[0:00] You're listening to the Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live to the Cosmos from the backyard at Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

[0:14] Vicious fish vodka. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to meet my baby. I'm 20 minutes late. You got my head all twisted. And I guess can't get it straight. Fishes, fish and vodka. Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues, coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday from roughly

[1:03] 12, to roughly 1245. Going to be joined today in the studio with Maxine Bellay, co-author of Modernist Cuisine

[1:11] Cookbook. Also, oh, here he is. He's coming through right now. I see him. So I'll wait to introduce him. We're also here with Dave. Hey, Dan, what's your last name? Goodyear from the New Yorker. She's just hanging out, but she's welcome to chime in anytime she wants. Yeah, put it on a pair of headphones. This one's for you. Right? And as usual, we're joined with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, who's sitting typing on

[1:31] our computer, getting stuff done for the cooking issues machine. Am I right? Yeah? Berlin. Berlin? Yeah. So, uh, hey, Maxine. Here. Pull up a seat, here's your microphone. and your headphones. So, Maxine, I'm doing well. doing well. Maxine, you were a graduate of what, Vice? Originally our arch nemesis, the FCI, is that true? Indeed, ISO. Yeah. Very brief since it ice. Yeah, that's our arch nemesis. But then moved to what anyone who was hanging around in New York in, I guess, the late 90s, early 2000s, Jack's Oyster Bar, right? Fantastic place. didn't you work there? I did. I did. I actually went to Jack's Luxury Stagier directly from Ice. The chef left about 2 weeks later, and Jack Lamb, crazy as he is, gave me the head chef job. So it was quite a transition for young chef. But a great, I mean, you know, I went, I think, once, but it moved across the street, right? I went when I went when it was on its original side of the street. I think once when it was across the street. Yeah, I was there when it was still the little carriage house and then it moved to the old

[2:35] Machimona space. What was that, on 5th Street? on 5th Street. Yeah. Anyway, fabulous place, great pedigree. When moved from there to the fat duck? You know, the Heston Blumenthal's famous joint, right? Indeed. And you were on the restaurant side or the development side, development side? I began on the restaurant side and then they quickly moved me to the development side. That was my, you know, my calling, all of the research and the, you know, great dishes that

[2:59] Hessen would push us to create. And then we're was tapped by Nathan Miravold to, you know, be a part of the modernist cuisine dream team. And so, you know, the 3 authors on the book, of course, Nathan, who's been on the show before, Nathan

[3:14] Mirovold, Chris Young, good friend of ours, been on the show before, and Maxine for the 1st time on the show. Well, welcome. It's so nice to be here Thanks for having me. And Dana, who, again, may or may not chime in. I don't know. Welcome to is writing an article on Strange Meats. true or false? true. True. All right. very good. So listen, call all of your questions in two, uh, 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. So how you doing? Maxine was at our bar the other day. I loved it. Oh my god. You were right. The basil cocktail that you, it's delicious. So fragrance. Thanks. I appreciate it. It's a technique we do at Booker and Dax. which basically we just lost, by the way, best new bar, time out in New York too, a Maison premiere, but it's good to lose to such a great bar. Maison premiere. Anyway, a technique where we smash the Thai basil with liquid nitrogen, and what happens is when it's

[4:06] frozen, that deeply in liquid nitrogen, there's no sort of enzymatic degradation of the herb at all, and we can shatter it into super, super fine particles, even just using a hand muddler, then add liquor directly that prevents the enzymes because

[4:21] the enzymes can't really work in type of liquor. That beautiful extraction. Yeah, it's like, the liquor sex is straight out. And then lime juice, the ascorbic acid further prevents breakdown via

[4:32] advance, and then shake it like a normal daiquiri from there or not. But I like it. a good. And the color is beautiful, but the just the aroma is just, yeah. Spectacular. So before I get into questions, and I hate to do this to you. everyone always asks every, you know, this is the question. I have to ask you, and if I don't ask you, someone will get upset at me. By all means. So what's next on your plate? Well, right now we're, really, it's been the book tour. It's been an incredible journey, you know, just sharing, teaching, you know, every different technique and all the aesthetics that we that went into creating modern cuisine. We're able to share on so many levels. It's just so much information. And by having this book tour, we're able to sort of unravel it and look at the different aspects that went into its

[5:18] making. But going forward, we've had many propositions and we're not totally clear exactly what the next phase

[5:27] is. We have a little project in the works that will come out soon.

[5:34] That's kind of exciting. But that's just, that's, I'm going to give you a teaser on that one and... Not allowed to tell me any more

[5:40] specifics? All right. Maybe, you know, at AV, they make you send giant NDAs and... Intellectual ventures. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, so I am bounds by... All right, all right. Well, just, you know, dropping it there that there is something coming. We just don't know what it is. Thanks for making me curious now and not giving me anything. Maybe off air. My full intention. Yeah, well, you know, by the way, in case you have randomly tuned to this podcast. and don't know what modernist cuisine is. It is probably... the single kind of greatest cookbook publishing phenomenon of all

[6:16] times. Probably, I would have to say, of all times. Well, that's very flattering. Yeah. Next to me, look, like, for instance, right? Apicius is the only book on Roman cookery. It's not that it's a great book, but it's the only book. Right now, we have a huge, a huge output of cookbooks and food related books, and yet nothing that has ever been

[6:34] attempted, much less successfully produced on this scale. It's amazing. I mean, uh, uh, anyway, Astounding Book. Uh, you know, and the thing is, is that even though I guess the going Amazon price

[6:48] is, what, about 450 now? Yeah, you know, it's, yeah, yeah, about 400. Yeah. So it's not an inexpensive book, but as Nathan is fond of pointing

[6:57] out, a lot of paper in that book. A lot of paper and very good investment per, you know, the amount of information you're getting.

[7:03] I mean, if you, if you think about it, it's 5 volumes, you break it down, it's, uh, and the

[7:09] amount of work that went into it. I think it's, you know, as a young chef, as a, as a, as a passion foodie, whatever you want to call, you know, yourself, it's, I think it's a very good investment for

[7:19] your, your, your future creative culinary adventures. It's less than half the price per book of the of the Abouly books, for instance, if you're going to compare. Yeah, exactly. If you want to comparison. That's the ref. Yeah, and what's what's funny about it, not to speak on such venal terms about it,

[7:36] but, you know, everyone's wondering, well, you know, Nathan, who has an unbelievable amount of

[7:41] money and a certain amount of money, really, when you think about it, he's a rich man. Yeah, very well for himself, and he's worked hard for this. Well, I'm not saying anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a lot of mean. you know, multi-billionaire. But, uh, everyone was like, well, you know, this is kind of, uh, one of the criticisms you hear is

[7:57] that it's just because he has a lot of money. He's never going to make the money back. But in fact, the book is good enough. It's making the money back. It's actually becoming on the edge of profitable. And that was never the intention, but, you know, the, I mean, we thought we would sell 2000 copies maybe, and now we're almost at 30,000 copies. And at that price point, yeah,

[8:16] we're, we're recuperating the, you know, the investment that was made. And that's, that's amazing. I mean, the fact that it's actually going to be a profitable book, I

[8:26] think, is the greatest sign of, I mean, look, success. I mean, success in terms of kind of the impact that it's going to make in the world, the fact that something can be at that cost can have that much money dumped into its production,

[8:37] right? Which Nathan will never divulge what the actual number is, but we know it's a lot. Because, I mean, at minimum,

[8:44] you at bare minimum, you had at least 15, you know, very, very qualified people working full-time for how many years plus then a lot more

[8:52] for. At least 3.5 you had a full team. And then and then a lot more than the 15 for a big chunk of that time. For the final year push when we really had to get everything together. It was almost 40, you know, including all the Ghost Riders and the copy editors and it was it was a pretty, you know, massive team of experts in, you know,

[9:10] in what they did. Yeah, and so the, yeah, and so for something of that magnitude to be able to break even, just, I think, goes to show kind of how ripe the time was for this information, the need for the book, and

[9:23] also, you know, it's just, I think it's an interesting measure. when it's often not talked about, actually, in the when people talk about the book, they don't talk about that aspect of it. Absolutely. No, and I'm glad you bring that up because it was in terms of timing and and people being, you know, open to what this means, you know, that that

[9:41] that merging of art and science, which is a beautiful thing. And it's something that, you know, a lot of classic traditionalists, you know, wanting to reject. And at the same time, when you embrace it, you realize that each really enhances the other. And it's such a clean, beautiful relationship that it's, yeah, it was primed for that and people are responding that way. And so that's a testament to the progress we've made

[10:10] with we're looking at the different roles of food. And something else, I think, I might have commented on this show about it before. I'm not sure. I can't remember. If you haven't seen the book at all. One of the interesting things about it is, and this is something I hadn't expected before I was able to see it, is kind of how personal it is. It's not, uh, in other words, it's not, uh, it's not

[10:31] the encyclopedia Britannica. It's not a cold textbook. No, no, but by no means. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of personal feelings, personal, I mean, it's... There's, I mean, there's, yeah, a lot of personal aspects. Yeah, I mean, it's a great book. Anyway, so we have a we have a question on the book, someone who read, actually, from

[10:49] Zeimerji, the blog, I guess, had a question regarding the

[10:54] Spaetzel recipe in the book. And I'll read it, even though it's addressed to me, I'll read it to you, and so you're going to know a lot more about it than I do.

[11:00] Uh, I've attempted uh, the modernist cuisine, sour cream, schpetzel, uh, recipe twice now with less than desirable results. So you're going to troubleshoot this. Okay, yeah, let's fix this one. All right. The issues are that they will not form into a shape. The 1st time I attempted them, they basically dissolved into the ice water. The 2nd time I received a new batch of Activa YG. By the way, that's meat meat glue. It's actually like a protein bonder. YG is the one that's made for dairy and protein stuff. made the recipe and split the batch into. I then used a before we go on, why don't you describe the recipe 1st so that people know what we're talking about. Yeah, so this is actually a recipe inspired by Alex Naki from IDs and food. And uh, we really, uh, as part of our, um, uh, beef

[11:44] uh, uh, cheek uh, goulash. We wanted to have a modernist special component. And so that was the basis for creating the recipe. And it's a combination of, I think it's cream. I have to look at the recipe in front of me to be fully aware of. All right, but yeah. But basically, it's a dairy-based spetzel, where we're using the binding properties of

[12:09] Activ YG. We also use an additional element of protein. that we use albumen in there. And what you create is these very fluffy little dumplings that after being sets with that enzymatic process, then are nicely toasted in brown butter and served as a garnish for

[12:31] this, for this, you know, very unctuous 72 hour beef cheek. All right. And so the proteins in it, egg proteins, I guess, egg white proteins, and also... The dairy proteins. The dairy

[12:43] proteins are being bound together with an enzyme, transgutamination, meat glue, set, and then potion, then

[12:50] toasted, or... Well, they're actually, they're never actually poached. What we do is we sieve them after they've, once the

[12:57] enzymatic press has begun, We sieve them into, um, through the, uh,

[13:03] spetsla maker into uh, ice water and you get these nice little dumpling shapes. And then you give him a final fry to really give him that textual contrast. So the 1st time that red made them, it dissolved into the ice water. The 2nd time, received a new batch of the Activa, YG made them and split the batch in two, used one quarter of the batch as directed with the same results, let the other half set in the fridge for 24 hours, thinking that it needed time to set up. That was also not the answer. By the way, protein gel made with Activa, once set, if it's broken, it's broken, it's not broken. You're breaking a jello. So that, yes. So as pointed out, that was not the answer because that won't work. The last quarter of the batch went into the freezer, another failure. I can test it. following the recipe to the letter, but cannot seem to get this one down. I'm not sure if you know the formulation or not, but anything that you could add would be helpful. Gelatin, water, sour cream, ricotta, whey protein, isolate. Why? there's gelatin in it too. There's gelatin yeah yeah. give a maximum amount of protein capacity. How come you don't do a, you know, um, how come you? Oh, the cold water then sets the gelatin and then the gelatin's cross-linked by the YG. So I would bet that they're not. I would bet that you're not they're not waiting long enough for the gelatin to get syrupy. That's right That's a good that's a very good point. When you have your base mixture, letting the gelatin

[14:19] hydrates, you know, at least, I mean, doing that over an ice water bath until it gets that syrupy

[14:26] consistency, and then setting it directly into the ice water is one of the tricks. Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people, like, for me, like, uh, one of the great meat glue applications involving gelatin is my brother-in-law, Wiley Dufrene's, uh, veg noodles and, like,

[14:42] quinoa chips. And a lot of people have trouble duplicating that recipe. And I think 99% of the time, it's because they're not getting the gelatin, uh, hydration. Yeah, I mean, one of the sad, not sad. One of the interesting things about a lot of these, a lot of these techniques is they really do require, sometimes it is helpful to see people do

[15:04] it, because there's a lot of like the hand in it. I know that, you know, like, um, why they also used to do very kind of a well-known in in WD50, a well-known recipe where he would take, uh, carrot and cardamom, uh, I think it was

[15:18] carrot. carrot, whatever, carrot. And then he would freeze it, uh, and dip it in a mixture of, uh, a

[15:24] kappa carrot game and locust being gone to make his egg yolk. They make the yolk with the egg with the egg whites. Yeah, the egg white was a coconut coconut, like LBG. Yeah, yeah. Very famous WD50 dish. Which we have in the book. Really? Oh, cool. But the truth is it's actually a very difficult recipe, if you've never done it before, it takes a lot of practice to get those egg yolks to work

[15:52] properly. And when you're 1st doing it, you'll get like one in 8 will work. You know what I mean? And then by the time, you know, you've been doing service every day for

[16:01] a month, you lose one in 20. Do you know what I mean? But there was always like the one cook in the kitchen who their job was to do all 60 of those every day, get them plated, get them

[16:14] away, and, you know, they had the magic touch, but it really comes from practice. So a lot of these things take some practice. Exactly. It's a huge amount of practice. And feel and, you know, exactly. So listen, calling your questions too. 718-4972128. That's 718-4972128. going to go to commercial break. Be right back with Maxine Belay. Cooking your shoes. All right.

[17:14] Booker team, the MG's nice. Coming back with cooking issues, Maxine Belay, caller. are on the air. All right, yeah, hi, Dave. Thanks. Um, I don't know how relevant my question is to your um,

[17:29] modernest show today, but um, I'm charged with making some dairy-free mashed potatoes for this weekend. And um, I've seen some recipes online that basically call up for like chicken broth. There's some milk substitute like soy milk or almond milk to, uh,

[17:44] simulate the creaminess like that, that dairy would, to mashed potatoes. I was wondering if you had any um, alternative suggestions. How long do you have from now? How I'm sorry, how long do I have? Yeah, how long do you have to get the recipe together from today? Um, I mean, I'm making them Friday night. What do you think, Maxine? I would go for like an emulsion. I would do like a vegetable. I mean, if you really want the creaminess, you have to have some vegetable, like, yeah, vegetable oil base, and I'm not sure what starch you would use. I mean, or, you know, if you were going to do... I mean, you can almost get like a mixture of gum Arabic and Xanthan, like the tickledoid that we use. And you could do like

[18:23] an, like a very heavy oil water emulsion. That'll hold as it dilutes, or as it's mixed with a solid, and you could get some of that, you'll get some of that creaminess. then you can just choose a delicious oil. I wonder if you could do a slurry of the, like, the potato flakes, hydrate them just a little bit, and then blend in

[18:43] the, like, a vegetable oil and make that your fat base. I'm just, I'm a little worried that if you don't pre-emulsify that it might break. It could, but the amount, it depends on the ratio. If you're doing, like, the Robuchon were, like, very high, 50%, yeah, 50% fat. But if you want the unctuousness, I mean, you know, even 15, 20% fat, I think the amount of starch that you already have in the potato will act as

[19:07] a pretty good emulsifier for a vegetable oil base. Have you tried just a vegetable oil base yet? I really haven't even played around with it that much. I've just kind of started looking into it right now. All right, well, 1st I would go bonehead simple, like we said, and just, you know, make mashed potatoes and

[19:22] beat some, you know, put oil into it. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. obviously. Put it through like a, I mean, like, yeah, yeah, don't turn it to glue. No, please, no chewing gum mashed potatoes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then after that, my next step would be to move into, uh,

[19:40] uh, my next step would be to move into something like, um, like a take a look, like a

[19:45] Xantham gum Arabic mix. Hey, what about like... It does have to be dairy free and completely

[19:51] like, what about eggs? combined with like an egg yolk and then... And then the last 2nd you, like, it's not a style where you just get that richness. You know, just no dairy, basically. I think, you know, yeah, you could go like old school, like almost using the egg yolk, like super thick, but like, like, yolk instead of the gum Arabic and anthem just

[20:11] to... As your multiplier, yeah, absolutely. Because it's going to add some of the emulsifiers that you would not. You're basically making a mayonnaise and folding it. I mean, it's the it's exactly that. Yeah, I think if you're allowed to use egg, but just make sure you don't get the temperature too high again. Exactly. You know, do you have access to a circulator? Wait, yeah, wait till the potatoes cool off a little bit. A little bit. Yeah, do you have a circulator or no? No, no, I'm pretty much working. I live in Brooklyn in this town. I dont even have a kitchen. I just kind of... If you just get a $7, $8 digital thermometer, you check the temperature of your potatoes, right when you, you know, before you want to serve

[20:44] them and then you fold that in to give it that, you know, just that, that, that folding, you know, technique. I think that would be great. Yeah, but just do it the last minute. Exactly. If you have a circulator, you can cheat and spread it out in a ziploc and go, but yeah, but just wait till the last minute. Yeah, last minute. And and if you... potatoes, season them up, you know, keep them, you know, starchy, whatever they are, and

[21:05] then hold that in at the very end. Yeah, and use a riicers or potato milk to have your potato base and then the last 2nd you fold it in with the right ratio. And that's something where you just keep on adding in just to get the right mouth feel and you just have to keep on tasting for that. Another cool thing that we love to do for to increase the potato flavor as well. If you're using oil, that's a great medium for that. You can take the skins from the potatoes, the potato peels, obviously, that you've taken away

[21:31] from your... Exactly. And fry them in oil beforehand that you're going to use for your mayonnaise. So they have a beautiful, deep, nutty flavor, and then strain that, cool that down, make your mayonnaise like that, and then you'd have a really intensely

[21:44] flavored and creamy mashed potato. Cool. That sounds great. What kind of frying on that? Like, like deep frying or just kind of like? Just in a pen, you know, and you have your skins in there and you wait until they get sort of, you know, crisped and golden. You don't want to burn them. You don't want to get any bitter flavors, but just until you extract all. Exactly. You're just extracting the some of those really beautiful flavors. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Good luck. Let us know how it works out. Absolutely. Do we still... Yeah I will. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, do we still have another caller? All right, caller, you are on the air. Yeah, hello. Hi. Ooh, you got an echo. Yeah. Okay. Hold on a second. Is that any better? No, we'll deal with it. Um, so, uh, I'm a current student at

[22:33] SEI actually, and I had a question kind of related to something I'm trying to do for my menu project.

[22:38] Okay. Uh, and so, um, 2 questions. I need both to create food and uh, large

[22:46] sheets and also I'm asking about uh, edible threads if you know of anything. Wait, large sheets of what? Yeah, what was the? Yeah, okay. So, um, for example, I mean, one of the things I'm trying to use is uh, Yuba, which is easy enough to get into a large sheet, but I was also thinking about using transglutamase uh, to bind thin sheets, thin slices of meat into large

[23:08] sheets. Yes, sure. Are you familiar with Shibori? No, is that Japanese uh resist dying technique, like a very badass form of tie-dye, basically. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. Uh, and so the idea is to... Is it still screening or is it? Is it silk screening or is it? So, yeah. Cleaning. I not sure. Uh, no, no. I guess so, my idea is, um, taking, uh, foods and binding them using these resist techniques, we actually weave thread into the fabric and then pull it tight and bunch it in different

[23:49] designs, and then you diet and where the fabric is pulled tight. It was just the dying. So the idea is to buying food, and then it would then resist different cooking methods through the different courses, either by taking, like a sheet of sashimi, binding it very carefully, and bunching it, and then soaking it in a, like, ceviche

[24:08] bait so that it, the bound portions resist the acid, they aren't exposed to the acid, and so some of it comes out as sort of a ceviche cure, and then some of it comes out towards the sashimi, for

[24:20] example. Okay. Looking for an edible thread that is fine enough to do that sort of work, uh, with something as delicate as fish, but it is still edible. How strong? How strong? Scallion, scallion comes to mind as the classic thread. Sure, sure, sure. You know what I mean? Like long pieces that are then, you know, lightly blanched. I mean, that's the classic, you know, thing like that that works. I mean, I'm sure there's others. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you can, you can do starch space ones. I mean, that would be consist of making starched paper based on like maybe a really good prehydrated tapioca starch. You make a leather, maybe a little bit of oil so that it breaks down in your

[25:07] mouth more easily. And I think I think that might be, I don't know, but then it might hydrate. At the end of a tough time when it's in contact with the with the fish. Yeah, yeah, my hydrate. Okay, so you need something waterproof, right? Which means that you're dealing with, I mean, that right there is a problem. So now you're basically down to long, long scale plant fibers. Yeah, absolutely. Or you could do a gluten base, actually. Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. you make that strong enough? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we've done it with pasta. We done it where if you do, if you cut them just fine enough, you could do a very fresh pasta enrich with, with about, depending on the flour using 5 to 7% vital wheat

[25:48] gluten, and Bob's red meat is a really good brand. And you could get you could get a very, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, elastic, um, thread that would be, you know, very workable, but also break down as you chew very easily. Can you hit it with RM to make it even tougher? We've done that for the for buckwheat because there was you had the protein content, but we didn't have enough of, of

[26:13] the, the, the, the, the starch. So, yeah. Yeah, exactly. work very well with the meat course too. Have you guys heard of, uh, was it, um, collagen

[26:26] thread? Oh, yeah. It doesn't break down so nicely though. Yeah, in the mouth feels not so nice. Yeah. I mean, obviously like, well, think about it this way. I mean, collagen on the outsides doesn't break down as nicely as like intestine, for instance. Uh, tripe would be cool. That would be cool. That would work. Yeah. You know? Honeycomb tripe is an amazing, yeah. Yeah, or like long, like carefully cut pieces of sausage casing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And as for gluing sheets, it's no problem. That's no problem. stuff's meant to do it. Here's my one recommend recommendation. The only time I've ever had meat glue provide an off-flavor in a dish that I've done was when I glued a, I glued many, many layers of different colored fish together and then vacuued

[27:16] them together. Well, no, but yeah, but so the 1st time I did it, I overmeak glued it and I vacuumed it and I let it cure in the vacuum bag. And then I had, I perceived a flavor that, and I, but so the 2nd time I did it, I used a much less amount of meat

[27:29] glue, vacuumed it, and then before, like right after I crushed it into shape. I cut the bag open and then it could air out in the fridge while it was

[27:38] setting and then, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I like that flavor come off. Yeah. When you, especially with fish, um, when I am butchering before you put the sheets together, would you cut

[27:49] them across like you're doing for sashimi or along the grain to kind of provide stability? Any like thin, beautiful sheet of fish is going to be absurdly delicate. No matter how you do it. Unless you're literally cutting unless you're literally cutting in a big piece and then preserving the sinew along the cut, which is

[28:09] possible. Like, you know, we've done tuna sinews delicious, you know, uh, but you're going to be tough getting big pieces. That stuff you could you could hit somebody in the face with, it won't break. But, yeah, if you were to, if you were to like partially cure the meat, um, then you might have. Yeah, I mean, if you give it, not cure. I would actually do it, Brian, but if you were to do like a 3.5 salts percentage, you know, to water, 2% sugar brine, you might be able to get a little bit more elasticity

[28:39] and, I think, structure to the fish. Yeah, I mean, the best way to slice, unless you're going to do some sort of special slicing is to parfreeze it. Don freeze it all the way. Just get it parfreeze, throw it on like a very high quality meat slicer, and go directly in between sheets of wax

[28:56] paper and then keep them almost frozen until you're about to use them because once those things stall out, good night. Was the trans glutamase still work while it's frozen? or would you apply frozen if it thaws that would activate? No, no, it needs a thaw. needs a thaw in order for this. What you do is, is, because so when we, you know, when I was doing it, I would take

[29:15] the, the, you know, fairly stiff but not fully frozen sheets, I would layer them. Uh, and then as soon as the salt and the sugar from the cure hits them, they melt out and then you have a block, but then you don't lift them

[29:27] again, that's it. You know what I mean? They're done. Yeah. You know. Excellent. Thank you very much. And if you want to see a video. I have a video on cooking issues on the blog, I think, or linked to from a Star

[29:41] Chef's video I did where I did Moko Megane, which is the Japanese metalworking kind of, you know, technique, and you can see the kind of in practice, like thin sheets of fish glued together.

[29:51] It's not what you want to do, but might give you some visual pointers on how to handle the products. Yeah, excellent. I'm really curious to see how you're, you know, this all comes together. This is send us some photos. I will definitely send you guys some photos. I have a friend who does a lot of food photography who's very interested also who wants to and document it. So I will definitely send you guys something. Awesome. Cool. and stuff. yeah Excellent. Thank you very much for talking with me today. Thank you. So do we have any more colors or should we take some email stuff? Let's do some emails, I think. All right. Do some emails. Yeah, I heard there was someone that I heard that, which means we lost them. Okay, let's see, we went. I'm probably, you know, it's nice that we're getting some calls, which means I probably won't get to all of the email questions. Anything that I miss this week. I will try to get next week. Michael writes in about nutmeg. Here's a question. I recently ordered a set of food grade essential oils from, I'll tell you, which is Mandy Aftel. You work with her over there? She's like, we haven't worked with NFC that works with Daniel Patterson for a while, and then that's... Yeah, and she's good buddies with Harold

[30:55] McGee, and yeah. And so she has, she's basically a perfumer out of San Francisco or thereabouts Bay Area. And she does a lot of interesting stuff and she actually has a line in William Snowman now that just launched, but I haven't seen it because I haven't been to William Snowman like how

[31:07] long? I just don't go. You know what I mean? I'm forbidden to buy kitchen equipment, people, by the way. Like, literally, if I brought another anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? I mean, anyway. Uh, so originally ordered a set of food grade essential oils from uh, Avtelier, uh, fun stuff, especially for those of us that don't have a road of app. Although Rotovap doesn't make essential oils. Just be clear on this. Rotovap does distillation, but not the steam distillation that is what happens when you're making essential. kind of a different piece of equipment. I don't do steam desolation because I don't have a rig for it. Anyway, you guys have the baller roto that. huge one. You know what? Come hang out. You know what? The thing is, is like, I say like, anything I ever negative, I would ever say about these guys is strictly due to jealousy, just straight

[31:48] up jealousy. All right. Okay, so one of the items in my set is nutmeg, essential oil. I seen remember from reading Solon Ice, which is, I guess, Eldridge Cleaver's book, that

[31:58] nutmeg was a popular prison hallucinogen with horrible side effects. So now I'm a little scared to use this stuff. Is there a chance that the hallucinogen is concentrated, or conversely, a reason to believe it was left behind, uh, left

[32:08] behind, other one other is not in the oil, uh, to make sure it's completely safe? Okay, look, the compound, there's several possible psychoactive compounds in nutmeg. One of them is Maristasin is the kind of famous one. Parsley seed oil, has a lot of it. And if you go to Arowid, which is like the place where kind of thinking druggies go to put down their kind of mental thoughts on

[32:30] this is where I go. Most of those people aren't using nutmeg. They're using parsley seed oil, which has a high concentration of this in various capsules. Listen, uh, that compound, uh, Maristasin is uh, is aromatic and it's actually characteristic of nutmeg. So there is no way that you making a dish that you enjoy the taste

[32:53] of, are going to get poisoned. The levels would be ridiculous, yeah. Yeah, people who, people who typically, to get hallucinatory effect out of it, people will do things like grate a whole nutmeg or two. And then, uh, kind of like somehow choke it down and it's described as the most vile thing that they've ever done in their lives. And then like three, you know, hours later, they start feeling some sort of psychoactive effects. This is not something that you would accidentally do. Uh, you know, I mean, could you take that oil, uh, pack it into gel caps, uh, pound it and do yourself harm? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the problems with nutmeg is that, uh,

[33:36] so, you know, psychoactive uh, substances are kind of the, you know, the thing with them is, is there, there are certain psychoactive substances that, uh, that the danger level is fairly close to the psychoactive level, and I think nutmeg is closer than many in that kind of spectrum, which is kind of where the bad kind of, uh, you know, rep comes

[33:57] from, because, you know, if you eat, uh, one grated nutmeg, you're, you know, you won't die, but if you eat like

[34:04] three, like there might be renal failure or something like that. So it's like, and, you know, an order of a 3 is not a safety level that most druggies would be happy with. you know, between activity and death. Like, it's not a happy number. Like an order of magnitude is a more friendly kind of a number. But anyways, don't worry about it. Like, what I'm saying is don't worry about it. A little grating here and there. Also, apparently, uh, and again, from Arowid, uh, the stuff degrades over time, similar to Thujon, which we're going to talk about in a minute with Absinthe, and, uh, in other words, so if you use nutmeg that's old, it's lost some of its principle.

[34:41] So, you know, even if you somehow are able to, you know, choke down, you know, that jar of

[34:47] McCormick ground nutmeg that's in your grocery store. Yeah, it's mostly gone and you probably not that I not that I recommend it. So don't don't worry. Don't worry, right? Absolutely. Don't worry. might as well do this on a on a similar one. We have in from Tom Fisher and Lansdowne PA, longtime listener. First of all, he has a centrifuge question. Let's knock that out first, right? Okay, before we get to the Thujone. I got my centrifuge, good. I'm glad to hear it. That's one of all of our favorite pieces of equipment. Yes, interviews. Yeah, you're on the cutting edge by the way. Like, in 15 years, many more high quality restaurants are going to have

[35:24] centrifuges, and people won't think that you're a freak show when you suggest they go get one. Absolutely not. It's coming to homes too. This is the next cuisine arts, you know. Really? They're gonna make one? I think so. I think they were very curious about it yesterday. so let's see. Really? Oh, by the way, before we get to this question, yesterday was the ICP. I didn't go because I had a bunch of events I had to do, but the album, thank you. The award ceremony and last year, uh, Modern Escuisine was about to come out and I co-hosted with Chris Young, you know, one of the other authors, and

[35:55] we were, I was telling him, joking that next year, if you don't win every damned book award, uh, you know, it's going to be a

[36:02] travesty. And in fact, you guys won three. We won three. Including one that they made up for you, right? Like, profound. was it? was it? It was, 0 god, it was like just invent, like a future invention or, you know, it was, they were very gracious and we were very, very honored to receive these awards.

[36:19] Bad year to write a different book. Anyway, okay. In the cooking world, that is. Okay. So, especially a professional book, and or one that purports to have amazing photographs, because you're just going to get swamped. Anyway, okay. So God of Centrifuge, you spump me some strawberries, but I have an issue. I tossed strawberries in the blender, added 2 grams per no, 2 grams of Pectinex

[36:43] ultra SPL, which is a pecknife enzyme for 500 grams of strawberry. That's, you know, more dose than you need. You could probably do one in that amount, but 2's not going to hurt you. You just don't want to put so much pectinex in that you start. It has a slightly fermented room. That's fine. Don't worry about it. Blend it into a slightly warm, good practice. Rested 10 minutes, good practice, 10 to 20, good practice. If you do something that's going to break down like bananas, you don't want to rest any longer than 10 because it'll start to get kind of brown flavors, and spun for 10 minutes. I would, you don't say what speed. I'm assuming you have a centerfuge, it'll do about 4000 times the force of gravity. 10 minutes is on the edge, 10 to 15 is better at those speeds just because it will clarify almost instantly, but the puck solidity is going to get a lot higher when you go faster.

[37:26] Okay, got a very solid puck in crystal clear juice. Glad to hear it. But on top was a layer of what appeared to be the same materials as the puck, but floating on top like a vinegar mother, scooping it out, clouded the juice, but spinning for 5 minutes more, clear it up nicely. Is this a result of air bubbles trapped in the mix? Yes. Yeah. If you have a vacuum machine? vacuum that sucker out, break it before I get the air out? No problem. Right? Absolutely All right. I mean, this is something that, you know, Maxime and I do every day. And glad to hear... Ours actually is acting up. have to get a new motor. Okay. Yeah, it's not going to replace the motor, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're using a centrifuge that only goes up to about 4000 G's, the buckets really aren't, it's not like a hazard to life and limb, but your motors will have to be replaced eventually.

[38:08] It's a bad $900 problem in the one we have. Anyway. Now the 2nd question, the different question. Absinthe. Years ago, when absent 1st became legal to sell in the US, I bought a bottle, and the maker seemed very energetic about saying it was free of

[38:21] contaminants like through Jones from the wormwood. It's not like contaminate. an ingredient. contaminant. People are so crazy. All right. It seemed all right. Yeah, right? Anyway, it seemed all right, but nothing to write home about. More recently, a friend got a bottle and was telling me about it, saying it was made from the original illegal formula. I said I'd like to try, I said I'd tried the Thu Joan free version years ago and laughed and

[38:42] said, Thu Joan free absinthe is like alcohol free rum. Thoo Jones is what makes it special. So what's the real deal? Thanks for doing the show every week. Okay. So, look, Thu Joan is another purported hallucinogenic, you know, psychoactive compound that is found in wormwood, which is one of

[39:00] the, it's the characteristic herb from other than the anise taste, you know, from

[39:05] absinthe. Uh, you know, and all of the later ones like, you know, not later, but different ones like Pernot, not the regular one or

[39:15] or Ricard or Pastis or any one of these southern French, like I'm a small man in Marseille drinking stuff. Not small, but old. I don't mean small physically, but yeah, it's good. But it's especially good in the summer in Marseille when you're sitting out. You know what I mean? Marseille is a great town by the way. Yeah. Yeah. fantastic town. really like it. Anyway, point is that Thu Joan, in there's a lot of research out there, the one

[39:39] that you should go look at, again, you can get to it via Arowid vaults, but there's a bunch of papers out

[39:48] there, where they studied old pre-band absent bottles and found that modern absinthe has roughly similar levels to older absinthe, that the longer that, and that's not really high enough to get you

[40:02] cranked on Thujone by itself unless you drank so much that the ethanol is going to have you stumbling and falling over.

[40:09] So is there some sort of synergism between like the smaller amount of food on that's actually in

[40:15] absinthe? And, you know, who knows? Who can tell? But like most of the studies that have been done, quantitative studies out there point to the fact

[40:22] that really what's happening is you're getting drunk. Uh, and, uh, I mean, horribly drunk, especially if you're trying to see, uh, how much absent it takes you to have a

[40:31] thew jone effect, you're going to be plastered. Plus there's a placebo effect, right? The other thing is, is that wormwood, through John Quantity and wormwood, this has also been checked, goes down radically as it's stored on drying. So if you have your own wormwood, uh, or other artemis species sitting around, and you, um, and you then, uh, like take it right away and make absinthe going to have

[40:54] a much higher throughjone levels than if you take a commercially prepared one that you get in an herb shop that's been dried and sitting around for a year, uh, and you're going to get a

[41:01] much uh, lower quality of throughjone. quantity. But even so, uh, the numbers seem to indicate that you're not going to get crunked on the uh, on the

[41:09] through zone that you're going to get shellacked by the ethanol. Now, uh, through Joan is, uh, is it oregano or sage oil? It's one of those two. Go look it up on the internets. And it's super high in Thoojone. I'm not telling you to go take this, right? But if you need to know what Thu Joan goes, like, go get a proper dose, response

[41:29] relate, you know, a relationship off of the internet. Any one of these, you know, herbal drug sites has many, many users who have put this stuff in. Make sure that you don't listen to anyone that doesn't tell you like relative quantities and different oils and also body weight phenomena, things like

[41:46] this because you want to get your doses. I've never, I've never tried it. But you know what? I've tried other things that people, like, supposed, has supposed psychoactive effects, like, for instance, you know, when I was in

[41:56] Colombia, we were doing coca leaf infusions with coca leaf tea. And yeah, and I've never done cocaine, so I don't know what that's like. I didn't feel anything different, but I had people who had a lot more than I did report

[42:07] that it kept them up at night, for instance. So there was, but a lot of this. Right, but a lot of this could just be mental. Do you know what I mean? Just placebo. If you tell someone, you're having coca leaf infusion. There's an excitement. There's a psychological reaction, which is, you know, No, no. Anyway. Okay, let's take one more commercial. Do we have time to take one more commercial break? All right, let's take one more commercial break. Call your questions. 718-497-2128. 718-4972128. Cooking issues.

[42:54] Let it rain, let it

[43:00] rain. Oh, I've got them deep river blues. Nothing rain, right on, let the way sweep along, goes I, got them. The revolution.

[43:23] Yeah. Ain't

[43:31] no one look around me. Let it rain, let it fall. And welcome back to Cooking Your Shoes. By the way, I'm not Angelo Gobots, one of my favorite interns of all time. wrote in from Nebraska, but I'm not going to have time to get your question this time. going to get you next time, Angela. All right, on to the last question of the day, and I really want to talk about this with Maxine, because it's something I think he's probably interested in. Steve Crendell writes

[44:03] in, you know, have you seen the paper, this interesting paper on food pairing hypothesis? Uh, and it's called a flavor network and the principles of food pairing by

[44:14] uh, uh, young Yale on at all? Okay, and it was paper last year by, you know, by a bunch of people in a, um, out of a bunch of different institutions. Anyway, so what I haven't had a chance really to have a Maxine look at the paper. So we're not going to talk specifically about the paper, more about just the

[44:35] general the general concept of it. But the basic concept of food pairing has been popular over the

[44:43] last, I don't know, what do you think? The decade or so? Yeah. Yeah, at least, yeah, 10, 15 years, I mean, really, you know, and it's something that, you know, at the fat duck you were exposed to a lot. Yeah, the basic premise is that you can get, and it's controversial. And Maxim and I, we've never discussed it together, so we might violently disagree, which would be awesome way to end the show.

[45:03] But the basic principle is that you can learn something about food pairing, or get interesting food pairing ideas by looking at the actual chemical similarities between different

[45:14] food items. Right. And so what happens is there's large databases of what flavor components are in various different ingredients, and then those are analyzed, and the fat duck was famous for which

[45:28] ones? The white chocolate and caviar both had a very similar volatile

[45:33] components, and it was very interesting. Was good? I actually never had it. I knew the idea. then I had a cocoa and roasted cauliflower, also both shared a

[45:45] compound, and that was it was a beautiful marriage. It makes no sense in, you know, in sort of a traditional context, but when you taste it together, you realize that there

[45:54] is definitely value to approaching it that way. I don't think it's as consistent and as secure of an approach that people will presume when

[46:05] they're when they're really getting into this. Right, I mean, approach them. The study, which you should read, is actually quite interesting. What they've done is they've taken a bunch of recipe databases. And then they've analyzed the recipe databases to see whether when you scan across many 1000s of recipes, is there more often than not shared ingredient, the shared ingredient, flavor

[46:27] components or not? And in the Western corpus, there was, and it was correlated that more than the statistically random amount of

[46:35] recipes, shared flavor components. And in their East Asian data analysis, fewer than the statistically,

[46:42] a number of shared ones would. And but what it boiled down to, the really interesting thing is, is that basically what it

[46:49] is, is that 75% of the recipes they pulled in Western cuisine shared a very small number of flavor, a small number of

[46:55] ingredients. And those ingredients shared a lot of things, like butter, milk. like a lot of these, yeah. Yeah, these very simple, yeah. Right. And the 6 most common, you know, Asian ingredients didn't share a lot of characteristics. And so because those things basically weighted everything out and all of the other recipes. If you remove the most common, uh, you know, 6 to 10 ingredients out of uh, out of our, out of our toolkits, then it's basically statistically random in terms of that, which is

[47:22] interesting. Here's, you know, my personal feeling about it is that anything that gives you an idea that's going to make you, uh, that's going to give you a good flavor, then fine, do it. whether it's like throwing dice, using a, you know, a dowsing rod, whatever in the hell it is. If it gives you a good idea, it's good, but that, you know, nothing in the world, there's no chemical analysis is going to replace your memory, your taste

[47:47] palate. what you've done before. Like, you might get an idea and then try it, and then know how to tweak it, but there's just, there is no, there is no substitute for having tasted a lot and having cooked a lot.

[47:58] Absolutely. Absolutely. And to sort of, you know, it's interesting that the, I guess the parallel between Western cuisine and Eastern cuisine and how we're noticing that these correlations. What I think is really interesting about Eastern cuisine in this sense is that, you know, taking away the sort of chemical balance of a few

[48:23] ingredients is the balance of flavor. And what I love about Eastern cuisine is that you, you know, now we're talking about flavor. I mean, the tastes, salty,

[48:35] bittersweet acid, and paying less attention to this, you know, this sort of, you know, sort of artificial combination of things that

[48:46] may have a synergy or nata. And so if when you build a sense of, when you build your palate, the balance of flavors is, you know, through

[48:58] practice becomes a very inherent part of your, you know, culinary experience. And a lot of these things maybe more confusing or misleading. Right, but I think what happens is, is, is with anything else, look, the people who are using these kinds of ideas, uh, right, or, you know, in modern

[49:16] cuisine, using new pieces of new pieces, equipment, new techniques, whatever, these are usually in general a very highly creative set of people and they're looking for inspiration.

[49:24] Like, and I've said this many times. Like the fundamental thing that Faran gave us was the desire to look outside of the normal kitchen for our

[49:35] inspiration. You know what I mean? And that's the thing. It's not foams or whatever. It's this, it's this intense curiosity and this, you know, love of learning. And so as cooks do this, they, you know, they're looking for very, you know,

[49:49] different disparate sources of inspiration. And is this idea of different chemical shared things, could that be a source of

[49:59] inspiration? Of course, of course. But someone who doesn't have the palate to back it up, doesn't have the experience to back it up, it will be confusing, as you say. A horrible disaster. horrible. So why don't we end this show on horrible disaster? Thank you, Maxine. Thank you, Donna. Nastasia. See you next week on cooking issues. All right.

[50:23] Vicious fish and vodka. Oh, you did that. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage radio network. You can find all of our archived programs and Heritage Radio Network.com as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage

[50:50] Radio Network and the iTunes Store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-date in your news. Thanks for listening. straight. Fishes, fish, and vodka.