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[0:21] Hello and welcome to Cooking issues. I am Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues here today in the studio. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez coming to you live every Tuesday from roughly noon to 1245.

[0:34] Calling all of your questions, technical cooking or non-technical cooking or not even cooking related to 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128.

[0:46] So, Nastasia, I'm excited because tomorrow, our new 3D printer arrives. I know, right? Now, folks, fillers you out there that, no, we have a basically a Cornell Fab at home 3D printer, which is an extrusion technology that is used to print food directly.

[1:02] But we're getting now is a Z-Corp printer. Z-Corp printer is a commercial 3D printer, and you can print basically in

[1:10] prints in powder. So we're going to be doing mainly plaster molds, I think. We're going to be making plaster with it. It can do in color. Did you know it could do it in color nastachia? It's a color, color plaster printer, or in starch. But we'll keep you posted on what we make with that. Moustache is currently stinking up the studio with a, um, with a some sort of space heater that's making the

[1:30] entire, uh, studio stink of electric heater with dust on it that just got turned on for the 1st time, which is amazing since it's almost summertime and is actually quite warm and muggy in the

[1:40] studio, so there's no reason. Yeah, very good, very good. have 8 cavities. That's a very interesting fact. You know how many cavities I've had in my whole life? Zero, I know. Zero. For those of you that don't know, Nastasia. Besides not really enjoying most of the foods that we all enjoy, even though she's in the food business, subsists almost entirely on candy. Not just any candy. Nastasia craves any sort of sour candy, correct? Yeah, I've seen her in under, uh, here, another interesting fact. Here's how she can claim that she does not eat the entire package of

[2:16] candy because she has an aversion to certain colors of candy. To be fair, based on whatever artificial flavor is in them. But I think it's also mainly a color thing. I mean, it is true that I blindfolded her and she was able to distinguish which colors by taste. So it's not that she can't do that. I think that she has matched the color with the taste in her mind and it's the color that bothers her. So tell everyone out there in case they're going to send you some sour patch or sour crybaby candy is what you like the most, right? Which are the colors that you hate nostalgia? Cherry, red, and lemon yellow, and sometimes orange. Sometimes orange. Yeah. Okay. And but these interestingly, even though the flavors are different. These are the same colors that you dislike in other sour candies, correct? that's true. true. How many cavities? Eight. Eight? Yeah. So yesterday I did the experimental cuisine collectives yearly, uh, yearly, uh, hoo-ha shindig thing, right? I gave a talk, and Nastasia was notably absent because apparently she was at the dentist getting her face drilled

[3:20] out. Then she called me and said, I'm coming to the event, but I'm high on Xanax and

[3:25] Vicodin. I was like, why don't you go home and sleep that off? This is a true story or a false story? Yeah. Okay. So, in the ongoing annals of cinnamon hydrocolloids, James McCulloch writes in from Australia, he says, I remember you were discussing the gelling qualities of cinnamon a few weeks ago, and he has been doing some experimenting. So, uh, basically, he did an experiment where he uh, mixed cinnamon. He said pictures of it, actually. Oh my god, the pictures aren't coming up on my iPad. That's unfortunate. But, uh, okay. So he decided to leave the cinnamon out of his spice mix until after water was added. So he made a spice mix, added water, and it was, you know, thin and fluid, and then added cinnamon to it. And after a while, it got kind of thick and snotty, I believe is what he said. Snotty, did you say snotty, gooey gel, phlegm like texture, phlegm. Well, that's interesting. Phlegm is the a phlegm like texture is the characteristic texture of a

[4:21] hydrocoloid called Xanthan gum, which basically is used as thickening, thickening agent, but in higher

[4:26] concentrations, turns to, I call it snot. You very polite. I guess they're more polite in Australia than they are here, calling it phlegm. Maybe we should call it phlegm from now on. instead it's not. Yeah? All right. So that's interesting. I tried to find, uh, and I've tried to find before, and I tried to find again this morning, the, um, whether there was any known hydrocolloid in, uh, in cinnamon, there is a, there is a polysaccharide, AX, which is supposed to have some sort of

[4:54] bioactive, uh, properties, but I wasn't able to find anything. I mean, it makes sense to me that ground up bark would have some thickening, which is what it is, would have some thickening power. There is a actual hydrocoloid gum called casia gum, but it's from an unrelated, um, casia to the, well, not unrelated, but not the same casia that we use for cinnamon

[5:15] substitute. And also it's from the seeds, not from the bark. I thought maybe that maybe cellulose in the ground up, bark would also act as a hydrocolloid, but cellulose itself doesn't really act, isn't soluble at all until it's been

[5:29] treated either with acid or with other things to make things like microcrystinal cellulose, MCC gum, or cellulose gum. So I don't know that it's a cellulose, but there's got to be something in there. I mean, you can see in the picture that it does do something. I hope I can find, if there's any hydrocolloid expert out there. Can you please call and tell us what is in cinnamon that causes

[5:49] jelly properties? Anyway, uh, Brian in New Zealand? we're doing the Australian and New Zealand show today, which I enjoy. You know, I've never been to never been over there. You want to? You know, Dave Chang just opened a new place in Australia and he loves it down there. He said it's fantastic. New Zealand. I want to go to New Zealand because I want to go to the home of the New Zealand,

[6:09] the New Zealand grapefruit, a.k.a. the Porman Orange, which is one of my favorite citruses on the planet that we had at Gene Lester's

[6:16] ranch out in Watsonville, California. Was that one of your favorites there? Yeah, that was really delicious. But they don't ship it here and they don't grow it here because because we're dumb. Okay. Brian has a comment on the thermal mix, and for those of you who don't live in Europe, which is most of

[6:32] us, I guess, right? The thermal mix is, and I guess they have them in Australia, New Zealand as well. Thermal Mix is basically is made for a home, but all of the fancy European chefs use them.

[6:43] They're basically a blender slash heater slash not really a food processor, more a blender heater scale. And they have like a stainless steel trough that you do things in. And, um, you know, in the US, we don't really have them very uh, very much because they're not very uh, widely

[6:59] distributed and we use our Vitaprep blenders. And so here's a comment from Brian. The question about thermal mixes the other weeks. Maybe write this email. I absolutely love my thermal mix. I got it almost exclusively to hydrate hydrocoloids, cuts down on dishes, saves me time and not needing to stir. I love it. I also happen to use it as a blender because it is there. And it beats most other blenders out there, which is true, but I still want to

[7:21] vita prep. Brian. I'm going to have to go ahead and say entirely fair. That's an entirely fair set of comments right there. And yes, you do still want to vite a prep because they kick some serious butt. I like myself a Vita Prep. But I think you're right. You know, when we teach hydrocolloids, it can be a pain in the butt sitting there stirring and you can turn a thermal mix on low and just have it stirring

[7:42] Agar from cold and heat without even watching it and it's not going to scorch.

[7:46] So I think, I think you're right. I'm going to take back anything I've ever said, and if you do a lot of hydrocoloid work, I'm going to say that the thermal mix is an awesome thing to have sitting around, especially for heated hydrocoloids, which would be Agar,

[7:59] Carraginen, um, I don't know, you know, uh, Jelan, uh, you know, even anything like that. And so that's a good call, Brian. Thank you. Thank you for the, thank you for the comment. Derek Bocking writes in on gummy bears. He's a blogger, and he was a contestant on Top Chef Canada. Oh, I don't know. I don't know how he did. I hope you did well, Derek. He called in a few weeks ago about making heat resistant beurre blanc, and we were talking then about gum Arabic and

[8:26] Xanthangum mixed the one we get from TIC gums. You know, the one that we use for almost anything for alcoholic drinks. He hasn't gotten it yet. But he did try some of the pointers about making gummy bears, and he asked a pastry chef friend about making gummies, and she said the same thing that we said, which is that you have to make starches out of molds out of cornstarch, and he wants some ideas on these molds. Well, here's the thing. You don't buy, you don't buy a cornstarch mold. What you do is you take cornstarch and you dry it out for a long time in a dry room, usually, you know, a couple of days

[8:56] in like, oh, you could use a dehydrator, I would guess, or like a low oven, really, really dehydrate it. And if you really want to do a bang up job. See, in the days, what they would do back in the days, you know, in the, you know, 1800s, early 1900s, they

[9:10] would, and to this day, I mean, they still do it. But in other words, just old technology, is you would take the starch, and you would use it, and after a

[9:17] while, it would absorb crap out of your candies, and it would become old or dead. I think they called it dead starch dead, I think is what they used. And so, but when you got a new batch of starch, and the starch didn't hold impressions very well. So what they would do is they would take a certain portion of their dead starch and then sift it back in with their brand new starch and do their

[9:36] molds, right? If you don't want to have to do that, I would go to the National Starch Corporation, National

[9:42] Starch, you know, food innovations brand. They make something called new mold, N-U-M-O-U-L-D, new mold, which is cornstarch with a small amount of mineral oil that's been mixed in. So it holds an impression right from the beginning without having to already have starch that has

[9:58] stuff in it to have it really take a mold well. After you get your new starch. Put it in your dehydrator at like 60 Celsius or something for, you know, like 24 to, you know, 48 hours, something like that to really dry it out. Then what you have to do is you build a box, almost like a frame with a bottom in it. Uh, so, you know, like you can use, you know, uh, one by 2s or whatever, uh, and

[10:20] a like Masonite on the bottom, get it nice and flat, put your starch in it, then take a ruler and strike it flat across.

[10:27] And now you have a bed of cornstarch that is, you know, perfectly even and flat, right? Now, you take another piece of, uh, you know, stiff, like masonite or board, and you make, this is how you do the mold. You take the shape that you want it. So you have to have like little, little like, like wooden, waxed or like really smooth. It has to be really smooth or like plaster or whatever, gummy bears or whatever, and they're all on this board, and you press it into your cornstarch mixture, and then you lift it up very carefully,

[10:55] right? And that is how you mold it. So now you have a bed of cornstarch with a bunch of shapes of gummy bears or stars or chickens or whatever in it, and then you deposit your gelatin

[11:08] or whatever, whatever you're going to do. And then, depending on the product, something like gelatin with gummy bears, you would then put it back in your

[11:15] dehydrator for, you know, up to a couple of days at a slow dehydration rate.

[11:22] If you dehydrate too quickly, you case harden the outside and they never they never set properly. So there's a couple of articles you can read on it if you're interested. Uh, one that I would suggest that's pretty interesting is modeling diffusion of moisture during stoving of starch molded confections by MB, um,

[11:40] Sudh Harsan and G.R. Ziegler coming out of Switzerland and the University, uh, Penn State University here in Pennsylvania. So take a look at that article and see whether you get any good information. And with that, I will go to our 1st commercial break, but please call in your

[11:55] questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues. Cherishes you. I used to describe... All

[12:12] those feelings that I have fighting here for you and someone. I don't know how many times I wish that I had told you, you don't know how many times I wish that I could hold you. You don't know how many times I wish that I could hold you into someone who could cherish me as much as

[12:36] I cherish you. Very shameful word that more than a blog To

[12:51] the hope in my heart each time I real. But I am not gonna be the one to share your dreams that I am not gonna be the one to share your schemes. But I am not gonna be the one to share what seems to be the life that you

[13:13] could cherish as much as I do yours. Oh, I'm beginning to think that man has never found the words that could make you what me. That have the right amount of letters, just the right

[13:34] sound I could make you here. My goodness, Estasia. My goodness, cherish. This game sings that every single day. Every single that I always sing, like, I always sing some, like, horrible variant of it. I never actually sing cherish. I'm always doing it. always something horrible and not cherishing. payback. So Nastasia is paying me back for hearing all of my all of

[13:59] my, uh, different, different, unsavory versions of cherish. All right, call in your questions too. 718-497-2128 718-497-2128. All right. So I had a question in, from, oh, another question from Derek from Derek Bocking about Tarte to Ten. Uh, he's been making a tomato tarte tatin at work and has been falling apart when he demolds it. So it's another molding question. That's interesting. So, uh, Tartatan, you know, for those of you, or, ta, ta, ta, ta. Anyway, so for those of you out there who aren't hip to it, it's, you know, it's the famous French, you know, upside

[14:34] down Apple Doodad, which, you know, you know, apples, cook them. After the apples have been cooked down, have lost a lot of their moisture. You can then also add some then reduce, juice as long as it's really reduced. You put a layer of pastry on the top, you throw it in your oven, you cook it, and when the pastry is done, you pull it out, and then you flip it and unmold

[14:55] it, and there you have it, right? Um, so the, the, he's making one with tomatoes, right? And so, my guess is the reason it's, he's tried a bunch of things to try and keep it holding together. He's been, uh, making a tomato water gel to pour into the molds with a guar and pectin and

[15:13] agar, um, but they've been, they've been not really working as well as he wants. So I need to figure out exactly why it is that it's not working. I wouldn't use Guar, Pectin, and Agar to hold it together. If you really want that sucker to hold together, um, what you're going to have to do is use something like gelam, which is once it sets, it's never going to unset, in which case you would then cook it,

[15:37] uh, then let the thing come down to temperature, right? Uh, come down so that the gelan sets, then heat it slightly again in case there's some like sugars

[15:46] there and then unmold it. But the problem is, is that the real way tarte tin is supposed to unmold, is that the sugars stay liquid, whereas the fruit holds together enough with its own sort of like gelling power impectant and the fact it's been caramelized, and then it unmolds.

[16:02] I think your main problem is that you have just too much water in there. And if you're going to add a gelet, it's, I think it's still going to have your pastry come out kind of soggy. I think your main goal here is going to be to get rid of water. So what I would do. And actually, Melissa Clark from, you know, who writes for the New York Times, or at least used to, I think she still does, right? I have no idea. Anyway, she did an article in 2008 on Tomato Tartin, where she had a very similar problem. So she switched from larger tomatoes to smaller tomatoes and made sure that they were just cooked down a lot before she added the pastry on top.

[16:37] So I would consider using smaller tomatoes, squeezing the seeds out after you peel them, but don't throw that away because that's all the flavor, reducing that 1st before

[16:47] you, while you're cooking the tomatoes, and then add that reduction back and then put the lid on top of it. Just make sure you have enough sugar in there to hold it to form like a thick caramel that's going to hold everything together and make sure that your water

[17:00] contents not too high. If you do that, you should be okay. If you're going to then bolster it with a gel, I would do it with a gel that doesn't melt.

[17:08] And the only ones that don't melt that taste good would be something like gelan. And I would use a low acyl gel in, which is the firm one, the brittle one, because that one is clear, and it's not going to give a cloudy appearance to your to your tarte

[17:24] tatin. So, um, these sound like good suggestions? All right. So hopefully that works out for you. Let us know. Let us know how that goes. Okay. Uh, Sue. I have another series of questions from our good buddy,

[17:39] Ken Ingber, uh, and says that we we neglected to make the joke about uh, Terroir when McGee was on and we were talking about roto vapping dirt. But it's funny you should say that. Um, because that is exactly what, so we're talking about it, uh, a couple weeks ago, someone called in and they had a

[17:57] rotoVap, and Harold McGee was online, and, um, asked what he should be making with a rotoVap, which is a vacuum still. And McGee mentioned that one of the famous early cooking applications of uh, rotary evaporation was the, you know, Roka, the Roka brothers at uh,

[18:12] El Kalar Kenroka, one of the great restaurants in Spain. They put dirt water into a roto app, and then distilled off the essence of dirt. eau de dirt, eau de terre. And then, although I don't know how to say that in Spanish. Do you know? Do you remember? I don't remember You know what Nastasia is? Nastasia is, have you ever seen, have you ever seen Born in East LA? No. You never seen Born in East LA? You remember the song Born in the USA? Yeah. So Cheech Marin did a cover of that call. I was born in East LA and had some success as a video. And then

[18:43] he is he's an American and he lives in of Mexican descent who lives in East LA and doesn't have an ID on him and gets deported to

[18:52] Mexico, and his whole joke is that he doesn't speak Spanish, right? That is Nastasia. So Nastasia could be in East LA. Uh, you know, close to where she's from, not have ID, get deported to Mexico and not speak any

[19:06] Spanish. That's conceivable, right? So you could be living that movie. lost it. You could be living that movie. Yeah. okay. Anyway. It's not that it's a good movie. I enjoy it because I enjoy anything with Cheat, Cheat Marina, but anyway, so how do we get on that? What were we talking about? Roto apps. So, um, Elklar Kenroka, uh, famous dish is dirt water with oysters. And then, uh, uh, but the actual reason that they did that was because they wanted you to experience, no joke,

[19:35] the terroir, uh, like, in a literal sense, the terroir of their region. So they would get dirt from this particular, you know, forest that they used to go and play in as

[19:45] kids, and it would have that moist, uh, that moist, here comes the space eater again. Nastasia turns on. You pretend that I can't smell it. It is not at all. Folks, folks, if I ever wore shorts in my life, which I

[19:59] don't, because I hate them, I would be wearing shorts right now. Anyway, um, Oh, jeez. All right, so they, so they, so they, they wanted you to experience, and in, in Juan Roka's, uh, like his words, and because I asked him about it, uh, years ago, he wants you to experience the feeling he had as a child right after the rain in the morning when you go out in the forest and you get that

[20:22] smell mixed with, uh, you know, like the local oysters that they can also get by. So literal terroir was the reason behind that that dish. Okay, uh, so here's uh, Ken's question on uh,

[20:35] onions and other things and mireplos and sauces. I was making a veggie intensive tomato sauce for a weeknight meal, uh, mushrooms, onion, carrots, uh, carrots, green peppers and garlic. But several questions came to mind. And he hopes that they are of general interest. Well, let's see. Uh, uh, he said, maybe I need a primer on onion. Some recipes talk about sautéing onions for 5 to 8 minutes. My onions hardly change at all in such a short period of time. And if he jacks up the heat, he singes the edges of the onions, but don't really accomplish much else. If his goal is to soften the onions, one in an hour and a half and tomato sauce, do that. And if my goal is to caramelize, caramelize the onions, aren't we talking about a much longer period of time than any home

[21:13] cooked spends on onions for tomato sauce? And so the question is, what is a softened onion? Okay. It's an interesting question. So there are a bunch of things that are going on. Um, and he's going to ask about because because I pre-read the questions. I don't want anyone out there to pretend that I haven't read the questions before they come

[21:28] on and I just know all the crap off the top of my head, although I really do. Anyway, the book to get on this whole subject of onions, and I know we've and garlic. but onions as well. And I know that I've mentioned this book on the show before, but it's really kind of a one of

[21:42] a kind thing is garlic and other alliums, the lore and the science. That's a good title, right? By Eric Block. And it's one of the only kind of books on food that I own that has a preface written by a Nobel laureate. And this book was brought to my attention, as most other good things are, by Harold McGee. And while this book is very highly technical and huge chunks of it, are only going to be of use to trained organic chemists.

[22:11] It also has a bunch of sections on cooking that talk about interesting things and also about things like

[22:18] here, chapter 2 is all things allium, alliums, which, you know, onions, garlic leaks, alliums in literature, the arts and culture. So it's really an all-around book, and it's one of those books that you kind of need to have in

[22:30] your in your house, just so you can say that you have, like, it's not even

[22:35] that. mean, it's expansive. I'm not going to say it's cheap. I don't have the price here. I would guess it's like 50 bucks or some crap like that. But for 50 bucks, you have like the world's repository of knowledge onions. For instance, the chapter 6.4 on page 320 is use of onion as an insect repellent by

[22:54] cappuccin monkeys. How ballsy is that? I have this in my house, and you don't. Don't you feel less, less good that you don't have a book that you can flip open and learn about the use of onion as an insect repellent by

[23:06] Capuccin monkeys? Anyway, um, So, so get this book, and it describes in detail, uh, what's going on in onions and

[23:15] garlic and leaks, uh, and so forth when they are being cut when they are sitting around, when they are being

[23:23] cooked, uh, at different rates and describes all the different reactions that are taking place, and therefore gives you an insight into what's going on?

[23:31] The one unfortunate thing that they don't cover in here is, and

[23:35] maybe I don't know this guy, Eric Block, but maybe I'll call him because they don't go into what happened specifically with pressure cooking, which is one of the reasons I bought the book because I'm very interested in pressure cooking alliums, garlic and onion and things like

[23:47] that. It's one of our main, it's one of our main things that we

[23:51] do is pressure cooked things like garlic and onions. Anyway, so buy that book. But here's the thing. The flavor of onions is changed by heat, and the arresting of further production of flavor in the onions is arrested by heat well before the onions themselves start to soften because you're breaking down the tissue,

[24:11] okay? So there's the flavor development, and the flavor changing that the heat is providing. That is going on at the same time that you're heating, and then once you get above

[24:21] 85C for an extended period of time, where you break down the pectins and the hemicellulos and actually soften the onion. So if you're making a sauce and your goal is to, uh, basically, uh, you know, provide a certain type of onion flavor that happens relatively quickly in cooking, then it's not

[24:38] necessarily not necessary to get them all the way soft as long as you get them up to a heat where you've deactivated the enzymes and you've kind of, I

[24:45] guess, stabilize the flavor somewhat. Then the cooking in the sauce will take you the rest of the way in terms of making the onions soft, right? Assuming you cook it long enough. It actually takes a long time in a thick tomato sauce to have onions go soft because the

[24:58] water's not as available as it would be if you were cooking it in water. And that's also, frankly, another thing you could do. If you're not getting high heat flavors, you could just put the onions in with wine or whatever, flash them off so that they're almost

[25:10] boiled and that'll get what you want. If you're not providing any color. Okay. But, uh, if, and if you want that deep caramelized uh, flavor where you're actually altering the onion, the, uh, the sugars in the onions, uh, then you need to cook at a lower heat so that it doesn't scorch because when you scorch the sugars, the flavor turns different and most of us say worse, unless you're burning the onion to make

[25:33] that, to darken up like a stock, most of us don't want that acrid burnt flavor. So then you need a lower heat for a longer period of time to get those kind of caramelized

[25:44] notes. And you can do anything in between, but you're obtaining different flavors. So everything depends. As for the other ingredients, so then after

[25:55] that, he says, he says, admittedly, I always cook onions in bulk. So I acknowledge that the volume of onions I cook will increase the time for any kind of

[26:04] sauteing, but he thinks his point stands. That's true, especially if you cook in bulk, you're going to basically be steaming the onions, breaking down the tissue, and then only after they've been steamed and broken

[26:14] down, Are you really going to get those kind of flavors and, and, but you know, honestly, it's difficult to do a good onion. If you're going to make like an onion tart, let's say. It's very difficult to do it in under half hour, I'd say, when you say nastasia, something like that. And I guess he has the same question for Mirepoix, which would be like, you know, the classic like onions or onions or leeks, carrots and celery, sofrito, which I assuming means a Spanish version, which would be, uh, um, garlic, onions, and, uh,

[26:43] tomatoes or the, the holy trinity of Creole cooking, which I guess is onions, bell peppers, and celery. I think it depends, like, celery. I don't think you're getting that much out of celery in the saute, except for you're densifying it by sauteing it and have the structure break down before it's been in a liquid, right? Same thing goes. I mean, bell peppers, I don't think you're getting that much out of except for you're getting some brown flavors off of the off of the meat of it, but I don't think you're winning that

[27:08] much. Carrots have a lot of sugar in them. So you could be getting some caramelizing effect out of the carrots, depending on how you treat them, but I don't cook a mirepoix long enough to get those kind of flavors in my carrots, so I don't really think that's

[27:19] gonna happen. Um, he then says more generally, which of the veggies really ought to be sauteed before adding to a sauce. For example, mushrooms, they're better sauteed for the texture, but will they retain the intensified flavor after they've been in tomato sauce a long

[27:32] time to say, yes, especially on something like a mushroom. If you're cooking it in a sauce, I think the liquid's going to diffuse into the mushroom because if mushrooms are basically a porous sponge. So if you cook the mushroom by itself and then let it shrink down, then it becomes a denser item that's not

[27:47] going to absorb as much liquid. And so I think you'll get a fundamentally different, denseer, more intense result if you sauté your mushrooms beforehand. Anyway, um, and then as regards garlic, uh, I think it's a good idea to add your

[27:59] garlic, uh, much later, uh, when you're sautéing onions, because, uh, garlic does have a tendency to scorch very readily and turn extremely acrid.

[28:08] The flip side of that is if you're cooking garlic in water in a pressure cooker, in which case

[28:12] it doesn't matter when you add it because you're pressure cooking the whole dang thing. All right, let's go to one more break. Calling all of your questions. If you have any questions, you people out there. 2718-497-2128 at 718-497-2128 cookie issues.

[28:45] With my child, girl. I feel the wreck without my little trying to burn. I hear her heart beating. Loud as thunder Soully stars crushing. Oh, my little channel girl. We've got a little, little child, girl. Oh, here, heart's speaking. Love is thunder. I saw this

[29:34] star's crushing down. I've been touching like a... I wonder, look at nothing trying to go, girl. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage radio network. Tune in to Greenhorn Radio hosted by Severin von Sharner Fleming every Thursday at 2 p.m. Greenhorn radio is radio 4 young farmers by young farmers. Helmed by acclaimed activist, farmer, and documentarian Severn Fleming. Greenhorn radio is a weekly phone interview session surveying America's cutting edge under 40 farmers. Again, that's every Thursday at 2 PM on the Heritage Radio Network. That is a weird Bowie song you chose. I feel like Marlon Brando, when I look at my little China girl. What a weird song. Weird song. You know which one I forgot that we should have played? Was it? was the abracadabra. That's next. Oh, yeah. Okay, so next week, for one of our break musics, we're going to play Steve Miller's

[30:43] Abracadabra. Yeah. Steve Miller's song. Yeah, unless someone out there in internet land can come up with a worse Steve Miller song to play a more horrid, abysmal,

[30:56] like depth of hell. Give him the story, Dave, of how they asked him to create a song. Well, look, so our theory, our theory is, but our theory is, is that, you know, they needed to come out with it with a new album to go on tour so that they can go on tour and play all of their older, really good

[31:11] songs. And they come into the exec and like he's like, hey, it's Abracadabra. I'm gonna reach out and grab you. That's the song. And they're like, yeah, that's funny, Steve. Yeah, what's the real song? He's like, no. That's it. Anyway. So next week, unless one of you can come up with a worse Steve Miller song that's going on the list, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one's gonna come up with the worst song. I mean, you could look at any B side, anything. And yet they still play it at every crazy dance. It's on the radio, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Abracadabra. Jack, can you think of a worst Steve Miller song? He's shaking his head down. Yeah, no. anyway. Okay. I got a question on vodka sauce. What do you say about vodka sauce? In your view, is the purpose of vodka, purely because the alcohol A released a certain flavor compounds, and then B boils off, or is there some residual alcohol in the sauce that is itself a

[32:02] benefit? Am I correct in that the flavors will be released by wine as well, but unlike vodka, the wine will in

[32:07] part, a beneficial flavor of its own, even after the alcohol boils off? Okay, well, couple of things. One, alcohol never truly boils off. I mean, you lose a bunch of it, that's true. But it never truly boils off. And in fact, uh, I think it's, uh, it's been a while since I've researched this. And I myself have never done a side-by-side taste test of the same exact sauce, prepare the same exact way, except for in

[32:33] one, you add a bit of water, and then one, you add vodka, and then correct them for the same level of final reduction at the end of the sauce, right?

[32:43] It's possible to do it, and then doing a side-by-side blind tasting. I've never done it. Do you know anyone that's done that? No. I don't either. I mean, it was an interesting test. I don't really have the time to run it right now, but it would be a very interesting test to run. If someone else is yeah, Nastasia loves pasta. If anyone in the greater New York area wants to run that side by side test and invite us, we'll come, right? Yeah, we'll come. Anyway, but I think that the effect of vodka sauce is supposed to be from residual alcohol that's left there that has relatively little flavor in

[33:16] it, that vodka. And so it would be the volatilization of the aroma compounds in the residual alcohol that I think is providing some of the effect, although the residual alcohol content is still quite

[33:29] low. So even if you don't drink alcohol, I don't really think it's a problem, but it really is true that not all alcohol boils off. We did have to run a test on that a number of years ago because Nil's got called, I forget who it was, some TV show, made him do it, and we had to do a bunch of research on it, but there's still quite

[33:47] a, I know what we did. We flambade alcohol straight, and then did alcohol and water tests without a lot of complicating effects like sugar and tomato sauce, and then

[33:57] did uh, um, then did refractometer readings of the result to see what the residual crap was left in it.

[34:03] And in fact, there was residual alcohol content. I don't remember what the numbers were, though. Do you? You were there for that, were they? It was before you were there? Okay. And speaking of alcohol, we have a question in, non-alcoholic cocktails from Christian Swanpole. You think I'm pronouncing that, right? Swanpole. Hmm, Swanpol. Also from New Zealand. This is a new, you know what? We need to get our butts on to New Zealand. First of all, do you like lamb? You better like lamb. I just, Julie's there. I wanna go there for that. Yeah, but do you enjoy eating lamb? All right, so you don't hate lamb. No, I don't hate lamb. All right, good. Lamb is some delicious stuff. Gotta go to, you know, we, in New York, we get a whole bunch of New Zealand land, but I wonder whether they keep the best products for themselves.

[34:45] What do you think? You think so? wouldn't you? Well, but the thing is, like, I'll eat lamb when I'm there, of course, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna basically, like, eat New Zealand, uh, grapefruits till, like, plots. I'm just gonna eat Porman oranges until my body explodes. No, you can't eat grapefruit when you're on Xanax. I did. There's a, so the, in grapefruit, there is, and the perceived, the literature says that

[35:10] the stuff that's in grapefruit that means that you can't have it when you're on any form of statin or anything like that, there's a bunch of drugs that

[35:17] interacts with is a chemical called bergamotin. This is what I've been led to believe. Uh, and uh, so I talked uh, for with uh, Ken Kershenbaum at NYU a number of years ago, seeing whether we could maybe get rid of the

[35:30] Bergamot, and I think since then someone has uh, postulated a way

[35:34] to, to, to do it. I think I saw some patent literature recently on someone basically getting the bergamoten out of grapefruit juice. But my question, and no one's, as far as I can tell, do the research on it, is Bergamoten is one of the, and think about the

[35:47] name Bergamoten, Bergamot, right? And Bergamot is the classic flavoring in Earl

[35:52] Grey T. And so my and my question is, is Earl Gray T not okay to have, are there significant levels of bergamotin

[36:03] in Earl Gray T such that you shouldn't have it when you're on statins or other medications that are affected by

[36:10] it? Now, the truth of the matter is, is that, um, what happens is, is when you, when you take grapefruit when you're on these medications, it changes the, uh, your response to dose, right?

[36:21] So I think some medications, it can increase the

[36:25] response and some medications, it can decrease the response. But theoretically, if you have the same amount in your system all the time, they can correct for the fact that you are

[36:34] ingesting grapefruit, but grapefruit isn't something that you typically ingest at a constant rate every day. So maybe like Earl Gray tea drinkers. Maybe they drink it at a constant enough rate that it's not a problem. Maybe it's not a problem at all. I'd love if anyone out there has any information on bergamotin levels and statins and bergamotin levels

[36:55] in Earl Grey T because it's something I've never seen discussed. No doctors ever tell you. They tell you, hey, stay away from the grapefruit, but they never say, hey, stay away from the old gray tea. And a lot of people like

[37:03] old gray tea, right? Do you like girl gray tea? I like rogue grade tea. I don't drink it, but I like it. Anyway, how the hell do we get on that? Oh, New Zealand. Man, we man, we go on tangents, right? Man, Jesus. You know, I got some serious issues. Like, like, yesterday I was, I was at this talk for the, for the experimental cuisine collective. And, um, someone asked a question in the audience because, uh, Maxine uh, Maxine

[37:30] Delay from the, um, from the, uh, the modernist cuisine book, you know, along with Chris Young and Nathan Mirvold. He was there, along with Grant, and they were giving, they were basically talking about the book. And actually giving us some food, some really delicious food from the book they served out. Yeah, they served out the rare beef jus, which is one of the famous dishes in the book now or becoming famous dishes in the book, where they make

[37:51] a beef jus, at a very low temperature, like 52 Celsius, which is as low as you can go and be bacterially safe,

[37:59] basically, or 53. I forget, somewhere in there, in that range. And they serve it red, and I had it at, you know, at the kitchen lab

[38:06] when right before the book was released, when I flew out to Seattle. But, um, I had it this time cold. They served it cold for the summertime, and I think it was actually even better cold. It's this bright red color. Anyway, and they served, you know, some other stuff. interesting stuff, great, you know, great stuff. And someone asked a question. So, you know, is there anything else to know or have we figured everything out? And I was like, what? That's really weird, right? You know, I was like, we haven't even asked all the right questions yet. And I was thinking back to Roy Fong, the tea guy that we met from the Imperial Tea Garden

[38:39] in San Francisco. And, you know, I was like, you know, look, you know, you could spend your whole life studying, you know, like a single type of tea and uh, and

[38:50] not, not really know, know everything. Uh, anyway, again. And so, but then I was like, then I, when I, when I, when I said that, as soon as I said that, I didn't add this, I was like, but me personally, I'm way too scattered to spend my life, like, which is why, like, you know, in a way,

[39:07] like, I love all this, like, kind of generalist work that we do because, like I don't, I'm too scattered and I go off on too many tangents to study, uh, just one thing forever. What do you think? Yeah, no, that's true. I actually was talking about that last night with someone. Yeah. Yeah. And how you can't, yeah. Even though you weren't at the discussion, hearing me say that because you were high on Xanax? Well, I was just talking. Yeah. To yourself. Was there someone there? were you hallucinating them? Yeah, yeah, it was a hallucination. Okay. So, uh, Christian asked, uh, I'd like to start by saying he loves the show. Thank you. Keep up the good work. We will try to. I heard last week that you were doing non-alcoholic drinks for a party. I have to do the same thing for a party of my own. Unfortunately, I don't have awesome things like road of apps, but was wondering if you have any pointers or ideas. I don't really have any experience with any form of cocktail, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, and he knows that I'm somewhat of an expert in this respect. Well, we hope we hope anyway, right? So he thought he might have something interesting for him. Thanks for your time. Christian Swanpole from New Zealand. Okay, so, uh, here's the thing. Here's my feelings on non-alcoholic cocktails. If you serve something non-alcoholic, I would go for something that is carbonated because, uh, it's just more festive. If you serve something that's not carbonated, it just seems to me to be more like juice.

[40:23] What do you think, Nastasia? I mean, do you think... A Virgin Mary? Virgin Mary is a good cocktail. Yeah, yeah, so Virgin Mary is good. So, I mean, a traditional Virgin Mary, but depends on what time of day. I mean you don't want that in the evening. I'll tell you what we did. We took coriander seed. We lightly ground coriander seed. Then we cooked it in simple syrup, so one to one sugar and water. Then we let it cool. We kept on tasting it while it was going. If you cook coriander seed too long, it becomes too much like

[40:56] a heavy spice note and you lose some of the citrusy notes, we used untoasted coriander seed. Uh, then keep, uh, we used quite a bit actually. Keep tasting it. And then when you feel it's where you want, strain it out. Okay? Then take something with a lot of spice in it that has a lot of

[41:13] heat, but not very vegetal. We use to Thai chilies. They very hot, so we didn't have that much. Make a separate simple syrup with a Thai chilies, right? Then take your coriander syrup, put a pinch of salt in it. Then, um, then add the Thai chili because the coriander syrup is very nice, but it lacks something in the back end in the middle of the

[41:31] palate. You want to add a little bit of that Thai chili syrup to it, not enough to make it spicy, just enough to

[41:37] fill up the back of your throat a little bit like a ginger ale. Uh, and then you want to add uh, malic acid and citric acid, if you don't have that stuff. Two parts citric, one part malic. And that's going to add some limey flavor to it. If you don't have that, you could just bite the bullet and use real limes, but the problem is with real limes, unless you follow our clarification directions on the blog, www.cookingissues.com, you're going to have issues with

[42:02] foaming that are going to cause problems, even if you strain it. And that's a really good syrup to have at a party and you can just pour seltzer water on top of that and it's delicious, right? You like that one, right? Or you could clarify any number of juices and make nice light cocktails with clarified juices, but I

[42:19] just, I tend to think that, that if you really want people to think you're doing something for them that's non-alcoholic, get some sort of a carbonation

[42:26] rig. And carbonation rigs are fairly cheap nowadays. I don't think we ever posted on getting one, but they're fairly easy to get. And carbonation in general, you can do in an ISI rig or something like that. So the ones we did, we did a coriander soda, like the one I told you, we then did, we made clarified raspberry juice and clarified strawberry juice,

[42:44] you know, we used a centrifuge, but you don't need it. You can use a lot of different techniques. Hell, you can even buy the juice. And then carbonate it. Just remember when you're working with cocktails that you're going to want to balance, when you're tasting them, especially because there's no alcohol there. They're going to tend to lack something in kind of the mid-palate and in the back of your throat. So you're going to want to add, like, spice is very good to add, like, in the form of that Thai chili syrup that I'm talking about, just to round it out, not allowed to make it spicy.

[43:15] Don't forget to add a pinch of salt, which is gonna round out all the flavors, especially fruit flavors, not enough to make it salty, but just a little

[43:21] bit. And it's going to be, you know, balancing kind of fruity, acid and

[43:26] aromatics. I think is where you're going to want to go to. So wait, is that good advice or no? good, yeah. And then, of course, if it's sometime in the morning, Virgin Marys are great. There's tomato juice and, you know, like whatever forms of spicy stuff that you want in. If you want to make tomato water, that's a little more intensive, and I recommend buying a centrifuge, just kidding. Anyway, this has been cooking issues, come back and see us next week, every Tuesday, cooking issues.

[43:55] 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

[44:11] 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.

[44:28] This is Katie Kiefer with behind the scenes food news for the week of May 11th. One of the most exciting things that I found in my trolling of trade blogs this week was the announcement of a new initiative called Agri, that's capital AG, small

[44:44] REE. So it's sort of agriculture and green, I suppose, is the idea behind that. And the co-chairs include Dan Glickman, who is a former secretary of the USDA under Clinton, Gary Hirschberg, who is the president and CEO of

[44:59] Stony Field Farm, Jim Moseley, who is a former deputy secretary at the USDA under George Bush, and Emmy Simmons, a former assistant administrator for economic growth agriculture and trade at the US Agency for International Development.

[45:13] So this is kind of a mixed bag of political viewpoints here, which is what made me really sit up and take notice. It's funded by all the usual suspects like the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, et cetera. But leading off in their 1st meeting, Glickman stressed the importance of involving all stakeholders and seeking common ground in addressing the need to feed a growing global

[45:37] population, and doing so in ways that are environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. And the 8 foundations that are backing, agree, he notes, agreed to set aside their political differences, as did the individual

[45:52] co-chairs to develop research-based long-term solutions and strategies.

[45:57] I think this is a gigantic step in the right direction. I'm hoping that these guys will have a huge impact on the farm bill, which will be coming up again in 2012. So let's keep an eye on Agri. If you want to read more about them and what they're doing and their news. They do have a website. It's www.food and agpolicy.org. This has been Katie Kiefer with behind the scenes food news. The following is a message from Heritage Foods USA. In the next few weeks, Heritage Foods USA will be offering an interesting variety of amazing products ranging from top quality seafood to their famous pork cuts. At the end of May, the heritage team will go up to Maine to harvest fresh lobster with sustainable lobstermen. These delicious lobster are a perfect way to kick off the summer season. In the pork compartment, Heritage Foods USA will offer the maple cured, smoked, boneless heritage ham at an unbeatable price. His offer won't last long, so get them while you can. Place your order today at heritagefoodsusa.com or call 718-389-0985.

[47:03] That's 718-389-0985 to place your order with Andrea or Ashley. And don't forget to sign up for the email list and to check them on Facebook and Twitter to get in on their new products,

[47:15] deals, and offers from Heritage Foods USA.