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[1:01] Fishes, fish, vodka. Oh, you did, yeah.

[1:07] Hello and welcome to live cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues here on the Heritage Radio Network, coming to you every Tuesday, except the last 3 ones from 12 to

[1:20] 1245. I am in Roberta's, but Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, you know, the motor of the cooking issues

[1:28] bus, is actually going to call in from North Carolina from the Outer Banks, but I think she's having some technical issues. We'll get her when she comes in. Let me call in all your questions, by the way, all your live questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So I'll take the 1st question 1st and that's from Ross McGuire from Dublin. I'm excited to have a someone who listens in Dublin. I've only managed to go to Ireland once, and I only got to spend a couple hours in Dublin, which is

[1:57] preposterous because from all accounts, it's a great city, and I'm anxious to go back. So very excited. I'm getting a question from Dublin and was wondering, are we still on? I was wondering if you and Dave are still doing cooking issues. Nastasia and Dave are still doing cooking issues on Heritage Radio. I pick it up as a podcast and it's become a huge favorite of mine every week. And we have been a source of inspiration, which we appreciate. Ross thinks he's stuck in Dublin. I would say you were lucky to be in Dublin. And anyways, hoping that we're coming back sometime soon. Well, here we are. And I'll tell you why, Ross, that we haven't been on for the past 3 weeks. The past 3 Tuesdays in a row, I have been in transit from one place to the other. Three Tuesdays ago, I was flying back from California because I was lucky enough to go shoot a pilot for ABC. God knows if it'll ever get aired. But it was a cooking-based thing where I was a judge. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to talk about it except for, I will tell you, that I have tasted peacock now, whereas I hadn't tasted it before. Peacock, as you might know, was one of the animals that was highly prized as a

[3:07] foodstuff from the Roman times, perhaps before, but I know from the Roman

[3:11] times, up through the Middle Ages, primarily because it's a really amazing looking bird, because by all accounts, it didn't taste very

[3:20] good. It was kind of dry and stringy, especially using the cooking techniques at the time. And I have to say, it, you know, has the ability to become a very tough stringy bird, but it, from my experience over the past couple

[3:31] of weeks, can be cooked properly. And then the last 2 weeks, I've been en route from

[3:36] and to Florida where the main business I did down there. I did, actually, a few guys are familiar with the truck, you know, the food truck explosion that's been going

[3:46] on. One of the best ones around is a gastropod in Miami done by Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog. And we did a, you know, an event together in

[3:56] Miami where I did cocktails along with a Chadzilla crew, if you know that blog. And it was a really good time. But I also went down there with Harold McGee and Nastasia to taste exotic fruits and mangoes. And we had some of the most amazing mangoes. We, unfortunately, because we were caught in a torrential torrential downpour both days in a row, only got to sample, maybe. I haven't really counted yet, but maybe 60 to 80 types of mangoes. I like to do at least a 100 in a one or 2 day tasting just so you can get the kind of a full variety of different kinds of flavors that a particular fruit can

[4:30] do. So, you know, when we did citrus, we did a one day citrus that was over a 100 varieties, we did a

[4:36] two-day apple that was over 200 varieties, a pair day that was a 100 variety. It's a nice round number because then you could say that, you know, you've exhaustively tasted at least that many. And you really do get, you really, after the 1st 40 or 50, get an idea of the range of flavors that can go on. But I had no idea how good a mango can be because the mangoes that are shipped up to New York all go through a process, no matter where they come from, even if they come from Florida, of going through a heat

[5:02] treatment, to kill fruit flies and any other insects that might be nesting in the, you know,

[5:07] or, you know, whatever they do inside of the mango. So they're immersed in hot water, and that hot water can kill some of the aromas and also prevent the natural ripening process from taking place exactly as it otherwise would have.

[5:20] So basically, the mangoes we get can be okay, but they're never going to be the world's greatest mangoes.

[5:27] So, you know, went to Florida, got them off the tree, and I, and in various ripenesses and various flavors. There's a couple of different styles of mango, right? They roughly break down into ones that have derived from the Indians, Indian mangoes, ones that have derived from Southeast Asian, like Thai style mangoes.

[5:43] And then there's a bunch of Florida mangoes that are kind of their own thing that are hybrids of those that have been brought in, but also Egyptian

[5:51] mangoes, delicious. So there's a wide variety of mangoes. And I hope to have a blog post on that soon, but I, you know, I was amazed at the kind of different

[5:59] flavors that could come out of a mango. There, one that tastes like a cream sickle, many, many that have a, like a coconut. amazing, amazing stuff. Anyway, uh, Oh, nostalgia's online. Hey nostache, how you doing? Good, how are you? How are the Outer Banks? It's actually not that human down here. Give me a break. I have you know, I've been there. I have you know, I've been there before. But you know I would tell you the truth. It's actually not that human. So it's not humid. No, I mean, not right now. It's about 85 right now. Yeah, but nothing feels humid when it's 85. Tell me when it gets up to 95 degrees. I will. I will. check back in. Here's what I don't want to know. I don't want to know, is it comfortable? That is a useless piece of information to me. I want to know the exact temperature and humidity because, you know, 85 degrees, even when it's like a zillion percent humidity, especially because I know you're stepping into an air conditioned house when you step into it. So you're like, man, it feels great in this air conditioned house. No I'm outside right now. I'm on a porch. You're on a porch right now. And it's not humid. I mean, there's a little bit of moisture there, but not what I was expecting. Well, it's not 95 degrees yet. When's it going to get up to be like nine? Like three, like 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock. All right. So at 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, you know, I wish that everyone could be on the air, so you can call me back. I could hear you gasping for breath while you tell me how not humid it is in the

[7:18] Outer Banks up there. Okay. Yeah. Super. I mean, look, like I say, I've been there and maybe like I happen to be there on the only summer that is so hot and humid that you want to die.

[7:31] In fact, like even the green flies, which suck half of your blood in the 30 seconds that you're outside, if you're out near sunset, we're too tired and lazy to come kill me, but I somehow doubt

[7:41] that. Uh-huh. Anyway. I'll check back with you. You have a lot of questions to answer. Yeah, well, I just answered Ross McGuire's question on, do we still exist? And happily for us, we still we still do exist. Okay, so, uh, by the way, I will regive you the number in case someone just realized that we are live again. 718-497-2128. That's 718-4972128. But I do have a lot of questions that came in in the interim while we were away. So I'll go right to it. Howard writes in with a question about papayas. I have a question about papayas. I've been eating a lot of papaya lately, which I can't get down with you on this because, Howard, because at some reason, papaya is one of the fruits that I haven't learned to love. I just, I can't, something about it, that's not, not me. I love, love, like an unripe papaya as a crunchy element, a salad, things like that, but I haven't figured out how to

[8:30] love. I don't hate them, but I haven't figured out how to love a ripe of pie. What about you, Nastasia? Yeah, I feel the same, but I do, I do like the fact that they're good for stomach ailments. Well, okay. I mean, you know how I feel about taking things for food is medicine. You know how I feel about it. But, I mean, maybe it works. Who knows? God only knows, I certainly don't. Okay, I've been eating a lot of papaya lately, and usually this is Howard, by the way, not me. And usually I peel and cut up the whole fruit and store it in the fridge. I've noticed that when I get to the bottom of my container, there's always a papaya jelly, presumably made from the papaya juices. Do you know what's going on there? Is there any way this phenomenon can be put to good use, i.e. in a cake,

[9:07] Jell-O, et cetera? All right, Howard, because I don't eat a lot of papies. I didn't have a lot of experience with this, so I had to do myself some research. My 1st, you know, theory was, you know, one of the main things in papaya that is useful is a protein, a protein breaking down enzyme, a

[9:24] protease called papayin, which is used as a meat tenderizer. Now, usually when you break down proteins, what happens is, is they break gels. You break proteins down and they lose their strength. Except in certain situations, you can partially break down a protein, and as they actually cause it to gel. And actually papayin is used in certain tests for that for gelling soy, soy proteins.

[9:46] So at 1st I thought maybe that was what's going on, but then I was like, nah, there's not that much protein in the

[9:51] papaya, and I don't really know how that would work. Then I was thinking perhaps you were getting a low temperature yeast or bacteria in there. I was like, nah, no. But then I came across an article that you were going to enjoy called

[10:01] Stability Studies of Papaya Pectin Esterace. All right. It is a known fact that papaya has extremely active pectinesterase enzyme in it. I only known about, I'd only known about the protein breaking down enzyme, the papayin,

[10:16] but and to Nastasia's point. A lot of people take papaya because of it has lots of bioactive molecules in it, more than many fruits, okay? And pectinestres is, and a lot of fruits have it, but I guess not in the same quantity, not the same activity.

[10:29] What pectinestraase does is actually joins pectins together, making them bigger. And actually, does it do that? No. Does it join them? No, it just strengthens them. I don't think it actually polymerizes them. Ah, who knows? I don't know. But it makes them stronger. And what happens is, is that, um, papaya can self-gel based on the activity of this pectinesterase, once the, uh, once the juice has been released from it. I will read you the 1st paragraph of this. papaya pectinemstrace, it's a pectic enzyme which has important influence on the quality and stability of processed papaya products. A short period after papaya is poked into puree, a gel is formed. This gel formation has been attributed to the enzymatic action of pectinesterase by Yamamoto in InuA in 1963. Pectinestre is also a great concern to the citrus industry, since it has definitely been established that it can cause clarification of citrus juices and

[11:17] gelation of concentrates, which is interesting to me. I've never thought of using it as a way to clarify. Of course, I have I use the opposite enzyme. I use, um, I use a, uh, wait, shoot,

[11:29] pectinesterase. Anyway, yeah, I use one that breaks down. I use one that breaks down pectins to clarify things. But anyway, so that seems to me to be your answer. I don't, what it's basically doing is making a stronger pectin out of it, a pectin gel. So I don't know that you could use it in cake or Jell-O, but maybe you could make up a pie of juice and have it gel on its own as a good jelly.

[11:49] I don't know what the texture of it is, but hopefully this answers your question and it's very intriguing, something that I might study more. Maybe I'll even learn to like papaya. What do you think, Nastasia? Maybe, maybe if we tried a lot of papayas we'd find one that we like. That's possible. Try a couple 100 papas. There were a couple down in Florida when we tried that, but you know, I just didn't even look at them. I didn't even bother, you know? You know what's another one? You know what's another one? Here's one that ticks me off. Guava, right? People just say people just say guava. I mean, the hell does that mean? Like, the different guavas taste so stupidly different that to just say guava, I mean, it doesn't really make any

[12:28] sense because I'd never been a huge guava person as a fresh food. I had lots of guava juices that I like, but I've, you know, I have never been a huge kind of fresh guava person, but then the last 2 times we visited

[12:38] Florida to taste. We had really kind of interesting guavas, right? Yeah. But like unrelated and taste to each other, right? I mean, some were very acidic, like the cast that we had. Some were kind of, you know, so lacking in acidity that I found them kind of

[12:50] sweet and insipid. I really hate fruit that just has sweet with no acidity. Do you know what I mean? don't you? Yes, I know. I know you do Oh, to test it. Hate it. I would much rather. yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah. I mean, I'm that guy walking around eating the unripe berries off of trees and hoping I don't die. I don't actually do that. I only do it if I know what the berry is. And getting poison ivy. Getting poison ivy. Yes, yes, that's a story story for later. Okay. Aaron Oster, formerly a Salum Maria. Where is he now? Oh gosh, I don't remember. Another salumi place. Good job, good job, good job remembering. Anyway, Aaron Oscar writes in about round Cambros and coffee. I hope all is well. I was seeing you the other day. I'm writing because I have a question for Dave. I think only he can answer, although it's probably not true. Is there any advantage for making iced coffee via the 12 to 16 hour steep method in a round Cambro versus a square one, a

[13:38] Cambro for all of these who don't use Cambros. It's basically just either square around plastic food containers that have marks of like courts and

[13:46] leaders on the side and they're very common in professional kitchens. You know, we typically use the four, the 7 and the 22 liter, 22 quart Cambros, the most. But they, you know, that's what that's what he's talking about. Anyway, wants to know whether there's a difference in using the round or the square. The steep method is the here's the steep method he uses. At ground coffee, at room temperature, at ground coffee, to room temperature water stir, and lets sit overnight at room temperature, next morning, filter the coffee through a super fine mesh. And what you're left with is super rich in deep coffee with all the top notes of the coffee and supposedly less bitterness. This is a study that's been, this is, by the way, a type of coffee that's become extremely popular over the past, you know, several years, and a lot of really high powered people are investigating it. I know Harold McGee is investigating it. Don Lee's investigating. A bunch of people are investigating it. You want all of the recipes. They all seem to say that they use circular containers. He's wondering whether the circular versus around makes a difference. I don't think that it makes a difference in terms of the steep, but I haven't done it

[14:41] myself, so I don't know whether or not the actual filtration becomes more or less difficult. I'll give you a story. When we're using an enzyme to break down the pectin in juices, like apple juice, and then letting it set down in the bottom of the container. What ends up happening is we always use round containers because when you pick up the container and move it to start, you know, decanting the clearer

[15:03] stuff that doesn't have the particles off of the top. If you have a square container and you pick it up, The corners start mixing the fluid as you turn it. It acts almost like a mixer because the fluid's in a square shape. And as you turn it, right? The corners kind of start moving the fluid, whereas if you use a round container and pick it up. You can pick it up and spin it, and basically you don't end up stirring the product. You move it very little. So the grounds don't get kicked up. The particles don't get kicked up off of the bottom. So if you're getting advantage with this coffee, in terms of your filtration, by being able to dump relatively clear stuff off of the

[15:39] top, before all the particles go into your fine mess strainer, right? If that's going to increase your filtration efficiency or perhaps even change the taste of it, right, then I would definitely recommend going

[15:49] around. But if you're, you know, stirring it right before you're going to pour it anyway, right, you haven't let it settle for a long time and you're not extremely careful to

[15:58] just, you can't just the top liquid off the top before you start, then I would say it doesn't matter whether it's square around.

[16:03] I don't think it's going to actually make a difference in terms of how it infuses. It's just a question of how you're going to pour the liquid off the top. That makes sense? What do you think, Nastasia? Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Now, I have many more questions, but I'm going to go to my 1st commercial break and we'll come back and answer. Call all your questions. Two, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[16:28] you can't go home Oh, your puppets gone. And your life is filled with much confusion. Until your business is nothing new. And the world around is crumbling down. Darling me down. Hello, girl. Pick up my feet, reach up. Reach out for me.

[17:06] But the love will shelter you. I'll be there. When you

[17:21] feel I'm about to give up Welcome back to

[17:26] cooking issues. Call your questions, two, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Jack, good choice of break music. Very good. Were you dancing? Oh, you, yeah, I was, you know, feet pounding, fist pumping. Was that was that Jack or was that Eunastas who picked that? No, no, that was Jack. Nah, nice. Good call. We should let him pick it all. anyway. Chris Anderson writes in with a vacuum ceiling question. Hey, Dave, I'm a mini pack 31 I guess MVs, Hughes writes 31X Chamber, vacuum sealer with gas flush. Wow, that's nice. The 31, by the way, is the small unit, which, you know, I'm not saying that I'd like to get one for free, but I'd love to get one for free.

[18:04] I think it's the best unit of that size that's available right

[18:08] now because it's very compact, but it has a much larger chamber size for its size than the equivalent other

[18:14] small, small units that I've had. I think it's like the best home vacuum unit. you know, or small, small commercial. I mean, most restaurants, I think, would kind of outgrow it pretty quickly because of its limited size, but for, you know, a house, it would be perfect

[18:27] hint, right, Nastasia? Yeah. Anyway, what gas flush means, by the way, is that after you seal a vacuum on it, you pull a vacuum on

[18:37] it and you seal it, the air comes back in. If you have gas flush, you can fill that bag with an inert gas, usually

[18:43] nitrogen or depending on what you're doing, CO2, whatever, mix different mixes of gas. Uh, you know, if you're doing fish and you want to be, uh, you know, you want to really ruin everybody, you can put carbon monoxide in there to make

[18:54] it keep red or if you want to do that to meat, if you want to rip off your customer, you can do that too. Anyway, don't do that. Um, So but with the gas flush, you can do that. And the cool thing is you can then package things like potato chips and they don't get crushed because, you know, there's extra gas in there, but it's totally dry gas. So you're not, it's not going to go stale. It's not going to oxidize. I mean, it's good stuff. Anyway, I have some, he has some bulk flour and a few other powder-like ingredients. He wants to vacuum seal to prevent oxidation. His concern is that fine particles are going to disperse throughout the chamber, either during the vacuum or during the nitrogen backfill. Any tips for preventing this. Well, you're not going to have a problem with the powder during the vacuum cycle. I've never, the only thing I've had even minor problems with was some spray dried vinegar powder, which is extremely

[19:41] fine and really wants to fly all over the room. Like you can't, if you pour it into a container, it like, you know, it comes out of the container and chokes you, you know, like, it's crazy stuff. And I vacuum sealed that with only minimal kind of dust issues, like hardly any problems at all, because the vacuum isn't

[20:00] getting, like, 1st of all, the bag is there. The vacuum isn't sucking directly out of the bag, it's sucking, you know, through a hole, which then is dispersed over the entire chamber. So you get very little actual movement of particles out of the

[20:12] bag and it hasn't been, in my experience, a problem. Here's where the problem happens when you take a very fine powder and you vacuum it on a high vacuum. When you let the air back in, the stuff gets squashed really flat. And so you can have caking and pelleting problems with the

[20:30] powder, like it forms clumps when you uncut the bag to use it later. And that's been my main problem with things like transgutaminates or with the vinegar powder is that I get clumping after I vacuumed. Now, I'm trying to think of a decent way to, because what happens when you do a gas flush is the gas comes in via, like, depending on your unit, like one,

[20:53] two, or 3 little tubes that are in the bag, and they come in with enough force to really kind of,

[20:59] like, I've had bags that weren't like, you know, held on properly, rocket across the machine, uh,

[21:05] and, you know, spray their contents everywhere. So you're going to want to, and I don't know whether you're going to be able to get around this problem. What I would do is because you needed to go in the bag and not just fill the entire chamber, right? You need the gas to go directly in the bag. You could try to put little diffusers over the front of the gas jets, turn the flow way

[21:26] down and the pressure way down so that you don't get a lot of spray, but you might have a problem doing

[21:31] doing a gas flush. That said, you're only going to need a tiny bit of gas in there to prevent it from compacting and therefore causing clumps. So you might not need that much gas, but you're definitely going to need to put kind of diffuser plates on it or it's going to kind of fire across and going to cause problems. But you're not going to have a problem if you don't use any gas flush on it. He writes, on a related note, do you have any experience? Oh my iPad just turned off. On a related note, do you have any experience with oxygen absorbers, they're sold in little packets like

[22:01] desicants. Do they actually work, and are they food safe? All right, a couple. I don't have, if he's talking about oxygen scavengers, like physically prevent oxidation by being in the package and just having a stronger affinity for the oxygen than your food does.

[22:15] And they, I don't know whether the particular ones you're looking at are food safe. I've never used them, but they clearly definitely make food safe oxygen, you know, scavenging package. And I will tell you a story that I probably shouldn't tell you because it was told to me by someone who must have had too much to

[22:31] drink, who works for an oxygen scavenging package company, a couple of years ago, when I say a couple, like 8 years ago. They once were doing an oxygen scavenging package, right? A little paper insert that sucked up oxygen for a major candy manufacturer that worked with peanut

[22:49] butter. Let's say Reese's peanut butter cups. Let's just say they were that. I'm not saying they were, but let's just say it was that. And what happened was, is they would put these things in to prevent the peanut butter from going

[23:01] rancid, and nobody liked the taste of these Reese's peanut butter

[23:07] cups because, you know, they just didn't taste right. You know, they tasted not like Reese's peanut butter cups. And what it turns out is, is that the characteristic taste of a Reese's peanut butter cup is due to a certain amount of rancidity in the peanut butter.

[23:24] And so, you know, one person's rancid is another person's

[23:28] recess. Now, I love Reese's peanut butter cups, and I'm sure a lot of you out there do as well. You wouldn't necessarily love it if I told you that what you were liking is rancid peanut butter because rancid has a negative

[23:41] connotation. However, um, you know, if you didn't know it was

[23:46] rancid, and you just said there was, there was like some selective oxidation and aging of the peanut butter to make delicious Reese's peanut butter cups.

[23:53] Maybe you'd like it better, but the term rancid is so loaded that has a problem. So anyway, long story short, they didn't use the oxygen scavenging packaging in the

[24:02] Reese's Peanut Butter cups anymore because people didn't like it. So yes, they are food safe. No, I don't have any experience with them. Um, okay. Have a question in from Anonymous. Hello Anonymous about sealing vegetables. I recently got an immersion circulator and I'm cooking a lot of vegetables and they're floating to the top. Is there any way to safely keep vegetables under the water so I can get the most out of my machine? I'm assuming uh, they mean the vacuum machine because when you're cooking, uh, I don't

[24:28] know, here's the problem. When you take a vegetable and you put it in a vacuum bag or even if you try to do it in a ziploc or whatever, vegetables have a lot of air on the inside of them naturally, right?

[24:39] So things like carrots, they float in water because there's air. What happens when you seal them in a bag and then cook them and heat them. The air that's in them expands and escapes and inflates the

[24:49] bag. And then the bag flows to the top and does 2 things. One, it makes it very difficult to have it cooked evenly because the top of the bag's out of the water and it doesn't get hot. And they also take up a lot of space and they're ungainly on, you know, their

[25:02] pain in the butt. So there's a couple things you can do. If you have a vacuum machine, I recommend sucking a hard, hardcore vacuum on those things. Super hardcore vacuum. If you suck a really hardcore vacuum on it, you might be able to get in, and when I say that means whatever the full vacuum is plus an extra 30 seconds, you'll be able to get enough of the air out to get them to sink down to the bottom and stay somewhat near the bottom.

[25:26] They're still going to inflate a little bit when they get really hot. Another technique you can use. And by the way, when you suck that kind of a hardcore vacuum on it, also any flavor you put into the bag, whether it be oil or with carrots, something like orange juice,

[25:37] will get injected further into the carrot and you'll get more of that flavor transfer. Another thing you can do, and this is from Herve Maliver, our friend at the French Culinary Institute, is you can take some stainless steel knives and throw them in, you know, butter

[25:49] knives, and throw them because they're not sharp, or, you know, and they're heavier than spoons. And throw them into the bag and seal them with the bag, and that'll drop your thing to the bottom like a stone, even though it's filling with air. If you have enough knives, and he does that all the time. If you don't want it in with your vegetables, you can even seal the knives in like a bottom section of your bag and then seal the vegetables on top of

[26:10] it so the knives aren't directly touching. And he does this also when he's wrapping things like, like, when we do, like, roulades of

[26:18] meat and we hand roll them in plastic wrap and drop them, those roles sometimes have a tendency to float. So what he'll do is he'll take the role, and he'll roll it in plastic wrap, and then he'll take like five, 6 butter knives, and depending on the size of the item, and then he'll put those, and then he'll roll another layer of plastic wrap around

[26:34] that and around the knives, and bang, those things drop right to the bottom. So it's a really good solution. When you're, um, but I mean, that's basically what I recommend, you got to weight the thing down, even with a very high seal on something, uh, you're still going to get some air coming out of the bag at high

[26:51] temperatures, and and you have to cook vegetables at high temperatures, 85 Celsius and above.

[26:56] So it really, it's a tough problem, but not insurmountable. So you know, also you have to cook vegetables. If you don't add a lot of liquid to the bag, which you're probably not, because otherwise, why are you cooking them in a vacuum bag anyway? You know, you're probably trying to concentrate the flavor of the vegetable and or add another

[27:11] one, you have to cook it for a lot longer because it takes longer for the vegetable to break down, even at high

[27:19] temperature, in the absence of excess water. Uh, okay, so, uh, Victoria Sen writes in about dehydrated fruit sheets. Hi, Nastash and Dave. I'm planning on making sheets of dehydrated fruits, spices, and seeds. I'd like it not to be fruit leather, but to be crispy. I think the recipe I have is going to change the colors. I want to keep the color of the mixes, but also have it dehydrated, so it's flexible when it's baked, but then shaped and gets hard, similar to a fortune cookie. The base that she's using is similar to a tuile base. But the problem is the color changes to a dark brown. Is there a recipe or ingredient I can use to keep the color of these mixes after they're dehydrated or

[27:54] baked, yet still maintain a crispy textured end product thanks Victoria? Okay. Here's the main problem. Fruit leathers are done at a low temperature, and they always have a lot of sugar in them that haven't had all the water driven off because they're done at low temperature.

[28:11] That is why they are always flexible. Okay? The higher temperature products you're doing, their tuile batters, right, are based on driving off the liquid and almost, you know, turning the sugar into, you know, almost like caramelizing the sugar, which is why they're brown,

[28:27] right? along with, you know, if there's any, you know, other things that turn brown in it, like milk solids and whatever. And when they are heated, you're basically melting it, and then you can form it, and then you let it cool, and it gets hard again, right? That's how fortune cookies work. But that's why they turn brown. So, uh, one thing I would do, uh, to change it and still have it be crispy is switch from sugar to isomalt.

[28:48] If you use isomalt, isomalt browns a lot less than sugar when it gets cooked up to those higher temperatures. I'd also say you could switch to a non-tuile, like almost like

[29:00] some of these dehydrated multodextrin thing. The problem is they might not be as flexible when they when they dry down. Um, what I would like you to do is send me the actual recipe you're using, because I looked up some, uh, there are some crunchy fruit, um, fruit sheet recipes out

[29:19] there, uh, based on, you know, fruit, isomalt, and maltodextrine. But I don't know exactly the recipe you're using. So I don't I can't truly troubleshoot it. But my guess is, is that your flexible recipes that don't get too hard aren't cooked to a high enough temperature and your other

[29:34] ones, you're getting browning of the sugar from cooking at a high temperature and you might be able to solve it by moving to an isomalt, although it will make it less sweet.

[29:41] Anyway, so hopefully that helps. and give us a call, give us an email with the recipe you're using and maybe we can help you even more. In a similar vein. Mike writes in and says, hello, has cooking issues been taken off the air? No, I have not been taking off the air. He misses it. We appreciate that. We're back. Don't worry. My question is, how can I help keeping my homemade marshmallows from sticking together after I've cut them and cover them with cornstarch and powdered

[30:03] sugar. He uses a one-to-one ratio of cornstarch and powdered sugar to cover the marshmallows after their set. He has been using a recipe that he found online, and I wish I had it with me. Some reason when I pasted it in the URL didn't show up or I'd tell you whose recipe he used. I've increased the size of the recipe 30% to fill a half sheet pen, and I always use a scale to measure, thereby saying he doesn't think it's a problem with the recipe.

[30:26] Do we have any help? Okay, the recipe that he's following online, which I apologize, I don't have the site for because it didn't show up on my iPad.

[30:35] uses as, you know, most of these do. And it's an egg white and gelatin mixture with sugar that you cook up, you know, to

[30:43] candy stage and then you beat it in the gelatin, the egg white, the sugar. It sets up as a foam and then it's cut and or dolloped or whatever and then put into a cornstarch and sugar mixture. Now, if your if your marshmallows are too wet, right? And you need more structure. You can up the gelatin one, you can, or you can increase the cooking temperature of the sugar to a certain point, right?

[31:06] But if you like the texture that you're getting and all you want to do is make it less sticky, right? Then what you need to do is work on the coding problem. Now, all marshmallows are too syrupy on the inside, really, you know, too sticky on the inside, you know, to have them not

[31:22] stick. If you're actually going to touch the inside of a marshmallow. Otherwise, it would be the same as the marshmallows that are in, you know, cereal

[31:28] boxes, which are 100% desiccated, right? Although I like those. Do you like those nastasia? Yeah, yeah, me too. I mean, they're not really marshmallows. And by the way, I mean, they kind of are. I mean, they're marshmallow like things, but they're kind of more like little meringue with marshmallow tasting, but

[31:43] I got addicted to those suckers when I was a kid. And I once called one of those serial companies to see whether I could buy just the marshmallows for a project I was working on. I was trying to make the world's 1st meat-based breakfast cereal with pork rinds. It was called pickles and beanies. It was sweetened pork rinds with little pork rind pieces with bean shaped marshmallows. And this was, you know, back, you know, I don't know, high school or college or something like that, you know,

[32:06] 90s, early 90s. And, uh, and they would not ship me, uh, or let me buy any marshmallows from. This was before I had enough technical knowledge to do it on my own. isn't that mean? It's really mean. So me. weird. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, I'm not going into the cereal business, they could have at least just sold. I was like, listen, I'll choose whatever the closest marshmallow you have in

[32:27] your like line of like cereal marshmallows to a kidney being shaped. And, you know, this is before I even knew how to make my own pork rinds. I mean, I was literally like either in college or like right around. You know what I mean? It's like, they could have helped me out a little bit. I'm sorry. I used to save all the marshmallows to last in the milk. I could enjoy them. But did you ever like open the box and then break it down into marshmallows and not marshmallows? No, no, no, no, no. Because it was a family. was for the family, the whole cereal. Oh, well, you know what though? How many people in the family there? Five? Five? Five? They couldn't have bought you your own box of cereal? I mean look. cereal was expensive. Seria was like 599 a pack. Okay, okay, look, here's my point. My point is this. You have people in the family. They're going to eat the cereal anyway, right? Right? So if you're going to eat the cereal anyway, there's going to be another box of cereal in a week anyway, right? Right? So if the total quantity of cereal eaten is the same over a 6 month period, what does it matter whether each person has their own box or not? It's not like the stuff goes bad in a short amount of time, it's not like you're going to be able to not finish that box of

[33:32] blueberry within like, you know, the 6 months that it stays good. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, I'm just saying, you know, in your next life, you can bring up that argument. See, that's what I'm good for, Nastasia. I'm good for that kind of logical-based argument. That's what I'm good at. Okay. So back to the marshmallow problem. Marshmallows are sticky on the inside. So what they are is a problem in control dehydration. You want to just have the outside be dry so they don't stick together. The problem with using a one-to-one powdered sugar and cornstarch mixture, and I read the person's recipe online, and the reason they use

[34:05] a mixture is, they thought the cornstarch by itself was too chalky on the outside, especially because it's there in a large quantity, right?

[34:12] But the problem with powdered sugar. Is it powdered sugar is gonna suck up moisture from the atmosphere and from the

[34:18] marshmallow and it's gonna be get tacky on the outside? There's no way around it. Like short term, it's going to work, but long term, it's going to cause problems with things getting sticky. That is my feeling. Now, you could try it with a straight up cornstarch, but then you might think it's too chalky. I did some research on industrial marshmallow production, Mike, and I have the answer for you. Here's what you're going to do the next time. I have not tested this, but I am so confident that I'm going to tell you on the air that this is going to work because I felt so confident that

[34:46] I can't, in fact, I might make it sometime soon. Here's what you do. You take the marshmallows, right? And make sure you follow all the recipe. Like another way marshmallows can go bad is if you don't beat them till they're cool, all that, you know, all that nonsense, right? Whatever. whatever the recipe says, just do it. if the recipe works, the recipe probably works. Now, instead of putting it into a mixture of cornstarch and sugar, right? Like a day before you do it or like a couple hours, you know, day before you do it, bake out some cornstarch in the oven to make sure it's really dry, seal it in court

[35:16] containers and let it cool down, right? Now you have dry cornstarch. Take your marshmallows, right? And then dust them into pure, into pure powdered sugar. Right? Now shake off the extra powdered sugar dust. Now, throw them into cornstarch, and then let them sit there with the cornstarch on them, right, for like 4 or 5 hours up to a day, depending on how much you want to dehydrate the outside layer of the marshmallow.

[35:42] Now, what you're doing is, is you're letting the sugar still be the taste thing on the outside, but you're using the cornstarch as a desiccant to desiccate the outside of the marshmallow a little bit so they won't be tacky, but you're not going to pick up as much cornstarch into the marshmallow itself proper because it already has that protective layer of

[35:59] powder sugar, huh? Huh? Huh? What do you think? It's good Apparently, that's how the big folks do it. You know, what they do is they they basically do it all under pressure and inject the marshmallow from a from a tube, it expands automatically is cut, dropped into powdered sugar, and then put into a cornstarch mixture to dehydrate

[36:21] as as it comes out. So I'm thinking that that mic is the way to get your marshmallow problem solved. Okay. Paul. Hey, should we do one more commercial break? Yeah, we can do a break. All right, one more commercial break. Call in all your questions too. 718-4972, 128. That's 718-1972128 cooking issues.

[36:44] Hush, not child. And don't cry Your folks might understand you. Just move on up. Toward your destination. Though you may find from time to time, communication.

[37:25] And take the trip. But there may be, let it roll ahead, and you cannot slip. The following is public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Tune in to Hot Grease every Monday at 330 PM. Hakri strives to bring sustainability, localized sourcing, and other forward thinking schools of culinary thought to the minds and kitchens of everyday folk.

[37:57] Each week, Nicole Taylor's conversations cover the entire spectrum for enthusiasts, some internationally renowned culinary masters, some moms

[38:05] on a budget looking to impress their tiniest critics. Again, that's every Monday at 330 PM, Hot Grease on the Heritage Radio Network. Hey, welcome back. Hey, Jack, that was move on up. Curtis Mayfield, right? Yeah, move on up. Curtis Mayfield. Good tune. I like the mixture of the Curtis Mayfield with the hot grease. The song seems to work with the hot grease, right? Yes. Yeah. I'll tell you something else. I don't care whether you're a mom on a budget or not. Like, like, like pleasing your kids. They are the pickiest little pickiest little critics, aren't they? Pains, that's a tough problem. Anyway, back to the questions. Nastasia, you still with us? Yeah. Awesome. We got a question from Paul K. earlier today, this last question in that we got. and it's not really a question so much as a comment. It's kind of funny. Hi, Nastasia. I thought I'd bring this article about human derived gelatin to Dave's attention, perhaps for the radio show. I'd like to hear his thoughts. And basically what it is. It's a new article called New Strategy, for expression of recombinant, hydroxylated, human derived gelatin. Um, just came out. So basically it's, what they do is they take, uh, the, our genes, human genes for producing

[39:19] uh, gelatin, you know, collagen, I guess, are gelatin, and they uh, inject it into a yeast. You know, they put it into a yeast. And then they grow the yeast, and the yeast then just makes a hyper abundance of, you know, human style gelatin, but, you know, obviously it hasn't come out of a

[39:36] human. No humans were killed for the gelatin. Uh, you know, anyway. So it's like that's that's what they're doing. I'd like to hear his thoughts. My 1st thought is, if we're common in technology allows greater quality control, why not use animal gene derived or common gelatin to avoid the controversy and creepiness? I think the allergy thing is a bit of a red herring. So the reason, the point here is that the reason they're using human derived gelatin for this is they're trying to think of, they're now looking at food applications for it, but originally this is for things like gel caps for

[40:04] medicine, and the idea being that there is less of a possibility of a

[40:11] human immune response to gelatin that's derived from human tissue than from animal

[40:20] tissue. I think it's probably a red herring. I think that if it's actually a pure gelatin protein, you know, pure gelatin, that's not going to have a lot of other extraneous stuff on

[40:30] it, that, I mean, maybe there's a difference, but maybe there's not. I haven't read any studies on how many people are allergic to

[40:36] gelatin. Maybe there's a lot, but I don't know. I haven't really, I didn't really have the chance to look into it. But the idea that we can have, because gelatin is freaking fantastic, right? And there's a whole, there's a whole group of people, vegetarians, you know, who won't eat gelatin. So, you know, whether, like, the idea of a recombinant gelatin, whether it be, you know, bovine derived or human derived,

[41:02] you know, the strain of it, I think would be awesome because there's certain things that gelatin does better than anything else. Marshmallows, for instance. Now, you can use Carraginen. mixture of Kerogenen and, you know, locust bean and or other things, gum, to produce a marshmallow. But gelatin is really, really good. Also for Jell-O. Gelatin is really, really good. Now, can you approximate Jell-O using things like carrogen? Yeah, but, you know, is gel- gelatin is still kind of the reigning monarch of taste in, you know, hydrocoloids. Like we, maybe it's because it's traditional and has been for so long that we just grew up loving it, but

[41:43] it's, it's good stuff. So if they can make one that was price competitive, and also have very consistent quality. Because another problem with regular gelatin is it's of differing qualities depending on the source where it was derived from how basically hydrolyzed, how broken down the proteins are. And that's why you have different bloom strengths of gelatin because they're a naturally derived

[42:05] product and gelatin from a fish doesn't work the same as gelatin from a, you know, a pigskin or, you know, animal, you know, cow bones or whatever.

[42:15] So they're all different. And the processing makes them all different. And so this is, you know, gives the possibility of having a very consistent gelatin product where no animals are harmed. I think it'd be interesting. The real question is, would a vegan use it? What do you think, Nastasia? vegan use it? I mean, like, question is, like, what is, like, why, like, in other words, like, what would be the, if you were a vegan would you use it? I mean, I would think you could, but I don't I don't know, right? do you think? I don't know. I really don't know. I don't I can't think like a vegan, you know? I think that's that's the issue. Yeah. Anyway, I'd like to hear from some vegans and see whether or not they would be willing to use,

[42:53] uh, you know, so, because you wouldn't have to harm the animal to get the DNA for it, right? You could just take a blood sample from a human or from whatever, get the gene,

[43:03] you know, and do it. I mean, I think that, um, be an interesting problem. don't know. But definitely, I think, has a lot more commercial application than the poop derived meat

[43:16] analog. Oh, I knew you were gonna go there. Well, didn't we bring this up on the radio a couple weeks ago? Somebody asked about it. Didn't we talk about it? You didn't talk about it. I'm pretty sure you didn't talk about it, at least, and I've done every show with you. We didn't talk about that. Well, it was a big thing on the internet, so I'm sure a lot of you guys have heard about this. crew in Japan was recycling sewage into meat

[43:39] analogs and people were making much hay out of it on the internet, but I don't really know enough to comment other than it's fun to say poop meat, right?

[43:47] I mean, uh, okay. So as some of you might know, um, I do, uh, you know, a little thing for eater, like, you know, once every week or once every 2 weeks or

[43:59] something. And recently they've had some, they've started getting chefs to ask me some

[44:04] questions. Nastasia, I don't know at this point where they're going to let me answer the rest of Michael Asconis's the... Yes, they want to know they wanted to know today when you're going to answer the rest, but that's for after the show.

[44:14] But the question is, should I just answer one now online? And then, and then, because there's really only one that I really want to answer more than the ones I've already answered. I can just answer that one now and then talk to Michael about it and then do a new chef for them. What do you think? I think they're kind of waiting for the answers to be answered. online. All right, so I'm going to answer Michael Escanis's questions on malt, which I think are very, very interesting. You know, Malt, as you may know, assuming most of our listeners know, is what you make,

[44:46] you know, beer out of. So you take barley. I'll talk about it a little bit now and then I'll write about it. You take barley and you grow it, you germinate it, right? And then you kill the, you kill the growing germ, kill the growing sprout on the inside before it pops out of the actual barley. And what you're doing there is activating all of the enzymes. The alpha and beta amylases, being the primary ones, and those enzymes, then when you kill it, you got to make sure that you kill it in such a way that you leave the enzymes in there. And then what you do is you grind it up and you steep it, you know, at different temperatures and the temperature of the mash that you

[45:22] do, the way you steep it is what makes different kind of beer is different, along with how the malt is made and how it's kiln and how, you know, what flavors are derived there.

[45:30] But anyway, it's the active enzymes in it that allow you to convert the starch from

[45:35] barley or if you're, you know, adding other things to it, like rice or whatever, that allow you to convert that starch to alcohol, right?

[45:43] Sorry, to sugar, which then you use yeast, yeast to convert to alcohol. So the primary function of malt is the function of it is to produce these enzymes that can break starch into sugar. Now, how the malt is treated, it makes it

[46:01] widely, you know, different in how much enzyme there is, and also in the flavor of the malt itself. It's a really tricky process. And most beer people, many beer people. I used to do all grain, meaning I don't, I used all my own grains and everything, but very few people make their own malt because

[46:18] it's, I don't know why. few people do it. So mald is a very interesting subject. Now, when most people are baking with malt, they're either using like diastatic malt, which they're adding to bakery products, and what that is is malt that still has the active stuff in it. But it still has the active enzymes in it. And they do that to break some extra starch into sugars for yeast as a yeast food or

[46:40] a bacteria food in a starter. But when I say malt to someone as an ingredient, what I'm thinking of is dry malt

[46:48] extract. And what that is, is you take the malt and you then convert all the starch to sugar using it with all the great flavors of malt. Like think Malta, the beverage Malta, malt beverage, like that multi-flavor, and then they, before they let it ferment, they dry it out into a powder. And so if you're doing what's called extract brewing, you take dry malt extract or still a liquid version of that

[47:11] extract, and they have amazing taste, malt tastes amazing. Uh, and that powder is an incredible, incredible ingredient, uh, which, you know, you can use not just to make beer, but you can use it as a sweetening multi-agent and

[47:25] thing that's great in mashed potatoes. Like I used to make malt mashed potatoes all the time, not with like the malted milk ball stuff, but with dry malt extract direct from a brewing shop. And you can get these if you have a home brew shop anywhere. Our Whole Foods here in New York City and Manhattan and lower Manhattan, Bowery has dry malt extract, but it's a fantastic ingredient. So I'll write a little more and probably a little less stream of consciously consciousness about Malt when I answer Michael Scott's other questions. We will be back next week. We hope not to have another 3 week period where I'm flying around like a lunatic from place to place and we apologize for any convenience we may have caused. Cooking issues. Fishes, fish. Oh, you did. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. 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

[48:36] Radio Network in the iTunes Store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for

[48:42] up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. Got me on this corner. Saturday, Saturday,

[48:52] Saturday, Saturday. Saturday, July 23rd, Butchwick Block Party Block Party. It's a party in the street. Repeat by Roberta, Death Killer Death Wrestling, featuring the legendary Mad Dog Toast, though. Boota Boot by Ryan Slack. What a world, close by Hymerodactyl. Mary Meyers. or Mogart. Back killer, asphalt resistant jeans. All kinds of food for your base, sweet soda by PNA, Roberta's bake sale. Heritage food. Argentini Eating Contact by the Argentini Brothers. Live music by Alex Truchen, Florida, hyper twin. Gangzai. The Netherlands. Team Robespierre. Wild Jack, MC Todd, Bo Breezy. Night Show. Sponsored by Martin Greenfield

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[49:54] Bay, Spushwood Block Party. It's a party in the street. All day long. Figure on the pulp and city winery, our proud present, the summer barbecue blowout festival. August 6th from noon to 4 p.m. The barbecue is happening at city winery, located at 155 Barrack Street in New York City. Restaurants featured at this event are Empire Mayonnaise, Van Dag, Momo Fuco Mopar, Imperial No. 9,

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[51:05] This is behind the scenes food news with Katie Kiefer. AMP goes local. The great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, commonly known as the AMP, that grocery chain you've seen all your life, has glommed onto the concept of local and

[51:21] sustainable and has just introduced a new consortium of producers known as the mid-Atlantic country farms, from which they will source beef and poultry. The animals are antibiotic and hormone free raised on vegetarian feed. There is no mention of certified humane or animal welfare approved status, however. Maybe they haven't gotten that far in the marketing department. But what makes this of interest is that A and P supplies all AMP supermarkets, pathmark, food emporium, walled bounds, and

[51:47] super fresh. These are not particularly high-end supermarkets. So this is good news for the average consumer. If you want to read more about this, you can go to the AMP website, which is

[51:55] www.apt.com slash press room. This has been behind the scenes food news with Katie Kiefer.