[0:00] This episode of cooking issues has been proudly brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods Market reminds you that every bite has a story, so whether it's a tomato, a muffin, or a

[0:08] T-bone steak, your conscious food choices can change the planet. Because at Whole Foods Market, every single purchase you make helps us support things like animal welfare, organic agriculture, equitable

[0:19] trade, and energy offsets. Let's think before we eat. Let's retake our plates.

[0:29] Vicious fish vodka. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where. Hello, welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, the host of Cooking Issues, coming to you on the Heritage Radio Network. I am not in the studio today. We're coming live to you from London Heathrow Airport as Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez and I are waiting to fly back to New York City, but we're still here live to take all of your cooking related

[1:05] questions. Uh, call in to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Now, unfortunately, Nastasia is sitting next to me and we can't have 2 of our cell phones calling it at once. So she's going to have to just make comments next to me from the from the peanut gallery, but we're going to try to do the best we can. Actually, Nastasia and I, we're both over here doing a demonstration, uh, for uh, a rotary evaporation here in London, which is interesting. We had to hang out with our other good rotary evaporation friend, Tony Congigaro, uh, and uh, it was a good time, right? Yeah. So, uh, we have some email questions, thankfully. I'll just say about the call number, calling your questions to 718-497-2128 that's 718-497-2128. Uh, so, uh, Marvwood House from Belfast UK writes in. I'm hoping to get an ISI cream whipper for Christmas. Can the same use CO2 and N2O cartridges? I would like to use the same unit for infusion and for carbonation. Okay, so 1st of all, what we're talking about is the uh, the, you know, the things that you buy to make whipped cream. They're made by ISI, which is a company out of Austria. Uh, anyway. So they have the ones that are made for soda water, which are, you know, the soda sizons, and they have the ones that are meant for whipped cream, right? And the main difference between those two. is the soda ones have uh, a, uh, like a tube. 1st of all, the neck is much smaller. And they have a tube that goes down to the bottom of them so that when you press the little lever to dispense it, the liquid is forced through the tube and out of the

[2:35] nozzle, just like, you know, in the 3 stooges, everyone gets sprayed in the face of seltzer, that kind of thing,

[2:40] right? Uh, but they both take the exact same cartridges. So you can put, uh, N2O, the whipped cream car shoes into an, into a CO2 machine, and you can put, uh, you can put, and vice versa, they, they, they both work. Now, I would definitely recommend getting the cream whipper rather than the, uh, rather than the seltzer one. The seltzer one has a much smaller neck, so you can't put a lot of things into it as easily as you can into a whipped cream one and you can actually carbonate. I mean it's not my favorite to carbonate, but you can carbonate with the whipped cream uh with the whipped cream thing. The trick is, um, you know, you you have to just vent off the excess CO2, open it, and pour it all out. You can't dispense it like the Sweet Stooges movie. You have to actually vent it and then pour pour all the carbonated liquid out. Usually you're carbonating with a whipped cream maker, though. What you want to make do is put some, put some ice in, so it's very, very cold. Make sure everything's extremely extremely cold and it's probably going to take 2 chargers. You're going to want to shake. you gonna want to, and this is in a regular whipped cream maker. You're going to want to put your 1st CO2 cartridge in, shake it up a bit, and invent it out. Now you're getting rid of all the air and everything in there, that air is what's kind of, the air is your main enemy in carbonation. So one of the main problems that have the carbonating in those bottles is that you can't get all the air out of the headspace. So basically, that 1st charger is really venting all of the air out of the headspace, uh, and

[3:53] also, uh, getting rid of a lot of the stuff that's going to make it foam. And the 2nd charger you put on, the 2nd CO2 charger is what's really going to get it nice and fizzy.

[4:02] Then you put your 2nd charger in, shake it, and let it stand for a couple of minutes for the bubbles to settle down, slow, slowly,

[4:08] slowly vent it, unscrew it, and pour it out, and you should have a delicious carbonated

[4:12] product, even in your whipped cream whippers. So that is a, I would definitely go uh, mar for the uh, whipped cream maker and not the CO2. Uh, anyway. Okay. So, we have a 2nd question from Melissa, uh,

[4:28] Melissa actually, uh, graduated from uh, Stanford, you know, for those of you out there, Nastasia is a Stanford graduate. the same year as Nastasia, uh, and so, uh, they have, I guess, some sort of uh, kindred kindred spirit, uh, but she has a couple of questions. One relating to mangoes. Um, both, uh, she and her fiance are, uh, huge mango fans. She grew up in Malaysia, I guess, which is, you know, well, some good mangoes in Malaysia. I've never gotten to go to Malaysia, but I hear they have some good food over there. So we'll assume they were good. So they, they, you know, eat them by the, by the boat load. Everyone loves the mangoes. and then all of a sudden, about 6 years ago, her fiancé develops this allergy with

[5:05] mangoes, right? And, uh, and actually I feel, you know, I feel for this as well because uh, I was allergic to nothing growing up. And then all of a

[5:11] sudden when I became about 30, 31 years old, I developed a, uh, analogy to

[5:17] cherries. Now they, my throat closes up and I have to go to the hospital and all this, it's a nightmare. So my wife doesn't let me have anymore cherries, even though they're actually my favorite fruit. I guess, you know, I was being punished for always making fun of other people's allergies. So because I always make fun of other people's allergies. You know, someone said, hey, how about you become allergic to your favorite fruit? Anyway, um, and interestingly, uh, he became allergic after sitting down and consuming an entire box of mangoes in one

[5:41] sitting. This guy sounds like you, you know, kind of like me a little bit. The way I did it with cherries is, well, 1st I had had a preposterous number of lobsters at

[5:49] the summer party, and then, you know, I bought a giant bag of cherries to kind of wash down the lobsters, and of course, I ate the whole bag by myself, and I ended up in the

[5:57] hospital. So I guess there is something, you know, too much of a good thing. Uh, and so her question is, is there any way to neutralize the

[6:04] toxin and mangoes, to make them edible for someone who's allergic to them without compromising the integrity of their flavor or texture, uh, either through some physical cooking method or by adding some kind of neutralizing.

[6:14] Say, look, the answer is, it depends. There's basically 2 different ways that you can be allergic to mangoes. Right? Uh, the 1st uh, way, and this is the way I hope it is. for him, that you can be allergic to mangoes, is you can be allergic to, uh, uh, a chemical, uh,

[6:29] which I can never get the name right, but it's like, your, your, which

[6:33] is basically, it's very similar to the, or he has a chemical that's in poison ivy, and there's a little bit of that chemical in the out, in the mango

[6:40] skin and in the sap, right? So, and then you're going to get like a contact, like you're going to get a rash, basically a dermatitis from touching it, well, just like you would get from poison ivy. The good news is, if you, if you wear gloves, and you peel the mango relatively thickly, and don't let the peel get back onto the fruit after you cut it, the people who are allergic to that, to, uh,

[6:58] the urushio, have you pronounce it? Like, those, those people can, um, can have mango.

[7:04] okay? Now, um, there are people, though, who are legitimately allergic to the mangoes, uh, themselves, right? And that's closer to the allergy I have with, uh, with cherries. And most fruit allergies, basically, have, uh, uh, to do with proteins that are on, uh, that are on the fruit, in the fruit, and, and

[7:21] somehow, they seem to be some research I've done related to, um, actually pollen allergies. And unfortunately, uh, there's no way to uh, get rid of those in a raw fruit. Now, certain of these proteins are destroyed by cooking. So, like theoretically with me, I could eat cooked cherries, but unfortunately, I never really liked cooked cherry products. I just like watch areas and I don't feel like experimenting with it and I

[7:43] ended up in the hospital and having my wife like, you know, call me an idiot for for experimenting with cherries and going to the hospital, but it is theoretically possible that, um,

[7:51] that you can cook it and have the allergy go away. Now all this is assuming that it's not like an anaphylactic, like, uh, I mean, I go to the hospital when I eat these things because my throat closes up and I sound like that's eat

[8:01] ducked because, you know, I can't breathe anymore, and you end up in the hospital, but it's not really a full on anaphylactic reaction,

[8:07] like my body doesn't shut down. It's just my throat closes up because of the contact with the stuff in my throat. So if it is that, um, you know, you have 2 basic things you have to figure out, what, you know, what are you allergic

[8:17] to? Uh, is the actual mango? Uh, or is it just this chemical in the skin, and then it does cooking make it go away? I'm not specifically with mango, but it have a good shot, but there's nothing you're going to be able to do that's going to make, uh, if it is the mango itself, to make a raw mango, uh, you know, not, uh, not cause a

[8:36] reaction. Unfortunately, you know, cause, uh, I'm sure, you know, raw mango and a cooked mango, they are not the same thing. Um, So Melissa also asks, uh, whether she knows that uh, Nastasia's worked with Cesare Casello, one of

[8:50] our, one of our good friends, uh, Italian chefs from Tuscany.

[8:53] He's, uh, used to be the, uh, the salt, he, he's a sultan of Salumi

[8:58] now and he was, what, the uh, Wizard of Beans or something like that. The empresario of beans. I mean, he has like these Tuscan beans. He has this, he has salumi. he runs the Salamariosi, and, um, you know, up in the uh, upper west side of New York, uh, all

[9:10] around good guy, and we like him, and so, um, Melissa was wondering whether Nastasia had any

[9:14] recommendations, because she's setting up a tour to Italy, uh, and you're, uh, lucky that, uh, Cesare is just started, uh, a culinary tours company of Italy where he takes people from the USA to

[9:24] visit, and uh, taste and visit, not only just restaurants, but shops and vendors. And if I know Cesare and I do, you know, it's going to be an interesting tour. I mean, the man knows your suppliers over there. And he knows, uh, you know, he knows food, and he definitely knows, uh,

[9:40] Tuscany like that, like the back of his hand. And, uh, I don't have his website here, but it's Cesare Casella,

[9:45] and or you can, you guys who are, you know, write questions into the, to the radio

[9:49] show can just write uh, Nastasia, if you're interested in contact info for that. Um, okay. Hey, Dave, we have a caller, Dave. Oh, we have a caller? Oh, call her, you're on the air. Oh? Hi. How you doing? Um, I just had a quick question, uh, and I'm going to make it super short because I'm actually in class as we speak, but, uh, I had a question about making bitters. Okay. Hello? Hello? Hey, what's your question? Bidders. Um, I was just curious about the process of making it, uh, in your home like, uh, where could you find information on it? Um, and like, where to start really? Right. So if you troll the, uh, if you troll, uh, kind of bartenders forums and probably on, on, uh, ego, there's a load of information on

[10:43] bidders. Another excellent source is some of the old bitters recipes are in the old kind of alcohol handbooks that are available on Google books, like the old stuff in the

[10:53] 1800s, like they're... Yeah. And, and you can get a lot of those, uh, yeah. I was just going to say, is it better to start with uh overproof alcohol, like

[11:04] a spiritus or an everclear or is it better to use something flavorful or really does it depend on the profile you're looking for?

[11:10] It depends on the profile you're looking for, but most often people start with an overproof

[11:14] product and they get, you know, a faster and probably a more complete result with that and then you can water it down when you're done, but most people are starting with an overproof product. Um, you know, one thing I, you know, I will say that's interesting. A lot of people ask because, you know, we have a lot of new techniques for infusion, and, uh, you know, I don't, like if you use it, one of the newer techniques, I don't think you're going to get the same result as you would get with the older technique, like I

[11:34] say, not better, not worse, just different. So I would definitely look into the, you know, into some of the older, some of the older

[11:40] recipes, if you're trying to achieve an authentic order result. I mean, I know John Darragon was one of the 1st people to make avid bidders, but I think Abbott's is now maybe commercially available. I don't know if it's a, maybe the better truth has it or not. Also, cocktail, uh, cocktail, kingdom, grape balms, uh, website. He has a lot of information on fitters because he has a lot of the old recipe books, but it's very simple to do. It just takes time and sourcing of the herbs, and if you're in New York, there's a couple places downtown that have like very good herb selections or else online, I don't have the website off the top of my head, where to go, but most of that, most everything's available. Okay, great. I'm actually uh in New York, so I guess most stuff is readily available. Um, and really, they say that. The slow time is the best way to do it. There's really no way to push it. Well, it's not the only way, but if you want the actual specific flavors that you would get from those uh older, older ways of doing it, then I would do it that way. I mean, I haven't experimented so much with straight, like, actual, like, uh, using a similar recipe, for instance, to like an

[12:39] Angostura or an Abbott's or a pay show, to try and get a fast result using one of my new techniques. The new techniques would, I'm sure, make a great result, but they would be different. In other words, I just don't think it's a matter of better or worse. I think it's just different than what you're shooting at. If you're trying to recreate an old recipe, then I would do it the old way. If you're just interested in your own flavors, then by, you know, by all needs,

[12:58] use you one of the newer techniques and see whether you come up with something that you like better. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. Uh, thank you so much. No problem. Good luck with it. Tell us what happens. All right. Uh, so, let's see what we have going on here. I have another question. Someone asks, Colin. Uh, do you know what is in a Faran Adrian's product fizzy from his textures line? Now, uh, Front Adria, you know, the famous chef from Aboli, has a whole line of products called Texturus, which are kind of new ingredients, they're unfortunately called molecular gastronomy, ingredients, uh, you know, by people, because they, they're, you know, a lot of the ingredients that are, you know, labeled by, uh, reporters and whatnot as, like, astronomy, even though anyone that knows me

[13:43] knows, I did test that term, Front Adria, to test that term, uh, has some movement

[13:47] thought to test that term, Harold McGee, to test that term, while they claim to test that term. Uh, pretty sure Grant gets to catch that term. Uh, I can't, uh, he's very hard to find someone who likes the term like gastronomy who, who, you know, speaks English. Um, but that said, um, that's often how they're labeled. So Fizzy is one of these products he has. He sells them methosoline. He sells uh, he sells uh, analogenate, he sells all this stuff. But fizzy is one that's supposed to be a carbonation, uh, kind of thing, fizzy,

[14:16] but and it's a solid. Now, unfortunately, I haven't actually used it. So, uh, the question is, is there's 2 basic ways that it could, could be. since I haven't used it. I can't say what it is, but there's 2 basic things that could happen. One, it can be similar to a pop rocks and pop rocks, uh, the way you make pop rocks is you take sugar, and you heat it till it's molten, till it's molten sugar, and then you put very high pressure on it, like 8000, uh, sorry, 800 to a 1000

[14:42] PSI, uh, that's passed per square inch, uh, of carbon dioxide into it, and basically infuse the, the CO2 at that very high pressure.

[14:50] You then allow it to set into a block, you release it, at which point the candy explodes,

[14:55] leaving with these little rocks, the inside of the rocks are high pressure or carbon dioxide. When you put it in your mouth, you melt the candy and pop that high pressure carbon dioxide comes out and hits your tongue. And that's why pop rocks is so much sharper in taste than, um, than a normal seltzer, because it's actually, you know, quite a high concentration pressure of CO2 there. anyway, that's pop rocks. So, and you can buy neutral pop rocks. There's a company in um, in America called Chef Rubber, that sells them, and there's a bunch of people who make kind of blank pop rocks, and then you can just mix them into things. Now, the other way to get a fizzy effect is by using an acid and base reaction. This is similar to how kind of alcohol also works or something like that. So, when you're doing that, what you're doing is you, you know, the classic one, you could mix, uh, like when you make a kid, when you're doing a, a, a, a volcano, when

[15:42] you see a science project, you mix baking soda, which is a base, and vinegar, which is an acid, and it'll foam up, you, you're supposed to color

[15:48] it red, of course, so it looks like a volcano. You, you add the vinegar, which foams all over everything, right? This classic acid base. But you can also use that to make things fizzy in your mouth. And so you can use citric acid, and then you could use a, you know, you could use a base like baking soda. You could use a more neutral base, and you, you arrange them such that they neutralize each other so you don't have a residual base of acid.

[16:09] Uh, so it's possible that they're taking an acid in a base, and then mixing them into uh, sugar, uh, syrup solution, and then turning it into granules, and then you eat it, and

[16:19] it, and it comes fish in your mouth. So I'm not exactly sure what the, what the fizzy is, but it could

[16:23] be, uh, either, one of those things. It's probably an acid base because a lot of the recipes were fizzy have you grinding them up to use them and that wouldn't work with uh pop rocks. Um, but, uh, I, unfortunately, I'm not sure, someone has to send me a container of it and I'll play around and report back. So, uh, we'll get a commercial break and we'll come back or not commercial break or music break, I

[16:45] guess, but please call on your questions to 718-497-2128 and 718-4972128 cooking issues live for Heathrow.

[16:53] I call your name. people to know you're in, yeah. How you feel, fella? Yeah, yeah. You're getting down. Look at him. We're gonna have a bump, good time. We're gonna have a fun good time. We're gonna have a fun, good time. We're gonna have a bump, good time. Now take 'em up, Fred. Gotta take your high. All right. You want to do it again. You wanna do it again, huh? Yeah, that's going, man. You got to take your hide.

[17:43] Brother? Now I want everybody. Let bread blow up by 2 courses. And then I want to wave in, I'm going through that again now, all right? Welcome back to Cooking Issues, Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues, calling all your cooking related questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Now before I come back to answering any questions. Uh, you know, tell you guys a little bit of what we've been doing for the past week, uh, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, uh, and

[18:15] so I apologize a little bit for the fact that we haven't had a lot of posts going up on the bug. Uh, part of the reason is, is, you know, uh, Nasage and I were trapped in a lot of traps. London's a great place, but we were in London and the hotel had no free Wi-Fi. Sorry, no Wi-Fi at all. The internet was completely broken, so we had basically no internet access to the

[18:34] past, uh, 3 days and it's kind of weird to think how your life changes these days. I mean, you know, they didn't even have the internet when I was in college and uh, you know, not much of an internet and now, you know, I'm

[18:43] complained when I don't have it for for 3 days. So anyway, so, uh, since we last spoke, uh, uh, at on cookie issues, I've been to

[18:51] Kentucky, and I went to a bunch of distilleries in Kentucky, and then, uh, we just went to London, but it's been kind of an amazing week, so I think I'll just talk a little bit about that. I usually talk about kind of where I've gone and what I'm doing, but Might as well, since some of it's, uh, pretty interesting. So, uh, in, in, uh, in London, I visited uh, Natasha and I visited the Brodale collection. Now, the Brogdale collection is the largest collection of fruit in the world. It's in Kent, which is about an hour outside of London by

[19:23] train, and it is like, it is Nirvana. It is, like, you know, if I had to pick the closest place to, you know, heaven on

[19:31] earth in terms of temperate, you know, temperate climate fruits. This is it. It's crazy. Now, you, 1st of all, uh, everyone there, which is 3 people, apologize that, you know, that we went on a Monday because there was no one there. And remember, this

[19:46] is, now it's prime apple season, and Nastasia and I went there for the apples because I visited with Harold McKee. Uh, I had visited, uh, you know, about 4 years ago, 34 years ago, the, uh, the

[19:56] Geneva, New York Apple extension, which is the largest single Apple collection of apples in the

[20:00] world, and it was a life changing experience. It was amazing. You know, I got preposterously fake off of apples over the course of 2 days with McGee wandering through the trees and just eating and spitting,

[20:09] eating and spitting, eating, getting, you know, you know, we became our own cider presses. Anyway, so at that time, I also decided I wanted to go to the Brogale, which is the English collection. Now, the English and the, and the Americans, we kind of had a, you know, like a friendly rivalry back in the 1800s up to the early, early 1900s of kind of who could blow the best apples, you know, who could, who, who had the, because it was kind of a, you know,

[20:32] a Victorian area, a Victorian era, a lot of people were developing new fruit varieties. It was really kind of an important thing to do, and it was really kind of the golden era of fruit. And this is when, you know, the 1000s and 1000s of varieties really, you know, became available. And so I really wanted to come over to England, where I am right now. And, um,

[20:50] taste some of these English varieties in their native setting and just basically see how the Brogdale, uh, you know, works. So anyway, so Nastasia and I show up on a Monday. The place is deserted. We saw not one soul, not one soul the entire, we were there for 5 hours eating fruit, and we saw not, not one person, a tour bus showed

[21:11] up. It took like 3 pictures of the outside of the orchard. It got back on a tour bus and they walked away. I mean, those guys, these guys missed out on the biggest, the coolest thing they possibly could have gone to because it's

[21:20] not, turns out it's not just apples. Like for me, the apples ended up being a side light because I've already tasted a pajillion Jillian apples at

[21:27] the, at, you know, the Geneva Apple extension in, uh, upstate New York. And by the way, you know, New York apples are some of the finest apples in the whole world, not toot our horns, but, you know, toot toot. Um, so, you know, we go there and apples aren't the 1st thing you come to, pairs are. And, you know, I've never been such a huge pair person, but I go in there and uh, they have something like 400, 500 varieties of pair, uh, a lot of which are still on the tree. It's actually past prime picking time for the pairs, but on the tree, they're still fine because it's prime eating time for the pairs. Uh, and Nastasia and I tried, maybe, oh, I don't know, maybe uh, uh, 200 varieties of pairs, uh, most of which, you know, at the end, we were just, we would split the rows in

[22:08] half, and Nastasia would take the right half. I would take the left half, and we would just eat them, and if they were interesting, we would tell each other, uh, about it, but, and we'll post on

[22:16] it soon on the blog, but, uh, suffice it to say, that there is a lot more to know about pairs than you have ever known if all you've had is a supermarket pair.

[22:25] The range of flavors and textures and pairs is astonishing, not surprising,

[22:32] astonishing. We had pears that tasted like rose water. We had, uh, we had a whole variety of pairs. I didn't even learn about, which are pairs that are only cooking pairs. So they never get soft. You can actually, these are pairs that can actually be stored a long, long time over winter and be used into spring and they're hard, like rocks and they need to be cooked. They don't develop their flavor, or their proper texture until they're cooked until they're cooked. But, you know, unlike cooking apples, which are, you know, have similar characteristics, but are basically just tart, like these ones are, you know, useless, uh, until

[23:05] they're uh, until they're cooked. And we, we tried a couple. Unfortunately, I can't bring me back to the states to uh, cook them to see what happens, but, you know, in case of

[23:12] Rasrah. Uh, we have uh, just an infinite variety of textures and aromas. And so when you read, the old books on uh, pomology, which is the fruit study, you know, usually these temperate fruits like apples and pears and stone

[23:26] fruits. You'll, uh, you know, you'll, you'll hear people say how awesome pairs are, but you're sitting there as a modern person, be

[23:31] like pairs, who cares about pair, pair? Fine. I like a pair, but what's the big deal? Uh, and then you really get into it and you see what the huge,

[23:39] huge differences are. And all of a sudden, all the old recipes, like, you know, the medieval recipes for cooked pears, like charred wardens, famous

[23:46] one, like, these ones all make kind of more sense, and you kind of want to try them with the actual,

[23:51] the actual pair now, and, and, you know, 4 or 5 years ago, when I became infatuated with the idea of all these apples and flavors that we've lost.

[23:58] I didn't even consider the pair and now I'm just as hyped on pairs as I am on apples. Uh, but that's not all this farm has. I mean, this farm is acres and acres where they basically let you roam free. They have signs to say, don't walk off the path and go into the orchards, but I mean, come on. that's just there, I think, for liability reasons, because they have huge rabbit holes. By the way, did I mention this place is full of game. There's game everywhere. There's rabbits. There was like pheasants. There was, like, if you, like, were allowed to just go on that

[24:27] land, and like with a shotgun, and still, you would never have to leave, because they have all the game, all the fruit, you could

[24:34] distill, I mean, it's just, it's crazy. Anyway, so, uh, they have a huge plum orchard with, uh, several 100 varieties of plum. Unfortunately, as I said earlier in the program, I'm allergic to cherries, but you know, maybe nastasia can go back during cherry season because they have 100s of varieties of

[24:48] cherry, and they specialize mainly in sweet cherries. Kent is interesting as a group. They specialize mainly not in in cider apples, but they have cider apples, but they specialize mainly in in non-insider apple cider apples or apples that are are Teutanic to use by themselves. They're very good for uh, for cider, and can't, uh, local ciders are actually made with uh, sweeter, sweet apples, sweet apples and cooking apples, not with panic cider apples. It's the west country uh, ciders in the UK that are famous for their very, very tanic apples, smaller tanic apples that they use in their cider. So Kentish cider actually traditionally uses. So a lot of people in this country, well, in this country right now, but where I live in the US, they think that you're copying

[25:24] out, if you're using non-sided varieties for, uh, your site, but it turns out it's actually fictional in certain places

[25:29] they can, to use non-sided varieties, um, of apples. So these, but these guys have cider varieties, sweet varieties, they also have a huge nut for us with like a 1000000000 different kinds of

[25:38] hazelnut. I mean, the place is nuts. I mean, I wish I could have Spent, the fashion I have a huge cash intentional problems as a result of being there because, uh, you know, we tried, uh, you know, like I said, you know, uh, at

[25:54] least, uh, one or 200 varieties of pair, uh, you know, bazillion apples. Uh, we had some plums, even though they were well past prime, and don't bother with a plum, a plum past prime is, uh, is, is, is no fun. Uh, and then we went back to their little cider shop and trank fighters, but, uh, if you were in, in England, you know, skip the

[26:13] Tower of London, skip anything, and go get on a train, go to Faversham, which is the little town where it is, and

[26:19] I go to the Brogdale, and, uh, go there in fruit season, and have one of the most miraculous fruit

[26:25] experiences you are, uh, ever going to have in your entire life. A completely uh, uh, operation there. Hey Dave, we have a caller. Hello, is that you, Jen? We have a caller? Hey, Carl, you're on the air. Great. My name's Corbin. I'm from San Diego. And I had a question about reproducing a barbecue pulled pork using sous vide. There are a couple things I like about barbecue pulled pork. One is the smoky flavor. The other is like the, uh, a nice crust, uh, bark that you get on the outside, and I know sous vide is a good way to control the temperature and make it nice and tender, but how can I get the smoke and the bark after or before using sous

[27:07] vide? Yeah, it's tough. There's a couple problems. One, when you use to feed, at least with uh the lower temperatures that are associated with sous vide, you're not going to get the same texture. So if you, I don't know if you've done it before, but when you do like a short rib, when you're cooking sous vide, um, you'll notice that the connective tissue gets soft, but it doesn't render out, right? So the fibers never get kind of stringy the way that they get in a traditional, uh, in a traditional braise. So nutritional braise or a barbecue, the, the connected tissue is going to melt out and the fibers

[27:39] in the meat are going to, basically going to be lubricated by that connective tissue. That's why the meat without connected tissue, never good done barbecue, right? So when you're doing it in the sous vide, the stuff turns soft, but it doesn't render out. And that's why one of the interesting things about sous vide, like short rib, for instance, is that you can slice it, unlike normal thing, which is going to break apart because the fibers are totally broken apart.

[28:00] So the texture is, um, a little bit, a little bit, um, and so it's not, I'm

[28:07] thinking, a pull the same way that, uh, texture wise, that, uh, that, uh, normal barbecue, uh, I don't know what you're making. pork, right? Pulled pork is going to work. The other thing is, is that you, that, that, the outside crust, I mean, you, but

[28:19] you, one way you could do it, I mean, the smoke is gonna be tough. You need smoke, right? And I'm assuming that, you know, there are some high quality smoke applications that you can put on, uh, or you could do a cold smoke kind of situation, but it doesn't taste quite the same, like something that's smoked, doesn't taste the same as something that has the smoke flavor from barbecuing

[28:39] it from being bar, you know, from being made into barbecue. They don't, to me, they don't taste quite the same, although I don't know the chemistry of why that's the case, but um, you, you could apply a smoke. There are some very high quality smoke, products that tastes a whole hell of a lot better than liquid smoke, but still, people don't like to do it, because you're basically applying a smoke

[28:56] flavor to something rather than smoking it naturally, um, but you could, you could like cold smoke,

[29:02] or uh, even uh, hot smoke after the sous vide step, or after the low temp step, but you're still gonna need, if you want that, that, that surface on the outside, you're gonna need to apply some dry heat to it to actually get some of the moisture out of it.

[29:15] Now, you can apply that with a higher, uh, higher temperature than you would doing when you're making normal

[29:21] barbecue, and that would allow you to keep the inside still, um, you know, have the advantage

[29:25] of the low tap. But, uh, you know, having the outside dry out a little bit, but it's going to be totally different because then,

[29:31] uh, to obtain that same surface that you would get. You want to have a kind of a, the browning happened for a long time over a low temp, and it's not going to provide the same

[29:39] result, because in order to keep the low temperature result on the inside, you're going to need to put it like in a 500 degree, uh, like grill or oven or something, not to really get the outside, you know, to crisp up on you and

[29:50] and get it to firm up without overdoing the inside, but it's not going to be exactly the same result.

[29:54] It would still be delicious. Right? But I don't think it's gonna be the same result. Is that that makes sense or no? Yeah, yeah. So, I might get a different product, but I could still, uh, get something that's delicious and, um, maybe approximates barbecue. Yeah, that's not. Yeah, it's gonna be totally different, but yeah, low temp cook, and you can, you can either put something smoking in the bag, or you can smoke it a little bit afterwards, or get a real,

[30:21] like put some chips or something to make your grill real smoky. Get your grill hot as hell, put it in there, you know, not touching the fire, maybe, but like a, away from the hot as hell, and then crisp up the

[30:31] outside and uh, and get some smoke flavor in it that way, and you can make a delicious product, but I don't think it's going to be the same

[30:37] as, like, regular barbecue. Delicious but different. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, so I called a couple weeks ago and I had some questions about. I bought a used lab circulator, so I'm gonna, try it out. I got some good advice last time, and I think I got some good advice this time, so I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah, let us know how it goes and hopefully it works out for you. I think it will. Great. thank you. All right. Thanks. All right we gonna go to our 2nd commercial break. uh calling your questions to 718 uh 4972128 that's 718-4972128 cooking issues live from Heathrow

[31:14] Airport.

[31:26] Give up the name of all the men! You know what? When I hear a groove like this, boo. Oh, hey, I got to get high. Yeah, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Like way of young, man. It's bad. Look at you. Someone got a groove like this. You know? You know? No, I need the grip, got, grip, got, grip, got. Welcome back to Cooking Issues, is Dave Arnold. I was such an issues, calling your questions too. 718-497-2128, that's 718-497-2128, uh, on the

[32:25] Here's Radio Network coming to you live today from Hugo Airport in London, where Nastasia, the Hammer and I are waiting to get back to New York City.

[32:32] So we have a couple of more questions here. Uh, one is, uh, Colin writes in and he's interested in buying quinine sulfate, uh, and he says he's having some problems getting quinine sulfate. Now quinine, uh, is the product in tonic water that gives it its characteristic bitterness. It's also what is a, I mean, the reason it was there originally is quinine, which comes from a bark, by the way, uh,

[32:58] Kinchona, I think is how it's pronounced, so I can never remember, uh, this, this quinine is an anti-malarial, right? Which is why, uh, you know, you take it if you're going to go to India, it's your British, your British officer in the, uh, 1800s. you know, want to get a malaria, you you drink your quinine. They eventually, you know, made this tonic out of it, and they mix it with gin, and there you have it. Now, uh, the amount of quinine in,

[33:22] in quinine also has other cool properties like it, it's, uh, it's, uh, phosphorescent. So in clubs, if you go to a club and a black light hits it, it lights up. It's kind of cool anyway. So, uh, quinine is in the tonic water, although that is the characteristic flavor, the bitterness flavor of it.

[33:37] Quinine is not there in enough of a quantity to stop you from getting malaria. So if you, you know, don't think you're going to, you know, cheer your malaria with tonic water, right? In fact, uh, the doses that you need for uh, for, for medicinal reasons are much higher. I think at least 2 times higher. Um, the, in the, in the way that we normally put it into a drink is by using a, a derivative assault of quinine sulfate, right? And you can buy this stuff, but you have to be incredibly careful when you buy

[34:05] it, because, uh, an overdose of quinine is, you know, a bad thing, it causes

[34:10] disease known as chinkatism. It's no good. You have to be careful, uh, until recently you could just go in and buy it, uh, at a pharmacy because people will take it for leg cramps, but now it's considered a prescription medication. So there's 2 ways you can do it. You can get a doctor friend to write you prescription for quinine, uh, for, you know, because you say, oh, I have terrible leg clamps, and then they'll prescribe you some quinine. You can get quinine and do it that way. Or, I mean, I don't, I don't, that may or may not be fraud, in which case I don't recommend it. Uh, but the, uh, you know, the other way is you go to a lab supply house and you buy, uh, quinine sulfate, uh, and you have to buy the UFP grade, which is basically a

[34:46] pharmaceutical, uh, uh, considered okay for consumption, and you buy a, uh, you know, you buy a little, little

[34:54] violet. The stuff I bought. I bought from a company called Spectrum Chemical, and I bought their USP grade of quinine sulfate, and

[35:01] you have to be extremely careful with it. Quinine sulfate. You're gonna want to be using on the order of, well, the legal limit for tonic water is less than 83 parts per

[35:10] 1000000, which is way more bitter than you actually want it to be. So you want the best way to use uh quinines. First of all, don't let other people handle it. You know, you know, keep it safe so people don't just, you know, use it like they

[35:22] would, sugar, creamer, ass or something like that. And then, um, make a solution of, uh, quinine in water or in alcohol is actually better that you keep there and then make, use it as kind of a bittering

[35:34] agent. But you gotta, you want to be careful not just for a safety reason, but also quinine can become, uh, it'll go from being not bitter enough to being very much

[35:43] 2 bitter, extremely bitter, uh, with very small additions, because the taste, at least in my mind, seems to be cumulative. So, you know, a little bit of tonic water, a little bit of quinine, okay, a little

[35:53] more okay, a little more, you know, okay. And another, the next shot and you're like, boom, it's, it's ruined. too bitter. Um, so, uh, I would just say uh, you know, be careful with it, but you can get it. It's not cheap. I paid $80 for, you know, a little vial of it, uh, but that vial is

[36:09] lasting me years because it takes such a small amount of the quinine to, uh,

[36:13] to, to bitter up your, your tonic water. And then, of course, you, you know, the, for the rest of your quinine work for your tonic, you're either going to want to use an acid mix, which, which lime acid to, to mimic the flavor of limes, which I recommend would be, uh, 2 parts of citric acid, which is the, um, which is the

[36:29] acid, and lemons, one part malic acid, which is the acid from limes, and then a pinch of 6

[36:34] inch. That's acidic is really going to give you the characteristic authentic lime taste. Uh, and that one you can only get from chemical supply house is like spectrum again, is where I got mine, USP. But you can do a fairly good, but don't you, again, be careful with that one because it's really nasty if you add too much. But, um, the citric of

[36:50] now like acid you can get from a home brew supply shop. It's a really good way to do it. Otherwise, you just make your tonic water with a clarified lime juice, uh, which, you know, we have uh, on our blogs, go to cookingissues.com and look

[37:01] up uh, clarification, we have a way to clarify lime juice, and you can make a tonic water with that, and that is delicious carbonated with uh,

[37:08] gin. Uh, Colin also asks, um, about, uh, he just got a big block of Pete, uh, and he's, you know,

[37:16] Pete, as, you know, most of you might know. Uh, they uh, roast uh, mals with uh, peat when they're gonna

[37:21] do uh, you know, scotch is more or less peaty, depending on which scotch is. Uh, and it's that you add the characteristic flavor, so he wants to use Pete, maybe uh, distill Pete or get uh, some essential oils out of it. Um, but my impression is that you don't want to use the peat directly and that the peat is good for making peat flavor when it's being earned. So I would, uh, I would definitely, I would definitely use the

[37:45] peat. Uh, you can smoke something with uh, peat, throw some peat on the, on the grill and

[37:49] then, uh, and then let the flavor transfer over to your food from, from

[37:53] roasting, uh, from, uh, you know, using the peat to, to burn it. I've never actually used it, but it's something I would definitely definitely love to do. I'm kind of like secretly fascinated with Pete and also with uh bog mummies. I'm a, I'm a, maybe with like, you know, the bogs, you know, where, like, peas, go, you cut pee, bog, and there's very acidic conditions, because you're breaking down stagnum moss in there, and it releases chemicals and acidity down there, that basically, you know, it well, can, uh, you know, so hearing beings, back in the days, you know, drew the days and whatnot, that, you know, you would have these people who, one reason, another human sacrifice, execution, whatever,

[38:31] killed, thrown to be bogs, and they're preserved for 1000s of years very well. Um, so I'm kind of have a secret fascination. I guess not so secret anymore with uh bog bodies. But another interesting thing about bogs, that, uh, that I'm fascinated with, this idea of bog, butter. So you'll have these strange fat deposits in bogs called bog butter. And then I believe, although I can't verify this, if some people would actually put

[38:52] fat into bogs to preserve them, and then you could use them like a long, long, long,

[38:57] long, long time there. I always find some ancient stash of odd butter, and then, um, and then cook with it, but, you know, uh, I don't think that's, uh, that's going to happen. But speaking of things that I've always wanted to have happen and just did happen, is that, you know, in in the US, it's very difficult to get game birds to eat unless you are a

[39:20] hunter because you cannot hunt meat in this commercially in the United States.

[39:24] So, uh, so anyway, so it's very difficult to get birds like woodcock, we have to get it shipped from Scotland, you cross an arm and leg, uh, grouse, uh,

[39:33] does I say grouse? No, yeah, grouse, woodcock, teal, which is kind of like a tiny duck, widgeon, which is kind of another kind of small duck, uh, knife, all these birds, these great

[39:42] birds that, you know, I've read about my whole life, these great game birds, and I've never had them before, and went, uh, 2 nights in a row to a restaurant here in London called Hicks, and the 1st night they had grouse on the menu, which

[39:53] I'd instantly ordered. I got the last one, I almost had to beat the crap out of someone else so that I could make sure that I got this l- last grouse because I wasn't going to leave London without having it. And then by chance, it was delicious, by the way, like game being, uh, the unlike any other bird I had ever had, everyone says, you know, well, grouse is just different, like,

[40:11] well, that, it is, you know what I mean? Uh, and the menu says, you know, make and change shot if you needed whatnot. And the next day, we went back. Um, randomly, and the person apologized for, you know, make us go to the same restaurant twice in a row, but their menu is almost completely changed, and I just, I know, I must say, a really good menu change, and they had a game feast,

[40:29] a game bird feast, with woodcock, teal, widgeon, and snipe, and

[40:34] I, uh, I just went, I went I went crazy, 1st of all, woodcock, you know, the, you know, the, what they say about woodcock, and it's one of these things with a really long beach, is that it takes off, and as it takes off, it poops out, everything it's in its

[40:46] intestines, so it's not basically eviscerated. All the guts are still on the inside of the woodcock, and they cook it, uh, and, and they serve it to you, and it's got this

[40:53] big, long beak, and the head's still on. The whole thing's basically entirely hole and uh, and all 4 birds were, let's just put it this way. They're a little bit bloody. I, I did spit some shot out onto the plate during the middle, and this gives you an idea what the meal was like. So, uh, so anyway, so I'm there with, uh, these, you know, 2 friends of mine from, uh, 69

[41:11] Colbert Blow, Mimi and Stuart Nastasia. They're there and uh, Mimi's actually, I guess, not for Susan Coba Crow. She works with Savannah Club. We can't buy in the US. There's a fake Atlanta club in the US. It's not really the real world, the real Santa Club can't come to the US because I'm bargain with Cuba. Anyway, I'm sitting there and, uh, I'm eating these birds, like literally there's blood from the birds, like all over my hands. I had like a piece of heart. from the woodcock, like stuck on my knuckle. You know, I'm looking across the table, and I'm sure I have blood all over my face, from the, and everyone's completely horrified, but, and I was like, look, you know,

[41:48] I'm, I'm sorry. Uh, I'm sorry, but I've never had the, it had a chance to eat cheeseburger before, and you know, you really need to pick them up, and it's really not like a

[41:55] neat and deep. I apologize for, you know, making such a mess of it, but, you know, that's kind of, that's what it is. I'm done and I apologize to everyone for this horrific carnage

[42:06] scene. I'm sure the entire restaurant was repulsed. Uh, and and as the guy say, say, played away. He said, oh, so how was the head? And this is after I just apologized for making this, and I was like, well, what do you mean? like, well, you're supposed to split the head of the woodcock open and suck the brains out. So after all that, I sit there and I, shove the knife through the head of the woodcock and split it in half, and then uh, suck the brains out. So I think that was kind of the last nail in the coffin of decency, uh, for the

[42:35] heat. But, it was a chance, um, that, uh, uh, you know, I've never had before, but

[42:41] that meal, I'll leave you with this. That meal, I had, uh, right after Nastasia and I had just eaten, uh, you know, several 100s of varieties of fruit, uh, so it was,

[42:53] it, uh, it was an, a gastrointestinal extravaganza that day. Let's just say, I had, uh, we had, you know, we're about 3 quarters full up with, uh, with, uh, mangled fruit parts, and then we stuffed it down with, with, uh, with our game birds, and then, of course, I had to have dessert because it's me, uh, and since I was in England and going full traditional, I had, of course, the famous pudding, spot

[43:16] dicks, and this has been cooking issues live from Heathrow, London, come back to, uh, come back

[43:21] to most of this next week, and we'll be back in New York City. Fishes, fish. Oh, you

[43:33] did. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at.