[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. For more information, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.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 Radio Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:32] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking here. She coming to you live. Roberto's Pizzeria. Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network. Every Tuesday from roughly 12 to 1245 Joined today by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez with Jack, Joe and Eddie in the engineering booth. How you guys doing? Hey, you're pretty revved up today, huh? Well, it's so freaking hot out that, like, I don't know, my body now that it's cool in the air conditioning here has all this, I don't know, extra energy it was using to cool

[0:56] itself. I don't know. Now I don't know. I made that up. Call your questions two, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. We hope to be joined soon, correct, Nastasia? With, uh, you know, one of our favorite all time people. Harold McGee, great master blaster of science as it relates to making things delicious. He is actually en route now from his hotel in Manhattan to the Heritage

[1:20] Radio Network Studios here in Brooklyn. So we'll see how long that takes. It's actually a really crappy time to travel from Manhattan because they're always working on the freaking bridge. Everyone takes the bridge and they're always working on it. You guys notice that? He's taking a subway. Subway. What's that The traffic sucks from here to from Manhattan to here around noontime. Sucks. I think he's making a joke because he never goes. Oh, oh, I get it. I don't understand people who don't go to Manhattan. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, we're traveling out here in the in greater in greater Brooklyn. So anyway, so should we hit some questions before he shows up? Anything cool happening, Nastasia? No. Nothing? I only hit some questions. All right. I have I have one little message. I was at Bonnaroo with Heritage Radio and Roberta's and it was all crazy and everything and we got a little message from a friend that I'm going to play. Yo, yo, Jeremiah Bullfrog here at Bonnaroo. hanging out with Heritage Radio. Y'all know the deal. I love myself since Jeremiah Bullfrog. He's the king of the Miami food trucks, if I'm not mistaken. Gastropod. Gastropod. He a good man. Good man. Met him a number of years ago back when I used to teach at the French Culinary Institute, back when it was called, the French Culinary

[2:28] Institute before it became the International Culinary Center, right? Nostalgia? Yeah. Okay, have 1st of all, a shout out to Jack and some information about the museum from Kate. Hello, everyone. I have 2 questions, if you don't mind, but 1st I do apologize because I'm still catching up on the backlog of cooking issues. So I apologize if you've covered these topics already, please do not feel obliged to listen to our back catalog, right, Stas? I realize, always say. Uh, she says, uh, I realized this website for Mofad, that's the Museum of Food and Drink, uh, is updating and looking good. I'll check the website once in a while and hope that more is developed. I would be so excited if it happened as I live in Brooklyn, love cooking, and museums. I do work in the nonprofit sector, so I understand that it takes a tremendous amount of work to get them going. I'm down to help in any way possible. I sent an email to them with an offer to volunteer, if needed, whatever it takes to get those doors open. I enjoyed the southern food and beverage museum so much when it was in New Orleans, and when I was in New Orleans, it's about time New York has a spot of their own. I'm sure working alongside the New York Historical Society could be fun too, is they recently had a beer exhibit. Well, good news. Uh, 2 good news is, one, Kate, we are going to have a Kickstarter launching

[3:33] WinStars. Saturday. Saturday? Kickstarter for the Museum of Food and Drinks. So there's going to be a lot happening and a lot to look at and a lot to look for. So please everyone look out. We're going to put it on Twitter blast, but the Museum of Food and Drink Kickstarter on the puffing gun is going to be up within a week. I told by noastasia. She knows all these sorts of things. And the 2nd piece of good news I have for you is that Harold McGee is now in the studio. Is this the 1st time you've been on the show live? By phone. By phone, yeah. In person, 1st time, yes. So, listen, Trump suckers. This is your chance to call in personal questions to Harold McGee at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. And congratulations to all your recent graduates out there. Okay. And Jack, you might be interested in this before. Before we start up. Kate also said, I just listened to the cooking issues episode that was recorded right after Valentine's

[4:31] Day, and I can't help myself, but let Jack know that I would have inquired about a potential Valentine's Day. He sounds sweet, funny, and interesting. flattered. Yeah? I'm also taken now, though. Oh, man. Kate, you're too late. Too late. Well, you never know. Jack. I mean, I don't do I know your new girlfriend? No, you don't. So I can say this, maybe it'll be over. Maybe there's room for kids. Maybe even more less. I don't know. I don't know. I'm getting, I'm getting the, I can't believe he's saying this shaking head look from Nastasia. Harold, how you doing? I'm doing well, except for having taken the red eye and had problems with a hotel, but

[5:08] otherwise, great. What kind of problems? Went to one place and a reservation went to the 2nd place and a reservation. So up in the air. And by the way, he is coming here directly off of the red eyes. So this is probably the only chance that you have. I've never, like, he's never been tripped up, and he's never gotten angry at anyone. So here is your here is your chance to maybe try either because we have with us a tired Harold McGee. But thanks so much. Thanks so much for coming on the show. So I'll have some questions. Here's one that you might want to weigh in. Barry McCasey writes in. Please address factors that contribute to food aroma. Now that's very broad. So I'm not going to ask you to do that because, you know, that's like a topic of a whole book that you're probably working on now. But EG, how can the aroma of almond chicken soup be enhanced and

[5:56] fill the room? And you've done some work with this in classes with just simply with fans, right? Uh, yeah. Um, well, a bunch of different ways. That's certainly one of them, heating the soup up so that it's giving off as much vapor as possible. And it turns out that if you have room to do it, if the soup could use a little salt, salt will actually help drive aroma out of a food and into the air, because it makes the food more polar, more electrically

[6:30] charged and aromas don't like that, so they get out into the air where they're more comfortable. Now, does that effect reach a certain saturation point or can you take a small portion of the soup, put it in a wide vessel? Presumably you want the soup in a very wide vessel. So you have maximum surface area. Yeah. So, I mean, could you could you punch that up and take a bit of it, put it in a super wide vessel and just salt the

[6:50] bejesus out of it? I've never tried that experiment. Worth trying. Yeah, I mean, if you have some extra soup. lying about. You know? Sacrifice a couple ladles full in a frying pan with some salt and see whether or not you can really amp up

[7:03] the uh... Well, and frying pan, I mean, why not fry it? I mean, put the heat on and boil it. That'll get it into the area even faster than just kind of letting it evaporate. I guess that's true huh? I hadn't thought about that. But you might get bonding and stuff with the oils, right? No? No, I guess maybe, I don't know. Well, I don't mean fry fry. boil. Well, yeah, yeah. boil hard. Use a fan, maximize surface area, right? It's all about volatility with that stuff. They were almost fairly simple. I mean, it's very, very complicated in how it's integrated, but fairly simple in that it's crap that goes up into the air. Yep, that's right. That's right. And into your nose. Yeah, and it has to be in the air first. Right. And, you know, if you want to cheat, I mean, people have done things like put things in vaporizers and actually volatilize them or you

[7:48] could, um, use ultrasonic humidifiers, actually don't boil things. They create tiny kind of misdroplets, they can carry heavier molecules with

[7:56] them, so you could use an ultrasonic commutifier. But on chicken almond soup. I think that's gonna be kind of a nightmare. It needs to be water thin for that to work. Another thing you can do, not fill a room, but the Japanese are very

[8:09] fine when they have their soups of covering their soups with a bowl on the way to the table with an

[8:14] inverted like a smaller bowl and it has the effect of concentrating the headspace directly above the soup.

[8:19] So then the person grabs the uh, the lid, lifts it, and the soup wafts up into their uh, nose, and they get the uh, the full aroma of it. That's how the Japanese get away with having relatively underflavored broth. Boom, boom. Uh, but the uh, uh, it's a little, you know, a little, little dig at the Japanese broth there. But the, but right or no? Yeah. Yeah. And you don't get, if you can smell it coming, then your nose is already beginning to get adapted to it, right?

[8:48] It knows what's coming. It's going to say, okay, yeah, that's that's chicken almond soup, but if you present it with no fanfare, you just open it up and there it is powerfully, it's a much more intense

[9:01] experience. An excellent point that I hadn't thought of. And the reason why we should have Harold McGee here all the time, all the time. Yeah, in fact, you know, it's an interesting point. Modern cooking, when I say modern, modern American home cooking, is all about kind of integrating the kitchen with the dining

[9:20] experience. And part of that is because people who wouldn't ordinarily, 80 or 100 years ago, bee cooking, you know, people who are actually kind of running the house now, take pride in

[9:28] what they're cooking. So they want to be integrated in with their guests and have it. And so it's become part of this, you know, aroma of the kitchen is considered a positive thing. Whereas, uh, you know, a 100 years ago, it would be, you'd be horrified to smell what was going on in the kitchen in your house. It would be horrific, a sign of, you know, poverty and disgust. You know what I mean? And although I definitely fall in the more modern camp. It is interesting to the idea that maybe you could have, in certain circumstances, a much more powerful presentation if they didn't smell it until the moment they were going

[9:57] to eat it rather. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe you want one kind of wafty welcoming aroma, but that should be not something that you're actually going to serve at the dinner. Best of both worlds. Okay. Joel writes, and by the way, Joel, if you're listening, this is Joel of the

[10:17] of the heavy of the, you know, metal version of cooking issues, rights, and with a rib problem, your idol, Harold McGee is here. Did you ever hear his song he sang to you? No. We'll play it for you later. You know, I'm sure Jack has it here in the archives. Joel, here, cooking issues, personal performance artist. Still wicked excited to hear my song being used and pumping up the Heritage Radio Airwaves, and still waiting to hear more about the Sears All attachment progress. The deal with it is we're just trying to figure out, like my partners are a little worried about safety and people burning themselves is really the main issue.

[10:45] And so that's what we're dealing with, right, Stas? Yeah. Uh, okay. I would be more than happy to be a tester, and we'd like to report back my findings. On my question regarding low temperature short ribs, boneless, but 1st here are the specifics. £40 of ribs at 57 degrees Celsius, which is roughly 135 Fahrenheit for you, Fahrenheit heads out there. I cooked them for 60 hours, and the bag contents were seared, unsalted meat, reduced red wine, raw mirepoix, herbs, reduced chicken stock,

[11:09] cold in the walk-in for a few days, all items bagged, room temperature, and vacuum sealed, and placed into 2 separate preheated bass, and covered for 60 hours and left a run for the weekend, unattended. Results. One bath of bags came out great. No sign of bacterial growth or off smell. I ate about 6 ounces and I'm feeling fine, as you should, because it's safe. I'm also researring and bringing them up to the good portion of the meat. All the bags in the 2nd bath were puffed to near explosion. I open one bag and it smelled like death and gym socks. Good combo. Pretty close to what my grease trap smells like. Besides a few $100 worth of meat I threw away. The only thing I can take away from this is to turn into a learning experience for myself and my team. So I need help finding out what happened. I know it's hard to figure out if both bats were at a concert temperature since I left them unattended, but both bags were plugged into the same outlet and running when I returned. Although, that's no sign of anything because they can turn off and they can turn back on again, like a plug can get them kicked. By the way, in the future, never plug 2 circulators into the same outlet, it's possible that they'll continue running, and then it's also quite possible that you'll blow a circuit. Like very possible that you blow a circuit because even a 20 amp circuit, like, I mean, they're not running for the same, they're not running full bore all the time, but

[12:17] I've more than, I've on more than 3 occasions seeing people do that and have circuits blow. Uh, even even on a 20. You just never know. So don't do it. But both bags were plugged into the same outlet and running on our return. Here's my thinking. Chicken stock is possibly too much age on it being the culprit. Do not think that was the culprit. I kept my backbags very close to my baking area in my kitchen where I used natural starters. This may have caused a reaction from reason for microbes to find their way into the bag. I do not think so. One circular, maybe off calibration. This is possible. You should calibrate your circulators with ice waters. The very 1st batch of the new style of circulators, had an issue where it was very easy to set the temperature offset incorrectly and have problems.

[12:55] Uh, so it could be a possibility, but it's fairly unlikely because I think I know what happened.

[13:00] Red wine causing some pickling or fermentation, not the culprit. Cross-contamination. Also not the culprit. I've heard that blanching the bags at a much higher temperature is a good safety step. I try that next time. Help me, help me, please. Love Joel. You have a couple of problems. One, you put raw mirepoix in the bag. Raw Mirepoix has a lot of air in it, and so unless you suck for a super long amount of time, There was probably a lot of residual air left in the Mirepois. As you started cooking, it started heating, the air migrated out of the Mirepoix creating an air gap in your bag. You probably had a further complication at the bags were very tightly packed together.

[13:35] That's a lot of meat to be putting into 2 circulators at the same time, right? So if they're packed tightly together, and then you get any air, you have 2 major insulating effects in your bag. As the air puffs up, you're also taking up more space and it's more difficult for the water to get into the center of the bags. As that happens, if your bags don't get up to bacteria killing temperature within a couple of hours, you're

[13:57] going to get lactic acid bacteria growing in the bag. The lactic acid bacteria is going to create some awful, disgusting, funky smells and cause the bag to blow and puff, right? And then subsequent cooking will actually probably kill those bacteria over a long period of

[14:11] time because they probably won't survive at those high temperatures. However, it's too late. The meat's already ruined and the bag's already puffed. So you have a couple of things you can do. One good way to deal with over cramped bags is to, like you say, put them into simmering water for a minute or 2 to kill all the bacteria on the outside and start

[14:30] the cooking. Looks like we have a color. We have a cl? Oh we have Patrick. Patrick is going crazy with the I got the color. Patrick, come on in here, you crazy crazy. Harold McGee. Here's Patrick, our founder, Patrick Martin. I feel like a I feel dull witted in this room right now. Wow. Three of you guys. Wow. Have a seat. Have a seat. at you, that's right. All right. So there's another mic, Patrick. Why sit over here? Climb over. I won't clean, but did I interrupt the show? Poquito, Poquito. Okay, so here we go. Uh, so, uh, you can dip them in very hot water, like 85 c simmering water to kill the bacteria on the

[15:08] outside. You can start the cooking in a combi oven and then throw them in to finish, and just don't overcrowd them in general. If you cook the mirepois, the air cells will get ruptured as the vegetables shrink down. You also get less puffing from the air and you can suck a hard vacuum. Don't be afraid, by the way, to salt your ribs before you put them in the bag because they're being cooked for a long time and you don't want a fresh steak texture on them anyhow. And also over reduce your stock, right? Yeah, yeah. All right, you want to take should we take a quick break so we can come back with maximum Herald McGee? Quick break.

[15:44] And today's break song is The Hustle by Alan Wilkes, and you are listening to cooking issues on heritageradionetwork.org.

[16:46] 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 salamies, experimenting with both ingredients and techniques. The salamis are made using heritage breeds, mostly red waddles, tamworts, Berkshires, and mule flips. Try their award-winning Stuart pork shoulder and goat salami. To learn more and purchase products, visit

[17:25] shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. And we're back with cooking issues calling your questions too, 718-497-2128, 718-497-2128. So Harold and I were talking about one of your questions, and so we might as well talk about it on the air. Paul writes in on honey and fruit. Hey, cooking issues crew. Just sending you a link about using honey water to stop fruit from browning. I thought it was an interesting alternative too, ascorbic acid, which is vitamin C, different from citric acid. Remember that, people. Everyone always makes that mistake. You notice that, Harold? No. Really? You don't make that mistake, but people, well, when I'm teaching people, they're always like, I bought that. I bought the citric acid and it didn't work. I'm like, no, so the vitamin C. It's escorbic acid. Citric acid will prevent browning somewhat by lowering a pH, but not nearly as much as ascorbic acid, which is actual antioxidant. So the video in question is by Rebecca Masters on America's Test

[18:15] Kitchen, and it's available even if you don't pay. So you can go look at it. And what she does is she soaks slices of apple in, well, Well, I don't know what she uses because I don't remember, but the paper, relevant papers say about 10% honey solution. So, Harold, you want to talk about this for a minute? Sure. This came as news to both of us that honey would do this. But a couple of things. One of the reasons I think we haven't heard more about honey is that the experiment suggested that there were peptides, pieces of proteins that were responsible for this, and the people who wrote the paper in

[18:48] 1990 saying that honey would inhibit Browning, said they were going to follow up on that and find out which peptides were responsible.

[18:56] And it's been radio silence from them ever since. So it never got followed up on. And then there was a paper in 2000 that did follow up on the honey, but said that they got really variable results depending on which honey they used. Some were good, some were not so good. So I think my guess is if you actually did an ascorbic acid, honey side by side, probably ascorbic acid would be more reliable.

[19:20] Right. Well, I forget which one it was. I read another paper on the various different I mean, scorbic acid is also interesting because it can actually reverse some of

[19:28] the some of the browning after it's already occurred, but they said also some of the honeys. I mean, it's really conflicting information. Just to be clear, though, the paper from 1990 specifies clover honey, right? So, like, you think clover honey is more likely to work than other types of honey or no? I don't know. don't know. Hard to say. Good thing for, you know, somebody to follow up on. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, honey is a, and I didn't really, I mean, I've always, you know, like, I don't I don't know whether I ascribe. Do you describe this whole uh, local uh, allergen, honey,

[19:58] Deleo, or no? I don't know about that one. Where if you show up in a place and you're going to have seasonal allergies in that place, you just pound some honey from that place and that they wipes out your seasonal

[20:08] allergies. I wish I'd known that 2 weeks ago. I don't know whether it's true or not, but this is an often held belief, but I have no idea about the efficacy of said

[20:17] thing, but honey is a miracle. Honey syrup is an incredible foam forming agent in cocktails because of the extra proteins. So we use that in conjunction with some of our milk wash

[20:28] strengths at the at the rest at the bar to get really dense heads of

[20:32] foam. That was Piper's call. Pip came up with that. Are there any concentrated feeding operations for bees where like bees get

[20:39] overused or don't have the room to do what they need to do? Well, I mean, I don't think that the bees aren't. I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't go crying about, you know, go overcrowding on bees. They kind of, that's how they groove, like they, on overcrowding and like keeping their temperature up in the winter by being close to each other and buzzing, and also how they kill, how they kill giant, uh, the giant hornets. you know, by glomming onto them and shaking so hard that they heat them up and kill them. So bees don't have the same problems with overcrowding that we do, although they will swarm out of their

[21:07] colony. If they're too crowded, they'll swarm. Uh, but yes, so if you talk to natural honey producers, as I have done, remember that lady who chewed our

[21:15] Euroff stars? Anyway, national honey producer. Like, anyway, my point is, is that, like, the big thing that they hate is feeding them sugar water to tide them over on the winner. That's what the honey producers are like, I don't feed my bees any sugar water. You know what I mean? Ruins the honey. Anyway, but so yeah, I mean, and then the other problems with bees, obviously. I mean, the other problems with bees, if you, like, when they're store too close together, I don't, I'm not up. I haven't been up on the colony collapse papers in for about probably 5 years or something like that. But, um, you know, they used to think that overcrowding and too close the proximity of commercial highs was part of the spread of colony collapse. Do you know anything about modern modern? Actually, you're mentioning the sugar water is interesting because the

[21:59] latest I've heard is that, you know, it's probably lots of different things, these

[22:04] mites and a virus and crowding and pesticides and all that kind of thing. But one of them is the fact that, uh, uh, it's become more and more common to feed bees on either sugar water or high fructose corn

[22:18] syrup. And what they've found is that honey actually has lots of stuff in it that's good for bee health.

[22:24] And if you deprive them of that and just give them sugar water or high fructose corn syrup. They're gonna get sick. So the idea is give them enough honey to feed themselves and maybe things will get better. And no allergies for the bees either. No, nothing, nothing, no problems with that. Hey, did you know? just read this, but I don't know if it's true. Certain Linden flowers are irresistible to bees, but toxic to them. No. I got to research more. That might be crap, but I read it somewhere. But it could be crap because many things that I read are. Here's one that you might want to chime in on. I have a good recommendation for where to go look at it, but Joe Blow, which is like kind of the

[23:00] best, well, they're Joe Blow 67, but it's a good, it's a good, what's it called? It's a tweet, tweeter, tweeter name. Uh, uh, love the podcast. Quickie. Why does OJ taste so horrible after I brush my teeth? Well, uh, the go to www.bite size with a Y, as in small, like, as in bits and bites. Bite-size science.com, the American Chemical Society, of which Harold is a member and a regular speaker for their

[23:28] things. They have a web series of short videos on science that people might find

[23:32] of interest. They did one on this. And they say that it's the sodium laurel sulfate in toothpaste that, uh, that A, suppresses sweetness and B, washes off the phospho lipid. So it suppresses sweetness and enhances your ability to taste bitter. You ever read anything on that? No, no. Interesting. I did read a paper by commercial, uh, commercial tasting thing where people who, you know, we're apt to brush our teeth in the morning because that's what we

[23:56] do, and they show up to work and they need a taste, and they actually cancel the effect of the toothpaste and get them ready for tasting by pounding several glasses of OJ.

[24:04] So there are some studies on that. But, uh, I recommend you, uh, Joe Blow to bite-science.com. Interesting little website. All right. Can I interrupt with a question? Sure. Um, I'm always hypersensitive about how I eat, uh, you know, because I eat out a lot for my work and my wife's in the food world too. So, um, I always wonder about the effects of that on my health, and I read Michael Polland's piece,

[24:27] germs, and uh, I was wondering, I mean, should people who are worried about such things, like, send their feces to that place in Colorado and

[24:36] and have them do studies on it, and is it as important as DNA and all

[24:41] of that? Is your poop as important as your DNA? Well, they say the microbia that lives in your stomach, you know, and that there's this new budding

[24:49] science, and I was just so interested that he likened that microbia to DNA in terms of importance for its effects on human health.

[24:58] And I was wondering, is that true? I mean, is was that a real seminal piece that people? go ahead and toss this one to Harold. I know it's a crazy question, but No, because in fact, you read more and more about that in scientific journals these days as

[25:14] well. And that's, I think, where Michael Paulan got the lead for this. My feeling is that we're just beginning to understand how important the gut microbes are and what to make of

[25:27] them, and at the moment, what we kind of know is that people in different states of health have very different communities down there, but whether it's possible to change them quickly or over

[25:40] time, by changes in diet, or whether changing them more drastically by taking little pills with lots and lots of is a good idea. We have no clue. I think we're still figuring that out. And also to say that it's as important as DNA. And put it this way, you can, for all intents and purposes, wipe out a good chunk of your gut microflora by intensive antibiotic regimes or like super

[26:05] sickness, plus antibiotic regimes. I mean, I've gotten, like, I, this, it's not microfluora, but, you know, I, I had a situation once where I was so cleaned out that I was lactose intolerant

[26:14] for like a week and a half because I had no enzymes left in my body. But fact of the matter is, you can reestablish those colonies. If I were to supply enough radiation to you, to destroy your DNA. Very difficult to reconstitute. Very, very, very difficult to reconstitute, right? Yeah, so let's leave DNA at the top of the heat, but maybe microbes are right up there. you know, just underneath. I mean, there are plenty of things that are completely necessary, but not as

[26:42] critical from an everyday standpoint, right? You know? We've got a caller. Like, water. It's right up there with DNA. Hey, caller, you're on the air. Hey, dude. Hey, old this is Johnny Clark from Memphis, Tennessee. How are you doing? All right, how you doing? I'm doing good. I was looking for some advice on, um, the addition of mascarpone to cheesecake. Uh, I was working with £3 of cream cheese. uh £5 uh mascarpone, and anywhere from 2 to 3 eggs per pound of cheese. And sometimes when I cut through it, it, it appears broken.

[27:27] Um, any advice on, you know, maybe Malta dexter, cornstarch, flour, addition, and sous

[27:36] vide, time and temp. Yeah, well, I've never, mean, mean like, when you say sous vide, do you mean like in a, in a CVAP or something like that? I've never put a cheesecake in a bag, although I'm sure you could. There's no reason why you do it. Oh, I, yeah, I just bag it and search or let it, yeah, for... were doing it in the tubes, right? You were doing it in the tubes. No, I was just, well, I was just doing it in, uh, 3 or 4 small

[28:02] bags, and after, um, like 2.5 hours, pull it out and pipe it into the

[28:07] molds, the mulbs. Well, I would imagine mascarpone has a higher water content and the water in it is less bound than it would be in cream cheese.

[28:18] wouldn't you think so, Harold? Yeah. And so I would guess that it would be a lot looser under all conditions. I mean, um, can you hang mascarpone to just firm it up a little bit? Uh, you probably could. What I don't know is, you know, how much you'd be left with, you know, would that be an economical thing to do? If it if it only leaks. That's where I was thinking, Tapia. Uh, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't use, I mean, if you're going to go to Maltodextrin. I mean, maltodextrin doesn't supply a lot of thickening power. You might want to go to an actual starch. You know what I mean? Something that's has a little more thickening power to it. I mean, multidextrin is more of a bulking agent, so that when you dry something back out again, you're going to have more bulk. I mean, I think that the addition of a starch to it to thicken it up, maybe. I mean, you can up your egg quantity a little bit, which is I think what they do in the Italian cheesecakes that are ricotta based, right? Don't they up the egg content in those things? I think that's right, yeah. I mean, it's been a long time. Yep. Do you know ratio on what they do for that? I don't. I don't. But, I mean, like the classic Italian style cheesecakes are using a much looser cheese without all the, you know, they're using

[29:28] ricotta-based typically things, which are gonna be, they have a grainier texture. I happen to love them. I happen to love those styles of cheesecakes, but I don't make them myself, but they're typically much

[29:39] grainier and I would imagine they're bound with a higher egg proportion. And they taste like they're bound with a higher egg proportion. So I would up your eggs. I would move to perhaps a starch, one that has a good thickening power, maybe one that doesn't require a complete boil to activate. So maybe something like potato that has a lot of swelling, but then it's not going to hold as much

[29:57] eventually it might break. I don't know. I'd have to think about the stars that you're going to use. Um, but I would I would definitely add a starch to it. What do you think? Yeah, no, I agree. I also think that it's the kind of thing where you're just not going to know for sure without trying it. Yeah, I've done a few test runs and, uh, cornstarch. and AP flower, I'm just looking for any other star congestions as well. Hey, you can, you could, you uh, could use uh, to, to get around the problem of the temperature if you're doing it sous vide, because you might not be functionalizing the starch. You might want to use a pre-aglomerated. I mean, an agglomerated pre-cooked starch, like a, um, not ultra text, but ultra spurse. Yeah, one drop. Wonder could work, that's pre-cooked, but like ultra spurs or something like that. Because Wondra is still going to have all of the, it's going to have a more of a flowery note to it because it's flour, whereas the ultra

[30:48] spurse is going to be more neutral. And you can pick, I think you can pick up ultra spurs from the guys at monitorspantry.com. Yeah. Give it a shot. Let us know what happens. What's the percentage of ultra spars? Jeez, I don't know. a lot depends on how much water you need to bind, right? Because it's the it's it's the percentage of ultra spurs compared to the free water that's available in the mascarpone, but I mean, I wouldn't guess

[31:14] that you'd probably need to add more than a percent or two, right? I mean, because if it's almost set, right? Then you don't need to add that much. A lot depends on how much you need to bind up. You could also just cheat. You could just cheat and set the stuff as a gel. I mean, cheat. You know what I mean? Yeah, you know, uh, like use like, uh, I don't know, like make a fluid gel, uh, or any sort of gel, have it set up. You know, if you could do, you could do a, you could do like an iota carraginen or a kappa that will melt in

[31:43] the, in the thing, you could pipe it while it's hot, it'll set into a gel and you're done. Very light gel. You know what I mean? And especially because there's dairy in there. You could use a very small percentage of carragina and have it set up pretty nicely. So you wouldn't use uh, carrot gain and nan ultrasars, right? I'd probably try one or the other to see how they work and see what the texture difference is, but might try that. Okay, I appreciate you. All right, good luck. have a good day. All right, you too. All right, we have a question in from Brian, regarding Mastarda. You like Mastarda? You're the Italian fruit-based content? Yeah, me too. I haven't had it in a long long time. Because no one else in my family, Jen likes it, my wife, but my kids, you know, are not big on it. You like that stuff, St us? I mean, the cherries and the pears and that kind of gelatinous, no men's land, just like floating around. Yeah, in a syrup, we like to call that like a syrup or a jelly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They make one from watermelon rinds that I really like. Um, but anyway, uh, Brian writes... meant to be eaten, is it? All the, oh, you don't need all the gel. You just eat the fruit and it... I put the stuff on bread with cheese. I just eat the whole damn thing, yeah. You, Harold? Yeah, yeah. It's condiment. Yeah, yeah. there you go. Hello, cooking issues team. Hope you guys and gals are staying cool. We are not. It is hot as hell. Not in the studio, but it's nasty out. Okay. After some research, I discovered that true mustard does not contain mustard powder or mustard seed, but mustard essential oil, which they call

[33:08] senape in Italy. Senape, how do you pronounce that, Stas? Oh, thank you, Patrick. With the with the Italian. Uh, apparently, this is such strong stuff that only pharmacists in Italy sell it, uh, or Eshola from Studio Kitchen. uh, uh, Studio Kitchen

[33:22] blog does use a Roto app to extract it from mustard oil. Do you have a source for this product or a substitute? What does Cesare or Mark say about this? I didn't have a chance to speak to them. Did you speak to Mark about this? Nope. Thanks. job. You got home late. Whatever, whatever. whatever. Okay, okay. Thanks again for your awesomeness. Brian. Okay, so, uh, Mustard Essential Oil is available on the internet's on

[33:43] eBay from, uh, Nival, the company's Nival, N-I-V-A-L,

[33:49] Pure Essential Mustard Oil. It's available on eBay and also from essential depot.com in Florida, but that stuff's expensive. Let me just say that there's 2 things. If you go to like an Indian, uh, Indian mart, like, uh, you know, like Kalustians here in the city or dual specialty shop in city, anyone is,

[34:07] you can buy stuff called mustard oil. That's press, press mustard oil, and that stuff, it can be pungent or cannot be pungent. It's all labeled as not for human consumption because of, you know, it contains what is it? something I have it here on the thing somewhere. I can't... aroustic acid, acid. Yeah, a fatty acid that causes problems in mice, but apparently not in people, but we haven't gotten

[34:28] around it. Right, yeah. I mean, cultures have been using it for 1000s of years internally and it hasn't seemed to be a problem, but we're worried about it. Yeah, can't have it. Yeah. But here's the bad news. Mustard oil in, because I've purchased it. Mustard oil in Indian stores, or I guess Korean, I guess they use it in Korea as well. Um, Bangladesh, a bunch of other places. It's just not that strong. It's just not, I mean, it's got some sort of mustard thing to it, but I once had a pure vial of the mustard essential oil that was given to me

[35:02] by a Japanese gent, and that stuff is ridiculous. like 2 drops in like in in like your mashed potatoes and they're like completely mustard it up. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, this stuff's crazy because it's, it's, uh, distilled, but not

[35:18] distilled like rotavap style with a bunch of water left over, like distilled, the oil floats up to the top. You take the super on the top of the stuff, and that's your mustard, essential oil. And it's almost, it's some, it's some, like, I don't know,

[35:31] isothotocyanate, some sort of allium to be a sulfur derived thing of a jig. So it distills quite well, probably the same way that horseradish does, which distills like a demon. Uh, but, um, yeah, I would recommend, the stuff's really expensive, but it goes a long way. buy it. I would buy it. I'm thinking now of buying it. I don't know whether this one's any good. Have you ever bought it, Harold? No, I haven't. Yeah, I mean, people swear on Amazon, the best you're going to get because I looked for a while is mustard oil. like pressed mustard oil, not mustard essential oil, right? It's not the same. You have to like dump a whole boatload of that interior mustarda. your favorite kind of astardo? You like them all?

[36:14] I think actually the pair. You know, the grit goes really nicely with the, with the heat, I think. Nice with a nice Pecorino. Doesn't Mark say that Gouldens is the best mustard ever made? I think you just said that today. Really? For real? Did you just make that up? No, it's in my book. And Marion Cunningham, who was James Beard's assistant, said that Hellman's is the best mayo. Why would you ever make a mayo? Nothing could ever taste better than almonds. So it's the thing that it was the essay was, don't make ketchup. unless it's really better than Heinz. If it's not better than Heinz, just also serve Heinz. Well, anyone who's listened to the backlog here knows that Nastasia doesn't care about different brands of ketchup, which is one of

[36:57] the my main gripes with hers, that she doesn't see that there is possibly a difference between different brands of ketchup.

[37:03] And I haven't tried the new fancy stuff yet from Portland. The fancy ketchup in Portland. However, Heinz, it makes a delicious ketchup. Let's just be clear on that that in what's your opinion on Heinz schedule? It's delicious, but there's somebody in San Francisco makes a nice one too, June Taylor. Yeah. June makes a nice ketchup. Yeah, yeah. It's different. You wouldn't mistake it for Hines, but it's delicious. Is it ketchup in like the 1820 of mustard? I mean, not mustard, mushroom-based ketchup or is it? No. No, it's tomato kips. Tomato-based, but with more of the spices showing. Yeah. You know what I'm about to get myself in trouble for? Because I always bust Nastasia for stuff that she doesn't like. But you know what? I actually, it's not that I don't like it, but I'm not a huge fan of, or I don't care about it. Here's something I don't care about. I don't care that much about the nuances of different barbecue sauces. I don't. I mean, I see that there are differences, but to me, they're all fundamentally ketchup,

[38:01] molasses, and like vinegar and sugar and stuff, right? Am I wrong about this? No, I'd agree with you. Yeah. I care more about the base ketchup. Uh-huh. In the barbecue sauce. Although, uh, Paul Prudhome has an excellent recipe from the mid-1980s that uses a lot of ground up nuts and a barbecue sausage is pretty good.

[38:22] Ground up nuts. Really good, actually. Yeah, pretty good. What kind of nuts? I don't remember because my mom used to make it all the time back in the day. I'm going to say it was... Cons, I guess. Probably. Yeah, although he probably subbed out for northerners when he was right. This is back when Paul Prudholm had just recently opened K-Polls in Louisiana and he was still famous for sticking really red hot peppers into liquor and calling them Cajun martinis and back before everyone had, you know, black and this, that and everything.

[38:52] He came out with a cookbook early on that I think was pretty influential. Yeah, my mom used to cook out of all the time. So I have to admit, but you know, whatever. Speaking of old school, Christopher Milch writes in, because I guess because of the Sears all tours that I'm working on, and wants to know, if we've watched the old Julia Child episode where she goes on David Letterman, and they don't have equipment that

[39:14] works, and so she has to, she was going to make a hamburger and melt the cheese with a torch, which the Sears all is great at, by the

[39:20] way. Uh, instead has to make beef tartare, and David Letterman is being vicious to her the whole time. you seen this? No, but he's always vicious to the chefs. Yeah, I mean, but Julie Child, I mean, like, this is 1987. So she was probably, what, in her 70s, late 70s? Yeah. Yeah. And uh, he's just like ripping her up and down and she's like taking it completely as a good sport and as every bit as quick on her feet as

[39:43] uh, Letterman is. She, like, uh, it's kind of when it, it's, I kind of wish that I had met her, that you may, you met her a couple times, right? Yeah, I did. I did. And had dinner with her once and felt and this was when she was in her

[39:56] 80s, and afterwards felt just totally inadequate because she had read, you know, 10 books I hadn't read and seen 10 movies that I hadn't

[40:06] seen and I just couldn't keep up. She was an amazing woman. Yeah, and a spy during World War II. Interesting, interesting character. I haven't seen that movie based on it. I haven't seen the movie. I don't know. Anyway. Jay Matthew Miller writes in about Arancello. you like Arancello? I am not a big Limoncello fan. Do you like Limoncello? Orangello being the orange-based variant of it? Every once in a while. It's sweet and that. My problem with it, it's lemon cello. And again I'm going to get in trouble now. is the episode where it's like, well, it's a little bit sometimes detergent from my taste. Anyway. They make orange cello in Italy. I mean, with using their red oranges or blood red oranges or something? I don't know. haven't had it over there. I've only been to the north of Italy. They don't play that game. Yeah, they do. Yeah, I haven't been south of Rome much to my, much to my chagrin. Okay, I've made some Calamandan, which you might out there also know as Calamansi. Uh, which is sold mostly green, but is, in fact, orange when it writens. Okay. I've made some calamundan arancello from calamundan peels. Of course you didn't, because what else would you make it fun? Grown in my yard. I soak the peels. The fruit have almost no pith, in 190 proof, ever clear for 7 days, then mixed with equal parts,

[41:15] one to one simple syrup. See, that's sweet. That's sweet. The resulting product is pretty good. but a little bit stiff by itself next time I'll probably add more water. Anyway, I've been storing it in some mason jars and I get a dark orange ring where the surface of the liquid meets the glass of the mason jar just around the edge. It is really tiny but noticeable. What's going on here? Is this excess citrus oil? Yes. What can I do to prevent this from happening? Nah. On my next batch? My tree produces 3 times a year, I want to make enough to give his gifts, but the ring around the mason jar makes the end product less appealing. Thanks for your help. J. Matthew Miller. Yep, that's the oil coming out when you're diluting it because you can absorb more of that stuff into alcohol than you can under water. And that's it, right, Harold? I mean, that's what it is. Yeah, and thanks to all the sweetness, the density of the liquid is pretty high and the oil is that much lighter, and so it's going to pop up to the surface. Good call. So maybe making it a little less sweet. You can get around it. That's it, yeah, that's a good. I see. Again, I hadn't thought of that. Here's the things I thought of. Don't go and try to buy brominated vegetable oil, which is what everyone used to use back in the day to keep citrus oils and suspension and things like sodas.

[42:19] See, what happens is they add bromine to vegetable oil. It's exceedingly heavy. It gets in close contact with the citrus oil and the average of it makes them kind of float around and makes it cloudy. That's how they made things like sunkist soda, you know, work. You're not, they don't use it anymore much. They use something that you also can't buy, which is sucrose, diacetate, hexoisobuterate, S-A-I-B, which is a sucro ester derivative, but also probably can't buy that. Here's what I suggest you do. Either reduce the sweetness. Try that. Also, put it, get one of those old school, like, uh, who makes some Lipton, sun tea things, one of those giant iced tea coolers that has a spigot at the bottom.

[43:02] Put your product into it, your entire batch. Let it sit for a week and a half or more after you've diluted it. The ring will form around the top, then drain it from the bottom. Right? Brilliant. Brilliant. See, Harold's thinking about it from an actual kind of thinking standpoint. I'm just thinking the mechanics of what to get around it because that's that's therein lies the difference. Uh, okay, now we have a question in uh, from Will about sours, uh, whiskey sours. and zucchini. Word to Dave, Nastasia, Jack, Joe, and the new guy in the booth. I guess that's you, Eddie. How do you? Eddie. Yep. I've got 2 questions. hoping you can help me with. The 1st is the cocktail problem. I want to pre-batch whiskey sours for the 4th of July. I like mine with egg whites, and I make designs on the phone with various bitters and eye dropper bottles and a chopstick. I use simple syrup that has gum Arabic for a better mouthfeel and a strong rye for a better flavor. What I want to do is pre-mix and dilute the sour and then run in a blender with dry ice to chill for service and top with an egg white foam,

[43:59] decorate, and serve. I've got a whisk that goes into a power drill for stick mixer like effects, egg white sanding gum, gum Arabic and nox gelatin, et cetera. How can I get a good phone without an ISI? I have not yet incorporated gelatin, but my efforts up to now have resulted in foam that is too stiff to decorate well with bitters and tends to break when added to the sour. I've seen many people online suggesting the cocktail foam should be its own fully realized beverage. I mean, yeah, I don't know about that. That compliments the underlying drink. Thats true. In normal sours, the foam is essentially fully flavored by the drink, modified by the approximately half teaspoon

[44:28] of various bitters I decorate with. Do you have any suggestions, direction to take the flavors for this foam, looking for a direction to take my generally very tasty experimentation. Let's hit that before we go into the next thing. One, be very careful blending dry ice into something with a

[44:44] blender because if you serve any chunks of dry ice to someone that they ingest, it can be extremely detrimental. That's one, two. When you blend dry ice into a product, you will get a very light petillon carbonation in

[44:57] there and you have to make sure that that's not going to hurt the flavor of your whiskey sour. That's two. So I, in general, I am somewhat loath to chill with

[45:08] dry ice and blenders, although I've seen plenty of people do it, but it just makes me very nervous and I'm not, what are your thoughts on that? I have no experience with it, but I take your point. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing is, remember, as you say, a normal cocktail. Okay, so a normal cocktail with egg white in it, the thickening effect of the egg white is manifest

[45:31] most visually by a foam on the surface. However, the body of the entire drink is changed by the protein addition. So you're not going to have the same drink by blending with dry. What you what you're going to be doing is making a slushy and then putting a foam on top, which could be delicious, by the

[45:50] way. I mean, I would use liquid nitrogen instead and just get it slushed out. Because, but, but drinks that are slushy are so freaking cold, they're actually somewhat painful.

[45:59] Whiskey flavored drinks actually taste best when they're not so cold that they're slushed out in my experience, right? You want them just when they start going clear after you chill in liquid nitrogen is when they start being good again. Otherwise, like, uh, they don't end up being balanced and anything too much more than slushy in it is literally painful. It's so cold. Uh, in terms of foams to put on the top, you know, um, Methocell

[46:24] F50 makes a nice phone, but it's still pretty dense. Um, I have to think more about this. you might it might end up being shorter for you just to just to shake the dang things. Like pre-blend some egg whites and just shake it. I understand you're trying to do something different here. And what do you think, Harold? Any any feelings on the phone? I mean, I know that should be my kind of a thing. I mean, you could use ISI, uh, and then do like a really like a, like a lighter, a lighter foam, but I mean, the egg white foams are also somewhat fugitive, which is nice.

[46:56] And most of the foams that are made, aren't, they're either have a very large bubble size or they're not so fugitive, but try

[47:02] methacell F50 or VersaWhip, uh, under a percent. They make a really nice film that's quite stable and you could probably make a slushy and then like literally spatula of the foam and strike it off the top and then

[47:13] draw a design it. What has Piper been using recently? Remember? He's been making some films recently for cocktails. He actually literally whipped egg whites, I think, and put it on top. Could do that too. Whipped egg whites. You could take egg white powder, hydrate it with some flavors, uh, and then whip it, uh, not with alcohol, though, but like whip it, and

[47:34] then and then strike it off the top and draw with the bidders, right? That would work, right, Harold? Yeah. Yeah. Second question is about grilling vegetables. I enjoy really well caramelized zucchini or brown zucchini, I guess, unless

[47:45] it's well, no, probably some sugar and zucchini. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, both. Both. Most people would say bordering on burnt. flavor that develops with a good garlic marinade and that mesquite smoke and the vegetable flavors is out of this world. Unfortunately, they end up very delicious, but a bit mushy. I'm wondering if some type of calcium slash pectin treatment might help here. I'm cooling with a raging grill, a cooking with a raging grill, and the poles right up under the food. It's charred my satisfaction about 2 minutes if that helps. Thanks very much for your great work. Looking forward to the Mofad puffer. I don't think the, I don't think you need to firm it, right? I think it's more of a water problem, right? That's what the mush is. I would I would par dehydrate the stuff. What do you think? Uh, that and maybe just chill it. You know, put put them in ice water so that when they go onto the grill. They're really cold and so the inside will just take that much longer to heat up. Oh, so you think he wants to keep it? See, I was thinking want it more chewy than, I mean, zucchini has too much freaking water in it, in my opinion. I don't really, I mean, I have issues with it, because it's got so much water in it. Yeah. And if you're going to char the outside in 2 minutes. There's no way to get the water out of the inside, right? So you have 2 choices. Either try to keep it raw on the inside or try to get rid of the water beforehand. Or, I mean, look, you could try a calcium bath that will firm it up a little bit, but that'll make it bitier, but it won't, won't change the fact that moisture is going to migrate from the inside of the zucchini to the outside of

[49:08] the zucchini and ruin your crust. Well, except that's not what he's saying, right? He's saying that the crust is fine. It's just the inside's a little mushy. So, uh, I think maybe

[49:21] the 1st thing I would try because it's very simple. Just put the zucchini and ice water for half an hour before they go on the grill, see if that takes care of it. If it doesn't, then take more drastic actions, but if it's just, you know, the matter of preventing the inside from getting quite so hot, that should take care of it.

[49:41] Right. And what do you think about for dehydration, do the paper towels microwave thing? Yeah, yeah. Or, or, you know, I don't know how exactly he's presenting them,

[49:54] but, you know, you could also cut them into slices and salt

[49:58] them. All kinds of all kinds of things. yeah Yeah, yeah. Anything you would do for eggplant to get rid of moisture. You could probably do the zucchini to get one moisture, right? Okay. Adam writes in, here's a good one for you. You read this one yet? Adam writes in. Dear, Nastasia, Jack and Joe. My question is for Dave and for Harold, little did you know. What do you make of the recipe for fermented juice of mushrooms and oats in the

[50:19] Favekin cookbook? If you haven't seen it, which I have not. The basic idea is steam salted mushrooms and grain. After cooling, combined with sourdough, sourdough starter overnight,

[50:28] seal in a jar for 6 months, when you open it up, it should have a fleeting odor of peaches. That's the cookbook pros right there. The fresh juice doesn't last long, so Nilson, Magnus Nilson recommends allowing it to turn to vinegar or pasteurizing it. He describes the pasteurized practice being like soy sauce. He also stresses that anyone who attempts the recipe should not eat it until it's been analyzed by a lab to determine whether or not it's edible. The procedure is somewhat similar to mixed yeast bacteria fermentations of the Chinese yeast ball that McGee likes. Here you are right here to talk about it. But I've never read such about such a long sourdough fermentation or one that isn't cooked afterwards. It's strange, just what is happening, and what's your opinion on the food safety? Thanks for the thought. Well, I looked into Sandor Katz's book. I mean, I think, correct me when I'm wrong, I'm going to let you just take this for a minute, but the sourdough thing is just to kickstart the fermentation to get the pH low enough so that botulism doesn't grow first, right?

[51:13] Isn't that what the deal is? And after that, it's going to take over on whatever it wants to do. Yeah, and the part of it that I don't understand is why do you have to seal it? I mean, because that would, you know, remove the issue of botulism bacteria anyway. Well, I mean, look, so the recipes for fermented mushrooms that I could get were, they were all pushed under the water to encourage anaerobic stuff after

[51:40] their pH is dropped, right? I mean, lactic acid, stuff. Yeah. Um, sauerkraut kimchi style. Right, but then why do you have to seal it? Yeah, yeah. And and have it out of view. I mean, why not do it like a sauerkraut fermentation where you can kind of check on it, see how it's going, whether you've kept everything submerged or not, that kind of

[52:03] thing. Also, I would, I don't think I would ever myself want to make a dish that I had to have a lab check before I could

[52:11] eat it. I mean, that just sounds like legally. I mean, if you check the pH before you start the fermentation, then it should be everything should be copacetic. If it's acid enough, you won't have botulism. Yeah, acid and salt, I imagine there's salt in there as well. Yeah, but, I mean, again, I'd have to know the levels, but, I mean, but if it's tart enough, the botulism's not gonna, I mean, like that's essentially how pickles work. You know what I mean? non-acidified mushrooms are dangerous to keep for long periods. Time in the absence of oxygen. Yeah. That much we know. That's the classic thing to kill yourself with. Poorly canned non-acidified mushrooms. That's right. Right? All right. Really quickly. Andy writes in about Ikujime and Buttarga. Hey, Nastasia, I have a couple questions for you, Dave, and the cooking issues crew. I wrote in a year and a half ago about Ikigime spinal cord destruction, which is where, but for

[53:08] the reason you don't know, You take fish, especially like pelagic fish, fish that swim around a lot. And when you kill them, you can increase the quality of their flesh by shoving a needle through the spinal cord to

[53:18] disrupt it. And the theory being that you by destroying the spinal cord. You're preventing any sort of electrical messages from going to the muscles that happen regardless whether the brain is still present. Therefore, increasing the amount of ATP that remains in the

[53:32] muscles, because it's not being used to respond to these errant electrical signals, and that therefore it takes longer to go into rigor mortis, and when it goes into a less strong rigor mortis,

[53:41] when it comes out, the flesh is firmer and better. That's in a nutshell, the theory of what's going on. Okay. So he tested it for us. Okay, and I had always been interested why people don't do it on bluefish, and it's because I don't think in Japan they eat much bluefish, even though I think it's a delicious fish. you a bluefish fan? I love Bluefish. Delicious, right? Uh, okay. I wrote about Nikajime spinal cord destruction test on bluefish in Alabama. I'm heading back to Alabama next week and we'll be trying the test again, likely on a wider range of fish as well. After my trip last year, I read somewhere that one should only use iced

[54:12] salt water or seawater as opposed to fresh. I was using fresh fraudder from the rinsing hose at the end of the pier, and the results were clearly still far superior to non

[54:21] Ikejime spinal core destruction. Any thoughts on this? I will be, of course, trying it, but I may not have the capability to side by side assault versus fresh. Any other suggestions for tests that I could run while I'm down here? Well, the reason for salt is so that the heart keeps pumping and that you're not putting it into shock right away so that you can keep that

[54:37] going. And also, you want to keep it relatively isotonic with the fish. So salt water is obviously the best call, but I don't really know what the effect will be. You know, do you have any? No idea. Yeah. And I don't have any suggestions right now for other tests you should run, but please just let us know what all your tests are because this stuff's fascinating to me. And I want to know how good bluefish is after it comes out of it. Because bluefish, everyone says it doesn't keep, but if you were to do spinal cord destruction, but don't fillet it now so

[55:03] the oils aren't exposed to the oxygen, could it become a fish that keeps longer? I don't know. Uh, my 2nd question is about Botarga, which, you know, is salted, uh, cured row, typically from, uh, mullet, and what's the other one, the one that the, the, what's the other

[55:17] one they make? Well, tuna in the Mediterranean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. In Alabama, we often go cast netting for mullet. I'm quite interested in making my own, but Target. It's really expensive here. Really freaking expensive here. Uh, Nastasia does not like Patargo. Yeah. Not sure if this is the right season, but I had a couple questions anyway. There seems to be a fair number of recipes, techniques out there and this seemed perhaps the best. Soak the row overnight in salt water solution, 10 grams of salt per one liter of water. By the way, the soaking is there just to leech out the blood and any sort of other strong flavors that are there. I don't think that's actually a cure step. Yeah, that's just what, one%? That's less than a 10th of a percent, right? No, yeah, 10 grams per one liter. One percent. That's roughly isotonic, right? It's just to not ruin it, not blow the eggs up, but soak the stuff and get it out. You don't want to soak it in pure water because then you might blow the eggs up because of osmotic pressure. Remove the solution and pat dry on paper towels, all good. Lay out fresh paper towel and tray, liberally sprinkle the salt. Okay. Place row on top and cover with more salt. So far, so good. Place this in the fridge, replace the paper towels daily, add more salt, right? So the cure is taking place at low temperature. After 3 or 4 days, the rose will firmed up. Use a skewer to poke a hole, and time with butchers twine, a long loop, hang the row in a cool place to drive for 10 to 14 days, or longer if desired. This seems like a good technique, but I wonder if there are other better ways. I would put them, I would put them in a curing chamber, but of course I won't have it in Alabama. I also wonder if cool dry place would cause case hardening. My thought is to salt them for a few days in the fridge, then put them on a rack or hang them outside in the sun to

[56:47] drive them dry them. The air would be humid and hot and most likely breezy with enough salt. I'm not that worried about contamination, but should I be? Then I could take them home and put them in my curing chamber for longer drying and eventually backpack them for storage in the fridge. I would dip them in wax. That's the traditional way, not to backpack them, although backpacking will work. But dipping in wax is the traditional way. And pretty cool. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Okay, Andy, I got a treat for you. It's not Alabama, it's Florida. But if you go to the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, or simply type this into your browser, solar drying of seafood products, colon

[57:18] mullet row. They did a bunch of experiments, literally on the open air drying of mullet row to make

[57:25] Botarga in the 70s in Florida, which is fairly similar to Alabama, and you can look at

[57:30] it. And your main problem is actually not going to be case hardening, although they do mention it, I think, in the paper. Your main problem is going to be that unless it's fairly covered, you see, you need

[57:39] to, the temperature of the mullet row needs to go above atmospheric temperature because humid is held.

[57:46] As soon as it goes above atmospheric temperature, which it will from the sun hitting it, right? It will start getting water off. And so it doesn't matter how humid it is as long as it's hotter than the outside environment because then the vapor pressure's going to be there. However, it got so freaking hot. By the way, they used a word that I hadn't, I didn't know, insulation, meaning how much sun hits, not insulation, insulation, which is awesome.

[58:08] Uh, but uh, the mullet roll that they were testing uh, that had uh, like a plastic covering like greenhouse, that let the uh, sun hit it, but had screens all around it, so air could

[58:17] walk through, 150 Fahrenheit, that stuff got up to. hot enough to cook your huevos. Uh, but, uh, anyway, so go read that paper and that should give you some good uh, suggestions. Now, before they rip my microphone away from me, kick me off the air. Since Harold McGee is here, I want to talk about claustridium

[58:34] perfringians and Rachel Dutton and these papers with salt risen bread that I promised I would talk about before. So you want to give us a little clue in there? Why don't you get us started? Because that was a few weeks ago, and that's not in the front of my head. So here's what happened. A number of years ago, on the radio show, someone asked me about salt risen bread, and I'd never done it before. So I made some as a test. And salt risen bread is an interesting, interesting because it's bacterially raised

[59:04] product, and in fact, it's raised with an anaerobic bacteria, claustridium perfringens, which is a pathogen. Right? And in fact, certain strains of it do really nasty things like cause gas gangrene, which was a big problem in

[59:18] the World War one. I guess probably even after, but that's when it 1st became a big deal, right? Yeah. So, anyway, so I made it and the bread had a very distinctive taste to it that I

[59:31] remembered. Went to Africa. and tasted a cassava, like a dumpling that was made from cassava, cassava, as you may or may not know, is redded, so it's soaked for a long period and allowed to, and that's to get rid of

[59:46] toxins in it, right? But it also goes through some sort of fermentation and picks up characteristic flavor. And when I tasted this, I said, oh, that tastes like salt, risen bread. I wonder whether it's custardium, uh, culsidrium,

[59:58] custardium perfangium, same thing. And so Harold and I were hanging out, what was that, the World Science Universe or whatever it's called? right. World World Science Festival. Festival. Yeah, festival. And met up with Rachel Dutton, who is a microbiologist at

[1:00:12] Harvard, studying various fermentation things. What's her actual field? What does she do for a living besides help chefs with that things? Well, she has a five-year postdoctoral fellowship, essentially, to kind of open up this whole subject to academic study, which it really hasn't been open to before.

[1:00:29] Nice. I like that. Who's paying for that? Uh, I forget who the fellowship is from. Yeah. Because the problem is, is that usually work only gets done in food when there's money behind it, which is why most food science sucks so

[1:00:43] hard. Right, yes. Yeah. So, so, well, the avenue she's taking is to, uh, uh, study cheeses in particular, but other fermented foods as model systems for understanding, um, microbial ecosystems, because these things generally cheeses, for example, you know, each cheese has a different set of microbes that ripens

[1:01:05] it, and it tends to be 4 or 5 and it's relatively stable, and so understanding how all that works, uh, she feels will help us understand microbial life

[1:01:16] in general. And that's the proposal that got funded. That good sale. I like that. Strong. Uh, strong. So anyway, so she found an article showing that in fact, Kassava Redding does indeed involve a clustridium, not

[1:01:33] perfringens, but one that produces butyric acid. I mean, I can't pronounce butyrians, whatever it is. Oh, right. Yeah, butura... something or other. Anyway, it's there. So it turns out that, you know, this is, in fact, like half of how I ever accomplish anything is I taste something different. I put it away in my memory bank and then like years later, like something comes up. Is that how you work as well here? Yeah. That's right. Um, and then Harold, because then I said, well, I wonder whether or not the clustrudium in salt risen bread is, in fact, not for

[1:02:05] French. I wonder whether it's this other one as well. And Harold found, and emailed to me, possibly the best article I've ever read in my life.

[1:02:13] And I don't have it here, unfortunately, when it didn't get pasted into my thing, but it is from 1923. And you wanted, like, this, isn't that one of the coolest articles you ever read? It is, it is. They made salt risen bread from a traditional starter standpoint. And then they also made salt risen bread from a culture they had taken off of an injured gas gangrene patient in World War

[1:02:40] one. So like some poor, some poor fella who, you know, in the trench got hit with something, developed gas gangrene, which they isolated that

[1:02:49] strain, and he baked bread with it. And then ate it, presumably, because he said that, you know, he described the crumb texture

[1:02:56] and, oh, it's good, you know, kind of, I think he ate it. And then, then, then, took the bread and recultured the bacteria from the bread to prove that the spores had not, because it remember folks, of course, stadium was spore forming, and was, in fact, able to culture it. And injected

[1:03:13] into guinea pigs and noticed that the salt risen bread clustridium was active, but not as virulent as the one that was developed from the gas gangrene

[1:03:22] patient. So it is, it's fantastic stuff and then specifically said it wasn't this other one because it had a different kind of fermentation. Fantastic paper. Yeah, yeah. something you could never do today, right? No, walk up and just inject that into guinea pigs and eat, eat, like bake bread with uh,

[1:03:39] baked bread with gas gang green stuff? No. No, that's pretty cool, right? It was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, good paper. And anyway, so but then later work, later work, including someone who has a, she has a salt risen

[1:03:53] bread blog, Susan Brown, they did some paper where there's been never been a case. They don't really, I think, in the recent research, prove that it can't cause disease. They just show there has never been a case of disease from clustradium

[1:04:06] prefringe insault rhythm bread. But what do you think about, are they, would you have concerns making that in your kitchen? No, no, I've done it a couple of times and now I'm going to do it again because you've, you know, raised this whole

[1:04:16] thing for me again, but it is fascinating for exactly that reason.

[1:04:21] You take, uh, foodstuffs. I mean, milk and cornmeal and things like that. And kind of intentionally let it rot, right, for a day, and then make bread with that. And you do end up with this really interesting, some people in my own family found it off-putting, but I found

[1:04:42] it really interesting flavor. Yeah, I like it. And it rises. It's, um, yeah. Oh, Redding is very interesting. So, Redding, you do it for cassava. By the way, Reading, literally, you just take the stuff and you throw it in a big vat of water and you let it sit for a couple of days.

[1:04:56] And in West Africa, it doesn't take very long for it to do its thing because it's hot as hell. But, you know, Harold, for now, for several years, been telling you about Reddit Amarant stocks. Yeah, yeah, which is how you make stinky tofu in China. You you let vegetable kind of waste vegetable materials. Amaranth leaves are delicious, but the stalks are so tough that they're inedible. You throw them in water and just water, no salt, so you're not doing

[1:05:25] a lactic acid fermentation, and other things take over and you end up with something that's really stinky.

[1:05:30] Uh, and then you can either serve that or you can put tofu in that same vat of stuff for a few days until it soaks up those flavors and that's how you get sticky

[1:05:42] tofu. As a microbiology, that been studied yet? Not to my knowledge, not in, you know, English accessible materials. Well, more work to do. Harold, thanks so much for coming on the air. We love having you. Anytime you're in New York, please come by and see us. Cooking issues. Oh, wait. By the way, thank you for the bacon, Matt, and the bacon Band-Aids, whoever you are. Cooking issues.

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[1:06:39] Thanks for listening.