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[1:03] Slate Cheeseboards, Coasters, and other fine items. For more information, visit BrooklynSlate.com. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni from Beer Sessions Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageraidernetwork.org for 1000s more.

[1:27] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network in

[1:35] Birchwick, Brooklyn. At Roberta's Pizzeria, joined as usual with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez. Estas, A, and Jack in the engineering booth. We're just running with the old school crew right now. Old school. Old school crew. Streamlined. Yeah. Calling your questions to a 718-497-2128. 718-4972128. Uh, and uh, Jack has told me to read this at the beginning because we have an auction that's gone live. Join me, Dave Arnold, and the Hammer, are my co-host, Nastasio Lopez, and the Heritage Radio Network, executive producer Jack

[2:09] Insley, all 3 of us in the same place at the same time, join us in the studio as a special guest on an episode of cooking

[2:16] issues. The weekly radio show on the latest innovative techniques, equipment, and ingredients in the food world, presumably they know what show it is because they were listening to it. Not, if you somehow tuned in here by mistake, I am truly sorry. I'm not going to read this about myself. You have to read this. I'm not going to read a crap about myself. That's crazy. I wanted to see what would happen. Yeah, I'm not going to read that, like, you know, all right, you read this crap, Jack. Well, it's basically, it's on CharityBuzz.com. If you search Heritage Radio Network, and as you may have gathered, you get a chance to sit in on the show, be a guest on the

[2:49] show. We will take you to lunch here at Roberta's, the famous lunch that Dave always enjoys after his show. Now, listen, just so you guys know, the lunch that we normally get. Stas and I, when we're here, like, what we get is she gets a lemonade. I get a Dye Coke because I don't think they have seltzer. otherwise it'll get seltzer. Bape seltzer. They have seltzer? I like seltzer better. Anyway, like she gets a lemonade. I will now be getting a cell cert. We get a pizza and a salad. That's what happens. Right, but this lunch would be, you know. Yeah, this is like more of, this is more tricked out, right? Yeah, yeah. all the fireworks. Yeah, yeah. And if you are lucky, if you are lucky, maybe, maybe Santa's little hipster will be your

[3:28] waiter, but we can't guarantee that as part of that. Maybe Indy Jesus would be making a return surprise visit. don't know. Do you think we can get into the possibility? Stas sees him in Manhattan now all the time. Resurrection? Oh my god, indeed Jesus. You're going to get me in some big, big trouble. Uh, yeah. So anyway, and then, uh, well, we're gonna go, you might have to sit and listen to a bar meeting for a while, or else you can entertain yourselves for a couple of hours while I do real business, and then you can join us at 5 for a couple of drinks when Booker and Dax opens

[3:58] up and we'll hang out. I'm sure Nastasia will make fun of me and you get to see behind the scenes how she daily attempts to drive me

[4:05] bananamas. If you're lucky, Nastasio will make fun of you also. Well, it depends. Listen. Like, she's not kidding. You really have to kind of watch your step because she'll just, she'll just like razor blade you without even, not physical razor blade. she's not, you know, That won't happen. She's not physically violent person, right, Stas? Hey, she's giving me the mezzo meta hand. You know, she gave the Metsa Metsa hands. She's like, you know, would it be fair to say that to a random person you would not be violent? Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll just leave it at that. Speaking of, I know that this is supposed to be a cooking related show, but I have to bring up a story of holiday cheer at the

[4:42] beginning. And I asked Nastasia's permission on this. So I'm not talking out of school here. Nastasia, I'm not going to say she stole her Christmas tree this year because that would be true, but like she like right on the border. You want to tell this stories, does? No, you do it. the quick way that you did at the bar. was good. Oh, okay. So for those of you that have never been to New York City, here's the way it works. People like from Canada or Minnesota, right? Who, I don't know what the hell they do the rest of the year. Do you have any idea? No. They they ran a flatbed truck. And they pilot full of trees from where the trees grow way up north. And then they're basically like circus carnies for Christmas trees. No offense if this is what you do for a living. And then they drive down and for the holiday season, they pretty much camp out in front

[5:27] of like some sort of hurricane fence or parking lot somewhere and they just have all their trees leaning against the fence, right? Because we can't just go to Home Depot or Lowe's or like standard Christmas tree operations here in New York, like nurseries and this kind of

[5:39] stuff, you can't do it, right? And there's a host of these guys that totally overcharge. So Stas goes to this guy in Hell's Kitchen, which is, you know, where she lives. And it's in a parking lot. She walks up, she goes, talks to the parking lot, and where the hell's the guy? Where the hell's the guy? I want to get a Christmas tree. Because listen, when you're going to buy a Christmas tree in New York, you're set up to buy a Christmas tree. You're not like, I could buy it now or I could buy it later. You're like, you're going to go out. You're going to buy the freaking tree. It's a huge hassle. You're either going to pay your someone or a friend or something. You got to cart a freaking tree home on your shoulders and you're going to lug it and stars now has an elevator, but she still has like those memories

[6:16] of like, and I do as well of trucking those trees up the stairs and down the stairs on the shoulder with people looking and laughing. This is what New York Christmas trees are like, happy freaking holidays. So you don't go out unless you're going to get the tree. So she's like, where's the freaking guy? And they get parking lot and it's like, hey, hey, I don't know. Just, you know, he's like, yeah, he's in a car over there or something. I don't know, just shake a tree will come. So Stas goes over. She starts, you know, she's not even probably looking at the tree. She's probably giving it like the, you know, her irritated bored face and just starts shaking this random tree. No guy. She looks over at the parking lot, tenant. Guy goes, meh, you know what I was saying? Meh. And so she starts shaking the tree even harder, like this, anchor shake. I dont know if you can feel it in my voice, the anger shake of the tree. Nothing. So then she picks the tree up and she starts doing the... where you like hammering the tree on the ground and kind of see how it shakes out. You know what I mean? Nothing, not a zip. So she's like, hey, hey, hey, oh, walks away with it. She's like, I'm gonna get 10 feet away. The guy's going to be like, come out of this car. Nothing. She's so like one block later, 2 blocks later, 3 blocks later, home, tree. Wow. Now they have a sign on those trees when I walked here that says, you're being watched. There's a camera, surveillance on you. Call this number if you want a treat. Oh come on. That is not, that is not. I gotta put this one on them, you know? Yeah. Well, yes and no. I mean, Stas did steal a Christmas. Right. But I had $42. Miracle on 41st Street. Hey, listen, listen, here's the thing, right? She like, she thinks that because she had the money in her pocket to pay that she didn't steal it. Yeah, I had every intention of being. You know? Yeah. But I was going there. You know what you should do? You should pin a 20 on one of the trees and walk away. Yeah, right. They could see that on the videotape. Yeah, it's on the video. It's a piece of crap. So you think the whole thing's like a big lie. There's no... And I must not have been the only one. That's full. Clearly, if the guy, 1st of all, now Nastasia to make herself feel better. Just give me some insight. Nastasia Makers, like, I think he stole those trees anyway. No, Mark said that. Oh, all right. Well, he's just trying to make you feel better. Because... Whoa. I have no problem, by the way, someone's stealing a stolen tree. That's fair. Right? Right? But, yeah, you have no evidence that that tree is stolen, just that the guy's an idiot. You have very, very strong evidence that the guy is either an idiot or he's unprepared. Here's the thing, right? Let's see. And there's no tree stump cutter area. No, no, no, weak, weak. No Baylor, no tree something. Here's the thing, right? Like, either you have to have like a bladder of steel to do this job or you have to have a helper that checks in on you once every two,

[9:06] 3 hours so you can go relieve yourself. You know, I don't care if you're cold if you're bored. This is your job. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, whatever. It's like the crossing guard has to stand in the street because if the kid gets run over when this person's not in the crossing lane,

[9:21] then, you know, it doesn't matter that you needed to pee. You know what I mean? You're guarding the trees. That's your job. That's your livelihood And considering how bad this, presumably, fellow, most of these people are dudes, although there are occasionally women tree sellers. I had one at Lowe's, so she was quite good. Uh, and uh, because I got mine at Lowe's and carry my heavy, heavy tree home on the

[9:39] subway like uh, Dingus. Anyway, the, um, because I'd own my car someone. My point being that it's kind of, you know, it couldn't have just been one tree because I don't think this guy has such an accurate

[9:50] inventory if he just leaves the stuff lying around 43rd Street. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, all right. Well, if you want to steal Christmas trees with Nastasia, head to charitybuzz.com and just, you know... Is that thing going to be over

[10:02] until? her to steal a tree? I don't know. It's like next year, right? What, the auction? No, the getting of the pro. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, true. There'll be no more trees. We'll have to get something else. You know what, though? Shell give you tips. Tips and pointers from next year on how to steal various, various things, they're supposed to be symbols of giving and love and compassion. So there's 14 days on this. So listeners, you know, get in there. Yeah. All right. Now, before I start in, I'm going to do a couple of rants. I get very I read reviews of things. And not just my own book, by the way. Other people's books, other people's restaurants, and I get like virulently angry at people's reviews. So I'm going to read the 1st couple of the reviews I got, like, kind of takes me off a little bit. I got one review on Liquid Tone who said piss me off. and so I'm going to read it. Uh, but I'm 1st going to read a review of Death and Company's book because, like, we often get reviewed at the same time because they came out roughly similar times, and it turns out they're both about cocktails. So anyway, this is by Craig, who's not smart enough to have his own last name on Amazon. Uh, and he wrote this review of uh, of Death and Co's book. One star. First of all, idiot. Why would you get idiot? Why would you give Death and Co's book one star? idiot. And then here's what he wrote. I think this, I mean, this is Craig's voice now. He sounds a lot like me. I think it is important for everyone, considering purchasing this book, to understand that the authors completely omit vodka from the book. No drink recipes with vodka. It's like having the definitive book on fashion and omitting the color black. Oh, jerk. First of all, death and code never said, right? The authors never said, hey, you know what I'm going to give you? I'm going to give you the definitive all time book on cocktails. No, it's the definitive book on Death and Coast, cocktails, and death, what Death and Co thinks about cocktails. And guess what, buddy? They don't serve the vodka to think. And now if you had bought like, you know, like Mr. Boston's guide to like how to make every cocktail in the

[11:56] world and it wasn't like shellacked with vodka recipes, you'd have a point. But as is, no freaking point. What do you think about this, Jack? It's irritating, right? Person's an idiot. And yet you, like, you know, that that review has been sticking in my craw for a long time. And yet you don't have a way to erase it. Like this idiot is sitting there knocking on their on their totals. Like, thank God, it doesn't knock it a lot, but whatever, irritating. That's why you have to read the one star reviews. You have to read all of it, but like the thing is, is like, like, how is it, like, that they learn to type? How can they tie their shoes if they're that stupid? Now, here's one from my book, Liquid Intelligence, 3 stars, which is not horrible. I don't like it. I mean, I don't like it. It pisses me off, to be honest, but whatever. By Robert Boyle, not the famous dead scientist, right? Robert Boyle, here's what he wrote. I swear to God, this is what it said. A little too, 1st of all, 1st of all, 10 in two. A little to deep. Yeah, deep, not really a verb here. I think what they meant is too deep, as in T-O-O-D, whatever. A little to deep. Not many home mixologists will be buying liquid nitro for their

[13:10] guests, no apostrophe drinks. Now, here's my point. First of all, forget the grammar. don't care. You know what I mean? Don't care about that because if they'd said nice things, I would have forgiven their grammar. For all I know, even though his name sounds as English speaking as the day is long, the

[13:26] guys, you know, native language could be some like, you know, completely different language. I don't know. You know what I mean? So I don't judge people's, like, you know, writing skills on this. However, what they're saying is, is that I gave them too much freaking information in the book. I bend over backwards in the book telling everyone how they can do all of these techniques and ideas without the fancy

[13:44] equipment if they want to. And then I also tell them how to do the fancy stuff if they want to, and I'm getting hammered on it. To me, I was telling Stas before, it's the equivalent of saying, you know what? You know what? This encyclopedia Britannic kind of sucks. Why do they have this section on trigonometry? I'm never going to read it. They could have gotten rid of all those pages and these freaking encyclopedia would not have taken so much room on my shelf. Jerk. Anyway, whatever. That's my rant. We should just pick, like, not my book in general, but like other people, like, we should pick some bad reviews and like rank on the reviewers every once in a while because it just, it just bugs me that people can

[14:16] write. Here's the thing. Most people I think that write reviews like this. have probably never done a damn thing that they've put out there for other people to enjoy. This is why I have problems with, not problems with them, friends with a lot of critics, but the problem, my problem with criticism in general, uh, whether it's like Yelp or whatever is that most of the people who are making

[14:36] criticisms, and it can be valid or not, is just that they don't, they wouldn't do it if what they did for a living was try to put something out there for someone else to enjoy.

[14:47] You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden get smacked back on stuff like, like, you wouldn't take it so lightly. If you actually wrote books or had a bar or, you know, did anything like that, you would not write flip reviews of other people's

[15:06] work. You would take it seriously, wouldn't you, does? Yeah, whatever. Speaking of beautiful day here in New York, huh? Oh yeah. Yeah? You know what? It's raining. It's raining. It's not the rain. The rain's not so bad. It's the freaking wind, but guess what? Booker and Dax has a buyout, so it's a perfect night for a buyout because we're not going to have any foot traffic anyway. awesome. Awesome. Anyway, Jack, now that we've done the preliminaries. Oh, Stas, we have a contest. You want to announce that or no? You're not gonna announce that? Yeah, we're having people send in their cool series all tricks, techniques, practices, application videos. Send it to Searzol at bookerindex.com. We gonna choose 10, the 10 will all get a Burnsomatic TS, 8000, and then the winner will get a

[15:50] sears all signed by days. Blockside by Dave. The people who get the TSA 1000 also get another series all or just a tour? Okay, so, like, everyone who wins is going to get a TS 8000, and then one of them is going to get an additional sears all on top of the 8,000. You sounded really excited. I'm kidding. I can't wait to see your videos. Jack, did you believe her excitement? I did. bought it. Yeah? You bought it? I'm so excited. So we're looking for it. Look, here's the basic deal. We know what we use it for, but like every day, you know, I have like different things that I come up with it

[16:21] for, just because it's sitting there all the time in my house. I use it for different things. So we're looking for new things that we haven't thought of or tips and tricks that we can put videos up, and we're looking to steal your good ideas, and in return, we will give you a sweet new

[16:36] Burns Matic, TSA. And by the way, donated by Burns Matic. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're friendly with us. They're good people. Okay. Got some questions in. BJD wrote in a while ago and I didn't get this. First, while searching a cooking issue site for an email address, and I love that I missed this because now I get to smack it back on Stas.

[16:56] Stas used to have a little blog called, uh, well, little in the technical sense. about being little, 5 foot kitchen. long time ago,

[17:05] where she was like, you know, she had this like tiny, tiny, apparently 5 feet long kitchen where she would cook and she would like, you know, try to, you know, have like meals for like, I don't know, 20 people or something out of this

[17:17] five. That was the that was the the conceit of the blog. correct? Okay. First, while searching the cooking issue site for an email address, I stumbled across 5 foot kitchen and it appears now to be a porn site, not judging, but in case it's a

[17:30] mistake, I thought I'd let you know. a mistake. Awesome, wow. Wow. So it's not fivefootkitchen.wordpress.com? I don't know what it... I mean, it used to be. Oh, that's working. Oh, really? It got taken over, I guess, at the porn site, but it's not really an appropriate porn title. 5 foot. kitchen. I mean, like there's no, like, five, not a particularly porny number. Oh, no. Yeah, it makes sense. still there. All right. Well, it must have gotten temporarily taken over, but I like that idea. Now, onto the questions. Does proof affect the flavor extraction while fat washing? I believe PDT uses 4 roses yellow label. If I use bonded bourbon, isolating with higher proof than the 4 roses yellow, will I pull out more bacon flavor?

[18:17] Okay, that's an excellent question. I would say that proved most definitely affects the flavor you get with fat washing. Now, you got to remember, PDT is using Benton's bacon

[18:30] fat, and Benton's is the smokiest damn bacon in that I've ever had. It's, I mean, like, I can't say, you know, whether they are not smokier. It is by far, however, the smokiest bacon I've ever had. So they don't necessarily need to get the maximum amount of extraction out.

[18:48] So they're just picking a whiskey that they like. You know what I mean? And so I think in certain situations, like at the bar, for some reason, I don't know, God knows why. Uh, they they wanted to make uh, uh, a booker in Dax, Smirnoff ice, so they could ice some bartender at some event in some other city, right?

[19:06] But they want to do it, Booker and Dax style. So they said to me, hey, Dave, hey, Dave, we want to make a Smirnoff ice style thing. What are we gonna do? Now, the key thing with the Smirnoff ice, right? Is it? I mean, I think it's not clear, right? It's white. It's milky, yeah? And the way to do that is to put citrus oils in, but they didn't want to get citrus oils and buy

[19:22] it and do all that stuff. So what I told him to do was take super high proof. We use stuff called industry standard technical reserve, which is 955. Soak a bunch of citrus peels in it. That's going to extract the oil. Then you're going to make a water base that you're going to put some gum Arabic

[19:39] into. Then you're gonna add the 2 together. It's going to loosh out, and then when it looshes out, you're going to get a Smirnoff ice colored thing, which is what they did, and it worked. Now here's the thing, right? So for that, I needed very high proof. Why? Because I really wanted it to loose. So I was sucking a lot of stuff out, right? Now, let's say you weren't or you didn't want it to lose or you had a different set of criteria. Then, you know, that high proof would be a detriment because it would cause Lucian when you diluted your drink down. Um, so yeah, you probably extract more, but more isn't even the right way, probably

[20:12] different uh, different ratios of uh, flavors will come out and just different overall things. So I don't think there's a better or a worse. I think there's just kind of what you like. What do you think? Yeah, whatever. She doesn't care. Okay. Also, caller. Oh, okay, call her. on the air. Hey, Dave, how's it going? It's Anton from Boca Raton. Hey, how you doing? Hope you're not back on any juice cleanses for the holidays. You know I feel about that. Exactly, man. I didn't explode the turkey, so everything came out awry. We didn't die with the deep front of drinking. Nice. You still have a house or garage or wherever you did it. Nice. Everything's all intact, though. Sweet, sweet. My question is, I'm actually going to be opening up a restaurant zone, that's a very small cafe, about 1,300 feet. Um, my partners really want to hold off from putting in a, a hood system inside there. I mean, because

[21:07] of the expand from the amount of time that's going out. One of the solutions that I thought I could go around is perhaps offering the fear zone, because I want to, I still want to put something, some sort of cook on everything, without having the whole small place,

[21:21] my luck like that. I don't know if you had any other recommendations outside of that as well or what you thought. Well, I mean, look, the serial is not intended to be the primary heating device for a, you know, in a commercial

[21:35] application, just because, like, it's just going to take a long time to do a bunch of covers. If you're doing like... I did want to do. I was definitely going to do like a partial cook, like I was definitely going to do a sous vide. It was just to finish anything on it. Yeah, I mean, look, you could do like a finish or like, you know, you know, I've done I've done, so I just put a video up to show people kind of, you know, what it's like,

[21:56] but you're talking, so when I did the 4 steaks on the 2nd finish around, you're looking at like 5 minutes,

[22:02] but, excuse me, that's not 5 minutes that you get to like do other stuff. That's 5 minutes of you just searing steaks. So, I mean, I think it would be a little tough to do something like that. I mean, like, you know, one way to get around this also is like, you know, you could kind of

[22:19] go like induction portable and then do something that's not tech. I can't believe I'm recommended this, but not technically illegal, like in terms of, like, you need to have a hood if you have certain kind of cooking stuff, right? You just need to from a code standpoint. However, if you just have a non-hood, uh, ventilation in a window with a fan, you know, that's not technically, uh, you know, ventilation for what you're doing, but then if you had a small induction unit that you can move around, people might not gripe on you so

[22:48] hard, and then you could use that in conjunction with some spot work on a

[22:52] series all. There's also going to throw off smoke, though. You know what I mean? But, you know, you could do something like that, but I wouldn't want to rely on doing. I mean, look, if you were in a catering situation or like a one off thing or if you had like just a couple of things that you wanted to hit, but, you know, you're going to be talking that if you're just cranking covers out with that thing, you're going to have someone on it, you know, all the time.

[23:13] Now, you know, eventually I'd like to make one that's, you know, kind of holds itself there almost like a broiler that's bigger, in which case it'd be golden for that. But, you know, in this application, Um, is it multiple story building? Is it a multiple story building or a single story building? They should put the hood in. Yeah, I want them too, with the trying to crank everything out as quickly as possible and then

[23:39] also they're trying to do it with minimal cost as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the costs are to do like a, uh, you know, but a hood down there, but there's that outfit out of Georgia that sells really cheap hoods and like in, uh, up, you know, uh,

[23:54] uplast blowers. I just, I don't know what it would cost to actually get an install down there. But, you know, you're in a good situation because you have only one story. And, you know, can you fake around not having a hood? Sure, but then, you know, you're going to be limiting your menu quite a bit based on what you can do. Um, you know, I just, I don't, I don't like seeing anyone kind of go into a situation where, you know, they're

[24:18] setting themselves up for problems later on. You know what I mean? And that's that's pretty much what I see right now too. I'm trying to see what options I can go down. Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, I would do a lot of tests. Is it relatively open the place? I mean, are the, is it like, how open is the space? Um, the actual cooking is fairly closed off, but it's, it's probably going to be, and being around 500 square feet. Right, but I mean, can you open the cooking space to the outside? The problem is, is that in the summertime, you're going to need to AC that thing. Otherwise, like, you know, I mean, you know, you're in Florida, you can't mess around with that. You know what I'm saying? So it's not like you're going to be able to, you know, but you have, you have like, you have a what? You have like 4 or 5 months of decent weather in front of you before you get totally hosed on the heat, you know, and maybe they'll install a hood by

[25:05] then. But, you know, the question is, yeah, can you get around stuff? Sure, you know, you work around having minimal amounts of sear, you, uh, on things, you can spot, do things with a sears all, or, you know, you can get, um, there are these, uh, like cast iron griddles that you can heat up

[25:20] on that, you know, Kenji Alt Lopez has one on this. They're not available yet. You could heat on induction until it's ripping and then do stuff like that.

[25:28] So there are ways around this kind of a thing. Um, you know, you're going to have to like, you're going to have to add texture in other ways, like other crunchy stuff that you can add to it, you know, and then you can do a minimal amount of sear down on

[25:40] stuff or things like fish that are primarily on the, on the more, uh, you know, raw side where you're just hitting it with something for a little bit to like get it

[25:48] out. Uh, you know, shift your menu towards that kind of stuff until you can go serious

[25:53] on the, on the hot side, but you're not going to want to choke yourself out and put yourself in a situation where you can't crank the stuff out in a reasonable amount of

[26:00] time. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. It's just, yeah, it's a huge predicament that I've been thinking about for a while. Here's the here's the thing, right? Here's how I would approach it. I approach any situation. So, say, look it. Okay, you're going to have a sears all or two. You're going to have like some induction burners. I don't know, maybe you're going to have an electric oven, whatever. Look at what you have, right? what you're going to be able to get. And then just like forget, forget whatever it is that you think you want to make, right, beforehand. Just forget it because, you know, maybe it does, maybe that's not what this kitchen wants to make. But you have a certain battery of, you know, the cuisine there. And you have a certain refrigerator and freezer storage space, and you have a certain amount of ventilation. So now just like build, build a, use it as an exercise in menu design and just build the menu around

[26:56] your, your, your battery, you know, to cuisine. And that's it. And that way, you know, don't, you know, don't do like the big old hard seared X, Y, or Z because, you know, you're not going to be able to get rid of the smoke. But, like, you know, a little item here with a small amount of steer to give that brown flavor, and then maybe, you know, a bunch of other stuff that you can do on like a cold prep or, uh, you know, uh, you know, something that's like

[27:19] hot but not smoky, like on a stove, an induction on a pot or, you know, in

[27:23] a, in a warmer. So build what you do around what you have. And I think you're going to be like a lot happier than trying to crush something you want into a space that you can't

[27:34] produce it. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. For sure, for sure. Excellent. So when are you going to open up? It's gonna, it's actually gonna be, uh, it's still gonna be, uh, goose filed up for cocktails this time. Oh nice. All right. Well, good. So like, like, I mean, unfortunately, you know, as I, as we all know, if it's going to be mainly cocktail, what I, what I want to eat is fried food, but that you definitely need a hood for. Ain't no. I really want to put in a fry. That was the initial thing. I initially tried looking at the oilless fryers, but I don't know if that was possible or not. Yeah, you know, look, there are hoodless fryers and apparently they're pretty good because, you know, like they have them in Penn Station, right? like they can't like, but I think those things are pricey. In other words, by the time you get, and I don't know this, I'm just talking out of, out of, I'm not talking out of the proper hole when I'm saying this, but, you know, the, uh, my feeling is, is that if you're

[28:29] gonna invest in uh, a hoodless fryer system, then, you know, for, I mean,

[28:37] because you don't have a particularly difficult install job on a hood.

[28:40] So, you know, those are typically, I think, sold to people because it's going to cost a lot

[28:45] to do a hood. So you're looking at, you could have had like an $800 fryer and then like a $500 hood and like, you know, a $1000 blower install for an extra $1000 or you could buy a $4000 hoodless fryer and still

[29:00] have, and still not have a hood. You know what I'm saying? Um, you know, another option. I don't know whether it's legal or not, but, you know, I don't know if you could fry outside, but, you know, then if it, you know, with

[29:10] like a, with like a, what's it called, with like a, uh, cover or something. I don't know if it's legal or not, but it's, you know, you could do that. I mean, my next fryer is probably going to be, you know, outside, semi-covered, so I don't have to worry about ventilating it. Very good. Thank you once again, man. All right, let us know, let us know how it goes. Let us, you know, you know, take a picture of your menu and send it over to the cooking issues

[29:32] Twitter so we can see what you came up with. Alrighty. And Jack, do you want to, should we take our 1st break? Let's do it All righty.

[30:10] Today's program brought to you by Brooklyn Slate. We're so proud to count Brooklyn Slate as a business member of Heritage Radio Network. Brooklyn Slate Company as a collaborative effort from Brooklyn graphic designer Sean Tyson, Parsons graduate student Christy Hideka. After visiting Christie's family slate quarry in upstate New York in the spring of 2009, the 2 grabbed a few pieces to use as all-purpose boards back home in

[30:33] Brooklyn and began gifting pieces to friends. The response was so overwhelmingly positive that the 2 struck out to produce a line of slate products. We encourage you to visit Brooklynslate.com to learn more. You can also get your own Brooklyn slate care package by becoming a super fan member of Heritage Radio Network. Visit us at heritageradionetwork.org slash donate for more. And we are back. By the way, those Brooklyn Slate people, good people. Great people, yeah. Yeah. You know, they they donated slates to our very 1st fundraiser Del Posto years ago, early supporters of MoFed. They're nice slates too. Yeah, very nice. I wonder, I wonder, like, are they like, I know what those slates look like, but I wonder whether they

[31:20] do, like, slate for pool tables too. Not them, but the family. You know what I mean? Or whether they do slate for like more like shingles, like slate roofs and stuff like that. not sure. I don't know. Do you know stars that if you try to move a slate pool table, you'll totally ruin

[31:34] it. Oh really? I did not know that either. I thought it was the kind of thing where you could just get a bunch of knuckleheads. Like buy the used pool table, pick the sucker up. you know, because, you know, I'll pick any. not that I'm weak. I'm physically weak, but I have so much internal kind of like deep seated simmering rage that I can pretty much lift

[31:52] anything. You know what I mean? Even though I myself am physically weak. So I just thought I could get, you know, a couple people like that and like throw it in something and drive it around. But apparently just picking one up will totally hose it. Like the slate, like slates in like 3 pieces and it'll break and it'll never be the same again. So when a pool table is moved, it's completely disassembled and then reassembled, including the felt and

[32:14] everything, or it's not really felt cloth. You know what I mean? You can move the Brooklyn slate pieces, though, pretty easily. Yeah, in contradistinction to pool tables. Brooklyn slate pieces are easy to move unless you're moving a couple 100 of them around to a

[32:28] MoFed. I think remember that? We're like, 0 yeah, that's sleep. That box is heavy. Anyway. So back to some questions. The aviary did a cool Martinez variant about a year ago with a maraschino liqueur iceballs that gently melted. Gently melted. What song am I thinking of? Gently melted. Gently, silently, I'm thinking of silently sleep. That's like uh, Simon Garfunkel. Somehow gently melted makes me think of Simon Garfunkel. Which your pro, right? Surprisingly. You like the Garfunkel and the Simon. Me too. Altering the drink and adding to my overall enjoyment of the cocktail as it dried out.

[33:10] Um, I wonder when you dried out. Melt it out probably. anyway. Any idea and how this might have been done and any way to replicate it without liquid nitrogen? Well, I happen to have gone to aviary and I'm pretty sure that they don't use liquid nitrogen for this trick. The way that you used to get kind of hollow spheres of stuff is you would take

[33:28] water and you would put it, you would, well, you would blow up a balloon partially, and then you'd put water in it, and then you'd throw that balloon into LN or whatever, and you'd spin the balloon and you'd spit fast because it's going to shrink because

[33:38] of the water. Although, maybe they just do it full. I don't know. Maybe they don't have air in it, in which case it won't shrink. smart. Meh, maybe. don't know. Anyway, probably. Anyway. So you spin it, right? And then you're getting a layer of ice all the way around the balloon and you know how long you're going to spin it, and you spin it, and you spin it, and you spin it. Uh, and then uh, what you do is you take the, pop the balloon off of it, and now you have a sphere of uh, ice and the inside still liquid.

[34:02] Then what you do is you take an ice pick or whatever, and then you go, that was my noise, and then you

[34:09] blick, blick, blick, blick, blick, blick, blick, you pour the water out of the inside. It says, well, my guitar gently leaves. Oh, that's it. That's it. While my guitar. Well, my guitar gently melts. Yeah, anyway, so you stick the, uh, stick the ice picking. Look, look, look it out. And now you can fill it with whatever you want. There are some caveats because it's going to melt the stuff out of the inside. So storage is an issue. I would do it you know, relatively quickly. They then refreeze a plug over the hole and do it. And pretty sure this is how they do it, right? But they don't do it with liquid nitrogen. Last time I was at aviary, they do it with polyscience, a circulating chiller that chills, liquid down. I don't I didn't see. notice what temperature they were running their circulator at. But that's what they do. What you could do at home is crush ice, very fine. And then add a not a little bit of salt, ate a lot of salt, like on the order of a quarter of the weight of the ice in salt, like salt, but you want

[35:03] it also to be kind of liquidy, right? You don't want it to be chunky solids. That's why you want crushed ice, uh, water, and uh, well, but don't add water right away because, you know, you're going to get some meltdown and a boat ton of salt. You stir it up, and it's going to get preposterously cold, and then you could probably do the balloon with

[35:19] water. Spin. It will freeze. It's gonna take you a little bit longer, but you'll be able to do it. If you immerse a balloon in it, spin it around so it stays nice and, you know, evenly whatever, and you should be able to do it that way. Third, every year I make several batches of regent's punch for my holiday party. I was thinking of adding a spherification technique, an attempt to add a festive flavor. I don't know. I wouldn't add a verification festive flavor. I go straight, but I'm still going to answer this question. I was thinking of something like slightly diluted Angostora syrup balls. Like people know I don't like the I don't like the little balls. You know, stars? I don't like the little balls. What technique would you suggest to minimize flavor thievery and maximize stability? First of all, regions punch. So, uh, this is, by the way, I'm giving you, um, David Wondridge's recipe for Regent's punch off of an esquire article. He wrote, thin cut the rinds of 4 lemons, one pint tea, 12 ounces super fine sugar, 6 ounces lemon juice, one. 5 cups, orange juice, uh, one cup pineapple juice, one pint brandy, one half pint, dark rum, 2 bottles of brute champagne. Stas is perked up,

[36:27] boom, champagne. Uh, slices of orange and slices of pineapples. Put the lemon rinds into the tea while the latter is still hot, allowing them to steep together, add the sugar, set aside to

[36:36] cool, when cooled, add the fruit juices and the liquor, liqueur, or

[36:40] liquor, actually. Place in a punch bowl with one or 2 large chunks of ice, adding the champagne immediately before

[36:46] serving garnish with orange and pineapple slices. Now, this is Dave Wondridge's note on the official recipe. If you were to cut the brandy in half. Lose the rumen pineapple juice and pitch in a bottle of Madeira, your fellow creatures would not turn up their snouts.

[37:00] I think that's probably a good addition. Now, what you want to do here is you're trying to throw Angus Dura balls into this, right? So, If you want the angus syrup, it's a punch. First of all, it's a punch. We mention this, punch. So that means if you're going to do it traditional, it's going to sit around. It's going to sit, right? So now you have a couple of choices. If you do standard verification, the angostura balls are going to go solid, and that's going to suck. There's going to be little balls. They not going to have any flavor. you use algaen and go forward, right? Even if you were to, you could do, like, uh, gelan, very light. excuse me. I'm coughing like a lunatic today. It's the sweet weather we're having. You could do like a very light gelang gel and they would still have some flavor. It go a little bit larger. you could drop them, but again, and we're talking the light, like, you know, a quarter of a percent or less, of

[37:48] uh, of low ace, of jellan, so you get that nice brittle and the flavor release, but they're going to melt their flavor out relatively quickly. By the way, if you're going to make the balls beforehand, you're going to want to store them in the

[37:58] angle syrup themselves so that they don't leach flavor out. But you're going to be looking at that kind of a problem. It's still going to be solid. If you want it to stay liquid, right? Then you're going to have to do some form of reverse alginate, and to do reverse alginate, you're going to need to add, I

[38:14] would presumably, you need to add calcium to the angostura, thicken it quite a bit, with sugar or whatever else, and then drop it into a relatively thin alginate bath, let it sit long enough, pull it out, and then put it through a calcium water bath to rinse off the rinse off and slash set the

[38:30] algebra on the outside. You don't have to add calcium in the 1st bath, although I usually rinse off in water and then in calcium. But if the balls stick together, then your SOL. But this way these balls will last forever. If you store them in Angostora with a little bit of calcium in it, you can keep these things forever.

[38:47] And they will stay liquid on the inside forever. But here is your problem. One of 2 things is going to happen, depending on the density you choose for it. They are either going to sink to the bottom of your bowl or they're going to float to the top of your bowl. Neither of which is necessarily what you want, right? So how are you going to remedy this? Well, you can't, unless you want to make a geland fluid gel out of the punch. And now you've gone beyond where I am going to even cosign even temporarily on this on this stuff because like by making a fluid gel out of the punch, the whole thing's going to shake like a bowl full of jelly like Santa's belly from that night before Christmas thing.

[39:22] You used to read that when you were a kid? You like that pump? I used to have it memorized. I don have it anymore. I just remember their sashes. Remember he throws open the sash. Oh, yeah. Yeah, at the time, I didn't know what a sash was. That's why I stuck in my head. I would say it every year and I was like, I have no idea. But you know what? Too lazy to look it up. You know what I'm saying? It's like my son Dax. He's like, what does this mean? I'm like, go look it up. He's like, nope. anyway. Uh, PS, some friends of mine were traveling from our home in St. Louis to New York and visited Booker and Dax on my recommendation. They loved it. I don't usually recommend places. I have myself not visited, but I felt confident you would deliver. Thank you, BJD. Thank you. That's very nice. I appreciate that. Okay. Now, got some more, these are actually new questions. We got new questions in. How much time do I have? 10 minutes. Yeah, 10 minutes. Alex writes in. Hello, Jack, Anastasia, and Dave. Hey, yeah, right? Nice. Thank you for the show and everything else. I've listened to just about every back episode over the past 2 years and I've heard your comments about pressure cookers that don't leak any steam as being better, but I cannot recall ever hearing why. I have some guesses, but I would rather hear your reason. Um, And when he says, and if it's a slow

[40:31] day and you have time for another question, we spoke about ultra spurse M versus three. I'm unfamiliar with them besides being pre-gelatinized starch, but how are they different from Wondra? And what am I missing out by not using them? Well, I'll get into that one next time. If Jack, if you can have someone remind me to get that question next week, I'll get that one next week. But as a result, the pressure cooker. The interesting answer is, I have no idea. I have no freaking idea why it makes a difference, whether the pressure cooker is emitting steam or not. And, you know, I just don't know. You know, because it's going to be like, well, it's, you know, the volatiles are coming out with a steam and that's what's ruining it, right? That's what you would think. No stars? Is that what you would think if you actually care to think about it? Yeah, right. Yeah, probably if I care to think about it. But, um, interestingly, uh, the pressure cookers that let off steam fared worse inside by side stock

[41:25] tests. This is just stock, by the way. And by the way, I think I did veal and chicken. Um, they fared worse than an, like an open standard stock pot. Now, you know, that thing is open and the volatiles are leaving all of the time, right? So if it's the fact that it's volatiles leaving, then why should an open pot be better than a pressure cooker pot, unless it's a different kind of better, that, you know, like it

[41:51] goes, loses so many volatiles that it comes back through, but that wasn't my impression.

[41:55] So what happened was, is that for years, I'd been making stock in my pressure cooker, which is a coon recon, which doesn't, which has a spring and doesn't make steam. And I was like, this is a better way of making stock. And then, uh, you know, I went to go write the blog post about how years ago. Uh, you know, I went to go write, you know, my blog post about how awesome pressure cookers are and how they're so much better for

[42:19] stocks, because the stocks are browner and faster, and they just taste inherently better because there's more extraction and more meaty flavor and more and more better, blah, blah, blah.

[42:28] And I used the FCI's crappy pressure cookers. They're crappy $60 pressure cookers that were blowing steam off the entire time they were doing it. And this was, by the way, just a formality because in my head, I'd already, the pressure cooker was already better, blah, blah, blah. So I made a traditional stock, and I made the pressure cooker stock, and I tasted them side by side. I was like, what? What? What? The traditional one was better. Like by a good margin. The pressure cooker one was darker, but the, you know, traditional one had like a much better flavor. Everyone agreed. And it wasn't just because onion is really softened, for instance, in a pressure cooker or sweetness of carrots magnified. It just wasn't as good. And I was like, what? Like my entire world was like kind of like thrown upside down for a couple of

[43:16] days. So I did it again. And again the traditional one. And then I was like, you know what? You know what? I'm bringing my pressure cooker into work. So I brought my pressure cooker into work, and then I did three. I did traditional. I did my pressure cooker that doesn't vent, and I did their crappy pressure cooker that vented. I'm not going to say it was a fagor, but it was. And then, uh, no offense to them, but it steams, whatever. Anyway, so like, I did the test. And then, uh, I was like, my pressure cooker easily

[43:48] beat traditional and way, way, way, way beat the, um, the venting pressure cooker. And I ran the test a couple of times and we always got the same kind of results. And so, uh, and I also ran it in a different kind of ceiling pressure cooker, the American canner, which also seals, uh, because it's basically a bomb

[44:10] with, you know, with a little overpressure valve on it. So whatever. So, you know, it's just something that, you know, I discovered

[44:17] empirically, and I haven't ever really made a good reason for

[44:24] it because I don't really know the answer. But, you know, that's the good thing about not having to know the why necessarily in the kitchen, just knowing the what, but you can't know the

[44:37] what unless you do the kind of careful observation of what you're doing.

[44:43] So I have no, I still have no clue. I'd like to hear someone tell me why. Um, I like to hear someone tell me why. But I think for other things, it doesn't make so much of a difference. Like, uh, you know, I haven't noticed a difference in eggs, pressure cooked eggs, for instance, between a venting and

[45:00] a non-venting. Um, so I don't know. interesting question. I'd love to hear other people's ideas, but I never like to give explanations that I just don't have any idea. You know stuff? Yes. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. So, uh, let me see. Now this, now Uriel wrote in, right, a couple of times. Oh, wait, we have Paul, Paul, because Uriel, listen, you wrote in about milk powder, and I don't have a good answer for you because I haven't had the chance to try to cook with the milk powder

[45:32] yet. I'm going to try to do a test with the milk powder to see kind of what happens. So, you know, the question that he had was, um, there's a couple questions, but the important one is about, and I read it once on the air about Heston Blumenthal, and how he adds milk powder to chicken wings when he's roasting them off, and he's going to make a

[45:52] stock. And, uh, Uriel's not able to get, because the reason being that you get kind of mired reactions, because, you know, milk has both milk powder has both

[46:00] proteins and reducing sugars in them. And the browning in milk is really like a myard, like in, um, believe it is, like in Dulce de Leche and things like this. And so, um, you know, getting those extra kind of flavors by adding the, you know, milk powder to

[46:14] the to the chicken wings, but, um, and Uriel wasn't making stock, but he said that this really doesn't have a kind of a good

[46:20] result. But, uh, I, um, I don't, I don't really know the answer to like how to get it to use it for searing because

[46:28] I have me for browning on something cooked, so I haven't tried. So I'd love to get other people's responses into this and I'm going to try to do it myself because I do have some milk powder lying around. Okay, so we're going to hold that one off again and hopefully someone can write in, you know, tweet me or whatever and give me some guidance or

[46:44] advice and hopefully I have time to run some experiments myself. But we have Paul writing in. I guess it's gonna have to be the last question, huh? Yep. All right. Hi, Dave. I was wondering if you had any experience or advice using a coffee siphon

[46:57] brewer. We're talking about a vacuum pot, and it drew a really nice picture. You like that picture sent us? By the way, you know, people, I appreciate I can't show them on the air, but I appreciate it in a nice little picture, you know? In fact, instead of reading it, I am looking at the nice little picture. He drew a Japanese style one, those really kind of expensive Japanese ones that you get with the little ball underneath

[47:18] and the thingamajig. Anyway, I was wondering if you had any experience or advice using a coffee siphon brewer with hot cocktails. A bartender friend of mine was thinking of doing something with gin,

[47:28] see attached sketch. Oh, there's a recipe there? I can't see that small. Stas, can you blow it up on your computer? See what the recipe is? A bartender a friend of mine was thinking of doing something with gin. See attached sketch. And while I have seen hot cocktails prepared this way at the aviary here in Chicago. I didn't know what considerations need to be made with ratios, et cetera. I'd also heard the method brings down the ABV. Is this considerably? Is this true and anything that could be done to counter that? Well, what was the recipe? Cinnamon, anise, allspice, clothes, orange peel, gin, gin cider. Gin cider? I mean, that's the arrow there. Oh, okay. So a couple of questions here. One, do you have to adjust ratios? absolutely. Two, do you lose ABV? Absolutely. Three, uh, what does the siphon do to it? And the answer to that is, I have no idea. I've never used this. I've never used a siphon for infusion for cocktails. I've had coffee with it, but I've never used it for kind of infusion because a bunch of people kind of had already done it. And, uh, and so like, you know, I, we don't do kind of table side infusions

[48:37] at Booker and Dax. I don't have a lot of personal experience with it, but I do have a lot of experience balancing hot drinks. and getting rid of alcohol. And the truth of the matter is, is that losing alcohol is not a bad thing. When you have a hot drink, you need to have a like a much, much lower alcohol content in that drink than you would in any other kind of cocktail. You also need to serve in a wide, not like in a

[49:00] bowl, because if it's in a huge bowl, then you have to put your face over it like you're a dog looking out of a bowl and you'll get overwhelmed by the fumes. But if you have a smaller glass, like a normal cocktail glass, when you bring

[49:11] your add up to your nostrils, you'll get a focused hit of hot alcohol and

[49:17] it'll, you know, even if the drink is balanced, you won't be able to drink it. So what we use is kind of, you know, TT slash coffee cups when we're doing it. So the vessel you drink out of is extremely important when you're doing a hot alcohol drink like this.

[49:29] Also, bear in mind, when you're serving hot drinks to people, it's nice to give them a cup with a handle on it. There's a reason coffee cups have handles on them. And teacups have handles on them. Now, so getting rid of the some of the alcohol is not bad. In fact, when I do the red hot pokers, which we're going to fire up again in about a week or so at Booker and Dax, um, because we have our new welder coming in, uh, when

[49:52] you, when I do hot drinks, I literally burn excess alcohol off because when you're, um, if

[49:59] I want to include like a lot of a flavor of the base spirit, right? I need to include enough liquor for you to really taste the liquor, but that amount of

[50:09] liquor if you didn't get rid of some of the alcohol would be too strong in the aroma of alcohol in a finished drink. So getting rid of ABV is actually your friend in this situation. Not your friend from a cost standpoint, but it's definitely your friend from a flavor standpoint. And as regards mixing. If you're going to add, was there any, was there any acid in that? I know I heard there was orange. Was there any acid at all on that? You want to really scale the acid back to very low. And then, um, you know, you're going to need to taste it hot because the, your perception of the sugar is going to change radically and your perception of the alcohol is going to change radically. So what I would do is I would make the drink and then just add in hot water until you get the kind of dilution you want in terms of the alcohol nose and the flavor of the

[50:54] spirit. You'll get that, then back substitute in your other base flavors. By that, I mean your sweetness and any acid that you're going to do. Then, then worry about your botanicals and infusions because those things you're going to be able to nail pretty easily because they work just like

[51:10] tea and tea is something you're used to. The parameters that you're going to have to work with that you're not used to working with are hot alcohol, hot

[51:18] acid and hot sugar in terms of how they relate and balancing a cocktail. And there's a section called red hot poker drinks and liquid intelligence that you could probably do Amazon search inside without even buying the book and just check out and see kind of what the parameters are

[51:31] there. Because I write down my alcohol levels, theoretical, you know, and whatnot and talk about this in kind of greater detail. And with that, we're out of here cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadioNetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

[51:51] 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.