[0:00] Hello, do it yourself, or? Ever thought about gardening? If you can build that window box? You can build a raised vent in your backyard. Bonnie, veggie and herb plants in raised beds make a fast weekend project with a big payback.

[0:15] Fresh, grow 'em yourself tomatoes and peppers, kale, basil, and thyme, and so much more. Bonny plants are healthy and strong, and help jumpstart your garden. So get growing. Plans and how tos at bonnyplants.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:46] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Daveon. Your host of cooking issues coming to you live from a British Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined, as usual, by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah? Yeah. Got Jack in the booth today. Good old-fashioned, good old-fashioned cooking issues. Last week my tires blew out in my car. For real? Yeah, that's actually why I wasn't here. For real, your tire is blue. For real? Like while you were driving? Yeah, it was kind of flat, 2 of them, and I was like, let me drive to the gas station and fill them up, and then, you know... Was it like, was it like, koplow, or was

[1:25] it like... Yeah. Were you able to keep control of the car? Yeah, I made it into a repair shop and got it replaced. Yeah, I had a little bit of a car corporal you today. My old school, like you don't think of this happening anymore with your car, but battery dead. Battery dead. Is that why you're late? dead. Yeah. I was going to work on the puffing gun, which we'll talk about in a minute, but the battery was completely Muerto.

[1:49] And so I haven't had to have a jump since I was

[1:53] in like high school, you know? Uh, but yeah, it works. turns out I still know how to jump start a car. Also joined in the studio today. Emma Boast. Emma Boast from the museum. Have a food and drink. Hey, what's what's your title there at the museum? I am the program director, so I work with Peter, who's the executive director of

[2:13] MoFed and a whole slew of amazing volunteers. Yeah? Nice. So Emma's here today. Actually, I forced her to come on because I'm a little bit late

[2:24] because what we're doing this morning, as some of you might know, last summer, we got a kick, we

[2:31] had did a Kickstarter and we paid for this puffing gun. Now, puffing gun is an explosive puffing device that was used to make breakfast cereals, one of the

[2:42] big, I like to call it the big 3 of the initial breakfast cereals, right?

[2:46] So your initial big 3 were your flaking rollers, right? Three, right? No, two? Well, I guess you had your your crumbled, your granula kind of granola-esque cereals. Right, that's the... That's the or cereal. Right? Ore cereal. And by the way, remember, started by kind of religious health zealots. That's a fair term. Zealots? Yeah. So it meant to kind of taste bad and be dry and just kind of, you know, one of the original cereals names was

[3:18] Pablum, Pablum. I've got a call. Oh, color. Well, we'll get back to the puffing in a minute. Call her, you're on the air. Hey, David and Crew. How y'all doing? All right. Very well. Cool. 2 part questions. Um, one of them was, I had recently seen a video that Jose Andres had done, and he had made a mimosa with Clementine air, he said, and he did it

[3:42] with um, soy lectin. Yeah, he loves that stuff. Yeah, and uh, I tried to do it at home, and I just modified it by doing it with blood orange. Right. But since we didn't have any fresh blood oranges, I used, uh, just regular, um, like it was, it was already pastures. I got it from Whole Foods, but it was blood orange juice, and for some reason, I just couldn't make, uh, the air to someone that he does, it

[4:07] ended up being real goopy. Yeah. What was he? What was he using? Well, give me his whole technique, because I haven't seen a video. Yeah, it was, uh, he was making cava, and then he used fresh

[4:17] squeezed, uh, clementine juice, and I don't know. That's why, because one of the effects that mine didn't work at all. Yeah, I mean, what was it? What was the procedure? Sorry, he was making mimosas. No, what was the procedure with the soy lesson? So he used the immersion, not the emerging circuit. Stega stick blender? Yes, the stick blender. Right. And, uh, he just put like about a spoonful or so

[4:40] of uh, soy like inside of the uh, Clementine juice and just made like an air, like an air out of the

[4:47] Clementine juice. Okay, so put that on top. And what is, and he was using presumably the powdered stuff, right? Because there's also the granular stuff and there's the powder stuff. powder stuff much better. Hopefully you had the powder stuff. Uh, okay, so you can add almost any kind of, uh, kind of, uh, you know, he had a no extra whipping agent, right? Just the, uh, he had a just the soy lesson for the for the bubbling effect, right? No whipping agent. All right. Yeah, yeah, just that. And you've had luck using this stick blender technique in the past or do you need some pointers on the stick blender technique in general? I mean, probably I need techniques altogether because I definitely just tried it bad.

[5:27] Like, I just tried to attempt it on a brunch and it was, it was not a failure just off of booking. It didn't look as hard. as it wasn't clearly it was. Right, okay, so... There's a trick. I don't know if there's the type of soy licks in that I got. Maybe it wasn't the same quality, I don't know, but... It's possible. I'm not a huge fan. I'm not, I've never like been like a soy, uh, less thin guy, but what you should do is practice on something that foams

[5:52] naturally. Like, so I'm wondering if you've used this kind of technique in the past, like carrot juice is a natural

[5:57] foamer. You don't need to do anything to it at all. Just use carrot juice, you know, juice carrots and do it. But the trick with uh, with any of those kind of, uh, foam ups, uh, with a stick blender, is you want to uh, have

[6:10] not like, you, you, you, you know, a small quantity in the bottom of a container, stick the stick blender in it, and then you go on a, and here's the key that I don't know whether they tell you about in the video or not, but you need to turn the entire thing at an angle such that a portion of the stick blender's blades come out of the liquid on every revolution. And then when you're

[6:33] holding at that angle, you turn it on high, and as it flips up and out of the thing. It's gonna be whipping air and creating a froth that will rise above the surface.

[6:42] So that's why when they're doing that technique, you'll see them all the time, and it's not just because they want to look jaunty. They need to have that that container. I usually do it in quartz or whatever on an angle. Usually pretty steep, like 45 or better so that the blades can whip in and out. But you did that or no? No, definitely didn't do that. I just tell it directly in there. almost like a reverse blender as it usually is, you know, so I definitely didn't get any air into it. Right. So the trick with any of those foam things is he's adding a little bit of the soil less than to stabilize the bubbles a little bit. You're praying that there's a kind of enough solids in the in the in the juice to kind of hold those bubbles once they're formed with with that. And then you just tilt it at an angle, you give it a try. Carot juice is a good one to do it with, tills it in an angle, and voo, voo, voo, and you hold

[7:34] it, and it'll, it'll make like a froth on the top, and then you pull out the stick blender, and I'm sure you saw this part on the thing, is he, then they take a spoon usually, and they harvest the stuff off the top of the liquid, and then you can do that a

[7:45] bunch because there's extra stuff in there before it's really depleted of the surface act, the stuff needed to make a foam. So they'll sit there and they'll just re-hit it almost to order and then harvest each time it'll settle down after a while and then you can just hit it again. But if you look if you look at the video, I'm pretty sure you'll see him holding that thing at an

[8:03] angle. Okay. Yeah, I'll definitely check that out. I'm kind of surprised, though, that they didn't, uh, I'm kind of surprised didn't, uh, uh, mention that because it's kind of key aspect of the technique.

[8:16] The, you know, other things you might want to try. Um, is, uh, it depends if, like, so those kinds of foams are usually extremely airy,

[8:26] like extremely airy, right? If you want something a little bit, uh, denser, um, methocell F50, uh, is really cool. That makes more of like a shaving cream or a Guinnessy kind of head, and you're going to want to use like 0.8%, so like 8 grams per liter, and then you blend that in in like

[8:46] in a blender to hydrate it. Let it hydrate for a long time. Sometimes it takes a while to hydrate. And then you can whip that thing in a kitchen aid, and it foams up. Now you need to have enough solids to get it to work right. So if you don't, you can add some, um, Maltodextrine. Uh, you know, not like a crazy one, like Anzorbit, just something like a bulking agent or uh, or a whipping agent like that. You can get the, like an orange juice to, to come up into like, almost like a shaving cream, but it'll be a little bit denser than, but much more persistent than the one that you

[9:16] were, um, dealing with with there. You know, like a good one for that would be actually, do they make purees of that? They do make purees of that, but I don't know how dense they are. You need a little bit of pect and a little bit of structure in with the methocell to get it to work. Hope so, well. And then, I mean, that's great. I will definitely try that for next time. And the other one that I had, the other question was, I'm trying to make a healthier, I guess, ice cream for my parents, they,

[9:43] everyone has a sweet tooth, obviously, and uh, the one that I was trying to make was out of a coconut milk, instead. And the issue that I had is everything flavor wires comes out comes out good, but when I put inside the fridge, it gets really hard. And I'm trying to see whatever commercial techniques because any regular uh, ice cream you put inside there will stay, uh, still airy and

[10:07] fluffy, and I don't know if it's a combination of gums that are shifted in there. Or what, I mean, it's just token of water substituting. I'm sorry, coconut milk, substituting traditional milk or whipping milk. Right. But so by substituting for both the cream and the milk, right? Right. So a couple of things, probably your fat concentration is probably a little low. Uh, and, um, but, you know, you can, obviously, sorbets work, right? So the other thing is probably your sugar level might be a little bit low. Is it is it a lot less sweet than typical ice cream? Uh, I would say per quart, uh, I put about a cup, typically of a

[10:47] sweetening, sugar. I have to do some math here. So, like, I can't think of that in terms of, see, quart a cup, a cup weighs roughly 8 ounces and so a quart is for,

[11:00] so for... Sorry, I did some stuff in my head, right? So you're saying you're putting in 8 ounces of, uh, sugar into, um, 32 ounces of product that gives you a total weight of

[11:16] 40 and eight. Yeah, so it's like 16 so that should be sweet enough, right? Right? It tastes sweet enough then, right? Yeah. Huh. Because usually like overly solid things are due and like textural problems like that are due

[11:32] to, um, lack of sugar, uh, or, you know, especially if it's good when it's

[11:39] soft, it means it's free. you say it's good when it's soft, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely taste wives before I make it hard. tastes great. Yeah, in other words, when you initially churn it before you, before it turns hard, that it, it tastes fine when it's, before it's been aged, right? Exactly, yes. Yeah. Okay. So, typically, overly hard on storage is going to be, uh, just, uh, it's

[12:03] getting too solid and you control the solids by controlling the meltdown rate and you control the meltdown rate by how much sugar is in it. So, I mean, um, I guess it's hard for me to do the numbers on the fly, uh, I

[12:17] got to, I have to go back and remember exactly what my target bricks for is for a sorbet.

[12:21] You want to treat it like a sorbet, basically. even though it has the addition of it, because it's easier to calculate. That's how I calculate. I do my all my sorbets with coconut milk. Um, but, uh, I usually they're fairly sweet, right? So I tend to use coconut cream because it's got sugar in

[12:38] it and it's so easy for me. Like, I can just buy like a package of puree, and then like a package of coconut. I mean, a can of coconut cream. I know this sounds like real, like, I'm not working, but, you know, but it's easy for me because I do it at home for the kids and mix them together and it works fantastically well.

[12:56] Um, I think I just have to recalculate. Do the recalculation on the sugar, uh, and go uh, look up because I don't have it off the top of my

[13:05] head, like the uh, Target bricks for like a sorbet. ignore the fat content of the ignore the fat content of the coconut milk to start with because it's not going to hurt. It's not going to hurt you in terms of your calculations, and figure out a target bricks for it, and then see whether or not you're going a little bit too low on the sugar. Because did it taste kind of less sweet than normal, good, but less sweet than normal? No, I mean, taste like everything was good. It's usually more so, like you said, just in the agent, it gets too hard inside the fridge, and I can put a commercial ice cream in there, and it will

[13:40] still, this off, but. I mean, you could add some whipping agents to it to try and uh, increase the, uh, increase the air. Um, commercial coconut milk already has some, uh, usually has

[13:54] some some product in it to stop it from breaking because regular coconut milk will break when you heat it and canned stuff usually typically doesn't.

[14:01] I dont know if you're making it yourself or not. Um, but if you're using cans, that typically will have some stuff in it. But you could add, um, some sort of a uh, thickener, like a locust bean

[14:13] or or, or a flavor free iguar to it and see whether that uh, helps you, helps you out a little bit. But if the sucker tastes good, um, uh, when it's soft, it's probably not an overrun problem.

[14:27] So like if it's overly dense when it gets hard and and, but it doesn't temper out nicely either. Like it doesn't, when you pull it out of the freezer for a little while, does it scoop nicely eventually and get back to good

[14:36] texture or does it just turn like a rock and stays a rock until it's melted? No, I mean, it eventually goes back to a nice, that's true. It's definitely stupid, again. Right, so it could be density. It could be density, in which case you might want to up the solid. So it's coconut milk and what? Coconut milk. I definitely put the coconut cream in too, like you're saying, and I do use the can. And then, um, every once in a while, I'll throw some liquor in

[15:02] there as well, depending on what plate I'm doing. Right, that'll make it softer. But I wonder whether you need a higher solids content, whether it's not, it's just not churning enough. You know what I'm saying? Like, you might want to... Sometimes I'll put in like, I'll put in coconut

[15:16] nut, so hopefully make like, uh, so it's definitely next to like a syrup instead of actual

[15:21] sugar. I don't know if that could be a problem perhaps. No, I mean, like, if you added too much sugar, it would get too soft, right? and it wouldn't freeze properly. It wouldn't get too hard. So if this stuff does come back to being kind of in good temper again and it's sweet enough, then it could be that you're just not getting enough overrun. And so you need to add some, um, something that's going to increase the, um, the actual overrun, the whipping ability of it, in which case that would be more

[15:48] solids probably. Um, and then maybe something uh, that aerates it more. You know what? Like if anyone's listening that has a good kind of a breakdown on this. Because usually when I'm doing coconut milk, it's not straight coconut milk, it's coconut

[16:03] milk and a fruit puree, and the pectins that are in the fruit purees are helping me with

[16:10] solids, with body. I think maybe that's what, you know, what's going on. If you see whether or not you have the same problem when you do, um, when you do like, um, a flavor that has more solids. Like I've done really good coconut milk, sorbet style stuff is with

[16:27] chocolate, like chocolate, coconut milk, sorbet is fantastic. So you take like coconut milk, uh, and or

[16:35] cream, and, uh, you know, melt chocolate into it, and I usually also add uh, cocoa powder because I want really dense kind of chocolate flavor.

[16:43] And that texture comes out pretty, pretty nicely. So you might want to, um, see whether or not it's just a solid dish, whether you just don't have enough actual solids in it. For sure. Excellent. I'll definitely try that. But again, this is off top of my head. So hopefully I'm not off base and be like, that guy does not know what the hell he's talking about. No, not at all. I mean, as a matter of fact, I was just going to say that I've listened

[17:08] to as many of your previous podcasts that you've done, I've become enthralled

[17:13] and your biggest fan. That's why I've watched you all of the talk. And, uh, I can't wait for your, your cocktail book come out and then your seeers all. Wow. Donated a few times over, waiting for the new one to come out. Cool. Well, appreciate it. Well, it's uh, we're uh, we're actually talking to our suppliers right now, uh, Styles, right? We're looking, we're looking. we're hopefully going to be on time. We might be a couple weeks late, right? Right. A couple. I hope not. We're gonna we're gonna update more as we go. But I'll tell you something. I won't be talking out of my behind in the cocktail book. That thing has been thoroughly vetted thoroughly vetted. In fact, like, you know what, one of the weird things that we had, uh, uh, recipe change on was, um, with the

[17:55] Campari and soda. Like, so we have on the bar now, we have a recipe that's the Booker and Dax take on

[18:00] Campari and soda. And, um, You know, the benefit is you can carbonate the whole thing. So although, you know, nastasia here likes any comparian. soda variant, right? No matter regardless of like how well or poorly it is carbonated. Uh, you know, booker index, we like to carbonate everything, right? And uh, we're also kind of people rib us because uh, our drinks tend to be, like, everyone claims that our drinks are high in alcohol, even though they're the same amount of alcohol that you

[18:28] have in any, in any beverage. So we do the uh, Camparian soda, and we use uh, champagne acid. So champagne acid is a mixture of lactic acid and um, tartaric. And the reason is, is because although the grapes have a balance of tartaric and malic acid, most champagnes, one of the notable exceptions is

[18:46] Krug. Did you, are you, you like Kruegiver? Yeah, so you notice how Krug Stas is shaking your head? She's so happy thinking about champagne that she can't like words can't even come to her mouth. But she, uh, uh, Krug has a kind of an apple note on it when

[19:00] you, kind of like a green fresh apple note on it, and that's because of the malic acid because Krug does not go through malilactic fermentation. Whereas um, most champagnes do. And when they go through malalactic fermentation, the acids turn from malac to lactic. And so the champagne acid we use is a blend of lactic and tartaric. But the weird here's where it gets weird. So we add that instead of a squeeze of lime, we add that to, and we did

[19:26] this, by the way, before the lime craziness, where the lime prices are so high now. Uh, but, um, we do it so that the, the Kampari, uh, and soda alike drinks more like a wine and less like a cocktail. Uh, Crazy thing is, turns out that if you bottle the stuff, add the acid, carbonate it and let it sit overnight, that the bitterness, the inherent bitterness of the campari is

[19:50] amplified like greatly. So it tastes delicious when you make it, and then the next day, it's kind of unpalatably bitter. And it's not unpalatably bitter in that it's like so bitter. like it's like the bitterness lingers. It just lingers. And we did a test. We did a test, but with adding it before, you know, we ran a test and putting Aperol in, because Aperol is, you know, less bitter. And Aperol also gets, you know, Aperol for those of you that don't drink Aperol. Aperol is like Campari, slightly sweeter, slightly less alcoholic cousin. And, um, we did it with, uh, Aprol, Aprol also got bitter. So it now, and we don't know why. I have no idea why, but we tested it without the acid in it and it was fine. It was stable. So something about storing diluted Campari or Aperol in the presence. And I don't know whether it's any acid because we didn't test it with, um, you know, Malik or like a lime acid blend. We tested it just with lactic and tartaric, the champagne acid, but something about it causes the liquor to change

[20:51] overnight. It's very odd. I have no idea why. I just know it empirically to be the case. Um, so that's a recipe that was in the book that now I'm going to have to add a little footnote because once we had tested it for stability in the bar,

[21:05] we noticed this phenomena that we completely didn't um, anticipate because the acid itself,

[21:11] unlike uh, lime juice or lemon juice, which is known to go bad over time, you

[21:16] know? It's not the acids that go bad and it's not the product, it's the actual juice that goes bad. So I had not expected that in a, uh, in a capari situation. Uh, so should we take our 1st commercial break? Come back some cooking issues. Yes. Let's do it. It is my third.

[21:52] Hello, do it yourself, sir. Ever thought about gardening? If you can build that window box, you can build a raised band in your backyard, Bonnie, veggie and herb plants in raised beds make a fast weekend project with a big payback.

[22:10] Fresh, grow them yourself, tomatoes, and peppers, kale, basil, and thyme, and so much more. Body plants are healthy and strong, and help jumpstart your garden. So get growing. Plans and how-tos at bonnyplants.com. Are we back? We're back. And we're back with cooking issues. I never can I never can tell. Like, sometimes, like, it ends abruptly. Sometimes, we, you know, kind of, keep you on your toes. I know it. I know it. Even though we're sitting on our duffs here. You mentioned the lime shortage thing before. It's crazy. I was reading all these articles. People like, yeah, I'm just going to sub-lemons. I mean, that's crazy, you know? Yeah that won't work. That won't work. So, you know, just, you know, well, I mean, if you don't care, if you're an enemy of quality, you know, then it

[22:54] won't it won't matter, then, you know, it's fine. You can do whatever you want. You could substitute, you know, I don't know, swill. It doesn't matter, but if you want it, the stuff that, like, lemons and limes don't taste any, they don't taste the same. They don't function the same way. And strangely, you can tell more once a drink is made that you, like, some people make the mistake of tasting just lime juice and just lemon juice and thinking, like,

[23:17] it's, you know, it's like, because it's something that's that acidic, like those, the differences between the 2 are only going to come out more as when they're used in a drink. We ran a test. So both lime juice and so much more than Jack was hoping for. Uh, we ran a test with uh, lemon juice and uh, lemon juice and lime juice are roughly 6% acidity. Uh, lemon juice, the, the acid uh, predominantly, just forget the vitamin C, because the corbic acid doesn't really affect the flavor of it that much, uh,

[23:47] is, is uh, citric. That's the bulk of the acid in a lemon. And in a lime, it's instead of 6% citric, it's more

[23:55] like and give or take, right? It's like 4% citric and 2% Malik. And it's that citric malic blend that creates the natural acidity of, um, lime. Now, the, the trick is, you know, we wanted to do, we wanted to fake, uh,

[24:12] we want, we tried to do a fake thing where we took lemon and then doped it with malic acid and water so that it was still 6%, uh, but it had the correct blend.

[24:21] And it wasn't quite, uh, right. Part of the thing when you're shake, most of the time when you're using a citrus like a lemon or a lime, you're shaking a cocktail. when you're shaking a cocktail. It's not just the acidity you need. You actually need the, the, the, the surface active properties of the, of the juice itself, the, the pecked ins, whatever else is in

[24:40] it, that cause uh, um, that shaking cocktails to hold air better, right? and become you know, kind of better shaken cocktails. So I don't know whether it just tasted not as good or whether or not, you know, we

[24:52] could just tell because it didn't have that kind of peel note that's in lime juice. Of course, that I could have faked it by adding a little bit of succinic acid, which is the secret ingredient in lime acid. Uh, and also hard to source. But we weren't able to get a good thing, even when we were specifically trying to do a subout. So during the shortage, we have, we have less lime juice shaking cocktails and more of our lemon juice shaking cocktails on the menu. We're luckily, we are not, you know, forced to use one or the other. But, you know, the thing about it is, Jack, is that even though limes are ridiculously expensive now, like a factor of

[25:26] four, I think, I forget what the recent numbers are. It's crazy like that. Yeah, it's, well, and your, so you, you pay by the case, which is a certain case count, but the, the amount of juice that's in the ones we're getting now is nothing. So it's like, you know, we're in that time of year anyway where when you juice the lime, like 2 drops of juice come out of the lime. And so they're expensive and useless. So the actual price difference isn't even enough of a factor to factor in how bad they are.

[25:52] Um, But still, relative to expensive liquor, it's still, you know, and relative to the use rate, you know, you can kind of, you can kind of

[26:03] afford it. Although the issue is just, you know, we don't want to order too much because we throw it away at the end of the night. So it gets expensive if you make a lot extra and then you have to throw it away at the end of the night or we don't we don't actually throw it away. We give it to the kitchen because the kitchen can use it in cooking applications that, you know, we can't use it for in drinks anymore. But yeah, it's pain in the butt. Hopefully, I'm told that all of that nonsense will be over in May. at the end, well, at the end of May. Yeah. There'll be another crop coming in. Because this one is shafted by a number of things. So everyone says it's the cartels. I like to say it's the cartels, but, you know, they had a spot of weather, as we say. Not the cartels. come on All right, well, I mean, like, I want it to be the cartels. Right? That's what we all want. A better story. Yeah, you know. It's like, but if it was the cartels, right, avocados come from a similar area, don't they? Like avocado prices haven't spiked as much as limes. Of course, you don't need armed guards for, I mean,

[27:02] like for your lime trucks now require armed guards. I think the last time I read an article, and it's good, again, I'm talking out of my behind, so I could be wrong, but what I, you know, the article I read was that a tractor

[27:14] trailer, limes, had, like, you know, a value of street value of over $100,000 now. So it's like, you know, no, it's a lot of freaking lives. But you got to remember, like, you know, I'm used to limes being like, you know, seven, eight, for a dollar, you know, at the Essex Street market, where I buy limes and cheap avocados, and

[27:31] Ann's delicious, but not inexpensive cheese, that would be Ann Saxby. Uh, but, um, isn't that weird, that market, they have like, like,

[27:41] like people who are selling the cheapest possible avocados in bulk and then like

[27:47] Ann Saxelby, it's a strange market setup, right? a cool market. Yeah, it's wonderful. Unfortunately, it's only going to be more of the latter going forward, I think. More of which one? Which one's the ladder? of the delicious but not inexpensive items. I don't know. I think that they're obliged to keep the avocado vendors there. I mean, there's like 5 or six. I mean, the reason is there's 5 or 6 people that sell very similar styles of produce

[28:11] there, and so they're beaten, their prices get beaten down pretty, pretty hardcore. Anytime someone who's there has something that isn't duplicated 3 and 4 times, the price tends to rise a little bit. But I don't know. Jack, you used to work there every once in a while, right? At the market? No, but I mean, the heritage meat shops there, so I've spent some time there. I just saw you when you hung out at the, you could used to hang out occasionally at the heritage meat shop in the market. Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's great spot. Yeah, someday someone will tell, so heritage meat, there you, well, won't get, won't get in. won't talk. If you're in New York, go to Gas Street Market and get a heritage pork chop and some sacks, it'll be cheese. How about that? There you go. And you can eat. I've never eaten at shop since eaten there? Oh, I haven't, but he's apparently a crazy guy. Yeah, man, again, we're just a little like inside, inside ball for New Yorkers, but there's a lunatic there,

[28:59] shops. That's his 2nd location, right? You ever eaten there, Emma? No, I haven't. He's like an old school lunatic. He's like the soup Nazi for breakfast. Is that accurate? I mean, we had the menu in our office for a while, just as a kind of piece on its own on the wall to look at occasionally. He has a book. Right? He won't serve you if he doesn't like you, right? So I've heard. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to. I don't wanna have to be judged. I just want to eat breakfast and then go in peace. What about you, stars? do you think? you like being judged when you're having breakfast? You just want to eat? Do you like judging while you eat breakfast? Stars, do you like judging why you eat breakfast? I don't usually eat breakfast out. I don't eat breakfast actually. Really? Really? Most most important meal of the day. Which brings us back to Siri. Yes, which brings us back to cereal. But she does judge when she we both judge when we eat. Like, we're both pretty rough. Like we're both pretty mean. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Especially to women, you're really rough. How am I rough to women? That's a lie. First of all, I'm way rougher on men than on women. Emma, back me up on this. You hung out with me before. I'm not sure I've had enough meals with you. Certainly I've eaten here. What women am I rough on? Besides you. Like, any woman that he sees online, like, instant, like, anything, like a Twitter follower or, like, anything that you see on your computer that's a woman you're like, look at her. She's busted Are you kidding me? That is not true at all. That is a straight... First of all, not only is that, like, I am actually offended. That is a freaking lie. That's a freaking lie. What I show you is when people on Twitter follow me who aren't real, who clearly are not real people, who are out there trolling to get men to look at at

[30:49] them to like trade some sort of pictures. It's the fake people that I point out. I don't point out any real people. People that I think are fake people. You know what I'm talking about. Jack, you know what I'm talking about on the Twitter, right? too, unfortunately. Yeah, I look at them like, that, that's not real. You know what I mean? Like they, you know, and then they're like, you know, email me for the picture. I not gonna email you for pictures. What do I need with your picture for? I don't need picture. Well, we've got a call. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, um, So since you're Wolfad person is here. I was gonna ask you, is there any update on the boom cereal? Are you guys gonna be able to make that? Oh, on the actual serial? All right, Emma, why don't you say what we're up to? What a segue. So indeed, yeah. We were actually just at the machine today and it was kind of in hibernation over the winter and need a little bit of care after the long rough winter that we had in New York. But the gun is in beautiful working order and we've been puffing a lot of rice and kind of trying to perfect the recipe on that front. I think we may also be testing out some various wheat varieties.

[31:57] We had stayed away from wheat and gluten containing grains initially, but I think there might be a possibility to try those out actually after all. Sorry to everyone who is celiac, but there's just too many possibilities out there. So, I think we should be able to get those bags of puffs to

[32:15] everyone. Probably by the end of the summer. I know it's a year later, but there was just a lot of downtime when we couldn't use the gun over the winter. Oh, that's that's fine. That's going to be very exciting. All right. And we're going to fire the gun at... What did you say? I got a question for you. A few weeks back, uh, you were talking about the merits of vitamixes, and you mentioned something about blending a pound of bacon into pasta sauce or tomato

[32:45] sauce or something. Oh yeah. Is there a recipe behind that? No, it's just what happened. And luckily, my wife does not listen to this show because she hates when I tell this story. Um, but the, um, I hate it when people pick things out of food, I hate it. You know what I mean? Like, unless you're actually allergic to it. Like, I detest when things get picked out of things. I don't like when sandwiches get picked apart, like when someone gets a sandwich and they rip it open and they take all the guts

[33:15] out. My kids do it all the time. It's like a constant source of irritation to me, but I, it just gets to me. So I used to make sauces, right? And then with bacon, right? And then at the end of the night, there'd be a little pile of bacon in

[33:30] the, in the bottom of the bowl, because the bacon had been, you know, picked around or whatever, and it's not because

[33:36] my, my wife is not one of these people, by the way, who is, you know, afraid of eating

[33:42] fat. You know, in fact, one of the reasons I knew that she was the woman for me was because we once went to a Popeyes fried

[33:48] chicken and she wasn't paying attention to what was going on. She took a whole bucket down by herself. I mean, this lady knows how to eat. So it's not that, but it was just something about it. And I was just like, uh. And so then I got the Vita Prep, and instead of having the bacon maintained and so it was a visible thing, I was like, to hell with it. After, you know, normally I would cook out the bacon, remove the bacon, sweat out

[34:10] the, uh, whatever alliums I'm using and the bacon fat, add the, add the tomato, whatever else, cook down, blend,

[34:19] uh, add bacon back at the end for crunch and texture. And, um, and then, you know, one day I was like to hell with it. And I just blended it into the sauce and it was so smooth, so

[34:28] smooth. And so there's no way possibly to pull the bacon out anymore. And I was like, when? Yeah. Well, I've, I've noticed that I have that problem when I'm making, like, pasta sauces with bacon that I can't incorporate the bacon. It tends to stir out. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. ends up at the bottom of the bowl when you're tossing. It ends up at the bottom of the bowl when you're tossing is what you're saying, we were separating out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, the bacon is a fun part. I don't know how much we would lose in texture, but doing it that way, but, uh,

[35:04] I, I'm gonna give it a try anyway. Yeah, here's what you should do. Blend blend it in for flavor, and then maybe save some, and then sprinkle over top, uh, like at service. Yeah, like garnish bacon, but then most of the bacon will be emulsified bacon. Yeah, that's the way to go. Oh, this is gonna be awesome. All right, thank you very much. All right, tweet, tweet on in. tell me how it tastes. Cool. Cool. thanks a lot All right, so going back to the gun for a minute. and then I got a question on the thing I have to hit before we go, but okay, so we're we're at the gun

[35:38] today and it's gonna be, it's actually gonna be at our benefit, right? So you want to talk about the benefit for a second? May 7, right? It's going to be here in New York at an awesome place called the Foundry, which is in Long Island City.

[35:50] And one great perk of this venue that we found, it's an industrial area, so we can drive up the puffing gun, unlike, you know, some sort of gala hall in Manhattan where, you know, space is limited. So we're going to pull up the puffing gun and hopefully do a couple of preview shots for people. So that's why we were there today. The benefit is going to be a huge, huge affair. I mean, we've got 8 of these amazing chefs lined up, each of whom is tackling a different museum themed

[36:19] course. So, for example, I was recently emailing back and forth a little bit with Amanda Cohen of dirt candy, a vegetable centric restaurant in the East Village. And her theme is Korea before the chili, i.e. uh,

[36:34] pre-Colombian, Korean cuisine. And for that matter, you can do that with a number of South Asian or Southeast Asian cuisines that rely heavily on Chili's. So, I think she said she's making a few different kinds of kimchi that are chili-free kimchi. The old white ones? Yes. I think so. Nice. Yeah, sounds good. What else we got? Why don't you tell them why don't you tell them who's and you can still buy tickets if you've got the cash. Uh, you just go to mofad.com or.org, right? Yeah, benefit.mofad.org is the place for tickets. So, uh, we've got individual tickets and then also if you got a group of buddies or colleagues. You can buy a table. So why don't you run through the chefs in what they're doing. So we've also got Franklin Becker of the Little Beat, who has what Massaswat brought to Thanksgiving. Now this is a bit controversial because the idea of a 1st Thanksgiving is pretty contentious historically. I think most food historians would say. There probably was no 1st Thanksgiving in the way that we have idealized it here in the

[37:34] US. That being said, there is a primary source, uh, one or 2 letters that mention that this Wantanag chief

[37:42] Massasua brought 5 deer to a gathering with colonists in Plymouth.

[37:48] Deer tastes good. Denison, in May, maybe is a little dicey. I think the approach with this course is probably going to be something

[37:55] more long lines of foraged food, since it's spring, and would be in keeping with the Native American cuisine theme. What else we got? Let's see. Oh, Wiley Dufrane, WD50. Longtime supporter of MoFAD is tackling the 4 humors. So the sort of extremely outdated notion that human physiology is based on these 4

[38:19] substances, with black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood, I believe, are they? That's not true. Not true when it was debunked, but it was quite a while ago. So he's going to be kind of exploring this theme of food as medicine, the intersection between food and health through this

[38:37] theme. I'm not exactly sure what his, what his, uh... It was an incredibly influential view in medieval cookery.

[38:46] And so, uh, you know, a lot of medieval cookery was based around, um, you know, the idea

[38:51] was, is you wanted to center yourself not to not too phlegmatic, uh, or moist and, you know, cold, not too hot, not too dry.

[38:59] So you had your phlegmatic, and you're cold, you're hot, and you're dry, and you got to

[39:03] get, and as represented by the different actual bodily humors to biles and whatnot. But it's a very interesting and demented, every food has its own sort of rating, and every cooking method had its own sort of rating. So roasting would be hot and dry. You know, and there's all different. And so like kind of balancing all that, um, interesting idea. Who else we got? Let's see. Also, I'm really excited about this one personally. Dominique Anzel of Cronet fame, although I'm sure he hates to be cast in that light, is taking on food on the battlefield.

[39:36] And apparently he used to actually, for a short time, was a cook for the French military. And so he's got some actual hands-on experience doing this kind of food. And I think he's he's going to be doing a pastry course, as far as I know. Um, and I think the presentation will be will be very interesting there. I don't want to give away the secret entirely. We got, uh, we got, uh, Brooks Headley's doing, um, Food of Future Past, right? Yes, so a more conceptual theme. I haven't checked in with him. So again, not sure what that course is like in terms of its development. Michael Anthony got TV dinners. Yes. Another one where the presentation is going to be critical. And the idea there is we'll do a short video pitch on

[40:19] MOFAD, since we're going to be announcing some big plans for the coming years, along with Michael Anthony's TV dinner. Nice, which is hilarious. That's everyone, right? No, we've also got Nils Noren? Oh, Nils, Nils, oh my God, the best. cuisine. Rastafarian, ital cuisine. Oh, I love Nils. Nils is a huge reggae fan. Who else we got? Let's see. And... Yeah, that's it? Sweet. Oh, and then on the I'm gonna hit this question real quick. Also, we've got Shangre of Momofuku Cove. Oh, beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, whenever you're listening, things out of order, it's better listening to order. What his topic? He's got Pennsylvania Dutch food. He actually hails from Pennsylvania. Yeah, from Lancaster County, right? Right, right. So this will be hitting close to home for him in some way. Sweet. All right. And that's everyone, right? You got one now? All right, nice. All right. If we have a 2nd on the way out, I'm going to do a pitch for the round table too, Mofad round table. But, uh, we got a question in from Alex in Santa Barbara. Um, Hello, Dave, Nasasha, Jack, and maybe. He gave you a maybe, Jack. Maybe, wow. Wow. And everyone else is there today. Once again, thanks to the programs. Greatly appreciated. The question's a bit long, so please feel free to edit for your show. I believe we all do uneconomical things in or for the kitchen.

[41:34] For example, last summer, I grew $25 tomatoes because I only managed to grow 4 of them. So spent $100 total, got 4 tomatoes, 25 bucks. The year before I was giving them away and figured I could repeat my success, but it didn't work out. I would have been much better off buying farmer's market tomatoes for 10 bucks and saving 90 bucks. The only reason I tried to grow them was because of tomatoes the year before were very good and very plentiful. This came up because my friend was just getting into home brewing. I immediately thought back to my tomatoes and figured he was about to spend a lot of money, time and effort to produce a product far inferior to what he could purchase easily. I understand the journey is part of the fun, but sometimes the cost isn't worth it. I do not brew my own soy sauce, roast my own coffee beans, smoke my own bacon, or keep a sourdough starter. The time energy and cost are not worth it compared to what is readily available. On the other hand, I never order something at a restaurant that I can pull off almost as well, if not far better at home. A New York strip steak is a great example. Instead, I try to order something which takes much more time and energy at home. Additionally, I never purchased a half court container of diced onions or jar of crushed garlic. That crushed garlic is gross. Uh, no fence, uh, to people who make it. I cannot believe those products sell well enough for the stores to stock them. I refuse to believe I'm alone and thinking this way. Like I said above, I can understand the journey and the experience is part of the fun. That said, what do you think are the uneconomical efforts put forth at home? More importantly? What are the products that should never be purchased because the cost quality effort are such that making them at home is the, uh,

[43:00] is the, uh, uh, should never be purchased because, uh, because the cost quality effort are such that making them at home, uh,

[43:06] is a bad idea. I went ahead of my brain. Hopefully the spirit of the question came through this email. Some of the things off the top of my head, peanut butter, right? He only buys it and he has friends that. I buy peanut butter because commercial peanut butter is delicious and you don't have a mill. I guarantee you don't have a mill that can produce peanut butter with the same texture as the stuff that you ever had any

[43:29] natural, like home ground peanut butter you thought was really good. I know people who like that kind of texture. I'm not one of them. I like good old-fashioned, emulsified, sweetened US peanut butter. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. That stuff's good. Uh, hot sauce. I always buy it. I think, here's the thing. I going to answer in general and then I'm going to go over some of these things. So, for instance, learning how to do everything, like being a brewer for a while, if not for your whole

[43:54] life. If you like brewing, you should keep doing it because it's rewarding if you do it, right? It is a pain in the butt to do all grain, grain brewing. But I think doing anything once or twice is worthwhile if you want to know how things

[44:06] work, even if you're not going to make the kind of best product. The only thing that I haven't done, really, in this list. I mean, I haven't done soy sauce, but, uh, wines because I, like, you don't have really control over the raw ingredients to even get kind of usually a reasonable expectation of the highest quality

[44:23] on wines, one reason I haven't hit it yet, because I don't have a lock on the really high quality inputs, but like beer, you can get extremely high quality

[44:30] inputs and you can make good beer. So do I brew beer anymore? No, after my 2nd son was born. I don't do anymore because it was a huge mess, but I did it for a while. Same with roasting coffee. I used to roast all my own coffee beans and I think it's really good. Other people can do as good a job or a better job than I can do. But I enjoyed learning about it, and I feel like I know much more about coffee for having done it. Uh, ditto sourdough starters. I, you know, I'd no longer maintain one, but I maintain one for a long time, and I think it was worthwhile, uh, to kind of feel what it's like to have

[45:04] something, um, on a continuous basis you have to take care of in your kitchen that made delicious bread. So I think that there's, it's often worthwhile to go through the effort to do it, but not necessarily worth the effort to maintain it for your whole life. Does that make sense? Makes sense? All right, let's go over these one by one. Styles like, I don't care. Tofu. You said you liked yours homemade, but I read up on the process and now testing out everything the local Japanese market has to offer because I can't see myself going through all that effort. Here's another thing. Tofu is only hard the 1st 4 times you make it. As soon as your kitchen is streamlined and you have all this stuff ready and you've gone through the procedure, so you're not wondering what's going on, it's actually not that difficult to make, uh, to make tofu. Uh, you just have to remember to soak the stuff uh, beforehand is the only is the only big whoopie crap. So a lot of these things that are difficult are only difficult because we don't do them often. Uh cheese. I always buy, but I'm starting to think I should try my hand at my own ricotta at the very least with McGee's booking hand. What about you, Emma? You make your own cheese? No, actually, I think I've only done, you know, simple kind of fresh cheeses, paneer, things of that sort. Yeah, and I'm not very good at it. What about you, guys? You ever make your own mozzarella or anything? See, I think there's a huge art to making something like a mozzarella ricotta, I could try. But like real whey ricotta or like the whole milk ricotta one makes. don't know. don't know about that Puff pastry dough. I buy the frozen sheets. I've made it in the past and cannot tell the difference, which might say more about my pastry skills than it does about the quality of the frozen sheets. I make my own puff paste, but I like making it. enjoy the process of making it. Yeah, I like lemonated dose. They're time consuming, but they don't actually take a lot of effort. You just need to be able to take it out of the freezer, you know, over the course of a

[46:35] day, 10 times. Yeah, I would say mine's probably worse than the stuff you can buy, but I enjoy making it. What about you? You ever do laminated doughs like that? No, not your jammy. Are you much of a baker or more of a cook? You don't like to bake much, right? Even cookies? No. No? Especially cookies. Uh, cake mix. This one's a tough call because the box is so very easy, but I like to think from scratch cakes are better. I don't like cake mixes. I never use cake mixes. I think it's an insult because it's literally like the stuff that they put in that box you can just buy and measure out. Same with pancake mix. I don't get it. I don't like that hyper uniform texture that they provide. I never, I never use them ever. Yeah, well, and particularly when you read about the history of the development of cake mixes and how they initially had made

[47:16] them, so it was really almost just add water and then found that through kind of consumer research, Housewives were didn't really enjoy the process of making these cakes. There was too little to do. So they reformulated them. So you had to add egg and add a little bit of, you know, put in a tiny bit of effort. Yeah, so what the hell? It's like I also, I don't use Bisquick, no fence to Bisquick. I't use self-rising flour because I know how baking powder works, you know? Uh, tortillas. I buy them, have made them both corn and flour, but the local shop makes a fine product. I think it's very, look, it's a huge pain in the ass to make tortillas, but I still think I'd rather have, I use the

[47:56] store bought ones like in a pinch, like for a normal weekday meal, and heat them up. If I don't have time. It's been a while since I've done the full next stabilization, I think it's definitely a worthwhile road to go down, but it's a pain, but like if I if I'm really in a hurry, Maseka is not that much slower, so you buy Maseka to do the tortillas. Dried pasta. I've made my own pasta, but fresh is definitely different than dried, not necessarily better, depending on the shape for things like spaghetti, the dried is preferred. Yeah, dried pasta is delicious. I like dried pasta. I like making fresh pasta, but to make fresh pasta, Well, you need to. I mean, you know, efficiently, to have it not be a pain in the butt. You need to have your kitchen set up to do it. So I used to always have my pasta, my rollers clamped onto my work surface and everything was there. And by the time water was boiling, I could almost have fresh pasta done because I didn't do what you were supposed to do.

[48:46] I didn't give it the rest periods you're supposed to give it and all this and still tasted good, you know,

[48:50] and so I used I used to make fresh pasta two, 3 times a week. My kitchen's not really set up for it right now. And then finally, mayonnaise, this one's a tough call. I'm going to make a dressing such as rancho blue cheese. Oh my god, Dexel's very interesting. Then I will put forth the effort, but for sandwiches and the like, I go with the jar, though lately I've been enjoying the Hamptons food alternative. I think you get the idea. I'm looking forward to your information on the things I could buy, but shouldn't. I have to come back next week with other ideas. I'll think about this, but I'll tell you this. I like mayonnaise in a jar. I like jarred mayonnaise. I enjoy commercial mayonnaise. I think that stuff is delicious. Now, I still know how to make mayonnaise and I make mayonnaise from time to time. But I like mayonnaise in a jar. Jack, you? Actually, mayonnaise is one of the few things I don't like, so... Yeah. weird, right? It is weird. Yeah. I mean if it's on something, I'll take it, but I'm never like, I don't know. Never reaching for the mayo. what's your mayo thoughts? I like it. But do you like it from majority, like fresh? Anyway, yeah. I mean, pretty different things, I think, but I mean, I'm pretty partial to QP myself,

[49:52] but... Oh, QP is delicious. They, yeah, yeah, they, yeah, you get that in the, in the Asian marks, QB in the little thing. Well, I wish Stas Internet's such a high note with anyway. I wish we were still allowed to use commercial music, then we could leave on any way you want it. That's the way, you know, the journey song. You like that one or is that one of the ones you don't like? I like it. Yeah. All right. So anyway, we'll come back with more things that you should or should not make it home next week. on cooking issues.

[50:21] This is Chris. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.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 is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.

[50:50] Thanks for listening.