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[0:29] Vicious fish. Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues, the show where you call in or email in all of your

[0:39] cooking related questions, technical or not. I'm Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues here with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, cooking issues, big old hammer bringing the hammer down on all you people that don't behave. Although we've never had anyone not behave, actually. We've never actually had to use your hammer. I think you're just so frightening. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Okay, so calling all your questions live to the studio at 718-497-2128, 718-497-2128. Here for the next 45 minutes or so. So please call in your questions. So what's going on here, Nastasia? I'm flying out to Florida today, right? Yeah. Did you look over the stuff? No, of course not. But they don't need to know that. By the way, if, well, it is true. I'll give you a partial announcement now, but in the near future. You know, we might be open to consulting kinds of

[1:27] situations. But just so you know, should you ever hire me, Nastasia, which has a cooking issues team at this point? Should you ever harass for anything? We're not going to think about your problem until it's actually time to think about your problem.

[1:42] Well, we'll try to break him of that. Yeah, right. Sure. So speaking of thinking about problem, last week we came on the show and we asked for any sort of suggestions as to what to do with our 3D printer, because we have this 3D printer that was given to us by the Fab at

[1:56] home guys at Cornell, it prints basically, it's a syringe that moves around in 3 dimensions and squeezes out, you know, at a very precise rate, any sort of paste, any paste that you want.

[2:07] And they want us to come up with a good food application. And we didn't for about 8 months, we didn't come up with one. And, uh, you know, finally, a couple people have called to interviewed me actually about what I thought about 3D food

[2:19] printing and I always said pretty much the same thing, which is no one's thought of a really good application yet. And, you know, I think it's a, you know, there's no need to print, you know, the Mickey Mouse

[2:27] in, you know, out of, out of turkey paste. I mean, there's just no need for it because I can, you know, I could make a Mickey Mouse mold and then spread. I'm going to Orlando today, which is why I'm thinking about, is a, you know, make a Mickey Mouse mold and spread it into a silicone, you know,

[2:43] thing. Then I could make a whole bunch of turkey things that way. So I never thought that like weird shapes was an interesting application for me for a 3D printer. And lo and behold, we came up with this. What I thought was a good idea in conjunction with Jeffrey Lipton, who runs the program, the Fab at

[3:00] home program up at Cornell. And it was, well, we're going to take what I think is one of the ultimate pace of all time, which is

[3:06] Masadough, next to Milized corn. I mean, you know, what's better than masa? Nastasia, anything? You're going to Boca. Oh, ah, whatever. Florida. So is there anything better than anything? No offense, no offense to Florida, but you know, it's just not my not my place. I hate the sun. I hate, you know, flat landscapes and, you know, Spanish moss is okay. Anyway, whatever. So the, uh, but in anything, nothing better than masa, right? So we had a thing where we print out this squiggly shape of masa, and it looks great and it has a great

[3:33] texture, like shredded wheat, but it tastes awesome, like a tortilla chip. I thought it was fantastic. CNN shows up. We give him this long song and dance about, you know, what these applications are good for, you know, the printers are really good for coming up with maybe with new textures or for, you know,

[3:47] ideation, thinking about new ways to make things. Uh, and they basically, you know, what I say, what I'm not interested in is this whole idea that in the future, it's going to be the Jetsons or Star Trek, and you're going to push a button and all of a

[4:00] sudden, your meal is going to come out. And, you know, for instance, there's nothing, I think, worse in the world than thinking that if you press a button, your meal is

[4:07] going to pop out. What could be more horrific to a cook than thinking that we're totally going to remove human beings from the cooking

[4:14] process? And furthermore, you know, get us even further away from, uh, you know, from

[4:18] the from the food chain from where our food comes from from the from the whole food supply system to a point where we don't care that everything that's served to us, you know, comes in a tube and is extruded out of a syringe into random

[4:29] shapes. Honey, what shape do you want your turkey paste in tonight? We had Mickey yesterday. Goofy? I mean, seriously, like, what is that, right? It's crazy. Anyway, so we, I thought we had won over the CNN money people. And yesterday I looked at the CNN money piece on the web, and I was horrified to see that what they took away from it was that in the

[4:54] future, we will basically print turkey paste. You knew that. We spoke about I felt like we had made a connection with them. And, uh, and that they kind of, you know, understood at least our point of view that that was a

[5:09] horrible, horrible, horrible idea. Anyway, uh, go read our post on it to see what we think about it. That's enough diatribe, right? Enough to I try for today. All right. So, we have a couple questions in from John Meyer. I met him, what, yesterday, day before? And 1st question is on cheese tempering. So the question is, hey, listen, I bought some cheese and I put it in my fridge. You know, I think maybe that was, you know, maybe the 1st mistake, put it in the fridge. I mean, depends if you're going to buy the cheese today. I would never put it in the fridge. We get into that. I have cheese. It's in the fridge. I forgot to take it out. Or I bought it, you know, you know, right before I went to somebody's house and it was in the refrigerated

[5:47] case at the store. The store doesn't know how to keep their cheese, XYZ, whatever. And the problem is now I have to eat it. What can I do besides throwing it in the oven and or the

[5:56] microwave or just waiting for a couple of hours? Well, I feel your pain, John, I really do. I remember once I flew back from France and I smuggled in my favorite. I think my favorite cheese in the world, which is Vashram Mondor. My wife used to have to go out to France, to Paris, every January for a trade show, and I would go out with her, and I would, you know, just

[6:15] basically swim through like, like wheel after wheel of Ashramandor. And, you know, you cut off the top, you scoop it out, you eat it all, and there really is almost no better experience on Earth than crusty bread and Vashramondorp. you know, that's it. That's the kind of the apogee. So far in my life. I mean, anyway, hopefully it gets better. Right? I mean, you hope that you hope that you don't have the like, you know, the ultimate food experience like that and you know, you're only not even 40 yet and then that's it. Anyway. So the... So I smuggled this thing back and I'm planning on having Sunday family dinner, because every Sunday I have family dinner, the family comes over to my

[6:49] house and we cook a big meal. And, uh, horror of horror, it was put in the fridge. I won't say, you know, I won't say by whom. It was put in the fridge and there wasn't enough time to temper the thing out. And, uh, and I was, I was, you know, it was just, it was one of the worst food experiences of my life because it tasted good. I put it in the oven, but it tasted good, but it wasn't, you know, the greatest thing in the world. It wasn't what it should have been. Like, here you smuggle this wheel of cheese back. you think it should be the greatest thing in the world it wasn't. So I definitely feel your pain, John. Here are my suggestions to you. One, if you're buying cheese, just don't put it in the dang fridge. If you have a wine cooler, put it in the wine cooler, let it sit there unless it's going to go for a very long time, it's going to be fine or something like a mozzarella. Even when I buy mozzarella. I buy it. I don't put it in the fridge. Even if I buy it in the morning, I'm going to eat it in the evening. I don't put it in the fridge. Because I know I'm going to put it in the fridge or freeze it after I'm done that 1st day because I don't carry it over to the 2nd day anyway because I use it for cooking at that point. And mozzarella really will be okay in a cool spot for the whole day. You don't need to worry about it. That's one. I should also further say that there are some people. I am not one of them, but there are some people that feel that cheeses should be served a lot cooler than we serve them in general, that they should be served at

[7:59] cellar temp, basically at your wine cooler temp. I don't agree with that, but there's some very, you know, fine cheese sources that do say that. Okay, so one is just don't ever put it in the fridge. This would be my 1st recommendation. Um, Second would be, you could, and this doesn't apply to soft cheeses like Vashran or things like that, but harder cheeses, and I hate this, but you could do this. You can cut the cheese up into slices beforehand, cover it with a layer of plastic

[8:22] wrap and chamber them because they'll chamber very rapidly if they're cut into pieces. I happen to not like that because I hate the look of the cheese as it warms up sweating out or the fat coming up to the top. I don't prefer precise cheese, but this is definitely an option if there's no other alternative. Now, on the subway over here, I thought of a 3rd alternative that you might want to look

[8:40] at that I've never actually tried, but I guarantee it will work. That is, take tap water, turn it on so that the temperature of the tap water is roughly in the mid

[8:50] 80s. So slightly below your body temperature, but slightly warmer than your normal tap water, which is probably running between

[8:55] 50 Depends on where you live, but could be as high as 60 or 70 degrees.

[9:00] Put it up to about 80 degrees, and then put your cheese in a Ziploc

[9:05] bag and use the instructions on the cooking issue blog under the low temperature primer

[9:10] on, which I need to finish. Jeez. How to package things in Ziplocs. Basically, put it in a ziploc, and you immerse the thing in the ziploc underwater to force out the air, you close it, then keep that ziploc bag in the running tap water at the right temperature, and it will chamber lickety split without the water getting on the

[9:28] cheese and without overheating it. Because I really find there's no good way to temper out cheese in a microwave or in an oven without ruining a good portion of it. What do you think, Steph? I think that's a good answer. Yeah, good answer. All right, good. thanks Uh, okay. Uh, 2nd question from John is, uh, saw Richard Blaze on uh, on uh, his television program. I was trying to make pizza, threw a bunch of Binchotan charcoal in there and got his oven up to, you know, 800, 900 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a good trick. I hadn't thought. the question is, is it going to ruin your oven? Is it safe, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that's a separate question. But I feel that that would work. I mean, I have electric, I have electric heaters, electric stone heaters in the bottom and top of my oven to jack the temperature up to 850, that's how I do it, but you could definitely light a

[10:13] coal's in your in your oven. Here are the caveats. One, the Japanese have been cooking with coal indoors for a long time. Every bag of coal that you purchase will say right on it that you're not allowed to cook it inside. And the reason is, they don't want to generate, A, a lot of smoke and B, a lot of carbon monoxide. So, you know, one, I would say that if you're going to burn coal inside of your kitchen, you better have some good ventilation. That's one. Please have some good ventilation. But that said, places that do have good

[10:39] ventilations, do do it inside, although no one in the United States will tell you it's safe. Okay? Secondly, he's using benchiton charcoal, which is an extremely expensive form of Japanese charcoal, which, theoretically, they say, gives off less smoke than our standard ordinary charcoal here in the

[10:55] US. However, if you buy real hardwood charcoal that you open it up and the thing looks like it was a piece of wood back in the day and is now a piece of charcoal, I mean, I don't know how much better the bench

[11:07] a ton can be than that stuff, it burns fairly clean for a charcoal you can get here and isn't that

[11:13] expensive. They carry it at Home Depot, they carry it at some stores. So you could do that. Now, uh, it's gonna, like, I don't, Benchitan or whatever, you know, Kingsford Briquettes, don't use Kingsford Briquettes in your oven, but any of these things, nothing against the Kingsford Corporation. Any of these things, no matter what, are going to generate some carbon monoxide, so you should need to be aware of that and you need to ventilate it properly. The 3rd thing is are you going to damage the oven? Uh, well, it's possible. depends on what your oven is made out of. I mean, I would elevate the stuff on a grate. You're going to need to make sure that air can, you have a sufficient air supply in your oven to get it started. And I would also put a heat shield above it, like a piece of steel or something above the direct flame. So if you, where to build the, uh, put your pizza stone in the bottom of the oven, then build the

[12:02] binchoton on top of that, then have some sort of like a deflectorcheal above in case you get a roaring fire up. And please try not to get a roaring fire. I think theoretically as possible. Also, don't overload it. Don't go crazy. You're basically just trying to get an extra 100 or 2 degrees out of it because your

[12:19] oven's probably going to make it up to 550 and you're only looking for an extra couple 100 degrees out of it. So I think the idea is just to not go super crazy with the amount of coal that you put

[12:28] in, right? Yeah, but he lives in New York, so he's right. He does? Yeah. It's not really the oven. He renting. Oh, well, if it's a rental, then. Go ahead. Do it. Then when your landlord comes, be like, huh? What? Yeah, if you're in New York, I doubt you have decent ventilation, I'll tell you a little story. I might have told this on the radio once already. I did? Yeah. I want to lit enough coal in my house. I have a good hood. I want enough coal in my house to ignite the small hibachi that I had put into

[13:00] it and yeah, almost got me divorced. you know, not yet. Anyway, so be careful. Be careful. Although I have seen people light Benchitan charcoal inside our amphitheater at the school and not have basically any smoke at all

[13:14] because, you know, they would light it on top of the gas burners. They would ignite it and then they'd pull it off and it is fairly clean burning, more clean burning than most of most of our charcoals. But again, only use it for that extra couple 100 degrees to pump up. All right. So listen, we're going to have you call in all your questions too. 718-4972128. 718-497-2128. We going to go to our 1st commercial break cooking issues. How you feeling, brother? You're feeling good. Play so much bone, brother. How you feel, man? I call your name. I don't want people to know you're in, yeah. How you feeling, fellas? Hey, yeah. Sure, getting down. Look at him. We're gonna have a punk 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. We gotta take you high.

[14:23] All right. I'm gonna do it again. You wanna do it again, huh? You gotta take it home.

[14:35] Brother? Yeah? Now I want everybody. Let bread blow up my 2 courses. Welcome back to cooking issues on the Heritage Radio Network. Call your questions too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. I hear we have a caller. Hello, caller. on the air. Hey, I was listening to the 1st part of the show and I also find that things are bad when they're put in the fridge. What is, why is that? What is the chemical reaction happening that takes taste away from

[15:03] like vegetables and cheeses and meats and like cured meats when they're actually put in a

[15:09] cold space? That's a very interesting question. Uh, I think, you know, the everything's different with different uh, with different products. So, you know, in tomatoes, it's the texture that gets ruined of the tomato, never to come back. Cheese, a lot of it is reversible. We did a study once, where we took balls of mozzarella, fresh ones, all from the same batch, and we refrigerated some, and then let them chamber for a long time back, and

[15:37] it's posted on the blood, but a long time ago. And, um, we did, you know, most of it actually does come back. I mean, we think there is some effect that putting it in the in the fridge ever, hurts its texture irrevocably, but it's not as much as we generally

[15:51] think, because the texture of cheese is so dependent on temperature that even a couple of degrees in the center of like a ball of mozzarella or something like that means the difference between it being, you know, delicious and, you know, oozy, you know, awesome and and being rubbery,

[16:07] right? So it's like part of it is the fact that I think we never do allow something enough time to chamber up. But, I mean, also, like something like cured meats also, I haven't run a side by side, clearly out of the, like, you know, everyone says when you're tasting cured meats when they're

[16:23] cold. You know, put them on your tongue, let them warm up, but it's not, I mean, look, it's not the same thing as having a piece of meat served you at the right

[16:30] temperature and not having to like lay it on your tongue for 30 seconds to try and warm it up. Do you know what I'm saying? So, with that, I don't know what the actual problem is. I mean, like certain effects like this, like with cheese, the question is, or tomatoes, this happens just from the temperature change. And then there's problems with the refrigerator itself. So, uh, you know, like uh, or freezer, right? Which could be desiccating, it could be removing moisture, it could be adding really bad aromas. Most fridges, like, you know, for most fridges have awful aromas on the inside of them. Just turn off the fridge, which allows the volatiles to become, you know, kind

[17:05] of, you know, better for your nose. And you can see kind of the nasty things that are going on in your fridge. But, um, I'd have to research kind of other, like, which vegetables do you have in mind as being never as good when they're in the fridge. Some, by the way, are never as good after they're stored, period, because you change their metabolism. Most of these vegetables, a lot of vegetables are basically still alive when they're being pulled, right? And so, you know, you alter their metabolism rate, you change their metabolism rate, and they just are turning to crap anyway. So the fact that you're putting it in the fridge and storing it for longer means you're reducing its quality. Does that make sense? Absolutely. All right. Well, I'll look into this more. Maybe we'll talk about it, right, Nastasia? We'll look we'll look into this more and we'll talk about it more. All right. Did I hear another ring? Do we have someone in or out? No. Okay. So I have another question then from John, and this is a doozy. This is going to take a while. So dig yourself in, nostalgia. Nastasia's going to actually have to pay attention instead of, I don't know, doing whatever she normally does. Drift off into sleep while I'm speaking. And the question is, and this was actually posed to me by several people in the past couple of days. Why is it, or how is it, that we use ice? We use salt to melt ice on the roads, right? Although we're usually using calcium chloride, not sodium chloride, but principle is the same. Why do we do that? And at the same time, when we're in a kitchen, if we want to make something really, really cold, we want to keep our stuff cold, we dump salt

[18:25] onto ice. So in one case, it seems like we're using it to melt it, which seems like we're warming it up. And in the other case, we're using it to actually cool it down to make it, you know, colder. And so what's going on? Seems like a contradiction, right? Right. It's not. It's not a contradiction And this is something that is actually poorly explained by most high school teachers when you're learning it, not by my high school

[18:49] teacher, Mrs. Zook, my chemistry teacher was awesome, but maybe that's where I am today. But, uh, but, uh, well, I never had snow in California,

[18:59] so... Oh, nanny, nanny, nanny, nanny, poo-poo. All right. So, you know, I come from a place where we have seasons where I don't have to drive to see snow. Uh, so uh, no offense. California. Okay, so here's what's going on. When you add, it's all, it's actually kind of complicated, but, you know, bear with me. It's all about a fight between heat enthalpy and entropy, right? So here's what happens. In order to melt ice, you need heat. That makes sense, right, Nastasia? You need heat to melt ice, right? And the reason why is because ice is at a lower energy than water at the same temperature. So in order to make it from ice into water, you have to add energy. And that's called the heat of fusion, right? And that takes about 80 calories, 80 calories per mole, right? So every gram that promote, no, per gram, whatever. Anyway, 80 cal- melting one gram of water is enough. I put it this way. Melting one gram of water, I believe, is enough energy to raise that same gram of water 80 degrees. Again. That's how much energy it is. So it's not insubstantial, right? It's a lot of energy. It's called the heat effusion. Okay, so it requires energy to melt the ice. Now, which means, right, that things want to be at a lower energy. So at, you know, in general, uh, things want to turn into ice to go into that lower lower energy state to give off that, uh, you know, that heat and become ice. Now, there's a competing principle here, which is things like to be disordered. Entropy, right, is basically how much a disorder there is in a system, and the universe wants to be disordered, chaotic, have, you know, lots of different states available for everything, maximum chaos, you know, like our lives.

[20:44] And, um, and so what happens is, is that, um, at 0 degrees where ice normally melts, it's the point at which the

[20:53] amount of uh, the amount of entropy, right? the amount of heat that you have to that you have to add to melt the ice is balanced by the amount of entropy gain you get from

[21:07] melting it. It's not making any sense, people. Read it on our blog. make more sense. But it's this fight between enthalpy and entropy and it's all balanced on temperature. When you add salt to system, right? What happens is, is that now there's, it's more states of disorder that water can be in when it's

[21:27] in, um, when it's in a solution with the salt. So therefore, right, the entropy win is greater and the temperature at which the stuff freezes drops. So now you can forget everything I said for the last 3 minutes because I'm sure it didn't make any sense. Read it on our blog and keep this in your head. When you add ice to add salt to ice. What you're doing is making it so that everything wants to freeze at a lower temperature. And we all know that, you know, salt water freezes at a lower temperature than ice, right? So here's what goes on. In order for the ice to melt into salt water, you need to have heat. Heat needs to go into the system to do it. But where's the heat gonna come from, Nastasia? Where is he going to come from? No. The heat's gonna come from the ice. The heat's going to come from the ice. So when you take a big block of salt ice and you add salt on it, right? Like the ice is going to start to melt into the salt, it's going to form a brine, but in order to do it, it's going to require heat, that heat has to come from the block of

[22:26] ice because that's the easiest way for it to get it. It's not going to suck it out of the air because that's not fast enough. And so the entire block of ice along with the salt brine is going to get colder. And that's what's happening when you're making your mise en place, right? Now, if there's not enough ice there, right, to all get colder and not melt, you melt it all out,

[22:45] right? Furthermore, if you let it sit there for a long time, energy is going to go into the

[22:49] air and then it's going to keep remelting more. So it's basically, the same thing happens. When you put salt on ice on a road. Initially, the whole block of ice is gonna get colder, right? And then it's eventually going to melt off alonging, as long as you've depressed the freezing point long enough, such that it can't freeze in your ambient atmosphere.

[23:14] And that temperature where it's going to freeze, right? In ambient atmosphere, in a fully saturated salt solution is quite low. Like, you know, in the minus tens. So it's so the system all works and it's not a contradiction and it didn't make a damn bit of sense. No one's gonna understand what the hell I was talking about. We should have your old chemistry teacher, then. Mrs. Zook? We should have Mrs. Zook on. But you can go on the blog and look up cocktail science. The very 1st cocktail science we post I posted about a year and a half ago, has a much more lucid and easier to follow, easier to reread explanation of

[23:45] it, and I apologize for kind of going all over the place. What do you think? Did make any damn sense at all? We have a caller. We have a caller, even though that made no damn sense at all. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hopefully I'll make more sense. Oh, hi, sorry, this is Antoinette. Um, I have a question that's completely off topic, so I don't know if uh, if you want to wait for me a few more minutes to go through the ice. Well, no, no, no. How off topic? Let's hear it. Like, really? Like something about cars? No, I was wondering, have you read Andrew Bear's Mark Twain's feast? No, I haven't. Tell me a little bit about it. It's, he, he goes through Twain's, a tramp abroad, and Twain went through how he loved all these American foods that no longer exists,

[24:25] and uh, he tries to recreate all these dishes from the 1800s. Oh, how is it?

[24:31] It's all, it's, it's, I recommend it. I, I, I do recommend it. I love I love Twain. I mean, I love Twain. He's one of the great kind of, you know, funny misanthropic writers, you know, of America, wouldn't you think? No, definitely. I agree. I think you'll like this book. I definitely recommend you get it. And um, what I was calling about is, Twain apparently liked his coffee, American coffee, much more than coffee abroad, because of our milk, and they're guessing it's because it was raw milk, and I wanted to know your thoughts on the raw milk debate.

[25:05] Raw milk debate. Well, okay. I mean, uh, so wait, so their theory was that the milk in uh, in Europe was pasteurized before the milk is was here. I don't know. I don't know the actual, I don't know the truth or falsity of that. Um, I know that the milk we used to get was alternately in the milk back in the day, back in the day, they like pre, for instance, pre-Erie Canal, pre-railroad into New York City, the milk we used to get was

[25:30] alternately was horrible here, but could be much better in the country where now we kind of get a kind of broadband mediocre milk,

[25:37] uh, no offense to the milk people. My feeling on the raw milk is that I'm sure that there is both good milk, good raw milk and bad raw

[25:47] milk. I have had some fantastic raw milk, and I'm sure you're aware that, you know, here in the United States, you have to buy it directly from the farm. So, for instance, we have a farm in at the green market here in New York that sells raw milk when you buy in upstate New York at the farm and it has warning labels all

[26:04] over it, but they can't ship it into New York to sell it at the farmer's market here. Give me my debate on its taste or my debate on the law. I mean, the law is absurd. But, I mean, okay. The law is ridiculous. The law was originally put in place because they thought that you could get tuberculosis from

[26:20] cows and so they started pasteurizing the milk. I'm sure pasteurization has done a lot of good, you know,

[26:28] keeping milk for a longer period of time, but there's no question that, um, I mean, you can have really good cheeses that are made with patrized milk, obviously, I've had many, many,

[26:38] but, uh, you know, that said, you know, most of the great cheeses of the world outside of the

[26:42] U.S. are made with unpasteurized milk. So it would be interesting to do a side-by-side test, which I've never done, of the same exact company, same exact process, pasturized versus not, same milk, same cow. I've never I've never had that happen. I had great experience with the raw milk that I've purchased at farms here, but it's because they're great farmers and they make great milk. Do you know what I'm saying? And the milk and a lot more happens to our milk other than just pasteurization. You know, it's broken up, it's homogenized. So, um, you know, I think there's a, there's a lot wrong with, uh, there's a lot wrong with our milk supply based on what it could be. I mean, it's really only ideal in the sense of it's relatively cheap compared to what it actually, you know, probably should cost if it was done

[27:26] right, and it lasts a relatively long time, but that's about all I can say kind of good about it. What do you think? Well, I think, um, I think it's a little absurd. The law, again, like as you said before, but also I think it's almost impossible to really recreate the mill set, uh,

[27:44] Twain is talking about as Andrew Bears is trying to do in the book. I don't know how we would possibly be able to recreate it exactly. Uh, yeah, I mean, there are people that have the same kind of breeds of cows. They're treating them in the same kind of way. It's just not mass. I mean, I'm sure in a microwave, you could go reproduce it because, you know, you could go to someone who's pasturing a very similar cow. The breed of cow that we're, you know, around back then are still extant. And, you know, you can get them, you could find someone milking them, uh, and you can get it directly from the cow, you know, uh, this is all possible. It's just not feasible in New York, for instance. Do you know what I mean? I'm talking to a bunch of food scientists who say that I'm a jerk for saying that the law is absurd because they point to the fact that, you know,

[28:30] indeed there are diseases you can get from raw milk cheeses that haven't been

[28:35] pasteurized. And it is true that there are a certain number of people who,

[28:40] you know, can, I guess, contract diseases from raw milk. However, I'm willing to take that. I'm more than willing to take that risk. And 9 times out of 10 nowadays in the US, when someone gets a disease off of a cheese, for instance, or a dairy product, it's off of

[28:54] a pasteurized product that's just been stored incorrectly. So, I mean, the big, uh, the big, you know, problems in the past, I think in the 70s and 80s where, like, queso

[29:02] blanco queso fresco that were just, uh, you know, not, uh, that didn't have any back, because, you know, having a bacteriological, you know, having a bacteria component of culture in the milk protects it against certain pathogens.

[29:14] So I think it's actually kind of these pasteurized and then stored in properly recontaminated products can sometimes be less safe. But, you know, again, I've had dairy scientists, you know, just tell me that I was a complete jackass for saying that,

[29:27] but I mean, look, I think we should just slap a label on it. I'm allowed to smoke if I want. You know what I mean? For instance. And I think that's a lot more dangerous than, you know, eating the cheese that I want. And I think, and their point is, yes, but the consumer doesn't know that there's a risk to eating cheese, whereas they know there's a risk to

[29:44] smoking. So I say, hey, why don't we just slap a warning label on it. And they're like, well, a producer wouldn't want to do that and be like, I would love that. You kidding me? Like, you think that the people that I know that I hang out with that are paying a bazillion dollars a pound for a block of cheese anyway, right? And I used to, she was always my favorite thing in the world because, you know, my theory was I could afford the best cheese in the world.

[30:05] I can't afford the best wine. It's no longer really the case because cheeses have gotten so expensive. But, you know, you know, we can afford to have at least a little bit of the best cheese in the world. And I think that we would flock to achieve that had a big old warning label on it saying it was made with raw meat. We would look for it. It wouldn't be that it would frighten us. We would actually seek it out, you know, but anyway, that's just my feeling on it. But I'm definitely going to check out that book as a fan of Twain and as a fan of 19th century American cooking.

[30:31] And, you know, an interesting, you know, the take on 19th century American cooking, I guess that most sticks in my head was, what was her name? Oh my god, Hesse. The couple, what was their name? Oh my god. My head's gone. He was the, she was a famous food historian. He was a, uh, he was a New York Times critic for a while and they they wrote a book called uh, Taste of America. She just passed away recently. Real curmudgeon. Like her main gripe was that American food used to be great before the invention of baking powder. You know, and that baking powder ruined everything. That was her basic, that was her basic tenet. And she was a real kind of like, I think a tough, you know, a tough individual, but she was hanging out with the likes of William

[31:10] Weiss Weaver. Uh, and, you know, writers like that, people who really have kept, uh, you know, William Boyce Weaver is big on uh, Pennsylvania Dutch and food saving and heirloom vegetables. And these guys have really brought back a lot of the old recipes. And I think there's a lot of value there. So I'm definitely going to check out that book and thanks for bringing it to our attention. No problem. Alrighty. Let's go another break. Oh, a commercial break time? All right, we're going to a commercial break. Please call in all your questions too. 718. Whatever it is, 497-2128. 718-497-2128. Cooking issues. Good 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? Yeah, yeah. You're getting done. Look at him. We're gonna have a bump, good time. We're gonna have a bump, good time. We're gonna have a bump good time. We're gonna have a bunk, good time. They'll take them up, Fred. We gotta take you home.

[32:22] All right. I want to do it again. You wanna do it again, huh? Yeah, they do on that. You gotta take you home.

[32:34] Bam! Brother? Yeah. Now, I want everybody. Let red flow in my two course. Welcome back to cooking as you still got a couple minutes left here in the studio, although I'm told we will have to get off the air at

[32:45] 745 fairly properly. 745. Oh my god, 1245. on my brain. My brain is fried. I'm talking about frying in a minute. Call your questions two. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. We have a question about a registry, huh, Nastasia? What we got? Same fried chicken guy. which one do you want to go? I want the, that's very nice. I apologize, Clayton, for you being referred to as same fried chicken guy. So let's that's why we call her the hammer. No tact, no tact, just a hammer, big blunt instrument. Anyway, give us the, give us the registration question, and then we'll do a fried chicken later. All right. One more question if he has time. I'm getting married soon and would like to use my wedding registry to beef up my kitchen. What are a few items that any modern cook shouldn't be without? Okay, I would recommend you get some rich friends. That's the 1st thing. and register for an immersion circulator. If you do not already own an immersion circulator, you should register for an immersion circulator. If you throw 3 parties this year, you will be happy that you have an immersion circulator. And let me think about this for a minute, because I'm just thinking about this. And then we're going to take a call and we'll come back to it along with the fried chicken question. Call her, you're on the air. Hi, this is Hannah. I'm just calling because I like to buy kind of chicken and fish and I'm always looking for a new healthy sauce to cook with them. Right? Do you have any recommendations? A new healthy what? sauce? Sauce to cook with chicken or fish? Wow, uh, I in general, so you want a thick sauce or a thin sauce, you want something to serve or you want

[34:11] something, something separate? what are you, what are you looking for? Well, I tend. I'm just getting bored of my ones. I'm ready and I tend to just do kind of, um, a tomato base, like a passata with, um, just onions and some spices. Um, so anything different already. All right. So here's what I would recommend. Anytime you're looking to change your sauce repertoire. 1st of all, there's a very good, very, very good book on sauces. I highly recommend it by James Peterson called Sauces. It won like a Beard Award, like maybe about 12 years ago. It's available kind of very cheaply, I think, on Amazon now, or, you know, you use. It's fantastic book. And what I like about it is it teaches like basically fundamentals of sauce making and how to build on sauces starting with certain

[34:55] bases. So what I would do is I would come up with a couple of techniques that you like that you can then build a bunch of flavors off of. So for instance, whenever I have a vegetarian, now you're talking about chicken, so it's, you know, it's different, but you can use the sauce. Whenever I have vegetarians coming over, I do one of it, which is a lot, actually. I have various variations of fundamental coconut milk sauce that we make. And if you have a good blender. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you know, we'll do, you know, it's, so it's a variant on Indian, but you could switch it to Asian or Thai if you

[35:30] want. It's just, you know, uh, pre-cook your, your, uh, your, um, your onions, your shallots or whatever you want, your garlic, then put in your spices, you know, hit them with the heat a little

[35:40] bit, then I usually put in cashews, sometimes tomato paste.

[35:44] If I want it red, sometimes not, then your, you know, your coconut milk, you know, your heat, blend, correct with lime,

[35:50] and or soy, and or whatever. But I have like maybe 15, 16 sauces that I can build out of the simple idea that I'm going to start with frying my ingredients, toasting the spices, throwing in probably a nut to beef it

[36:03] up, and then coconut milk and blend. Similarly, I have, you know, 13 or 14 different variants of, uh, you know, frying up. I can say, I'll start with frying the onions and garlic, uh, frying

[36:16] that, and then, uh, you know, some form of cheese, cheese, uh, you know, and herb and oil blended. Or so they all work that way. And, you know, these are all basically separate sauces that you can make in advance. I mean, then, of course, the obvious is, you know, the pan sauce, whatever based on what's in the pan, which is usually some form of deglazing. So it all it all depends on kind of like building up building up your your repertoire, I would choose a taste flavor that you like. Like if you like an Indian profile, I would get like, you know, a couple of the base spices in your kitchen that you need to do it, coriander, cardamom,

[36:46] uh, cumin, you know, things like this, uh, and have them just ready. And then, you know, whenever you want to make a sauce, you know, it's it's whatever, wherever your heart takes you that night and you, and you, you blend it. But it's just having, you know, if tomatoes, your only base to start with now, then, you know, there's only so far you can go with that. So then you just, you know, stock out your pantry and get a couple of different, get an emulsified sauce in there. Like, so start building on, on, like, hollandaise slash Bernese-based differences. Those are delicious. Everyone likes them. And they're really, they're really quite simple. You don't need to have clarified butter. You know, you can look up Harold McGee, I think, wrote about it. And we might have it on the blog very, very fast, Hollandaise, or Bernese, or any one of those sauces, no sauces form a fantastic base for other things.

[37:29] It's just a question of changing the flavors. And so you can really kind of alleviate boredom by just picking one or 2 of these sauce families, right? And then working with it from there and really, really expand out. And that's how I think all good cooks expand their repertoires by

[37:44] like taking some new basic nugget and then building on it again and again and again through repetition. helpful at all or no? That is. And would you say using frying the herbs before you then add in the sauce? It depends. So like the, you know, the classic that a lot of the dry spices and things like ginger, things like nuts, I tend to fry before I add the liquids

[38:06] because I, you know, I've never done it side by side, though. It's interesting, but theoretically, you know, that's how it's done in those

[38:12] cuisines, and so I just, I tend to do it. And, you know, they say that it releases the aromas. I don't know if that's actually true. Well, it probably, if there's a high heat involved, it actually does probably do some sort of toasting,

[38:23] frying, and changing the base notes that are involved, because I know that, for instance, toasted caraway, tastes very different from untoasted

[38:29] caraway, not better, not where it's different. And so it's just, it tends to be something that I do. I don't ever pre-cook green herbs. And, you know, always like the dried spices, not dried herbs, more dried spices that you tend to

[38:42] hit. You know, just make sure you don't scorch the garlic, et cetera, et cetera. But then throw it on the blender. and it goes me. The blender is like, you know, especially I have a vita prep at home that'll take a pound of bacon and emulsified into a sauce and no one will even know it's there other than the flavor. No one will know from a texture standpoint. So a good blender is a definite sauce maker's friend in the kitchen these

[39:00] days because it definitely saves me a lot of a lot of heartache. Anyway. So, uh, so... All right, thank you. Thanks for the call. All right, now I'm going to... No, why don't you just finish the wedding one? You can't get to the gym. Watch me. Four minutes? Watch me. You're taking a portion of my 4 minutes to tell me that I can't answer this question in 4 minutes. This is a lady who berates me for my Martha Stewart position where I was supposed to do 3 cocktails. I did 3 quarters of a cocktail. Here we go. All right. listen, I'm going to think more about your registry problem. Light up prep. Oh, yeah, but you can't register. Where can you register for a Vita prep? If you can find a place, here's what I here's what I would want. Get yourself a Vita prep, get yourself an immersion circulator, buy your own vacuum machine or get, you know, a, you know, cheap one, whatever, um,

[39:44] Obviously, if you don't already own a decent set of knives, get have them buy you a good set of pots. For Christ's sakes, get a good set of pots. I mean, when I registered, I had like a mismatch of different pots, and now I have like kind of the standard

[39:57] pots, and even though I got them, you know, 18 years ago, whatever it is, you know, 15 years ago, uh, when I was registered, I'm still loving them

[40:05] today, they're fine. I have the, you know, standard kind of all clads, but definitely hit all those big ticket

[40:09] items. Yeah, ditch the China and get all that other stuff. Yeah, forget China. Who wants China? It's gonna break anyway. Get the Vita Prep, get the immersion circulator, get some decent pots, get some decent knives,

[40:21] right? And then if Nastasia thinks of anything while I'm talking, we'll go for that. Okay, now, on your fried chicken question, you make fried chicken only about once a month, that's a reasonable amount, although, you know, you can make it more. Keeping the oil, how do you keep the oil after you're done because the oil can be expensive. Is it worthwhile to keep the oil? Okay, listen. The enemies to oil are basically oxidation and breakdown when you're cooking and when you're storing. What causes that breakdown to happen. First of all, fresh oil is kind of bad anyway. You should always fry a little bit with your oil. It really picks up quick, especially at home because you're probably pretty brutal on the oil, but, you know, fresh oil actually isn't the best. You want to use it a little bit because what happens is the oil breaks down somewhat. And when it breaks down, it becomes, it has more polar components, so it actually can attack the food and fry it a lot faster. So a little bit of oil breakdown is actually helpful. But in general, don't worry about your oil being too fresh at home because it ain't going to be fresh for long. Anyway, so the main things that are going to kill your oil is if you're overheating it. If you overheat your oil, which you tend to do, not you, but one tends to do on a stove,

[41:22] the temperature cycles up and down, up and down and way high. That's going to ruin oil very quickly, and if it gets really dark in color, it's not going to be worthwhile and you probably won't keep it. The other thing is, if you get a lot of particles floating in the bottom that burn, those will cause your oil to go down really

[41:39] fast. And the 2nd is if you're frying a lot of high liquid stuff. sprays out into it or lots of salts. You're going to notice the oil is going to start foaming a lot more, and the oil is going to go south fast. So a lot of how long you can keep the oil is how you treated it when you're frying. We use an oil, if you can go to a commercial supplier and get a 5

[41:56] gallon, you know, wherever it is, £30 or 5 gallon pail of oil, the professional fry oil that we use is 8 times better than the fry oil you can get in a

[42:05] supermarket because it has antioxidants in it, which means the oil is going to last a lot longer. Okay, that's one, two. When you store it, you want to let it cool down, and then right

[42:15] away that night, you want to pour it, filter it through 1st like a strainer, and then through something finer, like some napkins or cloth, to get all the particles out of it, because those are really

[42:24] going to make your oil turn to crap. Then, when you store it, you want to store it outside of the light, because if it's stored in the light, you're going to get more oxidation. So you want to store it in a dark, cool place. You want it to be filtered and you want it to stay, you know, in a cool area. You want to make sure you don't do too much temperature cycling on it. And here's the best way to find out if your oil is crappy, right? Take a little bit of your oil, heat it up in a pan, and fry a piece of white bread in it, and then eat the white bread. White bread is extremely neutral. It soaks up a lot of oil, and it's the best way other than just dipping your finger in and tasting it to figure out whether you're going to get any off notes in your fried products from the oil that you're using.

[43:03] And that's my standard technique in the kitchen to determine if an oil has gone too far to keep using is I do a bread fry test. All right. Now, I have 30 seconds on the way out. Jarrett called in and or wrote in. And he said, hey, when I make my dashi, right? I eat a huge bowl of it and I get all buzzed and I have to sit down and watch comedy programs because I get a buzz.

[43:24] Is this from the glutamic acid? And I don't know whether this key, you know, you know, keys in with the kind of pot questions we had before, but I definitely, I know you gave us our recipe. I want to know kind of what secret ingredient you're putting in to get buzzed. I have never noticed this. I've never heard, I couldn't find any reputable cases of monosodium glutamate intoxication, but the last time I got drunk without

[43:49] drinking was an ice cream party, random. I found an ice cream machine. I look more Jared, by the way. I'm about to own a tangent on the way out of here. I found an ice cream machine on the side of the street, a soft serve ice cream machine. It was all broken and beat and battered, weighed £900. I wheeled it into my apartment, wired it into 3 separate circuits because it took

[44:06] 3 phase power and it was all demented, finally got it to work. The refrigeration didn't work, so I had to throw dry ice into it, all these nightmare problems. I had a giant soft serve party where I actually went up to the Bronx to Mr.

[44:17] Softy, which is our local ice cream soft serve ice cream here and bought a bunch of gallons of Mr. Softy ice cream mix and threw the most disgusting party in the world. It was all it was was champagne and all you could eat soft serve ice cream out of an ice cream tap, you know, because we had the big soft serve machine with all the toppings.

[44:34] And I didn't even have anything to drink that night, but I must have eaten, I don't know, like a half gallon of ice

[44:39] cream. And I felt completely looped drunk crazy. And so that's the only similar experience I've had to a non-alcohol base buzz on a food

[44:47] I've done and it wasn't related to MSG. or to Dashi. But I definitely want your Dashi recipe if you can get a, if you get buzzed off of it, Jared. So I'll look into it some more. And for this week, it's cooking issues. Come back next week, this next Tuesday, 12, 12 noon. Vicious, fish, vodka.