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[0:21] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues, the show, where you calling with all of your cooking related questions, technical or not. My name is Dave Arnold. I'm host of cooking issues here with in the studio with Nastasia,

[0:34] the Hammer Lopez. Calling all of your questions too, 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. We'll be here for about the next 45 minutes or so. So, anything, anything new, Nastasia, before we get into our daily business? No. No? All right. Well, I'm going to start with our weekly announcement about the upcoming fundraiser for the

[0:55] Museum of Food and Drink, they get the ball rolling fundraiser. There are still tickets available to, I think, what's got to be one of the coolest coolest events. Well, it's the coolest event we've ever run. Of course. It's the 1st event we've ever run. But I mean, it really is kind of a special thing. Go to www.mofat, MOFAD.org, and look it up. But we have Cesare Casella from Solomario Rosi doing preserved meat. We have Dave Chang. We have Wiley Dufrane. We have Mark Ladner. We have our very own Carlo from Roberta's, Brooks Headley from Del Posto,

[1:28] Nos Norin, our buddy, Christina Tozi. We have Damon Bolte from Prime Meats, Jamie Gordon from Prono Ricard. Kentagoto from Pegu Club, along with Audrey Saunders from Pegu Club, Thomas Wall from Death

[1:38] & Company, and Evan Klem from BR guests, all doing museum themed cocktails. And me. going to be doing an Amuse Bouche. I'll have you know that in private, I always refer to it as a Namuz Douche, but I'm aware that it's an Amuz Bouche. amusing the mouth. I'll be doing an Amuse Bouche myself. And lucky, lucky people might taste a little bit of mana from heaven dissolved into cognac, right? Yes. It's going to be doracious. Anyway, there are still some tickets available, but buy them well, they last. It's on Sunday, March 27th at one p.m. at Del Posto Restaurant, and it's the must attend event of the season. Yes or no? Yes. Yes. All right. Okay. I'm going to attend to some of our email questions. Ben wrote in and said that I mentioned, I got a cheap PID controller and a PID controller for those of you that don't know, is a controller. Usually we control temperature, but you can control anything with it. You can control humidity, you can control anything, pressure, anything with

[2:32] PID. PID stands for proportional, integrative, and derivative, and it's a control algorithm that allows you to very accurately get to a particular thing, let's say, a temperature without

[2:43] overshooting without ever going over, and it just sits rock solid there. And it's become basically the norm for high-end temperature control these days. Immersion circulators have it. People make their coffee machines, have it. I mean, it's just, it's the thing to do. It used to be that you couldn't get one for a controller that is for less than a couple

[3:01] 100 dollars. But recently the prices come way down. The cheapest PID controller, Ben, that I have seen comes from Aubur instruments, AUB, ER instruments, and they'll sell you a complete PID controller for about 35 bucks.

[3:15] Now, I don't know if it's any good or not, but they'll send you one for about 35 bucks. I've used love controllers from Dwyer instruments. They're going to run like $89. You can get the more the higher brand name ones like Fuji or Watlow for a couple 100 bucks, but I mean, from Auburn instruments for 35 bucks, a couple dollars delivered is not such a bad

[3:35] deal. They all, uh, you can get them all basically so that they plug into a 110 socket. That's not a that's not a problem. One thing I would look for with them is if you can spend a little extra money and get one with a solid state relay as opposed to a regular relay for the output, I think you're

[3:50] going to be a little happier. It's going to be quieter and it's going to be longer lasting. You just want to make sure that whatever you're running, you can drive the amount of current that you need. So if you're going to be making, let's say, an immersion circulator, it's not going to need more than about a 1000 watts, so you're really not going to need more than about 10 amps through it. But you want to make sure that the controller can handle about 10 amps and then you're going to be, okay. So then I hope that answers your question. Let's go to another question. Uh, we have from Ryan writes in about creme de Violette, and I noticed

[4:24] Dasher de Tess, creme de Violette. I'm actually not such a big fan myself of Prime de Violette, although I have had it. Ryan's interested in Creme de Vilette, specifically because of the cocktail, gin-based cocktail, the aviation that uses

[4:36] it famously uses it. And so he says, um, regarding creme de Violette. I love the classic cocktail, the aviation, and to be properly made, this requires

[4:44] crème de Violette. Sadly, my state of Ohio doesn't allow it distributed in the state at the moment. And while I'm sure I could order a bottle online and pay shipping, we're only about a month away from violet season here in

[4:53] Ohio, so why not make it? I've looked for a recipe to make crème de veilette and have had no luck. Any pointers would be great, and I also see foresee the issue of the violet infusion eventually browning. So any heads up on how to avoid that would be great. Well, I looked in a bunch of recipes online. I looked at Rothman, which is one of the people that actually distribute Creme de Violet here in the States, and they claim to actually use violet flowers. But when I looked on, and I'm sure you can, basically. So then I would just take a boatload of violet flowers, macerate them in the highest proof liquor you can get in the state of Ohio. Don't use crappy, like most of the 151s that they sell on the market are

[5:31] pretty, pretty crappy. If you can find one that's decent, smell it, um, taste it, I mean, sorry, not 151, uh, Everclear, 95, 95 proof. Most of these smell pretty bad. If you can find one that's decent, I recommend buying that. We buy from a lab supplier. We buy our straight booze and it's pretty, pretty high proof. But the 1st thing you're going to need is very high proof liquor. I mean, 151 really isn't ideal. That's only like 75, 75, uh, you know, percent, which isn't really very good. You're going to want at least like 85, 90. But try to find one that's good flavor, and then just basically pack that full of violet flowers, let it

[6:10] macerate probably for several weeks to a month or so, and then decant it off, mix it with sugar to taste, and then water it down to whatever percentage you want. The recipe that I found in my, uh, in my old source, which is a treatise on the manufacturer and distillation of alcoholic liquors by Pierre Duplay, uh, copyright 1871, which I have a hard copy

[6:31] of, but is available on uh, Google books for free to look at. Actually doesn't use violet in their creme de Violet. They use Oris root. And so Oris root is something that apparently, you know, it's a flavoring in a lot of liqueurs, but apparently has somewhat of a violet nose, violet, you know, aroma flavor to it, and was used in the old days, to make certain creme de

[6:51] Violette live if they didn't have the violet flowers lying around. And so these guys basically say, take 12 liters of orris root infusion, which I guess you would make the same way that you would make the violin infusion by steeping in the highest proof liquor you can get for a long time.

[7:04] Um, then 24 liters of 85% straight uh neutral grain spirits, uh, 56 kilograms of sugar, and 26 liters of water. And they actually recommend coloring it with cochineel, which is red, and blue food coloring, which they don't specify what to use.

[7:21] That's probably specified elsewhere in the book. But it's interesting that they would specify coloring like that because I also found

[7:28] it a 1905 Connecticut agricultural experiment station reference where they tested 5 or 6 different creme de

[7:35] Violettes and found that they were all adulterated basically with dyes, with

[7:39] dyes. some of which were not so savory. So, uh, I would recommend one. First thing you want to get a hold of is some high-proof spirits. Make sure they're food great, make sure they smell good. They don't have a lot of off taste because otherwise you're going to be starting with a bad base. Then if you have the iris flowers, you know, sorry, iris, don't use iris out of poison, if you have the violet flowers, just pack a whole bunch of them into the highest proof liquor, you can get and let it sit, taste it every once in a while, see

[8:06] how, uh, whether it gets the color you want, then add just, like I say, add sugar to taste and water it down. There's a couple books available on homemade liqueurs that I have at home. I couldn't find them in time to provide a reference, but I'll see if I can find something else and get back to you next week. And then if not, try to order some orders root and see whether you can get an interesting flavor that way. So, uh, Ryan, I hope that helps and let us know how it works out. Um, Nick writes in with an interesting clue a pig question. My friend Mel is having a housewarming for her new house. She doesn't have a proper garden yet, which is a shame. If I had a house, I would really want a proper garden. That would be one of the 1st things. Pizza oven, outside pizza oven. A tandor buried in the ground, which is similar to the question I was about to answer, and then a garden. Those will be my 1st my 1st orders of business. Um, and maybe someday I will have one. Who knows? And she's letting me dig a pit in her backyard to cook a whole pig, like an Hawaiian

[9:00] emu. it's pronounced emu. a Hawaiian basically hole in the ground oven that's used to cook Kalua pig, Kalua pig being the buried pig that you would

[9:07] have delicious, I should say, buried pig that you have in a luau. Not that I've been to Hawaii. Anyone wants to fly us to Hawaii to taste tropical fruits. We are your people. Am I right, Nastasia? Right? Yeah. Never been to Hawaii. My wife was born in Hawaii, has a Hawaiian middle name. Anyway, uh, anyone in Hawaii wants us will be there. I've heard that you must use igneous rocks because other types might explode at high temperature. That sounds awesome, and it is Nick. I've tried it. That sounds awesome, but probably not a good idea, a crowded party. Also true. I'm planning on using a probe to monitor the internal temperature of the pigwell cooking, so food safety shouldn't be an issue. Okay, 1st of all, here are my tips. One, it is true that many different types of rocks explode. I used to do a bunch of experiments on basically heating rocks to throw them into

[9:51] liquids to heat them up. So back in my red hot poker experimentation days, which are basically over now because we haven't pretty much settled how to do a red hot poker, right? Yeah, pretty much settled. But, you know, other than just using a red hot poker, one of the things we were using was hot stones. And so we ended up settling on using these Korean basically stones that are that are used as part of the Korean stoneware cookery, the giant gobdoles that you make that, you know, that you make

[10:16] a bibin bop out of, the Tolso, I should say, that you make a bibin bop out of. And these stone bowls are, by the way, are some of the greatest things. The world, everyone should go to the local Korean supermarket and purchase at least 6 of

[10:29] these, the hot stone bowls. Anyway, those things don't explode. But I've had very bad luck with regular stones, even ones that I thought were

[10:37] igneous. Igneous rocks are basically volcanic rocks, the theory being they're heated so high, when they were made that there's not, 1st of all, they're not very porous, typically, unless it's pumice or something that's been

[10:47] nerrated as it sprayed into the air. But they're hopefully not porous and don't have any water in them. So they won't explode when they're heated. Now, I have, the other types of rocks are metamorphic and sedimentary. So sedimentary rocks are layer rocks like sandstone and metamorphic are basically then compressed and turned into other kinds

[11:04] of, turn into a denser, denser rock. I've had all of these things explode. Even an igneous rock when heated very suddenly, if it has inclusions or anything inside it, it can expand in weird ways and explode.

[11:14] I've had rocks explode in the kitchen and fly completely all around over the kitchen. I did it once at the pastry, uh, in one of the pastry kitchens, the French culinary, and completely freaked out a group of pastry chefs. And, you know, plus I had to clean up the rock particles everywhere. But the good news is that you're going to be heating up those rocks well in advance because it's going to take hours and hours for this pig to cook. So you're going to be heating these rocks up well, well in advance of the party people being there. So I wouldn't worry about blowing up too much, especially if it heats fairly evenly, and it's being heated from above, which is probably how it's going to happen from the side. I wouldn't worry overly much. Like it might blow up a little bit, but, you know, you know, just don't stand with your eyeballs over a hot rock because it's warming up.

[11:56] And once it's very hot, once it's been hot for an hour or so, I think mainly your risk of explosions are somewhat over at that point.

[12:03] So you're going to want to align it, really, you know, get it nice and hot, and then they cover it with lots of green vegetation. The idea of being to cause steam similar to the way you would use steam in a, sorry, seaweed

[12:14] in a clam bake in New England. And bear in mind, this is all theoretical knowledge, not having done it myself, hands on. And then the last thing, obviously, is you're going to want to find some nice leaves to wrap the, uh, the wrap, the pig. Now, this is something I have done, not in an oven at outside, but, you know, you

[12:29] wrap. I've wrapped many pork shoulders in leaves to do my own version of

[12:35] klua pig at home, and it is delicious. You want to use tea leaves if you can get them, but if you're not in Hawaii, I don't think you are, so you're probably going to want to use banana leaves, which you can get at any local

[12:45] Asian, any local Asian market. So I hope this helps Nick, and I hope you have an excellent pig experience, but it should take several hours to cook. And like you said, you're going to have a temperature probe, so you're not too worried about food safety. I wouldn't worry about that either. It's going to heat up and it's going to cook to a very high temperature. You just need to keep enough liquid in there so that it doesn't dry out on you. Does that sound like a good advice, sir? Good job. All right, so let's go to our 1st commercial break and why don't you call in all your questions too? 718-497-2128? That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[14:01] You'll only come by tonight, mean a hungry time. Nothing you do, I've seen here before Watching a

[14:14] wedding. Wish she's sitting with you, but her eyes are on the door. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Tune in to Hot Grease every Monday at 330 p.m. Hakri strives to bring sustainability, localized sourcing, and other forward thinking schools of culinary

[14:33] thought to the mines and kitchens of everyday folk. Each week, Nicole Taylor's conversations cover the entire spectrum of food enthusiasts, from internationally renowned culinary masters to moms

[14:45] on a budget looking to impress their tiniest critics. Again, that's every Monday at 330 p.m. Hot Grease on the Heritage radio network. Why don't we have a name like that? Hot grease. Sounds awesome, right? Hot grease. I like that a lot. Hot grease. All right, back to cooking issues. Call in all of your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Dave Arnold, back at you with cooking issues. And I see Nastasia has hauled out the Hall and Oates as she threatened, right? Yeah. Did you ever get to go see them in concert? No, I babysat your kids instead. That sounds probably like a better bet. I think I want to remember Hall and Oates as they once were. I think in most, no offense to either Hall or Oates, because they listen. Yeah, avid listeners. But in general, you know, I find that I prefer to remember people not on their comeback tour.

[15:38] What do you think, Nastasia? I would have liked to see. Well, you're gonna go see Elton John, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Like Elton John, whatever. It's not as no judgment, no judgment. All right. Colin Gore writes in with a series of statements and questions, so I'll just go down and we'll take a look at them. Um, You mentioned, he's talking to me. Uh, you mentioned that you occasionally get an oil slick after diluting booze that lush

[16:02] is like, like the Akavit that we make with caraway and fennel. And when you say loose, you know, when you're pouring, when you when you dilute something that has a lot of, that's alcoholic that has a lot of dissolved oils in it, you basically decrease the solubility of those

[16:14] oils that they dilute till they pop out of solution and form a haze, like Uzo does.

[16:18] It's called the ouzo effect or, you know, things that lose out. Is there a good way to stabilize that oil and booze? The oil has a lot of flavor, obviously, so I want to incorporate the slick back into the hooch. I suppose I could hold off on diluting the drink strength until right before serving, but I prefer to get the whole bottle balance in one go. Well, it's fairly rare that I actually have something where the oil will separate out on top. Most of the time, what happens is you'll get an enrichment, it won't actually fully separate, but you'll get an enrichment in the

[16:43] oils in the top part of the bottle, but it'll stay somewhat in, you know, in suspension. And then you can shake the whole bottle and get it to come back together again. If you actually have a bottle that it fully separates out and you get the stuff on top and it won't shake back into a homogeneous suspension, it's not really a solution anymore, but a suspension, then I recommend,

[17:03] I mean, you could go with an emulsifier, like a gum Arabic or something like this. But the problem with that is that, you know, it's going to change the body of the drink somewhat. But dumb Arabic will help to emulsify those oils somewhat and keep them in. And luckily, gum Arabic doesn't add that much viscosity to your booze. You could then, the next step up from that would be to use something that's a mixture of gum Arabic with another

[17:24] stabilizer like Xanthan gum. I recommend TIC gum, saladizer, 210 S, which sounds gross, but it's basically just Xanthan, and gum Arabic, but it's

[17:33] gonna definitely affect the texture of the drink, which is why I'd stay away from it unless you absolutely needed it. That's the product that we use to do, our butter syrups and our pecan syrups, and, you know, all of our sort of emulsified, um, all of our emulsified oil syrups that we put into drinks, which

[17:50] are which are delicious. Anyway, that's my thoughts on that. Secondly, he asks, how far do you typically reduce your road of app port syrup? I'm running a simple VAC steel rig with a stir bar, magnetic stir bar, I'm assuming. And it's tough to estimate the vinyl vinyl viscosity of the scissor, and I appreciate the use of

[18:05] sip it, sip it, simple scissor. Anyway, for all you 666 fans out there. We all have eaten so much shrimp that we get iodine poisoning. While it's warm and being agitated. Lastly, uh, last time I simply facted it till it would give uh, much, wouldn't give it much more H2O without a fight and ended up with something the consistency of more meat. It was great, but I have a hunch you use, something less viscous in the 3 cheese course. He's talking about a course where we take 3 different dessert wines. We break them into a syrup and a brandy in the roto app, throw away the water in the middle and serve these delicious syrups with the cheeses. Yeah, I take them down to the consistency approximately of maple

[18:39] syrup and it is very hard to deal, especially if you're not in a road

[18:43] of app. When you're dealing with a rotavap. You can stop the spinning and you can watch how it falls down and you get used to judging when it when the reduction is done based on hot. You can kind of get a feeling for what it's going to be like when it cools off. It's just by experience though. Um, you know, when I do strawberry, I take it down to, uh, you know,

[19:02] I can take it. I can get the brakes fairly high, like in the in the in the 50s or 60s even. I can get the brakes up to. But the problem when you take port, especially down too low. It starts tasting a little weird and tannic sometimes when it gets too, too reduced. So I like to take it just to the edge. I also often will break the system open and just taste a little bit and

[19:22] then, and then put it, put it back together again and continue running it. So I cheat just like everyone else, but it's experienced like anything else and obviously distillation and reduction under vacuum is a fine art that I wish more and more people would

[19:35] learn. And speaking of TIC gums, Colin rides, thanks for helping to hook him up with TIC gums. Someone at TIC heard him ask for information on the show, and got in touch with

[19:46] him, and now the head of TIC Gums. Dr. Martito is going to the University of Maryland to talk about the structural properties of

[19:53] gum polymers. And Colin and Dr. Nito are holding an event this Friday at one

[20:00] p.m. That's March 11th, hosted by the University of Maryland's Material Science Department. And any listeners, apparently, you have garnered an invitation, listeners, in the Maryland

[20:11] area, to go to room 2108 in the Chemical Nuclear Engineering building. If you're anywhere near UMD's campus there in the

[20:20] DC Maryland area, stop by. It should be a very interesting, should be a very interesting lecture. Another, as for Collins, last thing. He called in a while ago or wrote in, I forget. He was trying to get some of the astringency out of walnut liqueur because the astringency comes, obviously, from

[20:35] the skins, in the walnut, and he's trying to remove the astringency by freezing the finished liquor.

[20:41] The idea being that a lot of times if you take like persimmons or quince. It has a lot of tannin in it, tannic principles that are astringent. If you freeze them, those

[20:50] tan is complex, basically, and become non-estringent anymore. And so it kills the tannin. He was hoping to use liquid nitrogen to do that to a bottle of finished booze. Bad news, it doesn't work. He has to go back to the drawing board and try to get and I'm going to have to quote this one. If listeners or friends of ours will know that Harold McGee has the world's greatest walnuts. We walked into his place one day and, you know, Nastasia and I, because we'll snack on anyone's crap, it's just laying out, right? We start taking his walnuts off the table and we're like, Jesus God, this is the best walnut in the world. Of course, McGee has the best damn wallets in the world. And we mentioned this on a radio show before. And so, I will leave Collins with this. He says, uh, where I got to find, I got to find his his exact quote. He says, he's going to try again, if he can get a hold of McGee's sweet, sweet nuts. It's the exact exact quote. Get a hold of McGee's sweet, sweet nuts. And wouldn't we all like to, right? Love it. Anyway, okay. Thanks for writing in. And Colin, tell us any of your any adventures and tell us how the TIC Gums lecture goes. Seth writes in with an egg tempering question. Hi, I've got a question for the cooking issue show. My question is about tempering eggs when making custard and gelato and et cetera. Is it really necessary? Basically, I've learned for years to make custard by heating the milk and then slowly incorporated the heated milk into egg yolks, bit by bit, slowly raising the temperature so they cook but don't coagulate. I question this because a friend of mine recently made an Alfredo sauce, and he simply whisked the egg

[22:18] yolts into the cream beforehand while it was still cold, and then slowly raised the temperature of the complete mixture. He said that this way, this is the way his mother always made it, and it never coagulates, and it always comes out smooth and delicious. Next time I made gelato at home, I tried it that way and everything turned out fine. I heat it over a double boiler to be extra safe. So did I get lucky both times or is there any reason to do this whole temperature tempering thing in the 1st place? I'm becoming convinced that it's an unnecessary time consuming step. All right. Seth, here's the deal. I don't think there's any technical reason to heat the milk beforehand and pour it into the egg yolks except this. You want to heat, like a lot of times we're dealing with large batches, right? so you have a lot of milk that you're going to be putting into your egg yolks. So the idea is to get the milk hot first, right? So you can heat the milk up fairly quickly. You don't have to sit there, you know, tending it and worrying the whole time, right? Then you can temper it into your egg yolks and then slowly bring it up the last couple of degrees to get it cooked. So I think in actuality, when you're doing a large batch, The tempering is really a time saving procedure and not a time wasting procedure. If you're doing a smaller batch, and you're going to have to take it up and you're going to take it up slowly and you can watch the whole thing and keep it stirring as you go.

[23:25] I don't think there's any need to heat the milk 1st and then temper it into the egg yolks. I think it's just a matter of convenience. If you're starting with a completely cold mixture, stirring it together, making sure it's completely

[23:35] mixed, and then slowly heating it, you're not going to have any problems. I mean, but I think, uh, and so I think for smaller batches, things like an Alfredo that you can basically hold or

[23:44] like a, like if you're making like something very small, then it's probably easier to do

[23:48] it like you say, start from cold and heat up. But I think when you get to bigger and bigger batches, you're going to find it's easier to go the other way to heat the big batch of milk quickly up to temperature and then to temper it into your egg yolks. I hope that makes, hope that makes sense. I think I think that's the case. Someone's gonna, someone's gonna write in who's more of an expert on this. going to say, no. I get that all the time, by the way. You might not know it because those guys tend not to call the call the show. They end up like writing me later and saying that kind of thing over the email. Like, that's my just interpretation of what they say, then, since I'm just reading it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Joshua calls in with a writes in with a yogurt question. I have made yogurt 5 times with varying results. My procedure is scalding the milk and letting it cool to a round body temperature. I then stir in a couple tables spoonsful of Greek yogurt and place the whole pot in the oven with only the interior light, pilot light, light or pilot light, you think? Pilot light. Pilot light? Pilot. Providing heat. After leaving the pot, sit overnight. I place it in the fridge and strain it in, strain it until it's a little less thick than lemonade, which is

[24:50] Greek strained yogurt. And the 1st 2 times were quite successful with whole milk, but since I haven't been able to recreate the

[24:56] results reduced fat. Probably because reduced fat milk doesn't taste as good as whole milk. My question is, how does the fat percentage of the milk affect the final yield and thickness of the yogurt? And also, do I really need to scald the milk if it's pasteurized? Can I just combine the milk and yogurt and let it sit on the countertop for a day or so? I'm not big on checking temperatures. What's the easiest way to make authentic, uh, thick yogurt, uh,

[25:17] labneh style? Okay, Joshua, here are my feelings on this. Um, I don't frankly know how the texture is going to be affected. I mean, how the thickness of it's going to be affected by the fat content, but I guarantee you that the whole milk is going to taste a whole hell of a lot better than the reduced fat stuff, especially because reduced fat milk is such crud anyway.

[25:37] I mean, I really like if, it makes me so angry. Like when I see people, they use like the 2% and the one%. what are you really saving? You know, like, just don't eat as much of this stuff and just use milk to taste better

[25:48] for, for, for goodness sakes. Go back to using the whole milk. What do you think, Nastasia? I completely agree. I know it, you know, like, you know, you know, seriously, instead of having 18 quarts of like one% or

[26:00] skim, which is vile, disgusting puke, instead of having that in your coffee, just add a little bit less of something, delicious and satisfying, like whole milk, and good whole milk at

[26:09] that, if you can get it. stuff that tastes delicious. anyway. Uh, okay, so that's my feeling on the whole milk. Now, on the pasteurization. Paturized milk has a lot of the bacteria wiped out, but there's always bacteria left in it, which is why, you know, it just arrives when you're, when

[26:25] you, when you, you know, open it and close it, bacteria gets in it, which is, I think why the recipes always recommend heating it up to like 180 and then letting it cool

[26:34] down. It also helps because now you're warming it and as it cools down, you know, it's ripe for accepting the cultures that you're going to put in the yogurt. There's also, and I don't know whether this is affecting it, but it goes back to a question we had before, when you pasteurize milk, you're changing the characteristics of the milk, right? So you're basically pre-agglomerating some of the whey proteins and you're also stopping some of the curdling ability that you get on

[26:58] Renet casing from when you're making cheese. So it might also be, but I didn't have time to research. I apologize, Joshua, but it might also be that the heating of the milk helps the texture of the yogurt, aside from any properties of killing bacteria. But I don't know. Next time I speak to McGee or someone, maybe also write in and tell me this, I looked in, you know, in McGee's books, and he, indeed, even in past

[27:21] drives milk, recommends heating it up to 180. So there might be something there from a technical standpoint, affecting the milk with the heating. As for then letting it cooling, you want to let it cool down to about 115, give or take, stir in

[27:34] the stir in the culture, the live culture, the yogurt that you already have. And then the temperature isn't really crucial, right? Except for the taste is going to change depending on the temperature at which the yogurt's inoculated. And, you know, it could be done you know, even in a couple of hours, depending on how much you stir in and how active the cultures are that go into

[27:54] it. But I think you are going to get varying results, depending on the temperature that you use. Now, if you find some stable place in your kitchen, like the oven with just a pilot on, although my oven's too hot for that, or a particular place in the

[28:09] kitchen, and you do it once there, right, then it should be the same every time you do it in that

[28:15] location, as long as that location stays the same. So as long as you keep all of your variables the same from time to time, even if you don't have a lot of control,

[28:23] right? Or you don't measure a lot of temperatures, you should be able to get fairly consistent results. But it's never going to be as thick as you want it, in real Greek style, unless after it's made, you put the yogurt over, uh, you know, over a cheese cloth or over a piece of muslin, then let it strain in a

[28:39] colander, uh, overnight in the fridge to let it egg the extra wage drain out. That's the real key to making a really nice thick Greek yogurt. But I hope, Joshua, I hope that helps. And with that, we will go to our 2nd commercial break. Call in all your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Cooking issues. What I want. It might be hard to handle. Like a flame that burns a candle. A can of be the blame. Yeah, yeah, but I got full stop. I thought you dream to scatter. When you pull them all together. And I can't explain. Oh, yeah, well, by you.

[29:35] Well, well, well, you make my dreams are true. you On a night, when, when, come, scream. When the man's with the claim, I love it in the way. Oh, yes. This is... Cooking issues coming in with the Hall and Oats, Nestasia. I have to say that, uh, much as I was making fun of the hollow notes earlier, I I definitely appreciate that. I really

[30:13] do appreciate that, but really making my dreams coming true. Making my dreams coming true every day here on cooking issues. I still have about 15 minutes to call your questions in two, 718-497-2128, that's 718-497-2128. You know what, you guys? Another thing, I'm going to put a call out for people to write in with guests that they would like to

[30:33] hear appear on the cooking issues. What do you think about that, nostasia? Within reason, right? Well, I mean, we're not going to get Barack Obama on if that's what you mean. You know? But, you know, like, look, we have a group of friends that if we get a request, I could pester them. Like, I could Pastor McGee, I could pester, uh, supposed to have Tony. Yeah, Tony Canigliaro and, you know, any one of like our known, our known friends and associates in the cooking world, Wiley, you know,

[30:58] anyone, request them and we'll see whether we can, uh, whether we can pester them with a, with a live request to, or, you know, the request to come in to get them on. But, you know, don't ask me for Barack Obama. you know, we can't we can't get that, right? Okay. Joseph writes in. And he says, Dave, I've been researching various methods of crystallizing flower

[31:16] pedals so that I can use them to make a syrup, which will then be made into a caramel. Why would you crystallize the flower petals to make a syrup with them? Anyway, the question I have is that some formulas say use egg whites and others say use a combination of egg whites and gum Arabic. And Joseph Wright, saying with a fun note, that gum Arabic was using the mummification process, and I too appreciate mummies. Nastasias rolling her eyes because she's sick of hearing me talk about mummies. But I love a mummy and any kind of a mummy story. And I was wondering why I was wondering why they would use these 2 things and is there a difference? In addition, what added benefit does the gum Arabic provide besides increasing the viscosity, the egg white solution, and why would it be called crystallization when there's technically no crystals being formed? Well, I think the procedure you're talking about is either dipping a flower pedal in egg white or gum

[32:00] Arabic, and then basically brushing it with super fine sugar

[32:04] to and then letting it dry out. So assuming we're talking about the same thing, there's, there're basically 2 different, 2 different things. Gum Arabic is obviously a hydrocoloid, it's a tree exudate, and it's one of the very few hydrocoloids, and instead of being

[32:19] a basically a linear chain with very short branches, is a highly branched molecules. So they look like big ping pong balls, like a millipectin almost there, like big. But what that means is is that it's extremely soluble. You can have very high percentage of gum Arabic syrups, right? So if you look at something like gum syrup, old school gum syrup was basically a simple syrup with a lot of gum Arabic added. So the one of the great things it's used for is adhesive or coding because you can have something that's still fairly liquid, right? But has a high percentage of solids in it. And then when it dries out, it dries to, you know, a clear, crystally,

[32:58] a not clear crystal, but a clear, like, you know, hard or, you know, glue thing drives back to gum Arabic fairly quickly.

[33:03] So, uh, if you use a lot of gum Arabic, uh, you know, it can it can do that. And a lot of the recipes I looked at use only gum Arabic to do it. I don't know why you would use egg whites and gum Arabic together. I have to do more research. Frankly, I didn't get a chance to look at it very closely, but I would guess that if

[33:20] you're using a lot of gum Arabic and had it sitting around that you would just have that syrup and you could, and you could just go and it wouldn't go bad kind of because you'd have a very high solids in it, you probably wouldn't get a lot of bacterial growth in it because it would have, you know, such a high

[33:33] solid content. And it'd probably be easier to keep around than eggs. It's also probably more sanitary than eggs. In the house. I'd probably just use egg whites because it's so fast and in general, once it's dried out, I'm not so worried about contamination. Um, and I don't know why they call it that, if there's no actual crystals, a crystals being formed, but the, when I've done it, you are brushing it with crystal. So the flower itself ends up being crystallized, even if you don't actually form your own crystals. Um, Nastasia, you say we had another question come in? Okay. This comes in from red. I said, you answer my question about the red standing of chicken thighs due to pulling a hard vacuum on them. Lowering the vacuum has been a complete success. Thank you. But who is from red? interesting. I've been now switched to bone in chicken breasts from boneless, and I don't know why, but I have. The thing I noticed after cooking for 3 hours at 60 C, depending on the thickness, is after they sit in the fridge, they tend to weep blood. Do I need to cook longer? Is this part of the standing from the bones? I'm not sure. 60 C is low, is low for that for chicken breasts. I mean, they're cooked, but most people are going to want them up around 64,

[34:40] 63, 64. It's still going to retain... It might not be pink at 60, but it's still going to retain a lot of those juices and they probably will weep, especially out of the bones. I mean, even at 3 hours. I think you're going to be better for 64 degrees for like an

[34:56] hour, uh, rather than 60 for 3 using the extra hours, 2 hours to try and get the color into it at that low

[35:04] temperature. I would switch up to 64 for 63 or 64 for an hour. But you're going to have a really tough time with the with the bone. Um, and and the stuff coming out in a vacuum, even in a lower vacuum. I don't know. Please speak to whoever it is and tell them that you would really like to take the bone out of it because I really have a, there's just a lot of problems with putting chicken in the bone

[35:27] in the vacuum. You could try to switch to a Ziploc situation where there's no vacuum at all and that might help it, but I'm not sure, but please give some, give some of those things a try. And then, um, you know, write back or call back and tell us how it worked. We try to do some more troubleshooting, right? Yes. Because chicken's a problem, right? Chicken's a problem in the back. First of all, the more vacuum you suck on chicken, aside from the fact that

[35:49] it, it, it sucks the, um, bones are hollow. Chicken bones are hollow and they're filled with red crap. And when you vacuum it, the red crab comes out. And then, you know, you can't really get rid of it unless you cook it to a really, really high temperature, like in the 80s,

[36:02] 80s somewhere, 70s or 70s, 80s. So I tend not to like to, and also I think the vacuum affects the texture of the chicken. So as much as you can, I think you should suck a very mild vacuum, if you suck a vacuum at all on a piece of chicken. All right, now. One last thing Colin ribbed us on, by the way, that I forgot to mention is

[36:20] a contractual post. I'll have you know that I'm a day person, right? So I said that a week ago, and in fact, the post is already up in draft form. I'm adding the pictures. It'll be up by end of day today. It is a 4000 word megapost,

[36:36] Megapost, on, um, on Nixtamilization. So keep a lookout for that. Wait, we got a call and I'll take that real quick. Hello? Call her you're on the air. Hi Dave. Howdy. Um, in Alinea and a couple other cookbooks I've seen, they talk about uh, blanching garlic and milk a couple times. Does it take away the bike? Huh. Well, you know, it's funny you should say that because when I cook milk in the pressure cooker, sorry, milk, when I cook garlic in the pressure cooker, I also cook it in

[37:05] milk and I don't know why. How about that? Um, I don't know, but I have the book on garlic and

[37:12] alliums. So, um, I'll look it up. I, I, it's like, it's also I blanch horseradish in milk, and I don't know why. as opposed to water, right? I mean, don't we, we all kind of do that. We're trained to do that, but I don't, it's kind of natural for me to do it, but I really don't know why. If there's any sort of chemical, chemical reason. I mean, the stuff that gives garlic its bite are groups of sulfur compounds and, you know, thials and things like that. Um, And I wonder whether there's something in milk that tames those. This sounds like a, this sounds like an area for further, further research. I mean, when you can cook garlic, obviously, in a pressure cooker, and when you do it, you blast

[37:56] the, you blast the pungency away even without milk. But there's a host of things that we blanch in milk, and no one really says why. I'm trying to think. I'm thinking in my head that silence is me thinking in my head. Can you think of any reason? I, off the top of my head, no, I cannot. All right, well, this is, like the, like the yeast question. I mean, even though this is something we do, this is obviously needs some further investigation. So what I think I'll do is next time I pester McGee, I'll put, basically what I do is I call McGee, I don't know, once every 2 weeks or so, and then I sit there and I just pepper him with absurd questions for like 45 minutes.

[38:37] And then he maybe says hello. you know, and then and then the conversation's over. Nastasia thinks I'm a low quality human being for the way I pepper him with questions. But I'm going to add this to my list and plus I'll do some research and I'll go read the, I think the name of the author of the garlic book is block, I think is the guy's name. And it's actually a really interesting book, but I read it kind of very quickly. It's got a, it's got a forward by a Nobel laureate, pretty cool book on garlic. But I'll definitely look that up and I'll try and think about it. And I'm going to try and think about the problem of milk blanching in general because I think it is interesting because it's quite expensive, really, when you think about it, to blanch everything in milk. Right? Yeah, yeah. So we'll look into it and we'll definitely talk about that next week. Alrighty? Great. Hey, you gonna have them on your show again? Who, McGee? Yeah. All right, is this a request? Yes. We'll call him in and have him. Maybe we'll try to get him for next week. Actually, actually, you know what? I'm calling I'm calling in next week because I'm going to be in Vancouver at Tales of the Cocktail. Maybe the week after that, I'll try to get get McGee. All right, cool. Thanks a lot for the question. Thanks, Dave. All right, so back to the Knicks stabilization Mega Post. So the one section of it that I'll talk about now on the air is a pretty badly burnt my

[39:53] tongue last stupidly. I pretty badly burnt my tongue last week on what day of the week was that? Friday. Thursday? Thursday. Thursday. It was Thursday. Wednesday. Wednesday, whatever. Last week. I burnt my tongue with lie. So here's how it happened. We use lion cooking for a lot of things, for pretzels. We use it in the Harold McGee class for our eggs. I have a use for it in the next model post that you're going to read, hopefully, if you're a reader of the blog, which I hope you are. And somehow, a bunch of lie, sodium hydroxide got put into a court container with no label on it. And we're moving a lot of stuff around. And someone puts this container in front of my hand and I'm not in front of my face and it's like, what is it? I'm not used to thinking about something in my kitchen being so dangerous. So I stupidly put my finger in it because I have literally dozens of different quart containers with powders in them sitting around. And most of them are hydrocoloids, simple

[40:54] acids, like tartaric, citric, and malic, um, you know, uh, where I say hydrocoloids, sugar, salt, things like that. And so you can just go boom and taste it and it's done. So I go, boop, taste it, lie. It's the most violent reaction I've ever had on my tongue. It's the equivalent of eating a handful of those Szechuan buttons. And I instantly knew something was horribly, horribly wrong. And so I spat out. ran into the kitchen and started washing my mouth out, you know, thankfully I didn't swallow it or I'd be in really, really, really, really big trouble. Start washing my mouth out for, you know, several minutes. Look in the mirror, my tongue is bleeding, the roof of my mouth is bleeding. It's eaten away all of the taste buds on one half of my tongue. And so I'm like, well, I better go to the ER. So I go to the ER and I had to, you know, stay there for hours while they made sure that I didn't ingest any and I have to take steroids and all this other stuff. But, uh, the tongue heals miraculously. And, uh, my taste is mostly back, although there's still a swath where I have my taste buds burned away, but it's coming back.

[41:59] I'm here to tell you, lie is dangerous. I had it in my house, right? And so I threw it all away because God forbid my kids should get a hold of it. So it's reasonable to cook with lye. It's like, you know, a good ingredient for what it's for, but just be extremely careful. If you have anything like that, and you have kids around, it doesn't take much for them to really, really, really, really damage themselves. I, you know, I've known for years how dangerous it is and I've always been paranoid about it getting on my hands, but I never knew how fast the damage happens.

[42:32] Uh, you know, than when it happened to me last week. So just be extremely careful when you have it around. Make sure that everyone who cooks with it in your kitchen is extremely careful about it, and make sure that there's no possible way on God's earth that any child could ever, ever get their hands on

[42:48] it. Are you going to be in big, big trouble, right? So to round out cooking issues for this week, I'm going to say a little story and

[42:55] a help. I need help from our listeners for more research. So I've been researching a lot about corn for various reasons, mostly because I'm a dork. And I came across something I basically said, there was a lot of corn research and genetic corn research that was brought about by the atomic nuclear testing at the bikini atoll in the 40s after World War II.

[43:16] Because what they did was they took a whole bunch of corn and they exposed it to an atomic blast, several atomic blasts. And then they would plant it to see whether the seeds, presumably, to see whether the seeds germinated or not. But they noticed that there was a good bit of mutation in the, uh, in the, in the corn that, that was newt, right? And so then the Atomic Energy Commission started sponsoring a lot of research on corn,

[43:40] in corn, cold of ours, and core mutations. So if you look at a lot of the research on corn, in the 40s and 50s, it's sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission, and they would actually create radiation sources with, you know, various forms of radioactive cobalt and whatnot to purposely irradiate seeds, to try and get genetic

[43:56] mutation. So it causes explosion in, um, in genetic research and different kinds of corn mutations. Now, one of the main core mutations that was discovered, discovered in 1949, I believe, was a gene called

[44:12] Shrunken 2. And Shrunken 2 is the precursor to all super sweet corn that we eat today. And before that, corn was relatively sweet or not, but not the super sweet that we have today. So there's a researcher who just happened to be chewing on a bunch of mutant corn while he was sorting through

[44:29] it. And noticed that this one shriveled dried piece of corn was super sweet. isolated that gene, regrew it, and that is the genesis of all the super sweet corn today. So here's what I need to find out. And I've got a bunch of calls in. I want to find out the exact chain that leads from the atomic testing in bikini atoll to

[44:49] super sweet corn because there's some sort of link there, right? You know, whether, and I'm hoping that all super sweet corn is a result

[44:57] of, um, of irradiation by cobalt as a result of the initial experiments done with the atomic

[45:03] testing, because I just love the idea of nuclear sweet corn, don't you? And this has been cooking issues.

[45:14] 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

[45:32] Heritage 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. You got my head all twisted. 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.

[46:03] 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.

[46:10] 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

[46:21] 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 Pelaggio talk about maple syrup on her show, a taste of the past, episode 12. 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

[47:08] 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

[47:16] co-host Brian DeMarco in this 2011 redux. True to the original format, Erin and Brian will keep you abreast of current happenings, and break down the news and global events, distilling complex into anecdotal stories that inspire. From media and political events to hailstorms in Argentina, no topic is out of bounds.

[47:33] Tune in every week to hear them chat up the industry's biggest personalities and host on-air tastings with visiting ventors and the country's hottest somoliers. Whether you're an expert or an enthusiast, unfiltered demystifies

[47:45] wine, and lets you know what it really takes to get a bottle from the vineyard to your neighborhood wine shop.

[47:50] Unfiltered broadcast live every Tuesday at 4 PM 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

[48:08] 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 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 Bomufuku, Wiley Dufrayne of WD50? Mark Ladner of Del Posto, Nils Norin of the French Culinary Institute, Cesare Casella of

[48:42] Salu Maria Rossi, Carlo Maraci of Roberta's, Brooks Headley of Del Posto, and Christina Tozzi of

[48:49] Momofuku Milk Bar. Bartenders include Audrey Sanders, of Pegu Club, Thomas Waugh, Death & Company, Simon Ford of Pernot Ricard, Damon

[48:57] Boltie of Prime Meats, and Eben Clem of BR Guest Restaurants. Proceeds from the event will directly support the Museum of Food and Drink, tickets are very limited, and $250 per

[49:07] 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 dot com. Sponsored by for No Recard, Heritage Foods USA, Pat Lafrida Meats, Barterhouse Wines, Del Posto Restaurant.