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[0:20] Bring your vision to Ferguson Home, where it all comes together. Shop top brands like La Cornew or find your local showroom at fergusonhome.com. Today's program has been brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information, visit heritagefoodsusa.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:57] Hello and welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookies. What? Cooking issues. I've been choosing my voice today. Maybe it's because my voice buds are frozen. We have voice buds? Voice box, frozen. It is snowing like a demon out, but I'm still coming to you live a little late because the subway was shafting me. I usually I'm late and it's my own fault, right, Stas? Yep. Because I'm disorganizing a bad person all around. Today I'm actually going to blame the weather. Although I noticed that Jack made it here on time, as did Nastasia, so maybe, and they're both coming from Manhattan. That's right, now I come from Manhattan. In fact, farther away. were you guys on the L train today? Yes. No. Well, yes, Beth Tell. F-Tell. F-Tell. Ada, L. Ada, L. yeah I was just on whatever. People don't care. Call any questions live two, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. Um, so we haven't actually have an event tonight, right, Stas? I think it's going to go on? Really? Yeah. talk to her. And she's like, we're going to do it? Oh, yeah. She's excited about a hot drink, everything. We don't have a hot drink. I told her we were working to work on one, so... Yeah, like, so we're doing this event tonight at a place called Feel NYC. And, you know, one of the partners, fuel food. Yeah. But what's funny is, is that our friend, who's, you know, one of the partners there, Galen Quinn, who runs the Bogota Food and Wine Festival, or Wine and Food Festival, I can never keep it straight. She, uh, she's from Columbia. She calls it Phil food, like Phil, like our friend Phil Bravo. And she can't, like, literally cannot hear the difference between the words fill and feel. So we were busting, we were busting our chops yesterday on the feel feel phenomenon. phenomenon, film, phenomenon. Anyway, but so I can't believe we're going to do an event with cocktails with people like arriving as it's like dumping buckets of snow on

[2:44] us. But, hey, that's life. That how it's cut. We agree to do it. So we do what? We do it. We do it. All right. So we got some questions in on knives. Deer cooking issues team. I have a simple. have a simple knife question. Although it's not so simple as it turns out, most things are not so simple, right? On a whim, I recently bought a 10 inch knife blank, the listing claimed it was a 100-year-old

[3:08] sabatier blank. You know, Sabatier is like the French, like the French knives. You familiar with those? Sabatier blank, you know, French, the French knife pattern, the like the old Sabatier pattern is different from the kind of standard German chef's knives that we all kind of grew up with. Like, you know, in the US, you know, if you, you know, if you're my age,

[3:30] um, you know, when you were younger, no one really had the Japanese or the Japanese Western stuff. They weren't very popular, I don't think, until probably the 90s, you know,

[3:41] like, you know, some somewhere in the late 90s, somewhere around there with the US people. So, you know, in the in the early 90s and the late 80s and early 90s, everyone wanted their their Hankles and their

[3:52] Vostovs, right? And if you were going to get, you know, a Japanese chess knife to do Western style work, most likely you'd

[4:00] get, um, like a Mac. You know what I mean? The Macs that you would get, like we're semi in, you know, kind of the newer style Japanese western pattern, but more, you know, akin to

[4:11] Japanese takes on Western knives. These are the ones I was kind of grew up being exposed to. But, you know, most of us, uh, or most people I knew didn't really have a set of uh, French pattern knives. And the French pattern, the knife actual, the handle style and

[4:27] the shape of the knife, a little bit different from the German style, actually quite like it. So I so I, in fact, my favorite knife that I have. That's a Western knife is because I have my favorite Japanese knives, but my favorite Western knife is, in fact, a 10 inch sabache knife, old, really freaking old carbon

[4:47] steel that I found at a flea market for 2

[4:52] bucks. And it was, you know, it was rusty, but not like too rusty on the blade section, so it didn't have, didn't have any real wasting or loss of metal in the actual edge.

[5:02] There was some pitting in the belly of the blade itself, but nothing on the edge. and so I was able to take it. and that thing, that thing's a demon, except for people keep picking it up, using it without my

[5:12] permission and then leaving it wet, which really makes me want to,

[5:16] if people do not, 1st of all, don't use other people's knives, right? Like, unless you ask, don't use somebody else's knife. Yeah, straight up. Like, remember at the SCI, I had a set of Japanese knives, also carbon steel, so they rusted, and some, and I had a new Suba, which is, you know, the vegetable carving knife. It's got a very, like, flat blade. It's meant for like turning daikons and stuff into those sheets. And, you know, I bought it at a time when the yen was not quite as good as it is against a dollar now. So it wasn't ridiculously expensive. But still, I think it set me back like a 100 and something bucks, and now it's like a 150 or a $185 knife or something like that. And some jack wad picked it up, thought it was, I guess, I don't know what the hell they thought it was, a cleaver, and they hit it into bones and took giant scallop marks out of

[6:08] it and made it entirely useless and then left it wet. So I came back to my knife kit. They were kind enough to put it away, but they put it away and left it ruined, completely ruined. I've never been so angry about something that's happened in a kitchen to my equipment ever. And I was like, why would anyone ever pick up somebody else's knife? But so this is the problem about having nice stuff in a communal environment. And, you know, my home now, because, you know, people come through, it amounts in some ways to a communal environment. So anyway, it's hard to keep sometimes carbon knife in good shape, which

[6:36] is, you know, why you should, you know, be protective. This making sense? It's not really the question, but you ever have a carbon knife? The advantages of the carbon steel knives. Are they ridiculously easy to sharpen? They take, you know, they they don't, uh, they're a pain in terms of, you know, uh, taking care of them. Like whenever I use mine, I wipe it down after use and I put a thin coat of oil on it, you know, at the end of the night. I wipe it after each use, and then at the end of the night, I put a thin coat of oil on and put away, and it's been fine for years, but it's just a little more use, but it takes an edge

[7:08] extremely well. I don't think the edge lasts longer than. I mean, the new, the new steals, the edge, the new steals that they have are crazy, you know, uh, and so, you know, I'm sure from an actual performance standpoint, but the fact that it takes an edge so easy, so easily means that you, you know, you can, a couple swipes on my, on my, uh, on my

[7:26] stone and the sucker is, you know, like a, like a, like a slicing

[7:30] machine. That's my favorite thing to slice steaks with steaks. Anyway, uh, okay. So, uh, I bought a 10 inch knife blank, and the listing claimed it was a 100-year-old Sabatier blank, recently discovered in a

[7:42] warehouse, squarehouse in how do you think you pronounced, uh, like, I should know, because it's French, right? But, uh, TA, union TA, pronounced, written in English, Thiers. But I think it's probably TA. How is it spelled? Fears. Like F-E-A-R-S? No, like T-H-I. I would guess it's like TA or something like that. T.A. I don't know. But you never know with them, right? They could be like, douche, you're supposed to pronounce the RS on that one. You're like, of course, they don't understand douche. That's my favorite thing about French people is that they don't understand the douche insult. They're like, shawo, shawo sack? I'm not going into German. Anyway, I have problems. I've got the pronunciation. What is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was pretty close. And made from virgin steel not used today. With this story, I couldn't pass it up, but I've been having trouble finding someone willing to transform the blank into a functioning knife.

[8:33] I was rebuffed. I like that. Buff's a good word. I was rebuffed by one custom Brooklyn knife maker, and he could not point me to any other knife makers who would be willing to do the job, and he suggested that this require heat rather than just sharpening as well. Uh, I really have a good 8 inch chef's knife at home that I keep sharp with a DMT system. Those are the diamond, uh, anyway. I like them, DMT. But system. So this is not an especially urgent task. However, just holding the blank makes my current knife feel like safety scissors against

[9:03] Excalibur. So who and where do I go to turn this blank into a real knife, preferably here in New York, but maybe this task is not as simple as I had originally

[9:12] thought. Uh, and then uh, is from Patrick. And, um, he did, he put in the description from uh, from the eBay. And by the way, for those of you interested in this problem, the person who he bought it from, if you if you look Sabatier blank, there are some eBay auctions currently from the same guy still up, you can still go

[9:31] buy one of these if this is something that interests you. Yeah, it's not as simple as you thought. If you, if you go look, if you guys look it up and you go on eBay and see what you, what we have

[9:42] here is you have a, a blank just after the forging step, right? So it's a whole, you know, blank with the metal entire, but it, it,

[9:51] uh, it looks like it's only gone through the 1st step. So what happens after you forge it is you have to do something called annealing. And the annealing is to make it soft to work and get rid of some of the stresses. So you're going to anneal it, and annealing it, you're going to take it up to a fairly high temperature like somewhere like 1450 or so Fahrenheit, and you're going to hold it there for a while, and you're going to cool it very, very, very slowly. And what that's going to do is it's going to bring the metal into a very soft state that's easily worked. And I think it also gets rid of some of the stress. And that is so that you can do the kind of the grinding and to get it down to almost finished, except for the actual edge itself, you want to get it

[10:30] down because if you look at the picture that you have of the blank, it has like a lot of forging marks in it that you can still see in

[10:37] the picture. After you do that, right? Now you have to harden the guy. So you have to, you're gonna, you're gonna anneal it, then you're gonna do, uh, kind of whatever, uh, work you're gonna do on it, then you might do something called, uh, normalization, which is another thing similar to annealing, but not quite as, uh, not quite as slow a cooling. The reason you cool it slowly is when you heat the steel up to a high temperature, uh, you, um, change the state of the metal. It goes from being, you know, a mix of whatever it happens to

[11:10] be in whatever state it is, partially probably hardened from working, partially

[11:14] not in kind of an ostentitic state, which is a non-magnetic state. And then if you cool it very slowly, it forms into,

[11:22] you know, a very soft structure, whereas if you cool it very quickly, you know, a portion of it, hopefully a large portion of it turns to Martin site, which is a lot harder, which

[11:29] is what, you know, hardened steel. So, so anyhoo, so you want to cool it, not as slowly as it kneeling, but relatively slowly, to kind of, you know, produce a finer grain structure and get rid of any kind of imperfections in it that might cause problems with

[11:43] the with the hardening which you're about to do. Now I don't know whether that steps fully necessary or not, but a lot of people seem to recommend it. Then you're going to uh, heat it up again to that same high temperature and then quench it like a mother in oil very quickly so that

[11:58] uh, the metal does not have the time to uh, to go into its softer state instead frozen in the harder Martin City state, right? Does that make sense? Then it's really shattering, like it's going to be shatter brittle like glass. So then you need to take it and heat it up again to a tempering stage, which is

[12:14] a lower temperature. That, you know, is much easier to accomplish because the other temperatures are like 1450, that kind of

[12:19] thing. You need a real, like a kind of a forge or a kiln to do that, right? The other one is a little bit lower, is a tempering thing. That can be done kind of more reasonable step. So you do that to kind of make it not as brittle. You temper it maybe once, maybe twice, depending on who you listen to. And there you have your blade. After you temper it, then you have to put scales on it, right? You know, wooden parts, right? You don't have to use wood, you could use whatever you want. Like a lot of people use, uh, uh, like phenolic compounds, bone, or whatever you want, and rivet it down, sand down the, uh, sand down the, uh, handle so it's nice, and then put your final uh, polish and your edge

[12:57] on it. So in other words, to put it in, you know, to put it this way, it's a lot of freaking work. And to have someone do a one-off custom job on something like this is going to cost a lot of money, like much more than just going and buying a high quality old

[13:13] sabatier chefs knife. At least I would charge a lot, you know, if I was going to do something like that. And that's probably one of the reasons why the custom knife maker that you that you dealt with was like, why would I do that? I'm a custom knife make. I want to make my own knives. I don't want to do that to this other knife. Now, they're probably being a little bit of a jerk about it because everyone's, everyone who does something like that for a living. like including myself, like when someone's like wants someone comes to me and wants me to make somebody else's cocktail. I'm like, why would I do that? That's ridiculous. You know what I mean? So everyone who does this stuff for a living, like they're kind of jerks, but, and they're kind of not understanding towards someone who's not directing on the inside of their business, but that's just the nature of someone who cares about what they do.

[13:49] I mean, the problem is it's going to be hard to find someone who cares about what they do, who is willing to do it for a reasonable

[13:54] price, and who doesn't care about the whole process in general. Does that make sense to us? So anyway, so I think you've bitten off quite a bit, but I think it's a really interesting project. If you go on kitchen knife forums. There's a guy there named Devin Thomas, who's a very famous maker. I've never touched one of his knives, but they're, you know, a chef's knife from Devin Thomas is upwards of like 1500 bucks, if you can get it because they're made one off their custom. And he's a maker of crazy, crazy pattern Damascus style steels that he makes himself, both stainless and carbon Damascus steels. And he wrote in that he bought one, like 20 years ago from the same guy and made a knife with it. And this is what he says to do. Should you find someone who's willing to do it? Um, he says, uh, a Neil, at 1454, uh, one hour, drop the temperature to 1275 for 4

[14:43] hours, and then cool in the furnace, uh, to harden it, soak uh, at roughly uh, 1500 degrees Fahrenheit for uh, 10 minutes, and then quench in oil, and then temper immediately for one hour uh, between 350 and 400

[14:58] degrees uh, Fahrenheit, uh, one or 2 times. One time for more toughness. Sorry, 11, 2 times for more toughness and one hour for more wear resistance, i.e. longer keeping edge.

[15:09] But that is not something that the average person, I

[15:13] think, could do. Although I have to say, I love the oldest Sabate Nas. I love them. Anyway, does that make sense? Devin Thomas. You should go take a look at his knives, by the way. I mean, I looked, you can't even, you can't buy them. It's crazy. Like, I think maybe Matt from, uh, Chef Matt from, uh, uh, Sambar might have one because he's kind of a knife nut. Anyway. All right. Should we take a should take a quick break? Let's take a quick break. more cooking issues.

[16:05] Today's program has been brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of Heritage Breed Pigs and Turkeys. For more information, visit Heritage Foods, USA.com.

[16:33] And we're back. So that's interesting. We're being hosted by the parent company today, huh? Oh, yeah. They, uh, they got some pretty good pork over there. Yeah, I didn't know we were the largest distributor of heritage pigs and turkeys. Heritage breed, yeah. But are we are not the distributor of the largest breeds of pigs and

[16:52] turkeys as far as I know. No, no. The opposite. Yeah, the turkey, the turkeys are delicious. Anyone who's had one knows this, but they're not like the jacked

[17:04] up like, you know, super like gym going birds that... athletic birds. They fly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, you know, I forget how much they weigh. How much did they weigh at Thanksgiving time? You remember? They were like, they were like on the, more like on the £15 side, right? Yeah, that's more common. Yeah, not on like the £25 like monster turkey. 18, 19 is as big as you're getting with those guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should figure out like how to get the, like, I'm sure they could grow some sort of like a giant mega heritage breed turkey if they wanted

[17:36] to. Wow, only you could find out. We can do it. Of course, the heritage breed pigs will grow bigger. You know, if you let them live longer. You know, the advantage of letting the pigs live longer. Well, it depends on what you want, right? I mean, like we slaughter our animals so young, typically here in the US. which is one of the reasons if you go back and you read, uh, dry cured meat products by Fidel Toldra, which, by the way, I don't recommend. It's not a very scintillating read. I mean, it's good from an informational standpoint. I'm sure it's horribly out of date and Fidel Toldra has written other books since this one, which is written, I think, in the late 90s. I own it. like technical book. Boring. I mean, it's not boring. It's boring. I mean, like stars, you would find it intensely boring, but it has information in it that I'm glad I have in my head now. One of those pieces of information is that the muscular

[18:21] enzyme makeup of an animal is dependent on its age. And that for dry cured, long age, dry cured meat products, the enzyme

[18:31] balance or the enzyme makeup, rather in older hogs, is more conducive to creating a higher

[18:39] quality, long age product. In addition, the meat from older hogs or older animals in general tastes incredibly different. Now, Jeffrey Steingarten, who, by the way, like, wants to get in touch with us, but then he didn't call us back. I've talked to Jeffrey in a long time, but Jeffrey, so here's 2 different styles,

[18:55] right, of thought. So you got your Harold McGee and your Jeffrey Steingarten, both of whom went to Spain

[19:00] to taste very old meats. So there's a bunch of restaurants in Spain that specialize in, you know,

[19:08] you know, cooking older animals, like seven-year-old cows, things like this. you know, older, things that we don't get here in the US, I think, and I think even older, you know, mutton, very age

[19:16] mutton, things like this. So, McGee, this like Stas knows, McGee is like just explaining like kind of how awesome it is and like maybe I can, you know, how can I get it, blah, blah,

[19:27] blah. And Steiger is just rubbing in my face that he got to have this awesome stuff that I can't have. You know what I'm saying? Steingard loves it, she loves. It's like Steingarten, you know, was invited to one of the Ordolon dinners that they had, uh,

[19:39] maybe, maybe they did, maybe they didn't have it at, uh, I think at Le Circa, and also maybe once at Danielle, back in like the 90s, and rubs in my face all the

[19:47] time that he's had the Ordolon. like, how was he? He's like, delicious. Because he doesn't care that I can't have it. You know what I mean? I shouldn't say he doesn't care. He revels in the fact that I want it and I can't have it, I think. Which is not to say he's mean. He just likes a good, he likes a good nose rub. You know what I mean? Anyway, I owe him a call. Anywho. Okay. What was it talking about? Oh, Fidel Toldra. So the age of the animal, also not only from the enzyme standpoint, but the actual flavor of the muscle is going to be

[20:13] different. I don't have any personal experience on that. Uh, but all the data shows uh, that release the data from the late 90s shows that, um, older pigs equal better pigs from a ham standpoint. I'm talking about curing hands, long, long-term age products. I don't know, whatever. That's neither here nor there. Okay. Hi, Dave, is it from Sam? Hi, Dave, can you talk a little bit about your philosophy of dishes and flatware? I don't think you've ever talked in depth about the subject on the air. Sam. Well, that's interesting. You know, most chefs who, um, cook food for a living, they care

[20:50] extremely uh, deeply about their, both the, the plates. I think mostly about the plates, right? Uh, not, not to play it, plates, all service wear. And then probably, uh, after that about the, um, about the flatware. And I think that there's kind of, you know, at home,

[21:11] it's a lot, it's a lot different. If you're going to go professional, right, especially in like a super high-end restaurant, a low-end restaurant, you just need something that's going to show off

[21:20] the show off the food well, right? So you go with something simple, but a lot of high-end restaurants, like, you know,

[21:25] what, like Mark has how many different kinds of things at Del Posto. Yeah, but you know, the thing is, like, the cost investment, because at a high-end restaurant, the service, the plates that you have need to

[21:36] be of the quality that you're like, you're not like, man, this is thick and

[21:42] crappy. I could have this in my own house and it's not a big, you know what I mean? Like it needs to have a certain level of kind of quality and panache, but it needs to be tough enough to not get totally banged

[21:52] up or else the costs are going to go through the roof because each one of these plates caught. You remember he was saying how much some of those plates cost? Like those ones we shattered at our event? We shattered at the MoFat event a couple years ago, we shattered probably how many? Like 15 or 20 and they're probably like $75 plates or something like that. plates. Anyway. So, you know, if you're going to have something for a long time, you have it, but then you, you know, bringing a new plate in, you have to think

[22:16] about how many different dishes am I going to get out of this plate, right? So like I've been to restaurants and I won't name any names, but they're like, I really like this weird plate,

[22:25] right? And then because they invested in this weird plate, I get this plate 3 or 4 times during the meal on a large course

[22:30] out meal on a tasting plate, you know, on a tasting menu, and you're like, enough with the crazy plate. You know what I mean? Enough. You know what I'm saying, status? Have you ever had that happen? Where, like, someone like, they buy that, like, I don't know, it's shaped like a wave or like some sort of a crazy oval and then they bust it out like 3 and 4 times because they kind of need to. No, I haven't had that. Yeah. I mean, the flip side of this is if you have a tasting, look, so you can either go on a tasting. Some people do the almost entirely one plate, right? And then the plate's blank canvas. And then you have to choose a plate that you like that fits your style, typically white, thin, beautiful,

[23:05] right? And then you're going to need another one that is slightly dished. Like maybe you get a charger that's slightly dished. That way, if you serve something, it's not a full on soup, but it's brothy and you don't want with a wide lip, that something can go into it. Right? Then you need some form of soup. Usually, you know, I would go for a wide soup, because you go wide soup, you can do a lot more than you can do thin. It's more elegant to have like a wide soup than a thin soup, right? When you say Stas? And then, if you want a salt and pepper it, that's when you pull out the, like the cheap dish. That's where you go to Chinatown, you go, and you buy, like, you know, the less expensive stuff in the pretty colors, like the ceramics that don't cost an arm and a leg, and you can kind of buy on a lark and switch out for a plating thing here or

[23:46] there, or switch up if you have something weird into sake cups and other things that are, you know, that are

[23:52] less, you know, less expensive. So, I mean, if you had to, and even at home, I would say, and this is what I've done, is you invest in, you invest in a good, uh, very kind of neutral, but, you know, beautiful, like, basic set that allows you to do chargers, that allows you to do normal plate stuff, smaller stuff, like bread and butters, you know, B&B plates, and, uh, you know, maybe like, uh, you know, a,

[24:17] a more wide flat soup, and then, uh, a regular soup bowl, and then just buy a bunch of weird, weird stuff that you do for

[24:22] one offs, like for events and parties and stuff. What do you think? You agree with that? On the, I mean, like, you know, the exact opposite extreme of this is Grand Acre. at a lineea. you've ever eaten in Italy. You ever read there? I've eaten there a couple times and it's like all customized hyper stuff. Uh, you know, hyper customized different things, but, you know, I think that's very difficult for the average person to, A, pay for and

[24:44] B to support in their in their kind of restaurant. I mean, like he has dishes. He has dishes that are built for dishes, if that makes sense. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Dishes built for dishes for specific dishes. Pieces of ceramic things to eat dishes off. You know what I'm saying? Flatware. You know, I love, uh, I love flatware. Uh, but I don't, I, you know, I don't think about having like lots of tons of different kinds of flatware. I'm not a giant fan. I am. When I go to the old school, like, French place. Do you like going to old school French restaurants? I love it. You know, if there was a time when I, you know, I don't know, I went to a bunch of in a row and I was like, but then, and I, you know, I kind of lost the kind of love for it, but then, you know, I remember once, uh, years and years ago, I hadn't been to an old school French restaurant a long time, and I went to Danielle, uh, and I had the, like the whole, the full on old school, Danielle French, like nothing new, like nothing that had been kind of invented as a technique, you know, after

[25:42] Escolfier. Like they just busted out all, except for, it was not when you can sell was the pastry chef at the time, so there was some newer stuff there. But I mean, like, really old school French stuff. And I was like this is awesome. You know what I mean? This is like super awesome. And then they bring out the fish fork. Do you like the fish fork with the little notch in it? So for that kind of stuff, I like that. And normally, I'm like, you know, I just want some normal, like good quality flatware. I don't like a lot of weird handles. I hate the weird handle. I hate anything that feels weird in my hand. I want the I want the fork and the knife to be like a sensual extension of my body and I don't want any sort of

[26:18] weirdness there. What about you, Stas? I like you fancy. Flatware. No, but do you like weird handle? Oh, yeah. Really? I hate a weird handle. I hate a thin handle doing a thing. Well, if you're doing a thing. Wait, what kind of a thing? Like French thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, like, you know, a high quality hand, like, you don't want, you ever have one of those things where someone makes like a handle and it's like a wire

[26:40] almost, and it's like this weird created handle and you're like, when you're holding it, it doesn't feel substantial. No. So my wife designed flatware for a while. And uh, this, one of these like salt, you know how there's like every, every business has these salty old guys. He was like, we got the prototypes back and Jen was looking at him and the guy was like, hey, yeah, uh, those are nice, but then they're going to sell. And Jem was like, why not? He's like, they're just not heavy enough. It doesn't even, he's like, literally, he's like, it doesn't matter what it looks like. Put the sucker on a scale, and if the knife and fork don't weigh X amount, they will not sell. Like, so, you know, she just beefed it up a little bit so that the weight was right. But if you hold something thin or light in your hands, you're like, this is not a

[27:21] satisfying implement. So, you know, I think, and ever since then, I was like, you know, damn, this crusty old dude's right. And, you know, I feel for heft in my hand. So I like a good heft in my flatwear. Now, drinkware, it, like, you know, also at the bar, if you've ever been to Booker and Dax, we don't really stock lots of like loony, loony toony glassware, you

[27:48] know? I'm a kind of a believer in getting a relatively small number of glasses

[27:54] and, you know, just going that way. you know, but it bars a little bit different. So you could invest in a boatload of different weird things, but in general, all of the drinks are designed around certain volumes anyway. And so unless you bring in a whole new category of drinks. Like when we brought in the red hot poker drinks, while we're like, okay, now we need a coffee cup. We don't stock like 5 different coffee cups for each different kind

[28:16] of drink. You know what I mean? Each different red hot poker drink. Or, you know, most shaken drinks fit in either a koop glass or the two-thirds koop glass. And so that's all we have. You know, and it hasn't really served a purpose for us to have a zillion. In fact, we don't even have highball glasses because we don't do that kind of drink. I kept I keep on telling the bartenders, though, I'll buy the highball glasses if they can make a drink

[28:40] that's that forces me to buy them. You like highballs? Me too. What do you think of, like, the cocktail and a mason jar thing? What do I think of the cocktail and a mason jar thing? Look, I'm going to piss some people off. Mason jars. are not particularly pleasant to drink out of because the lip of them is

[28:59] really, really thick. And the only really reason to have a thick rimmed glass is like a coffee mug or something like that that you kind of want your lips to be around and you want the mass of

[29:08] the of the glass to provide some sort of either cooling and or warming property to it. In general, I favor glasses with thin rims. So, you know, coops have thin rims. Um, you know, old-fashioned glasses have thin rims. And in fact, the thinner the rim, the more I enjoy drinking out of it, as long as the glass itself has enough weight. So I like, you know, like on an old-fashioned, I think it's nice to have, uh, you know, not a preposterously thick bottom, but a fairly thick,

[29:37] bottom and a fairly thin lip. So mason jars have screw lids on the top, and so are always beefy. And they also, I think, tend to kind of obscure kind of the cocktail on the inside. Now, for a theme event, I think they're fine. Or like, you know, for like, uh, if you're going to have a lot of ice in it, in a drink, I think it's kind of okay, as long as you pre-chill it. But I never, I never reach for them. That makes sense. What do you think, Stas? I agree What do you think, Jack? You disagree with me? I can't stand them actually. Wow. I mean, like, if it's a cold lemonade with a lot of ice and a straw maybe, I guess, but I agree with you. It's not a pleasant thing to drink out of. Yeah, you're putting this in a tough spot. They use those here at Roberta's? I wasn't going to make mention of that. Yeah. See, I thought you were just trying to get me in trouble. I wasn't going to mention that. But, I mean, you know, think of like a pint glass versus a mason jar for a beer. I'd rather have a pint every time, yeah. I actually, I like pint glasses. That's like the thickest rim that I like drinking something out of is a pint glass. And I like them because they're sturdy. And when you put a pint glass down, you're not like, I'm afraid I'm

[30:45] going to break this sucker, you know what I'm saying? But you're also not like, why am I, why am I, you know, drinking out

[30:52] of, uh, out of an iPad? You know what I mean? Like, you know, Mason jar is like so thick. It's like the thickness of a freaking iPad. That wasn't meant to be a dig at any one place. I mean, you know, a lot of places do that. I know, you know, and then like the worst of all, I'm really going to get in trouble. Look, here's the thing, like, any one of you out here out there, if you use it, I'm sure you can do something to pull it off, right?

[31:15] I mean, like anything can be pulled off. Like stuff that normally I would hate. How many times does have you heard me say, man, I thought I was going to hate that crap, but it was good. A lot, right? Because I'm opinionated guy and I go, but like, have you seen these people who like put mason jars on stems? Oh man, yeah, I've seen that. Why the hell would you do that? Why would you do that? Here's another thing. Like, let's say you had a drink that you were somehow, I don't know, gonna package and sell to somebody. Then maybe it'd be fun to have a jelly jar or like a, or a mason jar because you could actually like, it would look like a canned thing that you could

[31:48] buy and you could buy it in a store. That might be fun. You know what I mean? I don't know, whatever. You're getting me in trouble, Jack. Jesus. Jesus. All right. Dear Dave at all. I was intrigued by your recipe for pressure cooked eggs, which I found on the cooking issues blog, but I've had some trouble actually making it. When I squeeze the egg whites out in into the ramekin. Some of the yolks float up to the top instead of a neatly divided muffin as you seem to get. I get a spongy mass with pockets of egg white in it. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? Also, should I be putting in some water at the bottom of the pressure cooker or not? Thanks, and keep it the good work. Good work, Alex. Okay, Alex, when I press, there's a couple different pressure cooking tricks I do with eggs. The ones where they turn brown, where it's like a humin egg,

[32:37] which you should all, by the way, anyone who's listening to this, they own on food and cooking, right? Pretty much. Anyone, right? If not, if you don't, I'm not calling you out. You shouldn't like feel embarrassed. You should just go on to your local bookstore or if you don't go to your local bookstore, go to

[32:53] Amazon and purchase Harold McGee's book on food and cooking, right? Yeah. Uh, and uh, in that book, uh, he describes uh, something called a humming

[33:02] egg, and a humming egg, uh, is an egg. So like, you know, I've described this on the show a couple times, but I'll do it again. Let's say you can't, let's say that you observe kosher laws. You're not allowed to cook on the Sabbath, so you have a large oven in a village environment, let's say, and the oven has retained

[33:21] heat. So you put all of your stuff in there the night before, including eggs into the stew, and it cooks for, you know, for a long, long period of time at a relatively, you know, decent temperature and as it cools off the coast. Now, those eggs, so-called how many eggs, they turn brown, not simply from absorbing flavors, but

[33:41] because egg whites are alkaline. And the more alkaline, you make something, the lower temperature you need for myard reactions to take place. So even at the, you know, at boiling water temperatures, you can get my yard reactions in an egg

[33:58] white, if you cook it for a long time. What's a long time? 12, you know, 18, 24, 48 hours. So I've cooked eggs at, you know, at simmer and boiling temperatures for that length of time, and indeed, they do turn brown. And not only do they turn brown, they get interesting kind of brown flavors,

[34:16] biscuity notes and stuff like that. So, you know, back when Nils and I were at the French culinary, you know, one of the things we said, well, why don't we accelerate this with a pressure cooker and

[34:24] you cook the eggs and you put them in a pressure cooker and they come out within an

[34:29] hour. They're like a nut brown, and the egg yolks smell like kind of chicken livers, and the whites are brown. You got to be, uh, but, but, here's the trick. And I think here's the here's the thing. When I do that kind of an egg, I do not crack them before I cook them. I cook them in the shell. Not only do I cook them in the shell, but I cook them at a simmer for a

[34:51] good six, 7 minutes before I put the pressure lid on and take the pressure up to full pressure.

[34:59] And the reason is, is that I want that, if I do it the other way, I get too many ruptured eggs, right? So you want them to set before you, before you take the pressure way up. Now, the other thing is, is that if one of these eggs, the shell does break, it

[35:14] leaches the brown color and the flavor out of the egg into the water because those Mayard products are water soluble. And so you want to make sure you keep the shell on when you do that. You cook it for about 45 I mean, sorry, yeah, 45 minutes to an hour at 2nd ring, which is 15 PSI, and then you let it cool slowly. Don't uncap it all of a sudden because then the eggs will blow up on the inside, right? So you let it cool down, you open it, and then you have your, your ham and eggs, and they're great. Now, the other kinds of eggs that I do when I'm doing in the pressure cooker, I separate them before I do them, right? So I do, um, I can do egg yolks in

[35:55] the, in the, in the pressure cooker and I can do egg whites in the pressure cooker. But I never cook them at the same time together. I separate them. Now, the yolks. I was trying. I can never get the yolks by themselves in the pressure cooker to taste the way that they do in a

[36:11] Hamin pressure cooked egg. They never get that chicken giblet flavor, but the trick that I do have with it when I made those muffin things is that by adding a small amount of baking powder, which

[36:21] is, again, a mistake. I wanted to add soda to it because I wanted to make it more alkaline so that it would have some of those same flavors that it gets when it cooks in the egg itself. But the person I told to go run the test for me, put in powder instead. And the actual yoke turns into that muffin thing, which isn't one of the things they did on the blog. And then I later found out. and that's in modernist cuisine as well. I later found out that you don't even need the pressure cooker. You can just mix egg yolks, sugar for flavor, and baking powder, and then steam it in a regular oven, and it turns into a bun. And the amount of baking powder you add changes the texture from something that's very kind of dense and

[36:56] cakey to something that's very kind of hamburger bunny. And, um, they're, they're good. Like they, you need to get it just right. Like, I like it when there's a little bit of soy and a little bit of sugar in it. But some people really like them and some people really don't like them, those things. And then the whites, Will Brown, you know, you make the brown, but I've never, as far as I know, I got to go back and look at the cooking issues blog, but I don't think I ever cooked them

[37:18] together, and there's no way I could ever get a yolk to float in the middle of it. That just wouldn't work, right? Right. Right. Okay. Does that answer that question? Pressure cooked eggs. We haven't done that in a while, have we? Not that I remember. No. I was like, but by the other hand, I wouldn't remember because I don't care. You know as well as I do. No, but I, no, the thing, I mean, I think I've done it at home a couple times, but we've never done it for, never done

[37:43] it. I haven't done an event in a long time. People haven't asked us to do a lot of cooking events for you, but people I mainly ask for cocktail events now. Didn't we do a cooking event recently or we did a cooking demo recently? With the series all, now that series all is coming out, hopefully people are going to ask for more cooking demos again. What do you like better? cooking demos or the cocktail demos? cocktail demos. Why? Because they're easier? Wow. All right. That's honest anyway. I miss doing the cooking demos. You know what I mean? Gotta keep your chops are hectic. Well, because in cooking demos, I'm usually doing like 18 different recipes and pissing everybody off, adding things at the end with cocktails. a certain amount of work you can add, right? Wow. And that was, I can't believe it. We just got through. We got through all the questions. Well, actually, we got a question in on Twitter. fan of Albert, not Fat Albert, which is one of my kids' favorite shows. Do you like Fat Albert? Really? I can't imagine you watching Fat Albert. Not anymore. But when you were a kid, you did? Who's your favorite character? don't remember. You don't remember the characters? Do you like Mush Mouth? Yeah. Yeah. Mubbish Maboth. Yeah, he was good, right? Yeah. Anyway, the movie, I like some of the actors in the movie, terrible. You seen it? I'm sure, no. Terrible. Terrible. Anyway. So a fan of Albert. not Fat Albert, wanted to know why there's not a problem when you freeze

[38:59] French fries before you cooked them because he's saying, doesn't, when you freeze them, wouldn't you get a lot of retrogradation in the

[39:06] French fry, and that would ruin it, right? Uh, and then say, well, maybe, um, increased water loss for increased crunchiness is why it's why it's good. Well, let me just put some stuff out on the table here, frustrating things. So, 1st of all, Star retrogradation is what happens. So when you cook a starch out, right? It loses its crystalline form and turns into what they call an amorphous form, right? And then, and that's a cooked starch product. Bread, pasta, whatever, right? Right? And that's how it goes from being a crystallizing to a not crystallizing, loses this crystal structure. Retrogradation is what happens when over time, the starch recrystallizes. And that's one of the and also at the same time, gives up water. So recrystallizes and gives up water. And that is the primary mechanism for bread going

[39:57] stale, right? And for all kind of starch things, staling, things going stale that way, like potatoes going stale, starch retrogradation. You hate that, right? Yeah. So, um, starch retrogradation is actually halted by not halted, but drastically slowed by freezing. However, so you're not retrograding when you're at a tremendous rate when you're in the freezer. Here's the trick. As you starch retrogradation is fastest, right? at refrigerator temperatures. That's why if anyone ever puts bread in the fridge. You should... I mean, I wouldn't smack them hard. Don't hurt them, but make them understand that, you know, that bread in the fridge is a horrible idea. Do you ever put bread in the fridge, does? Are you just saying that because you don't want me to get angry? No, I have friends that do it, though. What do you do to them? Nothing. Nothing? They do a lot of things bad, but I don't Like what? Give me some more. They don't take the bones out of fish. They shop for food at Walmart, all kinds of stuff. Wow. You need some new friends. Man, I like most of your friends, but like, why don't you yell at them? for other reasons because I don't like being that person that brings their job into their friendship.

[41:08] It's not job that's like life. They would tell me about like classical music or fashion or all the things that they do. We just leave it up. We leave our music. I don't know. I don't know. at least you have some people comment on this. Like, if someone does something that is like a straight up destructor of quality that's easily

[41:24] solved. Like if someone, if someone throws tomatoes in the fridge, right? Fresh tomatoes in the fridge, you're not like, hey, it doesn't really, you wouldn't, here's

[41:33] how, if they're cooking now, or if they've already brought you the tomato that they've refrigerated, there's not much you can

[41:38] say, because you don't want to insult them, right? But if, like, you see the tomato in the fridge and they're not going to cook it that night anyway. You take it and be like, you know what? You're, you know, you spend good money on this tomato and you're kind of like hosing it by putting it in the fridge. Just thought you might want to know. You know what I mean? No, you wouldn't do that? I wouldn't do it. But you're making them better. You're not hurting their feelings. You're not being a jackass. Jack, what do you think about this? Is it okay? He left. Is it okay to help someone out? It's not okay to help someone out. You're like, hey, your bread will keep longer if you take it out of the fridge. I had that happen last night. The girl brought the bread out of the fridge. Oh, Jesus, how bad was it? She toasted it. Well, that's the good news. So if you have bread that's staled, you can toast it. And as it warms, that it will get better again, but then as soon as it's cold, it's death.

[42:27] It's a nightmare. It's only good then for breadcrumbs or for rusks. Do you like the word rusk? I'm surprised. I like the very Rusk too. Anyway, so um, Star Trek for gradation happens most rapidly uh, at fridge temperatures and slightly below fridge temperatures, but uh, not at freezer temperatures, right? So freeze freezer temperature is going to be somewhere around -20 Celsius, around -4 Fahrenheit. At those places, it's pretty slowed. But the freezing rate is incredibly important. So if it takes you a 1000000000 years to freeze something, right? Then, then you get a lot of retrogradation during the freezing process. You also get a lot of retrogradation during the thawing process, which is

[43:11] why, if you're going to make French fries that are frozen, right, you want to freeze them relatively quickly,

[43:16] right? And by not super quickly, if you freeze liquid nitrogen quickly, you're not going to get the dehydration phenomena. So one of the reasons, and this, you allude to this in your question, that French fries, when they're frozen, are crunchy, is because freezing is a cellular can be looked at as a cellular dehydration

[43:31] process, because the ice crystals aren't forming on the inside, typically, of the cells of the plants or meats that you're

[43:39] freezing. The water is extracted from the cells and frozen extracellularly. vast majority of it, unless you freeze with liquid nitrogen super quickly, and you can

[43:45] get like, you know, a very quick nucleation of crystals inside the cell. That typically doesn't happen. So, um, what happening is, is that the water is getting squeezed

[43:55] out, and then when you fry it, right, that water is more easily uh, liberated from the

[44:00] French fry, hence crunchier fry. However, you're also getting rid of a lot so you can get a kind of what we call a hollow inside. Do you like the Halloween? You don't like french fries, whatever. I'm not going to talk to you, but like a hollow inside or a hollow core, which I don't really like.

[44:13] I don't really like hollow core fries. I like I like the my goal is to have the inside of the fry be like a mashed potato and the outside of the fry be

[44:20] crunchy but not hard. That's what I'm looking for. So, um, freezing a fry has similar effects to drying the fry before you do your initial, uh, so you blanch in boiling water or

[44:33] simmering water, you know, boiling water, salted, and then you typically dry it and then 1st fry 2nd fry.

[44:39] Freezing has a similar effect to drying. However, the uh, freezing uh, does uh, kind of some more all the way through the fry instead of like drying, which is more of a surface phenomenon.

[44:50] That makes sense? Anyways, point being that if you are going to, some, I'm, no, I'm jumping all over the map here, but from a bread standpoint, the general rule of thumb is that every freeze cycle and thaw cycle that you put it through is equal

[45:07] to, assuming you do it relatively quickly, and bread freezes relatively quickly because there's not that much water in it, right? So it does freeze relatively quickly. It just doesn't have that high the thermal mass, right? French fries have a higher thermal mass because they have more residual water in them before the 2nd fry. Make sense? Anyways. So, uh, the rule of thumb that I've read is that every free sauce cycle that you put it through is like an entire day of staling. So if you're gonna freeze bread, freeze it right now. Like, as soon as you say, as soon as you bring the bread home and you're like, damn, I'm not

[45:38] going to use this thing in time, freeze it right now because the freeze thaw cycle just by itself is like eating it the next

[45:44] day, right? Does that make sense? So, uh, and this is why, and you're losing on both sides on both the thawing side and the freezing side. You're losing as the bread is spending time in that hyper

[45:55] retrogradation retrograding stage of just below fridge temp to just above fringe temp. The rule of thumb that I read is about -8 to about +8

[46:05] Fahrenheit Celsius in that region, right? So, uh, you want to minimize the amount of time that your uh, products stay in that zone, which is why the cardinal rule with

[46:16] French fries done this way is fry from frozen, right? fry those suckers from frozen and don't go through repeated free saw cycles. If you go through repeated freestaw cycles, you're an enemy of quality. And that's all we got this week. If you live here in New York, stay safe. Don't slip on the way home, cooking issues.

[46:45] 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 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 as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.