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[0:31] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Ishes coming to you live from Bushwick, Brooklyn, and Roberta's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly one o'clock.

[0:43] Stas, how you doing? Good. And I forgot to say that I was joined by you because I just said hello instead. You like that better? Don't care. Don't care? No. We didn't get any new submissions for songs, Jack. Yeah, no. Jack and Joe in the engineering booth, both, by the way, accomplish musicians. Whoa, wow, wow. There it is. The call's been open. So, I mean, let's put it at the top of the show here. Maybe maybe people pay attention more. We need a new theme song. Listen, we like we got. We want to keep all the theme songs, but we want some more. Yeah, I mean, so what were you what were you thinking? I was thinking maybe like, so we have like cocktail jazz, like that, you know, the vicious, vicious vodka kind of redo, right? The fish is fish is vodka. That's, you know, from the cocktail jazz kind of, you know, theory of operation,

[1:27] like Amos Millburn, that kind of stuff. And then, you know, we have a kind of a hardcore version, right? Right? Yep. So, so what do we, what do we make? We don't have country. We don't have a twangy country theme. We could use that. We could use maybe like a hip hop beat theme. Oh, hell yeah. Right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh, hell yes. Oh, yeah. But it had to be good hip hop. I know. Either good hip hop or like dumb in a really good way. Right. Like, uh, Lonely Island, good dumb. You know what I mean? Or, like, or, like, actually good. Or actually good. Which is so hard and so hard to get hip hop that's like mostly pops in between. You know what I mean? tough. What about like a club, a club theme song? You mean like, uh, like, like what era? Like house? Like 80s house? Yeah? Or like 90s, like 90s asses stuff like James Brown is dead. Like who's that? That was LA style. Remember LA style? James Brown is dead. We could do something like that. But the problem with them is that they came out with that song when James Brown's still alive. What we really need is like a Hall and Oates type theme. Oh, Hustino, that would be amazing. I, you know, Stas, at any given moment, Stas and I might just break into a

[2:40] hollow note song at any given, any given second, it might happen. You know what I mean? Maybe instead of playing break songs, you guys can just sing Hall and Oates songs on the break. All right, that's not allowed, right? Well, I don't know. It's also a little known fact that I kind of, uh, I have singing Tourette's in that I, uh, kind of involuntarily insert curse words into the middle of songs as I

[3:02] sing them. Mostly the C word. No, I never use that. In songs? I use the F-bombing songs. You're almost just cursed. It was close. Anyway, it's a bad habit. I'm trying to break it. But, you know, that's what it is. But if someone's going to do country, like, uh, I mean, personally, Stas doesn't like country, you know why? Jack and Joe know why? Why? Because she doesn't like stories. No, I swear to God. am I lying about that? only since I started working with you. Because you talk, like, you'll play, he'll play a country song? The same country song over and over, and he'll be like, can you believe that he left his wife or his dog? And I mean, why would he do that? Same, same breakdown. He analyzes these songs, same songs. Oh, 1st of all, like, is that not true? I think some of these songs merit attention. They merit deep reading. Merit attention. What? That's not true. That's not true. hope someone's writing a story theme song for us right now. I hope so too. Look, and you know what? You know, Stas didn't grow up watching TV, so like, you know, we're, oh, yeah? How do you not like a story song? If you grew up watching Gilligan's Island. about the story. Gilligan's Island. analyze it. This is not country. Yes, because it's like the same analyzation. every... Analy, it's not even a word. Not even a word. Analysis every single time. even a word. How can I trust anything you say if you bust out non-words on me? You know? But, like, certain injustices, Jack and Joe, like, they they hit me, so I have to mention them every time. So not country but TV theme songs. You're familiar with the Gilligan's Island theme song? Oh, of course. Yeah. You familiar with the 1st season of Gilligan's Island? I'm probably. I used to watch a lot of reruns as a child of Gilligan's Island. Gilligan was like one of my best friends growing up. I watch that stuff constantly. Yeah, I bought a Gilligan hat because I liked him so much. Nice. Nice. Nice. But anyway, so the 1st season was in black and white, right? And this song, which we all know, you know, at the end, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor and Mary Ann, you know, here on Gilligan's Isle, right? right? We all know this. The original season it was, was Gilligan, the Skipper 2, the millionaire, and his wife, the movie star, and the rest.

[5:30] And the rest, the rest. There's only 2 of them. Two people. Yeah, the time it takes you to say, Professor

[5:38] and Mary Anne, you could have just said, you know, in the rest, it's like the same thing. They changed it, but I mean, I don't know, it just seems like crappy. Everyone knows Marianne's a hot one. Why didn't she get on it? You know what I mean? Anyways, I like story songs. I like to think about the stories and songs and why people made particular choices, you know, I like Merle Haggard. I mean, how do we get on this? It's all because of the theme song. All right, okay. So, uh, call it your questions too, 718-497-2128. 718-4972128 ps. Someone, I'm not going to go into the full rant because, because I, you know what? my veins will burst burst. I was up, uh, last night, uh, quite late writing. So, uh, Mike, uh, uh, uh,

[6:22] uh, uh, Mike, you got a name? I can't, you know I can't pronounce names, Mike. Mike, F. Strati Adis. That's kind of a nice name. Estratiatis. I hope I got that right. It says, hey, Dave, I was wondering about MSG. Is it safe? What's with all the gloomy posts about it? Mike, Mike, how you do this to me? Go you make me. and listen to old shows. No, stars, that's an absurd. That's absurd. Heritage website and look for MSG specific

[6:49] shows. And then when you hear you rant. okay. going to go into the full rant, Mike. Let me just say, tell you this. I'll give you a couple brief bullet points to use against people who talk about MSG. Most arguments against MSG, either rely on a number of really turd basket studies about the actual purported effects on people. And then there's a lot of hoo-ha, hokum, bad science,

[7:18] about, um, excitatory, uh, neurotoxins.

[7:22] Because if you, it turns out if you inject a lot, you know, MSG into your brain, it's not a good idea. Don't inject anything in your brain, by the way. But, you know, there's a bunch of research that neonatal primates can get brain damage if you give them large amounts of MSG, um, you know, without anything else, and it's because, uh, you know, um, it can cross the blood brain barrier in primates, but not

[7:45] in, in, in humans. In fact, your body produces MSG, your body produces MSG, uh, not MSG, but it's because not monosodium, but it produces, um, uh, it produces glatamic

[7:57] acid in your, in your head, it's used as a, as a, um, neurotransmitter. It's then converted to glutamine and transported back across your blood brain barrier to be

[8:05] extreted. So you're a net producer of it. There's no credible, decent evidence that it's bad for you. You don't consume enough of it for it to cause your blood levels to spike in any way unless you would eat it pure and a large amount of it. And the only decent studies done are double blind control studies where the actual MSG was administered in gel

[8:27] caps that couldn't possibly be detected by taste. And all of those show that there's no problem. And yet, despite all this, Nastasia continues to believe that she has some sort of reaction to it. Sure or false does. Nope, I just don't eat it anymore. What kind of a, what kind of a horse crap is that? Trying to get out of saying here. I just don't need it. I eat it in your snacks. We don't use MSG in the snacks for consumption. We use it in our tests. You only use it in tests. Jesus. No brains. No brains. Stas, no brains. Now, we use it like I use MSG. Piper, when he was with us, brought a lot of MSG. we did it to test snacks because what you do is when you're testing snacks out, you want to test how much kind of umami punch you need to add to the snacks in order to get kind of the flavor level where you want.

[9:19] And then the, the part part is, is that to sell snacks to people, because people are irrational about this, you have to have them be MSG free.

[9:28] So then you have to go back and you have to punch that umami the same amount without using MSG. So typically if you don't want it to taste like, um, uh, kombu or dashi, you, uh, you add things like uh, yeast extracts or, you know, other broken down uh, protein uh, products.

[9:45] Anyways. So there you have it, Mike. My non-rant version of MSG, but I'm sure that Jack can find when I went off on it before. Oh, yeah, that was like the unplugged. Well, I mean, because I was so loud you had to... Yeah, last time you were really getting in. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, so you can't you can't do the same thing. This is what I want to go off on. Someone has to explain this to me. Are you guys shoppers at Subway? The store that sells submarine sandwiches with that bread with that. That's really bad. Yeah, do you go? My kids. I haven't been in years. I told you my kids love it, right? Because they get to customize their sandwich. told you that. Did they tell you their new their new craziness, the new thing? Oh, sriracha? Oh, they have sriracha? No I didn't know that. I mean, everyone's got sriracha. You know, there's a sriracha. a Sriracha documentary, but I haven't seen it yet because you have to buy it. So I have to buy it and look, it's like a half inch documentary in Sriracha, and they interview the guy and he's like, everybody loves my product. I can't help it. If people stop loving my product, maybe I'll stop making it, but everybody loves it. But he doesn't have that accent. Great story. Yeah, it's a good story, right? And one of the PAs gets his eye sprayed with Sriracha in the outtakes, which is hilarious. But anyway, no, not a sriracha. So here's what happens. I guarantee it, because I know how ideation stuff happens in these corporations, because, you know, we've done it a couple of times for people. they're like, listen, guys, this is like, this is the subway, the boardroom or whatever. sitting around the ideation room. They're like, hey, hey guys, listen. We want to sell pizza, but really, we're a sandwich company, right? So we don't really have the, you know, we don't really have the wherewithal to sell pizza to people, right? Because we're a sandwich shop, yeah? So we have to like show, we have to demonstrate something's wrong with a regular pizza or some point of difference so that people will buy our subway style pizzas instead of a real pizza

[11:27] they could get across the street, right? Right? Okay, so, guys, come on. What's wrong with pizzas? Wait, what do you got? Hey, Larry, what do you got? Uh, I don't know, man. too greasy. Yeah, it's a good one. too greasy, too greasy. Hey, Harv, Harv, what do you got? Pizza's a 23 dimensional boss. They're 23 dimensional. That's it. We're going to make a flat pizza. So swear to swear to God, Subway has a new product called flat pizza because they perceived that the problem with pizzas is that they're

[11:57] two, three-dimensional and need to be flattened out. What kind of dope were those dudes smoking when they came up with that idea? Who thinks that a problem with pizza is that it's too freaking flat? And by the way, the image that they have on their freaking advertisements is like a deep dish freaking thing. It's the least flat pizza. You know, they have no mechanism to actually make a flat pizza. They can't make like a cracker crust. They can't do... Fire baked style. What does that even mean? What does that mean? It has no meaning for me. Flat pizza and it doesn't trip off the tongue. It's the worst word for a product, and people, they're 1000000s of dollars involved in this decision. Like, like, many dozens, 100s of people had

[12:45] to, had, like, what kind of ogre runs that company such that no one underneath was like, boss, this idea sucks the royal root.

[12:55] This makes no freaking sense, boss. No one checked them on that. It's Elios, though, basically. I don't even know what it, what's an Elias? You don't know what that is, the frozen flat pizzas. But what do you mean flat? Pizzas are by their nature flat. There's like, it was like, I'm not like, oh, oh, you know what? I'm so sick of these kind of like three-dimensional globe shaped puzzle pizzas that I've been getting recently at the local pizzeria. The thing about flat pizza is that it's the same amount of syllables as flat pizza. It doesn't save you any time. The name. It's bad Yeah, but you know what? They like, hey, boss, we can't trademark flat pizza because it's just the word

[13:33] flat, and the word pizza, and everybody already knows pizza is flat. Well, we can trademark flat pizza. This is genius. The more I think about it. But you know what? How does it do people make 1000000s of dollars doing this? Like, how is this? How is this like, how is this possible? I don't I don't understand it. Someone explained to me an actual valid marketing scheme behind this. Like, I, like, as, uh, was it, what, Barnum said that no one, uh, no one, uh, lost money, uh, underestimating the stupidity of the American

[14:04] public. Is that was that Barnum? I don't agree with that. I agree that we're a good natured people and that we can be reasoned

[14:10] with to prove him wrong. Don't buy a flat pizza. Maybe it tastes delicious. In which case, I don't know, but Jack doesn't think because Jack doesn't like their products, so he doesn't think it tastes delicious. I like their cookies. Oh, you like their cookies? Why the cookies? don't know. You have the option to get like chips or a cookie with your sandwich and I've enjoyed those cookies. Yeah. They're kind of like uh, kind of gooey. Yeah. Yeah. You never had you never had a subway cookies? You ever had a subway sandwich? Yeah? Yeah. I had one literally the other day because my kids were like, we're going to go to Subway, dad. Oh, great. Okay, uh, Timothy Helmuth, uh, writes in, uh, regarding apricots. Hello, Dave Nastasia at all. I've enjoying a lot of delicious sun-dried apricots lately. The really sour ones, so presumably the Blenheims, right? Because those are the ones you get that are sour. Uh, and got to thinking they'd make a great flavor for a soda. They probably would. Any tips on how to extract the flavor of the apricots ideally without using alcohol. I hope to share the finished product with some teetotalers. I'd love to hear your thoughts practical or otherwise, thanks, Timothy. Okay, listen. Uh, So the main question, obviously, is do you have a centerfuge, right? So let's just assume you don't have a centrifuge. You're going to want to go to modernist pantry.com. ModernistPantry.com and get yourself some Pectanex Ultra SPL if you don't already have it. And because what we're going to do is we're going to break down the pectin in the apricot. If you don't, it's going to be like a nightmare. Also, apricots take a long time to rehydrate. I think you remember there was a caller who called in before because they were doing prunes and apricots in a bag and the apricots wouldn't hydrate

[15:48] and the prunes would, takes a while. And my experience has been making alcoholic products with apricots in a centrifuge that I literally have to blend it, spin it, and then blend it again to get like the full flavor of the apricot

[16:02] out just because it's so resistant sometimes to rehydration. So what I would do is I would mix uh, the apricots like um, like uh, maybe start with like 4 to one in water. So, like 100 to 400. You might have to go a little more. You might have to go 100 apricots, 500 water. Get warm water, right? It can even be, it can be make it warm. Take that back. Make it warm. Uh, you know, like body temper thereabouts. Add some enzyme, add like more than I would normally add. Add like 4 grams per liter of Pecninex ultra SPL and blend the hell out of it. So what you're doing here is that the Pectinex is going to start breaking down the internal, uh, you know,

[16:43] the, the, the, the actual structure of the apricot and allow you to extract more of the flavor. It's also going to break down some of the soluble peck. I want to cook it beforehand because then it makes it more resistant, my feeling is, I don't have improved it, but I think it makes it more resistant to the

[16:55] Pectinex. So you're going to be breaking down the products. Then you're going to want to strain that, right, through like a fine strainer. Don't go, Sheen, don't go, what's the word I'm looking for you? Coffee filter on it yet because it's just going to be frustrating. Then reblend the pulp that's left with Pectanex again. and some more water and let it sit for a while to really break down, blend it again, let it break down, strain it out, then put that sucker through a coffee

[17:25] filter, and it should, uh, you should be able to get a product that's clear enough to make a soda out of. If not, you could probably let it settle overnight. Once you've added the

[17:36] pectinex and strain it out, you should be able to let it settle overnight and then rack the stuff off the top. But, I mean, I know I've done it with centrifuges, and it's delicious, but it's just your yields aren't very high on those apricots, uh, unless you do, unless you do that 2nd rewetting, which, which, I call

[17:54] remillage after the French stock technique of rewetting the

[17:59] bones. Yeah? rewriting the bones. Should we take a break? Take a commercial break. Come right back with cooking issues.

[18:17] Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins from Fairway Markets. I've devoted my idiot career to the old ways, the old recipes, the old tools, the old geography of where serious foods come from for centuries, and I've strived to make these wonderful things available to New Yorkers for 37 years, so it's a

[18:38] fete accomplete for us to support Heritage Radio Network. And I hope you will too, and I hope you'll keep tuning in. For more information, please visit Fairway Market.com.

[18:55] Hey, guys. We on? Yeah. Hey guys, what's Steve Jenkins? He sounds like some voiceover actor. That's because he was a voiceover actor. Come on. I'm serious. For real. For real. He spent some time doing voiceover work. Maybe, I don't know. I'll have to look up his like his credits. Maybe you heard him somewhere. Or maybe it's just like that voice is like, you know, the man's got a golden voice. Does he do a cheese show for you guys? We profiled him on evolutionaries, which is that really awesome thing we do where we do like radio documentaries on people's lives and tell their stories. He was episode number one. So I recommend that. There's a lot of his voice, and he says some pretty cool stuff talking about like, you know, he used to import illegal cheeses, and the people didn't know any better at the airports because they couldn't read French, and it was all like

[19:39] raw illegal cheeses. I remember that time. And in fact, he used to get really, really angry, whenever someone in the media would point out that New York City, I mean, like virulently

[19:52] angry, when people in the media would point out that cheesemongers in New York were bringing in illegal

[19:59] cheeses because he didn't want the tap to stop flowing. You know what I mean? So he was nervous about it and he was like, can't can't you just shut up and like let me bring in the cheese, you know what I'm saying? That was in the old days. So he doesn't do that anymore. He's too big. been too outed or what? can't speak to that. Ah, I don't know. Yeah. But apparently everything was fake back before him. Even when they were selling things, they called Canne Bear or whatever, it wasn't actually that. Right. Well, you know, look, that, that, I mean, it's hard for, it's hard for people to remember unless they, unless they, you know, think back to it. So I 1st started shopping for with, you know, at Fairway for his chief stuff in, I don't know, I don't know, like the early 90s or

[20:40] mid, mid 90s, I guess, when they moved the fairway, when they 1st created the uptown fairway over in Harlem, where my studio was at the

[20:47] time. And yeah, it was like a revelation. Because, you know, you've been shopping at places that you thought, like, had decent cheeses for years, like

[20:54] Zabars and, um, you know, those kind of joints, and then, uh, they, they really, they really upped the game. You know, it's like people, uh, again, people forget. It was kind of, um, a groundbreaking place to to buy cheese. I didn't live down near, you know, the downtown cheese shop. So my expo, my early exposure to that, that kind of level of cheese stuff was uptown at

[21:14] the, uh, at the fairway. So, yeah, kudos. But he's not like, the voice is not quite, it's not Casey Casem. It's a mix. Like where is it? It's like in the voiceover world. I got to figure out where it is. anyway. Uh, and you're going to look up his uh, his credits. Yeah, I'll see if I can find, I can dig it. We'll see All right. Paul writes in regarding Benzowet. So we're on preservatives and other stuff today, right? Sodium benzoid. It's a good word, isn't it? I would like to hear Alec Baldwin say Benzwood. I bet he'd be awesome at it. Hi, all. I've just been listening to episode 149. Yes, I'm a few weeks behind. You were answering a question about stabilizing fruit juices. And I think I understood that Piper uses benzowate. I think that Piper uses benzoate to prevent microbial growth. I don't recommend doing this because a few years ago. It was shown that benzowit can convert to benzene over time, benzene nasty, by the way, in case you guys don't remember your chemistry. Uh, convert to benzene over time, especially in acidic environments, and especially in the presence of vitamin C. I think Piper was aware of that. I don't know how much bends would he use in his whatever. I know this because I was working at the time at a company that produces food

[22:24] supplements, including a berry extract. And due to regulatory changes, we had to change the preservative that we were using. I was researching alternatives and came across this issue. If my memory serves me correctly, I'm sure it does. The major soft drink manufacturers removed Benzowit from their products when this problem was identified. I did some accelerated tests, incubating at warm temperatures, and found that

[22:44] benzi did in fact form when we added benzowit to the product, the berry product they were making. In the end, we chose sorbet, which chose sorbet, which also avoided the problem that a small proportion of people can taste

[22:58] benzewit. I recommend that benz would not be used in fruit juice applications, or if it is used, that you send samples away for testing, so you can determine if

[23:06] benzene does form over the duration that you keep your products, keep up the great work. Paul, thanks. I love that kind of follow-up. So that's good information. People can take, you know, that's good stuff. Um, We got a Sam right saying, hey, Stas. He says, hey, Nastasia, because that's what you should say. Thanks for answering my questions on the radio show. I now have request. Dave is an undoubted ninja of kitchen ergonomics. I don't know about that, and layout. Could you see if he will post an in-depth photo tour of his home kitchen? Thanks, Sam. Not quite done yet, Sam. When I actually get my uh, when I get my oven customized, maybe, when I get my oven customized. You like my new kitchen better? Yeah, really clean. Yeah, but it's like it's galley. But all my equipment's new. That's why you like it. Yeah. Won't be new for long. Sure I'll ruin it. All right, so Sam, once I get it done, I'll do that. We're getting I'm still changing it. Not quite. It's not quite photo ready yet. Brian writes in from San Diego about Koji, which has been the topic that I've been

[24:10] remiss in getting the information on. had a lot about. Today cooking issues crew. Longtime listener. I don't have a question, but was listening to your show and also wondering about how to make Aspergillis. I can never pronounce it, like Orizi, you know, the rice, the rice base one, the one that they use for Koji. Aspergillis Sports to make Koji. Uh, in case the moment... Whoa, really? I can't say mumbofuku now. In case the Mamafuku people don't get back to you, Dave, I found a couple of resources on the web, which you may or may not already know about, it seems publicly available information on this topic is scarce.

[24:38] Uh, one is, uh, um, uh, tailor-made, uh, ak.org, uh, growing Koji for homebrewing sake. And the other one is, of course, well-known, the Nordicfoodlab.org, their blog, and their thing, Koji History and Process. The Nordic Food Lab, for all you don't know, is a great resource, like, you know, they they do a great job. They document everything they do and they're very open source about information. They don't hide information and they do a lot of work with Koji and they publish it. So I actually went to the tab you sent me and it's it's good. And of course, Shirtleaf, who, you know, as we, anyone who's heard me

[25:15] say knows that I learned, you know, most of what I know about tofu from Shirtleaf, even though

[25:19] he, you know, basically called me a jerk for asking whether I could use Edamame to make

[25:24] tofu. He was like, why would you do that? you're evil. He thinks I'm an evil. Well, in the one phone conversation he had with me, he basically he intimated that he wouldn't want to have dinner with me and that he thought it was a bad

[25:35] human being. I mean, he didn't come out and say it like that, but that's just a vibe I got over the phone. You know what I mean? He's like, why is this Eastern son of a, whatever? He doesn't, he doesn't talk that way. He like all peace and love and whatever. Uh, but anyway, uh, his website, www.soyinfocenter.com, uh, books forward slash 154,

[25:56] History of Koji, um, is there. But I looked up an interesting article. Because the issue is this. Look, everyone knows you can make Koji, you can buy the, you can buy the, you know, the, you know, the

[26:07] Koji candy seeds for it and do it. The question we had a while back was, how do you know if it's safe? And the problem is, is that some strains of Aspergillis, right? um, like flavas and whatnot, can produce uh, Aphletoxin, and Aphletoxin, you know, for those of you that, you know, pay attention to sort of thing you want to stay away from because even minute quantities. It's one of those no known safe kind of exposure things because minute quantities can be like viciously carcinogenic.

[26:35] And so this is why we screen things like peanuts, which can grow alpha toxin

[26:39] for, um, you know, for the growth of it and whatnot. So the question is, why, uh, don't people get poisoned all the time from um, things that are done made with Koji because they're all done with different uh, aspergillis strains. And how is it that you can select for the safe ones uh,

[26:58] in, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, either home, wild or pre, you know, industrial setting, how do you choose to, and make sure that you only get the ones that don't

[27:10] produce afletoxin. So there's a, and a lot of people have taken, done studies and shown that the, um, that

[27:19] Aphletoxin, uh, is not present in products commercially that are produced with uh, Koji molds,

[27:26] right? So, you know, soys and misos and things like that. And a couple of ones have shown that at miso, miso itself is not hospitable for the production of alpha toxin, but it's

[27:36] aged for a long time. So the question you want to know is, how can I guarantee that the mold that I'm growing right now on my

[27:43] coji is safe to use right now, not necessarily in an age product, not necessarily in a secondary product, but how do I guarantee that it's safe in all points of its existence?

[27:53] That's an interesting problem. And as of 2001, which is the last article that I have on it, they hadn't really 100% solved it, but the most interesting article I saw on it was called

[28:04] Affletoxin genes, and the Affletoxinogenic potential. That's a good word, right? I can't I could try that twice. Aphletoxin, whatever, of Koji molds, um, by, um, Oh my god, I can't read my writing on what the person's name was, it broke. It was the last name, BR. Oh, no. Vanderbroke, Vanderbroke, P. Vanderbroke, uh 2001. And it was interesting. So what they said was, is, look, they analyzed a bunch of strains of Aspergillis that they found in various products that

[28:41] have been produced, some kind of artisanal wild fermentation

[28:44] types and some commercial types. They found in that, in that, they found some strains of normal aspergillis

[28:53] oaks. I can't pronounce that. I don't know why it's got a mental block on. I can't do it. that actually had the genes encoded in them to some of the genes encoded in them to produce

[29:03] appletoxin, but did not, in fact, produce appletoxin, which is difficult if you want to make a rapid assay to make sure that there's no appletoxin in it, right? Uh, They also found, um, certain uh,

[29:14] Aspergilis Flavis, uh, uh, molds in there that were afhletoxin producing strains, but they didn't find any afhletoxin.

[29:22] Now, the Nordic food lab has a couple of points on this where they say, look at, uh, you know,

[29:28] the, the, um, Aphletoxin, when it's produced, those strains that produce that tend to inhibit yeast

[29:35] growth. And so people that are doing things like brewing sake, where you have a lot of alcohol involved,

[29:41] the only aspergillis strains that don't produce athletoxin are selected out. So that's how the safety goes. But we're not talking about that because we're not talking about maintaining a culture for, you know, generations. We're talking about a wild thing and how to prove it safe. So here's what's interesting. These guys said, look, we, we, we made a bunch of Koji, and uh, it didn't produce uh, athletoxin, right? So they said, okay, I'm going to take a strain of aspergillis that's known to produce athletoxin. Like one that we bought specifically to produce Aphletoxin. And they, because their thing was, well, maybe this, because like Koji fermentation is solid state fermentation under very particular circumstances for fairly short periods of time.

[30:23] So they said, okay, look it, we're going to put the, uh, we're going to put this known athletoxin generator into a typical Koji production. And lo and behold, it produced like 0 almost, like hypertrace amounts of appletoxin. they're like, hey, that's pretty safe. So they're like, well, maybe it's something about the, the actual substrate that they're, we're growing it on that's stopping at producer. Instead of running it for 24 hours, they ran it for like a week or something like this. And after a week of incubation or a week and a half , then there were measurable and meaningful amounts of appletoxin present. So their conclusion, which I think interesting, is that these strains that can produce athletoxin take longer to start producing the athletoxin in the solid state fermentation that we do in Koji,

[31:09] take longer to produce the athletoxin, then typically they would have to produce it when you're making the Koji. So if you're going to use a while fermentation of Koji, then I wouldn't let that aspect of the fermentation go on longer than, you know, like, you know, the day or so it takes to do it.

[31:26] Uh, and I would read that article because it made for interesting reading, but that's the closest I could get for an answer on how can you

[31:32] guarantee without having, uh, you know, a microbiology lab present, how can you guarantee the safety of any given

[31:39] wild uh, coji that you're making? Do you think that's a good final answer on that? think that's great. You know, whatever. Uh, you know what, you know, you know, you know what? that you need that feedback. You know what, you guys, you know what, you guys don't get? you don't get the look on Stas's face. It's like, it's like, someday I'll be able to describe it. She's like, yeah, great. I know you need the feedback. Yeah, all right. Kyle Kleberg. I like that name, Kleberg. Kleberg, because I like Stanfriedberg. you ever heard of Stanfriedberg? No comedian. From the 50s? He was an advertising guy, like kind of, I guess, pre- maybe pre-madmen. Yeah, pre-Madman era advertising guy who he did a bunch of radio shows. Anyway, for those of you who are history of advertising buffs and like

[32:25] 50s comedians, Stanfriedberg's the man. Anyway, Kyle Kleberg says, hey there, I've got a question for the cooking issues. Our restaurant recently acquired 100 pounds, £100 of

[32:36] high quality spot prawns, and it just owes spot prawns. Do you like spot prawn? you ever have that? It's West Coast, but it's northern. You never hang out up there, right? Like BC and all that stuff. They're supposedly good. you know, we don't get them here. You know, like, at least I don't get him here. Of high quality spot prawns. And as it just so happens about two-thirds of them were carrying eggs. Well, discussing a plan, my chef, in his infinite wisdom, took a ninth pan full of

[33:00] row and toss it into the Vitaprep with a healthy dose of neutral oil to make shrimp oil.

[33:06] As you can imagine. We ended up with about 6 cups of shrimp aioli, yes, because it has eggs. They will emulsify the hell out of stuff. Anyways. So I came to you guys with questions hoping you can help me write this. First, would the eggs of prawns be called row or coral? and secondly, is there a way to purposely break this emotion? break this

[33:28] emotion. And I have a song going to take these broken wings and learn to fly again. Yeah, then? Learn to live so free. Yeah, what is that? That's the that's the song. Blackbird? No. Is that? Learn to fucking learn a list of free, really? I think so. No, no, it's different. It's different. Jack will know. Jack or Joe will know. Anyway. And second, is there a way to purposely break this emulsion and turn it back to an oil of some sort while maintaining the flavor of the raw

[33:53] eggs? If this is a lost cause, I still think I still have some reserve to make the compound butter, which I hope will be a better plan. However, if I've learned a thing from listening to cooking issues, if the things are not always as simple as they seem. Thanks, Kyle Kleberg, uh, the polloose in, uh, what's ID, I wonder? Washington, I understand. Maybe Idaho? Really? Like on the border? Really? I don't know. Okay, so listen, 1st of all, when you say carrying eggs, I'm presuming

[34:21] you meaning on the outside on their swimmerettes. So here's a deal. So Decapod, you know, crustaceans, the way that they, the way that they do their, the way that they do their business, 1st of all, interesting spot prawns, that if you want a little thing about spot

[34:35] prawns, and I got some of this information from it, www.organicocean.com. It's brought, and I can't remember because it's been a long, long time since I've done my, I went through a kick where I read a lot of lobster biology stuff because I was thinking about writing an article for the New York

[34:49] Times and they wanted me to prove that whether or not lobsters could feel

[34:54] pain. I was like, I can't I can't do that. It's not possible. anyway. So I can't remember where the lobsters do this, but spa prawns are cool because they're big and delicious. apparently. But they uh, they change sex. Then they become females, then they do their eggs, and then when they're changing their sex, they're called trannies. How awesome is that? That's what it says according to the website. Anyway, um, so anyway, in Decapod crustaceans, when the females are going to lay the eggs. Typically when you have a lobster and you have what's called the coral. Do you like that? The red stuff when it's cooked out. Yeah. Yeah, when you have the coral, as opposed to the tamale, which is like kind of the gut. You like the tamale? but you like the coral. Okay. Good to know. So, I don't really, okay. I'll lay it out on you. I am not a huge fan of the tamale. Like I can eat a little bit of it, but I don't want to pound that stuff. You know what I mean? You know? No. Anyways, so the coral is the eggs on the inside of the lobster, right? No one, at least not on this coast, eats the, and when

[35:55] I, when you say that the shrimps are carrying eggs, I think you mean on the outside of the shrimp, right? So what happens is, is the lobster, or in this case, the shrimp passes the egg from the inside of its body to the outside, and as it gets passed to the outside, that's when it gets

[36:10] fertilized, and then it glues it to the underside of its body. So when you get a lobster out, a female lobster out of the out of the water, you look at the bottom up. you know, lobsters stay females. They stay freaking females. don't do this weird tranny stuff. Anyways, what am I thinking? So like you turn it over and they're called buried, right? They're not like buried like in the ground, like not like gravod lobster, but like buried like not berry farm. And because they put the eggs all on the underside of their body. Now, lobster folk, when they get buried lobsters are supposed to throw them back, like notch the tail and throw them back because they know that's a producing female,

[36:47] right? And you want to leave the producing females in the water so that they make more lobsters because that's your bread and butter, right? You know? So you never get buried, you get females, but you never get ones that are

[37:00] buried because they throw them back. So, um, so anyways, so I would, I would not call it coral because

[37:07] as far as I know, coral is only when it's on the inside of the animal, since these have made it to the outside and are fertilized, right? Presumably, I don't know whether the fertilization makes them change flavor or texture or what. I have no idea because, you know, I don't have any experience with it. But interesting, these guys at Organic Ocean said. Don't, uh, they said, some spot prawns are brought in from the United States, where they are caught sooner, smaller, and often buried, i.e. before

[37:38] spawning and with eggs attached. One Asian grocer is selling live British Columbia spot prawns, which would have to

[37:45] have been to the United States. The BC season opens later when the prawns have grown to full size and are about to die naturally. So buyer, beware. So organic ocean believes that you, uh, that, you know, they, I guess they lay eggs and then and then, uh, and then they croak. Right? Because it says, uh, they say that a wild BC spot prawns are hermaphroditic, born as males. The female sex organs on their tails become more pronounced at about 2 years of age, at which point they refer to as transitioning prawns or trannies. With the final 2 years of their four-year lifespan sent as females. So they do their spawning and then they're ready to die, so you should take it afterwards. So that's just on whether to call it coral or whether they call it, um, row, I would call it row or eggs. Now, on the breaking of it, You have very few people who want to break this kind of egg

[38:34] emulsion and I wasn't able to find anything offhand that would break

[38:40] it. The only easy thing that I thought you could, you could do 2 things. One, you can add so much oil to it that it, um, that it breaks, right? Because that's one way to break a mayonnaise is to is to stop adding water and to just add enough oil like, you know, 95% so that you actually start breaking the emulsion and you get oil coalescence.

[39:02] That should work, but the problem with that is, is you will be adding so much oil to it that you probably won't have the flavor transfer. The other thing, and you might have already tried this. Um, is you might, because you said, I don't know whether I read it, but, you know, you intimated that you didn't want to heat it because you didn't want to change the flavor, right? Didn't he say that? Did you say that? Yeah. I would freeze it. I would freeze it and then thought and then freeze it and then thought and then freeze it and you thought. And each time you freeze thought, you should be destabilizing that emulsion. And hopefully after one or 2 free thaw cycles, because you haven't added any stabilizers other than the stabilizers naturally present in the prawn eggs,

[39:45] hopefully, it'll break. And then you'll be able to get, you know, and if you have a centrifuge, obviously, I would free saw and then try this interfuse. But that, that should work. And, you know, I would stop it from, I would not let it get exposed to oxygen while you're doing all that freestyling. Uh, but, you know, so like put it in a backbag or in a zippy, and then freeze thought a couple times, see where that works. But if you try it, please, uh, send me the answer because I want to know whether whether it worked, right? Okay, Kurt writes in. Hello, everybody. I've just recently become head bartender of a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right next to the MIT campus. The building complex that we are in host a Cambridge Science Festival every year. I bet that's a pretty good science festival. Yeah, yeah. And has asked if we would like to be a part of it. I've been using a handful of modern techniques behind the bar, Pectin X slash Agar clarification, carbonation, EC infusions, and the like.

[40:40] I added the at the lake. wasn't in there. So the chef decided I'd be the best candidate for the job. I made an off the cuff comment about how cool it would be to have a rotovap and centrifuge to play around with for this presentation. And a day later, I got an email asking exactly what I needed for equipment.

[40:58] These guys have a lot of lab connections. I've attached the email I've received with some questions about equipment. Also, I'll be giving a presentation to 75 to 100 people, which I've not done before, and was wondering if you might have any general advice on giving demos to an audience like

[41:13] that. I clearly plan on ignoring that Gemma advice that Thomas Keller gave you last week, where he called me an idiot. Thanks, Kurt. Okay. Uh, and uh, the attached questions are uh, regarding the Centerfusion Roto app. I have a few ideas on who to ask, but a few questions for you. What size centrifuge? Do you need tubes? What size roto app? I assume you need a vacuum for the roto app, and what about the cleanliness of a roto app? Um, Typically the flash you used or cleaning a glass cleaner and autoclay, but is this okay for food, especially if they previously been used with dangerous chemicals,

[41:45] um, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so look it. So a lot depends. Let's start with the centrifuge. Let's start with a presentation, right? When you're going to do a technique. When you're going to do a demo for a lot of people with modern techniques. People like to see rotovaps run, right, Stas? Weve done that a bunch of times. Yeah, they like to see it run. Here's the issue. If you aren't really good at running a roto app, it's going to take you a while to set the sucker up, and it's going to take

[42:14] you, when you 1st setting up a roto app, assuming you haven't played with one before, and you put food products in, it's going to boil over.

[42:21] I'm just telling you that right now. It's going to boil over. And that's a nightmare. And let me tell you from experience. You don't want to boil over in front of a big audience because it makes you feel really stupid, right? Right? The other thing that happens is when you're talking during a demo, here's what people don't like. They don't like to sit and have you sit there and stare at the machine for like half an hour

[42:41] well as distilling, right? So you're going to have to bring someone with you that after you, you know, wave your hands over

[42:47] it and do the magical touches on it and everything like that and get the sucker running, right? And during that time when you get the sucker running, you can't be talking or doing anything because you're going to have to making sure the sucker doesn't boil over on you. And unless, you know, unless you don't want to do a good job. Like, there's always that, right? But you don't want to sit there staring at it. So someone's got to run it. The other problem with the roto app is, is that roto apps take a long time to produce appreciable amounts of product. So what I would do is choose a product in a Roto app that you can make that you can give relatively small tastes

[43:17] of, like really small, like less, like quarter ounce, like little skim shot coach, like really strong flavored stuff that you can give small amounts of.

[43:25] I would stay away and you're going to want to make them beforehand. So even though things like fresh herbs are the best things to do in Rotovat, where one of the best things to do in Rotovat. You don't want to do that because then you can't make that sucker the night before. It brings me to my next point. Never demonstrate a roto app that you haven't fired up before and run for at least a couple of hours.

[43:45] You're going to need this Roto app well in advance so that you can A, make the product that you're going to hand out at the event. And B, get the hang of using it, right? You're also going to need a vacuum pump, obviously. You're gonna want as good a vacuum pump as you want. The chem folks don't need a particularly good vacuum pump because they're not worried about getting good recovery of flavor,

[44:05] right? Ideally, what you would like to have is a bunch of liquid nitrogen and a cold finger, right? Because, chem, they're like, well, just chill it with tap water. Just chill it with tap water. Nah, that's crap. crap flavor. That's not, that's not right. You can't just chill your condenser with tap water and expect to get a decent flavor out of it because

[44:26] then, 1st of all, you're going to need to run your bath at 60 degrees Celsius,

[44:30] right? 140. So like, why bother? Then you're dealing with you're dealing with 60. Then you're dealing with 40 and change as the temperature of your of the actual product in there that's being distilled and you're dealing with 20 degrees, give or

[44:44] take is the temperature, the tap water that you're running off of circulating through your condenser. And you have a very small temperature difference between your product, like, and

[44:54] your, uh, and and your, uh, what's it called? your chiller. I like to have like very large temperature differences, right? And I like to keep my stuff as cold as possible. So like when I'm running a condenser or regular condenser, I run it. of doing alcohol, which is illegal, but hey, at like -20 degrees Celsius, um, and you need a chiller for that. And that, and then when you, when you bring a chiller into the, into the fact, you can run a

[45:17] roto vap with a water bath and a vacuum pump off of a single socket. You can't reliably run a roto vap with a chiller off of one socket. I've seen them blow in demos all the time, all the time. Here's another thing. People are going to, so, so I, if you can get the liquid nitrogen, get it. If not, get a chiller or find something that you can do hotter and it's not going to hurt it like chocolate, you know, like

[45:41] cocoa nibs or something like that, but they boil over. Another thing. Get the biggest freaking distillation flash that you can get, right? Now, everyone's always going to be like, here's a liter flask. And they're going to give you one with a tiny little free game. what's the thing I'm looking, so I'm holding up tiny. what's this word status? Neck, neck, tiny neck. Uh, and and the problem is, it's hard to load stuff in and out of it, and they tend to boil over more violently with the thing when they boil over.

[46:08] So you want a big as flask as possible. Never fill it more than a quarter full, especially when you're learning. Otherwise you're going to have boilover problems, right? Get the biggest around. It's called vapor duct, which is how they, the actual vapor gets transferred into the condenser area. The biggest one, you can. They, tem folks always mess up. They always give you the small thing. Why? Because they're very rarely doing rotary evaporation and quantity. They doing it for more like for analysis. And so it's not, they don't, they don't deal usually in, in like kind of those large style quantities that we're dealing with. So those are some of the recommendations. They also, like, there's inherent problems with most rotive apps and that the stuff that's being distilled down, isn't getting chilled properly, so you're going to want to chill the receiver so that you don't redistill off of it too many times. Um, on centrifuges. You know, if they're going to let you use one, yeah, get new buckets. I mean, I almost exclusively use 3 liter benchtop centrifuges, swinging bucket centrifuges, and they're great for cocktails. Great, along with Pectinex. But, you know, if they have a 500 mil fixed liter rotor, the, the, you know, it has, you know, those, the tubes in

[47:16] it, and the handle, you know, you just do a couple more spins in those, they usually do higher G's anyway, and some of those things, you know, I wouldn't use it for everyday restaurant service, but for a demo, you can get a couple extra spins out of it.

[47:27] I once in Columbia did a demo for a 100 more than a 100 people using that tiny $200

[47:33] centrifuge we got on Amazon. I just had to sit there for 4 hours spinning, you know, tiny tube after tiny tubes. So you can get any of that, you know, that you that you need. Oh, so the size on the road about the size itself of the road of app is not so important. You want a 3 liter flask and probably like a one liter receiver. Uh, if you can get a, uh, um, an LN, um, a

[47:56] cold finger condenser for it. do that on the cleaning, I'd be a little careful. I don't know what kind of chem, presumably the people who have it know what kind of chemicals have been put into it. If you can get new glassware, get new glassware, uh, there can be some persistent nasties that get into, uh, into stuff, especially,

[48:14] uh, anyway. But, I mean, they try to make them nice because they're glass and they're, you know, non-absorptive things like Teflon and whatnot, but, you know, be

[48:23] cautious. The other thing is, is try to get, um, certain brands of rotary evaporator are horrible. Uh, you know, I use uh, Bukey, hideoff is good. You want to get glassware that's coated in plastic. It's called plast glass. And when you look at it, you can see that it's got a coating on it because it's a little bit wavy.

[48:40] And if it doesn't have that, you need to wear safety goggles at all times because if it's really clear looking glass, it means it hasn't been coded and those could implode at any minute and send shards of glass flying around into

[48:54] your eyes, which doesn't make a very good demo. Turns out it makes for a bad demo. But wherever you're doing technology, be sure to have your products done

[49:04] beforehand because I've had anything and everything go wrong on stage,

[49:09] right? And so luckily, because everybody knows that I'm kind of discombobulated and disorganized anyway, I can just kind of smile and shake my

[49:19] head and it all seems to go away, at least most of the time, right, Stas? But that only works if you have the product beforehand to make sure that no one's leaving

[49:30] empty-handed. I'm also, whenever anyone's demonstrating new techniques, and for any of you out there, and hopefully you all do, you know, use some of these new

[49:40] techniques. When you go demonstrate them, I really believe that you should hand out

[49:47] tastes of things whenever possible from what you're doing. And the reason is it's really easy to get a piece of fancy equipment and put it up on stage and have people be like, wow, that's really, that's

[49:59] cool, that's awesome. But what the real challenge is is showing people that they're not just like weird science tricks or

[50:07] gimmicks that they actually can produce delicious products. And so, you know, it's I've always been a fan of handing people things to taste at the demos to prove that what you're showing them on stage isn't just some BS that you're doing for a

[50:21] gimmick. And that's that, cooking issues. 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.