[0:06] Vicious, fish, vodka. Oh, you

[0:13] did that. Got me on this corner. Hello and welcome to cooking issues on the Heritage Radio Network, coming to you every Tuesday from 12 to 1245 to show where we answer all of your cooking related questions. I'm Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues, and I'm here with Nastasia. Hey, I remember Lopez. Call in your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Today's show is being brought to you by Texer for all of your McIntosh related technical needs. They're at www.techserve.com, tech with a K. And they're actually, they're the sponsor, but they're giving away basically their time here to talk about the

[0:58] lower East Side ecology center. And the Lower East side ecology center is having its 8th annual after the holidays e-waste event with 10 events in January, and to find out where and when, you know, when they are, they're on the Lower East side, which is where I live, go to

[1:13] L-E-S, that's like Lower East side, ecologycenter.org. And they're going to help, you know, put good use to all the equipment that you're going to throw away after you get your new

[1:24] equipment after the holidays, right, Nastasia, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, by the way, it came to me through the grapevine that some listeners of the show believe that

[1:36] I somehow prevent Nastasia from speaking on the radio. In fact, this is not the case. I want all of your readers to know that I would be happy to have Nastasia speak more on the radio. It's that she particularly does not want me to make her speak on the radio. So I might make her do some today, just to prove that I am not purposely trying to hog all of the all of the airtime. You know, you don't really, those of you out there probably don't really know Nastasia that well. She likes to be kind of the puppet master person in the background, you know, manipulating dials and wheels, doesn't like so much to speak. Believe me. Believe me, when we are not on the radio, she more than makes up for speaking her

[2:18] mind. All right? I'll just put it that way. What do you think, Nastasia? Any comments? Yes that's true. Yeah? All right. Well, in the light of trying to get you to say more, we had an email response. By the way, for those of you that didn't listen last time or anytime, you know, we

[2:32] are, uh, you know, basically a meat eating, uh, folk, we're immediating crew. I lost a bet about that, you know, someone couldn't produce any raw chocolate that I would find even remotely

[2:44] palatable. I lost this bet. And as a result, I'm going to have to, uh, Nostasia decided to join me, although she doesn't have to. I'm going to cook and eat, well, cook. I'm going to prepare and eat a raw, you know, raw food diet for a week, probably sometime in late January or February. Now, last week, I had said that maybe I would just do, you know, I could eat like raw fish. raw, right? Technically raw. And then someone emailed us, you know, a response to that, basically calling us giant sissies. More me, because Nastasia hadn't said anything, because, of course, I never allow her to speak. So you want to read the read the email there. This comes from Pablo Escobar. The cooking issues team. I think you should go raw vegan because one, the raw chocolate bar you ate was mostly like most most likely raw vegan too. It's typically what it meant by raw foods. Three, it would be awesome to see how you innovate inside of these constraints for a diet where you can eat raw meat and fish for a week just doesn't sound that hard. That's it, right? And he had the one request. Right. And as far as the writing goes, I think if you do make it about personal experience, my only advice

[3:52] is, don't make it sound too much like a post-apocalyptic survivor story.

[3:57] Well, Pablo, if we don't make it sound like a post apocalyptic survivor story, it won't be like any other day in our lives. It's getting like every day for us is basically a survival story in the tech hole. You had to visit us sometime, Pablo. And see, we literally live in kind of a small closet

[4:15] hole with no windows. We don't, like, the entire world could have crumbled around us. And all we'll know is like the piled up mass of junk and equipment that

[4:23] we live in in this tiny closet. So our normal lives, you know, you know, is basically that post-apocalyptic problem. So it won't have anything to do with the raw food, but it might have that tone anyway, right? Nastasia? Well, he also says he tried to do it for a week, and it's pretty hard, especially New York in winter. Oh, because you can't get the good, the good fruits and whatnot? Well, we could do it. It will do it. You know, it's just going to take a lot, a lot of research, and that's the reason I have to put it off for so long,

[4:49] is I'm going to have to read, you know, basically every book I can find on the subject, because that's, you know, that's the way that's the way I roll. Nostasia's rolling her eyes because she knows it's going to be a huge pain in her behind. But I agree with you, Paul, Pablo, rather. and sorry. And we will do it. We will do raw vegan because you're correct. It's more of a challenge, and why not take on the challenge? I told my wife this last night. She's like, I'm not eating raw. not eating raw food. And you know, for a week. And I said, well, what are you going to do about it? I'm the only person that cooks in the whole house or prepares food. I keep on saying cookie. You know what I mean? So like she's kind of like, other than when she's at work, she has no choice, really. Right? So she's going to do it. Well, I mean, I don't understand her choices. Well, pizza. Order pizza and not eat what I'm eating. I say the most, see, here's the thing, right? Food is all about being social. So if you, you know, like eating something separate from what my family is eating is kind of the worst idea in the world. I would rather eat nothing and go on a Gandhi fast than prepare something separate for myself and the rest of my family. Like the whole point of eating with your family is you eat together, not a bunch of separate micro meals, you know, that, you know,

[6:01] that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, so yes, she's gonna she's gonna eat raw food with me for a week and she'll probably stock up on hamburgers or whatnot when she's at work.

[6:09] Okay. I had a question last week that I did not answer on eggs. And the question was, what is in egg substitutes and because, you know, he was having some problems with baking, using the egg substitutes for baking. So I did some research on it. And there's basically 2 different classes of egg

[6:30] substitute. The one, which I think is the one you're using, if you're actually using it to make omelettes, is more like it's called like egg beaters, things like that. And they're not really 100% egg substitute. They're not typically vegan. They're egg whites, and then they add flavoring and

[6:44] coloring and some other functional stuff to make it act more like an egg when you're scrambling it. So what's in the egg beaters. It 99% egg white, apparently. And then the rest of it's color, spice, salt, onion powder, xanthan gum, and guargum. The Xanthan and the guar are going to modify the properties of the egg white and make it a little less hard.

[7:02] And also, you know, maybe give it some of the proper texture when it's being, you know, poured

[7:07] poured out into your pan. So that's what's going to make it kind of act more like an omelette. The coloring is obviously going to make it more, you know, more omelet colored. And the onion and whatnot is, I guess, just flavors that they think you want in there. So that is basically the egg substitute, you know, if you're just, if that's the one you're using, egg beaters. Now, the reason that doesn't work well in baking for you is because they haven't added one of the prime things that is

[7:31] in eggs, and that is less thin, right? So eggs contain a good bit of fat, which also, you know, help in baking to, you know, you know, make it taste better and and, uh, there, there have functional properties, but there's the emulsifier, less thin, uh, and other

[7:48] different various uh, phospholipids and things in there. So, uh, if you want to use those in conjunction, uh, you know, with, um, with soy

[7:57] lessethin, which you can buy, right, that you can add a little bit of soy lessethin, and you'll probably get back a lot of the, uh, the same properties that you would get in an egg when

[8:07] you're when you're baking. So I would add, I don't know, it's so hard to tell. I mean, I would add, you know, maybe half a percent by

[8:15] by volume or a percent on eggweight volume of soy less than to try and get that, um, get that texture back. I would buy the powdered soy less of thin so you don't have to, um, uh, you don't have to heat it too much to get it in. You can, you know, blend it in with a stick blender and you should be able to get it in there and that might help your

[8:32] your baked goods perform better. Now, they make, now, the reason why they probably don't put the soy lesser thin in there is because they don't want to add a soy product because it's going to knock out a whole segment of their market if they put a soy product

[8:46] in and most people aren't using it for baking. Most people who are using egg substitutes for baking are doing it because they want to go vegan. They tip, they don't want eggs. Either they're allergic to eggs or they want an actual vegan product. And so those are typically powders. And they're usually mixtures of modified starches, like tapioca and potato starch. There's the energy is like one of the famous brands people use. And it contains basically tapioca starch, uh, potato starch, calcium carbonate, which is a leavening agent. I don't know why they use calcium carbonate, not other ones, but typically I would use that as leavening agent, but it's kind of specific. Citric acid, sodium carboxing methyl cellulose, which is a modified cellulose product, which is going to provide viscosity in the batter, and

[9:32] methocellulose, which is going to provide viscosity in the batter, and also some gelation when the product is heated, and that's going to provide a little bit of structure that the egg would be providing while the batter is hot,

[9:44] while it's hot and being cooked. So when it cools down, whatever starches in your bake thing will have time to set. Now, I did a cake with Johnny Azini from Jean George based on this, you know, years ago where we literally doped a whole ton of methacell, not a whole ton, you know, like, you know,

[9:59] 0.8%, into a cake and phoned it without adding a lot of egg white because we wanted to produce a sponge batter that didn't have that kind of protein bite to

[10:08] it. And so we used methacell for the same property. So they're, you know, they're basically including something that gels when it heats, but ungels when it unheats. They're including thickeners, uh, and a little bit of a leavening agent because that's basically what eggs are doing in

[10:21] a in a baking system. So I hope this answers, do you think that answers that do a good job this week? Yes. As opposed? Did we get to drink when we're on the raw foods, right? Well, that's interesting. So if you go to pure, I like that Nastasia, all she's been thinking about this entire time is whether she gets to drink when we're on the raw food diet. I believe you do, the last time I was at Sarma's restaurant,

[10:44] pure, pure food, right? Pure food, pure, you know, they have wine, but, you know, they they typically, like all the wines were biodynamic and all that. I mean, we don't have to go biodynamic though, right? That's not part of the part of the list. I don't understand. Like again, I'm going to get a bunch of hate, you know, whatever, X, Y, and Z, but I don't really understand the biodynamic thing myself. It's like, I understand, I understand, look. It's true that old school farming methods, like, you know, like the lunar cycles and all this other thing and like planting based on like X, Y, and Z, weather

[11:16] sign. Sure, I'm sure they have some sort of basis, in fact, generated by centuries of trial and error, you know, wisdom handed down from the ages. Boom, yes. Do I believe this? Yes. But like taking a horn and like packing it with manure and then bearing it in your field doesn't make any

[11:33] dang, any dang sense to me at all. You know what I mean? Like, that just seems like hokum, no? Yeah. But, but I think that, and I've said this before, I think what's good about it is if you're spending the time to go out in your fields and

[11:45] bury a horn full of donkey poo in your field, I think it means that you're paying more attention to your crops, which is probably

[11:52] going to make you have a better product. So it's not like that you don't necessarily end up making a better product this way. It's just that, um, you know, it's just, you know, it's not because of the horn and the donkey poop.

[12:02] The other thing that's really interesting is I think that a lot of people who are interested in, you know,

[12:08] biodynamics, organics, they never do blind taste tests. I never forget this. I went to a wine tasting, and the, you know, the person was handing out these completely organic biodynamic wines, right?

[12:19] And they were saying, you know, this wine was producing a field and

[12:23] a field is overgrown with all sorts of natural vegetation and it was awesome. All this, it was so full of life and crickets and frogs and birds and you know, all this stuff, right? And then, right, he's like, and the one next door, it looked totally barren. They had used, you know, chemicals on it and there's nothing growing but the grapes. It was, you know, completely unlifelike. There was no bub, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, wow. So you tasted them side by side and you really notice the difference in the wine. So he's like, ah, why would I taste that wine? I was like, what? What? The whole point is you taste the 2 wines and you prove that your method does a better job. So we need to find someone who actually knows that situation. You can find 2 producers with very similar soils and climates and varieties, like everything, same, same, but one's doing the biodynamic

[13:10] action, and one's not. And then we do it side by side. That's interesting to me. Would that be interesting to you? So if any of you out there have this capability, please call or write in. So anyway, let's go to our 1st commercial break, but remember to call in your questions too. 718-497-2128,

[13:26] 718-497-2128, cooking issues. How you feeling, brother? You're feeling good. Play so much, bone, brother. How you feel, man? Don't call your name. I don't want all people to know you're in here. How you feeling, Bella? Hey, jam. Sure, 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 bump, good time. We're gonna have a bump, good time. Now take 'em up, Fred. We gotta take your high. All right. I wanna do it again. You wanna do it again, huh? Yeah, let's go on that. Gotta take you home.

[14:26] Brother? Yeah? Now, I want everybody, left red flowing by two courses. And then I want to wave you, let's go until that we did it now, all right? All right, all right. I'm gonna get that fella with a little horn over there. Get a James Horn moment. Fred, can you take us higher? Yeah. Take his iron. Fred! Man! Welcome back to cookie issues. All your questions to you, said 18497, 2128. That's 718-497-2128. Coming to you live today from the refrigerated trailer that is Roberta's Pizzeria radio station. Please come out and eat at the restaurant, though. The restaurant's nice and toasty. It's just the radio station that's a refrigerated storage unit. Perhaps Patrick storing his meat here from the Heritage Food, and that's why it has to be so cold. Okay. Now, I have a question. 2nd time question from Max. And again, some of it is unprintable. So he says, you know what? We used a phrase, and maybe Nastasia can say it, so I don't have to say it this time for a stick blender. Dildo stick. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And he said, don't worry about that, but you know, if you if you don't want to use that, He gives me a word. I'm not really sure what language it is, but I'm a little worried knowing Max's questions. I'm a little worried to actually say it for fear that I might be saying something, but he says it translated to lopsided

[15:55] carrot as the stick blender. Thats the slang he uses anyone. Anyhoo, he has an interesting question. And his question is, why not pig's milk? And this Max is an excellent question. And you've been worried about it for years, as have I, although you seem to have actually, you know, arrived the same answer I did.

[16:13] And also, you know, spoken to more people about it, perhaps more pig farmers, because if you spoke to at least one, you've spoken to more than I have. But the, um, uh, the, the question that always comes to mind is we have yaks milk cheese, we have camel's milk cheese, we have cow's milk cheese, we have goat's

[16:30] milk cheese. We have sheep's milk cheese. Do you think of any other animals? They, like, no, right? I mean, basically, domestic animals, they make milk and you get cheese out of them. Why is there no pig milk and or and or pig cheese, right? Now, the kind of the answer I'd always, you know, come up with in my head and spoken to, you know, I actually have spoken to some pig

[16:53] farmers. But the answer is, is that, hey, look, when a pig gives birth, you use the milk from that pig to feed the piglets straight up, you know, and then you take them off of the, when they take them off, you

[17:08] wean the, wean the pig off of me and the pig stops lactating so that you can have pigs again because pigs, unlike other animals, are really meat machines. You know what I mean? It's not they're not kind of multi-use animals. I mean, we get leather out of it, sure, boars, bristles, and whatnot, but compared to the cow, where we get milk, where we get leather, you know, a lot of leather,

[17:28] or compared to the, you know, the sheep, or the goat, where we can get wool, and we can get meat, and we can get milk, or the chicken, where we can get

[17:36] meat, and egg. The pig is a meat machine. You know, it takes garbage and well, it used to take garbage and crap that you would otherwise not be able to use and convert it into meat that your family can

[17:46] eat. And so, I think the idea was, is that you want to fatten up the little pigs to get them into meat as fast as possible.

[17:55] Another interesting thing that I did not know, Max, and thank you for bringing it up. is um, that pigs don't produce nearly the amount of milk that

[18:04] uh, cows produce, you know, per per body per, you know, percent body weight. Uh, well, actually maybe 4% body weight, but he, Max says that the average pig is going to produce £13 of milk a day as opposed to a cow that produce £65 of milk per day.

[18:18] Yeah, but you know what, Max? A cow is a whole hell of a lot bigger than a pig. I mean, a lot, unless you have a giant's, like, super fat pig. So if you were going to breed a fairly young sow that was like on the range of like £200 or something like that, which is normal about slaughter weight, you're going to breed it

[18:32] once, I mean, to get, you know, £13 of milk out of that as opposed to, you know, a cow that weighs, you know, well over a £1000 doesn't seem like such a bad, like such a bad trade, right? I think a lot of it goes to the fact that, you know, they just use it to feed the pigs. Now, if I had someone with a lot of money, sure, I would either mechanically, you know, feed those pigs something

[18:54] else, if that's even possible, I don't even know, and then just take the milk. I mean, Max, I think that, you know, next, I don't know where you live, but next time you're around, maybe we can find someone and just run an experiment. I mean, you could probably pay a farmer. the, like, if you, if you paid the farmer the entire cost of the litter of pigs that was going to be fed off of this pig, I, you know, certain that he or she would sell the

[19:16] milk and then you could taste it, see whether it's delicious, and uh, and make some cheese out of it. I mean, you know, I think that's entirely entirely reasonable, right? What do you think? There was to, you know, not to get, you know, gross about it, but there was a chef. I forget who it was in New York, who was using his wife's breast

[19:34] milk to prepare things. But I think that was just a gimmick. I mean, that's got to be a gimmick. I mean, you know, I have 2 kids. Listen, no, I have 2 kids, and I'll tell you, you know, that if you if you have

[19:47] kids and and your wife or you, if you're a woman, you know, had to basically, you know, pump milk so that you

[19:55] could go to work and then feed the kid the milk, then, you know, this stuff is like a super precious commodity.

[20:00] This is not something that you're taking to the restaurant and turning into dairy products. This is like liquid gold that you treasure. And when you accidentally leave one out and it goes bad on the counter. you, you know, you, you, you, you, you, you know, racked with grief and horror and pain. You know what I mean? So it's not like something that I think you would normally normally do. But if a chef can do that, then you can definitely get some pig milk. And if you get your hands on some max. Please, you know, let me in on it. At least call me, send me an email, and tell me how this stuff worked

[20:30] out because, you know, I'm dying to know. Right? Nostalgia's not saying anything. I told you, she doesn't want to speak on the air. It's not me. It's not me. Um, but, okay. So, hey, look, this is all in good tone, by the way. This is still a family show. I've not said anything. Anyway. Ben writes in and says, some recipes, particularly, particularly many Middle Eastern recipes for basmati rice, and most Asian recipes for short grain

[20:59] rice, call for you to rinse, soak, and or drain rice before cooking. Other rice and recipes tell you strictly never to wash rice. What does washing do for the final product? Is there any reason to use one rice washing method over another? Does the type of rice affect this decision, the temperature of the water,

[21:16] et cetera, et cetera? Yes, there. No, so the problem is, is that every culture has their own style of rice cooking and also their own style of rice that they're

[21:27] using. Here in the US, right? If you're using an enriched rice that they enrich with, you know, with, you know, nutrients and stuff like that, a lot of them are basically dusted on.

[21:38] So then if you were to rinse the rice, you would rinse off all of that, all of that stuff. Now, that's not an issue so much, if you're using rice that hasn't been enriched or if you use rice that's been enriched with, you know, I think they have one where they spray it like almost like a wax or an oil base in it or something like

[21:53] that, where it stays in better with rinsing. So I think when someone tells you specifically, specifically not to rinse it, what they're doing is they're basically saying don't wash off the nutrients, I would guess, right? Now, the reason to rinse rice is because during the milling process of rice, there is

[22:12] excess bran and starch that's on left on the outside of the rice. There's also, you know, some of the rice is processed in some pretty nasty conditions, you know, you know, it could have twigs, it could have rocks, it could have dirt, it could have, you know, animal or other types of bad

[22:31] products in it. So, rinsing is a good step to clean it out. And in fact, if you take rice and rinse it, Most any rice that you can get, the rice turns cloudy really quickly, which means that there's a lot of soluble starch that's coming off of

[22:47] it, or at least some sort of soluble powder. Back in the day, they also told you to rinse it because when they were milling it and sending it out, they would have a little bit of talcan to increase the kind of

[22:56] whiteness and also, I think, as a milling aid, you need to wash the talcat. So, the rinsing step is most often to get rid of starch that's on the outside or that might, you know, interfere with things.

[23:08] And so, you know, if you take a Japanese rice, right? Which is somewhat sticky to begin with, but you don't want it, you don't want the grains to be all glopped together, right? Then you're in a situation where, hey, look, you're going to do a lot of rinsing of this rice, especially because they don't cook it in a lot of boiling water,

[23:23] right? There's not that much point in, um, in, in rinsing your

[23:28] rice if you're going to cook it in an excess of boiling water, like it's done in

[23:32] some, in some Indian recipes, because if you're going to cook it in an excess of boiling water,

[23:37] right? The starch that is going to come off is going to be relatively diluted unless it's quite dirty, in which case maybe you have to rinse it anyway. But if you're going to cook it in either steamed or small amount of water, right? Like, like you would, like a small amount of water for Japanese cooking, if you don't wash off that rice and there's any starch on the outside, then it's going to become sticky because the rice already has that

[23:59] medium grain rice already has a bit of stickiness to it. So to get it to be exactly the right texture, you want to wash it until the water runs

[24:06] clear and there's no more starch coming off of it. And that's where those instructions come from. Now, um, you know, other types of rice, I don't think it's going to matter one way or the other, uh, too much. So for instance, like, you know, and coming to soaking and cooking technique, a lot depends on the type of rice.

[24:22] Soaking, right, your rice as opposed to washing it. You wash it, and then you might soak it. Soaking it is helpful in situations where you want to either not use as much fuel because you want to get some of the water in before you start

[24:34] cooking, or it also helps because any sort of water pre-soaking into the rice is

[24:40] going to make the cook time quicker and also more even. So if you have a rice, it tends to split open on the outside before the inside is cooked,

[24:47] right? Then if you soak it beforehand, you're going to get a much faster and more even

[24:53] cook and the rice is going to come out better. Similarly, with a sticky rice that's steamed, right? You soak it beforehand because if you don't, it's going to be hard for the steaming method to get

[25:04] the, you know, get more moisture in. So the pre-soak on a steaming thing like that really helps cooking sticky rice. Now in a parboiled rice, right? The reason why you can boil parboiled rice in a lot of water for a long time. And, you know, it gets a bad name in this country because it's called converted rice, you know, like Uncle Ben's converted bran rice. It gets a bad name here because people think it's some sort of newfangled, like bullschnaz. But in fact, right, it's an ancient and fantastic technique where you take whole rice, whole, you know, instill in the hull, and you boil it for a period of time in the hull, and you actually increase the nutrient content of your rice by boiling in the hull because you get some of the, well, so they

[25:43] say I haven't really actually read the studies, but you, you know, you get some of the nutrient from the hull into the rice. Also, you pre-gelatinize some of that rice darch. Then when you cool it down. It, uh, what's called retrogrades recrystallizes and becomes resistant to swelling and bursting again. So parboiled rice actually doesn't necessarily cook faster. The ones that cook faster are also sometimes parboiled and then pre-boiled again and dried, right? So that they're basically, they're pre-cooked, which is different really from parboiled. They cook very fast, like minute rice, things like that. But traditional parboiled rice, which they have, you know, a lot of Indian rice that are parboiled, don't actually cook faster. I don't think, although I'd have to go back and check it. It's been a long time since I looked at a recipe. But the interesting thing about them is that they don't rupture or break apart, the grains stay firm and together, even if they're cooked for a long

[26:37] time, and even if they're cooked in a lot of water. So it's a very good technique to get individual grains. They have a lot of bounce, they're harder in texture, even though they're cooked, because the starch

[26:48] is, basically, you want to think of them as being kind of preset or, you know, kind of strengthen this by this technique of parboiling, cooling it, starts retrograding, then milling

[26:59] it, and then cooking it again. So, there's a lot to do and with rice. It's extremely complicated. It's based on, you know, the type of rice you're using, the culture you're dealing

[27:11] with, and the recipe you're using. I think if your rice is coming out sticky, you're going to be better off and you don't want it to be,

[27:18] maybe you could benefit from some rinsing. If you don't want to rinse, right? And you do like Japanese style, you can buy what's called the rinse free rice and it has a Japanese word, which if I had it in front of me, I would attempt to pronounce, but I won't because I won't pronounce it out of my head because I'll get it

[27:32] wrong and then everyone will laugh at me. But rinse free rice uses a kind of newer milling

[27:37] technology that allows you to have a Japanese rice that has all of that extra starch and brand coating on the

[27:43] outside completely remove without the need for rinsing. Mushy mint. I'm not I'm not going to try. I'm not going to do it. Anyway, so it all depends. I wish I could have a hardened fast answer for you, but it's there is no hard and fast answer. It's just knowing what the variables are and um, kind of how they how they interact. Is that useful at all, you think? Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right, we'll go to our 2nd commercial break. Call your questions too. 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128 cooking issues. How you feeling, brother? You feeling good? so much bone, brother. How you feel, man? I call your name. people to know you're in here. How you feel, fella? Hey, Jeff. You're getting down. Look at him. We're gonna have a bunk. Good time. We're gonna have a bump, good time. We're gonna have a fun, good time. We're gonna have a bunk. Good time. Now take 'em up, Fred. We've got to take you high.

[29:00] All right. I want to do it again. You wanna do it again, huh? Yeah, that's it. Gotta take you high.

[29:12] Brother? Now I want everybody, let bread flow in my two courses. And then I want to wave in, let's go until everything is now, all right? I'm gonna get that fella with a little horn over there. You got James Horn moment. Fred, can you take us higher? Take us higher. Fred! Man!

[29:52] Welcome back to Cooking Issues, calling your questions to 718-4972128. That 718-497-2128. We heard from King Ingber. He was the gentleman that called in about his his mom's turkey, which was left out in the stoop, I believe in, was it Brooklyn or Queens? Brooklyn. Brooklyn. And, uh, and, you know, the question was why didn't, uh, why didn't he die? And, you know, I thought that was an interesting question. And so, um, and he's still alive, thank God. So he emailed us another one. He had a question about, um, the Araby. And the Arabi is a coffee machine, I believe it's called an Arabi. It's a coffee machine invented by the same guy that invented the, it's not called an

[30:31] arobi, is it? It's called the Aerobi, the little Frisbee that came out like in the 80s. It's like a little ring that you can throw like the length of a whole football field, even if you're like a tiny kid. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? Jeez, man, I'm old. Anyway, so this guy invented a coffee machine. I guess it is called the Arabic. Anyway, so it's a coffee machine where he, you know, he basically said, look, I want to increase the amount of pressure in

[30:55] the brewing chamber so that I can force the coffee through and thereby, I guess, get better extraction. So it's very simple mechanism. It's a piston that you drive the hot water through

[31:06] your through the puck, right? and produce coffee. Now, the question has always been, is this espresso? And I'm saying this, I still, nastasia, let's just buy one of these dang things. Are they expensive? They're like 40 bucks. Well, charge you to the school. Well, anyway. Well, no, seriously, we'll buy it and we'll experiment with because I've gotten enough questions from it and I've never tried it. So I feel kind of like a moron every time I talk about it. But it's, it's, you know, it's, by all accounts, a good product, but the question is, doesn't make espresso. And my answer is, uh, no, because, and of course, Ken calls me out on

[31:40] this and he goes, well, part of the controversy is semantic because if you define espresso as a beverage brewed at 195, there's a range

[31:47] there. But yeah, at 9 bars also a range, with a mouse tail out of the porta filter, then a device that brews at 175 degrees Fahrenheit, which is what the

[31:54] Aerobi apparently does. With moderate hand pressure, it can't make espresso. And that's true. Uh, that's what I'm saying, but I don't think it's merely semantic because if you look at, uh, if you look at, um, the book, um, the chemistry of quality, espresso, the chemistry of

[32:12] coffee by Andrea Ely, which is, I believe, available again, it was unavailable for a couple

[32:16] years and is available again. There are numerous charts and graphs showing

[32:22] extraction and the type of not just like how much is extracted, but what is

[32:27] extracted, at varying different pressures and temperatures. So you're, you know, it's not gonna be the same cup of coffee because brewing kinetics is extremely complicated. And, you know, in the new year, if I ever find time, I have a lot to do with espresso and pressures and things like

[32:42] that. But it's extremely complicated. So I'm not saying that it can't make a fantastic cup of

[32:48] coffee and maybe the best mocha style pot, you know, coffee ever. But I also wouldn't call, and I don't dislike, by the way, mocha pot means those little kind of octagonal things that you put on your

[32:58] stove and the water boils up through them and makes coffee as mocha pot. You everyone know what I'm talking about? Um, they're cheap. They're fine. Those things are, they're fine. They great. They make a decent cup of coffee for what they are for a mocha cup of coffee, right? They are a short, strong cup of coffee. However, to me, that does not mean that it is espresso. That is a different animal entirely, right? So I'm not saying it doesn't make a great cup of car. And I shouldn't even talk about it until I get one, but I feel like I should address your question now. Um, I don't feel that it could possibly make the same thing as, uh, as an espresso, at least not, of course, non-intensity espresso you get

[33:36] out uh, anywhere is Drek anyway. And so you might as well make it any dang way because the people who make it, you know, care not a whit for how it's made or what it tastes like, you know? Like, like 9 times out of 10. You go and someone's pulling a shot in like 15 seconds or 45 seconds and they don't really care that, you know,

[33:53] that, you know, what the shot time is. They're not really accurate with their dosing. They're not really accurate with their tamping. Their grinders aren't adjusted properly. I mean, anyone of those variables throw off in your espresso is not going to be the same, at which point, you know, maybe you might as well just make it out of a 40, you know,

[34:10] a $40 pot, which is not to be disparaging on the $40 thing. I really want to get one experiment with it. Maybe, maybe it'll change my life and, you know, I'll throw away my La San Marco espresso machine. Anyway, I don't know. But it definitely needs some experimentation. And he also pointed me to a really interesting little thing on

[34:28] coffee geek, which is a fantastic website, by the way. I love coffee geek. I've been going to it for a long, long time. I lurk there. I never really comment, but it's a fantastic site. And, um, uh, point to a person who's measuring their coffee extraction using a refractometer, which is I've heard about before, but I've never actually done

[34:44] it, and again, now I feel foolish for not having done it, because one of the main, you know, quality characteristics in coffee is how much stuff you're extracting out of the coffee

[34:52] bean, and the way one of the ways you could test this, obviously, is by measuring how much stuff other than water is in the coffee when you're

[34:58] done. And a lot of people use what's called a total dissolved solids meter that's basically measuring the conductivity to do this. Instead, this other gentleman whose name escapes me, is using a refractometer, which seems like a fantastic technique in a really great way for someone at home or even in a restaurant to make sure that their coffee is staying on

[35:16] point at least in terms of extraction. But remember, even at the same level of total extraction, right, out of coffee, it doesn't mean you're extracting the same thing,

[35:28] right? At different temperatures, different things are gonna extract differently. So if you get, let's say, whatever you're going to get, like, you know, 10% extraction out of the coffee, right? Bean, right? Let's say you get that. Well, who's to say that it's the same 10%? You're just measuring, you don't know that you don't know the distribution of, you know, of the different elements that you're sucking out of the coffee and how that's affected by the pressure and the temperature.

[35:52] So to measure the performance of a machine strictly based on

[35:58] extraction, in terms of what it reads on a refractometer, I think is missing what, you know, the full kind of gestalt of what's going on in espresso.

[36:07] And it also harks back to, you know, I think a real problem with all of food science, which is, you know, we often, uh, you know, I read, I read food

[36:15] science and you need to make metrics. You need to quantify what you're doing in order to have a result in order to have repeatability, especially

[36:24] in industrial commercial scale. But often these measurements, which are trying to measure very, very specific, like crispness. They're trying to measure like how, you know, how hard it is to break and to form a crust, let's say, or total dissolve solids or any one of a number of things. These metrics are really measuring something that isn't a single variable, but are controlled by a wide variety of different things that are going on within food

[36:49] systems. I mean, the reason of food systems and drink systems are so interesting other than the fact that they're delicious and we eat them every

[36:54] day is that there is such a richness to be encountered with a very small number of ingredients, starting ingredients. And so, you know, it's very hard to get a set of metrics. It's actually going to work as well as looking at it with your eyes, feeling it with your

[37:11] hands and tasting it with your mouth because in the end, right? That is all we really care about, right? I mean, the repeatability, the metrics, the thermometers, which I all love. I love I stuff because I love any gadget. Anyone knows me, loves it. I love any gadget. But the, you know, like all of that is only an

[37:30] aid, uh, to trying to, uh, you know, get get to the best instrument of all, which is your tongue and your nose and your eyes.

[37:39] Uh, so that's my my feeling. On the other hand, I'm going to go out and get a refract on that I can measure my coffee with. Right? Anyway. So I think in the time that we have left, I will discuss alkalinity and some interesting

[37:54] things, I think that we've been working on last week, someone asked a question about

[37:58] myard reactions, and I somehow got into a riff on Thai lime water, right?

[38:04] Remember that? Yeah. And, so I read this website by, uh, it's called SheSimmers. She's a blog and she had a, you know, a bunch of stuff on Thai cooking. I think her she's tie or her family's tie. And they use this limestone water, which is slaked lime, calcium hydroxide, and they do numerous things. I've used it for years to hardened bananas up when I'm going to, you know, make a foster or something like that. So the bananas get a cook taste, but they don't break up. Apparently it can also be used for pumpkins. But she uses it. And apparently it's traditionally to be used in frying batters as well. And I was extremely interested in, uh, in that because she says it makes it crispier. Now, in a rice in a rice flower situation. We have tested that and I haven't, we haven't gotten any conclusive answers, right, Nastasia? Right, yeah. I mean, Nastasia preferred the one with the with the lime water in it because she likes the flavor of the lime water, which is reminiscent of pretzels or reminiscent of a tortilla because it's got this calcium hydroxide, this

[39:06] lie kind of flavor that Nastasia really liked. But it didn't seem like it was any crispier. No. And it also didn't seem like it browned any faster. I was thinking it was going to brown a lot faster because alkalinity accelerates myard reactions. Well, yeah, we have to run all those again. Yeah, we have to again and again and again and again. You know, because of that question on my art reactions, I'm now in like a probably a five-month K-hole of worried about alkalinity and noodles and, um, you know, and batters and frying, because it turns out

[39:34] that that this lie, you know, use of alkaline cooking methods is goes across, uh, kind of, you know, the world and

[39:43] culture was was used in various places completely separately from each other.

[39:47] So when I started reading about this Thai red line paste and it came to my, you know, attention that is basically just calcium hydroxide, well, calcium hydroxide is kal, right, is what the, what is used in, um, you know, you know, south of the border here,

[40:02] uh, Mexico and Central America, uh, and, you know, I guess South America to, uh, next to Milized corn, right? And so, uh, nixtamilization is the reason why everybody who lived here isn't dead, right?

[40:17] Because, uh, you know, if your main staple is corn. right? Uh, and you don't know how to nixtamalize, which is also the best word in English language, right? It's not even English, but this is the best, nixtomalization. That's like a, that's an awesome word, am I right? So if you, if you don't, uh, uh, and the way nixtimilization works, is you take calcium hydroxide, you, you put

[40:39] that in water with dried corn, uh, you heat it for a while and then you let it steep. And what happens is, from a functional standpoint, it makes it easier to mill and to grind because in back in the day, they would be grinding the corn after it was, you know, boiled and soaked on something called matate mano, which is like this like stone thing with like the mano is like a square thing and they

[41:04] grind it that way directly from the corn grains into the masa that you would make the tortilla out of or

[41:11] whatever, you were grinding it to make tamales or whatever. And so I'm buying one, by the way, today. Yeah. Anyway, going to Nastasia's neighborhood to buy one. Anyway, so the, basically, it was easier for them to mill. It also, the alkalinity softened the husk on the outside of the corn and also thereby making it easier to milk. But the process of boiling and soaking in alkaline solution, because

[41:38] calcium mitroxide is alkaline, did 2 other things. Well, one more functional thing. It made the dough easier to work. If you don't, if you just take cornmeal and mix it with water, it doesn't have the right texture of masa,

[41:50] right? Partially the boiling pre-gelatinizes the starch a little bit. And so that helps the dough stick together. It provides some structure that it doesn't, you know, because there's no gluten, you need some structure in the dough. And so pre-gelatinizing some of the starch on the outside of the corn kernel in the beginning of the boiling procedure helps to do that. And also treating it with the alkaline solution, the calcium

[42:14] hydroxide, that also causes the starch to be able to hold more water,

[42:20] right? And so it improves the dough capability. So it holds more water. to feel drier for a particular for particular water concentration, and it all in all makes the dough easier to handle, easier to form into tortilla.

[42:35] And so without next normalization, there is no real tortilla production, right? But here is the kicker. It also makes niacin available in the corn that was not available beforehand.

[42:48] So you get a bunch of Europeans showing up and they ship the corn over to Europe and they grow it, right? And it was cheap and easy to grow, so they grow it, and they start eating a largely corn-based diet, and they all get

[43:00] pellagra, because they're not getting the niacin, because the dunces don't look and see that, you know, there's this procedure that's been done for, you know, millennia, literally millennia, right, of next

[43:11] civilization, they don't think that's important. They think that they can just take the crank, the grain crop, corn, and build a whole culture around it without doing the

[43:19] niximalization. And as a result, we get Palagra. So, this is a process, it also has another effect, in a culture that was probably deficient in milk at the time, prior to the domestication of milk producing

[43:32] animals, to go back to Max's question, the calcium hydroxide also radically increases the amount of calcium that's in the

[43:39] tortilla because the calcium goes into the corn. And so all of a sudden now you have a lot more calcium available to the system. You have a lot easier thing to work with as a doe. And you have, and you have

[43:53] niasim. So it's all good. Now, I became interested in this, uh, because I'm interested in all things uh, like that. And so we started nixtomalizing things based, you know, based on the fact that we were playing around with it using Thai red lime paste. Now, uh, we're going to, tomorrow or the day after, we're going to tour Torteria Nixtamal, which is like the only place in New York that uses its

[44:13] own, uh, um, makes its own Nixtamal. I'm getting a matate because I did some mixtamilization of popcorn, which is weak. Don't try to do it with popcorn. It's not the right kind of corn. I've read on the internet that it works fine. It does not work fine. I mean, it works fine, but it doesn't mill very well. And without the stone grinder, the metate mano, over the weekend, when I was making a tortilla for, you know, my family

[44:34] for for Sunday dinner, I blew out my Vita Prep like 3 times. I blew out my cuisinart. It was a King Hell mess, and I still didn't get the texture exactly right. So today when I pick up the official Mexican grinder, I'll tell you whether or not, you know, next

[44:49] week, hopefully, whether or not it works. But I'm also interested in nystimalizing other grains other than corn for just for giggles, right? So what you know, we've done barley. We've done rye and we've done wheat. And I've had some success and some failure, and we'll come back on it, but

[45:06] basically, we made something that was made with rye that had, it had a rye flavor, which

[45:11] nastasia doesn't like, unfortunately, because she doesn't like things that are delicious. But also the flavor of tortilla, right? So a lot of the tortilla flavor, what differentiates it from just, you know,

[45:22] cornmeal cake is that lie cooking has a characteristic flavor, right? And so next time you bite into a tortilla, think about the difference between that and

[45:34] unnextimalized corn and that flavor. And so I was achieving that flavor in other grains. Now we haven't yet done the control side by side of whether just boiling it for the same length of time without using the lime is going to produce the same kind of

[45:47] batter. But this is what we're working on in cooking issues. We want to bring nextimilization to the next level. Like usual, we're not content with just learning, which we're going to do on

[45:58] Thursday from the people, real people who do it every day. So it's always best to go visit someone who does it every day. so that you can get a feel for what it's like to do it right. I mean, it sure beats the, you know, 400 pages of niximalization crap I read in the scientific literature that I downloaded off of my illegal connection to Columbia's servers.

[46:15] But the, you know, nothing beats going and touching the real stuff, eating it, tasting

[46:22] it. I will have practiced with my matate mano by the time we make it to it. And next week, this time, I mean, I won't be a master. Also, I'm not going to use a tortilla press because it seems to me like that's like a sissy move. I need to learn to be like a Mexican grandma. My goal in life other than, you know, like doing a good job on this raw food thing that we're going to do, you know, is I, you know, and this is a

[46:44] longtime life goal is to become a Mexican grandma. So that means I need I already have a mocha jete in my house, a little stone grinder, which I've had for years and you know, a little like, you know, mortar pestle. I've had one of those for, you know, I don't know, 10 years, 12 years. So now when I get this grinder, I'm one step closer. And when I can form tortillas effortlessly by hand, without a press, I

[47:06] am, but then I have to learn Spanish. And if I, once I learn Spanish, I will officially be a Mexican grandma.

[47:12] Uh, and uh, with that, I will tell you to go. We have a new post-up. Go check it out. It's on pairs. Nastasia and I did a great pear tasting and I finally posted on it months later because I'm a lazy weasel. Cooking issues. Fishes, fish, vodka. Oh, you did.