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[1:46] Calling your questions, too! Cooking issues. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Bert's Pizzeria in the back of... Well, no, come meet you from Roberta's Pizzeria, actually. Not in the back of anything. We are in the back of Roberta Petrito in Bushwick, Brooklyn, back from Senegal today. Sorry, I wasn't able to do it last week live from Senegal, but you know how sometimes these things work. We are down 2 of our crew members today. Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, is in Philadelphia, attending a conference by our good friends, David Michaels,

[2:23] flavors and food chemistry folks down in Philadelphia, and they're hosting a food innovation seminar today, and Nastasia is there.

[2:30] Also, Jack is MIA today, but we do have Joe, thank goodness. Hey, Joe. How's it going Dave? Doing well. And we are joined in the studio. I think by the 1st time ever, maybe in the studio with Peter Kim. Yo, what's up, yo? How? So Peter Kim is what's your title over there? Executive director. Really? Yeah. Okay. Is the executive director? noticed, Dave. I know, I know. Peter came as the executive director of the Museum of Food and Drink, which is a 501c3,

[3:00] when do we get our status there? You got it last September. Right. And we, oh, yes, I'm the founder. I also have, what's my other title here? You're also the president. Well, founder and also the president. Like Harry Clue, right. Yeah. Mass, great. And you want to give him the mission? I sure you have it memorized. Our mission is to change the way people think about food and inspire day-to-day curiosity about what we eat and why. Yeah. And, you know, just, and I'm sure I've already spouted this a 1000000 times, but why do we need a brick and water museum devoted to this?

[3:28] Because you can't eat food in a book? And, uh, you know, watching TV is always unsatisfying. You just see people eating food, but at a museum, you could actually be tasting things as you learn about it. Right. So in this museum, it's not going to be as someone once asked me,

[3:42] you know, a long time ago, are we just going to be looking at, you know, shellacked pieces of bread or some sort of plastic sushi or stuff like that. Is that we're going to be looking at here? No moldy sandwiches and, you know, little boxes. This is going to be like, I mean, sometimes I describe it like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but with an educational focus. Right, right. And, you know, and and why have most other food museums in this concept? Why do you find them lacking? Why are they lacking? I think 2 things really. One is that they often have too broad of a focus. And so they try to cover everything in food and drink, which, you know, as you

[4:14] know, really well, that covers that covers a lot of ground. And so MoFed will be actually focusing on very specific topics instead. And the other is, I think, you know, a lot of a lot of food museums really end up being corporate sales, and that's something we're really not going to be. Sweet. So, you know, it's good to hear good to hear these words out of out of Peter's mouth. We hope to have this museum in an actual brick and mortar location in how many years. Around 5 years. Yeah. Five years. It takes time to build a museum. It turns out it does take time to build a museum. In fact, you know, most museums start with a large donation of money. or a large donation of a collection, right? So they start with that kind of that kind of a nut. The, uh, the genesis of this museum simply is an idea. But I think, uh, you know, the great part about this idea is that, uh, a lot of people like the subject. And so we're hoping to, we're going to be going to be pestering and soliciting for the museum more and more as time goes on. Just wanted our listeners to know that the project is still

[5:21] going, great guns slamming forward, not in a way that people outside might see, but that there is

[5:28] actually a lot of work going on. And hopefully, you know, can't talk about it much right now, but hopefully good news in three,

[5:34] 4 months maybe. Possible. Fingers cross. And if it's not good news in 3 and 4 months, I'll tell you what the bad news is that it wasn't good news. figure out what our next steps are. But the other reason I have Peter in the studio today is because I just got back from Africa, and since Nastasia can't be here, I

[5:48] wanted to talk a little bit later about my trip to Africa, and Peter's a good choice because he was also a volunteer in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, correct? That's right, almost 2.5 years there. Yep, yep. And interestingly, if we have time, I don't know if we will, because, of course, I'm horribly late. Uh, we'll get in also to uh, Peter's experimentation with uh,

[6:05] cot over on the in the east of Africa, right? I don't know what you're talking about, Dave. Yeah, it's legal over there. Right? I mean, I don't think you're going to get prosted. I think you can get, Peter, aside, aside from being the executive director of the museum of food and drink and an accomplished Spanish style guitar player, as a lawyer. And so, you know, probably shouldn't cop to illegal drug use

[6:28] in uh, in this country. And, you know, I guess technically, if it's a schedule one narcotic, you're not allowed to consume it in any country. Is that true? I'm not sure how it works Well, maybe you could talk about the experiences of some guy named Meter Mim that you were sitting next

[6:43] to in... Yeah, Keter Pim in East Africa later to discuss it. Because I think it's an interesting, um, It's an interesting story and we'll get into it later. Anyway, should you have questions? Feel free to call them in too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Okay, 1st question in from William about milk. My cousin had an interesting question on her faith on her Facebook page. She's come across whole milk being sold for $1.59 a gallon at her local store. That's crazy. Milk should not cost $one.59 a gallon. You know what I mean? insane. I mean like, I mean, it shouldn't happen. It's got to mean, like, I hope, I hope the store's losing a lot of money that they haven't figured out a way to, you know, screw the system into people making it in the cows so hard that the milk is actually only worth

[7:26] $1.59 a gallon. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, maybe maybe someone like mislabeled it. I've done that. Like, I walked into a store once and Passionfruit were labeled per pound instead of per each. This was back when I was, you know, just graduated from college. had no money. And so I bought every passion fruit in the store for like an unbelievably low

[7:47] price and the person I was like, it says so on the price, you have to honor the price, you put on the thing, and they did. I was even more of a jerk than I am now. I should have just purchased 2 passion fruit at that price and then let them recoup their mistake. But instead I bought... It's not me. I bought every passion fruit in the store. I was like, it doesn't say limit. I was a real jerk. But you know, when you're, when you have no money and you, and you love things. Like it's, you know, you feel more of a justification for jerking people around like that. And you taught them a valuable lesson in precision with their pricing. I did. I'm sure they didn't give a crap. Oh, that was a stop and shot back in New Haven. Oh boy. Going back to the super. Yeah, I haven't been back to the superstop and shop in New Haven in a bazillion years, and I don't think I will. No? You a shopping stop? I've never, no, no. No? No, no, really. Okay, question was, are there any drawbacks to freezing whole milk? Well, the texture, consistency or taste be adversely affected? I would think since it has much less milk fat than cream that the ice crystals wouldn't affect it so much. Thanks. Can't wait till the Kickstarter Torch is available. Neither can I, actually. But we're working on that as well. So it's an interesting question, William. Now, there are a lot of studies out there. What happens? I haven't tasted. I didn't have time to actually do the test and see whether you could do tasting. What happens is that the, um, the, uh, fat globules in homogenized milk are altered by the freezing process.

[9:17] And so it's possible that you will get different. And in fact, there are some studies. I didn't have time to sift through them all. There's a bunch of studies out there on this, but a lot of them are older, so I couldn't get the full text of them. in the database that I was searching, so I couldn't get the actual nitty-gritty of it. But, yeah, so when you freeze, especially if you're going through multiple free saw cycles, which is going to happen unless something's totally frozen, so it depends on how much of abuse you get in the fridge, you're going to alter the fact

[9:42] lobule size. Now, if you alter the fact lobule size, you will alter mouthfeel, and you will alter, you know, possibly, you know, how it works, or whether it's going to, you know, the fat's going to agglomerate more when you when you heat it, I would think that it's going to be relatively small effect, you know, when you're using the milk in

[10:03] cooking situations where curdling might not be a problem, and it might not even have an effect in a curdling situation. But yes, technically it is affected. And although I apologize that I don't have more information on that, I came across, and this is one of the reasons I'm actually late, is because when I'm researching something, I,

[10:23] in just like in my real life, when I'm researching things, I go off on tangents and found a very interesting tangent, um, it's actually going to tie in later, we have a question about

[10:32] pregnancy in eating later. But, um, there was a study on freeze, freezing and thawing human breast milk. And this is actually very important because, um, um, you know, most mothers who breastfeed, um, also, at least that I have met, you know, will

[10:50] also um, express some of their breast milk and freeze it for later use. This way, if they're at work, you know, uh, caregiver can, uh, feed the actual breast milk to the

[11:02] child, or uh, an alternate thing is that, you know, the mom then can sleep a little bit longer at night and the dad can wake up in the middle of the night and feed, uh, the already express breast milk, you know, natural breast milk to the

[11:16] baby, right? So, and, you know, you can either refrigerate the milk or you can freeze it.

[11:22] Now, uh, so the question is, does freezing the breast milk do anything bad to the milk? Uh,

[11:30] and, and, oh, this is also important in other countries, actually, because uh, there's a thing called a human milk banks. And in a human milk bank, you know, mothers who are lactating, continue to lactate and express milk and then donate it to donate it to hospitals so that, um, you know,

[11:47] um, babies that are born early, let's say, and maybe the, the, the mother's milk doesn't come in right away, they can feed this, you know, actual human milk to babies

[11:56] that couldn't otherwise have, which is a great idea, right? Fantastic idea. Right. But you have to freeze it to preserve it. Okay, so what happens? Well, it turns out that aside from the structure of the fat, you know, changing, like I said, I said it would, the actual fat

[12:12] level in the milk as it's fed to the babies decreases substantially on freezing.

[12:17] And along with that, the protein available in the milk decreases, not as much as the fat. The fat can decrease significantly. Uh, you know, but the the protein in it as well can decrease. And the theory is this, that on freezing the fat globules agglomerate, when they

[12:34] agglomerate, um, you know, they're not as well dispersed in the liquid phase on thawing, right? The fat preferentially sticks to the relatively hydrophobic walls of the plastic vessels that breast milk is invariably stored in,

[12:53] they didn't test glass because it's not usually stored in glass, right? So the fat, the fat sticks predominantly to the side things. And so the remaining liquid is relatively depleted in fat, and that some of the proteins also are bound in with the

[13:10] fat and adhere to the fat layer, and so you're also somewhat reduced in the protein levels as a result. And turns out that it's statistically significant. Interesting right? Yeah. So, there you have it. I mean, I don't know really what to make of that. The name of the study, should you choose to look at it. is, and my iPad decided that I should no longer be able to read, so it turned off on a second. is it's in the magazine, early human development. It's called analysis of the influence of, oh, they also tested pasteurization, but I didn't read that section as much, passportation of it. Freezing, thawing, and other processes on human milks, macronutrient, concentrations by Viera at all in 2011. Oh, yeah, here's a reason not to pasteurize. I did read a little bit. A reason, a reason not to pasteurize human breast milk, is that it inactivates the bio salt stimulated lipace, which is greatly responsible for the digestion and absorption of fat in newborn

[14:07] infants. So patriation decreases the maximum utilization of the delivered human milk. That's basically a direct quote. So anyway there you have it. Yeah, regardless of what you do. It's probably better than powdered milk. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah. Yeah, I'm just saying that, you know, uh, and it's not saying that you that you're not getting, you know, all the benefits. It's just that there's, you know, there's not going to be quite as nutritive in terms of

[14:29] that point. Anyway, I thought it was interesting. But here's another interesting thing I researched as was, I'll tell you, tangents, right? So recently, here's my story about that I've always had for years, and I've never gone back and done the hardcore research, which is, of course, what you should always do before

[14:43] you make a statement. People say, well, should I consume breast milk? Make sure I have food, shake, and some breast milk. Should I consume alcohol while I'm lactating, right? That's a question a lot of people ask. And my, you know, kind of pat response has been, well, look, you figure that, uh, human milk, although it has fat, is mostly water, you know,

[15:01] vastly, mostly water. And therefore, you would assume that the alcohol content of breast milk is relatively similar to the mother's blood alcohol level, blood alcohol level, let's say, you know, they

[15:13] were, you know, on the limit there. 0.05%, right? So assuming that the blood, that the milk has a roughly similar alcohol concentration of 0.05% alcohol. In my mind, from a, from an actual ethanol level concentration, that's roughly zero. 0.5%. That would mean 50 milligrams per milligrams per 100 milliliters, as opposed to uh, a glass of wine, which is, uh, you know,

[15:46] like, let's say it's 12% alcohol, that's, um, 12,000 milligrams per, uh, you know, per milliliter, right?

[15:55] So roughly 0 we're talking about. 12,000 milligrams? No. No, sorry. 120,000 milligrams. Yeah. So 35, you know, milligrams would be roughly 0. Right. Okay. So, it turns out, I might be wrong. So tip the bottle. Yeah. So, well, no, no, so here's the story, right? It's what is true is that human breast milk does roughly correlate with blood alcohol level,

[16:21] right? And so that for a woman that consumes roughly three, you know, 35, you know, 3 or

[16:29] so, a little more, a little less, grams of alcohol per kilogram of body weight, right? Is that true? Anyway, it gets a blood alcohol level of like .3. Your milk will be roughly .3.35 somewhere in there, right? Percent. So the, so the deal, the deal is, is that that was right, what I said. However, it turns out that there's a study that was published in 2000 that shows that that small amount of alcohol in the breast milk can actually have an

[17:00] effect. What they studied was sleep, the sleep patterns of babies. And so that were fed. And the study was they had mothers, uh, and they expressed breast milk, you know, with a medella. And then over the course of 2 different testing days, they either took that milk and added 35 milligrams per 100 ML of alcohol to the breast

[17:22] milk bottle or didn't. And it turned out that the ones that they fed the, um, alcohol too, did not sleep as well and didn't have as much activity during their waking hours as the ones that

[17:37] didn't. So, you know, it's only one study. I haven't seen it replicated since 2000. I don't know whether the information is still there, but it's interesting to note that that's out there, right? Anyway. All right. So, uh, Alex from Toronto rides in Dear Dave, Nastasia, Jack, Joe, Indie Jesus, Carlos. going back. And whoever might be working in the booth now. I'm still catching up on back podcast. I was finally prompted to write in because of Dave's story about the person rapping out loud in episode 83. So I was talking about how, you know, people are rapping out loud and how they suck. That was what I was talking about. Anyway, Alex Wright said, my wife and I recently visited New York and probably the strangest thing about our trip was how many people we saw singing as they

[18:21] walked the streets or waited for subway trains. Nearly all of them had earphones in and seem to be singing along with recordings, but we're also clearly practicing rather than just casually singing along. We wondered if this was some kind of special New York thing, the Broadway equivalent of LA waiters hoping to be discovered by an agent or director. Judging by your reaction to the rapper. Apparently not, but we saw at least a dozen people doing this on our 4 day visit. Our favorite was a girl practicing her ballet moves in the subway, totally unself-consciously waiting for a train. weird. Yes, it is weird, and it is quite common here, and I don't know what the hell it is. You know what I think it is? I think it's set, when you live here, 1st of all, I remember years ago, and I might have mentioned this in the other episode,

[18:57] like, I was learning to try and play bagpipes, and they told me, just go outside and play because, just, you know, because what else are you going to do? You live in New York. You know what I mean? So there's the fact that you can't practice anything in private New York. There's no private place in New York. You can do anything. You have an apartment. You probably have a family or roommate there. Uh, you know, you don't have a basement. You don't have a garage. You don't have a backyard. Uh, what the hell are you gonna do? You know? If you're gonna play bagpipes, you know, what are you gonna do? It's like, there's no real choices, you know what I mean? And so same thing goes with bad rapping or bad singing or any of that

[19:28] stuff is that since you have no place to do it. You go outside and you do it. And furthermore, I think they're, like, living in such a big, busy city, uh, strangely dehumanizes all the people around you and they become like trees or

[19:40] shrubs. You tend to stop thinking of them as people, and then so you're not embarrassed about singing in front of them because they're not human beings to you.

[19:45] Are you positing that there's a correlation between population density and bad public rapping? Possibly. Possibly. Yes. I also think that everybody is just crazy here too. Like there's a lot of crazy going on in New York City. Do you think there's more crazy than normal or it's just like, like you see it more because you see more people every day? I think that's, I think that there's just so many people around. There's just got to be more crazies. Right, right. And like I say, like, you know, we have our, we have our kind of, you know, zone out blinders on when you're walking around the

[20:14] city and so, you know, you tend to just view everyone as this kind of like a blur, you

[20:18] know? Anyway. Uh, so, uh, anyway, uh, they went to New

[20:24] York and uh, and, and they made it back. here's the story. When we got back from our trip to New York, we found that after 3 years of trying, we are expecting a baby, which is nice. So New York did the deal. The calendar doesn't quite back this up, but I give partial credit to the Bangkok daiquiri and son of a peach that we drank at Booker and

[20:41] Dax bar. Good times. Well, thanks. Thanks. You know, I'll take that. I'll take that credit Uh, you know, we're, we're the, I mean, I wouldn't say that we're, nah, I'm not going to go into it. Okay. We don't seem to have anything like the awesome New York bar scene here in Toronto, but perhaps I'm just unaware of the best stuff. Dave Chang just opened 3 restaurants in Toronto. Any plans to expand the Booker and Dax Empire. I let's put it this way. I don't know. Won't say no? I won't say yes. Okay. Very ominous. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I hope it's not ominous. I hope if we do it, it's good thing. It's not like, you know, the evil empire coming in. I mean, maybe it is. I don't know. That be awesome. I wish I had some sort of like evil, evil emperor vibe that I could bring to whatever I, you know what I mean? Someday. That's my goal now. That's my new goal. Evil empire vibe. Okay. But I guess it's time for some cooking questions. Now that the wife is up the spout, she is no longer able to enjoy her favorite drinks. By the way, that's a phrase, and I pride myself on kind of being well versed in slang and idiom. I mean, it's kind of, you know, I do. I never heard that before. You heard that before? Up the spout is a British informal, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. For one, broken. i.e. no longer working, which hopefully is that's now what we mean in the case, or, uh,

[21:49] two, of a woman pregnant. But according to this, if possibly related to the other thing, like somehow you're broken by getting pregnant, because I think it was maybe an unwanted pregnancy in the past, clearly not in this

[22:00] case, and it's lost that meaning. And third, if you pawn your stuff off, you can say it's gone up the spout. I'm not even going to try to start analyzing that one. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. But an interesting phrase, and I like it when anyone gives me a phrase that I'm not familiar with. Okay. Or I should say, which I'm not familiar. Okay. She usually drinks white wine and Caesars. Caesar's possibly a Canada specific drink. Basically, it's a bloody Mary with clam juice. No, that's a drink, also known as Bloody Caesar or a clam digger or a bunch of other things. Clam digger is the one I normally hear it by. You know, it's Clemato, which I love saying that word. Clemato. It's not clemato, though. Like, it's tomato, tomato is fine, but it's not clemato juice. That just sounds weird. Clemato. Yeah. With the accent. Yeah. Yes, yes. I won't do it again. Okay. Dave just put a monocle on while you said that. I wish. We all know that the Mr. Peanut with the monocle is one of the most dashing figures in all of, in all

[22:55] of, uh, whatever those people are called, spokes, spokes characters. Right? I mean, like Joe, what do you think about that? You like the Mr. Peanut with Monaco? Simply dashing. Yeah, yeah, it was amazing. You know, I was talking about this with labor, who's the design, the our graphic design team for the museum. And they took a freaking peanut, which is, it's a ridiculous looking thing. You know what I mean, a peanut. It's like, it's like if you squeeze the hell out of a golf ball and like colored it beige and made it dirty. That's a peanut. You're like, put a pop hat. Give it a monocle, and all of a sudden it's like... Classy. amazing. And on the far end of the spectrum, I think, on that very same conversation was Grimace, who is the opposite of classy.

[23:41] There's no class in grimace. Grimace and nobody knows what the heck grimace is. Now, listen, by the way, I don't want to get any negative calls here. We're not hating on grimace. He's not classy. Just not classy. Yeah, he's he's like the he is like kind of prototypical schlub. I mean, I am also a prototype prototypical slub, so not hating. Nah, all right. Yeah, no hate. No hate on the grimace. not classy. Okay. Okay. She usually drinks white wine and Caesars. I finished whipping up a batch. So by the way, if she's not going to drink alcoholic drinks and she likes Bloody Mary's of those kinds of things, that's terrific because they don't have that much of a perception of alcohol.

[24:18] So like the hardest drinks to, uh, to, you know, master are the ones that are heavily alcohol flavored, like bourbon drinks or things

[24:25] like that. So, you know, if she likes things that are, um, if she likes things like that, that are relatively strong flavored, you know, you could easily make, uh, you know,

[24:34] a, a virgin version of that. If you're gonna use any sort of fresh clam product, obviously you pasteurize the shit, pressurize the hell out of it, you don't want to get, you know, anyone sick, but the clamato juice that they sell has been, you know, heat

[24:48] pasteurize, and so it's okay. you know, so you can use it. So, I mean, that'd be an ideal. The white wine, obviously, you can't, you know, drink the white wine, but you could do any sort of, um, uh, you know, acidic, uh, product. Some people say like white cranberry juice. It's altered with a bunch of different things. I mean, I think the key thing, continue reading the question maybe, right? He says, I've just finished whipping up a batch of your coriander syrup recipe, which is very tasty with the one I use for the coriander old

[25:15] fashions. But I was wondering if you suggest either some other recipes or somewhere to start looking for serious

[25:19] drinks, which happen to contain no alcohol and are easy to make at home. I tried making a peach sipping vinegar based on recipes for other fruits that I found online, but that was a bust. It just tasted gross. Any thoughts? I'm hoping to find something with enough complexity that will make it satisfying to sip for a long time. And I think that's the key, by the way, is the sipping for a long

[25:38] time because that's what, uh, you know, kind of separates, uh, uh, an alcoholic

[25:43] drank, that you don't pound too hard, at least you're not supposed to. I mean, I might, but you're not supposed to. versus, you know, uh, uh, you know, like a thirst quenching drink. Now, on the one hand, the reason why coriander, the coriander syrup, especially if you make it spicier, if you increase the spice level of a drink or the kind

[25:59] of spice impact of the drink, it tends to shift towards a more sipping drink, right? So that's why the coriander syrup, which is more akin to, like take ginger ale, right? I love ginger ale. You don't pound ginger ale as hard as you pound Sprite, right? I don't pound Sprite either. Well, let's say you were going to. You know what I mean? You don't pound it as hard as you pound seltzer. Right? You don't pound ginger beer as hard as you pound ginger ale. Right. Right. So, uh, ginger beer, good candidate for uh, non-alcoholic drinks that you can sip for a while because you

[26:35] were going to take it in small doses, but the other key is, is that you can't do that by making something that you, the reason you're taking small doses is that you don't want to drink it. Right? Which is why ginger beer is such a good candidate. Uh, and, you know, if, you know, properly done, uh, the coriander syrup, uh,

[26:52] without, with, uh, with, um, making it into a soda, with, like, some lime is a good candidate because it stays good tasting, but you take it in small

[26:59] doses. You're not like, bang, knocking it back. Um, so, you know, you could do that. Um, the, but the other thing is, uh, I think you, you know, it's very difficult. having tried to do this for, you know, my wife, you can make special drinks. The other thing you can do to make drinks more sippable, and I hesitate to do this because I don't like these kinds of drinks myself, but is to make them physically thick.

[27:26] So drinks that contain purees, tend

[27:31] to go down slower, but if you like them at all tend to be enjoyable.

[27:35] And it's especially good in the summer months as they come up. So you can do like frozen things, things like smoothies, and, you know, she'll feel good about the theoretical health benefits that she's getting from

[27:47] them. And uh, and also uh, be sipping them uh, slowly. So I hope this is somewhat helpful. What do you think, Peter? Did you have any Besop while you're in Senegal, Dave? I had a whole boatload of, uh, of, uh, BSAP. That is one of my favorite summer refreshing beverages, and I'm wondering whether if you concentrated those flavors that could become something more sipable. Oh, yeah. Bisop is a good point. Bisop is known by a bunch of different names. Roselle, red sorrel, not to be confused with wood sorrel or the herb sorrel. It's hibiscus flour. And, uh, you know, it's used in Africa where it's native. It's used a lot in the Caribbean and Mexico, where it's naturalized,

[28:26] uh, and uh, makes a fantastic uh, beverage. The Biss app that I had in Africa was of higher quality than the dried stuff that I get here.

[28:36] Uh, but I have used the stuff here and it's good. You make like, you make a tea. They actually make it delicious also. They make a delicious bisop jelly in West Africa, at least in Senegal. And it's amazing because it has the texture of apple butter, but with that really tart acidic fruity thing. So I think Bisop would be great. Make a tea out of it, sweeten it. Uh, and then, uh, actually, Bisop and Ginger works. and also bisop and mint works. Or all three. Yeah, or all 3 together. And so like a combination of mint, uh, bisop and ginger could make a really great, um, um, drink that could go on

[29:10] the sipping. If you make it a little bit weaker, then it's a pounder. And if you make it a little bit, you know, heavier in flavor, then it's more of a

[29:17] sipper, but the great thing about it is, is that if you're a fan of the flavor, which I am, you don't tire of it when you're drinking

[29:23] it. You know, you can drink, you can drink a good bit of it. Good call, Peter. Good call. All right. My other question is about coffee. I did not have an espresso machine, I would not be able to justify the expense of buying any new equipment, but would love to be able to make phone milk for

[29:38] our weekend coffee. I've tried to look for solutions on coffee geek and various other websites, but I've had no luck. I did find a video where someone seemed to be able to make a decent phone with the little wands you can buy at IKEA, but I've been unable to replicate this

[29:48] either with the identical gadget or by the slightly more expensive one the Cooks Illustrator recommends. What am I missing? Is steam an essential part of the process? Am I not getting the right temperature or just using the wrong vessel to hold the milk? Is there a stabilizer that might help? I seem to be able to get a good foam when the milk is cold, but I can't seem to heat the milk up to even moderately drinkable temperatures like 60 Celsius and keep the

[30:08] foam or to foam the milk at higher temperatures. The coffee geeks just laugh at me and say, I am SOL. Any ideas? Uh, yeah, I think you're SL. But here's the issue. Like many things. By the way, you know, Alex has another question on coffee makers, but I'm

[30:28] going to have to put that one off till next time. But the, the, the, the deal is this. Um, so the coffee coffee geek was one of the early websites that introduced, uh, I mean, so, you know, those of you that have been making coffee for a while, uh, you know, no, that's like

[30:45] the latte art movement kind of that came out of Seattle in the late 90s, I guess,

[30:50] 1990s. Is that right? I mean, it's hard for me to look back. You know, David Schomer from Vivace was the 1st person I knew about who, you know, was widely talking about it and I bought his book, but, you know, with whatever it's called, professional barisa techniques, whatever, where

[31:02] it explains it. And, you know, amazing stuff. But to get that, you know, by the way, latte art, everyone knows what I'm talking about here, latte art, the pictures that you make by, you know, doing the milk, and the highest form of it, you don't even touch the cup at all. just how you pour the milk makes it. But in order to do it, you need a very specific texture of milk, right? Now the theory is that that texture of milk is also the most delicious texture of milk, but it's called a

[31:23] microfoam. And so there's a lot written in coffee geek about how to achieve microfoam. And that particular type of microphone is produced by steaming, right? And trying to create that in any other way. I mean, you might be able to come up. I mean, or I might be, or you might be, someone might be able to come up with it with a similar textured product by doing a host of other things to it, but there's no simple way,

[31:49] right? Now, here's the question. Is that the best tasting foam? I don't know. It's a taste of foam? Is espresso the best taste of coffee? I think it is, but other people like other forms of coffee making. So what I would do is stop trying to make latte art style foam in any other technique, and just find a foaming technique that you

[32:09] like, that makes a taste that you like. You know, you're, I have very severe doubts that you're going to be able to, without a lot of experimentation, and we could stabilize

[32:18] it and whip it. But, you know, the microfoam is a very specific, very dense bubble

[32:24] sized, very wet foam and, you know, right? I mean, you know, and just because you're different, just because you can get a different result doesn't mean it's necessarily worse, you're just going to have to use it in a different way. But I will think more about it and maybe talk about it more when I talk about your coffee coffee maker question later. Uh, John Riper came in and he, uh, last week, unfortunately, I wasn't here. I was in Senegal, and he gave us some really interesting hazelnuts.

[32:51] So I was reading a little quick things. So hazelnuts, we all know hazelnuts, a little around it, but they're not all around. There's a variety called the Duchili hazelnut that is long, almost looks almondy, and looks like woody on the outside. So John dropped by some, these are like, these are like super, like, old cultivar heritage, heirloom variety of hazelnuts. And he dropped by some roasted ones and unroasted ones and was talking about

[33:16] the what happens to the development of flavor in hazelnuts as they're roasted. So since I just got back yesterday, I tasted them, but I haven't had time to do a lot of experimenting. So next week, John, I'm going to go more into about these different

[33:28] things, but you guys should take a look at these do chili hazelnuts. They're supposed to have a thinner skin and therefore be less bitter than their

[33:36] smaller rounder brethren. But they're susceptible to certain diseases and that's why they're not grown much. If you want to research it, well, before I can get back to you guys, Go to Homequist, uh, orchards where they grow them in uh, in Washington. Okay. Um, Robin writes in about meat grinders. Dave please say some words about meat grinders. I'm primarily using a meat grinder for making dog foods from chicken, turkey, and rabbit parts. So I need something powerful enough to not bog down grinding soft

[34:04] bones, and with a fill hole that will accommodate something as large as a chicken leg without me having to further invest in a meat

[34:10] cleaver to cut off the parts so they're small enough to fit in a chute. I made the mistake of purchasing an LEM number 5.2 horsepower motor grinder sold by your local sporting goods big box store. It is underpowered. It is underpowered. The fuse had to be reset frequently, even though I'm not forcing the meat through, and it is overheating and smoking. It requires disassembly to unjam it and was a waste of money. It's going back to the store tomorrow without breaking the bank. What do you recommend? It will serve me well. Thanks for the brilliant radio show. All y'all. Robin. Okay, here's the deal. So, Peter, you might be asking yourself, why would they want to groan the grind the bones? I am asking myself that. Very question. Like, remember, they're making dog food. So the thing is, dogs, calcium, suppose. There's a movement called the barf diet, which the acronym can mean different things, but like bones and raw

[34:56] food diet for dogs, and you grind up the bones whole, so the dog's taking the whole thing. Cats also. have to be careful not to do, not to do it with cooked bones because cooked bones are very sharp and can damage the insides

[35:09] of the, of, you know, your animal. And then there's the debate of whether or not there's microbial problems due in raw food diet when you feed it to an animal. blah, blah, blah. I not getting into that. We getting into weather and grunt. Now I've never thought about this problem. But I did some, I did some research. Turns out that the LEM that you looked at, that you had, the LEM, number five, quarter horsepower one, which sells on Amazon for 196.99,

[35:31] has a quarter horsepower, power motor, is pretty small motor. The good news about that grinder that you have that you hate is that the gears are all metal and so they're really tough and it's all stainless. So all that's really tough, but that motor is underpowered. And so it's going to jam overheat and the fuse will blow as, or it's not really probably the fuse. It probably the thermal overload in it. So that's probably what's happening. So the solution to that is they do make a larger motor one. Uh, they make a .375 horsepower, which is only $70 more, $267 you can go

[36:07] get, and that might be a solution. I've heard other people say that that one grinds chicken bones better. Uh, you know, then you, like, you know, if you, without breaking the bank, that's the problem. The larger ones can do it. So the Weston, uh, the Weston number 22 professional on the Amazon for $551.

[36:24] Everyone says that grinds through chicken like nobody's business, right? But, you know, that's well over twice, almost 3 times the cost of the one

[36:34] that you had. If you go on the, on, uh, still on eBay now, if you look at the STX

[36:39] Turbo4 3000 series. You like that? STX Turbo Force 3000. They say it's 150 bucks. They say that it is 3000 watts. And they admit, if you look at, it's really interesting, actually, if you look at the things, the thing with motors of all types, is people, you have to ask someone how they rate it. So I'm assuming that when LEM is rating their motors, they're actually talking shaft horsepower, power at the shaft, right? Which is different from the input power into the machine, right? Because motors aren't 100% efficient. it's a question of how you do it. 740 something watts is one horsepower, right? So these guys say that the STX Turbo 4 is 3000 is 3000 watt, but that's a load of malarkey. That's the motor, as my dad would always say, that's the motor, like, as it's about to explode from burning out,

[37:25] like, when you're holding the shaft and plugging it in and drawing all the current that you possibly can and everything's blowing up and dying,

[37:31] right? Uh, or peak impulse death powers. He calls it. I'm imagining back to the future doc, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? Yeah, exactly. So in reality, this 3000 watt monstrosity is actually closer to 3 quarters of a horsepower in real life. But that's still significantly more powerful than the one you have. It has some plastic gears, but they claim that these plastic gears don't break. It does have a guarantee. It also has something you might be interested in called a reverse switch so that you can reverse the machinery to unjam it without disassembling it.

[38:04] So if you do jam it, there you go. Now, there are a number of people on the reviewing thing that say they have ground chicken bones, and then there's a number of people who call BS on that and

[38:13] say, sucker doesn't grind chicken bones that well, right? So what those guys say is that to really grind chicken bones, you got to freeze debone your thighs or legs, freeze the thighs, break them with a

[38:24] hammer, and then grind them in, which is what they say to do. But clearly you don't want to do this because you don't want to cleave it up, you say, with a meat cleaver. So, you know, I'm not sure where to go with that. But it is on Amazon. It does have a return policy, so you might be able to, you know, test your luck and it is even cheaper than the one you already had. Uh, okay. Uh, Alex, uh, wrote in, uh, different Alex, wrote in with questions about uh, mocha pots. You know mocha pots, Peter? Yeah, you know, the ones that you put on the stove and they're little, they're like made out of aluminum usually and they make coffee. Actually, you know, I used to use them. Again, they're not espresso. People make that mistake. Mocha cup is its own kind of cup. It's not an espresso. So Alex has questions on the mocha process, but I think what I'm going to do, Alex, is fold your question on mocha pots into the other question on coffee that the other Alex asked, and we'll talk about

[39:14] them both on the next show, since apparently my time here is drawing nigh, right?

[39:18] Right? Okay. So to quickly to rip through. Got some Twitter questions in. Elliot Papinau rides in. Any problems with infusing chopped hazelnuts? It's a hazelnut show. It always happens, man. Chopped hazelnuts into cream with an ISI. I mean, I don't know how much of a flavor your impact you're going to get off of just infusion without heat in ISI because nuts aren't that porous. Usually you do a heat infusion or better yet, grind them and make like a nut milk. That's the way I would do it. grind and make a nut milk and then strain the stuff out. I think that's the best way you're going to go. I dont know that ISI is going to be the technique to use with that. But, of course, I'm probably wrong, as I usually am. Terry Tinton writes in, hey, have you ever tried creating your own arrow chocolate bar? No, I have not. Although, actually, that's not true. I mean, I've made the aerated chocolate before. with a vacuum machine. But what I would do is go look at Heston. Blumenthal has done a lot of work with that. He has a recipe online. You need a vacuum machine and a way to set it in the freezer, but it's not technically difficult. I've never actually done it though. But Heston's recipe is out there for all to read. So you know, go check it out. If you have more questions or problems on it, hit me back on it. Peter, you got the Tony Harryon has a question in there about on the Twitter feed about freezing and thawing to increase or change the flavor of juice extraction. Freezing and thawing ruptured cells, and so therefore will theoretically increase a yield of juice, but I've never done an actual test on it. I will look up over the course of the week, uh, hopefully whether or not, um, whether or not there's any studies that I can publish. And then I'll talk about my experiences and the differences in flavor of, for instance, like frozen thawed

[40:50] lemons, and also its effect on stringency and tannin and things like

[40:55] persimmons, where you can clearly reduce the tannin and the astringency by freezing and

[40:59] thawing, but that's slightly different from what it does to the juice. That's just the flavor change from overall freezing and thawing. Any other questions there you see on the Twitter right away? Uh, we got, let's see here. Alvin Schultz. Give me some. All right. I want to make large format clear ice at home. Have a chamber back, rotovap, liquid nitrogen, and a crappy home freezer. Okay, no problem. Go buy an igloo cooler. Uh, you know, square one. Rip the top off of it. Use hot water. Pour it, if you can, use relatively pure hot water, right? Pour it into the warm water. You don't have to, you can let it cool down. Don't put it hot into your freezer. You going to screw all your stuff. The reason for hot, less dissolves gases, right? Right? Right. It's not, strictly speaking, necessary, but, you know, do it. warm water even. Then put it in the freezer and let it sit for, you know, a number of days. Uh, should take like 2 days, maybe day, day to 2 days, test it, right? What's going to happen is, is that the uh, the energy is going to go into the ice uh, preferentially through the top. And so you're going to freeze from the top down. Therefore, all the stuff at the top will be clear as you expel out the various impurities at the ice water layer that's in the bottom, then pull it out of the freezer before it totally

[42:12] freeze a solid, or you can let it freeze totally solid, but the bottom of it's going to be crappy. Let it temper out, pop it out of the igloo, saw off any bad parts that are on the

[42:21] bottom only when it's tempered and there you go. should work. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. Now, how long do I have? like 3 minutes? What do I have, Joe? 3 minutes? Yeah, you've got like 3 minutes. Yeah, exactly. 1257. And we need and we need to go off right at one. can go a little bit later. All right, so here's what we're going to do. I know I didn't take any commercial breaks today, but because I'm running late. So what I'm going to do is, is that on the out of the show, can we go to the actual commercial

[42:51] break so we can play our sponsor? By the way, the our sponsor today is Joe. It is the chef's step from Chris Young. Right. So Chris Young, who has been a guest on this show before, is one of the authors of Modernist Cuisine,

[43:04] uh, but not Modernist Cuisine at Home, but the interesting little dig that he had, you know, saved the 500 bucks. That's kind of an interesting little dig. I just met with our friend Michael Natkin yesterday. By the way, big congratulations to all of our friends who were winners at the James Beard last night, including Wiley

[43:23] Dufrene, brother-in-law, Brooks Hadley from Del Posto, Del Posto itself, and then a bunch of other

[43:30] people. I didn't I don't have the full list in front of me, but a bunch of good people won. That's great. Anyway, so Michael Natkin, talked to him at the bar yesterday, the writer for the Urbivoracious website, and also working with Chris on this project. And so I was talking to him about it. You know, maybe maybe we'll do some work with them at some point. But I found out that they were sponsored the show. We love them. Great guys, you know, all best, all love. But I love that little dig, right? Save 500 bucks. I figure they're targeting 2 very different markets there, though. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that was fun. Anyway. So, uh, and by the way, I hope I, Michael, I wanted to force him to come on the show today, but he had to go

[44:09] back, uh, back home, but I hope to get all of those guys maybe back on the radio here at some point, uh, and then you guys can all ask questions of

[44:16] them. Okay. Before I go to the last question, since I can go a little long, let's talk a little Africa stuff. So when I was in Senegal. I think the most striking thing, I'm just talking food now, right? The most striking thing about the food was there seems to be a much more of a continuum between the unfermented and the fermented in West African food than we would get in the

[44:39] states, right? So a lot more fermented grain products, like a lot more products

[44:44] of fermentation in all of their grades. Is that your experience down in Cameroon as well? Yeah, man, at those temperatures, everything just starts fermenting, you know? Right, but it's all done. in other words, like, it's like part of the flavor. So, you know, like porringes will be fermented. Uh, you know, so they have like a, they have this awesome millet, um, porridge called Funde in, uh, in Senegal that is, um, you know, it's fermented millet,

[45:09] porridge, and it's served with fermented kind of thin milk yogurt on top and like a little bit of sugar. And it's great. You know what I mean? And it's the flavor that you don't get here. Or, you know, the main starches that, you know, will be made into, uh,

[45:23] grules, uh, you know, or batters, fermented, and then, uh, and then cooked off, you know, so like various fermented, uh,

[45:31] fufus and things like that. Oh, yeah. But one of the interesting things I had, that's from Cameroon, and maybe you remember the name of it, because I can't remember the name of

[45:37] it because I couldn't write it down. I had it, it was very interesting, and it was, it was manioc, cassette. Oh, I love it. And sticks? Like gummy, like a rice cake? Yes. Had the texture of mochi, but it's fermented. Do you have this? Yes. What's the name of? Well, in Cameron, there are a lot of different names, but the most common one was just baton de manioc, which just means manioc stick. Right? Yeah. Okay. So they have a real bouncy texture like mochi, right? And they're fermented and they're like the 1st bite, you're like, am I going to like this, but they're freaking addictive. amazing. Yeah. But here's the interesting thing. The particular one I had had been, you know, made by the cook was housemade. And the particular fermented flavor of this one was unlike most of the other fermentations that I had had in that it didn't taste like a lactic acid

[46:25] bacteria, to me, the one I had. It tasted the most similar fermentation taste I could put on it was salt risen bread. And salt risen bread, which we talked about in the show before, is like a very kind of, like, weird old, like, kind of rare bread technique from the Appalachians, where the main fermentation agent is

[46:45] clustridium perfringians, which normally is a foodborne, you know, illness, you know,

[46:50] pathogen cause a lot of problems. But one time I made salt raised bread one or twice. This had that similar fermented flavor, but I haven't had time to research it yet. But did you notice in Cameroon that they had a different kind of fermented flavor from other

[47:02] things or is it the same or? It hard for me to say, man. It's just a great taste, man. I love it. All right, so I'm going to go back and do some research on that. The other thing, you know, that they have. There's so many fermented products over. And one of my favorite fermented products in the world. It was in Cameroon. Which one? Palm wine. Oh, yes, you know what? The palm wine, 1st of all, Senegal is predominantly Muslim, right? And in fact, they had me serve an alcoholic beverage at this event and didn't put a French translator next to

[47:29] me. And so I was in a position. My French isn't, my accent's not good enough to immediately tell people. So these people descended on us. And then people started picking up the drink and drinking it. It was made with mud, which is an M-A-D-D or M-A-D or M-A-D-E, which is an amazing fruit from Cosimans, which is in Southern Senegal. It's an amazing fruit, fruit. It has like kind of like, it tastes like kind of passion fruit and like kind of got, but a lot of acidity, more acidic

[47:53] tart in the way lime is tart, not in the way that passion fruit, tarp, but like passion

[47:57] fruit, and a bunch of different other tropical fruits, like maybe some guanabana flavor in it.

[48:01] And I made a juice out of it. Uh, you know, I tried to do booker and Dax, but like low textile. So like I strained it. It was really pure and mixed it with rum. Fantastic. I wish we could get this fruit here. Anyway, so they're picking it up and like one person does a spit take. I'm like, it's got alcohol in it. And then like they eventually posted a, like a hostess next to me who literally just stood there like wagging her finger back and forth

[48:23] like, no, no. I'm like well, you know, don't do that. It's not poisonous, you know, and some of the people here aren't, aren't, you know, Muslim, they can have it. But I was like, I was like, what is going wrong with my life that I'm here in a Muslim country trying to serve alcohol

[48:36] to people. Like it's exactly like the worst thing it could happen. But the drink was in fact delicious. Um, they have Netatu in in Cameron or no? I don't know what Netatu is. Cameron, Netatu is the fermented seeds of some acacia

[48:50] tree. And it's amazing stuff. I forget the genus name, but the species of it is Big Lobosa. Big lobosa. That be a good rapper name. Oh, Sick name. Net 2 Big Lobosa. Like, uh, but it has a taste. It's used in a lot of stews, like, and like other things like tibu Jen, which is like the traditional, you know, national Senegalese dish. But it has, in it, It has the flavors of like coffee and chocolate and black bean. So it's like really kind of and it's boiled and fermented. Uh, you know, boil the boil the uh, the seeds and the pods, ferment them and then salt them and let them dry. Uh, fermented onion that's used in things that's put in balls. Fermented fish is famous like gedge, fermented conch, yet, which is amazing. But like all these fermented things. But what people don't, I mean, the smells in the market can be overpowering, but the foods aren't at all like

[49:42] that overpowering. It just really, I thought, really delicious, really interesting, unique

[49:46] flavors, and I'm definitely going to be working with them in the future. You know what I mean? And the camera, the one Cameroonian restaurant I went to, the food was amazing. I can't wait to go to the Cameroon area there. I hear it's like just the fruits and vegetables and stuff, just good stuff, yeah. There's an insane culinary diversity in that country. Yeah, I mean, there's just a lot going on in West Africa in general. So I just had the very, like, the smallest taste of it going to Senegal and I hope to be going back at some point. I think it's one of the most undiscovered collection of cuisines in the world. West African. you know, that's in part, and all of sub-Haran Africa, frankly, you know what I

[50:21] mean? is like that. And that's the reason that we were doing this thing. Pierre Cham, uh, you know, a friend of a friend of ours who, uh, you know, had a restaurant grant a car in, uh, Brooklyn is from Senegal, and, uh, you know, uh, I had spoken to him about organizing a series of trips a couple years

[50:37] ago, and he finally made it happen, even though, you know, I I have, you know, I've been too busy. I haven't done it. But the basic idea is, is that in Africa, when foreigners come, they feed them non-traditional food because they assume that, you know, that, you know, Western, or, you know,

[50:50] it was like Euro, Euro and American style folks don't want the traditional food, right? Which is as far like people nowadays, like people like myself or other like gastro tourists or, you know, gastro tourism, which is a big

[51:03] thing, they don't want fake food. You know, like I say, if I want French food, I'll go to France. If I'm going to fly somewhere, I want to learn about the food that's from there, right? Uh, so, so there's that. They're showing people there that outsiders respect the indigenous

[51:18] stuff and that that's what they should do. And then there's the flip side is that we don't know hardly anything about it. And there's a lot to learn. There's as much diversity and interest and amazing stuff going on there as, you know, any one of the Asian cultures that everyone here knows all the

[51:31] minutiae of or any one of the European cultures that everyone knows all the minutiae of the food products from, right? And yet there's not the exposure to it, and therefore not that level of interest. So when I went there, I did a talk actually, and I tried to point out, I was like, look, you know, in here in the US, I was like, take a look at Sean Brock, who's been doing like

[51:49] high level work with, you know, specifically South Carolina stuff, right? And so he's doing some amazing work, but that's, you know, not that much of a stretch because he's, you know,

[51:57] here and people, you know, respect that's going on. I was like, okay, well, you know, look at, you know, 20 years to 10 years ago, even, 10 years ago, who thought about Danish food? Did you? Now all that stuff's now all the rage. Why? Because of Rennie Rizzeppi. So I put Renny Rizzeppi up and I put Alex Atla from DOM in Brazil, who's like, you know, everyone in South America looked at what

[52:20] happened that that restaurant and how he's using incredibly local products to do this really high-end work.

[52:26] So he's not doing French work that happens to have a couple local ingredients. It's like using modern cooking techniques and using incredibly local ingredients. And the advantages is it can't be copied. You can't copy that restaurant somewhere else because you don't have access to the ingredients. Same goes for Noma. Same goes for Sean, you know, down in South

[52:45] Carolina is they have cuisines that are respected the world over and that can't be copied, so you need to go travel to have it. And, you know, I said that this may seem irrelevant to you. that says to people, in a country where, you know, a huge percentage of, you know, your population is suffering from problems like iron

[53:01] deficiency, you know what I mean? and other things. But in fact, we can, you can, you know, you can generate some good revenue if you, you know, if you do it. I don't know. And of course, introducing people to these these culinary sort of treasures around the world is one of the major goals of the

[53:17] museum of food and drink. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, much so, yes. Anyway, so we'll talk more about maybe some of the other, like, Bayobab. they have baobab stuff down here. That's my favorite tree in the world. That's a good tree, right? That's an awesome tree. Baobab. It called something like Bui or something in Woloff, but I don't know what it's called down in a camera. But yeah, it's a guy, they use every part of the dang tree. And plus they're just really cool looking. amazing. Yeah. So we'll talk more about this. You know, I have some, I don't bring it with me. Bale of bad candy. I bring you some. I still think I still have some left. I not sure. Okay, last question on the way out. And then on the way out, remember, Joe, we're going to play our commercial break sponsors because I didn't go to a commercial break today. got it. Uh, SB writes in. Says greetings from Paris. All right. Yeah, Paris. The 4th season of Top Chef has just ended here in France. And I wanted to get your views on culinary competitions in general. So already, it sounds like a good question, right? Right? Yeah. More specifically, the Top Chef or Iron Chef like shows really crown good cooks. Or is it more of a mix of luck, contestant personality, et cetera? What do you think of the professional competitions, such as the beaucuse? That's the, uh, the beaucuse of gold, as we say here in the, in the US of A. The pastry World Cup or the MOF, which stands for, oh, something may, you know, something over here, Francaise,

[54:40] anyway, like butt kicking of Frenchness, which, by the way, isn't just for chefs. It's for any sort of, there's a whole list of crafts that you can have MOF in

[54:48] France, and others. Also, feel free to say bad things about Airveitis. Okay, SB. Well, he is actually one of the very few people in the food world that I don't have a compunction just saying bad things about because

[55:01] he, A, doesn't care whether or not Americans say bad things about him, and B, he is a huckster charlatan, and says crazy false things all the time. And I always hold up against him. Harold McGee, who is, you know, awesome. So they're kind of like opposites. You know what I mean? Yeah. Herb Atis, who thinks that cooking an egg in an oven is a good way to measure how it responds to temperatures,

[55:27] which whatever. You know what, SB? don't get me started. Don't get me started because then, you know, I only have a couple minutes to answer your regular question. So my thing on this is, is that contests, Contests

[55:41] clearly measure something. The question is, what do they measure, right? So, you know, one thing you can look at is, uh, you know, which ones do chef squatch, right? So chefs used to, I don't know if they still do, uh, watch Iron Chef, like they like it, right? That was one of the very 1st contest shows that chefs actually wanted to be on, right? So Wiley, uh, who, you know, didn't was

[56:06] like, out of who TV, I hate food TV. He doesn't talk like that. But anyway, but he said that. Why do I always use voices that aren't people like anything like the people that I'm talking about? is just, I don't know why. don't know why. Anyway, when he got the opportunity to do Iron Chef, I was like, yes, I want to do it. Everybody has respect for the, uh, uh, or, you know, again, I haven't spoken to people about in a while, but respect for the Iron Chef brand. And it is a mixture of personality, right? Because a lot of it's about, you know, you have to talk to the judges. It's, you know, there's some sales shit, you know, sales, you know, sailing that's going on when you're

[56:40] talking, but it also is real cooking task. And, you know, you do interesting stuff and it's respected. Um, you know, a lot of chefs have done Top Chef Masters, and the reason they do it isn't necessarily because they like the format of the show.

[56:56] I mean, to be very, um, you know, kind of blunt. Uh, you get a big pop in the restaurant after you do the show, whether you win or you lose, right? So it's good for business to do it. And it's good for, and it's a, it's kind of a mark that you've done it that allows you to then

[57:13] to do other things. So it's there's an advantage to doing it. You know, and what does it measure? I don't know. You know, like, you know, does it measure, like, how much you would like the food that someone cooked, were they thinking about the food

[57:27] beforehand? You know what I mean? So when you're put in a situation where I, it's Iron Chef. For those of you that don't know, okay? Iron, when you do Iron Chef, it's not like someone's like, walks up to you and says, uh, widgety grubs. And then it's the 1st time you've heard this widgety grubs, and then you create all these amazing dishes in an hour from widgety grubs, right? Because if those iron chefs could actually do that, then I would, you know, I would quit my job and spend all of my time just

[57:57] bowing at their knees. You know what I mean? That's in fact not what happens on Iron Chef. What happens on Iron Chef is you're given a list of of 3 or four. I forget what it is, possible things that it could be, and you practice those recipes a bunch of times to make sure you can clock in

[58:15] in under an hour. That's what happens. Now, there's an extreme advantage to the Iron Chef because they're used to the kitchen, and a lot of inefficiency comes from not being used to a kitchen, but there you have it.

[58:25] So, uh, so like, but still, you know, it's a lot different from cooking in your own element with ingredients that you choose

[58:34] yourself. And these things like Chopped, where you'd have no idea what's going on, are extremely different. So someone winning in that circumstance isn't the same thing as someone who would make them necessarily the most delicious food at their

[58:45] restaurant or even at your house because at your house, time management isn't as important as it is in

[58:51] Iron Shed. Iron Chef is as much about time management as it is about anything else. Because in Iron Chef, the goal, really, is to produce a bunch of incressive, impressive crap in an hour. You know what I mean? So it's like really a time management thing, which is actually a fantastic measure of the chef. Chef needs good time management. Not necessarily the best indicator of who is, in absolute terms, the best cook, right? So, I mean, these are, they're all measuring different things and you have to look. Now things like the... I also, you know, think that most outside accolades are kind of absurd

[59:23] because again, they're also not necessarily measuring things that might be important in the real world. That said, MOF is pretty badass. You know what I mean? Anyone that has an MOF, you can pretty much guarantee that they're a badass. Saying, Boku's door? If you win the Boku's door. You're a badass. I mean, like, that's all there is to it just because it's incredibly, incredibly difficult, right? So if someone climbs Mount Everest without oxygen, right? Are they the world's best human being? No, that's pretty badass. I mean, I think it's, I think it's personally dumb to try and climb climb Mount Everest. And I also, myself, wouldn't want to spend the amount of time in my life, it would take to get close to winning any one of these competitions if I even could. You know what I mean? But they are a measure of badassery. What you think? I don't know if you know about this notes about me, Dave, but I actually competed in a cooking competition once. Yeah. I almost won $100,000 making a burger. How was the burger? I mean, the thing is, this speaks to your point. I'm not a great cook. I'm, you know, I can practice something and do it well eventually, and that's precisely what I did in this situation. It was actually a Sutter home burger competition. The price was $100,000. I came in 2nd place, like lost by one point out of 235. So what do you get, just like a boatload of Merlot? I got nothing. No, Nathan. I got five. Actually, the 2nd prize was $500. So it's $100,000, 1st place, then $500 second place. 3rd prize you fired? Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I basically, I think it's it's how a measure of how well you played the rules of that particular game. Yeah, also, yeah, in bar competitions, a lot of it's about the pattern and the speech and kind of what you do and how well you can smooge the judges. And to be honest, like it depending on like some things are, you know, judges are incredibly biased, you know, and you can just have a bad judge and you can have this.

[1:01:04] So, you know, they, yes, they do measure something. But take, take, you know, anything like that with a grain of salt. I personally detest competitions unless they are, like the only competitions that I kind of enjoy are ones that are quantitative in nature that you can win or you can

[1:01:25] lose. You know what I mean? juicing contest, which I lost, unfortunately. Last time I was in one, I embarrassed myself in front of my kids and my kids have vowed to revenge me later.

[1:01:36] I was embarrassed myself too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See? There you go. And, you know, or, you know, soccer game, who gets the most goals. Anyway, but that's me. But I'm a curmudgeon and a weasel and a hard person to deal with. Uh, so, uh, more next week. Thanks, Peter, for coming in, ready for the commercial break and on out with cooking issues. Do you want to become a more creative cook? Are you interested in cutting edge cooking techniques? Do you find the science of cooking fascinating? You could buy modernist cuisine, or you can save yourself $450 and check out chefsteps.com. Founded by Chris Young, Ryan Matthew Smith, and Grant Crilley, all alumni of the creative team behind modernist cuisine,

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