[0:00] Hey, what's up? This is John Norris and you're listening to the Heritage Radio Network.

[0:10] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday

[0:19] from, actually, we're start on town today, 12. Yeah, to about 1245. Actually, next week might be a problem. Going to Germany next week. Last time I was in Germany, we did cooking issues live from a street corner in Germany. You want to, you want to see whether we can do the live German cooking you should do? Yeah, more off the wall than a street corner. Well, I mean, like, look, honestly, if I'm going to do it, I probably have to do it in the hotel with Skype. Otherwise. I mean, like, we were just lucky that my phone didn't get cut out or I didn't get beat over the head by some sort of angry. you know, ex East German. Uh, last time I did it, but, uh, we love the, the angry XE Germans, by the way, it's no offense. Colin all your cooking questions too. 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. So, Stas, last week on the show, we had our friend Ariel from UC Davis and Brooks

[1:09] Hedley, the pastry chef that more people need to know about from Del Posto Restaurant. Uh, he got a caller question in, uh, asking about the 7 course vegan tasting menu that they do at Del Posto. Nastasia made her vegan face, which by the way, now I can relate to you all. She would not let me take a picture of it, literally, like, I pulled up the camera maybe eight, 10 times. I caught her once as she was exiting the vegan face, but I couldn't get the full vegan face on camera because she refused to let me get it, but if you've ever seen either the Sopranos or Stephen Van Zandt on his new show, Lilihammer, his angry gangster face scowl, like the kind of bulldog frown, that's pretty

[1:55] much, that's pretty much the vegan face right there. So you can just, It's pretty popular. Even on iTunes, one of the reviews was referencing the vegan face. It's blowing up. Well, and I suspect maybe Nastasia can't even make the real vegan face anymore. No, I can. It's when she doesn't mean to do it. That's when she did. So, like, you could see her true reaction to the vegan lunch. It's like, I don't need to actually ask her. I just look over and see, you know, is Stephen Van Zandt sitting next to me or is Nastasia sitting next to me? And, you know, that's basically how you do it. So, by the way, I'm going to get probably in big... I'm about to get in big trouble with our good friends over at Del Posto, Mark Ladner, and Brooks because here's what they said. They actually enjoy making the, they said, 1st of all, don't publicize the, uh, the, the vegan thing. Thank God, our cadre of listeners. It's loyal, but, you know, we're not there, you know, whatever. We don't have enough visitors to blow up Del Posto, right? Right or wrong. So I'm not going to get in trouble. Well, we'll see. You'll find out. So here's what they said. Any good cook likes a likes a challenge and likes a set of constraints in which they can work and try to get new ideas to try and push their skills, push their talents, right? And this could be anything. Like, so when we did the museum event last year, also at Del Posto. You know, we pushed the bartenders and the cooks into areas they wouldn't normally work by giving them a set of

[3:25] constraints. You're going to work with, you know, this set of ingredients or this time, you know, this

[3:29] time or like, you know, nils, we gave fad diets, et cetera, et cetera. And without exception, every single cook and bartender who worked at that event took the challenge in the exact way that we wanted to and use it as an opportunity to do something creative and interesting.

[3:44] Wiley, in fact, put the dish that he did there, the bone marrow. He put that on his New Year's menus. Brooks did his artichoke thing, I think for a while. So, it's a great thing for any cook to do. Maybe not all the time, but, you know, on occasion to take a challenge, take a set of constraints. And cooking something vegan is just set a set of constraints. And so the guys at Del Posto, uh, really liked, uh, they really, they really like cooking this kind of thing and it actually is on the menu all the time. They have a customer they said who comes in quite often, and whenever that customer comes in, they revamp the vegan menu for them. So it's not the same every time it comes in. This time, unfortunately, also macrobiotic, which listen, you know, I find it very difficult to not offend people, but not eating nightshades is crazy. No tomatoes. You're going to go vegan. Now you're all of a sudden you're not going to have tomatoes, potatoes, or eggplants. I mean, please. You can do without the eggplant, you said. Well, you said, and I agreed. You said, and I agreed. I said, do you like Baba Ganoush, and you said no. I said, do you like, do you like anything with that kind of, no, she said, no,

[4:46] doesn't like bacon barda. She likes eggplant Parmesan, but mostly for the fry, the mozzarella, and

[4:52] the, anyway. One thing I'll have to say is that they should have shifted into liquor earlier. Oh yes, I emailed what's his name and told him that. What's his name? Nice shout out. Jeff Porter. There you go. See? See how much nicer it is to use somebody's name instead of... Okay. So anyway, I'm here to report. Oh, so they said don't popularize it because even though they like cooking it. And this is a challenge to vegans out there. Anyone with a, like that, there's wine glasses right here, Nostache. Uh, to with dietary things out there. You have a reputation among chefs as being difficult human beings with which to work. And so the their issue isn't that they don't like cooking the menu, their issue is that in general, to

[5:43] generalize, the customers who order it can be problematic because they tend to not be people that are interested in food primarily.

[5:52] They're just there to get some, you know, to have a meal and they have these restrictions in which they're working, but the food isn't the primary

[5:59] focus. And cooks prefer to cook for people who like food. Fair? And that's why they told us not to publicize it. Am I saying that without getting anyone in too much trouble? You didn't use the exact language of what they call those people. Now they're those people. Or what? All right, so you say it then. No, no, no. say what they say. They did not insult vegan people. Anyways, my point is it was very good. Unfortunately, it was also macrobiotic, which to me, I mean, someone please call and tell me why macrobiotic stuff is not a bunch of hoo-ha. Anyone, anyone. Colin. I know there's a lot of people out there who love Mac. They had 2 shots of green of green stuff. I do not drink. Actually, we make a very good green drink at the bar. Not macrobotic because you can't have distilled distilled liquor. Uh, but, uh, yeah, those kind of like wheat grassy, like, you know,

[6:46] 11 of the drinks, no offense to Jeff there, because I think he was, they bought it and they did it on purpose just to shaft me. Tasted like I had latched my mouth onto the exit chute of a

[6:56] lawnmower and was riding around the grass, you know, with a lawnmower attached to my mouth. But the meal itself was very, very good. What did you think? It was good for what it was. What the hell is that? I would not go there and get it. Like people who want that, get what they want. get a great meal, right? I thought, I mean, I thought it was a really good meal. Nastasia, 1st of all, is prejudice in this sense. When she goes to an Italian restaurant, if she doesn't leave with her gut busting open, she's like, it's not

[7:26] Italian. Italian food's supposed to be hottie. It's supposed to be a hottie food. You know what I mean? And my point is, it's not necessarily the case. It's so sad to go to Del Posto and not eat a bunch of pasta. It's sad. VW TV. But so my point is that you you have a preconceived notion of what Italian should be and of what Del Posto should be. So you can't divorce yourself from that notion and just look at the food at

[7:48] which as it was presented. What about, you know, I thought the flavors were very, very well balanced, there was nothing that I thought was lacking. There's a lot of use of hiumami, and like protein-based things that weren't meat, like nutritional yeast, which is quite good.

[8:04] Obviously, a lot of mushrooms brought into it, a lot of very, you know, reduced root vegetables, things like that, things to, and I thought everything

[8:14] was, was delicious. I thought the textures were good. I was well balanced. The one thing I don't didn't like were the raw snap peas on it because even though everyone, everyone finds them

[8:23] delicious, except for me because of the raw, the raw starch taste. I do not like pea shoots either, and I might be the only person on earth who does not like pea shoots. And, uh, because I don't like that raw. I don't like that raw taste. Part of the problem with me doing that raw diet last year. I don't like it. You know what I mean? Uh, anyways, so I thought they did an amazing job. The wine was good. When we finally got wine, that was I liked it. Oh yeah, we had an orange wine that was, I guess, you know, which we'll research more. I didn't research it a lot, and Nastasia at that point was dying for great. Speaking of dying for a drink, we have a line

[9:00] here, you're going to have to translate this. What's land of what's kieti? Don't know. I thought you spoke Italian. Now you forgot Italian too? I don't know, you can look it up. Anyway, it's called Passetti. it's Pecorino. Now, Pecorino, for all of you out there, obviously means goat. So is this wine? Jack, this wine literally passed through a goat before it's put in a bottle? I can't confirm or deny that. You can't butt. I don't know. I'm excited to try it. It's from the barter house there. those guys? I was about to say, these are from our good friends at the barter house. And I said this before. It's a province in Italy. Really? There you go. Land of that. Yeah, Kathy is a province. For people who've been listening to the show forever, they're the same people who brought you Booza. Yeah, so they're also bringing you wine passed through a goat. This is a white wine. What's the what's the grape? Is there a grape called goat? What the heck is this? And the king. So here's the deal. So the barter house, for those of you that, if they haven't sponsored a show in a while, mainly because modernist pantry has been sponsoring our show for a long time, but we like the folks at the barter house, and what they

[10:01] are, is kind of a specialty importer that imports wines, kind of unusual and interesting wines. So they're not going to carry a lot of the wines that, you know, that we're familiar with. But one of the one of the good ways to see whether or not you should try a new wine in the store, and it's not just a

[10:18] barhouse. Find, you know, an importer. Someone brings in wines that you like. And in general, these people choose wines that they like that are interesting. So if you don't know the producer, you don't know the grape, you don't know the style, sometimes looking at the back and seeing who's bringing it

[10:33] in is a good indication of whether or not it'd be something interesting to try. And I think it's something that we don't do enough in wine stores. People don't think about the importers or the houses that choose wines

[10:42] or they curate, you know, the selections that they're going to bring over. But I think it's a good way to try a new one. So we're gonna, Nastasia and I, because it's so hot. We're going to have this white wine that's been passed through a goat. Uh, Passetti doesn't actually mean, doesn't mean pass, Passato means pass, right? So what does pacetti mean? is their last name. Oh, that's the name of the people? It's a husband and wife team. Franco and Mima. Meme up a city? So they, so well, hand me my glass so we can try this stuff. We should get to some actual cooking issues here in a minute. Otherwise, this is going to be a show just based on nonsense and drivel. Let's try it. No offense to nonsense and drivel. Wait, what do you think, Stows? It's really sweet, huh? It's not actually sweet. just not like hyper dry and crisp. It's fine. Fine. What do you think, Dave? And what would you pair it with, stars? I would pair it with actually with pecorino cheese. You're such a love. You know what? Whatever. That brings me to another thing. before we get into real stuff. You know, we've been there's been a lot of play recently on recently. like on our show and nowhere else. On, um, on, um, the taste pairing hypothesis, and this hypothesis where, uh, you know, things that have similar molecules, not necessarily

[11:52] similar. Nastasia apparently believes if you name something after a goat, it should go well with goat cheese. It's stuck in my head. But yeah, I think it would go well, don't you? I think almost everything. Okay, so what do you think? I don't know. Like, you know, it's one of those things that has enough acidity to it that it could go well with spicy or like an Asian thing. It not going to get totally cut down. It's not the structure of it isn't like a red that's going to get obliterated. So I could see it with that. Asian thing. What the hell was that? What the hell is that under your breath Asian thing? You just said... Mike is spicy. I'm thinking about it because we were at Pockpock, uh, New York, Pockpock, Brooklyn. Yeah. So now we've become a review show where we're reviewing restaurants we've been to over the past week. But we only we only went to 2 in one day. It's like, we don't do anything together. We don't go out to restaurants. Thank God. Thank God. My wife and I were at the table next to Nastasia, Mark Ladder from Delposto, Brooks, and her friend from

[12:49] Juilliard, Pat, Patrick Posey. Uh, and uh, so, uh, this was, this is Andy Rickers, uh, not Rick Turr, comedian, Andy Ricker, the uh, famous uh, Portland, formerly Portland, now

[13:02] Portland and New York-based, uh, chef who uh, does tie kind of uh, in a different way than I've ever had it in New York and because I've never been to Thailand, so I can't call it authentic, but extremely delicious, extremely great uh,

[13:17] food. And I'd only ever had Pockpock Wing, which is his takeout joint in the Little East side and his food at events. This is the 1st time I got to go to basically a full-scale restaurant of his. And I was, frankly, blown away. I thought it was great. And what do you think, Stas? Yeah, it was amazing. I hate Thai food. Well, okay, when nostalgia says she hates Thai food. Those of you that have ever listened to the show knows that they know that Nastasia is crazy, basically. Here's what she doesn't like about. Here's what she says she doesn't like Thai food. Heres what she means. I don't like lemongrass and I don't like coconut milk, right? And peanuts. I don't know, so what? So there wasn't a lot of that in this food at all. Right. Anyway. That's not my point. My point is, is that Nastasia's crazy. And this restaurant was great. For instance, the thing that, like, something that blew me away is that he served an extremely spicy beef

[14:05] dish, I forget the name of it. Uh, you know, kind of ground meat. And next to it was just a plate of herbs. that were, and these herbs, they look like, you know, a plate of herbs. And I started to taste them and they were unlike any herbs you'd never tasted. Like, when he came over, I basically, I had the waiter call him over because, and Mark 2 is like, look, if you're in the business that I'm in or the market, you're not, no one's supposed to be able to, in New York City, hand you a plate of herbs and have the 1st 4 things you taste off of, be unlike anything that you've ever

[14:37] had and completely foreign to you, such that you have no idea what the hell's going on. That just doesn't happen. Do you know what I mean? Like one or 2 new ingredients, whatever, or new ingredient, but something that's just totally foreign to you like that is crazy, right? Didn't you agree with that stuff? And like this one had the kind of tartness of a sorrel, but a completely different taste. I want to use that in a drink. like, and he gets it, some guy in Florida. Some, basically, I guess, who smuggled seeds from Thailand to Florida and is growing these kind of insane Thai herbs in Florida and then shipping them up to

[15:10] Andy and he guess he gets them on consignment from this guy. I'm going to try to get some for the bar for Booker and Dax. But it's just crazy stuff, good stuff. I recommend going. Uh, okay, enough with the restaurant reviews else, right? Oh, one more piece of news from Booker and Daxland. and then I guess we should go to, yeah, Booker and Dax. Well, it won't be ready for about a month, but we now have Booker and Dax, the company, not the bar. has its own space in the Lower East Side. So look out for us coming in doing some cool stuff on the lower side, correct? Yeah, yeah, it's a small space. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. storefront, which is awesome. It's our own space. So those, you can stop by, like, wave vegetables at Nastasia in the window, she can make her face for you in about a month. And with that, call your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[16:13] I know you got another jockey at home. Man, you need to rob it, you, you, you, man, you, now I can go. I really don't care, you too. You got baby Oh, oh, oh, you're never alive, you're never move on. You got your life, we believe that. Oh, you got your life, we breathe. Oh, you got to lie. Now you're never gonna move on. And welcome back to

[16:52] Cornacious. By the way, today's show is gonna be brought to you by the Barter House. Yeah. Jack just told me. Yeah, you wouldn't pay attention. The doctor's like, I don't know. playing Tetris. Anyway, before I go on to some relations, I want to talk about this book, Taste Buds and Molecules about the flavor pairing hypothesis. So I've been basically saying for a while that I think that this flavor pairing hypothesis is bunk, whereby, you know, you take, uh, you know, foods that share specific flavor

[17:20] compounds and therefore you can decide that they actually go well together. And it's, uh, it's a, you know, it's a technique that's gotten a lot of play recently. And so I kind of thought I'd go by, and I, you know, I bought it, a book called Taste Buds and Molecules, written by Francois Chatier, and I think that's how he pronounces his

[17:37] name. I don't know. He's Ketakoa. But he's done a lot of work in France, and he is like a true master. nobody argues the man knows his wine. And, uh, sometime in the early to mid uh, 2000s. He started working on this, working on the idea of flavor pairing, looking up what components were in a wine, the aromatics

[18:01] and wine. And a lot of that stuff is readily actually available because a lot of studies have been done on it due to wine quality issues.

[18:06] And so a lot of food studies have been done on it. And also what, when those same molecules appear in foods and has built a structure of tastings and basically food pairings based on what, you know, what he calls his research into those things.

[18:25] And the result is this book, taste buds and molecules, which also has like a lot of crazy kind of graphical elements. And so I bought it thinking that I was going to hate it, right? Uh, and there are many things about it that I disagree with, but I have to say that he, uh, I mean, he clearly, uh, you know,

[18:48] understands and he clearly, you know, from everything I've read about him. I never had dinner with him or anything, but has a very good palate, right? So this isn't, in other words, it's not something where someone is just saying, hey, look

[18:59] at, here's a bunch of stuff that I saw on a piece of paper, and therefore they're going to go well together, even though I haven't developed a palette. He's coming at it from the direction that I think is a good one, namely, he spent years and years developing his palate, right? His nose, his palate, his senses. And then after those years, uh, then used uh, these kind of pieces of research as a further tool to uh, to get inspiration in areas he hadn't already looked, basically

[19:29] to, to, something to help the light bulb or the chime in his head, say, yes, these 2 things would go well

[19:34] together, and to give him kind of the confidence to put 2 things together that wouldn't ordinarily be put together.

[19:40] And so, uh, to that extent, you know, yes, I think it could be used as

[19:45] a valid, uh, valid thing. And I actually ended up liking, um, liking, like what he was saying more than I thought I would. But on the flip side, I mean, I think this is part of kind of like the, you know, because the book was published in French first, that kind of

[20:03] writing. It's a little more kind of florid, and it kind of takes things a

[20:07] lot, a lot further than I would like and kind of makes much more sweeping comments about, you know, what he's

[20:14] doing and the concepts behind it. than I would like. And so, you know, when I'm working on the cocktail book, I got to guard against that too, not making these kind of sweeping statements. My problem is when any of these things become sort of dogmatic or almost become a

[20:27] religion, the way, you know what I mean? The way that people kind of treat the new concepts. But interesting book. Um, so there's there's that. It's my last word on the flavor pairing hypothesis for today. Now, on to some questions we come in. Hello from Osaka, Japan. We going to Japan soon. Nastasia and I going to Tokyo to work in the Park Hyatt. We're going to be working there for 4 days, right? Plus a 5th press day. And I'm hoping to get the, like, I want the most butt kicking Japanese stuff. I don't want any stuff that I can get here in the States. Me, I do. I want to see like how much better all the stuff that they say is better there. I want to get all that when I'm there, but I want some stuff that you cannot get here. I mean, you know what I mean? You with me on this? They're taking you. They're taking us to the market. and the other one. There's a big fruit market next to it. I'm going to go bonkers. And they're with their credit card? Oh, man, I'm a dangerous person with someone else's credit card. That's as soon as you arrive. for going straight there. So I better sleep. can't sleep on planes. I'll have to drink like 8 loads of espresso, just make like an hour trip to the bathroom and

[21:36] then we'll go off into it, right? Okay. Hello from Osaka, Japan. I have 2 questions. I'm interested in buying a refractometer to use in the field as well as in the kitchen. Some things I would like to be able to do are measure the salinity of a brine to know when it

[21:49] has reached equilibrium, measure the sugar content of produce in the field to know when to harvest. Measure the sugar quantity of produce to determine which provider has the best product. Can one refractometer be used to measure salinity as well as bricks? Do you have any recommendation for refractometers? Are electronic bricks meters better than optical refractometers? Okay. Uh, here's the thing. I've used both electric ones. We have one manufactured by the Hanna Corporation, as well as manual ones. The, for the field. I mean, the thing is, you don't want to be caught out in the field with one and have it break. I mean, the optical ones are fairly bulletproof. I mean, Nastasia did break one of mine. She like shattered the, uh, the, I don't know how the heck she did it. She broke it. No one else has ever broke it. She broke the little flip down screen that goes on. Uh, the handheld ones, the ones that are not um, electronic are uh, a lot cheaper. They're like 32 bucks to get the ones on eBay. They work fine. You need light. you know what I mean? And you need to be able to see through the product somewhat to be able to do it, you know, to use them properly. Those ones, I've never seen one that'll do both salinity and bricks. However, well, you know, you can get just a bricks one and which measures sugar content and get one that is for salinity and they're fairly small and they're fairly

[23:11] cheap. So you can get 2 of them, right? For much less than the cost of one good electronic one. I really like the electronic one for just speed of use and not

[23:21] having, especially in the bar to worry about light. You do have to, with the electronic ones, hold your hand, sometimes over the measurement device so that you don't get errant light

[23:30] problems, if there's too much ambient light, you can't work with it. The electronic ones are better for just crushing up some

[23:38] juice, even if it has particles and throwing on because they're not as thrown off by that and they're easier to read. You can read something in an electronic one that there's a really cute kid looking in through our window, by the way. She's pressing your nose against it and we're waving to the window. Uh, there's a uh, she's wearing some sort of purple flowery thing. Yeah, very cute. Anyway, uh, the uh, so the electronic ones are better at measuring things that you couldn't necessarily, because in a handheld one, you have to be able to flap the glass down. The plastic piece that goes over the reading prism. You have to be able to flap it down and get good contact before you can get a good reading, and you don't need to do that with the with the handheld electronic ones. I do think that the handle electronic ones might break a little easier. The Hannah ones that I have are only calibrated for bricks, right? You could, you could, and mine is, what I like about mine is especially if you're going to be using something for a long time in a lot of different fields and you might be measuring juice one day or fruit one day and syrups the next. Is it my electronic one goes from 0 bricks to 85% bricks, which is really nice. And there are handheld optical ones that have a very wide

[24:44] range, but the problem is, is that those wide range ones, it's hard to get a very accurate

[24:49] reading because the scale is the same length no matter what you do. And so then you have the issue of not being able to discern, find differences in bricks. Now, there are also triple scale manual refractometers. I've never used one, and those, apparently, you can get the accuracy you want in several different scale ranges, but they tend to be more

[25:11] expensive. So instead of like $32, you're talking about $100, $150, and you can get a

[25:17] decent, uh, uh, electric one, electronic one on eBay for uh, on eBay on uh, Amazon or whatnot for, you know, around that price. What do we pay? 260 for a 0 to 85. Now, there is a company. I don't have theirs, unfortunately, called, I believe spare

[25:34] as the company, but you can look it up that has different ranges in the same

[25:39] refractometer, and they will actually program 3 custom ranges into your refractometer for you. So you could get a 0 to 85 bricks refractometer. At the same time, get a salinity meter. And all it's basically doing is changing the calibration within the unit so that you can measure using the same instrument. Another thing you could do is use your bricks refractometer, and then carefully make things of the proper salinity,

[26:05] right? Measure what the bricks is on it, and then you can hit that number every time, even though you're using a brick scale.

[26:12] So you can correct bricks to salinity. And it's hard sometimes to find the published papers for that on the internet, but you can also do that. The last thing I would caution about refractometers in general is that you, you know, you're going to have

[26:25] a, a lot of people make mistakes on refractometers and they think that you can measure bricks and other

[26:31] things in mixed medium. Remember, all that the all that the refractometer is measuring is how what the difference in refraction is as light is passed through a

[26:42] liquid. So what happens is different liquids have different refractive indexes. They bend light a different amount. And a fractometer is measuring typically how much your liquid bends light relative to water. And so um, what bricks is measuring is dissolved sugar, but anything that changes, any solute, anything that's dissolved in it is going to

[27:03] change it. So if you have alcohol, which changes the angle of a fraction,

[27:07] right, if all you have is alcohol, then you can use a refractometer to measure how much alcohol is in the

[27:12] water, if all you have is alcohol and water. If all you have is sugar and water, then you can measure how much, uh, the sugar, how much sugar there is in the water using a fractometer. If all you have is salt and water. Same. If you have salt and sugar, you cannot, because there's no way to figure out what

[27:27] the, what each component is doing to the refractive index independently unless you can measure one of the variables. Same thing with ethanol and sugar, which is why you can't use a refractometer to measure something like

[27:39] quantro, because it's got both sugar and alcohol in it. So there are, you know, limitations to what a fractometer can do for you because it's only measuring one quantity, how much

[27:52] light is bent as it travels through your medium. So, I mean, I hope that helps. But, you know, if I could go back because the spare one's only like an extra $50, but it wasn't on Amazon, I would get the multi-range electronic bricks unit that does 0

[28:09] to 85. They have a wide scale one. I think it's spare, but, you know, whatever. The SPER. I think. I not sure. I would get there one that does the full range from 0 to 85. That going to do 99% of any of the sugar work you want. And they will also do a custom scale. So if you wanted to do, I don't know what you're doing for a living, but let's say you're a distillery or something and you also need to measure or a wine fermenter, and you also need to measure glycol. You have a glycol scale in there so that you can make your glycol solutions, which you would use for anti- when you're

[28:36] using, like, chilling, if you have a chiller, and you need to do glycol, you can put a glycol scale in and a salinity scale. So you could choose any 3 scales. If it was me, I would have bricks, salinity, and ethanol percentage for distilled spirits. I would have those 3 on it. And then you'd have one or factometer, and you'd be good forever. But you might want to back it up with a manual one. The manual one, most people get a 0 to 32 bricks, if you're doing fruit, and much higher fractome, are you much higher bricks level if you're doing anything like sugars or syrups? Because remember, simple syrup, one-to-one simple syrup is running about 50 bricks, right? So you can't measure it on a standard 0 to 32 bricks, uh, uh, refractometer bricks is basically just percentage of the solution that is sucrose, right? And if you're doing 2 to one simple syrup. up at 66 bricks. And so it can get, you know, 0 32 is of limited use in a bar, right? Right, size? Yeah, that's why you bought the 085 for us. And we're quite happy with it, yes? Another piece of equipment we have at the bar. We're very happy with now is we bought best $65. That's not true. I'm lying. It's a good $65. Not the best $65 I've ever spent. The best $65 I ever spent was on my wife's wedding ring. Boom! Kidding. He's not lying. Yeah, I might shoot faster. But, yeah, no, it was a good $65. I bought a 0 to 5 milliliter, basically micro pipe pet, and it's just super accurate. So we use it to dose all of our, like our wine finding

[30:07] agent's queso sauce on kaida sand. And also, when we're making small batches of things to correct things for salinity and whatnot, we can add small

[30:14] amounts that we can then reproduce when we scale it up. So I really like the micro pipet. And we stole that idea from our friend, Tony Conyaro, not the famous dead baseball player from, you know what the story of Tony Conyaro? It's a very famous Tony C, they call them because also Americans. In America, it's Canigliaro, by the way. So Tony, the baseball player was Tony Cunigliaro, not Tony Cunigliaro, the bartender, right? But he was like one of, like, slated to be one of the best baseball players of all time, was, in fact, very good, played for

[30:44] the, for the Bosox. And got, he crowded the plate all the time and got hit in the head with a beaner and like almost like, I think I put him in a

[30:53] coma. He was in the hospital for a long time, never the same, never the same. By the way, what Nastasia is actually doing, the work she's doing is looking up pictures of the chauffeur from Downton Abbey on, uh, I looked over to see like what kind of things she's looking up about the event I'm doing in Germany that we're going to talk about after the next break.

[31:08] And she's looking up. She's looking at the chauffeur, kind of like the least sympathetic character on Downton Abbey. because not the least sympathetic, but I mean... It's not. No, no, what? It's what the stars look like out of costume. But you've already seen that. I know, but I was crazy. This is what I deal with people on a daily basis. All right. The 2nd question from Osaka, from John, is are there antioxidants that are fat soluble as well as temperature stable, up to temperatures around 180 degrees Celsius? Failing that, what is the best practice when storing fats to keep them in their best condition? Two applications I'm interested in are we using very expensive tempura oil and keeping schmaltz without oxidizing, any thoughts? Schmaltz. I love schmalz. Chicken fat is delicious. I've never been to one of the old school restaurants in New York that has schmaltz on the table, like one of the old kosher

[31:53] restaurants, because you can't have butter on the table. Because you can't serve butter in a steakhouse. You can have schmalz. I freaking love chicken fat. So what can you, what can you do? Well, I meant, I forgot that this question had been asked when I saw it last night, so I didn't look up the specific things that are added, but typically, if you buy commercial fry oil, they have an anti-oxidant in them, some sort of like vitamin E,

[32:19] tocophuro-based thing that's fat soluble that prevents oxidation in the oil. And that is very helpful and stable up to frying temperatures. I'll try to look it up during the break or Nastasia can try to look it up now instead of looking up Downton Abbeys before and after pictures. But the, um, And that's why I say commercial fry oil is much, much better than any of the stuff that we buy in the

[32:42] supermarket, uh, because it lasts just a boatload longer and tastes a lot cleaner. They also, in commercial fry oils, do something that you can't do in a home oil, which is they specifically, and temporal oil might be like this. They specifically tailor the fatty acid, mix in it, to have only those fatty acids that are fairly temperature stable and oxidation resistant.

[33:03] That said, obviously the things that cause oil to break down uh, most are, if you get salt in the oil, which is, you know, sometimes, you know, unavoidable,

[33:13] uh, allowing uh, burnt particles to stay in the bottom of the oil while you're cooking, if you don't have a commercial fryer with a cold zone at the bottom, which tempura doesn't work that way, by the way, which is crazy.

[33:22] But whatever. Uh, or, um, if you, um, so those are the main things. You also, like, it's best to use, and this, again, goes against the way I've seen most tempura done, but you really want a very low surface area to volume ratio on

[33:38] your, on the oil because then you have less air contact. You want as little foaming as possible. So not a lot of like, a lot of high water stuff dripping in. Anything that basically is going to promote a lot of amount of oxygen getting into the oil. Also, clearly you don't want any reactive metals like iron touching the stuff because that's gonna that's gonna mess with you. And you want to, as soon as it cools down enough, filter it, and you could, you could, uh, you know, vacuum, you

[34:09] could vacuum pack it, or, like, put it in bottles and then, like, suck the air out of it to prevent any sort of oxidation from taking place. But those are the kinds of things that I would do. The worst thing, though, I see breakdown on oil, especially when it's done in a home

[34:23] fryers, temperature cycling. And there's just very little you can do to prevent temperature cycling except for, you know, I mean, commercial fryers are really what's going to stop you from doing a lot of temperature cycling. Other than that, you could get an induction unit that keeps the oil at a relatively even temperature that has like basically a temperature controller in it that's, you know, keeping the oil tolerances fairly

[34:42] tight, and then not overloading the oil so that you don't have to get the,

[34:46] um, you don't have to have as much of a temperature drop, so you don't need as high of a thermal input to do the instant recovery, and that's going to cause you to have less thermal cycling on your oil, and that's going to increase

[34:55] the uh, the lifetime uh, significantly. In a home frying situation. It's crap floating to the bottom, burning and destroying the oil, salt, but most importantly, temperature cycling that is really killing your oil at a

[35:08] fee rocious rate. Uh, and those are the things I would do. I don't know about it. Are you looking up the vitamin E, the Tokafirol-Bay stuff, or are we still on down adding? No, no, I was doing the German East. All right. Well, okay. So why don't we do this? Well, take a commercial break and we'll see whether Nastasia can find that stuff on the internet. cooking issues.

[36:05] We'll find the soul of the world.

[36:24] Welcome back to cooking issues. Am I back? All right. So, uh, it turns out that, uh, I wasn't able to look it up over the commercial break, but we'll try to find some specific thing that you can go buy in a store to drop into your oil to add as an

[36:40] antioxidant. So, Nastasia, what's this event that I'm doing in El Germany next week? It's called Academia del Ron. And it's a Havana Club event. And you will be there from, you arrive Monday morning and you leave Thursday. I don't know that people need to know my schedule. What am I talking about there? We're talking about yeast in alcohol. Yeah. So here's the deal. So they asked me to do, they asked me to do this event on

[37:08] rum, and I said, fine, but they, they, like, I, you know, I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to become, like, well versed in

[37:16] several things, but the effect of yeast on rum, like, I can think of at least 5 other people that I know personally who know more about this than I do,

[37:25] right? But yet that's what they wanted me to talk about. See, people make the mistake. of, uh, and I'm not saying anything against it. People make the mistake of thinking that I'm a scientist. I'm not. I'm like a gearhead cook that can read science papers, right? So, like, I don't feel like I'm the guy to sit there and talk to you about like any sort of actual research that I've done or anything because it's just not the case.

[37:47] So over the past week and a half I read, I don't know, several 100 pages on the effects of yeast on different, uh,

[37:54] uh, uh, different, you know, on fermentation products. And I've learned a boatload about it, but I still am not an expert in the field on this. So what we, what I had to do was I just basically took a bunch of molasses. I couldn't get the molasses I like, which is Crosby's molasses, which is a... Those bastards. They never got back? Crosby's molasses for any of you have ever been in the in the Northeast New England or Maine. Crosby's molasses is the one molasses that I've had. They're like, my god, is that delicious molasses. Like, I would pour that. You know how like, you ever listen to Louis Jordan? You ever listen to Louis Jordan? Louis Jordan, you know the song is, he is, he's using my baby, or Caledonia, or beware any of those. Louis Jordan. Like big in the 40s, you know, kind of kind of cocktail, kind

[38:38] of like, you know, like, you know, whatever. Like, anyway, like, uh, uh, musician. Uh, you know, musician, anyway. Beans and cornbreaking all that song? Beans and cornbread, you know that? Anyway, Louis Jordan. So, uh, Louis Jordan, what the hell was I talking about Lou Jordan for? What are we talking about? Fermentation. Yeah, but how the hell did I get on Louis Jordan? Molasses. Molasses. So he's like, in the beans and core bread song, he goes together like hot cakes and molasses. And you're like, hot cakes and molasses. Who the hell would put molasses on pancakes? And

[39:07] then, and then once you've had Crosby's molasses, you realize why. But those dumb bastards from Crosby's, they're up in Canada. And by the way, I love you Canadians, but you're a lazy group of people. Just kidding. I'm kidding. He's not. Just kidding. Anyway, but they won't distribute outside of New England. We had the mailers. So... So we wrote them in, well, you wrote them a nice email from me in response to how great their

[39:31] molasses. Yeah, sell it down here. No response back. Crosby's molasses is so delicious. Like when you next time you're in Maine or wherever over there up there in New England way, get some Crosby's molasses and tell me you don't think that's the most delicious molasses that you've ever

[39:45] had. I mean, I don't know, maybe in the Caribbean, maybe they have some delicious molasses. I don't know. But as far as in the continental US, it's the most delicious molasses I've ever had. Anyway, so we didn't use that. We use some sort of like molasses and we're distilling our own. I still, I fermented using 2 separate yeast. Now, when you're, when you're actually doing rum and you're using wild use fermentation, there's, it's not just uh, sacromyces, uh,

[40:07] cervase, which is the normal beer, you know, brewer's yeast, of which there's a bazillion

[40:11] strains, each of which have different, uh, produce different flavors. Uh, but there's like, uh, uh, I forget the names of like schizo, you know, schizo

[40:19] sacramise, cervase, there's like, there's a whole bunch of different yeast range, like 5 or 6, uh, not strange. you know, actual genus species. and then a zillion strains, all of which produce different flavors. It turns out most of the flavorful difference in a fermentation, a lot of the flavorful difference is due

[40:36] to, um, the yeast, right? So think about it this way, Nastasia. If you've ever had, if you ever had wine grapes? Yeah, like to eat? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wine and grapes don't taste like wine. Right? It's very difficult to, like, if you taste, like, Pinot Noir grapes. You're not like, oh, I get it. You know what I mean? That all of the, like the, the most of the flavors that are in there in Pinot Noir are there as precursors,

[41:02] right? that you can't taste, then the fermentation and the different yeasts that are used, bring out the real character. So a lot of the flavor is due to the due to the yeast. It's just I don't happen to be an expert in that. that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think people ask you to talk about these things because you're able to understand it and explain it in

[41:21] an interesting and exciting way. That's very charitable. So that's your special thing for the week. Yeah. So that's that's that's the one nice thing going to say to me all week. So anyway, so over the course of the week, we're going to have to go out and illegally distill

[41:37] the molasses fermentation. By the way, fermented molasses tastes horrible. This black strap molasses stuff tasted horrible. Tasted like iron. I was told by our friend Chris, who's opening a new beer bar in New York called proletariat. Proletariat. Nastasia gave the proletariat face. She hates the vegans and the people. about your MTV, your MTV Belvedere drink. Did you guys talk more about that yesterday? No, do you tell me about it. The Red Bull that you're going to make? Oh, Nastasia signed us up to do a Jersey Jersey Shore. For those of you that don't have the don't have like haven't been outside. There's a show called Jersey Shore, which I actually haven't seen, but I saw the thing on YouTube where the guy punched the lady out. Yeah, that's Snooki, right? Anyways, I haven't seen the show. Have you seen the show? You have I actually watched an episode? This is serious. Like last week, I watched an episode for the 1st time. It's good. It's funny show. It's a funny show. I'm pro. One of our favorite lawyers is from the Jersey Shore. Yes. Vadim. Yeah, good guy. Anyway, um, so um, Nastasia signed us up to do an MTV party with uh, uh, Evan Freeman. Uh, and uh, it's going to be a Jersey Shore party. And so Nastasia wants us to do a high-end vodka Red Bull. Yeah. So we're working on it, but I don't know what Red Bull. I don't really know much about Red Bull. No, we need a... We need to look it up. Yeah, yeah, we'll take that stuff up. anyway. Oh, by the way, we got some shout out from John who asked the 2 questions on Osaga says, loves the show. Thank you. So much, and this is in general about the world. Here we go. With so much knowledge, this is John talking. with so much knowledge being spread around. I don't think there's ever been a more exciting time to be a cook. In Japan, it was commonly accepted that the price you pay to become a cook is your youth. kind of nicely said. In 5 years, I've been able to learn what would normally take 10, and on top of that, I know the why behind the how, which seems to be a very uncommon thing in Japan. Whoa, boom, I'm going to have to have some talks about that when we're in Japan, huh? Uh, behind the house, uh, seem to be very uncommon Japan. So here is a thank you for you guys and everyone else sharing what they know. And it's true. We would not have what's going on today without the increase in kind of sharing of information

[43:47] that's been made possible by, you know, the, it's not,

[43:52] it is the internet. Like obviously it's obviously it's the internet, internet. But I think it's other things. I think that, and I've had some conversations with some European chefs, especially in America, but also among Spanish, just

[44:06] like this extreme desire to share what people know and to be generous with ideas that is in the

[44:14] Cook community. You know what I mean? You agree? But for instance, Tim Row, the Michelin star chef in the Germany, which where I'll be next. Hey, he's in Berlin. Maybe I should see him. I'm in Berlin. Anyway, he, uh, he, um, He said in Germany, the chefs

[44:29] don't, like, they don't, like, hang out and give each other ideas. weird, huh? too bad, too bad, too bad, too bad. Okay. Hey, Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. Jack, you got the shout out on this one. Uh, this is, uh, if you want someone to know who it's from, this stuff. You gotta look this up. Oh, from Tony Harrion from Mixing Bar in Brazil. I read a post on Academics, our good friend Camper English, the blogger. I read this post on academics about the production of Quantro, because he visited the Quantro distillery that says, when they

[44:55] add water to reduce Quantro to proof, the essential oils and the peel, because it's Quantro's orange peel, distillation along with neutral grain spirit, caused the liquor to

[45:03] louche, to get cloudy. Like when you add water to absinthe. They centrifuge the quantro to make it clear again, which I did not know. The same happens, and this is now it's Tony talking. The same happens when we wrote of app, citrus peels, and other spices and dilute it to proof. Other than the centrifuge, what can be done to separate the compounds that fall out of solution when you dilute liquids with high concentrations of essential oils? Can you think of any other way to stabilize or avoid the precipitation or loose without the centrifuge? And then how good does your centrifuge need to be to achieve loose separation in G's or RPM? Uh, lastly, to make liquors in this fashion, do you recommend adding water to reduce the

[45:38] proof, and then adding the sugar, or use a weak sugar syrup, or both at once, with or without the centrifuge of the step? Let the show keep up the great work? Cheers, Tony Harrien from mixing bar in Brazil, which when I go to Brazil, we got, well, we got to find someone who will pay to get us to Brazil.

[45:52] And then after we do that, we'll visit them. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. One, by the way, this is anyone who wants to get the cooking issues crew down to

[46:02] Brazil. Keep this in mind. I don't know what it costs for a plane ticket down there, but

[46:07] polycience circulators are twice the cost. In Brazil, as they are

[46:12] here, So what we can do, if you want a circulator, right? If you can find some company to pay for us, we can buy the circulators here, bring them

[46:19] down as personal equipment for the events and then do a swap down there. Just hand. And you might need help carrying them. So you know, I'm here. Yeah, yeah, just saying. Just saying, just an idea for all you people in Brazil. If you're trying to get around the tax problem of getting a circulator into the

[46:34] country, and you know a company that wants to ship a bunch of tech knuckleheads down there to talk to

[46:38] them, that's

[46:42] about to see you break even. You break even. Yes. Yes. Well, with that, when it comes to getting a mustache, a trip to Brazil, blinding speeding. Blinding. Ask her about Toko Firo. What? What's that? Crickets are in the background. Jesus. All right. I hear my feeling, Tony. I have this happen a lot with, I mean, we do it, we do a distillate, because Thai basil is like one of my favorite beverage flavors, so we do one that's Thai basil, orange, cucumber, and a little bit of cilantro, and that thing

[47:12] looshes out and goes white, like very quickly. I think it's not so much the orange peel in that because we don't add a lot. I think it's probably the Anafo, which is the same

[47:21] thing. It's causing lushing in a pastise because there's a good bit of that in Thai basil. You know, that licorice flavor. By the way, in that taste buds and molecules book, like one of the interesting things is that there's a, I think it's Esther goal, it's a compound

[47:34] that shared that's in fennel. Actually, one of those compounds is in Apple to a certain amount. Maybe, this is the thing. The book actually gave me some interesting concepts. Harold McGee and I years ago when we went to Geneva. Harold McGee's going to be in town later this week. Harold McGee, we're going to eat search drumming with nils, got to set that up. On my wife's birthday, though. might be problematic. So we had some apples that grew on the tree that had a huge fennel note to

[48:01] them, and then the fennel dissipated very quickly, but probably due probably to that volatile molecules. Anyway, so like that book actually brought up some interesting stuff in my head, brought back some taste memories I had.

[48:10] So anyway, kudos to that, whatever. Uh, uh, when you dilute them to proof, they are

[48:15] going to lush out. Um, even if you, I've had ones that I've done that too, and then let's sit for several months and they, they basically they separate over time as well. My feeling is, I don't know, here's the thing. Whenever I've tasted these things straight out of the centrifuge. I mean, sorry, straight out of the roto app. I love the flavor of them fresh so much that I wouldn't want to kind of, I wouldn't want to change

[48:42] them and I don't mind the, I don't mind the, the lushing. I don't mind the pastice effect. I kind of like it. It's kind of a signature of that you made this product and that it has so much, like, of these essential oils in it that they can't be held in solution when the proof

[48:56] goes up. Instead of diluting to proof. I would I almost always keep my, unless I'm going to serve it straight. like an occavite, I almost always, and that,

[49:08] I, I've had occavites that go, go white on me because we get so much, uh, so much essential oil in them from the

[49:14] roto app. I almost always keep them at rotovat proof, which for us is between a buck and a buck 20. So about 60%. And we keep it there until we're about to use it and then let it loose

[49:27] out and it's more stable on the flavor. If you don't want to do that, I don't know how I don't think it would take that many G's, but I think it would take quite a long time because the particles when you're looshing are very, very small.

[49:39] And so you have to wait for them to kind of coalesce, aggregate, and become larger before you can get them to settle out. So I think probably centerfusing and time are needed. Another hard part about throwing in the centrifuge is that you

[49:53] remember these are these are oils and they float to the top. And so you, um, that's my guess, it would float to the top. And so when you spin them, you'd be in this position of siphoning them off the top or getting the stuff out of the bottom, which may or may not be a difficulty because they're not going to go solid if you freeze it the same way that I can do with nut oils or coconut

[50:13] oil. Uh, so anyway, so uh, those are, those are my, those are my thoughts uh, on that. Okay, last question in, because apparently we have to wrap it up because, you know, Jack's got other things to do. Other shows, other shows. Okay. Uh, five. Five-fifth questions apparently today. why do you number them? Because I don't ever do them in order anyway. Like, why put numbers on them? What do you want instead? I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, just people don't care. I don't know why I asked. Okay, Andrew writes in and says, uh, what is your, I have actually 2 things. What is your recipe for pressure cooked mustard caviar? I cannot seem to find one online by you yourself. Thanks, Andrew. Here's my recipe. Uh, pressure cooked um, mustard seeds are awesome. They pop like caviar. They're delicious. Even nastachio likes. She hates everything I cook. That's not true. See, I'm just messing with her because I can. Okay. 1st thing with the mustard seed. I use the yellow mustard seeds. I blanch them quickly and a couple of like 2 times or 3 times in boiling water for a couple seconds apiece to get

[51:13] rid. It does get rid of some of the pungency so much so that you can almost get away with not purchasing cooking, but it's not the same thing.

[51:19] We've done the test, right? But it gets rid of some of the dirty, musty taste that I don't really like in a mustard seed. So we blanch horseradish as well beforehand to get rid of some of that earthy taste. Then you pressure cook them afterwards in straight vinegar. I use distilled vinegar. I pressure cook them for between 15 and 20 minutes at 2nd ring in excess

[51:42] vinegar. They're going to soak up a lot of vinegar so you don't want to go light on the vinegar. Then you drain them and while they're hot, you stir in, I use white, you can use whatever you want, but I use white granulated sugar to taste. The sugar will dissolve in with the vinegar that's still on the outside of the mustard seed. Don't want to add vinegar beforehand. It's going to become a goopy mess. Add the vinegar after it's cooked and drink while it's still warm. hot, preferably, and just keep tasting it. And then you pack it in its residual juice. If you save a little bit of vinegar, you can add a little bit in a quart container and it lasts for a long time. So that's that recipe. And we have one other suggestion in before I leave because I'd be remiss. We had a question last week regarding thermocouple probes, and our good listener, Elliot Papineau, called in a response and said, I use a dual probe, alarm meter, from www. thermalworks.com, uh, and it's a

[52:35] cool dupe, dual probe, uh, thermocouple thermometer. Uh, and they have some cool looking pros, the probes aren't cheap, the thermometer is, so there you have it. Elliot likes it. Tell us whether you like it too. See you next week, hopefully from Germany. cooking issues.

[52:55] Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage radio network. You can find all of our archived programs on 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

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[53:18] up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. You got my head all twisted. And I can't get it straight.