[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Brooklyn Slate Company, a manufacturer of slate cheeseboards, coasters, and other fine items. For more information, visit brooklynslate.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:28] Hello and welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from a birth pizzeria every Tuesday on Heritage Radio Network from Tuesday from Tuesday. Well, it's Tuesday. From roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Uh, we were joined in the studio by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, but she had to take an urgent business telephone call.

[0:46] She is out. I don't know where she is right now, but we do have in the studio with today Piper, Piper, Piper, Christiansen, right? Yep. Yeah. Uh, and we are joined in the studio, but maybe maybe Stas left because Joe is in the uh, engineering booth today, not Jack. There's this, you know, new beef that style started last week with between, you know,

[1:06] her stuff. I heard about this beef. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I didn't realize, but you know, it's okay. We'll have like a east-west coast rap battle thing go on or something like that. Something, yeah, something like that. But yeah, you know, so anyways, don't have Jack. We do have a newcomer in the engineering booth. Evan, how you doing, Evan? Great, how are you? doing all right? Like, so this is the 1st time cooking issue show, right? All right, calling your questions two, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128 with any of your cooking related questions. We'll be here to answer your questions for the next 45 minutes or so. Okay. This in from Tony Harriet, from the mixing bar in Brazil,

[1:49] you know, dealt with him over the years. I've never been to his bar because I've never been to Brazil. I'd like to go to Brazil. You been? We should do that. Yeah, but I mean, like they have like the great, like some of the greatest fruit. in the world in Brazil. I have, you know, I have whole textbooks on the crazy different fruits of Brazil. In fact, I believe it's called, it's not called Crazy Fruits of Brazil, but it's called Fruits of Brazil, and it's got a kind of a weird, I really love it because it's got a weird kind of like light blue cover and all the pictures of the fruit are on this like weird grid system that's like light blue and like they're all crazy colors and some things they look like

[2:23] fruits. I mean, like, honestly, they're like, it's, you know, like, if you were going to come up with, like, an alien movie. You would look for the fruits in this fruits of Brazil book. And then the thing I really like about the book. Love it about it. I mean, is that it's very hard to get, actually. You can get it at the Fruit and Spice Park and their gift shop in South Dade. And there's a couple of Hawaiian fruit tree suppliers that sell it. But the, and it wasn't on the Amazon when I checked. strange. Anyways, what's awesome is, is that it has a section in the back called exotic fruits, and you know what's in there, Piper? Stripper fruits? No, uh, the apple. Oh. Because in Brazil, that crap's exotic. They're like an apple? Wow. Apple. I think what they mean by exotic is not from Brazil. Right. Although now I have a scripper fruit, when you were a kid, well, you were younger, a lot younger, confused by the fact that Striper, which sounds like

[3:17] stripper, is a Christian band? I don't know the band. No, no, no. too young. Joe, you with me on this? You know the history of rock anyway? Not the history of Christian rock, I don't think. I'm pretty sure Stripe is a Christian heavy metal band. Now, someone will look it up for me. Okay, this end from Tony. Hello? Heritage Radio Network and Cooking Issues team. Hope all is well. I had a couple of questions for Dave about non-alcoholic cocktails for the next show. Piper, you can chime in here too. Dave, what is your opinion about the importance of non-alcoholic drinks on bar menus. In your view, what makes a great alcohol free drink and what just doesn't work? Can you give a few examples of interesting drinks? It works for you in the past at events or at booker index, either high or low tech. And what are a few solutions that you try to use to mimic slash substitute for the taste or flavor,

[4:02] a kick of booze and a non-alcoholic drink? Here's an example from Darcy O'Neill. So Darcy O'Neill is the author of the book, Fix the Pumps, and it's kind of the, you know, I would say, you know, one of the leaders in

[4:13] a kind of soda, soda, jerk, soda, pump, uh, what's it called, um, resurgence in the past couple of years, and he's a chemist by trade.

[4:22] He has an excellent blog called The Art of the Drink, which you should look up. And, uh, Fix the Pumps is kind of like the classic small work. I mean, small, in other words, not long. Uh, on, not small in terms of small importance, because I think it was extremely influential. Uh, on, um, kind of reviving old soda fountain stuff. And so consequently, you know, he spends a lot of time because, you know, the soda fountain movement went hand in

[4:46] hand kind of with the temperance movement, people wanting to go out and do things and kind of have fun, you know, in an era where they weren't legally allowed to go pound boots. And so, you know, the golden age of the soda fountain is kind of the golden age of the

[5:00] non-alcoholic, uh, mock tail kind of a situation, right? So anyway, so I highly recommend that you go buy, fix the pumps if you haven't already purchased it. Um, And he has an interesting post at this point too. All you need to look up is cognac oil. And what it is, is, is the steam distilled, like, wine leaves, I guess, from the fermentation that they do. And so, and Darcy says that it's kind of like a really

[5:22] good thing to add to non-alcoholic cocktails to give some, or not mocktails or whatever. It's really kind of a bad name, mocktail. I always hated saying, I don't like saying mocktail. I don't like, I don't like the term. I don't like that you're being mocked for not having alcohol. It also implies that it's kind of an or sad drink. Yeah, yeah. It implies its own BS nature. It's bad. It's like it's like not a good term. someone needs to come out. I mean, the 1st person I'm sure who said mocktail was like, mocktail, I'm so smart, like a Piper, who's the king of puns, by the way, I don't know if he's going to bust any of

[5:52] these puns out during the show, but, you know, Piper, kind of king of puns, uh, you know, that's, you know, that's that's beneath you, right? Yeah, that's a little pedestrian. Yeah, mocktail. But I'm guarantee the 1st person who thought of it thought they were a freaking genius, and now it is de facto, the term for a non-alcoholic cocktail, because non-alcoholic cocktail sounds dumb too. Yeah. All right, but still cocktails. Yeah, yeah, nap. Well, are they? I mean, shrimp cocktails. Oh, good point. The shrimp cocktail. haven't thought of a shrimp cocktail. By the way, no offense to the shrimp cocktail. The shrimp cocktail holds a certain kind of, you know, feeling, but the crappy, crappy, you know, pre-packed shrimp cocktail, like

[6:37] horseradish ketchup mix, like a crappy shrimp plastered into a parfait glass is weak. Like, I would much prefer to have a very, you know, nicely made cocktail sauce, and then dip a well cooked chilled shrimp into

[6:51] it rather than have it all kind of pre-glommed into a into a crappy glass. Am I wrong? No, I agree. Yeah. All right. So, again, shrimp cocktail maybe doesn't deserve the title either. And just letting the shrimp defrost on the plate. The cooked trim? Oh you hate that? What about when you bite into it and you have that little bit of graininess because it wasn't fully thawed? What about the one where they thought too much water and it inflates with fresh water and it starts dripping everywhere? Leaves everywhere? Is that your favorite? I like it with eggnog, I guess. Piper, referencing the fact that Nastasia and I did not like his eggnog. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, Nastasia, back, back in the studio, but still, but dealing with whatever the aftershocks were of the telephone calls she had to deal with. Uh, here, there's a mic over on that side. How you doing, Seth? Right. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Everything okay? Yes, relatively? Yes. Yeah, nice, sweet. I liking everything. Okay. So here is Darcy's recipe for aromatic cognac syrup. 5 ounces of de-alcoholized. It's a weird word, right? The alcoholized, the alcoholized white wine. I like to pronounce the extra H. I don't know why. When it's wine, white wine. I like to add the, I don't know why. Because I'm stupid. I think that's why. 4 tablespoons of wine jelly. 4 tablespoons, sugar, 7 drops, cognac oil, which you can get on the Amazon, by the way. I don't know the quality or not. 3 drops of chamomile essential oil, 3 drops of green peppercorn essential

[8:22] oil and 2 teaspoons glycerine for texture. So Darcy and his poster, he talks about cognac ale, and I recommend looking into it. is, you know, it's all about trying to mimic the mouth feel, uh, the aromas that make you think that there's alcohol in there, and then, uh, some of the biting bracing nature. I haven't gone that far into it. I mean, Nastasia will remember, we did a, we used to, we were doing a school project with Nils

[8:42] Norin years ago. We got to start that up again. I'm not going to do that in my cocktail book, but Stas, Stas thinks that when I mean, start something up that I mean like today. This is a people out there. This is the classic stuff that, this is the reason why I yell at Nastasia on air sometimes, and it makes me look like a bad guy, because she'll sit here and make

[9:01] a face like I'm like a taskmaster ogre saying that we should maybe at some point revisit starting an incredibly fun project.

[9:09] So yeah, so that makes me the jerk. Anyway, uh, so the, yeah, big jerk. Now, yeah, fun. Big jerk. Anyway, so school project. And we had some, the idea of the school project is, is that, you know, we take pictures of people doing a Scandinavian

[9:24] ritual, the skull, where they do a cheers, uh, with uh, Akavite, or any schnapps, any, really. They do the shot, and you look in someone's eyes, you take the drink, and then you look back. And so we did these triptych pictures and it was fun. It was a fun project. But we had some people we wanted to scold who didn't drink alcohol. And so then one of our problems was, well, how do we mimic that? And our mimicked ones were kind of bad. We wanted him to taste like Akavit. So it was caraway infusions. Uh, and then to make that, like, kind of look, ah, doing a shot of Akavite. We added menthol to it. Like menthol crystals. Remember a couple years ago when everyone was putting menthol crystals in everyone? Everything? We were some of those people's menthol everywhere. Man, the people who took that shot. They made that kind of menthol face. You know, that... Menthol phase. I don't know. I didn't like it. But so when we're designing, in fact, we don't have, Piper and I have done some non-alcoholic drinks that we want to put on

[10:21] the menu. There's a couple of things that you need for a non-alcoholic drink. It can't be as sweet as soda. If it's as sweet as a soda. People tend to feel that they're getting a soda. Sodas are generally in the range of about 10% sugar by weight, around 10 bricks, somewhere between 9.5 and 12, right? 12 like a toothache, but if there's a lot of bitterness and flavors going on, it can be that high. So what you need to sometimes do is tone back the sweetness, because most cocktails, like they are, in fact, less sweet than

[10:53] that if they're carbonated. Now a non-carbonated cocktail can be that sweet, but it's counteracted by the fact that there's alcohol in it, which is

[10:59] going to cut from the sensation of the sweetness. Um, So the issue is, is you want to do things on the dry side. That's why tonic water is so fantastic because the quinine and tonic water cuts the sweetness perception, tonic water is typically a little less sweet than

[11:13] it's on the less sweet side of mixers anyway, rocking around 9.5% sugar by weight. 9.5 bricks for all you techno freaks out there. So I think adding bitterness back. The other thing is if you can make something incredibly fresh, even if it would kind of be conceived

[11:31] as a soda, if it doesn't feel like a soda because it's entirely new and different from anything anyone's had

[11:37] before and you can dial back the sweetness a little bit, I'll give you an example. Piper and I clarify some watermelon juice a while back and we made a very kind of light and then we added lime to

[11:49] it. And with the peel in it, the peel adds kind of the essential oils of a fresh peel, which takes it less out of the soda

[11:54] realm and into kind of the cocktail room and did a carbonated watermelon soda that would have been good as

[11:59] a as a non-alcoholic drink. I make a strawberry soda with freshly clarified strawberry juice that

[12:06] has huge punchy flavors, but it's not overly sweet. No one would confuse that for a, you know, commercially made soda. And so they would appreciate that the care and time had been made in, you know, put into it for, um, for it to be kind of registered as

[12:19] some, it's like a, uh, worthy of the same feelings as an alcoholic drink. The other thing is, if you can tolerate small amounts of alcohol, like, if you're doing it just because you don't want to drink and drive, then, you know, you can add all kinds of bitters, uh, which have alcohol in it, uh, to, like, we make a hop spitters, a

[12:38] hops tincture, actually, that you can add that adds, like, the real feeling that you're having kind of a beery thing to it without having a beer. If you are, if you, if you don't want anything at all alcoholic that makes it a little more difficult, then you can only do things like bittering agents and spices and not actual bitters and tinctures that are made with ethanol,

[12:55] but I mean, it's only if you're being very strict because the actual amount of alcohol you're consumed is less than you would consume from eating, for instance, anything that it

[13:01] fermented. Um, What do you think? Anything else, Piper, that I'm missing here? Well, I don't really drink soda, but I like sandbitter. So would there be a way to, like, make the bitterness syrup? Yeah, well, that's the thing. I mean, so like, you know, like, uh, so it's the bitter base of Campari, uh, with, uh,

[13:20] it's the bittering agent. You know, what you do is, is if you have the sweetness there and you add bitter to

[13:24] it, and all of a sudden it becomes more adult, and, you know, it's bitter lemon's a good one. kind of like a, you know, it's kind of like tonic, but with more oils dispersed in it, so it's cloudy, but it's got bitterness and it's more grown up. It feels slightly less sweet. It would be more grown up. Uh, so anything like that, like a sand bitters or, you know, make, would be uh, kind of a good, I

[13:46] think a good choice, yeah. Also, if you just want a light more lightly alcoholic drink then, go carbonate yourself some comparian soda because that is delicious. All right. Next question. Oh, by the way, if you're looking for cooling things other than menthol, we haven't done a lot of experiments, but you're going to

[14:03] want with, if you actually want to simulate alcohol, you're going to need to stimulate the trigeminal senses kind of, and I am not a fan of Szechuan buttons or things like that to do it, but there are

[14:12] like sugar alcohols that can be somewhat cooling on the palette that you might want to use. And things like cubebs have a cooling effect. There's also, like, you know, certain herbs, like tarragon, can have kind of trigaminal sense, kind of, but you want to mess with that stuff back there to give people the sense that there's something's going, going on.

[14:29] Yeah. Okay. Um, Eddie Shepard writes in. He has a new vegetarian book that he on the iTunes. And do you have the title of it to us? I have the title of it. I don't have the title of it. Oh, here it is. It is a new digital cookbook on the iTunes called Vibrant Vegetarian. So I'll check that out. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. See what's going on. Vibrant, a vegetarian. I'm a fan of alliteration. Piper, do you like Literation? Yeah, love it. Yeah. Everyone likes alliteration. you know that in the old days, uh, you know, before, um, you know, English was polluted by the Norman Conquest in 1066, uh, you know, English poetry, old English poetry, was a strictly alliterative and

[15:11] non-riming, uh, you know, thing based on kind of a very complex structure of meter and alliteration, like old school

[15:19] Beowulf is, it's, it's completely unintelligible, but it makes you pine for the days when alliteration was kind of the way to go.

[15:26] And we still have that sense of alliteration in our language. That's why rap in English sounds so awesome. You know, especially American English with all kind of our flat, our flat pronunciation of everything. It's why rap is so amazing here in America. And when you ship it, I mean, no offense to MC Solar, but I mean, you know, French, no offense to French rap. But, you know, you're not, you know, anyone with me here? I agree. Yeah, all right. What about you, Joe? You with me on this? Can't say I really listen to much French rap, but yeah. Maybe you can make me a mixtape or something. Uh, yeah, look, look, like, you know, MC Solar, Galactica, it's

[16:06] all good, but whatever. not as cool. It's not that it's not as cool. It's like alliteration. It's like it's like Beowulf sounds so awesome. What, we got, Dana, you got to die. You know, it's like... Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like, anyway. Okay. I think that's the 1st line available. I can't remember, it's been it's been 25 years. Okay. I don't know what the hell else. How did I get on that? Oh, vibe or vegetarian. Oh, here we go. The question I wanted to ask is about dry ice. I use dry ice for a number of culinary applications for fast freezing, carrying aroma, et cetera. I also don't currently have access to liquid nitrogen. Pity, pity. Pity. But in the UK, it's not all that easy to get hold of dry ice. It isn't widely available, so generally you have to order it in reasonably large amounts, at least 10 kilograms at a time that's £22 for

[16:54] you, US folks out there, which is inconvenient and quite expensive.

[16:58] Get this, Piper, 80 bucks for 10 kilograms. 80 bucks. 80 pounds or 80 bucks? He says bucks. I'm sure I'm sure if he's in the UK, he has a little key set for a pound, so he could do it. We must have done the conversion for us Yeah, nice. Thanks. Nice. Especially if you are cooking for small numbers of people at a time. I wondered if you had any experience with producing your own dry ice for culinary uses. I've seen online that some equipment is available for making dry ice. These basically seem to be simple things which attach to CO2 tanks. Do you think these might be a good route for making small amounts of dry ice around a kilogram at a time in a more affordable and convenient way? Also, do you think something like these bits of equipment could be made at home rather than bought? I know Dave is both very handy with this kind of DIY stuff and also self-proclaimed cheapskate. So I'm hoping he'll have some tips on this. All the best, Eddie Shepard. Okay, so what you're looking for here, yes, I have. Yes, I have done this. You're looking for something that works on something called the

[17:55] Jewel Thompson Effect. And the Jewel Thompson effect, fundamentally, is that most gases will most real gases, when they expand, you know,

[18:05] rapidly and don't give off, don't have the time to give off heat to the environment, will chill.

[18:11] And in fact, um, so much so that you can convert uh, CO2 at room temperature to uh, dry ice. Because remember, dry ice doesn't want to exist as a liquid in atmospheric temperatures,

[18:25] uh, atmospheric pressures, rather. It doesn't want to exist as a liquid. Okay. So, uh, here's how here's how it works. Now, there are plenty of people on the internet who say that you can make dry ice by taking a CO2 fire extinguisher and putting a bag over it and then squeezing the trigger for a while and then chilling the stuff

[18:41] off and you probably can make some dry ice this way. However, this is extremely inefficient process, right? So that what the items are, what you need, 1st of all, is a siphon tank. So in the US are sold as £50 CO2 cylinders with a siphon. And what that means is, there's a tube extending from the top of the tank all the way down to the

[19:03] bottom so that the pressure on the top from the gas is forcing the liquid through the tube and you're actually spraying, until it

[19:10] depressurizes, you're spraying liquor up liquor. Liquid, CO2 out of the out of the tank. So that's the 1st thing you need is a siphon tank. siphon tanks are also good. If you're going to fill a lot of your own CO2 tanks, you know, it's good to have a siphon tank because it's easier to fill out of a siphon tank, trust me. The other thing you're going to want to do, well, then the commercial ones, you screw a brass valve on it that can handle the high

[19:34] pressures, right? And then that brass valve is designed to more efficiently expand the CO2 and convert the maximum possible amount of it into dry ice.

[19:45] There's then a sack attached to that, which allows the extra gas to shoot out, and then collects the dry ice as a snow in that sack.

[19:53] Now there's various, you know, and that's the cheapest one. That's like 100 bucks, that one. And then there's various kind of levels above that that, and you can make it yourself from the valve once you own the valve, and you possibly can make the valve yourself, but I don't know. I don't want to. I haven't done it, so I don't want to get into it. But then they, they kind of route it through a wooden box or a plastic box, and then the, the dry ice impacts into the box and compresses itself into a brick, and then you can make a brick that way. And I'm sure that once you have the Jewel Thompson valve scenario thing that you could modify it from a sack collector because the snow is kind of a pain in the butt. It goes away quickly to a brick maker. Now, here's the downside. This is an inherently inefficient procedure. So, uh, 1st of all, you know, if you look frigimat from Bellart in the U.S. makes uh, these makers and they caution you that it's, you're really only converting the liquid. Once you're out of liquid, you're not really converting that much more into dry

[20:46] ice and the amount of liquid in your tank is not the same as the weight.

[20:51] So at atmospheric, a normal cylinder at, you know, at regular room temperature, only like two-thirds of that or a little more, 70% of that is probably liquid and the rest is a form of compressed gas on top.

[21:04] So already out of a £50 cylinder, your yield is down to you know, 70% of that. Now, taken to that, that on your usage base, usage basis, the best you're ever going to get is about 45, 46% of the weight of the CO2 that you spray out of it as dry ice.

[21:22] So that's, of that 70, less than 50% of it's going to turn into dry ice,

[21:27] right? The other thing is sucker's loud. Let me put this, let me say this again. Sucker is not quiet. You know what I mean? Because you're opening a tank and spraying it out as fast as you can. It's loud. I mean, you've done that before, Piper. It loud. Yeah, it's loud. irritating. You don't want to do it at a bar. No. Or in your living room at night. No, it feels dangerous. Yeah, it's no, it's not the fun. Anyway, I mean, it is fun, but it's not fun for other people who don't think that kind of thing is fun. And certain ones are much less efficient than others. So the thing is, you got to figure out how much is it going to cost? Usually on a £50 cylinder, you don't buy, you rent it. And so you have a rental fee on the cylinder, and then let's say it's a £50 cylinder. Let's say that 70, let's say you get a 3rd of 70 is like what's 70 divided by 3 Piper. It's like 20 like 25%. Let's say you get 25%. So a quarter of 50, you got to get like 12, 12,

[22:22] 12.5 pounds of dry ice out of a £50 cylinder. So then the question is how much are you paying for the cylinder? If you're paying, the good news about the cylinder is, is that you could keep it there for 8 years, not 8 years because you need to rehydrate test. But you could keep it there forever and then make the dry ice when you need it and there's no sublimation of the dry ice when, you know, you make it when you need it.

[22:42] So there's no loss that way, but you have to figure out like what your overall cost would be to buy more than you need, have it sublimate, use it, and then have it go away versus, you know, you know you're going to get £12 of

[22:54] CO2 out of this tank. And I mean, dry ice out of this tank, and then is it cost effective? And I just don't know. I haven't done the math in a while, but I remember when I broke my dry ice maker. I'm buy another one if that's any indication. But, you know, of course, I had liquid nitrogen, so there's not as much need. Here's another thing. If you have a walk-in free fridge, uh, you should, before you make the dry ice, the colder your cylinder

[23:20] is the higher the yield, you're going to get out of it because the more uh, of the product will be liquid. Yeah. You have a color. Oh, color, you're on the air. Hey, Dave. Dan, Seattle. 2 questions. Well, actually, one's a comment. You were talking about fish sauce last weekend? Yep. Have you ever had the red boat fish sauce that became available from Vietnam in like the last 18 months or so?

[23:42] Yeah, like it a lot. Okay, because you didn't mention it on the show, and I mean, I think it's much better than anything else out there deserved one. Yeah, no, no, here's the problem. And thank you for calling and imagine. The reason is, is because the taste test that I had done was before that stuff was available. And then so when I thought taste test, I just went back into my mind of the old taste test and it wasn't in that lineup because it wasn't available yet, but yeah, that stuff's excellent. I was just curious about that. And then, um, my actual question, I made the full modernist, uh, chicken stock a week or 3

[24:14] ago. And it came out fantastic, but it took me a 100 years to actually fry all the ground chicken for the amount of stock I was making.

[24:22] Because I actually deep fried it, which is, my interpretation, what the recipe says to do. Yeah, that's a, I forget who originally, I mean, I remember Wiley told me about that, and that was a protocol based on some, it's like a 10 year, 12 year old protocol from someone out of Europe grinding and deep frying, but I forget who originally came up with

[24:40] the, I forget who originally came up with the idea, but yeah, okay, go ahead. Okay, so came out fantastic, but on a home stove, and I've got a pretty good home stove, the time to actually deep fry, several pounds of ground chicken. I mean, it went on forever. If, if I put the ground chick, if I spread it flat on a sheet pan in the oven, can I get somewhat close to the same effect, and how much oil and time, and uh, your 1st guess at time

[25:06] and tamp? Yeah, well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't spread it flat so much. I think like the whole, the benefit of the deep fry on the grind is that you're getting maximum surface area of stuff that's

[25:16] browned. And so I would kind of leave it as fluffy as you can. Uh, and then I would put them on uh, on like as many pans as you can fit in your oven and just pan them in. Uh, and I would do like whatever, you know, you don't want, the trick is you don't want to scorch it. So I would probably do somewhere in the range of 375, 400 Fahrenheit. Sorry, Europe, I tear in my oven in Fahrenheit. Uh, but like, uh, somewhere in that range and let the let the stuff roast off like you would a normal bone. I don't think it's going to require that much higher. Although you probably could go higher because it's so small that, I mean, the grind, but I would still stick in that range just because I don't think it's going to be necessarily beneficial to crank it to 500 or

[25:57] 550 and there's no reason to go lower. So I would be somewhere in that 375 to 425 range. If you have a convection, that'll help blow some of the moisture off and get it browning faster. Um, but I would definitely leave it kind of fluffed up because the whole concept of that recipe is

[26:13] to uh, is to get browning on the maximum possible surface area of, uh, of product. I will give that a shot on my next go. Thank you very much. And do me a favor, tweet me in at cooking issues and tell me how it worked. I will, I will. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye. Hey, hey, you guys want to go to our 1st commercial break? We're going to come back from the 1st commercial break. Call the questions too. 718-4972128 Cooking issues.

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[27:34] Brooklyn Slate Company is a collaborative effort from Brooklyn Graphic Designer Sean Tice and Parsons Graduate Student Christy

[27:57] Hideka. After visiting Christie's family slate quarry in upstate New York in the spring of 2009, the 2 grabbed a few pieces for use as all-purpose boards back home in

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[28:11] The response was so overwhelmingly positive that the 2 struck out to produce a line of slate products. They now make regular trips to the family quarry in upstate New York to handpick their favorite pieces of black and red slate. Some of this latest source from the quarry graveyard, a collection of odd shaped pieces that were ultimately destined to be ground for use as

[28:32] road cover or baseball diamonds. They then transport the pieces to their studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where they do additional cutting and clean the stone to be food slate. Every single piece of packaging that comes with their products from the envelope to the

[28:45] burlap bag can be repurposed for other uses. The end result is a product completely unique in cut, shape, color, and overall presentation. For more information, and to order. brooklynslate.com. Now through December, enjoy 10% off your purchase at BrooklynSlate.com with discount code heritage. And we're back. I like the Brooklyn Slate People. We actually accidentally shafted them. They donated a bunch of stuff to the museum a couple of years ago, and then we had to tell them that, you know, we didn't have our 501 C3 status in order. So we love them and thank them and are sorry about that, right? I think we told them they're invited to any event that they want to. Yeah. They're good people. They make they make they make good, good. I like slate. Slate is a good product. Yeah. I mean, of course, Piper thinks so. from Vermont. Vermont. It's the New Hampshire next door. I don't know whether you guys know this. People who people who like, you know, aren't from the northeast of the of the United States might not know that you'd think that Vermont, New Hampshire, which are basically identical

[29:48] structures like flipped and then stuck next to each other. Like they look identical to each other, just kind of flipped end for end and glued together, that these guys, they don't like each other so much. It's kind of like, it's kind of like they don't like each other. We're from different parts of Pangea. It's not the same place at all. I mean, like physically, they look the same, just flipped, right? I mean, Vermont looks like an upside down New Hampshire. Yeah. Or vice versa. Right. Yeah, and they're both literally right next to each other. Right, like a doppelganger. Yeah, but New Hampshire has no laws. Seabelt laws. They have no seatbelt. don't have to have insurance in Hampshire. you know that? I didn't know I don't live free or die, right? Yeah, live free or die. Turns out that whether or not you live free, you eventually will die. But anyway, interesting. Michael Nakkin writes in, he was enjoying the farm to toilet discussion we had last week.

[30:37] He goes, Dave, love the tissue cleansing through bowel management rant. You exceeded my fondest expectations. Well, well, thank you. Nastasia and Piper. This is regarding their overindulgence in Jerusalem artichokes last week. which, you know, if Casey, you know, of course, you know, if you didn't hear last week, Jerusalem artichokes contain a very, very large quantity of a

[31:00] non-digestible polysacchari called inulin. And when you eat a large quantity of inulin, you have painful, bloating, tooting phenomenon going on for a good long time. And I was laughing because had they just read

[31:16] the curious cook, they would have known this beforehand and both Piper and Nastasia for lunch decided to just inulin themselves like straight up the wazoo.

[31:24] anyway. So, uh, Michael writes in, uh, Natasha and Piper, may I suggest you read undaunted courage? If I'm remembering it right, Lewis and Clark had to over Winton, over Winton, over Winter, with

[31:36] Mandan Indians for 2 years in a row in the frigid Minnesota Winters. They were stuck inside the teepees for months at a time, and guess what the main source of food was? Yep, Jerusalem artichokes. Can you imagine the aroma? Compared to that, the 2 of you are probably like a field of daisies. So you can tell Dave to quit his whining. Michael Nakkin. Nice. Nice. a good guy. Yeah, yeah, that's a good guy. Good guy. Strong. Another thing, before we go any further. Uh, we are going to announce that Booker and Dax is going to have the Kickstarter launch for the Sears

[32:10] all. Sears all on Black Friday. That's right. For those of you that aren't from the United States, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when everybody is supposed to go out and consume like wild people here in the U.S. for the Christmas season. And we have decided to put our Kickstarter on air for this year is all on Black Friday. You guys want to talk about this a little bit? Yeah, well, we're launching it actually in midnight on Thanksgiving. Well, it's not Thanksgiving anymore if it's midnight. Piper's the guy that came in. Maybe this is a Vermont thing. He's like, so midnight. Is that is that AM or PM? Like, it's the next frigging day. It's the next frigging day. mom listens to the show. I'm sure your mom knows that it's the next day. I'm just breaking on you Anyway, whenever I say anything, typer's like my mom listens to the show. That's what he always says, what? It's still going to feel like Thanksgiving at midnight on... Oh, I agree. I agree. You know, as far as the human body is concerned, it's not the next day till you wake up. That's why if you pull an all nighter, like your calendar gets messed. Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, from a feeling standpoint, you're right. Regardless, we're launching it on midnight on Black Friday. Yeah. So the, so anyway, and we're going to have it up. We haven't decided yet whether we're going to run it to Jan one or whether we're going to kill it on the 26th of December. Have we decided? 24th. midnight on Christmas. Why would you do that? I know. You mentioned it. No, I said we should have it run through. Okay. Anyway, it'll be on Kickstarter. So here's what here's the story with it. So, you know, for those of you that, you know, I don't know, I don't know, uh, here's the problem. When you're at home, often you don't have access to very, very high intensity heat

[33:53] source to do things like finished low temperature meats, there aren't anything like that. So normally a lot, what a lot of people do, which I think is a horrible idea is they use a torch. And when you use a torch, you create all sorts of off-flavors in the food that we call it, we call it torch taste. Torch taste. And it smells like products of combustion. And indeed, you know, Ariel, UC Davis, did some GC mass spec for us and show

[34:17] that in fact, you are creating kind of secondary compounds from the super high intensity high heat flame from a

[34:23] torch that cause these kind of off flavors. So, we developed and have a patent pending on this little device that turns

[34:30] the heat from a torch into a 3 inch, uh, like infrared, uh, radiant, uh, not infrared broiler kind of, uh, that you can hold in your hand. And so it makes kind of very quick work of that. It's also, you know, reheat pizzas, whatever, do whatever you want. You know, Piper likes to grill cheese with it. I like to finish steaks. It does great work on scallops. It's the only way I would ever cook foie gras ever again. I would never cook foie gras any other way ever. It's actually a higher heat intensity than a salamander. More similar to a deck broiler. But anyway, so we're going to launch this guy. And I also like it because, like, let's say in a restaurant, it's not really for, like, very, like, heavy duty use in a restaurant because it's small and you have to hold it while you're working. We, you know, years, we have a patent on the technology. So, like, we could build a huge one that would be like the world's most insane, you know, grill if we wanted to, but that's down the line. Anyway. But in a restaurant, like if something comes out and it's not totally finished, right, you could finish it, like, you know, spot finish things. Or if you're around Gon

[35:30] Marger, and you have like one particular thing you want to do, you don't want to like be near a hotline, you can finish something right there. Or if you're doing catering events or, you know, you're out at a picnic and you want to, you know, just have something you can carry around and just put like a nice flame on

[35:42] kind of smaller things. It's kind of a good tool for that, right? Yeah, you agree? Um, you know, and I like it better for things. I don't like, like, it's 1st of all, it's more powerful than a heat, like, it literally plugs on a torch.

[35:54] So it's converting a torch to this other thing, and you can take it off and use your torch. It's normal, or you can put this on and use it like a seersol. Um, I like it better than it's more powerful than something like a heat gun. Torch you don't want to use because it makes bad taste. Heat gun would be okay, but heat gun is much more kind of focused and smaller, and it's not as powerful. And the big thing I don't like about the he gun is got a cord on it. I hate having to have cords on stuff when I'm using it in a kitchen. It's really irritating. Anyway, so we're going to kickstart that thing. And have we agreed on the, on the kind of what we think it's, we should not talk about price or anything like that, right? Not yet, not until... Still hammering it. Because the deal is, is that we need pretty good insurance for this. So we have the insurance and we're going to have to go, um, get it manufactured right now. Piper and I go down into the basement of Booker and Dax lab and weld all these suckers by hand. And we don't intend to do that. No, we want to have the best product made that we can, so we're still working on figuring that out,

[36:51] but... Yeah, so anyway, so we hope you all come by it. And this you won't have to tweet me anymore and ask me when we're finally going to Kickstarter because we're going to do it. You can see it on Al Jazeera America. I don't even, was it on that? Was it actually on? Yeah. Did it look okay? you see that? I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Oh, hey, we started a Twitter for the Booker and Dax lab. Oh, yeah, what is it? At Booker and Dax Lab. We'll be posting some photos of the Sears all and the stuff we do there. antics. Follow, follow, follow, follow the, follow the Epokerindax Lab. Follow us. Yeah. What were you saying? going on? Hey, so, Dave, I have a question in that's basically, what does the trans fat ban mean for the mass marketers of things like sweets and candy and

[37:36] everything that has lots of transfats in them? It'll probably just make it a little more expensive. You can remove trans fats. Like there's, you know, like you can go into the store right now and buy trans fat free Crisco. Uh, it's just uh, probably going to be a uh, cost increase. I mean, I would say that's about it. There's no, in other words, the transness of the fat doesn't change the functionality of the fat. The transness of the, so, the deal is, is that, um, when you, um, you know, when you remake and break double bonds, you can do it in a way where, uh, where they, they, depending on cis and trans has to do with what side of uh, of a, you know, a double bond they, the substituted chains are on, cis, meaning it's on the same

[38:22] side and trans, meaning it's on the opposite side. Uh, and so, um, the cissness or transness doesn't affect really things like the

[38:31] temperature at which the fat melts or anything like that, uh, it affects more

[38:35] the, um, affects more how your body reacts to it. And so the, it's in the manufacturing of fats that they produce,

[38:44] um, you know, of uh, things like Crisco and other shortings that they produce these trans fats. So all you have to do is then get rid of the trans fats or do another process to summarize them to trans. And so all I can foresee really is a price, uh, maybe a

[39:01] pricing increment and not a functionality increment. If that makes sense. Yeah, makes a little bit sense. Okay. Got a question in from, we talked enough about the Sears author. good. What about what's it called? Booker and Dax Lab? At Booker and Dax Lab? At Booker and Dax Lab? Who runs that? You run that, Piper? Stas? co-run it? The Hammer and Piper. So if you need, if you don't want to, if, like, you know, Mustache's Twitter handle is Hammer at Hammer BDX. I dont think she ever looks at it. I do. Yeah. Every day. yeah. And Piper, I think, has Piper BDX or something, I guess, right? Yeah, not getting a lot of action these days. No? Nice. All right. Anyway, follow those guys and for all the what's a who's. anyway. Alex writes in. Hello, Dave Hammer and the revolving cast of others, Jack, or whomever else there may be there at this day. Oh, what's up, whomever? Oh hello. Yeah. Excellent show. efforts are greatly appreciated. I have convinced my wife that a kitchen update is a good idea. strong. I am stealthily trying to put some more precise slash modern tools into the plan. We have a 6 burner gas range and I want to expand my options. My wife is reluctant to give up the storage or the counter space, but she is open to a flat top, perhaps even a 24 inch

[40:13] acu steam griddle if I can find one in good shape. Uh, Akistin griddle for those of you that don't as a, is like a sandwich layer, stainless steel griddle that has water on the inside, and it has an extremely fast recovery rate.

[40:23] Everyone that has it in a short order situation, loves it because the recovery rate is almost instant, and everybody respects them and thinks they're great. The only downside of them is that they can fail because they're a pressure vessel and need repair and repair on an

[40:37] accurate team is expensive. So if you talk to people who don't make, you know, people, other griddle suppliers and you're like, what about AccuStam? They're like, 0 it's great. The only thing that we can say is that it might break and then you're at SOL. Anyway, that's just my my two, my ¢2, but they are good products. Uh, well, they look fun, uh, and then release my uh, inner short order cook, that's the AccuStream. I don't know how much use of it get in a world where a fry pan or 2 will usually do. You know what? Another good thing to get, any sort of like the problem with most griddles is they don't have a super, not really high heat enough and they don't heat up quickly enough. In my house, I have an actual gas fire, the electric ones are garbage. A gas fired, uh, crampuz, crate maker, which is, how wide is this, 18 inches my hands? 24. Yeah, it's somewhere between 18, 24 inches. Uh, cast iron top heats up to, if I needed to, to 615 can throttle down to, um, you know, down to uh, low enough temperature to do pancakes that are even lower. and it's super fast and it's fairly

[41:36] compact and it's on the counter. gas fired. This thing is awesome. They're hard to find here in the US, but next time you're in France, they're not that expensive in France, and you can't get them here in the US. They just cost twice as much as they should. anyway. I do not know how much I would get to use a griddle where a fried pan or

[41:50] 2 would usually do. Instead, I want to push. I tell you what's good on that crate maker is razor clamps. Oh, razor clams, plancha style. Instead, I want to push for a 20 to £35 tube deep fryer. I've been okay with frying on the range top, though the small batches and consistently adjusting the temperature, recover them, and then not overheat them can be a pain. So a better solution is sought. I have heard you mentioned it to become a master of the fry. You need a real fryer, Drew. True. My wife's concern is the safety, maintenance slash cleaning requirements, and how big it should be to be useful. Assuming I use a quality fry oil, and you should get commercial fry oil, by the way, commercial. What kind of life can I expect out of the oil? How often is it filtered replaced? How should it be stored? Besides a type K fire extinguisher? Are there any other safety precautions you recommend, any features I should seek? Any other advice on whether or not a fryer is a good idea? Thank you, keep up with good work. Well, look, from a cooking standpoint, there's no question that a deep fryer is a good idea. It's unquestionable. From a cooking standpoint. Let me put it this way. There is no question. Oil lasts in a home environment for a tremendously long time. If you, you know, you fit filter it regularly. I just keep it in the fryer and cover it completely so that it's not exposed to air or light so that you're not getting light-based oxidation or a lot of

[43:04] oxygen, oxidation in the top of it. And it lasts for a long, long time. And you can just test it in between fries with

[43:11] a, with like a piece of bread to taste to see whether the oil is starting to get that cardboardy, rancid taste, but because you're using a tube fryer and all the stuff sinks to the bottom, it's going to last a long time, getting, you know, a stainless steel

[43:21] pot and you're good. Like the iron ones aren't as good for keeping. Anyway, here's the thing. Your wife is 100% right. These are completely not necessarily safe in a home environment. They're not rated for a home environment. And let me put it this way. This might avoid your homeowner's insurance. If you have a fire based on having a deep fat fryer in your house, commercial deep fat fryer in your house, your homeowner's insurance might be void. Let me say that again. Your homeowners insurance might be void. Also, if you're not set up to battle a fire from a fryer or you don't know how to use a

[43:53] fryer or you're going to freak out if there's a fire, this is a dangerous proposition. I will point you at these YouTube things. Look up mythbusters, water on oil, fire, right? And they have awesome slow-mo images of them dupping a cup of oil into an oil fire and showing what

[44:11] happens. This is, by the way, why you don't ever have a deep fryer next to a stove because you might spill oil into

[44:16] something, and then what happens is, is that the water instantly vaporizes. And if oil is, let's say when you're using a fryer, you should never leave it. ever. You should never leave it unintended because you can see if it's starting to go over hot on you. If it goes over hot, in order it's a thermostat breaks and it goes into runaway, thermal runaway. Once the oil auto ignites, and then if something like water hits it after it's auto ignited, then you're

[44:40] misting, the water hitting it will cause tiny oil droplets to be, you know, sprayed into the atmosphere like a, like a, like an

[44:48] aerosol. That aerosol will ignite into a fireball, right? Here's the other problem about fire extinguishing an oil fire. If you fire extinguish an oil fire on, if you have oil that just spills out of the fryer and hits a heating element and ignites, sure, then you

[45:03] can, you can hit it with a, with a type K fire extinguisher. And it's not gonna be a big problem. If you have thermal runaway, and your entire batch, £30 of oil is at auto ignition temperature, and you spray it, what you're doing is you're spraying oil, with the, with the, with the extinguisher, you're spraying oil at its auto ignition temperature all over your kitchen, where it will then, again, ignite as soon as you release the uh, fire extinguisher, unless you have enough fire extinguishing power to uh,

[45:31] like kill it completely and cool it down, which is why they have ansel systems. And in an ansel system, the group that they spray out of your ansel

[45:38] system, especially saponifies the fat so that it doesn't reignite after it stops and it puts a suppression blanket on top of your fryer for like 20 seconds.

[45:48] Please look up Pyrochem Kitchen night 2 fire test demonstration, and for an extremely boring,

[45:55] uh, and they're boring, but you go through them. And Ansel R dash 102 suppression system versus dry chemical extinguisher on YouTube, especially that 2nd one.

[46:04] Ansel R 102 suppression system versus dry chem extinguisher. And you can, it's really boring. Go to the interesting parts. You can see a firefighter spraying a dry chemical extinguisher on

[46:14] on a thermal runaway, auto ignition, oil temperature fire from a fryer and the disasters results contained. Also, for a good laugh, look up William Shatner turkey fry because William Shatner has a save. He like, I love fried turkey. It's a taste. my taste. love it. I fried turkeys, but then he has like the safety thing where they show like an entire like garage melting down from someone putting

[46:34] a poorly thawed and or too much oil in it. So check that stuff out. But anyway, yes, from a cooking standpoint, they're the best. Maybe, fair? Fair, fair. Okay. Oh, caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Nathan from Richmond. Hey, how you doing? Good, man. I've been reading this book called Pulinary Reactions by Simon Clewensfield. Have you read it before? Uh, don't have, do you have that Piper? No. Nope, go ahead. Okay. So he's talking about turkey and he wants to cook his turkey at a relatively low temperature, um, 96

[47:09] C for a long time in the oven. Right. But initially, he rinses the bird with hydrogen peroxide, and I'd never heard of anyone doing

[47:19] this. I wondered. Why does he bleach the turkey? Because he says he's going to cook it at a low count, so he wants to completely remove the chance of

[47:29] any, like, uh, bacterial growth. Especially botulism, since the hydrogen peroxide will break down into oxygen and help help keep botulism from growing. All right, Piper, like, all right, like, tweet me the tweet me the name of the book and the protocol. I'm going to look that sucker up and we'll talk about it. We still have time before Thanksgiving next week, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'll look that up. Hydrogen peroxide on the bird. You heard of that, Piper? Is it a is it a base? Hyperoxide? I'd say it's an oxidizer. It just kills things. It's a... It doesn't work based on acidity. It works based on like literally like ripping things apart. Haven't you ever poured hydrogen peroxide on your on a cut, Piper? They don't have that up in Vermont? Spit. Oh, nice, nice. Yeah, so I'll look that up and we'll try to see if we can figure out what's going on. I mean, I would I would prefer to use kind of a slightly nitrated salt and get that cured taste rather than use

[48:24] a hydrated peroxide. But I don't know. go buy some hydrogen peroxide. We dump it on. I dont know if I have time because we're working on the Kickstarter, but I'll definitely at least research it. Piper will have me research it and we'll get back to you next week. Okay, okay, thanks, babe. All right, thank you. All right. Alex and Toronto writes in. Dear cooking issues team. Any recipes involving powder gelatin consistently ask their 1st be hydrated, then heated up 2 questions.

[48:47] As long as there's enough water, won't the gelatin hydrate as it heats up anyway? And two, to what temperature must one heat the mixture in order to melt the said gelatin? Thanks and keep up the good work. Alex in Toronto. Actually, they don't tell you to add to the cold water to hydrate it. They're putting you into swell it so that it can disperse easily before you hydrate it. What they're worried about is that you add the gelatin powder to a hot liquid and it forms clumps that then take a lot longer to dissolve. The reason that doesn't happen in Jell-O powder is because there's so much

[49:15] sugar separating the gelatin that it easily disperses in hot water,

[49:21] okay? But the blooming, as it's called, is not a hydration. Any hydrocolloid that you use. Gelatin, even though it's a protein, is classified as a hydrocolloid, is usually a two-step process. Disperse, which is what you're doing with the blooming process, getting them swollen, but yet not glued together, and then hydration by heating. And gelatin hydrates, what, like 140, something like that? Fahrenheit? Somewhere like that? It's pretty low. Something like that. I just do it by I. I've never actually measured it. It probably depends on the gelat. I just do it by eye. Anyway, that's your answer. Uh, Patrick uh, Patrick writes in on ham. Dear cooking issues gang. I thinking of trying to cure ham in a location upstate New York, who's low and sometimes high temperatures, dipped below the freezing point for one quarter to

[50:01] one 3rd of the year. This excludes a completely ambient curing and aging process, but I'm thinking of providing just enough heat to keep the temperature above freezing to do a

[50:08] semi-ambient ham and then let it age for a long time, at least over 2 summers where the temperatures are still relatively mild. I don't have a desire to produce a facsimile of another place as hand, but instead want to do something that stands on its own. Do you think in general, this is an okay idea, or is it simply not a good idea to do

[50:24] a semi-ambient ham, most likely unsmoked, outside of the traditional handbelt climate zone you described before? Completely ambient seems out of the question. Also, are there any detailed references in English, you would suggest for ham curing. I have a copy of Fidel Tolder's dry cured meat on the way, and Paul Bertoli's cooking by hand has a really good description of his own prosciutto method. Not looking to replicate other processes, but make a country hand that tastes like its own unique climate and geography. All the best, Patrick. Okay, listen, look this up. Dry curing Virginia style ham, Virginia cooperative extension by Norman Marriott. It's about Virginia Hamm, but it talks about the general procedure, how to pick out a hand properly for curing. Uh, although, you know, I don't necessarily agree with all of his trimming procedures, but it goes into salt

[51:02] levels uh, and things like this. And he actually is an advocate of the bag style here, and it's probably good for curing small amounts of ham rather than the box cure where you're layering lots of

[51:12] hams on top of each other. The bag cure, you add the specific amount of salt you need to the particular ham, wrap it, and then, you know, you overhaul it a couple of times, but it's, you know, easier to

[51:21] get to get right. I think that you have a good idea. I don't think it's going to be a problem. As long as you keep it from freezing, if you have it in a semi-controlled

[51:30] place. And you got to remember, a lot of the smoked hams that, you know, we have, you know, over time, come from more northerly places where freezing is a possibility. And so things were hung near fires to keep them from freezing, among other things. And so I think that should that should work great. And I'm looking, you know, I love to try an upstate New York style ham, semi-ambient. Semi-ambian ham. Yeah, but remember, your your aging temperatures. Like the reason that the country hams, my feeling is tastes the way they do. Southern country hams is the very high humidity, uh, high uh, temperatures that they experience in the summertime. And most of your aging. Most of the kind of funkiness from aging is going to happen during the summer times. Okay, last week we had in a caller asking about sodium ferrocyanide in salt. And Ellie Papineau wrote in with the actual sheet from Morton saying that there can indeed be

[52:23] there. But it's not going to hurt you. First of all, sodium ferrac cyanide. It's not 2%. 20 milligrams per kilo of salt. It's the maximum allowable amount in, uh, in European standards anyway, which is like

[52:37] .00 I have to do the math, but it's like .002% of sodium ferrocyanide. And sodium, uh, ferocyanide. Ferrocyanide is a is a bunch of cyanides glued around an iron atom, and the iron bond so well with the cyanide. It takes an acid stronger than stomach acid to release hydrogen cyanide gas. And so sodium ferrocyanide is relatively non toxic. You'd need to consume a whole bunch of it for it to hurt you, and there is not, and it's, you know, and there's not that much of it in there anyway, but

[53:11] indeed it is there. So it's, remember, it's not 2%. It's 20 milligrams per kilo, which is very, very, very low. Um, Chris, uh, Chris Kohler writes in, uh, but it's pronounced, it's written like collar, like holler, like Chris

[53:25] Kala, but it's, but it's color. Anyway. Two questions pertaining to bread and proofing dough. I've been making Levan style bread for about 6 months now and continually amazed with how long it lasts, last being quantified in days without drying out, molding or showing significant drops in quality.

[53:39] My 1st assumption was that this bread is 77% hydrated and that's playing a role

[53:44] lasting longer. I recently did a side-by-side, a 77% Levain bread, and

[53:49] 70 separate hydrated, no need bread with commercial yeast and a traditional needed bread at 77% hydration with commercial yeast. All 3 breads were made in a standard country style loaf. The bread made with the Levan was a clear winner and lasted a week with a slow decline in quality. The needed bread lasted for 4 days, and a no knee bread was shot after two. Any thoughts on what's going on? And as a follow-up, I recently got a wood fired oven. I'm trying to convert a mini fridge into a proofing chamber. So I can hold pizza dough at 65 Fahrenheit for extended periods of time.

[54:15] I can't imagine this being too difficult, but the scope of my scientific knowledge is in the world of medicine, not engineering. Thus, I'm often intimidated by the smallest electrical project, save for the help, Chris Kohler. Uh, so, uh, as far as uh, the 1st thing, yes, the sourdough technique, especially on whole grain breads, like Lemans, uh,

[54:34] has a, um, a radical uh, effect in a positive way on the staling properties

[54:40] of, um, of those. I point you to this article in food microbiology from 2007 called The Impact of Sourdough on the Texture of Bread. And there's a couple things going on. The acidity from a sourdough starting is directly causing some of the anti-staling things by how it affects the way enzymes are breaking down starches during the fermentation

[55:05] process, and also probably due to their effect on the gluten in general, which they say can affect staling, although I'm not exactly sure

[55:12] how I'd have to go reread the whole article. The other thing is, is that the lactic acid bacteria that are growing in a sourdough starter, make their own extracellar,

[55:20] a cellular polysaccharides, which can lead towards, uh, can lead towards anti-staling effects, and also break down other things like proteins and other things that are more present in

[55:29] uh, whole grain breads. And so a sourdough plus a whole grain bread is probably vastly superior from a staling technology, but just go read the impact of sourdough

[55:38] on the texture of bread. I went to go look for my copy of the breadbuilders, which I think also, even though it might be out of date,

[55:45] it's a very good book on that style of bread, but it's already been packed because I'm moving very soon. Anyway, I hope that helps. John writes in, and I guess this will have to be our last one, right? we're getting kicked off the air in a second. John writes in. Hey, Dave, Nastasia and the crew. I had a question about Ginko, specifically the evil female tree. For a while, my wife and I have had a ginkgo on our block and did collect the seeds for a brief moment to dry out the seeds for a Chinese dish we wanted to try.

[56:10] But unfortunately, soon after the process of separating the softer flesh of the seed from the

[56:14] inner seed, we found during the process that the fruits contain, I can't pronounce it. I can't pronounce anything. Yushu all, the stuff from, from, uh, from, uh, Poison Ivy. Uh, your show. I can't pronounce it. Anyway. contains that, which made for very unpleasant few days following. That tree is long gone, but I do see a lot of the trees dropping their stink seeds around New York City

[56:36] now and was wondering if I was brave or crazy enough to brave the stench and collect them

[56:42] again. Is there a way to neutralize the, you know, the dermatologically impaired product, which I will not try to pronounce again, before trying to get the seeds to avoid getting

[56:50] poisoned oak side effects again. While the fresh seeds were good, I am not sure the risk or effort involved is better than the ones you pick up

[56:56] into Chinatown. Aside from knowing their origin and processing and processing them yourself compared to the industrial variety. Thanks. Hope all is well, John. Okay, look. So, in fact, look, Yurushirol, however you pronounce it, is

[57:08] actually that technical thing is only from that family, the Anacardis, Anna card,

[57:14] DC, which is like mangoes and poison ivy and whatever. I looked this up. I didn't know that this was in Ginko. And again, my book on Poison Ivy problems, which I have a

[57:25] couple actually, but they're already, because I'm fascinated with trees and stuff now, have been packed away already for the moose. I couldn't go look that up. But it turns out the ginkko has a related compound in it that can cause dermatitis, but doesn't necessarily cause it for everyone.

[57:41] So in other words, some people who are, because I'm highly allergic to poison ivy, but I've smashed ginko seeds this year, in fact, and haven't gotten any

[57:48] problems. Here's the other problem, something you mentioned. First of all, ginkos are unrelated to any other living extant tree. They are they are kind of they're alone in their group. They're usually classified with the conifers, but they're kind of like living fossil, and they're only really wild in China, but they were brought over and extensively cultivated in other places, including here in New York City.

[58:07] It's an interesting tree. It's trees are either male or female, unlike many trees which have male and female parts on the same tree. There's only male trees and female trees and the female trees produce stinky, stinky, stinky,

[58:20] stinky ginko nuts, which is why most people who cultivate them only cultivate the males.

[58:24] But you can here in New York City, I can verify this from my own personal experience, find, in fact, there's one right outside of

[58:29] MoFat offices. There's a female tree that was dropping its nuts. and you pick it up, and it's not really, it's a, you know, it's a CEA who, but you break it and you smell

[58:39] homeless, and you can't wash the homeless smell after it because of the intense concentration of butyric acid on it.

[58:44] Now, I did not know that it also contained an irritant, but in fact, it does. And so I will, did I write it down? There's a, I will try to look more into whether or not there's any way to actually stop yourself other than gloves.

[58:58] I mean, gloves, right? Gloves. But I don't think of any, I haven't found anything that specifically inactivates it. I was reading an article on the preventing of occupationally related contact dermatitis, but and that came up when I searched for

[59:13] ginko, but I wasn't able to find the specific ginko reference that kind of kind of had to work around it. But man, if you can brave that stench, 1st of all, the fact that you put that stuff on your hands with the smell, because it's so hard to wash out of your hands, I was sitting there

[59:26] watching for like so long, do you get to stink out? There are things called barrier creams that are given to forest rangers and people who trek out that are supposed to stop poison ivy from penetrating the

[59:37] skin, and maybe that would work here. But, man, I mean, I would collect and then, you know, maybe they use some sort of fermentation to get the pulp off instead of pulping it by hand. I will look it up. I will look it up and tell you, John, because I'm kind of curious about it. Oh, it's too late in the season for us to collect it. Can you imagine if I brought all this ginko nuts back to the lab and it was stinking up that lab with butyric acid, like smelling like vomit, vomit, vomit,

[1:00:01] vomit? can't imagine what that would be like. I think I think there's other stinky stuff in there because it smells worse than just vomit. It's like vomit plus not washed. It's like unwashed vomit. like, it's like, it's like you didn't wash for a week. You spent your 1st 20 bucks on the cheapest liquor you could get, drank

[1:00:16] it, and then puked it on yourself, and then just fell asleep dozing in the hot sun. That's what it smells like to me. Anyway, we'll look it up and we'll get back to you. cooking issues.

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