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[1:02] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookies. She's coming to you live from Bogota, Columbia, calling all

[1:11] your questions to the studio of Brooklyn at 718-497-2128. That's

[1:15] 718-497-2128. Stash and Hammer Lopez is sitting at the studio in Brooklyn. How you doing, Nastasha? Good, how are you doing? Yeah, all right. Uh, I was supposed to be doing cookie shoes today from Brooklyn, but uh, due to the hurricane, which Nastasia apparently wasn't much of a big thing in our area

[1:32] anyway. My flight was canceled and here I am in Bogota. Right. Nothing happened down there, right? Nothing, you have a caller. I know you want to take them. Oh, and call her. You on the air. Hey, Dave, how are you doing? Kevin from Virginia Beach. Hey, I got a question about, um, I got some calcium hydroxide, flake lime, and I was thinking about, um, different ways to use it since I got a lot of it, and I was thinking maybe you could use it for spherification, but I'm concerned about interacting with sodium alginate, and producing

[2:00] lie. And if that would be a problem. I was wondering if you have any experience with that? Uh, well, let me think here. No, I don't think it'll do that because um, No, I don't think it'll do that because, you know, you, uh, you add salt all this, all all the time to, uh, uh,

[2:15] you know, you add salt all the time to, uh, do things that have calcium hydroxide in

[2:20] the minute. I mean, yeah, calcium hydroxide, it's not a problem. So, you know, in order to form the lie, you need to, you need to start with sodium and then have

[2:28] the uh hydroxide already attached to it and then put it in. starting with calcium hydroxide, which is much weaker, so it's not, it's not going to be, not going to be an issue. Think about it this way, if you had, um, pure lie, and pure uh, hydrochloric acid, right? You don't retain the powers of those 2 things. You just end up with salt and water. You know what I mean? Right, yeah. Yeah, so you think it would taste okay? Uh, okay, so those are 2 separate questions. Uh, you know, look, it, it, look. It can't taste worse than calcium uh calcium chloride does. Calcium chloride's horrible, but I think the real problem with it is calcium hydroxide has

[3:10] a, a very low solubility. So I don't think that you would necessarily get enough calcium in there to have it set properly. I mean, it's interesting. tried it. Um, you, you know, calcium hydroxide, um, saturates very quickly. So typically you add, if you're going to make something like a soaking solution for, uh,

[3:29] bananas like Thai style, you can like just mix it with, uh, you know, water, let it settle out to the bottom, pour the stuff off

[3:36] off the top, and that's basically saturated, uh, child seam hydroxide. Yeah, that's for the water. What, and it tastes like, it tastes like uh, cement to me. Um, I don't know whether that will set alternate or not. Um, you know, you just have to see, you just have to drop a cup, it'd be easy to test. You have to drop a couple of pearls into it and see whether it sets it. Um, but, you know, you could try it, be interesting. Let us know, let us know what happens. I mean, we use it for, uh, obviously for niximalizing corn. It's primary thing we use it for, uh, if you were here in Colombia, you could chew it with coca leaves to release

[4:13] the, uh, alkaloids, although I'm not necessarily advocating that. Um, you can use it to harden vegetables. Uh, you can use it to uh, well, keep things uh, firm while preserving the color when you're cooking them. It's really good stuff, you know? Yep. Okay, awesome. I'll give it a Sean. you know. All right thanks a lot. All right, thank you. So, Columbia, is Columbia has some amazing fruits, nastasia. I figured you were gonna say that. Yeah, amazing fruits. Check, one of the reasons I wanted to come down here was to taste all the fruits, and uh, we went out partying after one of the events with uh, the ambassador to Columbia from the United States, and uh, I was like, hey, come on, you know, uh, any

[5:02] we could slip some of those fruits in the bag, you know? No, he's like, no way, there's no way. There's no way we can get the fruits uh up in uh up in New York and shipped into the United States and it's a shame. They got the, one of the main fruits over here that they got, that I really like, it's called

[5:18] uh, Lulu, and it, it's hard to describe these damn things, but let me put it this way. If you were going to come open a cocktail bar down here in Bogota. Uh, you could do some pretty serious drinks. This Lulo drink, like has some natural hydrocollard drinks. I know, and it forms a, it forms a head, almost like you were shaking with an egg white. Pretty little stuff, pretty little stuff. Uh, if we have time later, I'll just go down some of the crazier uh, fruits that we had, uh, so, let us get to some email questions. Boop, boop, boop. Okay. Andrew writes in and he says Andrew Switzer. Dear Dave, as a former career barista, uh, espresso, this is questions about espresso. A career obrissa. I'm wondering if you can share more info on your home espresso setup. I know some of the various requirements to have a professional home machine. I need to hope with the practical how-to and setup. Also, if it seems to be too big a job for my apartment, do you have any advice for achieving foaming milk for coffee lattes at home, my wish is a

[6:17] stovetop steaming device capable of achieving microphone at 140 with a traditional metal steam wand, thanks a buck. All right. Andrew, here's the deal. I've had uh, in my life, 2 professional espresso machines, uh, and 2 different weird kind of

[6:34] home, uh, machines. The professional machine is the way to go. If you are independently wealthy, then, and you have a lot of space, then, uh,

[6:43] purchase, like, a 2 group, uh, espresso machine, uh, and install it in your

[6:49] house. Here are the problems. Uh, 2 group espresso machine and I bought one used at an auction. Uh, you know, I went into, it was a, uh, this place was shut down as a result of, uh, drug activity in, um, in, you know, like in the upper 100s, in

[7:02] Manhattan on Broadway, it was a restaurant, and they locked the restaurant shut, and, uh, when they reopened it, a year later, all the food was rotting, and so no one else wanted to be in that auction but me.

[7:12] I was the only person who was willing to stomach the stench of this place to go in and purchase equipment. So I got a, um, a fairly, you know, nice 2 group

[7:22] ranchillio espresso machine, uh, for almost nothing. Of course, I then had to disassemble it and boil all the parts to get out all the nasty stuff that had accumulated

[7:32] and like animals, made their house, whatever, anyway. So I got it to work. Uh, problem with these larger machines is the larger machines, uh, take a lot of electricity. So that one required like a

[7:42] big, uh, 220 circuit. Um, the good news is, is, well, that makes better espresso than the equivalent one group machine, and the reason is, is that in traditional espresso machines, they use the, the mass of the

[7:55] equipment to provide um, the stability, the temperature stability, and also the ability to have like huge amounts of steam on

[8:02] demand. So, that machine, even, you know, made better espresso, than a single group

[8:08] professional machine that I have now, which is a lot of San Marco. The problem is, I didn't have 220. I wasn't able to install it. So if you don't have 220 or if you don't have a lot of electricity, you can get a commercial, one group machine

[8:20] that will run off of 110. And if you have a lot of money, you can buy very temperature stable one group

[8:25] machines, uh that run off of 110, uh, but they're very expensive. Uh, the professional ones, like the dual boiler or any of these ones have very accurate temperature control. Very expensive. So you have to make a choice of how much electricity you're going to have. Secondly, you have to make sure that the coffee machine can live near a sink. Uh, so what you do is, is you put it near a sink, um, you put a, uh, I'll go under where, where your sink line is, the line in, go to your cold

[8:50] water tap, install a filter on your cold water, you know, unscrew it, put in a T, where

[8:55] the uh, water comes in, install uh, another branch off of that, which is very simple. This is all Home Depot, like, you know, one hour problems, no big deal. Install a water filter on it. Make sure you put a shut off valve beforehand so you can change the water filter without everything going wrong. You then under the sink there, place the pump for your espresso machine, if you have an external

[9:16] pump and most pro machines have an external pump, you put it down there. And then you run, um, do you run the power wire to the, uh, to the pump and the, uh, drain and the, um, sorry, the, uh, the input line

[9:29] in, right up, and then what's really good is to drill an extra large hole. Oh, by the way, you're doing a hole in your counter. Uh, dimension this, you're filling a hole in your counter, uh, behind the espresso

[9:39] machine that can make it into uh, underneath your sink. Then you want to install a drain hose, which they're not very big. Uh, and then tap that into, um, you know, the equivalent of a, of a, uh, basically a, uh, like a disposal, or a washing machine, a washing machine drain, uh, that goes into the

[9:58] things, you want to plug it into another one of those so that your machine, uh, so your espresso machine can drain, uh, and make sure that your espresso machine is always above the level of your

[10:07] sink, so you can't, uh, you know, have backups, uh, um, onto the floor out of your espresso

[10:12] machine if your drain clouds up. Uh, and that's basically it. I mean, uh, it's, you know, it sounds like it's a lot, but you know, if you have a drill. And you can go, uh, drill in, uh, you're set, uh, you know, then you want to make sure you have a place that you can knock out espresso grounds, so you're

[10:29] going to want, uh, you know, either to take a small, you can buy one, or you can make a knock, a knock knock box, uh, and it's helpful to have a trash can or buy. Uh but that's it. It's pretty simple. Um, they, um, you know, as, as regards if you're not going to get a professional machine. Uh, you know, I haven't used anything, it does a very good steaming job, uh, that wasn't a, uh, pro machine, um, because, you know, it's just, it can be

[10:56] done. I mean, if you go to coffee geek.com. Those people will sit around and make amazing uh, foam with uh, home machines, but it's just, you know, they, I think they, they're always sucking wind a little bit because they don't have as much of a steam capacity as, let's say, even a single

[11:12] group uh, 110 machine. Uh, but that said, you can do this all very cheaply, uh, if you

[11:18] scrouge around and you can have, and let me tell you this. It is extreme pleasure to just be able to use the freaking espresso

[11:27] machine, like nature intentative, which is having it plumped into your water supply, and having it, you know, drain into your, uh, into your drain. Even if you don't have a commercial special machine, you can usually plumb them by putting a, uh, a level sensor and a, and a, and a solenoid valve to, uh, allow you to put high pressure from your, you know, mains, uh, which is like

[11:52] 4050 PSI, put that into a gravity fed container and espresso machine. So, there you have it. Hey, Nastasia, did you know that Bogota is over 8000 feet high and I haven't had to do this much talking in a row on

[12:06] a phone and I'm actually feeling winded from the altitude? Wow. You there? More than when you ride your bike here and come in. What did you say? I said, you feel more out of breath than when you arrive here after you've ridden your bike through Brooklyn. Uh, well, I guess that's true, but you can't let yourself mellow out when you're, uh, when you're in

[12:25] Bogota. There's no there's no modeling out. The weird thing is, I didn't feel, I haven't felt that windy the whole week. just, uh, I guess it's just, uh, because of, uh,

[12:34] they, the talking at high speed, because when I was doing my demonstration here, it's the 1st time, like I said, it had to

[12:40] be uh, done in Spanish. And so it's weird having to constantly stop and like give like ¢3 his wake, give 3 sentences,

[12:46] wake, give 3 sentences. That's very strange. Very, very, very strange. All right. Jason E writes in a question on eggs. So, I know Dave's done quite a bit on low temperature egg cooking, including the chart recently published in

[13:00] David Chang's Lucky Peach magazine, which that we've used that chart. How many times have we used that chart, Nastasia? Many, Harvard uses it too. Who? Harvard. Harvard's using it. There's some popular science one. That chart is like all over all over the place. Anyway, but I was wondering if you guys had any tips for other eggs. Playo, duck, et cetera. I'm assuming times would need to be adjusted for different egg sizes, but what about the composition of eggs? Our substances and different eggs difference, and if they're the same as chicken eggs,

[13:27] it's the ratio of substances the same. All right. Well, Jason, unfortunately, I don't have, uh, or didn't until right before this happened, uh, have enough Wi-Fi time to research the exact opposition of what's going on in these

[13:39] eggs. I will say this. Chicken eggs and duck eggs, and quail eggs, for that matter, are different. Um, the proteins in them are different. They're fairly similar, right? But they are different. And the reason I know this is because when you treat uh, eggs with uh, lie and salt, which is something we do for the Harold McGee class, uh, and

[14:00] uh, I really like them. I think we have it on the blog because nastasia, remember, it's on the blog from a couple of years ago. Yes. You can just look up, look, lie and eggs. And um, that lie basically, um, the nature's the protein slider makes it less able to bond with itself, uh, which makes it such that it stays

[14:17] clear even when it's cooked. Uh, so that's pretty cool. And, you know, the, um, doesn't work as well in chicken eggs as it does in duck eggs and quail eggs.

[14:28] So you know that there's fundamentally a difference between uh, those 2 those 3 eggs. Um, quail, interestingly, and duck work better than uh, chicken. Now, I haven't done a lot, as far as cooking them goes, I haven't done a lot of experimentation to figure out what

[14:45] temperature, whether there's a temperature difference. I know that a duck egg and a quail egg are going to be runny at 62 uh because I've done them. Uh, and I know that a quail egg will still get slightly, you know, that creaminess that you would normally get at 63 Celsius,

[15:00] right? Which is, but, quail eggs cook much faster, and I think they also, uh, can drift into overcooks much

[15:07] faster. A quail egg is done in like, you know, under 15 uh, way under 15 minutes. You know what I mean? It's like, it gets done quick. And clear legs, though, when you do a clear leg in a circulator, they're difficult to, uh,

[15:20] take, get out the way you would get out of chicken egg. So what I normally do is you get like one of those uh, one of those like cigar cutting things that are not for, they're for quail eggs, and you chop the top and the bottom, not just the

[15:33] top, to get the egg out, the top and the bottom, and then you can shake the egg out, and you can get like, you know, um, you know, most of the eggs will come out properly, whereas if you try to do it

[15:44] via cracking, Uh, you're gonna lose, you know, like half of your eggs. So if you're going to low temperature circulate a quail lake, you're going to want to get something that can chop the top in the bottom of the um shell off. Um. Duck eggs. I haven't had a lot of experience with. I mean, I know they're still creamy at 62, but I don't know whether they'll set, you know, exactly

[16:04] at 64 and be premium 63. They're obviously going to have to cook longer because they're um because they're bigger. Um. But, you know, you know, more interesting thing on eggs is uh, and and relating to uh, the proteins and basicity is, uh, and I, I think we put this in heater last week, is uh, you need to add a little bit of, uh, if you, if you're having problems peeling your eggs, if you add a little bit of baking

[16:27] soil to the water. Apparently, it helps, and um, and uh, that's Harold McGee trick, uh, because it makes it more alkaline, it makes it so the proteins

[16:35] and the eggs bond less strongly to the membrane in the shell when you peel it, which is kind of cool. Uh, I asked uh, Wiley whether they do that at the restaurant and uh, the restaurant being WD

[16:44] 50 and indeed they do, but they say the peeling eggs is still a, uh, a pain in the butt. Um, all right. So, uh, by the way, uh, before I forget, I said on the

[16:56] blog, a couple of weeks ago that, uh, that dragon fruit is, uh, uh, you know, a gross, awful, uh, tropic fruit, and I got a couple people telling me that I was wrong, and I was like,

[17:06] well, look, I'm willing to be proven wrong. Well, I came down here to Columbia and I had a fruit called Pataya. is another basically word for a type of dragon fruit. The ones that get down here are yellow, and lo and behold, um, it tastes good. I like it. So I found a dragon fruit that I like. Also, you know, nastasia, you remember how I hate

[17:26] papaya? Yeah. Yeah, I hate it, right? I mean, I, I, I like a green papaya, like a crunch and pie, but I hate myself a, uh, uh, a

[17:34] riper pie in the States. It smells like, like nothing you'd want, like alternately, sometimes it smells like a diaper. sometimes it smells like vomit. You know, this smell good. you like them? No, no I don't. No, they're awful, right? Here they're actually good. In fact, in Colombia, right? not supposed to, you're not supposed to walk around the streets of Columbia showing off that you have a lot of bling. This is not a bling oriented society when you're walking around the streets, you know what I'm saying? Uh, you know, for obviously, and the security here is intense. You know what I mean? They're still, I guess, you know, worried about, um, I guess problems. Anyway. So, uh, the local phrase is to show you how good the papayas are here compared to where they are in the states. If the local phrase here is, uh, don't give papaya. In other words, if you if you have this papaya out that you're giving out, that people are going to come take it and then take more. You know what I mean? So it's like, that probably they're so ingrained at like the, the kind of national statement for like, you know, don't flash your bling, is basically don't flash your

[18:32] papyas. Cute. Yeah, anyway. Uh, okay. going up. Have a question from Chris about uh bloom strength of... You want to call her in case you want to do that first. All right, all right. Call her. You're on the ear. Yeah, hi. Um, My name is Jesse. I have a question about juice extractors. And I was wondering um for under 300 bucks. Is there one that you recommend highly? Okay. what kind of juice? I'm juicing vegetables and fruits. Okay, but not citrus? No not citrus no. And not sugar cane? And not sugar cane, no. And not, um, wheat grass. No not wheatgrass either. Okay. Uh, because those are, those are tough. Um, so the one that we typically use uh, in the

[19:28] school and that almost every chef has, and they could be had for well under $300 uh, is the uh, champion

[19:35] juicer. Okay? And the champion juicer. Basically, the way it works is, it's got an auger and then little teeth, and it just, you know, you push the stuff

[19:46] through, and pulp shoots out the front, and juice goes down the bottom, um, and you can even put the pulp through a 2nd time if you want

[19:53] to. It can also grind peanuts and it can grind cocoa nips to make chocolate, you know, it's good. a good machine. It, you know, it tends to heat your juice up a little bit. You know what I mean? Um, yeah. So, if you're having a problem with your juice overheating, and especially when I make it, I tend to force the stuff down the throat of the machine so quickly

[20:13] that like it tends to overheat. I've had, um, I have had the base of the champion, the motor, like almost catch on

[20:22] fire and, and like, uh, you know, I've, I've melted the internal complementary of it, but that's after like, you know, like an, over an hour of continuous, heavy, like, you know, basically, I, when I juice like that, I

[20:35] juice, as if I was going to the gym and working out. You know what I'm saying? So it's, uh, it's, uh, you know, that's not going to happen that much for more money. Um, some people like the green starch juicer, which is basically a set of gears that matches the stuff. However, I've never used one. People that I know that have used it to say that the yield is not nearly as high with, um, the green star as it is with the champion. Now, there are a bunch of other juices that I've seen on the web and even seen kind of in person that seem to, they work on different principles,

[21:11] right, that work like centrifugal, so they grind it and then, then centrifugally separated out. Um, and some of these purportedly make very good juice. The problem is, is that they, a lot of them don't have a lot of capacity. So if you're making a little bit of juice, right? They're okay. But if you want to make a boatload of juice, like if you're doing a party, or if you have a, you know, a lot of people coming over or whatever, then you're not going to want to sit around and, and burn out a smaller

[21:37] juice, or you're going to want something that maybe is, um, a little bit less, uh, maybe had a little bit less, um, yield on extraction. Maybe warms up a little bit, but it's kind of a robo monster, right? Which is what the champion is. So, I actually don't have a lot of information on the other kind, on the kind that is like a little

[21:54] bit, uh, slower, maybe a little bit more gentle, but can't handle a lot because I can't personally use a piece of equipment. that can't pump out, you know, a gallon of juice and a reasonable amount of time. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Yeah, okay. So, um, and, you know, it, uh, although I have to say, you know, on the o- other end of the spectrum, if you have a bajillion dollars, if,

[22:15] if all of a sudden you win the lottery, go out and buy a neutra faster, like the professional ones that you see that look

[22:19] like uh, that look like a, a, a tower at an airport, and have a tube coming out of them.

[22:25] Yeah, I went to a I never used one before because I, you know, I've never worked in like, you know, one of these places that used for living, but, by the way, none of these juicers will do wheatgrass, sugar cane, and they're not for citrus, which is why I asked you those questions.

[22:37] Um, but you put, you know, when you put an apple in a champion juicer. You have to push on it to get it to come out, right? I mean that's just what it is. When you, uh, you know, when I put an apple into the neutra faster thing, I felt like it was going to suck my arm down into it. That's how thirsty it was to eat these apples, you know what I mean? So I respected that machine. The other machine that some people like, it's very expensive. is the Norwalk, which is basically a press. But again, I've never used it. I don't know how concerned you are about, um, heat changing it versus just, you want it easy to clean, can pump out a whole bunch of juice. Um, yeah, are you more in that category? You want it to be a... Yeah, I'm more than that. Yeah, and pop out a boatload of juice when you need it, but not necessarily need to do that much. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd use a champion. have used it before? Um, I think I've used it once in a restaurant. yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most people have them, you know, um, and most people, we're we're usually fairly, fairly happy with them. Uh, I, you know, I don't know how much more it costs to get the commercial one. The commercial one basically uh has a stainless shaft and better bearings on the motor uh versus the home machine. Um, otherwise I think they're fairly similar and it's easy to get replacement parts for it. And uh, I don't know anyone that doesn't like their champion, but that way. Okay. Well, great. All right. Well, thanks a lot, Dave. good luck with it Thanks, bye. It's take a break. So, Nastasia, you think we should go to the 1st break? All right, call on all your questions too, 718-49721287184972128 cookie issues.

[24:49] La mirada.

[25:05] Dave? Yep. You're back on. Hey, welcome back. on the air. Cooking issues coming to you live from Brooklyn and Bogota, Columbia, where the weather is

[25:16] always like fall. It's crazy. It's like falling here all the time. I actually like the weather a lot. Oh. Pretty good. Yeah. You know, you, you could, even though we're on the equator, it's, it's like so high up in the

[25:28] mountains that it's always kind of like, uh, it's like basically fall weather, like early fall weather, which I enjoy. If you go to Medellin, which is, you know, it's also in the mountains, but like slightly lower, they call that one

[25:40] eternal spring because it's like 10 degrees warmer than here, so it's always springtime there. Always.

[25:45] Zombie, like literally nothing changes weather wise. They have a rainy season where maybe it rains more, but like weather wise, the temperature. It's always the same. It's crazy right? Cool, yeah. Then we went down to Cartagena, which is like on the water, and that is freaking humid. Um, freaking human. Anyway. Uh, call on any questions, still time to call any questions,

[26:07] 2718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. By the way, more on Columbia. Uh, guys down here incredibly nice. Incredibly nice. Uh, I should probably do a, a blog post on, by the way, I haven't had blog posts. I been internet challenged, uh, uh, often when I'm down here, and telephone challenge, and cash challenge, you know that they, I came down here, uh, and uh, my bank, Chase, uh, you know, decided that

[26:35] they, when I asked them for replacement cards, they would give me a temporary card. You know what temporary cards don't do? Give money. They don't take money out of banks internationally. We've been, I've been like basically mooching off of my new friends here in Columbia. Uh, you know, for the last time. you money 2 days ago and you never gave me the code. I don't I don't understand how it works. Anyway, whatever. We would be later. I'm just saying is that travelers are going abroad. Please get your financial crudge straightened out before you go, or you could be more unlike Dave Arnold. That's basically the point, right? Anyway. So, uh, Chris writes in about the bloom strength of gelatin. Can you explain how to convert between different bloom strengths of sheet gelatin? I have a recipe that calls for silver strength at 160

[27:21] bloom, but only have gold strength, 200 bloom handy. thanks. Okay. Uh, 1st of all, uh, Bloom Force, Bloom is an, is kind of a, a weird definition of the strength of gelatin.

[27:35] And literally what it is, is you, they take uh, uh, gelatin, it's been cured, you know, for like, you know, 17

[27:43] hours at a very specific temperature, like 10 Celsius, right? at a very specific concentration, like uh 66 and 2 thirds, 6.66%, right? Uh, and they push a, um, they push a little plunger that they make standard into it, and they figure out how much force it takes to push that

[28:04] plunger, 4 millimeters into the surface of the gel, right? And they give you that force in grams, and that's what Bloom is. And by the way, most of the measures used in foods are weird, crazy lunatic things like this, where some dude in a factory was sitting around saying, hey, listen, I got to figure out how to measure this

[28:22] correctness. So he makes this like, he's like, now this is the standard for all time. So he like, I don't know, he uses whatever he wants, a ball, a cone, a pen, whatever, but he makes the standard for all time. It's named after him, Bloom, and he pushes it in and he writes the stuff down. So this is how the food industry works. So the question is, how do you convert it? So you can't just simply, you know, uh, you know, other places have published. You can't just simply exchange, like say, hey, I have one that's a 200 bloom. making these up to make math easier for me. I've wanted to 200 bloom and one that's a 100 bloom. So I'm just going to use twice of the 100 bloom. Right? It doesn't make it doesn't make sense. Here's another thing. People like to use a number of sheets of gelatin when they use gelatin to kind of figure out what's going on. But the fact of the matter is, is that typically you buy sheet gelatin uh in grades, right? Platinum, silver, bronze, gold, right? And the thing is, is that as it goes down the line. Platinum is the strongest gel It's usually has the highest bloom strength. It's usually the clearest gel that doesn't have any brown, right? Some of the lower strength gels have undergone some hydrolysis. There can be some browning in them. It's like they're not as, you know, not as good looking, not as clear. Anyways, the lower the strength of gel, typically, like uh, the higher, uh, the higher the weight. of each sheet is because they're attempting to um,

[29:37] keep uh, the gelling power per sheet similar. Does that make sense? But if you're going to substitute uh a weight. uh then you have to do some sort of conversion. Now, uh, a, as you change the concentration of gelat, right? You're not uh, it doesn't scale. So in other words, if you double the concentration, you don't get exactly twice the uh, you don't get twice the strength of the gel. Typically, uh, you get much more than twice the strength of the gel, right? So you, you can't do a straight conversion. A very good uh, uh, thing to look at on the web. It's something called a gelatin summary and conversion. And it's a really useful, like 4 page word document that you can download right off the thing by uh AUI. There's Albert, Uster imports, and they're Nastachi, you'll be happy to know that they're Swiss, right? And uh, they provide uh, the formula, uh, where you take, uh, and you multiply, uh, by the square

[30:37] root of the bloom strengths. It's not going to make much sense, but I'll put it to you this way. If you have a 200 bloom strength gel, right, and you want to figure out how much to use

[30:46] in 140 bloom, you do 200 divided by 140, right?

[30:51] And then you take the square root of that. And so if you needed, uh, an existed example right off their sheet. I reading it off their sheet, so don't say I'm plagiarizing and it's right there. Uh, if you have 10 grams of 200 bloom gelatin, and but you, you know the recipe calls for 10 grams, 200 bloom, but you want to use

[31:06] one that's 140 bloom. You take 10 times a square root of 200 over 140 and that is how many grams of the lower bloom strength gelatin you want to use.

[31:18] And the reason for the square root there is as I say that it's not a linear, it's not a linear thing. Um, Anyway, I hope that helps, and you should read that, uh, read that little paper because it's kind of cool anyway. It's got lots of kind of cool pictures, and uh, it's titled Gelatin Summary, and that's what she is. It also gives, interestingly, stuff that you don't, uh, it has a bunch of actual conversions, uh, for known

[31:43] things, like how to convert uh, platinum sheet weight to Knox powder weight, how to convert uh, Knox powder weight to gold weight. By the way, Knox powder, which is the one nastachi that we use, uh, when we're doing uh, our gelatin work is actually pretty darn good. It's got like, uh, it's, it's between uh, platinum and and gold and actually closer to platinum, so that's pretty good, right? Yeah, that's really good. Why not? Yeah. So Knox Shelton, even though it's in the supermarket, turns out to be a serious butt kicker. Right? Nice. Yeah, nice. Nice. All right. So, uh, I tried coca tea, by the way. How was it? Yeah, it's been fine. It's like, you know, uh, it's, uh, yeah, uh, we went to the, like, highest point in Bogota, which is, uh, Mansarate, which is, like, you have to take up this, like, crazy tram up to the top, and it's, you know, it's way up there, and they have this, like, little, uh, market over there, and, uh, so they sell all kinds of local Colombian products, and one of which is, uh, uh, Coco tea, which is basically just the Coco

[32:45] leaves, and I tried it, and, you know, I didn't, I didn't feel, uh, I didn't feel anything, really. didn't, you know, didn't, uh, do anything to me as far as I

[32:53] know, and someone got me a bag of the leaves, but I'm pretty sure they're illegal to bring back to the United States. And since I'm flying around from here to Panama and Panama to the United

[33:01] States, with a bag loaded with knives and uh, and white powders loaded in Ziploc bags. I don't think I'm going to take the chance of actually having any cocoa products on me. What do you think? I think that's smart. It's wise, right? Uh, yeah, I mean, uh, I'm not exactly sure how the law goes. I should have researched it before I, before I came in, but uh, I'm thinking that this is going to have to stay with some friends in, in Colombia. There's no way I'm going to try and bring us back on you. Can you imagine? Can you imagine like they find the cocoa bags and then they find like all the bags of like

[33:33] sandfan gum and and uh, you know, just be crazy, crazy. Yeah. Bad news, horrible, horrible idea. I mean, I've had some bad ideas before, but I think that might be the most horrible of all. It was interesting. Uh, in terms of coca. You know, uh, there's a lot of, obviously,

[33:50] controversy, uh, about the growing of cocoa because it's used to be cocaine, which is then shipped to the United States and causes many problems, et cetera, et cetera. But what's interesting is that we went to a museum called the Gold Museum down here,

[34:02] uh, and it's all about pre-Colombian gold. And this, you know, the coca is a product has been used by uh, the people around here for like 10 bazillion years. You know what I mean? Like a lot of the gold implements that they had way, way, you know, way before anyone

[34:16] uh showed up, uh, you know, demonstrate that this is, they, they use this. Not I not talking about refined cocaine, but like this, as a, uh, as basically a normal part of their daily life. They had, you know, they would have, uh, pouches that, they're like beautiful

[34:30] gold that you were rich. Most people would use just hollowed out gorge, but like gold pouches to carry the, uh, lime, they would burn shells, calcium hydroxide to use to activate the, uh, coca leaf strongly. So it's, it's interesting. It's really, you know, part of the historical culture here, which makes it a little bit more

[34:46] difficult, um, to say that we should try to stop people from growing it. Don't you think? It's kind of a interesting little question. Yeah. All right, so, Brian writes in uh, with uh, several questions, and so we'll try to uh, hit some. I'm going to go in reverse order. All right, Brian. Brian bought some malac acid some citric acid at the homebrew store. good news. I want to use them in cocktails and other stuff, such as jams, pate de flea. Any other acids I should get, any thoughts on the best applications? Well, yes, in fact, you can get some tartaric acid. Although if you have citric and Malik, citric and Malik are the 2 baller acids. If you have citric and mal, citric acid, malac acid. You can do a lot, right? Malic acid is the acid that is typical in apples, right? Apple's malice, uh, and citric acid is the acid that's typical in lemons. Now. Um, and if you taste them by themselves in small quantities, like they taste like the warhead that they're, that they're, you know, the apple

[35:45] warhead, and the other one tastes like lemon warhead, warhead of the candy, if you, you know,

[35:49] or the sour patches. If you buy tartaric acid, like that's one of the main acids in grapes, and so that

[35:55] provides, uh, a grapey note. Uh, if you mix 2 parts of citric

[36:02] acid to one part malic acid, you get the acidic flavor of, uh, lime, which is the one that I use most. And I use it as a corrective, right? So if you don't want to add limes or, you know, if you just want to correct the acidity of the juice slightly, um, we use these asses all the time. If you jack them too much, you tend to throw the juice out of balance. When you say so, nastasia? Yeah. Some other acids I would get. are uh, lactic acid and powder form, which can give alternately like a sauerkrautty or a sausage you taste, depending on the application, because it's, you know, it happens with lactic

[36:37] acid, um, uh, uh, that's a good one. Uh, I use one called, uh, 6 cinnic, but I don't recommend getting it. It just makes very, very authentic uh lime juice, but it's very hard to get. lactic, lactic, I use tiny amounts of it, lactic acid. The, um, and the malic acid, the citric acid, tartaric acid, uh, are all pretty much available, I

[37:01] think from homebrew and wine shops. The other one obviously you should get is ascorbic acid, which is vitamin C, which is a very good, uh, antioxidant, if you're making apple juice, uh, and whatnot. Um, but, uh, there, you know, there's some

[37:13] asses that I want to get a hold of, that I don't have, like clinic, which is

[37:17] a stringent, and is, is a part of the characteristic stuff, and things like apples. Um, but I don't have a source for it yet. Uh, I want to try, you know, tiny quantities of other bizarre acids, but, uh, until I find, I won't, I can't talk much about them until I find a, a source for them. Uh, but it's good news, you're gonna love that. We always love having that stuff around. Um, just to like I say, correct acidity. If you're going to make a soda and it has to last a long time, then you can use a malic citric blend with simple syrup to approximate

[37:47] lime, then if you squeeze a little fresh lime or peel in at the end, you get a good line back out, but I mean, nothing beats the real

[37:53] thing. Right, Nastasia? That is right. In nothing like the real thing. Anyway, okay. 2nd question. Uh, is Brian speaking again? I have made my own vinegar. It is a snap, except for the damn vinegar flies, and the vinegar is tasty as well. What exactly is the vinegar mother and is there any culinary application for it other than for making more vinegar?

[38:13] That's an excellent question. Um, in fact, one of the uh, uh, Harris radio hosts is an expert vinegar maker, but I don't know if

[38:20] he talks about it on the air, so I won't call him out. Uh, the, uh, when you make vinegar, what happens is, is you take, uh, you basically take alcohol, right? That's, you know, somewhere around 10% alcohol, and you expose it to

[38:35] oxygen. When you expose it to oxygen, acetyl acetobactor, grow on acetic acid bacteria, grow on the top. Well, they grow all throughout it, right? And they're turning the ethanol into uh, into acetic acid. Okay? Now, uh like I say, they require oxygen to survive. Excuse me. So what ends up happening is that, uh, they tend to form, uh, a bunch of what's called bacterial cellulose, right? And then they

[39:04] float, that stuff floats to the top and forms a layer. Now, the bacteria, then, after they use up the initial oxygen,

[39:13] it's in the acetic, uh, in the, in the stuff that you're turning into vinegar, after they use the initial oxygen up, they tend to only exist in large quantities,

[39:22] actively in large quantities, in the top of the forming vinegar,

[39:26] right where the oxygen is. And so, they sit there chilling on the top of the of the vinegar, uh, making acetic acid from the ethanol, and at the same time,

[39:37] uh, producing bacterial cellulose. And so that layer is basically, uh, living bacteria and bacterial cellulose. So, yes, you can lift it off and use it to make more vinegar, right? Uh, or, uh, it, there's a, it's, I've never heard of it done with, uh, with vinegar cultures before with vinegar mothers, but there's kind of a

[40:00] well-known uh, Asian Filipino dessert called, uh, what is it called? Not a not a de cocoa, right? And what that is, is, is it is the shell produced basically vinegar mother, right? And what they do is, is instead of having it a jar that's tall, uh, right, or a jug, and where they're trying to prevent, I guess, excess, uh, moisture loss and whatnot, they spread coconut water in, uh, like in, like, a several inch thick layer in large sheets, and they use a very specific, uh,

[40:32] cosito factor, but this works with, you know, any, any, uh, acetic acid bacteria, and it grows a thick

[40:39] layer. Uh, of uh, bacterial cellulose on top, which is the same thing as vinegar mother. There, you know, this one, it just happens to produce a lot more of it, so it makes it a lot thicker. So what they then do, is they take off the uh, the top layer, and they soak it, uh, and then I think they might even boil it, and they get rid of the acetic acid flavor, and they

[41:00] have the, this basically gel produced from the thing, and then they infuse it with syrups, and make it sweet, and stuff like that. So that's, uh, I believe, not, not that to cocoa, I think, but it's basically vinegar mother. So you could take the vinegar mother, soak it. Uh, if you're gentle with it because it's probably not going to be as strong, uh, and then maybe boil it in a syrup and make a, a gel out of it, uh,

[41:22] and, you know, tell us what happens. Compare it to uh compare it to the one from Asia anyway. Uh so that's an interesting question. The 3rd question that Brian has is, oh, by the way, he used one of my favorite terms. She's like, I have, uh, a lot of questions, and he says, I hope I'm not Bogarting the radio show. don't you? I haven't heard Bogarting in a long time. Yes. You like that one, right? Anyway. Um okay. Black garlic is all the rage. How is it made and can I make it at home? All right. So, for those of you that, uh, haven't been paying attention to like tip new ingredients over the past couple years. Uh, black garlic is a kind of garlic that, uh, you know, originated in Korea. Uh, and people bring it over here and it's black, uh, uh, well, it's kind of, it's not really black. It's kind of brownish black, right? It's not really, it's not black. Right, yeah. It's got like dark, dark, dark brown. Uh, and it's kind of ooey, it's still in its, uh, in the clothes, and it's, uh,

[42:22] gooey, gooey, and you spread it on things, uh, or do whatever you want with it, and it's very, very sweet, uh, and it's, uh, has like, uh, sugary, like, some people say like bulcanic, but I don't really

[42:37] get, get that anyway, but like it's, it's what it is. It tastes like what it is. Uh, and it's pretty good. People like it. It also doesn't make your breath stick the way that uh regular uh garlic does. And if I have time more more on that later. Well, let's do it now. So, you know, we pressure cooked garlic to do the uh same thing, and uh, we're working on. um, we're working on trying to get some funding to get uh, uh, a garlic specialist to run some tests for us, to verify why pressure cooked garlic doesn't make your breath stick, because the stuff that's in garlic, that, um, stuff that's in garlic, that does make your breath stink,

[43:10] and is extremely punch, and shouldn't be broken down by the temperatures of a pressure cooker, but apparently is, and he has some theories, but we have to run some tests, some more on that when

[43:20] we, when we do it. But the way black garlic is made. People, and by the way, I did some, uh, a little bit of research, and I haven't been able to, uh, find anyone definitively says what's going on. But people say that it's fermented, and it's not fermented in the traditional sense, right? Uh, because the temperatures are too high. Here's how it's made. You, uh, you basically keep the uh, the garlic. And whole. Uh, some people apparently soak it in some dump beforehand. You keep it in, and by the way, some people say soy sauce in it. Soy sauce is unnecessary, not needed in it, blah, blah, blah. okay. You take the garlic and you keep it above 140 degrees

[44:00] Fahrenheit, above 60 degrees Celsius, right? And uh, but you can go all the way up. Right, according to some of these, uh, sites all the way up to like 80 or 90 degrees Celsius and still have, have at 8. wouldn't do that. I would never take it, uh, uh, you know, above the softening temperature of the garlic, which is

[44:20] gonna be, um, you know, in the 70s or 80s, uh, uh, Celsius. So, you know, I, I would keep it down lower where people recommend like 40, 50 Celsius, which is in the 100 and like 140 and a little above

[44:34] range. Don't go any below that because if you go below that, you can have bacteria growing on it, right? So they keep it hot. And they keep it, uh, basically from drying out, so it doesn't defecate, uh, over time, and they keep it for a long time. So on the order of 30 days. The higher the temperature, probably the, the, uh, the less time is going to take. But that's how they make it. So it's done hot, uh, for a long time, and then allowed to cool down,

[45:02] and, and, and there you have it. Some people, uh, in a in a patent line, red online. Some people put charcoal in with it to try to absorb some of the odors as it's being made. I don't know if that's truly necessary, but the easiest way to do it, uh is to use a dehydrator. So, if you're lucky enough to have an Excalibur style dehydrator, then you can, um,

[45:25] so the sheet style dehydrators are tough, because you don't want it to actually dehydrate. So you want to kind of, like, put plastic put, like, put the garlic in a container that's non-reactive, put plastic wrap or whatever over that container so that it doesn't lose all of its moisture.

[45:41] Now it's basically a controlled humidity environment, and then you put that into a dehydrator, and

[45:46] you, you set it at like, I'm going to make up a number, like 150, and you let that Fahrenheit, and you let it run for like 30 days,

[45:55] and, and there you have it. And so, um, so that's it. So it doesn't appear to be an enzyme reaction that's going on, uh, because of those temperatures, I'm pretty sure you're going to, at least,

[46:06] it maybe initially it is, but you're going to break them down, uh, broken down a lot of the enzymes over that period of

[46:10] time. those temperatures, I would guess, right? And it's not a fermentation in the sense that it's not bacterial or uh yeast derived. And this is why in the science literature, it's just referred to as aged garlic. I think what's happening is, is that a lot of the compounds in garlic are pretty

[46:25] unstable, and if they're just held at these temperatures for very long periods of time, can produce these kind of crazy things

[46:33] like, uh, like aged, aged garlic. Uh, what do you think? Pretty interesting, right? Yeah. All right. So, uh, anyway, I was supposed to, like, say, be in Brooklyn, I am flying out tomorrow to Panama, where I'm doing a demo, uh, in Panama City for a bunch of cookies for people, and I'm going to do an

[46:53] Ikachime demo there, uh, maybe using some of the new Ikachime stuff that I learned when I was working with, Dave Chang, uh, on his iPad app, after which I will be in Harvard next Tuesday, giving a lecture to, uh, bright, you know, bushy, whatever, it's

[47:08] bush bright-eyed, bushy tailed college students. Uh, about uh, the wonders of science in uh, in cooking with uh, Harold McGee, which should be a blast. Unfortunately, that means I will not be doing a live show because it's during the actual uh cooking issues time that we'll be

[47:23] uh doing the lecture. So I look forward to speaking to you all in 2 weeks. Sinister questions, cooking issues.

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