[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by Fairway Market, like no other market, a New York City institution that sells the best local,

[0:06] national, and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit fairwaymarket.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:35] I'll see you in my dreams. Jack, is that our new, is that us now? No, no. not. That's just, that's plexophonic, but, you know, we, uh, at Heritage

[0:47] Radio here, we're going all original, all licensed music. So the cooking issues theme is no longer. So, okay, so like no longer as of now. No longer as of now. So basically, okay, so for those of you that don't know how this works, right? As with all other things in life, theoretically, if you use on the

[1:04] air, in some sort of a program, a song, you were supposed to pay for it, right? You're supposed to pay, what is it, BMI or ass cap, whatever it is, right? Right, Jack? And we decided we didn't want to do that because we were a nonprofit. Yeah, and we're so cool and we have so many friends that make music. Yeah? All right. So now that I know that we're on the air. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live. A little bit late today from the back of Roberta's even later than normal, actually. Yeah. From the back of Roberta's Pizzeria, Bushwick, Brooklyn, here in the studio, Witness Dodger, they Amber Lopez and Jack Insley, our intrepid engineer, and what is your title over there at the

[1:40] radio? Grand Vizier. That's a cool title. Executive producer. Executive producer. So they're call me these days. By the way, everyone wants to know what Nastasia's title is with the organization, and by the way, no one even knows what the organization means. No one knows what company we're talking about, or what the hell we're talking about. Cooking issues, not really a business, right? It says? Right? So it's hard to have a title there, but you have one. She has the same title across anything she works for. And basically, you can treat her however you want so long as her title is heir parent. I felt like that needed applause. Yeah, well, you know, I don't really know what, like, I said, when she said this is what she wanted her title to be, and that was, you know, her only condition for working, really, strangely enough. I said, well, uh, like air parent or what? She's like nah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Rice does? Yeah, true, true story. Okay, call your questions live, 2718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. So anyway, just got back from London. Mary old Mary old England action, right? Uh, where uh, I was with Harold McGee. We were at the kind of the bar this year's, you know, I guess last year, the year, 2 years ago, whatever it was, the bar wedding of the

[2:53] century was Audrey Saunders of Peggy and Robert Hess of, you know, he writes about, you know, bars of, you know, bar kind of master, writer,

[3:03] thinker, cocktail boy, I think is his blog, right? The name of this blog? I don't know. Anyways, so that was the wedding of the bar wedding of the century. This year's, well, the American bar wedding in the century. And this one is, uh, you know, Rhea, formerly of Prono

[3:17] Ricard, and good friend, and uh, Tony Konoyaro of 69 Colbrook Row in Zetter Townhouse in uh, in the London there. Some of my favorite bars in the world. So we went over. I should say we, I went over, and Harold McGee also went over, Nastasia was like, no, crap on that. And okay, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. do I know? Anyway, I went over to London for the wedding. But the wedding wasn't in London. was in the Cotswolds, which was beautiful. But in order to write off the entire trip, Harold. Harold... Yeah, you know, what are you going to do? Harold McGee and I went to the Brogdale collection again in Kent Favisham, which is, for those of you that don't know, where the United Kingdom

[3:53] stores all of its fruit. Now, did I mention this on the last show that I was going to go there? Did I talk about it in general? Just quick, quick refresher, quick refresher. So when you're storing fruit, you store it in the form of a tree, right? And so you go there and they actually have all the trees. Now, if you go to the United States, it's fruit repositories, which run by the good

[4:13] old, it's kind of a governmental plus university effort, right? So our apples are run in, you know, in conjunction between Cornell University and United States

[4:21] government, and pears and small fruits are in Corvallis, where we're going to go to, are you going to that Stas or no? No, it is. Oh, to Portland Cocktail Week. I hope to go to Corvallis, which is where the other ones are stored. So here's what I've learned about American fruit collections. They really don't care. They don't care. Like no one goes there to visit it, right? And you can go in there and go absolutely nutty ape crap on the trees and eat as much fruit as you want with almost no supervision. This is what I found. Whereas in the Brogdale, which is in Kent, it's not the case. They they, they don't let you just go, go crazy. Now Nastasia and I, was it, 2 years ago? We went and we went, we went nutty bunks in the, in the orchards and we were able to eat whatever we want. No one gave us any sort of guff because there was literally nobody there. This year, it was pretty hardcore, and we had to sneak around and we got kicked out of the orchards like 3 times.

[5:12] Yeah. But here's another thing, sad to say, for all of you English folk out there. This is like, and I asked some fruit growers there. This is the worst season for taste for British apples and whatnot in

[5:26] many, many, many years because they had not enough sunlight and more than usual, less

[5:32] an average sun, more than usual rain. And the apples just stars were not. They weren't bueno. I tasted a bunch. This listen, I love the Brogdale. There's no offense to the Brogdale, but the apples just were no love, right? And I had apples. I tasted apples that I knew exactly what they tasted like, American apples, plus English apples that I knew what they tasted like. So coxes, I tasted cocks, empires, all these other things. of them, none of them, none of them good. I also learned something else. The English prefer their fruit a little more sour than we do. Sour. There was a, speaking of sour, there was like, there's no way she doesn't know anything. So she's not listening. But there's this woman on the tour with us, right? Because I had to take this tour to get out there. So we had to sit around. All these people. They care about stuff that Harold and I really just don't care about. Like the value of the trees as trees. Harold and I look, look, this is an apple tree. This is a pear tree. Its value lies in the fruit, in the fruit, the fruit. And then they're all like, the horticultural, blah, blah, blah. Nastasia hates this kind of talk. Some people care about that. But why would you care about that? It's the fruit. In other words, if an apple tree looked like a cup of water and yet it made delicious apples. Wouldn't you be like apples? No? She's talking about the value of the tree that produces the fruit. That's so delicious, right? No, she didn't care about the deliciousness. First of all, the lady had no taste. I picked an apple off of a tree that was so horribly underripe. It tasted like you were sucking on raw starch, and because apples, before they're ripe, they taste very starchy. And they're usually very acidic and they have very little roundness. So this was, this tasted of starch and malic acid and nothing else. And it was overly hard and, you know, like kind of teeth breaking as you chew into it. She loved it. She's like, this would be fantastic with the fine cheese. And I was like, I was like, this lady has to be an anomaly. And then I asked around, they're like, no, man. No, man. crazy, depressing. Anyway, call her. you were on the air. Hey, Dave, this is Johnny from Memphis again. How you doing? Doing all right. how you doing? Doing good. Thanks for the, uh, I'm, uh, suckling pig a few weeks ago. turned out good. It did. turned out well. Turned out good. I'm happy. I got another question for you. All right. I know that you don't need to, uh, the salt, uh, like a pork butt or brine a pork butt before you

[7:51] sous vide it. Right. And if I was gonna, like, open it up like a book and put, uh, herbs, like, pichata

[7:59] style, and then roll it up and sous vide it. I wouldn't need to brine it, right? Okay, so there's there's 2 ways to think about it. You don't need to, so brining does 2 things, 3 things, really. It, it, uh, it alters the protein so that they're less apt to get overcooked, right? And that's the reason why a lot of people do it when they're doing traditional cooking. It also, um, and that you don't need to do for sous vide. It not necessary. Two, they do it to flavor the meat. Right? And so for the flavor, you know, that's still necessary, if that's the flavor you want. But three, it also tends to firm up the meat a little bit and make it taste less like fresh meat. And that's okay in like a chicken, not okay in a piece of

[8:49] steak, and then it's up to you in a piece of pork, whether that's okay or not. You know what I mean? See, uh, what called their pork? Oh. If I, if I have been trouble, uh, making like a roulade style, um, that, uh, putting some transflu terminates on it. Yep. And I know it likes gelatin, and if I make the roulade sous vide, and then

[9:17] want to cuss the outside. Um, maybe I should use water and like a pesto spread instead of oil. Does that make it come apart the oil evening? Uh, okay, so, I mean, anytime that there is uh, oil in between, I mean, here's the thing. Some oil, I wouldn't go water base, it's just going to leak everywhere. I think the oil is not going to be too much of a problem. As long as there is some meat to meat contact, it's not going to be a problem. Which transportaminates are you using? Uh, either one, I'm adding gelatin if I'm using the RAM, uh, a couple

[9:55] shapes. Um, and I use a GS, whichever. Yeah, you shouldn't need that. I mean, the RM has a casing as a binder. You shouldn't need to to, um, to add it. Um, I mean, if you were, if it wasn't sticking, I guess you could add some or that, you know, uh, I mean, I would, I would keep it, if you want to brine it beforehand, I would, you could just let it brine

[10:18] itself based, salt it. You know what I mean? Then add the transcutaminates as a powder. I wouldn't go crazy on it. And then the question, is it going to, is it going to, what's going to happen if you put pusto on it? You need meat to meet contact. Do you know what I mean? You need the meat to meet contact. You could make a, you could make a gelatin, you could make a gelatin water herb slurry, and that sucker would glue up. You know what I'm saying? Uh... But I've dissolved the transclude, time a nice end of that and put it in the cryo back, get the air out. Uh, I would make the slurry with the gelatin. Let it, you know, cool down till it's not set, but, you know, like maybe starting to get thick, whisk the

[11:06] transgutaminates into it, and then spread it on the thing and roll quick. Okay. That's what I would. All right. I appreciate you. All right, let us know. how it goes. I will. All right, thanks. Bye. Thanks a lot. bye So, stars, I didn't come across as too harsh on the on the on the Brits. It was just a bad year for them, right? Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Okay. I like how the style just lies, so I get off her back. You were wonderful. You want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. I wanna know exactly what happened. Anyways. Okay, got a question in from Philip Lamont. Hello, Nastasia and Dave. I just saw your lecture at Harvard and loved it. Nice. Thank you. But they only published the one that we did together, right? I think the one I did for the students was actually stronger because it was just about, it was focused more on the students. So it was about the science and what was going on, you know? Um, okay, uh, Philip's question. I have a small question about chlorophyll. I've been making an herb mayonnaise lately and I can't get it to stay green longer than one night. I make an herb puree by blanching the herbs in salted water and icing to keep them cold. I blend those herbs in an ice blender with just enough cold oil. After

[12:19] blending I add lemon juice or ascorbic acid. Then I add this to mayo via a robocoupe, which the subsequent mayo is made in. It is nice green, but not for long. Am I just screwed? It's an interesting question. I've never, uh, I've never, I haven't done enough tests with it to know 100%, but just kind of off the top of my

[12:40] head and I went back and looked at some of the books that I, uh, that I, uh, you know, that I love, uh, to see what their recommendations were. Now, you specifically want an herb mayonnaise, i.e. you want the flavor of the herb in it and not just a green mayonnaise,

[12:55] right? So what's most likely happening is, uh, you know, as most people know, there is a, um, there are, uh, there's an enzyme

[13:04] in, in, in herbs and many plants called, uh, I forget what they're called, like polyphenol oxidases, I

[13:09] think is what they're called. And they, when you break herbs or leaves or anything like that, apples. You release those enzymes that are otherwise locked up, such that they can interact with the rest of the juices from the cell,

[13:25] right? Some of those things are phenols that get altered by the enzyme and then can kind of stick together and form colored particles,

[13:34] right? Uh, and so that's what's happening. Now, there's a couple of things that inhibit those enzymes. One are antioxidants, ascorbic acid. So that's that's good. And 2 is heat. So if you heat an herb, blanch it, as you're doing, and salt it, blanching in salted water, by the way, is a good

[13:54] idea because it means you're going to leak less of the color and stuff out of the herb. So blanching in salted water, very good, putting it into

[14:03] cold water to stop heating, which was actually break down the chlorophyll, which is a separate problem of browning. That's what happens when you overcook the vegetables, right? And then having ascorbic acid. These are all the things that I would do. So, but let's take a look specifically what you say here. You blanch the stuff in salted water, and then ice it, and then blend those in an ice blender with cold oil.

[14:28] I don't think you really need to worry about the coldness of the oil and you don't need to worry about icing the blender. Okay? You're blending it with the oil there, I guess, to get the water oil stuff right so that when you add it to the mayonnaise, it's not going to break the emulsion. And that seems fine I guess. Um, lemon juice or ascorbic acid that you that you add afterwards also find. Um, and then add to the Mayo via a Robocoup. Here's what I would say. I wouldn't bother with the with the cold necessarily making it cold or icing the blender. Make sure you squeeze out the herbs after you blanch them to get rid of any of the stuff that's in them. I would take out stems. I would take out the stems, but I would also maybe use a different method. So you should go read, you should find, buy. Go to bookfinder.com and get the out of print book, uh, from Harold McGee, the curious cook, which I keep telling he has to bring back into uh, circulation. And he goes through an entire section in that book about keeping things

[15:27] green and all the various different interesting ways he's trying to keep pesto and things, which is a similar problem, green. And so I definitely recommend, um, I definitely recommend reading that. But here's how I would probably do it. If I was going to use your technique. I would blanch in water. Uh, then I would, in this cold, you know, in the in the salted water, very salted water. Pull it out, shock it, squeeze it, to get all of the stuff out, then directly blend that without added

[16:00] oil, with ascorbic acid right away. Boom. Then, uh, after you do that, I would add, if you wanted to, I would just start beating that

[16:08] into uh, mayonnaise, and then adding more oil is necessary to get the consistency back. I mean, that's that's what I would do. But also, I think one of your problems is, is that you are adding the solids. And it might be the solids in there that are causing the problem because when I looked at one of my favorite

[16:27] all time cookbooks, which is James Peterson's sauces, which is a very, in an early 90s classic, it's

[16:34] 1991, it came out, and it's one of my treasured books. And one of the sad things about cookbooks and cooking, you know, cookbook and thinking about books is there's lots of books, especially from that

[16:45] era before cooking was wildly popular among a bunch of people that have just fallen by the wayside and aren't red enough.

[16:52] So, you know, some of Bill Neal's old southern cookbooks are some of those books that aren't read enough these days. And, you know, James Peterson, obviously still famous, but I don't hear as many people talking about his sauces book, which I think is a classic as, you know, as much as they used

[17:08] to now. When you do read the book, by the way, and I recommend you go get in the book. Uh, you do see some of the, the, some of the that time in it. So at that time, reduced cream sauces were extremely popular. And so there's a lot of reduced cream sauces in that book that you wouldn't necessarily see on a menu these days. But you just got to, you know, whenever you read a really good book like that, you have to filter it through the lens of the time in which it was written.

[17:35] anyway. So I looked at what he had to say about

[17:39] it, and, you know, he calls it by its French name, Sauce Vert,

[17:43] a green mayonnaise. And the way he makes it is to actually make a chlorophyll juice. I'll just read you what he says. Uh, sauce, green mayonnaise. This mayonnaise tastes the same as basic unflavored mayonnaise because of the way he makes it. Only the color is different. Stir one half of a teaspoon, 3 grams of chlorophyll into one cup of mayonnaise, and to extract

[18:04] the chlorophyll from spinach leaves, C, uh, chapter 15, uh, butter sauces, and chlorophyll butter and whatnot. Don't worry, I have that for you, so I can read you that as well. If I can get my iPad to stop rotating on me. Uh, which I did test. I just test that. I test it. So I want to stay where I want it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Then, uh, so that's what that's what he says. You add the chlorophyll, and I'll talk about that in a second. He says mayonnaise can also be colored directly with the juice from spinach, watercress, or parsley. Now, here's the technique that's going to be important to you because I think this is how you should do it. Blanch the greens in a large pot of rapidly boiling salted water. Quickly rinse the greens in cold water, pat dry, and finally grind in a blender of food processor. Place the puree greens in the middle of the kitchen towel. Here's where he's doing something different from you and tightly wring the juice out into a bowl. This juice can then be used for coloring the mayonnaise. The puree can be combined directly with the mayonnaise and the sauce strained. So, and this think about this. This is the way that we make parsley oil, right? Even if you weren't to follow his directions and blanching. You can blanch in quotes, you can blanch herbs directly in oil, right? So you could take your oil, you could heat the oil with the herbs in it enough to kill the enzymes that are in the oil without ever putting it in the water.

[19:22] Then blend it, and then strain out the particles. And that's how we make things like parsley oil and herb oil. So I would do that instead. I think it's the solids that you're dealing with, and you could also get rid of the water blanching step. The only issue here is you're going to have to sprinkle a little extra escorbic acid into the mayonnaise as it's being made, which should dissolve into the water phase and have it be fine. But I think that is the key there is that you're getting rid of the solids and using the juice from it, right? And the thing he's not saying is that you can blanch the herbs directly in oil, so long as you're careful. You don't want them to brown. You want the temperature to stay below right around or below the boiling point of water. And you can see the bubbles coming up from the herbs and you know when to kind of like mellow it out to stop it from getting to brown.

[20:08] So for completeness sake, his recipe for chlorophyll butter, chlorophyll butter. This butter is good to have on hand for coloring. Hot sauce is green. Plain chlorophyll can be used for cold sauces. First prepare one ounce of chlorophyll. To do this, grind £one or 500 grams of raw spinach leaves with one half to one cup of water

[20:27] and a blender of food processor. Pour the green paste in the center of a clean kitchen towel and twist it to extract the green liquid. Gently heat the green liquid in a saucepan until it coagulates. Strain the liquid through a strainer, line with a wet towel. So you got to do that quickly before it turns brown. And then gently scrape the chlorophyll away from the inside of the towel with a

[20:44] spooner, a metal spatula. Chlorophyll can be stored in the refrigerator covered with a thin coating of oil, right? There you go, and prepare chlorophyll butter, work to chlorophyll with 4 times its volume of butter. So, I don't know whether any of this is helpful, but hopefully some of it is helpful. And let us go to our 1st commercial break.

[21:07] You are listening to Bohemia, who submitted their music, as listeners of cooking issues on heritageradionetwork.org.

[21:29] Today's program has been brought to you by Fairway Market, like no other market, a New York

[21:38] City institution that sells the best local, national, and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit fairwaymarket.com. Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins from Fairway Markets. I've devoted my idiot career to the old ways, the old recipes, the old tools, the old geography of where serious foods come from for centuries, and I've strived to make these wonderful things available to New Yorkers for 37 years, so it's a

[22:05] fete accompli for us to support heritage radio network. And I hope you will too, and I hope you'll keep tuning in. For more information, please visit Fairwaymarket.com. Like what you hear so far, support the network and become a member. Membership helps us bring you the best food radio in the world and gives you access to 1000s of dollars in discounts like the sustainably minded businesses that support us. To become a member, visit heritageradionetwork.org today. Hey Jack, what did he say? Did he say my idiot career, my whole idiot career? That's exactly what he said. Wow. that awesome? My whole idiot career. love that. Have you ever met Steve Jenkins? No, he yelled at me once from above the, you know, in the fairway, they have like a, right by the cheese thing. like an upper counter where like they can look down and see what's happening in the Cheeseland. He yelled at me from that once. What were you doing? I don't remember. I remember being yelled at. Oh man. Is he, is he, is he pleasant to deal with here at the radio show? He's great. I love Steve. I mean, I love I love what he has done for the cheese world. I thank goodness many days for his 88 career. He was one of the people who, you know, for those of you who don't know Steve Jenkins or for those of you that think that somehow everyone in America has always cared about cheese,

[23:21] well, you're wrong. Uh, you know, a long time ago, there were a couple of shops in New York where you could

[23:29] get, uh, you know, cheeses. So, you know, you think they're, you know, Zabars for a long time, but Fairway. I think really, uh, was one of the leaders in, uh, in

[23:40] the, in the, uh, 90s and early, early 90s, at least in really kind of raising uh, cheese consciousness among a large group of people. Wouldn't you say so, Jack? Yeah absolutely. I mean, yeah, so I feel that we owe Steve Jenkins as a cheese eating culture a lot. You know, and then, you know, I mean, obviously we have a lot of cheese gurus now. Do you know what I mean? But I think I think we owe him. I think we owe him. Yeah, they all always credit Steve too. All the people that go on NSAX will be show and talk about cheese say, you know, he was one of their inspirations. Yeah, yeah. Good guy. Gotta love them. Thank God for idiots. Okay. We have a follow-up from Rob Treypas, who by the way, I now can just pronounce his name because he's had a written in

[24:23] and enough. don't need the help anymore. tripos. Uh, we, uh, we had a discussion on the radio program about uh, rebodling for

[24:29] Mooth, and here's his follow-up. Dave at all. Thanks for your help and insight on my quest to rebottle my apparatis and vermouths. He was having a problem with them oxidizing. I found that fever tree, tonic, and ginger ale are bottled in 200 milliliter glass bottles that accept regular caps, i.e. crown

[24:45] core caps that you can get at any home brew shop and you can buy the bottler for very little. I mean, the capper for very little. Uh, accepting regular caps and it's some champagne splits. Also take standard bottle caps. I thought they all did. No? I thought they all did. Hey, look, it's not an actual champagne slip of a bottle if it doesn't take the cap. So I don't know what your any non-screw top thing should accept it. Okay. The reason why is because that's how they store it normally before they cork it when they're doing their racking stuff. Anyways, okay, okay. So after, uh, and it's convenient that you can pack a 5th into 4 small bottles. So after a fugion and tonics, horses, necks, and French 75s, you know, that's what they used to call some of the people in my stepfather's family, they all had dumb names for people, like mean ones, mean nicknames that

[25:29] used behind their back, and horse's neck was one for Gerard's great grandma. Well, I have no idea why. I have no idea why. some of them are unrepeatable on the air. Some of some of the, in fact, the vast majority of the Adonisio family nicknames are unrepeatable on the on the air, although they are hilarious. Okay, A, I collected enough bottles to rebottle my collection. A local wine shop and canned wine preserver gas, Argon, which remember is a good one to use, that I used to purge the headspace. I experimented on a different dispensing techniques to get an effective blanket using a bottle filled with water and a match. Well, you'll see why. One drawback to canned gas is that the pressure is high at 1st and then dissipates as you use it. I found that 7 quick sprays towards the south side of the bottle did the trick, and I checked my blanket by putting a lit match in the opening just below the crown.

[26:20] If the match went out immediately. I reasoned there was no oxygen. I then use the same technique on the 4 to 5 fortified wines. When I noticed a different pressure flow out of the can. I checked the water blank. The attached poor quality cell phone shows the results. Happily, I can now keep 6 small fresh bottles in my refrigerator, along with my syrups and acid ingester, without upsetting the family too much. I also attached a PDF, which is from a wine thing. You guys can look it up with some more information on inert gas. Yep, what do you think? He also, remember I recommended picking up a copy of Fix the Pump by Darcy O'Neill. Remember that? Yeah, he did that and he likes it. So there you have it. Yeah, bueno. Can I ask a really quick question from the booth here? This is for me. Um, if I don't refrigerator vermouth. How long is it going to be good for? It's not the refrigeration. It's the problem? Refrigeration slows the changes that are due to oxidation, right? So if you, uh, like, if you were to actually effectively remove all of the oxygen from uh, where the stuff is, then it's shelf life shouldn't be compromised over regular vermouth, but uh, storing regular vermouth in the fridge is

[27:28] gonna prolong its its life after it's been opened if you don't remove the

[27:32] oxygen. Okay, yeah. Got it, man. But I definitely recommend doing it. And or buying most people, if they're not, like, at the very minimum, just buy small bottles of vermouth. I mean, the real problem is, is that it's usually only the brands that aren't my favorite brands,

[27:47] that come into small bottles. So no one makes small bottles of carpano. They only come in, you know, larger things. No one makes small bottles of Dolin. No one makes small bottles of coke or all these other things that, you know, we like to use. And so it's a problem. If you're a fan of something like Martini and Rossi, then those do come in smaller bottles and the cost isn't so high. So you can use it in relatively short order. You know what I mean? And this is another dumb question, but Amaros are not fortified wine, right? Uh, well, I mean, they, uh, now you have to look

[28:22] at Nastasia, look at the technical definition of Amara, while he's looking at it, and we'll get back to it. I mean, they can be wine base, right? They have a wine base and then fortify with herbs and extra liquor to get the proof up. But Estach is going to look up, this is the 1st time ever. Nastasia's going to look up, what? This is the 1st time I'm useful. Well, that's true. I mean, in general in life. Yeah. You probably didn't hear what she said because she wasn't, her face wasn't in the microphone, but she was, uh-huh, uh-huh. All right. We'll get we'll get that. get that technical stuff for you, Jack, in just a second. We have a, now these questions, I'm just, I'm just reading, so I haven't, I haven't had time to look at them beforehand. They're coming off of, I don't know, Jack's printer somehow made them. Hello, gang. This is from Mike. I have a practical question concerning chili peppers. I frequently handle them when cooking, and by the time I am finished with prep work. My hands often feel like they're burning. Presumably it has something to do with capsation, which is the, you know, the heating part, the hot principle in hot peppers. Sometimes I'm smart enough to wear latex gloves, but this isn't always possible. Plus, at home, you don't like to wear, they taste close anyway. Do you? you like to wear latex clothes? Well Nastasia likes to wear latex clothes when she's cooking. That's some weird stuff I don't want to get into. No. I'm making it up. Do you know of any treatment which neutralizes this burning sensation. Sorry for such a housewife you thought, hey, don't be insulting the housewives, by the way. But my hands really, really hurt right now. Much appreciated, and please keep up the great work, Mike. Well, I don't know. Do you know of any, like, uh, presumably you have some small nicks and cuts somewhere in your hand, right? So what would, see, I don't think rubbing it with oil would help because

[29:52] capsation's oil soluble, so it would go into, go into that. I mean, you could try it as kind of a primary thing, but then your hand's going to be slippery and you're going to slice the heck out of your hands. I would just, uh, look, if you only handle as you're cutting, if you're careful to only handle the waxy outer cuticle section of the, of the pepper, then you're not going to become in contact with the, with the, with the seeds too much. And probably, if after you slice it, you give it a real quick, quick rinse

[30:18] in, in, uh, in, uh, water to get the stuff off, it might help a little bit. But I don't really know. I've never been asked to have this problem fixed. Uh, so listen, anyone out there, please, give us your thoughts on, uh, if you have problems cutting, uh, cutting, you know, red

[30:36] hot pepper, hot chili peppers, and you know of a solution other than latex gloves, call us in, right?

[30:42] Or right. And we'll do it next week. All right, next one, which also has something to do with uh, capsation, is uh, from Rory

[30:50] Mirns, and Rory writes, hi, day, from the Land Down Under, a.k.a. New Zealand. Love the show. I listen to the podcast on my walk home from work. I have a, that's a long walk. Well, where does he live? I don't know, but I'm saying it's a long walk. If you listen to the podcast, it's long. long walk. I have a question regarding the coloring of a capsicum-based sauce. I'm working on that contains, you know, capsicum peppers, red pepper, presumably red, although it doesn't necessarily need to be vinegar, sugar, salt, and a little ginger and garlic, no other

[31:21] additives. The sauce is bottled and capped well hot, and it has a stunning red color. It retains this color well overall. But after a while, there is some darkening scene near the tops of the bottles. What is causing this? I assume it is some sort of oxidation. But more importantly, what options do I have to prevent it from happening? Oh, shoot, you know what? When I was talking about the herbs, here's what I forgot to mention. McGee, in his curious cookbook on that thing, says that even if you, um, even if you destroy the enzymes,

[31:48] the polyphenol oxidases in the, uh, in the herbs by blanching. After you make a pesto with them, they will still eventually go brown. And the reason is, is that the oxidation of those phenols and then their eventual agglomeration into brown colored things will happen even if the enzyme is destroyed. you know, not nearly as much, but will happen at a much reduced rate.

[32:16] It all depends on the actual, uh, reactivity of those, uh, phenomic

[32:21] compounds. Because the phenolic compounds aren't destroyed. the enzyme that's destroyed. Another interesting thing. If you add at fresh enzyme, like any fresh herb at all to the stuff that you've blanched, the enzymes are there and they'll go and they'll work and they'll do their dirty brown work.

[32:36] So that might be another thing to look at on the herb thing is the fact that you, you know, maybe there's some fresh herb getting into it

[32:43] afterwards or maybe you just get some browning anyway, maybe you need to blanch it a little bit longer to really make sure you kill all the enzyme because enzymes aren't deactivated right away.

[32:51] Anyway. Uh, so back to uh, Rory's question. I assume it's some sort of oxidation, but more importantly, what options do I have to prevent it from happening? Okay, looking at your list, you have capsicum, peppers, vinegar, which is an acid, acid should present, prevent somewhat browning because if there are any enzymes in it that are, if it's an enzymatic reaction, the vinegar, the acidity, is going to inhibit

[33:16] that. sugar, salt, and a little ginger or garlic. Okay, but here's the issue. You don't have in there, so oxidation is going to take place over a long period of time, regardless of whether or not

[33:29] there are enzymes present, as I just said, what you might want to do is add a little bit of an antioxidant.

[33:36] Uh, so vitamin C, ascorbic acid is one that you might try, um, sodium metabisulfate. Another one you might try, although I don't recommend it. I don't like it because the meta by sulfites, to me, they have like kind of a sulfree note, like an aroma that I think is unpleasant. I mean, clearly it's you're bottling it hot, so it's not probably not an enzyme thing. Uh, and it's interesting that the discoloration is seen near the top. So it's either a drying effect, which it can't be because it's sealed or it's oxidation, which is happening at the place where the oxygen is present,

[34:10] a.k.a. the top. So I would say if you adding an antioxidant is a way to go, or if you can, going back to the last question about

[34:17] vermouth, put an inert gas blanket on the top of it. might also help you. So inert gas blanket on the top. and or an antioxidant. I would you know, if it was me, I would do both. I don't know what kind of time length you're talking about to Browning, so I don't know kind of how much you, you know, can get rid of. But those are, those are my suggestions. do you think? Good. Good. Oh, if you have time for another quick question. What would your 3 must try food joints be in New York while on a

[34:51] budget? Can be street food vendor, takeaway joint, reasonably priced restaurant,

[34:55] et cetera. Thanks for keeping up the good work. So what do you think? Roberta's for lunch. Let's say. Yeah? Come to Roberta's for lunch. How much does how much does pock pot cost? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Jack, you got any good budget joints? I'm thinking now. I guess you could, you could do reverters on a budget. Pac pac? I'll look up the price. I don't know. I mean, like Pac Pac's a great restaurant. That's Andy Rickers restaurant and I don't think the prices were that high, right? don't think so. Who else is budget? Nastasia's thinking, right? All right. Jack, are we are we are we about to get the plug pulled? or should we, we don't have time? I got another 5 minutes, but not time to see what do I have any Twitter questions does? No. All right. So we can just blither. I can just blither for 5 minutes. music? Did you? Oh, we can talk about the music. Yeah, we did not. I kind of, I shunned it. Here's the deal. So we're not allowed to use vicious vicious vodka by Amos Milburn anymore. Fishes, fishes, vodka, as some called it. Which I enjoy. We can make our own song called Fishes, Fishes, Vodka. And then, you know, be, you know, be all set. But that's probably not going to happen. But here's here's the thing. So what Jack wants to do is to have some sort of contest for kind of a user user, a listener to say that they, you know, have a song they think should be

[36:20] the what's it called? Theme song. theme song for the cooking issue show. And then I said, you know, I just bought a base, a new base. I haven't played bass in many, many years, but I just bought an acoustic electric

[36:31] base, and I thought, you know, Jack and I could come up with some sort of crazy theme song. He says maybe we should have the listener theme song versus our theme song.

[36:41] Yes. Yeah, and then people can vote. I think our theme song would win, especially if we do fishes, fishes, vodka. Especially if they choose our theme song and we give them some free heritage heritage meat. That's right But now you're discouraging people from entering into entering into the thing. Well, I think, uh, we'll probably give all the all the people who enter the contest and give us a real submission will get some some pork chops from the heritage

[37:05] meat shop if they happen to be in New York. Yeah, what are the requirements, Jack? For the song? Yeah. Shouldn't be, it doesn't need to be longer than, say, a minute and a half . And it should be clean for the radio. Right. No cuss words. Instrumental, right? Well, you know what? Not necessarily. does not have to be instrumental. No, I'm going to keep it pretty open-ended. Yeah, like why would it be instrumental? Like, like, for instance, like, I would be proud to have the Hearst Ranch grass fed beef. Oh, man. You know? We should get him out on it. Right? He should probably come up with your theme song. In fact, he should probably do all the theme songs for the whole network. Uh, yeah. I mean, like, I, like, the problem is, is that, like, I'm just a fan of that particular song.

[37:52] That jingle. You know, Hershfried, Granch Fed Beef. So anyway, send us your music. info at heritageradionetwork.org. Come up with a theme song for cooking issues. MP3 is best. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All righty then. Uh, so I guess, uh, you know, you're gonna give you 10 more seconds to call in. If not, have a good week and we'll be back next week with cooking issues.

[38:22] 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

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[38:49] Thanks for listening.