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[0:48] Vicious, fish, vodka. Oh, you did. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you from roughly 12 to 1245 every Tuesday here in the studio with Nastasia

[1:07] to Hammer Lopez. We're coming to you from the Heritage Radio Network in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. So listen, Nastasia, what's the telephone number to call in? 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. 2128? Yes. Good. Just so you know, that's kind of a thing. I can't remember the dang telephone number to this place. When it comes to scyogenic glycosides? I'm there for you buddies, but with the telephone number, can't help. Listen, we have a call around the air, so let's go right to it. Hi, Dave. Hey, how you doing? Good. I've got a two-part question. First one, I'm in London. Where should I go for drinks? Well, that's easy. Before you even go any further. That is simple. Anywhere that my friend, Tony Cunnellaro, is involved. You should go immediately for drinks, the one that I go to all the time is 69, excuse me, I biked here

[2:03] at about a 1000 miles an hour, so my throat's a little scratchy. So 69, Colebrook Row. It's in Islington. It's like a 10 minute walk from the Angel tube stop. I can't believe I said tube stop on the air. Uh, and uh, what else did you like when we were there? Nostalgia, where'd you go? Oh, I don't remember. I wasn't with you most the time. Well, that might work because I work quite close to the angels tube stop. And now he said it twice on the air. Right. So what I said there, what point should I get? Anything. Here's the thing about it. Like that, I, 9 times out of 10. Tony's a friend of mine. So when I go, I typically don't pay, which means I don't go anywhere else. So I've had most of my drinks there. That said, I mean, have we been to Hicks? Apologize, man, I have to bike here earlier. It's just, seriously, I was breaking my neck to make it here because I was researching stuff, so I have something caught in my

[3:03] throat. I didn't have time to get it out, so I apologize again. Uh, so Tony is a, it runs a very interesting bar there. He also has a new hotel bar, but I don't know what it is. I thought he has a lab than the Pink Floyd Studios, the old Pink Floyd Studios. Really? I think the drinks also might be interesting. There's new restaurant, um, in, excuse me. Remind me never to do this again. Always give myself 5 minutes before we start to, uh, no matter how late I am to get whatever's in my throat out of my throat. So, Quince, the new restaurant, I think, has some interesting drinks as well. and hicks, but Tony uses high-tech stuff, like rotary evaporators, centrifuge, but you would never know it in his bar, because the bar is like a little tiny, like neighborhood

[3:50] bar, they just happen to serve some of the best drinks in the country. And it's not me saying that. like, constantly, like, one of the best people, but, like, whatever they're making, my trick

[3:59] is I always walk in, again, say, bartender's choice. What do you want to make? And then typically, you know, if you, if you, if you tell them that your game, for whatever they're going to make, typically they will make you something

[4:11] interesting if the, if, you know, if you're like, I really like tasteless vodka drinks,

[4:16] well, then they'll size you up and they'll give you something. I mean, Tony will still give you something good. And all of his people are good, but you know what I'm saying. A bartender's choice is always the best choice. Right, but can I say bartender's choice, preferably with whiskey? Sure, yeah, sure. Yeah, that's perfectly respectable. I mean, look, they're actually one of those great places where they're not going to make you feel bad

[4:34] there, for whatever you drink. They're not they're not snobs that way, even though they're some of the best people in the business. Um, but, yeah, you, I mean, you know, definitely, typically what I'll do is I'll say, uh, you know, your choice. I'm feeling kind of like a brown liquor today or maybe I'll say whiskey or something like that. And they can, they, they have all things there, but they do a lot of really interesting stuff. And they have a piano and certain nights there's tranny bands playing. Even better. All right, so the 2nd part of the question is, what are your feelings on water chestnuts? Ah, interesting. Water chestnuts. Okay, so my wife detests water chestnuts. So do I. Really? I like them. For her, it's a textural thing. And, uh, you know, at one point I said to her, look, uh, maybe

[5:21] to say you don't like canned water chestnuts and you grew up eating canned water chestnuts, so I made them fresh. She's like, no, I hate these too. And I was like, oh, is it similar for you? Is it a textural issue? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't really add anything in taste. I don't like the crispiness of it. I pick them out of every food and I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone thinks it adds anything to a recipe. What do you think, Sashi? I bet you hate them too, Nastasia. I used to like him as a kid. I hate that. Yeah, nostalgia hates most things, though. Yeah, you know, you and my wife are in the same camp. I'd like to, I kind of like, they have a very unique, um, okay, so the texture is crispy in the way that a raw potato is crispy, but without that raw potato

[5:59] flavor. So if you like the texture of a raw potato, but

[6:04] not that raw starchy flavor. Then a water chestnut seems like it's a good bet for you. If you don't like that texture, I think you're going to be in trouble. Would you agree or no? No, I agree. I... I mean, I'm not looking for a raw potato texture either, I guess. Right. And water chestnuts and certain other things that grow in the water like that can have parasitic worms in them. I think it's worms. Maybe it's a bacteria. I forget. So you need to cook your water chestnuts before you before you eat them, if you get them fresh. So don't, you know, eat them raw. Well, you should eat them at all because you don't like them. But here's a, here's a good, um, thing that uh, Nils Norin always used to get uh, water chestnut flour. And he said that for dusting a fish and frying,

[6:47] he loves water chestnut flour. And I think that's a trick he picked up when he was working in China. What are chestnut flowers not so easy to come by here in the US. I don't know about the UK, but it's definitely available. So maybe there is a use for water chestnut for you yet. Well, I'll look into it. And one final thing, Dave. actually Brady. Brady. Oh, this is my cousin Brady. I didn't know you hated it. I didn't know you hated water chestnut water chestnuts. Brady actually. Oh, and they keep showing up in the Thai dishes here. I'm like, why do people do that? It's ruining the dish for me. And I thought I'd ask you. Well, this is interesting that I unrelated, you know, just where family by, you know, by marriage, my wife and Brady and me, actually. But the 2 people in the family, they hate water chest. the only 2 people I know are people who regularly come to my house. When you're coming back to the states. But that's good because Jeff Jen hates them, then that means you will not make them while I'm there. Correct. Go to Tony's bar or I'll kill you and you never invited to my house again. No, I'm going there it after work. So I thought I'd call. All right, cool. Thanks a lot. All right. All right, listen. I'm going to recover my throat, and we can take the 1st commercial break, come back, and I'll answer some email questions. Call in all your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's... Bicycle.

[8:08] I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. Why won't you ride it where I lie? I say, why? I say bite, you say shot. I said, hey, man, Jaws was never my scene, and I don't like Star Wars. I say Royce. Give me a choice. I say, Christ, I don't believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein or Superman. All I wanna do is life. I want to ride my bicycle. I

[8:48] want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bicycle, races are coming always. So forget all your duties on here. And welcome back to cooking issues. I am almost fully recovered. You know, I must have swallowed something when I was riding over here. Just give you an idea of what you're dealing with when you're biking from Manhattan to Brooklyn. I passed by a concrete factory on my way over here and a giant, you know, what are those things called with the big thing in front, the scoops, the bulldozer. A bulldozer dumps an entire bulldozer, like, you know, shovel load of dirty concrete

[9:35] water basically on my bike as I'm biking past them. That's Brooklyn. Anyway, call on your questions too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. We're going to be here for a little while because I got some email questions to answer. All right, by the way, we have this new kind of thing. People just call in with kind of information and shout outs. Have you noticed that recently? We've gotten a lot of people just writing in with some info? Yeah. All right. Well, so here's some info. For those of you who are in the New York area, and don't have a job. or who have a nighttime job. Tom Metcalf says there's a really good movie that you should look at at the moment today. It's a Museum of Modern Art. Giro Dreams of Sushi is basically it's playing at today, I think, August 23rd today, right? Yeah, 4 p.m. at MOMA. And the film is about Jiro Onne, the best Jiro Ono, the best, the best. I mean, I hate the best. But, like, you know, one of the world's most renowned sushi chefs in Japan, in Tokyo. And Chronicles his lifelong complete devotion to becoming ever better at his craft. And Tom believes that I have made some comments that suggest I would admire his work,

[10:41] ethic. seen it. You seen it? Was it good? It was good. Compare it to the Faran Adria movie. Faran Adria was a bit better. Relatable, I guess. Right. Well, so we actually had the filmmakers on a taste of the past episode 60 for those who want to

[10:56] hear. Please go please go listen to that. Now here's the thing. listeners to this show are kind of specialized. They have specialized interests, right? So I went to go see that, what's the name of the front Adrian movie that we did the event for? What it called? Um... It's the movie about Faran Adrian. Anyway. It's uh, so some reviewers have criticized. basically just food porn and how much can you, how long can you sit and watch Faran tasting different pieces of

[11:27] food? This is a valid criticism for someone who's not interested in the process of making

[11:31] food, right? So, uh, I went to go see it, and I thought it was extremely interesting because it gives you an insight into the way

[11:39] that uh, Elbuy and Furan, how they work, how they cook, how their process is. And as a cook, as someone is interested in cooking, to me, that's extremely valuable because Faran is clearly at

[11:54] the very top of his game at the top of the field in what he

[11:58] does. So, it would be extremely interesting, I think, very, very worthwhile. For anyone interested in Japanese cooking techniques, which I am extremely, you know, interested in, and I wish I could go to it today because I would, but

[12:12] unfortunately I can't drop what I'm doing this afternoon and go, I'm sure I'll see it eventually, it's very difficult to get an insight into Japanese cooking techniques

[12:21] because the mode of learning in many high-end Japanese kitchens is one of

[12:28] years of careful observation without much explanation. Let's put it that way. And so really the only way to learn what they're doing. You're never, you know, you're never going to learn what you're doing, right, because you have to sit there for, you know, 2 years, you know, washing the rice before they let you cook it or whatever, whatever the old, you know, the old things

[12:48] are. But, um, in a Japanese, really any cooking demonstration. Don't, who cares what they're saying? Don't pay any attention because 9 times out of ten, they're not telling you what's really going on anyway. Pay attention to their hands. Pay attention to the ingredients they're using. Pay attention to the way their hands move. Uh, and these kinds of things are going to give you a big clue as to what

[13:12] is uh, what is actually going on in the food. So, and this is why videos and live demonstrations from top notch people are so valuable to watch. And so the ability to see in a movie, Someone like this working is invaluable. So I do I do hope to see it. And it can almost be, I mean, it can't be silent because I have to hear what the ingredients are, what's going on, but the explanation and any sort of plot or arc or

[13:40] narrative, I really could care less. Uh, and, and I shouldn't probably say that gets a mean thing to say, but you know what, you know what I'm saying? like, for me, it's going to be valuable either way. Do you think it did, who do you see it with? Mark, we're talking Mark Ladner from Del Posto. Would he find it valuable? Yeah, he did. Yeah, I bet. Mark likes fish, Mark likes to push a fish. Mark used to get in those whole kindai tunas butcher them up and send them back. Anyway, so very valuable for anyone interested in learning something about Japanese cooking. Yeah? Yeah. So thank you, Tom, for writing in that information. Another interesting piece of little tidbit comes from Steve Crandall via the Wall Street Journal. They had an article called Scooped. and here's something I'd never heard of, fracking. Have you heard of fracking before? I mean, other than that, I'm gonna, okay, yes, I have heard of fracking from Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I have seen a new Battlestar Galactica thing. But I hadn't heard of fracking the term, and fracking is basically hydraulic fracturing. So what you do is you're drilling for oil or whatever. You drill a pipe, way the hell down into whatever you're going to do, and then you put a huge pressure on it to fracture the rock under there, and then you pump

[14:46] in, uh, junk, like sand or whatever to allow whatever you're trying to get, oil to filter through that and you

[14:53] get it. It's a way of getting more oil or water or whatever out of it, but a lot of people are pissed off about it because it can, you know, pump poison into the

[15:01] aquifer, stuff like that. You know, anyway. So, I will read the Wall Street Journal thing because it has to do with Guargum, Guargum. Fracking has a new victim, ice cream. Oh, oh, I was just handed by Jack a no frack button. Jack, I didn't realize that we were an anti-fractor. That doesn't represent my opinion. somebody left that here. Oh, so in other words, some of our hosts and our guests are anti-fract folk. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Well, apparently they're frat, this is anti-fract button from the CatskillCitizens.org. So presumably there's some fracking, whole lot of fracking going on up in the Catskills. presumably for water and not for oil. Anyway. Uh, fracking has a new victim, ice cream, hydraulic fracturing, this uh, fracturing, the sometimes controversial oil and gas drilling method, is causing tremors in a small but vital corner of the food industry. This is I'm reading verbatim for the Wall Street Journal. Guargum, produced mainly in India, helps thicken foods ranging from ketchup to ice cream. The problem is it's also mighty useful in fracking fluid. Fracking fluid is the fluid that they pump, pump, pump into the, into these places to actually cause the pressure to fraction them. With the surge in fracking, demand for guargum has rocketed. Having often languished under ¢50 per pound, Guargum has recently changed hands at over $3. Uh, and so this is going to cause problems because they use a lot of guar. Uh, in in ice cream. And the reason they use Guar is because Guar is cheap. The guar is from a seed, and it's very similar to another product called locust bean gum. Locust bean gum is actually, for a lot of applications, better, but because locust bean gum doesn't have a kind of taste. Most guar is kind of crappy tasting. It tastes kind of crap. It has a beanie. a beanie taste, kind of like eating black eyed pee flour, if you've ever done that. I don't know. I don't know why you would. I have many times. Anyway, uh, so, uh, they, you know, TIC gums, the good people from TIC gums make

[16:55] something called flavor free guar, which is awesome. And Guar and Gelan, another hydrocolate is what we use to make the stretchy ice cream that I like so well. But Guar has been cheap. So if Guar prices go up, good for the poor sons of guns that have to sit there and harvest

[17:11] Guar. You know what I mean? Good for them. You know, if we have to pay, like, you know, a nickel more for our, First of all, $3 a pound. Let's put this in perspective, what $3 a pound means for a guar. So you're going to have well under, well under a half, one half of one% of

[17:29] glar in your ice cream. Okay? So we're talking that, uh, you know, a minuscule amount, cost-wise, increase in uh, your ice cream. So if all of a sudden, a bunch of people in the oil industry. And I'm not saying, I'm not pro frac, not pro frat here, but, uh,

[17:48] you know, if some poor sucker in India gets

[17:53] more for their glar seeds as a result of this, God bless

[17:57] them. I'll pay the extra five tenths of a penny for my ice cream. Does this make any sense, Nasasha? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. All right. All right. Guar, yeah, I like Guar. I mean, it's interesting. Our good friend Paul Adams from Popular Science. He writes mainly for their online, but I think he's going to be doing something in the magazine as well. Uh, he did a nice write-up of the Glenn Livett uh, experiment I did in New Orleans where I was

[18:22] separate, separating Glenn Livit Scotch into uh, Oak and Spirits, and, yeah, you can read about it on popscience.com. Anyway, he writes in that popular science is doing some challenges and maybe some of our readers are interested. So the idea is, is that some knucklehead, and the website is

[18:38] innocentive.com, innocentive, C-E-N-T, like innovation, incentive, innocentive.com. So they basically offer an award. And the idea is, is that any knucklehead who wants to can write in, and, you know, propose a solution to the problems. And if you win, you get either $10,000 or a chunk of that

[18:59] $10,000. And the guaranteed minimum, the guaranteed minimum, like maximum, how am I going to put this? So the, the, there will be someone who gets at least $5,000. They might get the full 10,000 and they are going to give $10,000 away. Makes sense now? All right. So this one here is, and this one, by the way, is the one he sent us. Ari has 373 people who have signed up with solutions. Most of them I'm sure suck. Come on. Oh, come on, most things in the world are bad, so why wouldn't most of the solutions to this problem be bad? The problem is, over time, low fat batter for baked product sticks to the baking surface of aluminum baking pans. No duh. Right? I didn't mean it that way. The stuck batter burns and must be removed from the baking service. The seeker, that's the company here, is looking for creative ideas for reducing either the adhesion of battery to the baking

[19:49] service or for improving the speed and efficiency of the cleaning process, and more information is available from their challenge description. And so basically, they want you to come up with a new release agent or a non-stick baking service or a new way of cleaning, but you only have a couple more days to solve that problem.

[20:04] Presumably they're going to have more of these. I have a solution. Add some freaking fat to the batter. You know what I mean? Add some freaking fat. What is the problem with having a little fat? Here's the thing, right? I'm not going to answer the question. What? You're gonna help them out. No, they're not going they're not going to add fat to it because they want to make a low fat product and therein lies their

[20:22] problem. Therein lies the problem. Look, wires a waffle batter different from a pancake batter? Hint. It has more fat in it so that you can get it off of the waffle iron. right? When you have fat in these things, right? Typically, if you're a normal human being and you're not paying attention to what's going on, you eat slightly less of

[20:42] it and you're slightly more satisfied because there's more fat in it and you get more seated. The idea that you, I mean, like, you know what I'm saying? I'm not saying like have your baked goods swimming in Greece like a Popeye's biscuit, which are also delicious, even though you don't like Popeye's biscuits? I don't like biscuits. You don't like biscuits? Jack, help me out here. You don't like biscuits? People, people. This is what I'm dealing with. The 1st person I've ever heard say that they don't like biscuits. Yeah, you know what else, Jack? Like, this is very interesting. She'll like later on, she won't say it on the air, but she'll be like, it's because I'm so discriminating. What? Do you say things like, I don't like peanuts because I have a more discriminating palate? No, it's not that I can't discriminate a peanut. It's that they're delicious. Biscuits are delicious. Okay, we need to talk about this for a minute. Like, even if even if I can't answer all the questions, what is it you don't like about a biscuit? I don't like how dry and flaky they. I... Well, why don't you put butter on the biscuit? No, I still I just, I really don't like biscuits. I like bread. I also like bread. I don't like biscuits. I see, here's another thing. like this pack. It's nothing like hardtack. Hardtack is a form of biscuit similar to a beaten biscuit, which is nowhere near like the standard biscuit that we eat. First of all, there are fluffy biscuits and there are flaky biscuits. And a huge range in between, depending on the hydration ratio and how they're mixed and how they're formed. Okay. So let's just start there. And then, like, this is a kind of a classic thing that I don't understand. And so, like, you know, if anyone ever, you know, tries to analyze, like,

[22:20] the relate, the working relationship here, here's what I don't get. I don't like biscuits because I like bread. What she leaves off is like an implicit instead. Like, I like bread instead of biscuits. I can have in a single meal, I would consume several slices of bread. And then Jor I handed a biscuit. I would also consume several biscuits. Jack, back me up on this. I uh, he doesn't want to get in. He doesn't want to get into it. anyway, don't like biscuits. Don't like biscuits. I love biscuits. Yeah, biscuits are good. I like a flaky biscuit. especially the biscuits at Roberta's. They are good. Seriously, that's not even promotion. biscuits. I can't remember. Do they do a flaky or a... We'll have to give you guys. We'll get YouTube biscuits. Yeah, please. That'd be great. And we'll talk about them next time. Anyway, my saying is just add a little bit of fat to your baked goods and cook it a little bit less. Whether it's a waffle or some sort of, you know, you're not going to cook biscuit in an iron, obviously. Like maybe it's cornbread or something and they're trying to reduce the amount of fat and cornbread? Absurd. Absurd. Absurd. Okay. Uh, not really. Look, I'm sure there's many people who think it's a good idea to reduce the fat in their baked goods. I just happen to think they're wrong. They are wrong. Just eat less. Just eat less. Right. Just eat less and be more satisfied with a better product. Right? Although apparently this is marketing that hasn't worked. People just eat, then they're like, oh, it's okay to eat high fat, so they just eat more of it. By the way, we spoke to a person, uh, this last week named Pat Brown, and uh, Pat Brown is a

[23:55] doctor, and it is, uh, has a company out in, um, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he's interested in making, uh, basically not meat analogs, but things that someone would choose over

[24:10] meat. In other words, that they, they, they are a viable main source of protein that are

[24:17] built, not just as a protein that, you know, has crap sprayed on it that kind of resembles meat, but

[24:24] it actually engineered from the ground up to be delicious, such that someone who is a meat

[24:29] eater would choose it based on its taste. And it's inherent low cost over meat. What do you think? Okay. Anyway, next time I'm out in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm going to visit it. But he's the only person I've spoken to who wants to do plant-based, and he has kind of an interesting philosophy. He wants to put all meat and dairy farmers,

[24:53] literally, he'll say this. He wants to put them out of business. He's like, he's like, you know, to make an omelette, you got to crack a few eggs. The world's going to be around for a long time and these guys are hurting the planet. So even if it hurts them right now, you know, you know, you can't you can't help out someone now at the expense of killing your grandkids, which is basically...

[25:11] Yes, he's vegetarian. But he doesn't necessarily want, he doesn't want to make, he doesn't want to beat you over the head and have you become a vegetarian because he's a vegetarian.

[25:19] He wants you to buy this plant-based food because it's so freaking delicious and so cheap that it's what you want to

[25:27] do. See what I'm saying? So it's an interesting reversal, and it seems like an interesting guy. I can't wait to go out there and meet him. Okay. Have a question in from Priscilla Andrews regarding transglutaminates noodles. And I'm going to have to apologize in advance, Priscilla, I don't have the answer for you right now, but the question is, what is the starting ratio

[25:47] and using meat glue and gelatin to glue fruits and vegetables together, any help is appreciated? Okay, so what we're talking about here is using transglutaminase, meat glue, which is an enzyme that bonds proteins together,

[26:01] to make gelatin into something that won't melt when it's reheated.

[26:08] So this is a technique that was developed by my brother-in-law, Wiley

[26:12] Dufrayne, of WD 50 restaurant, where what you do is, you take gelatin, right? normally gelatin. When you heat it, it melts, and when it cools down again, it turns back into a gel. If you take transglutaminase and mix it in with the gelatin. The gelatin cross links, and now it no longer melts again. So it sets and never again will it melt. And so Wiley uses this technique to, basically, uh, make noodles out of anything. So quinoa, peas, uh, peanut butter, things that you can't normally glue together, uh, or can't normally make a sheet or a noodle out of. He can make one out of that can be fried, toss like a pasta, anything. So basically, the trick with it is, is, and I would start with about one% trans,

[27:04] I'm making this up because I don't have the recipe in front of me and Herve Malivare, who runs the, who runs the tech stuff when I'm not at the, at the French

[27:11] culinary. He has the recipe because Wiley came and demoed it once and I just keep them forgetting to write it down. But I would bet it's somewhere about one% transgutaminates, not Activa RM, which is meat glue plus

[27:24] casing, milk protein, but Activa TI, which is just the meat glue.

[27:29] And the reason is, is because you want gelatin to link to other gelatin. If gelatin links to a casing molecule, that doesn't increase the gel strength, okay? And also, if you're gluing together a veg or something that has a lot of protein in it,

[27:46] right, like peanut butter or something, you don't want the gelatin bonding to the protein from your product either.

[27:52] So, uh, what you what you want to do, and, uh, John McGee, Harold's son, who's one of the TAs in the lecture series up at Harvard, the food lecture series, which I'm going to be doing with

[28:04] Harold, uh, on September, what? 6 and 8th, and there's a public lecture for those as well, right? Yeah, I think there's a public lecture in the evening after the students go there. So his son did like a couple days stage with Wiley to figure out this problem of what's the best way to do it.

[28:19] And, of course, I forgot. But basically what you do is, is you make a paste, you dehydrate it to get a lot of the water out. You don't want it to be too watery. Then you make a gel slurry and use however much gelatin you would normally use to set what you're doing. I think that's a good starting point or maybe a little more. Well, it's warm, but not hot. gel, the gelatin. Mix in transgutaminates Activa TI, right? Let it sit for several minutes to start cross-linking, you know, while it's warm. And then whisk that together with your product, sheet it

[28:51] out and let it sit overnight in the fridge, at which point it should be set. I wish I had a better information for the starting ratios. All right, so we're going to take one more commercial break and come back and answer some questions. Call in your questions, two. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. That's a pretty good Dave impression. Thank you

[29:34] We had your leaving That's okay.

[29:43] I thought a little wild time had just begun. I guess you kind of scared yourself. You turn and run. But if you had a change of heart. Ricky don't lose that number. You don't wanna call nobody out. Send it off in a letter to yourself. Ricky don't lose that number. It's the only one you want. Uh, Jack and Nastasia making fun of me for not being able to remember the dang number of the radio station and furthermore making fun of me for the early one, the

[30:43] Aranto ride my bicycle for my constant bike problems here in the city. Thanks, guys. Thanks. appreciate the support. Yeah. All right. Caller. You were on the air. Hi, Dave. I have a question about gum Arabic and simple syrups. I'm in the New York area and I'm looking to pick some up. And also, I'd like to just know how to add it to simple syrup, like a just, you know, one cup water, one cup

[31:06] sugar, how much to put in? Okay. So, it's interesting. We're going to pick it up in, if you want, if you're in the New York, if New York City, I believe uh, Kalustians uh, on Lexington in the 20s has it, um, if they don't have it, there's a place called dual specialty shop down in uh, where is it, 1st

[31:26] Avenue Avenue A, down near Death and Co, the bar. That's how I remember where it is. It's close to Death and Co. and it's downstairs, they might have it. If not, there's plenty of mail order supplies for gum Arabic, but one of those 2 places would be the 1st places that I would go in the city to

[31:41] get them. Get it Now, um, gum Arabic is very interesting because, uh, as a hydrocolloid, and you know, hydrocolloids for those of you that don't know what the heck I'm talking about, or kind of these new group of thickeners, uh, what's interesting about it is most hydrocolloids are uh,

[31:57] long uh, linear chain molecules with a small number of backbones on it, right?

[32:02] A small number of little side units, rather. Um, The gum Arabic is the only normal

[32:09] one other than uh, a millopectin, which is the big bald starch molecule. that is ball shaped, right? And so what that means for gum Arabic is that you can have very high percentage gum Arabic solutions that aren't too

[32:25] thick, right? So you can put a fairly high percentage of gum

[32:30] Arabic into your solutions and still have them be portable fluid, right? The other cool thing about gum Arabic. Is gum Arabic has in it a protein, that is basically, it comes with the gum, and originally was considered an impurity. But when you remove the gum the protein from the gum Arabic. The gum Arabic doesn't work anymore, uh, to do what you want it to do because gum Arabic isn't just a thickener, although it is a bodying agent,

[32:57] right? And when you add a lot of it, it can add a lot of body viscosity to your syrup. It's also an emulsifier, so you can get flavors into things using it and it's pretty cool because unlike other emulsifiers, when it's diluted, it doesn't break. And that's why it used to be made for, it used to be used to, as an emulsifier for soda syrups. Now they have other things that are, you know, not necessarily dependent upon the

[33:21] Sudan for their sourcing. But the, and are cheaper, but that was one of its original uses. So it could probably also stabilize ahead in a shake and drink or stabilize bubbles in a shake and drink. So it's very interesting. I don't happen to have any of the ratios in my head. But what I would do is put the gum Arabic into the water first. It should dissolve, I believe, at room temperature, but you can heat it to speed it.

[33:50] It's not going to hurt it at all, right? I would try to powder the gum Arabic as much as you can beforehand to speed the dissolution of it. And then after that, you know, you could heat it, add the sugar to it, make, I would definitely do it that way, not the other way around. I would add the gum Arabic first, and then add the sugar afterwards. And you can add you can add a fairly large amount, but I would look into like any one, you know, all the old references have

[34:15] it. I think maybe the imbibe, the old, you know, the Dave Wondridge, the first, you know, the imbibe book. I think maybe has a couple recipes before, but that one's easy to Google. I just don't have it in my head. Alright, thanks, Dave. No problem. good luck with it Alright, thank you. Bye. All right. So, I see what we're going to go into now. Okay, we have a question from E. Papineau just wrote in. I want to know about smoking tomatoes. Well, I've never smoked a tomato. Yeah. Have you ever had a smoked tomato? I've had smoked tomato things. Yeah, no. I've never smoked a tomato. But in general, when you're smoking something. The rule is, is that, I mean, I don't know where you're going to pick up color or not, but you're going to want to get, it's somewhat dry and tacky, not overly wet. You're obviously going to want to peel the tomatoes, uh, or at very least kind of split, but I would peel them and semi-desiccate them, like partially dry them first. Then after they're partially dry, then I would smoke them and then finish the drying out. I mean, I wouldn't, you know, tomato, when you're smoking something, smoking has certain kind of preservative effects and bacteria static effects and things like that, but really with a

[35:23] tomato. It's just, it's got a huge water content. And so to preserve it, you're really going to want to just reduce that water content. And so that's going to be the main preservation technique. If you want the smoke flavor to pick up, you don't want it too heavy or to become acrid, I would just make sure that they're mostly, you know, maybe

[35:39] uh, two-thirds to three-quarters dry, then smoke them until they pick up the flavor that you want and then continue your dehydration

[35:47] uh, at a low temperature uh, so you don't alter the flavor too much from that point out. That seems like good advice, right? Yes. The rare piece of good advice. Okay, Derek Bodkin. Like that name. Bodkin? I can like that. Derek Bodkin writes in about rice flour. You know, I have botkins in my family. Really? Yes. Anyway, Derek Vodkin writes in on rice flour. Hi everyone. Another quick question. I've got a bunch of rice flour. What sort of cool things can I do with it? Since it lacks gluten, right? I'd imagine baking with it would be tricky. How about a rue? All right. Well, interesting you should say. There's no such thing as just rice flour, right? I mean, there is. It's labeled that way. But basically rice flour breaks down into 2 separate kinds of things. There's glutenous rice flour, a.k.a. sweet rice flour, a.k.a. waxy rice flour, a.k.a. sticky rice flour, right? And that's rice flour that's made from what they call glutenous rice. And what glutenous rice is, it has no gluten, but it's very high, very low in amylose, the long chain starch molecules, I told

[36:56] you before, and extremely high, like 100% a millopectin. And what those are, what that kind of flower is great for is making mochi. And mochi, you know, you don't have to make it into flour. I can make mochi from just from sticky rice, which is kind of the cool way to do it, right? And, you know, the really cool way to do is to get sumo wrestler dudes and loincloths beating it with mallets after you cook it. That's a real cool way to make moji. But most of us are just going to buy glutenous rice flour or mochi flour they sell. If you really want the high grade stuff, buy stuff called mochi flour. And you mix it, and the cool thing is, is it's got this dense flavor, but you can grill it or fry it, and it puffs up like a lunatic. Amilopectin is fantastic at puffing. Whether or not it's a, you know, semi-dried, and then it puffs like a puff snack or whether or not it's just like in a donut form. If you ever had a mochi donut, like Japanese mochis donut. Great. anyway. So that's one form of rice flour. And then the other one is, you know, rice flour that has a certain amount of, um, uh, amylose in it. Now, and that's what you use for most other kind of cooking applications.

[38:01] So in terms of thickening for making a roux, right? So Ru, we typically think of with wheat flour. Now, wheat flour is kind of the weakest of the flowers in terms of thickening. Rice is rice flour is going to thicken a little bit more than wheat flour, corn a little bit more than rice, arrowroot, a little bit more than corn, and potato the most, starch.

[38:20] The problem with something like potato starch. And the reason we don't use it more often is even though it makes things super thick, as you cook it, it breaks down very quickly,

[38:27] right? Cornstarch also has problems because it gets thick, really real fast and it's going to stay thick, but when it cools down, it sets up a lot harder than when it was hot, whereas wheat starch is a little less finicky that way than corn.

[38:39] But rice is kind of in between the corn and the wheat, and we'll work fine for a roux, especially if you want to do something that's gluten free, if that's interested, interesting to you. It should work just fine. It's also used a lot in deep frying as either a portion of your

[38:58] batter or as a dusting beforehand. The reason it's used is because it doesn't have any gluten. It makes things very crispy without making them hard, right? Because it doesn't have the kind of the protein that forms together you get from a wheat flour. So adding a certain amount of white rice, you know, neutral white rice

[39:15] flour to a batter recipe is going to increase the crispy

[39:20] crunchiness, but not the hardness of the batter. So Heston Blumenthal uses it in his fish and chips recipe. A lot of Thai recipes have it. And you can make, actually, almost like puffed crispy snacks just by making a rice batter and frying it. And it's good as a garnish. I mean I wouldn't necessarily eat it on its own. In bread baking, you can add a certain amount of bread to round out the wheat flour and reduce the amount of wheat in there slightly, although I don't really see the point in

[39:48] that. But it is used as a dusting for almost like an anti-stick, along with flour in the same way that cornmeal is used for. So it can be used that way. Another interesting thing you might want to look at is something that I used to make like a long time ago. When I was rating my mom's cookbooks, uh, one of the 1st cookbooks I rated, I started making bread uh, in college in a, uh, they

[40:11] used, uh, General Electric or Westinghouse, I forget, used to sell turkey ovens, and they're basically like large crock pots that you cook turkeys in for

[40:18] Thanksgiving. And in the 50s and 60s, these were used because you wanted to be able to use your oven for something else and cook your turkey on your countertop. And it kind of fell out of popularity probably because they probably don't make a good turkey. I don't know. I never cooked a turkey one, but I picked one up for about 2 bucks at a thrift shop when I was in college and used it to bake bread in my dorm room. And one of the 1st books I stole from my mom was her 1977 copy of the Sunset

[40:43] bread baking book. And which at the time, I thought was a pretty good book. And they had something in it called Dutch Crunch, which is a bread coating, bread treat, crust treatment that I've never seen really around, but I'm sure people still make it, but it's really cool and it's a rice flour trick.

[40:59] So here's what you do. You take, and I'm sorry it's in tablespoons, but I just wrote it down this morning from the book. one. 5 tablespoons sugar. I still kept the book. I stole it, you know, 20 change years ago, more than 20 years ago and I still have it. Anyway, uh, one. 5 tablespoons sugar, 4 packs of yeast. right? Which is a lot. Pay attention at 4 packs. Half teaspoons salt, 3 quarters cup rice flour, 2 teaspoons of oil, and basically a half to

[41:26] 2 thirds cup warm water. Let it stir it, let it rise for 30 minutes, and you paint it on your bread before you bake it, and it gets

[41:31] this, like, intensely thick, crunchy, like, funny look in, but delicious

[41:36] crust, crust called Dutch crunch. So try that out. Derek, and tell me how it works. All right. So, have an interesting, and this is one of the reasons I was late because this is what I was researching and time just ran away from

[41:50] me. Hastings from the underground bar, which is a portion of the underground food collective, writes in about cherry pits. We're processing what's essentially a palette's worth of cherries at our prep kitchen right now, and I'm sitting on an insane quantity of cherry pits. We've made delicious demonstration batches of cherry pit amaretto with brandy and a relatively high concentration of cherry pits, but I'm generally aware of the risks associated with the pits of stone

[42:14] fruit, and haven't been able to find a concrete source that conclusively outlines how they can be manipulated or processed to eliminate that risk prior to infusion.

[42:22] Varying sources say roasting or blanching the pits takes care of the problem. I assume, if a method works for one variety of stone pits, it would be applicable to the others as well. Could I weigh in on this? Earlier this week, Hastings emailed Darcy O'Neill to ask the same

[42:36] question because Darcy had a recipe for infused maraschino liqueur that involved the pits of the

[42:40] maraschino cherry. They're not really whatever the cherries are called. Anyway, the cherry, cherry pits. It's an aside in a larger post on preserving cocktail cherries. The problem is the amaretto that Hastings is making and some of the other applications they've been toying with involve pit concentrations that are 20 to 100 times greater than the recipe Darcy referenced.

[43:00] Okay, Darcy O'Neill, for those of you not, uh, who don't know cocktail blogs, uh, is one of the great, uh, like scientific technical, uh, drink and cocktail

[43:10] writers wrote a book called uh, Fix the Pumps, which is extremely influential over the last year and a

[43:16] half uh, or 2 years. I forget how long ago it came out, basically reviving old soda traditions. And in fact, is selling products that have been kind of extinct for a while, including lactart, which is, you know, a lactic acid-based acidifier for use in

[43:34] sodas and acid phosphates, which is phosphoric acid-based soda acidifiers.

[43:41] So he's selling these things, and that book, extremely, extremely influential in the comeback of interesting sodas.

[43:49] I mean, people have been working on interesting sodas for a while, but kind of without a lot of basis, and he's providing a lot of basis and contextualizing of the old recipes for kind of modern people.

[43:59] So under read by JQ public, but very influential among the kind of cocktail and drink thinking crowd, fix the pumps.

[44:08] anyway. So Darcy wrote back to Ellen, by the way, in case you don't know what's going on, stone fruits contain 2 different things, many different things, but 2 things that people are worried about,

[44:19] amygdalene, which basically breaks down into cyanide, which is why, and that's why, you know, cyanide smells like burnt

[44:25] almonds. don't want too much. Anyway, amygdalin and lesser quantity is something called prunisin, which is, you know, also breaks down into cyanide. So, uh, Darcy wrote back to Hastings. The problem with the Megalan and the Stone and Pitts, uh, is that the form in there, which is what's called a glycoside, which is a sugar, bound to

[44:42] the cyanide, right? It's only released when it encounters specific digestive enzymes, which are found in our digestive systems.

[44:49] And Darcy's had some conversations with sugar syrup companies that make syrups from fruit stones and say that there aren't any, there isn't any cyanide in their product. And the problem with that method, Dorothy says, Darcy

[45:01] says is that they're actually looking for cyanide and not for the amygalen, which is what's going to get you when you do it. Buddy says that small amounts of pits aren't going to hurt you, but Hastings is pointing out, what the hell? I'm using 20 to 100 times what you use. Am I going to die or not? Well, it's a very interesting question, Hastings. I don't know if you're gonna die. Here's what happens. When you eat a whole bunch of products with amygdalin in it, like apricot

[45:24] kernels or the classic one or pits from cherries, et cetera. The amygdalin in it breaks down and forms cyanide, you know, cyanide,

[45:32] HCN, you know, hydrocyanic acid or whatever, and benzaldehyde. Benzaldehyde is what gives you the taste that you want, right? And it's done via enzymatic reaction. Now, there is an enzyme in the pit. So what you want to do. The way they get rid of this is you grind, you don't roast it. Roasting, I've, you know, some people say roasting gets rid of, gets rid of it. Roasting is going to get rid of any free cyanide in the pit, but isn't going to degrade the

[45:58] amygdalen at all. So as soon as you eat it, you're still going to have it. What I would do, and what everyone he does, commercially, they break it, they grind up the seeds roughly, then they soak them in water for a period of one to 3 days.

[46:12] What's happening there is cyanide,

[46:16] free, the free cyanide things are very soluble in water, whereas the benzaldehyde, which is the aroma and the flavor you want is not.

[46:23] Furthermore, enzyme, it's soluble, but not that much. Enzymes are in the pit. And when you break it up, those enzymes are going to go to work on the amygdalin and break it down into

[46:35] the free cyanide stuff and the stuff with the flavor, the benzaldehyde. So what you then do is you soak it for a couple of days, then you drain it and you cook it. And when you cook it, and you free cyanide is extremely volatile and will boil off because the cyanide, the stuff that's going to kill

[46:51] you boils off at like 78 Fahrenheit. You know, obviously leave the lid off the pan and don't breathe in the vapors. And then what's left over should be fairly amygdalin free and fairly cyanide free. That said, I can't give you any numbers that are going to be 100% safe. It's kind of, it's a tough thing. I can't I can't really give you a number and say that you won't die, but that is the way things

[47:14] are things are reduced. You can further reduce the amount of amygalena stuff through fermentation, but you have to get a specific strain of yeast, the one that does tempeh

[47:24] works or specific bacteria, specific funguses. They were like tempeh fermentation works and certain other things, but don't count on it. Um, you know, so what do you think, man? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I saw another article while I was researching this called why are so many plants cyanogenic? Interesting question, right? And I didn't know so many were, but it turns out that a disproportionate number of our food plants have these glycosides, these sugar bound with cyanide, and other

[47:54] stuff, in them. And the theory of this paper, why are so many plants styogenic, is that these plants don't get eaten by animals as

[48:05] much, but humans are good at figuring out how to not get poisoned by them.

[48:09] And so we tend to eat them. And that's why a disproportionate number of these products are eaten by people. And some large number percentage have certain stuff in them. Among them, wheat and maize have a small amount, I guess, in a sprouts, to stop the sprouts from getting eaten. But sorghum, the sprouts, the seeds are fine, but sprouts have huge amounts of it in it. And so sorghum sprouts are poisonous unless you cook the hell out of them. And I always knew sprouts were poisonous. right? It just further confirmation that sprouts. She is a poison, right? Anyway. So I hope this has been somewhat useful. And here's what we're gonna round out with today. John Larry writes in and says, my name is John Larry. I would like to know if you have an old pressure cooker. My God, do I have old pressure cookers, right? Nastasia? Yeah, we do. Available that I'm looking for less expensive ones than the ones that I have. Could you let me know the prices for old pressure cookers, and I'd be happy to pray by credit card. Well, John, pay my credit card. Yeah, John. I thought that was spam. It's not spam. No one writes a letter asking for a used pressure cooker. spam. It was the it was the words he used that made me think. Pressure cooker or credit card? Which was, anyways, John. Uh, fellow person with 2 last names like myself. 21st names, rather. Why? Because your mom couldn't afford. My mom couldn't afford a last name, so I got 21st ones. Boom. Anyway, so, well, we are not in the business of selling used pressure cookers. I do agree that pressure cookers cost quite a bit of money. Uh, you know, uh, the pressure cooker that I use every day costs well over 200 bucks.

[49:48] You can get a decent pressure cooker or figure workarounds for pressure cookers. I'm not going to tell you to modify a pressure cooker like I did on the blog last week. Uh, but, uh, you know, you can get one for under $100. I wouldn't recommend buying a used pressure cooker because the seals on it are probably about to go

[50:03] anyway and you're going to have to buy a new seal, could be clogged up. It's just a world of headache. Go out there and research. one of the cheaper pressure cookers. I'm not going to, you know, not going to push any brands online. But, yeah. imagine, imagine if we were, like, if we ever had a rummage sale, it would be crazy, right? Oh, yeah. Anyways, but. A rummage sale? A rummage sale? You don't want to rummage through my stuff. Anyways, today, tomorrow, I'm flying out to Columbia. We're going to be doing a demo in Colombia, the country,

[50:34] and in Bogota, who's I can't pronounce properly, but I'm going to be doing a variation on milk soup on Colombian milk soup,

[50:42] which should be interesting. Fly back for one day just to do this radio show. That's a lie. But I'm here though, right? you Yeah, I'm here. I do that. And then I fly out and then the next Tuesday I'll be in Harvard. So I'm going to try 2 weeks from now to do it live from Harvard with McGee. It's not during the class time, is it, a show? don't think so. I think I'm going to be away too. So I might be able to do it. Anyway, so I will have been, uh, next time I speak to you people, I will have been to South America for the very 1st

[51:08] time, cooking issues.

[51:16] Fishes, fish, vodka. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to meet my baby. The following is a message from NoFA NY. Do you dig local food, love organic farmers? Do you crave to be part of a growing movement of consumers concerned with the state of our nation's food

[51:48] system, then sign up today to take the NOFA NY's local floor challenge this September. Join 5000 other New York local oars that are hungry, active, and ready to change our food system. Learn more at www.nylocavorechallenge.com.