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[0:06] ingredients, and tools. Hi, this is Joe Campanelli, the host of In the Drink. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadioNetwork.org for Thousand Sports.

[0:28] All right, should I Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Dave. Happy birthday to you. Very nice. Very, very nice, very nice. All right, now, before we start, thank you. At what age do I get to say years young instead of years old? I don't know. When you're like 60? Yeah, probably. Yeah, yeah. 44 years young. All right, so here's the here's the here's the question. Should I should I do this NPR style or should I start this like regular cooking issue style? I think regular cooking issue style, we can take it from the top.

[1:16] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking is just coming to you live on

[1:20] Rebird's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, every Tuesday on the Heritage Radio Network from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined as usual with Nostasia, the Hammer, Lopez. Got you in the engineering booth. Call 100 questions, 27184. What is it? 718-4972128. That's 718-497-2128. You like that one better than the NPR style? I prefer the NPR style. Hello? Yeah, I do. I've heard feedback from listeners that like, it's in the lock. because they usually listen in the morning and so the yelling is like, but maybe it's like you could use it as like your... For me, it gets me ready for what's to come, you know? Hello, welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues, broadcasting live out of the studios in Roberta's Pizzawia, Bushwick Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio

[2:06] Network every Tuesday, from roughly 12 to 1245. Call in your live questions 2718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. like that one. You like that one better? I don't know. I don't know. We can put it to a vote. Yeah. Write us in, guys. us know which one you want. Tweet, tweet at heritage. Heritage underscore radio. Yeah, that underscore is kind of a killer, huh? Gotta love the underscore. Is the other one owned by the, by the, like, uh, the foundation? Yeah, I don't think so. That is unrelated to you guys. I don't know who the regular heritage radio on Twitter is. Oh, it's a dead account, the other heritage radio. Well, the other heritage radio, the false heritage radio. The other at Heritage Radio Regular has one tweet, and it says, it's from 2009. It says, I am planning next week's syndicated old time radio show. No other tweets. That's, yeah. I was like, I'm not, we have no bottle opener here, and Jack

[3:01] has it. I'm just going to use your table here. Old school, because I don't have like even like a knife with me, so I don't feel like a, as Nastasia would say, you're only half a

[3:11] man because you don't have your knife with you. But, uh, you know, I'm of the, uh, so what'd you do for your birthday yesterday? I worked, fell asleep. I worked. I ate leftovers and I fell asleep. Like that? No, sad. I was going to go out to the bar and hang, but I, you know. It looked like people were there for you. No, they weren't, they were there for, they were eating dinner. It's not, it's good. Anyway. So the point that, yes, whatever. Like, you know, birthdays, when once you, you know, once you're, you know, my age, you know, birthday is fun. It's nice, you know, I cooked a big meal on Sunday because the birthday's on a Monday. Monday birthday is like, what are you going to do on a Monday birthday? everyone's got to work. You know what I'm saying? Anyways. But you got a tandor. Oh, yeah. So big news for, well, so next week is Easter. And so, uh, of course, what do you, when you're gonna cook Easter dinner, what do you do? You buy a tandor. So I drove to, uh, plus also, I've mentioned before, I'm going to do a big outdoor kitchen, but I've really been kind of researching kind of what I'm

[4:09] going to do. I going to build a, an old school bread oven. I considered maybe buying a bread oven and then just putting it in, but I think I'm just going to actually build it from scratch. But the problem is, is that when you're pouring the concrete and doing all this, you have like days and days where it's going to take a long time. It's going to take probably the better part of this season for me to actually be able to build the bread oven if I'm only working, you know, on, you know, every other weekend or something to do it.

[4:29] So it's going to take a while. So like, what can I do right now? I can just get a tandor. And you can buy for not that much? I mean, it's expensive, but not that much money, just a completely built-in tandor. They build the tandor liner, uh, you know, with the whatever hairy crap they put into the clay, the clay,

[4:45] they, in deli, they put it inside of a stainless steel trash can fundamentally, and then they put refractory cement around

[4:51] it. They give you some skewers, a little bread cushion. You Hanan works, right? With a bread cushion. So they give you a little bread cushion. And you're ready to go. So, you know, I'm going to be doing oh, I got to call Patrick Martins. Listen, peoples, if you need lamb for Easter, which I'm sure you do. There is still time to go to Heritage Meats and purchase some of their lambs. Are you familiar with the lamb and heritage meat, Jack? I know you... Yeah. Tunis lamb, if I'm not mistaken. Really? From Tunisia, I would guess. Both guys know from lamb. Anyway. So the point being, I'm going to try and I'm going to try

[5:31] and like sneak some lamb from Patrick and I'm going to do, I'm going to do Mediterranean flavors,

[5:36] tandoor cooking. What do you think? That's good. Do you like you like kebabs of lamb? Really? You've had them and don't like them? Yeah. Why? Why? What the hell? Although I had, uh, from a food truck last night. Is that, is that your new, that sounds, from a food truck sounds like a, like a novel, like your 1st novel from a food truck? What's that called? What's what called? You shave it off. Which version of it? Shawarma? Yeah, no, no. It was called something. Zero? Yeah. It was really good. Donor? No. Uh yeah. I don't know. So that's like pulped lamb and other stuff. Yeah, I just sound like the crusty lamb with all the spices on the outside. You know, you know Stas, you never cease in finding new ways to culinarily disappoint me. You don't like the crusty deliciousness on the outside of a lamb kebab? No, I don't. don't like some of those flavors. What is it, cumin? You don't like cumin? don't like cumin. You don't like chili? See, that's, remember when you yelled at me for not putting cumin in the chili and you were like, it's not chili? It's tomato stew. Right. That, yeah. Until you had the cumin. At which point, well, or be, you know, beef stew. beef stew. And a rather crappy beef stew at that until you add freaking

[6:54] cumin. That is, uh, that is not cool stuff. Okay, so back to the, although now I can't get that out of my head. Oh, cheers. What about the, well, his glasses. What about the, um, what about the, like the Russian version of uh, of lamb kebabs? I haven't had that. Kursky Shasleik? the Russian? You would like that because it's not spiced. That's great, yeah. Well, that's what I'm going to make. It's not going to be there. Well, someday you will come up. Someday you will come up and we'll get the lamp anyway. we're going off topic. Has that ever happened before that we've gone off topic? Never. It's never happened Anyway, I'm very excited about the tandor. I have to, um, there's, you're one of the big things when you get a tandors. It's clay, right? So like people, 1st you have to pre-fire it. So I got to do the pre-firing with charcoal. And that stops it from cracking because remember when we made the fake tandor for Anthony Bourdain? Yes, I do. And we cracked it because we fired it real hard, real fast. We tried to do a pre-fire, but we did. We did that stuff back then and that was less hardcore than what? I mean, legally hardcore. What do you mean? The legality of what we did was not... Nobody cared. Anyway. So, yeah, so, you know, and we made that tandor and what, like, like a day, less than a day. We did the old school, like, 2 flower pot, tandor, and we drilled a hole in the bottom for the charcoal thing, put it in a trash can, surrounded with insulations. And the food was delicious. But anyway, but now a little more hardcores. I gotta do a pre-firing of it. And then the big bone of contention with the tandors is that you have to

[8:24] season the inside of it, like with a mixture of like. he hasn't used it? Who? The guy. He sells them new. I went to his warehouse in New Jersey. You can go to this warehouse in New Jersey and the guy will just hand you a tandor. Well, it's like 350 pounds, but he'll hand it to you. He has actually a giant warehouse dude who looks like a giant warehouse

[8:40] dude complete with the sweet warehouse dude beard. And he, like, picks up the thing and puts it in the back of your station wagon. Anyways. Uh, yeah. right out there in Jersey, like 20 minutes from New York. You can just go buy it. Pick it up. Thanks, yeah. So I hate to have to say this, but I have a caller on the line who's upset with the way you treated her

[8:59] vagetti. Oh my goodness. Hi Dave. Oh my goodness. I am so embarrassed. That's the greatest. That's the greatest. thing that's ever happened to me. So, Dave, I was listening a couple weeks ago and I heard you were talking badly about the

[9:27] Vegetti. Uh, just the name, the name. The name. But you don't trust the noodle, the product. No, you don't trust the product. You said that noodle, uh... You said that you didn't trust the product. We were talking about vegetable noodles. Well they're not a new frier. noodle. It's not, I think it could be an interesting... I think it could be an interesting, look, I mean, I think like shredded, like, daikon shreds and strips are delicious, right? Many shredded things are just... or like strips, noodle... Spiralize. Oh my gosh. You know what? All right, all right. And so you have a, you have a, you have a vested steak in the, in the

[10:12] veggetti device or more just a love for it. I have a what? Are you like part of the Vegeti Corporation or do you just have just have? No, I just, I got one. because I'm, you know, trying to cut back on the car and it changed my life. I mean, you can, you can use it for everything. Like, um, the jetty carbonara, the jetty, and meatballs. I mean, it's like. Wait, did you say veggetti and meatballs? I mean, it's amazing. You can do veggetti fritters. Yeah. looks like he wants to kill himself. You ever done like sausage and veggie sausage in the gravy with the veggie? I'm not gonna, here's a, here's a okay. And what's your favorite things to veggetti eyes? Or spiralize, as you would say. What are your favorite things to spiralize in the veggetti? Well, I pretty much exclusively spiralized zucchini of the green and yellow variety. But doesn't that just turn around? I've never really done anything else. I don't, I think that, you know, it has to be um, a little bit soft. I think that like a potato or a carrot would be a little too much for the

[11:25] spiralizer tea, you know. Now, how big is the opening to the? To the fagetti. How big is the opening to it? Like what size of a veg can you stick into that thing? I mean, like a zucchini size. You could do a cucumber. You could do like a cold cucumber salad. You could put a cucumber in the baghetti. Okay. All right, all right. All right, hold on. Well, here's my question, though. Dave, I'm going to send you one for your birthday. All right. Well, we'll play around with it. And why don't you experiment with it? And then, you know, I'll call back in and we can go from there. That's a fair deal. That's a fair deal. All right, will do. I haven't busted out a lot of, like, we haven't done a lot of side by side, so, like, you know, culinary tests in the past year or so because I've been, you know, focused more on bar and the cookbook and everything and the sears all.

[12:19] But we will definitely reopen our testing our, the testing phase of our career with the veggetti. I look forward to it. Thanks, Claire. Oh, thank you. And I'll say that the sears all in Vegetti are a great match. We'll test it for you. When you send it, send your favorite things that you like to do. Thanks. Oh, my God. Okay. For those of you that don't know. Uh, that, well, I guess, you know, you know, if you listen to the previous conversation, you you know what the Vegetti does for a living. Oh, man. So we were talking about the Tandors. So whenever you're, when you, when you, when you fire Tandor for the 1st time, you, um,

[13:03] you, you, you know, protect the, uh, the clay from later thermal shock, right? But then you have to put a seasoning on the inside. So I'm trying to figure out whose recipe for seasoning you need because people mix

[13:13] like sugar and mustard oil and like eggs and spinach and they rub it all on the inside. The theory being that I guess it affects like the patina and whether or not the

[13:22] nons will stick to it properly and then release properly when they're when they're cooked. But expect me to go on kind of a tandor frenzy for the next. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna probably do Mediterranean style lamb with spices that you might appreciate. Uh, for Easter, along with just non after non after non. You like non, right? Yeah, yeah. Everybody likes none. Anyone in the engineering booth, not like non? Do I have to get an argument over here? on. Garlic naan is my favorite. Yeah? You like the garlic naan? Yeah. I like plain. I don't know why. I like plain. What about you, Stas? I like playing. I like playing. Yeah, in general, you like, you know, plain. Oh, I have to recover from that. All right, so, um, last week we had, uh, we had a question we didn't get to from uh, Brian Van Claverin, uh, about

[14:12] ham. Hey, Dave Hammer and the boost squad. Ooh, I like that. B squad. Yeah, me too. Yeah, Jackie molecules in the booth squad. Oh, man. Yeah, well, it's like it's almost like you become like the terror squad. Yeah. Man, terror squad. All right. I received my 1st country ham last week, a half of a Colonel Bill Newsom's country ham. Colonel Bill Newsom's out of, by the way, I believe it's Princeton, Kentucky. I think is where they're from, but there, uh, Nancy Mahaffey, uh, is the is the ham curing uh, master there, and she's been doing it for a long time. I think she took over the business. It's got to be like maybe 15, 20 years ago now, at least, I think. I don't know. It's been a long time. I haven't spoken to her in years, but, um, Her hams are done according to the recipe that they've had in the family since their family was in Virginia, you know, 100s of years

[14:59] ago, and they do ambient curing. So ambient curing, meaning they really only cure one time of year when it starts getting cold out, and then they don't do a refrigerated cure process. They would have, they do it in the way that you would have done it before you had refrigeration. So she has, you know, every year she produces a different batch, some of which she saves for long enough to do 2 and

[15:19] 3 year old age hands, although they all get bought up right now because she has, you know, pretty wide cult phony, following the thing I like about her hand. She also doesn't, for what it's worth, she does. I believe she's a non-nitrite, adding, uh, non-nitrate,

[15:33] adding, uh, person, but I can't remember. But anyways, I think the interesting thing about her hams in particular, is that they, they, I've never been to her curing area, but apparently it's near a pretty swampy region and maybe that's why, but they,

[15:50] like, at their best, her hams have a particular kind of funky, almost at the back of your mouth, blue

[15:56] cheese kind of a note that I think are indicative of her best hands. And so whenever I taste one of her hams, I like taste to see whether it has that particular note to it, in which

[16:05] case, then, you know, I'm like, oh, that's the real deal. Uh, and the only other hams I've had that have that blue cheese note are, is a ham that my wife smuggled back to me from China, which when we go visit production, we can, we're

[16:17] going to go on a Hamathon in China. Can't wait. Cannot wait. Anyway, that was not... So I've got a few questions on storing it and slicing it. For storing, I just put it in a brown paper sack and fold up the end tightly inside my kitchen cabinet. Then I set the ham in a bag on a metal grate trivet. Online, it's mentioned to use cloth or wrap or to wrap it in paper. So I figured this is close, but I'm still on the lookout for a cotton bag or something. My house has a California cooler, which is a vented food storage box, which I could use for food storage as well. The conditions inside there for the next several months will probably be around 52 to 64 degrees and around 75% average humidity, maybe a bit higher, whereas the cabinet would be a tad warmer and

[16:58] drier. Of course, I could always just use the fridge, but the other spaces are more plentiful. Of the options between us, a kitchen cabinet, a California cooler and a fridge, what would be ideal? And because I got half a hand, there's quite a bit of meat that's already exposed. Is it necessary to cover sliced areas with some sort of fat? I prefer not to use lard or shortening with hydrogenated oils if possible. Why though? I wonder why. Dunno. Why? Don't know. All right. So I was wondering if peanut oil or something might be a decent substitute. If not, I do have some leaf lard I can render down if I need to. I'm wondering what the best way to slice is. I've looked at instructions for slicing both country hams and Spanish hams. Most of what I've seen for country hams look like they instruct you to cut perpendicular like a spiral

[17:40] cut, or at least closer to being perpendicular to the bone, which seems to be better for frying or

[17:46] whatnot. I like whatnot's a good one, right? Whatnot. For the Spanish hams, the cuts seem to be closer to being parallel to the bone. If I'm primarily eating it uncooked with very thin slices. What is the best way to cut it? Thanks, Brian from San Francisco, California A. Okay, now, let's go, you want to go in reverse order? Let's go in reverse order. All right, 1st of all, how to cut a ham. Now, the age old, uh, this is like, this is the heart of the, and I've spent a lot of, uh,

[18:12] time, figuring out whether you should cut a ham, uh, across the grain, the way that we traditionally eat all hams in

[18:19] this country. And by that, I mean, even when they're eating crudo style. I'm talking prosciutto and even the average American slicing a Spanish ham is going to slice

[18:27] it, um, across the grain. Now, my feeling, borne out by research that I've done now, like, did over 10 years ago, so I have, there's probably, I'm sure there's been a lot

[18:38] of, uh, recent, got, much more recent scholarship on, on this, not that what I was doing was scholarship, but it was for the ham exhibit I did back in

[18:46] 04. was that traditionally meets our, uh, hams like this were sliced. If they were going to be eaten in a crudo style, were sliced, the way a Spanish ham was, in that, in that, to this day, you know, the, uh, Italian folks who, you know, are more artisanal at it doing

[19:05] it, will slice it, uh, the long way, that is, uh, horizontally, that

[19:10] is, with, uh, you know, with the grain running along it in a long strip. This does several things. It produces a much chewier piece of meat,

[19:21] uh, and it allows you to section the entire length of, uh, or not the entire length, but a larger length of the ham in in one in one slice. So, it gives you a chewier thing and more textual variation. And also, uh, let's be honest, most ham, a hand ham slicing isn't so

[19:38] good, so it gets like thick and thin and thick and thin and thick and thin. Remember that time we were doing it and everyone was laughing at each other. Everyone was telling how everyone else was a crap hole. And then as soon as you said someone else was doing a good job, then they would break through and mess it up.

[19:50] was at the farm. Yeah, it was fun. Anyways. So, uh, the point is, is that uh, the people who like that style, like that style. Now, the crosscut that we have now, really, I believe, didn't, it never came into vogue in terms of crudo ham serving, until the invention of the meat

[20:08] slicer by a fellow named Van Berkel, who of the Berkel

[20:13] meat slicer. So those, and those, the original ones were completely vertical, the ones that you see in the fancier shops with the vertical

[20:20] blade. And actually, the original ones were amazingly frightening looking because it was literally a large spinning blade with no guards at

[20:27] all. They're fantastically frightening. You ever seen the pictures of those stars? There's a picture of what looks like a, uh, you know, a 2015 Brooklynite, i.e. he's got like a huge hipster kind of mustache on him,

[20:38] and standing in front of this machine with, oh my god, imagine if we got one of those old ones and like set it up and then like force hipsters to use

[20:45] it. Their hands would get cut off like left and right. No blade guards on this thing. They don't use their hands to hold on to the bike fixes anyway, right? Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. The only time I've been heavily damaged in the kitchen was with a meat slicer. Well, I mean, other than being horribly burnt. But I mean, with a knife, and a lie. Yeah, but I mean, what I meant to say is the only time I've been really, really badly cut in a kitchen was

[21:04] on the was on a meat slicer. And that was like a semi-modern one with a bunch of guards on it. Like, I'm holding my thumb even just thinking about feeding my thumb into the edge of that blade, which is, anyway,

[21:14] um, I've thankfully never, you know, severed huge, you know, any, whatever. Um, yet yet. Wow. Uh, yeah, you don't want to know it, that's just it. Anyways, the point is that the advent of that slicing technology has kind of like led not only to the luncheon meat phenomenon that you

[21:33] have. Remember Blimpy back in the day? Yeah. Fresh Lice, Blimpy. still exist? You still have Blimpy's? Anyways. Um, but led to this idea of cross-cut hams. And the ability to slice them very, very thin. And all Americans grew up who grew up eating Americans that grew up eating prosciutto and other crudo style hams grew up eating it this way. And I have to say I like it. I like cross-cut ham. Cross-cut ham is 5000 times like, I don't know, it's more supple. It hangs like a fabric in your hands. You can put up to your nose, sniff it in a way that you can't, I

[22:11] think the long kind of stiffer strips. Um, and I like it. And it's and it's sections a different thing. Instead of sectioning along the length, it sections whatever particular muscle group you're on right now all the way through. So I like it. But that said, it's a matter of taste. I don't believe as other people believe that there's a right answer or wrong answer. I think it's what you want. If you want that more tender, thinner slice, go

[22:34] cross-cut, if you want to sample all the different pieces and you like that textual variation, go horizontal.

[22:41] But I will say it's incredibly difficult to try to make good cross-cut slices by hand. So if you don't have a meat slicer, I would I would slice it more traditionally, get like a long, thin, uh, or straight slicer and and learn to

[22:53] a slice, uh, serrano style. Make sense? Okay. Now, as for what was the middle part of the question, the middle part of the question was, um, quite a bit of meat already exposed. So, the fact of the matter is, is that any meat that you leave exposed will, uh, you want to keep it in, you know, not too dry an environment or it's going to

[23:13] overdry. It's going to dry out. But any piece of meat that you leave exposed will end up, depending on how long you store it, drying out to the same extent that a, um, that the

[23:24] fit. So if you look at a ham, like a standard, like American country ham, there is a portion of the meat that's exposed, you know, where you severed the leg from the pig, right? The face of the of the ham there where you've severed. There's that exposed meat. And eventually any cut surface will approach the same level of desiccation as that face section of meat, which maybe you

[23:45] like, maybe you don't. I would believe that any oil covering would help somewhat ameliorate that problem, you could probably even literally store it in oil. You know what I mean? With a complete cover of like in a gallon zippy with like oil around it to prevent. I don't know. I've never tried it, but I'm sure that would work. But that said, the old school folks, in fact, in mountain in Spanish mountain hams, and in Italian, actually, in Italian hams, right? They'll, uh, I forget, do you remember what they mix in with the with the lard? They mix some sort of flour with the lard, but I forget what it is and paste it over the face. That's why the face of a prosciutto is that kind of like whitish color when they're curing it. Um, and that prevents um, rapid moisture loss through the face. And so what that means is, is that, is that the meat will be relatively similar levels of dryness throughout

[24:35] the muscle, whereas if you look at a crosscut of an American ham, you'll notice that the meat that's closer to the face, substantially darker, substantially drier, has a different texture and different taste therefore, than the main cushion of the meat, which is up and usually very,

[24:50] very much softer. So anyway. And in the old days, yeah, you would rub lard and probably with some other mixture, some crap with it so that it doesn't drip out on you. I don't know. And that's what, I remember, I think it was Morris Burger from Burger's Smokehouse in Hollywood. I think I believe they're in Hollywood, uh, in the Ozarks, but the town is called. I think it's the town's called Hollywood, which would be pretty awesome. Anyway, he used to say that what they would do is they would go out. They would hang their hams on a wire because the rats in the barn, couldn't hold onto the wire, right? So they couldn't climb down a wire to get to the hams, and then they would slather lard. They would cut the piece off. They then they would slather it with lard and hang it hang it back up on the wire. and that's the way they would keep their hams out in the barn. When he was a kid. And then they would go scrape off, slice another frying slice

[25:38] out and then put the, the, the lard back on and go and that's how they would keep it. So that should work fine. Now as to where you should keep your hands. I used to hang my hams. There's 2 there's 3 There are several enemies to hams. So the 1st enemy is over desiccation. I would guess probably in San Francisco, that's not going to be too much of a problem. The other 2 enemies are bugs, specifically

[26:05] like things that bore into the meat, these like little

[26:09] beetles. I hate them. I hate them. And you can see like you'll get like little bore holes in your hand where those freaking beetles get in. Now this is where screening is going to help you, right? And any sort of thing like that is going to help because once they hit, they'll hit all the hams that you have that have exposed meat,

[26:26] right? So the bag should probably prevent this, like the cloth bag, it will probably prevent this. Some papers and sacks probably prevent this. So you won't have that problem. The other problem is freaking mites. Now, mites, they form like a dusty powder and you'll notice a dusty powder accumulating under your hams because these mites get

[26:45] there. And I don't think any screen. I'm not sure, but I don't think any screen is going to prevent you from, once you have the mites on the ham, and for me it was, I brought a mighty ham in, mighty ham. I brought a mighty ham in, and then all the rest of my hams got contaminated with the mites. And I spoke to, um, I spoke to, uh, uh, Sam Edwards from

[27:05] SLS Edwards's son, uh, a supporter of our network, by the way. And he was like, yeah, like unless you have treatments for it, like in your home, you don't typically treat for mites, unless you treat for it,

[27:16] like once you get a mite in, once you get mites in there, you're done. You gonna have the mites. And nobody, the mites, they make that powdery stuff. I mean, I don't know that they hurt the hand, but it's kind of an irritant. So, storing it in the fridge. The problem with storing it in the fridge wrapped in paper is that you'll get some moisture coming up to the surface

[27:34] there and I've gotten mold on the paper, which is not a big problem, but you have to kind of wash it off. So I would just kind of hang it out maybe in your California cooler. I think it should be good temperature fluctuation, not bad. It'll just keep aging. You just got to worry about over desiccation, uh, which you could probably fix using uh, some form of large spread over the face in a meat or some stuff like this. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. take a break. Yeah. Let's take a break. Come back with more cooking issues. Uh oh. What, we're not? We're not going to a commercial break? All right. Jacking molecules, not ready with his...

[28:34] Hey, what's up, guys? It's me, Jack, as in Jack, from cooking issues, as in the guy that's probably been talking on this show. So, here on the break to tell you about molecular recipes.com, which is not only an awesome website and store and resource, but also they support us, which makes them even that much cooler.

[28:58] So I know Dave gives you plenty and plenty of information on the show, but should you need further resource, should you want to get some of the things he's talking

[29:06] about, molecular recipes.com has recipes, techniques, ingredients, tools, all in the world of this

[29:13] modernist thing we love so much on the show. So, you know, explore the world of foams and spheres and invisible foods and mind blowing cocktails, all that awesome stuff. There's a community of over 400,000 chef scientists and food lovers sharing their favorite recipes, tips, and tricks. Cool photos, tools, gadgets. Again, this is everything you'd be into all in one place, molecularecipes.com. And just for being a listener of this show, you'll get 10% off any of their popular

[29:42] kits just by using the promo code heritage at checkout. That's promo code heritage. So again, check them out, molecular recipes.com, tons of really awesome stuff there. Definitely write up your alley. And we're back. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You say invisible foods, Jackie Molecules? Can't say them. Can't see them. How do you know how to show this? No, you know like if you go to the website, you'll see. There's like invisible raviolis and stuff. Oh, see, see. You can, I guess it would be see-through. Yeah, I mean, like, I'll tell you what, if I could sell invisible food, I'd be a

[30:20] rich, look at all the invisible food in front of you right now, Jack. Pay me. Transparent and see-through. I like that. I like transparency through. As you all know, anyone that's met me knows that I enjoy, I enjoy some clarified products. Yeah, some distilled products. Listen, go to the, go to their website, check it out and, you know, hopefully you're going to find something that you desperately need and order it to show

[30:46] that that, you know, their sponsorship is worthwhile. Am I right, Jack? I'm eating invisible scallops right now, by the way. Oh my god, how do they taste? Really good. They're seared perfectly. Really? Yep. Yeah. Even the searing is invisible? Yep. Dang. Dang. You know, remember the 1st time someone I remember, uh, because, um, the Rokas, right? So the, you know, Geordi, the brother, Roka, who's the pastry chef, or I guess still is, at

[31:12] L. Clark and Roka, um, he was using their Rotovap because they were kind of pioneers of Rotovap, and he was making all of these perfectly colorless, clear desserts, like with the flavor of X, Y, and Z,

[31:25] like years ago. It was kind of a mind blowing, mind blowing experiment back in the day. Uh, way back in the day. Anyway, okay, questions. Uh, Eddie Nell writes in about Pepper. Hey, Dave and the crew. I'm in love with the oils produced via the chef step technique. So you look up on chef steps, time oil. It's basically they do, they vacuum bag, and then cook their thyme with the oil and other spices at

[31:50] 55C for 3 hours. Uh, okay. So far we go through a ton of time in rosemary oil at my house. Now thinking about adapting that method for black pepper oil. Obviously, we'll need longer extract time and heat question and heat. But where would you start on a process for that? Thanks. Uh, Eddie? Okay. Well, that's a good question. I've never, I've never, since I haven't done it, right? I'm like, I'm not going to give any numbers here. What I'm going to say is I would, I would set up test batches, small test batches. So the 1st thing you're gonna, uh, want to do is I would test a range of, uh, the short answer is no, I don't have any recommendations. Here's a long answer. I would save a bunch of test batches with a different kind of grinds of the pepper. Different peppers, 1st of all. I mean, obviously, you know black pepper is not a kind of unitary thing. You can get like Malabar, you can get Telicherry. you can get, you know, a bunch of different kinds. And so even like a trip, if you live here in New York, you can just go to Kalustians, or even a dual specialty or any of these places, and you can buy 5 or 6 different kinds of pepper, and we used to do that. Remember we used to have those pepper tastings in China? Did you like that tasting? Yeah that was fun. We did it basically on butter with bread, right? Because the butter helped like spread it out. so we would just do butter bread and pepper. We'd smell it by itself. And in fact, there are stark and huge differences between the different kinds of peppers,

[33:13] right? Right? Yeah, yeah. Even you agreed. Yes. Yeah. The lady who thinks it all ketchup tastes the same. Um, the... So back to this. So what I would do is I would 1st try to figure out which kind of pepper you want to

[33:28] use. And then I would try whole, uh, cracked, uh, and fine. And then I would, because I've done pepper with liquor, right? In fact, I think I have one black pepper tincture in the book. And for that, I tested a variety of grinds, but I've never done it in a variety of peppers, but I've never done it in oils.

[33:46] That's why it's, and then I would test a variety of temperatures. Uh, and then I would see, test those temperatures to see which temperature regime you like best in terms of balance. And then after you do, uh, and I would test like maybe 3 different temperatures, like low medium and high, and then, uh, and then in between those temperatures, I would test probably another

[34:06] two, and then I would test duration of time. So you're going to have to run a bunch of tests, but in the end, you'll be able to get something that you really like and then you can tweet us back and tell us what you like. But I'll say another thing is that I am reminded years ago, Steingarten called me on the phone. And he said, Jeffrey Steingarten, you know, like one of my, you know, culinary writing idols.

[34:27] Um, saw him recently, or talked to him recently. Anyways. Remember when he was on the show? Yep, that was fun. Yeah, you like him because he's mean to me. Yes I do. Yeah. Anyway. I wonder whether we come back on the show. Jack, should we get some Steingarten back on the show? Yeah, man, love Stein Garden. Yeah, all right. So, anyway, so he said to me, he says, you are an idiot. Uh, like everyone else, you add pepper at the beginning of cooking, whereas it's known via

[34:56] studies that, uh, that, you know, basically the, the awesome aroma of pepper volatilizes, you know, within minutes after adding it and all you're left with is the bitter taste,

[35:06] to which I replied, but Jeffrey, I like that bitter taste. You know what I mean? And so we got an argument, but what it leads to is this idea that you can have, just like hops, where you can add kind of a bittering hop and then an aroma hop, right?

[35:19] You can add pepper at the beginning of a cook for its bitterness, and then at the end for aroma. So with your oil, and I do that actually with, um, when I'm doing uh, hop infusions, um, hop infusions into alcohol, I'll do some

[35:32] heated and some cold, right? You might also experiment with pepper with oil, by the way, using an EC to try and get a higher pressure to pressurize the stuff into the pepper. But the point being is that you're going to get different results because pepper oil is extremely volatile. Here's another little wrinkle. I read a paper or tried to read a paper. I didn't really have time called thermal properties of black pepper and it's volatile oil.

[35:51] Bye, type is too small here. Uh, Merladar, Megwal, uh, and TK, uh, Gaswami 2011. And I was hoping for some like hard and fast numbers, which they didn't give it, but

[36:03] suffice it to say, the one number that did stick out in my head was that the volatile oils are solid below about 38 degrees Celsius. And in the introduction, they mentioned that the grinding, even kind of normal

[36:17] grinding can heat pepper up substantially and change the composition of its volatile oils by volatilizing some of them.

[36:22] So, and they say cryo grinding is one way you might get around it. So another interesting thing you might do to try to get an infusion of flavors that you would get in a whole peppercorn, but doing it more completely in a ground fashion would be to

[36:34] cryogrind your pepper, keeping it below about 40 degrees, -40 degrees Celsius. -40 degrees, your average fridge does about -20. So we're talking about like storing it in dry ice for a while and grinding it or using LN to grind it, but that might give you a different result, which would be a whole interesting kind of thing. So some things you might want to think about is this kind of, um, you know, pre-pepper, post pepper, similar to kind of dry

[36:54] hopping to try to get the, uh, the bitterness out of one and the aroma out of another. Another thing you might want to look at is maybe doing like a super chilled, like a cryo grind to see whether that gives you something different versus the normal just playing with temperatures and times. But hopefully this is some food for thought. yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Stats is like, yeah, okay, move on. Um, all right. Now, we have a question in from Brooke in Tribeca, and Brooke writes

[37:19] it the official style with the capital T, the capital B, and the capital C. Do you ever do that? No, no. No? No? I guess if I lived there, maybe I would. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah? What are your feelings on Tribeca? I really like it, do you? Uh, I mean, back in the day, Tribeca was like, you know, it was the shizzy, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, the artists, they couldn't afford to live in Soho. So they moved down to Tribeca. Now it's like super fancy. My wife used to live in. that where isn't that where the... and Beyonce. And that's the only reason you like that event, right? is you can look at on Beyonce's apartment and hopefully she came out once, right? And you were like, oh, Beyonce. Right? Who my brother calls Beyonce or used to. Anyways, love the show, new listener. Quick question about making fresh cheeses specifically ricotta. What are your thoughts on ricotta styles? Like it. Yeah? All right, fine. No problems here. Is there any advantage to using a circulator to make something like ricotta versus a

[38:15] quick stovetop method? I recently used a ricotta recipe that call for cooking the entire milk cream acid mixture in a bag for one hour at 172 degrees

[38:23] Fahrenheit? That's pretty damn specific. What's that in Celsius? Can you look it up for me, stars? That sounds like the kind of thing that someone came up with a Celsius recipe and then just hit convert. What is it? 172. It's I bet it's pretty close to an even 5 degrees somewhere in Celsius. Let's see what it is. We have 4 people. Stas's fingers are fast like lightning, but you know, the Google in here is not necessarily so fast. Um, well, she's finding that. I'll continue the question. But traditional stovetop methods seem to call for just a quick simmer before adding the acid to the

[38:55] kurtle. Uh, well, you know what, the thing you didn't tell me, Brooke, is like, what would the result? 7 degrees? What? 77 something? Nah, that's not a good one. So no, that is a real number. 77 No one would. 77.77. Yeah, okay. But who would choose 77.77777. You said 172, right? Yeah, damn. All right. So they must have meant that. But you didn't tell me what the what the results were. So I don't know whether or not you enjoyed that 172. Anyway, whatever. Moving on. But traditional stovetop methods seem to call for just a quick simmer before adding the acid to the kurtle. While we're on the topic, what's better? Whole milk or milk with some heavy cream. And is there any difference in texture between lemon juice, distill vinegar, and white wine vinegar, or is that just a taste preference? Many thanks, and congrats on the nomination. Best Brooke from Tribeca. Yeah, the nomination for the beard. And 11 an IACP. Jane Griggson award. Yeah. Hey, yeah. Should I get another bottle of per second? No, I think we're all right. But yeah, I didn't even know I was up for award. And... You didn't even go. You weren't even invited to the event. I was not even, yeah, it's not that I didn't ghost us. I know. Not invited. Not invited. You know why? It's the equivalent of like the carnation thing. Like I wasn't up for any of the things that had been nominated, right? But, but like the judges have like special judge awards. They were like, meh. Maybe they should have won something. give it to them. You know what I mean? Let's not invite him Let's not invite him, though. We won't invite him. Last month, you weren't even nominated. Now you're a winner. I know, now, but that's what I'm saying. I've won. I've won something. So now my, you know, my losing streak is over. That means I have no more, my hair has been cut. like Samson. Because it wasn't a category. But no, actually. Excuse me, though. Were you up against anyone? It's an award. Come on. Not only is it an award. Not only is an award, but like, it's pretty badass. Jane Gregson was the, she's a, was a well-known, I believe she's British writer. She died, I think, in the 90s or something like this, and, you know, I guess her most famous book here in the States was charcuterie. And anyway, she is a fanta- was a fantastic writer, right? And so this, um, And very influential, in fact, and this, uh, this award, Jane Grixson Award, is for, you know, heavily kind of researched and thought out

[41:08] in, like, deep, deep dives, basically. And I love deep dives. And I, you know, I love her writing, you know, and have for decades. So, you know, super duke honor to get the Jane Gregson Award, right? Yeah? Yeah? Anyway. So Stas just wants to do anything to make me feel like it wasn't a, it's a great award from the International Association of Coordinary Professionals. You get a thing on your book? Do I get a thing on my book? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. you know, I don't know. Not at liberty to say whether I get a sticker on my book or not. You know why they put stickers on books? So they sell more. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I don't know whether they work in Amazon. Like it used to be, you would go to a, you would go to a bookstore and you'd see it.

[41:52] and you'd see a sticker and you'd be like, do I want to know what this idiot has to

[41:56] say? or this idiot? Well, some other idiot gave this idiot an award, so they must know what's up. I feel like when the stickers were on the books of like the books in elementary school, it's the ones you wanted to

[42:06] avoid because they were the long, laborious. The tough reads, yeah. What, like Caldicotts and those kind of awards? Yeah, you'd be like, oof. I'll tell you what, though, for a children's book author, especially, like, unless you win some of those big awards, I think it's hard to do numbers, because there's just so many kids books out there that, you know, you need some sort of, because parents, when they're buying kids books,

[42:27] right, there's a big, well, am I buying something that's going to be good for my child's brain? I'll get the one with the with the free game award, you know, on. I think the same goes for cookbooks. You know, the cookbook has the sticker on it. Yeah, for sure. You know, the assumption is that there's some useful information in there that's going to help, because, you know, cooking a recipe out of a book is kind of a, it's kind of a, for people who don't cook necessarily every day is kind of a big whoop, you know what I mean?

[42:51] Like they go through the big rigmarole of getting the ingredients and all this other stuff. It's kind of a big. you remember back when you used to be like that? I remember that. You know, my 1st cookbook that I cooked out of that I owned that was given to me? Uh, man, the title of it. The Julia Childs, not her 1st one, but the, what's it called? The Way to Cook. Yeah, I used to made so many recipes out of that damn thing. In fact, I still make some of those recipes out of that thing. Anyways, what were you talking about, though? Ricotta cheese. How the hell did we get on this guy? How the hell does this happen? So I'm not, oh, she, thank, it was a congratulations on the award. That's fine. Okay. on the nomination. So I have not made a boat ton of acid, curdled

[43:32] cheese, be it, you know, ricotta or paneer or, you know, like a fresco or things like this, but I'm going to

[43:39] go go ahead and say that, um, You know, Kenji, at Sirius E, a long time ago, did a bunch of tests on ricotta. And for him, he didn't see a kind of a huge difference in, uh, the, in the texture of the ricotta based on the temperature to which it's heated.

[43:58] So he didn't see, uh, he didn't see it as being a big deal. And in fact, to prevent scorching, he even nuked, you know,

[44:05] nuke the stuff and just made sure that it was in the temperature regime that he wanted before he

[44:09] added the acid to it. I'm interested in the one that you have where the acid is pre-added and then raised to curdle it to see what that is. But my feeling is, is that while it's true, perhaps, that he didn't get that much of a difference in texture with a different temperatures, it's a known fact

[44:26] that the rate of curdling is going to be different at different temperatures and also holding occurred at an elevated temperature in a liquid for a length of time will continue to exclude water from it, making

[44:38] a kind of denser, harder curve. So my guess is that over very short periods of time, the temperature might not be that big of a deal, but that over longer periods of time, the temperature will become more and more of a big

[44:53] deal. The other thing that's interesting. I'd like to find, if you could send me, uh, you know, or tweet me out like a link to the recipe that you followed, uh, in the circulator, uh, for it. One of the things that is really clear with any sort of gelling mechanism is that the final texture of the gel is very dependent on the conditions present at the time of

[45:16] gelling. So, um, for instance, with alginets, if you use a soft calcium, right? Not only does it take longer to set, but the gel will be less firm because the actual agglomeration of the alginate to

[45:32] itself, the binding of the alginate to itself. Not only is it slower, but it produces a different texture. But it also aging, it can increase the texture, but it's never, you know, it increase, make it harder, but it's never going

[45:45] to be the same in a slow set situation versus a fast set.

[45:49] So the amount of acid you add, the speed at which it curdles, and the

[45:53] temperature which it curdles, it seems to me, are variables that you could probably dork with and get, um, get different results.

[46:00] The same goes true for acid, the acid that you use. And again, I haven't done extensive testing, but, you know, according to, you know, what I've read. Uh, you know, lemon juice is going to taste like lemons. Buttermilk takes substantially more, so it's probably going to affect the texture and it's also going to affect the, um, It's going to affect the texture. It's also going to effect the flavor at those kinds of levels. But remember also is that different things with different assets, depending on the rate at which you add

[46:28] them, are going to affect the rate of curdling as well. So the rate at which you add it is probably also going to have an effect, similarly, the draining time is going to, they

[46:37] all, basically, they all have effects. In terms of whole milk versus whole milk and cream, obviously the more cream you have, the more fat you're going to have. So the more creamier it's going to taste, right? Um, The other things you might futz with is, uh, you might want to add some extra calcium to the mix and the form of like calcium

[46:53] chloride if you want a harder carb. I dont know what you're trying to achieve. So please send me a link to the recipe that you did, because I'd love to actually try it out, because I'm going to do a bunch of side by side, especially because you know now that I have a

[47:03] tandor that I'm going to go paneer crazy. Do you like paneer? You do? Really? Well, what the hell? Stas and I are going to be doing a pioneer for days. And that is the 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

[47:26] 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.