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

[0:20] Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold. Your host of Cooking and She's coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. Today, I'm actually not in Roberta's, uh, in Brooklyn and Bushwick, uh, as I normally am, because for the 1st time in my life, my bike

[0:42] sailed me in a time of need, and my tire, uh, went completely flat in an unreparable way, right as I was off, uh, off the studio, so I'm joining you live from my living

[0:54] room, on a phone. Uh, also not with me today, strangely, is Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, because even though this is our holiday edition, uh, she decided to hightail it out to her actual

[1:07] holiday. She's in California with her family right now. So the only person, I don't know if Carlo is there. Carlos is there, but Jack, our intrepid engineer is chilling live in Bush. We had can on the radio show. How do you Jack? Hey, we're both here. Yeah. Oh, hey, hey. So listen, who's our sponsor today? It's modernist cuisine, but I'll have to read that copy, I think. Yeah, you want to do it after the 1st break? Modest country. Yeah, I'll do it after the first break. Modern is pantry, sorry. Yeah, all right, all right. Well, you know, modern cuisine, the great book, and we'll talk about that later. Modernest pantry, the place where you can buy the ingredients you read about in the book. know what I'm saying? Anyway. Okay, so, uh, calling longer questions. 2 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.

[1:50] We'll see whether we can juggle me being on the phone and you calling in on the phone. That'll be fun. Okay. Matthew writes in with a granita question. Hey, David Nastasia. I was wondering if you had any advice on making a granita at home without any special equipment, ice cream or

[2:04] sorbet ice cream machine or sorbet makers. I've read a few recipes online, which call for putting the fruit and syrup mix in a pan, stirring it periodically as it freezes. Is there any way to improve on this technique without forking out $4000 for a pocket jet? Uh, the specific granita. I trying to make is blood orange. Thanks. Matthew. All right, well look. The deal with, uh, a granita, right, is that it's supposed to have a grainy kind of a texture,

[2:28] granita, right? So uh, it's not so much of an issue that uh, its texture kind of, kind of is, is not good. I mean, oh, look. I am not a giant huge fan of I have to admit of the granita. Uh I much prefer like a smoother thing like a a sorbet. Um so let's pretend like you want to make a sorbet for a minute. Then I would get uh something if you don't want to spend a lot of money. I would get something like a champion juicer, freeze everything rock rock rock rock hard, and then put it through a champion juicer with a blind plate attached to it, and uh, and you can even do that with, um, you know, like frozen fruits and whatnot, and you can get out

[3:05] the sugar in, and you can get out, uh, passable sorbet, and I guess if you, if you, if you decrease the sugar

[3:10] content. It's gonna be icier and it's gonna have an icier texture and it'll taste more like a granita. The, the periodic freezing technique that they, you, you're using is basically, the idea is you're trying to break up and fluff the crystals as they're forming. Harold McGee is um, very popular, uh, sorry,

[3:25] Tom McGee is uh, very interested in this uh, thing called um, uh, needle ice cream, pin needle ice cream, which is an old, old, old French

[3:33] thing. It's an actual ice cream, uh, you know, with milk and and whatnot in it, uh, cream and fat and all that, but it, it's supposed to have very

[3:41] long, uh, crystals in it, and so you stir it very, very periodically and try to maintain these kind of large crystals. So slow, uh, slow freezing with periodic stirring. It's going to give large granito like crystals, uh, and, you know, basically making with an ice cream

[3:57] machine or blending a sour thing like apoco jet. You're never going to get a pocket jet texture, but you don't want it. a granita texture. So try, uh, yeah. Try either champion juicer or hell, even try and take uh the cubes, blend them and then put them back in the fridge and harden them up a little bit and uh see how that

[4:13] works. Let me know. Let me know what what goes on. I should study grenades more, but it's just not my uh. It's not my cup of tea, although paco jets are amazing. I love them. anyway. okay. Um, Ralph writes in, uh, dear Miss Hammer. Fortunately, she's not here. She can't even listen. She's on a plane right now from, uh, I think she's, she transferred. Check this out. She's decided, right, that, um, that she's the cheapest holiday person in the, in the world, so she's flying out now. It's like 818 connections, right? So it's basically it's taking her like 3 days and 4 nights to get from New York to LA because the number of connections she chose to get because she's so cheap. But even worse than that, she's flying back on MQ Christian, and she's flying back on Christmas day. On Christmas day. Yeah, right? Wow. And it's because they only mentioned this last week because she's so cheap, right? She said, it's because it's what I pay her. But really, it's because she's so cheap. Right? That, uh, that she wouldn't do it any other way. I was like, but you're gonna make your dad drive you after Christmas dinner to the airport. It's kind of crazy, right? Anyway, whatever. I won't talk too much about it because she's not here to defend herself. Not that she ever does, but there you go. Okay. So, uh, Dave recently asked for ideas for cooking related holiday gifts. Perhaps he has recommended favorites for a good values uh thermocouple thermometer. Uh actually Ralph. I uh I don't. I'm not super. I've never had a thermometer where I said. Wow, I love that, you know what I mean? It's uh, I've had plenty of them break um, I've used uh, multimeter based uh, thermometers which are very cheap. Uh I've used you know all those things. I've never been. I've never been super super happy. I mean there'm a couple if you buy a a dedicated therm a couple thermometer

[6:03] they're typically they used to be expensive. They're getting cheaper and cheaper. I mean, X-Tech stuff seems pretty cheap. Uh and it's okay. Um, a lot of the stuff I've had, uh, you know, break. It really depends on on what you need and what kind of a cost uh you're looking for. I mean, the good thing about thermocouple thermometers as opposed to the other type. They're not actually extraordinarily accurate. You have to calibrate them out of the box, but what's nice about them is that you can get loads of different probes. Um, you know, the ones that, that we use uh, to penetrate the bag for sous vide stuff, the hypodermic probes can get pricey. You know, they're, they start at about uh, 80, 60 to $80 and usually run up over, over about a

[6:40] 100. But the good news with one of, with a thermocouple, is that you can go on McMaster, McMaster.com, and just order thermocouple wire and make your own thermocouples. In fact, they have a post on the blog from, like 3 years ago on, uh, making your

[6:53] own thermocouples. really cheap and I I do that a lot, but I have to test a lot of, a lot of different things. If you needed computer uh data acquisition. That stuff has gotten really cheap. I have a uh, uh, you know, a DAQ, digital, whatever it is, acquisition. Blah, blah, blah, uh, from, um, measurement computing, it costs a 150 bucks and puts 8 channels of thermocouples into my computer. Pretty cool. Anyway, another one, a good quality immersion blender. I'm not really happy with any immersion blender, to be honest. I don't have uh, I don't own one of the, the band mixers, although people seem to think they're nice. You know, as many as you have ever met me known. Like one of the things I'm going to be building with a new company that I'm starting uh, with Dave Chang, which is by the way, official now, all the documents have been

[7:38] signed. It's an official company now, it exists. Yeah, uh, that uh, is one of the things I'm going to be tackling because there's a lot to be done out there in the uh, immersion blender world.

[7:48] Pressure cooker. I go with Coon recon. They ask about pressure cooker. I know they're expensive, uh, but I've used in many different kinds, in many different price ranges, and I just like the coon recons,

[7:59] and uh, they've linked to the blog a couple of times, but they've never given me a damn thing. Can you believe that? Yeah. can you believe that? Never give me a damn thing. The number of times I pumped out for them. anyway. Uh, I would use them, and the reason is, is because they're non venting, uh, the pans themselves are fairly high quality. I go in mind and it's been through continuous uh abuse for uh you know years and years and years.

[8:22] I broke off the handle, but it still works like a, like a champ. Um, you know, I don't like the ones that vent because I think that they reduce the quality of uh flavors, things like stocks, although they're fine for some applications. I've used the giant American pressure canners and I just put one uh gave it to the guys

[8:41] at sanbar to use to make a large large large quantities of pressure cooked eggs um but not so good for home use because it's just so dang

[8:48] big. Uh I like the electric of the electric one. I mean, I like the cuisinart one that I have, but exception is that you can't use it out of the box because you have to modify because the

[8:57] temperature is not high enough. For some reason, they decide to set the temperature below the standard 15 psi for a pressure cooker and so I had to go in and modify it again. notes on the blog. Don't, I can't really recommend that you do it because, of course, it's not safe and all that, but anyway, you can see how I did it on the block. Um, for a cream whipper infusion thing. I mean, ISI, look. I know they're expensive, and I have actually done work for them, so you know, you know, everything, uh,

[9:24] above board here, but, I've also used crappy. The last time I was in Colombia, the country, I, uh, I did a demo and they got me some off brand, like whipper to use, and

[9:35] this thing just wouldn't feel right. It was complete nightmare, so, I think it's probably worth the extra money for uh the ISI on that just because I wouldn't think it would be worth the extra money and then when I've used crappy

[9:47] ones, they've leaked on me, um, vacuum sealers. I mean, I like the mini pack, the small one, if you have the $1500 to spend. I go ahead and get the mini pass because it's got the nicest chamber size of any

[9:59] vacuum uh machine in its class, but still, that's like you're forking out between 1500 and 22 grand for it. Um, but you know, mm, there you have it, um, and digital scale is the last one. It's a tough one on a digital scale because everything depends on what you want or need.

[10:17] Uh, you know. So the question is, if you're gonna do hydrocoloid work, you should be able to measure something down to the 10th

[10:23] gram, because occasionally that's gonna come up, right? But then on the other hand, if you do a lot of work with meats, you're gonna want something that can weigh many kilos.

[10:30] Now, I have an old scale, uh, from, you know,

[10:33] that bar of eBay that was, you know, kind of like a, it's a weird scale. It does 12 kilograms by the 10th gram and plus it's a counting scale, the thing is sick, but the problem with it is, uh, it's very slow, and if you wanted something with similar

[10:46] capabilities, today, you'd have to spend 1000s of dollars on something that had multiple balance

[10:50] ranges, so you could go do small amounts of large amounts. Um so what I would do instead is just get a good quality wash down scale. There's some waterproof scales, uh from A and D. I haven't used them. I don't know whether they're any good but that's a really nice feature. You can throw the dishwasher, they claim, and they get a get a large one for things like meats, and a small one. Uh things that bother me about scales is when they turn off. I like a scale that plugs in and stays on forever. This way, if you're measuring stuff uh into a container and you walk away, uh, and you come back, uh,

[11:22] and you still have your measurement, which is great if you forgot something, or if you're called away for a minute, or if somebody catches on fire on the

[11:29] stove and you have to walk away and look at it, you come back. You don't want to have to reweigh the thing that was partially weighed in there. So I hate a scale that turns off anyway. Uh, just my, not specific brand recommendation, but just, what I would look for, all right, so, uh, a couple of weeks ago, you know, there's

[11:45] an, ongoing, uh, Jack, is it high school project? It's high school right? The high school project on uh temperatures? I think it was a high school project. yeah. Yeah, high school anyway. So I mentioned this program, the sous vide dash, which is basically an iPhone, iPad application that allows you to, uh, uh, check what temperature, um, you know, something's going to be, depending on its, uh, what it

[12:07] is on the temperature of the water bath, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, the guys wrote back Uh, they heard that I mentioned it, and so they said this, uh, thanks for your mention on the show a couple of weeks ago. I was looking for suggestions on how to make our application even better, and I think your suggestion about not changing temperature settings when the food has changed is a good one. It's actually something we've gone back and forth on. So, basically, the, the problem is, is that, there's all these parameters, and if you change one, like, hey, instead of changing it,

[12:32] like, and maybe I didn't want to cook chicken, but I want to keep the water back the same. I want to cook fish or something like that, not that you'd ever change some chicken fish. I mean, whatever, but it just changes all the things anyway. Some users like you want to do a lot of exploring and toggle all kinds of settings one by one. I always want to pick uh chicken fish or whatever and have the app give them a reasonable starting point for temperature. Blah blah blah like you. I personally tend to be the tinkering type, but a lot of our users have told us that

[12:55] they, they want to start with uh normal settings, but that doesn't stop us from trying to figure out how to please everyone. I think we may do an up uh upcoming update that has auto temperature selection on food disabled if you've gone into the

[13:06] advanced and allow any temperature mode. Anyway, they thank us for spending the $5 which you really should because I am a cheap cheap bastard. It could get me to spend five dollars a very difficult thing to do uh and they give a PS. Uh I put together a blog post and a video on the fast cooked methods for eggs and a circulator and uh if you go to cv dash dot com and look at it, they want to know what I think about it. Well, I'll tell you what I think. So what we're talking about here, for those of you that don't know what the hell I'm talking about, is uh, an emergency circulator, which most of you know, is a, is a device that keeps water at a very accurate

[13:36] temperature, and the reason you want to do, there's a couple of reasons you want to do that. But one reason is you can achieve, um, textures or, or temperatures all the way through, uh, a piece of food, and uh,

[13:47] and uh, that allows you to achieve textures that you couldn't otherwise achieve. For instance, on eggs, right? The difference between a 62 degrees Celsius egg, right? Which is runny. That's a poach egg, right with a very kind of custardy soft white and a runny uh yolk. The difference uh between that and a fully set egg yolk, but still very creamy. It's only 2 degrees, 64 degrees Celsius. So the window is very, very small, right? And in a large uh chicken egg. Right? I tend to cook them for one hour, right? So at one hour, I know that the inside of the very inside of the

[14:22] oak has gotten up to the, basically up to the temperature of the bath, and I can pull the egg out, and I'm done, right? And that's the typical thing, but a lot of people, there's 2 things that are going on. One, some people don't want to wait around for, uh, the eggs are cooked for an hour because they're inpatient weasels. I don't know why anyway. Uh, and the other thing is, perhaps you want a farmer egg white, then given with those, uh, 62 degree eggs, for instance, or 63 degree eggs, which is where most people are cooking. Well, I did a bunch of charts like 667 years ago, something like that, uh, that showed what happened if you used a small temperature belt. So, for instance, um, take, uh, set your bath at 65 degrees Celsius, right? and then put your egg

[15:07] in, and put, like, we put, like 10 eggs in, and we pulled them, um, every couple of minutes and looked at them, and found that you could, in fact, get a, uh, uh, an egg

[15:20] right, that was like a 65 degree egg, which was our favorite, at the time, right? And a yoke that was very similar to a 63 by timing things very exactly. These guys have uh gone wrapped up even further and used like a 70 Celsius or 77

[15:36] Celsius. I forget, uh, water bath, and they're cooking the egg for only 18 minutes, and

[15:41] the idea is to get a kind of runny textured yolk. All right, here are my issues with the with the technique. One. Timing now is very, very important. So, if you have a particular water bath, and you're only putting in, like, 4 eggs for you and your spouse, let's say, then uh, it's gonna work fine because you're gonna do it the same way every time, right? So even though there's carry over heat, and the temperature of the egg yolk is going to go up a little bit, and the outside of the egg yolk is cooked a little bit more than you'd want, uh, and the inner sides, you know, a little under whatever, but that's all

[16:13] going to be frying because you can do it the same way every time. The problem from a restaurant point of view is if you're doing 100 eggs. It's very, very hard to make sure that all the variables are the same every single

[16:26] time, because a circulator, right, going at a 1000 rots, is never going to be powerful enough to come back up to temperature right away if you drop a huge uh batch of eggs into it,

[16:37] right? So this is a technique that's mainly meant for smaller batch cooking. Now, on the super flip side, it's become very popular in high end restaurant circles to go with, uh, uh, boiling water,

[16:48] right, because they wanted. traditional, overcooked, rubbery, white on the outside and our creamy center. And so what these guys are doing, is they're basically saying, hey, look. There's one temperature that I know I can maintain hardcore, screaming boil, and they can put it

[17:04] in, and they time it very exactly, and then you can do more batches because, um, it's fairly easy to maintain a super high consistent

[17:13] temperature because you're just slamming the, the heat into the water and boring it as hard as you can. Uh, so anyway, these are 2 2 different ideas, but uh, those are my thoughts. So with that, why don't we go to the 1st commercial break? Call your questions, 2 718-497-2128, that's 718-4972128, cooking your juice. Santa Claus. Go straight to the ghetto. Hitch up your end here. Go straight to the ghetto. Santa Claus. Go straight to the ghetto Feel every stock and you buy. The kids are gonna love you so, uh. Leave a tour. But, Johnny. Leave a dog for Mary. Leave something pretty but darn it. And don't forget about gearing. Santa Claus? Go straight to the ghetto. Santa Claus. Go straight again. Get him, James Bronson, you. Wow. Wow, Jack, good call on the James Brown. I have a James Brown Christmas album. Yeah, that's awesome. Have you heard the entire James Brown Christmas album? I think there might be several. I have one. And at the end of the song, he starts screaming. It's called something like, you know, Merry Christmas, Christmas time, at the end of it, he's screaming about

[18:54] how, he, he loves all the sands because they bought his record, and it's all a show. Bro, my random show, like that. I mean, he says like 18 times at the end how he's so thankful for all the people that bought his

[19:07] record and sorry show. Wow. So I remember sitting like, I have it in the Christmas rotation, and you know, uh, and we're sitting around,

[19:16] and, you know, it's like, you know, being fired and all this stuff, and all of a sudden, James Brown just comes in and starts screaming about Merry Christmas, Christmas time, you know, all

[19:23] this is awesome. Good, good business. Oh yeah. I didn't think anyone else listened to the James Brown Christmas. Cheers to the James Brown Christmas. Uh, oh, sorry, you gotta read the uh, promo, yeah? Oh, actually, keep going. Alright, I'll keep going. Hey, anytime you want, just brother, we'll get the promo. Okay, make it up. What are they giving away this week? Not sure. Not sure. We'll handle it later. Okay. So, Aaron writes him with more suggestions on uh, vacuum machines,

[19:48] cheap, because everybody, look, everybody knows, everybody wants a inexpensive vacuum machine. Everybody wonders why, like chamber vacuum machines cost $8 billion. I'll tell you why. Run, they don't make that that many of them. That's one. 2 There's a lot of stainless steel on them because they're stainless steel, like restaurant grade, and 3, all the good ones have very expensive vacuum pumps in them, right?

[20:14] And the company that makes, uh, the majority of vacuum pumps for commercial vacuum machines, company called

[20:19] Bush, out of Germany, and the pumps are just really, really, really solid, and a good chunk of the money you're spending is actually for the pump, and, you know, if you buy a crappier, they're, they're very good in that they can withstand a lot of contamination in the, uh, in the

[20:36] oil because of the, uh, vapor that you're boiling, the, uh, liquid that you're boiling off of your, uh, product as you're vacuuming it, et cetera, et cetera, without braking, and they're

[20:45] just Like, you know, they're the tonka trucks of assuming tonka is still good. I have no idea maybe tonka's crap now, but they're the tonka trucks of, uh, you know, vacuum pumps for that kind of, uh, an application and they just cost a lot of money, right? And so, everyone's going around looking for for cheaper alternatives. I've used refrigeration vacuum pumps and they're okay. They eventually fail, um, but, uh, yeah, everyone wants super cheap. We all know, much as I, actually, I've met them. They seem like nice people. People would make the food saver. We all know that the vacuum is kind of weak. Well, there's another contender out there. Uh, the Ziploc, you know, from uh, S.C. Johnson, S.C. Johnson wax, I believe, is a corporation, they make a little vacuum sealer, and Aaron writes in and says, is the bank thing any good? I went on the Amazon, and it's, it's available now for like 6 bucks. You can buy it for like 6 bucks. Uh I don't know. I don't know whether it's any good. I've never tried it. It's never gonna be a good enough vacuum to, uh to, to use for uh, you know, doing uh vacuum infusion, things like that, which is what I mainly and why the vacuum for. I mean, I'm sure it's really really good for bagging a muffin without crushing it, so you can throw it in a freezer in an individual

[21:58] Ziploc, and not get a weird freezer burned around. I mean right now I do that with a straw for anything else. I just use ziploc bags and uh, dip them in water as I back and I get uh, very good results with no leaking. So, I mean, tell me how it works,

[22:14] and when you get it, or if anyone else has extensive experience with the Ziploc vacuum, uh, write in and, and tell us. Hey Dave. What did you say? Did you know today's show was 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 when only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist pantry has the solution? They offer a wide range of modern ingredients in packages that make sense for the home cook and enthusiast, and most cost only around 5

[22:45] bucks, saving you time, money, and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloids, pH buffers, or even meat glue, you'll find it at modernist pantry. And if you need something that they don't carry, just ask, Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you. With inexpensive shipping to any country in the world, modernist pantries, your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist pantry values your feedback, and to encourage it, they've now added product reviews to their website. Any customer who visits the site to post a review before next week's show will get a free $10 gift

[23:14] certificate good toward the 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 experiences. Visit modernestpantry.com today for all your modernest cooking needs. You tell them, Jackie. No, we never met those guys. Did they ever come by the station ever? Anyone ever meet them? We should hang out with them sometime. Where the hell are they located anyway? It's a great question. And we'll figure it out. You figure it out, you tell me. Alrighty. So it's still time to call in your holiday related questions too. Someone 8172128 that's 718-4972128 pay for writes in about fish. Hey, David Nastasia, first. I'm a big fan of the show in the show soundtrack. That's all Jack nowadays, by the way, Pedro. I rarely make any request. Nostalgia can't be bothered. She texting on the phone the whole time, so it's pretty much all Jack. I right? It's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If any of you ever want the pleasure. You should really come on any Tuesday and launch Nastasia's vegan face while she is

[24:12] texting away and uh giving me dirty looks and you can be

[24:17] served pizza by Indie Jesus, who's actually changed his garbage. More wild rust Jesus the last time I saw him. Have you seen him today, Jack? You're not there anymore. Uh, okay. So, uh, Pedro the fish. Sometimes when I buy. Sorry about that, Dave. We have a caller. extremely small. Hey, Dave. We have a caller. All right, we'll cut back to Paige. I'll get back to you one minute. Call her around the air. Hey, how's it going, David? Brian. Hey, Brian. Hey, um, wanted to let you know I got back from my trip and I got through customs. Um just fine. I got my spices. I got some, uh, some dried meats, from, from my trip, um, so thanks for the, thanks for, uh, the, the tips

[25:00] or, or you didn't really have any, you said, just go for it and see what happens. Right, and nothing happened to you at all? No, there was a little, there was, uh, I, I, I, I went through Newark and there was a little dog, one little dog that was sniffing, sniffing around,

[25:15] but, uh, the dog didn't, didn't sniff my stuff, or at least I didn't see the dog, except my, my, my stuff, and I just went right through. No problem. Was it meat vacuum packed? It was vacuum packed? I think that I think that's the key. Yeah, I have bad luck with little dogs. I'm more of a big dog guy. Yeah, yeah. Well, me too. but in this case, I, I got, I got lucky. So what do you speak back if you don't mind telling me? Um, I got, I got some of those, um, Omani or looming what they're called, the, uh, some of those dried limes. Um, I got some, um, some, some dried hipsop, uh, you know, wild hipsop, and uh, some, some wild sage, and um, I got, got some, uh, what, what looks like the, um, the pasturma,

[26:02] and um, uh, also some, uh, some other dried sausages. Well, I'm glad I'm glad you made it. Did you write it on your declaration form? I didn't. So that my mother and friend, I believe, I forget who was on the show when we were talking about it, but, uh, they all basically write it on the form. This way, if they're caught, they can say, well, I wrote it on the form. I just didn't, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, you really did look out on that one. Yeah, I, I, I did. So maybe, maybe, you know, next time I'll write on the declaration form. I, I did bring some cheeses back from Quebec that we're, we're vacuum sealed, uh, the,

[26:43] last time, but, um, you know, coming from Canada, they don't, they don't, they don't care and

[26:47] check, quite as much as I, I think, from some other countries. No, apparently going to Canada, the customs can be brutal. This is very weird. I don't know, look, my son who's uh 9, I apologize for bringing this up, but no, the

[26:58] actually not the 9 year old, the uh 6 year old, he uh, has gotten into comic books, and did you know that there was a guy arrested for uh, having a Japanese uh,

[27:07] manga, uh, cartoon comic book, and he's uh, from America, and he's facing a year in prison, because they deemed the comic book to be uh, child

[27:18] pornography. Strange huh? Wow. Yeah, there's an American dude chilling in a Canadian jail right now because of

[27:26] a comic book. Because of a Japanese comic book. Yeah, because of a Japanese comic book. Yeah, right. So he got he got dinged with child pornography possession. Apparently, Canadians hate, look, it's not my style either, but apparently, Canadians hate, right? Uh, uh, that style of comic books. The customs officials do. I mean, the Canadians themselves, maybe they love it. I don't know. Anyway, I thought I'd mention that. Weird, weird fact. All right. Okay, so yeah, no comics for me. But while I'm here too, I got 2 questions. One is, why don't you guys give a little, little west coast love and uh, play some power of power occasionally. Yeah, can we do that for her? Sorry, yes, definitely. Love tower power. I saw her in with Ray Charles like 15 years ago. Really? Wow. What an opportunity. Yeah, that sounds cool. Um, but I got, I got a cooking question here for you. Um, so it's, um, it's citrus season and I want to make some of my own, own marmalades with um, the grapes, uh, grapefruits. We we have out here. Um you got any tips? For how to make marmalade? Marmalade. yeah We got great citrus. It's the time of year right now. Well, I mean, the real question is how much of the bitterness of the peel do you want in, right? I mean, that's the main thing. I mean, so what I would, I would do, is I would separate the flesh out from the from the uh rind, right, and then treat them separately, and then um, you

[28:55] know you could do the, you could do the. Hey, if you were real, if you look, it depends some people they actually like the the albedo, the right part to be in there a little bit,

[29:03] uh, and some people like uh, more of that bitterness or less of that bitterness, but if you wanted to be, if you wanted to make the world's most baller marmalade, like seriously straight up baller

[29:12] marmalade. What I would do is uh, peel, the uh, peel them, right? Uh, carefully, uh, like score and peel them off, then soak the uh, peels in a solution of

[29:25] pectinex, SPL, and water, which you get can, you can buy that apparently now at modernestpantry.com. I've never tried. I have my own supply. But anyway, uh, you soak them in like 4 grams per liter of that stuff, and um, then you take a, a tooth, a toothbrush

[29:38] or a, a scrubby, and you just wipe all the arbita off, gone. Then you can sliver the peels and they're perfect, but they can be long. So normally you can only get thin slicing of perfect peel that way, but you can get kind of like,

[29:51] like larger sips. You can make them whatever is going to taste good in the marmalade, uh, and then, you know, cook. You can, then you can blanch them if you want, if they're too bitter for you, but they probably won't be, uh, bitter, that is, and then, um, you can, um, make your, the marmalade, uh,

[30:05] base separately, and then fold in the, uh, peel afterwards, that kind of ball, right? That sounds pretty good, but the question would be, you know, when you use the enzymes, doesn't it take away some of the

[30:15] packing, which gives, makes the marmalade thick. Right. Yeah. Well, the question is, so I'm gonna have to add pecking back in separately, you know, from the, you know, like from the box. Yes, you could do that. Um, I haven't thought about how much pecting you'd be removing, but you're gonna boil the, you're gonna boil the citrus

[30:38] down, and the question is, is there enough in just the regular pump without the albedo to do it for you? I would bet there is, but if not, you can always build it with a little bit of pectamine, that's where they get it from. You know what I mean? Like they get it from the citrus peel, either that or from apple, so like most of the commercially available peck do we get to either citrus or apple? I mean, but if you want, I mean, like it's worth getting the extra. I mean, I wouldn't feel bad because no one's gonna know how you did it. You know what I mean? It's gonna be sweet. Mm, okay. Sounds like, uh, I gotta get my hands on some, some, uh, pack next here. Yeah, yeah. It's a good start and plus, you know, then you can use it for the French fry recipes. Use it for clarification. I know that most of the clarification stuff that I have, uh, requires a centrifuge, but I'm working on a new technique. I read a paper. On a technique called electro flotation, and just location in general, where they basically make a little electrolysis set up, and they throw it in the bottom of a, a,

[31:34] a, a vat of, of stuff that's not clarified, and then you turn on the electricity, and it makes tiny hydrogen bubbles, and the tiny hydrogen bubbles float up, and as they float up, they carry the

[31:45] stuff, all of the, uh, impurities with it. So you could dope it with SPL, and then you can clarify liquids with uh with hydrogen bubbles. I haven't tested it yet. I built a rig, but I've been so damn busy. haven't tested it yet. Wow, that sounds cool. And that'll be a home setup I can do? Yeah. So I'm thinking that, I don't know whether I could commercialize that to the new business, especially because the people who wrote the paper might already have

[32:09] the patent down on it. I know, but it's definitely the kind of thing where, you could probably build it for pretty cheap. If it works, you could probably build it for braid cheap. I mean, the trip would look for a flotation is tiny, tiny, tiny bubbles, so for instance, um, I was wondering, could you just take an aquarium pump and do it, but the problem is the bubbles in an aquarium pump, even with those little centered

[32:29] stones, is just too, the bubbles are too large. So the question is how to make tiny, tiny bubbles. And that's why um, electrolysis is good because they use very thin wires. They basically, they use that, uh, the, the one that they used in the paper that I read was carbon,

[32:45] like uh, graphite, carbon, not graphic, carbon, uh, rods, and uh, a stainless steel top, and

[32:51] the stainless steel. I was just there producing the hydrogen, and these very, very fine wires, and those very, very fine wires made a very fine bubble size, and

[33:01] so it didn't really disturb. You don't want turbulence. You just want lots of little bubbles rising. But with the aquarium pump, can't you just put on a, uh, a thinner filter? Well, it's, it's possible. I mean, the thing is, in in one of those, what's happening is the bubble generation is happening from the holes, right? And in in the in the mesh, the bubble generation is happening from the wires itself. So, uh, the, the, the problem is, is could you, could you get holes in, uh, in a porous medium that, uh, aren't

[33:36] going to cause bubbles that coalesce right away. You know what I'm saying? Whereas with wires, very fine wires can be spaced far enough apart to prevent immediate coalescence of the bubbles. I think that's the only one bubble each that kind of comes off of each one of those

[33:49] wires as opposed to, you know, with the aquarium, but it's a group of bubbles which collide into one another and form larger bubbles.

[33:55] Right. I think you want like a constant, just upflow of gentle, tiny, tiny bubbles for this thing to work. And if you look up on the web, you can look up. Uh, uh, you know, if you have access to the, the scientific stuff,

[34:08] elect, electro flotation is the technique. Electrophortation. All right. And uh, can I keep on? I'm still looking for things that people can do if they don't have a sitterfusion. Yeah, that's an expensive idea. Yeah, and space. Run? I don't have the space. Yeah, exactly. So, so, this one, I'm trying to build one in one of those, uh, you know, you go to

[34:34] Suratab and you buy one of those things that's meant to, to, uh, uh, store pasta. I'm trying to build it in one of those, see what it works. Very narrow kind of contain round container. Yeah, narrow, right? And uh, and just you drop it in the bottom and you, you know, I, like, it's gonna take a bunch of tests, like, that's, that's the kind of thing that, if I still

[34:55] had the intern program running at the FCI. I would just have someone do it, but since, um, you know, not there every day. I don't have that program running anymore, so I don't have anyone that can do any testing when I'm not there. You know what I mean? So it's just, I sat next time. Oh, is, is the school selling Pecanex anymore? Yeah, I believe that Irvey Malivore, uh M A L I, V E R T, uh, so it'll be H Malivore at

[35:19] French culinary dot com, and he, he still has it. Yeah. I just saw it there yesterday. Oh great. All right. Thanks, Dave. Happy holidays. Happy holiday, thanks for calling in. Jack we go to our 2nd commercial break? Yeah, let's do it. All right. 718-497-2128 718-497-2128.

[35:43] Five long hips. We have been together. Your love and understanding has brought us to stormy weather. I must admit, girl. I haven't always been good But you stuck by me just like you said you would. Hey, I know That enough is enough. But you shouldn't be talking about. Give it up, girl. Turning loose. Might be right as soon. The wrong decision, we'll sparkle on a dream. If you don't want, the spot I sleep between. Don't change horses in the middle of a stream. That would be an extremely bad call to change your horse in the middle of a stream. Extremely bad call. At least, you know, if you're actually fording a stream. Of course, if the horse was sinking and drowning you, right? Like if the horse was literally dying and sucking it down to the bottom of the river instead of swimming, then maybe

[36:57] a good idea to chase the horse in the middle of the stream. Maybe the only choice. Yeah, so, I mean, I think like that phrase, like, you know, don't change, blah, blah, mint, should be, uh, unless, uh, that change is going to prevent you from

[37:09] dying. Of course. Yeah. If the horse is actually worse than no horse at all. Man changing course is a pretty good idea. You know, it's one of those things. anyway. But, you know, I mean, I understand. You don't get rid of a marginally okay horse. Like if there's like a stellar horse next to you swimming and you're like, man, that horse is a badass and mine is only, you know, kind of okay,

[37:29] then, yeah, stay on the okay horse. know what I'm saying? absolutely. And whenever I think of this, I always, I don't know, I shouldn't, I'm not going to get into politics anyway. won't get into politics on the show. Okay, do it. Okay. So back to Pedro and his fish question. Uh, by the way, uh, anyway, so, we're gonna have one more song going on, right? You gonna get us one really awesome holiday song for the for the outro. That was Tower of Power for the last caller. Yeah, but you got it for the last, on the way out, are we going to play like some hardcore Christmas stuff or what? Oh yeah, definitely. Okay, cool. All right. I'm excited to hear what you what you have. Anyway, Pedro and his fish. Okay. Sometimes when I buy fish, the flesh is extremely soft and the tissue looks like it's falling apart. I know it's not because the fish is old. I know how to judge freshness pretty well and I buy my fish from a small fisherman's co-op. only sells that day's catch. Also, this seems to happen much more frequently with Atlantic mackerel and bluefish. Do you know why this happens and how to avoid it? I know the fish are caught using nets and not blood out, so could this be related to rigor mortis? Well, Pedro, I bet it is because, I mean, we've had a discussion before, but everyone who grew up in the

[38:35] northeast and like hung around with people that fish know that back in the day, uh, people didn't like bluefish so much because it didn't

[38:42] keep and it kind of went south fast and the fishes became mushy and whatnot. It's because blues, I don't really know that much about mackerel. The blues are vicious, you know, fighting strong fish, like when blues are

[38:54] running, uh, when blues are running, right, uh, close to the shore, you know, bathers have gotten like bites taken out of their

[39:01] legs. The balloons are vicious. why when you're fishing for blues, you use like a steel, uh, you know, steel leader on it, and, and, and people like fishing for blues, because they have such

[39:10] a good fight, so, for their size. So, I would bet that they go into a really really hard rigger, and that that hard rigger is ripping apart the, uh, you know, some of the structure of the muscle, muscle, and it's

[39:23] getting, uh, mushy. Uh, and I know we had a, um, a listener, and for some

[39:29] reason, his name just went straight out of my head, but we had a listener who ran some preliminary tests on bluefish by doing

[39:35] Ikigime, where they, uh, we do the spinal cord destruction, and you bleed them out properly, and so that the fish were in a side by side. Now he only did one or 2 samples, but the side by side, the bluefish was significantly better. Uh, i.e. summer, uh, when it was killed using, uh, the Japanese techniques that, you know, uh, uh, fall under the, under the heading of

[39:56] Bikachime, fish killing techniques. Um, and that's because, as we said many times, on fish, they swim extremely strongly, they go into a hard rigor, if you take a needle and shove it through their spinal cord, uh, it stops the messages from going from the spinal cord to the muscles, and therefore, preserves ATP, which is the energy the muscles

[40:14] use to contract, and therefore, delays rigor, and then delayed rigor is a softer rigor. Anyway, so I would bet that that is what's going on. I don't know much about the mackerel. Uh, I mean, other than I like to eat mackerel. I don't really know much about them from a fishing and swimming

[40:30] perspective. So, I, I do know that they suffer some of the same problems of, uh, that all

[40:37] orally fishes, uh, suffer in terms of, uh, enzymatic activity. They can be mushy if they're cooked at low temperature, because the enzymes in them, not only do the muscles themselves get broken, but the enzymes in the fish keep

[40:49] working, uh, proactively, uh, while it's being cooked at lower temperatures and so they can turn mushy. I know certain species of mackerel have that problem uh very much. So anyway, so I don't know whether that's also playing into a part of it. It's never really listed in the uh, those enzymes aren't resisted in uh, the bluefish because it's only been recently that people have appreciated the

[41:10] delicious, delicious bluefish. I love bluefish. Uh I think more people are liking bluefish Jack. You feel more people are liking blue fish now? Yeah, I hear more about it lately. Yeah, good stuff. I mean, you either like it or you don't. I like it. Anyway, okay. So our buddy, Christa, from poly science. The people that brought you, the immersion circulator, calls in about butternut squash, wrote in. Hello, Nastash. I hope all is well. I'm glad you've caught up the last few radio shows on iTunes. I have a question I can't find a good answer for maybe Dave knows more about it. I've observed that when I cut butternut squash. My skin feels like it is dried out. It's quite aggressive, and I'm not sure if it is actually dehydration or something else. I'm also not clear about the liquid pearls that collect on the butternut squash

[41:52] surface, uh, after a few minutes, instead of the attached picture, but I don't have it. Sorry, Christoph. I have the picture. How does it happen that it collects in pearls like that? Is that liquid responsible for this dehydration? I wonder if this liquid is used in any products like cosmetics have a great holiday season. Okay. So I went on my scientific uh web search engines that I steal and uh typed uh butternut squash and then a host of other things and I couldn't find anything

[42:17] specific. Except, uh, there are certain people that get what's called a, uh, a protein contact dermatitis, uh, from many things,

[42:26] uh, one of them being butternut squash. So it is known that there are certain people that have uh skin sensitivity to uh butternut squash. I was doing more research, and butternut squash, are part of a larger group, including cucumbers and all other squash and melons and stuff called cucumbers, and um, they have, uh, can have, um, lots of crazy things, uh, flowing saps and whatnot, flowing through the flowing, which is in the stems, but also, I

[42:56] think, uh, to some extent, they can have stuff flowing through, uh, the, the fruits themselves, and I believe they would concentrate somewhat towards the skin side of it.

[43:06] Now, uh, I was able to find some strange sugar components that are in pumpkins, um,

[43:12] and and other, uh, strange kind of defense stuff, but nothing definitive. I would guess that if your hand is drying out like that, like the same way it does, for instance, if you're

[43:21] shelling a lot of shrimp, that you're getting some sort of, uh, either protein,

[43:26] rural hydrocoloid that is, uh, basically not dissolving away on your hand and drying fairly quickly into a foam.

[43:34] That's what I'm guessing, but I would love to hear if anyone knows anything more about it. I wasn't able to do it, reading the 1st, you know, 10 to 15 papers where I typed in, you know, uh, sap and or latex and or, uh, hydrocarloid or dermatitis, and butter and squash and or acutribit,

[43:54] but it's an interesting thing, and it's a known fact. I mean, I found uh, an egolet, uh, you know, link with someone, and there's someone on the ego thing, say, It's a starch. It's not starch. Starch isn't going to do that to you, but um anyway, it's an interesting question. It's got to be some lacky hydrocarloid or hydrocarloid protein mixture uh that's coming out of there so anyway. We'll look into it more. Or, you know, it's one of those things where, uh, I'm going to have an answer for you in a year and a half because I'm going to

[44:20] meet, someday, I will meet the butternut scratch scientist and I will ask them what the hell the deal is, and they'll tell

[44:27] me anyway. Gabriel writes in. I hope this is the correct email address. It is, um, this question relates to an absurd, the absurd price of soft rentals, uh, it's actually not a thing I want. Uh, well, because he says he doesn't cook at that level, but Gabriel, once you own one of these, and by the way, I saw a funnel that we're talking about, saw a funnel soft gun, is basically a funnel, preferably metal, that has a little stick in the center of

[44:49] it that you lift up, and stuff comes out of it, and it's one of those things that, yeah, you don't need it, but man, are those things

[44:56] a joy. They're just a, they're a complete joy. Well, they're absurdly priced. Surdly priced. Uh, so anyway, so this race they have served prices soft funnels. Um, uh, okay. So I wondered whether there wasn't a less expensive place to get a soft funnel than JB Prince. Now listen. before we go any further. I know the, uh, the finals at JV Prince are expensive, but JV Prince is selling

[45:18] a, an expensive brand of those funnels because they only carry kind of the top quality

[45:22] stuff. Here's the deal with JB Prince. And yes, it's true. I know them all. I like them, and they've given me some stuff before, but, uh, their stuff isn't cheap,

[45:31] but I don't think that they, they're charging, they're charged. they're not getting rich off of it. They're just carrying high quality brands, but stuff that you can't normally get embarked from places, and so the price, the prices are

[45:44] a little bit higher, but it's not like they're. It's not like they're, uh, you know, making money hand over fist with huge margins. They're just not. Okay, anyway, um. Okay Well, there is an easier uh, sorry, there is a, uh, uh, one uh, he saw

[46:01] on uh, on uh, QVC that was much cheaper, right?

[46:05] Uh, and I looked on Amazon and there was a sauce funnel on Amazon. It was about half the price of the one that you get at JB Prince. However, the one review I saw on it, uh, was basically

[46:15] that, this sucker doesn't work and we'll get the expensive one, which is from, uh, Matfer. Uh, and so, you know, he's wondering how hard could it possibly be to build one of these

[46:24] things, with metal frontal, uh, a screen? It actually doesn't need a screen and some sort of device to control the aperture. Uh, but I'll tell you what, I wouldn't want to build it for 150 bucks. Could I build it? Yes, I could go, the probably metal funds themselves are expensive, especially when they go down to the thing. So, yes, I own a welder and a plasma cutter and a drill press and all that stuff, so I could go make one, but I definitely wouldn't want to for a 100, 150 bucks, but uh, something um, uh, he writes

[46:52] it, Gabriel writes it, it's interesting is, if you search for results like soft

[46:56] gun TRY plans, you come upon DIY weapons of the Libyan rebels, and if you look it up on the Atlantic uh, monthly website, they have a link to all these pictures of, like,

[47:08] literally, like, Dudes in workshops, building weaponry to uh, to take back the country from

[47:15] Kaddafi. pretty interesting, pretty interesting website. anyway, go check it off. Okay Monica writes in on milkshakes. 1st of all, I love cooking issues. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Anyway, I've never written to you before, but I thought you might find this recipe interesting in quotation marks. I would really laugh out loud when I realized that these people were actually making a buffalo chicken milkshake. Although it sounds totally gross. I'm thinking the idea of savory milkshakes might be worth checking out, like a Frozen Bloody Mary or something. I saw this recipe on both feed, but I can't find a link to the article now, but here's a link to the video of them making

[47:47] it. Um, I found it to be totally different and thought you and other readers might enjoy it. Uh, thanks and take care. Monica. Okay. So what this is, is, uh, and I haven't seen this episode, even though I love 30 Rock, is, uh, passing some sort of a fast food establishment, and the sign says, ba-, you know, it's back, the buffalo chicken milkshake, and so this guy, which he calls himself a super fan, is on this video on video, I think, or no, YouTube,

[48:15] and, uh, he's, uh, sitting with one of the writers from 30 Rock, and he's making her a buffalo chicken

[48:21] milkshake, now. If you haven't seen the video, here's what he does. He takes milk and cream, right? And then, uh, say, milk, cream, uh, blue cheese, blends it,

[48:32] adds uh, tomato sauce, and buffalo uh, sauce, buffalo chicken wing sauce, and Worcestershire sauce, right?

[48:40] And then puts it in the pan, and much like the granita we were talking about earlier, puts it in the freezer, and stirs it occasionally, until it turns into an icy creamy thing, and then uh, blends it in a blender, uh, and

[48:52] then, uh, serves it, as a milkshake, and garnishes it with a, a chicken strip, and sorry. okay now. Let's just leave aside whether or not this thing's gonna like whether or not this is a good idea. Just leave that aside. Jack, what's your call? Good idea about it, yeah. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. So anyway, so let's leave this aside. This is like, here are the errors that are made from a cooking perspective in this

[49:15] video. Uh 1st of all, you can tell that the texture of this thing is not going to be right. It's not an ice cream texture. And the reason why, it's not going to be a milkshake texture either, it looks greeny and groppy, and the reason why is because there's no sugar in it, right now, if you want to go savory, right, you still need something to take the place of sugar,

[49:36] otherwise the texture is never going to be milkshake. It's going to be greeny and gloppy, like it is in the video, you can see it. So what this person needs to do? is get a hold of some glucose syrup, right? Which has a lot of the properties of sugar in terms of texture modifying for ice creams, but does not have the sweetness,

[49:55] right? So this is the 1st straight up air that uh is being made in this, is that there's no sugar to modify uh the textures. Now, if I wanted to do it and I didn't have a home, uh, ice cream machine, which I don't, right? I would, uh, whip it with a whipping agent, uh, then set it in

[50:11] the free, uh, freezer, then blend it, uh, with the milk stuff and get

[50:15] it, but you'd have to have something with glucose syrup. There's a 2nd huge error that he makes, and this is the one that really is going to, uh, um, shows he's not paying attention to the labels on his ingredients, and that is, he says that his, uh, thing, uh, it

[50:30] had, remember, has Worcestershire sauce in it. He says that his milkshake is still vegetarian until he puts the chicken strip in. Now, I don't want to go, like any of you guys are vegetarians out there. Uh, Worcestershire sauce is not vegetarian because the one of the prime ingredients in Worcestershire sauce is anyone, anyone? anchovies, right? In fact, I just did a clarified, uh, uh, you know, centrifugally

[50:56] clarified, uh, Worcester sauce, like 2 weeks ago, and all of the anchovy settles out at the bottom, and it basically tastes like straight fish paste, the stuff at the bottom that settles out

[51:06] to clarify Worcester sauce. So Worcestershire sauce is definitely not vegetarian. Now, you can buy crappy steak Worcestershire sauce, right? Which I do not recommend at all, and fake Wishershire sauce, can be vegetarian, because it doesn't have anchovies in it. But if you use honest to God, which is your sauce, which they were using on the video. It is no longer vegetarian. So take that for whatever it is, right? Right anyway. Okay, Matthew writes in on cheese. Hey, Nastasia, uh, as I've written in before, I'm working with melted cheese sauce, use a sodium citrate, and I order

[51:39] carrot in along with cheese, water, and beer. Sodium situates, it's called melting salt, by the way, and it helps uh, maintain a smooth curve and something's melting so it doesn't get greeny. Okay. I got the recipe from Nathan Mirvold via the internet. His recipe is for use on mac and cheese. I'm using the cheese sauce as a topping for a sandwich. I melt the cheese and hold it in a steam table. It works quite well, though it does tend to thicken over time. I fix this by adding liquid and then adjusting the seasoning. My question is in reference to the iota carrot in this recipe. Uh, in the miracle recipe, he melts the cheese with uh, the chemicals, sets it in a block, and then partially freezes it to make it easier to grate, and subsequently

[52:14] melt it into the cooked macaroni, and cooking water. I'm unsure if the roll of carrying is simply to make the cheese more stable for freezing, uh, keeping the shape of the block, or if it is to do with the mouth feel or texture of the melted sauce. Uh, as I'm not very familiar with either, either uh, ingredient. This recipe. I was hoping you could shed some light on the properties or lighter there, and perhaps the purpose of using carrot again, and well, uh, thanks, Matthew. So rather than uh, having my own speculation, which I have, uh, I wrote Chris Young an email last night. Uh, Chris Young is, uh, you know, one of the authors of the book and worked on this

[52:45] recipe, uh, and so, uh, here's, you know, might as well get the answer from the guy, right? Anyway, so he wrote back, he said, the short answer is that melting salts, uh, act to stabilize molten cheese emulsions by, uh, cheating calcium, uh, cute, so it's cheating, or is

[53:01] even cheating. Uh, calcium solidizing and dispersing the proteins. Hydrating is probably an iPhone problem. Uh, solidizing, dispersing the proteins, hydrating and swelling the proteins, and I must find the fat. You can use only melting sauce, but older cheeses tend to have brittle texture. This is because aging breaks proteins down to shorter chains. They have less interaction with each other and less elasticity in the slice. Adding iota carrot union gives back some of the elasticity and moisture holding ability, uh, when restructuring

[53:29] of ferry merch or cheese. If you want to skip the iota, just blend in younger, milder cheeses,

[53:34] a stir, uh, curd cheese with 3 to month, 3 to 6 months of age is a good choice. So, uh, it's basically there so that you can use more intensely flavored, more mature

[53:44] cheeses, and still have some elasticity. So, if you're using a young cheese, uh, Chris Young, our friend,

[53:50] who found a show, uh, says you can leave it out. Okay. Uh, Chris, right, saying, uh, lactic acid, uh, with another lactic

[54:00] acid that cheese question, uh, dear Dave and Hammer. Um okay. Are there any tips that you might throw at us for using malik, ascorbic citric and lactic acid in the kitchen? and I, I don't know where his, uh,

[54:11] uh, you know, he, was it? I wonder whether Chris is a man or woman. What do you think? Chris with a K, Jack, man or woman? Ooh, with a K. That's a wild card. I'm not sure Yeah, that's a tough one. I'll say I'll say guy though. Yeah? You're going with Chris Christopherson? Yeah, Carlos is going with woman, though. Yeah. So we got a 50-50 split. Okay, um, Okay,

[54:34] we generally cook vegan kinds of food. So mustache on an airplane somewhere making her vegan face. Uh, but not that raw, uh, kit. I shouldn't say it on there. sugar honey iced tea. Not that raw sugar honey iced tea and I promise we stay away from sprouts. Good because sprouts, as we all know, tastes like poison. Uh, but um, Chris is interested in making cheese, uh, with, with nut milks and convinced that lactic acid is the key flavor compound that's missing. Yeah sure she uh he or she knows it's just one go easy on me. I'm mostly interested in doing this from perspective trying to figure out what makes some of the distinctive flavors other than specific bacteria,

[55:08] et cetera. Okay. So, uh, it's true, that, uh, lactic acid is one of the characteristic, uh, flavors in many, many cheeses, um, and you, and, and cured meats for that matter, um, and pickles, uh, and sauerkraut, uh, and kimchi, and you can

[55:24] bilactic acid, and you can spike things with it to make it taste more like that.

[55:28] Uh, and I've done this many times, but as you note, it's only one of the many flavor components that's, uh, present, so a lot of it is protein breakdown, and uh,

[55:39] and, and a lot of the 1st is, if you ever had a cheese, that's so sharp that, like, it pops the, the taste buds, like, I, like I have this like harbor reaction to, uh, certain cheeses that I happen to love, so I eat it anyway, where my taste buds literally pop out, and you can see them, they look like little mushrooms that are exploding on my tongue,

[55:56] and, um, And those are because of fat breakdown products. So you have, you know, liquid breakdown products, you have protein breakdown products, uh, and you have

[56:07] other like bacterially uh, produced things like lactic acids. So it's just a total schmorgasborg conglomeration of different uh flavors and you can buy. Uh, for instance, if you put fats in, you can buy enzymes that will

[56:21] enhance, um, the liquid breakdown in nuts, uh, and causal certain things to those flavors

[56:29] to happen. I don't know whether they're gonna taste good or not. That's definitely something you, you can, you can do, but if you experiment with us. uh, you know, please tell us, a scorebic, for the other one, that's lactic, for a scorebic, I use that whenever I'm juicing. Like whenever I'm juicing something, uh, I got a scorevic sitting around because that's the one that stops things from turning. Uh, you know, stops things from oxidizing because that's like, you know, uh, vitamin C. an antioxidant. Uh, Malik, I use uh, a mixture of malik and citric, 2 parts, citric to one part, Malik, as my go to, uh, acidity corrector, because that mixture, 2 parts, uh, citric and one part, Malik, is basically the main acids in lime juice, and since lime juice, is what God put on the earth to correct acidity with, uh, if you don't want to use lime juice, because it's not going to keep, or it's going to be heated a lot,

[57:16] something like that, a slight pinch of those 2 acids in that ratio, will, uh, will bring

[57:20] about, uh, the desired. The desired acidity. So I always have those things on hand and I use them all the time. All right, Dave, we got to wrap it up. All right. I'm almost done with this and my last question. Okay, we good? Do we have 5 minutes or 2 minutes? Yep. Okay. Also, unrelated question. Would you be willing or have you ever posted pictures of your home kitchen somewhere? I know you must have a somewhat small kitchen, I'm interested in your use of space. We are in uh Los Angeles in a smallest condo, and space is always an issue,

[57:47] uh, where the kitchen is taking over uh, the living room, and I wonder if you how you solve some of these issues that we run into, and I'm sure you are more creative about this than we

[57:54] are. I don't know about that. Our solutions often just involve a lot of swearing, but perhaps yours do as well. Well, well, Chris, swearing always works. I find that if you curse at something enough, and sometimes punch and hit it, as long as it's an object, not a person, that you can usually get it to do what you

[58:10] want. But in fact, if you go on, uh, on the Google and you search, uh, New York magazine. Dave Arnold Kitchen. There is a picture of my kitchen. Um, it's bigger than, it's bigger than it should be. My apartment is 800 square feet. My kitchen is 200 of that, but it is pretty compact. I have a 6 foot sink with like sliding boards and all that, but there's a there's a rundown of it there. I'd be happy to talk about it in excruciating detail, uh, maybe the next time around when we have more time, but, on the way out, I do want to say this. Uh, happy holiday to uh everyone out there. We're gonna see we'll be back uh next Tuesday. I think I scheduled right unless heritage radio is not going to be working next week. Are they, Jack, are we on for next week? We're not. We're off next week, so we'll see you guys next week. And the week after that, it's what? 2012 yeah. No, it'll be January 2nd or third, I think. All right. Well, listen, I'm going to see all you guys in the new year. And before I go, I want to say that I can officially announce now that, uh, we're going to be starting a bar concept,

[59:14] and the back of Sambar, uh, and it's probably the official date is going to be sometime in mid January, it's going to be called Booker and Dax, at Sambar, and it's going to be using all of the techniques that we've been jabbering about for

[59:30] years. We're going to use the red hot poker. I'm gonna use uh some new carbonation equipment on building, with a center views there. I'm going to be doing legal rotary of operation using liquid nitrogen so that we can do water-based dissolations that

[59:43] tastes good. We're gonna pull out all of those stops, and we're gonna get it going in the back. uh in uh it's going to be in night times in the back of sandbar and look for it. Booker and Docks at sambar. Happy holidays, cooking issues.

[1:00:09] Merry Christmas, baby. You sure did treat me nice. Mmm Merry Christmas, baby. You should it, dreamy night.

[1:00:37] Cave me a diamond rape with Christmas. I'm living in paradise.

[1:00:51] Well, I'm feeling my mind. Got good music on my radio.