[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by underground meats, an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin.

[0:08] For more information, visit shop.underground food collective.org or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritage radionetwork.org for 1000s more. Cooking issues.

[0:56] Calling your questions, too! Cooking issues. Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues. This is Dave Aron, your host of Cookies. from Roberto's Pizzeria. Bushwick, Brooklyn. Joined you in the studio with, as always, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, Jack and Joe in the engineering booth, and special guests. First, of course, Piper, Piper from Booker and

[1:17] Dax's iPad Piper. Hi. How you doing? And Mark Ladner, from Del Fosto. Definitely, dude. How you doing? I'm doing great. how are you? All right, I'm going to make you actually say stuff on here. Dave, you want to get close to the mic there? Who? Dave. Well, I was told not to yell into the mic. You got to get closer. I told not to yell into the... I told not to yell into the mic. All right. So, uh, so 1st and foremost, I'm

[1:46] gonna make Mark, oh, by the way, calling your questions to any of us, including Mark, for all of your Mark Ladner style questions. 2 718-497-2128. 718-4972128. Mark, uh, you're expensively here to, uh, to, uh, give plugs for your uh, barbecue thing you're doing here, right? don't you talk about it for a second? Yeah, I came to review with Erin and Patrick, some of the logistics for this small

[2:10] get-together we're having on Saturday morning at the Heritage Warehouse, which is on this same block. So, yeah, I'm going to head over there afterwards and check on my grill. Make sure everything's... Are you going to come? You gonna bring your kids safe? When is it? Saturday evening. This Saturday evening? I would I would love to. I would love to, but someone's going to have to come take my place because I will be flying to Senegal. Oh wow. Yeah, I'm taking a trip that is being organized by a good buddy

[2:41] from, you know, the Grand Dakar restaurant, Pierre Cham, who has an excellent Senegalese cookbook called Yolele. Uh, and you might have seen him on the Iron Chief. He was on the Iron Chief at one point, yeah. Yeah, I know. Have you expecting a pretty exotic experience out there? Well, I mean, the whole point of these trips, it's supposed to be a series of trips that chefs are taking, you know, American chefs are taking to Africa with a

[3:05] two, with a two-part, a two-pronged kind of goal. One, we get to steal ideas and ingredients and bring them back here, right? And two, people over there. Uh, the hope is, is that locally, they'll say, oh, when people come visit our country, what they really want to see is

[3:22] authentic, real deal stuff. They don't want to see some sort of BS fake French or some sort of, you know, Western garbage, that

[3:30] there's that there's inherent value in doing, um, you know, very good presentations of uh, local ingredients. Yeah, because, you know, and it's the same thing in, you know, most places when, you know, when I know you're the same way. When you travel, you know, what do you got good here? Like, what is, yeah, because, uh, you know, you know, you've been to the, you know, you've been to Italy, you've been to France, you

[3:54] know what's good there. So if you're going to, um, you know, if you're going to Senegal, you don't want some interpretation. McDonald's. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I spoke to a good friend of all of us, actually, who's like, whenever he travels, he goes to local McDonald's to see how they're different from American McDonald's. Yeah, it's kind of strange, though. pretty strange. Yeah, pretty strange. So anyway, so that's the that's the goal of that. And so someone will have to take my place at the barbecue, but can they still purchase the tickets at the

[4:21] event, right? absolutely. Does anyone know the site to go to? Jack? The site is Italianbarbecue.eventbright.com. I'm not going to say that if you don't go, you're worthless and stupid, but I wouldn't

[4:35] be pushing. I'll say that. It's it's yeah. What are you going to be making there? Some sticks. We're making some Spiadini. Yeah? Made from heritage USA's very own red wattle pork shoulder. Red water, huh? It's going to be delish. Has the price of red wattle come down at all or is it still absurdly? I don't believe so. It's pretty absurdly expensive. Not as expensive as the, you know, what's my favorite word is a pig related word is Mangalista. I've never cooked with it. You ever cook with the mangalista? It's pretty strange. Is it worthhile? Yeah, it is, it's good. Worth the money? If you like pork. Do you like pork, Dave? I do. I do. I do enjoy. enjoy the pork every night. Speaking of pork, who's our who's our sponsors today? That's underground meats. Madison, Wisconsin. Have you had their product? I have yet to have their product. I would like to try their product to see whether it is as delicious I hope it is. I believe there'll be something sent out Oh, beautiful, I like it for the show. Friend of cooking issues, listener of cooking issues, so... Well, I'm excited to try it. You know what I had last night from pork? Pork, pork related? You know, the Salamaria Belaci guys? They're excellent, you know, salumi curing outfit here in New York and New Jersey. Good people. And I've taught a lot of people, a lot of, you know, a lot of people who are known for their curing now in this area, spent a lot of time with the guys at

[5:58] San Mary B. Lacy, um, kind of learning their techniques. And what they did that was very interesting way back in the day was instead of changing their procedures to meet, um, to meet food code, they hired and paid for people to prove that their techniques were safe from

[6:14] a uh, food from a food, you know, food safety standpoint. It's true and absolutely fascinating. I think they're the only people that have actually gotten away with that. Yeah, I mean, they spent, I think, a lot of money, you know, but they, you know, their point,

[6:27] and I was hanging out with Paul from there yesterday, and the point that they made years ago when I 1st met them was, well, you know, I

[6:33] don't, if I'm not going to do it the way I want to do it, I just, I don't want to do it. So, you know, let's see whether we can. And they did. Yeah, I don't know anyone else who, I don't know anyone else who does that, but they had, they had the most delicious wild boar supersata that I had yesterday. Of course, I'm from the east, I call it super sock. But anyway, but like it was ridiculously good. And they apparently they had these wild herds in Texas that they let Rome free and then right before slaughter. They heard them together and like slaughter them. I guess shoot them in the head. So it's all wild fed, but USDA. Really good. You had that product yet? I have not. I have not. Sounds good, though. look out for it. You want that, right? Okay. Love more. All right, now, 2 some questions we have. Okay. Mark writes, not this mark, not Mark Ladner, the mark from the noodle questions last week. Thanks for discussing my rice noodle predicament. I tried adding more water because I told them maybe I had more water. If you remember, if you listened or whatever. He was trying to make a rice noodle. It's made from partially cooked out hydrated rice starch mixed with more rice starch and water and pressed through, you know, through a potato ricer into boiling water to make noodles. And the reason you pre-boil part of the starches because otherwise, you know, rice starch doesn't really hold together very well if it's just rice starch and

[7:43] water and it'll fly apart on you. So, uh, so anyway. So, uh, that I told them more water is what I told them. Or a more baller press. Those are the 2 choices I gave. More water, more baller. Okay. I've tried adding more water, but the texture of the final noodles, compromise. I'm definitely going to try the Indian noodle press thing you mentioned. I can't see how that wouldn't work because in India, they make these noodles from cooked out starch and they're really stiff and so they need really hardcore presses to press the stuff out. Hey, have you ever tried, Mark? KitchenAid, the new powered extruder that fits on the KitchenAid. I haven't seen it. Yeah, I read about it last for last week, but I've never seen it. You have one of the really nice new pasta. Not the Arcabolino. Yeah, the other one or you have the Arcabolino? No. The other one? I'm not sure of the name right now. I think it's a itology. Yep, and you enjoy it, correct? Yeah, it's good. don't do a lot of extrusion. Most of our stuff is handmade, but I've seen Wiley use a pretty interesting extruder that's sort of like a cocking

[8:42] gun. Yeah, the one he used to use the shrimp noodles? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That one's pretty cool. Takes a lot of torque, though. I mean, I don't know how you would do it with a racer. Yeah, I mean, like the Ricers, I mean, I have a good stainless steel ricer, but I also had a plastic ricer and I know that I would break it. I know I would break it. I mean, I know me. I would break it. Okay, back to the question. But concerning the methods of hand pulling noodles that I was talking about that me, Dave, was talking about. Because basically when we look on a handful of noodles, the question is, is that there's some guys, and it's usually the people who are attempting to

[9:13] mimic, uh, you know, Asian recipes from an American standpoint, their pulling style and their hand pulled noodles is,

[9:20] uh, it shows that the dough is so slack that if they pulled overly hard at all, it would just fly apart into

[9:26] nothingness. And then occasionally, you will see those guys pull the stuff and the noodle strands will break and fall into nothingness. Whereas if you look at the actual guys doing it in Asia, they're

[9:35] thwap, the dap, the lap adapting that stuff around and it looks like it has a lot more resilience to it. And from my perspective, a dough that has more resilience in

[9:44] it, if it could be pulled, is going to have better tooth. I mean, it's just obvious to me that it's going to have more tooth if it's got more structure, when you guess. Yeah, I don't know. Where is the introduction of that alkali water stuff that they use? Is that the real secret ingredient? Well, so a lot of people are using, they use alkali water in, or they, whether they use baking soda. Most American guys use baking soda, when they're doing it and they add some and that should, so when you add it to a regular noodle, not one of the kind of

[10:10] overprocessed hand pulled noodles, but a regular noodle, it's going to strengthen the gluten and also, depending on the cult of our wheat, you use increased

[10:19] yellowness. So you got the yellow alkaline noodles that have the snap to it, right? But a hand pulled noodle is never going to have that kind of bite to it because in order to pull it, if it had that kind of bite to it, it wouldn't pull right.

[10:30] You know what I mean? So it's, you know, when you're making the hand pulled noodles. You have to get to a point where the, uh, you know, where, um, you know, it's not

[10:38] so, uh, elastic is going to break short, but then it pulls. You want the extensibility, but not necessarily able to pull back elasticity. Have you ever successfully attempted this yourself? No. No. No. I mean, I've never even known anyone that's tried. No, I mean, I've tried it. I've gotten stuff that like, I was like, oh, I can see where this might work, but I've never been like, oh, I'm good at

[10:57] this. Or, oh, I would serve this to my friends or family, you know. And that, you know. And so, but, you know, the guy, Chef Tom. Anyway, so let me finish it. concerning the methods of hand pulling noodles that you were talking about, my limited experience, the thwacking method is really helpful if your noodle dough has been sitting, which makes sense because the gluten

[11:15] strands would probably rejoin together a little bit for more of a network. I've only used the recipe from Chef Tom, which is the one available on the internet. And I found if you pull the noodles right out of the mixer bowl like he does in the video. They are easy, but they can tighten up after resting. So a few quick thwacks can help get them back to being pullable. Maybe the resting can help add chew. Thanks again. Mark, I think you're right. I think the resting adds too. But you know, the thing is, I think, like anything else, there's so much more to know. Like the one thing I almost got good at was doing the dragon's beard candy. And even then, I sucked compared to, you know, the, you know, the 1000000 year old dude has been doing nothing but Dragon's

[11:47] beard candy because, I don't know, because that's all he does. I don't know. You know, like anything else, like there's the techniques, the more you learn about them, the more you know that you don't, that you're not really good at what you're doing and that you're a farce. You know? What you say? But on the Ublek noodles, I was talking about, if you remember this, this guy who saw this video, this insane video where the person was Ublek is something that like acts like a solid, but then when you're hitting it, but then when you're not hitting it, you know, it drains through

[12:12] a, it turns to a liquid. And so there's videos of guys, cornstarch and water is the most famous one. You can make, just mix cornstarch and water, and these guys running across a pool of cornstarch and

[12:21] water, and then stopping and sinking all the way up to their chest in this pool of cornstarch and water.

[12:25] Uh, and then we say, well, how the hell do you make these Oublek noodles? And, uh, eating Asia said it's, uh, they're actually not rice, which is what we thought last week, they're sweet potato. And Paul Adams has made a proper ooblec noodle. And so you go on my Twitter there, cooking issues. He made it with 5% pre-cooked sweet potato starch, balance, uncooked with water and alum. And I still don't know what the alum does. But anyway, so enough with the enough with the updates on the noodles, right? Good? Okay. Ben writes in on miso and beans. Ben says, big fan of the show actually became a heritage radio member at the low cost of about ¢50 per cooking issues episode. Thanks, Ben. amortized over all of our episodes. That's changed, dude. And we've done a lot of these dang things. Anyway, 2 unrelated questions. I saw Dave Chang on Mind of a Chef. Have you ever seen Mine of Chef? have not. I have not. Have you seen it? I don't really, I don't, I don't get, I get PBS now, but I, well, and I went to go look at it online, but the PBS took it off because, because they're publicly funded and so they wouldn't have it streaming.

[13:24] I understand that. Does that make any damn sense? Makes no damn sense. Okay. I saw Dave Shang on Mind of a Chef discussing the pitiful quality of American Miso. Is there any way to make miso in a home environment, and could you achieve the superior quality to what's available in the store that way, granting it may take a

[13:40] year? Failing that, any New York City or mail order sources of quality Mesa. Now, look, you know, Dave is occasionally, um, you know, liable to make some hyperbolic statements. In fact, there is, you know, you can get some delicious miso here in

[13:54] the, in the US and you can get some crap miso here in the US. Most Americans when they go buy me. I mean, actually, Nastasia, Mark, and I were all in Japan about a year ago. We had some some pretty good meat. Did you have any good misa when you were over there? I some amazing miso. I had the guy who was the head of purchasing from Park High. bought me some hatcho miso, which it is very hard to get really good hatcho miso here. I don't never seen it available. I've seen really bad versions of Hacho Miso here that I guess weren't treated well. And Hacho Miso is one that's aged for an extremely long

[14:26] time. It's made exclusively soy beans and it's very dark and kind of rooting flavors, like salt and coffee and all sorts

[14:34] of really awesome stuff. And the real, the real good stuff is just light years beyond, you know, the crappy version that

[14:42] is that I've had here in the US. However, they're extremely high quality misos that are brought in. Most misos, most people like the lighter misos or they get hooked on the lighter misos, like the shiro misos and things like that. And most of those are done with very short fermentation times, and then they have to dope them up with things to stop

[15:00] them, stop them from growing in the package and blowing off. And so those can taste not so great. Right? But any major city that has a decent Japanese population in New York being one of them. I'm sure San Francisco or any, any, you know, is the same, go to any one of those Japanese places, and they have on

[15:19] hand 20, 20 different misos, some of which are going to suck, and some of which are

[15:25] going to be good. And now, not being able to read anything in Japanese and not being able to communicate with a lot of people that are selling me the stuff, you know, even though they actually all speak, they all speak English in the stores

[15:35] here, but I still, for some reason, can't communicate with them at Sunshine Mart. Can you have this problem, Mark? Spanish. I don't know shit about miso, Dave. Anyway, so but you've been to sunshine, Mart. Yeah. See what I'm talking about. Like, they speak English fine, but still they don't communicate with me. I don't understand it. Anyway, Piper, you ever done this? Nah, you don't care. taste this. Okay. So anyway, so because you're trying, when I walk into a store, here's what I want to know. You have 30 different things. I don't want to fool around. I don't have the time. I can't even type this stuff into a search engine. Just tell me what the good stuff is. Just point out the good stuff, right? And even though I know it's a very nuanced question. Like, still, like, if someone walked in and then, and, and, you know, I had a bunch of different price ranges of

[16:20] things, and I said, why is this thing cost more? They would have some sort of explanation. Anyway. So I end up just buying like, you know, a couple of the higher priced ones and

[16:29] and maybe one of the crappier ones to see what the difference is taking home. But there are some very, very good misos available here, but you can make your own. If you want, but this said, miso is, there's a lot of steps in miso, and anything where there's a lot of steps, even though you can do it yourself, there's a lot of room for not being as good as the people who are actually very, very good at it.

[16:47] It's the same way that you can bake bread at home, but most of us, unless we don't, unless we devote a lot of time to it, aren't going to make bread as good as the best bread makers that we can go visit. But if you want to make your own, you should, well, 1st of all, you should probably own at any rate, uh, Sandor Katz's book, The Art of Fermentation. He has a small section on Miso. And then he, he actually directs you to the kind of still, you know, I think almost 2 decades or more later, like grand tome on me,

[17:12] so by William Sherliff and Kiko Oyagi, which is the book of Miso, the same people that brought

[17:18] you the book of Tofu. I've talked about these guys on the air a bunch of times. The tofu book, I think, and I told you, I called him and he was like, he called me a bad person for trying to make tofu out of

[17:27] edamame. He said I was like a, he actually said, I think that I was a bad human being. And, um, anyway, uh, he, uh, you know, his book on tofu, I think, has been superseded with more modern books, but I think his miso book is still the, his and her miso book is still the, the one to

[17:42] get, uh, Beware that they have abridged small paperback versions of the book of

[17:47] Tofu in the book of Miso, and they've been hacked up and then reglued into a paperback form. And to me, that was almost unreadable. Get the big version, like the larger version, whether in paperback or in hardcover. Uh, and uh, you can go to his website, uh, It's a funny thing. It like both of them. him and her, but then whenever someone's writing, it's always him writing something, so I never know. You know what I mean? Anyway, uh, soyinfoCenter.com and uh, good source, good source for uh, Koji. You need Koji to make miso, and a good source for that is gemcultures, www.agemcultures.com. What do you think? Enough on Nisa? Yeah? You know what my favorite misos are? I like barley misas. Barley misas, me the misas. You like barley miso Piper? Never had it. What the hell is wrong? You guys don't like miso? I just don't use a lot. Why? What's your hate down on music? Nothing. No hate down? No, I just don't use it. cook with it. It's stuff delicious. I agree. I actually, like, you know, a lot of people like Chang hates this, but I like putting miso

[18:47] in things that it doesn't belong in. Like, I really like, uh, I like I like milk-based miso soups. I like cream of miso soups. I like, I mean, it's just such an awesome rich flavor, but, you know, apparently I'm a bad person. Here's another one. Like, okay, you ready for like a bunch of people? I'm gonna lose a bunch of listeners now. Ready? I like, I like with, I know that I'm a bad. I know it's bad. I know it's stupid, and I know that, like, and I guess you have to be a certain generation for this to be really offensive to you, but wasabi, mashed potatoes taste good. I'm sorry, they do. Like wasabi mashed potatoes taste freaking good. Now, you know, okay. I said it. I'm a bad, bad man, and it's like incredibly trite, and, you know, I shouldn't like them, but they don't. Blasphemous heretic. Yeah, right? But they don't taste bad. Do they taste bad? I'm not going to make Mark comment because, you know, he's professional in this. They don't taste bad. How about this? What about mustard and mashed potatoes? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Oh my god. Gotta call her. I got, I got, call her, you're on the air. Hopefully it's not about the wasabi. It's not about wasabi. Hi guys. Um, I'm calling because I have a bunch of delicious leftover duck fat from a duck roast that I

[20:02] did, um, and I'm interested in a sweet application for it. So I was just wondering if I could substitute it one for one for

[20:09] butter. And whether you have any, um, awesome recommendations of something that would be as particularly delicious in a sweet duck fat pastry kind of a thing. Mark, what do you think? You got anything? Yeah, I think it's, I think it's awesome. Make a pie. Yeah, pie was the 1st thing that came to my head. an empanada or some penzo at the ear, something like that. Yeah, I mean... It's going to be flaky. A little softer than it's going to be a little softer than lard, right? But any sweet that you would add lard. I mean, like there's no made a better pie crust than a lard base crust, right, Mark? Never. Crisco. That's illegal, though. Yeah, but the flavor of lard better than the flavor of Crisco, though. That's true Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm not so, I'm like, I don't really care whether it's the flakiest thing in the world as long as the taste is good.

[20:59] Are you like a huge flake man? No, not necessarily. Have you done a pie crust with duck fat or ever? assuming it would be good. I have not. I assume it would be good. But here's the thing. throw it into mashed potatoes. You're making fun of me. I wouldn't want the sweet match today, but check this out. One thing I'd be aware of is when you're making pie crust, you know how everyone says your butter has to

[21:22] be like exactly the right temperature? I find that that's kind of like crap that you can kind of make pie crust with any form of butter

[21:30] in any form of Crisco. And in fact, Steingarten in his 1st book. You know, has a whole thing where he and Marion Cunningham make pie crust, uh, and they don't worry about the temperature of their water or anything like that. But once you move to highly plastic fats that tend to grease out on you,

[21:43] lard being one, and I'm presumably duck fat being another, especially after it's rendered. Duck fat, you're like, oh, it takes forever to render out of the skin, so it must be really resilient. No. Like once it's there, like it softens up quick in your hands when you're working with it. Now chilling your water and making sure that the, that the, that the fat's exactly in the right plastic range is going to be a lot more critical because when you're making those kinds of

[22:05] things. I guess empanada is not as much. But when you're making like a pie crust, you really don't want to melt out too much of the fat into

[22:12] the, into the flour because it's just going to change the consistency. It won't necessarily be bad, but it won't be the same consistency. That's my feeling. What a, uh, like a buttercream crossing? you have a question? I don't know. Sounds good actually. This is why I like Piper around, but like a duck buttercream, a duck cream, ducky, ducky cream. Duck cream. I would try doing a I would try maybe subbing half out to see whether it works. That's what I'm thinking. And then so like, you know, replace half of the butter with the duck fat. But see, Piper, this is why we keep Piper around. Piper has some awesome ideas. He also is the master of punch. If you need a pun, Piper. Yeah, you need to come to Piper for the post. All over it. Do any of these ideas help out at all or no? Absolutely. That was really helpful. I think the half and half is probably the way to go. And freezing it in thin sheets for laminating. Oh yeah, yeah. best way to work with it, yeah. Oh, there you go. Colder the better. There you go. Bang. All right. And so we're going to call that one Piper, Piper. What are we going to call that? Let's give it to it. Just remember, Piper, when you make it and you tweet tweet back to cooking issues saying that it was delicious. Just, you know, don't forget Piper. Okay. I promise I will. Cool. Thanks a lot. Okay, the 2nd question Ben had was, what's the deal with kidney beans, red kidney

[23:29] bean, toxicity. My understanding is that soaking, followed by boiling, can deactivate the toxin and kidney beans, which is a

[23:35] phytohemaglutenin, but that temperatures below boiling could exacerbate it. I've seen Texas, obviously non-Texas style because Texas style chili has no beans in it, right? Although I like beans in the chili. Am I also a bad man because I like beans in my chili? I like beans and chili, Dave. Piper? Beans and chili? Always Yeah? Yeah. So, you know, people who are meat only, just need to need to get over it. you know, purism of any sort. Like, sometimes purism is fun, like at dinner parties, to have like, and we could talk about Colonel Sanders being a purist later because, you know, he was like kind of the purest of all time,

[24:05] insulting his own restaurants. stuff's amazing. Anyway, but there's no reason to be a purist and beans and meat, they love each other so much, especially in Chile. So, yeah. Although I like a meat only chili. Uh, I've seen obviously non-Texas style chili recipes. They call for beans to be soaked and salted overnight, then simmered on a gentle heat for a couple of hours in a

[24:24] Dutch oven on a stovetop. Is that safe? Kenji Alt's recipe on Sirius Eats is one such example. Okay. So here's the deal. Kidney beans. And a lot of other beans, similar beans contain in them, PHA, phyto,

[24:39] a hemoglutenin, along with other what's called anti-nutritional factors, right? Some of them are, you know, undigestible things. Some of them are protein absorption inhibitors, and some of them are just,

[24:51] uh, you know, uh, sugars that you can't uh, digest, and so they make you, um, toot. Yeah, flatus. Oh, the Piper busting out the flatest. Yeah. It's what makes them a musical fruit. Let's just put it that way. And you know, Booker, my son, Booker, has stopped eating beans because Dax told him that they make him fart. He's never had a problem with it. Like, Booker's never been running around the house tooting out with beans, and yet the idea that it might happen now has turned

[25:14] him off of beans until he says, daddy, you need to, you need to have a way to guarantee that they won't make me toot. And I was like, I can't, I can't, I can't do that. I can't guarantee. Spending that much time on the subway, though, you dude, you should be concerned. Well, yeah, he's not a subway tutor. I hate the subway tutor, not as bad as the airplane tutor. Airplane tutor is the worst. What? You know what the worst, the crowded bar tutor? Like, because you're trying to, like, enjoy something and, like, someone, like, just toots out at the bar. Anyway. Okay. So, if you go on the FDA's website and their bad bug book, right? they, in fact, put out this notion, and if you go on the Wikipedia, of course, yeah, like you can trust the Wikipedia, necessarily, if you go on the Wikipedia, they both mention the fact that incorrect cooking, and they both mention, I think, uh, 85C, cooking it at these kind of simmering temperatures, can increase by some, you know, order of like fivefold the toxicity of, of the, of

[26:14] PHA. And what it is, is it's a form of electin, which is a protein that bonds to polysaccharides. And another style thing like that is ricin,

[26:24] which, you know, just got mailed out to some of our politicians, unfortunately, comes from the caster beam, but that's deadly. PHA is not going to be deadly, but if you eat too much PHA, in the form of a raw or undercooked kidney bean. It's not fun. Like, you know, you got yourself some diarrhea and some some sickness and some, but you're having to die. I don't think. Probably not. Although, don't take my word, don't go out and eat raw rocketing. But, uh, and you know, like I say, you can read about it in the clinical complications, but as you say, what's the deal

[26:53] with that? Why would cooking it at a lower temperature make it much more, much more toxic? And then when I went to try and read all the scholarly articles I could get on the subject of

[27:02] deactivated, because it's a big, it's a big deal, making getting rid of the anti-nutritional factors and things like kidney beans. In fact, I did not see that that was the case. I did not see any situations where soaking and low simmering actually made it much worse. I think here's my feeling on it. And at least someone who's a doctor, come and tell me why I'm wrong that if you were to cook a bean at a temperature that wasn't going to deactivate a lot of the PHA,

[27:27] they wouldn't taste cooked. So if the bean doesn't taste cooked, then the bean's not cooked and you probably shouldn't need it. If the bean tastes cooked, it's probably been activated at 85, you know, it's probably been

[27:38] activated, cooked above a temperature to deactivate to denature the protein to an extent that it's okay. My guess is that the person who, that, whatever study, which I was not able to find, uh, even though the

[27:50] US government puts it out there as a fact that you can make it worse by undercooking it, it's got to be

[27:55] that uh, partially breaking up the bean and then masticating it makes more of the bad stuff that you haven't deactivated yet available to your system. It's got to be it, right? I can't think of any other mechanism. Anyone? Anyone? Just cook your kidney beans, for Christ's sake. We need to hear about it more often. What? A lot of people put beans in a crock pot. You think you'd hear about people getting sick from it? Yeah, you'd think. Well, so another study I read called to see if I can find the name of the study here, I can't, but it's called like clinical presentation of kidney

[28:26] bean toxicity, and it just came out this year. Oh, here it is. Clinical Complications of Kidney Bean, Physiolis Vulgaris Consumption by Sandeep Kumar, February 2013. Made the interesting point that these toxicity things come up more often in the UK than they come up in the

[28:41] US. Different cultivar, perhaps, that we consume. Another possibility is that aside from actual toxicity due to PHA,

[28:50] there's it could be another factor in allergic reactions to leguminous

[28:54] things and maybe there's some other complicating factor. The ones in the UK. I don't know, but the study specifically said there's a higher incidence of problems in the UK. Because in the US, you're never like, man, my cousin, man, in the hospital after that kidney

[29:07] bean. You know what I mean? ever you ever heard of that? Never Dave. No, it doesn't happen. Okay. I think we should go to a break. Oh, commercial break. come back We could be issues.

[29:42] Underground Meats is an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin. They use small farms from southwest Wisconsin to source their meat. The animals are raised on pasture for their entire lives by farmers who care about animal welfare. While underground meats uses European traditions, They also use ingredients from the Upper Midwest to try to create new types of salamis, experimenting with both ingredients and techniques. The salamis are made using heritage breeds, mostly red wattles, tamworts, Berkshires, and mule foots. Try their award-winning cured pork shoulder and goat salami. To learn more and purchase products, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. Oh, be great. Welcome back to cooking issues. All right, so we have a question in from Mike and Orlando says, Dear Dave and Hammer, and little did Mike know that Mark Ladner would be in the studio today to answer this question so that I wouldn't have to give my kind of useless information on it, Mark

[30:55] Gibbs. Don't assume that's going to be helpful. I think this one's going to be good. David Hammer, every weekend at our house. We also have family dinner with my in-laws. I have family dinner, although not usually with man-laws, whether they're always welcome when they're in town. My wife really loves Carbonara. Who doesn't? Love it. It's good product. Good stuff. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out the best recipe for it. I've heard you and Hammer argue about bacon versus pancetta. I live in Florida. We don't have very good pancetta down here. What do you recommend? Love the show. Thanks for everything. Mike in Orlando. First of all, before I let your recommendation. Do you believe in the old school where people soak and soak and like simmer their American bacon to get rid of the smoke or is that just ruining the flavor of the pork all over the all over the map? I like the smoke, Dave. Yes! Yes. Yes! Mark Ladner. We're in America, damn it. Oh, sweet. Sweet. Sweet. All right. Well, you know, really nothing much more I can say about that, because the fact of the matter is, bacon is delicious, but if someone actually wanted to have more of a pancetta experience,

[32:00] Is there any good mail order source of pancetta or anything, anything you like here? Perhaps Belese. Do they mail order? imagine they would. I can't imagine they wouldn't. Right. I mean, they make a top, they make top notch stuff across the board. Yeah, poorly made industrial pancetta is absolute garbage. I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend using it. It's just really salty and smell and smells and tastes of chemicals and stick with some bacon. Well, especially in something like that, if it doesn't have the smoke in it, the poor quality of the poor

[32:33] pork's going to shine through, right? You don't want the pork. Well, one of the alleged stories about, um, the, uh, the history of uh,

[32:45] carbonara is based off World War II, American GI, C rations, and being powdered egg and some sort of bacon product.

[32:57] Have you ever made it with powdered eggs? I never have. I bet it's no good. Powdered eggs? Depends on how desperate you are. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, as Colonel Sanders said about the Egg McMuffin, I would eat it in an emergency. But, uh, well, in case I put some of it up on my Twitter feed last week, but we've been reading around here this 1979 interview with the

[33:25] 89 year old Colonel Sanders, where it's a genius interview. in a book, a humor book called junk food, and this guy goes to the Colonel Sanders, and he brings an egg McMuffin, a filet of fish, a

[33:36] Big Mac, a Krispy Kreme, donut, and then a bunch, you know, some other, some other, you know, fast food stuff to him, milkshake, and all this, and gets this kernel, the kernel's opinion on it, as well as the kernel's opinion on Kentucky fried chickens,

[33:49] uh, own products, and it is an amazing, an amazing interview. The guy had, they had him a Krispy Kreme donut and the, the colonel pulls a gold spoon out of his pocket and just starts nudging all the different

[34:01] foods and when the guy said, what do you think of the Krispy Kreme, he just size and stares at the ceiling. I do not like yeast raised donuts. They turn into balls of dough, don't you know? Anyway, like it's like an amazing, amazing interview. Someday we had to just put the whole of it up on the cooking issues website, see where we get sued. Anyway. Okay, so I think we got the we got the pancetta. We got the pancetta nailed down. Okay. You can get bacon that has less smoke in it also if you wanted to, although again, smoke is delicious. Now, here we're onto the tasting portion of the cooking issue show. We've never done this before. We're doing a live taste on the air. What What? Uh, she's saying pop it open, Piper. Uh, so, uh, John Riper writes in. Deer cooking issues peeps. A few years back, Harold McGee showed that holding olive oil at deep fat frying temperatures for 5 minutes drives off pretty much all its distinctive flavor compounds.

[34:54] Some Italian cookbook authors harumped at that by some Italian cookbook authors. It's Marcella Hazan. Some Italian cookbook authors, Harump, at that, and said

[35:04] that the olive oil will indeed impart its flavor when cooking an egg on your conditions much milder than

[35:08] Harold tested. Most of us cooking at home use olive oil in the huge gap between those applications. In the initial minute or three, but when the oil is hotter than you'd want it for an egg. Can you give any useful guidelines? Wait, whoa, shit. I mean, shoot. Oh, I love you, Piper. All right. I didn't mean to curse on error. I apologize. We'll get Jack and Joe to bleze that out. 1st one in a while, though. I gotta hand it to you. Yeah, but what I thought was happening was these like all of these containers that I had like

[35:35] labeled, that the labels were getting mixed about, none of us would know which containers were which, and then the entire thing would be ruined. So I apologize out there in listening land for the curse. Why does your oil smell like eggs, Steve? Oh, okay. Oh, good knows, though. See, I love that. I'm the same way. When someone cracks something in the thing, I'm like, what is that, blah, blah? anyway, okay. Okay. Can you give any useful guidelines about how fast olive oil loses its flavor as it heats up and whether those flavors are transferred and retained in the

[36:03] cooked product as the oil loses them? Well, I can't give any hard and fast rules, but I did read Harold McGee's article that you forward to us, which was a New York Times from November of 2010. And let me just say something about Harold McGee is that when Harold McGee does something, he usually does it right. You know what I mean? He doesn't mess around. So he sits there and he doesn't make off the cuff statements. ever. I mean, never. You know what I mean? And so you should go read his article. He tests a bunch of different seed oils, a bunch of different nut oils, and a bunch of different olive oils, of varying qualities,

[36:36] uh, under 2 different heat regimes, uh, and then takes those oils also to, um, takes those oils to specialist olive oil tasters and has them

[36:45] taste it to see kind of what happened. And the result is, is that in his opinion, most of the actual quality of the olive oil is lost fairly quickly during

[36:53] the, during the cooking time. There is a rebuttal on Zester Daily by Nancy Harlan Jenkins, and you can read it on there.

[37:01] It's Friday Rebuttal, and I'll give you a quote, and I have a lot of respect for Marcella Zan, because who doesn't have a lot of respect, but she says something here that really ticks me off. Hazan, who has degrees in natural sciences and biology, immediately rose to the challenge,

[37:14] Parel McGee's challenge. She seemed to have a great, she seemed to heave a great sigh in her Facebook page. It was discouraging once again to see a scientist writing about cooking as a scientist, she wrote. You can only make sense about cooking if you write as a cook. Now, I absolutely hate, when people say, especially about McGee, that he is just a scientist in a lab thinking about, McGee is a lover of all food eating, gusatory experiences, and he doesn't sit around, like, I hate the majority also of food science where things are reduced to meaningless, you know, quantities, and you don't really get a feel for what actual cooking is like by reading it or the studies that people

[37:58] do don't actually have a implications for real world cooking. McGee is not like that. McGee is not a scientist in a laboratory doing stuff. McGee is someone who, and if you read his original book, The Curious Cook, it fantastically shows you,

[38:12] like if you want to know what's in McGee's mind, how McGee works, read a curious cook. It's out of print, but it's easy to get. And what he does is, is he notices something in a kitchen, or someone tells him something, and sparks an idea in his brain, and he runs it into the ground, and he runs tests, using his mind and his mouth. He is not, he, like, I know what it's like to talk to scientists who, uh,

[38:34] poo-pooh, the real world and actual experience. McGee is not that. So I bristle at any implication that that is what McGee is doing in the article because that's just wrong.

[38:44] Now, what she does say is that anyone that's cooked and quotes someone that McGee knows, but that wasn't in the olive oil tasting, that everybody knows that if you cook an egg in a good olive oil, it's better than if you cook it

[38:55] in not good olive oil. So what I have for these guys to test here. I have the same oil under 3 different procedures, and I want you to smell them and, you know, tell me about the different oils. And then I have one egg cooked in an olive oil and one egg cooked in

[39:11] a, well, I didn't have, I didn't have any non- olive oil in my house, actually. So the only thing I had was Pam. So I put an extra amount of gross kind of Pam in the, because I use it for my waffle maker, a Pam in the, and fried an egg and Pam. Yeah. So why don't you guys 1st just go for the oil? So why don't you pass these around here? Which one, let me read the lid because it doesn't, doesn't, that one says SLOO.

[39:40] All right. So what are your, what are your thoughts on the SLOO? Mark? Smells very vegetal. Yeah? Yeah. It smells like shit, Dave. Stuff smells like stuff. Smells like a fish, actually. Which one which one is that one? that's EV. That labeled E-V-O-O. All right. And then the last one? Yeah, passes around. Here you go, Mark's among the last one. Labeled a Rufo, R-U-F-O. Smells like pure. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so, so you taste them. And so there's a, so what would you say about the, the, the, like, uh, give Mark the middle one again. Piper, you taste it. This the strongest one. This feels this tastes raw. Yep. Uh, and not, yeah, well, no, taste the other one, the middle one. Sorry that you can't see what we're tasting here, but it'll become apparent when we talk about it in a minute.

[40:45] This is the S-L-O-O. No, not that one that he said smelled like fish. All right, so while he's tasting that. I did 3 different regimes. One of the oils is a, you know, an actual one that I would

[40:59] use that I actually use to eat on things raw. Uh, it's a, it's, you know, it's an unfiltered olive oil from Sicily, and it's a combination of 3 of my favorite olives, Nochalara de Belici, Cherosola, and Bianco Lilla, uh, comes from a guy named

[41:13] Galufo, uh, in the south of Sicily, and I've been buying his oil for

[41:18] years and I enjoy it. Uh, and that one was labeled uh, roof of raw unfiltered, uh, oil, right? Uh, the one labeled EVOO that uh, Marks that smelled like fish stands for uh, extraviolent overcooked oil. And that's deep frying conditions. So I took it up to just about the smoke point. Um, and and then fried a couple cubes of bread in it. Uh, and then uh, strain it out through a coffee filter. And, uh, to me, all of its all of its olive oilness is pretty much been wiped away. It just tastes, it smells like oil that's been slightly abused. Yeah. right? There's no debris at all, though, which is surprising. And then, and then the middle one, I sauteed some lettuce in very quickly, just to

[42:07] get, just to give an idea. And that one, to me, uh, I mean, it's not great, but it does maintain some

[42:15] oliveness to it. It's about half. Yeah. Pure. Yeah. And that was that, you know, that's if you're doing a very quick kind of a saute and it maintains it. And then I have 2 eggs here. See whether you can see whether you get an olive oilness out of the eggs. We have like fork here. By eating them. That's why there's a fork present. So anyway, so we ran the test here, and I think, you know, McGee is pretty much right. Two things are happening when you overheat an oil. You're damaging the oil and you're giving the off smells, which is where the fish stuff is coming from, and you are driving off a lot of the volatiles. You're getting much of a difference between them. And, uh, the, specifically, she said fry an egg. So I fried an egg. And I use what I always did is I heat up a cast iron skillet till it, till it's, you know, till when I slap the, till when I slap the surface of the skillet with my palm, it feels like it's the right temperature to cook an

[43:06] egg. I then added a small quantity of oil, crack the egg into

[43:10] it, and then, you know, before it fully sets, I turn the pan off and let the heat carry through the pan. That's my typical fry egg technique. I was to guess, I would say, this one had the oil. Was that the one that had the pre-broken egg, yolk? That's the one had Pam. Is it just because the pan was bad or because the olive oil was good? It just had more flavor. in general. I don't think that there was any noticeable

[43:39] advantage one way or the other. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, there you have our 1st on-air test of a listener question on the cooking issues. Here's a related question regarding that. So when I make my tomato sauce. I leave a lot of the oil that I cook the garlic in. Would it be better to fry garlic separately and then add cold oil and heat it up just at 212? Actually, I don't know. Usually when I'm doing garlic, I do two-step. I do garlic and then I always add fresh oil back to it. Yeah, so do I. I think it's actually better to start with a neutral oil and finish with

[44:16] a, like save your money for a good extra virgin oil, use that to finish, and then just do the initial

[44:23] cook in like a grape seed or a canola. Yeah, I mean, at my house, what I have is I have 2 3 liter containers of olive oil. One that is roughly 3 times the cost of the other

[44:34] one, and they're I buy the tins because I use a lot of olive oil, and because they have no, they have 0 light transmission, so they don't go bad very quickly in the tins. And, um, I don't stock a lot of

[44:48] different, um, cooking oils because if I'm going to fry, I deep fry and my deep fryer has, you know, 30, you know, 30 or 40 pounds of oil in

[44:56] it. So I'm not going to buy olive oil for that because that's crazy. I I use I usually use like a neutral vegetable. I tried a bunch of different ones. I like, you know, I used to use a lot of corn, but corn has such a corn flavor that I got so sick of it. I don't like using corn oil anymore unless I'm frying tortillas, in which case it doesn't matter. Um, but the, um, I don't use excessive amounts. And so I'd rather my cheaper olive oil is one that I'm willing to eat. I'm willing to eat it raw if I had to. Uh, but it's, you know, it's not breaking the bank and I use little amounts of it when I'm cooking, so it's easier for me to keep it

[45:31] around. If I was going to do that professionally, I would have a bunch of neutral oils around because it would be a big

[45:35] cost saver if I was doing it all the time. But at home, you know, the space is more important to me for the amount that I, you know,

[45:41] amount that I'm using, it doesn't break my bank. So that's, you know, that's why I don't have anything but olive oil around, you know? Anyway. Uh... Who's who that Red's in? Zach, and Pittsburgh writes in. I'm considering getting a big boy blender for my apartment kitchen. I know you guys like the Vitamix, but the price makes me kind of gun shy. Blendech looks like they make comparable blenders at a lower price. I know you've talked about blenders a time, but would like to hear some more. The show continues to be great. I just wish Dave wouldn't yell into the mic so much and blast the levels. Keep up the good work, Zack in Pittsburgh. Stas, Stas loves anytime someone insults me. In fact, she's doing the she's doing the yay pound in the air with it. Yeah, I'm not though. You got to get close to that mic. Well, you know, keep the levels good. All right, all right, all right. getting conflicting information. Apparently. Well, screaming and staying close to the mic are 2 separate things. Which is better, screaming or staying close to the mic. Sting close to the mic. All right. So here's my feeling. I've never seen an inexpensively priced blend tech blender. I've used their expensive one, the one that goes in jamba. Jamba, Jamba juice. And of course, I've used the Vita Prep, and it's the power of the blenders is both good. But Vita Prep is just a far better blender in terms of the controls and how I like to use them.

[46:58] Um, I mean, I've talked before in the air that Vita Prep. I have some issues with their old pitcher style. I think their newer pitchers are probably better. Uh, but, you know, I don't see chefs using a lot of any other kind of blender, which leaves me to believe that no one's had that good

[47:12] a luck with any other kind of blender. Now, Stas and Piper here have said that they've heard good things about the ninja, but I've never seen a ninja in a professional kitchen. I mean, blender, ninja blender. Ninjas that scene. You've never seen ninja. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen a ninja. Have I ever told that, have I told that story on air about, when I was at, when I was at Kenny Kanuya? All right. they're going to get me off this. They're going to get me off the air in a minute. So, like, Mark, is anything else you want to say about it? No, no, I'm fine. Thank you. Uh, and with some sticks on Saturday. Please do. And you'll be you'll actually be there, so you get to you get to talk to Mark, you

[47:51] know. be fascinating, I assure you. Mark, one of our beta testers for the Sears all unit, by the way. You still having any good luck with that or no good luck? Yeah, yeah, I love it. Yeah, nice. All right. Thanks, Piper, for coming on. But I'll tell you a little story that I may or may not get in trouble for about ninjas. So I was going to Kina Canuya, which is like the awesome bookstore in New York City for Japanese

[48:11] books. It's incredibly expensive because I think that even if it's an American book, they must ship it from Japan over

[48:17] here, because it's really expensive over there. And my son, Booker, you know, who, uh, is awesome, but, you know, sometimes we'll say things he shouldn't, like, screams and

[48:25] Kenny, Kenny, why is it so expensive here? These deals are not good. I'm like, shut up. Shut up. So anyway. So Rankina Canuya, because they have a Zaya upstairs, and Zaya is like a kind of like a Japanese cafe. We have here in New York, and they make, actually, I love their own agiri, the little rice squares with the Nori, because their Nori is hermetically wrapped and placed around the rice square. So you pull the plastic off at the last minute and the Nori is always really, really crunchy. And so, so, Booker is obsessed with Ziazone Nigiri. So we're there. And Dax's, the other son, Dax, like little, her best friend's little, little sister, we're sitting in Zaya, and some women walk in, you know, wearing, um, not Burka, but the

[49:09] other, the other kind of Islamic dress that, where it's just the eyes are, just the eyes are visible, and, you know, they're wearing full face cover. And Dax's, Dax's friend, Amaya, looks over, whispers in her mom's ear, look, mom, ninjas. cooking issues.

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