[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market, a dynamic leader in the quality food business, a mission driven company that aims to set the standards of excellence for food retailers.

[0:09] For more information, visit Whole Foods market.com. Broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. You're listening to HeritageRadionetwork.org.

[0:23] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host on Cooking YouTube, coming to you live on Tuesday, about five, 10 minutes late in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, calling your Questions Live 2,

[0:37] 718-497-2128. 718-4972128 Join in the studio as usual with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, Joe and Jack in the booth. How you guys doing? Great. Yeah? You doing well? You guys just became members of Heritage Radio Network, so we're pretty happy with you. Who, Booker and Dax, LLC or cooking issues, the show. Yeah, you guys, Nastasia, and you. Oh, as humans? Nice. humans. Well, congratulations to us, and thank you, Nastasia, for signing us up. Yeah, each? Yeah, nice. All right. Worth it. Worth it. worth every penny. By the way, it looks like I'm horribly out of shape. Today on the Williamsburg Bridge. Today on the Williamsburg Bridge. No sympathy. This guy, I didn't ask for sympathy. You know, I like how, see, Nastasia, again, this is another thing about Nastasia. those of you don't don't know. You looked at 1155. For those of you that don't know what's going. I didn't say I am late as a result of being out of shape. I said I'm horribly out of shape. Nastasia creates conversations in her head and assumes that they've already taken place and then makes conclusions based on those conversations that she thinks has already taken place. Like, for instance, me saying, I'm late because I'm out of shape instead of them leaving early. I'm just merely stating the fact that I'm out of late. Now, continue with my story that has nothing to do with me being late. has to do with me being out of shape, Nastasia. Uh, the, um, this guy passes me at the beginning of the Williamsburg Bridge, and he's on the straightaway, so I figure I'll catch up to him because I very rarely get passed because I bike, uh, not because I'm in shape or because I'm athletic, neither of which is the case, but I get extremely angry when I ride the

[2:08] bicycle, and his nostalgia knows anger increases my physical abilities. Not in a Hulk-like sense, but just, you know, anger, right, Seth? Right. Yeah. Anyways, guy beat me by 30 seconds to the top of the bridge. I could not believe it. I'm going to have to go into some sort of training regimen. The reason I'm late, actually, is because I didn't follow my own advice, because I'm a moron, to come here and do my research from

[2:27] Roberta is instead of doing it from home. That's the reason I'm late, Nastasia, for your information. Anyways, let's go to some questions because I have a reduced amount of time. On the leukuma, which I promised I'd answer. Uh, the question was, uh, can you use lucuma powder? Uh, is there a substitute for

[2:44] lucuma, leucuma? Is this fruit that I think some people think is a superfood or something? I don't know. It comes from Peru. And I said that I thought I'd do something similar to it in Colombia, and that I'll come back once I'm back from Colombia, which I am now. Got back on Monday. Uh, would, uh, you know, maybe you could use instead or that I try to use some of its properties to figure out a

[3:02] substitution. Turns out, I was completely incorrect, and memory, my memory was completely wrong. When I researched my memory when I got back because I didn't see anything similar to it. What I remembered is, is that Nastasia, you have to tune in for this and tune out of your Zappo's session there. The, uh, it's not, uh, it wasn't anything in Colombia I had that was similar to Luca, it's Kenestelle. Remember Canistell? The egg fruit that we had in the Fruit and Spice Park? And based on that, there is a taste component to it that's important, but it seems to me it's mostly the texture of it that's

[3:34] important. Uh, because it was the texture of that egg custard fruit, uh, canistell, C-A-N. I can't spell out loud, but canistell, that was so kind of amazing. And, uh, there is a producer of Canistell that ships. When it's in season, which is, I think, December through March or May or something like that. And they're in Florida. And if you go on local harvest.org and look up fresh gardens, they will ship fresh canistell anywhere in the

[4:03] US. I don't think you're going to get a powder that's going to mimic those same things. I mean, you could use a hydrocoloid mix to do it. But the thing about the, the thing about the canistell, and I guess a

[4:13] leukumo, which I've never used fresh, is it's just extremely dense and

[4:17] custody on its own, which is probably a combination of high fiber content, low water content, and probably a number of strange polysaccharides that contribute to

[4:27] its, to its consistency. So you could try to get that texture just by jacking polysaccharides

[4:32] in it. For instance, locust bean gum or locust bean gum is good for that because Guar is expensive now. you're going to use Guar, you'd have to use the flavor free Guar from TIC gums, or some form of thickener. The issue when you thicken something is you, some people say that you uh, perceive an increased gumminess, which is true. The higher the concentration you use, the more a kind of gummy something is, but sometimes that can be pleasurable.

[4:57] It's just basically managing the expectations of what the texture is going to be and messing around it to get the texture right. The other issue when you add hydrocolloids is once you add them in enough of a concentration to truly thick and thick and thicken something, you're masking flavor.

[5:11] And the only way to uh, reduce that masking effect is to increase the flavor profile of what you're what you're using. But I'll try to look into it more. It's an interesting problem. I wasn't able to I wasn't able to get an answer for you, so I apologize. Right style, I'm useless men. But you enjoy the egg custard stuff, right? Love it, yeah. Canistell delicious. And by the way, if you believe the wiki, folks, Canistell actually tastes better than the Luca, I'm just they don't happen to grow the Luca, being the Canistell in, I guess, Peru, where it's popular, where Luca was popular. How about that? So stuff we had was actually superior. Anyway, okay. Next question. From, oh, we had a response, actually, to our vegetarian gummy question from Andrew. He says, hey guys, I just thought I might be able to help with the question about vegetarian gummies. On the subject of alcohol, because of, you know, the person who wrote in, wanted to know if they could make an alcohol gummy. On subject of alcohol, I've made an alcohol centered gummy for a product development project in a confectionery school, but the thing

[6:12] is, you need a 2 shot mogul. And for those who don't know what a mogul is because that's not going to make sense to anyone. Mogul is, I think it's a brand name of NIDI needy or whatever they're pronounced is of confectionery machines that do starch molding. So it's a whole confectionery line that produces starch

[6:29] molds and then does depositing of candies into starch molds. And they're called moguls. You can look up, NIDI, mini mogul, if you want to look up the thing. NIDI starch depositing, look at mini mogul or there are other other lines, and they use them for depositing marshmallows, fondants, and, you know, jellies, all that kind of stuff.

[6:49] Uh, anyways, so, uh, wait, where were they? Oh, yes. But the thing is, you need a 2 shot mogul, and you need to make sure that both your outer gummy and your inner alcohol mixture have close to the same specific gravity, so it's not really possible at home, which I figured, right?

[7:05] figured. Okay. For vegetarian gummies with a really chewy texture, however, I would try messing around with either starch, which we've talked

[7:12] about, or gum Arabic. Agar is way too short, meaning, I guess, brittle, to replicate a gelatin gummy. And I personally don't like the cooling effect that comes with high levels of vagar. That said, pectin is my favorite for gels, has such a great flavor release and texture. Thanks for everything you do. Andrew. Ah, and the one that you was really easy for you to do at home, it's not starch, it doesn't require a lot of cooking, and I hadn't thought of, is the one he mentions, which is gum Arabic. Gum Arabic is expensive, but what's interesting about gum Arabic is it has an extremely high solubility. So, but yet it means you have to use a preposterously high amount of gum Arabic, but that said, you have a minimal

[7:50] taste impact with gum Arabic on your flavors.

[7:56] So this is an excellent suggestion, but I believe, and I haven't had time, because I just read this this morning to research uh, Arabic-based gum Arabic-based candies, but I'm pretty sure you're going to have to deposit it liquid into

[8:08] a starch mixture and then let it dry for a fairly long period

[8:13] uh, in a relatively controlled environment. I mentioned, I believe, starch molding once in the past. And there is online available. And 18, I think 90s or 19, 10s or 20s, uh, handbook producing England on confectionery. It's like the complete confectioner or something like that. And it has an entire section on starch molding and how to accomplish it with techniques that don't require sophisticated equipment.

[8:36] i.e. you can do it at home. It's not state of the art because it's from over a 100 years ago, but it's doable at home and it goes through the ins and outs of

[8:43] molding and starch and it's available free on Google books. So that's something maybe you should look into. Another question. Should we take a break or should we take the question? No, go on. Okay, another question. James writes in with several things. Once thanking us for circulation circulator info. Dear Jack, Joe, Nastasia and Dave, I've been really enjoying the show down here in Australia and have a few questions about freezing, shelf

[9:07] life, and tentacles. After learning about rethermalizing, which is what we call reheating so that the government doesn't get mad that we didn't reheat it to an incredibly high temperature, destroying all the flavor and

[9:14] texture, whatnot. After learning about rethermalizing on your show, using a thermal circulator has become an everyday part of our cooking, it is greatly increased the yumminess in our house.

[9:22] It's now routine to make quantities of both stock and prepared meals, such as curry, soups, and other ingredients for more elaborate dishes, including wild mushrooms, confit, and octopus. They are prepared and then chilled using good food handling practices, including ice baths and flat pans for chilling, fat, excuse me, flat pans for chilling, then held at 2 degrees C

[9:38] overnight, and packed in serve-sized portions using a chamber, vacuum sealer, flattened and frozen in layers no greater than 30 millimeters. Uh, by the way, this is kind of, I love hearing that we've ever said anything that actually makes people's food better, right? I mean, that's, that to me is, that's the best. I love that. Like that's that's the success. That's, you know, and before we had, uh, you know, a bar or any kind of place

[10:01] when, uh, we could actually serve things to people to directly make them, uh, hopefully make them happy, the only kind of uh, satisfaction we got out of stuff was that people said that the information we gave them

[10:12] helped. So I like that. Anyway, the freezer is set to -19 C, which is roughly -4 Fahrenheit for you guys here in Fahrenheit

[10:20] land, and using the turbo button, which we don't have, which I assume is a fan speeding thing to increase air circulation on the inside of your freezer, which

[10:27] is a good idea. I wish all freezers had kind of an increased circulation technique on the inside of the freezer to handle large loads like that when they could and is rated to handle 19 kilograms of freezing per 24 hours. It is a frost-free model made by male, uh, leave her. We get mail, but we don't get the fridges over here, do we? don't think so. associate that more with Europe, yeah? It seems to be designed to minimize the freeze thaw cycle by sealing the drawers and dehumidifying.

[10:55] My question is, how long can I keep this frozen stuff? The online guide, say one month for stock, 3 for prepared meals and fish, yet the snap frozen

[11:04] wild caught shrimp I have purchased, have a shelf life of 18 plus months. What's the deal? Ah, excellent question. What's the deal? Here's the deal. The freezing shelf life, the frozen shelf life of products, and this is a dirty secret that no one tells

[11:21] you. When you are looking at the shelf life of a refrigerated product, most people think what you're talking about

[11:28] is how long can it stay in the refrigerator and still be safe, right?

[11:33] Because bacteria can still grow, molds can grow in the fridge. And so in the fridge, shelf life is a safety concern. However, when someone is raiding the shelf life of a product. They're actually rating 2 separate things. They're rating, one, is it going to be safe to consume? And two, is it going to taste good, right? So there are plenty things that exceed their shelf life in the fridge or in the

[11:55] freezer, but are still safe. Now, in the fridge, it actually is dual situation,

[12:00] safety and safety and palatability. In the freezer, it's almost exclusively, shelf life is almost exclusively based on is it going to taste good or cook well once it gets out. And the culprits in a freezer are, one, free stall over time, right? So they have to assume a general, you know, a certain kind of level of quality of your of your fridge, freezer rather. So most freezers thermally cycle quite a bit and go up and down, up and down. In any home freezer, not 100% of the water in a product is frozen unless you're talking about pure water ice. Because not all of this is frozen. Anytime the temperature goes up and down, some more of the concentrated, basically

[12:43] everything that's in your meat, like salt, proteins, all those things are in

[12:47] a very concentrated solution. water increases and decreases, and when every time it does, smaller ice crystals inside of your product tend to grow because the smallest ice crystals typically are going to melt all the way

[12:59] 1st. And then when they refreeze, they'll freeze back onto the larger crystal. So ice crystal size increases over time in your freezer. And as a result, those larger ice crystals penetrate cell walls and whatnot and cause for more drip loss, which means when you thought more of the inside juices of your

[13:14] product, you're going to drip out, rendering your product more crappy. So the longer period of time it spends, in a freezer that's opened and closed a lot of freeze thaw

[13:23] cycles, the crappier your product is. And so that's a major influence on shelf life. Another problem with shelf life is things that are exposed to actual atmosphere on the inside of your fridge, whether inside of a package or not, tend to, what happens is they grow crystals on the

[13:40] outside and the surface of the meat become dehydrated, due to sublimation, and then recrystallization, et cetera. This is called freeze freezer burn. And so this is a situation that deteriorates over time, right? And so this is another reason why certain things have a specific shelf life. You minimize this by reducing any opportunity for your product surface to not be covered. So if you're vacuum bagging, this reduces a lot of that, or even if you're bagging something and you remove most of the errors, such that all the surface is in contact with something that's going to prevent sublimation of water, you're preventing that.

[14:13] The 3rd thing is, is that because you're actually in a concentrated solution and not totally frozen, right? certain oxidative changes and other changes, enzymatic changes, whatnot, can take place in a freezer,

[14:23] acidity of fats is one that's very well known. Fats can become more rancid in the freezer if they're stored. And you're reducing that by vacuuming at a high level of vacuum. So you want to, you know, a high, high level of vacuum when you're doing this. And that's going to retard those kinds of things, thereby increasing the shelf life on the inside of a freezer. So the steps that you're taking, right, should ensure that you have a very long shelf life, right?

[14:46] One thing you should notice that freezing is not a prevention, if freezing doesn't kill bacteria necessarily. So the safety of a product when you go when it goes into the freezer isn't any better than it is when it comes out, the freezer just

[14:58] arrests kind of any sort of bacterial degradation during its freeze time.

[15:03] If you actually want to preserve things for a dang near infinity. You need a freezer that actually does freeze all the way down to the point where everything in the product is frozen. And for that, you need a super deep freeze, like our friends Mark Ladner has over there at the Del Posto that keeps things at like -79.

[15:19] Uh, I think Fahrenheit or Celsius, I forget which, which, um, in French is dang cold, and most people can't do at home. And in there, there's no liquid water left in the substance at all. And so, in essence, it's in suspended animation. Okay, next, I'm a big fan of the sous vide octopus tentacles as they are tender, but don't have the honey-ish taste. It seems to come out when cooked conventionally for a long time in stews. Um, My question is, uh,

[15:44] cook this news. After most experimentation, ruling out suppliers. I got octopus from Victorian and West Australian sources. I've worked out the timings in the both under pressure book and the modernist cuisine

[15:55] book, result in an overcooked pappy mess that falls to bits or delaminates for want of a better word. Prior to stealing, the legs are blanched for 45 seconds in a big pot of water and sealed to a medium vacuum. The size of the octopus doesn't seem to influence the time that much of cooking, but the common across any cooking time is the legs seem to lose a lot of

[16:13] fluid that sets in much the same way as a gelatin, and they never seem to look like the pictures. Not that I'm complaining, they still taste good, and the octogoo makes a great addition to sauces and makes a mean ramen. During some tests, I've worked out that the timing needs to be reduced one. one to one. 5 hours, about 25 to 30% of the recommended cooking times. By the way, under pressure, I consulted it and their recommended octopus cooking is 77 degrees Celsius for 5 hours. Um, But size seems to make little. Oh, these can be big critters, where I come from, with 4 tentacles weighing in at over one. 8 kilograms, which is like almost £5 for us Americans here. But size seems to make little difference. I think this is a result of the practice of tenderizing that occurs down here using a

[16:57] free saw cycle or a small cement mixer. But I'm interested to get your take on it, changed. Cheers. Cheers, James. I like that. Cheers. from Chains. That's going to be that's going to be my sign off on letters. Jeers. See if anyone gets it. Anyway, so, Nastasia, remember when we cooked that giant octopus, were you there that day? Yeah, so True World Foods, which is a Japanese supplier and which, you know, UG Haraguchi, who now is working here at Roberta's and has his own ramen shot. Yuji, Go Yuji, anyway, Yuji used to be our supplier from True World. And he once got us a giant octopus tentacle. Remember that sucker? was big. And here's the, and we cooked it. And before I go on, because I'm going to forget to mention it. The interesting thing that no one talks about with octopus cookery. And that Nils and I used to think about quite a bit and only had a couple times to experiment

[17:46] with is that N McGee talked about, we talked about it a lot in the McGee, Harold McGee classes, who I'm going to see next week at Harvard, by the way, next

[17:52] week, cooking issues is going to be in Harvard. I can see if I can. I got to see if we can do the show from Harvard though. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, because we're doing the Harvard lecture again next week. Uh, okay, octopus. By the way, I'm sorry, I have so many, so many diversions that no one knows what I started talking about, but

[18:09] this, you had to excuse me. how my brain works. So, um, octopus are like the smartest things. like one of the smartest things in the ocean. They only live for like two, like summer even shorter, but like the big ones like two, 3 years. And then after they, either the males, after they do their business. you know what I mean? with the women, right? They go senile and just start wandering around on the floor and let themselves get of the ocean and start letting themselves get eaten by anything that goes

[18:35] around. They go, it's called senility. It's senescence. So this is literally what happens. The males do that, right? And then they're like, man, they wander around the floor and just get eaten and taken apart and stuff like that. The female octopus. Whatever. They don't give a crap anymore. It's like literally like they just wander around on the floor of the ocean drunk and crazy and then get eaten. The female octopus holds itself up, like doesn't eat

[18:57] anymore, and sits there with its funnel, just airy, like, you know, blowing water over the surface of its eggs to prevent kind of parasites from attaching and to protect them in case the poop hits the fan down

[19:09] there. Then as soon as the eggs hatch, she wanders off and dies and starves or whatever and it's done. Yeah. So anyway, so there's these weird things that are that are incredibly smart. like kind of amazing. They have amazing skin, amazing abilities, like cephalopods in general, of which octopus is my favorite. although I'm probably not to eat. Probably squid is my favorite to eat. Cephalopod. I think it goes like this. I think it goes squid. Then octopus, cuttlefish being dead last in my in my cephalopod ranking of eating. Anyway, they're like incredibly smart. And if they live for even, like, you know, twice or 3 times as long, it's my feeling that we would have octopus butlers on

[19:47] like in like aquariums on motors, like following us around, like doing our workforce because they would have evolved to that much higher level of thinking. And if they lived in order of magnitude longer, like 30 years. I have no question that they would have evolved to the point where they'd be out here just kicking our behinds left and

[20:03] right and that we'd be in little cages and they'd be marveling at how well we could unscrew a jar with our tentacles, i.e. fingers.

[20:08] Yeah, man, they're really amazing creatures, but delicious. Anyway, something you might not know is that the different tentacles of an octopus taste different, right? So they have dominant tentacles and non-dominant tentacles. So that's an interesting thing, especially because we usually eat octopus, like hacked up in a salad. There's no way to know. And also, the texture of the tentacle is radically different depending on where in the tentacle you get it. So we did a comparative tasting of this giant octopus tentacle from the base of the tentacle all the way to the tip.

[20:35] And it's been many years since we did it. But I believe the sweet spot was somewhere, like towards the 1st 3rd of the, not the thin part. You didn't like the thin part, right? That's the more rubbery part. That's the more rubbery part. And by rubbery, I mean, like the same texture as the small part of the lobster claw. You know, the small part of the lobster claw has that weird texture. Yeah. So the I believe the tip of the tentacle has that kind of a texture more, which makes sense if you think about it.

[21:00] But you don't want the very base either. I think it was like right around the 1st third. And you could do that in this tentacle because it was like 3 feet long. It was crazy. Uh, and so uh, the way we did it similar to the way you did. We did Japanese style where it slowly dipped tentacle point 1st so it curls into itself, then put in a bag and

[21:17] vacuumed, and it does indeed release a lot of goo. And this is the difference between oven cooking something or pot cooking something and doing it in a bag because the one thing that people always

[21:26] don't think about or rarely think about when they're cooking in a vacuum bag is there's no reduction inside that bag at

[21:32] all. And so what that means is all the juices that are exuded from the meat itself end up in the bag. That said, so you're not going to get that concentration, which is where that honeyness is coming from that you get if it's kind of reducing in its own goo over time in an oven.

[21:46] That said, that octagoo is delicious, but I don't think there's any way that you can get around that.

[21:53] As for the other problem you had, which is the shorter cooking time. I haven't done a comparative study. I know about freestyling, which talking about before is basically ice crystals rupturing the flesh so that when it thaws out, it's going to drip, but then also be more tender. That works. And so does the technique we call beating the hell out of, which is also practiced by some

[22:14] people, but I myself have never run a comparative study of a non-frozen versus a fresh

[22:18] octopus, and I've never run a comparative study of a beaten hell out of versus not the beaten hell out of an

[22:23] octopus. So I can't really speak to whether or not your octopus is different from our octopus. And by that, I mean, whether your octopus is different from Nathan Mirabel's octopus and Thomas Keller's octopus, which are the 2 sources that you cited. That said, some people like their octopus to be a pappy mess, which I don't. I like a little more tooth in the octopus. Nastasia, what do you like, a mushy mess or more tooth? Tooth. Yeah. So it could just also be a matter of taste because one person's mush is another person's tender. And so I think, that's a nice way to say it, right? So I don't know. It's really all a matter of taste. I didn't time it when we did it. We literally did it by pulling the bag out of the water and squeezing it. We also, I believe, did it at a much higher temperature. I don't think when we do our tests, we did our tests at 77. Um, I think we did a good bit higher, like 85. So I can't really speak to it, but we did not cook for 5 hours. There's no way on God's earth we cooked that thing for 5 hours. We just kept pulling it out of the bag and squeezing it. In our opinion, the amount of time did make a difference based on size. And the reason I say this is because the tips of the tentacles were definitely done from the base of the tentacles. So the size did make a significant difference in our opinion, but that also could be that the different parts of the muscle were different.

[23:34] So we didn't test, we didn't basically were schmucks, were schmucks. What we should have done is is taking the octopus tentacle and sectioned it all the way down in an exactly, you know, same sized strip all the way

[23:47] down in case it along the length. But you can't do that either because octopus muscle, the way it's structured, it's

[23:55] what do they call it? hydrostat, hydraulic hydrostat, something like that. There a word for the way octopus muscles work. And it's the same way that our tongue works. Our tongues are articulated, so we can move them in any direction, even though there's no bones. And so there's a particular muscular arrangement in an octopus, same as an elephant's trunk that allows that to happen. And so taking an internal portion of it, it's not going to be the same as taking the external portion. So you can't win. Turns out, as usual, Nastasia. can't win. Wait, you never wrote the post on that, did you? No, of course I never wrote the post on that. I just had the information in my head. I never wrote the post. We had the pictures. It was Piper who did it. And as an shout out to someone who's going to buy the Bamnox, cleaning the Bam, this is also from

[24:30] James. Cleaning the Bamnox is really easy. Run it in hot soapy water, then clean water and wipe down the housing. The blades group really well, and I've used the units that are 25 years old are still going strong. Make sure you get a 240 watt for home use. Badass power. Bad makes from James. It's not our commercial, as James. I was just reading it with my commercial voice. Yeah. With that, let's take our 1st break. Cooking your shoes. So you don't shot the devil with your rock and roll load knows that country music's gonna save your soul, the devil buns is

[25:00] groove with them rhythm and blows that cell. It's gonna get you sun in the air.

[25:13] I wish that is sad and those things that that took you. To God and spirit, man, of a team to one advance. The one who comes in people with them. The rock game goes to the brisket. Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods market. Did you know that pollinators are needed for more than two-thirds of the world's crop species? Most of these pollinators are bees. However, North America's bee population has been steadily declining since the 1990s. Whether you live in the country of the city, you can show your commitment by hosting a hive in your backyard or even on a rooftop. The beekeeping movement is growing, so you're sure to find swarms of folks who can help you find your way. Learn more about the ways you can help be the solution at bothfoodsmarket.com slash share the buzz. Damage is done.

[26:15] You'll see that stones in hell by the villain as well. Really, Jack? Really, Jack, be the solution. It's not my, it's not my copy. I thought it was kind of nice. So what music are we listening to? That's more of Damon's band, Brothers. Damon Bolty. Are we going to get a shout out to the to the thing next week or not? Are you going to give a shout out to it? Come to the heritage radio. And what is it, annual fundraising party? Right here, huh? Our 1st annual fundraiser. First annual members only fundraising party at Roberta Pizzeria on Sunday, September,

[26:51] the what, eighth? You got to give me the... you don't have it in front of you. If I'm gonna if I'm gonna scream like monster truck things, you have to have it in front of you, it's it's hard to put the monster truck voice on and we live at the same time. good news, though. We have some additions. We have sellers at Jasper Hill going to bring cheese. Biggie Grip type from Daptone Records is going to be DJing Funk and Soul with special guests. And get this, Brian Kenny, the guy you know from the Hearst Ranch

[27:16] commercial, will be playing songs. He might just play the Hearst Ranch commercial. Well, now there's something I have to say if he's not going to play it, we're not doing it. That's it. think he'll do it. Okay. All right, because I was about to walk out. Nastasia and I have decided that our New Year's resolution last year and it's a little late, so we'll have to do it again for this year. is to be complete divas at all times, right? You don't have the yellow Skittles. out. There is periage UA, so that means I'm going to be here. I'll fly through some menu items too. Michael Anthony from Gramercy is doing wood fire, roasted market, vegetables. Evan from Paris Hall, cooking sockeye salmon from Bristol Bay. Brooks is doing a brown butter, sour apricot, semi-fredo with olive oil croutons. Did I mention what a badass pastry cooked tomato is? Yeah, he is. And this one, this is the last Brady? How's this for a menu item description? Pickled forest mushroom salad with handmade farmer's cheese, sidewalk greens, and toasts. Sidewalk greens? Sidewalk greens. Let me tell you, you can collect lots of sidewalk greens on the lower east side. I just don't happen to pick them. I'm a little nervous about the exhaust fumes from the in my lamb's quarters. I'm assuming these were not from the lower east side. I'm assuming it's lamb Bushwick? I hope not. I'm assuming it's land quarters. those things grow all over the city. Like there's lamb's quarters all over this city that you can just pick and use. Like Purslane, I guess. No, no, it's like Oric. like, man, it's like salad. good. It does not, it's not like that sour. good. I mean, again, I've only collected it not next to where I've seen homeless people poop. What? that's true I'm not saying there's homeless poop in this dish, people. You should still pay the money and come to the members only party. Jack's horrified now. All of a sudden Jack stops talking about them. Hey, look, homeless people's poop wash is off the same as horse and dog poop does. Don't worry about it. So it's heritage radionetwork.eventbright.com. How much are tickets? They're 150, but you're cooking issues listeners, so you can use the code cooking issues for a $50 discount. Oh, snap. Has anyone used our code yet? have to check that out. Yeah. Are you gonna charge more if you come to the door? No. You should charge more if you come in. VIP is 250, yes. And for that, Nastasia will smile at you while she has the glass of piers juet in her hand. Only if she has the glass in her hand. One of my favorite things about Nastasia, and this is true favorite thing, is that she

[29:34] is a sucker for champagne. loves, as do I, by the way. I love champagne. love it And Nastasia loves champagne so much that even if we're trying to serve a

[29:45] cocktail instead of drinking our cocktail to like to sell the cocktail that we're making, she's like,

[29:49] crap, man, I want champagne. I want me some champagne. Well, if you put strawberry in it. your strawberry. Is that what we're going to do? I think so Yeah, that's what we're doing. Well, it's not going to be strawberry. It going to be a different fruit that's in season. But something like that. Something like that. Okay. Buy the dang tickets. Support this show by buying the tickets with our code so that people know that this is a PBS thing here, right? This is our PBS pitch that they know that, you know, you care about, if you care about quality programming, like cooking issues radio. Show your support by becoming a member of Heritage Radio today, right? Does that sound more like what they would say? Good PBS voice. Yeah, thank you. Okay, another question. From Co-F Miles about coon recon pressure cookers. I'm a longtime listener to your cooking issues radio show, albeit offline and seriously time delayed

[30:34] via the podcast. The question may be more for David because Nastasia doesn't care. It doesn't mess in. But I've been experimenting with an 8 quart coon recon pressure cooker. I would now like to start making healthy quantities of stock. That means big. I'm looking for a cooker between 28 and 30 quarts. To date, I have been able to find only aluminum cookers in that size. Since my stove is induction. I need stainless steel cookers or one with a stainless steel bottom plate. Do you guys know where I might look, thanks in advance. Co-F Miles. No. There is, as far as I know, no easily purchasable pressure

[31:08] cooker that is that large other than the ones made by American, like American pressure cooker Americans. Wisconsin Foundry, and they make the large ones. And Nastasia, we have one with the screw down things. the answer to that question this morning. What? This question? There was no, yeah. Yeah, I did care. That's fair, fair. I'm going to take that as a smack. By the way, what you're hearing now is Nastasias. I get beaten on by Dave on the radio show. Again, if you guys heard even 12th of what she says to me off air, you would have no sympathy.

[31:42] I'm just saying that because that's her ploy. It's her ploy. I looked it up this morning because I was like, this guy thinks I won't know the answer. So he's asking David. Oh, you see, it's actually because, you see, you never know what she's going to take personally. You're getting better insight into the Lopez mind here, by the way, folks, which I appreciate. But there is a simple solution for you. Um, The simple solution is they, uh, you can buy this. It's preposterously overpriced, but you can look online for the Max Burton 8 inch induction interface disk. And it's just a slug of stainless steel with a handle on it that you put in between the induction burner and your stainless steel, your aluminum

[32:22] pressure cooker. And with that, you can then they're also do ceramics, glass. You can heat anything because the induction burner is instead of heating your pot directly is heating a steel slug in between your pot and

[32:35] the thing. It's not as efficient or as fast as a

[32:41] normal, you know, induction in a pot, right? Because you're not heating the pot directly, but it is still fairly

[32:47] efficient, and I haven't tested it myself, but it should be fairly fast, not as fast, but fairly fast. Won't be on, obviously, on ceramics because it takes a long time for the heat to travel through. ceramic no matter how it's applied. But they charge like a 100 bucks for it, which is an outrage. You can just buy like a steel plate, like 8 by 8 or like 12 by 12, but you really want to fit the size of your pot. You can just buy a steel plate online. It doesn't have to be stainless even, stainless is nicer and it won't rust, but anything like that, a slug to put in there. But look at, so you can get the basic, like, look of how it looks. Max Burton, 8 inch induction interface disk with heatproof handle. And that's your solution. If you're worried about putting stuff inside of aluminum because you think that there's a taste issue, although I cook an aluminum quite often, you know, barring certain, you know, highly whatever. Anyway, you can put a Bain Marie on the inside of it, a large Bain Marie on the inside of one of those pressure cookers and still make a large quantity of stock or you can cook directly in the aluminum. One last thing, if you have a lot of space, money, and power, you can buy a used autoclave, which is a medical piece of equipment that functions as a pressure

[33:49] cooker, and you can actually use an autoclave as an extremely large pressure cooker, but unless you, you know, you have to keep it in your garage or something like

[33:57] that. But that's what they use, they use, Frankie, the instrument, the equipment company sells autoclaves that are

[34:04] repurposed for kitchens. And also, I think, I forget who makes them here, Market Forge, pressure cookers that are basically like

[34:10] autoclaves that are meant for kitchens, but they're not often used outside of industrial institutional cooking here.

[34:15] And in Europe, they're used like Nils used to use them in Sweden on large amounts of potatoes. Okay. Hi, Dave, Nastasian Joe and Jack. This is coming in from Arnie Skoug in Norway. Listen to your podcast yesterday. I've had a few tips for the guy who asked about shrimp cakes and sausages. I'm Norwegian. In Norway, fish cakes are traditional popular way of processing fish, commonly made from cod,

[34:38] haddacompolic. Homemade fish cakes invariably use egg, flour, and potato starch as a binder. It is said that not using a binder renders them short, that is grainy. Commercially made fish cakes use different binders like tapioca and contain only from 40 to 60% fish. However, I've been experimenting on using a different approach, wanting to use as much fit as possible for flavor. And I've been using a method adopted from research I've done on sausage making. I read some mayor, I think, in an article by Lynn Knipe, associate professor of Ohio State, uh,

[35:02] that, uh, in the meat department that regulating the pH value of meat of meat is a good way of obtaining a good primary buying and sausage. I lost the article in a computer crash and can't find it again. So this is from memory. The article says that a relatively high pH in meat helps solubleize myocin in meats. It also says pour slaughtering practices can result in meat with a low pH value due to improper chilling, and also for animals that freaked out when they die. The pH can drop quick because they have not enough glycogen in them. Anyway, this promotes the breakdown of glycogen in the muscles. A higher pH also increases the water holding capacity of proteins. Anyway, I've used this experiment to I've used this information to experiment regulating pH in sausage meat and I usually incorporate sodium carbonate in the salt about one to 2% by weight of salt.

[35:43] I wonder whether he's actually means sodium carbonator, whether it means bicarb. Not sure. But look up Harold McGee on sodium carbonate versus bicarb, but he's basically raising the pH of the meat. This greatly improves the binding capacity of the sausage, sometimes too much and the sausage becomes rubbery. In those cases, I add vinegar to the sausage meat and mix well, which loosens the texture again. Back to shellfish protein. I've used the same technique with fish cakes, with good results, and believe it would be worth trying. It's interesting. Um, I've also experienced that the freshness of the fish is important, but I don't know if this is because of pH. What you're talking about there, and he agrees with me on the grinding and stuffing, and says you use a sausage stuffer, but they're expensive because the auger in a meat grinder heats up the meat again.

[36:17] You can buy inexpensive sausage stuffers in this country. If you go to like harbor freight or northern tools or grizzly and buy sausage stuffers that are intended for hunters, they're not as well built as the normal kitchen ones, but they'll work. You can buy a £5 sausage stuff for under with a hand crank for under a 100 bucks, I think. Okay, so the article he's talking about, which you should read is by Lynn, L-Y-N-N, Knipe, K-N-I-P-E, Meet Export Research Center of Iowa State University, which is why you had problems, and it's called

[36:43] use of phosphates and sausage. Read it. It says a lot about phosphate, which increases the water holding capacity and also helps fat emulsification by altering the ionic balance in

[36:52] there. So go ahead and read it. Arnie will be in New York in February, March of next year. Are there any classes he can take? and going to have Nastasia look into that and we'll talk about it next because I don't know what my classes are. They tell me like a day before and I just show up and cook them kindly. William writes in about milk. Howdy y'all? I love making custard based ice cream. I understand that tempering the egg yolks is a normal procedure, especially for food safety. Are there other benefits to tempering the yolks? Why not use pasteurized eggs, sous pasteurized or Davidson's brand pasteurizing and skip the tempering altogether? Also, I live next door to a dairy farm that offers raw milk and cream. My country living folks tell me that I should still pasteurize the raw milk, so I never bothered going there. I've never had raw milk. Does it really taste much better? Okay, 1st of all, on the custard ice cream. There is a difference between like ones that haven't been cooked out and ones that have, if you look at it, a creme anglaise base is thicker than if you just blended the ingredients together.

[37:39] So I've never tasted side by side. Same recipe cooked normally versus not cooked. Okay? But I cooked actually to an anglaise up to like 82 to 15 minutes in a uh, edge of Celsius for 15 minutes in a circulator. However, I'm assuming that you're going to get a faster meltdown in the one that hasn't been cooked out just because there's a higher viscosity

[38:00] in the one that has been cooked. That said, Sam Mason, who's like an ice cream genius, like, you know,

[38:05] like an ice cream savant almost. He's crazy ice cream delicious. Doesn't like the taste of cooked eggs in his custards and doesn't cook there for the custards. And I just started experimenting with low temperature,

[38:16] uh, basically pasteurizing my uh, ice creams at like 60 degrees Celsius or 62 degrees Celsius, which is what I did when I was in

[38:22] Colombia last. And they're great. So, you know, I don't think that there's uh, in other words, you can make, and Sam makes some of the most delicious ice cream that I've ever had in my life. And that stuff. Uh, he doesn't he doesn't cook it out. So I think it's mainly a safety issue. And when I cook for myself, generally, I just take the salmonella risk and eat it without pasteurizing, but I've been having to cook for pregnant people

[38:44] recently. So I pasteurize the stuff out and out like 60. Okay, on raw milk. Does it taste better? Does it taste worse? I am going to defer to Ann Mendelssohn, who wrote a book on milk. And her argument on raw milk versus not raw milk is, I think, incredibly well

[39:01] put. And she basically says that most people who talk about raw milk versus pasteurized

[39:06] milk come at it from some crazy perspective other than taste. And she is a taste person. She says she's had that most pasteurized milk that you get. It's also homogenized pasteurized milk, by the way, is bad in the supermarkets compared to what the best milk can be. However, just having it be

[39:23] raw doesn't make it better. The best milk she's had have been raw milks, but they've been from, you know, very

[39:28] small, like producers who take a lot of care, have the right kind of cows, have the right kind of feed in X, Y, and Z. So her main point, which is the best point, and you so rarely read food writing, where people come at it from what I think is the correct point of view, which

[39:44] is, it's not, it's, you know, she's not starting from a preconceived notion of what's best.

[39:50] She's saying, hey, taste is the notion that I'm shooting for, what makes it taste better. So she's had horrible raw milk, and she said fantastic raw milk. And so, uh, go read her discussion of it in her book on milk, uh, and see what you think. Chris Young, you know, from Modernist Cuisine, you know, interestingly points out that it tastes as a matter of taste. In Africa, right? Everyone likes the taste of what we think is ridiculously overcooked milk. And if you tried to give them milk that tasted close to coming out of the cow as possible, they would think it's awful because they prefer the taste of cooked milk.

[40:19] So taste is taste. While I was doing this. I looked up a website called realmilkfax.com, which is a

[40:25] chill out for a law firm called Marler Clark, and this is a law firm that deals in food poisoning. So they're big on they make they make money based on assuming people as a result of food poisoning.

[40:35] That's how they do it. But they have some interesting things. And from them I got to the CDC. The CDC is on a basically a crusade now to stop people from wanting to ask for raw

[40:49] milk because they see that there's a huge surge in popularity in raw milk now among kind of health crunchies and then taste advocates. And so they have a big thing. So look up real rawmilkfax.com and they point to these 2 cases of kids. I would never serve raw milk, by the way, to like a young kid because if they get an E. coli breakout problem with a young kid. There's lots of things you wouldn't serve to a young kid other than just raw milk because of the possibility of a breakdown. I'm not going to have enough time to fully go through. Wait, so classes are the only one they have online, and it's hard to find, is um, 2 beat intensive September

[41:25] 28th, 29th of this month. I don't think they're doing hydrochloids anymore. But if enough people. No, no, no. supposed to teach one called cooking issues, but like we never, never, uh... Well, maybe you should take that over and do it at the space. Yeah I don't know. Anyway, I think I'm going to have to go more into this pasteurization, not pasteurization and health and not next week, but I would like to point you to a website before we go, that I just, when I was researching this

[41:52] stuff, came across, and they, NHS, which is the National Health Services of Britain, which by the way, I grew up completely frightened of, because my, you know, my parents are, well, you know, I grew up, my dad's an engineer, my mom's a

[42:06] doctor, my stepfather's doctor. I grew up in kind of a doctor-y kind of a household. And I'm not going to have a time to go into this. But basically, so that, you know, when I was a kid, they were like, you know, you think that the healthcare in Britain is great, but if you're over the age of 65 and you need dialysis, they

[42:20] let you die. This was back in the like 80s. That's probably not the case anymore, whatever. I'm going to get some calls on this crap. But, um, an interesting website that's put out by the NHS is

[42:30] called, um, how to read health news. Oh, it's called choices behind the headlines. And one of the articles in it is How to Read the Health News by Alicia White. And we need a website like this in this country where it's basically, uh, they go and they debunk all of the health related claims that are made in the news. So, like, a big news story hits, like, uh, you know, gastric bypass surgery surges in the UK, and then they'll go and they'll be like, no, it's not actually surged because we're a nation of, like, you know, 1000000s and 1000000s of

[43:01] people and, you know, increase from like a 1000 to 3,000. So yeah, it's like 300% more, but that's still like a drop in the bucket, stuff like that. And they actually break down studies and why they're

[43:12] crap. And then also say how the news media is misinterpreting scientific studies and not doing their

[43:17] research. So anyone involved in healthcare, uh,

[43:22] and health and uh, research should in the U.S. should check out how they're doing it in Britain. And we'll talk more about that. Hopefully we'll get a comment on it. And it's called behind the headlines, on the NHS website, NHS, I think.uk. Look up how to read Health News by Dr. Alicia White, and that, maybe we'll talk more about it next week. If I'm back in next week, we might have to skip a week. Depends on whether we have time when I'm at Harvard. Are we teaching on Tuesday? don't think so. Midnight. Tuesday night? So then maybe we can do the show live from Harvard with Harold McGee cooking issues.

[43:58] Vicious, fish, vodka. 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

[44:13] 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. HeritageRadio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.