[0:00] Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn, you're listening to heritageradionetwork.com.

[0:21] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. Joined with you, us today in studio by Nastasia the Hammer locals. Hello, Nastasia. Hi. She just got back from California. She was visiting home in the LA region because her sister was on the homecoming court at her high school homecoming

[0:46] thingamajade, correct? Didn't win though, right? But you feel glad that she had win. Yeah, I'm happy. You're happy that she didn't win? I care to tell us why. Because you have to go back home and crown the new princess. Yeah, which is weak, right? It's weak. Who wants to go back to high school after they've already graduated? It's lame. Well, unless you're robbing the cradle. But that wasn't me. I never did that Anyway, right or wrong. Phil, Bravo. Wow. friend of ours, Phil Bravo, well-known cradle robber, folks. Well-known cradle, cradle rubber. Test, test. Can you hear me? Yeah, that was working. I was nominated for Homecoming King. You were? That's awesome. Where did you, where were you in high school? I lost. It was in Long Island. Are you also glad that you lost? You didn't have to go back to high school and crown the next year? don't think I had to do that. That sounds crazy. That's like an LA thing, maybe. Sounds like it. You know what I heard? I heard from Nastasia that the queen did get to ride down the boulevard in a low rider with the hydraulics pancaking the whole way down

[1:38] the down the tarmac. How awesome was that? I've always wanted to get into a low rider with the hydraulics. They are sweet. Was it green? Was it green paint with green with the sparkly green? Oh geez. There's another lifelong dream. I still have time, folks. I'm not dead yet. Okay. So, Colin, all of your questions, cooking or otherwise, too. 718-497-2128. Memorize 718-497-2128. Today's episode is brought to you again. They must love us, to us. They do. By the modernist pantry. Today's show is I'm just going to read it. They wrote what I just said, which is today's show is sponsored by the modest pantry. You got actually, you know, it's a pain that when you're reading, you can't actually pay attention to what you're saying as you're reading it. That's why sometimes I'll stop my reading voice and start making comments, which is dumb. All right, do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients, but hate to overspend for pounds

[2:27] of supplies when only a few grams are needed per application. Modernist pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients in packages that makes sense for the home cook or

[2:36] enthusiast, and most costs only around 5 bucks, only 5 bucks. Hey, 5 bucks. That cheap, all right? Hey, saving you time, money, and storage space, whether you're looking for hydrocolloids, pH buffers, or even meat glue. You'll find it at modernist pantry, and if you need something that they don't carry, just ask. Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you with inexpensive shipping to any country in the world. There's got to be some country they can't ship to. Yeah. Right? Who knows how they do it? I have no idea. What does that mean in expensive? I don't know. I'd like to know. Someone just, someone from another country order from these guys and tell me, tell me, like New Zealand. Anyway, modern pantry is your one-stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist pantry now carries 8 types of metocellulose in various grades and viscosities. Fans of cooking issues at place in order of $25 or more before next week's show. will get a free package of high viscosity metal cellulos. Simply use a promo code CI 59 when pricing your order online at modernestpantry.com. Visit modernestpantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs. Okay, listen, Methosale. interesting. First of all, it's the only hydrocoloid that I use that isn't actually all natural. Methocyulose doesn't is not a naturally occurring product. What they do is they take cellulose from, like, you know, cotton or whatever, wood pulp, whatever it is. And they modify it to have certain properties. Now, what I would like to monitor this pantry guys to do is specify not a viscosity necessarily, but exactly what type of

[4:02] methocellulose we're talking about. Most chefs use methyl cellulose, and here's one for you,

[4:08] hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose from Dao. you know, the, you know, Dao, like big, the big company Dao. And their brand name is methocell, right? M-E-T-H-O-C-E-L, methocell. And the viscosity is only one of the things you actually need to know about methyl cell. It's also the type that it is because they have kind of widely differing properties, depending on whether it's methocellulose, hydroxypropyl

[4:32] methylcellose, what the chain length is, et cetera, exactly what series it is. Now, the super high viscosity ones are often used, the interesting thing about methyl cells. methyl cell, gels when it heats and melts when it cools down. So this is the hydrocollidative choice. If you've ever been to a restaurant or seen an application on the television set, where someone takes a liquid and squeezes it into a

[4:56] broth and it sets up into like a noodle or a gel right away into a hot broth. Typically that's a methocellulose is what they're, what they're doing there, methocell, a Dow methocell. Typically a high viscosity one so that it doesn't bleed out. However, I don't ever do that. My favorite methocell is not actually a high viscosity methocell, it's methocell, F, like

[5:15] Frank, 50, methocell, F, 50. And aside from sounding like an expensive Ferrari, does sound like a Ferrari, right? Methyl F 15. Anyway, um, it's not. What it is, is it's a load of medium viscosity methyl cell that has amazing whipping property. So you add like 8 grams per liter of this stuff to whatever, you know, fruit,

[5:38] puree juice, whatever. And then you in a blender. And then you put it into like a KitchenAid with a balloon whisk on it and you whip it just like egg whites. And the stuff whips up just like a meringue. This is what, I believe this is what Sam Mason, way back in the day, used to use to make

[5:53] like, uh, like, foams that had like the texture of like a Guinness head. He was looking for the texture that was on top of a Guinness beer was what he was shooting for. He used to get it with this. I forget whether he actually used Guinness as the foam with a 50 or not. I can't remember. Anyway, so it makes up into a nice almost like an egg white meringue. And here's the cool part. If you pipe it onto a silpat or whatever piece of acetate,

[6:15] sticking in a dehydrator or in an oven that's set to dehydrate, they don't fall. They gel up a little bit and solidify and they turn into these amazing meringues that disappear in your mouth.

[6:25] They're not like a regular meringue and have a little bit of a proteinist. They boom, disappear in your mouth and they're amazing. They can be made with any flavor. And they're vegan,

[6:34] not, I don't know. They can be vegan. Nostasia made a vegan face. I wish you could see her vegan face. It's like the equivalent of like, you know, the nose crinkles up a little bit and it's like someone made an off smell or something in the room, which is unfortunate because I don't feel that way about other human beings the way Nastasia does.

[6:48] That's why we call her the hammer. What? You don't like vegans very much. I don't have anything against... I think V, look, it's like, it's like, I don't... No, no, no. It's unfair. It's unfair. It's difficult for me to cook for vegans, right? So it makes it very hard for me to cook for vegans. And you're upset with their life choices. I wish they hadn't made that life choice. Yes, I do wish they hadn't made that life choice, but it's nothing against them personally, you know? Um, you know, I have, how many vegan recipes do I have that I actually make that are vegan? like two. Two. I have two. So if you come to my house and you're a vegan, please let me know in advance and I'll make one of my 2 recipes that's vegan. One of them is actually a delay. You know, you can you could take a lot of good Indian food and substitute out olive oil for ghee and get a passable

[7:34] result. I mean, I guess that's what a lot of people do. I don't know. Who knows? Why the hell are we talking about this? This is nothing to do with anything. Mental cellulos. vegan. It just happens to be the one thing I use. It's not all natural The other the other one I don't use that a lot of chefs use is propylene glycolalgenate. It's not natural. Not unholy, just not natural. It doesn't exist in nature, right? Being the definition of natural. All right. So, call in all of your questions to 718-497-2128. Okay, uh, Dave and Company. Hi again. My hunting friend wants to make a country ham out of venison, would the hanging time be comparable to pork, or would you use a and would you use a different cure? I told him he might want to incorporate juniper berries or jam into the cure. Am I full of crap? Thanks, Derek Bodkin. Well, I wouldn't put, Well, that depends. mean, I guess you could put gin in. Um, I mean, I typically for a country ham kind of an application wouldn't be using any liquid, so it wouldn't be kind of brined in. But I mean, it's not going to hurt. It's going to evaporate fairly quickly, but I would, you know, I would use, you could add whatever spices you want. I mean, um, you know, so delicious, uh, delicious, something with juniper in it that you might want to taste would be spech. Spec's delicious, right? You like speck, right? You know what, though? It's one of those things. I enjoy the speck, which is basically what they'll do is they'll take a ham leg. Theyll roll it out flat. They'll cure it flat, which means it cures a lot faster than it would if it was left in a whole roll. And they typically smoke it, and it's typically, I believe, juniper, right? Is the flavor in it? Yes. And there's there's one, there's a whole, you know, from altolategy up in the north of Italy, and then also across the border, in the, in the kind of

[9:04] a Austro-Germanic kind of tradition, there's speck. And I happen to prefer the Italian one because the one that's typically north of the border is a little bit drier. The ones we get, at least the ones that I've had. And so Speck is delicious and that's got juniper in it. The trick with curing venison is venison is

[9:22] not doesn't have typically as much fat in the meat as would something like pork.

[9:28] Um, I would assume that it would cure closer to beef in terms

[9:34] of uh, like a prasala. I think it would appear closer to that kind of situation. So, um, you know, if you wanted to cure for the length of time that ham would cure for, you're

[9:42] going to need to protect it from drying out too much, right? So, well, you know, what you could do is salt it down, uh, and get the salt level, kind of the way you want. It's going to take some practice. I'd have to look up exactly what's going on. Um, but I would, after it, after it starts to dehydrate a bit, I would cover it with fat,

[10:00] uh, like with a layer of fat, or maybe you could go, uh, maybe you could go, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Like, you know, Parma style, where after it ages for a certain bit, they'll put the face of the meat, which is a part of the meat that shows it doesn't have fat.

[10:13] They'll take lard and I forget, like, is it rice flour or something? They'll take lard and something like rice flour and work it over the face of the ham there so to stop the drying out. So I would do that. So that way you get the moisture level that you want and then you'd cover it up and let it dry out. Uh, you know, so it wouldn't dry out too much. And I think it should work. I think that would be great. I mean, juniper sounds great. I might even smoke it a little bit with new size. It would be delicious. And it sounds like a very good alternative to, you know, the venison jerky that everyone makes. Of course, also, if your friend is a hunter, and I don't know whether we've already discussed this because I can't remember which questions you sent in, please go buy an immersion circulator. If you are going to take the trouble to buy a weapon, get a hunting license, go sit in a tree for like a day and a half waiting for a deer to come

[10:54] by that's big enough that you want to shoot it in the neck and take it home. Spend the 800 bucks on an immersion circulator so that you don't have to turn everything into sausage and chili, all right? Because venison cooked in an immersion circulator. Not for too long, necessarily. If you cook it too long, sometimes it can get gamey, but venison cooked in an immersion circulator, even like an older one is going to be freaking delicious. And I know this not from theory, but from actual practice, not of my own stuff because I wish I could hunt, but I don't have a hunting license. I want one kind of pretty badly. I want, you know, I'd like to. I don't really want to, I don't really necessarily want to shoot a deer. I really want to get things that you can't buy otherwise. I mean, I want to get like grouse and woodcock and all those things. Anyway, Nastasia once saw me eat a grouse and a woodcock and a teal in England, because they can serve them in the restaurants in England, and it had like the little BBs in it and everything, and I thought she was going to quit working for cooking issues because I was literally like, like, there was blood, there was blood all over my face, like cooked semi-cooked innards, guts and blood all over my face because I was like, kind of burying my, I was burying my face in the carcass of the verge, trying to eat them out and spinning

[12:00] the, think, think, spitting out the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, on the plate. the head on the plate and I thought that was the end of it until the waitress came over and said, you're not going to eat the

[12:10] head. Well, she knows what's up. Anyway, so as we've said on the show many times. Immersion circulator should be Hunter's best friend. Like, it should basically, when they give you the license, they should say, do you have an

[12:24] emersion circulator? Would you like to buy one? Do you know what I mean? Oh, speaking of which, before we go to the break, a couple of weeks ago, somebody called in, I was like, I have an immersion circulator, but what the hell am I going to do with it? Basically. Remember that? It was like, why, like, what am I going to do with it? For normal family meal that's not like, uh, you know, not competent? You said, yeah. Yeah. Well, I did another one over the weekend. So, local, no offense in case you're the owner of a fine fair out there, but the local crappy, like, grocery store,

[12:52] key food, sea town style thing is fine. It's called fine fair where I live. You know, it's just like the local, you know, grocery store. And, uh, so I went in there and I bought your regular run of the mill sausage.

[13:03] And I cooked it for family dinner because, you know, a couple weeks ago we went to Cesare Casella's farm, the Thanksgiving farm where they, you know, they helped multiply disabled and autistic kids and adults through therapy, including working on

[13:16] a farm and whatnot. Anyway, so they gave us, they had this kibocha squatch, which are preposterously delicious. I mean, just absurdly delicious. And so I cooked those because they gave us a whole bunch along with some Brussels sprouts, very good. And they told us to cook the leaves on the top of the Brussels sprouts stock, which was surprisingly good. They take a long time to cook, kind of like collards. Uh, but incredibly delicious. So he had those along with potatoes a day. So we had a we had a Thanksgiving farm meal, except for this sausage. So I took the sausage and I threw it in a ziploc bag with a little bit of oil, threw that sucker in the immersion circulator at 60 degrees Celsius, which is 140. You should all remember that, by the way. I don't care whether you cook in Fahrenheit or Celsius. You should remember that 60 is 140 and vice versa. Anyway, cook it. Threw it onto my salamander. you don't have a salamander, you can, I don't know, grill it, do whatever, for like, you know, a minute on a side, and they were like the best dang sausages in the world, and people were like, oh my god, where'd you get that sausage? I was like, I bought it at the fine fair for nothing. But because I cooked it right, it was delicious because typically you overcook a

[14:15] sausage and you're relying on the extra fat on the inside of a sausage to make it taste good.

[14:19] What you should do is just not overcook it from the beginning. Now, when Philip pressed in from polyscience, our good buddy, was putting together the cookbook that we gave him recipes for

[14:28] for his emerging circulator, we gave him that recipe. We like sausage. You should have sausage in there, and he's like, well, why? I don't understand. Like, why do you need to cook a sausage in an immersion circulator? And because I can go by the cheapest, my mind was not the curse. anyway. And, you know, it's not bad quality. I would never buy bad quality for my family, but it's like, you know, inexpensive stuff and you treat it right. Did you do it in beer? What? Did you do it in beer? Oh, I told him he could do like brats, brats and beer, but I just did it in olive oil. I didn't want to like poach these things out. I just did them in a ziploc and olive oil at 60. Uh, you know, for like, you know, whatever. I wasn't even paying attention to it and I threw it. And then you know what I did? I didn't want to fire up my circulator for the leftovers. So I took a Ziploc bag and I threw, and this is an Irv A special. I threw mashed potatoes into the ziploc, squished it flat, sealed it. So here's the trick. You squish the mashed potatoes in the Ziploc bag down to a layer, like maybe like three eighths of an inch thick. And then I threw it into a pan of simmering water, like a frying pan of simmering

[15:27] water, and they heat it up like lickety split without, you know, having any burn spots on the bottom. They were hot all the way through and I didn't lose any moisture off of them. So it was perfectly reheated mashed potatoes, which are pain. It's a pain to reheat mashed potatoes and not having turned to crap. So I did that. So anyway, and you could do that in the immersion circulator if you already had it running. In fact, what we do now in classes is we make our mashed potatoes, uh, you know, in advance, like in the morning, pack them into zips or into, uh, vacuum bags, but not without the

[15:54] vacuum, meat gets, could vacuum them. And then, uh, at the last, you know, couple of minutes, we squish it real thin, throw it into the circulator bath and reheat

[16:01] it, and they're perfect. Because don't you hate when you're making mashed potatoes? Do you ever make mashed potatoes? Don't you hate it when you're always worried about getting them done at the last minute? You're like, oh my god, do my potatoes? Do they're going to get cold or then you have to stick them over a water bath to keep them hot and the water bath boils

[16:15] over? It's always a pain. Mashed potatoes are always a pain to finish off when you're finishing off the rest of your food. At least if you care about them the way I do. I don't know, maybe nostalgia is one of those people that beats the hell out of me in a KitchenAid until they turn into a soupy gloop. Are you one of those people? My mom hand mashes them. So there's all the leftover chunks of potato that didn't get right. She's making the vegan face. So you don't like the leftover chunks of No, not at all. I mean, look, because I am who I am and people, like my chef friends would make fun of me if I didn't. I used the food mill to make the mashed potatoes, but honestly, I think one of the easiest things, if you don't have a food mill, the potato

[16:48] ricers work really, really well. The problem is, is I always burn my hand when I use them. You know what I'm talking about, the potato riceers? They don't leave any little chunklets. They're pretty good. I also diverge from most of my chef friends who use they use only butter. But I don't, like, I don't want to, look, people are going to call me and tell me I'm a jerk, but I'm not one of these guys. I feel like I need to put so much freaking butter in that I can actually lubricate the potatoes entirely with butter alone. So I actually add cream and butter. What about you, Stas? Yeah, we add milk. Alright, that's for suckers. But, like, I add cream and butter, but people are like, why do you want to add cream? Why do you want to add all that water? just going to ruin it. Just add more butter. But I don't really want, like, you know, like the Robichon potatoes that are like half butter. And I don't really necessarily, I don't need

[17:28] that. You know what I mean? I don't know, it's not my thing. So I make sure of cream and butter. Throw in the Ziploc and keep it hot. So those are some more things to do with your immersion circulators, and I spent hardly any time talking about the venison, but that's life in the big city. Let's go to our 1st commercial break, cooking issues.

[18:06] I've been holding that so long I've been sleeping all alone. No, I miss you. I've been hanging on the phone, I've been sleeping, I'm alone, I want

[18:24] to peace with... Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

[18:30] Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

[18:46] It's starting in my dream, now long. And welcome back to Cooking Issues, calling all your questions too, 718-497-2128. 718-49721, 28. Let the record show that vegan face was originated on this show. When everybody else starts using that. Hey, you made you vegan face. You think it's going to catch on, definitely. If Jack has anything to do with it, he will. He'll get all the hosts, all the hosts of all the shows. By the way, today is a it's literally Roberta's is a one-man Jack Insley show today. Jack Insley being our intrepid engineer here. Roberta's is shut down for the day because the entire staff is off racing go-karts in New Jersey. Is this true or false? Correct. I spoke to the chef of Roberta's Carlo. Uh, couple weeks ago when I was at the farm and he told me this was going to happen. He didn't tell me I was going to be on a Tuesday. And here's the thing. They have a no, they have a no drinking well on the go-kart policy, which is very wise. Very wise. Do you think that's wise, Jack? With them yeah. Yeah, yeah, no drinking and go karting. So, but they have apparently. And I don't know how this shook out. They have a no. It's close track, by the way, folks, close track. They have no getting on the go-kart drunk policy. So the Roberta's idea was to get everyone shellacked on the bus ride down. That makes sense. Yes. So my prediction for the fight is pain as Clever Lang would say for all of you, Rocky 3 fans out of the audience. Well, I'll be making your Margan salad, so hopefully it's good. Yeah, Jack went and fired up the pizza oven so that I've never seen his place, Santi. crazy, right? Spooky. Yeah, I was like slamming on the door because I can't be bothered to read things that are around

[20:34] me, like signage. And so like the door said, you know, call Jack if you need to get in, but I didn't see it. Okay. This, by the way, you know what sucks? This is our Halloween episode, and we didn't think about anything to do for Halloween. I forgot that Halloween's on the Monday. Did you guys celebrate on Tuesday? It's a little late to celebrate for Halloween on Tuesday. No one gives a crap about Halloween after it's over. By the way, my son says I say crap too much. Anyway, speaking up that my younger son. My older son, who's obsessed with the MTA, and all things trained. So if he doesn't want to be on them, wants to be an, he wants to be a Metro North ticket taker, i.e. conductor this year. Try to go buy a Metro North hat, folks. Metro North is our commuter railroad, try to. Please. Nastasia, who's a genius at this sort of thing. So like if I want to find, by the way, if I want to find you, whoever you are, like she will find you, get your personal number and or your assistant number and start hounding them. So please don't like ask me to get her on your case because she will track you down. Found a uh, found a conductor hat and I have a little miniature conductor's hat. I think it might even be too small for my 10 year old. I didn't think there were human beings this small. I don't think they're supposed to fit on your head. Don't they just wear it like approached? They're not freaks. They're human beings who are taking tickets. They wear this as their as their hat. Does it fit around? Yes, it's a hat. Oh my god. Oh my god. All right, anyway, so I guess we will tell you stories of Halloween, but I wish we could get a Halloween. Please, someone call in with a Halloween question to 718-497-2128. All right. Okay. Hey, Nastasia and Dave. Thanks for answering our question on bagel cocktails. Sam and I work together. So it was just one group of people trying to work bait make bagel cocktails, not that the entire world is suddenly interested in bagel cocktails, which would be quite

[22:18] strange. And we talked about sending in a question, and we both ended up sending in the question. Anyway, we enjoy the show and it's been hugely helpful in exploring new ideas and techniques. Best Johnny Hunter from the Underground Food Collective. Well, that's great, but did the bagel cocktail work? Well, they sent that the day after. Oh, so they didn't have time to try it. Maybe. All right. Okay, another follow-up. Hi, Nastasia and Dave, this is from Andrew. Does someone else write in this or is just Andrew Rudd this in? Andrew. Okay. In episode 58, I like that people know what episode it is, because I have no idea. iTunes. Yeah, iTunes, iTunes. By the way, check this check this out. iTunes, right? Apparently, they will not tell you. I'm trying to figure out like whether or not anyone's listening to this program or not, right? So, I'm like, Jack, can you call up the iTunes people, and figure out, like,

[23:05] whether anyone is downloading this, and iTunes won't give out that information. Isn't that crazy? Does that make any dang sense? No. It makes no dang sense, right? Nothing. makes no sense. Okay. In episode 58, Dave wondered what temperature modern cuisine calls for for cooking gooey duck, low temperature. And they list it as barely cooked. According to their best bet chart, they prefer 50 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. Okay, in that same episode, low temp snails are mentioned, and the same chart in modern cuisine recommends 68 degrees C for 5 hours for a tender braised snail.

[23:36] I hope this helps, and thanks for the great show. I've learned a great deal from listening. Thanks. Um, Andrew, uh, before I get, let me finish this before I finish

[23:44] out when Andrew said. Okay, I, like I said last week, I think. I've had, um, um, Mira

[23:49] Vold and Youngs and, you know, Maxims and Grants. That's the whole crew there, or some of the whole crew there. I've had their Gooey Duck, Gooey Duck being the very Manly Clam, we'll say. Is that fair? It's very... It's a very, very manly clam. Anyway, yes. And so, um, it's the most suggestive food, I think, that we... It would be a good time to press pause and Google Gooey Duck. Yes, Belgeo duck. pronounced gooey duck. Anyhoo, like the good folks at the... They did not. By the way, Nastasia just admits on the air that she is a regular, I don't know where she finds the

[24:27] time because, you know, I don't know, but she... What do you have against the rest of their program? It's crap Wow. Calling out Hoda and Kathy Lee. don't care what we think. Anyway, I used to watch Kathy Lee back in the day when she was with the Regis. Regis and Kathy Lee. bringing it back. I used to be, man, the summer before I, the summer I graduated college. I did exactly 3 things. I worked on my 1976 Pontiac Bonneville, right? Bondoing the quarter panel so that I could get it pass inspection and making sure that it worked, paid $400 for that car. Best $400 I ever spent. Car got exactly 10 miles to the gallon, whether it was on the city or the highway, like a couple of months into owning it. James Brown tape got jammed into the tape deck and I couldn't ever get it out again. So whenever the car was running, James Brown was playing. We eventually spray painted a gold and zip tied bullhorns on the front of that thing. Thing was amazing. I love that car. Really good pickup. Anyway, so I did that. I deep fried potatoes and habanero chili rienos because I was training myself for heat eating at the

[25:33] time, and I watched Regis and Kathy Lee. and ABC's daytime soaps. And that was basically it. That was the whole summer. My wife was like, what the hell? I mean, she wasn't my wife at the time. She was my girlfriend at the time, but, you know, she was almost like, man, what the hell is wrong with this guy? What am I gotten into? Anyway, so, uh, Dare Gooey Duck is incredibly delicious. They cut it into like kind of long noodles, and they cook it in a CVAP oven, I guess, at 50 degrees C, which is just warming it, really, for 30 minutes, and it's just fantastic. Very, very tender. But they cook their snails at a much higher temperature. So 68. Once you go to 68, I mean, I don't see why you don't just take it all the way up to 85. I don't really see what the big name. I don't know. Id like to try it. I like to try the difference between a 68 Celsius snail for 5 hours and just like a regular simmer in a bag, let's

[26:19] say, for, you know, for like 2 hours, see what the difference is. But if that's what they say works, I'm sure they tried it. I'm sure they had one of the 15 cooks that was working on that thing sitting there with like snail after snail for days figuring it out. right? Isn't that pathetic that we don't own a copy of modernist cuisine? Don't even. It's pathetic. It's pathetic. Okay. Andrew was also wondering if we are still interested in some help for blog

[26:42] posts and I would gladly lend my time and effort. Okay, here's the thing. I have come to a realization, people. And that is, I have, look, I have roughly 15 to 20 blog posts in my head that need to get written.

[26:55] Right? Roughly 15 to 20 that I just don't have time. I'm just being pulled in all kinds of different directions. Uh, I think at this point, if there are people out there and they would have to go through Nastasia and give a sample of their writing or whatnot. But if there are other people who think that they want to write cooking

[27:13] issues style posts, meaning pedantic. You know, but like, you know, kind of, you know, the style. If you've ever been on the blog, cookingissues.com, you know the style. The style is what it is. It's cooking issue style stuff. I think at this point we could probably open it, open it up. do you think? This is the 1st I've heard of this. So we would have guest writers? Yeah. I mean what do you think? I mean, now that we're going to own it. That's it. We own it. we can do whatever we want, the people who are writing for it no longer have to be working for the French culinary. I mean, actually, I'm just considering between, I mean, look, look, you want to, does anyone care about this? Here's the post. what's school going to say? What are they going to say? They don't read it anyway. All right. So, like, look, I have a, I have a bunch of clarification posts on uh, Kiso Salt and

[28:01] Kaiosan, which are 2 new clarification aids that I use. I have a way to clarify now, things like lime juice to get pretty good yields without a centerfuge, even. I've worked on it without a centrifuge. But grapefruit juice. It no problem. I'll be very close to getting centrifugelist clarification for lime juice. Got to write about this. I have to write. There's a bunch of, uh, like book review things I have to write on, um, there's just a whole boatload, stuff, more infusion techniques I have to write about. I mean, there's just a bunch of stuff that I have to write about. I just don't have time. And you know what? Maybe this. Maybe it's not even stuff that I necessarily want to write about. If someone else can come up with a cooking issue style post on their own thing, right? And by the way, I'm not, if you have an idea, and you can write it up in a cooking

[28:43] issue is kind of a way. I'm not going to take credit for your idea. I just don't feel that that's appropriate. Do you? No, yeah, no, you're right. But yeah. It needs to be appropriate posts. I don't want some dummy. writing something, you know? Hey, Nastasi just called all of you guys dummies. No, but I'm just imagining this stuff we'll get. Is she making the vegan face? She's making the vegan face. I'll tell you something, like, well, that's why we call you the hammer noustache. Hey, you you know, you are the you're the hammer. You get to the side like whether or not this stuff... what I would do before you go bother writing it is I would propose to Nastasia what it is you think is an interesting. Look at Francis Lamb's writing. We really like him. I love him. that style of writing. Francis Lamb, who now he's at guilt. He's at his new company, guilt. He's not at salon anymore. The guilt, the blog. Anyway. Anyway, so I'm open, Andrew. And we had someone else calling the same thing. Okay. Another question. I just had a disaster occur, and I'm trying to backtrack my steps to where I screwed

[29:42] up, and this is coming in from Marty Eagle Rock. What? We have a caller? I'll come back. Oh, we lost him. We did. We got him. Hello, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, I just had a question. So, you know, it's pumpkin carving season. Oh, Halloween question. Yes. All right, go ahead. Halloween question. Anyway, I was just wondering if you had anything special that you do with all the inside outs that you just scoop out and then you just kind of throw it

[30:07] away. Is there anything you could use that for, food wise? I mean, other than the seeds? Yeah. For using the seeds, I don't know. Maybe you couldn't eat the seeds. See, no, the seeds are incredibly delicious. Now, I wish I had the recipe for it. Uh, the, my kids' babysitter makes the best pumpkin seeds I've ever had. We're just talking about this yesterday. And, um, and, you know, when she said she was going to make pumpkin

[30:29] seas. like, yeah, whatever. Come on, like you're going to make a pumpkin seed that I think is delicious. she hasn't normally cook that much. You know what I mean? Her pumpkin seeds are freaking delicious. And she, she removes the pulp from the pumpkin seeds, like washes them clean, and then squeezes uh, uh, lemon or lime juice over them, lets them sit for a little while, and then roast them off in an oven with

[30:47] salt, and they are freaking good on a regular pumpkin. They're delicious. I've tried them with the kobocha squash and the seeds are a little bit thicker, so they're not as good, but I try to get my babysitter's recipe for the seeds for

[30:59] later, for next week, but they're fantastic. Now, the pulp, I don't know whether you can use the pulp for anything. You ever use the pulp for anything? I mean, I'm sure you could cook it. I'm sure you could cook it and like make like a kind of a brothy thing out of it and then like press it out. The strings themselves. I don't know how well they break down. But the seeds by far and away, you should never throw away those pumpkin seeds because they're incredibly delicious.

[31:22] All right. Well, thank you so much. Hey, thank you and happy Halloween. Nice. Halloween question. I wish had a spooky sound effect to play out. Can you make one? I'll try. How's that? It was good. Spooky? All right. I just had a disaster occurred. This is Marty and Eagle Rock. I just had a disaster, Colonel. trying to backtrack my steps to where I screwed up. I love questions like this, right? stuff because I like because I screw up all the time and I'm always having to backtrack. Um, I had 2 hunks of cross rib roast. I blowtorch the surface of each and toss them into bags with olive oil, garlic, and fresh rosemary, and sealed them up with a home vacuum sealer, a couple of mistakes there, blowtorch.

[32:04] I'm not a big fan. he hasn't gotten the mistake yet. But I'm not a big fan of blow torches. Um, unless, look, I mean, I'm assuming, Marty, that you maybe you have one of the Iwatanis, which is one of the little, uh, the little butane powered, uh, blowtorches, but I find that like the average torch that we use, which are the big old propane ones that are used for, uh, when you're, you know, I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for, doing

[32:25] plumbing, like a plumbing torch, right? They leave what I call a propane taste. We talked about this recently on the air, propane taste. And I think it has to do with the chemical that they add to the propane so that you can smell it when it's leaking, right? Because you don't want it to leak and explode and all that stuff. And there are butane torches that don't have that smell because either they do a better job at combusting that smell or because there's less of the adulterants in the butane because you

[32:49] use a butane that you use for pipeliders and cigar lighters. And those customers are very sensitive about that smell ruining their cigar, which is why old school suckers don't use lighters.

[32:58] They use matches to light their cigars, right? Right? Okay, I don't smoke cigars, but I'm just making this up. Anyway, um, so, uh, I'm not a huge fan of

[33:08] of torches in general, especially on fat because fat tends to pick up that flavor more than uh, lean parts, which I've done the test on. I'm a bigger fan of just, you know, putting a

[33:20] sear on that thing in a frying pan. If you can't do that, fine, go ahead and blowtorch is going to work. That's just my thoughts on blowtorching. I recently bought a blowtorch at the Home Depot that is a propane torch that has a much bigger flame on it.

[33:33] It's a real monster. It's called like a wide angle, like a wide flame. I'm in the process, another blog post. I mean, the process of working on it to see whether or not that thing has less of a torture taste, whether it has a better combustion, and also whether it can do a better job browning because it's not as much of a point source of

[33:47] heat. It much wider. So I'm looking into that. Anyway, okay, this wasn't the question. We're back on Mari's question now. So he bagged them with olive oil, garlic, and fresh rosemary, and seal them up with a home vacuum sealer. So far, so good. One I cook for my parents, uh, 2 days at 130 degrees, uh, which is 544 or rare. The other, I toss it in the freezer. The 1st one turned out great. I salted it and seared it off, perfect meat. By the way, good job not salting it beforehand. The recent blog post we had is that if you salt the meat beforehand, it's going to taste cured. Uh, especially on a long cook like that, it's not going to taste like a fresh steak. So, good job salting it afterwards and searing it off. Perfect meat. Good. I'm glad. A couple of weeks later, I defrosted the other hunk, and tossed it into the

[34:30] sou into the immersion circulator into the, or whatever he's using to cook at 130 degrees, and cooked it for 36 hours. At 36 hours, he noticed an air pocket growing in the bag. He was worried there was some anaerobic nastiness happening, and sure enough, when I opened it up, it smelled like rancid zombie vomit. There's some Halloween for you. Rancid zombie vomit. So rancid zombie vomit. Zombie, zombie, zombies eat only human brains, right? don't know. Yeah, Z Jack, correct? have to do some fact checking on that first. Yeah, fact check. I believe, well, maybe not exclusively, but their favorite thing to eat is... Yeah,

[35:05] seems like Google says they eat brains. Yeah, human brains, and the reason they don't just eat other zombie brains. The reason they need human brains is because the way you become a zombie is to have a zombie eat your brain. Therefore, therefore, you don't have the brain to be eaten by once you're a zombie, so they need to search out fresh humans for their brains. See, this is why it works. Anyway, um, So Rancy's rancid zombie vomit would be like several day old human brains that have been digested by zombies, is what we're talking about for a

[35:33] snow. So i.e. bad. I dumped it and served leftover lasagna instead. That's a good call. What question is, where did I go wrong? Could I have killed guests had I served it and what should I do differently next time? Thanks, Marty. I don't think that, uh, look, obviously you did the right thing. Anytime a bag blows up with air and you don't know why, you should throw it away. Uh, because there's probably clearly bacteria growing in there that are causing

[35:59] uh, the bag to inflate. The fact it smelled like rancid zombie vomit, right? And usually, um, it, and it does smell freaking awful because I've had it happen before. It's like, to me, it's not zombie vomit as much as it is kind of blue cheese mixed with zombie vomit,

[36:17] like kind of a blue cheese, sauerkraut, socks, feet, zombie

[36:21] vomit, mix, right? But it's, um, it's off putting. Let's put it that way. Uh, certain like, uh, you know how some cheeses taste delicious with smell of death? It's kind of like that too. Anyway, what's happening in there is you're not going to kill anyone, most likely? But what that is, there are different lactic acid, bacteria, lactobacilli, and other bacteria like that that are growing in that bag. And what happened is this. You had a large piece of meat. You might have had a portion of the interior of the meat that had gotten contaminated, like a

[36:57] knife or something got stuck into it, or it's just the stuff on the outside, and maybe the meat was resting against the bottom of the circulator, right? And you put something in frozen, or you thought it, and as you thought it, let's say you thought it before you put it in the circulator. Remember, freezing doesn't kill bacteria. It kills maybe a certain portion of them, but it's not a method to kill bacteria. So the bacteria are basically in suspended animation. It takes a long time to thaw out a piece of meat. This is why they have you thaw meat in the refrigerator typically, even though it takes a whole hell of a long time. They don't want the meat to basically be growing bacteria while it's thawing out. The reason it takes a long time to thaw meat is because water is not nearly as like bound water inside of meat is not nearly as good a heat conductor as the ice.

[37:44] So once it starts thawing, it actually becomes kind of insulated relative to the part that's not thawed. And so it takes a lot longer to thaw something than it does to freeze it, which is why things take forever to

[37:56] thaw, and even though you've had that turkey in the fridge for, you know, 3 days, the inside of it's still frozen. You've noticed that, right? Nastasha? Yeah. So, uh, one, you don't necessarily have to thaw it, you can thought in the circulator, um, at kind of load cooking temp in

[38:12] that in that area, right? And then you're killing bacteria right from the get go without growing some at the beginning. The other problem is, if there's some bacteria in the middle of it, and it takes hours for the meat to come up to temperature, and it can take hours and hours and hours, especially you're right at the line

[38:28] there. You're at 50, uh, like 130 is like 544. If it's 4 degrees different. So if you have a big roast and it sits in the bottom of the pan and there's stuff underneath that's contaminated that hasn't been killed yet, and that part is even 4 degrees cooler because there's not water circulation underneath of it, you're going to be growing bacteria in

[38:48] that, and then the gas will come up around. It'll form a bubble and it'll start floating, right? So, and have to diagnose exactly where you went wrong. Um, one, beware that at those close temperatures, you should, what you should do is take the bag and probably simmer it like for like a minute just to kill everything that's on the surface layer and then put it in and you're not

[39:08] going to have a problem. You're gonna want to make sure the bag is up off the bottom of your circulator tank so that there's not a place where you're like 4 degrees

[39:14] different, at 4 degrees different. You're growing evil bacteria in there and you don't want that to happen. Another thing is making sure that you don't have any contamination on the inside, making sure that your thought times aren't too long. Uh, but you, you, you definitely put yourself in a situation where a chunk of the meat was in the range probably between 40 and 50 Celsius,

[39:36] right? So below 100 and whatever it is, 20 and change, 20, you know, 8 or 7 or whatever it is, and change where bacteria are growing and you grew lactic acid bacteria. You probably wouldn't have killed anyone, but I guarantee you the entire piece of meat was

[39:49] repulsive, so it's a good job to throw it away. Um, right? Yeah? All right. And uh, do you have anything else to say? Um, no. No? You have nothing? Pupkiss? All right. Well, this has been the Halloween episode of Cooking Issues. We'll come back with all of our Halloween stories. Happy Halloween and happy trick or treating. Vicious, fish, vodka. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner and I don't know where I'm at.

[40:37] Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage radio network. You can find all of our archives programs on heritageradionetwork.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage

[40:52] radio network in the iTunes store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up to date news and information. Thanks for listening. The following is a public service announcement from food karma. To kick off the New York City Meet Week in style, meet with a twist, we'll bring together the best chefs and mixologists for a cocktail food pairing party on November 7th, from 6 to 10

[41:18] p.m. at City Winery. Meet with a twist features 10 cocktails paired with 10 chef selections highlighting

[41:23] local, sustainably grown meat such as duck, lamb, chicken, pork, beef, bison, and ostrich.

[41:29] The party will launch a week's worth of events throughout the city that celebrate the slow food

[41:33] movement, bringing sustainable meats to our tables. Again, that's November 7 from 6 to 10 p.m. at City Winery. Updates, tickets, and more information are available at MeetWeekNYC.com.