. But you know what I'm saying? But like, you know what I'm saying?
+
+[14:20] It's desirable. Definitely. Desirable. Definitely. Uh wait, how do we get to talking about this?
+
+[14:25] What the heck? Oh, digestion. Fresh pasta. Okay. I don't know where we were.
+
+[14:29] I don't know where we're going. So the new book. Do you anyone else have anything from the week? Quinn? You you like to share a weekly cooking story?
+
+[14:35] You got anything? Uh yeah, today was actually pretty chill. I made some other uh vacuum packed ferments. But in the future, what do I do when I need to talk about all the pasta that I'm making and drawing with my extruder? You can't.
+
+[14:53] You can't talk about it. You have an arco boleno? Which one do you have? Uh the little one, the AX5. Yeah, listen.
+
+[15:00] Just do you know, like there's some things that you can't just you know, Nastasi's just gonna, you know, it's uh out of respect for Nastasi. You just can't talk about it. You know what I mean? Although Wait, Quinn, you're making you're making dry pasta? Oh yeah, I mean I I've done a few batches.
+
+[15:17] I think I have a good way to dry it. Silence. Yeah, I'm just gonna let that sit. Normally, normally Katie, you don't know this. Normally I don't allow any dead air.
+
+[15:32] Like I'll just fill any dead air with with talk. But I'm just gonna allow a little bit of dead air there for the Stasia to absorb. You know what I mean? It's like now. Yeah.
+
+[15:48] Uh okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, okay. What about what about you, Jack?
+
+[15:56] You like you always have some story. Did you go to someone's house and they poisoned you this week or what? No. Um, I made a Japanese curry, and um the spice blend called for dehydrated orange peel. And for whatever I was going to ask, I mean, the conversation you're having is way more interesting.
+
+[16:13] I was gonna ask about the best way to dehydrate orange peel. That doesn't involve waiting what seemed like forever on low temp in the oven. Why does it require dehydrated? I don't know, the spice blend, but they wanted it like ground up with all the spices. But is the spice end up into a paste or a liquid?
+
+[16:32] The spice is mixed with the roux, weirdly. Yeah, that's fine. And ginger. Yeah. Look, either like order the stuff online, or you know, because you're in California, I don't know what LA's Calustians is, but like, you know, I'm sure you have some sort of weird little shop catering to weirdos that sells all the dried stuff for some sort of faux medicinal reason.
+
+[16:50] No offense, LA. And then you can get some like, you know, dried orange peel there, you know, and then just blend it. Or just, you know, I mean, zest isn't gonna taste the same, but it's gonna give you some some stuff, you know what I mean? If you take zest and go chaka chaka chaka and then hit it in the see, the one issue you're not gonna get when you put it into a roux is you're not gonna get that slightly brown flavor that you get from dried orange peel when it's been like out in the sun or in a dehydrator. Uh on the other hand, you know, so what?
+
+[17:18] You know what I mean? Anyway, yeah, yeah. All right, so back to the book. The new book, which UPS did not ship to you here, and they shorted Kitchen Arts and Letters. Yes.
+
+[17:28] I was over there the other day with our buddy Matt signing books. Yeah, yeah. So uh it's called Uh Food of the Italian Islands. That's right. And uh, what's the name of the photography?
+
+[17:37] You work with? Ed Anderson. Gorgeous. Gorgeous shots. And let me ask you a couple of a couple of questions just about books, because I'm sure someone's listening who's interested in books.
+
+[17:44] All right. Uh so a lot of the other books that you have done, you've done with Simon and Schuster, right? Like you're on their Simon and Schuster, you're on their author page. Chronicle, Clarkson Potter. All of them then.
+
+[18:02] Voracious. Yeah, this is my seventh cookbook. Right. But it's the first from Parla Publishing. Well, that's what I was gonna say.
+
+[18:08] So most people who are self-publishing, I gotta talk ask you about why you're self-publishing, because there are people who self-publish because they don't already have a relationship. You have many, right? You've done many things, you know. Like you could walk into any publisher tomorrow and be like, yo, I want to write a book, and they'd be like, let's do that. You know what I mean?
+
+[18:30] That's right. Um it's un I think it's relatively unusual for someone with your publishing experience and history to do self-publishing. So why? Well, creative control is important to me, but even more importantly, is being properly compensated for my work. And I research my books for five years, which is a huge investment.
+
+[18:53] And then, as you know from your projects, when you get your advance, even if it's like a hundred thousand, which is you know, pretty good, but relatively average for producing a cookbook, 15% goes to your agent. Right. And then you're only getting the quarter up front, and you've got to pay for all your travel, half the photography, testing, and development. So when I receive advances like that, I'm already 10 or 20,000 in the hole before I get the second round, which doesn't come until several rounds of editing. And then using that money to pay off the expenses from the previous uh steps and then the photography, and then you've got to promote the book, and then you have to uh Yeah, a lot of people don't know that.
+
+[19:32] The author pays for photos. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think some publishers still do cover photography, but it's few, that's dwindling. But, you know, I kind of for the first time after a decade of this and 20 in publishing overall, a decade of cookbooks, I looked at how much money I was losing, and I was like, okay, let's do some simple math. If a cookbook costs $35 cover price, how many do I need to sell to break even if I invest $100,000 on it?
+
+[20:02] And the answer is like around 2,800 books. So I thought I can sell that. Maybe I can even spend a little more money and through pre-sales, generate capital to cover the production expenses, and then start earning money pretty soon after publication. Right, but you're in the hole for the whole production cost though. Not really, because the printer doesn't want everything up front.
+
+[20:23] They're fine paying you in. Well, I mean, I mean going around the country, Italy. And that had to not been cheap. No, it's definitely not cheap. But it's also included in that, like the hundred K hypothetical, nice round number, covers the printing, the binding, the editor, development editor, copy editor, proofreader.
+
+[20:42] It covers all the travel, it covers publicity, and it also covers the logistics, moving a container of books to a warehouse and then storing those books because it costs like I don't know, three cents a month or something for each book to be in there. And then also the um uh the costs that the the logistics company charges just for the honor of doing business with them. And so it might seem like you're putting out a lot of money right away, but you're not. Huh. And so you your experience with it has been so far positive.
+
+[21:16] Unbelievably positive. Exception of UPS. UPS is the worst. I also am not a super fan of Shopify. The creation of this book, which I thought was going to be really complex and challenging, printing it, having it bound, having it moved across an ocean, that was all incredibly smooth.
+
+[21:34] But getting it from a warehouse in New York to mainly bookstores to retail uh retail customers, it's been a dream. Everyone's got their book already. And it's just out today. So that's been great. But getting, you know, cartons of books to now serving to even Matt lost a couple, uh, a couple of cartons.
+
+[21:53] So I now have to do all sorts of like customer service and troubleshooting, which is super annoying. Well, what about the stuff that the normal normal the publishing houses do, like, you know, the book like getting them into like mom and pop shops like the McNally Jackson's and all of these things. Is that a hassle for you or no? I simply write an email um with a presentation of the book and a PDF and ask to be placed in the bookstore. And sometimes people say yes.
+
+[22:19] There's a nice bookstore in Mystic. I forget the name of it. You should get in there. I know people have been recommending a bookstore in Mystic. Yeah, there's only one, so it's the same one.
+
+[22:26] I forget the name of it. They didn't buy my book, but whatever. What else? Whatever. You still like them.
+
+[22:32] You know, I'm not like that. I'm not a vent, I'm not as vindictive as people make me out to be, but you know. But it's also been really nice to partner with independent bookshops. Um Kitchen Arts and Letters is this incredible place. And every time you go in there, you just want to walk out with the entire stock.
+
+[22:47] Um, so that's been really special to have Matt ha have the book in stock. I sign the books and people can pre-order or now order and then get a signed copy, which I think is really special. Um, the same with Omnivore Now Serving, Book Larder, uh, Bold Fork, all of these great small businesses are our partners that I've always have been doing business with, sort of through larger publishers. So the direct contact has been really nice. Well, I noticed you didn't do the pre-order stuff on Amazon.
+
+[23:14] Are you gonna sell normally with them or no? I am, but I wanted to prioritize independent bookstores and then sales through my website, which has of course the highest margin first. Um and you know, like when you write for a big publisher, you get access to like the back end analytics. And so I know that my books sell very well on Amazon, but I also could justify not putting it out on Amazon right away so I could sort of front load the sales in the smaller um markets. Right, make them make the most money from the people who want the book the most and then put it out, right?
+
+[23:45] Yeah, and also just you know, being being in contact with readers is super important and super special to me. My books improve because of their feedback. Um, and so knowing that anyone who has the book gets you know an email from me with the delivery information and they can write to me with questions, I think that that's uh that's so special. Now, when you're writing a book like this, which like you know, as you say in the introduction, like, you know, you could have spent just an infinity of time in any one of these like areas, because the the Italian island spans all the way from the extreme northeast down all the way to the extreme southwest. Uh so when you're doing that, how do you like so do you write the book and then go back and shoot it?
+
+[24:32] Are you doing catch as catch can? Like, how do you organize your life around doing something that's over such a large space and over such a large period of time? So I write the book first and then I shoot it. And I want to have a pretty good idea of what the features are and manage the travel based on that. So, like we did, Ed came to Italy, we traveled, and we did Ischia, we went all over Sardinia and Sicily.
+
+[24:58] Um, we went to Venice and kind of had to had to figure out how to encapsulate so many disparate areas during a 10-day shoot. I think he did a really special what? Oh yeah. That book was shot in 10 days? Yeah.
+
+[25:13] I'm a small publisher. I'm I'm on a budget, baby. Okay, guys, guys. Uh I don't know where you can go see a sample PDF. Is there a place they can see a sample PDF?
+
+[25:22] No, but they can buy the book. No, like don't you have like a sample chapter? Uh on shop.kadyparla.com, there are pages. Like when you especially if you're on mobile, see the cover, and then you can look at the individual pages. Yeah, I would not have guessed 10-day shoot.
+
+[25:35] First of all, I need to know what kind of meth you were taking during that time to be able to get all of those shots in 10 days. Addie, you know it. I'm just joking. My mom's listening. You're like, I'm just joking, joking, not joking, joking, not joking.
+
+[25:49] JKJK. Yeah. Uh, but wow, that's freaking impressive. I mean, Ed is such a delightful human, full stop. Like, I would love working with him no matter what, but he's incredible at shooting people, landscapes, and food really fast.
+
+[26:03] All but a couple of the dishes were shot inside to. I didn't want to do any studio at all. And I I'm I'm always floored by his work, but I was really like the the photos are breathtaking and really transportive. That's bananas. One of my favorites uh near the beginning.
+
+[26:19] Uh I can't pronounce I can't pronounce it. By the way, you just here's what you need to do. Anytime, which is all the time that I butcher anything, just just tell me how it's pronounced. Just in literally interrupt. And uh what's the island?
+
+[26:29] Uh is it Iskia? You nailed it. Uh so okay. So this dude, this old dude is sitting on a bench, and behind him is like a mosaic that's like I heart ischia. And he's sitting on this bench like staring off on the side, and I was like, love it.
+
+[26:46] Framed like there was a uh the whole thing's encrusted with seashells. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All beautiful. But the guy's like got this. He looks like right out of central casting.
+
+[26:55] It's crazy. And Ed's so good at like finding those moments. And the whole reason we ended up in Ischia is because we were supposed to go to Pantelleria, and we got to the ape uh the Naples airport at four in the morning and found that the flight had been canceled. And not just the flight, but like the whole airline. So we were like, uh, I guess we'll go to Ischia, and we end up having incredible, incredible shoot day.
+
+[27:16] Speaking of uh the former place, which I always butcher the pronunciation of, you have a whole page on capers. See. They convince me that the caper berry is a good product. I love capers. But why would I why like caper berries like a big watery is it?
+
+[27:30] I don't know. They're like watery, salty, like what are they why would I do that? Well, you're talking about the big boys, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know anything about that.
+
+[27:39] I know the Pontelleria and Selena caper berries are really small, like compact, and they're they're dry, they're not dry, dry, but they're not like watery. Right. You buy them salt pack, like you do the capers. Yeah, yeah. And not in brine or anything, just literally layered with salt.
+
+[27:55] And uh the capers, the caper berries, and the caper leaves are all processed in pantaleria, and they all taste like capers. Caper leaves. That's interesting. I hadn't had that one. I've never had that one.
+
+[28:05] I saw that on the page. And like, what do you what do you what do you do with those? Rehydrate and like like chiffonado suckers? They're tiny, but is that what you what do you normally do? Sprinkle them on a salad or toss them with a little bit of olive oil and put them next to a piece of fish.
+
+[28:17] Now, compare, if you will, like the really good salt pack ones that like come into like the little bags or the compare those with the Goya brand brine uh capers in the jar, like just like compare. I mean, the savoriness and intensity of the caper flavor in the salt-packed ones from like Lanikia, which is the place that I visited. Um, it's like tasting the sea and the earth. It's so powerful. There's like a tea there's a tea note that's lost in the brine guys, too, right?
+
+[28:48] Isn't there? I haven't had the dilutes, it dilutes the flavor. I haven't had a salt packed in a long time. And I mean, probably you know better than I. There's some sort of like osmosis that happens when they're water cured, which is how they're usually cured in the like the jarred ones.
+
+[29:00] Oh, really? I didn't know that. I just thought they were salted and then just stored in brine. I thought they were made the same and then stored in brine. They're made differently.
+
+[29:07] Yeah, I think so. Huh, huh? How do you rehydrate the salt, the salt pack ones? How do you use them? Because no most people here haven't used a salt pack one.
+
+[29:13] So what do you think? You have to rinse them and change the water several times, like bacala. I'm sure everyone's cooking bakal all the time and knows exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, I do. But uh Yeah, you just you taste it, you keep tasting it.
+
+[29:26] When it tastes not like overpoweringly salty, then it's ready to use. Yeah. You know what's disgusting is uh spilling the soaking water all over the laundry room when you're a kid. It's not great. It's not ideal.
+
+[29:42] It's not certainly not ideal. Yeah, why didn't we do it outside? Because you know, we have a a fear of a fear of I don't know, everything's spoiling. So, you know, I guess oh, did my mom put it in the fridge and then I took it out to change it and I dumped it all over the laundry room? I don't know.
+
+[30:00] Oh man. It was just that's gotta stink. It stinks really bad. It seems really bad. But most of the time when I cook with uh saltfish, salt cod now, I I use the thin stuff and it can be soaked really quickly.
+
+[30:10] It's only like Christmas Eve time that I get the thick stuff that takes days and days to reconstitute. Yeah. You like that stuff on Christmas Eve? I do. Yeah.
+
+[30:19] Uh all right. Let's get to some of the Patreon. By the way, John, how do they call if they if they have a question uh for Katie, they want to call in live at 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Tell them how they can become a Patreon member and listen live.
+
+[30:34] Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Get to listen live, you get the call-in number, you get prioritized uh your questions answered. We got cool guests coming. We work with awesome people like Matt Sartwell, get you discounts on awesome book like Katie's book. And we've just got a bunch of fantastic guests coming on.
+
+[30:51] So sign up and you know, join what all the cool kids are doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do that. Uh all right. So let's I have because I have a I have a list of things from the book that that I could do, but I I have to get to the Patreon questions.
+
+[31:04] But before I do that, little swipe at the Venetians. You say the Venetians like an overcooked pasta. What's that all about? They don't like it, they love it. Like how overcooked?
+
+[31:13] Like beyond, like cooked perfectly and then 10 more minutes. So Venice is a s I love Venice. Venetians out there love ya, can't get enough. But uh it's a rice, but mostly a polenta city. And pasta is present in the culture in the form of Beagli, um, which appear on the cover, which you will eventually see.
+
+[31:35] And so the the way that people cook pasta in Italy really does change from place to place. And the closer you are to Naples, the more al chiodo you'll find it, which is almost crunchy at times. Um, whereas when you head up north, it's not not just the Venetians that overcook pasta, it's northern people in general. Oh, I like the swipe at the northern people. All the north.
+
+[31:56] Because usually, right, the swipes at the north aren't cultural swipes, where this is a hardcore cultural swipe of the north. I appreciate that. Yeah. They're rejecting Italian identity by overcooking pasta. Wow.
+
+[32:07] You're like they're trying to turn it back to polenta something. Exactly. They're like, Can I can I just make this into a big stew or something? Wow. Gross.
+
+[32:14] Yeah. Wow. So I like I like this. I like see this is the kind of thing that I that I like. You know, I mean, or like uh you get lots of choice uh like uh anecdotes in the book, like uh the lady not letting you open the window on the train.
+
+[32:29] I almost died that night. It's like you said it was like a hundred degrees in this train. It was the hottest day of the year in the year 2000, and I took a train from Rome to Palermo, which takes like 15 hours, but everyone on the train was afraid of a draft, and so I had to be like hotboxed in this sleeper car with these four women without it without any air. And they were fine, they were cool with it, but I wasn't accustomed to that yet. So I thought I was gonna, I thought I was dying.
+
+[32:56] And what was the phrase is like the the the draft is gonna make my neck break or something like this? It was the something like uh it was some like crazy phrase. I'm gonna get a cervicale, which means like the draft is gonna cause like trauma to my cervical vertebrae. I don't know how that's diagnosed on a train, but anyway, that's uh it's good business. I love I love the kiddy.
+
+[33:20] Yes, wait, I have a question. Have you ever said have you done the train that goes on the boat? Oh, have I? So listen, I was on this train. I was 20 years old, and I thought obviously the train from Rome to Palermo will cross the Strait of Messina on a bridge.
+
+[33:38] At five in the morning, I am hallucinating from being so hot in this car, and I hear clanking around me, and all the women get off, get out of the car. And I'm like, we're drip, like I'm drowning. Like clearly, we're in the sea. And they had gone up to the top of the boat to watch the Strait of Messina crossing. Meanwhile, I have no idea we're on a boat.
+
+[33:59] But the train got on a boat next to another train, and then we like went the two miles across the sea. And I was like, I'm I'm going to die here. I'm out of my depth. It was crazy. Have you done that?
+
+[34:12] Yeah. I was like, what Italian was like, yeah, we're gonna put the train on a boat. Like it's crazy, it's crazy. Crazy. Bananas.
+
+[34:21] I mean, I I kind of love it, but it scared me to death the first time. Yeah. Yeah. So you did it again though? I did it again.
+
+[34:29] Yeah. But I was aware of what was going on. I see. So that's better. Yeah.
+
+[34:33] Also, like these women in the car, when we get on the car, right? They're like, I don't know, Italian at the time. So they're like, we need to explain to this dummy that it's so dangerous on the train. Someone could gas us and then steal all of our luggage. That's why we're gonna barricade the door to the sleeper car.
+
+[34:49] And they did the pulling the eye under the eyelid down, be like, be careful, like we're gonna get robbed. And then they still all got out of the car to go watch the Strait of Messina crossing. And I think I'm there drowning, but also protecting all the luggage. Well, they left they left the American to drown. Right.
+
+[35:05] Like, peace. Bye. Love it. Love it. Uh all right.
+
+[35:11] Uh let me get to these questions. Otherwise, I'll forget. And then oh my god. Oh my god. One more though.
+
+[35:16] Let's do it. So you also have had some bad situations. You also don't enjoy TSA people very much, or whatever the Italian equivalent of TSA is. No, it's I'm fine with that with the Italian analog because they oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. Postacchio.
+
+[35:32] You know what? Sometimes those people treat pistachio paste like liquids when you try to check uh check into a plane, and it's not it's a paste. Yeah. And you said they were bronte's, right? So expensive.
+
+[35:42] It wasn't just bronte, it was uh Corrado Assenza's coffee sicilia, like basically green gold spread. And I've had more than more than a dozen tubs confiscated at the Catania airport. And it's so upsetting. I'm still sad about it. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[36:00] And you like you we can't argue with those. But you said that they're eating it, basically. They're like, Thank you. I'm sure, I'm sure. That's not going in any incinerator.
+
+[36:07] Yeah, I like my worst one with that was with uh with uh meddler paste in in England, and she's like, that's a liquid. I opened the jar, turned it upside down, and nothing came out. I'm like, not a liquid. And she goes, Well, you could melt it and it would be a liquid. I go, you could melt me and I'd be a liquid.
+
+[36:26] And she said, Yeah, but I have to let you on the plane. I was like, Oh my gosh. Oh my god. You can't get meddlers here. That's crazy.
+
+[36:33] Anyway. Well, the islands are full of them, so come on over in the summer. Really? Oh, yeah. And they bled them and make them into a jelly and all this crap.
+
+[36:39] Just eat them. That's and yeah, we don't even really make any paste out of them. It's just like you eat it. No, no, all right. Good to know.
+
+[36:47] Oh, uh, I gotta get to these, I gotta get to the questions that they have. Otherwise, you know, whatever. We'll be here forever. And I'm not allowed to. Joe's gonna turn off the mic, it's gonna get uh all right.
+
+[36:55] Uh Wizmard writes in, I'm heading to Puglia for about a week and a half in May. I'll be splitting my time between uh how do you pronounce Monopoly over there? Monopoly. Mono Okay, well, nice. And uh and Leite.
+
+[37:08] Uh I noticed in a piece you wrote in 2017 that you were quite critical of the food scene uh of Cilento, uh, and quite critic uh critical generally of the area. Do you still feel the same way? Has it upped its game in the intervening years? Thank you. So it this is probably referring to the piece that I wrote for Australian Gourmet Traveler about Puglia.
+
+[37:28] Uh I have Australian gourmet travelers. I'm just kidding, Australia. Kill on the game. So I think what I it wasn't a criticism in my opinion. It was acknowledging that m most Puglia don't go out to eat all the time, and so the restaurants are mainly geared towards tourists, and also in 2017, that's after crises and people are thinking about margins, cutting corners on ingredients.
+
+[37:51] So I think I said something that's true for all Italian regional travel, which is you've got to really plan where to go. And I've got a lot of resources, not just in that article, but also on the city guides page of my website that directs people to cooks doing really nice things. And I think a lot of visitors make the mistake of planning a lot of restaurant dining when it's actually a mix of restaurants and cafes and cafeterias and bakeries that will really give the full panorama and introduce you to how people in Puglia or wherever actually eat. So it makes some friends with some locals before you go? Never hurts.
+
+[38:28] Yeah. Uh Rob L wants to uh wants to know uh are there any noteworthy new examples of uh Pecorino uh Romano, the the the genuine article, which you say most of it's made in uh Sardini, you say. 97%. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[38:43] Are there any new uh pecorino producers in Lazio? Well, that they can look for around Rome, or better yet in the USA to spare us from the monotony of industrial uh pecorino. But he said pecorini, but I have to say pecorinos because I'm American. I can't I can't do it. Uh and characterless uh Parmigiano uh that we have available here.
+
+[39:03] Okay, so um there are only a couple of producers, like literally one percent of pecorino romano is made in Lazio, two percent in Tuscany, 97% in Sardinia. Um Fulvi is a producer near Rome that is exported. Right. They have that here. Yeah, absolutely.
+
+[39:24] I mean, I literally got it at Whole Foods last night. Um shout out to that small business. Um and so, yeah, that's the one that that's the one that you're gonna be able to find that's gonna have a flavor intensity that uh mirrors what Romans eat. Romans also mostly eat Sardinian pecorino. Pecorino romano made in Sardegna.
+
+[39:44] And, you know, I think it's there's a little bit of tension there, right? Because you might have producers that are very large, but most of the people that are giving the milk to these companies are really small farmers and they deserve like dignity and support and and a place to sell their milk. Well, that's like the Parmigiano, it's all the consortio, right? Like all the small folks give their stuff to the consortio and then becomes becomes like mega cheese. But that stuff's pretty good though.
+
+[40:13] Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Uh speaking of Italian cheese, so no small producer that you can recommend that Rob can look around?
+
+[40:20] There's no small producer. I mean, there are a lot of people making pecorino, but not pecorino romano. Right. Uh talk to me about this Italian uh craft American singles product that you said that they were using in your book. I'm trying to find the name of it.
+
+[40:35] I wrote Galbani. Oh my god. Galbani's also exported. So Galbani is uh an industrial cheese. It's I mean, we could spend several minutes reading the ingredients list.
+
+[40:45] Like there's maybe dairy derivatives in it, but it's used in so many like cafeteria um meat dishes. So like meatballs with little bits of galbani in it, um, or in the case of the book, the brocciole alla messinese, it's little, it looks like little cheesesteaks that you wrap around pieces of really crappy quality cheese and then it all melts together. So when it comes to that, or uh just the sottiletta in general, which is like a craft single uh in Italian, those cheeses, they're super melty, they're super sticky, and they end up in a lot of home food and then like those little takeaway joint foods. Um if you put a beautiful like tuma or caccio cavallo in there, it wouldn't melt the way you need it to. And that's too fancy for that dish.
+
+[41:31] Could you do like an Italian queso with calabri and peppers and this stuff? Why not? Would it taste good? Sure. I mean, everybody likes queso.
+
+[41:41] See, yeah, queso is delicious. Uh Christian Sacco writes in, uh, I know double questions are sacrilegious to uh to Nastasia, but hopefully these are quick. Uh I don't even know how to ask you this. Rank the Roman pastas. Okay.
+
+[41:57] I'm gonna How many are you gonna choose like what like the best Roman pasta is rigatoni with the sauce, leftover sauce that oxdales have braced in. Okay. After which, for my tastes, rigatoni with the intestines of milk fed veal, followed by Griccia, carbonara, cache pepe, and a matriciana. Because everyone says that there are three Roman pastas or four Roman pastas, and that's only people who don't live in Rome that think that. Really, in Rome, the rigatoni dishes that I mentioned with the oxtail sauce and the payata are so much more emblematic than many of the others.
+
+[42:36] Talk to me about the veal intestines. How are they produced? How are they prepared? So the intestines are harvested with the mother's milk still inside, and butchers will lay out the squiggly intestines and then cut them into maybe six inch long segments and then use call fat to tie those into rings and then cook them like little cheesy sausages in tomato sauce until super tender. And then it's customary to break one open into the sauce so it makes kind of like a creamy ricotta-y, kind of funky uh undertone in the sauce, and then you toss it with rigatoni, and it's delicious.
+
+[43:10] I want that. I know. Yeah, I want that. You gotta go to Rome. You couldn't even get it in Caglioli or Palermo or Firenze, like it's such a Roman thing.
+
+[43:19] It's like all the spleen in Italy ends up in Palermo, all the intestines go to Roman. I was just about to, yeah, all the spleen in in uh now you have that all the golden California song going through my head. You're welcome. In a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills. Uh anyway, um, so you have the the sandwich in Palermo, and what's the name of the Palermo Palermi's sandwich bread they've uh Paste Paste.
+
+[43:41] Looks nice, looks good. It's fine, yeah. I've never been. Anyway, uh, so it's this like uh it's like lard poached uh spleen and lungs. And you're like, you might have a hard time getting spleen.
+
+[43:52] You can't get lungs, although I've heard that they're changing the law. I heard we're gonna be able to get lungs again in the US. That's great. Now, if we can get horse. Well, yeah, you have a big old horse steak, but you say the beast's pretty close.
+
+[44:02] I've never had the horse steak. What are your thoughts on the horse steak? Super lean. Yeah. Good if you cook it and real fast and then drench it in olive oil and oregano, and you're good to go.
+
+[44:12] So when you say cook it real fast, like so like Nastasia used to work for uh Cesare Casella, Tuscan. Amazing. Yeah. And uh, you know, we're all friends, right? And so he used to raise the Keanina cows, right?
+
+[44:24] Which are these big, big cows? Big boys. Cows. And then he'd get the steak, and Nastasi and I would go, and he's like, and we're like, what? What?
+
+[44:35] Oh, well, that's a thick steak. When people eat horse in Sicily, it's generally like a super thin pounded steak. I'm gonna bring up cheesesteaks for the for the maybe fifth time this year. Cheese steaks are delicious though. I love them, I treasure them.
+
+[44:48] Maybe that's why I like this dish so much. But it's a piece of of horse that's been pounded really, really thin, and then just like cooked uh very fast on both sides by ideally a sweaty, sweaty man on the streets in Catania. And then served on a plate so it like overflows the dimensions of the plate. It's amazing. I went uh I hate speaking of sweaty, sweaty men serving things.
+
+[45:10] I hate the San Gennaro Festival here in New York City. I absolutely hate it. What it's not super fun? Oh my god. Especially if like it's in your neighborhood, you know what I mean?
+
+[45:20] It's like, you know, or it's in used to be in my transit. I used to have to go through it. Detest it. I did detest it, right? But I went there once and there was a guy, sweaty, sweaty guy running the sausage and pepper thing.
+
+[45:33] Gotta get the cell seat. Yeah. And he pulled up his shirt and did a belly, like one of those where his belly is doing the waves. And I was like, I couldn't eat sausage and peppers for like like years. That's amazing.
+
+[45:49] It's horrifying, right? I disagree. This is where we we depart. I think that's really sexy. Oh my God.
+
+[45:56] So in uh in the uh in the Time Life Foods of the World series, the one with Italy has a spread on Tuscan bread. And in it, the guy is clearly wearing like uh, you know, like boxer shorts that like are allowing everything, you know, and he's wearing like a shirt, like a like a like like a sleeveless shirt, and he's baking the bread, and you can see the sweat dripping into the bread. Well, how else is it gonna have salt? That's exactly what I was saying. That's the only source of salt.
+
+[46:26] So, like, you know, maybe if you're making a Tuscan bread, really, it's just this dude's freaking sweat that's the salt, and you're getting the stuff up. That's disgusting. Disgusting. Speaking of salt and baking, uh, super interesting uh section towards the well, it's once in the middle in the pasta section and then at the end in the in the appendices. Uh is I did not know this hand pulled Italian noodles.
+
+[46:53] Uh what's the threads of God? Say it's so fidendeyo. Uh beautiful. It's it's very similar to the there's a Portuguese word also for something similar that's not that, but that's similar word. I forget anyway.
+
+[47:06] Um I did not know this culture thing existed, but but get this people. Uh so there's a QR code in the book you can scan, and then you can go see the the master making her making it. John Franca de Tori. But so get this. They hand-stretched the hand pulled and noodles, and it's very similar to the Chinese hand-pulled noodles.
+
+[47:28] Uh, and it requires salt. If you don't salt it, it won't work because you have to overwork the dough to break down the gluten in so that the gliadin's doing its thing, and it's very ex it's very um extensible without being very elastic. Anyway, I digress. But get this, people. She has this basket.
+
+[47:43] What's the basket called? This like wide, narrow. There's like it's like a basket really. I'm not sure of what the name is, but it's a wicker disc. Yeah.
+
+[47:51] And she stretches it and then lays them across each other at an angle and then lets it dry into like a big old disc. It's a it's three diagonal layers of super thin pasta made from Durham wheat, which is very uh difficult to make extensible until you really need the the heck out of it. Um see how I'm censoring myself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good family show.
+
+[48:16] Nastasia also hates it. It's a family show, it's not a trigger, but there you go. Um, and then that disc after it's dried is broken into a mutton broth uh with uh an acidulated sheep's milk cheese. And it's well, it used to just be served around the holidays related to San Francesco, and now because it's such an iconic thing that so many people in Sardinia are proud exists. Now you can find it all over the sub-region of the Barbagia where the town of uh its origin is located, and you can even find it like rest stops and cafes, and you could find it in other parts of the island too, whereas it used to just be one very specific hyper-regional dish.
+
+[48:53] Yeah. I was like, I want that. I know you do want that. It feels like velvet on your palate. It's it's such an incredible like mouthfeel.
+
+[49:01] Really awesome. Go to Sardinia, man. I would love to go. I would love to go. Hey, speaking of Sardinia, how the heck did France end up with Corsica?
+
+[49:10] Oh, that I don't know. Probably something from the Savoys or I don't know. Because it's not French. No. It feels more Sardinian, if anything.
+
+[49:20] All those, like all those delicious funky cheeses and the knife culture and the band tree. You like the knives, Sardinian knives has a whole page on Sardinian knives. And uh you gave actually uh like a website shout out. You can go, she's like, every town, she says has this like like a not every town, many towns have a culture like like handmade knife folks. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[49:39] So I mean there's certain knife shapes that are named for their town of origin, but you can go to like I this has not failed me yet. You go to a Sardinian town, you say, I really like knives. Do you know anyone who sells them? And they'll call their neighbor, their cousin, their grandpa. And that person has like a little foundry in their garage where they make knives with horns that they say they find instead of hunting the endangered animals for them.
+
+[50:03] Found it found at the end of a rifle. Yeah. Exactly. And so uh it's it's really fun, especially if you're into like gardening, you can get grafting knives. Uh I use my skinning knives all the time, not for skinning boars, unfortunately.
+
+[50:18] Um, but you know, like I take it on a hiking trip and and use it for all sorts of food preparation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, we gotta get to more of these questions that we uh oh, and the second one, uh after the Roman pasta. And I don't know if you like these questions or hate these questions, but if you had to pick the recipe from the new book you'd really like people to actually make, what would it be? Oh my god, that's really hard question.
+
+[50:38] I do like this question. It's it challenges me. How about that mint pistachio uh pesto? That's actually exactly what I was gonna say, right? Um, but I would say one of the pestos for sure.
+
+[50:49] There's seven in the book. Why don't you talk about your uh dislike for everyone only thinking pesto is the is the I'm sick and tired of Geneva getting all the pesto attention. So pesto is you know, loosely defined, something that's like mashed up that generally includes herbs and nuts and garlic, sometimes cheese, definitely oil. And there are pestos all over Italy, especially concentrated in Sicily, and there's even one in Sardegna. And I like the pistachio and mint pesto flavor so so much.
+
+[51:22] It's not traditional per se, but you know, cuisine's always evolving. So once upon a time, no one made pesto and trapponi, and now they do, and so it's a thing. Uh on on Mount Etna, where a lot of pistachios grow, um, you find places are serving pistachio pesto with whatever the seasonal herb is. And I think that one's just really delicious. But in terms of like a super classic recipe, the caponata is really nice.
+
+[51:46] Um, it's dairy and gluten-free, so it literally can be consumed by almost everyone unless you have a uh nightshade um intolerance. And it's the cu this classic sweet and sour eggplant dish, but it's got almonds in it, which I think give a nice toasty flavor and texture contrast, make it a little hardier. And I I just love that one. Yeah. Uh I like the last the last pesto recipe in the pesto section is get any two nuts and any tourbs.
+
+[52:14] Just get two different nuts and get two different herbs. Forget about it. Some cheese. Anyway, uh, so uh wait, you eggplants. So you have this one recipe in there, which so it's these small eggplants whole, you slice them on the bottom like they're uh like a like a like a like a tutu, like a dress, and then you salt them for a while, and then you fry them whole and let them go.
+
+[52:37] Is that greasy as hell or is it delicious? Or both? Both. Okay. Of course.
+
+[52:41] What kind of grease you're supposed to cook it in? I forget. What do they cook it in? Everyone uses generic vegetable oil or peanut oil. And they have these bubbling cauldrons of oil on the streets in Palermo where they prepare a lot of this stuff.
+
+[52:54] Some people also have little tiny brick and mortars. Um, but as the eggplant fries, the kind of like legs of the eggplant start to spread out like the wings of a bird. Um, and so that's called uh a quail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Qualia, right?
+
+[53:09] Qualia? See, yeah. And then uh you also have sardines in the manner of a songbird uh in the in the book, uh, which are like are those good the stuffed sardines? They're so good. And it's it's got a lot of the Sicilian sweet and sour stuff going on.
+
+[53:23] There's uh orange in the uh in the recipe and currents, right? Currants, yeah, pine nuts. It's it's delicious. Uh so uh what you have a so this book, I guess you say unlike the other books, you're arranging it by like uh function rather than by location. But one of the things that, and there is a fish section, but one of the things you point out several times is that not people aren't eating as much fish on the islands as you necessarily would think.
+
+[53:51] You want to talk about that, other than the Venetian islands? Yeah, I mean, fish is really expensive. Um, it's a commodity that the small islands sustain themselves by selling. Um, and above all, the cuisines historically, until the 20th century, when ice and refrigeration and wealth came to Italy, um, fish was uh not something that you could count on sustaining you. You would have to go out in dangerous waters and fish it, and there might be pirates out there, literally.
+
+[54:17] And so the island cultures, whether it's the larger one, Sicily and Sardinia, the smaller ones, Pons and Procida, they had to figure out what they could live off of in an isolated place, regardless of the weather, and really influenced by their terrain. So that that's why you got a lot of like rabbits on Iskia and not a ton of beef, right? Right. You said that the uh you're whoever is running the hotel is like, get inland, get some rabbits, go to someone who has a cave, get a rabbit. Why caves?
+
+[54:44] Why weighs a rabbit in a cave? Not sunny, I guess they don't die so. It's a sunken pit, really. Oh, so I'm running away. You're glorifying it by calling it a cave.
+
+[54:52] It's more fancy. It's more like put it puts the lotion on the skin kind of a situation. That's right. Yeah. You wouldn't want to eat it if you thought about that.
+
+[54:59] That's what we in immediately think about. The silence of the lamb says that is one of the great all-time movie situations. It's amazing, but you're not like, I want Iskia style rabbit after this. I do. Put the rubbish in the basket.
+
+[55:13] You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, I'm all about it. Yeah, yeah. I'm convinced. All right.
+
+[55:17] Yeah. Well, next time. Next time when you're, you know, you know, next time you talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Uh so uh a recipe that I thought that John would particularly uh like be interested and pissed off that he can't try the real one is because you have to substitute all different things, is dog fish, which is I guess a charcaloid, right?
+
+[55:37] Yeah. You can literally go to the Jersey Shore or probably the river and get some. I've never seen one for sale though. I don't think they're sold. You just accidentally catch them here.
+
+[55:46] So you hack, you you cut up the meat, you cook it in like a in like a broth, I don't remember what kind of broth, and then what vinegar and then and then you then you take its liver and you cook that with walnuts, make a paste out of it, put it back in with vinegar, and let it cure overnight. It's so good. It's so good. It's called burrida, and it's the dish of Caglieri, which is the port town on the southern coast of Sardinia. And when you go to the market there, the San Benedict the market is the largest fish market.
+
+[56:12] Maybe it's the largest market by area in all of Europe. The entire uh sunken floor, another cave reference, um, is filled with fishmongers, and they all have specialties. Some are just tuna, some are just mollusks, but everyone's got dogfish, and it looks like they prepare it for you, right? It's already sold prepped. So it looks like a bunch of like snake chunks in a bucket, which granted I'm not doing a great job of making this sound appetizing, but it's like it's bony and cartilaginous, and it really absorbs all these beautiful flavors, and the monk, not the monkfish liver, the the dogfish liver just brings like a real uh sweet earthiness to it.
+
+[56:47] It's one of my favorite things ever. Nice. Yeah. Uh I thought he's gonna be like, I can't have it. That's why I tell that's why I brought it up.
+
+[56:54] Sorry. That's why I brought it up. Uh all right. Uh Fuck Jack wants to know Will you have another book launch party at Fiorella's when I where I first encountered entrees from Food of the Italian South years ago. You bet.
+
+[57:06] And it sold out so fast that we added an afternoon signing. So the dinner, which is on Friday, the no, Saturday, the 11th, is sold out 10 minutes after it opened. Uh Rochester people are my people. They've been so supportive from day one. And from 10 to 2 uh on Saturday, I'm gonna do a just a signing.
+
+[57:26] People can come by, they'll be serving coffee, and uh, I'll personalize your book. I like that. Um, okay. You go to if you go to Rochester, you gotta check out our boy Donnie Clutter book. Oh, I know.
+
+[57:36] Yeah. I gotta spend more time in these cities. Yeah. I'll probably end up eating at the airport. It's like so sad.
+
+[57:42] The yeah, I I might end up spending more time in Rochester's great. Yeah, I like Rochester. I love it. Okay, so uh one of the things Nastasi likes to poke fun at me the most is uh a night that I double uh starched booker, my older son, and Nastasi was on the phone with him, and he he's like, Your dad's making too much starch, and that's all I could think of when I saw this sandwich. We got two more minutes, don't worry.
+
+[58:03] I got this sandwich in Palermo, where it's literally a hunk of bread, a square of fried chickpea, dough, and a square, a flat square, which is kind of weird. Yeah, it's a number of layers of it. And you know what? Not enough starch, some potato croquettes, and then I'm like, well, they gotta slather this mother in mayonnaise or something. Just lemon.
+
+[58:24] So it's an iodized salt from like the stickiest, sketchiest shaker in the world. But is that good? It's spectacular. Really? It's so good.
+
+[58:34] Yeah, it's really, really good. Yeah, and the buns, like the Vastetta buns or like the seeded uh germ wheat buns bring like a little bit of like sweetness to it. You've got the acid from the the uh seasoning, and I mean potatoes taste good, chickpeas when fry tastes good. What's what's bad about this? It's just carbon carbon carbon carbon.
+
+[58:53] That's right, but who so what? All right, all right. Okay. Let the Palermi tiny get their calories, man. Jeez.
+
+[59:00] All right. Um, to see what I there's so much in this book that when you go, oh, I know. Talk to me about this bread casserole. So you get the you get the stale bread, you put some beef meat bro, meat broth, and I forget which meat. Mutton or whatever you got.
+
+[59:14] And cheese, and you bake that sucker. Yeah. Talk to me about this. I always put uh stale bread recipes all over my cookbooks, and this is a favorite. Yeah, you just take big chunks of stale bread, layer them in a in a casserole with layers of cheese between them, pour over that broth, more cheese on top, and then you bake it, and it's like the the like bready cheesy part of a French onion soup.
+
+[59:35] Tastes fantastic. That sounds real good. Yeah. It's like, you know, with not too starchy for you. It's not me, remember.
+
+[59:42] I I'm the one that committed this thing. And we also, you know, cause uh whatever, like we always like to do the big night. It's a starch, it's a starch. Like um uh and on the way out, raw artichokes, raw artichoke salad with buttarga, huh? R what's come on, raw artichoke salad with botarga.
+
+[59:58] See, a little lemon juice, olive oil, black pepper. You've got a party. Now it must be real thin though. So thin. Oh my god, yeah.
+
+[1:00:07] You gotta risk like a limb on that mandolin. All right, man. Let's ever try it. Don't tell that to my cutting board when I accidentally leave raw artichokes on it and then it poisons everything else. Don't do that.
+
+[1:00:17] Do not do that, people. Well, Katie, thanks for coming on. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave O'Round, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan and New York City. Rockefeller Center, New Stand Studios, joined as usual with John behind me. John, how you doing? Doing great, thanks?
+
+[0:22] Yeah, yeah. Everything good? Yeah. PC? Yep.
+
+[0:24] Going great. It doesn't sound like it. I don't feel it. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's I don't know. It's my Monday, so just easing into the week, I guess.
+
+[0:30] Are you one of those guys that's uh kept down by the weather? You don't like bad weather? I don't really care. Oh, good. Good.
+
+[0:35] So that's why Nastasia can tolerate working with you because she hates people that care about the weather? Oh, I I I guess. What do you Nastasi the Hammer Lopez? You're there in California, right? Yep.
+
+[0:46] Yeah, don't you hate people that that change their life based on how the weather is? I do I do. Yes, I hate it. Yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, you can have a good time now because the weather's good.
+
+[0:56] Week, right? Week. No week. Yeah. Especially in New York City where we're not about the weather.
+
+[1:02] What are you gonna do? I'm gonna go surfing here. What the hell? Uh got uh Jackie Molecules not with us today, unfortunately. Where is where is Jack?
+
+[1:10] Is he doing something fun at least, Nastasia? Or is is he uh is he laid up in bed somewhere? He's at Southway Southwest. Oh. Okay, listen, I have to say something.
+
+[1:20] Well, we'll we'll get it. We'll we'll we'll come back. We got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How you doing? I'm doing great, man.
+
+[1:26] Good to see you. Good to see you as well. And uh our special guest, Homer Murray, restaurateur and chef uh Brooklyn and Manhattan, again, uh extraordinaire of uh 21 Green Point, formerly of Ombre Taco here in Rockefeller Center, which we will talk about uh in a little bit, and the newer 21 Greenpoint here. Welcome. Thank you.
+
+[1:46] Welcome to me here. A lot of mutual friends, but we've never met. I know. It's nice to make your acquaintance. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[1:52] So if you're listening live on the Patreon, call in to 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. Now listen, have any of you been to South by Southwest or South by is the they call it? No, I think I missed that boat 20 something years ago, right? Yeah, you know what?
+
+[2:06] That's a boat that you are so listening I know everybody loves it. Oh, you love it, right? I'm like, nah. No, it sounds terrible. I mean, like, you know what?
+
+[2:15] Anastasia, you'd probably like it because like you can go see all those bands and stuff, but like in terms of eating, it's just one big line. It's just one giant line. I hate lines. Yeah, I hear you. My dad likes to go.
+
+[2:27] He goes, but he gets to cut the line. So it's not fair. That's not fair. Like, that's why, like, uh, like I, you know, I don't mind going to some events if I know that I can just be like, come on. Like, if I know the people who are like running, I'm like, come on, go on.
+
+[2:40] I mean, like, I feel bad cutting, but on the other hand, I don't know how I hate lines. I just hate I I don't like uh events that descend upon a city, an otherwise peaceful town. You know what I mean? If I lived in Austin, I would dread that time of the year more than anything. I think the pe I know some I have some friends of mine live in Austin, and I think that they actually like it, kind of.
+
+[2:57] Because they could they can go home. They can go home. They don't have to stay in an Airbnb. Right. And, you know, if they want to go home and eat something that they bought at a supermarket, they don't have to wait an hour and a half for like half of a breakfast burrito.
+
+[3:12] You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. I mean the breakfast burrito, though. Oh, well, you know, those people I don't know if you know this. Austin invented the breakfast burrito.
+
+[3:20] Yeah, I heard about that. They invented a lot of things that I thought had been around for a long time. I like Austin. Austin's awesome. Hey Stas, did you ever go uh when we were doing the uh the Austin crap?
+
+[3:29] Do you go with us? No, no, I didn't go with you. All right, all right. We have a main one in Brooklyn for brunch. If you ever need a breakfast burrito.
+
+[3:37] Oh, oh yeah. So what what uh what makes a good breakfast burrito for you? Um we have great tortillas. Yeah. Uh nice flower tortillas that a friend of mine makes, and it's just simple.
+
+[3:46] You know, there's nothing crazy about it. Oh, is it there's one guy, I uh what's his name? The the guy who makes the flo the good flour tortillas. I think so. No, he is the chef, his name's Nikki, Nikki Gorgeous.
+
+[3:55] He's the chef of a place called SFBK, which is in Williamsburg. And uh he's from Arizona, so he's sort of passionate about it. And uh yeah, that's that's the building block to any good burrito, right? Yeah, does he uh does he use the the Hayden uh the Hayden Mills? I'm not sure about the process.
+
+[4:09] Yeah, but I know. That flour is like uh it's like super expensive. Okay, look, look, it's expensive as flour goes. Yeah. It's not expensive compared to steak.
+
+[4:20] Right. You know what I mean? But it's very expensive compared to flour, and it's milled by um oh my god, her name's out of my it went out of my head, but she has a book on milling, and she uses primarily white Sonora and wheat. And when you add milk to uh not milk, we add water to white Sonora and wheat to make a uh to make a dough, it almost smells like cereal milk. Yeah, it's got this amazing kind of aroma, and it's got a like it's just a perfect texture for flour tortillas with like you know, a little bit of lard up in that piece.
+
+[4:51] Right, you know, and uh it's uh doesn't take much. No. Yeah, no, lard, water, salt, flour, yeah, winning. You know what I mean? Uh yeah, but uh it took me many years to appreciate a good flour tortilla because the ones, you know, I was like, you know, I've been exposed to really good corn tortillas, but I'd never really been exposed to excellent flour tortillas.
+
+[5:10] Oh, you know what? Like you've been in New York a long, long time. Do you remember that place fresco? Yes, absolutely. That those were not terrible.
+
+[5:17] No, yeah. Gosh, I hadn't heard that. Really good flour tortillas at Yellow Rose. Yeah, Yellow Rose is a great uh original shit. And they just opened this little place next to Yellow Rose, a Taco Bell.
+
+[5:27] Looks great. Yeah, I got it. Charming. Artisanal taco. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[5:31] It might be a cantina. Yeah. Do they actually have something called Taco Bell Cantina? They do. I've never been to one, but they sell booze.
+
+[5:38] Really? Yeah. Yeah. Here in New York. There are a few in New York.
+
+[5:42] 36 and 6. There you go. Like booze booze. They have a full license. I have probably a frozen margarita or something along those lines.
+
+[5:49] But yeah, liquor. Yeah. You know what? I've just been working on frozen margaritas recently. I've been working on frozen drinks.
+
+[5:55] Yeah. I'm trying to get uh my frozen drink program up. Yeah. Well, what's your what's been your issues with it? I don't have one.
+
+[6:02] Look, the issue with it, I think is that like uh the frozen machines that most people are using, like it's a it's a trick look, people love the frozen drink machines because you know, pull and pay, pull and pay money, money, money, money, right? But they don't get cold enough, right? Well, they're in general, people are doing really, really high sugar levels, like 12, 13%, 14%, and low alcohol levels, and they're getting very long. Um, you know, it takes a long time for it to melt because it doesn't have a lot of alcohol. Whereas like a lot of my old recipes were like, you know, 13, 14% alcohol, and they come out when they're really cold.
+
+[6:39] They come out like a perfect slush, but they melt, you know. Right. And I I drink them so quickly, it doesn't matter, but like they end up like kind of slushing out. So like I would have low sugar, high alcohol. So I've been working on trying to do kind of a middle of the road situation where you know you're still over 10%, uh like just over 10% at or just over 10% alcohol.
+
+[6:59] So the backbone's still there. And just knock the sugar down a little bit. You know what I mean? And you get a good, you get a good uh get a good melt, uh get a good melt rate. Cool.
+
+[7:08] Well, we'd love to have you over. Yeah. Uh uh, definitely well. Like, you know, the trick is also like it's like what size machine? Like, you know, uh, I think the mistake people made, I'll never forget uh I was uh I had done a bunch of uh stuff for tails of the cocktail with frozen machines.
+
+[7:21] I was using El Meco machines, which is a machine, but they rented some like you know, crappy little miniature air-cooled daiquiri machines. So for anyone who cares about refrigeration, like the question is, is it gonna be first of all, how much power you gotta put into it? And secondly, is it air cooled or water cooled? Right? And air-cooled machines, there's only so much power you can get out of them.
+
+[7:38] Uh, but you know, you're like no one can afford in a in a restaurant to add a frozen drink program, you're like, I gotta put a freaking 220 line, I gotta water cool that sucker. And where am I gonna put it? It has to be countertop. So everyone ends up with everyone ends up usually with a 120 air cooled machine. And there's limits, hard limits to what a 120-air cooled machine can do.
+
+[7:56] And I think the other mistake uh then people make is is that because I had to run this, we all did this event, none of us had ever done frozen drinks before. It's years ago in New Orleans, hot as hell, New Orleans in July. They rent them all from some Mardi Gras garbage company. Yeah, you know what I mean? Sure, what I don't know.
+
+[8:13] Yeah, may not be though. Human trash cancer. Yeah, I don't know. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[8:16] Anywho, so we get all these machines, and then you know, we all dump our batches in and they all freeze down, all of us, like like 30 people. And then as soon as we start drawing and putting back in, they all water out. And so like that's when I learned gotta keep your batch frozen. Gotta keep your batch frozen. So if you don't have something right next to your machine to keep your batch pre-frozen, you're toast.
+
+[8:41] Yeah. You're you're absolutely especially because you know, if you're busy, you pull five of them, you know, so ah, give me five. Then you dump five drinks in. You say, well, we're good 20 minutes for the next one, folks. Right.
+
+[8:52] You see a lot of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh, you know, easily rectified by just having like a cheap, you know, a cheap uh freezer. Yeah, or even like we used to have um uh at existing conditions, we had a freaking uh what's it called?
+
+[9:07] A uh uh just a like a you know, one from PC Richards, like a little like oh, like a dorm room kind of situation, yeah, for freezer only, like you know, under counter, and then we we weren't have a drink machine, but we could load frozen stuff out of it, you know, or like you know, extremely fancy ice or whatever crap we didn't want to go bad. You know, you're sitting there watching dollar ice cubes go in the in the ice well, and you're like, you know, uh Christ. Anyway, uh so this is the part of the show where we discussed anything interesting that happened uh last week in in the food or otherwise world. You guys got anything? Anyone do anything interesting in the food world?
+
+[9:39] I went to Yellow Rose and it was delicious. Uh, there you go. Right. Yeah, it's right by my house. Yeah.
+
+[9:44] I go pretty regularly. That's nice. I've never I've never been, so give me the give me the scoop. Uh he used to work for Brooks at Superiority. Um, and then he's from Texas originally and decided to open up this place with his wife that does phenomenal Tex-Mex food.
+
+[10:00] Really, really, really good. I think he even the chili that one of the chilies that they used to do at Superiority Burger, he used to make, and it was the recipe he got or he got second place with at the Texas State Chili Cook Off and a V as a vegetarian submission too. Well, let me ask you this. Yeah. Was there a vegetarian category?
+
+[10:21] I don't know. I think he submitted it with all the meat dudes. I don't believe that. Not even for a second. James if I just because have you it was really delicious?
+
+[10:28] Have you ever I'm not saying that facts? I'm not I'm not saying that. Have you ever hung out with Texans? A little bit. And you think that a non-beef based recipe in a in a beef-based category.
+
+[10:42] Maybe you didn't tell them. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. You know what it was? You know what the main ingredient is?
+
+[10:48] Silocide and mushrooms. There you go. Right. You know what I mean? It's like, so they're like, oh man, this beef.
+
+[10:56] You know what I mean? Yeah. Because they're they're hallucinating into thinking there was beef in there because you can't. Is it got meat analog or is it a bean chili? It was a bean chili.
+
+[11:05] See, I the honor, great honor to bean chili. Yeah. Oh my God, here's a food story. Don't do. So over the summer I went to Maine.
+
+[11:13] I bought, you know, you go to Maine, you buy weird beans. Sure. Right. So, like, you know, I got I'm at a roadside stand, you know, you know, way up, way up near uh uh Acadia National Park. I go in, I'm like, where are the beans?
+
+[11:26] And they're like, and then like I go in and like all these little sacks of weird beans you never heard. Lowe's Champion Early, and inside is Graham's Saturday beans, like one of those old like courier typewritten recipes. Ah, I try it. And it's weird because a standard bean recipe, you you soak, well, I'm not gonna get into soaking, I don't care. Anyway, but you soak it, then you pre-cook it until you know you do the thing and the beans are almost pardon, and then you bake it for a while, right?
+
+[11:51] But Graham, in her infinite wisdom with this Lowe's early, which is specifically was this, because her other beans had different recipes in it. Just cooks them straight for like five hours, no pre-cook. Like that. At 250, it's good. I was getting nervous because at like four hours they were still kind of hard.
+
+[12:06] And I was turning them over so the ones on top would go underneath, and they weren't breaking. It was really good. And you know, around five hours, they they you know, they finally softened up. You know, no acid, no gussie, just a small amount of molasses, mustard, salt, no freaking pepper, onion, no freaking garlic, piece of salt pork. I have vegetarians coming, so I left it out.
+
+[12:24] I had some nutritional yeast to try to boost it a little bit because I didn't have the pork. And I added a little bit, even though salt pork's not smoked, I added a little bit of hickory smoke powder. Just to make up for the fact I didn't have the pork. Don't judge. No, none.
+
+[12:35] Anyway, I have a technique I use now with beans where what I do is I cook them in excess liquid first, let them cool a little bit, add bean o knock all the farts out of it, and then do my reduction cooking afterwards once it's been defarted. And then now, so I'm used to being like bean champion because I'm like, I can eat anything without like getting sick, but the bacteria in my gut are as strong as I am in terms of what they can tolerate. And so they'll just, you know, they'll blow me apart. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying?
+
+[13:04] It's a nice problem to have. Yeah, yeah. Or like, you know, like, you know, like Nastasia is with uh, what's it called? Jerusalem Martichokes, where she likes to, you know, she likes to expand her her friend's bottom sides with uh with gas. That's one of your favorite tricks, right, Saz.
+
+[13:21] In my 20s. That was not even your 20s. This was like six years ago. Yeah, anyway. So I followed Graham's recipe to the tea, and I ate it like I had defarted it.
+
+[13:36] And I have not been in so much pain from a recipe. I was like, I will never cook beans like that again without doing the defart technique. Or just eat fewer. Right. Who wants to eat fewer?
+
+[13:47] Yeah, that's not a that's not a compromise. That's not, right? Yeah. Because I'd made like the shaksuka for everyone else, but they were going so hard on the shaksuka that there was almost none left. I eat it for dinner, call me an whatever.
+
+[13:59] It doesn't matter. Whatever. Crap on you. I can eat it for dinner. It's not only for breakfast, John.
+
+[14:03] No. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Shaksuka's welcome any time of the day.
+
+[14:07] Right? Certainly. Right? Yes. Yeah.
+
+[14:09] Why are you turning around and yelling at meeting? Because I I can feel your eyes. Anyway. Looking right through you. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[14:13] Anyway. So like I ate mostly beans and also like, I don't know, another jerky move. I poached the eggs. I don't put the eggs into the shaksuka to cook them. Oh, really?
+
+[14:24] No, because what the hell? Yeah. It makes it harder to save it if you have more leftover. At home. I'm not talking about it like you're serving it to somebody.
+
+[14:29] But like when you're making a when you're making like a 14-inch, I've I've I use like a 14-inch Volrath Centurion freaking big old thing. And I'm doing like, you know, large format, comes out, the whole table's doing it. I don't know what's gonna, what people want, what they don't. So I just poached. I poached the eggs.
+
+[14:44] Sure. Uh so I'm just eating poached eggs and beans and bread. You know what I mean? Just poached eggs and beans and bread. And uh, yeah, it's very bad.
+
+[14:56] Yeah, very, very bad. Very bad. Although, I don't know whether the Lowe's champion early bean is a particularly 2D bean, though. I don't know, because I've never had it before. How do we track this lady down?
+
+[15:07] Ask her some questions. I I guarantee based on the font that Graham is dead. Yeah. Well, no one uses that font. Yeah, if I ever go back to Acadia, I'm just gonna like top of the list.
+
+[15:18] I got some questions and I want them answered. Man, she's just bust through the door and start screaming at this lady behind the she's like, I don't know. Waving this type recipe over your head. Yeah. What the hell is this?
+
+[15:27] Um, all right. So uh let's go back to and Destas. Did you wait what did you did you say you had anything or no? My mind is totally erased today. I don't know.
+
+[15:38] Nothing I want to share, no. Oh that means that's the most interesting. He's digging there, yeah. That means that's the most interesting stuff. Although I will say this uh for people who are looking for a centrifuge, we're getting ready to have announcement on that, right, Stas?
+
+[15:52] Oh. Yeah. Like announcement within a month. What did you say? No.
+
+[16:03] No. Uh all right. All right. So let's get on to stuff. Let's get on to talk stuff.
+
+[16:08] You want to uh promote the Patreon there, John? Do the do a little business? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Join there a couple different uh membership levels, and you get awesome things at each membership level, including access to the community Discord, um discounts uh uh from books that Kitchen Arts and Letters with guest authors that we have on. I believe Katie Parla's is discounted.
+
+[16:30] Um yeah, just really a whole bunch of great things, prioritize questions, all that kind of good stuff. So become a member. It's uh it's a good time for all. I DM'd Katie Parla. It's my first DM ever.
+
+[16:42] Really? I never I've never like slid into anyone's DMs, but I I listened to the show and I enjoyed it so much. I wanted to say, hey, I'm going on this show, what do I talk about? And uh I will say congratulations, she sounded great. I had my I had several people around me helping me craft it, so I hope it didn't come off too weird.
+
+[16:58] It wasn't a lecherous DM, it was a complimentary one. Well, I mean, I don't know, she lives mostly in Italy, so it might be okay, right? Great, yeah, why not? It's a reason to get over there. So uh did uh did she respond?
+
+[17:08] Not yet. She's on a book tour, I'm sure she's very busy. Oh yeah, she's in some other place now. I saw on her Instagram, some other place. All right, so let's talk about opening a restaurant in New York City in a place.
+
+[17:20] So you had ombre taco, and let's talk about why that place closed. Uh well, I I I'm not entirely sure. I I I may not have gotten the full story, but we opened um 2020, 2020, I would say, September, sort of right in the middle of all the guts of it, uh, of the pandemic. And it was it was sort of bleak and and dark down here. I don't know if you were in the building.
+
+[17:46] Yeah. Yeah. So you know what it was like. And we struggled through, but we we really uh were sort of getting our footing and realizing uh what it what it could be, and and then um and then uh an idea was proposed that it would be sort of uh reimagined as a second location. I've had my place 21 Greenpoint in Brooklyn for for a decade now.
+
+[18:07] And uh the idea was a good milestone. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, it feels nice. Yeah, I was talking about it the other day, and and uh and it it it sort of hit me that we had had sort of contributed to to shaping the neighborhood in the way that it is now, and and that that was a nice feeling. And we're uh we're very fortunate out there to have some great regulars and some great neighborhood people that have really um cauterized us there.
+
+[18:29] Well, Greenpoint got so cool that like people who live in Greenpoint are like, I don't really leave Greenpoint anymore. I know it's a real problem. I it it was for me. I I spent a decade there as well, uh, and and just recently left. Uh and it it does feel like a very small, very tight-knit community.
+
+[18:44] It is separate because of the G train specifically, it is its own little spot up there, so people don't leave as often as they do, and there's less um, yeah, it it it's it's a wonderful neighborhood full of incredible people. Is the well to go back to my other question? So, first of all, is is all the industry gone out of Green Point? Because I remember like in the 90s, it was like half little old ladies on their stoops talking to each other, and then somebody grinding because I had a job as a metal worker in Greenpoint in the 90s, and it was like either like industrial filth or little old ladies having like you know, pastries and coffee. Yeah, the ladies are still there.
+
+[19:23] Uh some of the filth is, thankfully. Uh a lot of the stuff that was by the water has been forced out of there, and now is very tall, glass buildings full of people. I don't know. Uh but uh the further you get from the water, the more industrial there. There's still a lot of uh, you know, film and movie production takes place over there.
+
+[19:39] And then you still have all those weird places like where Sydney Lamette was shooting and stuff, yeah. All that stuff is still there, which is neat. And and that'll take a little while uh to ruin, but they'll find a way. They'll find a way to ruin it. Certainly.
+
+[19:50] Yeah, yeah. All right. Uh so what I heard uh was that they obliterated the space that was ombre taco it no longer exists. That is true. That is true.
+
+[19:59] Uh there was a uh a reimagining of what the concourse level of 30 rock would be, and that involves uh bringing in some black iron and some ventilation systems and and expanding the uh the scope of what people were able to do. And uh Ombre Taco before it was uh a bibigo uh sort of a dumpling place, and before that was uh it was a candle store, and I think a video game shop. So it was never uh a place for for a restaurant to be, and now it is. We're we're we're in the final stages of getting our gas turned on. How long has that taken?
+
+[20:33] It's taken a while. There's been uh some uh you know, some red tape with the FDNY and Con Ed and stuff. No, no fault of anybody, but it's just bureaucratic silliness, which is you know, a lot of T's to cross. And we're working in a cathedral, right? Uh uh a landmark building where you know changing a light bulb requires several emails and stuff.
+
+[20:51] So things go slow. Ever since uh ever since the explosion, remember the explosion uh downtown uh in uh what year was that? It's like 20, I wanna say like twenty fourteen, 2015. There was a gas explosion on second. No, I guess not.
+
+[21:07] Blew up a whole building from a restaurant. They were doing illegal work in the restaurant. Two people were killed in the restaurant, leveled the entire building on the corner right next to uh Oh by the Palm Frits on like a on like uh seventh. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay, I remember that.
+
+[21:22] I wasn't aware that that was what caused it. Yeah, gas gas explosion. And there had recently, right before then, been a gas explosion in Harlem on like 125th Street in it was either a commercial building or some sort of like a older schoolish kind of building. And those two gas explosions happened kind of very close to each other. And ever since then, I mean, rightfully so.
+
+[21:44] I mean, we we're eight million of us stacked up in this little freaking place, you know what I mean? But like gas work is just a nightmare. Yeah, there's a lot of new uh regulations that I didn't know about. Well, what do you think about this whole uh in the future going non-gas though? Well, I mean, as long as uh, you know, the radical left tries to take our gas away, we'll always have something to fight for.
+
+[22:06] But uh, you know, I I like I like the idea of it. Sure. I if it can be if the same amount of uh power in production can can take place in a smaller area that doesn't require ventilation and and is possibly a nicer work environment, then great. More power to it. I I've haven't worked with a ton of it.
+
+[22:21] You know, I have a bunch of induction burners and stuff, but to see it operating on a full scale level would be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not gonna uh you're not gonna just burn a bunch of gas in a pickup truck going down the highway.
+
+[22:33] No, I do that at home. You know, that's a that's a personal choice. I don't bring that into the work of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
+
+[22:38] Uh so I mean, I just hate how long things take. I think I've said this many times. I don't think the average person who hasn't tried to have a small business understands how anti-small business, like everything seems to be. Like we we talk a lot about as a culture about how much we like small business and it's just not it's just not yeah it's just it's it's really it's really challenging and uh a lot of the uh a lot of the things that you fall into you know whether it's penalties or regulations or or or whatever especially in a place I'll use myself as an example in in a building like this where you know I I joke a lot about you know Ben and Jerry don't come down and inspect the the stuff as often as I'm here inspecting stuff and the things that are asked of of a small business are are a lot to take you know the the financial uh risk and the financial investment is is is profound and and little things that that maybe wouldn't register so much on a on a larger scale uh can be deeply effective to a small business and it it does feel in a way that the deck is is is stacked it feels that way I'm sure it's not and I know that those safeguards are there for a reason and they're there to be enforceable and to be profound against anyone of any size but if the same uh force is applied to a large uh matter as as a small one yeah then the small one does get obliterated yeah yeah and that feels uh like a hard hill to climb sometimes right right so like when it takes six months to get the gas installed you may not be burning gas but you are burning money yeah I'm employing people they're standing there you know looking for stuff to do uh yeah uh yeah yeah it's it's hard it's awesome awesome awesome but you know it's it's it's my job uh so uh on 21 Greenpoint, I read you were what was the name of the restaurant you worked at right before that was right there? River Sticks.
+
+[24:36] River Sticks. When we opened, that's what it was called. Okay. So what's that like? You just take over and then you change it?
+
+[24:43] Like how what's that? What's the how does that work? Well, River Sticks, I was um a partner of. I I was sort of uh um I I was I went to it with two partners, and I was sort of the head, you know, cook, you know. I I I was the guy who was sort of running uh the the day to day kitchen operations.
+
+[24:58] And that's where I was very content to stay for a long time. But we had some issues with partners, as as is often the case. And they both uh left. And then I was sort of sitting there and and I I was sort of asked to uh to take this on, uh maybe a little before I had anticipated that. And uh and and you know, I was in intimidated and and a little worried because I don't have uh, you know, I I was I planned to sort of sit at River Sticks and learn the business, right?
+
+[25:28] But I was sort of it was thrust upon me and and then I uh you know decided to to change the name to a little uh fix up on some stuff that was broken and uh and stay. And and we've turned it into something that we're all really proud of. It's it's a great thing. It it was it was it all came too fast, but it's always best to be sort of asked to do something when you're kind of not ready to, you know, just before you're you're good enough because it inspires you to try, you know. Yeah, and also I guess, you know, people always get people always second guess get bent when you say things like this, but like you need to be at a place in your life where you kind of give yourself the permission to try things out.
+
+[26:06] Yeah, like you know, most of the people I know who were uh successful in restaurants stuff like Dave Chang will say this about Psalm or any of these and any of these other places that when you kind of have the permission to mess around and do things and put things right, it can be kind of more satisfying. You can build something, you know, better where it's harder, it's a lot harder and costs a lot more to try to open something that's a specific way from the get. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.
+
+[26:29] I mean, yeah, having those constraints is is a lot, especially when you you you you feel obliged to them and you can't you can't, you know, change because it's a it's a constantly, you know, changing business. You have to once I once I really started trusting uh, you know, the my gut and the stuff that I wanted to serve and the and the the environment that I wanted to to have for people, that's when I started uh enjoying my job and doing a better job at it, you know. So back to uh hombre uh ombre taco and not not you said a reference to not a bad ombre reference. No, although I am, but uh no, ombre is what my my uncles used to call me when I was a kid. Wait, oh yeah?
+
+[27:10] Yeah, ombre. Hey, ombre, uncle beer. Even when you were like not really an ombre yet? Yes. Yeah.
+
+[27:16] Yeah. Homer. Yeah. Yeah. So like let me ask you this.
+
+[27:19] What are your thoughts on getting small children to hand uh like mad mad men style handing uh alcohol to adults? Pro, anti? Very pro. I mean, so they're the only ones that can nestle uh, you know, a brandy glass just so and bring it to the appropriate temperature. Wow.
+
+[27:33] You know, sometimes that stuff is very thin and delicate. You need a soft hand. Can I taste something horrifying? Please. Uh in the 70s, which I remember.
+
+[27:40] I was young, but I remember people still used to heat brandy. Yeah. And people would have little like I'm not kidding. My uncle would have me warm it in my hands for him. That's all you want to have.
+
+[27:52] It's what he said to do. I know, but where did this come from? And like, thank God it died. Yeah. You know what I mean?
+
+[27:59] Like, do you want your brand? Like you bring a snifter of hot brandy up to your nose. You're like, what? Why? Well, it's a greater, it's a greater appreciate the perfume, certainly, right?
+
+[28:09] I've seen a little tea candle and like a little setup where you can balance your glass over. Yeah. Happier time. They don't still have that anymore, right? Well, you have to make your own.
+
+[28:19] But it's out there, you know. I don't know. I mean, that's that's one of those things from the 70s that I'm like, glad it's glad it's gone. Sure. You know what I you know what I do miss though with candles?
+
+[28:30] Christmas time. They used to have these these things with candles in it, and then like a little fan above it, and the candles would make the fan go, and there'd be these little like metal angels that go ting ding ting ding ding ding ding. Yeah, I remember those. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[28:43] Yeah. Yeah. That was good. So let's bring those back. It's a good use of a candle.
+
+[28:46] Yeah. Speaking of candle, my brother-in-law. So I did something like my brother-in-law Wiley is opening his pizza place stretch. Anti-candle. He's anti-candle.
+
+[28:54] Is that right? Yeah. I'm very pro-candle. I I enjoy the light that it emits. You know why?
+
+[29:00] Because it looks better. That's my understanding. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, so like uh what is Wiley like LED lights or something?
+
+[29:07] No, look, look, look, look, look, like, what like I I'm like, I have a conversation with him. And I'm talking high school, whatever. He's my brother-in-law, whatever, whatever. I know Wiley. Yeah, but he's like, I don't know, he just doesn't like them.
+
+[29:19] Because they are a hassle. They suck. You know, you have to keep buying. What part? They're candy.
+
+[29:23] Oh, no. Emptying them out of the thing. Yeah, yeah. Bringing them. You know, you know, you know, they at the beginning, you know, you just hired this person.
+
+[29:30] No one told them to put water into the tea light thing, they can't get the freaking candle out. Learning opportunity. Uh yeah, it's a learning opportunity with a butter knife and a bunch of people screaming at you, but you know what I mean? It's like, whatever. But uh, ever since I read this book, what was it called?
+
+[29:44] Disenchanted Night by uh somebody, last name, you ready for it? Shivel Bush. Nice, yeah, yeah, Shivel Bush. Independent scholar named Shivelbush. Uh not independent for long.
+
+[29:54] Yeah, exactly. And uh he's like 90 now. Anyway, he's still alive. Uh anyway, he wrote this book, and he was like, yo, electric light is ugly on people's faces. He's like bad.
+
+[30:05] Yeah, he's like gaslight was awesome. And but you know, no one can have that now. But a candle, it's like the movement, it makes everyone look like maybe like 30% sexier. Agreed. Yeah.
+
+[30:17] Yeah. And so like I feel that one of the main goals. Why does Wiley hate that so much? I don't know. I don't think he thinks about it because he's thinking kitchen.
+
+[30:24] Anyway, so like I don't recommend them in the kitchen necessarily. Yeah, no, they're terrible. Can you imagine? Oh, you know, you're slicing together. So you look great while you do it.
+
+[30:32] Oh, fantastic. The blood like coming off of your face. Like little but like uh, you know, yeah, I mean, like people just look a lot better. And I think, you know, if someone's going out, right? I mean, whatever, a business meeting, whatever, but like a lot of people who are going out are going out to have a good time.
+
+[30:46] And if you want them to have a good time and an even better time when they leave and go back home or wherever they're gonna go, you want them to look good. Agreed. I always was like, I want I want my I want the people to look good when they're here. Absolutely. You looking your place looking good is one thing, but the the guests should feel like they look great.
+
+[31:02] There's no place without the guests, right? You know, yeah, yeah. We're there to facilitate a nice time. That's my understanding. This is why at the bar, you know, the way that you really are like the if you turn the lights on to get people out, people are like, oh for the Yeah, that's a harsh reality.
+
+[31:18] Let's save that for the the unflinching sun in the morning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let us let us live in this fantasy for another hour or so. I don't know. I should uh I I'm sure he'll eventually get some candles.
+
+[31:28] Because candles are not gosh, I hope so. I like candles. I do too. I think they're great. I feel like he would too.
+
+[31:33] Maybe he's gotta find the right candle. Yeah, he's not a votive guy. You know, he needs something made out of whale blubber or something that he can. Oh my god. Or like one of these uh who is it that was uh we were talking uh uh uh Nick.
+
+[31:44] Nick was gonna do the uh olive oil candles where he can you can dip there. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think Wiley would enjoy you dipping the crust into a candle. I don't think he'd appreciate it. Maybe he made one out of garlic butter or something.
+
+[31:54] Get this, get this. So Wiley made because of course, because why is Wiley made his own magic shell. Naturally, yeah. It's just coconut oil, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[32:03] Peanut butter, peanut butter magic shell. Right. I'm like, of course you made a magic shell. I can't wait to try it. Yeah, it's good.
+
+[32:09] Anyway, uh all right. So back to uh Ombre Taco. Yeah. Uh the place that's been closed for a year. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[32:15] But like uh, so but you know, we've talked about uh uh this so you know we went down after the show because right when we went here, it was it was going like right when we started, and that's when Joe was like, Hey, you know, Homer's like, no, I know I know I don't I don't know him personally, but I know him. So we went down and talked about the broccoli versus the avocado. Oh, right, yeah. Um well we make a thing called broccomole here and in in in Brooklyn, and it started as a as a reaction to uh not using avocados or trying not to use avocados because uh how much water they require and and the states which grow them uh have to import water from other places, and the people who harvest them are are not treated particularly well and myriad sort of social uh morate moral issues as to not using avocado. I I I've recently found a guy, duh avocado guy, d avocado guy, who makes an incredible product, and they're they're they're sourced from uh people that you can get behind.
+
+[33:08] But that's not AAA avocado in my neighborhood on the other side. I don't believe so. I don't know. It's not yeah, we've been over the stuff. Yeah, no, it's spelling the same in Dave's neighborhood.
+
+[33:18] It's a storefront. Oh, all right, great. Well, this guy's great, and you can get him at your house as well and stuff like that. Oh, really? Uh, but anyway, it's it's uh braccamole is just uh guacamole without the avocado, all the same flavorings, all the same stuff, tastes similar, looks the same.
+
+[33:29] It's cheap too, so I you know, broccoli compare d'avocato, so I can give it away. You don't have to charge extra for uh for Brock and stuff like that. Do you do the overcooked broccoli or do you overcook it, uh you know, blanch it essentially, but like you know, boil it and then uh combine it with all the stuff. Who is it that used to love the over, over, overcooked broccoli? Was it Marcello Hazan in the thousand people in general, right?
+
+[33:53] Uh hey, this is crazy. I printed out the wrong question list. I printed out a question list from like two weeks ago. Well, I like this then. Yeah, I feel good.
+
+[34:00] All right. I don't know much about uh Gage and Toler, but I I can make a big Alaska if we have to. Can you? No. Uh but I can make one.
+
+[34:09] I'll give it a shot. Yeah, all right. Uh I think some of the questions uh I didn't get to, so we're still there. All right. This one uh actually I thought uh was interesting.
+
+[34:16] Quinn, this is the one that uh I think you wanted to go into anyway, A X B Y C Z D zero, which is a difficult, it's a difficult username to no underscores or anything because you can't pronounce it like axe bibwizidzo Elon Musk kid? I don't uh no what was his name again? I don't recall. It's like but it's a normal name. I find him very uncharming these days.
+
+[34:39] Oh, the musk. Musk melon. I'm still gonna get that dang cyber truck though. I'm still gonna get that cyber truck if they ever throw a cannonball through it. So I mean, what my bother.
+
+[34:48] Yeah, listen. I have to say, when he did that, and when Fritz put that that, like when he broke the the window, I was like, of course the window broke. Sure. It seems you shouldn't do that to car windows. But what a the dummy move, the hilarious dummy move was then he's like, Oh, go try it on the other window.
+
+[35:03] Like, no, Fritz, don't man. But like if you did that to my Subaru, yeah, that's you know what I mean. Projectile steel balls work. Yeah, yeah. No, Fritz.
+
+[35:14] Do you think he got fired or murdered? Um yeah, I guess probably. Yeah. I mean, it probably would have been a bit more of a public crucifixion these days, but he maybe quietly was asked to leave. Like uh, all right.
+
+[35:27] So, uh, question is uh, and you know, we were talking about this actually before we went on the air, given the fracture state of media in general, which is kind of that's kind of loaded a lot, it's a lot right there to uh as they say these days unpack, right? Uh razor thin margins and and the profitability of restaurants, environmental impacts and sustainability, uh, and ethical trade. Do uh do we have any predictions as to where dining and or fine dining is headed next? Wow, it's it's a tough it is a tough like you now you have you know Red Zeppy saying that you know he's done with it, right? In a couple of years after he Yeah, but like come on, man, he's the guy, right?
+
+[36:03] He's the you know, it can't it can't be done. Fine dining cannot be done anymore on the level that he wants, right? Well, wasn't it 20 years ago you couldn't forage for things in Copenhagen and and complete a restaurant menu with just stuff that you found on your walk? He found a way to do that, yeah, right? If he's the greatest in the world, right?
+
+[36:21] And he's given us a chance to do it. Which I don't believe anyway. But if he's the best, if that's the top, right? Well, then maybe he could find a way. Maybe all the leaders in this world, instead of saying, Oh, it can't be done.
+
+[36:30] Uh I'll just gonna open a fast casual place and fry chicken instead. It's like, well, how about you figure it out, man? Are you passionate about what you love, or are you just here for the awards? Wow. Wow, that came out of nowhere.
+
+[36:41] Wow, I've been drinking. Wow. But you know what I mean? It's like, come on, we're we're here, we're here to effing work. Let's do it.
+
+[36:47] You know, it's instead of like and the guy's guy knows more than I'll ever even begin to know, and it's contributed more to the culinary world than I do by a long shot. But it's like I I don't get to walk away. You know, a lot of people don't get to just throw their hands up and walk away. Right. So you're saying like, you know, it's yeah, it is a definite, like uh, he can leave on top if he wants to.
+
+[37:11] And that feels great. And Mazletov could go out on top. He's a cool guy. You know, I got nothing but wonderful things to say about him, except for that le that stepping away. Because just because that opens the door for so many other people who are not as deserving to do it as well.
+
+[37:26] You know what I mean? If your leaders let you down, then who are you supposed to follow? Because I'm supposed to follow him, right? He's the top. Stas, you remember what we used to say when we when someone was uh chasing something, we didn't think they were gonna get it in the food world?
+
+[37:41] Yeah, but did you what did you come up with? Wake up and smell the red Zeppy. Like there you go. You know what I mean? Because there can't be that many, first of all, there's only and this is what I think is changing.
+
+[37:51] So I think part of this is talking, we were talking also about like Pete Wells changing the stars rating here at the New York Times and the way media in general is changing, right? So, you know, in the heyday of you know, when Noma and before that, whoever whoever was the fine dining blah blah blah of the world at the time, there's only a certain amount of oxygen in that space, right? So no matter how good any person is, it's actually hard to get to be the person that receives all the oxygen, you know what I mean? Sure. Um, and I think the the issue is it's so expensive to do that kind of work now that unless you have a chance of absorbing all the attention, it's almost like, well, then how can you even do that anymore?
+
+[38:32] That's is that part of the argument? Maybe you know what I mean. Like then the question is to what end? And that has to be self-assigned, right? That don't you get don't you have to answer that?
+
+[38:41] Like, how much do you want this? Does it matter to you that much? That you get that kind of accolade. Right. Or would you do it without it?
+
+[38:44] You know? Well, I mean, so, you know, uh so Pete So Pete Wells, whom I like, by the way, if for those of you that don't know or aren't in the United States, Pete Wells is the food reviewer for the New York Times, which since, you know, for at least 50 years, probably more, but since I've been alive and could look at words, was the, you know, premier uh restaurant reviewing venue in in New York. You know what I mean? And they're there, therefore, regardless of what you think of us as a city, therefore one of the most important in the country, right? And so, you know, the star system and and Pete Wells is funny and a very good writer.
+
+[39:34] You know what I mean? And uh, so you know, he's switched recently the star system whereby he I'm just saying this for people, you know, who aren't part of the New York scene, where like, for instance, like uh uh a food truck can get three stars, right? Now I think the star system started changing its meaning back when, you know, uh, you know, my business partner at the time, friend Dave Chang got three stars for Sam because that was not what a three-star restaurant had been because it didn't have the right kind of bathroom, it didn't have the right kind of table service, didn't have the right kind of chairs. So it started changing, but like I don't really understand a world in which in other words, like I don't think we've reached, I don't think we figured out what the meaning is. Like we want, we all as a community want to give more oxygen to people who aren't just like the Rennie Rezeppies and this kind of fine dining thing.
+
+[40:28] But on the other hand, is isn't there still a place for that for that kind of work, that kind of control, that kind of like uh desire to achieve a certain level of perfection. And so I don't really know where this is shaking down. I I remember when I was a young man in the early 2000s, and we I worked at a place that made fantastic food, and we did we worked really hard and it was a great, great place to go. And we would always talk about the idea of getting a great two-star review. Because those those stars sort of were sacred, and it did mean a certain level of dining, but it meant a certain expectation as well.
+
+[41:03] And you could get a great review and still get two stars. That I thought was a really genuine and sort of fair way of treating it. But then like Katz is got two stars, and so did per se. And you go like, well, this can't be right. You know what I mean?
+
+[41:14] Yeah, yeah. Then it became about only get you had to get four. Four was the pinnacle. For us, four was never a goal. Can't get four stars.
+
+[41:22] Less Circ has four stars. You know what I mean? It was about the review, and if the reviewer understood the food that he was, they sorry, we're talking about Pete Wells in this in this instance. And um, I think I think I think that that tiered system is helpful. And I think it's interesting, and it's kind of fun to have a four-star restaurant like La Bernadette.
+
+[41:40] Like, but that's that's a different place than even a great restaurant with amazing food and wonderful service and drinks and whatever. So I think if we could return to the intent of the reviewer and the and their emotions that they shared with the place they were going to, and then uh signing, keeping them in their little box was sort of nice in a way. Because it you you were safe and defined in your box. And it wasn't about beating other things, it wasn't about getting four stars, it was about getting the best two-star you could. Yeah, and also, here's what another thing.
+
+[42:09] Because uh, you know, I listened to the uh what's it called, the the New York Times podcast where Pete was uh The Daily. The Daily, yeah, where he was uh kind of you know defending this this choice. Yeah, and you know, he said something at the beginning of the podcast that I thought was really interesting and telling. He's like, there's only a certain number of fine dining restaurants in New York at any one time, and you can know what they you can know what they all are. I'm like, exactly.
+
+[42:32] Yeah, but I can't go to them. Right. You can, you know what I mean? And so like the point is is that like that is a beat, right? Once you sometimes restaurant review, you know what I mean?
+
+[42:43] It's he can write other reviews, but when he puts on that hat, the critic for the New York Times, there is a lineage and and an expectation that people have. I think it's okay to have that be a sort of rarefied air. You know, there used to be that great 25 and under column. That's what I'm saying. That was the that was the most exciting column of the week.
+
+[43:01] That's what I'm saying. Yeah, so like that is a different beat. Yes. And I think it should just be a different totally agree. Or like the other thing is like once it's open to all 20,000 restaurants or whatever we have now in in you can't know them.
+
+[43:14] Right. You can't know them. Right. How do I know that the how do I know that the the truck that you reviewed in the South Bronx is even in the top 10 of that kind of truck? Because there's just you don't know them all.
+
+[43:25] They're probably you know, they're probably clamoring everybody. There's so much more information. Right. There's so many blogs and there's so many whatever the hells, and and there's so many experts out there that they they feel obliged to write stuff that people will read and get and talk about. You know what I mean?
+
+[43:37] So a three-star review of a taco truck gets people talking. Right. But I think it's weird is that like, you know, it's a bit I think I'm sorry to interrupt, but on the daily, the the host accused him, and he he deflected it well of being performative. Right. And it does seem a bit that way, and that's okay because it is uh a stage, you know.
+
+[43:56] But um, there's there's I don't know, it is but then so then, okay. So here's what happens. So in the in the podcast, this is the first time we've ever talked about a different podcast, whatever, it doesn't matter. Here we go. So like they're they're together, he accuses Pete Wells of being, I'm accused him, says, is it performer?
+
+[44:12] Basically throws it out there and being like, you know, George Floyd happens, people don't want to just do like old, old white people crap anymore. You need to give oxygen to other people. All true, by the way. Absolutely. All fact.
+
+[44:25] And then, you know, uh, he's like, but you're just being performative because you are the New York Times, and so you're saying I'm gonna give my first starred review after the pandemic, because they stopped giving stars during the pandemic. My first star review is going to be to uh a pork truck, the piranha, that literally it's a truck, it doesn't even have wheels, it's on blocks, right? Right, and self-described by Pete Wells, you get coated in pork as he's hacking up the pork with a machete, and you can tell that he likes the experience because it specifically isn't the fine dining crap that he's had to do for years. Totally understandable. By the way, everyone gets sick of course, everyone gets sick of fine dining, right?
+
+[44:59] Which is why you should really maybe only do that job for a certain number of years. That's another conversation. Yeah, that's an important one. So um, so he's like, is that performative? But then he wins over um, you know, the host by taking him to a Vietnamese restaurant in my neighborhood, a North Vietnamese restaurant, and the guy was like, Yeah, that was a fantastic experience, and so now I kind of see what you mean.
+
+[45:21] No, of course, it a star review is it supposed to be It's not like it's not a good restaurant. We all understand that the food here is fantastic, right? So, like it's gonna get a good review, even though literally they put the table that they sat on in the bike lane, yeah. Which by the way, I'm against. Please don't put tables in the bike lane.
+
+[45:37] If I run into you, yeah, you're gonna get hurt real bad. Real bad. You know what I mean? Like, real bad, and then you're gonna get mad at me. Now these delivery guys are on motorcycles, they're all totally silent and they're 400 pound bicycle, whatever.
+
+[45:44] Okay, okay. Listen, listen. I'm of three minds on this, right? Like, so I understand they're not bikers. This is just their job.
+
+[45:59] Totally. They're gonna get the they're gonna get in trouble, not their boss if something happens. They have to buy the bikes. So I'm not gonna, but I but it just makes me nervous. Do you ever see the one where they don't even get on the bike?
+
+[46:09] They're riding, they're standing on one side of the bike like the bike is a moped. Well, they're dressed like they're they're they're they're gonna be jumping off of some sort of thing. You know, I mean they dress like for the X games, they're ready to die out there. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, but look, whatever.
+
+[46:23] You're Chinese. Yeah, yeah, anyway, whatever. It's like uh I don't know, right? I don't know. Anyway, the point my point being that uh he was won over because he had a great time, but that's not what it's about.
+
+[46:33] Correct, it's not about yes, absolutely. And you know what I think part of it is is that you know, New York Times was the kind of paper of record for a bunch of things, right? So like you would look at them for art reviews, you would look at them for restaurant reviews of a certain kind, and then 2500 for the but we also back in the day, because there was no internet, you know, you had people who were known for certain things. So, like time out back in the day when timeout came out. I used to, we would wait.
+
+[47:01] You would all year they would wait to do their cheap eats issue. Absolutely, and they would have an editorial team and a whole group of people who all they did was go around to every neighborhood in the city all the time trying to find the best cheap eats. And it was well curated. They they didn't get all this stuff, but like, you know, then we were like, oh, what a you know, and like that is a super important valid thing, which maybe now has been taken over by Yelp, so there's no curation on that. I don't know.
+
+[47:25] I just don't think it's I don't think it's right to poison the star system that way. I agree. I think it's okay to to ask the paper of record, right, to have a little rarified air about that stuff. And and like, and that's why it's various in the different kinds of journalism, like time out, like that cheap eats thing. That was something when I was a young person in college that meant I would I loved reading the New York Times reviews.
+
+[47:51] I would never go to these restaurants, but that's what that was for. And the cheapest thing was for me to have a little checklist and and try to go to as many as I could that year. Yeah. And again, yes, memorable meals, awesome meals at those cheapies places. You know, like you know, you discover some of those places.
+
+[48:06] Most of them, sadly, you know, they don't last that long. But most restaurants don't last. But yeah, I mean, like, I remember I found like my favorite, you know, what was it called? Sweet and tart, which was an amazing restaurant that everyone started going to. Yeah, it was uh it was down near the Chase Bank on Canal Street in a basement.
+
+[48:22] Oh god, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and they had, you know, they had like the really good, you know, fried pork-fried rice in the bamboo that would come and they had a bunch of great stuff, you know what I mean? But you know, that's what that's for. Whatever. So we're in semi-agrement.
+
+[48:36] John's been deadly silent on this. He has no opinion. He's been furiously shaking his head. You can't see him. What do you think, John, about star system?
+
+[48:45] I it's I don't know. It's I obviously it's a super flawed system, but I have always kind of placed a lot of credence in it, not necessarily it has great food, but it says a lot about the current like cultural context of dining, I think. You know, even even just like looking at the eater heat maps and all that stuff, you know, which I claim to it's not hierarchical or things like. I don't know. It's just uh I don't know.
+
+[49:11] This is like what I wrote a lot of my master's thesis on, you know, it's like notions of taste and dictating taste. And it's it's I don't know, it's just it's so it's so freaking arbitrary, right? Like I I don't know what Pete, I mean, I know what Pete Wells likes to eat, but I don't know. Do he and I enjoy eating the same things. Like I've read some reviews of places that he's been to that I haven't really had super pleasurable experiences at.
+
+[49:33] Um so yeah, I don't know. I I like it. I think there is definitely a need in a market for it. I just wait for what? For for a star system, a you know, that kind of review system.
+
+[49:47] Um I do it is frustrating, you know, to talk about the the meat truck and then you know, places like Globern Dets or you know, Teresa just also got the three stars, as did Kwame today. Um I didn't read their review yet, but you know, congrats. And you know, Don Lee, my former partner is doing the the beverage uh, you know, working with as is Karen Stanley, my old manager over there. So I have I haven't been because uh I was supposed to go for friends and family, but something happened. I don't I don't know what happened, but yeah, I haven't been yet.
+
+[50:15] But yeah, congrats. Yeah. Yeah. Um I don't know. It was interesting.
+
+[50:20] In the in the mid 2000s, right? You know, you would sit around with like, you know, groups of chef uh chefs like, you know, uh um Sam Mason, you know, and uh Wiley and Dave Chang, and they would all, you know, all of which had worked at four-star restaurants, um, you know, had their own, you know, threes and whatever. And, you know, they would be like, why do you have to buy into this star system? Why can't we just make food that we like? And that was really Chang's point with Noodle Bar.
+
+[50:50] Sure. Right. And then, you know, but then you know, the the stars ended up coming to him. He got the three stars at Sambar, which again, I say is is kind of kind of weird. And he was out to kind of change, at least he said he was out to change kind of what we thought fine dining meant.
+
+[51:07] In other words, fine dining could just be where the chef got to make the most delicious food and the most kind of fun atmosphere. And I guess that's true. But once you truly open it up to people who aren't him, don't have that kind of pedigree, that's good because I think in a way we all should know who's doing fun and interesting stuff. I want the good information. Yeah.
+
+[51:29] You know what I mean? That's the only reason a guy like me, you know. I didn't go to culinary school. I never trained under some master. I never went to France, and I certainly haven't worked at the places that those people have.
+
+[51:39] But I uh I followed them, you know, they they broke those barriers for for young people, you know, like me. And I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, certainly. But uh, you know, it it seemed so inaccessible that it took people that had already infiltrated it to open it up to others, and and arguably too many people can do it now, and maybe I'm one of those people, but uh you know, it was it was revolutionary at the time and it felt that way, but it was all sort of rooted in this reverence for what came before. Maybe that's getting lost a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I think look, like someone who I think and to go outside of food for a minute, someone who I think is doing a really good job of saying we, you know, only amplified a certain kind of voice before and we're gonna do it differently, is MoMA.
+
+[52:21] Like if you go to like the interesting the new shows at the MoMA and like the way that they're hanging, what do you think, John? You go to the MOMA, right? Yeah, so amazing. Yeah, so so good. Like a really amazing new curatorial groundbreaking stuff.
+
+[52:33] Fantastic. But you consume art in a different way than you consume food because you can you know if you're unless you're nuts, you can only go to one restaurant a night, and honestly, most of us can you know go out maybe once a week, maybe you know what I mean? Maybe once a month, right? You know, it depends on how much money you have, how much time you have, where you live. Um so I think that it's a lot harder to do it in our world than it is maybe to do it in the food world to go back to AXBY C Z D zero's question.
+
+[53:02] Uh I am glad that changes are being made. I don't think we figured out the correct answer yet. I think you're right. But uh, you know, it's it's the kind of thing that you have to just keep asking questions around. So we're we're we're sort of all in agreement.
+
+[53:15] We're circling around the final diagnosis, but uh, we'll get there, or somebody will come. Yeah, somebody something. Um I don't have today's question, so I don't know. Quinn. Oh, I'll give one for that I have that was a couple weeks ago that I gonna answer.
+
+[53:31] Ready? You like mustard seeds? I do. Do you? Yeah, yeah.
+
+[53:34] Tom Calicchio taught me how to pickle them, right? Come on, really? No, not really, but he did, and uh, so now everybody has this is a pickle mustard question. See, well, I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna tell them the way that I do it, and then you can tell them the way that uh your boy the the Coleconator taught you. I've never met the man.
+
+[53:49] Really? No, not one time, not one time. Never never. Not that I can recall. Seems okay.
+
+[53:56] Seems great. Yeah, power too. I remember when when craft opened and he was pickling mustard seeds and everybody's mind just went. You know, I never went to craft. It was great.
+
+[54:05] It was really great. Still very good. It's still yeah, good. Okay, here's the thing, right? Because I I've met I've met him once or twice.
+
+[54:11] He's a good guy, everyone loves crafts. Uh but I was always like, I hate making choices. You're taking me to a restaurant where literally I have to choose things. And it sounds like hell in the kitchen, right? Like, oh, here's a bunch of stuff, and they're gonna tell you how to cook it.
+
+[54:25] I go, What? What? Yeah, it's like it's like like if I want to make all the choices, I'll go to the store, I'll buy my food, I'll cook it. Yeah, that's choosing. You know what I mean?
+
+[54:35] Like, you're like, yeah, just choose for me, man. Yeah. And same at the bar. Like, I just like, you know, just like just give me something that's delicious that you like. That means isn't that why you go?
+
+[54:45] Like take a few things out of your hands for once. Yeah, you do the cooking. What? Yeah. All right.
+
+[54:50] Uh every time I use mustard seed in a dressing or anything else, it's excessively bitter. Is there anything that can be done about that? Or is it likely to be an issue with my source? Couple things, Monty. One, you might also find mustard seeds particularly bitter because and you know, my palate has changed.
+
+[55:04] So I used to, I remember I mu years cook mustard seeds, and then all of a sudden, one year I was like, oh, these are more bitter than they used to be. And then someone else next to me was like, no, they're the same. And I'm like, oh, I've changed. Weird. You know what I mean?
+
+[55:17] That's interesting. I I I've had the same thought. I've I think they got more bitter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I think maybe it's just us.
+
+[55:23] Anyway, uh, first thing, Monty, are you blanching them in a couple changes of water? Gotta blanch those suckers in a couple of changes of water. Uh, and then uh what I like to do is I like to pressure cook the mustard seeds in vinegar, and uh pressure cooking the mustard seeds in vinegar uh knocks out some more of uh the pungency anyway. Uh and and then uh I stir sugar in afterwards. And then then that's how uh I do it.
+
+[55:46] 20 minutes or 15 psi. What what else? Do you have anything to add? Oh no, I mean I kind of do it the same way. I don't pressure cook them, I just cook them forever on low in a bunch of vinegar, but you have to blanch them several times, certainly.
+
+[55:56] Yeah, and then uh vinegar and then stir in some sugar, and if you do it right, pressure cooker for 20 minutes, 15 psi. That's good. Is all you need. And then uh they kind of pop like caviar. Yeah, that's it's super fun.
+
+[56:05] Yeah. When you get it right. So I used to do it like we used to do it like when I was at the French Culinary Institute all the time. So I developed a pressure cooker thing, I just did it constantly, blah, blah, blah. And then one day, it's bitter.
+
+[56:15] Ah. Yeah. So I just stopped doing it. I haven't done it in years. Oh, I haven't either.
+
+[56:14] I mean, you know, maybe it's time to bring 2012 back. Bacon on everything again. Oh my god. Yeah, 2012 had its had its moments. Oh, it did.
+
+[56:28] Yeah. Yeah. Uh so Quinn, what else we got? Uh what else we got on the questions there since I've uh since I've uh since I printed the wrong list. Uh you have a question from uh Bift on there?
+
+[56:42] From biscuit? No. What does biscuit want to know? Sounds delicious. Bift it.
+
+[56:47] Oh, biffed it. No, no, what do we got? Yeah. Uh you mentioned to Carolyn Shift that you steam your fries and then double fry and then uh why two fries wouldn't the steam and the first fry be in a no listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. Uh one thing I think that I hate is anyone saying that there's a best way to do anything.
+
+[57:16] There's like a million ways to do everything, and a lot of them can be like incredibly delicious. Like if you go to Belgium, right, they don't they don't pre-blanch, they just do uh an oil blanch, they just do it at a lower temperature for a longer time. Yeah, right. But if you also go to Belgium, they have a really amazing fry setup. They have like that counter with the kettle in it.
+
+[57:38] And you know, they do very long low first oil blanch. The problem is is that you know, as an American running, okay, there's making fries at home, and there's making fries in a restaurant. And when you're making fries in a restaurant, like during service, you're not turning your fryer down. You're keeping your fryer at, you know, probably 365 thereabouts, the whole service, and you have to make everything cook at that temperature, right? And so, you know, and even when you're pre-doing it, it's hard to get uh, you know, whoever your prep person is to do a really long low oil blanch on potatoes and get it exactly right every time because this is not what they're trained to do.
+
+[58:21] They're not Belgian. They don't they don't breathe this stuff, you know what I mean? And so um pre-steaming the problem with boiling, I used to boil it is that they're they they break up too much, they get too damaged. So if you have a big steamer or a combi oven, you can do rack after rack of them and you can cook the hell out of them, and that's gonna make it easier to do a shorter first fry and have an amazing uh crust texture. So it's all about what you're what you're willing to learn to do on your own and what you're how repeatable you want it to be for someone who doesn't do it every time or isn't necessarily as skilled as you need them to be.
+
+[58:59] And so for me, the easiest way to do it is steam fry fry. But it's not the only way. Wait, what do you think? I I do it what I have now learned to be called the Belgian way, which is a super low uh oil, you know, poach essentially, and then just finish them off at the end. Yeah, and that's what they do, and they make the best fries in the world.
+
+[59:15] What's your gate? What's what what are you doing three eight, half, what size, three? Yeah, yeah. My favorite are half, but they're much harder to do well. Yeah, for sure.
+
+[59:25] Yeah, three eights gives you a little bit more flexibility. It really does because uh, you know, the a French fry is a fight between the crust and the center. A struggle. And it is. And like, you know, and and then and if you are a master of it, you can do the, you know, what you freaks would call 12 millimeter fry, but like what we would call, uh, I'm pointing back at John for those of you that can't see me.
+
+[59:47] Uh, you know, although do you eat are you a metric man, John? Yeah, yes. And no, I don't know. I learned more about the metric system growing up, but then going to college, I just kind of had to forget about it and start learning the imperial system, and I've just been confused ever since. Sorry, man.
+
+[1:00:06] That's all right. Anyway, so like a 12 slash half inch fry. When a half inch fry is perfect, uh, it's godly. You know what I mean? No, that's too, yeah.
+
+[1:00:14] You know, but it's just not, it's too much. Yeah. And three eighths fries are delicious. Agreed. You know what I mean?
+
+[1:00:19] I love a three of I I I can't wrap my head around the the thin ones. Yeah. They're super easy to get good. For sure. I've never been a fan.
+
+[1:00:25] I don't get it. No. No. No. No, no.
+
+[1:00:28] Wasting my time. Yeah. So and what do you uh oh because we got two minutes. So here's the question. I've never actually asked someone, uh I've never actually asked someone this before.
+
+[1:00:37] Oh, good. So burgers are a higher margin item, right? Okay. However, you charge a lot less for them. So is who?
+
+[1:00:45] Well, I looked at I looked at your menu. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they cost a lot less. Like, so you know, your steak free is a lot more than the burger. Yeah.
+
+[1:00:52] And it costs a lot more for you. Sure. Do you are you happy when someone orders the burger? Or I'm burger's great. I'm I'm I'm I I I mean, whatever.
+
+[1:01:02] Wouldn't put anything under that I didn't like. That burger means a lot to me. It's very special. Yeah. Talk to me about the burger then.
+
+[1:01:08] Well, you know, it's uh you know two four ounce uh patties, and uh it's just sort of seasoned simply, seared on one uh seasoned on one side, seared on the flat top, American cheese, a little bit of sauce, whatever. We get a beautiful bun from these people do called native bread out in Bushwick, and uh lettuce tomato. What kind of what kind of bun are they making? It's a potato bun. They call it the Martin's Killer.
+
+[1:01:29] Oh, yeah. So it's uh it's uh another political stick. Without the political level. Right, exactly. So let me ask you this.
+
+[1:01:36] Does it have the same uh hyper fast browning that the Martin's do? No, it's it it's un it's not similar to a Martin's roll in any way, except that it's a potato bun. It's not soft and squishy, it's not all the stuff that you love and I love about that bun, but it is uh it is something that I felt was an important uh so what are you getting out of the potato if it's not this soft? Is it just not stale as fast? Are they using potato or are they or they are they using like mashed potato or potato flour in it?
+
+[1:02:02] I'm not sure though. Big difference between potato starch and potato flour. I use I like potato flour in my uh Parker House rolls. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I like that.
+
+[1:02:11] I love Parker House rolls. Me too. You know what Wiley's putting his sliders on? The savory Hawaiian buns. Nice.
+
+[1:02:18] It's nice. Anyway, Homer, thanks for uh coming. I want I'm gonna come over and see you in your restaurant. Come back anytime. Hope you had a good time.
+
+[1:02:25] Yeah, you know where to find me. Yeah, cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios, joined as usual with uh John right behind me. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Everything good?
+
+[0:22] Everything's peachy. You enjoying this uh whatever this is, this springity spring? Absolutely. Nice, all right. Also in the studio today, we have always Joe Hazen rocking the panels.
+
+[0:32] How are you doing, Joe? Hey, thanks for joining us. Uh uh not in her normal place in an undisclosed uh location, Cheney like we have Nastasia Lopez. How you doing, Sas? Good.
+
+[0:47] Good. You sound so enthused to be here. I'm so so excited for you. Yeah. Uh in what?
+
+[0:55] I said I'm happy to be back. Yeah, yeah. Uh right, because you're you're back in uh you're back in New York as of next week, right? Or New York-ish. I'm in Connecticut, yeah.
+
+[1:07] I'm in Connecticut. Yeah, yeah. All right. Uh and in California, we got Jackie Molecules. How you doing?
+
+[1:14] I'm great. Yeah. It's still raining here somehow. So let me ask you a question. Like for years, all you've wanted is rain.
+
+[1:22] And now that you have it, you what are you thinking? Now that you've found rain, what are you gonna do with it? Well, I'm a transplant. So uh that's the easiest way to spot a transplant is if you know if someone's complaining about the rain. So guilty.
+
+[1:38] Yeah, all right, okay. And up there on Vancouver Island, we have our customer service extraordinaire person. Quinn, how you doing? I am good. It's great to be introduced to three.
+
+[1:50] Oh, geez. You know what? Quinn. The entire time on like, you know, for those of you that don't know, like when we get on the on, you know, together beforehand, Quinn just starts needing me today out of nowhere, needling me about bringing the wrong questions last week. You know, I don't know what it is.
+
+[2:04] What did I do? What did I do? You know, or as my stepfather would say, Who did I kill? Who did I kill? Just let me know.
+
+[2:10] Uh and uh today's special guest will introduce as normal before we start shooting the breeze is Benjamin Lore, the author of uh the Christmas present that my wife got me this year uh for Christmas. The secret life of groceries, the dark miracle. Oh, is it dark miracle of the American supermarket or dark miracle of the supermarket writ large? American supermarket. American super it's your show.
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+[2:32] You can read in this thing. But I don't think we should, like, you know, uh I don't it's a first of all, it's a great, it's it's a great slug line. Dark miracle. It's like was that you or your editor? Oh, that was me.
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+[2:43] That was I that was uh, you know, it's an unpopular unpop no one wanted miracles in the title. Really too ostentatious and religious and all these bad things. Um I'm I'm so I wrote a book and I'm trying to write another book, and the slug line of that is supposed to be the miracle of moisture management. And about five people on who, you know, are fans of that title, and everyone who knows me and cares about me is like, do not call it that. You know?
+
+[3:14] Yeah. Yeah. It's like a summer summer problem, like sweat schritzing. Well, I like the word moisture. Like to me, like, you know, pe people always hate on moisture, but like a cake is supposed still a cake is supposed to be moist.
+
+[3:26] Yeah. Moist. Because maybe a cake is supposed to be vaguely gross and sexual, maybe. Like moist implies human moistness. That's why people don't like it, right?
+
+[3:35] Moist implies dampness and humidity and like crotch rot. No? Yeah, a little fungal. It's more of the fungal aspects. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[3:42] But in a cake, it's clean and good. Moisture. Moisture. Because you know what people what do people hate, John? Dry.
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+[3:49] Dry cake. Yeah, yeah. I was just complaining about that for my breakfast this morning. You had a dry cake. Dry cake.
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+[3:54] No, dry pastry. Very sad. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now. Okay, okay.
+
+[3:59] And you know, Joe Hayes in here, being of part Sicilian extraction, am I correct, Joe? Yes. You must enjoy a dry pastry. Um, yeah, I don't mind a dry pastry. Yeah, we have these uh these Sephardic cookies called tartolikus that are so dry but delicious.
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+[4:14] Yeah, I like a what I guess what it is is that if a pastry is supposed to not be dry. Yeah, and your French pastry, uh dry. What kind of pastry? Yeah, what are we talking about, John? Pin raisin, pain raisin.
+
+[4:27] Oh god. Bread with raising. Yeah, bread with raisins. There we go. Yeah.
+
+[4:32] Like a little French French pastry. It's you know, a little like pinwheel kind of thing. It's got some, I don't know, it should be a little like custardy inside, flecked with some raisins. It's delicious, yeah. Can we just say that the French do not make the best pastries?
+
+[4:42] No, it's the Austrians. Everyone knows this. Even French pastries are made better by Austrian peas. Yes. But French still excellent.
+
+[4:50] Okay. Yeah, still very good. Okay. Yeah. But not the one you had this morning.
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+[4:54] No, no. Not also not in France. Let me let me ask you, let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. Was this your fault or the baker?
+
+[5:01] Was this three days ago pastry? This is like this morning that I got on my way in to here from a storefront. Was it worse than a streetcar pretzel? Because that's to me is like the highest promise and the lowest reward. Yeah, I don't know.
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+[5:19] I it's really running on nostalgia. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Had one once with your dad, and that was that's it. Yeah, and then you have one now, and you're like, oh, the texture's bad. Everything is bad.
+
+[5:29] Yeah. It's simultaneously wet on the outside and dry in the middle. But my expectation was the pretzel, you know, is is to not be great with this. I was hoping for something very good. Yeah.
+
+[5:41] Yeah. Yeah. Do you know uh the band King Missile? No. Oh, yeah.
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+[5:46] Joe does. All right. So John, uh, yeah. So Joe knows King. So King Missile was famous for a couple of songs.
+
+[5:52] Yeah. They Jesus is Way Cool. Uh what was a um Detachable. This is a technical term, man. It's a song quote.
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+[5:59] So even though it's family show, detachable penis. Classic. Classic. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Anyway, uh John Hall, I think is the name of the lead singer.
+
+[6:08] He also has a great song about cheesecake, where he starts driving a cheesecake truck and then eats all of the cheesecakes and then like basically runs away from home because he that's it, but he's still happy. He's like the utility monster. If you know about if you ever had a friend who's an economics major, the utility monster is someone who like their enjoyment stays the same regardless of how many things they consume. And so they just consume all of it, right? And he's that way with cheesecakes.
+
+[6:31] Because for me, I love cheesecake, but like, you know, two slices max. This guy eats like a whole truck of cheesecakes. It's Homer Simpson-esque. Yeah. Right.
+
+[6:39] Another utility monster. Anyway, so he is a poet, as it turns out, and he has a book. Detachable penis. Say no more. Right.
+
+[6:45] Obviously. The amazing thing about that song is that, you know, it comes off, obviously. It's detachable. And he finds it on St. Mark's Place.
+
+[6:53] This is in the 80s. And it's, you know, the people used to sell things on blankets over there, which they still do in parts of the cities, but I don't think they do it there anymore. It's like a churro in the subway. Right, right, but it's shaped kind of like a detachable penis. And what the interesting thing is is that the guy wants too much money for it, and so he bargains him down.
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+[7:08] And I think it's amazing that you would find your own penis for sale and then bargain for it. Like, wouldn't you just pay the going rate? Maybe you've been disappointed with it your whole life. I mean, it's like uh Well, anyway. Do I really want this?
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+[7:24] You know, I don't know how even how we got here, but I want to buy he has a book out that I don't know whether it's any good, but I'm gonna buy it for Nastasi anyway. It's called uh The Daily Negation. And it's just a poem every day about like just negating everything. Got it. Yeah.
+
+[7:41] It's like this uh contemplate your own death, like the the death clock app. Uh yeah, yeah, but not even like more apathetic than that. More just like, you know, hey, why would you expect today is gonna be different from yesterday? Like that kind of stuff. But like for every day.
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+[7:54] It's kind of like an antidote to people's, you know, uh what would not self-help, but like uh, you know, like those daily affirmations. Yeah, yeah. It's the exact opposite. Anchor your expectations in the streetcar pretzel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
+
+[8:06] That's how we got it. See, Benjamin. It's gonna only get better. You gotta come back all the time to tell me to to drop a little hint of why we were talking about something in the first place. Uh it's a good start to the show.
+
+[8:18] You can anchor expectations about me with the streetcar pretzel. Exactly. It's only gonna impress people. Uh so uh Quinn or uh or Jack, you got anything uh good from the week? Anything?
+
+[8:30] Anything food food or not? Food, food adjacent, perhaps. I uh I made this series eats bologners that was recommended to me via somebody in the Discord, and um it was as delicious as advertised. Okay, so what makes this different from any other bolognaise, or as uh those uh freaks call it? Now, in England, when they call it spag ball, do they mean bolognese, or are they talking about spaghetti and meatballs?
+
+[8:56] Because like whenever they say spag ball, I just tune, I'm just like I turn off. I can't, I can't listen. I have no idea. And anyone anyone know British people? You know British people.
+
+[9:07] What do they mean, Joe? He's married to a British. It's bolognese. All right. Do you co-sign that, Joe?
+
+[9:13] Yeah, I have no idea. Spag ball. What the hell? Uh all right. So what's different about this bolognese uh as opposed to you know, your run-of-the-mill bolognese?
+
+[9:22] Uh it was it was uh lamb, pork, beef, and then chicken livers that you kind of blend up. Um otherwise, pretty much as you'd expect. Oh, panchetta too. I'm sorry, panchetta as well. Well, you know, the chicken liver is definitely the secret.
+
+[9:45] Oh, the chicken liver, you add it to any type of bachamel like lasagna, it is phenomenal. So here's an interesting here's an interesting uh point. Um I was growing up listening to people read and talk about food. Now, obviously, there are many, many classic uh sauces. My my uh Francophone and file friend behind me will uh attest have liver in them, but it was widely taught when I was uh young that adding liver to long cooked things like soups or gibbleth gravy would make them bitter and unpalatable.
+
+[10:19] Uh and so it's glad I'm glad to see that there is a a turnaround on this, at least with poultry livers. You know what I mean? They liver comeback. Yeah, liver liver comeback. I you know, I think also like my generation is was one of the first generations to truly detest liver.
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+[10:37] You know, like my parents' generation tolerated it, my grandparents' generation loved it. You're like at the intersection of like heavy metals enter the ecosystem consolidate in the liver. Yeah. And then you have to also eat the liver. Like a real battery, the battery-tasting liver.
+
+[10:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And also like a very huge switch in the concept of health in major to uh to put quotes in the same way that uh someone will talk about in your book puts quotes on quote health food. Uh yeah. Uh anyway, uh interesting. So you like this?
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+[11:12] Uh you like your uh your bolognaise? Yeah, it was it was very good. All right. Okay. Very, very good.
+
+[11:19] And what did you put it on? Uh pepper dough. Okay. Okay. Did you cook it the way that uh Katie Parla told you to cook it?
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+[11:29] What's the word she uses that sounds like chowed? Don't remember. Kyode. Kyode. Kyoda.
+
+[11:36] Like more hard. Oh, like extra alden. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a extra eldentic. I did, actually.
+
+[11:41] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because as soon as she said it, in my mind just erased what she said and put the word chode in. You know what I'm saying? And now I can't undo it.
+
+[11:52] It's one of these things that's gonna like, you know, I'm not gonna be able to undo it. I don't know. Uh what about you, Quinn? You got anything? Anything?
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+[12:00] Uh made a nice orange gelato and the creamy. It was actually interesting. I had to use, I didn't have to. I wanted to use a 10% cream from a local dairy. Well, what's a 10% cream?
+
+[12:15] That's like a non, that's a non-thing. What is 10% cream? Heavy, heavy, heavy. That was the highest fat, you know, product. And I wanted to use their their stuff.
+
+[12:26] But that's like I made two. Like even half and half is like 15, right? Percent fat. I don't know. That's weird, man.
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+[12:36] I don't know, man. I don't know. I'll have to look at this. You have to send me your local uh supply. Hey, did you ever try that the uh olive oil yet that uh is from uh that weird little place?
+
+[12:45] Was it any good? Oh, you mean the local stuff? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great.
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+[12:51] Yeah, it's really good. Okay. We gotta get some to our to our we have uh an oleologist who comes on the show periodically, uh Benjamin, who uh we have to get the accredited. Uh they he flies around the world and like self-accredited. Well, he knows he's not though.
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+[13:07] He's got a real deal. Okay, I didn't even know there was such a thing. Yeah, and he's called from place to place to judge things. Oh wow and and he he takes a very forgive me the whole oleology community. You can just call him Captain Oily, but uh he takes umbrage when I call him Captain Greasy because he's like ideal in oil, not grease.
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+[13:25] Yes, he's very he plays like uh vegetal. He plays like Pansouri. I don't know. Like, like it's a whole thing. Anyway, he is very skeptical of anyone else's taste in olive oil other than his own.
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+[13:36] So when when you tell him that you like something, he's like, mm-hmm. You know what I mean? But not in a bad way. He's not trying to make you feel bad, just wants you to know that he doesn't trust your palate. You know what I'm saying?
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+[13:46] Sure. Yeah, right. It's like my art teacher used to say, he's like, you know, yes, everything is relative, but some more relative than others. Sure. Yeah, anyway.
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+[13:56] Uh all right, all right. Anyone else? Uh anyone else? Uh Benjamin, do you have any good food uh stories over the past week? I uh I go and I just been cooking tacos.
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+[14:06] I went to Mexico a few weeks ago, and I whenever I I just settle into a nice rut of something extraordinarily simple and uh very boring and just make it until I slowly grow disgusted with myself for the same food item. I like that. Slowly grow disgusted with myself. Well, that kind of fits in with the tenor of your book. Yes.
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+[14:25] Disgust. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, love and disgust. Yeah.
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+[14:29] Love and disgust together. Uh so anyway. I like that it's a better subtitle. It's a dark miracle. Well, love and disgust in the American supermarket.
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+[14:40] First of all, uh, I rarely, especially on like non-food books, a lot of people in like, you know, in our orbit have read this book. Um it is it's super interesting because you very specifically seem, or you very specifically in the book, shy away from trying to be the next food Jesus. I hate food Jesus. You know what I mean? Like uh share that.
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+[15:10] Yeah. And so like the fact that you kind of explicitly up front are like, hey, hey folks, no answers here. You know what I mean? Like uh it makes it uh compelling read, but also a little bit more must have been more difficult for you, and that's probably why it took over five years of research to to do, is that it's kind of like going into this book is like jumping into an ocean that's pulling you down under. It's crazy.
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+[15:40] You know what I mean? And uh yeah, it was a downer actually by the end. I mean, there's some dark I got into it for upbeat reasons. I I was just curious about the supermarket. I live I love I like I go on vacation, I'll go to the grocery store.
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+[15:53] You know, I like I like the supermarket, it's like a relaxing place. Um, I browse the aisles, I feel reassured in a supermarket. But uh the more that I swam in the supermarkets of water, yeah, the darker it got, the more it pulled me under. Um but uh but yeah, I did I I didn't want to give a false hope. I not that there isn't hope out there.
+
+[16:16] There is a lot of hope, but there aren't any tidy solutions, and they're nothing that that provides like neat answers. And so my editor was definitely banging the drum. Like, let's get a final chapter with like six bullet points that says tell us how we're gonna solve it and leave everyone with like a uplift. And I was like, absolutely not. Like, not for this.
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+[16:35] Like, let's leave this boat untied. Well, but that's I mean, that's the only way to do it. I mean, I don't know whether or not that helps or hurts sales. I mean, you can tell me, I don't know, but like in terms of like our community, and uh, you know, like both John and I were involved. Uh, one of our other things is Museum of Food and Drink, and like that's kind of where where we get into it is that all of the people who try to provide you quote unquote answers fall on one side of these two extremes that you deal with quite a lot in the book, which is either like elitists who don't really understand the depth of the problem and have these pat solutions and corporate chills.
+
+[17:11] And so somewhere in between these, you know, like somewhere, not even in between these, because it's not there's no in between, it's not a continuum. Like somewhere, it's and the book is just like this is this is what I found. Holy crap. You know what I mean? Like, let's just take a look at this.
+
+[17:27] And I do think solving these problems are like not that far from like solving like human nature problems. So quick fixes to like like externalizing it is very tempting because you can recognize it. You can say that's gross. I don't want to have to deal with that. I want I want to like to think that gross things shouldn't exist in the world, but it's not that it's not that simple to solve them.
+
+[17:49] I mean, a lot of them are motivated by our own worst qualities, and until we're willing to like do some of that work. Um I don't know. I do go back and forth on this. There's something I think, especially in this time, there's something a little irresponsible about putting out something without any hope in it. I don't think the book has no hope.
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+[18:06] I mean, I think the tone is pretty funny and upbeat uh at times. And oh, it's very funny. Yeah, and there's an absurdity that I think is how I deal with the fact that we're in a broken world sometimes, and I think that can provide its own hope. Um, but I'm not gonna lie about you know, f discovering some like solutions to huge pro macro economic problems. Right.
+
+[18:30] But I think you know, part of the thing that I enjoy about it is, you know, I don't know, I'm just gonna get deep fast, I guess, but like uh you're not even mad at people who virtue signal by by like not buying Thai slave shrimp, even though at the same time you're like, yo, do you think that uh shrimp in Honduras are being produced in any better way? You know what I mean? Uh they're just they're not, you know what I mean? They just don't have the spotlight on them. And so you're like, it it's one hand, you're like, listen, you're not necessarily a bad person.
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+[19:03] The system is designed to try to make you feel okay about the purchases you're making. And it's so complicated that I don't know how you would even come to an opinion you could gel at the end of the book, because if it seems to me, and I don't know, that what I got away, and I I re-skimmed it yesterday again. Again, like I said, I got it as a Christmas present, and uh my wife was like, You like this kind of subject, and it was uh McNally Jackson's uh what's you know, staff pick or whatever. And uh and I support local I support local booksellers, although McNally Jackson. Although I love McNally.
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+[19:36] I love McNally Jackson. However, you should buy this book at Kitchen Arts and Letters, and Quinn is gonna try to. I love Kitchen Arts and Letters too. Um they come on the show periodically and talk about it. They're an institution, they're great.
+
+[19:46] Yeah. I mean, um, yeah, like, you know, anyway, I'll leave me that you explain. Like, like it's just if you don't come away from it being like, oh, this is this is so hard, then you have missed the point of the book, right? Yes. I I mean, so when I was doing a ton of media when this book first came out, and it's like everyone would ask, like, well, what should I buy?
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+[20:08] Just tell me what I should buy. Like, that would be like the last question. And I'd be like, well, you've missed the you've missed the point of the book. Like I I think I grew up with that ethos, the Eric Schlosser kind of like he ends fast food nation with like make it your own way, Burger King subverted, but like vote with your dollars, and by voting with your dollars, we're gonna create this better system. And it's like uh I I love that ethos.
+
+[20:30] I grew up with it, but I think this book really points to the end of that as a as a way of creating change. Like that book was when, like 98, 99? Exactly, exactly. And uh it was it was a great book, but even at the time, I love that deeply troubling though in that way. I mean, like, I don't think the average person who wasn't studying this stuff pretty deeply kind of realized, even until after Pollen kind of became Food Jesus, not to harp on him, you know what I mean, but uh you know, even after that happened, I don't think a lot of people really kind of realized how troubling an elitist these kinds of like uh that's right prescriptions for the future of the world.
+
+[21:12] Well, I think it's not an accident. I mean, I think they're intentionally elitist. You know, in the book, we get I one of the big things I go into is like trying to figure out why we buy like I was really interested in the rise of the grocery store. Like, you know, growing up in the 80s, the grocery store was this like definitionally banal chore of an activity, just like long, looming linoleum floors, and it was just a boring place you'd go out of obligation. And then somewhere, you know, one of the triggers for this book was going to my first Trader Joe's uh with a bunch of yogis for this book, yoga book I was writing, and just watching them run through this store like kids at Disneyland, and they were just so excited by the Trader Joe's, which I'd never been in, and I couldn't quite understand how a grocery store.
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+[21:54] That was the first time you were in a Trader Joe's? First time I was in a Trader Joe's. Uh and it was mind-blowing. I was like, these are these are grown adults who are like think that this is a this is a playground. Um I mean, uh it's funny, like so.
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+[22:07] In the book, you talk about Trader Joe's specifically marketing to a certain kind of person. Uh over what was it? Over overeducated. What was it? Overeducated?
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+[22:19] Uh underpaid, overeducated, underpaid, kind of Volvo driving professor. That's that's yoga. That's yoga too, though. That's yoga. Oh, that was a conscious kind of pivot.
+
+[22:27] I was like, I don't, I didn't want to become yoga Jesus. That was actually in my mind. I was like, I finished that book and I thought I was kind of set up. I could go on like a tour of yoga studios and talk my little uh insights uh on how corrupt and and narcissistic the Bickram world was, and people would love that. But I just didn't want to be the yoga guy.
+
+[22:46] I didn't, I just didn't want to do that. I wanted to be a the pop nonfiction writer. So, but I was like, okay, but I do have a a little audience that I carved out in that world. Uh uh that book landed really heavy with the Bickram community for for understandable reasons. And uh and like who else is like what where is something similar?
+
+[22:59] And like the the Trader Joe's, it same same as like using that as a microcosm for understanding the larger grocery industry um in the same way that Bickram could stand in for like the the larger American uh romanticization and a kind of obsession with yoga. So it was it was I was super conscious of that like parallel. Yeah. Uh all right. So if you pick up the book, it opens with the most first of all, you you get a feeling for kind of your style, which I want to talk about in a minute.
+
+[23:39] In the first kind of uh, I don't know what whether it's called, I don't remember whether it's a prologue or whatever, but the the Whole Foods Fish Counter. By the way, that's my local Whole Foods. Uh and I shopped there back in that era. Yeah, so you work there for you don't say this until later, but like you know, part of your immersive, well, we'll get into it now. So, like you you worked at Whole Foods for two months.
+
+[24:00] Sure. What the hell? Why did you need like what did like okay, a week you're there, what are you getting out of weeks two through eight of being at the Whole Foods? Oh, that's where you really start to settle in. I mean, I do think that the first like three or four days of any experience, you get like 80%.
+
+[24:18] But then you get that extra little bit. I mean, so by no means would I describe spending two months in a grocery store as getting some type of comprehensive, like it was a dil dilettante experience, no matter what. Um, but I didn't think I could write about the grocery store without having some substantial time in a grocery store on the retail floor. The the the flip side of like the way we interact with it. Uh so to me, it was just a no-brainer in terms of like I like the immersive approach in general.
+
+[24:47] I think it like it allows you to write with a lot more immediacy. It grants you some kind of unconscious permission in your audience's brain. But but also I think it just from a really profound level, it subverts a lot of cliches. Like you're walking around with these set ideas of what something is, and then you experience them in real life, and it never matches one to one. Like so in the Bickram book, like a lot of people call Bickram a cult.
+
+[25:13] I would never use the word cult because I spent so much time with these people, even if it matches up with like a lot of the descriptors of cults. I would never like I saw them as fully formed humans who are doing things for wildly complicated reasons. I, you know, Bikram the Guru, like you could call him a charismatic narcissist, but like I saw what charisma means by experiencing like the way he would dominate a room or his energy levels, right? So all of that comes from this up close and personal uh encounter with things. And and so I think there's something about writing, it really refreshes the language if you're experiencing it and not writing from a point of abstraction.
+
+[25:56] Right, right. Let's let's them be more real people. Yeah. Because I think the instant you separate yourself from something, your brain starts to just push it into categories, at least for me. Like I'm not, I don't have a great memory.
+
+[26:08] Uh and so I simplify everything as soon as I'm away from it. I I shrink it down. If I'm in the moment taking notes as it's happening, it's just a lot more blurry, it's a lot more gray. Um, it doesn't fit into these categories. So then if I do reference something like a cult or I reference something like charisma, I have to put a comma and like 17 descriptors after it to like get at all the different fract fract fractured ways that this word that we carry around actually exists in the in the world.
+
+[26:38] Right, but you do like to do that in this book. You'll like, you know, you'll throw a little word bomb in and then a footnote and then bloom. You know what I mean? It's like uh, I don't know, it's an interesting tack. Uh let's uh if you are listening live on Patreon, you can call in your questions to Benjamin at 917-410-1507.
+
+[26:54] That's 917-410-1507. And if they're not listening live, uh John, uh why don't you tell them how to join the Patreon and what they get and who's coming up uh in the future. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. We've got a whole, excuse me, a whole great uh, you know, slurry of guests coming up as always. Uh Chris Young, uh Matt Sartwell is gonna be coming up and a couple others that Quinn's working on.
+
+[27:15] It's all gonna be great. Uh awesome discounts with partners like people uh Kitchen Arts and Letters. Hopefully we'll get uh Ben's book here discounted. And yeah, just uh be part of an awesome community. Join the Discord, Google Maps for restaurant recommendations, all these awesome things.
+
+[27:29] So patreon.com slash cooking issues. Right. And next week we have uh Abraham Barons, right? It's a different day from normal. Is that true?
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+[27:36] Yeah, one Michigan chef who has a new book on fruit. You know, I've never been to Fruit Michigan. You ever been to Fruit Michigan, Benny? I didn't even know it's place. Yeah.
+
+[27:45] So there's this like uh there's this one part of Michigan that because of the lake can grow very good fruit. So like a lot of our Concord grapes come from there. And it's in the same area where all the furniture people are. Huh. You know, like Herman Miller and all of that.
+
+[27:59] Yeah. It's weird little design and fruit. Yeah. Fruit, fruit and design. Yeah, two things that I enjoy, actually.
+
+[28:05] You know. Uh, but I've never been to that part of Michigan. I've only been to the other side, you know. I think actually my great grandfather had a farm in that area. Um I know there's a lot of tomato uh grow growing around there, and I I have no so little about it.
+
+[28:22] But uh, but I think I have been there. Uh it's only in fleeting weird memories of my dad dragging me along to on a family trip. But well, check out her book pulp. If you're you're interested in cooking with uh fruit. I I just received the book.
+
+[28:38] I haven't read it yet, so I don't I can't say anything one way or the other. But she's gonna be on the show next week. That's what's gonna happen. Fruit's one of those universally good things. I mean, no one says a bad word about fruit.
+
+[28:47] Okay, can I can I say this? This what you're saying is almost correct in that it is literally designed for us to like it. Fruit, right? No, you know, us meaning everything, right? Sugar, right?
+
+[28:57] And we're designed to like it. Yep. There is a huge cadre of people that don't or I don't know where it comes into their mind. They don't like cooked fruit. You ever met these people?
+
+[29:06] No. But I would uh I'd have words with them. Yeah, they don't like cooked fruit sometimes. Certain glances. Sometimes it comes out as a as a distaste for pie.
+
+[29:14] And then when you burrow in, you're like, what is it that you don't like about pie? Is it that it's delicious? And they're like, no, it's not that I hate that it's delicious, it's that I don't like cooked fruit. Roast peach, like a like uh what what's up? I don't know, it's a thing.
+
+[29:27] It is a thing. If you go out and ask, right, uh, you will find eventually you'll find that person. Usually cake over pie people, they're they might just like cake more. But on the other but they might be one of those cook fruit people. Got it, got it.
+
+[29:42] That explains because there are these people who don't like pies, and I've always I grew up pie strong. Well, especially with your grandfather or great grandfather, whatever you know. Yeah, I I I don't even understand where the problem with pie would begin, but now you've solved a life mystery. No, there you go. Well, I'm here for you.
+
+[30:00] Uh where were we even talking about? How did we even get there? Or we're talking about future guests. Yes. My brain goes, Oh, another thing about Kitchen Arts and Letters, where you should buy uh the Secret Life Groceries, the dark miracle of uh the supermarket.
+
+[30:12] Is it American or not? You're American supermarket supermarket. Although really, let's be honest, aren't all supermarkets American in the end? I'm just kidding, but I'm not. They're not.
+
+[30:20] It's a very American invention, right up there with the roller coaster t-shirt. Jazz. What about what Aldi did to it after the after the war? Like well, they they put their own little spin on that model and it made it extremely efficient. Yeah.
+
+[30:31] Even even less so. Yeah, it's like the pizza effect. They perfected it and then brought it back to us. So you went to for the book to go we're gonna go in circles, but you went to one of their distribution centers in the book. Yes.
+
+[30:42] But was that for an Aldi or was that for like an Aldi district? I went to a number, so in the book, getting into distribution centers at that time was pretty tricky. I could have gone on a formal tour of a few, but it was actually hard to get some access there. So I decided I would embed with a trucker um who would make drops at these, and I could wander around and kind of poke around through that. And so I went to a number of distribution centers when I was driving around with the trucker.
+
+[31:11] Um, but Aldi was the one that's featured in the book. Yeah. Yeah. I mean those stores are Aldi's are d are depressing. The ones I've been into.
+
+[31:18] You know what I mean? Uh but uh but great value. I mean, uh literally Aldi, I mean it's it's uh they've got a great model of just like banging out some basics at low price that is you know, not the lowest quality. It they put zero money into advertising, zero money into like packaging and marketing, uh and that just straight, you know, pennies over the whatever they're making on uh in the terms of margin. All right.
+
+[31:41] So this has brought me to a a couple of things. One the trucker, you brought up the trucker, uh, who is a pseudonym I just found out. Lynn, and how do you how's the pseudonym pronounced? Pseudonym is pronounced Lynn Riles. Okay, Lynn Riles, all right.
+
+[31:54] We can really, it is a pseudonym. Uh I did there's a very few pseudonyms in the book, but that was one where I thought if I write about this woman, I could really affect her livelihood. And she didn't want a pseudonym, actually, and actually may be angry at me uh because of that. But I just thought I would not live with, I wouldn't not sleep well if I wrote something and got her fired or got her blacklisted or okay. Well, it's so interesting.
+
+[32:19] So in the with and then the book opens, it opens with uh what one of uh my uh Instagram friends described as the most metal description ever of it of the Whole Foods fish counter circa 2013 or 14, whenever you were there. And again, when I was shopping there and probably buying fish, maybe from you, who knows? Uh although, did I buy a lot of yeah, I bought a lot of fish there. Um where the it gives it kind of an overall view of what the tone is going to be, the description of the smell of this fish counter. And then within that, you're like, oh, here's one of your footnotes where you're like, bing, by the way, uh, I am, if anything, underrepresenting this smell.
+
+[33:08] So you describe how long is the case? It's like 20 feet long or something like that. Yeah, it's a right, yeah, it's right around there. It's uh, and I I will stress again that the the reason I have mixed feelings about opening that book up with that image because it is a hundred percent real. Um, it is exceedingly gross, and it is was intended as a metaphor because I think the fish that we were selling at that Whole Foods was perfectly safe.
+
+[33:29] It was clean. The fact that the bottom of the case was dredged with like rotten shrimp and entrails of cleaned fish that we that that hadn't been cleaned in a month and a half or two months. That there was a separation there. But to me, that metaphor of like clean and downy on the surface with this fresh ice that we lay down every day and the fish sparkling, and then you just start digging through with that to this muck. That was irresistible.
+
+[33:57] Um, but but I also I don't know how representative I don't have tons of experience with fish counters. Maybe they're all as gross. Although uh caveat, I have I talked to some uh other Whole Foods employees uh after the book came out, and they were like, yeah, that was a particularly gross fish counter. Um right, but you'd take a lot of pains to say, hey, listen, you know, so what what it describes in the book, John, you'll you'll this is gonna make you kind of queasy as a you know current chef. They they would stand up on metal like stands and then chip down into it to cut like two by two blocks of the ice that was two months of ice accumulated of crush that was accumulated and like kind of glacier compacted into the top into like solid ice, but the freezer was on the fritz, so the bottom was kind of watery, and they would take these two by two blocks out, and after the first block comes out, you start seeing the filth and the smell permeating out of it, like is apparently worse than uh when you went to Thailand to a trash fish processing unit, which you describe as having a smell that is wait for it, deafening.
+
+[35:11] A smell that is deafening. You can't hear what people are saying because it smells so bad in front of this uh trash fish uh disgusting. 90 degrees trash fish up to your like mid-ankle. Yeah, like wading through rotting fish on the, you know, right off the dock. But it's not only 90 degrees, there's also a literally a furnace in front of you.
+
+[35:29] Yeah, you know what I mean? Uh and so like you're like, yeah, but that smell is somehow not as disturbing as this smell from the Bowery Whole Foods, which they've replaced people. They have replaced. Anyway, so it's uh it's an interesting way to start the book. But what it leads me to, I don't know whether you're gonna take this as a as an insult or a compliment, but um you don't put yourself as front and center and don't do drugs in the book, but it is uh specifically you say that you're not stoned in in one or two occasions.
+
+[36:00] But uh it seems to me to be kind of almost gonzo in a way, that journalism, you know what I mean? Like uh Yeah, I have an affection for the for big writers for guys who are not afraid to throw around some big, you know, like I would shy away from Hunter S. Thompson. I love him. I grew up with him.
+
+[36:20] I don't want to, I don't want anyone thinking that I'm trying to be Hunter S. Thompson because he's there's only one Hunter S. Thompson, and they we, you know, leave him where he is. Um but yeah, I have a lot of affection for those guys. And I I think, you know, I I love whoever said that the opening is metal, um, I think you got it's just like a punk song almost.
+
+[36:40] Like, you gotta get people from the first chord in a book. There are so many reasons not to read in our culture or to read just like two-second snippets on Twitter. So if you're gonna go, you gotta go hard. Like you're they're there gonna slow down. There was a time when you could have a slow burn of a book, and I love those books, but I don't know where America's attention is now for the slow burn grocery book.
+
+[36:59] Like, okay, let's save that for something else. That's most of them, but uh I have to read a lot of these kinds of things. Um, but so then that brings me, so you know, you unlike a lot of other books, you're present in the book. Unlike a lot of other nonfiction books about this kind of subject that, like I say, I have to read on the regular, you're extremely present in this book and judging your own judgments, criticizing your own criticisms the whole time, but clearly a character. And you've given yourself permission to be, and this is the one thing that kind of stuck with a little bit on me, like kind of brutal to some of your uh people.
+
+[37:43] So this person with a pseudonym who I can't believe she was mad that you used a pseudonym, you're unbelievably brutal in your description of her cough, like how gross, like the fact that she incessantly talks to you about crap that you don't want to hear. I mean, it's pretty hardcore and unusual. So, like, what is that? I mean, I can't believe she was cool with it and wanted her real name used, even despite that. That's a tribute to her, by the way.
+
+[38:09] Well, one, yes, yes. I think I am hard on characters. I think that really came from the Bickram book, where I was I really wanted to just do like a warts in all portrait of people. And I think I want to be in that book, I was much more of a present character. Um this book, like you said, I'm present, but it's not really about me introspecting.
+
+[38:31] Maybe I'm reacting to things to give you a contour, but I I'm I'm less present. But I want to be harder on myself than anyone else. But I I do think there's a lot of bad writing that just kind of hagiography at the end of the day, and uh yeah, if you we can't call it call spade a spade, you know. It's I I like I think it it also dignifies this woman Lynn, or who I call Lynn, um, a little bit to know she has an enormously difficult life. And I think anyone who reads that chapter cannot come away with uh an appreciation of how hard the life of a trucker is, how hard the life of a female trucker is, and then in particular the work that she's putting in and the and the and the care that she's putting into that.
+
+[39:21] But if I just write that in a glowing way and I don't include some like obvious, honest um reactions to who she is, it that it loses its luster. It just becomes another thing in airport magazine of just like this like saintly female trucker that I that I followed. Um, and that's not real. Right. So it is hard.
+
+[39:40] It's a hard balance though. Um I've I nobody likes what I write about them uh when they first read it. And some of them don't like it ever. Uh and it's hard because you spend a lot of time with these people. I always share it pre-publication because I want I don't want anyone to feel blinded.
+
+[39:57] But no, I'm I mean, everyone thinks they're gonna like it. And sometimes I'll write things that I think are like um verging on hagiography and I'm sure they're gonna love, and then they read it and they like the the description sticks on them, or the some representation of what they said with my own editorial next to it sticks. And it's it's definitely one of those things you gotta have a strong stomach for. Yeah. Well, the trucking one, I think, because of that description and like kind of this weird thing where you're like, I can't wait to get out of this truck with this.
+
+[40:28] Oh, I was just done. I mean, I was oh I I was ready to bolt from that chapter. I thought it was gonna be fun. I thought I was gonna be living my childhood dreams of a true truck driving, Mercy America, like you know, Dharma Bums on the road, but no. Um it was one, it's a grueling life that deregulation has completely changed the nature of the job from the kind of um, you know, more middle class 1970s.
+
+[40:55] Um but also this difficult movies you hate, by the way, I love. Smokey and the bandit. I don't know, I don't mind dual. Um there's there's some good trucking movies out there. Um, but but more she was a tough cookie.
+
+[41:08] Like she was not, she we would never be BFFs in real life. Uh and I guess there's something fundamentally weird about me writing that up as if we were gonna be BFFs. And and I think something that would shrink her as a as a truly remarkable person. I mean, I and I have a lot of respect for her. Right.
+
+[41:26] Well, I yeah, that does come through, especially when she comes back in later. And uh, but I think one of the most shocking things, because I had, you know, heard about slave slave uh and shrimp um, you know, uh boats in Thailand, and you know, I knew some of the history, not the personal stuff, uh, with you know, uh Trader Joe's, which is one of the main subjects of the book. But um, and I knew that uh, you know, as part of the museum, that you know, everything we get comes by truck, yeah, right. And you know, you what's interesting is that you would expect that this is going to be a story about, and it's mentioned, right? How much gas is burned, and you know, because those reefer trucks are going a hundred percent of the time and they're getting they're poorly maintained, they're getting zero.
+
+[42:10] Well, not poorly maintained, but they're still getting much lower than what we say on their on their mileage and just the as you put it, rivers of fuel being burned every night. Yeah. But that isn't the story. And I was like, oh, because I was like, oh, that's gonna be the story. That's not even the story.
+
+[42:26] I could not believe how these uh people who work these incredibly long hours are reduced to penury. For uh for those that don't, I mean, like I'm not giving the book away. She works for $100 a week. Yes, she gets paid $100 a week for the week I'm with her and the week before I'm with her, the week before that she she was, I think taking uh she was grossing something like $120,000 and taking home something like $17,000 for the year. Um and she's working 70-hour, 80-hour weeks when she was doing that.
+
+[43:02] Uh it's no, it's uh it's unfathomable. I think I walked into this book, like I said, thinking this is gonna be a book about the grocery store, and and uh this like truly miraculous. Like I think that's the miracle in the title. Like you walk into a grocery store, we got more options than the greatest kings and emperors at our fingertips. Uh it's it's amazing.
+
+[43:21] You can decide to cook Gordon Ramsey's five spiced goose uh the night before Christmas and go to your local Whole Foods and get every ingredient you need. But there's just so you know the book I ended up writing was about all the fat power that goes into that to create that, and that is really a book about labor and a book about um the way that labor standards have been degraded, because to create that abundance at the prices we expect, um, something had to give. And the two places it gives is the environment and the way you treat your employees, because that's where you shave the pennies off. Right. And that comes up over and over and over again, with the exception of Trader Joe's.
+
+[44:01] But yeah, just the inexorable pressure, monetary and time pressure on the trucking community. And then, you know, as you bring up like culturally, it's an interesting group of people because they want, they see themselves in an entirely different light. You know, like they don't see themselves in the way that most um I think exploited classes would see themselves, which is interesting in a way that I hadn't really thought about before. Yeah, no, it's fascinating. I mean, I think first of all, trucking's so big that it that making big generalizations about the it's the uh biggest employer in the majority of the states, uh is kind of my go-to stat on it.
+
+[44:41] It's so it's such a uh an overwhelming class of people that making big generalizations is hard. But the truckers I hung out with were, you know, right wing radio, a lot, some ex-military, um, and there was a strain of individualism in them and a belief in kind of like put your nose down, do the work, and the system will reward you. Meanwhile, they're living in this system that is like bleeding their paycheck, like deduction after deduction, pushing this notion that they're in control of their life through these lease to own agreements that never get that never pay off. They never end up owning their ships. Yeah, because how much does the truck cost?
+
+[45:20] It's oh, it's extremely expensive. I I don't know, I guess. Hundreds more right. Yeah, hundreds of, oh, absolutely. Um and that kind of confluence of that individualism and work ethic with like people who are willing to like mouth it as pieties, but also rip you off at the same time was really was really powerful.
+
+[45:41] And so you'd have people who felt like they were doing this job to be in control of their lives, and any objective observer would be like, you are not in control of your life. You are scraping by, barely making it. And like I I guess was very fascinated with that. But she didn't even have an RV. It was in storage.
+
+[46:00] She literally was literally home. Yeah, 100%. And that was that's not I like I chose her to focus on, be not because she was some crazy abnormality. Like it's so since the book came out, a number of places have picked up on that kind of trucking story. Um and they they you you swing a cat in the trucking lot, you'll find someone who's similar to Lynn.
+
+[46:23] Right. And well, and and you also take pains to say that you have no actual statistics on this, but um, well, this one you do, like five percent of the trucking uh uh force is women. That's right. And you did not speak to any of them that had not been assaulted, or had not heard like stories of like their friend being raped. Um, yeah, yeah.
+
+[46:44] I mean, it's uh it's an enormously abusive industry for women. I will say some of this may be true. I mean, trucking the pandemic happened as the book was published, and trucking got hit the hardest. Um I don't know how much of this has changed. I imagine very little, but um, yeah, female the way you train trucking is not a no-skill job.
+
+[47:06] It may be blue-collar, but you have to learn you no one's gonna just saddle up into a big rig and get behind the wheel and be able to drive it, be able to back it up. Like that's you, you have to be trained to do that. And you can't train on some um, you know, like auto autopilot video game type thing. You have to do it in a truck, and so you need to drive around with your trainer while you're doing that. And because no one's paying for training time, um, you train on the job.
+
+[47:32] And so you go off and do deliveries, live, sleep, eat, work in this truck with you and your trainer. And if you're a woman and you're partnered with a male trainer, um, who's probably only been doing trucking himself for six to eight months because that's how fast the turnover in trucking is that you can become a trainer, um, which is itself absurd. Um, that the person who's evaluating you, who is responsible for letting people know whether you're going to be promoted, is also like sitting next to you sleeping in the same, like in the same bunk beds that you're sleeping with. It's like it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out this is a situation that's ripe for abuse. And evaluating you.
+
+[48:15] And evaluating you. And plus you owe money already. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you don't get into that position unless you owe one of these quote unquote schools money, right?
+
+[48:23] But it would be a deeply uncomfortable, even if it was just uh like trucking is small, it's like a midtown elevator-sized. You're like you're sleeping, eating, driving in this thing that's not big. So even if it was just like mixed sex mixed gendered, like for like weeks at a time, like forget the evaluation part. That just adds like extra spice. It it's it would it's just a very difficult situation.
+
+[48:47] And you're you're both very frustrated because probably the job is not panning out the way you thought it was. Did uh were you able to get anything more nuanced about the coming automation, other than uh they'll pry it out, pr pry my wheel out of my cold dead hands? I, you know, I didn't I that's fascinating to me, and I didn't poke down that uh except for an amateurish ways. Like I'm I'm as interested in it as everyone else. I thought I don't think the march towards automation will be as quick as people think.
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+[49:15] I mean, obviously it hasn't. People have been saying we're getting automated cars, you know, since since like 2016, 18. Um, but uh no, I don't know. I I I have no silver ball there, uh crystal ball silver ball. Silver ball would be nice and ball.
+
+[49:32] Yeah. Uh all right, let's get to some before I only ask questions that I'm interested in. Let's get to questions that uh people had. All right. Uh Josh Kuhn writes in any ideas why the quality of produce at my local supermarkets has tanked since the pandemic and not come back.
+
+[49:46] And uh you had a very interesting point about why Trader Joe's uh produce is spotty, and maybe it's related. I don't know. Half the garlic I buy now is spongy on the inside and has a musty flavor. I also notice this musty flavor in many apples and yams. I haven't bought fresh green beans in two years because they are simply terrible every time.
+
+[50:03] Um there seems to be a big picture picture issue as it is the same at all the places I shop from Walmart to the small local grocer. Interested in any insight you might have on this. Man, I Josh, I don't know, but I've experienced it. Uh you're not alone. I don't, I mean, I writ large, it can give you the obvious answer, which you've probably deduced for yourself, which is that the supply chains are extremely tight.
+
+[50:26] And so um, you know, uh the way the market for produce uh is set up, it's extremely segmented. So there's like class A, class triple A, um, and you know, all down the line. So if you you buy almonds or you buy garlic, there's there's many different segments of quality in that. And I think the mar as the supply chain has tightened, um those margins have gotten blurrier. So what was available um at the highest grade is now includes things that are of a lower grade.
+
+[50:58] Um I'd say it is different from what I learned about Trader Joe's, which Trader Joe's has this model that in um essentially relies on high high turnover. They short code items. So it short code means they buy things that will be going expired soon, and knowing that they have such high volume of passionate customers that they will buy them off the shelf in a way that it doesn't expect the uh affect the customer experience whatsoever. Um I don't think that that's what's going on here. Well, where I think where uh where where my mind was drawing a relationship was a different thread of the book, which is about just in time.
+
+[51:36] Ah and in a similar way that like Trader Joe's is buying only what they're gonna sell today, right? Other grocers are are not buying things that are are that, but just in time during the pandemic became a little bit too late. Yes. You know what I mean? And so I think that was one of the big lessons of the pandemic.
+
+[51:54] I mean, essentially we've engineered the supply chain that was so taught and so efficient, and then any disturbance causes mega breakdowns. There just isn't the slack to absorb absorb something like a pandemic. I mean, there probably never would be a time when we could totally absorb uh you know such a disruption, but the the modern supply chain is is it's just on a hair, it's like uh a hair trigger. It it's not meant for disturbances. Um, how do you think that shakes out?
+
+[52:22] Because the the labor market had a kind of uh kind of a different trajectory. So, in you know, in our business in uh hospitality, you know, one of the things that uh I think is the worst is that you know, uh workers don't ever know how much money they're gonna make. You know what I mean? Well on the front of house, because you know, they could get caught at any time or even back of house, right? You can some people times people get cut, right?
+
+[52:44] Yeah, yeah. And so I think it's very um I think it's one of the one of the bad things about the industry is this um idea, which is probably worse the lower down the chain you get of uh people just figuring out exactly how many people they need for a particular time, and that has to do with something you talk about of the move from just in time to being just about widgets to treating people like widgets and like you know, calling them in when you want, not telling what their schedule's gonna be. Yep. But the the pandemic and this kind of rise, this need for workers all of a sudden, seemed like it was gonna bring the promise of of alleviating that a little bit, but I don't think it is. I don't know.
+
+[53:27] I just don't I don't feel I think I think it's a blip. I think that like we're gonna. You mean like hero pay? Or what do you mean? Yeah, well, or any of it.
+
+[53:33] Any of it like No, that's yeah, that was a total blip. Um no, I think I mean worker issues are I mean, I I don't know. I I have not followed it as closely as I should to be, you know, uh chattering on about it. But the here all the hero pay has been revoked at this point and gone back to business as usual. And um I think there have been some labor since so when I wrote in the book about variable scheduling, there's been some in big cities like San Francisco and New York, DC, there have been some laws that um aim to solve that.
+
+[54:08] So it may be technically illegal right now to do just in time scheduling in New York. However, the enforcement of those laws is basically non existent. Um, and I don't think there's any real effort to prevent that uh in practice. You may not be able to call it that anymore. But if your supervisor says, hey, we don't need you today, go home, you're gonna you'd be quite the empowered employee to go find a labor lawyer and dispute that.
+
+[54:33] And that's not typically the people who are working uh front end retail. So uh kind of part of the same kinds of questions, uh from uh um Yes Ezra. Uh COVID was a wild time as a grocery consumer for lots of reasons, uh, and underscored how important grocery is to our communities. I'm curious if you think the pandemic has changed the industry in any long term ways. Maybe if you write a follow-up sometime.
+
+[54:57] Uh although I I'm sure you're happy to let it let it go and do something else. But uh I now tend to shop more directly with distributors in many cases now. And two, I'm lucky to live in Oakland where we uh have uh an unfairly incredible number of local or small grocery chain stores that carry extremely high quality products. Most other places I go, it seems like everything is owned by one of the huge chains. What's the future of grocery consolidation?
+
+[55:18] How do we ensure that we're getting good products, both ethically and good quality. We talked about that a little bit what that means or doesn't mean as supply chains consolidate. Yeah. I mean look, I'd say those are two different questions. The consolidation issues huge.
+
+[55:31] We've got Kirger Albertson's merging right now. FTC is is looking at that closely and I think we finally have an FTC that might give a sh uh might care about that. Um and uh give a hoot and holler. Give a hoot. I I I I do think they they they certainly are treating it with uh a seriousness that it deserves because this is a big deal when the American grocery industry, I think it's like the top five chains control upwards of sixty five percent of the market with this merger going through it would it shrink it more.
+
+[56:01] They get tremendous, tremendous bargaining power. So forget the fact that you consolidate that and there's synergies, which means layoffs. And so the you know your buyers get consolidated. There's it it's pretty devastating for those two chains internally because there's a lot of redundancies when they merge. And that's where the cost savings come.
+
+[56:19] But you create something that has a ton more bargaining power. And that puts a pressure on the supply chain that, like we said, is already whittled down to the bone. It's already in a very fragile place. And when the stores can dictate price like that, it forces their suppliers to take that price out of the people who either who are supplying them with raw ingredients and manufacturing plants or uh the environment or their labor force. Uh and it just get it trickles down into ways that are that are not sustainable.
+
+[56:52] And it rarely does it go back to the customer. I mean, you see, both for Kroger and Albertson's um over the course of the pandemic, they kind of spoke with their world. They gave Hero Pay, revoked it, and then gave like two separate $1 billion, or this is Kroger, not they, but Kroger gave two separate $1 billion corporate buybacks with kind of the record profits that were coming in through COVID. Because COVID, I mean, to answer the first question in that question, um, COVID changed the grocery industry tremendously in that it everyone was suddenly shopping from home. There was no more eating out at stores, so their profits went through the roof.
+
+[57:30] Um, did it change the trends and the patterns of the grocer industry? I'd say I'd argue not really. It accelerated all these existing things. So grocery was already on the march towards automation. It was already on the march towards online retailing.
+
+[57:44] And this, the pandemic was just rocket fuel for those trends, but it didn't change things. And lastly, uh, in from uh Lizzie Young Booksellers, another good bookseller where you should go buy uh books, uh, this uh dovetails into one of the people you follow, um Julie uh Boucher. It's fine. Yeah, she has this product Slossa, and you kind of talk about how uh if you start a small food company, uh you're lucky if it fails right away when you've only spent a couple of thousand dollars in uh a couple months of your life. And Nastasia and I have a story about that, which I don't have time to get into.
+
+[58:17] But Lizzie wants to know Slowza, did she make it work? And look what you brought us. I brought you some Slossa, yeah, of course. Uh not only did it, she she's making it work. Uh I don't think Julia's gone from uh had a rags to riches story, she was never in rags to begin with, so that would be impossible.
+
+[58:33] Um, but she is she is out there hustling. She was one of the most remarkable people that I encountered in the book. Um, just showing exactly how hard it is for a small entrepreneur to uh to make it. And so yeah, I wanted to bring you the fruits of her labor, which is Slossa. I've been curious to try it, and we're gonna uh I'm gonna uh pass it around here.
+
+[58:54] So describe what Slaza is. Slossa is a coleslaw uh meets a salsa. I mean, in name, but actually it's it's more than just that as a neologism. It's uh it's it's kind of like a chut, it has some chutney in it, it's some chow chow. It is very chow chow adjacent.
+
+[59:10] Yeah, it's got some But the Chow Chow had a bigger piece like corn pieces in it, right? Yeah, so it's it it's a relish at heart, and it's a jail. It's a pretty it's a healthy alternative, it's a healthy alternative to uh, you know, just dousing it in ketchup and um but I I was more interested in it because if you look at this, it is I thought I this is just such a lost puppy dog of a product. I tasted it, I really liked it. I or decided I would never do uh something on a product that I didn't want to feature a product that I didn't like.
+
+[59:39] That's just that's just mean. Um and so then how taking this product that doesn't look like it fits into the venture funded uh marketplace and like seeing how it what it takes to to make it that I was interested in. All right. Well, we are out of time, Benjamin, but uh I didn't get to talk to you about eye stalk ablation, which I thought was a fantastic story. I only know about it with lobsters, but like you know, learning to rub a shrimp's eyeball off so that it becomes pregnant real quick.
+
+[1:00:05] Great, great story. No that we know of. No. Uh and no one's tested it yet. True.
+
+[1:00:12] True. Good point. There science out there. Like, you know, you need to go get the book uh so that you can, you know, read about uh, you know, your trip to the CAFO and how you don't know you don't know where to be after the KFO happens. And I didn't get to ask you how the heck you afforded to write this book for five years, you know, on what I'm assuming was never a large enough advance because they never are.
+
+[1:00:34] But if you ever write a food adjacent book again, come back and see us. Thanks. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a total pleasure. Cooking issues.
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+[0:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center. News Dance Studios joined as usual with uh John behind me. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
+
+[0:22] Well, that's not what you told me before the yeah, I mean life has been tiring. Tired. But you know, other than that, things are good. Okay. Yeah.
+
+[0:34] Okay. Uh somewhere undisclosed in Westchester, the land of my Westchester is uh just north of New York City, for those of you that don't know the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, major metropolitan area. Uh is uh Nastasia Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good.
+
+[0:50] How are you? Okay, that sounds very tentative, but I'll take it. I'll take it. Uh and of course, uh rocking the panels. Here we got Joe Hazen.
+
+[0:58] Hey, how are you? Welcome. Yeah, doing all right. Uh we don't have Jackie Molecules right now. We don't know what's up because we're doing it on a special day.
+
+[1:06] If you're listening to this later, uh, we're doing it on a special day on uh Monday, because it's the only day we could schedule it. And you know, sometimes, sometimes Mr. Molecules, you know, when the day is different, things happen, you know. But we do have uh our West Coast customer service team, Quinn on the line. How you doing, Quinn?
+
+[1:25] Hey, I'm doing good. Yeah? Yeah, all right. And and uh in the you know, in fashion that we now do, we will introduce our our guest today. Today we are very pleased to have Abra Barons.
+
+[1:38] And makes me nervous even saying it because beforehand, uh she said Well, welcome. Welcome. Uh chef and author, of course. Uh is it just come out or is it just about to come out? It's just about to come out.
+
+[1:50] So when is the fourth? April fourth. Nice. You don't want to come out on April Fool's Day. Right.
+
+[1:55] Well, we thought about that, but you know, not a Tuesday. Is uh is uh your book pulp, which is the third in in the series. It's so it's a trilogy of books, which starts with amazing title, Ruffage, Ruffage, uh, then goes to Grist, right? Which is a fine title, but it's no Ruffage. Uh and then here we are at Pulp.
+
+[2:15] Now, Pulp, of course, anytime someone says pulp, I think pulp the band. Do you not think pulp the band? Do you not listen to English kind of music? Uh I don't think of that. We get a lot of pulp fiction.
+
+[2:28] Like how is it gonna be like super macabre in size? Uh, or is it just gonna be all uh fleshy bits, which I guess is. Right, which is which some of it is. I mean, fruit is disturbing looking sometimes. You know?
+
+[2:41] Uh so I don't know if you could tell from the titles, but this is a one that's you know built around fruit, grist, built around, although it's stretched, right? Because it's grains and beans and stuff. Yeah. I mean, you know, and then Ruffage up is, you know, Ruffage. But I was thinking on the way over that if Pulp because Pulp's a band, I like pulp.
+
+[3:00] Joe, you pulp, you like pulp? Yeah, he's giving me the giving me the thumbs up. I don't know. It's Nastasia, you hate that kind of stuff, right? You hate that kind of English rock stuff.
+
+[3:07] I never hear you listen to it. Do you? I'm not really into them. Yeah, all right. But I think Ruffage should also be an English band.
+
+[3:17] Like I think Ruffage, like, you know, like like, oh, you listen to like garbage when you were a kid, because I love garbage, the band, right? And then you moved from garbage to roughage and then to pulp. Yeah, it sounds like they'd be from like uh Manchester or something. Something like that. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[3:34] Some kind of in-betweener thing, you know. Like uh, yeah, yeah. And now I well, so going back to songs, like as soon as the book showed up, and kind of every time I pick it up, I get the common people song going through my head. But then you said when you introduce yourself, you're like, uh Abra, like Abracadabra, right? Because a lot of people mutilate your name.
+
+[3:55] You have a name that is often mutilated. Uh-huh. And uh, but now I can't get that freaking Steve Miller song out of my head. And then you told me a story that he, you know, when you were because you started your career at Zingerman's, right? Famous or well, early in your career at Zingerman's.
+
+[4:10] No, that's where it started. I mean, I had worked in restaurants when I was 16, but um that's where I really like took hold. And uh, for those of you who don't know, Zingerman's Deli is in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's been, it actually opened two days before I was born. Uh, and so it's been around for a while.
+
+[4:26] And it's in an old building. So when I was prepping in the basement, as any good prep cook does at some point in their career, uh, there were lots of dark corners. And the person, Andrew Wilhelm, who trained me, uh, would hated that song. And so he would just sing it. And the way the sound traveled, it sounded so menacing.
+
+[4:43] It would like come, I'd be like in a corner prepping something and think nobody else was around, and then all of a sudden I would hear it. So yeah, it's a very traumatic song, actually. Well, I love the idea of someone singing it who hates it. And I have to say that's why everyone hates the song, because it's the worst of the famous Steve Miller songs, like easily. Uh but easily, right?
+
+[5:04] But then it's also the hook is so damned catchy. You know what I mean? And so it pisses anybody who likes anything, it gets pissed off by it. Gets it coming and going. Yeah, so you have to like, you know, I I always mangle those lyrics too.
+
+[5:20] Like Abricadabra, I'm gonna reach out and stab you. Like all the like all of the I can't, yeah. It's an intolerable, it's an intolerable song. Yeah. Although Nastasi and I got mad because there's a song that I mean like I think you got mad or maybe you were just humoring me, Nastasia, because we like a song that apparently I didn't know this universally reviled is uh Phil Collins Susudio.
+
+[5:42] Apparently universally hated I don't I but Nastasi and I have a soft spot for it. Yeah. How do you feel Tom Petty? Oh I I like Tom Petty. Do you know that Nastasi and I also enjoy talking about who who well it's kind of it's not appropriate but like like who is the because they're all dead now right no no Billy Joel's still around.
+
+[6:01] Yep. Who are the who are the three stars that you always go for I think it was just between Billy Joel and Tom Petty. Yeah you never even like Rick Rick Ocasic wasn't important enough to get into your no into your pantheon it wasn't my thing it was uh an MTV thing. Oh yeah because Nastasia started early at MTV and so like the behind the scenes they're like so and like what was the answer the answer was always Petty's awesome though you gotta look at No it it varied it varied. It was ugly or Tom Petty or that's so rough dude Billy Joel.
+
+[6:33] That's so rough it's like not right. All right whatever I'll take it I'll take it I like Petty though. No? No Petty I it's like the one it's a one hot take that I feel like I have is I'm just not a Tom Petty person. I like some of the like super early stuff but the when it gets to the point where it's like in the Mindy and the girls on the Mindy and that it's just no but like so we're gonna is like running down the dream and all that like full moon fever stuff.
+
+[7:00] I you know, I just sort of wrote it off as a whole, so I should probably do some revisiting. What about Tom Petty in Waterworld? The movie, which I've never seen because I'm not gonna watch that. Yeah. Okay, that was gonna be my answer.
+
+[7:14] So glad you're feeling that for me. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't know whatever. Okay.
+
+[7:18] Uh uh enough of this foolishness. We need to get to the point where we shoot the breeze for a little bit on collectively anything we have done interesting with food recently, like the past week. Anyone got anything? I've put uh filet mérica on the menu, the Belgian steak tartare, which I'm very happy about. Yeah.
+
+[7:35] So describe how this is different from other people's uh steak tartar. So it's mayo based. You add extra egg yolk, you add some chopped piccolilly, capers, shallots, parsley, and the meat is ground, not diced or cubed up. So and then you just put that on some bread and it's absolutely delicious. So how much more do you worry about a tartare when it has to go through a grinder as opposed to when you're like hand slicing it?
+
+[8:02] Just I know that you ultimately you have control, but it feels like you have so much more control when you're like, I'm gonna scrub the hell out of my station. I got my knife, I got my gloves, and I'm gonna shm sh like how do you how do you metal, you know, grinder that we keep in the freezer right up until use it so everything stays cold. I mean, I'm only grinding like two a pound of steak and trying to do it every day. So you're doing like a pork girt style. Do you have the stainless one?
+
+[8:33] Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I'd say like I have to say, like keep everything on ice. The expense, yeah.
+
+[8:39] The expensive ones of those are nice, but like all the castings have all these weird little like unless you have a lot of money, the castings on meat grinders are like real, like little little pockets of like like filth-holding pock. And they make me nervous. I'm sure yours is perfect, John, because you are a scrupulous individual. You know? I mean, yeah, try and keep everything as well.
+
+[9:04] I have to say, uh, I mean, it is unpleasant when you have a sliced, like a hand chopped tart and someone leaves a little bit of like garbage in it. Yeah. You know? Get stuck in your teeth and yeah, unpleasant. Yeah.
+
+[9:17] I like uh I always shy away a little bit from the tartare because like I love it when it's good, but if it's not gonna be good, oh yeah, that's really sad and disappointing. Yeah. Aubrey, what do you think? You a tartar person? Do you eat that?
+
+[9:27] You eat that kind of problem? I do. It's actually funny. Um I grew up in a small town in Michigan, but my parents, big food people, and my mom was an incredible cook. And uh after working in food, I went back to my dad and I said, Am I remembering correctly that we used to eat as kids like raw hamburger and raw egg on toast?
+
+[9:45] And he was like, Yeah, you idiot. It's tartare. And if it wasn't hamburger, your mom like went to the you know, butcher and had filet ground, so she also was a ground tartar person. But in my like eight-year-old brain, it was just uh a raw hamburger. Mom, how come you didn't cook the hamburger, mom?
+
+[10:05] So good. All right, all right. Uh and you know, plus you have a nice uh ceiling lake that's enjoyable. Oh yeah, that was super super fun. Love shutting down service on a Saturday night.
+
+[10:16] It was great. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I was joking that you were trying to, you know, live the live the bear, right? Yeah, yes, exactly.
+
+[10:24] My role model. Although, like, I don't know, you don't strike me as uh angering your way through a service in the same kind of thing. No, not really. Yeah. I get angry inside, but it doesn't radiate out.
+
+[10:35] More menu, less bare. Yes. Hey, what do you Albert? What do you think? Do you think that that culture is dying, hopefully, the the ex the extreme anger stuff?
+
+[10:46] I I mean, yeah, let's hope so. Uh I've I made a pretty hard rule when I started in kitchens that I would never work anywhere, that uh that was the culture. And so I've been really fortunate that I've never come up against that. I worked, um, I'll actually tell you my one of my most inspiring kitchen stories. I worked for Paul Verant in Chicago for a long time.
+
+[11:06] And uh there was a Valentine's Day service, you know, which is notoriously god-awful, and it was like an extra hard one. Uh and so something had happened and he threw something across the kitchen. And I had only worked there for a couple of months. And so I was like, well, that's great. I quit at the end of the day.
+
+[11:23] And um, he hauled all of us out into the alley afterwards and was like, I want to apologize. That is not who I want to be. I take responsibility for my actions. That said, uh, it didn't happen then. It started at 8 a.m.
+
+[11:39] when I came in and this was done wrong, and then it was at 9 30 when this was wrong, and then this was wrong, and then this was wrong. And so you all also have some responsibility for getting me to that point, but it is ultimately my responsibility to not tip that scale. And I was like, I'll work for you for the rest of my life. Wow, but so I don't know. I mean, I think it's it's all part and parcel.
+
+[11:59] I mean, I think it depends on if the kitchen culture is bullying in order to secure control and authority, that's one thing. If it's because people are overworked and strapped in a super thin margin, there's lots of different reasons, and I think we have to address them all, probably. Yeah. Well, you say at some point, well, we're we're still shooting the breeze, but I'm gonna say at some point in the book, you're like, I'm glad I don't do that kind of work anymore. Yeah, you know what I mean?
+
+[12:22] But you're like, I you're like sometimes I miss it, but nah. Yeah, it's I don't know if it's uh just maybe everybody feels this way as you age out of stuff. You know, it was so fun. I loved being a line cook. Absolutely loved it.
+
+[12:36] Uh and I don't want to do it anymore. Uh but at Grainer Farm where I work now, um we have sort of taken the best parts of the restaurant world through experiential dining. And so we get to kind of issue some of the the harder parts which is great. It's a it's a perfect balance for us. Anyway.
+
+[12:52] So uh did you I mean you've been busy because you're like not even at home you're like on a trip and you're pushing a book that's about to come out but had did you have do you have any interesting food experiences over the past week? Yeah you know what I made the other day uh a play on shrimp toast with whitefish so it was basically a mousseline um and then seared it on some just some toast that I had and uh also a mayo kind of topper like a remulage um a little bit spicy lemon and garlic and I it was just so good. I like forgot and musoline's always kind of gross me out you know really uh why what about it just like you know egg white and fish and you grind it up and it just seems like this is never gonna be good. It's like a filter fish you know you cream bind it too I only do egg white yeah um and it just s sears nicely it's great. I grew up loving shrimp toast like love like I I don't I never see it anymore but like the the takeouts in like New Jersey in the 70s and 80s like shrimp toast was like it was right there right with this barriers was the shrimp toast and I can still see those tiny like like the triangles, like the the little crustless bread with the thing and then cut into triangles and then the whole sucker fried and like brown with the grease and the shrimp.
+
+[14:10] Love shrimp toast. Yeah. I love it. So and the whitefish was a positive? It was.
+
+[14:15] I mean, yeah, we don't have uh I didn't have any shrimp. Uh and so it was like, well, we've got this, and it works great. But it was like fresh white fish. Wait, I don't it's lake fish from Lake Michigan. All right.
+
+[14:26] I wonder if you wonder if you did that. So uh if you've been over to uh um Russ and Daughters over here, the R our appetizing store, you know, Fish Capital of New York City, fit cured fish capital of New York City. They have something that I really enjoy called uh hot and cold smoked salmon salad. Have you had this? No, I haven't.
+
+[14:44] Yeah, so it's like they take uh the scraps when scraps, whatever, but you know, when they're done, yeah, yeah. Uh from the probably from the Nova and you know the guy gas bay, that kind of stuff. They probably don't do with the belly, right? And so they they chop that up fine. And then they take hot smoked salmon and also chop that fine, and then they mix it into this, and I think it is delicious.
+
+[15:06] What do you put it on? Anything, just a fork. Well, yeah, because uh in reality, like when I eat a bagel, I'm always I want a bagel cut in half with plain cream cheese, the Rust and Dollars cream cheese, which is in my opinion, God's cream cheese. And then uh I want uh you know, smoked fish of my choice and uh raw, raw onion and tomato, and that's it. I don't want any other nothing.
+
+[15:34] Then after I have my bagel, maybe I'll rip off a piece of a bagel and I'll dip or whatever. I'll just eat this stuff on a fork. But uh I'm um I don't know, I got a mental thing. I like certain things to stay constant in my life. Okay, you know?
+
+[15:46] Anyway, uh yeah, so that's good. Now you got me thinking about what if you did like a 50 50. That's what made me think about the salad. If you did a 50 50, either 50 50 fresh and cured on the whitefish or shrimp and whitefish. What would be better?
+
+[15:58] What would ta what would be a better idea? What would taste better? Or would they both be good? Or neither good. Uh I like the idea of doing a hot and a cold side by side.
+
+[16:08] Uh, you know, that play with that temperature a little bit more. But between the white fish and the shrimp, I mean the the texture of the white fish is definitely softer, you know. So I think you're getting to textural differences. I don't know, I'm not gonna call them in there. Yeah.
+
+[16:21] Get this. What about this? I just had another idea. So John behind me here is uh, you know, Mr. Belgique, and uh grew up like uh harvesting these tiny freaking shrimp.
+
+[16:33] Okay. So you like what are they called? Like uh crevis grease grease. Crevet grease. Yeah, yeah.
+
+[16:38] Anyway, shrimp. Yeah. And uh tiny. You love them though, right? They're tasty shrimp because they're they're salt water, they're not like raised in in concrete pools.
+
+[16:46] You know what I mean? And uh what w what about a shrimp toast made with those suckers? Probably be delicious. Yeah. Yeah.
+
+[16:55] I mean, that's not a bit of a taste better than those. Put them on a substandard tomato. You put them on a substandard tomato, didn't you? Exactly. Exactly.
+
+[17:04] But do you stuffed in the tomato? But do you want the substandard tomato? That's what I I've never had in a good tomato, you know. It's just always served in a substandard tomato to be interesting to taste in a really good tomato. There are applications, I have to say, where the good tomato is not what you want.
+
+[17:23] Right. In the same way, then we'll talk about pears where well, you know, we'll get into pears being the argument that you you know you've had with pears, which I don't know. I don't know. We'll s we'll get into it in a minute. I had uh some interesting things, so uh yeah, I family dinner.
+
+[17:38] I cook family dinner most Sundays. I have for the past, I don't know, 30 years or something like this, right? Twenty twenty five, 25, 30 years. And um it's fun because, you know, it's an opportunity, especially now that pretty soon I'm gonna be down to just cooking for two people again, which is kind of weird. Um it's you know, fun.
+
+[17:57] It's fun. Anyway, so I got a uh a request to do uh tortes, you know, the Mexican tortes, which for some reason I've never done before. And so I was like, fine. So I made the Tolera rolls, which are not they're not complicated, they're easy. They're just like a marginally enriched, you know, marginally, not like, you know, not even as enriched as I do, like hamburger buns, like marginally enriched.
+
+[18:19] And you push the, you push uh two lines into them so that they get those two lines. Um, you know, I did carnitas and you know, it's good. Uh you know, nothing really to report there. Everyone knows how to make carnitas, but the one thing, you know what's one thing I've never done, I'm super embarrassed about. I have never made re-fried beans on purpose from scratch.
+
+[18:41] Never done it. I've all I've made I've I've had beans that I've made, I'm like, I'm gonna mash these beans. You know what I mean? But I've never made refried beans from scratch, and I have to say, they actually are much better. I was in I'm embarrassed for all of the times that I have not done it.
+
+[18:59] Well, I have I have uh a good chunk of people come with vegetarians. Oh, gotcha. So um what I did was uh I also like, you know, for the past year I've been working on Duting beans. You know what I mean? Like uh so my current one, I detuted these and I didn't have any bad reaction to them.
+
+[19:19] You know what I mean? So it's it's good. And I'm relatively sensitive to these to to FOD maps, as they say. Uh and I also didn't make them with a standard bean because I I have almost exclusively in my house all of these beans from Maine, like Jacob's cattle bean and and yellow eyes and uh, you know, soldier beans. I could I like Maine bean, whatever.
+
+[19:37] Every you can like whatever bean you like. I I like to buy beans from Maine and Vermont and you know, I'm anyway. Uh so I made them with Jacob's cow beans, but whatever. Uh, but you know, you I cooked them with uh I cooked them in excess water for a long time. I added some um what did I use?
+
+[19:51] Did I use uh I used I think pasilla or guajio, just a couple in there and some you know, onion and a crap ton of garlic. It just cooked it till it's done with salt and wine too spicy, and then drained them. They actually they've been stored a little too hot in my kitchen. You know how if you store beans, well, I'm sure he wrote a book on it. So like if you store beans too hot, then they it takes forever to freaking cook them.
+
+[20:12] Yeah. So like midway through the cook, I had to put a little bit of baking soda in. And then you ever done that? Put baking soda in the middle of the cook instead of at the beginning? No, I've only ever done it at the beginning.
+
+[20:22] Okay. I thought I had destroyed everything. It's because I also I always uh to use your terminology, glug some oil into the beans when I'm gonna cook them. This is the technical term, people from uh the book pulp is glug. In fact, it's literally in the glossary at the beginning is glug.
+
+[20:40] Anyway, uh well, I think it was a little more than a glow. But anyway, uh anyway, so they're they're they're cooking and I'm like, oh my God, it's been I didn't pre-soak them because who cares? I'm gonna smash them, right? But uh, they'd already been cooking for like an hour and a half, and they were still super like, you know, like yeah. I was like, so I like took some some soda, it's like a half teaspoon or something into a pound or beans, boom, and instantly it smelled like soap.
+
+[21:08] And I was like, like that weird detergent soap smell, and I was like, I ruined all of these things, and then it went away. Huh. Interesting. Went away. So after it was fully cooked, then I drained the beans and I let them uh I let the beans dry out hot so that the skins would split and they would get real dry, and I saved the liquid.
+
+[21:28] Then I fried those in batches on a hot skillet and then added them back to the thing, mash them, added, and then as soon as the temperature went below about, you know, a hundred and ten Fahrenheit, I've done I put a bunch of bean o into it, folded it together, then like let it cool, it chilled it down and reheated it the next day in a steam oven. And that was a maybe a little bit of a pain in the butt. But it's not that hard. That's the thing. Like recipes that seem complicated, and maybe you'll maybe, you know, people will back me up here.
+
+[21:59] I don't know. But recipes that seem complicated, once they're part of just like the way you think, they're not complicated anymore. Yeah. And it's hard to get people to understand it's something that sounds like it's got a lot of steps. It's like, well, this is, you know, you don't, you're not like, oh my God, it's so complicated.
+
+[22:12] I gotta, I gotta brush my teeth and then comb my hair. And it's like it's just you know, stuff that you do. You know what I mean? Right. I don't know.
+
+[22:18] I mean, that's the whole point of these books, not to jump straight into it, but uh, is to give flexibility so that it's not like go to the store and buy a pear that is exactly this weight to be able to do it. It's like you're trying to teach people how to cook, but in a way that is a little supported if they don't inherently know how to cook or don't feel confident after years of being told that they're not good enough at it, you know. Yeah. Well, right. So in the intro, you you you know, your hope is to get people more comfortable to want to enjoy cooking.
+
+[22:47] Presumably, people who buy the book, or maybe people are given the book, in which case, hmm, that's interesting. Uh, you're right. So they they're interested in in cooking somewhat, but there are a lot of people who also don't want to cook, and I feel like they're made to feel guilty. Yeah, which is stupid, right? Right.
+
+[23:07] But what do you have to say to those people? Because they do feel guilty. Uh, they should get takeout. Yeah. If they I mean, or find the things that like you can do with uh the most moderate amount of effort, you know, things that they're gonna be able to work in, you know.
+
+[23:21] So is that making a frittato one day a week and then eating it, you know, that's great. Uh and that's the thing. I just feel like there's all of these presumptions, and especially around food stuff, it's so tricky. Uh, because you don't know where people are coming from. It's they're like always very weighty issues that come up for people with food.
+
+[23:39] So just whatever makes you feel good. Uh and it the thing that always gets me as a as a cookbook writer is uh, you know, I often write these recipes in the drafting stage, like from my couch. And then I'm like, yeah, that should work, and then I'll test it, whatever. And with this book in particular, I sent it around to testers um before I had done those steps because of the timeline of the production calendar. Um, and so many people got back and they were like, yeah, I don't know, it didn't work.
+
+[24:08] I must have done something wrong. And I was like, no, it's probably me. Uh yeah, it probably should have worked, it wasn't quite good enough. Um, but it seemed really interesting to me that that was most people's default. And so I feel like people think that it's supposed to be this picture, uh, like supposed to end up like that, you know, and it doesn't always.
+
+[24:26] Um, so yeah, it's a bummer. Yeah, although speaking of your process, you uh well, so to go to the the book a little bit, like this book is built around fruit, right? So you start with uh an introduction into like a bunch of techniques that you're just gonna use throughout the book. You know, this is a pie, this is a blob, you know, whatever. And then like alphabetically by fruit or fruit type, you go through it, and then within that, it's like cooking technique and then savory and sweet.
+
+[24:58] So it's like it's it's like regimented in that way, so you can find an app an application that you like within that. But then with like in one of them, yeah, it was the chicken over cornbread recipe. You talk and you mentioned because the interesting thing is is that even though it is very in that way regimented, you know what you're gonna get. Like I'm coming alphabetically, I'm going by technique, I'm gonna go savory, I'm gonna go sweet, right? But even within that though, you do your introductions into recipes and your introductions into sections all have a different kind of hook that you're hanging them on, in the sense of like, okay, in this recipe about chicken, I'm gonna talk a little bit about how I do recipe development.
+
+[25:45] And, you know, in the section on melons, I'm gonna talk about so sometimes it's like recipe specific, it's another section specific and melons, you know, you tell the story about working in uh a kitchen that's primarily women, and how you could like joke about melons and how that felt really good and and talking a lot about deep, you know, kind of deep heavy stuff in that in that section. So is that like how did you come to that kind of structure? Because it's kind of uh I like it, it's good. Thanks. Uh yeah, it's always fascinating to me to hear how it resonates with other people because this is what occurs to me to do.
+
+[26:19] Um, and so the way that I got to this style is that I started food writing um a food column up for when I was living in Traverse City area for the local paper up there. And so that was the format. It was, you know, uh a column and then recipes. And for that column, I was taking something, I was a vegetable farmer at the time, and so I was taking a vegetable that we were growing and trying to show people you can either play with the technique. So, how is poached asparagus different than roasted asparagus?
+
+[26:49] So keep the flavor combination similar and the tech the technique different, or keep the technique the same and then change the flavor combinations to try to get people, you know. I I was really inspired by the flavor Bible and uh mind of a chef or think like a chef, I can't remember what Clequio's book was. Um, and I found that when I I really loved and engaged with those books a lot. And uh when I would give them to people who did not spend their waking hours thinking and talking about food, uh, they would either get really frustrated if they weren't confident cooks, or they would like instantly understand them. And so I was trying to create kind of a middle ground between sort of the more um esoteric, but kind of I guess kind of esoteric books, and then like a straight-ahead recipe cookbook.
+
+[27:36] Um, and so trying to give people a little bit of that, like you said, you know, I have to get up, I have to brush my hair, I don't have to brush my teeth. I think it's the same thing. It's like if you have an intuitive sense of what it means to cook something or where you want to get and the tools in your toolbox to do that, it you do it intuitively without having to memorize the steps. Um, and I don't think a lot of people have that. And then, as far as the sort of weightier things with it, um, I think that one of the issues in our food world is that food consumption is often very divorced from food system issues.
+
+[28:10] And so sort of my way to say this is what I think people should be thinking about while they're doing this. You know, so the melon chapter in specific. Um, I wrote it at a time, it was December of um, let's see, must have been 20 2020. Um, somewhere in there. And there was a statistic that came out that of the job losses, they were 100% female jobs.
+
+[28:37] Uh, and I was like, that can't possibly be right, like a hundred percent. Uh, and then I like did the reading on it, and yeah, and it was all, you know, just like what does it mean? It's really hard to have a career in in food or in agriculture and hospitality, and especially if, you know, for for that one, it's like I have a job description when I post for a job, and you know, some of the requirements are stand for minimum of eight hours, be able to move up to 50 pounds. Well, as soon as a woman gets pregnant, she's not supposed to do those things. And it's not through any fault of her own.
+
+[29:08] And so, how do we create a system that keeps women in the workforce? Um, I don't have the answers, but I think it's worth people recognizing that that's a hurdle. Do you think you tie that with a joke about melons? Yeah, I mean, like for uh, you know, I honestly don't even know. I mean, I I hope things are changing more radically as a more quickly as a result of all the things that have been happening, both bad and good.
+
+[29:33] But I mean, it's not even just the actual limitations, but like uh I know for a fact that you know, a lot of um business owners are just rancid, rancid people when it comes to um pregnancy, just real buttheads, real, just terrible people. You know what I mean? Even people that would surprise you. People you think wouldn't be. You know what I mean?
+
+[29:57] Yeah, which is weird because they were all born in utero at some point. Yeah. I mean, we all got born, you know. Excuse me. Um, I don't know.
+
+[30:08] Um, but it's hard too. I mean, it's hard when you say like paid parental leave. Uh you're in a super tight margin industry. How do you justify, you know, paying someone for eight weeks, you know, six weeks. Uh, I think you have to believe that it's it's in it's necessary or it's of interest, you know, or that it's gonna keep talent in in the space, which I think is actually where it'll change, you know.
+
+[30:34] Yeah. Um on the less heavy side on the recipe recipe development side, now I don't I don't remember whether you actually mentioned the couch in the book or whether it's just you just said it to me uh on the couch. So in the chicken recipe, uh, and this is you know I I work, I think everyone kind of works the same way, but no one really wants to talk about how things happen. You're like, I'm like, I like chicken roasted over bread, which is by the way, something I you know talk like this, but you know what I mean. But that's that's uh that's something I've never done roasting a chicken over bread.
+
+[31:02] Oh, really? It's no really yeah. Is that like a thing? I don't even know that was a thing. Uh I guess I mean maybe I took it.
+
+[31:09] I mean, the Zuni chicken recipe has is like the with the bread salad. So it's it's probably just an extrapolation from that that it makes sense to me. But yeah, I often do it, you know how you like roasted chicken uh over vegetables or something like that. That's my standard, yeah. Yeah, throw in some cubes of old bread and then a little bit of stock and white wine or cherry tomatoes or things like that, something to give a little bit of acidity.
+
+[31:31] Oh yeah, it's so good. Yeah, so you're like, okay, so I love chicken roasted or bread, and then you're like, hmm, cornbread. Cornbread dries out. I need to add some liquid. Okay, I'm gonna add these blueberries.
+
+[31:41] Uh blueberries don't have enough acid. I'm gonna add lemon. And then you're like, okay, recipe's done in my head. Right. And so like, and you're like, oh, okay, yeah, that's the way actually things work.
+
+[31:49] You know what I mean? Um, I don't know, it's fun. It's uh like a fun thing to tell people how things work, especially now, because everyone gets so freaking bent about like too much explanation in a recipe book, not in a book. In a book, they're paying for for explanation before a recipe. But online with the giant recipe.
+
+[32:06] Oh my god. Every like three weeks we have that. That's stupid, stupid. Yeah. I don't know who starts it.
+
+[32:13] Who's the like, you know, salt in the cloud on that story? Like so many trolls, just so many trolls. Uh someone's giving you a recipe, just like if you don't want to read what they have to say, sift through until you start seeing numbers, and then you can deal with it and just be quiet about it. No. I mean that scrolling fatigue is really our biggest problem in the world, is I think speaking to some of our the things that we have succeeded on.
+
+[32:38] Uh scrolling. Um, another thing that I think uh we agree on, but the rest of the world maybe doesn't is you you have a story where you're talking about uh uh ground cherries like you know, Uchuva hus cherries, right? Which I like, although I have to say, well, before we even talk about that, remind me to talk about that again. All right, Michigan, I've only ever been to Detroit. Nastasi and I went to Detroit.
+
+[33:05] I had a good time. We went to, you know, see uh Hittsville, USA, the whole nine. I I had a good time. You had a good time, right, Stas? Except for like me almost dying.
+
+[33:14] That was the best part for you, right? Yeah. Me almost dying was your favorite part though, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No dang.
+
+[33:21] Okay. Anyways, so uh I really liked it. I would like to go back some time, but I have known for a long time that there's this mystical fruit belt in Michigan, and I've never been to it. And like when someone explained it to me the first time, I was like, what? Like, what?
+
+[33:40] So why don't you explain for the people that don't have never heard of it? I mean, I've never been to it, but at least I've heard of it. This, what a fruit belt is, how it works, why you have this like weird, unique climate there. Yeah. So Michigan is the second most agriculturally diverse state in the nation, second to California.
+
+[33:57] And it's primarily because of the fruit that we can grow. And so Michigan, you know, we're a mitten, uh, and we've got lakes on all sides, and specifically Lake Michigan on the western side of the state, you know, as the uh weather fronts come across from the west, they the cold fronts will pick up a bunch of moisture as soon as it hits the lake. And then that air, you know, it it picks up all of that moisture, it hits the land mass and then drops it. That's why we get lake effect snow, which I don't know if people are familiar with, but it's that it's it's generally a bit warmer in on the west side of the state because of that moderated temperature, but we get a lot more precipitation. Um, and that both keeps the fruit trees and vines and things like that from getting too cold in the winter, whereas, like, you know, Detroit uh will get easily get down into the single digits regularly because it doesn't have that same moderating effect um that far east.
+
+[34:50] Uh but on the west side, it's a little bit warmer, generally, more rain. And then we also, because of our glacial the curvature uh after the glacial recession, we have all of these hills and valleys. And so the airflow is great, and that is really prone for fruit production because the the breeze coming off the lake combined with the different elevations prevents a lot of things like mold growth or you know, things like brown rot, stuff like that, that makes it really hard to grow fruit in most places. It's similar. This is why Washington State also grows a ton of fruit, because they're getting the same thing, but off the ocean mostly.
+
+[35:24] Right. But you know, I guess like mentally, most people, even if they don't travel around in the States, like they kind of know that that whole coast over there somehow grows stuff. And then you wouldn't just looking at a map, guess this place that's that far north would have all of this like kind of cool stuff, and all the monitor's furniture too. Right? All the monitor furniture is made there.
+
+[35:46] The fact that the uh yeah, Herman Miller is from uh outside of it's actually in Zealand, Michigan, where my mom was a uh anesthesiologist at Zealand Hospital, and we would like regularly like go and get bonkets. It's a very Dutch area. So we would get bonket and then go to Herman Miller, and it was just like that was normal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so the whole area, even though I've never been, it has kind of a mat, like has this kind of magic vibe to me.
+
+[36:11] But like, you know, whatever. I never been, so who knows? I mean, you do. Um so, and also like something that maybe I'm wrong, but uh my impression is is that the lake effects snow that you get, the large amount of snow is actually like super beneficial because it actually moderates what's happening to the plants in the ground. Yeah, it insulates it.
+
+[36:31] Right. So, and so you know, and you've worked as a farmer. So, like one of the cool things is that you're not only not only a chef, but also you've worked as a farmer, you've done all these things. So you have kind of a much kind of a richer tie to how things are made all up the chain. And you know, you're a consumer as well, you eat things.
+
+[36:51] Uh so um how worried are you? You mentioned it in the book, but how worried are you about something that is so kind of weird and kind of unique based on like this set of very kind of tweaked out circumstances, right? Getting hosed with the climate change that's happening. And are you already seeing it over there? Yeah, we're already seeing it.
+
+[37:17] Um, and in the book, in addition to the recipes and the the essays, there are several interviews with different people who work along the food system. And one of them is Dr. Nikki Rothwell, who's the you know, foremost tree expert in the state of Michigan. Um, and we were talking a bit about it, and also with Mike and Pete Lang, who manage um Mobby Vineyard up in Sutton's Bay, and they're a 50-year-old winery in Michigan. Um, and both of them are saying, yeah, this is happening right now, and and this is how we need to plan for it and change for it.
+
+[37:49] Um, but nobody really knows. So I think on one hand, how worried am I? I it it will be a problem. Uh so in that sense, I'm very worried about it. I'm also incredibly uh confident that the farming community will puzzle it out.
+
+[38:08] I don't know that we can puzzle it out at the speed at which we need to, because you know, like Mike and Pete say in the book, if they're planting something, they're thinking about 30 years down the road. Uh if no one is planting, it takes seven years for a cherry tree to come to maturity. No one is planting thinking like that seven years ahead. They're thinking, you know, again, that amount of time. But if they can't, if it if the speed of climate change outpaces the ability to grow that root stock, I don't I don't see the answer, but I don'm not working that industry either.
+
+[38:42] Right. Especially though, like, you know, uh it's not a depressing book. I'm not saying it's a depressing book. I know. But macabre and like depressing this is a real self.
+
+[38:52] Right, right, right. No, but I mean, but uh on the other hand, like uh you have some hard numbers in there that are depressing. So like it sounds like on average, no matter what you're gonna plant, it's a for trees. It's like 20 grand an acre, right? And then X number of years before they start, you know, yielding.
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+[39:13] And then, you know, you know, you mentioned cherries, you guys are like, you know, cherry universe, right? And uh they're saying they're getting like the on the commodity. Please talk about the three different uh fruit fruit things, but can like 25 cents a pound for sa for tart cherries on the commodity market? That's bananas. I mean, like obviously we pay a lot more when we're getting tart cherries because we're getting them from a farmer.
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+[39:36] Right. So that that's a really key point in the book, and I think is speaks to this idea of understanding some of the larger systemic issues. So uh it was put very precisely to me by Abby Schilling, who is a is a fruit grower, and she said there's basically three markets uh that a fruit grower can feed into uh fresh fruit direct to consumer. So that's I grow this fruit, I bring it to a farmer's market, and I sell it directly to you. That is the lowest volume of fruit that you can move, uh, but at the highest price point.
+
+[40:08] And so then the middle ground is fresh fruit to effectively a broker. So it's going into grocery stores or you know, someone is dealing that out. And then there's the commodity fruit, which is none of that is fresh. That's all going into, you know, for cherries, Gene Garthy, who's another interviewee, um, is talking about cherry pie filling, cherry, tart cherry concentrate, um, dried cherries, like, you know, name your name your cherry. That's not the same one who has the one tenth of an acre of quince, is it?
+
+[40:38] Yes, it is. And so that's a pretty good example of it. That so he is a legacy fruit grower up in Northport, Michigan. He's been doing it his whole life. His, you know, grandfather immigrated and or great grandfather immigrated and and started it.
+
+[40:51] And um uh Jason or uh Justin Rashid from American Spoon had said, you know, we can't find quince anywhere. Will you grow them for us? And so Jean was like, yeah, sure. Uh so he's got you know a little spot on his farm that he can put some trees. So uh American Spoon buys the trees, plants them, Gene tends them, sells all the quints to American Spoon.
+
+[41:16] That quince is not any part of Gene's like financial stability because it's such a tiny amount, but it's a good relationship, things like that. And if he can sell the rest of his stuff to American Spoon, that's a better price point than going to, you know, the processing facility for it. Um, so I think those are the decisions that people are making, and when they're making it with such high overhead and such long-term decisions, Gene, I found fascinating. He was my neighbor when I was farming up in Northport, and he was uh growing cherries organically at the time. And so I finally asked him when we were doing this interview, you know, what is it about organic?
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+[41:51] And he was like, Oh, the the price was there. You know, so it's not for some organic growers, it's dogmatic. It's you know, and I think all farmers um I think there's this idea that conventional farmers are just like, you know, dumping buckets of fertilizer into the waterways just for funsies. I've never met a farmer that feels that way. That stuff's expensive.
+
+[42:09] They care about their waterways too. Um, it's just how they're trying to make a living. And uh, and so Jean was saying, you know, the price point was there. I could make the transition pretty easily. We could do it.
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+[42:21] And so that's what they did. But they he would pull out of it at any point. Right. Well, the year you talk to him, right? Or maybe it was someone else, like they got a pre-buy on a non-organic at a good price.
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+[42:31] And so he's like, to hell with it. And that year he didn't do it, even though he's like, I actually think the ones that we grow organically taste better. Totally. But a lot a lot of worms. He said he had worm problems.
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+[42:41] Yep. And and that's why there's these really strict rules about you know, fruit fly fruit fly larvae, uh, that you can't be you basically can't have any, which if anybody grew up in a fruit-growing region, it's very difficult to control. And so, yeah, it's a it's a hard road to ho. Yeah. Hey, uh, question on cherries.
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+[42:59] Um, I know you like them, but they're not your favorite. We'll get into that. I was gonna troll you and ask you what your favorite fruit is, because there's a section in your book where you're like, this is a section wherein I tell you what my favorite fruit is. So if you ask me my favorite fruit, you clearly have not read the book. I appreciate that you read it.
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+[43:18] Yeah, but uh, which is weird. I think this might be one Nastasia. You like this fruit, uh, apricots. You're an apricot fan. But I'm not talking about it yet.
+
+[43:26] Just us, isn't that one of your faves? Apricots. No, it's not no. I thought you like I don't know. You like dried apricots.
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+[43:34] I like dried apricots. Yeah. I are apricots in machine really good. It depends on the year. Uh, you know, I would say the one they can be great, you know, they can be that super like rich honey flavor.
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+[43:48] They're always have that sort of uh slightly drier texture than a peach or a nectarine. Um we don't get them that often because they always flower earlier, and then we inevitably get a late frost, it nips the buds, and then there's no crop. But when you have them, they're good? Yeah, generally. Yeah.
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+[43:59] I uh I'm always disappointed. Like when I was three, we moved out of California, and I still have like some like you know how those fake memories that you have? Yeah, I have fake memories. So we had an apricot uh tree in um in um Palo Alto, and like I would just eat them constantly, you know what I mean? And then I've always loved them dry because they're intense.
+
+[44:30] I love Blenheim's, which is you know, the California high acid variety, because I'm a high acid fruit fellow. And uh I'm just whenever I get them fresh, I'm always like, that doesn't taste the way I want it. And I know how I want it to taste, and that flavor is great. I don't know. I mean, isn't that the like whole thing with fruit?
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+[44:46] And this was the funny thing. So when we were, you know, when I was pitching this book, so many publishers were like, fruit books don't sell. I was like, how could fruit books not sell? You know, what's the deal with it? And they were like, well, people don't they don't cook with it, you know.
+
+[44:59] It's like you just eat it. And so I started asking people, like, oh, I'm I'm working on this fruit book, what would you want out of it? And it was literally 50-50. People were like, Oh, why would I need a cookbook? I just eat it.
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+[45:09] And then the other ones were like, I don't ever buy fruit because sometimes it tastes bad and I don't know what to do with it. Maybe if I had a cookbook, I was like, oh my gosh. Well, you can always, I mean, then you go through this, you're like, if it's not good, why don't you do one of these recipes where you like cook a little bit or add a little back to cherries? I know I was gonna ask you. So on tart cherries, a couple of things on tart cherries.
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+[45:28] One, when you pit a tart cherry, they discolor in a very unpleasant way pretty quickly. Why? And can you do something about that? Uh it's the it's, I mean, it's oxidization, um, which is ironic that the tart cherries would oxidize. I would guess, I would venture to guess, that the dark sweets uh probably go through a similar browning, but because the color is darker of the flesh, you notice it less.
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+[45:52] Because I notice it on the yellow cherries, uh, like Queen Anne's and um things like that, uh, which don't have the flavor because they are just sweet. So you think tossing them in ascorbic acid might help? I've never tried. Yeah, I think anything like that to which, yeah, same as like, or even just lemon water. They get that brown.
+
+[46:17] Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. And they sort of, I thought you were gonna say they just like deflate. Yeah, but they don't.
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+[46:24] I can deal with that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, there's this, by the way, uh, moisture mitigation is uh, so I'm moisture management is what I talk about in your moisture mitigation. I like that we have different terminology, similar, uh similar issues.
+
+[46:37] Um also on um on cherries, you if tart cherries are so cheap on a commodity market that and it's becoming problematic. Like uh the person you were saying, his shaker is like, what a quarter million dollars? Why is a shaker cost a quarter million dollars? And would it kill a person to jokingly put a shaker around them and go? But for those of you who haven't seen, like, you know, like it looks almost like uh like a Jurassic Park like like that dinosaur with the frill goes around, surrounds the tree, grabs it and so there's two parts of it.
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+[47:18] There's the there's the tarp that kind of scoots around and yeah, catches all of the cherries. If anybody hasn't seen a cherry tree be shaken, it is amazing because you don't realize how much how heavy those branches are uh at least I didn't when I saw it the first time and then the thing that attaches to the chunk it looks like one of those 1950s exercise belts where the person's like drinking martini and smoking a cigar and it's just getting shaken um but then what happens is that the branches like are are way down here and then it shakes and it's just like you know and it's like that Skittles commercial about with cherries. So what would happen if they did it to me as a joke. I I think it would be terrible I think you might die. Oh but it's kind of like you're like I want to get shaken by I know it looks so funny.
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+[48:03] It does but so you're thinking it seems like it's tickling the tree yeah you think it's a definite oh but it's also interesting is uh apparently he was saying the old shakers you know uh definitely cut short the life of the tree but the new shakers are more so maybe if you get a new shaker I'll survive. It's true. Yeah. You know a little bit a little bit less. I actually recently went down I go down rabbit holes occasionally I don't know if you can tell.
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+[48:27] Yeah. And I started reading patents for fruit shakers and when I was trying to figure out whether it would kill me to be shaking with one and uh interesting stuff. A lot of research and fruit shakers you know that's the thing I mean why does it cost quarter million dollars because they're really specific really researched machines that everybody needs at exactly the same time. So it costs a lot of money if you need to get into the business. So not a lot of people are getting into the business of needing to have a quarter million dollar tree shaker.
+
+[48:59] Commodity market is going through the floor on how much they're getting return. The land, another thing you bring up multiple times in here, people want to live on this land because it's pretty. And so it's becoming expensive. It's not cheap land, right? So all of these factors make it seem like tart cherries are gonna go the way of the dodo.
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+[49:17] Yeah, I mean, I think I think that would be the plausible idea. I think the question is, is there something that's gonna replace it that people are assured that they can can do? Because if you look at grapes, I mean grapes are the thing that everybody is like, oh, well, you'll just take the cherries out and put grapes in. Um, but there's even less of a market for grapes except for wine. Value added, yeah.
+
+[49:40] This country was founded by Puritans, so the wine industry is not super easy to like immediately get into. I was like, I remember you were talking to uh, I forget her name, uh, agricultural scientist specialist. Nikki Rothwell. Yeah. And she I think it was her, said, Well, there's a limited growth in the alcoholic business.
+
+[49:59] I'm like, that has not been my experience. You know what I mean? Like people drink uh wine. It turns out. It's true, although the isn't the NA market like the largest growing part of the craft beverage world.
+
+[50:12] It's like rocketing. It's crazy. Yeah. It's true, the growth. And you know, it's it's a weird time.
+
+[50:18] It's a weird time. And it's funny too, because um Mike and Pete, I don't remember if it was if it actually got printed or if it was part of the editing of the interview, but Mike, who manages Mobby Vineyards, says the most expensive part for him is marketing the wine, that it's like a totally different price structure. But they have an interesting winery because they are growing some of their own grapes, but they're also relying on bulk wine from the West Coast. And so I think for getting back to the scale stuff, it's just all about that product mix, um, which you know, all of these are really big, risky decisions to make. All right.
+
+[50:52] Now, before we run out of time, let's do uh first of all, what do you I I know that most people are gonna hear this when it's too late, but what what uh what are you doing here in the in the city this week? Where are you where you going? Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I'm gonna be at Art Stratus uh book store in Green Point, Brooklyn tomorrow with um uh Bettina as a food journalist from Bonapet and Eater. She's gonna be interviewing me there.
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+[51:15] And then I'll be at Union Square Market on Wednesday. And then Grahamcy Tavern is having me. And it's like, I mean, kid, it's such a dream. So yeah. Should be should be good.
+
+[51:27] Should be excited. And you're also going to the strand you said. Yes. And you're also going to Kitchen Arts and Letters. Yes, I'm gonna do a book signing um for both those places.
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+[51:35] So if you're looking for signed copies, any of those three bookstores will have them. And I think Books Art Magic will as well. And Kitchen Arts and Letters, I think we Quinn, did we get uh did we get them to put uh for the Patreon folks on the uh the discount on Pulp? Yep, it's already all right. So, you know, if if uh Patreon members get uh the book there, they can get uh whatever our discount is, which I don't even really know.
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+[51:55] And also Kitchen Arts and Letters, by the way. Uh there when is that? When is that they're doing that? On April 22nd, so there's some time and April 23rd on the 22nd and 23rd. If you go uh live, they're gonna sell a whole bunch of their used, out of date and slightly damaged books at like rock bottom prices.
+
+[52:13] But do not call them and ask them to hold something for you. Don't do it. Don't do it. Go and buy it. I believe they are also having a 20.
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+[52:26] I don't might have sold out by now, but they were selling like 20 tickets or so for early admission with all proceeds going to a city Harvest. Uh well, maybe they'll maybe they'll put more up, but it's a good idea. What was the what was the uh what's it called? What was the charity they were giving to? City Harvest, I think.
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+[52:41] Oh, nice. Yeah. So, you know, you know, P you pay and they're not taking the money. They give it to Yeah. Yeah.
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+[52:46] Nice. Um good folks over there. Yeah. Very good. And uh so if you want uh, you know, hopefully you are on the Patreon listening to it live or before Friday and you can go see over at one of these uh a fine events.
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+[52:57] Uh but if they're not, how how can they join, John? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh we got a bunch of different membership levels, a bunch of awesome perks, including, you know, getting discounts at Kitchen Arts and Letters, uh prioritize questions being asked. And we will eventually answer the non-book related questions, people. We're gonna have to do a no tangent because we have a lot of guests coming up.
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+[53:20] We're gonna have to do like a no tangent off day at some point. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um what else? Did I miss anything?
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+[53:29] Uh great upcoming guests who do we have coming up. Mark Forgione, uh hopefully Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters coming out at some point soon. Uh yeah, just a whole slew of great and awesome people. So sign up. Yeah.
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+[53:41] Uh all right. So I have a question for you. Uh you are the chef at Grainer Farm, have been since 2017. Yes, sir. Uh, and so what does that entail?
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+[53:50] So Granor Farm has like a CSA and also I mean, so what just give like a quick what's the deal with Grainar Farm? Grainar Farm is uh wonderful place. We are started as a vegetable farm. So vegetable CSA. We also were founded to do kids like youth programming.
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+[54:06] Um so every summer we do five weeks of uh farm camp with ages five to ten and then vegetable farm, and this is again scale. So we do vegetables really intensively, and then the grain program, which is you know, all cereal greens and heirloom beans and heirloom corns at a much larger scale, all funnels into our on farm farm store. And then I joined in 2017 to create a meal program. Uh so what we do are what we call experiential dinners. People buy a ticket in advance, they show up, they get uh, you know, little conversation and a walk through the fields and they see what we're doing and where, and then we go into this beautiful glass greenhouse that is a true Dutch kit greenhouse uh with the dining room in the center, and we do roughly seven courses.
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+[54:52] Um and they're so it's a tasting menu. People don't know what they're gonna have before they arrive. We on our dairy restrictions, but it's all a surprise because what we do is we take the harvest list, uh what we're getting from our farming neighbors, and then also our preserves list and write the menu for each event. So it's bespoke for that. Um, and yeah, it's just a really fun way to eat.
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+[55:11] It's a great way to cook. Uh, we get to, you know, really provide a setting for new cooks that are coming up to be able to, you know, learn new things each time. So it it's really nice to see cooks that are not just trying to prep out their station, but really want to learn, and then they spend, you know, ideally at least a day or so on the farm as well. Because I know my food just changed so much when I started farming. Um, and so trying to kind of systemize that.
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+[55:35] And so wait, so how many like so on one of these dinners, like how many covers they are it's just one service, one seating. Uh we had can see roughly 4048 in the main dining room, and then we have a PDR for 14. So if you have like a specialty event, because otherwise we keep the group size to six or fewer. So it's four kind of communal tables. And then, like, how big of a crew do you have working on that on the thing?
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+[55:57] We have there are three of us in the kitchen, soon to be four, um, or you know, one person's part-time, and then there's like three front of house. So it's a really small team. Right, but it sounds fun. It's really fun. Yeah, and the meals are fun too, and it's nice.
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+[56:09] You know, the most amazing thing happens. People come and they're I'm still amazed people come when they don't know what's gonna be on the menu, but that's I'm glad that they do. And then they have their phones out, usually taking photos of the building, first couple of courses, but then inevitably the phones just go away and they all are just there. And it's like it's this thing that can it never repeats. And so it's really just in that moment, and it's really fun.
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+[56:34] And like curious reading the the book, it seems that like most of the uh big city draw is west from Chicago and not east from the eastern side of the state. Is that true, or just seen that way when I was reading it? Historically, I think that's true, although it's changing. So the lot especially the last few weeks, uh, we've had a much bigger draw from Metro Detroit, and then also like Grand Rapids Holland area down. Yeah, cool.
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+[57:02] Uh oh, back on cherries for a sec, sorry. Yeah. Uh brining the cherries. Oh my gosh, I was hoping you would ask about that. So it's like not a boat ton of salt, but is it enough to have them start like because you wait, John, get this.
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+[57:16] It's like I'm gonna I'm gonna forget, but it's like not a ton of salt in water, and then just you can leave them out for like an unconscionably long amount of time. Is it because also you're getting your fruit faster? Can I do it with my garbage commodity cherries that I get? How much salt? I don't remember the exact ratio, uh, but it's not that much.
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+[57:36] I think it's like a couple cups of cherries, maybe a teaspoon of salt. I mean, it's I think it was based off the two percent ratio that I always use for a kraut and things like that. That's where I started, and then uh just felt my way around through it. So, what happens to them? They become like it's it's sort of like um the difference between fresh lemon and preserved lemon, although not as intense as that.
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+[57:56] Uh, but it has this like you know, briny kind of olivey flavor to it that I just have two more minutes. And she and she serves them with uh mixed with uh Castle Vitranos and uh Marcona almonds and lupini beans. Yeah. So it's like cherries and salty snacks. And um, it came from there was a dish that a chef that I worked for for a while put on.
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+[58:17] It was like duck and cherry, and I tasted it, and I was like, I think this needs olive. And he was like, You're insane. That's a terrible combination. And it's never left, and olives and cherries like really match in my mind. Yeah, you gotta try it before you say it's terrible, you know what I mean?
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+[58:30] Uh speaking of which, uh, one of your uh early mentors whose name just went out of my head, you had an argument over best fruit, and he was a pear guy. And here's what I'm gonna say. I think you're he saved a pear until it was like exactly what he wanted, and you're still like, nah. Well, I mean, it was so delicious, but it was like a you know, um, epic trying to get this pear to that case. I think pears are the biggest heartache fruit.
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+[58:58] I know they're so heartbreaking. And pears and apricots together, it's like heartbreak coaching. Yeah, because uh there isn't I mean, pears aren't meant to be eaten off a tree. You have to do something afterwards with them. They're only good for the tiniest window.
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+[59:09] Yeah, but they're ethereal when they are. I guess. Yeah, yeah. But I'm a peach girl, I'm I'm an easy, I'm a crowd pleaser. I know.
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+[59:16] I'm a I'm a new I'm a nectarine guy. I know that you're whatever. You don't like them as much. You say you didn't say that. You implied it.
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+[59:22] You implied it based on saying it's just one gene that's different and they don't have as rich flavor. It was an implication. Maybe it's Michigan. You know, nectaries always have that like whiter flesh. So to me, that just tastes sweeter and not the like you know richness.
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+[59:35] But again, everybody has their that's why food's so great. Alright, Joe's gonna cut me off soon. I have one more question. Uh the wheat that you grow on the farm is a soft, is a soft, uh red. Is it soft red winter or soft red spring?
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+[59:48] Both. How's a soft red spring? I've never used soft red spring. Uh I I'll send you some. I mean, it's great.
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+[59:55] I we use it mostly for pasta. Um, things like that. I know there's a whole fresh pasta thing on the show, but uh yeah, I but you can do the winter because you have the snow. So you're not gonna get blasted like they would in the Dakotas or something like that. So anyway, uh it's been a pleasure having you on, uh, Abra.
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+[1:00:12] Come back anytime. Uh are you gonna do a fourth or is three is a magic number? I uh I don't know. Yeah, three. It's uh everything's better and not numbers.
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+[1:00:20] It's just like plating, so it has to be three or five, and I don't know if I'm up. Five is a lot of things. What are you gonna do what are you gonna fill up a whole bookshelf? Fine. Anyway, it's a beautiful book.
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+[1:00:27] Take a look at it, uh, buy it, uh, and like I say, come back anytime. Thank you. Thanks for having me and thanks for the time. I appreciate it. Cooking issues.
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