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

[0:20] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live every Tuesday from about 12 to 1245. on the Heritage Radio Network. In the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Join, as usual, in the studio with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? I'm fine. And we got Jack and Carlos in the engineering booth. Hey, fellas. How's it going? going well? Last week was the 2nd kind of anniversary slash holiday

[0:49] party, the Heritage radio network. Went. Good time was had by all. correct, Jack? Yeah, it was awesome. Sorry for cursing in front of your kids. Well, he they're used to it. Yeah, they are not, 1st of all. First of all, they're not. And 2nd of all, we did the ear muff, so... I did a very effective ear muff so much. Daddy, what are you doing? Anyway, okay. Calling all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. that right? That's that's right. Oh nice. You got it. All right, so we have some questions to get to from. By the way, this week is the last pre-Christmas show, correct, Nastasia? Yes. So next week you have to ask all of your Christmas cooking related

[1:34] questions because that would be our last opportunity to answer them, yeah? We could do it next week. No? I'm doing sure next week. We'll have to ask the questions. Then ask the questions. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, last night, I was on the Anthony Bourdain, the no reservation show, which I wasn't able to watch because I don't have cable. Nastasia was able to watch it and said that I didn't come off like an idiot, which means they must have heavily edited me. No, it was just good. Compared to the rest of the show, you were the best part. Wow, why don't you insult the rest of the show there? Who was on it? How's Christopher Walken? He was on it, right? I only watched until 45. So you missed the you missed the walk. I think I might have. You love Christopher Walken. Everybody loves Christopher Walken. How could you miss the walking? anyway. Maybe some tired. I was tired. My 28 or 29 year old body can't handle staying up till 11 anymore. Tired. Nice. Okay. So, let's get to some of last week's questions while we're at it. Ellie last week had 2 questions. I was only able to answer one of them. This one comes in on spherification, a.k.a. the tiny balls. I use sodium alginate bass for verifications once in a while. I do that based on a recipe from the Alinia book mostly. So typically, mix the food to be spherefied with calcium lactate. This is a reverse spherification. We'll go into that in a minute. This works great and I get no bad taste. But I always wonder why I can't use a straight up calcium that I get from the grocery store instead of calcium lactate or calcium

[3:03] lactate, glucinate. I made yogurt spheres once and they worked great with no additional calcium, anything since the yogurt was already high, without any additional calcium, anything because the yogurt was already high in calcium, is plain

[3:14] calcium not soluble in a food liquid in its pure form. maybe. What is the deal? All right, the deal is, there's a couple of deals. One, for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, sodium alginate is a seaweed derivative, a hydrocolloid, that as soon as you get a solution of

[3:30] it and it touches calcium, it forms an irreversible gel.

[3:35] The downside is, there's 2 downsides. One is that there's three. It doesn't taste very good because it locks in flavor. Two, the texture is not particularly pleasant on its own. And the 3rd problem is, is that if you were to take a flavor, let's say, and mix it with

[3:49] alginate and drop into calcium, it turns solid, you know, very quickly. And once it's solid, it has basically no flavor to it at all. Uh, so, I mean, no good flavor anyway. Uh, so, uh, what Ellie's doing is called reverse verification, where you put the calcium into your

[4:05] flavor and you drop it into alginate and it just forms a thin membrane around the outside. Now, calcium is not extraordinarily soluble in water. Foods that naturally have a lot of calcium in them can be used for reverse verification.

[4:22] So, for instance, uh, olives, uh, typically already, I don't know whether they have natural calcium, but they usually add

[4:27] calcium, uh, to the, uh, brine that they're in to keep them crisp, uh, and that's enough to do reverse verification. So, uh, calciums are basically in, there's a grade of bad taste to, uh, to solubility basically. So the most soluble form of calcium is the worst tasting, and it's calcium chloride. It tastes horrible. You would never use reverse serification for that. Calcium, lactate, slightly better, calcium, lactate, glucinate, slightly better yet. I don't know what the form of calcium is that you can get in the supermarket grocery, but most forms of

[5:01] calcium, calcium carbonate is very insoluble, and you're not going to get very good results. But fruit juices that are doped with calcium, I think, are typically doped with calcium lactate glucinate, and so those would probably work. So the other thing that you need to bear in mind is that the more available, the more calcium that's available in the system,

[5:22] the stronger the gel setting is. So if you need a very strong gel, you need a very hard, fast form of calcium, and that's when you bust out the

[5:31] lactate or God forbid the chloride. If you want a softer gel, you can use a less available form of calcium or less calcium total.

[5:40] So I think you'll notice that the less calcium you have there or the less available the calcium is to the algenate, the softer the gel will be. Uh, and that has to do with the fact that, um, uh, basically the strength of the

[5:52] gel uh, is kind of dictated as it's forming. So it just leaving it longer in a calcium bath will cause more gel to form, but won't make it a

[6:00] lot lot stronger. Anyway, what do you think this does? good job. All right. Okay, now, got some interesting question in on ducks. Ducks. Yeah. Uh, Jacob, uh, Cesney. you can pass it, Cesna. Not spelled like the airplane, the Cessna, uh, the 172 being kind of the

[6:16] hallmark, uh, private aircraft, the Cessna 172. anyway, but not spelled that way. Spell Cesno. I said, good morning, guys. A longtime listener, a 1st time writer. I have a crap ton of questions. By the way, Jacob, I changed your actual wording, which wasn't crap time, but remember, this is now a family show, so we

[6:33] can't curse anymore. Jack. Uh, okay. I have a crap ton of questions, but we will start with a few easy ones. I do a good amount of hunting. and just hit it big on ducks the other weekend. I have breasts from a bunch of spoonies. That's a spoonbill duck, by the way, and have a few teal that I've plucked and vacuum sealed and are waiting for me in the fridge. I already ate some of the spoonies. I butterfly had the breast soap and then rolled them in some housemade guancelli, um, from Avedano's in San Francisco and quickly sear them in a hot cast iron skillet. Guanchale, for those of you not in the know is cured pig jowl. And it's one of maybe the most delicious things you can put on a pizza. do you think? It's some delicious stuff. Mistachi. I could have just said any kind of crazy thing. Nastasia would just said, uh-huh. No, I actually don't like Guonshali, but we don't. don't like Guonchali? Oh my god. Oh, Jesus. Damn. Okay. In San Francisco, and quickly seared them in a hot cast iron skillet. My girlfriend and I had that with some duck liver mousse she made and it was awesome. The moose was on bread and not on the duck rest. Uh, which was probably a good plan. I recently returned from some training at Quantico. Oh, Quantico, huh? Oh, country. Nice. Marines, Quantico's Marines, right? Uh, so I am getting caught up on your old shows. And I heard you talk about upland game and waterfowl. Any tips on cooking the few breasts I have left and the 2 teals. Okay. Uh, now. Uh, here's the deal. So the, a regular duck breast, right, wants to cook anywhere between, excuse me, 57 Celsius, which is about 135 and 58

[8:03] Celsius, depending on how tough the duck breast is. You don't want to over, you don't want to cook one of these things too long. Even on a regular farm raised duck, after a long cooking time, the breasts are going to start losing their texture and they're going to taste livery and gamey. My assumption is if you're doing a wild duck, that that's going to happen a lot, lot faster. But I would try the breasts sous vide at 57. I would try them for, I would try one just to see what it's like. Uh, about 57, uh, 57.5 for about an hour. Cool it down and then sear it off and see kind of what result you get. If it's too tough. You could try going longer, like 2 hours, but you start going to start probably getting a

[8:45] livery gamey taste in it. But I'm really curious as to what kind of results you get out of it. Now, another thing to be aware of. And I'm sure you know this as a hunter, is that the taste of the animal is wildly dependent on what the duck has been

[9:00] eating. This has been known for centuries. So I did some research for you. First, I looked in my after the hunt book, which is John Folse's book on hunting in Louisiana, and he had only one recipe for spoonbill, but it was

[9:15] so like kind of doped up with stuff that I doubt you could taste what the spoonbill actually tasted like. But he made an interesting point. Canvas backs, well known as one of the kind of best tasting ducks that you can get, but he says they probably don't taste as good as they used to because they used to graze a lot on wild celery and basically all of that, all of that is gone.

[9:32] But that led me to more research. I was like, well, what do spoonbills, a.k.a. shovelers, uh, shovel, you know, shovel nose ducks up,

[9:38] eat because what they do is, is they stick their, their big old, uh, you know, beak would beak. What's it called? The what the thing that ducks have. Bill, they stuck their big old bill into the mud and scoop crap up. So there was a study done in um, 1922. Uh, notes on the food habitats of the shoveler or spoonbill duck uh, by uh, W.L. McCatti. And basically, what's interesting about the spoonbill is that it not only eats a lot of vegetable matter, but a lot of animal matter out of the mud in the inside, especially kind of small crustaceans.

[10:11] And so my guess is, is that it's apt to have somewhat of a fishy taste. And so the thing is, is that, can that be made a positive thing, or is that inherently a negative thing? Edward T. Martin in 1918 in Hunter and Trader Trapper, the magazine, makes a note

[10:27] that you can remove the skin of these ducks and a lot of the kind of fishy taste because it's going to be concentrated and the fat is going to be concentrated in the skin. And so if you're having a problem with fishy take taste in a spoonbill, perhaps you can remove the skin and get rid of this. That would be horrible because the skin is obviously one of the reasons why God invented the duck. He also, if you read, go in and read Edward T. Martin's piece on ducks in the 1918 edition of Hunter Trader Trapper on Google, there's a very interesting discussion of rice birds, Carolina rice birds, which are one of my fascinations because it's the

[11:01] bobolink, which is a still extant bird, that used to gorge themselves on

[11:05] rice as they flew south through the Carolinas. And there was such a pest that people would go out and shoot them in droves, but they were incredibly delicious and could be eaten

[11:14] whole, similar to the French Ortolon. And um, I'll just read you one quick passage. I remember this is Edward T. Martin writing in 1918. I well remember how the Carolina rice fields were protected from the ravages of the

[11:27] rice birds by an army of plantation hands. They weren't slaves anymore, unfortunately. Fortunately, great Christ. Jesus, you know what I mean? What I mean is, is fortunately they weren't slaves anymore, but they were still unfortunately held down in the plantation

[11:40] system. There's an excellent book called Black Rice, uh, by uh, what's her 1st name, Beth, uh, what's her name? Something carney. And it's an amazing book on the evolution of the rice plantation in South Carolina, specifically how the rice that was originally raised there was an African type of rice,

[11:59] Glabarima rice. And the actual technology for raising that rice was introduced to the plantation

[12:04] owners by the 1st a charter generation of slaves that were brought over to South Carolina.

[12:10] And then how they got co-opted and ended up, so they started out with kind of a better situation than many of the other slaves on

[12:15] the east coast, and then got progressively worse because the conditions were so

[12:20] awful. After slavery was abolished, the rice plantations continued to exist, but the conditions were still horribly awful. And the only reason that it went away was because, um, it turned out that mechanization couldn't be applied to the Carolina rice fields. Anyway, crazy story. Okay. Uh, you guys know what I mean. Nostasia, giving me the wow on that. I can't believe you're a bad person. You're a low quality human being. Anyway, I well remember how the Carolina rice fields were protected from the ravages of the rice birds by an army of plantation hands armed with muskets and stationed along the levees. The birds, so fat they could barely fly, were given no rest. It was one constant bombardment. I have been in some skirmishes where the firing was no heavier. I guess he was in the war. Very few of the birds were very few of the birds killed were picked up. The object was to save the rice, but those that found their way to market were esteemed as a great delicacy for the table. They were far ahead of any other game I ever ate, not even excepting woodcock. Okay. Okay. And then, um, so that's kind of answered that question. Jacob writes on and says, something to think about because when I get the funds, I'm cooking CV, I'm going to be emailing you a lot of

[13:21] questions. I've been talking to the guys at 4505 meets in San Francisco and the guys have fatted Captain Napa. I'm learning to make my own salumi, and because I like to hunt, I've decided to turn a small in-laws quarter in my backyard into a meat retreat. I'm only 25 and don't have in-laws, and if I did, I wouldn't want them in my backyard like a bunch of vagrants. Jacob, let me tell you something. Once you have kids, if you should have kids someday. You're going to want the in-laws to come over to take care of the kids. Believe me. So you're going to have to convert that back from a meat retreat into an in-law cabin once you have

[13:49] the little ones. So my plan is to put a small U.S. cooler game locker in along with areas to hold my meat slicer and butchering tables. I really want a buffalo chopper, and who doesn't? The big question is, what do you use as a fermentation curing chamber? I was looking in US cooler makes floral coolers, which allow you to control temperature and humidity, but would they work? Just something to think about. Well, I don't know. I was trying to look at a little bit of it. They're mainly meant for flowers, high humidity and cool. If you want to control it more. You can also, it's very easy to build a simple humidity temperature controller

[14:18] for like two, 300 bucks so you could control however you want. I could go into that if anyone's interested later. I don't really have time, unfortunately, today, but it's if you Google humidistat end or humidity control for a couple 100 bucks, you can do it. And also Jacob writes in, based on our recommendation, he got the book of garlic canalians for his girlfriend, she's a science and food

[14:36] nut and has her degree in mechanical engineering. Mickey, love Mickey, Mickey, and Tubble E, my 2 favorite Es. and owns her own small bakery. She thought it was pretty freaking awesome. Thanks for the help. Sincerely Jacob. Should we take our 1st commercial break? All right. going to our 1st work. cooking ishes.

[15:01] Oh, she may be weary. Them young girls, they do get weird. Wearing that same old shaggy dress. yeah But when she gets weary Trying a little tenderness, yeah.

[15:39] You know she's waiting Just and

[15:47] just some painting. A thing that should never, never, never, never, yeah, yeah. Wow, she's there waiting. And without them, try. My little tenderness. A little tenderness, yeah. All right, so, hey, welcome back to cooking issues, Dave Martin, calling you questions two. What is it? 718-4972128. That 718-4972128. 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

[16:29] 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 make sense for the home cooking enthusiast, and most cost only around 5 bucks. Thanks, stocking stuffer. Saving you time, money, and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocoloids, pH buffers, or even meat. Why even meat glue? It's like meat glue is weirder than the rest of it. Yeah, well it sounds weird. Okay. 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. Modernist pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist pantry values your feedback and encourage it. They have now decided to add product reviews to their website. Any customer visits the site to post a review before next week's show. We'll get a free $10 gift certificate good towards the person of anything purchase of anything in the store. Let Chris and Company know what you love or what you'd improve about their products or service and help other customers by sharing your experience. Visit modernistpantry.com for all of your modernist cooking needs. Yeah. Right? That's my new sound effect. You like that? Paper crunching on the mic sounds awesome. Yeah, it does. It really does. Okay. Gave in Norcal writes in on rotisseries and frying. Hey, Nastasia, love the show. You and Dave are great. Thanks for doing it every week. You are welcome. I had a suggestion for a cooking equipment gift for the holidays, as Dave requested at the end of the last week's show. A good quality deep fryer for the home probably can be had at a reasonable price gently used from Craigslist or eBay. I think it's under an underappreciated home appliance. Folks just need to take the plunge, ha ha, and use them, and I'm sure Dave can offer lots of suggestions for home use beyond

[18:04] French fries, right? Well, did you pick a question that I like? Okay, look. For the past 12 years or so, 10, 12 years. I've had, in my home, a professional deep fryer. When I say professional, it requires £35 of oil to fill it

[18:24] up and requires 90,000 BTUs of gas. Now, this sucker can take that £35 of oil, which a little more than 5 gallons and heat it up to frying temperatures in about 5 minutes flat. Now, there is so much, and I got it for 50 bucks, by the way, a Mexican restaurant went out of

[18:41] business down at what the time was the World Trade Center. And I bought it there. And professional deep fryers now almost always have stainless steel kettles on the inside because they're easier to clean.

[18:52] I found an old black steel one. And because nobody wanted it, and because there was a tiny leak in the bottom of the kettle that I had to braise shut, I got it for 50 bucks, and I wheeled it home in a snowstorm, and hooked it

[19:05] up, and it's maybe the greatest thing I own. I love it. Here's the deal. People have a misconception about frying. When you have a large deep fryer like that. The oil lasts a lot longer. The food tastes a lot better, uh, and it's a lot, it's a lot better. It's not like a small fryer, is a smaller version of a real fryer. A real restaurant fryer, especially a gas fired one, tube

[19:30] fryer has what's called a cold zone. So what happens is, 1st of all, the tubes are very large and you have a very large flow, a very large surface area to heat. So you're not locally overheating the oil anywhere. It also starts nice convection currents of oil so that it really heats up very, very quickly, very evenly, has amazing

[19:48] recovery. The other thing is, is that there's a large area below the tubes where all of the little particles from your food that come off settle. Now, in a normal fryer at home, that stuff just sits at the bottom, scorches, burns, and ruins your oil. In a in a commercial fryer, they sink beneath the tubes into a much colder area of oil so

[20:07] that they don't burn and they don't ruin the rest of your oil. They just settle to the bottom. Then at the end of the night, you open it, you drain your oil, you filter it out, you pour it back in, and you're good to go. So your oil lasts a lot longer. Also, there's nothing on, and by the way, a fry every damn thing in that thing. I fry rack of lamb, rack of goat, prime rib, steak,

[20:25] French fries, onion rings, fried chicken. Basically, anything that you want to eat can be fried. The best way to test your oil when you're frying to see whether she's still good or not. And yes, it's a woman, Nastasia. Uh, is to take a piece of neutral bread, fry the bread, and then eat the

[20:43] bread because it soaks up the oil and the bread's very neutral, so it's very easy to test whether you're uh, whether it's gone bad. I've never done eBay or Craigslist, although I'm sure you can. If you live near a major city, you unfortunately have restaurants closing down all the

[20:55] time, and you can get it at auction pretty, pretty cheap. I mean, I used to get all my stuff on auction back before I had

[21:02] kids and my wife still let me bring major pieces of kitchen equipment home before I lived in a tiny apartment. Anywho, okay. And Gabe writes in, while I have you, here's a question for the next podcast, how about rotisserie turkey? I know Thanksgiving is behind us, but I was looking for an awesome roasting technique and thought rotisserie would be perfect if you would get the right setup. Does Dave know of any good spit setup, outdoor wood oven with a side heat source like a wood fired oven? And what are the physics of having that pulse of heat that you get from rotisserie? And is it so good on chicken because it's continually being basted as it turns? Okay, I don't know of a good rotisserie motor, uh, normal, normally. I built one once a long time ago to do a pig, but all rotisserie motors that I've seen, inexpensive ones anyway, are horrible. They suck. And the reason is, is the gearing isn't very good. So if you have a bad rotisserie, what happens is, is you almost never have the meat on a rotisserie perfectly centered. So the rotisserie slows down as it, as it's lifting the heavier side of the, of the meat over the top, then it's,

[22:03] it usually stops for 2nd falls as it goes through the heavier part until the gear catches

[22:08] again and then goes a little faster on the down. So you basically don't have even heating all the way around. It's awful. I don't know why anyone's no one's invested in like a simple precision, like worm gear drive that can't be overdriven. I used one once with a Bodine, which is an awesome little motor. And that thing, that sucker was dead on. Like, I could have swung, you know, I could have swung a piece of meat entirely on one side and it would have spun

[22:32] evenly. Okay. So that said, I don't know the good setup. It's all about, it's all about securing the meat and making sure that it doesn't flop around and that the

[22:40] wing tips or whatever don't fly off and get burnt. And you got to be careful when you're tying it, that your string doesn't catch on fire and come off and the wings get burnt. That said, rotisserie is a fantastic technique, not because of the pulse of heat, but because you're applying a high average, a

[22:56] high, sorry, instantaneous heat on the one side, right? which is making a good skin or a good crust on whatever you're cooking, but a low average

[23:04] heat because you don't enclose it. You know, that's why you don't want to enclose a rotisserie. And enclosed rotisserie is basically an oven with a broiler on one side. Rotisserie is really very akin to low temperature cooking and that you're keeping the average heat input very low. So you're not in cooking the meat. The base, the self-basting helps, I guess, somewhat because it gets a little oil on the outside.

[23:23] But I don't know the actual science of the of the basting and what that does. I probably should, I should research it. But that said, the trick of rotisserie is trying to get the heat input low enough that it doesn't over do too much overcooking of the outside of the meat, but high

[23:38] enough, such that it cooks in a reasonable amount of time. And so that's the trick, but I don't know of a good wood fire would be great. It's just a question of finding a good rotisserie motor. And I think that's one of the things we might build someday. Okay. Okay. What do you mean? He's not paying attention. Okay. Okay. Jason Molinari writes in about deep fried chicken and also wasabi. Jason, I'm going to apologize in advance. I don't know the answer to the wasabi question, but we will put it out to our readers. Keep up the good work with the podcast and Nastasia, keep hammering. You like that? Keep hammering. A couple of questions. I'm trying to figure out how I can low temp cook chicken prior to deep frying and maintain the same deliciousness. Hopefully you can get more deliciousness. Essentially, uh, cook for insurance as you call it. What that means is, is you cook the chicken beforehand, low temp, and then you fry it. And then when you're frying it, you just have to worry about the crust. You don't have to worry about cooking the chicken all the way through. And that's really, really good technique when you want to cook chicken at the same time as

[24:31] French fries, and you don't want to have 2 separate oil temperatures. Okay. The problem is the crust doesn't come out the same with low temp cooking versus regular straight

[24:41] frying. I imagine because I've DNA for some of the proteins in the skin and broken down some of the connective tissue. Have you experimented with a pre-cooked fried chicken, any advice to get the best possible crust slash crunch on

[24:52] it? The main problem seems to be loss of adhesion between the crust and the chicken almost becoming a shell. Okay. Okay, I have the answer for you. I believe, and tell me if I'm wrong. Right in, tell me if I'm wrong. But a lot of people have had this problem. The main problem with adhesion of crust on chicken is because the skin is wet. And when you're cooking something in a low temp, you tend to get a soggy kind of outside of the skin because it's inside of a

[25:21] bag. What you need to do is as soon as you remove the chicken from the circulator, you need to cut it open while it's still blazing hot, put it on a rack and let the skin flash off and form a pellicle on the

[25:33] outside. Okay? This is why after you brine a chicken before you fry it. You typically put it on a rack and let it dry. I mean, I know Carlos here doesn't do that, Carlo, he doesn't, Carlo just takes it straight from the brine and puts it in, but, you know, his recipe, I haven't, I haven't tested with it yet, but it goes against all, all things I've ever known about fried chicken, but it's delicious. So I have to look into it. anyway. So, you want to form a pellicle, and that's going to increase the adhesion, a dry thing. Then you're going to want to go, I do a flower. Then I do my liquid dip, which is a buttermilk egg, baking powder, baking soda, salt, pepper, and then back into the flour. I'm just telling you the steps I use, because if you're using a different kind of a breading technique, perhaps it won't work the same way, but it's all about drying the chicken

[26:15] off and the best way is remove it from the bag when hot, let it dry, on a rack, then bread it, then fry it. And you should get the same kind of quality. And 2nd question, why does wasabi taste so much stronger when paired with shellfish? It seems that when the same quantity of wasabi is put on

[26:31] Ebby, or a fish, Ebby, you know, being sweet shrimp, the Ebby blows my sinuses up. I don't know. You had that experience, uh, Nastasia, that it's stronger on on, uh, shellfish? No, I no, I haven't. no. I don't know. In other words, like, so on the shrimp, he's getting more of a hit than he is on the fish. don't know. I don't know. Well, someone's gonna, someone better write in or something like that. I did some preliminary searches on it, but that's a tough one to search for in the scientific literature. Really is. Uh, that's another one. I tried to put a call into McGee, but he's on a deadline, so he couldn't come in. Maybe next time, maybe maybe for Christmas we can get McGee. You want to get try to get McGee on our Christmas episode? Sure. Okay. Joe from Chicago writes in about tongue tacos and Flan. Hello. I recently tried to impress my girlfriend by making a pumpkin flan in a low temp water bath and completely failed. Oh, that sucks. My approach was fairly simple. I basically applied Douglas Baldwin's approach to crème brûlée to the flam flam custard mixture. Douglas's technique, and Doug Baldwin wrote a sous vide primates on the

[27:36] web, and he wrote a book, and he was working on some of the differential equations with Nathan Mirvold for cooking times, which, you know, our team of experimenters might be interested

[27:46] on that, you know, that are working on that science project. Okay. Douglas's technique basically involves blending the various ingredients, pouring into a bag and cooking for 15 minutes at 180 degrees Fahrenheit. He actually cooks, yeah, I guess, a little higher. Agitate the bag, cook it for another 15 minutes, and then distribute it to a service vessel. I went with a pie pan that I applied caramel crust to the bottom. So he's doing a flan, so he's going to invert it. What I had left was a slightly more viscous mixture with some grain to it that did not improve at all after

[28:13] sitting because Douglas lets his stuff sit in a service vessel for in like a ramekin for like 4 hours to 8 hours to supposedly set up.

[28:21] It did not improve after sitting in the fridge. The result was delicious, but not even close to a flan texture. It sort of collapsed into a pile of porridge when I flipped it on the plate. Do you have any tips for making low temp flan? This technique is way more appealing to me than the traditional oven water bath approach. Okay, so Douglas Baldwin, what he does is he puts all the ingredients for, he basically takes a creme anglaise mixture, by the way, and not like a standard, like a pot de

[28:44] creme or a custard mix for like a flan, right? And then he blends it. And then he puts it into a bag, cooks it, uh, and then agitates it in a

[28:54] Ziploc bag, and then pours it in, hope to say it's set. This is never, 1st of all, he cooks it for 30 minutes. Now, on his, he, you can YouTube, Douglas Ball, and go look at his YouTube and go all the way through it. But he basically, he cooks his custard, his, what he calls a custard anywhere between 175 and 180

[29:12] degrees, 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is anywhere from a little under 80 degrees Celsius to about 85 degrees

[29:17] Celsius. And he cooks it for half of an hour. Now, I've done many, many, many crème anglaise, which is a very similar mixture in bags in the circulator over time. I think half hour is too long. The longer you cook it, it does start getting thicker. So we'll get thicker, but also the egg taste comes out a lot more. So it ends up tasting a lot more like cooked eggs. The longer you cook it. We try to keep our time between about 15 and 20

[29:43] minutes, you know, in a bag, and we always do 82 degrees Celsius, which is about 181 degrees Fahrenheit.

[29:52] I think 185 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 85 degrees Celsius is too high. I think it's too high. And I think that the other number he gives 175, which is 80 degrees

[30:03] Celsius isn't going to set in the proper amount of time. So I would definitely do that. He also does his stuff in Ziplocs. And a Ziploc will work at those high temperatures, as he says, but they're very

[30:15] fragile, those temperatures, so you have to be careful. The other problem is, is that if you do a side-by-side taste test of a

[30:20] creme anglaise made in a Ziploc versus a creme anglaise made in a vacuum bag. Then one of the vacuum bag tastes a lot better. And I think it's because the air that's trapped into the mixture, when you're blending it, you're not getting any of that out, and it adds a kind of eggy sulfree taste to it, that you don't get, if you do it in a full on vacuum bag. Uh, is one of the uh, the readers of his uh, YouTube thing said. Perhaps when you're taking the bag out to agitate it so it doesn't form any curds, halfway through the cook, you could crack the bag a little bit and get rid of some of the excess air and maybe that'll fix some of the problem. Uh, you know, because Douglas says when it happens that it's mainly water vapor. And there is, it is mainly water vapor, caused from the increase of heat, but there's also some residual air from when you put it in the blender. Um, okay. The other thing is, is that aside from the fact that I would do a creme anglaise in a vacuum bag and not in a

[31:06] ziploc, if you can help it, um, a a creme brulee, uh, to me, is not done with a stirred kind of custard that way. It's done with a set custard. So I typically use a putt de creme recipe, uh, which is cooked in in a CVAP oven. So it's not agitated at all. In fact, it's completely stationary. And the same holds true for a flan. A flan, unlike a creme brulee, which can be eaten out of the out of the pot, right? And I do mine, like I said, in a CVAP, I'll pour the mixture, the custard mixture into a ramekin, put it in a CVAP oven, which is basically a

[31:41] steam low temperature steam oven. And I'll cook it at the same temperature that I would in a water bath, but without stirring, and it sets up into a nice creme brulee, I brulee it. great. For a flan, you need to add more texture because you have to unmold it. So 1st of all, you can't follow his recipe and use egg yolks. You have to use whole eggs so that you get that extra protein in there to have it set so you can upend it. Now, I've never done this. So I have no idea what this would work, but you might be able to take a ramekin,

[32:08] uh, put or or your pie pan won't work because it's going to explode in the vacuum, but you could probably put it in a ramekin. Uh, I mean, I guess you do it in a Ziploc too. And then put a lid on it and then ziploc it shut underwater and then weight it down so that you're in a water bath, but still in a

[32:25] ramekin. The whole trick is to heat it at an accurate temperature without stirring it. But you're going to have to go longer. If it's not stirred and you're not getting convection with the bag with it moving around. You're gonna have to cook it a lot longer. So, uh, we typically do around, uh, you know, 80,

[32:40] 82, 80, so between, like he does, between 181 and 185 in

[32:45] a steam oven for about 45 minutes in a ramekin, and you should get a good

[32:49] result, and then you should be able to turn it off. So, did that answer that question? Yeah. Okay. 2nd question. I made tacos de lengua, that's tongue, for the same meal, thankfully my girlfriend is as adventurous as I am, and followed Kenji Alt approach.

[33:02] Uh, Kenji Souvides, his uh, taco's tongue for tacos. He suggests 24 to 48 hours at 170 Fahrenheit, which is 76.6 Celsius. So I split the difference and cooked my tongue for 36 hours. The results were entirely too mushy for me, but my girlfriend claimed to enjoy it a lot. What are your suggestions if I'm aiming for a texture that has more bite to it. I was thinking about trying 24 hours at 170. Thanks. Joe from Chicago. Even that is too long for me. Look, when you're cooking up at 76.6 degrees. You're basically doing standard braise temperature. So the advantage you're getting from the bag is only a having to use less liquid so you can have a more intense tongue taste and also probably a slightly higher

[33:42] yield. Uh, but, and, you know, you don't have to make as much too as you would in a traditional braise, so you could do a small amount in a bag. So that's all great. But those temperatures, I wouldn't think you would have to cook it longer than so if a traditional braise was going to be like 4 hours, 5 hours, I would only do it a couple hours more, like

[33:59] six, seven, eight, nine. You know what I mean? Like not that long. Uh, that when you cook something for a long time, it tends to break all the texture down and it can get kind of mushy, as you

[34:09] say. And some people like it that way. I don't. I like a little more texture to it. So I would try a radically shorter amount of time, like 12 or 10

[34:18] and see how that is. And if it's not, you know, great. Then you can, uh, I would put like a tester in a bag, and then have your main bag, and then pull one after 10 hours, see whether you like it. if you like it, go with that. If it's already too much, you have to go less. But I think you'll probably be okay with like 8 to 10 hours at those temperatures. But give me a shot, see what you think. Okay. On the Brian subject, I'm unfortunately going to push that Brian subject off until next week again, because I'm going to try to get a hold of McGee, because I also want to have the argument with McGee on the air about whether brining a turkey causes you to have too much assault in the pan drippings and therefore not being able to use the

[34:54] gravy. And I was thinking about it in the shower this morning while I was washing my hair because I wash my hair every day, which apparently women and men who care about their parents do

[35:03] not. Is that true? Jack? Um, I wash my hair every day. See, that's what I'm saying. Are you not supposed to? That's what I'm saying. Apparently not. I was told that like, I guess we're like regular dudes who wash our hair every day because like we grew up washing our

[35:19] hair every day. you do. Like you go in the shower and the shampoo is there. You use it on your hair to make your hair clean. Yes. Yeah. Well women don't do that. Were you aware of that, Jack? Yeah, women don't do that. the hell, Jack? We have series. Yeah, anyway. Now Nastasia gets to bust out to how they... something every day, right? Yeah, well, don't you ask your ex when you had girlfriends? I don't know. Not about shampooing. Anyway, anyway, it's an interesting fact for those you that don't already know this, but they're like in New York because New York is where New Yorkers, there's a whole subset of men who also apparently care that their hair has a nice shine to

[35:58] it. Supposedly, I guess, a non-grease shine, although I don't know how that works. So they do not wash their hair every day. How the hell are they gonna do that? Oh, I was washing my hair. I was thinking about it. And I think what happens is, is McGee is expecting you to use a broth for your, to reinforce the drippings to make your gravy or to do something. I always make a stock and use the stock as the basis of the gravy and reinforce it with the pan drippings. The stock doesn't have any salt in it. And so therefore, I'm not getting excess too much salt in my gravy. Does that make sense? Anyway, I want to have this argument with him on the air, and so we'll push off the, uh, the, uh, what's it called?

[36:33] Intel until then. Okay, uh, Ken also, uh, Ken Engberg wrote in, and, uh, he says, I want to remind you about the cooking issue I raised a few months ago regarding the lack of research on oxalate content of food. Oxylosis and kidney stones is the problem most recently faced for Thanksgiving, because potatoes have a lot of it. Sweet potatoes are worse. Cook carrots and cooked celery are poisonous to people with this problem, although raw celery seems to be okay for no apparent reason.

[36:57] Cranberry sauce is okay, but almonds are disastrous and the list goes on and on. I more or less made 2 different meals. One that was low in oxalates and one that was normal. As I said previously, oxylosis seems to be a rare disease, but there are plenty of people who have had kidney stones, i.e. my mom,

[37:12] or candidates for them, and the docs often doctors often suggest a low oxylite diet. I'm telling you, if you want to follow a low oxalate diet, good luck. The research and guidance are almost non-existent, much of what is out there on the internet is from unreliable,

[37:25] pseudo-holistic or neutraceutical sorts of people. What charts I have found from hospitals, foundations, and other sites that appear to be reputable are inconsistent and would love to know more and how to accumulate reliable information. So I did a search again, and I went to the oxylosis and Hyperoxyluria Foundation, the OHF, and looked at their list of foods, and sure enough, Ken, is a weird list of foods.

[37:43] And I think the problem is, is there's not intensive research. First of all, like, uh, the oxolate content of a food is is dependent in plant foods is radically dependent upon kind of where it's grown, how it's grown, the conditions it's grown.

[37:56] And so, same with carrots. The calcium content, therefore the oxygen and all that, concentration of the inside of a carrot is widely varied depending on where it comes from and how it's grown, the age of maturity, the variety,

[38:05] et cetera, et cetera. And so because people haven't been doing the research, no one has done the research to try and figure out how to grow something with a predictable amount of

[38:15] oxalate in it, at least I haven't found anything so far. And so when it becomes a big enough deal, perhaps people will try to figure out a way, maybe not to reduce it and everything, but at least to make it

[38:26] consistent so that you're going to know ahead of time what you're going to go on. For instance, a random one you might not think of, you think of oxalic acid when you think of rhubarb, so you naturally stay away from it. But almonds, which have a very high oxalate content, you wouldn't think about it. So it's very, very weird. Secondly, he writes in, to keep Dave abreast with some buzz in the consumer coffee circles. There is a new Breville 900 Excel espresso maker that just became available in the US. The buzz is it because Breville is a major appliance maker. And by the way, Breville is pushing freaking hard. They, uh, they, they gave a bunch of stuff to the French culinary institute. They were at South Beach Food and Wine Festival last year. Noastasia. Remember that? They, uh, were working with Christina Tozi from Milk Bar. They're pushing hard with all of their appliances. Oh, they should sponsor cooking issues. Maybe, yeah, or give us some free crap, at least, something. Anyway. So they're pushing hard. I haven't used a lot of their appliances, although I will say that their their stand mixer that's trying to compete with KitchenAid comes with the scraper paddle blade, which is

[39:22] nice. you know, you don't have to buy an extra one, which I thought was nice, but I haven't used it yet. Anyway, the buzz is because Breville's a major appliance maker and can manufacture much more cheaply. Breville's $1200 machine. Probably competes with regular commercial machines twice the price. Dual stainless steel boilers, variable pre-infusion, manual automatic brew settings, a nice porta filter, really aimed at the budding barista types,

[39:43] um, and, uh, it seems like it has adequate steam pressure. There's not a full review on coffee geek yet, but, you know, what do you think? I looked at a, I looked at a, what's it called? YouTube on it, and it seems okay. You don't really want stainless steel for your boiler. Most people want brass because, well, I guess here's the thing. All the old, all the old, uh, issues people had with espresso machines are really based on what that espresso machine was meant to do and how it was

[40:09] designed. Old espresso machines are designed, to throw away a huge amount of heat and therefore become stable by taking in a bunch of energy and then throwing a bunch of it away.

[40:18] And that's how they gain stability. Now that everything's controlled with microprocessors, That's not the same, you don't need that anymore. So you probably don't need a big brass boiler, stainless steel boiler, probably great, and very sanitary, and all that. It also has a heated head, which means that separately heated head, which

[40:35] means I mean, it could be good. I'd love to try a couple shots with it. Maybe if Breville was one of our sponsors, they could give us one of those machines and we could test it out. What do you think, Jack? Yeah let's do it. Sound like it sound like a good thing? Yes. All right. Now, we're gonna... We do have to wrap up in 2 minutes because we have a one o'clock show. All right, 2 minutes. Two minutes. All right, so we'll leave with this. Listen, calling your questions next week. for Christmas related stuff and for your last minute Christmas shopping. I appreciated the fryer comment. was a good one. Colin wrote in with some typical Colin lunacy, and we'll, I guess we'll end on that. Colin says, dearest David Nastasia and Jack, and Carlos, you know, you got to call it Carlos. Really, Carlos? I don't know, he didn't say that. He just called you out, but I'm saying I'm at it. All right. Here's how I suggest getting a rough number of listeners. I agree that an online poll is a good way to collect data. Something simple like, did you listen to cooking issues, episode 66? Well, did you? Well, did you? Uh, do you regularly listen to cooking issues? Of course, people wouldn't answer that. And then, and then here's the weird one. What do you think of the hyperadvanced civilizations of the future will think when they unearth recordings of this direct that Dave Arnold spews into the

[41:39] universe. Wow. Wow, harsh. Okay. Uh, Okay, here's the thing. He also thinks that what we should do is I should sketch a picture of Nastasia's vegan face, sign it, and then offer it as a prize to a random poll taker. We should sketch a picture of the face she just made after hearing that. Yeah? Yeah. He said, and he says, granted, that price has a bias towards regular listeners who know what a vegan face is. I think even if you don't know, you would got to know that a vegan face can't be a good thing, right? No offense to vegans out there. am I right? Well, Vegans would think it's a nice face. They're probably some nice vegan faces out there. Well, not noastasia's vegan face. No. All right. Vegan face cooking issues.

[42:26] Yeah. Never gonna find a music. 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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[43:04] Take it, Mama, I love with the only you, baby.