[0:06] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. I am the host of Cooking Issues. Dave Arnold, here with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Brooklyn, New York, coming to you every Tuesday from approximately 12 to 1245.

[0:23] Call in all of your cooking related questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Actually, nostash prefers the non-cookie related questions, right? I do I prefer issues. Yeah, she prefers just straight up issues. And if you knew her better, you'd see why. Today's today. Come on now, right? Today's episode is brought to you by the Hearst Ranch. Hearst Ranch is a nation's largest single source supplier, free range, all natural, grass-fed, and grass finished beef. Since 1865, 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 landscapes. For more information, go to www.herstranch.com. That's www.herstranch.com. Hey, Nastasia. Anything interesting happen this week? Yeah. What? I can't. Oh, you can't develop it? Really? Yeah. Wow. I'm intrigued. Do I know this stuff? Oh, really? I feel like I feel like I'm being left a pizza, over pizza. I'm gonna hear I'm gonna Well, for all of you out there in internet land. I'm gonna get the real skinny when it comes to your peaches. By the way, the payment we get for doing this fabulous show every week is a pizza and

[1:36] a salad, correct? Yes. Yes. Anyway, not that that's not good enough payment, Jack. Just talking already here. Dr. Pepper. Oh, uh, and it diet, diet, diet, diet. Yes, okay. Okay, here come the questions. From Andrew Cummings. Hi, Dave and Nastasia. I really like all the stuff you do, apart from providing me with tons of ideas, I think you must be from England. Australia, I guess you said, right? Because he spells tons in the British fashion. Reading your articles and listening to your radio show, keep my passion for food going. Well, thank you. He's a food technologist, an honorable professional, when done right. When done right, an very honorable profession, when done right. He's wondering if I can tell him anything about cinnamon and its gelling effects. A couple of years ago, he was working for a chocolatier at a small boutique store and saw that the liquid components in

[2:23] Panforte, which is a delicious kind of, it's weird kind of candy dense sweet from Siena. I actually like it. Do you like it? I don't know. You know, it's that really dense dark with all the nuts and the candy fruit in it. It's got the wafer paper on the bottom and it stays good forever and you slice it into disks into wedges. Is it like a caramelly? No, it's not, imagine like a fruitcake without the cake? Anyway. but it's real dense. Anyway, sorry, sorry for interrupting the middle of your question there. Andrew. So he was making some panforte, and the stuff had turned into a thick slime, and he asked his boss about it, and he said it happens whenever he adds

[3:00] a cinnamon, and he looked around on the internet for some explanation, is why cinnamon would cause this kind of

[3:04] gelling effect, but could find no academic papers on it. I'm guessing it's probably some polysaccharide, similar to what's in gum Arabic, but he'd like to know if it can be extracted and used as a future shelling agent. Well, I was not able to find any information on that, although there is a polysaccharide in cinnamon, that some

[3:21] nut job has named cinnamon AX polysaccharide, that has some sort of BS health benefit or something like that, but it doesn't say anything about its geling properties. I doubt it's exactly similar to gum Arabic because gum Arabic isn't just, it's not a bark phenomenon. It's a sap phenomenon, so come Arabic, it's a mix of protein,

[3:40] small amount of protein, and gum sap. Although there could be some residual stuff in the bark. And it clearly, there are many barks that are used for thickening. For instance, uh, you know, filet powder, uh, which is at the leaves of the bark. I always forget. Anyways. So, yeah, yes, obviously there's probably some sort of, um, some sort of gelling agent. Another thing is Panforte is very, very thick and usually uses a boiled sugar component. So it's probably close to gumming up on you anyway. So the addition of anything that's going to absorb water and have any sort of polysaccharide or water binding effect might cause it to gum up. But I'm interested in this. I'm going to ask McGee if I have Niggy. Niggy, I'm going to ask McGee next time I speak to him if I can remember. An interesting thing is, is that, um, Casia, not regular cinnamon,

[4:23] Vicasia, uh, has in it uh, cumarin, which is an anti-coagulant. So the exact opposite of making things thick, making things thin. Anyway, I was not able to find anything, but I'm going to keep my ears out for that. And anyone else, if you hear anything about it or have had experience, please write in and tell us because we're interested in that sort of thing. Okay. I'm going to go on to hello from Adam. Adam has a bacon related question that he hopes we can help him with. You think so? Baking. Baking. You think we can help? Yeah. I don't know. Okay. This is actually a pretty complicated one, so I'm just going to read it straight out. He said, you know, there are plenty of situations where you need to hydrate a dough to work to work it, but where the gluten formation is the

[5:03] enemy. For instance, pie dough, biscuits, scones, cakes, cookies, et cetera. To keep the gluten under control, you usually use low protein flour, avoid overworking,

[5:11] and then add a lot of a fat. And the fat basically is coating the flower particles and preventing the water from forming gluten. Okay. So, and recently he's read about experimenting replacing water. In a pastry crispy, in a pastry crust recipe with vodka, since apparently alcohol doesn't have the gluten activating properties that water does,

[5:29] producing hypothetically producing a crust with even less chewiness than usual. This is true. This is not only for pie crust, this is also for batters. So, I mean, the famous examples, uh, in pie crust land would probably be America's Test Kitchen, uh, Chris Kimball's, um, you know, his show,

[5:45] that he's Cook's Illustrated guy, where they have their, uh, pastry, uh, their their pie crust recipe that includes a good portion of vodka in it, uh, does 2 things.

[5:54] One allows you to add more liquid so that you can make it a little more. It's not as flaky, it doesn't come apart in your hands. It volatilizes off and doesn't form a lot of gluten, so it can be rolled without it getting tough, right? So that's one application. The 2nd famous one is probably Heston Blumenthal's fish and chips batter, where he will add vodka to the

[6:12] batter, to prevent sort of gluten formation to make it stay crisp, without it getting tough at all, without the batter getting tough at all, and without having to add a lot of

[6:20] extra, you know, starch binders other than flour to get it to be where he wants. So these are 2 very well-known applications of alcohol being used as the, well, hydrate's the wrong

[6:32] word because it's not water, but you know what I'm saying, to give the dose some sort of plasticity.

[6:36] So, anyway, so, uh, he goes on and he says, it sounds like a holy grail of pastry crust is a dough with no gluten formation whatsoever. I wonder what would happen if you inhibit gluten formation entirely, with the starch still being in granular form. I think you still want the granules be hydrated to some extent, even if they're just swelling and sitting together in an extremely delicate array with little intergranual entanglement so that you're not eating something that's going to turn it to dust when you bite down on it.

[6:59] Well, okay. 0 gluten formation, 100% 0 gluten formation is actually quite problematic because it means the dough is extremely hard to work.

[7:08] This is why it's very difficult to work many gluten-free recipes, right? So if you're gonna make, I mean, people do make pie crust and whatnot exclusively out of things like potato flour and rice flour for gluten-free recipes,

[7:21] but these does are typically extremely hard to handle. The same way that non-flowered dumpling wrappers are hard to handle. And the way that those are usually solved is you will pre-cook, pre-boil, a portion of your starch, so that the starch will entangle itself a little bit to give you a little bit of

[7:36] structure, so that you can then form it into a workable dough.

[7:40] So a little bit of gluten formation can be helpful for, or is always helpful, usually in formation of dough, not so much in batters. So in batters, it's not as big a deal. But anyway, so he goes on and his last thing he's positing. A while ago, I was talking about the free saw stability of geling agents, and this came to mind. What if we had a gel that had poor heat stability so that the gel is holding

[8:01] on to most of the water when you're forming the dough, but when it's heated, the gel loses, it's holding on the water and allows it to seep into the flour, and that would control the shape of baked goods and make it so that it had a fairly high water content without it for having

[8:14] live gluten formation. Well, I'm not sure if that would actually be useful or not, but if you

[8:19] wanted to experiment with it, because in general, like very, very low water formation things still are delicious, the classic example is shortbread, which is basically, you know, you take of butter and

[8:30] sugar and a tiny bit of flour and you barely get it to hold together and you bake it. And is there anything more delicious than short bread? No. No? You like it? Do you like you don't like it? I don't like it. You don't like shortbread? What? It's like hard tech. Are you nuts? Who made your shortbread? Who made your shortbread? Jeez, my god. Shortbread, like, heart attack? My god. Anyway, I'm sorry for that outburst. All right, listen, we have a caller, but I'm going to tell you, 1st try an agar fluid gel. If you want to get something that's going to hold onto water, but at the close to the boiling point, we'll melt out. Capa Carragini won't form a fluid jealousy. can't use it even though it's going to melt at a lower temperature. Hardtack indeed. Color, you're on the air. Hi, Dave, I love the show, by the way. Lots and lots of useful hints. I have a couple questions about hydrocolides. Specifically, I've been using Agar and Guargum together. Sorry, Xantham and Guargon to stabilize emulsions. And I was wondering, do you have any tips for making them heat resistant, particularly like a

[9:33] hollandaise or a beurre blanc. Okay. What guar are you using? Uh, it's just, just a squire gone on it. I got it from will powder. Okay, I don't know which, um, Will is a good guy. Taste it. If it has a bad taste to it. It means he's sourcing, and there's no offense to him because I don't know what he's sourcing, but he's sourcing an inexpensive guar. And if that has a beanie taste to it, is before I answer your question. If it has a beanie kind of off taste to it, you're going to want to call a company called TIC

[10:00] Gums, uh, and get their, theirs, which is called uh, Guar flavor. flavor-free guar, NT 2000 or some crap like that, but it's flavor-free guar. And that stuff's awesome, right? That stuff's really good. Now Will might be sourcing that. So if you taste his guar. Uh, and it tastes okay, then I'd stick stick with it. But if it does have kind of an off taste to you, then I'd look into getting another guar. Now, what specific problems are you having with with stability using that system? Well, what it is, is a reasonable temperature. It's very, very stable, more stable than any Hollandaise or beurre blanc I'm making, but I want something that I can pour onto the plate, like at the same heat that I would pour like a

[10:43] demiglass or any other typical hot sauce. But when I get up to those temperatures, you know, like the 60 neighborhood,

[10:49] they, uh, the guards, uh, won't help it and it just splits eventually. So even at 60, even at 60 degrees. Well, no, no, I wasn't, I wasn't being that precise with my, with my measurements, because I'm not keeping it in circulators too. I was keeping it trying to keep it just in the traditional steam table where you don't have that sort of control. So I was wondering, like, I have methyl cellulose. Is there any other products that or culminations or percentages that

[11:12] that will increase the uh the heat resistance? Well, methocell is, the problem with methocell is methocell gels when it gets hot, so it's going to get firm and it's not going to stay pourable. I'm surprised. So when you heat Guar, what happens is Guar loses some of its thickening power. It doesn't get damaged in any way. When it cools down, it will come back to its thickness, but Guar loses a bit of its thickness as it gets heated up. Unlike Xanthan, which loses its, which only loses a very little bit of its, um, abilities when it when it's heated up. Now, I wouldn't want to thicken the guar at all because, I mean, add more guar

[11:50] because, A, you're going to start tasting guar and B, it's going to get too thick when it gets cold. Um, I'm wondering whether the heat, the damage is actually happening to the egg proteins in it, right? in which case. Well that's it is like to keep it as more like a traditional Holland. Well, 1st I was doing hollandaise, uh, that style, then I tried doing verb blanc, and I had good results of both. But I'm trying to keep that original Hollandaise beurre blanc

[12:14] texture, and I thought if I, if I brought my percentages too high, it, it became a bit too, well, I mean, you know what I mean? So I was wondering if, if, because already I found that doing the Xantan and Maguar together made good results. I was wondering if there was a 3rd guy, um, to bring in there um, that might bring some labs. that heat resistance without bringing my percentages too high. Triple gum systems can be difficult because you can have multiple interactions with things. So what you, basically, you don't have an emulsifier in there. The only emulsifier you have are the, well, the egg in the one and the, and the milk solids in the other. So, um, you know, both the Guar and the Xanthan, the Guar is acting basically as a thickening agent to prevent the particles from glaming

[13:00] together, and the Xanthan is acting as a weak jelling agent when it's not being stirred, right? And so that's basically your stabilization system. You might want to move to an added emulsifier. So a good one in this choice might be gum Arabic, right? So instead of using Xanthan, we use a mix of gum Arabic and Xanthan called Ticoloid, they're also from TIC gums,

[13:21] Ticoloid, 310 S, and Ticoloid, 210 S. And it's a basically it's a mix of Xanthan and gum Arabic. Gum Arabic is going to act as your as your emulsifier, right? And then, um, the, and the, and the Xanthan's going to act as your stabilizer and as a weak gelling agent when you're not stirring and sitting on the scene table. I've made butter syrups, just butter syrups with that, that will sit on your bench or get heated indefinitely without breaking. So then if you're having further problems with breaking, you can add something like guar, or even a starch to something like egg yolk to prevent the egg yolk proteins from being able to

[13:54] coagulate and, you know, and turn crappy on you. So, I would move to. I would try a system of gum Arabic and Xanthan, and an easy premix one is a tickleoy 210 or 310 S, which they'll sell to you or sample out to you, and or just get commercially available gum Arabic and add it into

[14:12] that. Because I think what you need is to add an actual emulsifier. And the good news about the gum arabic, because it's fairly stable over a wide range of heats, and it's also fairly stable over a wide range of

[14:23] dilution. So if you were to then suddenly use a, like,

[14:27] like, you could even fortify a liquid into that beurre blanc to, to thin it out a little bit, and it would still hold its sauce consistency. So it acts, uh, it's a lot more friendly than a traditional beurre blanc, and it could make, you could have like a base there that would be useful for a lot of different recipes. Right, right, great. So, uh, garma Arabic definitely sounds like the uh, the next thing I need to try. Uh, can I hear you with one more quick one before I go? The, uh, I heard you talking about uh, like, candies just a 2nd ago and I was actually planning on doing a wedding where I was going to have candies at the end. What product is the best one used to get that, that sour patch kids kind of stretchy, uh, jellies? Well, so like the classic American ones. You want an American sour patch kid? Those are gelatin. That's just straight up gelatin. Uh, and then, I was using that. No, it was getting like more kind of solid cuddible before it was getting stretchy. What am I doing wrong? Um, I mean, I haven't I haven't, uh, it's been a long time since I've worked with anything like that. I've never gotten really good results. They, but the, from everything I've read, like the, the, the gummy bears are starch molded. And so it's all about getting, you know, that's why they have that poured looking back because they're molded into starch, right? So it's like, it's all about getting your moisture levels right and just not rushing it. Like, those gummy bears take a couple days to make. So they're, you know what I mean? And so it's all about getting the moisture level, right? Having them dry in exactly the right rate. That's why gummy bears, they don't last in the bag, right? You could tell if you got an old one because they turn hard and the young ones that are just right, have the right texture. So, I mean, I would look at, you can look in some of the old books like, uh, like that one I mentioned a bunch of weeks back, I don't have the name in my heads by Kirkland called Professional Petisserie from like the 18, like early 1900s, because they have all the cornstarch recipes, but there are some modern books that also talk about

[16:07] that. I don't know where the Torah Blanca's book talks about that, but he talks a lot about cornstarch and molding. And it's interesting, interesting stuff. European-based jellies are more based on pectin, but that's more of those fruit slice textures that your teeth

[16:18] sink into. And they're not the same as a gummy bear. Also good, I think probably easier and faster to make. Yeah, all right, that's cool. The one other problem I was having is when I coated them with citric acid, I was getting a little bit of bleeding. You know anything about that? What do you mean bleeding? Me, from your tummy, after they went to hide and drive them properly, but they, uh, they, uh, the other thing

[16:38] was, I was doing half citric acid, half sugar, because I didn't want to cut it with pure citric acid. I think it was the sugar. When it contacted the jelly, it started, uh, leeching water. Hmm, that's interesting. It probably just wasn't. I mean, I've never done a coating of a candy like that. They probably make the candy 1st and then spray it with something so they can pan it. Do you know what I'm saying? So they probably have a, I don't know that for certain. I'm saying that I'm saying that out loud just saying it, but that's how I would do it rather than try to control the

[17:05] the powder and the candy making at the same time. But then... cornstarch or something like that. Well, they mold them in cornstarch, and then they probably, they probably have something that they paint paint on to pan. I'm not sure what, like maybe an alcohol or something and then get it to adhere. But I don't know. I'd have to look into it, but the citric acid shouldn't cause you any problems, but go ahead and get some other acids too. Get mal acid, get tartaric acid. All right, well, when I go and find my gum Arabic, I'll look for those too as well. All right, give us a holler. a lot. All right, thanks a lot, Dave. All right, bye. We're going on to our 1st commercial break on cooking issues. Well, I know it's kindly I hope I didn't wake it. But what I've gotta say can't wait. I know you'd understand the end. Every time I tried to tell you the words just came out wrong. So I have to say I love you in a song. Yeah, no, it's kind of strange. Every time I'm near you. I just run out of things to say. I know you'd understand. Every time I tried to tell you the words just came out. Welcome back to cooking issue. So that was Jim Croce. We haven't had Jim Croce as our middle music before, right, Nastasia? Oh, we love him. Yeah, we love Jim Croce, because I used to listen to it in my mom when I was growing up, used to play it all the time, but he has this song where he's like, Nastasia, I always joke about this. He has this song where he's like, I know it's kind of late. I hope it didn't wake you. And then he goes on to like have this like, like, crappy love poem where he's like, I hope, you know, I just called to say I love you in this song, but like, so nostalgia, I always go through it. We like, you know, it's the phone's ringing at 3 AM. You pick it up and you're like, who died? Who died? Who died? Oh, Jesus. And he's like, I know it's kind of late. You're like what? What? Gems. Snap out of it. Anyway. Okay. We have a question from, let's see which one we're going to take next. We have a question from Johnny Hunter and Madison, Wisconsin. Hi, I have a couple questions about using Activa RM in dry carrying meats, Activa RM, for those of you out there. Not in the note is Meat Glue. The wonderful, wonderful, wonderful product that glues any proteins together. Uh, first, uh, does it work to glue 2 muscles together and then do a dry cure? He was thinking this might be nice is he was trying to do a dry cured ham without the bone. It would allow for better shape and less air pockets, et cetera. That's true. The way they do a boneless, like a prosciutto, is they actually cure it bone in, and then they debone it and they have a very high pressure press that presses it into a ham shaped

[19:50] mold. That's why all prosciuttos are the same shape because they've been crushed into that mold. These are the ones that are bonus. Okay, so yes, this would work. This would definitely work. I mean, make sure that you add some, you know, it might help you because you could salt in that interior portion. And so when you're curing your own ham, a lot of times you'll get taint or lack of cure along the bone

[20:08] line because it's not going in, especially through the fatty areas. And so this would give you an opportunity to get some of the cure on the inside of the meat, as long as you didn't over salt it. And then you could still glue even over a light salting there and you're not going to get a lot of bacterial problems. I mean, the one main problem you're going to have from doing it is you're going to be introducing bacteria into something and then gluing it shut. So you want to make sure that you're killing bacteria right away there. So I would definitely put, um, some some nitrates, nitrates, rather, or trites, I guess, ham trades and some salt, enough salt to kill whatever ails you on the surface of that because otherwise you're going to be in deep, deep,

[20:40] doo-doo. don't want you to get anybody sick. Second question on Miklu was about rolling cured bellies. Tom, he mentions Thomas Keller's recipe in under pressure for rabbit bacon. I was like, rabbit bacon, that's crazy. Rabbit bacon? That's a pain in the butt. Think how small the belly on a rabbit would be, but he didn't mean that. He meant rabbit with bacon, not bacon made from the bellies of

[21:01] rabbits because even Keller's not that decadent to like kill a 1000 rabbits for one serving, although maybe he is. I don't know. I mean, I don't really know the guy. So basically what Keller does is he layers rabbit up with bacon using Activa using meat glue. And Johnny's tried this with a couple of different animals, including rabbit and goat. And after he cooks the bellies and slice them and roast them in the oven, they come apart. So, Is there any way to do it since the meat doesn't separate when it's cooked at a high temperature,

[21:28] thanks a bunch? So, here's the problem. I read Thomas Keller's recipe in the book, and it's not apparent how much kind of meat glue you have to add, and he's layering slices of bacon together

[21:39] with like one layer of meat glue. You need to make sure, 1st of all, when you're gluing things that have a lot of fat. You're not actually gluing the fat. What you're doing is gluing the connective tissue, the collagen and the different proteins that form the network of the fat before it's rendered, which is why you can't glue rendered fat.

[21:54] You can only glue, glue, native fat. Native fat? Yeah. Uh, so, uh, basically, if it's rendered, it can't be glued. What you are gluing is the stuff that ends up being a chichirone, if you were to cook it long enough, that's that protein residue. Okay. So you want to make sure that all of it has a thin dusting of meat glue on it. And then even at high temperatures, the stuff won't come apart. If you brutalize it, like you fry it in an oven, sometimes the violence of the frying can make the meat pieces come apart, but the bond itself won't be

[22:22] damaged, as long as you have enough meat glue, such that connected tissue is always touching connected tissue. So I would make sure that you get both sides of any belly that you were doing, you might even want to switch instead of using Activa RM using Activa GS, which uses gelatin as its bonding agent. It's going to be a little bit stronger of a bond. And also you can paint it on to make sure you're not missing anything. Just don't add too much liquid or it's going to be a problem. Uh, Keller also recommends an under pressure using a, like a, like a sieve, like a handheld sieve. Dont use that. Use like a cocoa duster because it's going to get a much finer coating. So you should be able to get it to work if you if you do it. And on side note, I had a lot of comments on our blog recently, coming from nutjob wing ding freak shows, who are anti-meat glue because of some knee jerk reaction that they think they're going to the butcher, and their butcher is serving them some sort of like hacked up piece of hamburger and selling it to them as a whole steak, and it's all based on some crappy,

[23:14] crappy exposé in quotes because it's not an exposé. an exposé of something that's not happening on a show in Australia called Today Tonight Show. The show itself has an oxymoronic freaking name today tonight. It's a dumb name for a show. Only, you know, I don't understand like, unless you're a listener, in which case producers, I love you or love your show, have me on. But the, basically, it's, it's saying that, like, some of the quotes that are absurd to anyone who's ever used meat glue before, are, um, even an expert can't tell that something's been glued together with meat glue, and anyone who's ever looked at a piece of meat

[23:48] before in their lives can tell the difference between a bunch of scraps glued together and

[23:53] foist it off as a whole cut of meat and, uh, and one that's been, you know, that it's a real honest to God muscles. So I think they're making a kind of 10% in a teapot about a problem that doesn't really exist. And they're also saying how it's a bacterial nightmare. Well, because when you're using meat glu, one of the things you have to be really careful of is that you're taking and you're putting things that possibly contaminated with bacteria on the inside of your meat, which before you thought was relatively

[24:16] sterile. Uh, but the trick with that is, is it's not, it's not that that's unmanageable. It's just knowing that's what you're doing. And anyone who's properly trained using meat glue knows that they have to kill that bacteria that they put on the

[24:26] inside. So I encourage all of the listeners of this to go around, find these blog posts with these morons who think

[24:33] they, they also say, it's banned in the EU. Well, it's not banned in the EU. Thrombin-based meat glue is banned in the EU, not transgutaminase, which is from an enzyme. Thrahmen's a blood clotting factor that's used as a meat, was used as a meat loose band in the

[24:46] EU, and it was banned in the meat, in the EU for dumb, dumb reasons. It was banned because the morons who were doing the legislation. Couldn't think of a valid use for it because they're not cooks. There's another problem of a non-cook. And they saw too much of a problem where you might do something fraudulent. And so they ban the use of that, but didn't ban the use of the other one, which is more prevalent. The thing that makes me really angry about this, is that it's so easy to bind together meats with crappy binding agents like

[25:12] Carragin and like the way they make dog food. Everyone, when they see a bound piece of meat, thinks it's been bound with meat glue. Meat glue is actually an expensive and nice way to buy things together without the use of a lot of fillers and gelling agents, which is how people can rip you off if they really feel like they're going to rip you off anyway. So go out there and smack these people upside the head with some knowledge because they need it. Okay, sorry. Okay. And from Australia, this is from James. Hey guys, greetings from Australia. I'm assuming James is not a member of the Australia Today Tonight Show. Hopefully not. He's been enjoying the blog for a while, so it's probably not, and getting into the podcast. So he has a question for the show. He's been struggling with oven spring in his bread for 2 years and he's stumped. So far, I'm going to be him now. So far, I've managed to work my way through every single problem apart from the vexatious side bust out. So when he's cooking it, the oven spring. What's happening is instead of going along where he slices the bread, he's getting a burst in the seam

[26:05] along the bottom of the bread and splitting it on the bottom, which is not what he wants to have happen.

[26:09] And he's tried all the different kinds of things you can try, varying his different hydrations from 60 to 85%, using autolysis, which is a process where you start the mixing of the flour, knead it a little bit, let it rest for a while, and then knead it again, mixing different batters, making different kinds of starters, different kinds of

[26:29] hand, hydration, different kinds of mixing, different kinds of flowers, et cetera, et cetera, different kinds of salt, ratios, different kinds of risings, different proofing levels, different baking, yada, yada,

[26:40] yada. So he was wondering what the heck is going on. And so he says that sometime he now uses a different esteam technique, where it's called steam via ice, where everyone who bakes bread knows it, that steam formation

[26:53] for many types of bread, steam formation in the very beginning of bread baking is extremely important.

[26:57] And so he's been trying, uh, one of the ways that you throw ice in and it gives you a constant rate of steam because the oven can't evap can't melt and evaporate it all quickly

[27:05] enough, so you have a steam that lasts a little while, whereas if you just throw water in, a very well

[27:09] vented, uh, home oven will just obliterate the steam and you're not going to get enough steam. So he wants to know what to do. Well, I was going to say that most times when you get a bad burst in the bottom, it's actually because you're

[27:20] using, you're not doing a good enough forming technique, assuming that everything else is okay. You're not like giving a good skin to it when you're forming it around. But you say you've tried that. Um, so I would go, I, you know, when I have a question, I don't know whether the baking community respects them, but I like going to the

[27:35] fresh loaf, which is a blog, uh, which is pretty interesting. And also, there's a kind of a nut, and I appreciate nuts. Um, there's a guy um, named uh, uh, Steve B, and I forget what

[27:46] his uh, what his uh, blog is, but you can find him, Steve B. He experimented with a lot of crazy stuff and he found a steamer that is, I think, I also forget the name of the company that manufactures the steamer, but basically what you do is you take a hotel pan, you drill a hole in

[28:01] it. You put it over your bread as soon, like as soon as you put it on your stone, and then you, you, you take, and you rig up a garment steamer with a nozzle, and you pipe steam into the hotel pan for like 20 or 30 seconds, and then put it in the oven, and then a couple minutes

[28:15] later take it off, and that more closely mimics the steam that you're going to get out of an oven, and I have never used it, but it looks really interesting, something you might want to try.

[28:23] And so, and there's a couple of people on the web now experimenting with these like handheld steamers and hotel

[28:28] pans, upturned hotel pans. So, um, I mean, I wish it was still wintertime. I mean, it kind of still feels like it. But I wish it was because it's hard for me to do a lot of baking

[28:38] and because my oven gets like mighty hot, mighty, mighty, mighty hot. In addition, I'm curious about like what the actual mechanism of steam is because it seems kind of confused. People say multiple things that like, I'm going to have to do more research on the actual, everyone knows that steam at the beginning helps the crust formation, everyone.

[28:53] But a lot of the scientific explanation seems kind of bogus. And I started reading some of the documentation this morning, but I didn't have time. So maybe that's something we'll deal with later on a different, on a different whoozy, what's it? right? So why don't we then take our 2nd commercial break? And while we're going to it, why don't you remember to call in two, 718-497-2128? That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[29:20] Operator. What could you help me place this car? See the number on the matchbook is old and faded. Living in L.A. With my best old ex friend, Ray. Gosh, you said you knew well, and sometimes hating. Isn't that the way these say it goes? Let's go get all out and give me the number if you can't find it. Following is a public service announcement from Heritage radio network. Tune in to the speakeasy every Wednesday at 3 p.m. where host Damon Bolte will discuss cocktails, spirits, wine, beer, tea, coffee, and all things in the liquid universe, with guests ranging from bartenders and brewers, alchemists and ambassadors, roasters and regulars, and every expert and enthusiast in between.

[30:26] Learn from some of the world's leading experts in mixology, bar history,

[30:30] distillation, and brewing about how we enjoy imbibing today. Again, that's every Wednesday at 3 PM on the Heritage Radio Network. You know, Jim Croce is visiting hell on that operator. Operator is just trying to do her job. You know, and he's talking about his best old ex-friend, Ray, who, I admit, is a jerk for running away with his woman. Or maybe the woman ran away with him. Well, it takes 2 to Tango. takes 2 to Tango. Dear old best old ex-friend, was it? Best old ex, yeah. Then he ends up non-placing a call. Yeah, jerk. Anyway. So, I have good news that I actually did something I said I was going to do, and I ordered an arrow press. coffee, so I can finally say what I personally think about the AeroPress coffee. We talked about it a 1000000 times on the air. It only costs 2495, so I ordered on Amazon, and it makes a perfectly fine cup of coffee. I might use it now as my as my take in my bag coffee maker, but here's what it doesn't make, espresso. That's it. Doesn't make espresso. But on an interesting note, coffee thing. I learned something recently that there's this thing called cup of excellence. Have you heard this? Cup of excellence. So what they do is they get all these people from every different country. Every different country has its own cup of excellence. A lot of coffee producing countries, and there's a huge competition where they're cupped again and again and again.

[31:49] And then the winner and all these small lots are auctioned off and someone has to buy the whole auction. So, for instance, Dallas Brothers, who is one of the sponsors, the museum thing. We did the latte art judging contest, gave me a bag of Rwanda's 2010 Copacama co-op cup of excellence coffee. And it sells for a lot more than regular coffee. It's like $30 a pound green, green, wholesale, green. Uh, and uh, it was very, very good. Cup of excellence. Go to, to check it out, go to cup of excellence.org. Anyway, uh, so I thought that was interesting. No? No? Yes, no, moderately interesting. All right. You still have about 25 seconds because I got 2 more questions to answer. To call in your questions, two, 718-497-2128. That's 718-4972128. Okay. Colin, good old Colin. Oh boy. What? This is not, he said specifically, uh, this has been a cuss free question. Yeah, but it's also a controversial question. It is? All right, let's read it. No, it's not actually weed. seaweed. Nastasia only... I read the 1st sentence and then I forward it at 6 AM today. Yes, that's what happened. That's what happens. So she's like, 0 my god, he's talking about weed. Seaweed. You know, with Colin, nothing is like what it seems. Uh, in honor of the, this is Colin speaking. In honor of the upcoming 420 holiday, although 420 is a holiday for me. It's my wife's birthday, but Easter is actually Nastasia's birthday, which is 424. Well, Jesus was born yet. Reborn. Reborn. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, so this year, Nastasia gets Easter. I've had Easter on my birthday before, yeah, Jen's had Easter on her birthday before, one of those crazy ones. Anyway, Colin has a question that pertains to weed. And of course, is there some sort of cannabis related holiday? 420 is the Jack, you know more. Wow. So it's not Easter? that that us old fogies aren't familiar with? It's been around forever. All right, whatever. Colin has a question about weed. Of course, I'm not really interested in cannabis. Of course you're not. It's seaweed that catches your his fancy. Seaweed salad is freaking awesome with its al Dante

[34:00] crunch and ubiquitous sesame dressing. Since they don't speak Chinese, I guess, or Japanese. I've been able to track, I haven't been able to track down good weed to use in a salad. I see the fresh stuff in some Asian groceries, but the sections near the sea cumbers where nobody bothers labeling stuff in English. A project I've been sitting on for a few years is to try cultivating seaweeds in order to have fresh unlimited supply of weed. I just saw a McGee's on food and cooking that says Wakame kombu and sea lettuce are commonly used in salads. And so he wants to know if I have any tips, what he should look for in market or what species make a good salad, any tips on prep, and have I, and since I've used

[34:31] saltwater aquarium before, made them, do I have any tips on sourcing and growing some hydroponic weed?

[34:35] Okay. The problem is that a lot of the seaweeds that you use are too big to basically, uh, to basically grow in a normal situation, although things like Wakame

[34:44] are, you know, and, you know, kelp and all these things are routinely farmed. I mean, that's how they do it. Like, you very rarely get wild anything anymore, but it's just they're so big that it's

[34:54] hard, it's hard to do. You can gather your own on the coast, which I've done a bunch of times with limited success. Unfortunately, I haven't done any research recently. Back in the day, the book that, you know, that everyone had was called cooking with sea vegetables by Sharon Ann Rhodes. Unfortunately, it's kind of like, and this is nothing against anyone. It's kind of hippie dip, and I'm much more into like straight up, you know, killer information and like

[35:17] pictures, and this looks like it was written in the 70s or 80s, and I've had it probably, you know, since forever. And it's like all black and white and it's not really up to date. Someone needs to tell me if there's an up-to-date new seaweed book. But how you use a seaweed depends a lot on what, Oh, if you want a good website. It's interesting. Uh, the person who made it apparently doesn't want you to find it because it's very hard to find, but it's seaweeds of the Pacific Northwest

[35:42] by uh, Briana Gutchmidt and her the website. I don't have here the name of it, but she has a Pendiva, Florida slash seaweed or something like that. But she has good pictures of all different seaweeds that you can get in the Pacific

[35:55] Northwest and how they taste because she ate them, which is pretty cool. So she has a good list. I recommend you go to that. pendiva.com slash seaweed. Wow, Jack's the best. Yeah. Anyway, he's on top of especially because you called him out. I know, I know, it's not right. It's not right. So not right. So anyway, I suggest you collect your own. I done it. Some people suggest against collecting your own because once seaweeds have been ripped off of their rocks, you don't know how long they've been batting around in the ocean and therefore

[36:23] there might be, they might be, I don't know, rotting or something like that, but I've never died so far from collecting wild seaweed. Oh, by the way, going back, one thing you can raise in your aquarium by the, is certain varieties of sea lettuce, green laver. You can raise in an aquarium. It's going to be an expensive proposition, but you should try it. And knowing you, you probably will. So you should probably give that give that a shot. Um, I think how you treat it depends on what it is. So for instance, even something like kombu. We use it in a salad after we've used it to cure and cook a duck.

[36:55] So, like, Nils would have this old recipe where he would wrap a duck breast in kombu, because kombu curing that is awesome, right? And then after we cooked it, we'd peel it off, and then we'd slice it finally, and then you could eat it, and it was really crunchy. Same thing with macame. If you don't oversoak it, right? It's still got a little bit of crunch, you slice it thin, and then you can have it as a nice as a nice salad. So how you use a seaweed is going to really depend on what state you get it in, you're going to have to refresh it. Um, and, uh, you know, usually it's dried, so you're going to have to refresh it. If you get it fresh, I would just, here's what I would do. In general, if you see something in that in that market, just buy the hell out of everything, just buy every damn thing, and then taste it, and then,

[37:33] you know, just try to compare pictures on the internet to what you can find, because there's a relatively few number of ones that are commercially sold. You know, you know, your Wakame, Hijiki, uh, RMA, uh, you know, lovers, noris, different types of kelps. So you should be able to do a mix and match, and then remember the characters names. I remember once I went to Chinatown looking for pig's bladder, which is legal to get in the US. And what I did is I went on, I went on Google and translated pig's bladder

[37:57] into, into Mandarin and then printed the characters out and then drew a picture of a pig with its bladder and then pointed to it. And I think I got my point across because they were laughing their butts off, but they didn't give it to me, apparently, because it's illegal here. All right. So, since we don't appear to get any more clothes, our last story for the day will be what we're going to do tomorrow. We're going to tomorrow eater. Really? Yeah, a little too early for a burger, frankly, but eater is going to come to my house because I no longer have the kitchen anywhere. We don't have a kitchen in Brooklyn yet, and I don't have a kitchen in the FCI anymore. So since I'm kitchen list, I'll be cooking it at my house, which actually has a pretty... I mean I have a sweet kitchen. Now? Sweet kitchen. Anyway. Um, So, uh, we're supposed to do our version of the ultimate burger. Now, the problem is it's so many people have done their versions of the ultimate burger, right? You have the modernist cuisine version of the ultimate burger, which involves a lot of

[38:53] steps, you know, they cook their burger actually for a long time. I'm not a fan of cooking a hamburger for as long as they are. I'm not saying I'm not a fan, but it's not for me because like certain types of meat can take on a kind of

[39:05] gaming livery note that I don't really, that's not for me in a burger. Like for me, like the longest I'm going to want to cook a burger is probably about 4 hours. That's about it. Not tomorrow because I'm not waking up that early to put a burger anyway. Anyway. So like, you know, I also don't like vacuum packing burgers down because I think they get too kind of smashed. So I'm a fan. The way I like to do it is to take the meat mixture. Give it a quick fry to set it, and then put it. grind bacon into it, though. Okay. It's delicious, right? I was thinking I was going to use a combination of short rib, chuck, and bacon, right? Grind it. I like a real loose pack and relatively thick and then fried quickly just to keep the surface intact. Then I'm going to put it into probably butter, or maybe maybe like a butter that's been mounted almost like a beurre blanc with some hyper-reduced beef stock. I haven't decided yet. And then, because my wife, right, my wife's birthday tomorrow. So I really shouldn't be doing this, it's my wife's birthday. Because you already did this. On her birthday. Yeah, yeah, but listen, she's not going to be there. It's going to be in the morning. My wife is flying to Boston tomorrow. So I have all day to fix whatever I do, right? To get a new place. I'm not going to get, come on. The place is fire proof. Anyways, I'm going to get because this is the best way to finish a burger off, right? I'm going to cook it in butter in a bag at about 55 degrees for a couple of hours. I'm gonna pull this sucker out. And then I'm going to build a small bed of hardwood coals on the inside of my house under my hood in the

[40:30] miniweber that I have. I'm gonna build the temperature up till it's about the temperature of the surface of the sun, such that it's basically melting the

[40:37] weber into my, into my stove. that's my weber. Well, I let you have it. You never took it home. I bought it and was never reimbursed for it. So yes, I gave it to you and I'm going to use it one more time before you take it. You've had a year and a half or more to take it to your house and you never have. I've moved it like 3 times. Yeah, yes, you definitely have cooking issues. So anyway, I'm going to fire it up in my in my house, and I'm going to grill, like hyper grill it basically on the surface of the coal to put a nice crust on it. And then I'm gonna do my favorite bun. And here's my favorite bun. It's, it's, um, um... No, close. Beef on Weck style from Buffalo. It's going to be caraway seed and salt on English muffin, homemade English

[41:18] muffin, and I think just regular cheese. I think just regular cheese. What, like, American cheese? Oh, something. I don't know. Maybe you like Gruyre? Like Gruyere. And then, and then I'm probably like a, the modern cuisine do a really cool thing where they, they

[41:31] take, and they, they flash and fuse a, uh, tomato with, uh, like a vinaigrette or something like that, which is a really good idea, but since it's not tomato

[41:39] season, I can't get a decent tomato. I might just use pickled green tomatoes. I'm gonna do the pickle and the tomato at the same time. I like fresh onions, so I'm gonna put some fresh onion on it. Nastasia, giving me the give me the stink face. grilled onions. Grilled onions, but I have a freaking grill there. I don't like, I don't, to me, okay, just a matter of personal opinion. We can grill some onions for you, but to me, a grilled onion is in between. It's not a sautéed onion and it's not, I mean, it's this in between crap. Raw Indians give me nightmares. What do you mean? like really? Like, how so? Why? I don't know. My mom told me. Well, wow. Okay. Well, I'm going to leave everyone out there with the image of Nastasia having onion nightmares and come back next week for cooking issues where hopefully we can discuss some of these onion nightmares.

[42:23] cooking issues. 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

[42:45] 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. All twisted. Whole Foods Market celebrates Earth Month with Do Something Real Film Festival, a collection of 6 provocative character driven films focused on food, environmental issues, and everyday people with a greater

[43:09] vision. Come see one of the 6 features at City Cinemas Village East from Saturday, April 16th through Thursday, April 21st, every night at 6 p.m. Learn more about the films and special events at www.doSomethingreal.com. That's www.dosomethingrreel.com. Sponsored by Whole Foods market.

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[44:25] Mash Transit. Escapemaker.com will be giving away over 50 getaway prizes ranging from zip line adventure passes to an overnight stay at Mohawk Mountain House. Travel greener, eat local. Come to the expo on April 30th. Get your tickets now at www.escapemaker.com. The following message has been brought to you by Fairway Market. What's the buzz about honey? Well, those busy little bees are up to something and it is delicious. The fairway label honey is superb. Fairway only hires worker bees that are the best at what they do. This makes for a great tasting, high quality honey, at an amazing value with the fairway stamp of approval. And on top of being delicious, honey is a great substitute for other sweeteners and can even benefit your health. This includes better energy, respiratory improvements and balance blood sugar levels. It's a no brainer. Get your fairway honey today.