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[1:20] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live every Tuesday from the Heritage Radio

[1:28] Network at Roberta's Pizzeria in the back in the little container they have cut here for our radio station in the Bushwick, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, although a sick

[1:37] Nastasia. Yes. Right? Yes. Listen, while I talk about Nastasia. I'm going to tell you to call all of your questions too. 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. You gotta hurry. because we're only here to answer your Thanksgiving related cooking questions or otherwise for the next 45 minutes or so. So, Nastasia, not feeling well, huh? No. You know it was even more depressing. Getting on the subway and seeing everyone with their suitcases at Port Authority going home.

[2:05] Well, they were at Port Authority, so you can laugh for them for that reason. Port Authority is, for those of you that haven't visited our fine city. Port Authority is a hellhole. I mean, a 100% unmitigated hunk of crap. One job. One job. one job. Get people into the city and out of the city in an effective manner. So what are some things you need? Good transport back and forth, right? Good signage, friendly staff. People, yeah. Any of those? No. No. Worse staff, worse, unless you work there, in which case I love you. Worst signage. You know, the building itself is split into 2 sections with a road running through

[2:44] it. So you're like, where's my bus? Oh, it's in the other building. How come there's no sign saying it's in the other freaking building? Because this is Port Authority. What do you want? An easy way to get in and out of the city? The hell is wrong with you? Anyway, Port Authority sucks. The only thing that kind of rivals Port Authority for sucking has got to be Penn Station. The other biggest hunk of crap in the entire city. And also the other place is supposed to get people in and out of the city relatively easy. Again, for those of you that don't take trains in out of the city either because you're rich enough to always have a car or whatever. I don't know why. But, uh, um, for some reason, even at Grand Central, at Grand Central, I can tell you right now on a

[3:20] program exactly what track your train will be on in a month and a half . Okay? Uh, at Penn Station. They like to wait until 5 minutes before the train's going to leave so that everyone with their luggage is smashing into each other down a tiny corridor to rush and beat each other up and

[3:38] like knock each other into the tracks to get to the train. Does this make any freaking sense? Come on people. Anyway, all right, enough of that. Okay. Did I already tell them to call them their questions? Anyway, so I think the reason Nastasia is sick is because Nastasia was, in part, aside from all the other cooking issues and, you know, new company related work that we're doing. She ran the wedding celebration for our good buddy, Nils

[4:01] Norn, and Vicki, you know, Chef Nils Norn, our buddy, had his wedding. Never thought he never thought he would get married till he found Vicki, the right woman. And Nastasia forgets to tell me it's true story. Forgets to tell me, hey, Nils requested that you make some cocktails for the wedding, which I would gladly do. I would do anything for nils. Uh, doesn't doesn't tell me, make them and was like, they've made them. I'm like the hell I made them. They were good. They were delicious, right? But like, I'm not going to take... So my recipe. If I make if I make Bobby Flay's recipe, I was like, hey, hey, Bobby Flay made your chicken. Anyway, they were good. So, you know, to you goes the credit. But had they sucked, you would have gone the blame as well, because that's the way she goes. All right. Matthew writes in. Hi, Dave and Nastasia, I'm looking forward to today's show. This Friday, I'm catering a party, and the host has requested me to prepare a filet of beef that's tenderloins for all you other people out there. I don't have access to a circulator, although there's a slight chance I could borrow one from some friends and we'll have to cook the tenderlens from raw at the apartment where the party is. I will probably cook one from medium rare to medium, which is already too high for my taste, by the way, Matthew. Uh, and another medium to well done, and in parentzy,

[5:16] right, it's not my choice, obviously. Not anyone's choice. What the hell? Just put a blindfold on the customer, so they don't know how overcooked it is, and they'll enjoy it when it's cooked less anyway. If you don't have the opportunity to poke their eyes out so they can't look at the color. I mean, it's what, you know, you're going to have to. Obviously, if you do tenderloin, well done, you're going to have to sauce it. Sauce to be Jesus out of it in order to have it be like even moderately edible, right or wrong. Right. Anyway. Do you have any do you have any suggestions, guidelines, temperatures, or general advice for

[5:44] preparing beef filet with standard issue home kitchen equipment? I have about a 3 hour window from when I arrive at the house until the meat will be served. Okay, look it. If you really do have to cook one of these suckers until it's gray and

[5:59] unappetizing. You're going to have to make a delicious sauce to go with it. I see she has something, a sauce with a lot of fat in it that's bound. have the fat pull out, a cream-based sauce, perhaps. Perhaps onions, cassis, and cream, some mixture thereof might be good with some reduced beef stock, right? Styles? That sounds good, right? Anyhoo, so that's one thing. Another thing, if you're gonna, look, if you're supposed to overcook it, because your customers want it overcooked, you might as well go ballsy and do a beef

[6:28] Wellington, because that's kind of ballsy, right? Where you take, you're going to sear off the meat, then you're going to take a mixture of pate and

[6:34] sautéed mushrooms and shallots and put it over the top of the tenderloin, wrap the sucker and puff pastry, and then cook it in a high oven, guaranteed to overcook the tenderloin. But if they want it overcooked anyway, that's what I would recommend. Now, tenderloin is interesting. It's a, you know, it's a cut that a lot of chefs don't give a lot of merit to

[6:51] because, uh, it doesn't have a lot of connected tissue and people think of it as a fairly, as far as beef goes, not having a lot of beef

[6:58] flavors. So chefs tend to make fun of the cut. Now, it can be delicious as a textural thing and it does, I mean, come on, it does have some beef flavor, right? Yeah. So, uh, and and sexist, it's usually like a lot of it basically there's a lot of sexism among news flash, a lot of sexism in this business. And, uh, you know, it's seen as kind of a ladies cut is kind of like, it's the Cosmo of stakes, basically. Uh, so, uh, but the trick to cooking one is one, not overcooking it. Because there's no connective tissue. It wants to cook at a very, very low temperature. So when I am using a circulator. I only cook it up to like 54.4 Celsius, which is very low, rare. Uh, because it doesn't have any sort of fat, really, or connect tissue to protect it from overcooking. Two, you don't want to cook it that long because, you know, even with a low temperature, even if you had a circulator,

[7:46] um, the meat would get, um, a kind of mushy if you cooked it for a long time. So if you, and I'm presuming, by the way, you are writing the question that you want to keep it whole as a whole

[7:57] filet and then cut serving. Otherwise, I would just cut it into steaks and cook the steaks, which is a lot easier to do, well, using home equipment. Now, I'm going to go radical on you. First of all, if you have to do it at home equipment, I would put a crust on it, and then I would put it in the oven, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out of the oven to try and

[8:16] get a more moderate heat on it so it doesn't overcook. But that's a pain in the butt. and if you don't do it all the time. That's how David Kinch like now replicates, because he does David Kinch from Manresa, amazing chef. Uh, he uh, moved away from using circulators and instead mimics uh, the effect of a circulator, which is a low average heat input by moving the meat in and out, in and out, in and out of an oven, which at the same time has the high heat of the oven, which

[8:42] crisp crisp and browns the outside while he's getting the low average heat input. So he's doing it that way. You can do it that way. Here's something I suggest. Go to the apartment. Most people's hot water taps at an apartment are fairly hot. Measure the temperature of the hot water using an instant reed thermometer. If the water is within a couple of degrees of 54, like if it's

[9:05] 53, all the way up to like 55, 56, then I would put the

[9:09] tenderloin in a Ziploc bag with a little bit of oil and turn the running water on.

[9:14] If the water's too hot at a tiny bit of cold water and it'll stabilize, get a steady but not severe stream of hot water.

[9:22] This don't work in an apartment, by the way, in a house because you'll typically run out of hot water, but

[9:27] an apartment, usually you won't. So you can run a steady stream of hot water over a Ziploc bag and I've actually cooked food this way in a pinch. It's completely eco-unfriendly. Uh, but uh, it will work. Bring it. You want to make sure that the thing cooks through in under, you want to cook it in about 45 to 50 minutes and a tenderloin will cook through. It depends on how thick it is. It might take an hour and a half if it's really thick. and then pull it out, cool it down a little bit and sear the outside of it. Is that helpful? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So about 54 is where I shoot for it for rare. I do not go above 56. Tenorloin has a very, very short window of yumminess. Okay. Now, our good friend Ariel from UC Davis, is she postdoc now at UC Davis? Is she still a grad student? What is she? she postdoc? Anyway, our good buddy, who used to be at NYU, is friends with Kent Kirschenbaum. And she gave us some very interesting information. She's running some tests on lime juice for us. for herself, really. But, you know, it also helps us because, uh, you know, people who've heard me yap about lime juice a lot know that, uh, a lot of people prefer lime juice that's 3 or 4 hours

[10:37] old as opposed to very fresh lime juice in a cocktail. And so she's doing the preliminary studies on what's actually going on in the lime

[10:43] juice. And apparently the volatile, the level of volatiles decreases rapidly over that 1st 3 to 4 hour

[10:48] chunk and other flavors are starting to come in. So it looks like there might be an actual sweet spot in the lime juice, if you like a specific profile. More to come. She's going to work on it more in the new year, but that's pretty interesting, huh? Yeah. And the other thing is that she wrote in about pungency and garlic, which is something that, you know, I apparently now got

[11:07] wrong and apparently McGee, also, we both got it wrong. There is a pungency scale for alliums, onions in particular, but I'm sure it would also work with garlic, and it's called the pyruvate scale. So what happens is, is when you convert Alley in or whatever it is to Allison, whichever way it goes from the non-pungent to the pungent, using the

[11:28] enzymes, when you cut or crush garlic or onion, that pungency that's created also creates a molecule of pyruvate, which is easily measurable and doesn't degrade.

[11:39] So what happens is they as fast. So they make the, they crush up onions and they use a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment, a special photometer as opposed to like doing, you know,

[11:49] chromatography, more expensive process. And they can measure directly the level of pyruvate that's

[11:56] there and therefore have a measure of how pungent the product is. So there is a measure of pungency, that in from Ariel, and you can look it up. It was even on Wikipedia. I should have looked at it. Pyruvate scale. Dumb. I'm dumb. Anyway, she sent us a paper. Um, and you can, you can just go look it up for those of you that have that sort of, uh, that sort of a capability to look up papers, pyruvate scale. Anyway, interesting, yeah. Yeah. All right. Now, Jason, from the southwest of England, writes in, says, I'm a dedicated podcast listener, but usually cannot listen live and call in because I'm in England, although I'm a native New Yorker.

[12:34] So hopefully I can ask Dave a question via email. Well, here you are doing it. Here it is happening. Okay. I had an argument recently with some people, most notably my wife, about storing coffee. She told me it should not be stored cold. I keep my current bag of coffee in the fridge and any supplies in the freezer. No one could explain to me why this was bad, and I assume that reducing the rate of oxidation in general spoilers by keeping the coffee cold has to be a major benefit given how fast coffee gets old and stale.

[13:00] My rationale also include the fact that the ground coffee is going to come up to temperature super fast, given its low moisture content, high surface area, and the fact that it's being immersed in 100 degree water. What do you think? The science says story cold, but people seem to be arguing against us for some reason. Thanks. Jason, who adds in Parens, stuck in South West England. Well, listen. Hey, if you're going to be in Southwest England, Jason. Now's the time. Shout out to Somerset and the cider folks over there. You guys got to be rolling an apple cider at this point. I mean maybe it's not done yet. But that's one of the apple cider producing kingdoms like centers of the universe right there. I mean, if I, like, like, in fact, if I had the time, if I wasn't working on so much stuff, and if it wasn't Thanksgiving, I'd be getting on a plane right now and flying to the other side, and, you know, sorry, Somerset, I'd be going to Kent to go to the Brogdale collection and chewing down on some apples and having some delicious cider over

[13:56] there. So good time to be from the south. I mean, good time of year to be from the south of England. Remember? Yeah, it was a fun time. Good time. Yeah, fun, fun, fun. Yep. I'm sick. Anyway. That's fine, Nastasia invitation, by the way. Okay, so back to the question on coffee. Now listen. I was not able, listen, I was not able to find any actual scholarly research on this, but I will tell you the reasoning that I have heard over the

[14:24] years. And it's also, you know, not to choose sides with your wife, but that you shouldn't store the coffee in the

[14:31] fridge and here's why. It's not the cold. uh, it's not the, it's not the cold that's hurting it. It's the fact that you get a lot of condensation as the temperature changes up and down, up and

[14:43] down, up and down. So if you had, if you had coffee in a hermetically sealed bag that had no moisture or, you know, the same amount of

[14:53] moisture, the coffee had in it, controlled atmosphere, let's say, CO2 purge, nitrogen

[14:58] purge, vacuum, right? Uh, and you pulled it, uh, in and out of the fridge, there might actually be some damage from temperature cycling, but the damage wouldn't be that great because you wouldn't be getting any condensation from the

[15:09] outside, from moisture coming into the outside. In a normal situation, there's moisture and the condensation, that moisture on the surface of the beans as the temperature changes is what's causing the problem. And that's especially going to happen if you're in and out, in and out, in and out. If you are going to freeze the coffee, freezing is viable, but you have to make sure that there's no moisture in the package at all.

[15:33] So you want to get all the air out of the package, if you have the ability to

[15:37] flush with some sort of gas, like CO2 or whatnot, if it's not fresh, very fresh beans, by the way, when you roast a fresh bean, if you

[15:45] were to, by the way, you should just roast, you should roast your own beans, which is a load of fun, just get some green beans, roast

[15:49] them. a lot of fun. Uh, I mean, it's really, it really is. And you don't have to get really some fancy equipment. You can start just with a pan and you know, spoon, you know, shake it around. If you just invest, I think, like 20 bucks in a whirly pop popcorn maker, they make great, you can roast coffee very well in that. I know I'm going to get some calls saying that I'm a jerk, but you don't even need a thermometer. You can do it based on sound and smell.

[16:15] Don't say it, don't tell me when I said that, but you can do good coffee roasting just based on that, or you can move to an air popcorn popper, a number of ways to do roast coffee. But then you can do it. But if you roast your own coffee, you'll notice that they gas a lot. If you were to take freshly roasted coffee that you just roasted and sealed it in a

[16:33] jar, assuming the jar didn't blow up, I don't think it would make enough pressure to blow up the jar. But when you open it, it will you get a blast of CO2 out because the CO2 is being evolved out of the beans as they age. And so that's why they actually have one way valves in these bags to stop the bags from puffing up so that the CO2 can get out.

[16:51] Once the beans have gotten rid of all of their CO2 beans. Once the beans have gotten rid of the CO2, then they start to oxidize much more rapidly and

[17:02] they and they stale. Um, I don't know what got me in. I't know where I got into that. But my point is, is that, uh, they want to be protected from oxygen, oxygen is going to be their enemy, moisture is going to be their enemy. So I think that the, also, your fridge has lots of, uh, man, I don't know about your fridge. You might have the cleanest fridge in the world, but fridges tend to have a lot of stinks in them. They have a little stank. Uh, which is why like when a fridge, when the power goes out, you realize how stinky your fridge is because it's not cold anymore, which doesn't, you know, doesn't dampen down the

[17:31] volatiles and you when they smell it. So coffee, which is very porous, tends to pick up bad aromas. It tends to pick up moisture, which condenses on it as it goes in and out of the

[17:38] fridge, and so the consensus is, don't do it. Yeah, good job. Yeah. All right. Nastasia's happy with my answer. I hope, Jason, that you were happy with my answer. What? Should we take a break Nastasia thinks we should go to our 1st commercial break. So we'll do that. Call in order questions. 2 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128, cooking issues.

[18:01] Like a passes, well, good night.

[18:07] I belonged inside your harsh embarks.

[18:16] I'm joining to your magnet's arm.

[18:26] I wish I could eat your cancer

[18:32] when you took back. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey your

[18:49] wait I

[18:57] Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

[19:19] kids forgive, no, but won't just yet. Get myself off angel hair and

[19:30] baby breath. Looking heaven of your highness, I... Go down your bed, canoe so I can climb right back. Welcome back to cooking issues, call your questions too, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. So the Nirvana, folks. I liked the Nirvana. That was what I grew up with. So I'm at this wedding that Nastasia is running, right? This was not my fault. Hey, look, so the DJ is playing all kind of easy, you know, not easy, but, you know, like, you know, brick house, like wedding kind of stuff, you know?

[20:17] My to maite. Anyway. And so like, you know, I'm dancing. By, well, by the way, I'm kind of a lunatic dancer, and I was with Vicky, our, from our intern, he's like an awesome Staten Island lunatic dancer. awesome, amazing. And my wife, we're dancing. And they throw on, uh, you know, they throw on, um, uh, smells like teen spirit from Nirvana. And I'm like, wait, what, what? What? At a wedding? I was like, look, if you're going to do that, the only appropriate way to do that is to go complete mosh out headbang slam. So I'm like, all right, you asked for it. You played it. And so I started doing the headbag. Now, it's not the same as when I had long hair back in 19, uh, you know, 90, 91. But, uh... Clearer the dance floor. I mean, everyone's like trying to do the little shoulder shake. It's freaking nirvana. Anyways. Uh, you know, thank God it wasn't 1991 or like some giant football jock would have started doing it and

[21:13] smashing into me and knocked me halfway across the. This is my memory, by the way. Now this is what my life used to be like. Anyhoo, my neck is still sore. So it turns out that when you're 40 going on 41, if you haven't done the

[21:24] headbang in a while, you might want to stay away. Today's show is sponsored by modernist pantry supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients, but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies and only a few grams are needed per application. Modernist pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients in packages that make sense for the home cook or enthusiast, and most cost only around 5 bucks. Saving you time, money and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloids, pH buffers, or even meat glue. You 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,

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[22:10] transglutaminates, a.k.a. meat glue to experiment with over the holiday. Simply use the promo code CI 63, placing your order online at modernestpantry.com. Visit modernistpantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs. Meek glue. We talked about it. I like it though. It's good stuff. It is good for the holiday season, the little meat glue. Those guys, they like us, those modern pantry guys, huh? It's good. We met them? No. Never met them in person huh? Anyway. Uh, so what are you doing for the Thanksgiving? I don't know yet. You don't know? I put my order in for the turkey. You put your under the table? No, I didn't. The turkey farmer. Did you guys remember his name, the turkey farmer? Larry Sorell. Larry Sorell, the heritage meet Turkey Farmer, right? I guess like, it's done, done. The turkeys are slaughtered. They dead. So he can come in from, you know, where does he live? Is he in Pennsylvania, where's he? Kansas. Kansas. Same thing. Kansas, Pennsylvania. same thing. Same thing. Anyway, so he's he's here at Roberta's eating, which is awesome because I'm about to go to the heritage meat

[23:12] stand, Essex Street Market. By the way, you can now just any Jokomo who happens to show up in the lower East side of New York and go purchase Heritage Meads at the Essex Street

[23:20] Market, little known fact by people who didn't already know it. And I'm going to go pick up my turkey today. And next week, I'll report back of how delicious. What are you doing? I don't know. You know what? You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking I might, look, I've become lazy in my old age. As soon as you hit 40, you instantly become lazy. Sorry, all you 45 year olds, you're lazy sons of guns. Anyway, I think I'm just going to bone the sucker out, roll it. What are you doing for Thanksgiving? I meant that I'm telling about the turkey. I'm gonna bone it out. What else is there to do? Be thankful for my family. I'm kidding. So I'm going to mistake, which is where my in-laws live. But I'm going to bone out the turkey and probably roll it and then cook it that way. I think that's the easiest way. You know, I just don't have the time this year to do the, you know, the aluminum skeleton and pumping the

[24:03] oil, although it is the best damn turkey I've ever made. Anyway, on 2 questions. Matthew writes in about braise colors. Thanks a lot for answering my questions last week. This week I'm working on a sandwich for my business based around red wine braised beef. I am raising Chuck on the stovetop and red wine and beef broth. After slowly simmering for a few hours. I pull the beef apart and reduce the braise to a glaze. Everything comes out pretty well, except for the color ends up being grayish. Ideally, I want to end up with something the color of red wine or Concorde grape juice. Concorde gravy. Delicious. Mustache's favorite. Any ideas or suggestions would be a great help, thanks, Matthew. Okay, look. Here's the issue. Well, assume, let's let's knock right off the bat. You're not using an aluminum. I mean, not aluminum. You're not using a reactive pan that's going to cause a color problem, right? So typically a aluminum or cop or anything like that. I'm assuming that you're working in stainless or some other form of something that's not going to cause any sort of all coloring based on the metal. bang, done. Uh, I think anytime you're doing a long cook and you're reducing and you have a lot

[25:01] of uh, stuff like beef broth or browns, the colors are never going to be as punchy as you want. Uh, I mean, you say gray. Usually I'm used to going kind of a brownish color. Uh, and then that brown can go somewhat grayish if there's fat that ends up getting emulsified into the braise. So I'd make sure you try and skim the fat after before you, before you reduce it down to a glaze, get the fat off of it. Also, you might, the flavor's going to be different. Like the real depth of flavor, you're going to want that, that, you know, brown, you know, meat stock, but you might move to like a white veal stock, which you can reduce a lot more without getting the huge color impact from all the brown bits.

[25:37] You know, if you don't brown the meat as much. But again, all that stuff's what makes it delicious. So I think it's going to be hard to kind of punch the color. Now you can cheat, but it really ruin, you know, not ruin. It's delicious. changes the flavor by doping up the color with things that have very high colorant

[25:51] values, like jelly, like concord grape jelly, but that's going to add concord or tomato paste, or something of that nature is going to

[25:59] punch, punch the red up. I'm interested in hearing anyone else whether they have any suggestions on this. I mean, I like a braised kind of a sauce, but they always do look kind of

[26:10] gloopy, unless you just create the sauce from scratch instead of having it be part of the

[26:14] braise. You know, like have the braves be the braves. Save that sauce, continue to brazen, and then just make a specific sauce that has a specific color profile, a cassis or whatever, to go with it. What do you think, Steph? Sounds good. She's like, I don't care. I sick. She said, I don't give a crap. I'm sick. Happy Thanksgiving. Okay. Colin writes in. You mentioned on last week's show that tannins and pectins combine in persimmons as they ripen to make them less astringent. Can I add pect into something tannic like black walnut booze, for instance, to reduce the astringency? I tried an LN too. that liquid nitrogen for all you folks out there, freeze last year to dehydrate the tannins at your suggestion, but that did not have a strong effect. Sorry. I'll try pectin, but if you ever tried something similar, thanks, Colin. Okay, look it. Look it. What happens is, um, tan and will complex with

[27:00] pectin in fruit, right, in a bledding situation. Bledding. Let's see, look it up. Anyway. Or listen to last week's show. Uh, but the, um, most effective way to do it, tannins like to buy with proteins a lot. So if you really want to bind the hell out of tannins, you're going to want to treat it with a protein-based wine finding agent. So what are your choices? Uh, already in your fridge, most likely, egg white. So, uh, mix, um, and you can look up the proportions in, uh, you know, in a wine finding on the internets, but it's usually egg white and salt. I forget why the salt's there. I think to, I don't make the proteins act better. I don't know why it's there, frankly. And water, to make it easy to mix in. You stir it into your liquid. And then over the course of like a week or two, the egg white proteins will combine with the tannins into

[27:50] larger, into larger complexes. And when they do that, they'll slowly sink to the bottom and then you can rack the stuff off the top. So that's a classic way to do it. Uh, even more hardcore than uh, egg in terms of its ability to remove tannins, because

[28:05] egg's gonna remove tannins, but not uh, necessarily that much. Gelatin. If you dissolve gelatin, mix a gelatin

[28:12] in the gelatin will complex with the tannin, and then over time, settle out into the bottom, and you can rack it off. If you have a centrifuge, you can do it even easier. So it's typically these, also, milk proteins can do it. If you combine milk proteins, but the problem with milk proteins is, I think, in order to get them to settle out properly, you might have to have a fairly low

[28:30] pH, which I think you won't have in your walnut liqueur. So it's, you know, it's a question. Also, I think the gelatin will work at basically any pH, but typically these things are done at wine pHs. But I would use this sort of this sort of a technique, or move to something like Kaita sandwich you can get at a, um, you know what? Stick with the protein. Tell me how it works. One of those things should work. Does that make sense? Anyway, whatever, whatever. anyway. Okay. Aaron, from the Northern England, it's an English show today. By the way, our good friend, Tony Canoyaro, is engaged from 69 Cobrook Road, engaged to be married. happened a long time ago, but I don't think we've mentioned it on the air. Amazing. Congratulations. Taria from Pano Ricard. Nice. anyway, good people. Okay. Aaron writes in. Hello, Nastasia and Dave. I'm still loving the show. Thanks very much. very inspiring. I like that he's like assuming that we're going to turn to crap. He's like, I'm still loving it. I was expecting it would be crap by now, but I'm still loving it. No, I think a lot of people are responding to. Are you listening? Oh, yeah, right. It's one of these You there? You there? Anyway. I would really like to improve how I present my food. I'm not looking for super fine dining level of presentation, but I would like to incorporate as much as possible

[29:41] of that quality into the food I serve people at home. I am in the north of England and haven't found any appropriate courses anywhere near me so far. Can you recommend any resources online or in print to help me learn all the

[29:52] best thanks very much. Aaron. It's an interesting question, actually. Um, It's a very interesting question. Uh, and it's one, I was thinking about this morning, and I don't have a, I don't have a good answer, so I'm just

[30:03] going to talk about it. We used to teach a plating course at the French culinary, but Nils taught it because Nils is kind of a monster plater,

[30:09] but they, you know, they don't teach it anymore. Plating at home is always, it's difficult because usually you're the only person doing the plating and you have to get all the components together and

[30:21] serve it out so it can be a little more difficult. But if what you're interested in is just I typically at home will serve family style. And then the question is just making the individual dishes look nice. So you have to look at it from a range of a range of ideas. One, are you just talking about what the food looks like in general or are we really talking about plating? If you're just talking about what the food looks like in general, then as you're making choices, you make choices not only based on

[30:47] taste, but based on how something's going to look in the end, right? So you'll choose things, they obviously taste as the primary thing you're going to choose, but you'll think,

[30:56] well, that color is going to go really nice with that. And instinctively, you start making choices about how things like that are going to

[31:02] look, being that, oh, man, that color would look really nice. You know, what flavor would go really nice. It has that color and you could bring like a pop, you know, like real something nice and poppy to it, color wise, right? Or I'm going to use a different kind of a cooking technique because I don't want it to look

[31:17] overreduced or brown or something like this, right? So that's the 1st step. The 2nd step then is actually once you get the colors and the look of the food to be what you want. Now how do you present it? And the best way to do that is to just read, not, I don't have any good, I've read some I'm not going to even recommend them, but the ones I'm sure there's great ones. So I'm not insulting, if it happens to be someone here that's written one, please tell us which one it is. take a look at it. But some of the old plating technique books that I've read. I don't really, 1st of all, they tend to be dated by the time they come

[31:49] out and, you know, they're kind of, they're kind of, I don't know, just, they've never really been inspired by them, you know? What I would do is just go look at a bunch of chef cookbooks that put out restaurant

[32:00] meals and you get an idea for what's possible with plating. So if you're looking to do food at a particular, in a particular style, then find the cookbook of a chef who's

[32:10] respected who does that. Like, if you want, like, kind of, hey, I'm a badass big meat jockey, go get the Pied de Couchon book and, like, you know, he'll show you how to stick a knife through a sandwich or something like that. You know what I mean? Or if you want to do something kind of really like high-end plating and fresh and new, go look

[32:26] at like 11 Madison's all plated out, you know, the new cookbook. But I would look at cookbooks. But I'm going to think more about this and hopefully people will write in and tell me things that they like so that next week I can mention them on the show. Do you have anything? No, no, I think that's a good idea, though. Yeah, but I'm interested in hearing from, you know, this week, you can prove you're listening by writing in with ideas for blading technique,

[32:48] like resources, right? You live in the middle of nowhere, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I mean, other things, like you can practice. like there's certain plating techniques you can learn. Like you can learn to canal something, right? And let's look online for YouTube videos on how to canal. Or you can learn how to drop, you know, oil onto a soup with a with a squeeze bottle. I mean, if you want to do some fancy plain techniques. Learn to do good work with a spoon, like the brush, the schmear, learn to learn to drop things out of squeeze bottles, but that's kind of old school. anyway. Look up, Nastasia is trying to punch me in the face, telling me we have to take our 2nd commercial break. So we'll come right back, call your questions two, 718-497-2128, 718-497-2128.

[33:49] He's scared, 'cause I won.

[33:57] Case sound on it all, be scared, 'cause I want. Oh, no, Crocusole.

[34:11] all in a row. Of a mango.

[34:25] A fly just attacked me. Welcome back to cooking issues. So, Nastasia, you're gonna even though you're sick, you're gonna go to the Thanksgiving Day parade this year? No, I'm gonna watch them blow up the balloons tomorrow. I like that. I wish they would explode the balloons. I hate parades. The only thing I like, what? Have your kids gone? No, hell no. No. No, 1st of all, my son, Booker, could you imagine him in that crowd of people waiting for a balloon to pass? the balloons blown up around natural history. That's cool. Yeah, whatever. I've seen it. I seen every parade. I hate parades. Hey, listen, you know what I like? Bagpipes. Wait, you don't like bagpipes now? No, I do. It's just you would, you know? I mean, I would. bagpipes are amazing. It's sad What's sad? sound is sad. It's not sad. it's stirring Look. If you get married. bagpipe. Oh my god. Yes. funeral. No, it's not only for funerals. I want all of Scotland to punch Nastasia in the face the next time you see her. I'm kidding. Don't do that. Not advocating any violence. But I'm saying, yes, funerals, because it's stirring. You're also supposed to play bagpipes when you march into battle and you play the big weddings. I would not want that. Not that. bagpipes are always appropriate. Anytime stirring music is appropriate, the great Highland bagpipes is appropriate. It's an amazing instrument. anyway. I enjoy bagpipes. What do you think? Every parade is a funeral. Why do they have them at parades? I guarantee it. They don't have them here. What? Well, I don't care. I don't like the Thanksgiving Day parade. The heck? Just marching bands. Yeah, marching bands. Bad plans. Yeah. Can we just do the rest of the show with bad pipes in the background? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. We have to put in the greatest rock and roll bagpipe of all time. That's your wedding. That's not really great look. Which is long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. the greatest use of bagpipes in rock and roll, am I right? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Back on back on task. Back on task. Back on cooking issues task. All right. Sorry. Anyway, on record, I do not enjoy a parade except for the bagpipes. Okay. Steve Santana rides in. I was wondering if Dave could go over a few SUV questions relating to duck breast. Should the skin be scored before bagging or just before searing? Should the breast be bagged with butter, or better yet render duck fat if I can find some, or the fat already under the skin be enough? With the same results from the last to salt or not to salt

[37:04] post, apply to duck breast 2, and should the duck breast be chilled after cooking? Uh, and he's asking 40 minutes to 64 Celsius as the time and temperature for cooking before Siri.

[37:15] Okay, I'm just going to go over this. First of all, don't cook the duck breast that high. I would not go, uh, standard, uh, you know, like Long Island pecking

[37:22] style, duck, uh, breasts, 57 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes is sufficient.

[37:30] I wouldn't go above that. If you have a tougher duck breast. Sometimes you can go to 58. I don't recommend cooking duck breasts longer than about an hour because it doesn't happen all the time, but they can start tasting

[37:43] livery and the color can start going gray if they're cooked for too long. So I would not recommend cooking the duck breast too long. Also, I don't bag the duck breast with anything other than the duck breast. Uh, they don't really need it because here's what you're

[37:57] going to, and I don't cut it or do anything beforehand because you're not really rendering out fat at those temperatures.

[38:02] If you're cooking to 50-57, 58, you're not really rendering a lot of fat. So what I would do is bag the duck breast, put it on a table, squash the skin side flat so that later

[38:14] on when you sear it, it will, um, it will be flat against your pan, it's going to sear out properly.

[38:20] Now, I know the good folks at modernist cuisine, you know, young, mirror

[38:24] of old, belay. They, I think, do a pre-seer, a cryosier. They freeze the duck skin, then they they poke it with holes, then they freeze it. Then they then they bag it, then they cook it, then they refreeze it, then they sear it. I typically, I haven't done it side by side. So I don't know what's better. I typically don't sear my duck breast before because what I'm doing when I do my sous vide cooking is a technique I call

[38:45] low temperature or sous vide for insurance purposes. I'm ensuring that the duck breast is cooked throughout to the temperature I want. And then I cool it, and then I sear it off as though I was doing a traditional cook on it.

[38:58] The only difference is, is that now all I'm focusing on is crispy, delicious skin. So I'm not worried about cooking the duck breast because it's already cooked. So all I'm worried about then is rendering the fat and crisping the skin out. Uh, and so that's a, and it's a whole, there's a whole range of techniques like that that I call low temp,

[39:16] you might call it suvedo, though. You're wrong. It's low temp unless it's in a vacuum bag, which this is, for insurance. I do that with roasts. I'll do it with poultry. I'll do it with a lot of things. And what it lets you do is get a lot of traditional taste and texture, but at the same time, ensure that you have the meat cooked

[39:34] properly and that you're only focusing on one problem at a time, getting the skin

[39:38] right, instead of trying to get the skin right and the meat right at the same time. Okay? Now, as regards scoring it, nils, and I have to agree with

[39:48] him here because I did a side by side, detests scoring the skin on a

[39:52] duck because when you score it, where you score it, you tend to overcook the meat because the steam when

[39:58] you're rendering goes up and overcooks the meat at that point. There's Flymageddon, by the way, going on outside. There's something crazy always going on outside at Roberta's Pizzeria. Today is Flymageddon. They're like running around with smashing flies with papers. What? was it last week? I don't remember. And last week it was Indie Jesus. That's every week at Roberta's Pizzeria. So anyways, so where was I? So I would use, here's a technique that modernist cuisine does, which everyone can do, and I think is awesome. Go to your local pet supply store and purchase a dog combing brush,

[40:33] the ones with all the little spikes in it. And instead of scoring the skin on the duck breast, whack it a few times with the

[40:39] dog with the stainless steel dog comb, and that way, you can render out a lot of the fat without overcooking the meat.

[40:48] It's a great technique. I've tried it. I think it's awesome. Do not salt the duck before you cook it. Salt the duck, maybe right before you sear it, and that's the that's the way to go. What do you think? Good. I want to make a shout out to the guys who listen at Blue Hill at Stone

[41:03] Barnes. All right, make a shout out. Hi. Well, that's quite a shout out, Nastasia. You really know how to shout out. Be like, to the guys who listen at Blue Hills Stone Barn. Keep it farming. That's a shout out. anyway. Okay. Uh, Tim Hayes from Eugene Oregon writes in, uh, regard, I'll just read it. Hi, Tim from Eugene, Oregon here. to tell you how great the podcast is and ask you a question. I usually stay on the savory side when cooking, but lately I've been seduced by the sweet recipes from Christina Tozi's

[41:34] Mama Fuku Milk Bar book. Specifically the incredible cookie recipe she has so kindly shared with the world. My favorite cookie of hers is the corn is the corn cookie. I enjoy the corn cookie quite a lot. Do you like the corn cookie? You don't like corn and cookies. You're a low quality person to stash. Although I love you, but you're low quality, you hear me. Okay. Wow. Yeah. Right? I mean, you know what I'm saying. I'm so immune to it. What I mean? What'd you say to me? are you talking about? Like low quality when you call me that? It's like a, it's like a nice love thing. When other people hear you say it, they're like, whoa. Yeah, I know. It's with love folks. I don't want anyone I want anyone to be like, whoa, you just called her a low quality human being. One day we'll be low quality human beings. Exactly, Jack. Wow, well, it depends. Do you hate corn and peanuts? No. Do you hate biscuits? No. All right. All right. Okay, sorry. Specifically, the incredible cookie recipe she is so kindly shared with the world. My question relates to the epic hard bodied 10 minute creaming of butter and sugar that the rest of her cookie recipes require.

[42:37] And by the way, what we're talking about here is Tozi recommends a very long creaming process, 10 minutes where the sugar and the butter are creamed

[42:47] together, and then the eggs are whipped in. And the basic idea is is to generate as much. By the way, if you heard that thwap 10 seconds ago, it was part of Flymageddon going on in

[42:56] Roberta's. So they prolong creaming step, whips a lot of air into the cookie and provides the structure that she likes in her cookie and so she's

[43:06] very, and we work in the milk bar commissary. I can say they cream the hell out of that stuff. Anyway, so my question relates to the epic hard bodied 10 minute creaming of butter and sugar that her recipes require. I see the reasons for this step to aerate the mix, but her peanut butter cookie recipe got me thinking. She mentions that you only need to cream this recipe for about 3 minutes because of the emulsifying properties of the peanut butter. Sure enough, the mix fluffs up much quicker. So two-part question, what about peanut butter makes it such a great emulsifier, and would it be possible to use emulsifying agents to quicken the creaming

[43:38] and other cookie recipes? Now, I guarantee that the way that Cetosy figured this out was, she noticed that her peanut butter stuff was, you know, was getting the amount of air beaten into it much more quickly than other things.

[43:52] Then the question is, is it really the emulsifiers in it that are doing it? And I did some initial research. And it's hard to find. Apparently, look, protein, there is protein and peanuts, and that protein can probably act

[44:08] as somewhat as an emulsifying agent. Then the 2nd question is, well, perhaps there's, what's wrong with you, Nastasia? This guy's hitting the flies, but he's got this cigarette in the other hand. Does that do anything? Great, Stasi, she's crazy. crazy for me. Anyway. So, uh, I looked up, uh, peanut butters, industrial peanut butters. I looked up Jiff and I looked up Skippy. Okay? Now everybody knows, some people know, I should say. If you grind your own peanut butter or you buy natural peanut butter, the peanut oil separates from the peanut

[44:38] solids and has to be whisked back in, right? Peanut butter is basically, you know, solids, kind of emulsified into a into peanut oil. So, Jiff does that, good old Jiff. Jiff does that by adding mono and diglyceride, which is a straight up emulsifier. So if you use JIF, you are adding an emulsifier into your cookie

[45:00] mix, and that will help incorporate air. Right? But if you look at Skippy's label, Skippy doesn't put

[45:08] mono and diglycerides in their regular peanut butter. Instead, they substitute a certain amount of peanut oil for a hydrogenated fat.

[45:15] And then hydrogenated fat, which is solid instead of liquid room temperature, prevents the separation of skippy peanut butter. Okay? So there's 2 basic ways that they can stop the separation of peanut butter, emulsifiers, or with adding a hydrogenated fat. My prediction. Look towards more people adding emulsifiers because less and less people are going to want to add hydrogenated fat because of the bad

[45:38] rat hydrogenated fat. This guy is freaking serious about killing flags, by the way. crazy. It's like, it's like, seriously, it's like it's like, you know, work crimes against flies. He's like going crazy over here. Anyway, but that led me to think. Actually, I think what's going on is that the peanut butter itself is acting as a whipping agent, right?

[45:58] So when you're creaming sugar and butter. The sugar, the particles in the sugar before they dissolve and melt, are acting as basically they're carving holes in the butter as you're whipping and they act as a whipping and aerating agent.

[46:15] And I think the tiny particles in peanut butter are also acting as a whipping agent, which is why you can actually whip peanut

[46:22] butter. If you add a little liquid to it, you can whip it up on its own. So I think it's probably not the emulsifiers that are doing it, but the fact that a peanut butter itself is acting as a whipping issue. I could use a peanut butter cookie right by now. Maybe I'll go to milk bar and steal a peanut butter cookie. Are we going there? We're going to milk bar because they have work work to do, but I'm going to steal a peanut butter cookie. So if anyone there is, you know, be on notice. I going to steal a peanut butter cookie from you. Anyway, I hope all of you have a fantastic Thanksgiving and a delicious, delicious, delicious turkey on your turkey day. Cooking issues.

[47:13] Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage radio network. You can find all of our archived programs on HeritageRadioNetwork.com as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage

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