[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons, 3rd generation

[0:04] cure masters producing the country's best dry cured and aged hams, bacon, and sausage. For more information, visit Surrey farms.com. This is Michael Harlan Turkell, host of the food scene. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadioNetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:30] Hello and welcome to Cooking Age. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on Roberta's Pizzeria and Bushwick,

[0:38] Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network with Nastasha, the Hammer, Lopez, and Jack Ainsley in the engineering booth. How you doing, guys? How'd you have that much breath in you after riding your bike here? I don't know. You know what? Well, before I get into the bike, calling your questions too, 718-497-2128. 7184972128. Now back to your question, Jack. You know, you know that everyone who bikes in this neighborhood. They know that there's a, like a block and a half from here is a giant cement factory. You know this, Jack, the giant cement. And something, I mean, I hate driving past it because whenever I drive past it,

[1:13] like, even although I'm breathing through my nose, like, you know, I'm inhaling concrete dust and

[1:17] always, like, I'm fine all the way here, up and down the bridge. I could get off and do the radio show at a minute's nose. bike past that concrete factory. And it's like all of a sudden my mouth is totally shafted. They're just spraying Portland cement dust into the atmosphere to ferocious rate. But I realized something else. You know, uh, you know, for those of you that are fans of Neil Diamond, you

[1:36] know, the Brooklyn Rhodes song. We mentioned on the show before, Brooklyn Rhodes. Anyway, you know that you know this song, right? It does? Neil Diamond? I thought it was, yeah, okay. Jack, you're a Neil Diamond fan. Not a Neil Diamond. What the hell is wrong? Brooklyn Rhodes. Brooklyn Rhodes. You're thinking of, uh, uh, LA's fine some of the time. Yeah, no, this is Brooklyn Rhodes. an entirely different song, not as popular. But, uh, so I always thought it was laughable because we would write, but Stas won't ride her bike here anymore because she took a tumble on Bushwick Avenue once.

[2:07] And Bushwick Avenue, and I've mentioned this before, is like kind of like a slalom course. But then like, it's like, like, seriously, it's like, it's the, it's totally like mogaled out. It potholed

[2:18] out, mogaled out. And then there's giant blobs of concrete, just in the middle of the bike lane, right? And then like a month and a half ago, Jack, I don't know if you were biking around here. You bike, right? I have a car. Yeah, so do I, but I bike, whatever anyway. I have to move it every morning for alternate side parking anyway. No, I know. All right. So anyways, very green. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, is it a partial 0 emissions vehicle? Not at all. No, wait, have you heard of this partial 0 emissions vehicle? It's not 0 emissions. My Subaru is, it says P, let's see, partial P-Z-E-V. Partial 0 emissions vehicle. Hey, listen, people, every car is 0 emissions when you have it turned off. What the hell is a partial, is there partial zero? You know? I'm part, you know, does that make sense? Does that make any sense to you at all? No, no, no. Partial, partial my butt. Anyways, so about a month ago. Maybe you did notice this, even though you were on a car, maybe 2 months ago now. They totally repave the stretch of bushwick that's near us. It was like totally sweet. New black top. No potholes, no life ending potholes, no nothing. And I was like, man, all right, I'm going to stop making fun of Brooklyn Rhodes. And then, like, the next week, the big turds, like, like copper light dinosaur turd fossilized chunks of concrete on the thing, and I realized it was those damn cement trucks, had extra cement in those freaking

[3:38] shoots. The freaking shoots are pointed to the freaking right, right? Uh, you know, so that they're not pointed into the center traffic, they're on the right, and they're blopping concrete right into the freaking bike lane. And that's why there's always blocks of concrete in the freaking bike lane around here. Someone needs to, someone needs to teach those weasels a lesson. You know what I'm saying? Jack doesn't care. He's driving next to it with his car, laughing at the people flying over their handlebars next to him. I didn't even door them and here they are over their handlebars. Wah wah. I've never adored anybody. It's never too late, Jack. It's never too late to door somewhere. I've thankfully never. Is that true? No, I did stop. I did pull an abrupt UE stop and the guy hit me, so that's adoring. I consider that adoring. I did adore this poor son of it. That was a long time ago, though. I was much younger, and I have been doored, so it's like, I guess I paid it forward. Uh, in a kind of reverse pay forward. Steal forward? What is it? I don't know. Good day, Nastasia, Dave, and Jack. Greetings from France. I hope you, me, that is, enjoyed my stay in Paris a few weeks back and you had the opportunity to visit a few of the places I had recommended in previous email. I didn't get a chance to go to too many food things because I was with Dax, who doesn't really care much, although he is now a crepe fan. Do you know that stuff? He loves crepes. I had that crepe maker for years. He never asked for crepes, and now he's like, crepes, crepes, crepes, crepes, crepes, crepes, crepes, crepes. jelly. I couldn't get him interested in crepesole with, you know, the ham and the cheese in it. You like that crap, right? Especially you're a Gruyer fan, right? Because Nastasia is a fondue fondue fiend. She loves fondue. If, well, it's not going to happen, but like, that's like, if someone was going to ask the stars out on a date back in the day, and they're like, you know, I know it's cheesy and everything, but, you know,

[5:13] would you want to go to a fondue restaurant? Should be like, finally, somebody's asking me to a fondue joint. many fondue places here. There used to be in the 70s when fondue was popular back, you know, wherever anyways. So that's another thing that style likes. You can put that on the list of 4 things. Styles likes fondue. Anyway, I went to Pierre May and I think a couple of the cheese joints, but I didn't get a chance to eat out at any fancy restaurants who mainly sat outside so that if there was any screaming and

[5:40] wailing, we could just kind of car ourselves away. Tax is old. He doesn't scream and wail. But you know, kids, like, they're not like always restaurant friendly. Although Dax is, Dax is very good. Anyway. Um, back to the question. Imagine I want to add caramel flavor into a sweet recipe. I can imagine that. Can you imagine that? Jack, you have it imagined? Okay. Could I take the original amount of sugar in the recipe? Cook it to a caramel. Let it cool, reduce it to a powder, and then follow the recipe instructions. I am particularly interested in the effect on structure. For example, sugar gives cookies a nice snap and

[6:15] provides structure to egg white, egg whites and meringues. Would pure caramel work the same? Also, it seems that caramel binds with water differently than sugar does. It becomes sticky after a while. When a cake or cookie becomes soggy. In general, would you recommend I cook all the sugar into a caramel or only part of it? And how do the many components of caramel compare to table sugar, i.e. sucrose for sweetness? The 1st try will be a simple caramel flavored meringue. I'll let you know if it works Okay, so here's the thing, right? When you're taking sugar, sucrose, which is, you know, one glucose and one fructose molecule bound

[6:51] together, and you cook it on its own or with a little bit of water until the water evaporates, until it turns

[6:57] brown and starts breaking down, you get a number of things that happen to it. Well, 1st is you're literally breaking the sugar apart and changing it into something else. So the darker your caramel is, the more sugar you have broken down. And, you know, I don't really understand what all those breakdown components are, but they're certainly not going to be

[7:20] as sweet. So anytime that you caramelize sugar, you are reducing its overall sweetness. However, the other thing that you're doing when you're doing this is you are also hydrolyzing some of the sugar into fructose and glucose.

[7:38] You're breaking that, you're breaking that bond, and you're turning it into monosaccharize. Now, the difference is between the invert, you're basically adding invert sugar to your recipe. So if you're taking what amounts to pure sucrose, which we know the properties of. You're converting a portion of it into invert sugar, fructose and glucose, and then you break further breaking down those inverted sugar portions into

[8:00] non-sugar sugar breakdown products. Okay? Now, to the extent that you have residual invert sugar in your in your sugar batch, that stuff is much more hygroscopic. It's going to pull up water more. So it's going to have the same effect as adding corn syrup to something like a cookie or a cake,

[8:19] i.e. it's going to increase its ability to pull water in. So you probably won't have as much snapped arrow. You need to use other things to control the water uptake. Now, the other thing I have to say is that if you look online at people that have made caramel powder in the typical way that they do it, is they'll just cook

[8:41] sugar, and then they'll pour it into onto a sheet, you know, they'll cook it to a specific brown note. They'll pour it onto a sheet. Remember, the sugar will be sweetness will be reduced, and it will probably be more hygroscopic. And then they pulse it in a robo coup until it's a powder and then you have to use that right away or it starts sticking up. However, if you look at some of the comments on recipes like that on the on the interwebs. Because I haven't, I haven't really, I've never had an occasion to actually do this myself. But if you look at a lot of the comments, people are like, it tasted kind of good, but it didn't really add that caramel flavor that I

[9:17] wanted to the recipes I was looking at. And then it dawned on me that, when you say, when one says caramel. And since you're in France, maybe you don't have this problem, but if in America, when you say caramel to someone, they don't really think caramelized

[9:32] sugar, unless they're talking about something on top of a creme brulee. Typically, when an American says caramel, they mean caramel candy, which is kind of like

[9:40] toffee like candy that we eat, like craft brand caramels. Do you like those stuff? Because they're delicious, right? Jack? fan of the caramels? am. You know what Stas and I actually both like? and we tried to imitate once and we miserable failure. Remember this? So, uh, Getz, it's pronounced Getz, but it's spelled Gertz, G-O-E, uh, T-Z, you know,

[10:00] but it's pronounced Getz. I don't want to hear anyone tell me that I don't know how to pronounce OE or Ouma, because it's their name and they can pronounce how they want, and I happen to be pronouncing it correctly. So suck on that. Uh, but anyway, so Getz makes uh, like my all-time, all-time favorite candy. Like, I can eat so many of these things. And Stas, the miracle thing is that she also likes them, which is, you know, kind of

[10:23] odd, for both of us to like the same thing. It's like, you know, I don't know. doesn't happen. Uh, so it's called, they're called caramel creams, and what they are, is they're like a caramel, they're a caramel outside

[10:36] ring and a center like bull's eye of like this condensed milk sugar stuff. they're so good. They're so good, right, Jack? They're so freaking good And they're like the size of a little bit bigger than a quarter, but smaller than a half dollar and they're cut, you know, into pieces that are maybe, oh, I don't know, like a quarter inch steak or something like

[10:57] that. God, I could eat a ton of those. They're so delicious. So Stas and I, we wanted to do it where we were going to replace the

[11:03] bull's eye with coconut flavor because we thought that would be good. And we just, we sucked at it. It was great idea, though. It's good, right? That would be good. And we were going to totally redo it and then do a whole bunch of these, man, we just never did. Um, yeah, probably because we're lazy, lazy. Anyway. So if you're looking to mimic the flavor of caramel, like caramel, uh, and they use, for some reason, I believe they use wheat flour in their recipe, which is weird, but if they craft caramel, it's not caramelized sugar really that's doing that to you, what you're dealing with there is the browned milk proteins, because there is butter and

[11:36] cream typically in, at least in a homemade kind of soft caramel. And the temperatures that you're taking those, um, those things to are more of a firm ball kind of a stage. So kind of low on the candy thermometer scale because they're supposed to be soft, right? And so the texture of them is coming a lot from the fat, and from the milk protein, and

[11:58] the milk protein, you're getting almost like a dulce, dulce de leche, kind of a flavor, but mixed with

[12:04] a high proportion of sugar into a stiffer thing. So that's where a lot of people, when a lot of people say caramel flavor, they're associating it more with a browned milk,

[12:14] butter, and a small amount of sugar caramelization like you again in the Dulce de leche. And so if you're looking to imitate something like that, what you need to do is powderize caramel. And to do that,

[12:27] you probably need to use something that it would absorb some of that butter fat so that you

[12:31] can incorporate it as a solid powder. And for that, you could use something like Enzorbit brand, tapioca maltadextrin, but you wouldn't want to let this stuff get totally solidified until you're done.

[12:42] I think there's some people online who have done it, hopefully with some success. So I would do it that way, but I would, I don't know, I would experiment. Another way is you could probably, um, I mean, it'd be difficult to get the milk. Do they, do they make a, don't make a browned milk powder that I know. Anyway, but I would try I would try doing that. So the question is, are you trying to get the flavor of caramelized sugar or are you trying to get the flavor of caramels? Uh, and your 2nd question was, uh... I got a caller here, if you want to... All right, call her, you're on the air. I'm doing all right. How you doing? Good. It's Antoine calling from Boca, Florida. Nice. How it going? How's it down there? Is it hot as hell? Always, man. Yeah. And humid? Always humid. I always align with you on how gross is in here, but... Well, luckily for you, it's pretty gross up here today too. It probably wasn't that bad, but the bike over in Brooklyn. Anyway, so go ahead. had a question. Yeah, um, basically, I've always wanted to get your idea and thoughts on um, just health and nutrition more than anything else. I like to eat, but I'm not so fond of working it off, or I want to know what sort of things you, uh, believe as far as like health claims as to whether to reduce, uh, any of the claims, whether it's producing complex

[14:03] carbohydrates. Or sugars. Um, what things do you believe in as far as keeping a good balanced health? I mean, I like to eat a little bit of everything, you know, but some things obviously taste better than others. Right. Uh, I don't, but I don't believe in any, any really uh, health claims. I mean, um, to be honest, I sometimes believe that specific things uh, that have, you know, good studies in them actually cause

[14:32] harm, you know, like I do kind of believe that if you consume large amounts of coffee grounds that you'll, you, it's possible that your cholesterol might spike because I believe they've done studies on that, you know, controlled kind of studies on

[14:45] it. But most of the nutritional uh, guidelines are uh, problematic. I think people are getting better at it over the years, you know, you know, better now than they were, let's say, 10, 20 years ago, but if you were to go back and follow,

[15:01] uh, strictly follow the kind of theoretical underpinnings of nutritional science from 15 years ago, you would be almost completely at odds with what

[15:09] the, uh, with what people are saying uh, now. Other than the strict adherence, you know, to variety and moderation, which, you know, hasn't changed, right? Eating a reasonable amount of food in wide variety has not changed, you know, ever, really. Uh, and, and, but like all of the specific things, like it's, it's fat, fat is your enemy 20 years ago. Was fat was your enemy, right? And then it's, oh, you know, carbohydrates are your enemy, and you can eat as much fat in protein as you want, and then it shifts around. Well, now it's a specific kind of carbohydrate or now it's a specific kind of fat. And while, you know, for instance, it may be true, the trans fats specifically are bad. Most people now don't believe that um, fats are bad. Now, the problem here, so you need everyone on their sugar on their sugar cakes, and all of a sudden, the problem here is that it's very hard because if you just, you can't just throw away everything that people tell you, uh, from a nutrition

[16:03] standpoint, because you're still falling back, I think, onto kind of a poisoned mindset for what, uh, you know,

[16:09] proper uh, proper nutrition is, I think. And, you know, I actually wrote something, we didn't submit it yet because someone thought it was too preachy, but maybe we'll submit

[16:16] it to Eater, where it's like, you know, I think the main point is that we have a poisoned relationship towards our food in general here in the

[16:24] US. And I think it alters, um, it alters our consumption patterns. Our ideas towards food alter our consumption patterns. So instead of, instead of like over the course of, uh, you know, a month or a year or 2 years, kind of trying to reset like what we think

[16:43] is uh, seating and good and delicious. So, you know, uh, we, we try to take moral attitudes towards our

[16:51] food like, oh, this food is good, this food is bad. This food is junk, this food is healthy, and healthy food. We kind of crave to eat it for moral reasons, but in general, things that are cooked specifically to be healthy, tend to suck and not be a

[17:03] sating, so we eat more of it, and then we cheat and we eat things that we think are junk because we crave them. And this whole sort of poisoned attitude towards food along with a healthy, healthy dose of kind of the magic bullet thinking that we get from,

[17:14] um, you know, quack doctors like Dr. Oz who tell you that this or that raspberry ketone or this or that,

[17:20] uh, you know, X, Y, or Z micronutrient from somewhere in South America is going to save us all from the fact that we haven't controlled or had good thoughts about our

[17:30] diet in, you know, basically our whole lives. And so this kind of thinking of how we're going to get around the problems we have, I think, is a lot of the problem that we have. So, you know, in general, like, if you were to say, okay, I'm not going to limit what I'm going to eat and I'm going to go out and I'm going to eat whatever I want just because it tastes good.

[17:48] The problem is, is that when you 1st start doing that, you're going to gravitate towards the stuff that you've been denying

[17:53] yourself and you're going to overeat binge on it. And so, yeah, it's gonna be unhealthy after a while. So I don't know, the question, how do we, how do we get ourselves back on track where we can say, okay, I'm going to cook to make stuff taste

[18:04] good and then I'm just not going to eat so freaking much of it, you know? And I think that's really kind of the way to go to it. I mean, to me, like the classic snack wells problem is, is that someone's like, well, I'm buying these snack wells and they're healthy, but, you know, I can't just eat one or 2 of them. And, you know,

[18:20] because, A, I can't just eat one or 2 of them because I'm not sated and B, somehow I think they're healthier for me, so I can pound the hell out of them. You know what I mean? It's just a poison relationship. And so rather than think about the particular health or nutrient basis, especially the nutrient basis, I think, you know, we're

[18:35] so, we have so much over nutrition, 9 tenths of us in this country, not 9 tenths, but

[18:40] like those of us with money have so much of an over nutrition problem that, um, you know, that to worry about whether you're getting this much vitamin C or this

[18:49] much, whatever, I mean, it really just doesn't come up. I mean, most of us aren't deficient in anything. I'm deficient in vitamin D because I avoid the sun as though I was a vampire. But, you know, I'm kind of odd that way. So it's, I don't know if this would make any sense, but, I mean, really what I think, you know, we should, now, I think it can be difficult.

[19:07] So, for instance, if you go to a supermarket and you, and you happen to live in a supermarket that is in, and live near a supermarket that's in kind of a shitty area, it tends to be hard to shop because all the stuff that, you know, like when I, like, you know, when you go to like

[19:20] a really good supermarket or a farmer's market, like you see things that, you know, the average, uh, the average health jack wad would say is

[19:28] healthy, and you're like, damn, that looks delicious. That's a delicious looking tomato. That's a delicious looking X, Y, and Z. And that stuff just doesn't look so delicious or satisfying at a crappy supermarket. And so you tend to gravitate towards the stuff that's, you know, shelf stable and

[19:41] bad quality. And so that you end up eating, you know, a lot of that. And I think that throws things off. So it's a complicated problem. And I guess my feelings on it are rather complicated. No, it was funny because uh, I used to work at a raw juice bar and um, right during that time that I was working there, I was listening to your whole segment on the uh, raw foods and

[20:04] obviously, I, I enjoy cooked food. But, you know, I had to make a living. And as I did that, I started turning on them a little

[20:13] bit. I was like, I'm listening to certain things. I was like, you guys are full of it a little bit. Plus, we also had 5 guys in front of those hooters and I started eating there more frequently for whatever reason. Well, yeah, I mean, that makes, look, I think that, that is a great point. I mean, I love this. Jack, we should put that on our, on our, on our, whatever you put things on. But the thing we put things on. Yeah, I don't even I don't know what it's called, you know, somewhere out there. But the, you know, I think it's really a good point. I think, and I wrote this in the in the thing that that, you know, that we may or may not publish, it's like a little 500 word essay. I'm like, look, don't eat. Don't, and I think I specifically said, don't go eat blended kale blueberries and Spiriolina. Don't drink that stuff because you think you drank too much last night. You know what I mean? Like drink it, drink it if you like it, right? Buy stuff that you like. And if you drank too much last night, don't drink as much tomorrow. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, it's like, that's the better solution, you know, uh, Oh my god, I walked into a juice bar the other day with, you know, bartenders, by the way, I don't know if you know

[21:19] this. bartenders love these raw juice bars because they're perpetually thinking that they're, which they are, damaging themselves with their lifestyle. I mean, let's be honest, a lot of these, a lot of these folks really, you know, they live kind of rough lives, you know? I mean, if you look at, you know, rock stars, which is a much rougher version. they don't age well You know what I'm saying? I mean, in all fairness, actually went from working as a bartender to the raw juice bar. Yeah, well, there you have it. So I go to with one of my bartenders to Liquiteria, which is a raw juice bar here. And this is not really apropos,

[21:51] just I thought it was so hilarious. I walk in there and, uh, you know, I'm not going to buy, uh, I'm not going to buy like a blended. I like to eat fruit a lot. I could eat as much fruit as in a smoothie in fruit form because I'm a weird guy that way.

[22:03] You've seen me eat like 3 quarts of blueberries in a row, right? in solid form, but I like blueberries a lot. But anyways, so I go in there and I'm like, uh, do you have any seltzer water? And the guy says, because you know, you know, my bartender friend was having some sort of liquid monstrosity. And I said, um, Seltzer. And he goes, no, have you tried coconut water? I was like, what I was like, is your coconut water carbonated? And he goes, no. And I'm like, what the hell? you know, have you tried, you know, have you tried getting, you know, I'd like some salsa water. Have you tried me punching you in the face? I mean, they're just totally unrelated. I mean, they both happen to be liquids, but, you know, beyond liquid form, I guess he thought I just wanted a non-flavored or light

[22:45] liquid. like, no, I want a carbonated liquid without sugar in it. Thanks. But, uh, anyway. So, uh, I appreciate the feedback you gave me, and I'm glad I pegged you, uh, without knowing

[22:56] so as a former bartender turned juice person, turned 5 guys customer. So I think you're, I think you're approaching. I think you're approaching some sort of balance. I think you're like, you know, you're going through the balance. you're going through, hopefully the sinusoidal waves that like mellow out and then you, you know, you get to a point where you just have like a steady, steady diet of delicious stuff in moderation.

[23:19] Wow, call it the sine wave diet. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the, the, the, uh, the damped sine wave, right? It has to go down towards, it has to go down towards the flat value. Right, right. This is like a square wave. Yeah, you don't want to, you don't want, wait, no, you don't want to, you want to be sinisoidal, but you don't want it to, like, be amplified over time and spool off into, into, into trauma at the end, you know, uh, you know, then you end up being like a

[23:41] fruitarian. you don't even, which is like, like, or Jane, or James. Has anyone ever met a Jane, a true Janist? Yeah, we had one on the radio station. He was in a band. He's in a band? How do you play an instrument that doesn't harm a bug? Yeah, I mean, like, I kind of have an appreciation for anyone who's like, I don't eat onions because they inflame the passions too much. What kind of music do you play if you're a Jane? Like, it's like world music, I think. But I can't, like, incite the passions anyway, right? It's all about like, ooh, like nothing, right? Did he have the he or she have the the bug mask on? No. So it's kind of like, I don't think it was, I don't think it was so extreme, but... Oh, so didn't sweep the ground ahead of him or her? Not quite. His name is Sonny Sonny Jane, actually. Yeah. Sonny Jane? From Red Barat, which is they call themselves party music. don't think Jane's party. If you can't eat an onion on a moral basis, I don't think you can party. But we'll look it up. I mean, I'm not an expert on Jane isn't by any stretch. But anyway, thank you so much for your call and keep calling back, especially if you say funny stuff about working at juice bars. Thanks, Dave. All right, bye. Jack, should we go to a commercial break? Yeah, I'm also vitamin D deficient, by the way. Oh yeah? Yeah, they had to give me like prescription, you know, extra strength pills. I called them sun pills. Recently? No, a few years ago. Really? Do you dip yourself in SBF 2 billion? No. See, I don't I don't either, but I like wear hats and like long sleeve. Yeah, me too. Yeah, Stas, you've seen pictures that like my wife has sent of me on the beach in long pants, long shirt, hat,

[25:20] sunglasses. Yeah, that's me too. Yep, vampire coming back with cooking issues.

[25:42] The following program was brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons. Edward Suriano Hamzer aged to perfection for no less than 400 days, and hickory smoked to achieve a deep mahogany color. The Edwards name is well known for its world class, aged and cured meats. Their exclusive curing and aging recipe produces a unique flavor profile that enhances the quality characteristics of Berkshire

[26:09] Port. Optimum amounts of pure white fat marbling contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty. For more information, visit

[26:18] edwardsvam.com. Man, I think we're all lucky there's not a barn nearby, because you know that's the, if there's a barn nearby with that music going, it's all over. Right? My jack, is that what we said? It's the it's the country music pre-leaven tune. There's like a shed in the back. I don't know. Now you're ruining it for us. Now we have to like, you know, everyone needs to chain ourselves down so that we don't all run in the back by the shed. It's not a real shed. Brooklyn shed. Yeah, yeah. It's not romantic. Well, it is for that. Is that is that puffy leg bird still there? haven't seen him in a while. There was a there was a hipster dove who lived at Roberta's and

[26:59] then, and then we saw another dove there, pigeon really, not dove pigeon. I feel like the pigeon mysteriously disappeared right around the same time, indie Jesus. coincidence. Wow, you think it just flew off? I don't know. Like a white wing dove. A 2nd question on Italian meringue, as the macaron recipe I have calls for it. I'd rather not move around. I'd rather not move around the scesyrup. By the way, you know Italian meringue, right? You whip the egg whites, and then you cook the hell out of the syrup, you pour the syrup in super hot, and you whip it into the KitchenAid or whatever you happen to have when the syrup's hot.

[27:31] I'd rather not move around the syrup when it's very hot. Close to 120 on the Celsius. Could I make the syrup 1st and then let it cool to a more reasonable 60 or 70 C before I pour it into the egg whites. I understand the syrup helps cook the whites, but I was never told the benefit of that. French meringues is made with all the ingredients at room temperature and Swiss meringues are heated to 50 or 60 C. Many thanks and keep up the good work, Stan B. Well, you know, I don't know. I don't know. So there is a cooking, but obviously, you know, I don't know what the finished temperature is when it all balances out. The issue is, and I don't know. Again, I don't know because when I've done these recipes before. I've only ever just followed the recipes. But one thing that is true is if you're pouring sugar syrup that's at 120 C into egg whites, you're going to lose a lot more, you're going to lose a lot more moisture from like sudden evaporation into, as steam into the kitchen and away from your

[28:26] meringues than you would if you, uh, if you didn't. So my guess is that, um, my guess is that if you let it cool, you'll have a higher liquid content in your

[28:40] finished meringue, then you would, aside from any cooking, let's erase any cooking issues from

[28:47] it, huh? Because theoretically, you're going to cook these meringue anyway. But my guess is that you'd be messing with the water balance. I don't know what the high temperature there is doing to the proteins more or less than

[29:00] it would at a lower temperature. Let it even say 80 C or something like this, something that's well above the temperature that would set the egg whites. So I don't know, but it could be the water balance might be a problem. I'd appreciate anyone sending in a tweet or a comment who has more experience, you know, maybe our favorite, you know, macaron blogger, you know who you are,

[29:21] could write in, and tell us what she thinks about it. Anyway, many things keep up the good work, Stan B. We have a question in from Jean-Pierre that I'm going to have to ask for some clarification for next time. My question is that we wrote a blog about tortillas, and I want to know why when I cook my white corn to make tortillas, they come out brown instead of white or

[29:41] yellow, what am I doing wrong? I'm using field corn, it's not burnt just a brown natural color. That's very odd. You know, I don't know. Like, why would, so, because we got to make sure that you're, I mean, I need to see it. Like, I need to know exactly what your procedures are and what you're adding, Jean-Pierre, because I can't imagine why they would turn brown, brown. I mean, um, maybe, you know, some coloration on them, but I'm not familiar with any, um, corn, corn, uh, like pre-colors or color, uh, color precursors that are going to go brown, uh, under the

[30:20] treatment, uh, under next normalization. But I could be wrong, and I've seen, and I've done white corn, and it comes out pretty white. I mean, maybe a little bit beige but not brown. So, you know, there must be something with the technique that you're doing. So just tell me, like, send me an email, uh, you know, for the question and I'll answer it next week with kind of exactly like step by step, what you're doing in the recipe so that I can help

[30:45] uh, troubleshoot, like the more steps, the better because, you know, you'll maybe include the step where it's where I can figure out what's going

[30:52] on. Okay. Hi, Dave and Nastasia and the gentleman or the gentleman in the booth. Hello. Hello. I'm wondering if you have any advice on diluting 35% cream with water to make something close to 3.25% milk. I tried it once using a blend tech HP3A. That's a blender. Uh, cream and water, and it didn't really taste like milk, and I think the fat did not emulsify. Do you have any advice? I want to do this because I'd rather carry a liter of cream home from a grocery store than 4 liters of milk. And if it works well, it would be potentially a bit cheaper too. Michael from Toronto. PS, thanks for hanging out at Dice, with the hangout at Dice Show, after Soylent Green. Did we talk about that? I did the, uh, remember that? I did the, it's made of people. Do you know there was someone in the audience who was there who claim to not know that Southern Green was made of people beforehand? It's people. That's really great. Did you watch the movie? You've seen it? Jack, you a fan of the Soiling Green? I haven't seen the movie, but I'm familiar with the story. It's not a bad movie, and it's it's Ever G. Robinson's last movie. And, you know, it's got the Charlton Heston in it. And regardless of what you think about prying guns out of his cold, dead, you know, fingers, he was a good actor. You know what I'm saying? Apparently he was kind of a sweet dude. I mean, not a jerk, that's what I hear. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I mean, like some people are complete jerks and you still like their stuff, right? Like Michael Stipe, jerk. Music good. You like REM? No. You don't like RAL? Why? What about you, Jack? I mean, they're good. You know, like, don't go back to Rockville. that's a good tune It's a little, it's like, it's like just before my time, you know? I remember losing my religion, liking that song. as a kid. Yeah, but I mean, like a lot of things are before your time. You still like it. Stas pretends to like the Beatles, even though she hates over half of their catalog. I would guess you hate the Beatles. Well, she hates all the songs you like. Oh, right. She's like, you know, if there's some sort of song that you like. or that anyone listens to on a regular basis at the Beatles. I think all their songs are great. I just think that a lot of them are radio played and they have so many great songs that the radio chooses the same ones over and over. So I don't feel like listening to those ones anymore. Yeah, I mean, it's fair. See, when I, you know, as I got older, like I had more tolerance for the songs that were overplayed on the radio as I was a kid.

[33:16] Oh, yeah. Like I couldn't, when I was or like overplayed by like the kids in in the in the smoking section. Like, there was a, there was a chunk of time when I couldn't listen to Led Zeppelin because it's all that got played next to me. It was like Led Zeppelin. I'm like, I'm done. And then I was like, you know what? Led Zeppelin is, there's a reason why those kids were listening to it so much because it's great stuff. You know what I'm saying? You like Led Zeppelin, right? Finally, something. You don't like Led Zeppelin Jack? You know, I have a problem with the not crediting the source material. They took a lot of those songs from older blues musicians. Yeah, but, I mean, they're good. I like the record. They're okay musicians, but I mean, his voice. Okay. Bottom? Yeah, medium drummer. Yeah, plant, got some pipes, man. Nah. Uh, whereas do you like, uh, uh, what's his name? Steve Miller because he does credit people? Yeah. Yeah, do you do? Oh, what? No Steve Miller? Zeppelin over Miller. Is it Abracadabra that did it to you? Come on, dude. Steve Miller. Stas had this argument with Nastasia like a couple years ago. She's like, what kind of hits do Steve Miller had? I'm like, really? He had like, what, seven, eight? No, he had like 10 or 12 mega hits. No, I bet mega. Bet it's seven or eight. I like an eagle? Yeah, look up how many. You know, let let your spirit carry you to the list of songs that they have done. It's like, well, the reason I was saying that, uh, you know, for Jack's benefit is because he did not write big old jet airliner, but ended up in an era when people didn't give a lot of money back, even though I think the person who wrote it didn't really have access to his own publishing rights or something like this, ended up, uh, giving that guy a lot of

[35:15] money and it was the reason that guy didn't die in poverty was because of Steve Miller's version of

[35:19] big old jet airliner. Please don't carry me too far away. And, uh, well, I almost did that with a Casey Cason. Rest in peace, Casey Cason. You know, do you like Casey Case and Jen? Oh my god. Okay, I'm sorry we're going far afield cooking issues, people, but like back in the, in the, I think it was late 80s, early 90s, Casey

[35:37] Casam had an outtake where he was doing an introduction to someone's dog that died, and the dog's name was, I forget what it was, something like fluffy or snuggles,

[35:47] or snuggles. And, uh, he was introducing U2 and, like, to commemorate the fact that, uh, that this dog Snuggles had died and he was doing his typical

[35:57] thing. And then he kind of flubbed the, uh, he flubbed the thing and he was like, and he starts cursing and screaming at

[36:05] the engineer for having him like go do this downer, like, he's like, and his dog died, and then he starts, he has to talk about you too, and he's like, these guys are English, and who gives it? And he's like going

[36:16] like off on it. And then so they have like, I forget what tune it was, like unforgettable fire or something like this. And Flatland, the, you know, kind of concept band, did a thing where they had somehow stolen those outtakes and just have Casey

[36:28] Cason cursing and screaming about YouTube being English, which is hilarious.

[36:32] And, uh, yeah. strong concept music. Anyway, back in the day. Okay. Hello everyone. It's Mildred from Albany, New York. still working through the backlog. I'm up to episode 137 right now, but I skipped ahead to get Dave's suggestion on soy sauce replacements. Thanks so much for the suggestions and forgetting my last name right. I haven't had a chance to try any of the suggestions yet, but mushroom ketchup was something I'd already wanted to

[36:56] try due to my interest in historical food. I have 2 follow-up questions for Dave and any guest that you may have here. Like Moch, like most ketchup recipes, there is a reduced to one half or two thirds or more of the original volume step. Could I change that to 13rd or one quarter to keep the consistency more liquid and closer to soy sauce for the marinade we're trying to recreate? You mentioned that I could ferment two. Yeah, probably. But the thing is, if you don't reduce, the 2 things are happening when you reduce. One, you're getting rid of liquids. right? Duh. And so you're going to have a more concentrated flavor if you reduce more. Second, you are boiling off some volatile. So for instance, if there are volatiles in there that taste better after they've been boiled a while, they won't taste the same after they've been

[37:42] reduced. Secondly, If you reduce enough until things start getting paste like or start losing a lot of their liquid nature, then you can start getting effects due to higher temperatures when you're working.

[37:55] And so you can get more kind of roasty toasty flavors. Just got to make sure you don't scorch. So in those cases, you'd actually be better off reducing it to its original

[38:03] volume, like they said, and then watering it back a little bit with water or with something else that has flavor in it to try and get that liquid back in. But you have to run a test on your particular recipe to see what tastes better. And it's easy to take a small amount of it. Um, and then when you're at the, you know, when you're at the point where you, you know, you've reduced

[38:21] it how much you want to for the texture you have in the finish recipe, pull out a little bit, then continue to reduce the rest down to, um, to, you know, what the original recipe says to, right?

[38:32] Then take a portion of that, dilute it back to the same texture as the one you pulled out earlier, taste

[38:36] it, and see which one you like better, right? I mean, that's what I would do. Um, and you can, um, get a feel for whether or not the reduction is actually doing anything beneficial. It might do something non-beneficial. It might actually harm the flavor. Who knows? Uh, but give it a give it a try. And then two, you mentioned I could ferment the mushroom ketchup. I've never done fermenting like this, so what I introduce yeast or something else, and should I do this before the reduction

[39:01] phase, what resources do you recommend? Mind you, I may not get a chance to do this step. soy allergic best friend won't let her husband or I make kimchi in the house. I'm not sure that this will be allowed either. That's why they make garages. Like, if you have a house, like, I don't, I don't have a house. I have an apartment. So, like, I don't really have any place that I can carry out crazy experiments.

[39:20] In other words, I can't do anything that's going to smell bad because I would hear about it. And my dog would probably eat it. But, uh, actually, we could do it at the lab. Here, like, Styles, like, yeah, thanks. But, um, I don't know. frankly, how, you know, bad it would smell. If you have a vacuum machine, fermentation in vacuum bags is

[39:41] always, um, is always an option. You have to make sure that your salt levels are high enough such that everything is safe. I wouldn't add yeast and you're not really going to probably be doing yeast fermentations with this. You're going to be doing mostly lactic acid fermentations, mostly anaerobic stuff. So, um, what I would do is 1st pick up a copy of Sandar Katz's book on fermentation because it's extremely uh, accessible and uh, that dude has fermented almost any damn thing that you can think

[40:14] of. And if he hasn't fermented that thing that you can think of, he has found some crazy person somewhere in the world who has

[40:22] fermented, said thing, and he has really awesome guidelines. And so he might have guidelines already for this there. I didn't get a chance to look at the book before I before I did, but I would definitely go there. If you have access to a vacuum bag. Uh, you could try uh, doing it under vacuum so that it doesn't smell. Another thing you can do, by the way, is if you don't have a vacuum machine, but you have a sealer, you can put it in a Ziploc bag, get rid of most of the air in the Ziploc bag, and

[40:47] you know, following similar instructions to what I say in cooking issues for doing a steak in a Ziploc bag, and then put that inside of another bag that you seal, or

[40:56] alternatively put it inside of a larger Ziploc bag. The reason for that 2nd thing, and then inside of the containers, should you have an explosion, due to gas, because there will be gas, most likely there will be gas produced by the fermentation. Um, when that happens, if a bag blows, man, right? But if it blows inside of another bag that's sealed, well, then it's still contained in that outer bag, right? Right. That's the last time we did sauerkraut at the lab, I did it in bags and you couldn't smell anything till I opened it. Now I stank up the place. Yeah, all right. Anyway. Thanks for your time and keep it delicious. Mildred. Okay. Um, all right. Well, last question. So we're getting close. Do we have any good things on Twitter? Yeah, but I don't know if we have time for them. Well, well, you can, you can mention them and then we'll, we can get it up till one o'clock today. All right, so let me answer the last one, a question here. Martin from Sweden here. Thanks for a fantastic show. I am a ballot biologist. Biologist. Biologist is gross, right? I'm a biologist, an engineer, who's gotten a lot of enjoyment in learning, listening to your musings on food and cooking. I'm also one of those annoying a-hole vegetarians. Wow, calling yourself an a-hole. I love vegetarians. I love them. I just don't happen to be one. Vegans? That's tough. You know what I'm saying? Like if you don't make milk and eggs. I still like you, but I find it harder to cook for you. You know what I mean? Looking to improve my cooking techniques. As you can imagine, I'm having a lot of fun with pressure cooking, hydrocaloids, and infusions. True. A lot of those things work great onto the vegetables. My question, though, is whether there is any value in applying low temperature cooking to mostly

[42:30] plant-based ingredients. Are there any cool applications, or should I simply avoid wasting money on a temperature controlled water bath, thanks in advance, Martin? Okay, listen, 1st of all, Michael Natkin, if you're out there, let me see, dance. For those of you who listen to Princess Black album, or if not, Michael

[42:48] Linak, and if you were there, please tweet on in some really good applications for circulators, and vegetables from, you know, from

[42:57] the perspective, an actual, honest to God, vegetarian. I say from my standpoint, it is true that most of the time that I'm cooking veg, even if I'm using vacuum techniques, which I think are very good for vegetables, I tend to do them just in simmering water rather than, you know, ways to circulate

[43:15] or bath on it because most vegetables when you're trying to cook them, You're cooking them above 85 Celsius anyway, because what you're trying to do is break down the pectin. And in order to break down the pectin structure and to get a vegetable to be soft, you have to get above 85. And there's not a lot of advantage to going much higher than 85. And once you cook something in a bag as opposed to in boiling water, you don't really get mushy vegetables like you do when you're boiling in water and you

[43:46] overboil. So there's not a huge advantage to the control. When you're doing standard vegetables like that. There's a huge advantage to vacuum bagging, et cetera, et cetera, but not a huge advantage to temperature control. Now, that aside, there are some kind of special things that are done with vegetables that are

[44:02] very useful to have temperature control on. So, uh, things like heat setting, uh, like

[44:09] transgutaminate stuff on soy products, that's one. Uh, having uh, making kambudashi, like kambudashi, like the taste of kambudashi, is very dependent on the temperatures that are used when you're making

[44:22] said dashi. And so when I make kambudashi, I use temperature control bath because I'm trying to hit around 70 degrees Celsius, when I'm using the

[44:30] combo, I think higher than that, the taste is not as good and lower than that, the taste is not as good. So that's a good application for circulator with vegetables. Another is, um, another is certain things like carrots, can have like

[44:44] a raw taste of a raw crunch of a carrot, but you can get sweetness intensification in a carrot by bagging it and cooking it below its softening temperature.

[44:55] So like 70 C. Like overnight, you can get some interesting effects on vegetables like carrots that way. And I also believe that the effects of vacuum

[45:04] and impregnation of flavors, that's gross. flavors into vegetables is accelerated under temperature and things

[45:13] like that, and the useful thing to have a water bath is you can do it without cooking

[45:17] them. You can cook it just below the softening temperature of the

[45:21] vegetables, so you can cook it at like, you know, like I say, like 70 or something like this. Another thing you can do with fruits and vegetables. If you have controlled water bath is you can do enzyme related things. So you can do, um, you know, Steingarden's, uh, famous mashed potatoes that were then taken up by Joel Robuchon, by Wiley Dufray, and all these where he does an intermediate step, an intermediate cook step where he uh, strengthens the uh, granules by, um, uh, I believe it's a pectin methyl esterase thing, causing the, you know,

[45:56] the Star... I believe that's what he's doing. I believe he that he's setting the structure of it more. I don't remember the exact chemistry of it, but he takes it to an intermediate step enzymatic step that sets the starch granules in place so that they don't break when you're doing it. And that's his famous kind of potato. And you can also do that in French fries. I don't particularly like it in French fries, but you can do it. And for that, he used to do it on the stovetop just trying to get very accurate temperature, but it's a lot easier if you have a circulator to do things like that. So there are special techniques. There are special techniques like that that, um, you know, are good for veg or for soy. And obviously, if you eat eggs, eggs alone are a reason enough to buy a

[46:38] circulators. If you don't eat eggs, if, you know, that's a whole, a whole separate ball of wax. But just for egg cookery alone, I think a circulator is worth it. So, but hopefully Michael will write in and, you know, tweet in and tell us some other great applications that maybe are more widely applicable to the vegetarian

[46:58] community. All right. In the 5 minutes we got left. Stas is going to go over some sweet tweets that we got in because I didn't get a chance to go over last week's tweets.

[47:08] So what do we got? You have a ratio. We can. Who's it from? The Vendor Sigal. Did you go over this? Make air out of liquid by adding less gin powder. Oh, the ratio? Yeah. Jeez, I don't know. It's like under, I think it's under... I always tend to add kind of like under a percent. The trick with Lessethen is that usually you want to heat a little bit. You want to get the powdered less thin. Um, and the real trick with it. I don't ever do it. I haven't done it since I taught it. And so I forget the exact ratios I use, but they're widely findable in, like, just go to Martin Larisch's, uh, textures, uh,

[47:43] thingamajig on the, on the, uh, Kaimos thing and look up any one of the number of the lesser thin, uh, foam things. The real trick to doing it isn't the percentage. The real trick is how you hold your stick blender. So you take your court container, you stick your stick blender in it, and the bell housing of the stick blender has to go above the level of the

[48:02] liquid. So you have to tilt the quart container or tilt whatever cup you have it in, and then like at a 45 degree angle, or even a little more, and stick the blender in such that the blender, the blades are going out and going back into the liquid. And once you do that, you're frothing and whipping the air into it, and then you can blend it and pull back on it to get the foam, scoop that stuff off and go.

[48:21] And you can keep doing that over the course of the evening as you're doing service. And that's the real trick to less it then. not the actual ratios. That's not the important thing. Okay, Roshan Gonzol Corale. says, Dave, do you have any suggestions on Blue Torch in UK for Sears Auburn dramatic not sold here? Unhappy face. Oh, the unhappy face. That's like every Stad's face is an unhappy face. So she's making your face for you. But, uh, we don't know for sure. I hope to go to England, maybe when the book comes out in November. We think that Rothenberger makes a torch. I forgot the name of it. We think that Rothenberger makes a torch that's a good substitute. Here's what you need in a torch to have it be good for a series all. A, it needs to have a high heat output. Uh, you know, no higher than the Burns Matic TS, uh,

[49:14] 8000, but no lower than the TS 4000. So that's about, uh, somewhere between uh, anything between about seven. I forget what the 4000 is, but somewhere between like 7000 BTUs per hour and like 12,000 BTUs per hour in that range. It needs to have, uh, in the tip where the tip is, it needs to be the right diameter, which I don't have in my head, but it's not, you know,

[49:35] it's, uh, somewhere near five eighths of an inch. And the important thing is that that tip has to have a little fins of metal on the inside, they create a twisting motion that mixes the

[49:47] air so it's pre-mixed. And I think those are called vortex burners or something like this. Everyone has their own different thing they call that turbo, whatever. needs to have that. It also, uh, very key, needs to have a, uh, needs to be not pointed any uh, further than a, I forget whether it's 30 or 45 degrees, the Burns Matic is, because otherwise you're going to be off center when you have the torch on it, and it becomes an issue of falling over, and it becomes a safety hazard in terms of its

[50:12] stability, if the torch head is pointed too far down. Next, it needs to have a trigger start on it so that when you press the trigger, not only does it ignite the

[50:21] Piso, so that it knights the flame, but it also, when you release the trigger, the torch has to turn off. And that's one of the key reasons why we never bothered developing the itwatani to its final stage because you had to turn the gas on with one knob and then press the trigger to ignite it, but when you release the trigger, the torch stayed on, and we felt that that was not a good forest, here's all, that's just not safe for

[50:41] Serial. Uh, and, uh, last but not least, the Piso element should be located uh, relatively far down the gas delivery tube so that it doesn't overheat.

[50:54] That's another problem that Iwatani had is that the Pisos would burn out after a while because the way they're designed, there is some cherry red around the tip of the

[51:02] torch tip, even in normal circumstances. And just a little bit hotter that it got when it was on a seersol was enough to ruin the Pisos after a couple of hours of firing. And so, you know, anyway, so those are the main things. From the way we look at it on the

[51:17] interwebs, the Rothenberger, I think it's called Surefire 2 or something, as I forget, seems to

[51:23] be seems to look like it would function with those things, but I can't recommend it until I actually use

[51:27] one. But the next time I'm in the EU. I'm going to buy one and see whether it works. Uh, wait, because we have, uh, we're, well, anyways, we'll try to go over the uh, Jack. We done, right? We're done. We're done. All right. So that's it for cooking issues. We try to get more of the tweets and next time, cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archive 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 anytime at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage radio network is a 501 C3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.