[0:00] Today's program was brought to you by mood magazine, a new international quarterly publication about music and food. For more information, visit moodmusicfood.com. 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.

[0:28] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues this day, Marm. Your host of cooking is just coming to you live on Tuesday, every Tuesday at 12. Well, no, we weren't here last week because we were embarrassing ourselves at Star Chefs.

[0:40] Boom. Anyway, today we're here at Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with Jack and Joe in the engineering booth, and as usual, Stas Hammer Lopez here in the studio. How you guys doing? Good. I just told Nastasia I ran into Indie Jesus in the street. What did you say? say, hey, Indy, Jesus. I didn't call him that. I said, hey Dante. Oh, no. You didn't like have a glass of water and try to turn it into wine, anything awesome like that? Next time. next time. He's not here anymore, though. He left? He's gone. Let's get you on his craft. All right, all right. So listen, today, we have a very special, are they both going to be on or just one? Oh, sweet. Sweet. We have, uh, we have the, the, you know,

[1:22] I, what do you call it? The, the, the unique group ideas in food. Akikamazala and Alex Talbot, you know, the kind of like the, how do you call them, the OG

[1:35] new tech food folk on the, on the, on the line on the internet, and they're, they're today have released a new book called Maximum Flavor, Maximum. Recipes that will change the way you cook. Uh, and if you go and order that thing right now, Today's the 1st day, you can have a shiny, fresh copy on your doorstep tomorrow, or if you still live in a place where there are real bookstores, you could probably go buy

[2:00] it right now. Welcome, guys. What going on? What's going with you? Yeah, it's good to chat. Yeah, so why don't you guys, uh, you know, oh, by the way, you can call in your questions too, uh, the ideas in food crew or us if you have any questions, you know, for, for us schlumpy folks over here. Uh, 2718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. Before we start with some of the questions. I'm going to, actually, one of them references you, so I'll hit you with that later. But, um, why don't you tell us a little bit about the book? I mean, one thing I noticed when I looked at this book, as opposed to the 1st book, is this is a full color extravaganza of a book. Novel idea, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So why don't you talk about talk about it for a minute? Oh, okay. We decided that we needed to have photographs in this book because every time anyone

[2:47] opened the other book. They looked at us and went, where are the pictures? Yeah. People are safe. People are so visual, the weasels, the weasels. Well, what's really interesting, you know, from, uh, I guess from an outside perspective is that for, um, you know, for many years, your blog was known for, you know,

[3:05] having being very photo heavy, having a lot of photos. I guess it probably just was a surprise to people to see something come out that wasn't that way.

[3:11] Do you know what I'm saying? Certainly I mean, the 1st book, the 1st book is really a handbook for the kitchen. Um, and without pictures, people are, you know, we're looking for, you know, what's it supposed to look like? Am I on the right path? Uh, and I think that's probably the big, the biggest hiccup we came across with ideas and food,

[3:32] uh, the book. Uh, so this one we we wanted to uh, face that front on and and photograph the bejesus out of it. And there was supposed to be only 75 pictures in

[3:41] it and I think we have probably double that. Yeah, it really helps tell the story. And it's like, you know, it's all all big color splashy stuff. I leaf through it. It looks great. I didn't get a chance to read it because I saw you right before my ill-fated Star

[3:55] Chefs demonstration, which is where we, you know, where the cooking issues crew was last

[4:00] week, instead of doing our real job of being here on the radio, we were at Star Chefs, having things not go our way. Uh, but, uh, you know, uh, that aside, I got to flip through it. It looks great. I can't wait to get hold of a copy, but it's true. I looked at it this morning on Amazon. And are you guys pro-amazon or anti-amazon? Do not want to come out for or against on the, you know, in public. Yeah, well, no, we, we used to live in Colorado in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, and we could not have gotten any books there if it were not for Amazon.

[4:33] So while we are pro indie bookstores, we are also pro Amazon. sometimes you just can't get things any other way. All right, and then you want to give a pitch for, like, if they already own the 1st book, like, you know, why should they go get this? It's all new, all different, correct? All new, all different. totally at all. You know, the 1st book, as we said, was one that it is, is the housing wise. It is the, it is, you know, the, the, the, the reference material that you'll need and then recipes that support it. Whereas this is recipes that you really want to eat. There's a lot of information jammed into each one. And then, it's erupt things to, uh, to really then extrapolate from. So, you know, it's great jumping off and then it's also just a great eating point. And for people, you know, who aren't necessarily super tech or equipment savvy, although I guess, you know, a lot of people who listen here are,

[5:28] like there's still going to be a lot in for them, correct? There's fun. In fact. The whole point of this. As we talk over each other. The whole point of this book is we had a lot of fun with it and the science is still there, but it's almost hidden. So it's kind of scattered through the recipes and it's in the head notes and it's layered more into stories as opposed to the 1st book where the science was kind of front and center, and the recipes were behind that, where we were more

[5:52] about like, really, really delicious food and then explaining how we did it. Sweet. Well, secondly. I can't wait to get a copy of it. I'm sure it's going to do well. Why don't we answer some questions for the folks. We get writing questions beforehand. I have a little bit of an advantage over you guys that I got the questions this morning. So, you know, I had a chance to look at it, but, you know, with that said, we'll all go for it here, okay? So, uh, Aaron will writes in. He said, recently we've been making shrimp stock at our restaurant, scratch. And we've noticed that. Unfortunately, when we let the stock come to a full boil, a stable form of foam would form, and it would boil over vigorously. This obviously has never happened to a fish poultry or land mammal stock that

[6:32] I have ever made before. And this leads me to hypothesize that there is some sort of stabilizer in the shrimp meat or shells that would cause this foam to

[6:39] form. If there is, could there be a way to use this in an advantageous manner to suit the needs of somebody or some entity? Also, I never got to thank you for giving us a shout out on the show a while back. Can't wait to get some Mofag gear and represent Aaron Will. Well, I mean, I'll just put my ¢2 in really quickly. One thing I need to know beforehand on the foaming. I mean, as you guys, as anyone knows, if you cook whole crustaceans, especially things like lobsters, they foam like demons. And I... Yeah, right. Yeah, come. I mean, it's my presumption, right? So I would assume that you wouldn't get that much foaming for if you were buying headless shrimp. Do you know what I mean? But if you were buying whole body shrimp, I would assume that you could get some decent foaming out of it, because there's lots of, um, I'm reminded of a very old, uh, like, uh, dual language Chinese American cookbook that I

[7:28] have that one of the recipes uh, calls for, like, foaming egg whites by hand and then putting it in front of the cooked crab on the plate, and it's, and it's called for crab spittle effect,

[7:40] an English translation, crab spittle effect. And so, you know, it's, right? I mean, it's well known that there's all kinds of protonaceous crap that, you know, sea creatures produce, especially crustaceans. In fact, when you have, you know, animals that produce waste, nitrogenous products constantly in aquarium tanks, you have protein skimmers to remove them because otherwise, and the way that they work is by foaming the protein stuff that's there.

[8:04] So my guess is, is that there's some sort of protein crap there that comes out. The only other guess I have is that some of that, you know, that shrimp shells are made of a product called chitin, which is one of the most common biopolymers in the world.

[8:17] And it's, um, it's a nitrogen containing, um, kind

[8:21] of polysaccharide like saying, uh, that, you know, I use the broken down form of it called

[8:27] kitasan for, um, for clarification and other things, but that stuff

[8:31] foams. So maybe you're getting some of that too. You guys ever had any issue with this stock or anything to say on crustacean stocks? Uh, I mean, whole shrimp shells, stock, certainly foam, same with lobster, but we do everything now in the pressure

[8:47] cooker. So, for the most part, we're not getting any of that boil. Uh, and and we're doing it, you know, again, real fast to concentrate the flavor. And again, the fresh cooker keeps the foam, I would say, at bay. Right. I mean, you know, the thing also, as opposed to shrimp. Let's just, I mean, it's not on the, not on topic, really, but shrimp as opposed to lobsters. So I think, you know, one of the common problems with a, I mean, shrimp shell, there's like, look, an American, like a shrimp shell that we get from a farmed shrimp, like, even if you cook the hell out of it, like, there's only so much crap that's there, right? If you're just using the shell and not the head and all that stuff. In terms of, I mean, it's so paper thin usually, and there's not much. I don't really find a lot of problems, not foaming problems, taste problems, but I do find,

[9:31] I'm curious about pressure cooking since I haven't pressure cooked this one. If you were to pressure cook like a hard shell lobster, you know how when you overcook a lobster stock to make a bisque, it

[9:41] gets, the only thing, I don't really know what it is because I've never analyzed it, but what I consider to be kind of like a

[9:45] shell taste, almost like a calcium-y taste to it. You ever notice that? It's funny you mention that. We haven't gotten it that way because all we use is the heads. any of the other shell. So we just take the insides. Oh, yeah, there you go. Because when you when you make when you're doing like, you know, an oil infusion or if you're making a stock like from straight shells on lobster, like it's like good,

[10:08] good, up, you roast them, right? And then you cook them up to a and then when you over extract them, you're like, this crap's done. You know what I mean? It's like... Yeah, it tastes like shells. Well, I mean, if you're making a shell oil, it's great, but if you're making lobster oil, you probably just want to use the, you know, the

[10:24] head part. Yeah, yeah. So back to your question, Aaron. They're well known that there are proteins in there. Try the pressure cooker. Do you guys believe my story that your pressure cooker should invent or no? I still believe it. Very, very wholeheartedly. You don't want to vent. Why would you vent it? No, no, I mean, in other words, like, I believe that the pressure cookers that constantly vent to regulate their pressure, produce a lower quality stock than ones like the

[10:48] coon recon that don't, even though I just had terrible experience with a coon recon exploding in my kitchen. It was frigging nightmare. Really? You haven't explode? Well, here's what happens. There's a, you know how like, you know how I'm lazy? Yeah, you know me. I lazy. So, like, you know, the gas gets deteriorate over time, because they're silicon, they deteriorate. And so, you know, it's my personal pressure cooker. I brought into work because I needed to do something. And, you know, every day, I'm like, oh, I'll replace the gaskets, I'll replace it. you know, next time I'll replace it next time, next time. And there's a little, there's a little secondary pressure relief on the top of the pen next to the valve. And the silicone there wasn't stealing properly. So it was always spitting out a little steam. So Piper, who works with me, is like, hey, David, steaming. Don, you say the ruins the flavor of this stuff? all right. So I go over there to start fiddling with it, right? And then, and then I'm trying to set the damn thing. So I think maybe there's like some grit in it or something. So I'm trying to set it. I take a butter knife, the back end of a butter knife, and I go, pap,

[11:49] pap, pap on the top of the thing to seal it, and I blew it through the lid of the of the thing. Now this sucker was full, 3 quarters full of rendering, like, full chicken with the fat in it and

[11:59] everything, stock at 15 psi. Like, I'm talking, like, like, 5 liters of chicken, 6 liters of chicken stock at 15 psi, and I all of a

[12:10] sudden I punch a quarter inch hole through it, and it was like old faithful.

[12:14] It was like a freaking geyser. It flies up, hits the ceiling, chicken fat, like everywhere,

[12:20] and, you know, Piper runs up. He's gonna put a towel over him like Piper, man. That's like, you know, that's like whatever. urinating in the ocean to raise the tide. like you're we're done here. And like, so we just have to sit there for a minute watching the damn pressure cooker vent chicken fat and chicken stock all

[12:35] over the entire lab coated with a fine mist of chicken products.

[12:40] My dog loved it. The dog thought it was fantastic. I have since replaced the gaskets. So anyway, okay. Uh, next... So it wasn't the pressure because it failed. was more of a user error. Yeah, I'd have to go say, I'd have to go user error with that. Uh yeah. I mean, 1st of all, like, you know, just note to Bene out there, you know, regularly replace the rubber parts in your in your pressure cooker because they do lose their ability to seal over

[13:09] time. This is, you know, this is not the 1st time I've had issues like this. You know, the main gasket around the rim. I'm always late in replacing that one. And modern pressure cookers have a safety override where if you look at the lid of a modern pressure cooker, there

[13:24] are gaps cut into it. And the reason those are there is so that if you build up too much pressure, it will literally extrude the main ceiling gas get out of these

[13:34] holes and then vent out of the thing. But if you don't replace your gasket, they just extrude under normal 15 PSI pressures. You know, as Bell Ray is back, you know, at Star Chefs, when he was doing that stuff, I've vented twice in one day, coffee, pressure cooking, coffee, rye beans, rye berries, all over his chef

[13:53] whites twice because I didn't replace the freaking gasket. Yeah, a little too much information for the folks out there. All right, next question. Johnny writes in about fermentation and about beans. And I don't really have an answer for the bean, so I'm hoping you will. He goes, thanks for the egg advice, a few shows back. Cracking them on a flat surface. Jacques Papin style has reduced the amount of shell in my scrambled eggs. I now have some questions about lacto fermenting vegetables and fruit. lately I been getting some really kick-ass results. Well,

[14:23] kick butt will say kick butt results with simple countertop, countertop ferments. I did some experimenting and found that even crappy, low quality flavorless tomatoes, both canned and fresh, become delicious with some bubbling on the

[14:34] counter, fermenting bubbling. Also, pureed chilies with a bit of salt left of ferment, turn into dynamite hot sauce. That's true. And my underwhelming sauerkraut taste, delicious, fried up with some potatoes. Although there's no reason for sauerkraut to be underwhelming. sauerkraut's inherently delicious. anyway. Question, is there an inherently safe slash putrefaction preventing minimum salt

[14:53] prevent percentage for lacto fermenting fruit and vegetables, assuming a normal in quotes water content in the amount of fruit or veg?

[15:01] I've been eyeballing the salt and nothing, you know, instead of measuring, presumably. I been eyeballing the salt and nothing's turned out inedible, but I would like to be more consistent so I can get repeatable results.

[15:10] I've also tried fermenting fresh corn and it ends up really sour. This is a known fact, by the way, sour. Anyway, not so sure what ingredients or dishes. It'd be good with or attitude. Any ideas? Do you have any favorite lacto ferments? Well, sauerkraut, actually, literally is mine, but boring as that is. Can you use them like stocks? Can you use them like stock or does the acidity totally change? How do you think about using them as an ingredient? All right, so, um, I'm going to, I mean, it's long. complicated, but I'm going to let you weigh in. The corn, by the way, I, you know, right now, when anyone asks me a fermentation question, I literally just pick up my

[15:44] copy of the art of fermentation by Sandor Cats and just see what, because the research in that is so thorough that, you know, I just, there's no reason to reinvent the wheels sometimes. I just

[15:55] go, because I'm sure he's researched it. And in fact, he found, I don't know her personally, but April McGregor has a website called Farmer's Daughter, and she doesn't sell those on the website, but she sells fermented

[16:08] corn in her stand in North Carolina, and she's like, yeah, they get really sour.

[16:13] Presumably you're using sweet corn. Sweet corn has a lot of sugar. It will ferment very quickly and make very sour results. But as for salt, you know, and I'm going to let you guys weigh in here because people ask me this all the

[16:25] time and I always say the same thing. You can do ferments without salt. The problem is they're not they're not going to be consistent and the short answer is... Well, yeah, I mean, look, like, you know, McGee was telling me that there's these crazy amaranth ferments in China that smell

[16:42] like the worst smell in the world, where people, you know, eat it without dying. You know? My feeling is, is that, you know, if it gets sour, you're probably safe. And if it doesn't get sour, you're probably not going to want to eat it because some crazy stuff's going to be growing in there. Um, you know, you guys, any, any, any thoughts there? On this on the salt free sermon? Yeah, go ahead. So, so, I mean, I'll kick in on. I mean, you don't need salt and again, that's referencing 11 sand or cats as well. But the salt, the salt is certainly the, the flavoring agent. So we wanted there to help peak everything. Fermentation certainly, we found fermented foods just taste better. You're developing flavors and the ingredients are broken down to release more aromatics. So, you know, anything fermented is good for the most part. Anything rancid, that's a whole other story. Um, adult levels? It ranges. I mean, what is it? I think we've seen as low as one. but we usually have our salt brines. And at way-based brines or something like that, roughly around what, 5%, I think. Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty, that's pretty standard. Like, you know, uh, not, not, but, you know, all these things are crazy. It's like some people they they write in and they take into account their theoretical water base for their veg and some

[18:03] don't. The fact of the matter is, is I think only if you are going to do the same thing a lot, right? Like let's say you were going to make uh, 55 gallons of uh, sour pickles, right? Well, then it behooves you. I'm just going to do that at home. Right, right, exactly. But I'm saying, but if you're going to do it, then it behooves you to get the stuff right. You know what I mean? And get something to measure salinity and figure out exactly what's going on and measure the water where you

[18:27] can. But in, you know, in reality, at home, I think, you know, eyeballing it in general is okay.

[18:34] You know what I mean? I mean, like anyone that's listening to this show, unless you have a very, unless you have a specific dietary restriction, right, knows that I believe that salt is

[18:45] not, is not harmful to people that it's not harmful to, right? So you should probably put the salt level, where it tastes good to you. Like, that's my feeling. What do you guys think about this? I would agree with that. I think that it depends on how long you want to keep your pickles too. If you're going to eat them in, you know, relatively quickly, then you don't have to worry as much about the bacteria levels. And I also think that with pickle making, it's usually pretty obvious when things have gone wrong. And I think actually Sandor says that in his 1st book that, you know, if it smells bad, if it looks bad, don't eat it, start over again.

[19:18] But, you know, pickles are, it's, it's, it's clear when things have gone awry, things start growing and things get soft and

[19:26] mushy and as long as your texture's good and your flavor's good, you're, you're good to go. Mm, soft and lushy. All right. His his 2nd question is... that was our biggest problem for the longest. As long as you're underneath the brine. Well, that's why, like, you know, that's why the, like, the easiest way to do it if you don't,

[19:44] if, you know, is to just back the crap down and then put it inside of a 2nd

[19:47] a backbag in case it blows and tie the 2nd bag down. You know what I mean? It's like, boom, sucker's insto submerged. Uh, you know, that's, you know, it's like such an easy way to get, if you have a vac machine. It's such an easy way to get high quality. I've never tried it just in zipping without a VAC, but I'm sure it would work. But the zip bags will blow once it starts fermenting is the only problem. You know, a good vacuum, actually, interestingly, a not so good vacuum bag that has slight gas permit, you know,

[20:16] um, it can diffuse a slight amount of gas through it. They don't below. I've never really had one. I've had them turn into really tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight pillows, but I've never had one explode on me. And the good news about that too is you get that nice little kind of petillon from the CO2 that can't leave. You ever do that? Do you like doing it in backpags? We actually don't. You don't let... jars, weights, boom, done. You don't like the vet? I know, I don't like the bubbles. Oh, I love the bubbles. You know, I like anything carbonated. If you know me, I like... any damn thing. Carbonate any damn thing. especially kimchi. I love kimchi with some carbonation in it. You have to like kimchi. You hate that? I love that. I hate that. I chop it all up so the bubbles dissipate. Really? So you're like, you're like, you're like, you're like putting throwing a vacuum down on it to pull any CO2 out of it right before service. You're like, pull the CO2N. All you have to do is slice it up because, you know, once you slice it up, it evaporates

[21:16] naturally, but... So yeah, no, I'm not a fan. Wow. interesting point of difference. And this just goes to show, this is why it's good to make your own crap because then, you know, if you like

[21:26] it to bubbles, you can make it to bubbles. you don't, you don't. But if you do make them, you can always get rid of them. That's true. That true. So Johnny's 2nd question. Sometimes I cook dried beans, and despite an overnight soak and long, all capital, so it must be very long cook time, several hours, I cannot get them to finish cooking with a soft interior.

[21:44] Now here's the kicker. I don't add salt or acid. Just cooking them at a boil and then add a simmer in water. I got them from a popular green market vendor that seems like they have a high turnover, so it's not like a five-year-old bean. Could the beans be so old that they just won't cook all the way through or am I just doing it wrong? I don't have a pressure cooker and would that solve it? That's an interesting question. I don't know what would cause them to stay hard if you're not adding any acid to it. Yeah, that's weird. No, I mean, all we need is C week. Combo. Yeah. You put a piece of combo in your beans. It helps tenderize, yeah. Yeah? What's the ag? There's, no, I don't have it in front of me, but there's actually an enzyme in the kombu that softens the skin of the beans and helps them absorb water

[22:27] more, more easily. So you put it in during the soak. You can put it in during the soap soak and leave it in during the cooking time or if you have like grease soap cuisines or you can always just put it in during the cooking time. Like, you know, a 2 inch square for every cup of dried beans. Exactly in the book. Yeah, nice. Go buy the book, buy the book. But, you know, my only question, you know, um, the one thing I don't know where Johnny lives or what his water quality is like. I mean, most typically. that could have something to do with it. Right. Oh, yeah. If he lives in Plano, Texas, he's toast. Why? What's the pH of water in Plano? No, the calcium in the water down there. Oh, they have a lot of. Yeah, super hard water, if you have calcium, will strengthen the pectin, and you're done. You're done You're done. That's got to be it. It's got to be the water he's using. It's always the water. Yeah. So, you know, that's right. Yeah. Super hard water. We were doing a demonstration down there a number of years ago. And we were making a pectin bath and didn't account for the calcium in the water because we didn't know about it. The stuff instantly gelled. And it wasn't even sequestrable. You couldn't even hit it with shimmp? No, I, we did afterwards, but at 1st we didn't even, didn't even, didn't cross our mind

[23:35] to sequester the, and then... Yeah. And then we... Johnny, I'm going to go ahead here and say that we've discovered your problem. You have hard water and you're going to want to use a water softener or get like a gallon jug of spring

[23:51] water or something like that. You think we got it? Or or a sodium hexometophosphate. Yes, that would be another solution is to sequester your bean water, although I've

[24:02] never, that's interesting. It might be the 1st time any human being has ever said I'm going to sequester my bean water. I have not done that yet, but I might have to try that now. What, to go next time you're in Plano, you're going to go get some water and add some shrimp to it to cook beans. All right. All right, sweet. Should we take a commercial break and then come back? We're going to come back right back with ideas and food, cooking issues.

[24:29] Like what you hear so far? Support the network and become a member. Membership helps us bring you the best food radio in the world and gives you access to 1000s of dollars in discounts at the sustainably minded businesses that support us. To become a member, visit

[24:46] heritageradionetwork.org today.

[25:22] What's mood? Mood is a quarterly magazine about music and food. For its creators, not many things can beat a good record and a delicious meal. Maybe a well written story or a gorgeous photo. Well, that's all in mood. The magazine looks at music and food in a cohesive and unique

[25:43] way, with a keen eye to design and high quality writing. Its contributors are located around the globe, and the stories span accordingly. Check it out today at moodmusicfood.com. That's moodmusicfood.com. And welcome back. So what is moot? Just kidding. I'm just messing with you, Jack. Anyway, uh, so, uh, we're back with ideas and food. You still have time to call any questions. 2718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. So the folks at Meme Street Kitchen, uh, who we met when we uh, or whom we met, we went up to Harvard, uh, wrote in a question. I think they must have sent it before, but I just got it. They said, hello from the crew at Main Street Kitchen. We are so amped up from watching Dave, burn up a bunch of rice at the Harvard lecture. I, when I last time I puffed in a lecture. I shouldn't do this lecture wise anymore. We, uh, for those, you know, we, we had an issue and we cleared out a science building at Harvard,

[26:40] uh, but it did make a big explosion, which was, which was nice. Anyway, we are so amped up from watching Dave burn up a bunch of rice at the Harvard lecture that we had to write and say how much we love you

[26:49] guys. It was very pleasant. The bar, the podcast, the blog, everything. was so fun to see you in action in person, especially Nastasia sitting in the corner like a boss. And honestly, we couldn't think of a better end of the night than watching Dave set off the fire alarm

[27:00] in a cloud of black brown smoke and subsequently getting Harold McGee to sign our books while sitting on the lawn like a friendly and wise

[27:06] woodland creature. Seriously, we think of burnt rice and it's great. I've never heard of McGee described as a woodland creature before. Woodling creature. I don't have to talk to him about that. So they have a question from 2 of their cooks, Emily and Caden, and the question is, it started when we

[27:25] try to figure out if the, and this is one where they reference you guys specifically. So I'm going to let you guys just take this sucker and run. You ready? Because they're referencing something that one of your techniques. Okay. Emily Emily and Caden's question. It all started when we tried to figure out if the air in a fridge is wet or dry, and if a thing placed in that fridge will dry out or absorb moisture. We had a peanut brittle on the menu at the time and we were trying to decide whether we should keep it in the fridge to avoid it melting, it gets hot on a food truck in

[27:51] August, or leave it out to avoid it absorbing moisture and becoming horribly disgusting and gummy.

[27:55] We noted that if you're drying out the skin of something that you want to crisp, you can put it in the fridge, like Dave Chang does, in

[28:01] the Momo fried chicken recipe, or Heston does, in his home cooked version of triple cooked chips, it's

[28:06] French fries for real people. I'm kidding, British people, you know, whatever, we call them French fries. Other things that you put in the fridge, so they absorb moisture. Other things you put in the fridge, so they absorb moisture, like on the ideas in food blog, Aki and

[28:19] Alex rehydrate, dehydrated beets by putting them in the fridge. What gives? So now we're thinking about the relative humidity versus absolute humidity. I don't know what those things mean, but my staff does. And whether we should be thinking of the fridge as an open system or a closed system. I don't even know what our question is anymore, but maybe you can just... Maybe you can just wax poetic about humidity and refrigerators and Lil like for as long as you deem appropriate, all the best, and thanks again for coming to Boston, Irene and Max, and Caden and Emily and

[28:47] Alex, Kalen and Olivia and Peter. Okay. So why don't you guys talk about that for a minute? Alright. Okay. So the, the, the, the, the... So we, we, we, we, we pressure cooked the beets till they're, they're cooked the bejesus. then we dehydrate them until they concentrate and develop a nice dark skin. Then we take them while they're still warm. We actually, there's a missing point there. We put them into zip top bags. Well, the warm ceiling in the zip top bags and then throw them in the fridge. So they steam in the bag in the in the environment. So, there's where you're moisture. So you're just reequilibrating, really. You're just re-equilibating. Exactly. Yeah. So one of the issues with all, with all food cookery that involves surface

[29:33] phenomenon. So that's frying, uh, panning, grilling, uh, par dehydrating,

[29:42] anything is that uh, you develop uh, a situation where the inside, typically, the inside of the food has a much higher moisture content than the outside of the food,

[29:53] right? And so sometimes, and you know, I don't really, you know, the inside out of your technique, you know,

[29:59] you tell me about, tell me about, but the, sometimes you can form a skin, that skin

[30:03] is, can be then permanent because the cells have collapsed, but you can get moisture back so that they can equilibrate so that the texture changes back to something that you like just by letting the moisture come in from the

[30:13] outside. Correct or no? Bingo. Yeah. The, uh, typically, and this can be a very good thing for this kind of a technique. Very bad thing with fried chicken. Horrible with fried chicken. But, you know, a lot of what cooking is,

[30:28] especially, if you want things to last for a while after they're cooked, is moisture control and moisture migration from the center of a product to the outside of a

[30:38] product, and much time is thought about that, especially on the pro level, this is why people add so much to their tempura. This is why tempura is actually not a good product. This is why it actually is bad. Like, tempura. I've had like some of the supposedly best tempura chefs in the world make tempura and I've eaten

[30:55] it and it was, it wasn't bad. I mean, it wasn't bad, and that's that's very, that's hyperbolic, but it's not as awesome as it could be because it's, it's, um, the, the,

[31:05] the, the moisture balance is shafted. I mean, if you eat it directly as it comes out, you know, yeah, it's good, but I don't know. I don't think I ever prefer it and it can't last the way that it's made. What do you guys think on tempura? Well, but they like to soak it in sauce. So it's sort of the combination of the crunchy and also the soggy. Yeah. It's not really only about the crisp. It wasn't a question about peanut brittle? Oh, no, so what they're saying is, is that they have a situation where, where, uh, look, where they put stuff in the fridge and they're having, uh, they want to know whether the, the, the environment in a fridge is adding

[31:39] is, is adding moisture to or moving moisture from things. So you put it in a Ziploc bag. So it's moisture neutral, but it adds moisture to the skin by re-equilibrating. In general, fridges are a, um, a de- what? Yeah. Yeah, freezers dehydrate, right? And fridges, you get a lot of recondensation of crap on them. You know, I, because the thing is, like, I think if you, it depends on the fan speed, like, in, in,

[32:04] in some of the pro fridges I've used that have a fan speed that's too high on the circulation, you can get a real

[32:10] pellicle on the outside. I think a lot, I think a lot depends on a lot. You know what I mean? Well, it depends on the ingredient too, I think, because if you're, you know, if you put chicken thighs on a rack, they're going to dry out a little bit. The surface is going to dry out, no matter the fridge, but if you throw peanut brittle in the fridge, the sugar's going to absorb all the moisture in the air. Right. Well, you know, that's even like in the sealed, this is why, like, you're never supposed to store coffee and and chocolate and what this in the fridge, several reasons, but to me, the reason isn't necessarily that the sucker's going to get moist while it's in the fridge, it's that as soon as you pull it out, you're going to get condensation from the air and you're

[32:46] toasted unless you live in Arizona. You know what I mean? So, yes. What? No, that makes that makes all the sense in the world. No, no, but again, you know, you know, peanut brittle. Yeah. I would, I would use desiccant in a, in, in a closed container at, you know, room temperature, right? in the in the truck. No, 100%. Yeah, desk against the way to go or vac sealed. You know what I mean? Vac sealed in a hard container or, you know, vac sealed in a in mason jars if you don't have access to a hard container that can hold a vacuum. Hey, here's another one for you on refrigerators and moisture content. If some, some, uh, of the hardcore, in fact, I think all the hardcore Japanese sushi chefs, I only

[33:26] talked to one of them, you know, when he was years ago when he came to the SCI, uh, those guys all have commercial refrigerators and then they've never plugged them in, not one time. They just throw giant block of ice into the bottom of the fridge and then keep their fish in

[33:43] there because they want to maintain the temperature, but they don't want the air circulation to mess with the water content at the surface.

[33:49] Presumably, I guess they don't want it to, I would say, in a case of fish, with very high moisture product, you know, they want to drown. And by the way, you know, now that we're talking about it, you're talking about peanut brittle, which has a moisture content below probably

[34:02] 6%, right? Like once it's cooked up, when you say it's like below 6 and a fish, which has a content probably above 80 or around 80. You know what I mean? 75, 80. So, you know, if the fridge is anywhere in between those things, it's gonna shaft both of them. That is true, but peanut butter, brittle crusted fish is tasty. Yeah? I've never tried it. For real? No, we did it years ago. You made like a peanut brittle and put it on hamachi and then baked it in place. Sponge peanut brittle. And does it does it form like a little snappy, like, you know, like crocante thing on the outside? Yeah, not quite as croconti as you'd want, but you'd get that the nice texture, the peanut brittle, the

[34:43] 2nd you know, the caramelized the 2nd time. You get the nice toasty nuts and then we smoke peanut brittle. So anything smoke tastes better. Smoked peanuts are in fact delicious. And while we're on the subject of peanuts, I just want to give a shout out to the Virginia peanut. Virginia Peanut, and you know, I don't get anything from the Virginia Peanut people. But if you've never, Virginia Peanut, by the way, it's a variety. It's a type of peanut. And there's people from, you know, North Carolina and South Carolina will tell you that the Virginia peanuts that are grown there are just as good, if not better, than the ones grown in Virginia. However, it is called a Virginia peanut. That all I'm going to say about that. But Virginia Peanuts, you guys play with Virginia Peanuts at all? No, we have not that I know of. You need to go buy yourself a high quality batch of Virginia peanuts because once you have a Virginia peanut, you're like, I can't believe I've been eating this other Drek, no offense planters, I can't believe I've been eating this other Drek for so long, Virginia peanut is just a superior

[35:40] product, taste, texture. You know how like a really good Frankfurter has that snap when you bite into it and you're like, damn, that's what a good Frankfurter tastes like. You know what I'm saying? As soon as you bite into one of these giant Virginia peanuts, a good one that's properly roasted and everything,

[35:54] it's like pop. It snaps. It's so awesome. Virginia peanuts. Smoke those up. Yeah, get some Virginia peanuts. I got an easy one here for you. Uh, Mike, uh, Shezheski. By the way, Mike, thank you for phonetically writing out your name. At 1st I thought it was like some strange name that I can, he's, oh, he's helping me with the phonetics because he writes,

[36:11] cha-chev ski. Mike Chevsky writes in about ham hocks. Hello, everyone. Question about cooking ham hocks. I usually braise in a typical mirepoise slash water stuff. Uh, my ham hock so that the meat gets tender enough that I can pick it off the bone and shred it. However, I find that much of the smoky, salty pork flavor is too often leached into the breezing liquid. Do you have a recommended cooking method, which will render the meat tender, but not rob it of its characteristic, smoke and flavor? Thanks, Mike Stichesski. Yes, put that sucker in a bag and cook it. Um, You know, you might want to add a little bit of liquid because it takes an unbelievably long time to render out collagen if there's not a little bit of excess

[36:54] moisture in with the product. But it does not take much. Pressure steam it, actually. So it'll be the fastest way. Oh yeah, that's true. So they put it, uh, the Hawks can do, you know, a bowl inside your brush

[37:09] cooker, and then, and do it, then do it that way, you'll have them in 45 minutes, you'll have perfectly broken down, tear the Jesus out of them, and you go from

[37:17] there. But they'd be salty. I mean, they will be salty. Yeah, but if you're going to shred it and use it as an ingredient, it doesn't matter. You know what I'm saying? Do you remember when they used to sell, hunt? I'm dating myself here, but they used to sell those plastic dogs full of seasonings and you would like stick your pork chops and some liquid in them and tie the bag shut and bake them

[37:36] in there. Is that like, is that like shake and bake? Is like some sort of shake and bake variant? The same time, a shake and bake, but it wasn't because it was sort of like this brace and the bag would puff up in the oven and it would just... That sounds fun. Well, you know, when I when I was a kid, you know how like every 20 years or so there's a renaissance of paper bag

[37:55] cooking? Yeah, and I have paperback cookbooks that date back to like the teens. Um, you know, Alexis Sawyer, the famous uh, English uh, chef, well, French English chef who wrote the gastronomic regenerator in the 1800s and was kind of like, you know, extremely

[38:11] well-known MFK Fisher loved his stuff. His grandson, I think it's in the teens, wrote a book on paper bag cooking that I own. So that comes back. So the only bag stuff I used to do is we used to do I used to do paper bag chicken like once a week, like that was my jam. When I was a kid in the 70s. Like, that was like, you know, once a week, like, I would handle dinner and I would bust out the paper bag chicken, you know, complete with, you know, all the 70s crap you

[38:34] had. I would rub it with the butter like you're supposed to, and put the, you know, crappy, you know, curry powder from

[38:40] the from the Grand Union on top of it, and shove that sucker in a paper bag and go, you know? That was my stuff back then. and brownies. No one messes with my brownies man. Those are the things I cooked when I was a kid. When are you going to make brownies? Well, here's the problem. Now that I'm older and I think more about it, it's like, you know, what kind of brownie do you want? Do you want the dense brownie? Are you dense or a fluff? Right. Dense, chewy. I like chewy. Okay, are you a cocoa powder or a chocolate brownie? I'm a mix. I used to hate cocoa powder. I was a full chocolate brownie because that was my great grandma, my grandma's recipe was a chocolate brownie. And then I like cocoa. Yeah, right. I learned later about the cocoa brownie. I don't like 100% cocoa brownie because the texture is always weird to me on 100% cocoa brownie. I guess I could just add more fat, whatever. I don't know. So now I do a mix. anyway. So you like the robo inclusion, actually, into the brownie. You like what? A rolo inclusion. Rollo, the rollo, the brownies before you bake them. I have not heard the word or thought about rollos in decades. Rollos. Do they still make rollers? They sure do. We do damage rollers in this house. All right, listen, listen. Stas is a candy aficionado. What are your thoughts on rollos? Yeah? Pro? You're pro rolo? Oh my god, ideas in food have found something that Nastasia enjoys, the Rolo. I might have to go out. Okay, do you like the do you like frozen candy? Remember the Charleston chew that you used to freeze those suckers? shatter it. Have you powdered Charleston Chew with nitrogen? No. Wouldn't that be awesome? I would be good. Well, now I'm thinking about rollos. Would roll those be good frozen? Yeah, they are good. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, well, you know, that's why that's why you can go to the dentist and get new ones. That's what Stas does all the time. She like put put for dentist through kids through college every day. The dentist can have a new kid every day and put it through college the way it does, gives the person money. Anyway. So, we have another question. By the way, thanks for that pressure cooker tip. don't know why the hell I didn't think of that. We were just talking about pressure cookers and everything. I didn't think of pressure cooker. This is why it's useful to have guests on the program. You know what I'm saying? I can write nothing. What? Anyway. So we have another question in. Nick, who's writing in from Seoul Korea, has a couple of questions, a couple of statements, and then a question about Halumi. I actually like Halumi, but, you know, in my neighborhood. Well, we'll talk about a second. Okay, thanks for addressing my tofu questions a couple of weeks ago. The tofu soup, which you suddenly developed a hankering for, is

[41:08] Sundubu G Guy. I cannot pronounce any words in any language, except for German, which

[41:14] actually only Austrian German. Did I tell this story on the air? I went to Austria a little while ago. And I told I said the story on the air race? Anyway, yeah, so I can do Austrian accents because I listen to too many Arnold Schwarzenegger movies growing up. Anyway, uh, Dubu is a Korean iteration for what is known in the West as tofu, and uh,

[41:32] J guys, umami rich soup, often made with feisty elements and served in boiling clay pots.

[41:37] By the way, I love myself. The clay pots aren't my favorite. I love the Tolso, the stone bowls. I have 9 of them. I have 9 of them at my house. And they, like, if it wasn't for liability issues, every Applebee's or TGI Fridays in the US would be serving everything in these hot stone bowls because hot stone bowl, plus a little bit of oil, some rice, anything you have in your

[41:59] fridge and an egg on top is delicious. Delicious. Um, I'm surprised that those things aren't. So is there a brand of hot stone balls that you like? Um, well, there, no, I've never had a, never seen a brand on them. I just, you know, I go... Yeah, it's going to... Yeah, you go in there and you buy them. There's there's there's 3 fundamental sizes and I have like some of each, like the big one

[42:22] and, you know, I've only ever had one fail on me and it didn't 100% fail, but it's developed cracks.

[42:27] I can still use it if I have to. But they develop an amazing kind of patina over time. Um, I, you know, my standard procedure, they're made of a rock, they may or may not contain this business, uh, that they call, I, I think like, serpentine or something like this. And, you know, you put it on your burner and literally I put it right on my burner and I just shoot it with an IR until it hits

[42:50] 600, 615 Fahrenheit. Then I kill all the burners and just ladle a little oil into them, smack the rice in, and done. I mean, literally, like, if someone's, if like a bunch of people are coming over and, you know, I just need something to be good now. I do the quick cook on my rice cooker, 20 minutes out, while that's cooking, I blast out, like, you know, whatever I have in my fridge. I'll cut it up, make some sort of quick sauce, bang done. Like, everyone should own a set of the hot stone bowls, uh, in my opinion. Anyway, okay, so back to the question. Oh, but that technique with the burning rice doesn't work as well in the clay pots because the clay pots can't hold nearly as much energy as those stone bowls can.

[43:29] Okay. You don't get the crust. No, no, not with rice. I mean, look, they're great. I like I have a couple of the clay pots too, but I thought I could get them because they're like a 3rd of the price or less of the stone.

[43:40] And I thought that like I could get away doing, you know, the rice trick in the clay pot and it just wasn't the same.

[43:46] So then I was like, well, I'll take the green pots, but then my guests can have the crunchy rice. I was like, you know, creep on it. I will just go buy more stone bowls. So that's what I've done. Okay. So then he adds, I've just landed Andrea and Wynn's book. Do you have that book on tofu? Is that good? Yes, that's a good book. Okay. And the book of tofu, the short leaf one, the famous short leaf one is en route. Once I get my basic tofu skill, tofu making skills down, I hope to experiment with mixing in some non-traditional flavors into the soy milk as well as working and some textural surprises. I also look forward to making tofu skins, which I've done. That is great. I, you know, I really, the amazing thing about making, um, you know, tofu skins, Yuba,

[44:21] is the difference in the 1st couple skins and tasting them as they go down. I've never had to do it kind of on mask. I've never done it for an event. I just do it for myself at home, but like tasting the difference in the sheets as they come off. isn't that kind of like a fun, fun, awesome thing to do. You guys like that, right? That's awesome, no? I mean, there's no... We've messed with milkskins. don't sit around and make tofu skin. No? Stuff's good. Well, we haven't yet. Yeah, you should. You should do it. We will be shortly, apparently. You should do it. Like the 1st couple that come off are like a much darker color and they have a completely different flavor because of the 1st

[44:59] stuff. I guess it settles up to the top and then they change as they as they go down and, you know, just like, you know, warm with some, you know, some sort of salty crap put over the top of them. They delicious. Okay, anyway. I also forward to making tofu skins, cut the way handmade soba, slice. They make wonderful gluten-free noodles. I thought about that. And I've never seen one chunk of tofu that's not stored in water here in Korea. I think every commercial, everywhere, every country people store it commercially in water. I just happen to like to not do that. I happen to make it right before I'm going to eat it, and then I just eat it without ever bleaching all of the stuff out with water. My guess here is folks like their tofu mild and subtle. I have another question for you today. That was just a statement. I have another question for you today. Can you explain the science behind grilling cheeses such as halloumi or finish and it's going to kill me? Lai Pai Justo? Uh, which I don't, I'm not familiar with that. I'm familiar with Halumi. And oh, you might not be familiar with this because if you don't live in an area that has lots of Latin markets. queso queso para Frier is a version of queso Blanco, which is firmer even in queso Blanco, and you can deep fry that sucker without a crust. It's even more kind of resilient than Halumi is. But anyway, what keeps them from melting with heated or would it be possible to achieve this non-melting property with other cheeses? Thanks, Nick. Um, So the main, the main thing about Halumi is that uh, they cook the ever-loving crap out of, uh, out of Halumi. And so a lot of the water is out of it when it's done, and then they salt the hell out of it. So I think that's the main function of the stabilization of Halumi, which I happen, you know, I like I like it a lot. But 1st they they do, um, after they make uh, the curve, the initial curve. So Halumi, I believe, is rented. That what I could get off of the internet. It's rented. And then they cut the curd into small pieces, like, you know, very fairly small pieces. And then they cook it, um, to like, uh, 90,

[46:54] like in the 90s Celsius, and then uh, dump way on top. They heat the weight to pull the proteins out so they can make some ricotta-like thing. And then they heat it in this and press the crap out of it, like press the ever-loving crap out of it, heat it, and then put the blocks in salted

[47:10] whey. So like all of those things are like hyperstabilizing the cheese and giving it that kind of rubbery texture. Whereas queso blanco, um, is acid coagulated, but then also acid coagulated very hot and then salted while it's hot, which means that it's going to be giving up a lot of its moisture.

[47:26] And I think that that's basically all there is to it. I don't think there's any way to make an actual cheese unmeltable unless you've cooked the curds before you pressed it out. You guys ever made a cheese, okay, you could make a, you could do it with gels. Mozzarella noodles. Uh, right. You're using a, but you're, you're, what you did it with regular mozzarella? Why don't you describe the process? Yeah, so we puree mozzarella with a little bit of ricotta. And we had Activa. originally we started with YG, which gives it a nice cheesy note to it. again, that's the addition of the yeast extract to the YG. You can actually use TI. Uh, and then we, we spread it thin on acetate sheets, let it sit overnight, and then you can cut the noodles, and then you can boil them, uh, and you got these beautiful, again, you cut, you cut them like tag of the tails. We make mozzarella taglia tail. So it's just as stable as, uh, as like the gelatin, uh, the gelatin noodles are, the ones that are

[48:20] uh, set with gelatin and, uh, TI? I would think so. Yeah. Again, you just, you've got the, they're, they're, they're, they're awesome. We got a nice little alente bite to them, but it tastes just like mozzarella. Uh, and then we did it with, we did it with feta too. and it made feta cubes. We made, you know, and and we're able to, you know, saute, you know, big chunks of feta, deep fry,

[48:40] you know, deep fry them, stuff like that. So what they're talking about is an enzyme, transglutaminates, and translutaminates has the property that it covalently binds proteins together.

[48:50] In this case, primarily. I'm assuming you're using whole milk ricotta, not the actual other stuff. So there's a lot of caseine present. And the caseine, in fact, caseine, the protein, caseine, from milk, is the protein that's added to

[49:04] most the activa that is most used in the biz is Activa RM, which is just a combination of Activa, the or of

[49:14] transplutamination, the enzyme, and of caseine, milk protein. So it's just caseine on casing action. It should, you said it does work with RM, right? It works only not as much. And we use YG. Right. It was the time for Roger applications, and then we, in a pinch, we did TI. TI works as well because again, we're pureing it in. So you don't need a protein bridge, like you'd have in RM or even in the YG. I'm super surprised that the RM doesn't work because it's just more casing. I wonder why No, but it doesn't work as well because there's half as much transcotaminating the guy. YG has a high level. T. Okay, so here's the deal. TI is, and I don't know if they still have a kosher app on it, because remember, you can't have a kosher RN because it's milk. And so they assume that it's milk protein. So they're assuming you're binding meat with it and you can't bind meat with milk. That would be a kosher no-no. But they made TI, which is just transcotaminates and maltodextrin. TI has a higher enzymatic activity per gram than RM does. But I did not know that YG also has a higher enzymatic activity. Yeah, it's it's a 100 parts per 1000000 as opposed to 50.

[50:20] for the for the RM. And you don't want to double up on the RM because you start getting off blah blah or something or just then you... No, again, I don't think it even crossed our mind, really, is what it was. I mean, we still, we, so we stumbled across RM and we started, it started years

[50:36] ago, if we wanted to make flowerless ricotta, duty, or gnocchi. Uh, and and we, we were, we're working with that and we, you know, called the folks at Achimoto and chatting with them and say, we're doing this. We're going to try it with RM and they're like, well, we've got this new product out there called YG. was designed for dairy applications, blah, blah, blah. I'm not very patient. So, they were going to send us to YG, but I already had some RM. So we started playing with it, and the RM sets up nicely, but the YG sets up a little bit more firmly, uh, and it has a, has

[51:07] a, uh, a more, uh, a fuller flavor, and that full flavor is actually coming from the yeast

[51:12] extract. That's also part of the YG formulation that was designed for the dairy applications. Cool. By the way, back to I don't recommend using RM, which is a caseine protein helper on gelatin. I find it doesn't set as well when you're doing the gelatin noodle trick with the

[51:28] RM, presumably because you really just want to link gelatin to gelatin and not gelatin to caseine. I don't know if you guys have also had that experience. We have actually not gone deep into the gelatin noodle thing because I don't know why. I think we just, what we saw, it was done? It was 2 other hours. Right. So not Harold McGee. We have a question in for hard water, but William McGee at Los Neco writes and is listening and says, I live in Plano. Texas. Are there any, are there any times cooking or using hard water as beneficial? Sure, making making alkaline noodles? It can be helpful, right? Yeah, is there anything else? Cooking, cooking, cooking broccoli so it doesn't get mushy? I mean, like... What else? Yeah, I don't know much. I got nothing. Yeah. I mean, but unless you're just encapsulating things and you're just dropping things right into it. Right. I mean, most hard water is probably fairly basic, right? So it may be good for, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I know it's alkaline and hard water that was the original well water used to make the noodles that were then substituted later for

[52:40] console. But I don't really know the pH of the water in Plano. I don't know. So it might not even be helpful for the noodles, because the noodles isn't a calcium thing. The noodles is really a pH thing. So probably just stopping broccoli from getting mushy or something like that, right? Anyway. Um, Oh, Aaron Will wrote in, saying whole shrimp was used. We have induction only, so not a huge problem. Just curious. I'll push for a pressure cooker for many reasons, especially after, you know, hearing the other tips about ham hocks and whatnot. Uh, I got uh, nostalgia giving the snacks, max, max, smack up. Here's, I got some questions I know that these guys are going to want, answered. Chris McDaniel writes in. Any ideas for making caviar in quotes, i.e. that, I guess the fake caviar with oakre seeds. You guys ever done anything with okre seeds? I guess maybe making them using the mucilage format? Interesting. Yeah I have not. We've never done it. I mean, I would imagine that you would soak it. The way you, I mean, I wonder if you can take dried okra seeds and soak them, the way you soak like basil seeds or something like that. Oh, and get them to puff up, get them to hydrate and puff up like that? Get them to hydrate and give them a different flavor and kind of, you know, or like mustard seeds. You make a, but I think you'd probably have to start with dried seats to start, you know, because how are you going

[53:55] to? That's interesting. We'll have play with that. Yeah, yeah, we'll give it a. The okra seeds, they, they, uh, I mean, we've played around. I mean, if you look at them years ago, we kind of kind of oak her up and looked at it and looks just like caviar. So you can kind of cook a stew of fresh ochre seeds. They get a little slimy and stuff like that. Again, it's just the, what kind of flavor do you want? Any way to kill the slime? I exclusively eat okra, either fried whole or pickled. I never use it as a thickener. I'm not a big slime master. That's big on the sand. I could have saw when I saw you were in that t-shirt. The slimemaster? Well, a different kind of slime. Xanthan. I like, you know, yeah, hand me some Xanthan. snot up any any sauce you got, I'll turn it to snot 2 seconds with Xanthen. my speciality. Oh my goodness. Jonathan Panterman writes in, can you suggest a good stirred cocktail using blueberry for a large group, perhaps mostly advanced prep? Any tips? welcome. Stir cocktail? Almost always, you're going to want to clarify them. So hopefully you have an ability to clarify blueberry juice,

[54:53] blueberries are usually fairly low on bricks and acids. So you're going to need to do probably a pre-chill on it unless you dope it with so much sugar that you can use it as a simple syrup, but then you're not

[55:03] going to have as much blueberry flavor in the finished product. We used to do one with Mezcal, lemon, and I think it was lemon, Mezcal, lemon, and blueberry. and a couple other things called malinche that was good. But you guys ever done a stir with blueberry? No, we've done No, we've had muddled, muddled with blueberry, which is, you know, like a blueberry mash, so we've already been marinated up. Yeah. Another problem you're going to have with blueberries is, I hope you're not trying to get that dark blue color because sucker's going to turn purple as soon as you go

[55:34] acid, and you're going to go acid because the blueberries already contain their own acid. But, you know, I would try. I mean, that's what we used to do a lighter mezcal mixed with tequila, blueberry, a little bit of sugar to augment because the bricks isn't so high on that.

[55:49] And that's, it stirs very well, but it requires you to have a centrifuge. Otherwise, you could crush muddle strain. Um, But, you know, in a third cocktail, The big thing is you don't want it to be a soupy mess. You want it to be nice and clear. Okay. Also, uh, Christian Spinella wrote in, have you guys been following, uh, you know, they're going to rip rip me off the air in a minute, but you know, you guys are familiar with

[56:15] the uh, with the controversy over uh, Carragin and uh, acid, right? You guys been, I get bothered about this quite a bit. You know, so for those of you listening out there, there was some research, uh, and it's, it's been around a long time that you don't want to, uh, use

[56:31] Carraginans in high acid systems that are heated, uh, for a long time.

[56:36] And the reason being that the kerogenans can be degraded and that degraded kerogenan may be may cause may have some carcinogenic potential over time and may be an irritant stomach.

[56:47] It called degraded care gain. There a more technical term, but I don't forget it. And then there's this group called cornucopia something that's been putting out all of these scientific papers. I have a link to it, which you can, you know, look on the tweets and tweet it to me, uh, that, you know, there's a new kind of pushout against

[57:05] Carragin and that you shouldn't use Carragin. And let me just say this. The work that was being put out there is kind of the worst kind of scientific bunk. I haven't had the time to figure out whether or not their actual points are right

[57:19] or wrong, but the method of presentation is leads me to believe that the stuff is wrong. They, for instance, use as scientific evidence that someone said, I stopped eating care,

[57:31] Regina, and then I stopped having the defauding problems. You know, things like that. You know, so kind of like post hoc, ergopropter hoc arguments for the efficacy of removing

[57:40] carraginum from your diet. And they focus almost exclusively on the research of a certain Dr. Tobacman who has had an axe to grind on

[57:51] Carraginen for a long, long, long, long time. And I think, you know, one of the things is that science is really, really, like real science, not like, you know, like, you know, you know, what we, you know,

[58:01] what we, the people who are talking here, we use the results of science and, you know, we're voracious. I'm talking for you now. Sorry, voracious like consumers of this sort of thing. But actual science is a lot different. And, you know, it's extremely hard work and it's a lot of boring, boring, boring, boring, keeping track of notes and

[58:21] really putting in the time to get your results right. And the key thing to being a really good scientist is to not start with

[58:29] the feeling that your conclusions, what your hypothesis is correct. You really have to test your hypothesis. And all of the work that Dr. Tobachman has done that I've seen has led me to believe that she is completely colored by her, her, her, her, her mind is completely colored by her preconceived

[58:48] notions, that Kerogenan is this, you know, evil thing. And let us not forget that most of the carragina we eat, we eat an extremely small quantities. In fact, that is the reason Carragin is used in dairy applications, just because it can be used in extremely small quantities.

[59:03] Have you guys been following this sort of thing or heard any like recent anti-karagan and rumblings? And by the way, it could be the worst thing in the world. I just, I haven't had a chance to back it up. I just can say that the writing about it is poorly done and is done in a junk science way. Why don't you, why don't you guys have the last word on Carraginen? And before you do it, I'm going to thank you for coming. I really enjoyed having you. I hope you have you again. I know the book is going to do extremely well. Go out and buy it, everyone. Now. Your last words on Kerogenan. Last words on Kerogen, and before I give that tomorrow, we will actually be in New York City at the 92nd Street Y at 7 o'clock with a cooking demo. So, and book signing. So if people want to join us, they can come see us in person. Where do they get tickets? Tickets are on the YMTA's website, 92nd Street, why? All right, so go to the go to 92nd Street, wide. Shell out, shell out. What does it cost for them to go see it? 25 bucks. I think it's $25. 25 times. it costs to go to a movie in popcorn now, please. Go to the 92nd Street freaking Y, you know, and go see these guys tomorrow. Okay, now, Kyragina. Carraginan. We just started seeing the rumblings of it. The funny thing is, is kerogen and an acid really, they don't get along at all. So, I guess that's my, my, my biggest question there is, is, is, why, why are they

[1:00:16] mixing it? They aren't very often together. Right. But yeah, but well, the point the point is the only time it could ever really be an issue, if you, you know, if the, if the degraded

[1:00:25] carraginan argument is right, is if you tried to make a high asset system with a boatload of

[1:00:29] carragin, and the only way to do that would be to overload it with carragin, and so the carragin doesn't get obliterated by the acid, which you would never. You're eating way too much carragin in anyway. Right, which you would never do. Which you would never do. Right. You know, and there are other argument is that, you know, that the kerragin can get degraded in your stomach to become degraded

[1:00:49] kerraginen is bunk because there's, you know, a very limited transit time and and,

[1:00:55] and you need a certain amount of heat in order for the degradation to take place. You're not getting acid hydrolysis of carrogene and at body temperature, but in the transit time that it's in your

[1:01:05] stomach. But, you know, that's, that, that don't, that's just me reading the scientific literature. Don't take it to mean anything. You know what I mean? So when you dive deep into this one, please let us know what the answer is. All right, cool. Cool. All right, thanks so much. been a good time. cooking issues. been a pleasure. Thank you. All righty. talk to you soon. All right, cool, bye-bye. Bye.

[1:01:35] Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

[1:01:43] store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.