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[0:35] Vicious, fish, vodka. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues here on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, and we're here with Nastasia de Lopez Hammer, just phoned back from Miami just this morning. Call in all of your questions too. Nastasia, give them the number. 718. Uh-huh. Brutal. 718-497-2128. That's 718-49721. 28. Hammer the Nastasia Lopez, huh? I know it. I know. She doesn't even have our number in her brain, huh? Anyway, coming to you live for the next 45 minutes or so. Today's episode is brought to you by Hearst Ranch. Hearst Ranch is the nation's largest single source supplier of free range,

[1:21] all natural, grass-fed, and grass-finished beef. Since 1865, which is a long time ago, the Hearst family has raised cattle on the rich, sustainable native grasslands of the central California coast. The result is beef with extraordinary flavor that's as memorable and natural as the surrounding landscape. For more information, go to www.hearstranch.com. We've had their beef and it's quite good, right, Nastasia? Yes Dave. All right. So, um, we actually, I got back, what, yesterday? Day before yesterday, Nastasia just got back. We were at the Miami South Beach Food and Wine Festival. I was doing a thing Majig for the Liberty Science Center, which is having an exhibition on cooking, which is going to open up in the fall, the science of cooking, which is going to be very interesting.

[2:02] Chris Young from the new Modernist Cuisine Cookbook was doing it with me and we were basically fluffing for the Food Network stars, you know, like Guy Fieri and Rachel Ray and Tyler Florence and, you know, the Ace of Cakes and Giada and all these people were coming out to do a show for the kids and their parents and we would sit there and do some

[2:21] science questions. fluff them up a little bit. But it was fun. We had a bunch of little kids ask us about liquid nitrogen. I had a kid ask me if Agar Agar was a chemical. I was so Jack, someone asked me that question. I got to go off on one of my favorite tangents about how, you know, a cow was a bag of chemicals, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, so it was a lot of fun. But the most important part of the entire thing was that we got to visit some rare fruit places, tropical fruit places in

[2:47] South Florida. So those of you that know me know I'm kind of a temperate fruit nut. Nastasia and I have gone sampled pears at the Kent, at the Broguedale, a couple 100 varieties. I've done a couple 100 varieties of apples at the Geneva Station, the agricultural experiment station up in upstate New York. Anyway, I'll go anywhere to sample a whole boatload of temper fruits. We've done semi-tropical stuff. Nastasia and I did citrus. you know, almost a year ago at Gene Lester's ranch out in Watsonville, California, a couple

[3:19] 100 varieties there. We only tasted 100 though, you know, so anyway. But we've never done full on hardcore tropical fruit. South of Miami, right at the very tip of Florida and Southgate, there are 2 places we visited that are simply amazing and worth a visit.

[3:36] One of them is the Fairchild. Now, Fairchild has been a garden for a long time that has many, many different varieties. They store many different varieties of tropical fruits, citrus, and otherwise. We visited not their show garden, but their kind of actual tree garden.

[3:49] Unfortunately, most of the stuff we wanted to taste there, like mangoes and jackfruits aren't in season right now. So we're going to have to go back and we are going to go back. Chris Young, Nastasia, Harold McGee and I are going back to there in July to the mango festival, and we're going to, we're going to eat mangoes until we die or they kick us out of the park, one of the

[4:06] two, and jackfruit, because they also have, I think, like 75 varieties of jackfruit, which we're going to, you know, eat until we're all jacked up, as they say.

[4:13] But the 2nd place that you need to visit, less well known in South Dade, is the fruit and spice park, the Miami Dade County fruit and spice park. And we had an amazing tour of that place. And they have, you just pay. I don't know what the entrance fee is. Not that much. You pay, you go in, and you can take a tour if you want, and you just eat a preposterous amount of the craziest tropical fruit. So of the stuff that we had in season, I think there's one called Japoticaba, sounds like Chupacabra, but it's not. It's chipoticaba, and it's they look like little grapes, but they taste musky and they grow on the actual bark of the tree.

[4:48] So the tree, like the little tree, shrub tree is growing there and the little grapey things are growing right on the bark and it tastes kind of like a grape with a little bit of a

[4:57] muskiness. Another really amazing one is Canistell, Canistell. they call like almost like a, it's similar to the Lucuma, which is the fruit that's famous in Peru that I've had shipped up kind of preserved, which I didn't like at all. Because isn't that stuff that we were given that we didn't like at all? I think that preserved stuff from, was it, Peru or Chile that we were given? Anyway, I think that was Lucuma, no? No, I just threw it out. All right. But Canistell has it almost a taste of sweet potatoes and kind of an egg custardy fruit, amazing

[5:28] stuff, and it makes a fantastic ice cream. If you're in Whole Foods in South Day, by the way, you should go to get Gabby Gabby's ice cream. She makes some amazing ice cream with both canistel. And the next thing I'm about to tell you about, which is black sapote. Black sapote, they call it chocolate pudding fruit. And you cut it in half and it's dark and it looks kind of like chocolate pudding, but it's super creamy and makes it

[5:48] like an, it makes, I think, an amazing ice cream. You like the ice cream, right? Noastia? Yeah, it was very good ice cream. So anyway, please, if you're ever in South Dade, go visit the Fruit and Spice Park. And if you're from Miami and you've never been to the fruit and spice park. You should just jump out of your window right now. If you're spending all of your time, like, you know, being all pumped

[6:06] and tan on South Beach, like a moron, you should get out of there and go to the fruit and spice park because it's a lot more rewarding. I have to say the whole South Beach thing, not my style about you, Nastasia, did you enjoy the actual South Beach? No, I don't like South Beach very much. No? All right. Now, on to the questions. So, from a couple weeks, oh, by the way, the reason I missed last week's show, I was in Seattle, actually Bellevue, Washington at the lab of Nathan Mirvold, the Microsoft billionaire Food Nut, who, along with Chris Young and, you know, 13 other people, have the past 4 or 5 years been tolling toiling away at the modernist cuisine cookbook, which I believe is just released now, actually shipping now from

[6:49] amazon.com. So you and about 450 of your closest friends, that means $450, can go on Amazon and purchase,

[6:57] you know, the modernist cuisine, which is, I think, 6 volumes or something like that. You know, I know some of the stats from visiting them, it weighs like £40, you know, £4 of it is ink. It's got like, you know, the greatest ink ever made. There's only like 2 factories on earth, 2 printing houses on earth. can do the printing that they that they can do. Anyway, it's amazing cookbooks. So I flew out there to Seattle to have a dinner at Nathan's lab. Uh, and uh, it was, it was, it was really, it was awesome, awesome experience. We, uh, I'll probably, will probably blog about it if I ever have time. Remember, for those of you that are angry at me for not writing more blog

[7:34] posts, starting tomorrow, I'm contractually obliged to have a post a week. So, you know, you have that to look forward to anyway. Dave, we got an email question. An email question. All right. Well, after the, I'll read it during the break and then we'll, well, I'll see whether I know the answer to it. So the, um, So anyway, so I'm sitting there at the place and the taxi that's supposed to come take me to the

[7:54] airport. I missed, didn't come. So came like 20 minutes late, had problem insecurity. missed my airplane back to New York by one minute and slept in the Seattle airport because I was too pissed off and tired to actually go back to

[8:08] anyone's anyone's house or anything like that. I later found out that all of our friends, you know, had stayed on at the dinner and partied till 4

[8:17] AM while I was busy being pissed off in the airport, but there you have it. Anyway, so, um, on to the questions. A couple weeks ago, someone called in, I believe, and said, what's going on in preserved

[8:28] lemons? What is it that causes them to, you know, be preserved and, you know, what is it? It's probably, is it a bacterias or whatever? And I didn't know the answer. I was, you know, wholehearted, you know, whole full on stumped. And the answer, I forget the name of the person who called in. But the answer is yeast. So I looked online for it, and it is a couple strains of yeast that are involved in the preserved lemons that can survive the saltiness of that environment and give the preserved

[8:52] lemons their characteristic flavor. I then conferred with Harold McGee when I saw him out at the, when I saw him out at the, at the Nathan Mirville dinner, and he agreed

[9:01] that, yes, he had heard it was a yeast, and it makes sense to him. So that's the answer. It is yeast. Okay. Now, on to the 1st of this week's questions. Josh, from Somerset, England writes, and he says, I was very interested in the article on rapid infusion on the cooking issue site. What I'd like to know is, can the, what are we supposed to say? ISI or EC? ECD. EC. What I'd like to know is, can the EC soda siphon be used to do the technique instead of the whipper? Quite simply, I've wanted both for a long time, but can only really justify getting one or the other because of money and space,

[9:36] et cetera. What are the advantages and disadvantages? Is it best to use a one liter or a half liter for home use? And he pumps us up and says the technique is genius. I wish I could tend the fundraiser, discover more things like this. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you very much for the kind words. And if you can only buy one. In fact, if you can only buy two, just get the just get the whippers. I wouldn't bother getting the soda siphons. The soda siphons are really specialized, and most of the time when we're doing, 1st of all, soda siphons have a very thin

[10:04] neck. So it's hard to get a lot of stuff into them. Second of all, soda siphons. They draw from the bottom. So really they're only good if you're like a big 3 Stooges fan and you like to spray people in the face with seltzer or if you're going to keep the seltzer in the bottle for a long time

[10:19] and keep it in the fridge, most of the techniques we do, I'm pouring all of the stuff out right away.

[10:24] And I find that you can actually lose quite a bit of the carbonation as you spray out through the spray head on

[10:29] one of those siphons. So for a number of reasons, even if I was going to carbonate with one of those things, I would never carbonate with the soda siphon, I actually carbonate with

[10:38] the with the with the whipper. The only difference is that, you know, you have to shake it more to get the CO2 in, right? If you really wanted to, wanted to make it act more like a soda siphon, as you put the cartridge in, you could hold it upside

[10:53] down, and then the CO2 would rock it through the drink as it goes up, which is basically all

[10:57] the only thing that soda siphon's accomplishing for you. Soda siphon is also harder to clean. So I would only buy whippers. I would even carbonate, like I say, if you were going to carbonate in one of those, which I don't really recommend, but if you're

[11:08] gonna do that, I would carbonate in the whipper. So I would buy only whippers. I think they're just a superior superior product all around the cream whippers. Now, as to the one liter or the half liter, uh, for home use,

[11:23] like if you're going to do a lot of drinks, then I would get the, and you're going to carbonate them, I would get the liter. If you're gonna be doing a lot of rapid infusion, you're just gonna go through a couple more chargers. Either that or you're going to have to infuse into more product if you have if you have the liter one. So, you know, we write all of our recipes for the half liter ones because we're doing lots of

[11:42] tests, um, and they don't scale exactly. So you can use either one, but just be aware that if you use a

[11:48] liter whipper with a smaller amount of product in it. You're going to have to probably throw an extra charger into it. So you're going to have the expense of using extra chargers if you're using the leader as opposed to the half liter. But both will work. What do you think? What do you think about that? That's a good answer, yeah. All right. Josh also says, uh, PS. I love James Brown as much as the next guy, but surely you've got another CD you can play. Well, it's interesting you should say that, Josh, because someone else

[12:14] email just the same week and said that they enjoyed the James Brown because it's exactly in sync with their treadmill as they're listening to the podcast.

[12:25] So now I've got a 4 and an against on the James Brown. I could come up with a different James Brown song, perhaps. Or I could possibly move to something a little less funky, like a Merle Haggard or something like this. I'm not sure. What are your thoughts, Nastasia? Should we stick with the James Brown? I didn't know we were allowed to change our middle theme. Maybe we're not allowed to change our theme music, but we can change our middle music. I don't know. what do you think? What are your thoughts? Any thoughts? No thoughts. No thoughts? Nostach is too tired coming in off of the... You answer your own question. Well, not answering my questions. What do you mean? I had a question. You're just sitting there staring into space. I don't know if you're about to have an answer or if you're in a catatonic state over here. Nastasia literally had to get up at O Dark 30 this morning and she's pounding coffee as we speak, trying to text all the people that were texting her when she was on a plane and like in

[13:12] in Super Spaceland. So I have to answer her questions for her because she looks to be frank stunned. Anyway, okay. Cho, and I don't know, I assume that's a last name, Cho, writes in. That's 1st name? Cho? Okay, Cho writes in, and in all caps, by the way. So Cho seriously wants an answer. What temperature should I poach an egg at? Okay. Joe, this is a, I'm assuming you have an immersion circulator, which I'm sure most of our, you know, listeners know. An immersion circulator is something that keeps the temperature of water exactly accurate. You can buy one at William Sonoma. We love them, et cetera, et cetera. So what temperature you should cook the egg to really depends on what you're looking to

[13:54] do. The lowest temperature we ever cook in A2 is 62 degrees Celsius, which is 143 and a half in Fahrenheit land. And that is a runny poached egg. Okay? So that's like, you know, you're going to put on eggs Benedict, whatever. You cook it in the shell for an hour. You can actually get away with 45 minutes, but you know, you cook it an hour. And then after that hour, you drop the temperature down to like 60 or 59

[14:20] degrees and then it can sit there for hours and hours and hours. And then when the time comes, you just crack the egg out and the thin white separates from the thick white and you have a perfectly poached egg.

[14:28] If you're going to serve it as is and you want it to look a little more white to look a little brighter white and well done, you can put it through simmering water on its way out to service.

[14:37] Now, That is going to be 95% of all the eggs you do. If you want a little bit creamier in the inside, you don't want it runny, then you cook it to 63 degrees Celsius, which is 145.5 for an hour on the dot, and then you lower

[14:52] the, uh, these are for large eggs, large chicken eggs, then you lower the temperature down to 60 again, and that is a creamy egg yolk.

[14:59] It still will run, but it's very, very creamy. Good for a consomme. If you want it just set, but still very soft and creamy, 64 Celsius, 147 Fahrenheit is

[15:09] what you should go. If you want also for an hour. If you want something that is kind of like a hard-boiled egg, but not, then I would put it in simmering water for like 4 minutes, 5 minutes, something like this, then put it into 70 degrees Celsius water, 158 Fahrenheit for about an

[15:29] hour, and the yolk will be perfectly yellow and creamy.

[15:33] It won't smell like an overcooked egg and you'll have a perfect hard boiled egg. If you want a interesting thing. Herve Tise, who writes a lot of books on the science of cooking, all of them, I think, bad and wrong.

[15:46] Uh, he, uh, and by the way, Tisa spelled this. If you're looking for it, don't write T-E-E-S, in the Google, write Erve, this, because that's how he spells his name. Erve Tis has written and said that the 65 degrees Celsius, 149 degrees Fahrenheit is the perfect kind of poached egg, because, and this just goes to show you how little he thinks about things.

[16:07] He puts his eggs in the or I was told this by someone who saw him run the experiment. He puts his eggs in what he calls a very highly calibrated oven. Now, anyone who's ever cooked an egg in a circulator knows that 65 degrees Celsius is not

[16:20] a runny egg. And it's because there's evaporative cooling out of the eggshell. In fact, you can use this. You can do Maillard reaction humming eggs in the oven by cooking them in the shell in the

[16:32] oven, and as they evaporate, the alkalinity of the egg goes up and they go, they undergo browning reactions in the oven, even without a pressure cooker.

[16:40] So the evaporative cooling alone is enough to drop the temperature of the egg as it's cooking by about 2 or 3 degrees to get a runny egg

[16:49] yolk. And so, airveitis, chew on that one. In fact, he did a demo at the French Culinary Institute 5 years ago, and he had

[16:58] to set up a bunch of circulators to cook us eggs, and he said all of these eggs are 2 degrees off. And the reason is it's because he did all of his initial tests in an oven, just goes to show you what he knows. Anyway, let's go to our 1st commercial break, calling all your questions too. 718. What is it? 497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Cooking issues. So much bone, brother. How you feeling, man? I call your name. I don't want people to know you're in, yeah. How you feeling, Bella? Hey, jam, you're getting down. Look at him. We're gonna have a fun, good time. We gonna have a fun, good time. We're gonna have a fun good time. We're gonna have a bunk, good time. Take 'em up, Fred. We've gotta take you high.

[18:00] All right. I'm gonna do it again. You wanna do it again? Gotta take it high.

[18:10] Brother? Now I want everybody. Left red, blowing my 2 courses. And then I want to wave in, let's go and fill that with dinner now, all right? I'm gonna get that fella with a little horn over there. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Tune in to the speakeasy every Wednesday at 3 p.m. where hosts Damon

[18:35] Volte will discuss cocktails, spirits, wine, beer, tea, coffee, and all things in the liquid

[18:40] universe, with guests ranging from bartenders and brewers, alchemists and ambassadors, roasters and regulars, and every expert and enthusiast in between.

[18:49] Learn from some of the world's leading experts in mixology, bar history,

[18:53] distillation, and brewing about how we enjoy imbibing today. Again, that's every Wednesday at 3 p.m. on the Heritage radio network. Hello and welcome back to Cooking Issues. Call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.

[19:15] So, uh, the email question uh, came in and said that when I when I was in Seattle, did I get a chance to visit Armandino

[19:20] Batali's, um, Salumi place and where do I rank him in kind of American ham producers?

[19:26] Now, this is an interesting question. So Armandino Batali is, in fact, Mario Batali's dad. He was a really interesting case because he used to be a chemical engineer, I believe at Boeing, but I can't remember. I interviewed him a number of years ago for an article I was doing on House Cured Meats

[19:44] at Food Arts magazine. And he, as a scientist, is very, like, you know, very keyed into safety and proper techniques and a really interesting guy, but I've only ever had his products at, um, at some

[20:00] Batali restaurants. I didn't get a chance to go there when I went out. I wish I had had the time. I would have been in and out had I made my airplane. Instead, I was in and stayed, you know, stayed over, unfortunately, in the airport. So I didn't get a chance to try, basically, any of the really interesting places out there. with the exception of Nathan Mirville's, which was quite interesting. Um, so, uh, I don't really, I, I wish I had more to, more to say on it. The one thing I will say is as far as I can tell, and I've never had his famous lamp prosciutto either. But as far as I can tell, he's not doing an American style of product. He's doing more of an Italian style of product. And so I wouldn't, I wouldn't try to rank him alongside

[20:40] of American producers, you know, like Sam Edwards or Alan Benton or Nancy

[20:48] Mahaffey, which Nancy Mahaffey is from Colonel Newsom's or, you know, people of that, of that nature or like Finchville Farms. I mean, they, these are what I consider American products are making American country hams, which I consider to be fundamentally different from

[21:02] European style products. The, you know, the, the temperature that they're, that they're done at is different. American hands are typically aged in a much higher temperature after they go through their equalization process. So, I just, I wouldn't rank them. I wouldn't rank them together, but the products of his that I've had, I thought were very, very good. Um, so next time I go out to Seattle, I will be sure to have, uh, some, I'll be sure to go to the site and have a whole boatload of uh, Armandido

[21:31] Patelli's products. Okay, so I had a question come in that says, I'm interested in cooking steak sous vide, but I have a question on searing methods. It is obviously possible to use a super hot skillet, grill, or broiler. Uh, you forgot deep fryer, which is my favorite way to do it, um, to uh, sear, but what about a blowtorch? At focus points, it can reach a much higher temperature than any of the other techniques, meaning more pink

[21:52] inside and crispy, more caramelized outside. When you say caramelized, I'm assuming you mean my yard because it's not actually caramel, but, you know, we all say caramelized. I'm just saying in case anyone's a stickler. In case Jeffrey Steingard never listens to this, he'll call up and scream if I don't say that. So, you know, that's the only reason I'm saying it. Also, this might be a way to achieve even my art reaction on meats that are not of uniform, thickness or dimensions. A 3rd advantage is that if searing is taking place before the water bath, then a more shallow searing depth would cause the meat to contract less, opening the

[22:19] way for non-traditional cuts of meat. And this comes in from Justin. Okay. Now. He also says that could you use some welding equipment? And if so, what kind of welding equipment would you use? Now, here are my thoughts on torches. First of all, when we're searing, of course, we see her before and after, and the reason we see her both before and

[22:38] after is, we see her before to kill some of the bacteria on the outside. We're talking about low temperature cooking, by the way. So you cook something to the temperature you want it. So if I'm cooking a steak to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, I have a water bath

[22:49] at 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and the steak is perfectly cooked all the way through. It means great technique. Typically, I would sear it beforehand to start crust development, start flavor development, kill bacteria on the outside. By the time it comes out of the water bath, the crust is gone, and so you sear it again to put a nice crust on it. The trick is when you're searing it, as Justin says, you need a very high temperature because you don't want to overcook the meat.

[23:11] So the way I usually do that is by dropping the temperature of the

[23:15] bath a bunch. So if I'm cooking at 55, I'll drop the bath to 50 degrees Celsius for like 30 minutes before I sear

[23:22] it so that I drop the whole temperature down and I can sear it really hard without overcooking the meat. And that's in general how I accomplish it. Here are my thoughts on torches in general. First of all, I wouldn't go and use, if you mean by welding equipment, straight up acetylene. I wouldn't use acetylene because if your mix is not exactly, 1st of all, acetylene's ridiculously hot. absurdly hot. There's a famous guy when they were building the spirit of St. Louis, you know, Lindbergh's airplane. The guy at Ryan Air. Ryan was the company that built the Spirit of St. Louis. He used to cook fish with acetylene torches on pieces of aluminum. And by all accounts, they tasted god awful, like fuel. I have never cooked with acetylene, although I have a torch somewhere. I haven't fired up the acetylene in a long time, but my feeling is acetylene probably wouldn't be a good call.

[24:10] Now, the commercially, most people use propane and butane torches.

[24:17] Now, the problem with propane and butane torches is that if unless you have a special source of the gas, they add odorants, things that smell to

[24:25] them so that you can smell if there's a leak, right? And typically they're adding either methyl or captain, or ethylmer captain, or some group of mercaptains, also known as like

[24:33] methyl. These are they're sulfur containing compounds. You can smell in very minute quantities. If they're not completely combusted, right? They tend to stink up your product and you have what we call torch taste, right? Now, the more fat there is on a product, right? The more you can smell, the torch taste. So things that aren't very fatty tend not to pick up a lot of torch taste, but things that are high in fat tend to pick up a lot of this torch taste. Now, there are 2 ways you can get rid of torch taste. You can either use a gas that doesn't have any of these odorants in them, but they're kind of hard to find. That's why a lot of pipe, pipe, lighters and cigar lighting, butane that are very clean, butane. Those butane torches tend to smell less, because they, I think, have less of that product in them. The other thing you can do is make sure that your torch has complete combustion. So some torches are much better than others that completely combusting. Most of the torches that we use in our houses, like the propane torches aren't very good at it. And so you get a lot a lot of torch taste. You can take and fire that torch through a grid, heat up the grid, and then that

[25:38] will basically enhance the combustion of these things and cause you not to have a torch taste. But we use a shinois, but it tends to ruin your shinois. So I had some nicrome wire, and that also works, but then you got to go buy some nicrome wire. Chris Young of the modernist cuisine cookbook. I was asking him about it. He uses map gas, MAPP gas. I don't know if they add an odorant to it or not, but map gas can be purchased at Home Depot. It's a lot hotter Now, if you want to go really balls out on this, right? I have used a roofing torch with a propane tank as a searing

[26:10] device as a test. The problem with a roofing torch is a roofing torch will light your whole kitchen on

[26:19] fire if you're not, if you're not careful. But I was able to get a complete enough combustion with a roofing

[26:24] torch, such that I had no torch taste at all. I scorched the entire work surface that the thing was on. It was hard to get an even crust on it, but I did get it to work. So 1st of all, that's the 1st problem. You have torch taste. The 2nd problem is, is that I think certain Mayard reactions, you don't want it too, too hot. I haven't been able to run experiments yet to figure out what the maximum heat that you want is. But I don't think that the Mayard products you get from a hyper intense heat, like a torch, are the same as the ones you get from a more normal kind of heat. So I don't think that it's the same. And also, you don't really want just a thin layer of black on the outside of a product. For real crunchy, like really crunchy, crispy crust. You need a certain depth of cr crust formation. And if you did that with a torch, you'd have to either be very, very gentle, or you'd basically incinerate the top while you were getting that thickness of crust that you wanted. I also tend to find that torching is really uneven in terms of its distribution. So even though theoretically you can get all the pieces evenly, it's hard to get an even torch job. So if you look at a torch sear, often you'll see spots that are darker than others, which isn't as pleasant as

[27:31] you could be. Now, maybe you could get around that by using something giant, but then it's easy to go overboard really quickly. So I tend to only use the torch as a touchup in areas like if you have a bird, like around the thigh area, or around like where the wings are, sometimes you can lose a little

[27:47] there, and I'll do a little touchup, but I tend not to use them as my primary

[27:51] searing, um, searing thing, right? Um, so anyway, that's my that's my feelings on it. Now, maybe we should go to our 2nd commercial break and I'll boot up the rest of the question. So let's go to our 2nd commercial break and we'll be back in a minute.

[28:14] Give up the name of all the band. You know what? When I hear a groove like this, boo. Oh, I say, I got to get... Yeah, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Like way of young, man. Yeah, man. And thing. Look at you. Some kind of groove like this. You know? You know? No. I

[28:55] need the grit.

[29:03] job, job, job. Need to get down Got bit in the bread. You know, I believe, eh, every time. Brother I'm getting ready to wave y'all in. You know what? I feel so down. I need to get down in order for me to get down. I got to get in deep. In order for me to get down. I gotta get indeed. Need to get in D. Dog to be. Down, be... Here we go, down to you, get it. Ready? Boom. Come on, do it. Oh, I love that. I love it. All right. Since this is the 2nd time I've allowed to have my down D in the middle. Maybe we'll change it. So now that you guys know how awesome the down D is, you know, you can just go listen to

[29:58] it on your own and we'll get a we'll get a different song for the for the thing. D, right? The down D is good. and Oates next. I'm not going to do Hall and O's Nastasia. What do you want to do? You want to do man eater? Which one do you want to do? Genesis. No, we will not do genesis. This is one thing I know we will not do. All right. No offense, no offense to Genesis fans. I mean, you know, Nastasia's more of a Phil Collins invisible touch or Sasudio kind of a kind of a girl, I think. That's my feeling on Nastasia. So calling your questions too. 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. Well, you know, if we're going to do Genesis. you want to do like, that's all. Remember that song? all? Sing it, no. I'm not going to sing. There's no way on Earth. I'm gonna sing it. No way. Anyway. Okay. I have a question coming in from Hawaii, I think. Aaron Melvin calls in. I assume it's from Hawaii because Aaron grows Lillikoi. And what that is is Hawaiian passionfruit. And actually, we had some delicious passion fruit down at in Miami at Gabby's farm, right? Of course, I didn't really get to taste it because Nastasia pounded the whole thing. That was such a lie. Okay, we have a rather extreme overabundance of Lilocoi in our garden. Oh yeah, and Molokai is in Hawaii, which I wish I could go. Someday we will get to go. A nice problem to have. I've recently made a little koi souffle and little koi crème brulee. Both were delicious and intensely flavored, but the texture is not perfect as the dairy was just beginning to curdle. Since the dairy is already high fat. I'm not sure where to turn to try and prevent curdling without reducing the intensity of the

[31:29] liquoi. I could try mixing some cornstarch into the dairy before combination with the

[31:33] Liloid juice, but would you recommend another hydrocoloid technique? Um, Certainly, in my somewhat off the cup of attempts, uh, these could have used a bit more structure or solidity. Now, you could use something like you could pre-gel the dairy or add it to add a little bit of

[31:49] carraginen to it. Carragin and locust bean gum. If you add kerrogen locust bean gum, these are the same stabilizers that are used in ice creams.

[31:57] I would use probably, if you don't want it too firm. I would use iota carrogen and that's going to be more puddingy. And if you want it a little firmer, You can use kappa, which is rigid. But I wouldn't use kappa actually in a high acid situation. First of all, you don't want it rigid. And 2nd of all, uh, in high acid situation, there's a possibility that there might be some carcinogenic uh, action with

[32:20] carrogen at very low pH. Um, but it hasn't improved yet, but I tend to stay away from Kappa Carragin at low pH. But you could use, I think, some iota carrogene and an LBG, and that should take you somewhat closer to stopping it from curdling, but if that's not working for you, cornstarch should also prevent it from breaking, but cornstarch will definitely stop.

[32:39] I know cornstarch will definitely stop egg yolks from curdling when they're overheated because

[32:45] that's how Wiley makes his, that's how Wiley makes

[32:49] his mayonnaise is a hollandaise sauce. He adds enough starch to the egg yolk so that he can heat it up without curdling the egg

[32:57] yolks. So any of those techniques would work. So hopefully, you know, you could try one of those things and hopefully someday we can go to Hawaii and try some of these things. Anyway, he also tried to make Methasell F50 meringues with his Liloco. And we actually use regular passion fruit puree a lot. F 50 is a product that is a whipping agent. You can make mousses with it, like almost like shaving cream, very dense mousses, and they act like egg whites and they can be whipped. And so what you do is you make a meringue out of something like a puree, a passionfruit puree, let's say, or a little

[33:27] quoi puree, and then you just put it on a dehydrator and you and you dehydrate them and they turn into crunchy

[33:34] meringues. In his oven, because it's so humid there, they got kind of dense, not super crunchy, but then he hit it with

[33:42] a Hebrew lay, the top of it to add it more crunch, and he says it makes an excellent Pavlova base, and I'm glad that worked out for you. I think that's a genuinely delicious technique. He also says, he was glad to hear our thoughts on chocolate tempering from 2 weeks ago.

[33:56] Have we ever experimented with sous vide tempering. So, basically, the idea is, um, by the way, yes, it works. There are people that do it. I haven't done it. So what you can do is, instead of if you have chocolates in old school traditional tempering techniques, assume, like, you know, where you, where you, um, you know, where you have to go through a bunch of different

[34:14] steps, are for taking chocolates, not in temper and bringing it into temper. If you have chocolate that is already in temper and you just want to melt it and keep it in temper, then you can just throw it in a sous vide bag,

[34:28] back it down, throw it in water, and set it exactly the melting point you want, and it's

[34:34] going to work fine. You can also actually do the temperature ramps in a bag by moving them around if you wanted to. The one issue with

[34:42] it, and people do this and they can keep it in temper a long time because the temperature is very accurate within a couple tenths of a degree. The problem is you got to make sure that when you take it out, that you take it out and you don't get any water

[34:51] and the chocolate off the bag because there's a lot of it's easy to mess things up that way. So I would put it into something that's easy to get something out of. Like, I would seal your chocolate into a pastry bag instead of into a regular bag, um, when you're when you're working. But yes, it would be a basically an attention free way of doing it. Okay, pepperoni Bill, which is an awesome name. I haven't gotten a chance to check out pepperoni Bill's website yet, but pepperoni Bill

[35:14] is, it's got to be one of the better names, like one of the better handles that people use on the

[35:18] internet. They still say handle or is that only from the CB era? I think that's from the CB era, because I don't know what it is. Hey, you know what? Speaking of CB era, what if we move to convoys as our song? No? No? I love convoy. Anyway, Pepperoni Bill, basically just a comment, he says, love the show. James Brown music is perfect sync with his treadmill walk. So he's the he's the James Brown lover. He'll be at the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, March 1st through third. Just wonder if you guys had any plans of attending. If not, we'll have to meet some other way. Maybe you can come to my pizza joint someday when I finally open one. Well, seeing as how it is March 1st right now, and we were not in the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, no, but we hope that you were having an excellent time at the

[35:57] Pizza Expo. I wish I could be at the Pizza Expo because I love myself some pizza, but I've also never been to Vegas. you? Yeah, it's bad. You wouldn't like it. I wouldn't like it. No, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm weird that way. Anyway, so pepperoni Bill, let us know how it is. Okay, Alan from DC writes, and been a fan of the podcast for a while as a fan of food science, and he's decided it's time to start playing with some of the fun techniques that we talk about. He has the ability to build a basic immersion circulator, but wanted to know my thoughts on what is needed. His understanding is that he needs a heat source, a simple fan, and a control feedback loop. So he says, control loops are fun. I can handle that. What I want to know is how exact the temperature needs to be. And what kind of fluctuations might be allowed? Are there interesting recipes that require changing the temperature partway through the preparation and how precisely rapidly do these changes need to be? Any other thoughts on what my circulator needs to do, Alan from DC? Now, uh, okay, so it's not a fan you need. If you want to build an immersion circulator. I mean, if you want to build your own temperature loop, that's great, but everyone uses basically what's called PID control, paid control, which is

[37:05] proportional integrative and derivative control, right? And this control loop technology,

[37:12] basically this control algorithm, it allows you to go directly up to the temperature and not overshoot it, not porpoise

[37:18] around like a bang bang does, right? And very, very few people write their own control loops. If you're good with a microprocessor, You can look up, um, someone for the Arduino wrote code to

[37:32] do, uh, um, PID loop, um, for his coffee maker, and you can look up on the web under

[37:38] Sylvia, PID, Arduino, and there's code out there that you can write to help you write code to do it, but that's the only really method that people use

[37:46] accurately because it needs to not fluctuate around. So you don't want to use an on-off temperature control. You want to use PID, PID. The other thing is, it's not a fan that they use. Most people, when they're building their own, you can buy a small pump, you can buy a small pump that, you know, like one that's actually used in a circulator, but the vast majority of people use aquarium pumps.

[38:08] And you can either bubble air in, which moves, just moves around by bubbling air or you can actually pump water. And if you look online, there, the pump that people use to do recirculated mash RIMS for brewing. There's a lot of, there's a couple of cheap pumps in the like $15 range that can handle it and can handle the temperatures and can pump a good amount of liquid because you need it to move around a lot.

[38:27] The other thing is you're going to need, um, all the commercial circulators are a 1000 watts. Um, there are a 1000 watts. So you're going to want about a 1000 watts of heating. More heating is not going to hurt you. The problem is, if you go over a 1000 watts. You going to have to make sure that you have a plug that can handle it, right? So all the circulators that are built are basically built to go into a standard 15 amp plug. And once you go, you know, over a 1000, you're going to have to start worrying about it. But if you have your own plug, you can make it as powerful as you want, and then it's going to go up and down a lot faster. It's going to be a lot more responsive. And so, like, these are the kinds of things that you need to, uh, these are the kind of things you need to to do. I would I would say that you want your temperature to be within a couple of

[39:12] tenths of a degree. In terms of, okay, so there's 2 things. There's accuracy, accuracy, and there's precision, right? So the question is how accurate do you need to be? You need to be within about 3 tenths, I'd say, of a degree Celsius, accurate and precise. Okay, so accuracy is

[39:28] like how close are you to what the temperature you really want and precision is, how often can you repeat it? And as long as your accuracy is within like 3 tents, you'll be able to recreate other people's recipes. Now, your precision should be dead on, like a 10th of a degree or so, because there's no reason for it not to be. you know, a PID loop can do easily that. And that way your recipes, even if you're not accurate, even if you are wildly off, accuracy wise, if it's precise, if you can repeat it again and again, then you're good to go.

[39:56] And that's why, you know, speak to Philip Preston, who is the, you know, the guy who builds the circulators that we use from

[40:02] polycience, um, he says, yeah, like even the old uh, analog ones are extremely precise. Like once you set the knob on the analog one, it's going to hit the same temperature all the time and stay there with very, very, very high degree of precision.

[40:16] It's just not accurate. So you have to use a 2nd thermometer to judge exactly where you are because it doesn't have a readout

[40:23] on, um, it doesn't have a readout on exactly how, uh, you know, how hot it is. So those are my thoughts on building your own thing. Now, I've built many, many of these in my time. What I used to do was I would get like an, you know, they were all bad. Let's put it this way. I've built like 3 or 4 of them and I now use the polyscience one just because the homebrew ones are always, how to put this, a little bit of a pain in the butt,

[40:53] right? Now the, Philip, uh, well, I see. So there's, when I was doing it, whenever I do anything, it's totally ghetto, spit, bubble gum,

[41:01] ridiculous. Like, so what used to happen with me is I would get shocked. I didn't build one once where I used a bunch of those coffee heaters. It costs like 2 bucks that you get at the dollar store, even though it's at the dollar store. They cost 2 bucks. Anyway, you throw them into the thing, you throw a bunch of them in. And then when you go in to get your eggs out of the circulator. You know what happens? Yeah, you get shocked, like really badly shocked. You know what I mean? So that one was out the window. I built another one where, you know, I bought like a heater for like 20 bucks off a McMaster car. And but it's just like now I have like wires sitting everywhere and like, you know, now that I have kids in my

[41:35] house. I didn't want them running around with like these wires out everywhere. But this is because I'm a moron and all I care about is functionality. There are people out online. If you search like the make community or the instructible community or any one of these DIY sites, there are people that know exactly what like plastic

[41:50] box, like, you know, they're like, go buy the Rubik's cube. Not, you know, it's got to be this Rubik's cube, because it's got the exact size box for the parts that they want, and

[41:57] they can whomp together one for, you know, under a 100 bucks, I think, is the current going rate for everything you need, including, by the way, a pre-made PID controller with digital readout. In case, you know, in case you value your time and don't want to write your own code, you can now get one of these controllers for, I think, like 35 bucks.

[42:15] And they work, they work like gangbusters. The only other thing I'd say is when you're buying one and you're going to have to control the heater and there's 2 ways you can go. You can go with a regular relay, but the regular relay is going to sit there

[42:28] going, click, click, click, click. I hate that. So I go for what's called a solid state relay, and solid state relay,

[42:36] uh, is completely dead silent, and you can run it at whatever rate you want, and it never ever wears out, but they are more expensive. So instead of like 4 bucks, 5 bucks. You're going to spend like 20 bucks, something like that. 20 bucks 20 bucks. But anyway, I would say go get the one for 20 bucks just because that extra $20 for that little bit of silence in your kitchen instead of having

[42:55] to click, click. Let me put it this way. My stove, right? Can't run off a solid state relay, uh, relay because I'm actually opening and closing a solenoid valve for my, uh, for my, I'm actually closing a solenoid valve for my gas, and it's irritating because it's like, click, click, click. But luckily, most of the time I'm running my oven, I'm making pizza, go to go back to pepperoni

[43:15] bills, pizza question. I'm making pizza, and so I have it on full bore blastout modes so I can get it up to 850 degrees and, you know,

[43:23] light, light everything on fire, basically. Okay, so on my way out, I will say that you should all, I wish that everyone had the money to go

[43:34] buy Nathan Mirvold and Chris Young's new modernist cuisine book. They've already sold well over half of the initial printing and they've ordered another printing on it. It is a pretty cool book. I am extremely jealous. I visited their lab. They have a waterjet cutter, a crazy waterjet cutter. Like, they have a scanning electron microscope. And by the way, Nathan has one at his house too, in case he should want to do, in case, you know, he doesn't want to have to go into the office and do a scanning electron

[44:01] microscopy, you know, he can do a scanning electron microscopy at home, you know? You know, you know, he, they have a crappy, awesome, like, you know, regular light microscope at the office because he wanted to keep his good one at

[44:13] work. So, I don't know. Anyway, extraordinarily jealous of the equipment they have. But we had a really good time out at the meal there. And I'm sure you'll be seeing about it. You know, it's on Wired magazine. I think a lot of the things you can see, the kinds of things they were doing in the meal. Oh, and I had their ultrasonic French fries. So Josh Zerski, who, you know, he writes things, right? He writes things. Joshua Zirski. Yeah I don't know. Yeah, anyway, so he writes things. So he came back and he says, yeah, he said, he hasn't taught that. Well, actually, he does kind of talk that way. Yeah. So he goes, you know, you got to, you know, Nathan Mirvold, and, you know, Chris Young's ultrasonic French fries, the world's greatest French fries. So I had the ultrasonic French fry. The ultrasonic french fry was quite good. And I spoke to Nathan. They've done the SPL. He likes somebody, likes the ultrasonic one better. But I have not yet published. I want you guys to know this. On the blog, I have published my 3/8 inch SPL. That's my enzyme that I use recipe. I will place up. I mean, his French fry was very good. And I'm saying. But I will place my new half inch because he was a half inch French frog guy. I will place my half inch French fry up against it. Uh, and we should also try maybe his ultrasonic technique along with RSPL technique to see whether we can do the double ridiculous Wandamula of

[45:29] like uh, of monstrosity French fry madness because that might be the French fry to kill all French fries.

[45:35] But remember, there is no such thing as the perfect French fry because French fry is something that can always be improved. All right? And that's cooking issues. We'll see you next week.

[45:50] Vicious, fish, and vodka. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archived programs on heritageradionetwork.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage

[46:11] radio network in the iTunes store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. And the guest can't get it straight. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Foods USA. In late March, Dan, Andrea Patrick, and the Heritage Team are traveling to the coldest reaches of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont to help the Cantor family tap sugar maple trees.

[46:38] Then the maple sap will flow down to the sugar house where it has boiled gently over a wood fire just as it has been for generations. Just a few days later, this grade A, amber syrup will be poured into the beautiful glass jugs and sent to you for pancakes, waffles, desserts, glazing hams, or just drinking by the

[46:56] spoonful. There's only a limited supply, so order today. Each one liter bottle is $45, including delivery. Delivery will be at the end of March, and we will notify you of the exact shipping date. Each shipment will include a CD explaining the whole process. You can also follow us on YouTube while we work and bottle. In the meantime, you can head over to the Heritage Radio Network Archives, and listen to Linda Palaggio talk about maple syrup on her show, A Taste of the Past, episode 12.

[47:23] For more information, visit www.heritagefoodsusa.com. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Join wine impresarios, Aaron Fitzpatrick and Brian DeMarco, as they dish out on the latest industry news with winemakers and tastemakers on Heritage Radio Network's revamped wine

[47:43] show, Unfiltered. Aaron Fitzpatrick, one of the 1st hosts on HRN with her program at the root of it, amps up the volume and unfiltered content with co-host Brian DeMarco in this 2011

[47:54] redux. True to the original format, Erin and Brian will keep you abreast of current happenings, and break down the news and global events,

[48:00] distilling complex into anecdotal stories that inspire. From media and political events to hailstorms in Argentina, no topic is out of bounds. Tune in every week to hear them chat up the industry's biggest personalities and host on-air tastings with visiting vintors and the country's hottest somoliers. Whether you're an expert or an enthusiast, unfiltered demystifies wine and lets you know what it really takes to get a bottle from the vineyard to your neighborhood wine

[48:24] shop. Unfiltered Broadcast Live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Heritage Radio Network. The following is a public service announcement from the museum of food and drink. Dave Arnold and Patrick Martins have gathered a team of New York's most innovative chefs and bartenders to create a

[48:41] 9 course fundraiser lunch at Del Posto Sunday, March 27th. Their intent to kickstart the greatest food museum in the world. The menu for this unprecedented event is derived from educational themes of the

[48:53] museum. Chefs will draw inspiration from sources outside their normal sphere. How will a cutting edge chef handle the Paleolithic, or a dish only using pre-Columbian ingredients? What will a modern Italian chef do with ancient Rome? The chefs include David Chang of Momofuku, Wiley

[49:07] Dufreyne of WD50, Mark Ladner of Del Posto, Nils Norin of the French Culinary Institute, Cesare Casella of

[49:15] Salu Maria Rossi, Carlo Maracci of Roberta's, Brooks Headley of Del Posto, and Christina

[49:20] Tozzi of Momofuku Milk Bar. Bartenders include Audrey Sanders of Pegu Club, Thomas Waugh, Death

[49:26] and Company, Simon Ford of Perneau Ricard, Damon Boltley of Prime Meats, and Ebon Clem of VR

[49:32] guest restaurants. Proceeds from the event will directly support the museum of food and drink. Tickets are very limited, and $250 per person. To purchase tickets, please visit MoFAD.eventbright.com. That's MOFAD.eventbright.com. Once again, M-O-F-A-D dot E-V-E-N-T-B-R-I-T-E

[49:57] dot com. Sponsored by For No Ricard, Heritage Foods USA, Pat Lafrida Meats, Barterhouse Wines, Del Posto restaurant.