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[1:00] Hello. Hello, huh? I can't hear myself. Hello and welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold. They hosted cooking issues coming to you every Tuesday live from 12 to 1245 on the Heritage Radio Network. Here in the studio today with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, bringing the hammer to all of you that step out of line, although they never do, do they? No they never do. It's crazy. All right, Colin, all of your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. By the way, today's show brought to you by the Burger House. some of our favorite people in wine distribution Something I'm sure all of our listeners know, but probably don't, is that I'm extremely lazy, so I find it difficult to memorize the names of any kind of wines that I

[1:38] like. Are you going to a store and you find a wine and you don't, you know, you don't really know what to get? All you need to do, seriously, is memorize the name of like 5 or 10 distributors that you

[1:47] like, that you know bring in interesting products, and then you can look on the back of the bottles, find a distributor you enjoy, and odds

[1:55] are, you might have a winner. Anyway, a little tip from me to you on how to buy wine when you don't know what you're doing. All right, our 1st question comes in from Paul Peterson, who is a researcher at the Humane Society of the United

[2:06] States. I Googled him. And he had a comment on last week's gelatin issue where we were talking last week about the possibility of using recombinant DNA technology to produce gelatin without having to kill a bunch of animals.

[2:18] And the reason to do this is because gelatin is awesome. And it's also used in things like gel capsules. It has very a lot of very good properties. Gelatin is great. Anyway, he has a comment on it. He says, whether or not a vegan would use, the question is, would a vegan use this? And he says the answer he thinks is it depends on the individual. There's a similar, though, much more vexing project, to harvest meat cells from an animal and grow them in a bioreactor, thus to create meat without harming the animal, with other potential side benefits, like it might cause less pollution, the conventional farming,

[2:52] et cetera. Uh, and uh, he points me to a, I forget the name of it. It's called like meat harvest.org or something like that, harvesting meat. whatever. Anyway, because for some reason, hey, iPad people, figure out a reason why

[3:06] the URLs get stripped out of my stuff when I put it on my iPad. anyway. There are some vegans who are fine with and prefer this technology, this artificial,

[3:14] well, this cultured meat technology. Well, others would abhor such a thing. Basically, Paul thinks it comes down to whether why one is truly vegan. Some simply want to create the least suffering, in which case they probably use the cultured meat, and some just detest animal

[3:27] products a priori, and they would object to technology. I think I basically agree. I would object to the technology because straight up, I doubt that it would be delicious. I mean, unless you could literally culture the muscle, uh, exactly as it appears in my favorite piece of beef, you know what I

[3:47] mean? I doubt that I would like meat that's made in a

[3:52] bioreactor, the same way that I like meat that's made on an animal. Do you know what I mean? It's like, we think about it this way. Um, how much of a different is there between the most delicious piece of beef that you've ever

[4:06] had, right? And crap hole, you know, 3rd rate beef that you get in

[4:13] a in, you know, in like a low rent supermarket. It's a big difference, right? Mistachia, what do you think? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, my point is, is that, you know, I'm always shooting for ultimate delicious on a

[4:26] product. And so, uh, and I think this is my problem with most meat substitutes in general is that what they're substituting for is kind of the chewy texture of meat,

[4:38] right? And when I say that, I mean, overcooked meat, they're usually shooting at overcooked meat, right? kind of like, you know, tough, you know, a little bit chewy. And then they try to substitute in meat-esque flavors. And by that, I mean, usually protein breakdown products. So you're putting in, like, nutritional yeast, you're putting in broken down soy compounds, anything like compounds, like soy sauce, things like that, anything that are

[5:02] gonna contain, you know, free amino acids that are gonna give some of that umami nature, and then also they typically substitute in some sort of browning or some sort of smoking to mimic those kind of flavors that we get out of

[5:13] meats. But really, these are kind of only the externalities of meat. You know what I mean? Meat is so many other things. It's the different muscles. It's the way the grains align, different muscles. It's the way the fat is placed with them. It's the particular characteristics of the fat, based on what the animal was eating. It's many, many things. I mean, the flavor of meat isn't some sort of monotonic thing that can be

[5:37] recreated in a bioreactor. Now, I mean, that said, I mean, if I'm going to assume that technology could some point get so sophisticated, that it could literally grow, you know, a

[5:50] ribeye. I just don't see that happening anytime soon. I see perhaps some sort of actual meat, meat analog that functions better than many meat replacers on the market today. But I just don't see, you know, my most delicious, um, you know, aged, uh, ribeye steak, uh, that, you know, that I cook sous vide and sear over like a, you know, fiercely hot charcoal fire, and then, uh, and then drizzle it

[6:18] with, uh, uh, you know, my favorite uh, Tuscan or Sicilian olive oil and sprinkle it with salt. I just don't see that coming out of a bioreactor anytime soon. What about you, Nastasia? I agree. Yeah. Yeah, talking to the microphone, you're face towards the window. I agree. Yeah there you go. She's only been doing the radio show for a year and a half, folks. Don't mind her that she can't face into a microphone when she's talking. Anyway, uh, but then Paul Paul has a question he says. He was curious whether I, what experience I have with cooking Satan, which is basically Satan's wheat, wheat gluten, that is then formed into a dough, and is typically cooked in a liquid where it absorbs the flavor from the liquid, and then is sliced, and then

[6:56] you are sauteed, fried, stewed, whatnot, as a meat substitute. And it's a nutritional meat substitute in, uh, in, you know, parts of Asia hasn't, uh, really caught on here to the extent that, uh, I think it should. Many people use it instead, like they say, well, Satan's a much better meat replacer than tofu. I say you're both wrong. Tofu is tofu and it's delicious and should be used like tofu is, and you shouldn't buy crappy supermarket tofu that's had all of its flavor leached

[7:22] out and it's been sitting there for a 1000000000 years in a whole crap load of water. I think that stuff's, you know, vile and useless, except as a flavor carrier. And Satan, I think, also needs to be explored for its own sort of properties instead of just being a straight up meat substitute. Anyway, Paul says, do I have any preferred cooking method, boiling versus braising? I would add pressure cooking is a good cooking technique for it. Unfortunately, I have not, uh, and he also wants to know whether I've experimented with it cooking is sous vide, i.e. in a vacuum bag. I unfortunately haven't experimented with Satan in many, many years. I've only played with making it a couple of times, uh, and it was, you know, years before I really got into cooking

[8:01] sous vide. It's an interesting idea. I don't know that you get a benefit from cooking SUV, though, because you're cooking typically at a high temperature anyway. I don't know that you get a benefit from cooking the wheat gluten at a lower temperature below boiling point or substantially below boiling point. I think you might get some textural benefits from, like I say, cooking at a pressure cooker because then you can get some expansion when you release the pressure. Um, You might be able to get some infusion by going sous vide, but you can fuse anyway with the stock. The stock permeates the satan as it's cooking. One advantage to cooking sous vide that I could think of off the top of my head, is if you had a very expensive ingredient that you wanted to infuse into

[8:38] the satan and cook it that way. You could cook it in a very, very small amount of liquid. So if you had some expensive flavor, something you didn't have very much of, You could probably bag the satan in the thing, and then cook it that way. But I would not use a high vacuum because then you're going to be compressing it and altering and or destroying the texture of the safe, and if you use a very high vacuum, it's going to be dense and rubbery. So I would almost do it in a Ziploc bag rather than sous vide. I probably would never do it, sous vide. Uh, and are there any other vegetarian proteins that benefit from sous vide? Again, if you, you know, you can compress things, you know, get rid of the air cells in in things with sous vide, which might be, you know, to firm up tofu or whatnot, but that's really more of a water expelling issue.

[9:18] So I can't think off my head of any vegetarian proteins that would benefit from

[9:22] sous vide other than possible textural changes and infusion

[9:26] techniques because the low temperature aspect of sous vide is not really necessary for vegetarian proteins. Anyone who thinks I'm a jerk and wants to call me out on that, please do because I'd like to know some good applications. What do you think of stations? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Into the microphone at the time. Nice. Nice. Okay, Ross McGuire from Dublin, Ireland writes in again about green vegetables. Ross says, I recently came across a Spanish vegetable stew type dish, Menestra made from fresh vegetables, artichoke, broad beans, runner beans, and white asparagus thickened with flour, is a fantastic shade of green. From what I managed, the from what I managed to glean, the artichoke when cooked in water changes to a strong veridian green veridian. Nice call for reading. Only an Irish dude could come out with like the awesome shade of green, right? Veridian green color. along with the water, which is interesting, which is what gives the soup its strong pigmentation. Do you know what the cause of this color change is and how one might go about achieving it? Also, are there any other examples of that kind of natural color change, which could be used a good effect in the kitchen? Cheers. Okay, uh, cheers, cheers, Ross. Anyway, well, that's interesting. As far as, you know, I'm used to Menestra is like soup in Italian, where it's the same word for soup as for as

[10:35] zippa, so you could use zippa, you can use Menestra. I guess as opposed to like brodo, which is more of a broth, right? Nostasia? Yeah. Okay. So, uh, I don't know of any uh, Spanish recipe that goes by the name, uh, minestra. But this coming from an idiot who hasn't researched it. But so I can't say it, but also, you know, you can make them, let's just say

[10:57] Minestra is a soup, you can make it from any sort of mix of anything you want. So we're dealing here with is a soup or stew of artichoke, broad bean, runner bean, a white asparagus that's then thinking with flour. And it comes out green. Now, typically when you cook a green, here's what happens with green things in general when you cook them, right? First of all, the interesting thing you say is that the water turns really green. Chlorophyll is not water soluble. So typically, right, what's happening is, is, uh, the majority of chlorophyll is not going to leach out into the water. chlorophyll is what makes these things green, okay? So what happens is, the reason why chlorophyll is not soluble in water is that it's got this long kind of hydrocarbon chain that comes

[11:38] out. that's hydrophobic, it wants to be soluble in oil, which is why things

[11:43] like, you know, basil oil and things like that are such nice bright green because we can extract a lot of the chlorophyll into the oil because it's water soluble. uh, oil, soluble rudder. So here's what happens when you cook. You stick stuff in boiling water. If there's any acid, uh, and I guess also McGee says alkali can make it happen. You can break off that hydrocarbon chain, and now the residual part, which is still green, is leached into the water.

[12:07] Okay? Now, in the center of the main part of chlorophyll, the really the business center is a magnesium ion. And in water with the action of heat, especially if there's acid, right? That magnesium ion gets kicked out and replaced with hydrogen, and what you get is that kind of dark, greeny, almost

[12:27] olive, drab your bluish, bluish color of the chlorophyll after that's been happening. So that's the major color change that happens in most, in most vegetables as they cook, or as I should say, as they overcook, which is why we say you can add a little bit of baking soda to

[12:41] something and your vegetables will turn mushy, but they'll go bright green, right? Bright green, uh, because you're basically what happens is, is when you put the vegetable in, all of a sudden, you know, uh,

[12:52] the, the light couldn't come out of the vegetable very well because there's air sacs, the chlorophyll might be

[12:57] containing stuff. So there's basically the color is muted. You throw it into water and boom, you know what I mean? It, um, it, it, the cells are broken. The water penetrates, and now all of a sudden, the green really pops. It really pops out. So, I don't know whether or not the color you're describing is some mixture of

[13:15] cooked and, I mean, otherwise, you know, chlorophyllis has magnesium taken out and some that hasn't, some that's become water soluble due to the action of

[13:23] cooking. I just can't tell. You'd have to send me a picture of your soup so I can see what's going on. Another thing you can do, uh, it could be toxic, so please don't poison your guess, uh, other than baking soda, which actually,

[13:35] nastasia, baking soda would work really well in a soup, because what you could do is you could add baking soda, cook your soup, uh, down till it's to death. It'll go bright freaking green, stay bright green on you, and then at the last minute, correct it with acidity, which will take out kind of the baking soda flavor and bring the soup back, you know,

[13:51] and once the temperature's a little bit lower, so it's not going to color change on you. Might be an interesting thing for you to try if you haven't tried it before. The other thing you can do is you, instead of replacing the magnesium with copper, you can

[14:01] place, I mean, sorry, with hydrogen, you can replace it with copper. And it gets a crazy ass. you know those olives that are like that hyper break green? Like, not the olives, like manzania, but the hyper bright, like sharing some cherrinolas are hyper bright, like that. I think not sure. could be making this up, could be lying. I think that they add a little, probably lying. For those of you listening, probably a lie. That's the same color that's produced by taking the chlorophyll and replacing the magnesium with copper. And so you can do that, but too much copper is, what's the word I'm looking for? Poisonous. poisonous. That's a small amount of so that aren't. So anyway. So what are some other things that you can do to change colors? Well, another one, going back to McGee, who we were hanging out with at Tales of the Cocktail last week. if I get time to talk about it. I'll talk about it. Probably won't get time. Uh, especially if some of you suckers call in to 718-497-2128 with a question of 718-4728. Um, garlic and onions can turn interesting shades of blue and green when they're cooked very slowly. And the very 1st curious cook column that Harold McGee put into the New York Times, it's got to be like 4 years ago

[15:03] now, 3 or 4 years ago. One of the things he treated was this fact that sometimes, if you puree onions and garlic or just cut up garlic and cook it very slowly,

[15:13] it can turn green and blue. And what's happening is, is that some molecules, in fact, some of the ones that make it pungent, you know, some of these sulfur

[15:23] compounds can get altered by enzymes that are native to the onions and the garlic. And then combine together into larger molecules, because typically larger molecules are pigmented, you know, or you can see them as opposed to smaller molecules, which are usually colorless.

[15:38] Anyways. Uh, so the uh, Not always, usually. So what happens is they combine and they get these kind of like shocking blue and greens. And so anyone out there who's done any low temperature cooking, let's say you were to put a steak with garlic and butter in a bag and cooking at 55 Celsius for 2

[15:53] hours. You'll notice that some of the garlic is going to turn kind of a bluish greenish. And this is something that you can do. And I've done, actually, we've made blue garlic soup using, I think it was blue, blue or green. I can't forget, like, onions turn green and garlic turn blue or the other way around, and you can, and you can alter the color by combining the different amounts of onion and garlic. Anyway, if you take a puree or even just slices of onion and garlic. You stick them in a bag and you cook it at like 55 degrees for like an

[16:20] hour. The stuff's going to turn bright colors on you. You can then pressure cook it to neutralize some of those flavors so it's not too

[16:26] strong, and then you can use it in large quantities and still have the color changed item to serve. If you don't cook it in a pressure cooker afterwards. And the color does stay, by the way. I done it. then you're in for a world of freaking hurt because if you can see that color, if it's a brightly colored

[16:41] puree, Please don't go anywhere near your family or friends for the next week and a half . The other one that I could think of off the top of my head is that you can use, if you have a blood-basting, and Nathan Mirvold, Chris Young, and Maxine

[16:55] Belay at all, the modernist cuisine, cookbook, cookbooks, the

[16:59] mega opus, and when's he coming on, by the way? When's Mirvold coming on? The 3rd week of August. All right, and the 3rd week of August, Nathan Mirville is going to call into the show. So none of you chumps missed that stuff. Call in to Nathan Miravold in the 3rd week. What country am I going to be in? 16th. You'll be here. I'll be here. Awesome. Call in to hear, and you, our cooking issues listeners, are gonna get the opportunity to personally ask Nathan Mirvold a question.

[17:26] Now, bear in mind, Nathan Mirvold, he might he might tear into it. Depends on what you ask. I mean, you know, you know, he's he's an opinionated guy. It should be interesting. I'm excited. I'm super excited, super looking forward to it. So get your questions ready for the Mirvold thing. And I think, hey, Jack, we can go an hour on an hour on Mirvold Day, right? Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. okay. The other one I was thinking of from their cookbook is you can take blood and hit it with carbon monoxide, the same stuff that you

[17:51] use if you're going to suck a tailpipe, the sad stuff, carbon monoxide. If you take carbon monoxide and hit it to meat, it goes incredibly bright red. There's, there are 2, uh, there are 2 small children looking in the studio window right now who are incredibly curious about the radio

[18:06] thing. Trust me, kids, it's not that interesting. Anyway, uh, so, uh, and this is how they make their uh, rare beef jus, where they cook uh, beef in a bag, and they can optionally hit it with carbon monoxide to get a really, really right

[18:20] bread uh, bread color. You can also use this to rip off consumers by hitting meat with carbon monoxide to make it look bright red, even though it's

[18:27] spoiled, and concursion bound, bought a piece of meat. Ken Kershimam, the polymer chemist and our buddy from the experimental cuisine collected at NYU, bought a piece of meat and basically kept it out of a fridge, turning, you know, awful for

[18:40] weeks and stayed a nice bright red color because of the carbon monoxide they so nicely put into the container

[18:45] for it. He hates that. He thinks it should be outlawed. Let's take a break. Not yet. Because that goes into this one question. Aaron Smith called in on bloodbasting. Nastasia, you know, only you could ruin such an awesome segue from going from changing the color of blood by adding carbon monoxide into a blood-based

[19:02] face. ruined it for you. This nostage will always do this. You know what? If you're about to buy Nastasia a Christmas present or a birthday present, don't, because what's

[19:11] going to happen is, is 5 seconds, literally, 5 seconds before you try to buy her something or get her something like a glass of

[19:17] water, if she's thirsty, she will ask you for it and ruin the opportunity for you to get it for her.

[19:22] That is a lot of information you're giving away. Yes, it's a lot of information, but it's true. It might be helpful to some of our listeners, should they ever meet you. Anyway, Aaron Smith writes in with a blood-basting question. Hi. I love the show and I'm thrilled that you're back from your break. I was looking through an old French cookbook. Uh, the, uh, La Varens Cuisine, Frose, uh, and from 1653, and notice an interesting instruction in roasting a pig like a boar. The recipe is you may disguise the boar. You may disguise the pig near to a boar. That is, after you've beaten it well, you shall endure it with blood. I don't know whether it's Endor Andoray. For me, we'll get into this. And after a while, stick it, spit it, and not forgetting to, I think I'm

[19:59] going to say Andre, even though I don't know. Feet with blood before it's roasted, serve it as a boar with sauce or without it. Uh, and then uh, Aaron puts down at the definition of uh, indoor is to wet dog, uh, some liquor as one doth

[20:11] of pie or cake before it's put into the oven. So basically a pig is basically with blood before it's roasted on a spit. And, um, Aaron's interested in what the blood might be doing. It has, and I'm saying, I keep saying your name a lot because I'm not sure if this is guy Aaron or girl Aaron. Aaron. Was it E or an E? E. Oh, can't tell. I can't tell. Don't know. anyway. Sorry about my lack of knowledge on that. Anyway, so I was curious about what's going on. He has sugars and amino acids, so it could be acting as a browning agent. I know a touch of glucose and pecking duct can lead a beautiful browning because glucose is reducing sugar, which you use to generate the

[20:44] myard reaction, along with proteins and amino acids. The Google search led to Julia Child's description of press duck, where the duck is based in blood sauce while it's being roasted. And so is this a standard method that's fallen out of flavor? Have I ever based it with blood or in my press duck adventures? I want to know what was going on. Um, okay. Well, uh, and this is, and errands from San Diego. Um, so listen. As far as I know, uh, I'm going to say Andre, even though it might be indoor, is a technique not just for basting blood or going on pies, was a standard technique for coding things with different colors in medieval

[21:22] times. So as a presentation trick. For instance, if you were making a cock and trice, which is a bird, you know, the back end of a bird glued under the front of a pig, right, you would take the seams and whatnot

[21:31] on the outside and you would endure it with different mixtures that would kind of form a crust and also color it to make it look more fanciful, right? Um, and then, you know, typically you would set that by then baking it, uh, or roasting it. Now, uh, when I make a press duck, I don't, uh, well, you know, what, what I always did, and the recipes I have, and I think this is the way Tour d'Argent, the restaurant does it, is they, they take the

[21:54] duck, uh, that's been strangled, so the blood doesn't go out, or suffocated. And then they press the blood and juices out, then the blood becomes a thickening agent for the sauce that you use.

[22:04] Then when you cut the meat's already been par roasted, then you cut off the breast slices and you reheat them in the sauce, and then the sauce thickens up,

[22:14] et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know of any recipe where you then baste it and roast it again. It's more kind of just a reheat with the slices. There's famous recipes for like civet, like or civet, I guess. I know how you pronounce it in French, of rabbit, or jugged hair, which is the way a US person would say it, that uses the blood of the hair as a

[22:30] thickening agent, but the last, at the last part of the sauce, because it will then thicken up and can curdle and break.

[22:36] Nils Norin says in Sweden, they have a famous blood soup that's made from goose blood that is cooked for a long

[22:42] time, and I think with acid to stop it from coagulating too much. Um, so there is a long history of this, but the idea of using it as an outer coating. I would think that it would set and then and then congeal with the heat and then maybe crust up as it dries out, but I don't know what it would taste

[22:58] like. Uh, it doesn't gross me out, mean blood, meat. It's all part of the animal. If the animal, unless, look, unless you're kosher, in which case, you know, don't eat the

[23:07] blood because the blood is the life and if you do, you know, a curse on your people, you shall be cut off from your people, et cetera, et

[23:12] cetera. But unless it's like religiously barred from you, for you from having it, I think it's a waste to throw it away because, you know,

[23:21] you done killed the animal anyway, I might as well use everything you

[23:25] can. I mean, I think that's a more modern way of looking at it. So, I, you know, it's another thing. Why is it inherently more gross nostalgia to eat the blood or any weird part of

[23:33] the of the animal? Why is it more inherently gross than any other part? Like, why is like, like, couldn't we culturally be raised? be like, 0 my god, the loin? Yeah. Gross. Right? I mean, why is it inherently is it because when we cut ourselves? We like, crap, that's blood, we're freaked out by it. Yeah, I think it's a it's a, yeah. Same reason why people think that like they're making a sexual statement by eating like, you know, deer testicles and stuff like that. You know, when a guy eats a deer testicle, people are like, yeah, you know what I mean? Like, is it because of some sort of weird, like, sexual connotation? Yeah, right? So like things that are gross of things that like we don't want to eat, like, you know, things that, whatever, very strange. Anyway, all right, so now we will go to our 1st commercial break, call it our questions, too, 718-497-2128, Cooking issues.

[24:33] Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. But then you can't be him. But I don't get what they say. And I'm coming from a friendly place. I'm feeling quick, and I don't miss the link, and I better don't leave no trace. Hey check it out. Check it out Take out this new What about my new trick? And believe me, the captain was so stealing hard. The cats don't speak, feel it hard. Some cats, but some bad, for the biggest odds. Check me out. That's where we must start. Buff, the stars, taking place, so keep it bible, fighting, when you

[25:25] got some old fights, and the bugs can't make, okay. Every jump, gotta be, on the hip, just...

[25:36] We gotta be hip on the hip hop.

[25:44] Following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Join Linda Palacio for a taste of the past every Thursday at 12 p.m.

[25:55] as she indulges her curiosities about food, cooking, drinking, and dining of the

[25:59] past, by taking a journey through culinary history. Linda interviews authors, scholars, friends, and chroniclers to learn about what was eaten, where, and how, from as long ago as ancient Mesopotamia and Rome, right up to the grazing tables and deli counters of

[26:15] today. The show underscores food as a lively link between present and past cultures. Again, that's Thursday at 12 PM on the Heritage Radio Network. So nice, that is true. Welcome back to cooking issues. By the way, Jack has managed to find, and I really like it. One of the, must be one of the only James Brown songs that I don't know. Oh, wow. You know, like, you know, I don't know how many 1000s of hours I've listened to James Brown and managed to get one of the ones I don't

[26:49] know. Great too, though. called Cold-blooded, and it's from the record called Hell. Oh, yeah. Guess what? I'm gonna go out and download today. No offense, James. I spent many. Well, you're dead. But not I've spent many, many, 100s of dollars on your products. I think I'm going to go steal this one on the internets. What do you think, Nastasha? don't know. Cold-blooded? Hell. Anyway, by the way, I think Linda Palacio might be a good person to ask that last question on blood and history. Then Napalacio is I think she wants to be involved somehow with the Museum of Food and Drink, and we'd love to have her involved. So if I see her, which I very rarely do, but if I see her, I'll ask her that blood question, because that might be right up her alley. Okay. Naveen Sinha writes in. And by the way, Naveen is the head TA for was last year. I know if he is this year, uh, for the class that uh, Faran uh, Adria headlined uh, in Harvard. needs a vegetarian. Okay, nostalgia. Why don't you bust on the guy for being a vegetarian on the radio, the guy already, listen, this poor guy. All right, listen, this poor guy, Naveen, right? He goes to this event, and he's now hanging out with all these chefs, right? Because he was involved with this class at Harvard where they had some of the world's greatest chefs go in, like Wiley, my brother-in-law, all these guys go in. And like all chefs invariably bust on this guy for being a vegetarian. Leave the guy alone. No? He's the DA at Harvard in the food studies program. And he's not a TA in Harvard of the Food Studies program. He's in the physics and material science program, and they're teaching a study, they're teaching a class on how to learn about that subject through the lens of food.

[28:25] Yes. Yes. Leave the man alone on his vegetarians. Please. He's a nice guy. hope he calls in. Yeah, well, if he if he does, I recommend he calls in 2718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Anyway, Naveen writes, and he says he recently read about the Uzo effect, in which

[28:47] Annis flavored spirits and liqueurs become a pick, white usually, unless it's been colored beforehand, when diluted with water. I was wondering if you have seen this effect, occur with other types of spirits. And also, do I know of any other examples of color changing beverages? Thanks. All right, so, uh, what's happening with, um, with, uh, Uzo or, I don't know why the hell they call it the Uzo effects. Seriously, like, they say that Uzo is drunk more in the U.S. than Pastise,

[29:15] Ricard, or Absinthe. But since absinthe, you know, went through that surge in popularity after the use effect have been

[29:21] characterized, maybe we should rename it the absinthe effect. How many by a show of hands out in the world on the internet, how many of you have had a glass of Uzo this

[29:29] year? Anyone? anyone, right? Some sort of absinthe beverage? There's 2 people in here raising their hands. you know what I mean? Or pastice or Pernot based substance. Anyways. So, uh, I'm going to forget the name because for some reason I forgot to paste it into my iPad. But, um, I believe the uh, the oil involved, the chemical is called Anatol. I think it's what it's called. Anatol. Someone will call in and say, I can't believe you forgot the name of it, but there it is, I did. Uh, and what happens is, is that it's a very interesting effect, when

[29:59] you're making, um, usually when you're making emulsion, you have to provide energy, usually, uh, mechanical energy, to, uh,

[30:06] create uh, the little droplets of oil inside of uh, a liquid. And the reason is, is because it takes a lot less energy for, because there's a lot more surface

[30:16] area and there's actual energy associated with keeping 2 admissible, i.e. don't mix together liquids next to each other. So that's why usually you have to beat things with whisks and blenders to get them to emulsify. Another thing you can do to lower the amount of energy you could put in is to add an emulsifier, which takes away some of the energy required to make that emulsion. But the way the Uzo effect works is entirely different. Instead of using mechanical energy, an emulsion is

[30:41] made basically almost spontaneously, it's called spontaneous emulsion. And what's going on is that the oil is soluble in ethanol, in alcohol, but not in water. So, uh, what happens as you dilute, uh, you know, I'm going to say uh, absinthe or Pernot, right? Because I don't drink Uzo, uh, you know, why not other things like that? Why not like, uh, why not like Aguardiente or any other anise flavored thing? Like, why Uzo? No offense to the Greeks. No offense. You know what I mean? Anyway. So, uh, when you dilute it with water, um, you have the entire solution is basically uh, evenly and homogeneously saturated

[31:22] with uh, with this oil, and all of a sudden becomes supersaturated. And it does it in a way that many, many, many, many, many, 1000000s of tiny, tiny droplets are instantly

[31:34] formed, right? And because that's super fast nucleation, you get these small, small droplets that are stabilized,

[31:41] right? For hours and hours and hours, sometimes even days, depending on how it works. And so it's this, like, instant, like, super saturation and massive nucleation that causes the uso effect. And yes, it is visible in many other spirits. I don't know of any commercial spirits,

[32:00] uh, other than the anise flavored ones where it happens, uh, because that's famous. But many of the spirits that we make in the rotary evaporator will show the

[32:09] Uzo effect when they're diluted. So some of our Thai basil spirits will, if you add water to them, they will go white on you when you mix. And then later on, if you let it sit for days and days, the oil will float to the top. Um, and just tons of them, I've had caraway go white on me when I, when I've done it. And I don't know what the components are in it that's doing it, but I've had some of our

[32:32] caraway, although maybe it was the caraway that we put fennel into, which would make more sense maybe. Maybe. possible. Um, but so the answer is, Naveen, yes, there are other oils that are, uh, you know, soluble in ethanol and weekly or insoluble in water and have this

[32:51] effect. The other thing that liquors can do to change colors is you can shift acid-based equilibria. So you can have a liquor that's neutral, that has anthocyanins in it, and they'll start out in the bluish range, and

[33:05] then, like blue corn. And then as you acidify it with lemon juice or whatnot, it'll turn

[33:11] red, a reddish purple, that's another thing you can do, although I don't know of any there's some teas in Thailand that are flower-based. There's a blue flower-based tea in Thai. I believe it's Thailand, because nastasia, yeah, that we researched. And that one, you make the tea and it's blue, you add the lemon, it turns red. So that's something you can do. Another thing you can do is you can do kind of a reverse ouzo, where you can suspend a weekly soluble, like calcium or magnesium salt in. And then when you acidify it, it'll go clear. Uh, Nastasia and I have had, uh, we had to do, we, it's interesting you should ask this because we tried those things for this event we had to do. didn't try that flower. What was that called? We couldn't find a flower. I forget the name of it. It's similar to like a blue cornflower or something. It looked that color of blue. Anyway, but it was very rare here in the US. Anyway, so we tried it and not too much good effect, especially because we needed to do the opposite of what was easy. We needed to go not from red to not from blue to red, but from red to blue and basic drinks. Let me just tell you, what's the word we're looking for here? Gross. Gross. Okay. Brian Oaks writes in on iPads and fruits. I know from the radio show that you have an iPad. Any recommendations on food related apps? No, I don't really, I don't really have any food related apps. Yeah, you do. What? Chang's thing. What? Chang's app. I don't have that on here. Is that released yet? Yeah, I think so. But listeners, if you're interested in developing an app for heritage radio network, email us at info at heritageradionetwork.com. Wow. Nice. I've heard some people like the ratio thing, but I've never used it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I know people that like that. Yeah? And I hear that, I don't, you know who, you know, Jerry Lavish, our web guru, he would know because he does that kind

[34:58] of stuff. I, look, I use my iPad as basically a book. It's basically like, you know, I have like, uh, you know, you know, probably a 100,000 pages or something of uh, of science related uh, books and articles uh, in my

[35:11] iPad, and that's mainly what I what I use it for. Um, but then people write in. Tell us what they think their best, their best food apps are. Also, Brian just got back from a trip to Florida and stopped by the Fruit and Spice Park. Good job. Everyone should go to the Fruit and Spice Park. I think we talked about it last week a little bit, right? Our trip to Spice Park, but he has a recommendation I might have forgotten to make, which is I would recommend bringing something to rinse your hands and face with because you were going to be covered with

[35:35] sweet, drippy, sticky mango juice. Not that there's anything wrong with that, he adds. I say I've been at least 15 different mangoes and it could have tried at least a dozen more. Why not? Why didn't you? Maybe I don't have to go to dinner. Maybe. Or maybe they were maybe because maybe he didn't get the super, like, treatment and they chased him out of there. I'm thinking rapid infusion with mango puree and rum. Keep up the great show, Brian Oaks. Although, you know what? I really want to do, and as I want to take some of those mangoes and infuse the mango chunks in a vacuum with booze, because that's to be delicious, but we couldn't, when we went, harvest enough of these mangoes to do that

[36:10] to. It's an excellent recommendation, by the way, bringing something to wash your hands and face with. What I used when I was out was the incessant rainstorm that was pounding us with buckets of water every 10 seconds, right? So we had a separate problem and that we couldn't like keep our cameras out because none of us had like, you know, diving cameras because we were basically tasting mangoes in like 3 feet of water.

[36:31] Like we needed like snorkel gear to do our tasting. Um, But you know what, I've had this problem so many times, you want to take fruit out of a tasting, and you don't know what to do. So anyone out there who has this, and we need a way to label fruits. Sharpies don't write on on waxy fruits, especially when it's raining, and the Sharpie comes

[36:50] off and the Sharpie starts writing. So Sharpie, I know I love Sharpie, Sharpie, all love to you, and for all of the all of the good times that we've had together, but it is ineffective for writing the names on

[37:00] fruits if the weather is at all messed up. They need to make a fruit sharpie. Yeah, thank you, Nastasia. They need to make a fruit sharpie. Are you listening out there, people? Someone either tell me, look, I don't want it to be horribly toxic. Like, I'm not willing to die to label my fruit, but I need some sort of like fruit

[37:17] label so I can write on it. The other idea has like, what if they had like a special like little, like, needle thing where you could like, almost like, you know, one of those old dimo, like label makers that would punch that

[37:26] tape. But like you could just like quickly like type the letter and it would stencil into the fruit skin. We should just bring whatever that thing is called. Any tape you put on will come right the heck off if it's raining. And, like, like, McGee and I were out there the 2nd day when you were driving to Miami, we were trying to write, and

[37:44] the, as we were writing, the paper was bleeding off into the, uh, into the earth. It was a freaking nightmare, which,

[37:51] which, A, meant that we could taste fewer fruits, and B is making our job of figuring out what the heck we ate a lot, lot harder.

[37:57] Anyway, I'm glad someone's going to the fruit and spice park. Everyone should go to Miami. Look, if any of you guys plan a trip to Miami, you need to go down to South

[38:10] Day to the homestead area to the fruit and spice park. And then when they tell you that you can't eat the fruit. I don't know, punch them in the face, uh, don't do that. dont do that. And do whatever you can to get a hold of some of the fruit. They usually let you eat the fruit that's fallen on the ground. The problem with the fruit, it's 2 things I've noticed. One, the problem with the fruit spice part is that they allow the public in a lot, and so they have to be careful about the fruits because otherwise they'd be stripped bare instantaneously.

[38:36] Um, The other problem is, is that tropical fruit people are more covetous of their fruit. This has been my experience, my relatively small experience as opposed to temperate fruit people. Like you have someone with an orchard fruit or like a pear, apple orchard, you know, whatever. You're like, can I have this fruit? They're like, yeah, take it. Take it. Otherwise, it's gonna fall on the ground and rot. You know what I mean? if they're not commercial. If they're commercial, it's a different story. But these guys are like, they know every, remember these guys knew every single mango that was on that tree, and if you took one, they're like, where that mango? You know what I mean? It's like they're, it's a different, different kind of crew. I still haven't figured it quite out yet. Anyway, why don't we take one more commercial break and then come back and slam through these last couple questions. Call your questions too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[39:48] We live in Brooklyn, baby We

[39:59] live in Brooklyn, baby. We trying to make it, baby. We wanna make it, baby. We're gonna make it, baby. Living in Brooklyn, baby. Hey, don't remember. Wow. Anyway, yeah, Nastasia, by the way, even though we're are we on? Yeah, even though we're in Brooklyn, a lot of the time, Nastasia is like an old school Brooklyn hater.

[40:33] So anyone out there, anyone out there who's a Brooklyn Patriot, please call in and give Nastasia a serious ribbing. Nastasia. You also. No. No, I hate the roads in Brooklyn. Like, someday for this, we're going to do the entire session on Neil Diamond's, Brooklyn Rhodes, and it must be some sort of like crazy sarcastic song because the roads here in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Roads. Yeah. He was on Brooklyn Rhodes. Rambling Roads? Brooklyn Rhodes. No, this crack. Crackling Rose. Crackling Rose. Yeah, Brooklyn Rhodes. Yeah, yeah. Get up on your Neil Diamond, all right? Anyway. Uh, so because the roads here are some of the worst dang things in the world. It's like, you know, it's it's like you, someone's sitting there and throwing hand grenades into the pavement and blowing holes in it for no apparent

[41:19] reason. And then, and then they, or, or, or, like, somehow, like, meteorites made of asphalt or falling into the, into the road and just leaving giant, like, or volcanoes of asphalt or coming out of the

[41:31] road, different points. And if you're a biker, the roads of Brooklyn are, what's the word? crap, right? Crap. Anyway. But Brooklyn itself, I enjoy. I enjoy Brooklyn itself, just not their roads. Okay. James T. Ray writes in about popcorn. Normally I eat with reckless abandon. However, I love to snack and I wanted a low calorie option. I like popcorn as a snack and recently purchased an air popper to pop my corn and I love it. So the question, can I get salt to adhere to the popcorn without a lipid or making a soggy mess? And by the way, I've tried the cooking spray with mixed results. I love the show James T. Ray. Um, well, the 1st thing you can do is to get uh, popcorn salt. So, Morton makes many different kinds of salt. And one of them is popcorn salt. I just dropped my iPad. And popcorn and salt is very, very, very fine. And so it adheres to popcorn, much better than even their iodized

[42:36] salt and definitely better than kosher salt and things like that. and super, super fine, easy to distribute. So if you've had mixed results with the cooking spray, which is what I was going to recommend before I read the last line of your thing. you know, spread it out, spray a little cookie spray, and then a fine dusting of this popcorn

[42:54] salt. I think you're going to get better adhesion. Aside from that, I did a primary search. There are, I mean, you could do... I mean, all the other things make it such a pain in the butt that I don't know that you do it. You can make like a, like an, an alcohol dispersion, like a, like a vodka dispersion of salt, spray it over the popcorn, throw it in an oven and dry it back out with a pain in the butt.

[43:17] I mean, you want to make popcorn, presumably you want to eat it. at some point, right? You don't want to sit there and rewet it, redry it out, right? It doesn't make any sense, right? Nastasia, that's too much trouble, right? I just put salt and sugar on mine. Air popped? Did you listen to the question at all? What's air popped is like in the in the popper? Again, Nastasia's sitting there thinking about... I am sure she's thinking about lunch, which we're going to have, delicious Roberta's lunch. Instead of what's going on. Air popper means that it's basically like a hairdryer that's

[43:45] contained, and by the way, your air popper makes a good coffee roaster. I don't know whether you knew that, James. you can roast coffee in your air popper. You have to be careful because the chaff flies all over your room. You have to contain it, make sure it doesn't catch on fire, fire is a problem. Anyway, I used to do it. For years, I used an air popcorn maker before I bought a coffee roaster and then moved to

[44:04] Whirlipop, which is actually my favorite popcorn making technique. So in air popping nastasia. There is no added oil. Mm, okay. Yeah. I wonder whether you can add just a small amount of oil to the popcorn kernels as you're popping them in the air

[44:17] popper, and then, um, maybe then increase adhesion. I don't know. That might, because if the spray problem was that maybe it wasn't getting all over it. Maybe a small amount of oil on the popcorn kernels themselves. But the problem with doing that, and is probably why it won't work, is that it's what's that technology, air popping, is what's called a fluid bed kind of technology where the popcorn kernels are all separated from each other and kept agitated by the air that's blowing in

[44:41] them. And then when a popcorn kernel pops, it immediately becomes less dense than its unpopped

[44:46] cousins and then floats to the surface and it is pushed out so it doesn't burn at the bottom. And so I wonder whether adding a small amount of oil would kind of ruin that effect or get into it or just ruin everything in general. But I know that you can have oil in a popcorn popper because that's how

[45:01] I, when you roast coffee, the oils are in there and the oil gets on the inside of the air popcorn popper and it does foul it a little bit, but it

[45:10] doesn't like ruin it in any way. So that could be another thing to do. My 1st step would be to get the actual popcorn salt and you can buy it on, you

[45:16] could buy it on the amazon.com. Anyway, Garth writes in about vanilla. We grow vanilla in the South Pacific Island of Tonga and process the beans into different products in New Zealand. How would we produce a vanilla foam that we could use at food shows for attendees to scoop some foam from a bowl to taste our

[45:32] vanilla? I visualize a nice glass fish bowl without any fish with an aeration. He actually says fish removed. Get a new one. Don't just remove the fish from the fish bowl because then you're killing the fish. I don't think he was saying that. Anyway, all right. Hey, just without a fish. buy a new one. Anyway, with an aeration pump causing a liquid in the bowl to foam up so people can just scoop some on a tasting stick. Not sure what type of base would be best as it ideally would just suit our vanilla flavor without too much else competing. Could taste like a custard, a panna cotta, ice cream, jelly, citrus, et cetera. We have carragin, but no other high-tech ingredients. Okay. Foam done with a aquarium pump in a bowl, or in any sort of vessel, was something that a bunch of chefs were working on and was 1st crafted and pioneered by Andoni

[46:21] Aderis, from, you know, at Mugeritz in like years ago. And his recipe, which is on the internets, I

[46:30] think, if you just search, the famous dish he made with it was called Vanity. And it had a chocolate foam. Uh, and what he, the basic recipe is 2% uh, powdered egg whites by weight uh, of the mixture, which, you know, then

[46:47] lets uh, uh, what's the word, hydrate. And 0.one, i.e. uh, one, is that right? One gram in a liter, can't be that low. Look it up, it's something like that. One gram in a liter of Xanthan gum. If you can get Carraginan, I'm pretty sure you can get Xanthan where you are. If not, it's easy to mail or Xanthan, and you only have to use a tiny, tiny bit of it so you can get a hold of it. And that's the basic recipe that he uses to make the big air bubble foams. And then you just put it in the bottom and do that. Now, the downside is, is, they have very little flavor in them because they are like 99.99% air with only a little bit of bubbles and they pop almost

[47:30] instantaneously. I mean, that's the idea of it. I think that for what you're doing, you're going to want a more dense stable foam. Uh, in which case you could probably just use powdered egg whites and vanilla, uh, and your vanilla extracted water, um, or something. I'm not trying to think of what the best foam would be. You could use, if you have Agar, you can make a fluid gel and then and then shoot it out of an ISI canister. The problem with foams is I think they're going to reduce the flavor of your vanilla by introducing a lot of air into it.

[48:00] The other problem is, is you might want to look at an article brought to my attention also by McGee. Uh, uh, from 1997 called The Effect of Milk Fat on the Flavor Perception of Vanilla Ice Cream. Basically, the more fat you have, the more muted your perception of the vanilla

[48:16] flavor is. So I would stay away from anything that contained fat because if you're going to want to highlight this. And I sense why you want to have it in a phone because you want the air, and then, 1st of all, you probably don't want to use that much of it, and you probably want to have the flavor come out. You also don't want to use a lot of heat because heat is going to alter the flavor of your vanilla. It's too bad you can't get something like versa whip, which you can then just whip it up into a foam with a little

[48:41] malto-dextrine or something like, you know, what else?

[48:46] Like versa whip or, yeah, methocell F50. I mean, you could try just a stable egg white foam. Um, you could probably get pasturized egg whites and then do it that way and do it uncooked, but I don't want you to have that eggy flavor, but I don't, A, I don't want you to heat it because I don't want you to alter the flavor of the vanilla through the heat. And B, I don't want

[49:09] you. Uh, I don't want to add any fat because then, um, you're adding fat. You know what? Maybe a minimum amount of heat, like almost like an Italian meringue where you whip the egg white, and then you pour the hot sugar in to set it a little bit, but it's not really cooking it for a long

[49:23] time, that might get it. And then you could just basically have this like meringue, almost meringue icing that people could scoop up and then just go sugar and vanilla. It's gonna have the air, you get good delivery. What do you think? Yeah. slow tech. Yeah, low tech, delicious, delicious and low tech. Also, you could maybe stir some vanilla in after you cook it so that you so that you have some totally uncooked vanilla in it. if you go a little overstiff. These are my recommendations, Garth. Use them for what they're worth, which is probably nothing. Uh, lastly, uh, Jason writes in about Nix Demol. Hi, Dave. I love the post about nextimilization. Thank you. But I'm having trouble doing it here in the UK because field corn is not common. I have 2 questions. Do you need to use intact kernels or can you use broken cracked kernels? Most field corn here is sold as bird feed, a lot of it cracked. Also, can I use a grain mill, like the one that would connect to my kitchen aid, make sure to grind the grain after treatment? Thanks, Jason. Unfortunately, Jason, cracked corn won't work because it doesn't hydrate the same, basically,

[50:25] um, the outside, the pericarp is what's stopping the water from going instantly into the corn kernel and overcooking

[50:31] it. And so if you treat it with lye and it's already been broken, it's just, no, it just won't work. It won't be the same. What I would recommend if you can't get field corn is use, even though I said in the post not to use popcorn, popcorn will work, right?

[50:48] It's just not quite as, um, It's just, it's just harder. It's not ideal for it, but it's better than brack, cracked or broken. So I would try to use, I would get popcorn. You'll get the largest kernel ones, not the small kernel variety that you can. And is it the best? No, because it's hard to grind, right? Uh, I would not use the KitchenAid, that thing's gonna gum up. I have one, a grain mill, kitchen eight grain mill. Things gonna gum up, lickety, lickety, lickety split. I would then, you know, if you have to, I would use a food processor. Um, and, you know, and then maybe even border and uh, mortar and pestle some of it to get the texture down. The problem with the food processor is you're going to have to add more water. I have done it. It's a sticky, awful mess, but I have done it. Um, so you can, you can do it. It's just, you know, it's not ideal, but it definitely is possible for experimentation. The people ate the, my, uh, tortillas that I made

[51:43] with, uh, with popcorn uh, and a food processor, and they didn't, you know, they didn't punch me in the face. I didn't also, I didn't have those looks of, me, well, this was good, but me, me, me, me. You know what I'm talking? those looks? Yeah. Anyway, so give it a try. And I'd appreciate anyone from the UK because I've had a couple people maybe have this problem right in with their solutions to finding good ways to do

[52:03] niximalization in the UK. Anyway, come back next week and get another episode of cooking issues.

[52:16] Vicious, fish. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. 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

[52:49] 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 AMP supplies all AMP supermarkets,

[53:12] pathmark, food emporium, walled bounds, and superfresh. 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

[53:23] www.apt.com slash press room. This has been behind the scenes food news with Katie Kiefer. 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, Momofuco Mofar, Imperial No. 9, Myeland, Mexico,

[53:54] Craft, Dizzy's Club, Coca-Cola, the Meatball Shop, and Dose Toros. Providing the soundtrack for the day are Midnight Magic, computer magic, new villager, punches,

[54:03] Ducky, DJ Autobot, and the Snacky Tune DJ, VIP, and general admission tickets are available at citywandery.com. Finger Lepole for City One, we like to thank our sponsors, Heritage Troods USA, New York magazine, Break of Vodka, Sonar, Smile, Guilt City, Subzero, and Wolf.

[54:22] Please come out and join us for a day of fun, food, and dancing. For more information, go to www.f-OTPNYC.com.