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[0:29] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Your Shoes coming to you live every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 on the Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting out of the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in

[0:43] Bushwork, Brooklyn. Joined, as usual, with Mustasia Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good, how are you? And the whole crew in the engineering rooms. Give a shout out. Yeah we're here. Yeah. Okay. You were right on time today. I know it. You know, at an up at 12. Maybe I'm just getting faster on the bike. It's awesome Yeah? I feel like I'm getting less in shape, so I doubt that's the case. Maybe I actually left on time today. possible. I doubt it. Probably not. Uh, so anyway, uh, the cooking issues crew. Nastasia and I, along with Tristan Wheeley from our Bar Booker Index, were on the Jimmy Fallon show yesterday. for the 2nd time, right? Yeah, second time. It was a lot of fun. They put a picture of my kids, Booker and Dax up with

[1:27] the with their bartender's mustaches on, thanks to Nastasia who emailed them the picture. But they were a great crew, right? They were a great crew. They were. I made a chocolate drink for Questlove as well, which was a lot of fun anyway. Enough about us. Okay. William writes in. I hate peating potato potatoes. I actually like peeling potatoes. It's weird. It's like, you know how, like, in every book about, like, a famous chef? Well, no, no, it's like, for instance, okay, so like, you ever read a Roman's book, Soul of a Chef? No. Right? No? Anyway, you haven't, you just haven't read it? It's not that long. mean, you could read it. I am not interested. I don't want to... Why do you have it? Oh, because I was like, oh, okay, Mark, I'll get a solo chef. And then I was like, nah. So it was enough, like, what? I wanted to try to understand and commiserate with the chef, having being dating a chef. I just haven't gotten around to reading it. Wait, not only have you not? No, I choose not to read it. You choose not to. chose to read Fifty Shades of Gray. What's that? Nothing, I'm joking. What is that? Some people will know. Did you really read it? No. What is that? What is 50 Shades? am I behind everything? the hell? I'm like 80 years old. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what any of the people are reading these days. I know nothing except about food technology these days. I guess, like, pathetic. Anyways, so you bought it was enough to buy it to be like, hey, Mark, look, I own this book, aren't I nice? Yeah, but I don't want to read. I not interested. Anyways, uh, so in that book, like they make a lot of hay over Thomas Keller liking to wash

[2:58] dishes, as though it shows a sign that he's interested in all aspects of what goes on in the restaurant in the search for perfection, not just, uh, you know, the

[3:06] finished cooking preverage, but everything from cooking dishes and scrubbing pots and all the way up.

[3:10] Really, I think he's just a cycle and likes to likes to scrub pots. It's like I like juicing limes and lemons, and I don't mind peeling potatoes. you know what I mean? It's like a zen thing for me. It's not like because I care about the little things, which is also true. It's just, I don't mind doing that freaking job. Cooks are weird anyway. Back to the question. I hate peeling potatoes. Is it an alternative shortcut to peeling potatoes other than the blanch for 15 minutes, dunk in ice

[3:36] water and rub the skin off? I tried this technique with large russets, but it was quite messy and a pain in the patucas, and feel that using a peeler would have been easier. Thanks, Williams. Well, William, you know, I've never actually used that technique for peeling potatoes. I peel all my potatoes with a Y peeler. Um, I mean, I just, I mean, I can rip through a, I can rip through. I've only really ever had to do like £20 at a time, though. So I don't know if you're doing like a whole bunch. I would bet anything under £10 or even £15, you're going to be much faster, I think, just busting out with a Y peeler. The only advantage, I think, of the Blanch is if you're not going to soak them in water right away after you peel

[4:17] them. I peel them and directly throw them into water. The blanching will probably kill the enzymes right at the surface of the potato. And therefore, stop the potato from discoloring. So if you weren't going to throw it into water right away after you peel it, then maybe that blanch would help you on that. But I would just use a Y peeler. If you are doing more than like 20, £30 at these at a time. Uh, and you have space in your kitchen, they do sell um, for not that much money. Nils used to use them in Sweden, actually, because the restaurants he used to work with in Sweden, it's like basically all they served were potatoes and herring and salmon. That was it. Potato staring. I'm just kidding, but that's not really, though. And so they had these abrasive peelers. And the way an abrasive peeler works, It's a drum, and it's got sandpaper on the inside on the bottom of the drum in a wavy shape, and the drum spins, and you pour water into it, and the potatoes literally tumble around and produce like a potato peel

[5:15] sludge. And the longer you run it, the more crap that you get off of it. And that's how, like large, larger restaurants that do a lot of potatoes sometimes get those. I think they're more common in Europe. And that's how potatoes are peeled in big potato

[5:31] factories, abrasively. And, and then they'll also a lot of times use a high, uh, uh, a high pressure water jet to spray on the potatoes as well because that'll blast out any of the dark areas that are uh, on a potato. See, here's the other thing, right? If you're going to blanch and then rub the rub this stuff off, you're still going to need some sort of a knife or a peeler to get rid of all the black spots that are on the insides of the

[5:53] potatoes. And, you know, that's why, this is another thing. People who don't peel their potatoes beforehand. I mean, the problem with not peeling your potatoes beforehand is that there are plenty of potatoes that look sound after you wash

[6:04] them, you know, you scrub them and you wash them. Uh, but, um, after you peel them, you notice the black spot underneath. So if you're not peeling your potatoes before, you know, you make

[6:14] French fries and stuff, then you have to pick through all the French fries and worry about all the black spots, right? No? Anyway. Uh, my, my ¢2, but sorry I couldn't, I didn't really hope there. I think a lot of, a lot of times when people are, uh, their peelings are not as fast as they otherwise could be using a regular peeler. It's just because they're using a traditional straight peeler instead of the Y shade peeler. In fact, the my favorite, you know, is, and I feel like I'm shilling for these guys because I also talk about their pressure cooker. I've never received a single thing from the Coon Recon Corporation, but they're relatively inexpensive and colorful Y

[6:49] peelers work great. They cost like 4 bucks, and they're so much faster than the metal kind of more professional style Y

[6:57] peelers whose blade geometry, I don't think, is correct, or any of the other expensive ones, the cheap plastic ones.

[7:04] And they come in a bunch of different colors, which is nice because you'd be like, yo, mine's the green one. It's the green one. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'd stay away from the serrated edge peelers. They're theoretically for soft, peeling soft, uh, things where um, I don't know. I've never had any damn luck with them. Nastasia likes them for some. She likes the way to look. You like the serrated peeler look. I do. But there's no sort of functionality that you care about, right? No, no, no. Got a tweet in about the Fallon show. Oh, yeah? What they say? Most amazing thing about the Fallon appearance is cooking issues didn't drop the

[7:39] F-bomb once. Oh, someone must know me. Someone, someone tweeted in. What's his name? Who? Joseph Gordon Levitt. He dropped the F-Mom? Yes. I couldn't watch. was working. was nothing to do. Like nothing for you to do. You're sitting around in the fish room. talk to you after. Nothing to do. Trista and I were sitting there prepping this stuff out during the, during the, with the producers. I said, I'll talk to you after. Yeah, and you wouldn't know because where were you not? With me working with Tristan. Okay, we'll talk about it after. Yeah, right. That's what makes Heritage radio better than Fallon. We'll let you drop F- bombs. I know, but I don't. I know, we appreciate that. Well, that's where we had that write-in once and they said their kids listen and... By the way, that's classic nastasia. For those of you that don't know her, is to talk about something. She was not even with me during the entire thing. She was working on email on the computer in the in, they have these weird little rooms and they all have weird names. We were in the fish room, right? And it had like all sorts of weird cereal boxes on the sidewall. But that's where that's where Nastasia was chilling most of the time. Right? Right, right. Uh, okay. Oh, and also from William, I've been catching up on older podcasts. And one you mentioned about not having the resources to buy certain things to test out for the listeners, why not putting up a donation link on

[9:03] the site? I'm sure many of us are happy to donate. After all, you're giving us a wealth of info, William McGee. That's a good idea. Right? Yeah. Mustasia, look into that. Listeners can donate to Heritage Radio on our homepage. But will that buy us cooking equipment to test out for our readers? Um, no. Check with Aaron on that. That's funny. Okay. Uh, Joe writes in, Amazon.com is advertising Mirvold's modern, well,

[9:28] Mirvold at all, Mirvold at all. Modernist cuisine at home to be released on October 8th. So what's the story? Is this just an edited version of the original, or will there be new content? Can those of us that have the original safely give this a pass? Thanks, Joe. Listen, I gotta be honest, I didn't have time to get in touch with any of those guys. So I don't know. I haven't read any of the pre-press on that. Like, you know, our heads have pretty much been in a hole because we got a lot of projects we're working on. So the outside world hasn't really been penetrating much. Um, I don't know that they've, I think it's probably a redux of stuff that's in the larger book. Uh, might have been represented somewhat uh, or changed, but I don't think those guys have had the time to to do anything. We put it this way. If that crew is going to do a totally fresh thing, they're

[10:22] going to put as much energy into it as they put into anything else they do, and I don't think they've had the time to do that. So it's probably going to be pulled from the other one. But I'm gonna, you know, if anyone else knows or wants to write in, I'm anxious to hear because I don't know. Um, okay. Passing along this question. Uh, in my most recent article about the benefits of anesthetizing fish, lobsters and crabs for enhanced flavors, I was wondering if uh, if I've ever tried doing the same with bivalves. And if so, whether it's made any difference in the flavor. Thanks, Craig. Okay, so we're talking about the recent 2 weeks old now. Cooking issues post on using anesthesia, specifically clove oil on lobsters and crabs. And the theory is, is that if you anesthetize them before you kill them, they taste better, which is true. We've done that test many, many times. And they taste cleaner, sweeter. They're awesome. And plus, if you should feel bad about throwing alive crustacean into a pot of boiling water. This will allay your nervousness somewhat because they

[11:30] don't they don't twitch, they don't move at all. They just sink to the bottom of a pot, and there's no sort of reaction from them at all. Uh, so anyway, so I wrote about the technique of how to do that using clove oil that you get

[11:41] at, um, at Whole Foods. Anyway. So, uh, plus, you know, or the benefits of just shutting a knife uh, through them and taking out all of their ganglion and then and

[11:51] then, and then boiling them, problem with that being that you lose some of the juices on the inside of the lobster, and so

[11:57] you uh, lose some of its taste. Anyway, question is, can you do that on bivalves? I don't know. Uh, I've never, I've never tried to anesthetize a bivalve, bivalve, meaning, uh, I would guess, specifically clams, and, uh, and mussels, or, you know, perhaps something like a

[12:12] welk, or, uh, or something else. I go, it's not a bivalve, that's a univalve, right? Anyway, um, the, um, so if we're talking about mussels and clams, uh, and and oysters.

[12:24] Here's the problem. Clove oil, water that you anesthetize things in has an aroma of clothes. And this is why when you're using clove oil, you have to be especially careful to not get it on your hands because it becomes impossible to find out whether anything's

[12:40] been contaminated because whenever you bring your hands to your nose to see what's going on. You smell clothes. When you're dealing with lobsters that are then going to get boiled, or you're dealing with fish that are going to get, you know, scrubbed and gutted. The clove oil flavor doesn't come through because it's been diluted twice, right? But like, it's not really enough of it is not on the fish or the lobster, uh, or in the

[13:01] thing so so that you can detect it. But in a bivalve where you have the where like part of its juices are the fluids in which it is sitting, then I'm pretty sure you're going to detect

[13:13] the aroma of clove. And so I don't think you'd be able to do a valid taste test between anesthetizing a lobster. I mean, an oyster versus knot. Um, It's an interesting question. Now, I've tried using gases to gas them open without much luck. You know, Mirvold and Chris Young and those guys use a quick freeze with liquid nitrogen to shuck their oysters quickly to, you know, kill

[13:45] them, kill them quickly. Uh, I don't know how fast high hydrostatic pressure is, which is also used Illinois. I've never actually tasted one of those oysters. It's killed and pasteurized with high hydrostatic pressure. So I don't can't tell you whether they taste good or they taste bad, but there's a lot of other effects other than not cutting open a living creature in

[14:02] that in that scenario. What I have done with, and it's totally separate has nothing to do with anesthesia is I've put oysters. This is years and years ago, I would make flavored seawater,

[14:15] using, we would use for clams, we once you used chicken stock with bacon in it, for oysters. We used to use carrot juice and cardamom. And we would, I would add aquarium salt back to it to get it to be just like the ocean. And then I would have the

[14:30] oysters or clams drink, the fluid, right? They would basically, I would put them in this, I would aerate it. I would, you know, keep it at the at the temperature that the clams and the oysters would want to feed at. They would feed. And then when you shuck the oyster, it would be bright orange. Like, so you'd have an oyster there in the shell, you'd shuck it, and it would be bright orange, and it would taste like carrots and cardamom. And that was a nifty trick. I haven't done that in a long time. Have you ever done that for you, nostachi? that before that was before you were working with us, but uh, and it's been a long, long time since I've done it, but it's a fun, it's a fun little

[15:01] trick. Anyway, so that's for whatever it's worth there, Craig. Anyway, you want take a break? Let's take a break. Come back to cooking issues.

[16:15] If you want to be a great chef, you can't learn everything from within the walls of a classroom. That's why the French Culinary Institute has evolved into the International Culinary Center. When you come here, you don't just learn basic culinary skills. You come to understand and to feel the whole culinary world. You have to network. You have to observe the true meaning of world-class performance. You have to intern at some of the world's great restaurants. At the international culinary center's campuses in New York, California, and Italy. We will expose you to the whole of the culinary world, one that is evolving daily at a very high speed. The International Culinary Center offers a wide range of courses, including culinary, pastry, and bread baking, to Italian, wine, management, culinary technology, and food writing.

[17:03] For more information, visit internationalculinarycenter.com. International Culinary Center, right? Yeah. Anyway, back at cooking issues. Call in your questions two, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. This one into Nastasia, myself. Real quick, Andy Milka says, why the Y peeler? Feel like I'm going to peel my hand somehow. Love traditional straight peeler. Well, I don't recommend peeling your hand. would be a mistake. It's all about, hey, look, here's the thing, right? Watch someone who's adept at a Y peeler. It's a different kind of a skill, right, from using it. So, uh, but I, I know what you're, for those of you that don't know what we're talking about. This peeler looks like a Y. That's why they call it a Y peeler. Duh. And if you're not used to using it, you, what you feel like you're going to get is, like, let's say you're holding a potato, you're holding a potato in the palm of your hand, and your thumb and your index are like on it, right? And you're peeling down and then you're using your thumb and index to rotate the potato as the as the Y peeler is going, shap, shap, shap, shap, shap. you do, if you're not used to it, get the feeling that you're going to nick your thumb somehow. But I haven't. Do you know what I mean? It's just like, I guess getting used to it. But it's just, I mean, look at anyone who's really good with a Y peeler and they're just much, much faster with it. I guess just because of the, the, the stroke. Now, what you don't get is that same feeling. So with a regular straight peeler, you're keeping the straight peeler kind of in between

[18:33] your 4 fingers in kind of like a, I don't know, what would you call that kind of a palm I'm making? Uh, like the... Like Kung Fu Iron Fist. Yeah. No, black power's a fist. Yeah. Uh, but like, uh, like kind of like a kung fu, like, like, like palm slap thing. And you're using your thumb and you can pull the straight peeler towards you with a curl of your of your

[18:55] wrist. It's kind of like a snapping motion, but still not as fast as a really adept person with a Y

[19:02] peeler. Another thing, and I got a call, give me one second. But with a with a Y peeler, like let's say you're doing carrots. You put the carrot flat on a baking sheet, and then you just, you just, the Y peeler, it's like, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap,

[19:16] as you're rotating the carrot underneath you, and the peels just go flying everywhere. It's amazing. Try the Y. Anyway, color, you're on the air. Hi, how are you? Doing well. are you? Good. Your show's great so far. I'm really enjoying it Oh, thanks. I have a really silly question. Now, I always try to like whip my own whipped cream, and I don't know if it's because I'm buying ultra pasteurized or I'm not whipping it at the right speed, but it's literally about 2 steps away from becoming butter. Maybe you know what I'm doing wrong. Yeah, I think you're probably just whipping too long. So usually when you're when you're whipping your own, um, cream, right? Uh, you, uh, it's not going to be as hard or as stiff as the stuff that, you know, that is commercial out of

[20:02] a out of a can. Or, you know what I mean? Those guys, yeah, because those guys add a lot of stabilizer. So I would start with like a really cold cream, got the highest fat content cream you can get. I've never done a lot of tests on ultra pasteurized versus not, but I can tell you that at the school, they

[20:20] use a non-ltra pasteurized, a regular pasteurized cream, which is hard to get in supermarket, and it

[20:25] just, it tastes better. I mean, it tastes better. And the cream we get is also a very high fat content cream. So it also whips up quite nicely. If, I mean, if you want to cheat and you want it a little bit stiffer, you could add

[20:40] stabilizers. I mean, and if you look at the label on whipped cream, especially the ones that are trying to reduce the fat content, they use light cream, and they stabilize the hell out of those things. Oh, okay. Yeah, and that'll get it a little bit. But if you whip it even a little bit too much. What happens is, is, um, so cream is

[20:59] a, uh, is an oil in water emulsion, the continuous phase is uh, is water. And then if you over whip it, right? And then when you whip it, the fat is, you know, basically you're forming like a foam

[21:12] and the fats at the layer, with air. If you over whip it, the fat starts to kind of agglomerate together and the emulsion starts to invert. And if you go too long, obviously, you get butter. But the 1st thing you get is that kind of grainy feel and starts watering down a little

[21:29] bit, the texture loses and you start getting a buttery taste to the whipped cream, which is not what you want. Yeah, yeah, I tried to make a peanut butter pie. So I was like, oh, this should be super duper easy. I'll just do it this way. And it still came out like really good, but it was like super thick and like not that

[21:43] aerated and I'm like, ah, crap. Do I keep doing wrong? So. Right. You could fortify, like, so you look at traditional moose recipes and they got their whipped cream and they're fortified

[21:52] with like a gelatin mix afterwards. They're folded together. And that'll keep something like that pretty stiff. Um, you know, another uh, let's see, over whipping, what else could be? I mean, that's that's the that's the main thing. And, you know, obviously something that people, I mean, I'm sure you know this already, but just to tell people, when you're

[22:09] with cream, don't forget to add salt to it, because it really pops the flavor. Yeah, a little bit. Not a lot. You don't want it salty, but it just really rounds out the flavor, makes it makes it a lot better. Oh, wow. I never knew that. Well, thanks so much for your help. Hey, no problem. Hope it helps. Yeah, thank you. Have a good one. You too. All right. So it was I, what was I, what were we talking about? I was like ranting about something different. Oh, the Y peeler. Anyway, yeah, I hit that. Okay. by the way, Jack, this one's for you and for anyone out there listening wants to download the podcast. This is to everyone, including Indie Jesus. This is from Kevin, but remember, Indie Jesus is no longer with us. He doesn't work our shift anymore. made it sound like he died. No, it. Jesus is all... You guys, man, you're going to get me in some big trouble. No, it's Indie Jesus hates Nastasia. the problem. Yeah, that means that's my best guess. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. First off, is from Kevin. First off, enjoy the show and want to share a tip for anyone who's on the Android and doesn't have an iPhone. You can download Heritage Radio's RSS feed for the show into the Google Listen app, and it will automatically download and sync all the episodes over the air.

[23:12] I did not know that. Yeah, I did not know this. It used to be a huge pain to download the episodes one by one and copy them over USB, so I hope this helps some folks. Number two, this is from Kevin still. I have the opportunity to give talks on food science for Australia's National Science week in Melbourne in August, although they pronounce it like Melbourne, right? Now how do they pronounce it? No, no. I can't do it. I can't do the Australian version of Melbourne the way they pronounce it. So I'm going to say it like an American Melbourne. Anyway, I'd like to tailor the message to the ingredients and cooking equipment

[23:41] available down there, i.e. in Melbourne. Do you have any experience working in Australia, and would you mind plugging my request to your Australian listeners, the best contact would be Kevin at sciencefair.org, fair as in food,

[23:56] F-A-R-E. Keep up the inspirational work. Kevin, I do not have any experience in Australia. I've never been to Australia. If there's anyone out there that wants to fly cooking issues down to Australia for any reason, will do it, right? But I'm sure, you know, if anyone from the Breville Corporation is listening, they can hook you up with some equipment, right? I mean, like a Breville like owns like Australia's cooking implement universe, don't they? Brevel. They also, they love Momafuku. They love like, you know, our partners, Dave Chang. They love Christina Tozi. Christina Tozi's. I think her shop is basically constructed out of Brevel, Brevel pieces of equipment instead of bricks because they have so much Brevel equipment.

[24:36] True or false. Yes. Not, I mean, not honestly. I mean, it's like, you know, it's an exact. exaggerating. Anyway. Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. By the way, it's, I always pronounce, pronounce your name properly because I always mispronounce it. Nastasia. Yeah, I say Nastasia. And so people one syllable less. Yeah, it's one syllable less because I'm a lazy, lazy son of a bitch. All right. Tom Fisher writes in. Dave Nastasia and Jack. Hope you had a great Fourth of July. I've run into a snag. I've been making clarified fruit juices using your instructions for some time and recently started using them to make flavored ice cream. The juices were not strong enough on their own, so I froze them and remounted them drawing off the concentrated juice. This worked well, but I got very inconsistent results as I have no way to determine the concentration of the juice. I remember you were mentioning a bricks refractometer to measure the concentration of sugar and solution. Will this work for my application as well? Many thanks, Tom Fisher. Hell, yes. Yes. That's the easiest question I've ever had to answer. Yes. Now, here's what you got to do. You got to figure out, so you want the sugar content of the ice cream probably to be on the same order of concentration as a

[25:46] sorbet. And I can't remember off the top of my head what a proper bricks concentration for a sorbet is, but it's on the order of, I think, 20% sugar or something like that,

[25:56] like 17, 20, something. I can't remember. So what you're going to want to do is figure out what percentage of your recipe

[26:03] is juice, right? And then figure out any other added sugar that you're going to add to it. And then you can calculate on a weight basis of your ice cream mix what the bricks, because all bricks means is, is percentage by

[26:17] weight, uh, of a solution that is sugar. Okay? So, uh, you know, let's say your your mixture was going to be one quarter fruit juice, uh, and it was going to be the only sugar that's in the in the recipe. Well, then you'd need a very high bricks, right? Because if you were looking for 20% of the thing to be sugar and you want to add, you know, only a quarter of it being juice, almost all of it would have to be sugar. But that said, it's all doable, right? But what you need is, you need a brakes for fractometer. Most of the ones that people buy are 0 to 32 bricks, so they can only do from 0 well, 0 to 32% sugar in a solution. And that's fine for fruit juice and fine for sorbet, but not fine if you're going to need to use something as concentrated as a simple syrup, let's say, typical simple syrup somewhere between 50 bricks, normal, or

[27:09] a rich simple syrup is going to be at like 66 bricks. So, um, I use, I use an electronic one that's, you know, a lot more expensive because I need to be very, very quick for the bar, but you can get a

[27:20] brakes for a fractometer that's 0 to 85% brakes, which will take care of a lot of what you're going to do. Uh, for about uh, $40, $50. If you want, you can buy 2 of the cheaper ones, one for the higher range and one for the lower range. The disadvantage of getting a single bricks or fractometer that's extremely wide range, like 0 to 85 is it's just not very accurate because it's hard to look into the refractometer and read the scale.

[27:45] But, you know, they're not complicated to use. They're easy to take care of. I've only ever had one person break one. But, uh, but yeah, go ahead and get them. And that's another one of those things. You know, if you ever need one, the needs are going to come up for it again and again, no one's ever said, man, I wish I didn't have that

[28:06] refractometer. You know what I mean? Okay. Uh, okay, uh, have some uh, Twitter questions and I'm going to take care of real quick uh, before we go to our other commercial break. At cooking issues. Have you ever run tests on Centerfuges to clarify high density items like bean puree. If so, would it be efficient? Okay. Well, yeah, no, we've done a lot of work, obviously with nut oils, where we're trying to get the, um, not obviously. I mean, only if you know me and have for years, is it obvious, but we do a lot of work with nut

[28:36] oils, where we blend nuts, and we've done, we've done a bunch, right? Walnuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts,

[28:49] bunch of nuts, pecans, peanuts, which aren't nuts. And blend them, and then spin them in a center fuse to extract the oil. And it's, I wouldn't call it efficient, but it is, it is delicious. Um, I have spun, um, tomato paste, and it's not efficient at all, but that tiny bit

[29:10] of uh, of juice that you get at the top of the tomato paste after you spin it is delicious. You tasted that right, size? That was good. You would like that. It's incredibly inefficient, though. Uh, well, and here, for more inefficiency, uh, uh, Tony

[29:25] Kenaliaro, our buddy, uh, at 69 Colbert Grow, who I'm going to see, uh, this week, I guess he's going to be in New York before

[29:31] Tales, although I don't know when. Uh, he uh, I'm Word Tales of the Cocktail, by the way, next week. I'm probably going to have to do that show from New Orleans. I gotta find out what my plan lands. He literally sticks whole olives in a centrifuge. Talk about paste and spins them and gets a ridiculously small amount of ridiculously delicious product.

[29:50] I've never done bean puree. Your success is going to be based on 2 factors. One, how tightly bound is the water to the puree. And two, how much physical water is in the puree versus solids, because the centrifuge at 4000 times the force of gravity is only going to have a certain amount of separating capability.

[30:08] So I guess the answer is not very helpful as it depends. Not very helpful, huh? You could also try to use something that breaks the puree down. If the puree is basically based on pectin. You can use an enzyme to break down the pectin and increase your yield. It'll be at the expense probably of the texture of the paste that's left over because you would want to be able to use both. Yeah? Okay. At cooking issues, heritage radio, where to eat in Chicago, coming from Dublin, Ireland, 1st time in

[30:36] Chi Town. Where's interesting? Cheers. Well, unfortunately, I haven't been in a couple of years to Chicago, so I don't know what's hit and happened anymore. I mean, obviously, for the kind of work that we do, you're going to want to go to Alinia, but you got to book up kind of well in advance, right? Uh, and, uh, the problem is, is that a lot of the places that I really want to go in Chicago, I haven't gone

[31:01] yet. Like, I haven't gone to aviary, and I'm just not I'm not plugged in in Chicago anymore, unfortunately. Um, because it's been it's been years and I'm loath to recommend places that I haven't been yet, right,

[31:14] Stars? Is that fair? Fair. But I would like readers to, or answer back on the Twitter. Answer me back on the at cooking issues on the Twitter and get some recommendations for eating in Chicago.

[31:30] Okay. Hey, Jack, you want to take one more commercial break? Yeah, give me one second. All right. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[32:35] Is Jack Heritage Radio reminding all listeners that we are a 501 C3 nonprofit

[32:41] organization and you can donate to become a member today by visiting Heritage Radio

[32:45] Network.org. And welcome back. By the way, crazy guitar, right? Oh yeah. That's Tim Power going crazy. Man, he was a nutty guitarist. Any comments about the music from listeners on your end? No, nobody, nobody. Look, it's like, it's like a freak show's college band from 1991. They're like, okay, we'll put up with it. I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. Yeah, pretty sure. Although, again, like one of the best parts about being in the Fallon

[33:15] shows, getting to listen to the roots play, those guys are awesome. Did you get to hang out with Quest Love at all? I mean, look, those guys are busy. I mean, the way the way it works is, um, you know,

[33:25] we, I wanted to, I wanted to do something with him. It's going to be up, I guess, on their blog on Thursday. Uh, but he likes uh, chocolate drinks, and this is his quote, not mine, so I don't want to hear anything. He also, like, he's accused of all by all of his buddies of liking his words, not mine, bitch drinks. And so, you know, he likes, he liked, uh, last time, chocolate flavors, and he liked, uh, kind of drinks a tasted lighter. So I wanted to make a drink. I want to make a drink for, you know, for him that it was also about the album that came out a year or 2 ago he did with Booker T, called The Road from Memphis, because obviously the bar's name is Booker Index,

[34:02] my son's Booker, and, you know, Booker T, and Quest Love, and Chocolate, and

[34:06] Bverage. So I made one and we did a little, he and I did a little segment that's going to be on Fallon's blog.

[34:14] Or is it NBC's or Fallons? Found's blog sometime later this week. So yeah, I got to hang out a little bit. I think he liked the drink. He drank the he drank it. I met him at Milk Bar once. buying a lot of cookies. Really? Yeah. He's a nice guy. Yeah, really nice guy. Yeah. Impressive fro in the real life. Very, more impressive even in real life than it is on the uh, on the television. Anyway, got a question in, really interesting one. Actually, I'm just trying to find it on my machine here. From Mike. I've been reading a lot of Chinese cookbooks, and which is a good plan. I wonder which Chinese cookbooks you like. I've got to get the Fuchsia Dunlop books. I don't have those yet. But always a good plan reading Chinese cookbooks. Some talk about the importance of seasoning walks. The general method is to heat up oil and or lard and some sort of alium. Traditionally, garlic chies, but a combination of scallion and ginger is also recommended. They say that the heating process opens the pores of the metal. The aromatics permeate the metal, and the whole process helps create a nonstick surface. Could you please talk a bit about seasoning a pan? Is it crap, or is it something I should be doing? And if so, do you have a better method? Thanks, Mike. Excellent question. So, the last time I spent a lot of time researching, seasoning in general is when I did a post years ago on cast iron

[35:44] pants in general, cast iron pants. Uh, and seasoning is not uh, crap. Seasoning is actually important. And there's a slight debate in the community about what exactly is going on when you're seasoning a pan. I think pretty much, for me, the accepted reason, seasoning a pan is that you are creating, you put a thin layer of oil and

[36:14] then, or, you know, fat, and when you heat it, the fat is breaking down and

[36:18] polymerizing and forming a basically a polymerized oil film on top of the pan.

[36:26] It's binding with the pan and it's that surface that is nonstick. Okay? And also, you know, black. You know, you have it there because it's black or it's brown. And it's the same sort of reaction that

[36:40] happens in oil paint when oil paints are dry, right? They use in oil paints, they use specifically something called a drying oil because it polymerizes and forms this kind of solid network.

[36:51] If you've ever seen vegetable oil that's spilled on a surface or been allowed to stay on a surface for a long

[36:57] time and it forms that yellow gunk, right? Stach, you know I'm talking about that yellow gunk, that is partially polymerized oil.

[37:06] And so that's what's going on. And it works. Now, there's a there's a, um, another group that thinks it's a different kind of oxidized, uh, iron that's the same. It's what is it called? magnetite, whatever it is, that is the another form of iron oxide, that's not rust, that's protective, and it's a similar one that they use when you're bluing guns, blue, you know, blue steel for

[37:31] bluing guns, similar sort of thing. I don't think that's the case. I think it's a polymerized oil. Now, in a pen, when you're seasoning, a couple of things are important. First is that you want to, a lot of people debate whether or not a particular kind of oil is more or less

[37:47] important. I don't really think it's that big of a deal. What you want to make sure of, is that you don't put a thin, a thick, sick, sick gloppy layer of oil on it when you're seasoning it. And the reason is that if you do, it's

[38:00] gonna form thicker layers and those layers will partially polymerize, but they're never going to be as tough or as uniform as lots of thin layers built

[38:11] up. And, uh, if you, um, If you, and you'll see this, if you let a thin layer thick there, when you, when you start, when you start scraping it down with a spatula, you'll, uh,

[38:22] you'll dig into it and and pieces of the seasoning will flake up and that's not considered good.

[38:28] So that's why there's a lot of rubbing with paper towels. That's why when you're seasoning a pot in the oven, they turn them upside down so that any oil that is free that's not been wiped around enough drips off of the pan before it gets

[38:41] to polymerize and forms kind of little crappy spots. All right? So, I mean, the classic technique is multiple coatings of

[38:50] oil in an oven that is hotter than frying temperature.

[38:55] So like 450 I usually use something like that. Or like if you're seasoning a griddle, I can season it directly. I can even season pans on a flame as long as you don't heat them up too much because, you know, you can burn the seasoning off of a pan if

[39:08] you if you put it at like 650, a self-clean cycle in an oven, you can burn the seasoning off of a pan.

[39:13] Uh, although I don't know the exact temperature. Now, the interesting thing about the, uh, the, the onions, the alliums, when you're seasoning a wok, and I looked into this. Before I get into the seasoning of the alley with the walk, let me say this. I don't have a lot of experience, because another thing I was interested in walks, when question came in, is, you know, what's the difference? Is there a difference in cooking capabilities or style or feel between a traditional

[39:42] hand-hammered walk, which is made by taking a sheet of steel and hammering it into a walk shape, or a spun walk, where basically they take the disk and press it between, you know, wooden chucks and spin it fast and then use a stick to push the walk down into a walk shape, or a stamped walk, which is basically just, you know, a big hydraulic press, boom,

[40:07] stamps stamps out the walk. And I don't know if there's a difference and I wasn't able to find any sort of difference online. Now, there is a possibility, and you mentioned in your question, porosity. And I think it is, no one has, I don't remember, because it's been a long time since I researched, but I don't think

[40:26] that, that, I don't know what the difference is in porosity between different things. But I will say this. The surface of the pan does make a difference in how something works when it cooks. And let's go back to regular cast iron pans, which I have a lot more experience with. Modern cast iron cookware that is produced is basically straight from the cast. So if you look at the surface of a cast iron pen. It's got a little bit of, I don't know, hard to say. Like, you know, I'm talking about a little rough sandpapery look to it. Uh, and uh, I don't like that, right? That's always got that little bit of a rough feel. Some people think that's going to actually enhance the nonstickness because it decreases the actual area of contact of the food with the pan,

[41:12] which therefore less area to stick. That's why certain nonstick pans have those little dimples in the bottom. I think it's a horrible idea. The pans I like were sanded to show a bare metal surface at the

[41:26] bottom, something that they call polishing, but you could literally just take like a sander or a grinder to get that kind of sandpaper, that sandpaper feel finish off the bottom of it.

[41:34] And those things take seasoning like a mother, and they come out like a black piece of glass. They're so slick and my cast iron that is, you know, at least 50 years old that was made that way is the is the cast iron in my place that is the best in terms of uh

[41:55] non-non-stickness. It's just, it's great. And another thing, by the way, back to walks. When you're looking at a walk, some people are worried about using a metal spatula with their cast iron, don't be worried about it.

[42:06] In fact, with a walk, you're always using a cast iron. It actually helps to knock a little bit. If you have a good seasoning on it, using something metal will help to knock little bits that will stick off and build up on

[42:16] your products. Don't worry about that. But the interesting part of your question. It's something I hadn't thought about was the reaction of the chives or garlic chives with the pan. And I don't think that it's horse hockey. I think that there's something to it, but because I watched a couple videos of people seasoning walks online. Here's a couple of things. First, uh, uh, 1st of all, most people don't cook with uh, a cut with carbon knives

[42:42] anymore, with knives in other words that will stain that aren't stainless. I have a couple in my house because I happen to like them. Everyone who has a carbon steel knife, one that, you know, will rust will tell you that when you're cutting an onion. Uh, that onion will taste bad, especially if there's uh, if it's not properly, like, you know what? I got a quick call. take the call in and then I'll go back to onions and knives and walk these because it's super interesting at least to me, hopefully to somebody else. Color, you're on the air. Hey, hey, Dave, it's Brian. San Francisco. are you? Doing well yourself. Good, good. Um, I wanted to thank you for answering my question about sugars uh, a couple weeks ago, and so now I'm, I'm no longer paranoid about Nutra Suite and uh, all the, uh, the artificial sugars. Good, and your wife's okay with it. everyone's good. She hasn't dropped it yet. No, good, good, good. I had some nutris for you last night and I'm not dead. What? I had some nutrisweet just last night and I haven't died yet. Well, maybe you should, maybe they'll take another couple days. We'll see. Well, to be honest, though, though, but back on that, that's not actually, like, the fact that we haven't died yet isn't necessarily a good argument because there are things. I'm not saying Neutral Street's one of them, because I don't think it is. There are things that take 20 years to kill you, like asbestos. Anyway, go ahead. Right, or Mad Cow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there you go. Um, so my question has to do with the, uh, uh, I was reading the modernist cuisine and they recommended, um, putting a slab

[44:13] of like quarter, a quarter inch or 3 quarter inch, um, aluminum into your oven as a

[44:19] half for pizzas. And I know you have some experience with them, um, packing your oven, but, uh,

[44:26] I I don't want to just completely destroy and just, um, dismember mine. So I'm wondering what you think about that as a, as a, a better, um, technique than, um, than a pizza stone. Hmm. So wait, they're telling you to put, they're telling you to put the pizza directly onto the aluminum. Exactly. Huh. Well, I've never tried it. I mean, here's the basic theory of operation. Have you ever filled, okay, so if you have an oven that doesn't have a lot, a lot of power in it, and you fill that oven with stones, not just

[44:59] like one pizza stone, but a lot. You'll notice that it takes a long, long, long, long time for your oven to heat up because

[45:07] you have to put a lot. it's taking a lot of power to heat up those stones. Do you know what I'm saying? So I once had an oven that I, yeah, like a long time. I had an oven. I completely lined the inside, almost like it was a masonry oven, and ours it would take to heat up. Uh, and, um, so maybe they're thinking that's not a good tack to take with your oven. Aluminum. How thick were they saying? They were saying 3 quarters inch, but then I was reading Egola and Nathan said, oh, you could go down to a quarter inch. No, I don't know, but here's the aluminum just because it's light. Right. Aluminum. Well, here's a couple of things. So what you want to do with the crust, I'm assuming their theory of operation is they want to put a big and instantaneous heat wallop into the bottom of the crust, right?

[45:53] Now, aluminum is a super fast conductor, one of the best.

[46:01] You know, it's like right up there with copper, not as good as copper, but right up there. in terms of heat. And, uh, the the issue with it is, is that it doesn't store. It transmits heat very quickly, but it doesn't store heat very well because

[46:18] it just does it. lighter, right? So it doesn't have as much mass. And, you know, and it doesn't take that much energy to heat up a block of aluminum.

[46:30] So the advantage is your oven will heat it very quickly compared to other things. It will heat very evenly, right? And whatever heat energy is in it will be delivered to your pizza very quickly. And it also won't cool down that

[46:44] much because the oven can supply heat to it fairly quickly as well. So unlike a pizza stone, if you're going to make a bunch of pizzas with a pizza stone, you'll notice that it starts lagging after a couple of pizzas because you've exhausted the heat that is at the surface of the

[47:02] stone and it's taking a long time for it to kind of replenish that heat because the stone doesn't heat up very quickly, whereas aluminum heat's extremely

[47:10] quickly. Now, I just, I'm sure because, you know, those guys are good at that, I'm sure those guys did the calculation of how much heat is really necessary to deliver to your pizza on an instantaneous basis to get that good

[47:24] crust, that good boost on the crust. And that's why they're getting whatever thickness of aluminum it is that they're

[47:30] getting is so that there's enough energy in that ingot to zap your crust

[47:35] fast. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. Does it make a difference, the kind of metal? Yeah, copper would be better. Well, I mean, really expensive. You know what I mean? Yeah, obviously it's bottle copper, then you, you know. Yeah, and heavy. Uh, and heavy. No, awful. No, stainless steel work? Yeah, awful. No, terrible. Yeah, stainless terrible. So, like, I like, uh, when I was testing, uh, um, like before I was making my own red hot pokers for drinks, I would have, uh, slugs of different metals that I was using to heat over a flame and

[48:09] then, and then heat drinks with, and stainless was just awful. It's a slow conductor, uh, of it's a very slow conductor of heat compared even to uh, iron. Very slow. Yeah, it's just, it has the advantage of being non-reactive. is all it's got. It's expensive, it's heavy and it's slow. Uh, you know, which is why your good pot. are, you know, have a big chunk of aluminum in the bottom of them, and, you know, or copper, and then like a layer of stainless that your food actually touches, it's probably quite thin. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, stainless terrible. You think this would be good for bread in addition to, uh, in addition to pizza or it would be too hot for bread? Ah, no, I mean, no, I think it would probably work. It would depend on what temperature. I mean, obviously you're not cranking your oven as high on, you're not cranking your oven as high for bread as you are for a pizza. Uh, I, it's been many years since I've done very thorough research on

[49:13] um, bread baking and crust interaction. So I'd have to figure out whether you're actually getting any sort of benefit from the masonry surface other than the delivery of

[49:23] heat. But I don't see why it wouldn't. I don't see why it wouldn't work. I don't see why it would work. But if you can afford the thicker one, I would get the thicker one. You know what I mean? Yeah. If you look online, go to macmaster.com. It's not cheap, but they, uh, it's easy to uh, obtain aluminum from them, and you can uh, figure

[49:48] out, there's a, there's a, uh, you know, most of this stuff goes by weight, but then sometimes there's a

[49:53] price uh, break where if you start getting it thicker, all of a sudden the price jumps more than just the weight jump.

[49:59] And so you can kind of see where that sweet spot is. I looked it up a while ago and I think it's somewhere around half inch that starts getting expensive to get bigger

[50:07] slabs, at least normally. Or if, you know, if you, if you have a car and you live, uh, you know, outside of the major city, you could probably just go to aluminum

[50:17] supply, uh, and get it. But McMasterCar, they're everywhere, you could at least get an idea of prices. They're about 30% more than they should be at McMasterCar, but it'll give you an idea. Okay, great. Thanks. Do you think I should season it? Aluminum or our previous question? No, no, aluminum? No. No. Okay. Yeah. It forms its own oxide and it's not, you're not going to be able to do anything good with it. Okay, great. Ain't no problem. You too. Jack says we have one more minute. Oh, one more minute. All right, so when you take a carbon steel knife and cut through an onion. You'll see that it picks up a flavor, right? The onion picks up a flavor and the onion tastes onion tastes bad. And I did some more research and old timers used to rub onions on their knives to develop a patina on the knife.

[51:02] And I looked on the web and people are now for kind of environmentally friendly corrosion

[51:07] inhibitors making garlic extracts that they rub on knives as corrosion inhibitors on knives.

[51:14] So there is, and it's basically these sulfur compounds that are in, that are in onions, in alliums, in

[51:21] scallions, that are interacting with iron, right, to inhibit corrosion in on a knife, but they also take up the bad flavors into the

[51:33] onions themselves. This is apparently the theory of operation in the stainless steel anti onion smell on your hand thing, but I don't know if those work because those are stainless.

[51:40] It'd probably be better off using carbon steel blocks instead of stainless steel blocks to get rid of the onion flavor.

[51:45] So there is an interaction between onions and iron. The other thing is, is that if you look at people on the web seasoning with the chives, it's basically a way to scrape around and also move oil around so that oil is not sitting in one place. So the chives are, these like chives, the long chives or garlic chives are, one, kind of interacting with the metal, taking metal away from it. I don't think it's adding a good flavor to the pan. I think it's removing bad flavors from the pan, right? And absorbing those bad flavors onto the onion, absorbing, you know, any sort of free iron that's on the surface of it. Now, the other thing is, is that instead of onions, which don't act this way, the scallion things, because they're like paper, when they wilt, they're almost like a scrubby

[52:31] pad that you're using along with the metal spatula to move the oil around so that you're not getting

[52:35] a caked on pieces of oil anywhere. So, uh, the theory is they're um, interacting with the metal to remove stuff that you don't want that's on there, and they're pushing the oil around

[52:43] in uh, in a nice way such that you have a nice, even coating all the way around the pen. My bet, this is a good way to season it. Now, why scallions and not something like garlic,

[52:54] I don't know, I haven't used that much garlic chives with this sort of thing. I mean, I've used them, but not that much. If you were to do this with garlic, it would make a scorched, awful flavor, which would probably mess with you and mess with your

[53:04] pambit. But Chives don't have an awful flavor once they get charred. And so you can continue to use those chives all the way up until the char point, which is where around where you're going to want to

[53:15] be to get accurate seasoning of the pan to get it nice and black. And there you have it. Cooking and dude.

[53:27] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening. get it straight