[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by Fairway Market, like no other market, a New York City institution that sells the best local,

[0:06] national, and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit fairwaymarket.com. I'm Damon Bolty, host of the speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:36] Hello and welcome to Cooking Ages. is Day Arnold, your host of cooking issues, coming to you pre-taped. Pre-taped, right? Styles are going to be pre-taped on the Heritage Rator Network in Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you happen to have gotten our message that we're pre-taped today, you can still call in your

[0:50] questions 2718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. Today we have a very special guest in the studio. We have Lena Quak, who is the founder of Cup 4 Cup. Uh, gluten-free, like kind of like the best known, like, so for years. For those of you who have celiac or perhaps you are one of those people that, for some reason, I don't understand, just reduces your gluten intake, even though you have no problem with it. Um, you know, one of the issues has been that there's been no very good kind of

[1:25] uh, straight replacement for wheat flour that works in, you know, a variety of different recipes. And one of the reasons is because weed flour is kind of a miracle. So, uh, you know, uh, Lena was at, uh, well, I let her tell the story. welcome to the show. Hi everyone. Hey, how you doing? And, of course, we got Stasia here, and we got we got Jack over in the booth, and we

[1:48] have Lindsay actually, Lynn's publicist. So why don't you tell me a little story about how Cup for Cup came to exist? And correct me if I'm wrong, it's like the only decent one on the market, right? I don't know if I'd say that, but we definitely focus on quality control. All right. Give me a little bit of the story. So I actually interned at the French laundry right out of culinary school. And one of the things that I noticed was that the chefs work about 14 to 12 hours a

[2:17] shift. And so these are really creative creative individuals and they had no time to experiment with all of their innovative thoughts. And so I wrote out a proposal at the end of my internship to create a position,

[2:31] R&D chef at the French laundry. And the chef at the time, Corey Lee, he actually took this concept and took it to Thomas and I was accepted as the R&D chef. And from there, I did a lot of diet restrictions for diabetic dishes and then also gluten-free and

[2:49] vegans and with a one dish that really resonated well with the chefs were the gluten-free bread.

[2:55] And so from there, we started developing products because people were coming in and crying over pieces of bread because they haven't had it for 7 years. And with about a year and a half , we dove into this project and started developing a gluten-free flower line. Nice. So now I think something that people might not understand. I mean, probably listeners to this show understand, but like how much

[3:18] care, you know, restaurants, you know, at this level take with people who have, everyone knows that chefs hate when people have restrictions, dietary restrictions.

[3:27] Every chef hates it when someone has a dietary restriction, right? They hate it. They hate it, but you know, it's one of these things. There's a divide with chefs. I feel like they are the chefs who, you know, it is, it is their style and they're as artists, you know, they feel so passionate about what they serve.

[3:42] They want to change anything because it is their piece of work. However, there are other group of chefs who understand also there's, it's an experience, you know, and everyone has a preference as an individual. So who are you to also tell an individual how to eat something. You know, and so there's 2 schools, I don't believe one or is better than the other. However, you know, for Thomas, It's really about how a guest takes in that

[4:05] experience and he wants to make it everything. He doesn't want to dilute anything just because you may have a restriction. So he wants to elevate that whole experience for you. Right. I mean, I think one of the reasons why a lot of chefs hate people with, not hate

[4:19] people is very, it's very badly played. One of the one of the reasons that they they get all hot and bothered when someone has a dietary restriction is, and this is what I think people don't understand is that they are worried. It's not as... I mean, sometimes it's just ego, but a lot of times I think the chef is worried that the person's gonna, it's the same as when someone asks for their steak well done. The chef just worries that this person is actually not going to have a good experience at the restaurant because now the chef has to cook something that the chef doesn't like or chef doesn't respect or chef doesn't know whether the quality is the

[4:48] same, and they want the quality to be as good, no matter what they put out. They want to be proud of what they put out and they want all the customers to have, you know, the best possible experience. And I think it's the nervousness that they're not going to be able to do that in the face of certain dietary fictions that gets a lot

[5:05] of a lot of chefs bent like a pretzel, but the, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that

[5:10] the, and the more kind of high end, more expensive restaurants are, the more typically they'll bend over backwards to try to accommodate this stuff if they can.

[5:17] Absolutely. And, you know, I think I completely understand how chefs take this as they want to guide someone's

[5:24] experience to the level that they understand as experts, what's going to be the best way to present one dish. But at the same time, those people who have certain, you know, specific needs or, you know, they don't particularly like certain things, they're not

[5:38] going to allow themselves experience that the way maybe a chef would like. And so rather than fighting that, I think it's just give people what they want. You know? They're coming in to have a certain level of expectation when they sit down. You know, they're paying for their meal and I really believe that, you know, you have to accommodate people as they come in because they are your guests, you

[5:59] know. Now, when you're trying to develop something that is gluten-free flour that works for kind of any application,

[6:09] right? I mean, there's a lot of issues with that because a lot of recipes, right? Use one aspect of wheat flour, and a lot of recipes, use different aspects of wheat flour, and very few, very few things, uh, you know, act

[6:27] like like wheat flour in every kind of situation. So how did you, how did you go about taking up this kind of a, how did you approach this kind of a problem? God, I'm so glad you brought this up. I can give you a hug because it's so hard to really explain to people, you know, that flower is such a complex single ingredient. You know, if anything, because of my research development through this. I've had such a deeper appreciation for flower and it's performance. But yes, there are different types of wheat flour that people don't really always

[6:56] consider. People always call in a butt cup for a cup. Can I make bread? And yes, you could formulate, you know, a recipe using that ingredient, but it's not going to perform the best.

[7:06] Bread flour well because it has higher gluten content. And even all-purpose flour is different from bread flour. And so I think it's very hard for people to understand that there are different applications for just regular flour that, you know, with

[7:22] Cup for Cup, what I really focused on was what were people missing the most from

[7:26] baking, was cookies, quick breads, pies, biscuits. I felt like that was what the home cook was looking for. So I really needed to develop something that was more like pastry flour, if anything. However, able to perform in different recipes as a multipurpose. Right, because none of those applications rely heavily on gluten. In fact, a lot of those, a lot of those applications, people try to shunt out the gluten in, you know, in a lot of ways. So, you know, those are kind of good, good applications, but, um, even frying also, it works better

[7:59] with uh, like tempura batters because there's no gluten that's going to cause it to be a soggy fry batter. Do you like tempura? I don't, me personally, I don't like to eat a lot of fried, but I definitely like

[8:11] crispy. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I think Tenpura. going to get yelled at by somebody, but like it's one of those things that I think that, you know, everyone thinks it's the most, like, like many,

[8:22] like, very tweaked out Japanese techniques, people think that it's kind of the height of the

[8:27] fry. And I just, I don't think that's necessarily the case. I mean, I think that I think that, you know, I've had some very good tempura chefs make stuff for me. And I'm like, yes, this is good. Do I think this is the height of fried? No. No, I like the shatter, like light fry. Sometimes I don't even like a batter, actually. I like it when it really is a very thin, shattered fry. If you're talking about specific frying methods. So tempura is not my favorite, because it might be a little thicker, but I've had a wonderful tempura before. Yeah, yeah, it's good, but then it's like also like you need to eat it instantaneously. They underfry it, so it's so freaking blonde and it's like, you know, it's whatever. I don't want to, don't give me a start. get me started. So the, uh, no, but the, so but like a lot of the applications that you say, and I think this is the way to hit things that people miss the most, because a lot of people, they're going to bring up bread, the most difficult. I mean, the most difficult. But even bread, you know, it's one of those things that, ah, it takes such technique and years of experience to make good bread, you

[9:26] know? Um, and I, again, it's not something that we're not working on, it's going to be a lot more work than just pastry flour. Right. Now, aside from the gluten, the actual starches, like, in other words, wheat starch works differently from other kinds of

[9:41] starches and for many reasons, right? One is because of the different kind of the actual texture of the flower when it's ground, the granule structure, right? And then there's how the how the actual structure it is. Now, the reason you can't, let's say, just do all rice flowers, because it acts totally differently, and it will be like a rice bun or a rice noodle, which is not what people are looking for, correct?

[10:03] Completely different, you know, and I'll walk through their ingredients. So we have cornstarch, which really acts

[10:09] as, uh, when you think about flour and its performance in a recipe. It's a filler, you know, it really is the body of, um, the body of the recipe in a baking

[10:19] formula. And then you have rice flowers that is going to provide more of a textural difference because cornstarch is just too fluffy. And then the other ingredients are really for elasticity purposes. You know, how do you bind because that's what flour does as well. It binds and it will be able to, within the baking process, how steam and everything works hold its shape. And so that's really how the formula goes. So what are the other ones? You have cornstarch, you have rice. What else you got in here? We've got tapioca, potato starch, xanthum gum, and milk powder, which is another thing that is really important to point out.

[10:52] It adds tenderness. A lot of other gluten-free flowers. They have eliminated dairy because they want to, it's a larger market when you do dairy-free, gluten-free, everything free, you know? But for us, when we decided this, if I took out the milk powder, it was going to be less performing flour. milk solids, right? So there's no lactose in it. No, there is. It's a skim milk powder, you know, and it's very crucial to the baking process. will create a tender crumb. No, milk proteins are awesome. Yeah they really are. But okay, so you have the potato, which swells fast, right? Yes. And then you had, what was the other one? tapioca. Tampio. is weird. You ever cook the straight tap yoga? That's a strange. It is, but it does give that showing, showing, showing. Yeah. That's no joke. No joke. I mean, have you ever had that Brazilian cheese bread? No, I've had Portuguese, like corn cheese bread, like broa? No, it's um, I'm blanking out what it's called, but uh, it's this, it's made with the cassava

[11:54] root, so tapioca. Oh yeah, I've had that stuff. And it's delicious, but it's fried and it's all chewy inside. Yeah, no, it's just good. I used to have to, when I was doing work on puffed stuff, you know, years ago for the blog, I was doing a lot of tapioca

[12:07] doughs, man, they're a pain. especially like they're just like really a pain. They're really pain because you also have to heat them up and then you're working with like galop and

[12:15] then them. Well, so heating up, you bring a good point. So when you're doing, when you're doing a dough that doesn't have any gluten in it, I mean, one of the things that, you know, we always used to do is just pre-cook some of the

[12:26] starch because, you know, when you're working without the gluten, things tend to be kind of like a sandy agglomeration of things, they don't tend to dough up on

[12:34] you, they just don't. So, like, the question is, is do you have some pre-cooked in here as well without telling me, like, how it works or is it we able to do it without any pre-cooked stuff? No pre-cooked. Because one of the things that was difficult with this process because when we developed the French laundry, You know, French laundry really source from smaller, you know, farmers, um, just our resources are more, you know, local. And for us to go out to a market and provide nationally, we really

[13:03] need to start digging into resources that we could find large volumes for.

[13:10] And so pre- pre-cooked starches, we don't work with them. Yeah, because they're easier to work with, right? They are easier to work with, and they're a little more stable, however, the volume of it. It's just not there. Now, I see you have one here called Wholesome that says it's dairy free. is a dairy free product. What do you have in to make up for the dairy and net sucker? So the wholesome flour is actually our 1st response back to the public.

[13:35] People are really looking for non-GMO. And what we found was it's really in the category, they're missing whole wheat flour. And so this is a solution for the whole wheat, flour, nutrient dense performing. So no milk powder, but what we did add was ground flax seeds. And so flax seeds, you know, with a little bit more fat. It adds a little texture and also creates that, I guess, textural difference in the quick breads and pastries. It does absorb a little bit more water like whole wheat flour does. So. Oh, flaxseed likes to absorb water. That's that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah, flaxseed. I did a, well, man, I don't even want to get into flexing. I mean, presumably it's not like a lot, a lot of flax seed, right? No, but it definitely has its share. So it has equal parts of fiber as whole wheat, and then also has omega fatty

[14:26] acids to contribute by the flax seeds and rice bran as well. Did you know that some people like soak and grind up flax seeds and eat that gummy pulpy stuff on purpose just like as is? Did you know that? So I was going through a week of like healthy after eating too much and I was going to grind up some. I was like, oh, I was just throwing flax seats into my smoothie. Don't ever do any more than 2 tablespoons. No, I mean, it's just freaking like it's a freaking gummy nightmare. I mean, it's a natural. Yes, yes, fiber, hydrocoloids. It's all great and stuff, which is, man, that is some, man. So, how many, how many, how many flowers do you have in the line now? You have... So we have the cup for cover original line. So it has a pancake waffle, pizza, chocolate brownie. And then our wholesome line, which is actually in stores now at

[15:17] Waim Sonoma. It is we're going to look to extend it and release 2 other products behind it. Okay. Now, you just came last night from Del Posto, Mark Ladner is a big fan of being able to make all of his

[15:31] pastas gluten-free, and he uses cup for cup. Which one does he use? The OG? Yes, the OG. Yeah, he uses the OG stuff. Now, he actually tasted you out last night on all the pastas, right? It was amazing. And I, you know, I had heard about Del Posto about a year and a half and just all of the oppressive receive with the gluten-free pastas. You know, I hadn't had a chance to meet Mark. And, you know, I ran into you guys last weekend. out of, you know, coincidence. Yeah, by the way, we judged a pint. I think we talked about. We judged a... We didn't talk about it. So Nastasia and I went out to UCLA and we were judging a not a pie eating contest, pie making contest. Pie making contest. Two people, I, we're not going to say, I'm not going to say anything positive or negative about the cause because, you know, just in

[16:17] case, just in case. Well, but yeah, they're like, school, she does, like, school years over. These kids, they're like freshman sophomores. They're not listening to this stuff. They don't know. But like, uh, so we had to eat like something like 22 pies and, you know, 22 pies, you know, and, you know, thankfully,

[16:31] like you can have gluten if, you know, you happen to have created that, like, the one kind of gluten-free, like, you know, replacement flour, but you actually can consume the gluten.

[16:40] So we were eating these pies, and for some reason, we didn't, like, the, like, one of the best pie crust there. Like, I don't know, like, my face was buried in, I don't know what the hell happened, but, you know, you had advocated for this. Oh, I stuck up for them. I totally did and I got chewed out, but... It was totally, you were totally right. And then later you were like, I can't believe it. I was like what? What? And then this nastasia never is gonna freaking let me forget the fact that I let, 1st of all, here's what happened. Like, okay, okay, okay, okay. So they have this class. What's the name of the class at UCLA? remember? Ah, well, I know the event was the food and science, but I don't know what the name of the class was. Yeah, Professor Robot out there. Yeah, she has a class and she teaches it. And so, you know, one of the things she does is, you know, you're supposed to like learn

[17:26] some science, like come up with an experiment and it's based around making apple pie, right? Which is great. It gets the kids, you know, really excited about making

[17:34] pies. the 1st time diving into it. Yeah, but all of these freaking kids, like not enough salt in the crust. Oh my Jesus. Not enough salt in the crust. People, when you make pie, put salt in the freaking crust. I was like, how much unsalted like crust did you have to eat? Because I think like it's like, I think this is, I was yelling at someone else. Like all the chefs, we were talking about this before. All the chefs are like, me, me, use unsalted butter, right? Unsalted butter. But the problem is, is then like people who, like, maybe, like, they use a recipe that was written for salted butter. don't taste the crust or whatever. It doesn't have any salt in it. I really think someone has to publish an article about how chef's pinch technically is. I think about a tablespoon. If you think about it, And that's why people always, when they say a pinch, they take maybe half a teaspoon and they

[18:20] throw it in. See, that's the thing. People just need to taste the sun, the thing, and see whether or not like it tastes good. People don't know. Here's another thing. Like, uh, you know, as any of you know, like the, I read that book recently, sugar salt fat. And I have some huge issues with that book. Huge issues with that book, written by Moss, right? Because one of the things is he's like, do you know that do you know that corporations try to make their food taste good? You know what I mean? like, what? What? And my point is, is that especially I think he falls flat in the anti-salt

[18:51] stuff, because you cannot make decent baked goods or decent ice creams without

[18:58] salt and like people don't know how much salt is in a decent dough.

[19:04] Like when I was growing up, McGee told me there's a there's a famous bread book writer who used to cook at one of the schools and was one of the bakeries out in San Francisco. I forget his name. He came out with a book maybe 4 years ago. And he says that over the past maybe even 12 to 15 years, like salt levels have gone up in all of the artisan breads, at least in the west coast. Because I used to, you know, do like maybe like a percent and a

[19:25] half. People are closer to 2% on bread. Really? Yeah, dryweight bases, dryweight, flower weight bases. You know, and so, you know, I'm still, you know, back at Weasley one. 5 . you don't need that much in a pie crust, but something, some salt. Well, you have to think about, you know, flavors is it's the same thing as composing music. If you were to only use one note, how flat would that be? But if you add different beats to it, it's really going to accentuate the sound of it and really focus. And then same thing with flavor. So I actually had a double post, so this great, um, it was a dried apricot sorbet, and he

[20:00] had, he had dusted it with a little salt on top, and it just brightens everything. So you really need that offset flavor to really highlight the

[20:08] dish. Yeah, like unless unless you have salt, sensitive hypertension, like salt,

[20:13] your good buddy for flavor. You know what I mean? So anyway, so like they undersalted their crust. They undercook their crust in general, right? They did, but you know, I will have to say it was a really fair stab at everything. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, so what happened is this one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. like, tell the grandma story. So like, I rooted for you guys. I just want to let you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's what happens. So this one, this one crew was working on cooking the apples, that was their shtick, the thickness of the apple slice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cooking with calipers was the name of their their their shtickamajig there, right? And so they're like, okay, so they they're like, well, our project wasn't about the crust. So for the crust, I just did grandma's crust. I called my grandma like a real ass. Is this a real live grandma or is this some sort of bull crap you're trying to tell me? He's like, no, this is a real life grandma. And I had the crust. I was like, damn, if that crust ain't good. Like, that's a crust I want to eat because they had, they had, like, they had coated the top right, it had the little bit of sugar, they had crusted, it was beautiful,

[21:10] like, it was cooked all the way through. It was actually flaky. It was like... I think that was the only pie I gave a 5 out of 5 when on the chart that we had to sign

[21:18] off. where you were like, would you give this to someone with no, like, questions to ask? I said the pie cross. Yes, you know. Yeah, those guys got hosed. got nothing. They got they got rippety-doo. they didn't even they got honorable nothing. They got hosed. Mainly because I was sitting there trying to sift through my freaking papers when it was going on and like we were confused over who, you know, which team

[21:39] was I'm sorry, grandma's pie people cooking with calipers. My fault. My fault, my fault. All right. So let's go on to a quick question we had last week from a reader about gluten-free. Nigel Olsen wrote in, hey, Dave, and Nastasia because he didn't know you were going to be on. I love your show. I've been a listener since day one here in Napier, New Zealand, North Island,

[21:58] East Coast, right by the Pacific Ocean. I've been an avid follower of your work. Um, you guys seem the logical people to ask. Could you help me come up with a gluten free issue? I guess, I mean, solution? Solution, right? That's solution. Yeah, solution. I plan on making profiteroles, cream pro, seclairs, that sort of

[22:13] thing, for sale, our local farmer's market. I'd like to have a gluten-free option available, but I'm not sure what flour alternative would have the gluten-type strength to sustain the shoe pastries expansion during baking. Now, choux paste will be interesting because it's pre-cooked, right? And so you get to you get to mess around a lot more with stuff with the shoe pastry than you would otherwise, right? Are you in New Zealand? No, we're not. But you know what? What really works with the choux pastry is if you use a blend of different rice flowers. So you're going to have to use a blend of brown rice and also white glutinous rice to kind of get that sticky dough. I would say probably... Same thing, though, like cooked butter and then beat the egg. Blend in your rice flowers. I would probably test around 50% of both white and brown rice. And then, um, and use it as weight with a pâte a choux pastry recipe. That's what I would say. And it's going to be okay. It's not going to have that weird like look see-through rice thing. It will, but you know, I'm just thinking half the time I had without going into, you know, the formulation of cup for cup too heavily, if it is just for pastry flour, I have seen rice flour blends work

[23:28] well, because you're able to cook it, and then it has enough of that starchy quality, it'll roll into a ball. And because there is enough steam, it will steam up and

[23:40] you want that hollow center. So I would say rice flour would be the best bet for the easiest, you know, you don't have to try it out. Yeah, I'm sure the like people who write into this show, they don't want easy. If you're going to do difficult. Would your stuff work well on a shoot pastry application? Absolutely. Actually, if you look up cup for cup? Um, shoe pastry, people have done several different variations of recipes using this. Right. But your stuff not in New Zealand. No. Sorry. No. No. Well, anyhoo, so yes, it can be done. And what, and the, you know, one of the things that you, like, the benefits you have is, like, one of the more difficult things I'm told about working with, uh, you know, non-wheat flowers is

[24:20] the, is the fact that the does don't cohere so well, but because you're going to cook the crap out of it beforehand, you win. Yeah, I think shoe pastry will be a, it's going to be an easier one to figure out with rice flowers, definitely.

[24:32] What would you add to it to have it not be so ricy? That's the thing. Yeah, you're right. You know, I would definitely add a little bit of cornstarch to give it more of that filler, you know, but you're

[24:44] going to need the most of it as the body is going to be the rice. Now, when people are doing the stuff at home, do they try to add stuff that's got like a little more of that nuttiness, right? what do they add? They add like buckwheat or something, but buckwheat doesn't act right, right? No, buckwheat doesn't act right. You know what I like to do a lot, too, is toast the flour. You really are able to taste that nutty flavor from it. Yeah. So dope in a little bit of the corn, but he's not going to need any of this other stuff like tapio. He's not going to need that stuff. No, just because you're going to cook the starches and it's going to be already such a hard, like, glob, you

[25:18] know, you're going to, you're going to be able to get that without having to use tapioca, potato, anything else that's going to cause it to retract.

[25:25] Right. potato is super swell. Now, the, the other thing is for the, for the rice flowers. You can just get brown rice flour. The so this is the difficult part. When it comes to gluten-free flowers or flowers in general, there are so many different variations of one type of brown rice, you know, you could get

[25:46] pre-gelatinized, you can get certain different grains, you know? the starch structure, you know, from crop to crop, it will change, you know? And so you, that's what's going to be really difficult sourcing, you know? And, um, it's going to be, it's hard for me to say like one specific is going to be better than the other right now. Right. And also, like, you know, for instance, like not harping on them, but like Bob's Red Mills, uh, like, like

[26:12] their, their rice flour, I think I've had a package of that once and it feels totally different from the stuff I buy, you know, in Chinatown, which is like a powder.

[26:21] It's almost like rice. It's almost like starch. It's so powdery. Well, what I noticed is, so that was one of the flowers that we tested with, Cuffer Cup originally, and the Asian flowers, they go through a different process.

[26:33] So they soak the grains and then they mill it. So that really produces, um, a definitely a different flower that has more moisture content and it performs completely differently from like American starches because we don't go through that

[26:48] process here. Yeah, because also, like, I've had terrible luck with rice,

[26:52] like, grinding your own rice, but, oh my god, it's horrible. Like, it's... Did you actually do it? I tried. Yeah, back when I, you know, back when I, you know, people, you know, whatever. I try anything once. But like grinding that stuff, it's just like it's like little pelletous nightmares. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't, it's not... I'm actually having any good luck milling my own wheat flour either. I mean, I have a I have a, you know, a grain mill, but it's, I don't really like it very much. And like the really coarse, the really coarse, uh, like whole wheat. It's like, it's like, just a killer. Yeah, you need that. I mean, you need that intense equipment to be able to support that grind. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I love whole wheat flour, but not the stuff that I make. No offense to me. No offense to me. Wait, so Jack is telling me we're already host. We're already hosed? Oh, man. All right. Well, listen. We were pre-taped this week. So I swear, Rob, next week, I will talk, do you like fiddleheads firms? Yes. Did you know this is very strange. So the fiddlehead fern that we eat is ostrich ferns, right? So we don't eat bracken. Although apparently in Asia, many people eat bracken and people have eaten bracken in

[28:06] the US for millennia, you know, Native Americans have eaten bracket, different kind of firm. like, don't care. Uh, but like the, uh, but the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, Bracken has some well-known, um, has some well-known carcinogens in it, like the most well-known is, I can't pronounce it, but it's like

[28:22] Taquila side from something like this, right? In fact, some people think that this may, like consumption, high consumption of Brackenfern might be the reason why there

[28:32] is, everyone's looking to figure out why more people get esophageal and stomach cancer in Korea, let's say,

[28:37] or, you know, places around there. And so a lot of, you know, some people have pegged it on like the inordinate amount of kimchi that's consumed. But then some people were like, hey, how about the bracken? Like we all know that Bracken, you know, has cancer causing agents in it. But I don't think it's that readily eaten that much in high volume where it

[28:55] would affect it. don't know. Because I heard it was because, like, the stomach cancer, right, was a lot to do with alcohol consumption. You think? Yeah, because I think it's the population 80% aren't able to

[29:06] consume, they don't have the enzyme to break down alcohol. And so they still consume it. And that's also contributing to the high rate. Right. So the pain, the pain about it is, right, that that, that there, you get 2 copies of the gene, right? So like most uh, Caucasian style folk like myself have 2 copies of the stuff that, you know, for the alcohol dehydrogenase, it can break down alcohol like nobody's business, right?

[29:28] Then you have like a whole, uh, you know, a whole like Asian consort of people who have no copies. They're the ones that are going to go bright red when they're drinking, right? And then you have people who have one copy that don't go bright red. This is the research I read. They don't go bright red, so they consume alcohol, but they're more likely to get

[29:47] damaged, like having cancer and stuff. So it's like that middle ground where you have one copy where it's like Dangerville. I wonder if it's the same, because also the Irish population also, because it's the dilation of your capillaries where that's why you're turning red. But I wonder if it affects different cultures as well. I don't know. I don't know, but I will try to research more of the bracken stuff, but the ostrich firm, strangely, just in the past 10 years, people have had these weird food poisonings happen from undercooked

[30:17] fiddle heads, real ones, ostrich ferns, but nobody knows why. And so, uh, the good news, Rob, is, is that if you were going to get poisoned, it's not a cancer thing, you would have gotten poisoned within about 12 hours. But so you're good. But yeah, people do recommend that you cook your fiddle heads, like overcook them, in fact, like way overcook them. But I'm going to look into it more and I have a lot more information I can get to you next week on, and unfortunately, I thought we would have time to get to Canon Gramercy, because he had a chewy crust problem with his pizzas. And we could talk about that because I think, you know, one of the issues I think people, you know, you know,

[30:54] like when I was growing up, everyone, all they worried about with flour was protein content, right? No one was worried about the way it was milled, the milling fractions of it, and like how the hydration is affected by how the flowers milled. But anyway, we're going to have to... So important for bread flour. But you know what's a quick solution? Go buy cup for cup pizza. Oh, boom. And with that, we'll have to leave it. cooking issues.

[31:20] 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

[31:28] store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.