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[0:34] Cooking issues.

[0:58] Killing your questions, too! Cooking issues! Hello, Happy New Year, and welcome to cooking issues. We're back with Nastasia Lopez here sitting next to me on the computer as always. We don't have any Jack today because he's still recovering from the New Year's festivities. He's sick. Well, what do you think made him sick? He has a cold. I see. Thank goodness we have Joe in the studio. How you doing, Joe? I'm doing great How are you guys? Doing well. How was your new year? It was wonderful in warm sunny Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles. Are you Los Angeles? No, I was just out visiting. Visiting, like, friends or what? Yeah, my girlfriend lives out there or is from there? That's where Nastasia Hills from near Los Angeles makes me think it's full of bad people. Just messing with you. Call your questions live too. 7184972128. That's 718-497-2128. Natasha, what do you do for the new year? I was here. Nothing, yeah. Nothing special. Well, we were avoiding each other. We didn't see each other over the entire entire thing. I was just hanging out with my family and then went to the Booker index. I wasn't avoiding you. I didn't. No, I know you were avoiding me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we have some questions. Michael Nackin writes in. Happy New Year, Michael. It's he's our, what would you say he's our favorite vegetarian cookbook writer at this point? I bought his cookbooks for 2 friends for Christmas. Yeah? Nice. With your own with your own catch. With my own money. Nice. I like that a lot. I like that. She used the booker index car. No, I didn't. I swear. All right, all right, all right. Michael writes him. Chris Young, Chris Young of Modernist Cuisine Fame, was now teaching, I guess, at a rival of ours, like Johnson

[2:39] in Wales, I think in Rhode Island. I think he's doing it, not Rhode Island, wherever it is. Yeah, Rhode Island on the campus anyway. Chris Young, friend of ours, like him a lot, was telling some entertaining stories about

[2:47] Fluffing, and Michael wants to know, can we say that on the air? I think we can, if we don't describe where the word fluffing comes from, we can say it,

[2:54] right, Joe? Yeah, just, yeah. Walk a thin line. Yeah, well, okay, so I think fluffy, like it's such a good word. It needs to just be redefined as just keeping people pumped for their job. lets put it that way. Exactly. Right, great. A fluffer is someone who keeps the more important person pumped and primed, let's say.

[3:15] Let's, let's say, say pumped in prime. Anyway, so about fluffing with me and Tony the Tiger in Miami, can we hear

[3:25] Day's version of the events? Yeah, sure. So what happened was, is that a number of years ago, um, we were asked, uh, Chris Chris and I were asked to literally fluff for Food Network talent at some event at South Beach. It's the only, did I go twice or did I go once to South Beach? I think once. Once? Yeah. I don't really, whatever. I'm not going to say anything about it. But anyway, the point is, is that Kellogg's, the people like who make, you know, make good products like the Kellogg's frosted flakes and other, other well-known cereal brands, they have,

[3:52] they, they rent this amphitheater thing inside of this place called uh, the parrot jungle. I think that's the name of it, parrot jungle in Miami, like right there, like near the causeway. And the place is nutty. Like the place is full of like crazy parrots and crazy trees, all sorts of like, you know, like they have

[4:10] a, they have a, um, a cockatoo there that literally used to, they have a picture of the cockatoo sitting on Winston Churchill's shoulder and this

[4:17] some, some gun cockatoo is still alive because apparently, as long as they don't get sick, these things, they just don't die. They live to be like 100, these freaking things. Anyway, so there's parrots everywhere. And Kellogg is like renting the place out for this South Beach

[4:30] food and wine festival thing. And Chris and I are there because they have some sort of science-friendly kids thing. I don't even really know. What it really was an excuse for was to get like Jada and, you know, the ace of cake, Sky, and Guy Fieri, and, you know, all these people up there. And so literally, Chris and I would stand there and take science questions from the local Miami crowd and their kids, just like cooking

[4:57] issues, just like this, but it was all questions that I hate. Like, um, you know, all like nutrition-based. Anyway, we fielded the questions. And everyone, no one could wait for us to get the hell off the stage so that Jada or

[5:12] Guy Fieri could get on stage or Tony, even Tony the Tiger was a much bigger hit

[5:17] than we were. I mean, frankly, I mean, I think we did a good job, but yeah, they weren't there to see, you know, Chris Young and myself, you know, answer their questions about,

[5:25] you know, different kinds of sugars. But, uh, my memory is, is that this, the one question that the person was excited to ask, this little girl is like,

[5:33] eh, raise her hand, I guess. And she says, uh, can you give this necklace to Jada? She had made this like pasta necklace? And I was like, 0 my god. I hope to God that Giada was good about it. and like took it and wore it. I like, well, I was like, kid, I don't know Jada. Like, if I went up and like tripped her and she fell over, she wouldn't know who to call the cops and blame. She has no idea who the hell I am. I didn't say hell. I didn't say any of this. But I was like, but I will try to see. I will put this necklace right here where her workstation is and hopefully she will put it on. I don't even know what happened because as soon as it was time for the real people to come on stage,

[6:05] they, like, you know, brought out the cane, like, swipe this off the stage and that was it, whoop, gone, right? Nastasia, let me tell you how ghetto this was. Nastasia was flown out there to quote unquote assist in this project and she didn't even show up to the event. true or false. I wasn't flown out and I paid my own way in my hotel. Oh, your own hotel. Because, because, because you wouldn't work with it to get the hotel. Your flight was paid, excuse me. I can look through my, yeah, yeah. Go through and look, your flight was paid. You could have had a paid hotel, but you can't... Here's a noastasia. even when we're going on business, so cheap. She's like, can I just stay in your hotel? No, I'm a grown man. We didn't have a business car. This is like... But the really good reason to go. And the reason why it was an extremely worthwhile trip was, A, I got to see the cockatoo that was on Winston Churchill's shoulder. But B, it was the 1st time I went to the Miami Fruit and Spice Park, which is, I think, one of the greatest places on

[7:00] Earth, and I've talked about it on the Air Bunch, and it's a place everyone should go. And we went with Chris and I think he was pretty impressed by as well. Yeah, yeah. Okay, a grand Indianapolis writes in about pork belly and Espuma. Okay, I'm going to go Looney on the word of spoom in a minute. But, hey, Dave Nastasia and Gang. I working on a new dish. I have a couple of questions. I would love to have you weigh in on. First, I want to do a pine infused espuma. I want pine flavor to come through, so it's recognizable, but not overpowering. My question is on method. I'm wondering if I should simmer the pine in my liquid on the stove, throw it in a bag in my sous vide supreme, or use a pressure, use pressure in an

[7:36] ISI whipper. do you think? All right. Um, Grant, 1st thing, here's what I think. I hate the word espuma. Okay, okay, I'll tell you why. I posted about this. You can't read it right now because the blog is still down. We're working on it, people. I dont want to hear it. working on it. Actually, I'm not working on it. A friend of ours named Paul is working on it. But, um, Aspuma is, I believe it's just kind of like the Spanish word for foam, right? I mean, you don't speak Spanish anymore. Nastasia forgot all over Spanish because she had an Italian boyfriend once. I don't want to talk about it. And, uh, but the point is, is that, is that in English, uh, spuma, to me, sounds like something you hocked up and spat out, right? Estaf, you with me on this? Yes, it's disgusting. Yeah, yeah. So for me, I'm going to say that if you're doing, like, I would just call it a foam. I would just call it a foam. I mean, if you have to say the word as spuma, say the word as spuma, but I just,

[8:25] I'm anti, the word as spuma on an English language menu. If the entire menu's in Spanish, then go ahead and write a spuma, right? Right. Right. But it would be like, it would be like writing, I'm going to have poached ooofs. You don't write that. You know what I mean? You're right. have poached eggs, right? Right. By the way, like, I hope you're not getting bent over me going on this diatribe. I just happen to not like the word. right? It's gross word. It's gross. no effect. I'm not saying, like, grant, we're pro you, just anti- the word is puma, right? Okay. On Pine. The interesting thing about Pine is that I love Pine. My favorite way to work with pine is actually to distill it. We, we, you know, several, many years, actually, we've taken Christmas trees, purchased Christmas trees, ripped the Christmas trees

[9:07] apart, and then distilled them. Remember last year's stuff? Yeah, we did a party for MTV, MTV music, and we did, we did pine, pine, gin, and tonics where we were doing Douglas

[9:18] firs, and we were buying Douglas firs and stripping them down and distilling them in the Rota app, and that's delicious. So the 2 things you want to make sure when you do it is one, you don't oversteep. If you're using something like alcohol, which it sounds like you're not, but if you're using alcohol, there's a real danger that you're going to get kind of that detergenty, um, pine

[9:37] soly kind of, uh, uh, thing out of it because you extract so, so much of the resin. It probably won't be as big of a deal if you do it in water, I would do traditional,

[9:45] for instance, like a spruce tea or fur, pine teas, typically done, either with the new buds, if you can get them. It's not the time of year, or with the needles brewed for a fairly long time in hot water because it won't extract as much of the resin, but you'll get a nice brew out of it.

[10:00] B, I, like I say, I've done it almost exclusively in alcohol. I've never really done any water-based pine stuff. You want to be careful to choose, well, aside from choosing ones that don't have weird pesticides on it. You want to be careful to choose a pine that's not too redolent of a bathroom cleaner. And I have the same problem with lavender. A lot of times when you're working with lavender in a drink, and I warn people because a lot of people want to work with lavender and they want to work with pine. Me, I have a huge soft spot for pine. I remember Sam Mason used to work with Pine a lot at WB 50 back when he was there. Uh, you know, I worked with Pine a lot. Nils works with Pine a lot. We all love it, but there's a good chunk of people out there that even when you do a really, really good job with

[10:36] it. are going to have, um, bathroom memories or cleaner memories. And, and, and like I say, the same thing is true with um, with lavender. And so you have to be very careful to try it out on a bunch of people to see whether or not they're going to have the same response. It's very difficult as a cook to, um, know what everyone's reaction is going to be to something just because you love it. I've learned this the hard way, believe me, many, many times. This same thing happened is true. you know, a number of years ago was super low temperature fish that, you know, a lot of people were playing around

[11:12] with it. Like a lot of the chefs really loved it, but there's a good chunk of customers that even when it was done really, really well, they just didn't like it. And so just be aware when you're using a polarizing flavor that you are using a polarizing flavor. and try to try to take it such that it's on the non-detergenty side. That's all. I'm going to say. That said, distillation is, heck. Also, on dosing, dosing is extremely important. So even if you have one that you really like the aroma of, and you don't think it's going to go to pine saw to detergent. We've done, I've done, we've done Frasier's, we've done Doug Furs. We've done, I think we've done balsam. Uh, you know, I've never had a really good source of spruce myself. I used to chew on needles all the time growing up because I loved it. Um, but you want to, um, you want to test it all the time as you're making it to make sure that you're not

[11:56] going to go extract too much stuff and go over bitter, over piney over resoney on it. There's a very, very fine line. You want to be careful. And the same thing's true. Remember when we did this distillation styles, we had a very, very strong distillate, we had to water it quite a bit to get it to work exactly the

[12:10] way, the way we wanted to do. But that said, it's a very good flavor. Okay. That's good. Yes. Okay. Second, this is from Grand Still. I'm doing a low temperature pork belly. Unfortunately, I don't have a circulator, just a sous vide. supreme. So I'll have to do smaller pieces of the belly at a time. My 1st thought is to do a brine, rinse, cook sous vide, uh, low, uh, and then sear it. What I benefit from doing a pre-seer before cooking low temp, or my best off leaving it till the end. My goal is to have a nice crispy layer of skin on top. Also, since I'm planning on cooking the belly a day ahead, would be best to reheat it in the bag the day of service and do my sear right before it goes out to the table. Okay. On the pork belly, I would cook it way more than a day if you're going to go low. I mean, Wiley used to do his, I think, for 72 hours and I still remember that dish. That was on, I think, his opening menu, his, his, uh, he was, Wiley's at WD 50 when he opened was, I think, the 1st time I'd had

[13:01] the, the low temperature long cooked pork belly. And that was actually one of the revelations for low temperature cooking for me was how much I like that. And he, he brined. I think his took up forever to do. He brined it, I think, with some nitrites in it, my memory is right, for 3 days or day, but one between one and 3 days, he would brine it, wet brine, I believe. And then he would vacuum package it, let it

[13:26] dry a little bit. Then he would vacuum package it. And I think here's the key to why his thing was so good. Uh, he wouldn't pre-seer, he would press it. And he pressed it for a long time and let it cool down to get the skin nice and flat, I think, and to get all the meat together. Then he would cook it for like 72 hours at a pretty low temperature. I don't know what he did, probably 60 or something like that. Uh, and then our 62, somewhere in there. And then, uh, he pulled it out, and then he would crisp it like a duck breast. And so I think he would. This is what I would have done. This is my memory of it. He, he, he, you know, and he would crisp it, uh, on the skin side and I think just like let the heat carry, carry it over. I've done it a bunch. I've never done all the. taken all the care that Wiley did to do it. We've done much more kind of off the cuff long cook ones because we weren't doing it for restaurant service, but the key in this thing is crisping the skin. And what you're, if you pre-sear it, my fear is that you're not going to have a very flat piece of skin and it's

[14:22] going to be hard for you to get a really good sear on it. So when you, when you have a piece of meat and you don't do the pressing, especially on pork and you really need that sear to get it crunchy. If you have a lot of undulations in the skin, when it's against the

[14:33] pan and it's rendering out, you'll get these blonde spots on the bottom that aren't

[14:37] crunchy and they're just not as satisfying as the rest of it where it's like all hyper crunchy and delicious. Yeah? Yes. Okay. Uh, we got a, we got a, uh, a write in from our, one of our earliest cooking

[14:50] issues, readers, back when the blog was working, Schinderhannes. And, uh, and it's Shinerhannes, very good to hear from you. Happy New Year. This is your loyal follower, Schinderhannes. It seems that the world has to accept the fact that you don't have the time and resources on hand to keep the world's best food

[15:05] blog cooking issues alive and well fed on new entries, but now your blog is completely unavailable. I used it as an important online resource and I'm missing it badly. Are you planning to publish it as an online blog archive? Please do so. That would be great news. Otherwise, I'll promise to buy any book you're working on. And then he says, as a 3rd alternative, he'll leave in a huff and turn to Campbell's soup for the rest of his useless life. Wow. Shinderhannes. And he ends it. Yeah, he's a good man. He ends it in Freudich Grusa, which is, I guess, you know, best regards, okay, friendly greetings, Aft Deutsch. Uh, Dr. Johannes Kerbeting. Okay, well, Shinerhannes. I've said this a 1000000 times, like, honestly, people need to know out there, like, we're literally waiting for people to flip the right switches. It seems preposterous, but we don't have control of the blog yet, and we're working on it in a hardcore way. Not really. I'm not working on it at all. But we have other people who are theoretically working on it. Is that true? Yeah. Do we have like a date? We have a Paul working on it. Paul doesn't have a date. Paul still figuring it out. Oh my, you know, it's like, it's like, if we just went into selling Cialis. of this would have happened. We could have just split it with whoever hacked us, wherever they are. You know what I mean? And just like, you know, kept on running, but, you know, it just, it wasn't to be, we're gonna get the information. I can promise this. The information will be back online. I have hopes that you're right. I don't have time to do what I was doing back then. Maybe we can find some people. The real problem is, is that it's hard to find people who want to write

[16:30] things kind of the way that I want them written. But this kind of ties into another question. not a question, a comment. Steve Crandall wrote in, and he said, he's giving us a point out to another blogger, and his name is Greg

[16:43] Blonder, the blogger. don't know him. Do you know him? No. Greg Blonder is a friend and colleague, a physicist who's playing with food a bit. You may enjoy some of his online articles. Um, and I read these articles on diffusion and brining, and it's some of the best writing on brining that I've ever seen on the

[17:00] internet. And you guys, everyone who listened to this, I think, would enjoy it. www.genuineideas.com. And so he does lots of really awesome things. Like, he's testing brining. And

[17:12] he, uh, in order to test nitrite, um, nitrite penetration into, uh, into meat during, uh, during, like, brining with curing salts. He bought nitrite. He went to an aquarium shop and bought a nitrite test paper for aquariums to test the nitrite level because

[17:31] of what fish make nitrites when they're in there. And he was using it as blotter paper and testing the diffusion of nitrates into meats, which

[17:39] was, I thought, like that is a freaking fantastic idea. And then he was using some sort of uh, some sort of salt assay to literally paint the surface of meats after different

[17:49] uh, brining things to see how far salt had penetrated in, which I thought was fascinating. And then something years ago that, you know, I tried to do, unsuccessfully was to use dyes to try and look at brine penetration. And that's when I bought a bunch of FNDC Blue One, which if you put into gel caps and give people, they will, they won't know it necessarily, but they'll poop green.

[18:10] I not recommending you do that. I didn't do that, but I know that it works, but I didn't do it. Right? Right. Nastasia opened up the bottle of FNDC blue. I was like, I told her, I was like, it came in the mail. I was like, Nastasia, do not open this. Do not touch this. And just so you know, her nature. It's not in her nature to not fool around with stuff and like put fingernail marks and everything and

[18:28] everything and like mangle and mutilate. I knew she messed with this one because when I came back, her face was entirely blue. entirely blue. Remember that? Yeah, I was like, I didn't touch it. I hear that. didn't touch it. I was like, and I showed her the mirror. She was like, oh. Anyway, so, uh, but the problem with FNDC Blue is that FNDC Blue is rather large compared to things like salt. And it also, it's not, you know, doesn't, anyway, it doesn't work the same way. But this guy that I don't know, but I'd probably like to meet Greg is showed a really interesting result, which was that if you brine with acid, it actually kind of forces the meat fibers apart and then allows larger things like the blue

[19:07] dye to penetrate further into the surface of the meat, but not very far. Fascinating stuff. And then even more fascinating on this on the subject of brining. And this is something that I hadn't heard before. This was new to me and opened up a whole world is that, you know, you get X amount of brine penetration, salt penetration over time during a brine, but then the actual cooking process pushes the brine further into the

[19:30] meat and he shows it with these tests that are relatively conclusive and like really cool

[19:34] images. So, uh, Steve, thanks for pointing that out and uh, Well, Steve, thanks for pointing that out. and I'm sure I'm going to go read. I hope a bunch of other people go read that stuff too. So with that, we're going to take a commercial break. Courtney Gorgeous, 2718, 497-2128, Cooking your Jews.

[20:51] The International Culinary Center is a proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network.org, the ICC with locations in New York and

[21:06] California, provide cutting edge education to future chefs, restateurs, and wine professionals. We're proud to claim Dan Barber, Bobby Clay, and David Chang among our honored alumni. This is Dorothy Can Hamilton from Chef Story. Check out our ICC website at InternationalCulinaryCenter.com. Every Wednesday at noon, Dorothy Ken Hamilton, founder and CEO of the International Culinary Center, interviews the top chefs in the world on

[21:35] Chef Story. Here from chefs like Christina Tosi. I'm going to be the best pastry cook. This restaurant's ever seen. Francis Malman. Cooking with fires, it's very feminine. It's very fragile, and Jacques Pepette. That was invited to work at the White House for John Kennedy. Learn how the greats become great every Wednesday at 12 p.m. on chef story at heritageradionetwork.org. Hello and welcome back to Cooking Issues. We have a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hi, David, this is Johnny Kart from Memphis, Tennessee. How you doing? Doing all right, yourself. I'm doing good. I had a question about uh, uh, uh, cookery. and surveyed the yolks. Okay. I rigged up some PVC pipe. You know, of course, cleans it out real good and put some acetate, um, you know, inside of

[22:31] there. and put saran wrap around the bottom. Um. Put egg yolks in there. And I thought I had secured it. um, with, with the other side, with Saran wrap all around, right? And I cooked it at, was it, uh, 64 degrees

[22:58] for, about an hour, and it came out running. Right. So the, here's the thing. The, a couple things. The one of the weird things about egg yolks is that they don't cook at the same temperature when you crack them out as they do when, um, as they do when you,

[23:19] um, um, cook them in the shell. And I don't really know why. I've tried to, like, wonder whether or not it's like there's a, the, the slight, the basic nature of uh, egg white. don't really understand why. You'd think that being surrounded by the egg white would actually raise the temperature, which it

[23:34] coagulates because the base there is going to weaken the protein. But, uh, for some reason, egg yolks, um, are they they set at a different temperature outside of the, the shell. The other thing is, is that if you add salt or sugar, then you drastically change the temperature at which the egg yolks

[23:56] set. Now, I've never done a full set of experiments to figure out, but like before I would, um, go through all the trouble that you're doing, I would, I would just like, uh, take some egg yolks

[24:08] almost uh, in ramekins at different temperatures and see at what temperature you can get them to

[24:13] set uh, fully outside of the shell. But I'll tell you, it is different. It might also be different. A whole egg yolk out of the shells. In other words, separated egg yolk that's not broken versus one that's been mixed with a fork.

[24:26] I don't know whether or not it's going to be different or not because I never run the full set of tests. This is one of the original years ago things that Wiley was asking Harold McGee when we were doing the original Harold McGee class at the French culinary.

[24:38] And I never really, I never really got a satisfactory answer for what was going on. I just know that the temperature is different. The other thing I'll add is that, uh, I wouldn't uh, I wouldn't trust uh, the PVC,

[24:51] even, even with the cleaning, you know, at this point, nobody really knows uh, what the plasticizers

[24:56] do, uh, to us or to people that we're serving, but, you know, everyone knows

[25:01] PVC does have plasticizers in it. And then no matter how well you wash it, it will leach out over time, especially into fatty things, like an egg yolks. So if you're getting direct I mean, I know you have acetate in there. And so there's probably not a lot of direct contact, but, you know, I, I, at this point, try to shy away from PVC when, uh, when I can. Even though, you know what, though, for tests, you know, there's nothing beats it because it's so cheap, it's so easy to work with. You know what I mean? Um, but I would definitely say you're going to want to jack the temperature height. Did you add salt or sugar to it? I did not. I did the one. I did about 3 tests. I did add salt to the 2nd one. I didn't add salt to the 1st one. Uh, what, what would be the, I guess the best conductor, is it conduction

[25:50] to the TVC pipe? Well, is it nerds like, holds the temp? Yeah, it's not that it's not that the PVC. I mean the PVC is a bad conductor. That's true, right? But it's not that the, it's not that the PVC was a bad conductor, I think it literally is that you need to jack the temperature higher. I would try... trying to remember what Wiley used to do. Wiley used to do. He would make egg tubes in VAC bags. He would make tubes out of vacuum bags and then seal them off and cook the egg yolks that way. And I'm going to want to say he had to put it as high as 70 Celsius to get it to work exactly the way he wanted to. So I think you're going to need to, although PVC is a bad conductor. I think you're going to want to go higher, like up almost up to about 70 degrees C. And then if that sets too hard for you, then you might want to pull it back. But I believe that in his old, um, I forget which dish it was where he had the egg tubes like that, but I think that they were done up at 70 when they were

[26:46] done out of things. Maybe a beef dish. I don't know. Um, okay. So, yeah, I would even go about setting them in a, in

[27:00] a, uh, bag where it's circular. Yeah, well he, they were I think what he was doing was he was, like, putting them in a, in, like, he was sealing the

[27:11] bag, almost like flavorized pops, and then, like, you know, injecting them

[27:14] full, and then cutting off the ends where they were pillow shaped. But I mean, there's a bunch of things you could do. You could get test tubes. The question is how would you get him out of the out of the other sides. Uh, you know, I think the technique that you're using as a test would be fine. I mean, you might want to move to like an acetate line, stainless steel pipe or something like that. You know what I'm saying? Something that's a little more, that is a better conductor and also is definitely food grade. So if you go to like mcmastercar.com, you can, I don't know what size you're using, but I'm guessing you're probably using like half inch or 3 quarter PVC, something like that. And if you, yeah, and if you're doing that, you can get something with the same internal diameter made out of like 304 stainless that's, you know, seamless on the inside, smoothbore and thin, and you can buy like a one foot length of it, you can cut it with a hacksaw into 26 inch

[28:00] lengths, and, you know, you can probably get that for in the range of 15 bucks or something, something on that order, especially, you know, and it's going to be completely

[28:09] non-reactive. And if you line that with acetate, you should be able to pull it out fine. you know? And then, uh, you know, and then if you don't have to make too many of them. And the good thing about those things is you can use them an infinite number of times, they're 100% food

[28:21] grade, and, you know, they won't break, and you know, you'll have them forever. What was the website you said? Oh, McMaster.com, which is McMaster car. And it's one of the they charge a little more than other people do, like a lot more, like 30% more, but the great thing is they have something like 4 or 5 warehouses all over the country.

[28:40] And so they're never more than one day, you know, usually, I mean, at least, you know, most places I've been, they're never more than one ground day away. So if you order by 6 PM, whatever your local time is, then it usually shows up UPS ground the next day. I'm also I'm also getting some air in there. because they're floating. Um, I don't know whether I need to come straight out of the fridge or or freeze them and then put them in the car back in

[29:09] the PVC or the, um, you know, the correct, uh, vessel. Right. Well, if you... If you freeze them, they'll be almost solid. If you freeze and thaw an egg, the egg yolk, they'll be on the solid. The problem is you'll get a little bit of greening on them, the color's never quite right after you freeze the egg yolk on the membrane on the outside.

[29:30] And if you mix it, that'll probably be ameliorated somewhat. But if you're using something like a stainless steel tube, uh, you what's, you should, if you have your vacuum machine, this is always a fun experiment to run. Put a bottle in there with a cap on it, real loose so that if you, if you, if the cap's on it, it's, uh, you know, the stuff will spill out of it, and then put, uh, put liquid into the bag with the bottle, and when the air comes back in, all the liquid will be shot into the bottle, which is

[29:58] a hilarious experiment to watch because literally the liquid liquid's forced in. So if you were to, if you were to put stainless steel tubes with a little bit of extra egg yolk into

[30:08] a vacuum bag, then the egg yolks will shoot themselves into the tube. Okay. So, you're cutting out of me a little bit. I can go back and listen to what you said, but, um, All right. So it won't float. What's the best thing to do to not float? Oh, well, Erve at the French culinary, his technique, whenever he was doing a hand wrap of something that wasn't in a vacuum machine, he would just take a couple of stainless

[30:37] steel, like butter knives or spoons, and do a couple of wraps of cellophane with the

[30:42] butter knife, their spoons, and those suckers will sink right to the bottom. All right. Um, any other, any other advice you can give me on this or? anything else? No, I think that should work. Like I try it up at 70 and if it's too hard for you, start scaling back, but I would do your next test at 70 degrees Celsius.

[31:03] Uh, and I would, like I say, vac bag it and go back and listen to it. you can hear if you backbag it. The vacuum machine should push the eggs literally into the tube for you. Uh, you know, and uh, and that should, that should work, that should work for you. But shoot us a Twitter at shoot us a tweet rather at cooking issues if you're having more problems and we'll give you some

[31:22] pointers, all right? Okay. All right, Dave. Good luck. Are you too. Bye bye. Uh, okay, so, uh, we had a question in from uh, Barry Muncasey. Happy New Year's cooking issues team. I bought an immersion circulator about 6 months ago, but I have not, but I have not done a multiple hour slash days recipe. The circulator came with a free camware professional container, but no top. I am concerned about excessive heat loss and evaporation when it is unattended for a significant number of hours, which

[31:51] will be better. Polypropylene balls, like the ping pong balls, or the custom cut lid that the website sells or something else. I'll hit this one first. So, uh, I use uh, at home, I have the lid that's cut, uh, and that thing works great. If you don't have it, you should just wrap saran over, you know,

[32:09] plastic wrap over the top of it. Anything to prevent evaporation. And when I'm doing a long cook, you know, like long, long cook, I'll even wrap around the gap in my pre-cut top with cerant, and you get almost 0

[32:25] evaporation, and you can run a 3 day cook without ever having to add water. I would keep checking it, obviously, because duh, right? But, you know, but it's not a problem. And I've never used the ping pong balls. I've never seen anyone use the ping-pong balls in the real life. I've heard of people buying the ping pong balls and I've spoken to people who used to use the ping pong balls and no longer use the ping pong balls, but I've never known anyone who actually

[32:50] uses them. The ping pong balls are really good for electroplating businesses, right? Whereas, or anyone who has a lot of a highly volatile chemical and you need to go in and out of the bath a lot. And so they prevent evaporation. When you're doing a long cook, you're not going in and out of the bath a lot. So the easiest thing to do is to just cover the whole thing with saran wrap or with a tight fitting lid, right? The only time you really need to be able to have those things is, like I say, when

[33:17] you're service, going in and out, and during service, you don't need to necessarily have such a good lid on it,

[33:22] right? Because usually your reheat temperatures aren't as important as your cooking temperatures. So if you get like a like one degree cooler at the top, it's not such a big deal, and you can just go in with tongs and pull the stuff out, not have to worry about these ping pong balls getting all over your kitchen, going to your dishwasher, getting lost, you know, I don't know, your dog swallowing it or

[33:41] whatever. You know what I mean? So I don't know anyone who bought the ping pong balls and loved them enough to keep working with them. You can buy. I don't know how much they charge. I've never purchased in my life a pre-cut lid. You know, I always buy a lid and I use a hacksaw. I think that they've changed it back in the day when they used to pre-cut the lids. They would cut the lid in the center of the thing, which is a waste of space in your

[34:02] camera. So I would always cut the lid on the corner. Here's another tip for you. If you buy an extra lid, and this is going to be, uh, you know, I don't know whether you're using this at home or whatever, but if you're, if, what I used to do, still do around New Year's or Christmas, whenever I have a big party, I would take my, my lid, and I would saw with a hacksaw, uh, holes to fit round Bain

[34:23] Maries in it, and then I would uh, drill holes so that I could uh, put a spring and pull them

[34:28] down, and I would put stainless steel Bain Maries. So I would literally have parties where I had sliders staying hot in the circulator that I could reach in through a little, you know, gap I cut in the

[34:38] lid, and then I would have like queso dip in one and chocolate fondue in the other, all running out of the same

[34:43] circulator, all kept hot. So, you know, you know, have Cambro lid and some ingenuity and a saw and you can get a whole bunch done. Okay, second, my department, I don't know what department? You didn't say what department? Department in what? I don't know. Like what? We'll say it's purchasing. I have no idea, right? Anyway. Second, my department annually has it, why is it always like purchasing as a department you think about because they get to do the cool stuff, right? They get to buy all the stuff, purchasing. Yeah. purchasing. Okay. Second, my department annually has a soup contest for the coveted golden ladle. I have made chicken gumbo, shrimp bisque, matzo ball soup. I love matzo ball soup. Do you like matzo ball soup? I never had it. Never? Never. Do you know that? That's crazy. We should, like, someone out there has to invite, uh, Nastasia, along with her Mucha friends and maybe Mark Over for, like,

[35:30] Mantamal Soup, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because I think you would like it a lot. What's not to like? Do you like, you've had, you had matzo balls, but only, only the mutant sweet one I made. I made a mutant sweet matza ball because I was working on a matza ball. I was working on a matza ball, uh, drink. It didn't work. We didn't end up using it, but it was all based on, uh, it was all based on this, uh, we use this kind of like nice uh, Japanese whiskey called Yamazaki. And so the joke was we were going to make a drink called Yamakazaki that was Yamazaki with a sweet maple syrup

[36:02] matza ball in it. And I made, the matzo balls were actually quite good. I'd never had a kind of sweet matzo ball before. But they were good, but the drink was just awful. Did you have that one? It was terrible, right? Who were you doing that for? We're just we're seeing where you can do it. somebody we were doing it for. I remember him. Really? Anyway, didn't work. We didn't, so for those of you out there, like, uh, know that we were unsuccessful in our matza ball, uh, cocktail,

[36:28] but you might be more successful. But anyway, be that. Uh, matzo ball soup, corn chowder. I like corn chowder Do you like corn chowder? I like a corn chowder, corn chowder, good powder. Amongst others, and a finished second so many times that they felt bad for me 2 years ago, and they gave me the golden spork as a consolation prize. So what's the name of that person from all my children, Suzanne Lucci? Susan Lucci. So he's like the Susan Lucci of soup in the purchasing department. Uh, this year, uh, with what I thought was a delicious Asian chicken and corn soup, I finished completely out of the

[37:00] running and so now have even lost a golden spork. I had 8 months to tinker an experiment to come up with this year's winning entry and would like to take a modernist cuisine approach. Could you provide me with a syllabus for success? And finally, I hope that one of your New Year's resolutions is that you will accomplish will be fixing and updating the blog, Barry McCasey. Okay. Here's the thing. I think your problem is, is the 1st thing, 1st thing you should do is never enter contests. I've learned this because it's only heartbreak. Barry, it's only heartbreak. Uh, the other thing is, is that if you look at it, right? discourage him. I'm not discouraging him. I just saying I don't enter contests. I don't like them. I don't enjoy them except for eating contests, which I always win. But the, the, uh, but here's the thing, right? So let's look at this. So the Asian chicken and corn soup. I don't know your audience. Like, you have to know your audience, right? So, you know, you can have the best tasting, most nuanced thing in the

[37:55] world, and if you show up and your audience wants, you know, you

[38:00] show up with, I'll give you an example. I did an event once and with nils. And Nils and I had spent like a lot of time making fresh

[38:10] clarified, really good apple juice. I think we were using, I think we were using Ashmeat's kernel, which is my favorite apple, and fennel. And we had, you know, clarified these things, uh, and then balanced it with gin and, uh, we had a little clarified, uh, you know, lime juice in it. We carbonated it. We done all this work. And it was, frankly, it was a good drink. You know what I mean? You know, one of our best, I think, that we did. And we went to an event and it was, it was a Chardonnay crowd. You know what I mean? And so we showed up. It's like it's like bringing, you know, you bring in the wrong tool to the job. You know what I mean? So, like, here we are, and you know what that is? Depressing. And that's actually the event that caused me to learn that what the most important thing to do, is to know your audience and to create a slam dunk for that audience.

[38:59] That said, you also have to make it interesting for yourself. So otherwise you're not going to, you're not going to be interested. You know, if you're just cranking out, you know, if what they want is Chef Boy RD, It's still not going to be interesting if you're just cranking open cans of Shep Boy or D and pouring it into a bucket, which reminds me of my Uncle Ralph. You know that story. What am I? I asked my, Michael Ralph asked, said, letting me once, and I was like, you know, I don't know why. He goes, he goes, what do I look like? Chef boy RD. I was like, kind of, Uncle Ralph, you look kind of like freaking Chef Boyerty. He doesn't really, because if Chef Boy RG was D was from Jersey, my Uncle Ralph would look like Chef Boy RD. I love Uncle Ralph. anyway. So, uh, uh, and he talks kind of like that. I love Uncle Ralph. Anyways, so know your audience. Secondly, the question is, what are you going to do, uh, modernist? Now, Nastasia doesn't like these because she doesn't like a lot of the flavors that we did when we did it, but the concept is

[39:46] sound. And I think nut milks are make a very, very good base for a soup. So you can take a traditional soup that is really good and switch it out for

[39:57] a, uh, like a nut milk base. So a pistachio milk, a cashew milk or a, uh, you know, an almond milk, any one of these kind of like, and and you don't have to have really expensive equipment to do it. I do it in a centrifuge because I have one, but you can, um, you can just blend it, you know, in a blender with hot, you know, super hot water and then strain it through,

[40:20] uh, you know, muslin to get the milk out of that makes a really good base. But it sounds like, you know, if they didn't like the Asian thing. I mean, I don't know what they want. You know what I mean? You know, you can use, you know, make your own stocks, obviously, with, like, you know, with a pressure cooker, as long as you have a non-venting one. I would look up everything in modern cuisine on stock making, on soups, but really, like, you need to get back with me on what style of soup you think is going to be the one that they're going to go

[40:47] for, because that's the 1st choice. You know, then, then making it, making it kick butt is the next thing. There's no sort of, like, catch all, like, best soup idea. It's more like, you know, what's your goal and then we can brainstorm towards getting there, right? Yep. Okay. Okay. Jeff on baking steel and Indian cookbooks. First time caller, longtime listener, love the show. You've made the process of cooking and learning about food, extremely enjoyable, and exposed me to people, equipment, and techniques. I would likely never otherwise have known. That's nice. Nastasia has a smile. That's the 1st time. Usually it's vegan face or something, but she actually had a smile. It was her. I'm going to kill everyone's smile, but it was still a smile. You know, I call that that's improvement. you know, by the way, our New Year's resolution, I think, you know, Jack was here, and he did not like it, was to yell at each other

[41:33] less. I think so far, it's been like a day, but... Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? What do you think? Good job guys. Yeah, nice. Uh, okay. Even inspiring, even he's like, Jack's like, why the hell would you not want to yell at each other? That's all the fun. Yeah, okay. for 45 minutes. Yeah, yeah. inspired me to do a lot more cooking at home and more importantly, to really love it. That's really nice. I like that. A couple of questions. I just obtained a baking steal and load the results I'm getting with the modernist cuisine at home Neapolitan pizza dough recipe. What procedure and a recipe do you recommend for sauce on a standard Neapolitan pie?

[42:05] And two, do you have a quick Indian cookbook recommendation? I'm looking for something reliable but extremely basic. I'd like to read about ingredients, technique, and have some solid recipes for the basics you see in almost every Indian restaurant. Uh, okay. Let me hit, and then there's a 3rd question. going to hit, but let me hit the Indian one first. I actually only own one Indian cookbook, and I bought it when I was in my early 20s, right after I graduated from college. Uh, and it's called, and it's really, it's old. It's from the 80s. It's called, uh, by Yamuna Devi. It's called the Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking. And at the time, it was this huge encyclopedic book, which is why I bought it.

[42:46] And it's not going to be. not like simple by any means, but, and so I was like, wow, and I read it, and it made a huge impression on me. Uh, you know, but I thought maybe it's going to be really, really dated. So I went to Amazon.com, and I looked up, and I looked it up, and it was been, it's been re-released, and it still gets really good ratings. So in other words, people, it's not as dated as I thought. I didn't have time to go back and reread it. But it focuses mainly on Indian vegetarian. Now, over the past 10 years or so, I find that I very rarely buy, um, I very rarely buy

[43:21] cookbooks on whole genres like that, unless I already know nothing about them, and I'm just trying to get a flavor for it. right? So in general, I would buy cookbooks that are on very specific regions or by a specific author that I want to work with. When I'm researching ingredients, uh, like black salt, for instance, which is a really interesting uh, Indian

[43:40] ingredient, or when I'm researching as a feta, a, hang, or any of these things. I tend to do a lot of internet research and not buy books or if I buy books, they're technical books or technical papers or historical papers. So I don't have very current knowledge. That said, obviously, Matt Jaffrey is a very well-known cookbook writer, and I think she has some shorter books that might be good places to start, but I'd love someone to tweet in what their recommendations are on this subject.

[44:10] Anyway, so I'm sorry I couldn't be more of help with that. But this to give you an idea of how I work usually, it's, uh, I won't buy, unless I know a writer is someone I really want to read or unless it's entirely new to me, I tend not to buy that kind of coke book. Also, anyway, whatever. On the baking steel, I know, I've never used, I spoke to Chris when they, when they were, uh, going into some sort of uh, manufacturing, when

[44:32] Moneros cuisine was going into some sort of manufacturing deal. I think it was with Chris. I think Chris was still with him at the time. with some guy in New England who's making the steals for them. But the theory is that instead of using a baking stone, what you can do is use this

[44:43] steel and the steel has this same sort of heat wallop into your pizza dough that

[44:49] you and more at lower temperature and faster heating than a stone and so use the steel instead of a stone. Uh, I've never used it. So I don't really know about it. And I'm all about not answering your questions today. I apologize. Apologize, Jeff, but the, I don't, you do standard Neapolitan at home. My oven goes up between 840 and like 875, 880 Fahrenheit. And I have 2 independence, independently heated stones, one in the bottom of my

[45:20] oven, and one in the top of my oven, plus gas. So when I'm making a pizza. I'll typically do a fairly. I'll do as high hydration dough as like Jeffrey Steingarten recommends. I spoke to Jeffrey like, what, 2 weeks ago? A few weeks ago, we saw him. And I asked Jeffrey at that time. I was like, Jeffrey, do you still stand by your very high hydration pizza dough recipe for his

[45:41] style of pizza? And he does. So if you go back and, you know, all of Jeffrey's stuff, even if you disagree with, even if you disagree with him, his writing is great.

[45:49] So go back and read his, like, high hydration does, but I typically don't do a high hydration, super high hydration dough for my pizzas. I'm typically like, I don't know, 65% hydration, i.e. 65, uh,

[46:02] 65 grams of water per 100 grams of flour in that ratio, and a fairly high salt load, like uh, like uh, 22% or something like

[46:10] that. So I do very low yeast and I let it rise for a long time. So my typical thing is, is that the evening before I'm going to make pizza, I'll blend the, you know, I'll do initially like

[46:23] 100% hydration to get everything hydrated and then maybe let it sit for a little while with a very small amount of yeast. So if I'm making like 4 kilos of dough. I'll use one yeast packet, something like that. Uh, and then uh, and then I'll, I'll put the rest of the flour in with the salt. And then I'll break them into individual dough things, put them in core containers, you know, like a quarter full, and then

[46:45] let them sit for a couple minutes to start, and then throw them in my fridge and retard them overnight, pull them out, like two,

[46:51] 3 hours, 3 hours before. use them, and that's my typical dough, and it works pretty well. For sauce, I don't do anything that is traditional at all. I usually do, I cook tomato paste and then blend in garlic and sometimes caper, and if I don't have vegetarians over anchovies, and olive oil, and that's my usual style sauce

[47:09] base for red, or I'll pressure cook a whole bunch of garlic and blend it with in

[47:14] milk and then blend it along with the curve in the milk, olive oil and basil. Um, and I usually put some onions in that too. Blend that for my for my green. I have a bunch of different, but I don't have any traditional kind of sauce, but the one key thing

[47:27] is just don't add too much sauce. You know, small amount of sauce goes, you want a small amount of a very flavorful

[47:32] sauce so you don't waterlog your dough. I think that's the that's the key and as high heat as you possibly can. And that, and someone's going to be like, that guy knows nothing about pieces. But I do make a whole boatload of pizzas and the people seem to eat them. They seem to eat them. Just don't load it down. The trick is not to load it down. Focus on the bread and don't load down. Focus on the quality of the crust and don't load it down with too much sauce. What do you think? Oh, if you're going to use fresh super fresh mozzarella. I get, I go to, when I get it, I get from DiPolo's, and I ask them for the, the, it's still fresh, but fairly

[48:02] dense. It has a lot of the water squeezed out, so it doesn't make too much water. Be very careful with adding too much high water mozzarella to uh, a cheese uh, to a pizza because it can really water water log it out. So, I mean, people who use it, I think they use it sparingly, right? And they're doing it very quickly in an oven, whatever. But just be careful. I mean, not going to hurt anyone. Okay, third. I like to start experimenting with adding salt to cocktails. If I keep sol solutions in a small dropper bottle. Is there any downside to keeping those for a long period of time? Is there any degradation or food safety issue? Also, what concentrations do you recommend starting with for cocktails and can you recommend a specific

[48:34] drink ratting? A bit of salt has a profound effect. We use 200 grams of salt per liter of water. Uh, so uh, and that solution ain't nothing happening to it. We store it on the bar unrefrigerated for infinity and there's no problem. And we usually add one or 2 drops of that per cocktail. And that's about it. We add that. Okay. I have time to do one word. Oh, that's it. What? All right, Daniel, from Illinois. I will go into depth in my fried chicken technique next

[49:03] time and if I have time. I'll tell you guys how I do my new lobster technique, which I think is really good. Till next time, happy New Year. Cooking issues.

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