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[1:03] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Brooklyn, every Tuesday, always late, supposed to be here at 12, am not, run until about 1250 or so. Yeah. Yeah. Got Nastasio, the Hammer. Lopez here in the in the shipping container. And in the engineering booth. We got and Jackie molecules, Insley, and Rebecca, how you guys doing? Oh, yeah. I got to get myself a bomb. I good. It's good to be back. I'm just playing this crazy video on loop. Oh, yeah, dude. Oh, I should talk about that. It's horrifying. So, so you know, like, uh, I was going through my box of crap the other day. And I came across, uh, by the way, calling your questions

[1:50] two, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So I'm going through my box of crap the other day. And I noticed an old VHS tape from when I was in art school, like back in like 95, 96, something like this. And it's a piece I did called what I am thinking about. And pretty much, and I had been making, like, flip books of this image in my mind for years, like little flip books. Have you guys ever seen my little elf character I draw sometimes? Yeah, it's that elf character. been with me for years. So anyway, so, um, I uploaded the video to YouTube. I got someone to digitize the VHS, which is super low quality. I wish I could find the original discs. And by the way, like it was really hard. Like, when you see it, you'll know, like, it was really hard because I'm walking a very long distance in it, and so

[2:42] to do the chroma key on it back in the, like, mid 90s, like the computers weren't so great. And so I rolled a giant, like a 200 foot long sheet of paper down my mom's street outside of her house. I had a friend walk behind me with a giant blue sheet that I had painted, like rolling it behind me as I walked.

[3:04] And so, you know, there's some bleed through. I had some problems with the chroma key. I had some interlacing problems when I was doing the early. It was like after effects version one or something like that, whatever, whatever it is. What does it mean? Okay, well, let me explain what the video is. It's on YouTube. You can go look at it. Chat room got it. Oh, they got it? They got it. All right. So it's called, uh, so, so, so basically it's just this elf who's me, like an infinite number of me just jumping into a woodchipper over and over and over and over and over again with a band playing.

[3:33] Like that's what it is. That there's no more meaning than that. There's an arts business. This is what I'm thinking about. It's I told you this many times. People who said she can figure out, she could write an essay on it. Yeah, course. I spent, you know, like many, many, many hours critiquing this piece and, you know, like defending it in critiques and all this other stuff. Kind of felt like lemmings. Yeah, you know? Well, the whole point of it, I'll give you a little hint, Styles. a little insight. I'll give you a little insight. Notice that I'm not I'm not upset about it. Just jumping in the wood chipper. Just there. Here I am jumping in the wood chipper again and again and again. It should keep jumping in the wood chipper. And it's very important that it's not gore, that it's like it's, you know, it's cartoon blood coming out of the side of the

[4:21] wood chipper. And, uh, I believe, I believe this is pre-Fargo woodchipper, I believe, I believe this is pre-Steve

[4:29] Busemi jamming his enemies into a woodchipper, I'm pretty sure. anyway. So, and pretty much anytime you see me staring off into the distance nowadays, this is what's going on in my

[4:40] head. Danish, danch, danch, danch. Yeah. Tim in the chat room says it reminds him of a craft for video. Oh, I'll take that as a compliment. I went back to my high school, which I hadn't been to in, you know, like five, 6 years or something like that. And I was like, I need a sousaphone. And I need a

[5:03] bass drama and a symbol. And they're like, all right, then let me take it to my mom's house and like film the video with that stuff. I sewed the elf out of it myself. And the curly shoes are real. I still own them and uh, there used to be a leather joint in the uh, in um, Soho. They moved outside up near Chelsea. They might be gone now, run by a guy who anytime you bought anything from as you leave, he'd be like, God bless. That's all you would ever say, God bless Adar leather. And yeah, I got all the green suede from him, made the last, made the shoes, you know,

[5:33] it was a full, full service, you know, art project back in the day. Anyway, still thinking about it. Figured I'd post it there. Okay, how was your Halloween? How many, how many, how many listeners did I just lose when they're like, that's what that guy's thinking about? come out. I'm out Wait how was your Halloween? Kids are freaking animals. Crazy. I had, listen to this. I had 150 full-sized freaking candy, full-sized candy bars, and by the way, a good selection, Jack, naming some candy bars. Uh, Snickers. Had it. Twix. Mr. Good Bar. did not, but I did, I had 5th Avenue, and I had paydays. Ooh, paydays. Payday. I like the payday, underrated bar. Everyone loves everyone who can have peanuts, enjoys the payday, but no one talks about the payday. I like it. Also, like, I always like to have a certain amount. I also had like the entire Eminem, like, you know, the all of the new and the regular M&Ms. Oh, like the pretzel M&Ms. Oh yeah, yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mega, which are the large scale M&Ms. coconut, right? I don't know if they had those at the store, but I also had like not the full range of skittles because there's 150 different kinds of skittles almost at this point. But like, you know, a decent Skittle selection. The full size Twizzler, which, by the way, would be my call, the full-size sour patch pack. Yeah, and Stas is turned off her vegan face for that one. And, uh, so anyways, it's like, uh, you know, I had 150. And uh, pounded it, gone. Gone. I had to go out. I bought 50 more and they still wiped this out. Booker and Dax were so depressed because they thought they were going to have all this candy left over. But then, of course, when, you know, we started cooking dinner and Booker got picking anyway, so Jen took away all of his candy. I don't think she threw it away. She's not like, she's not that. She's not the, it's going in the chute because you see, when you live in New York, you have a trash chute. Once that stuff's gone, there's no getting it back. You know what I mean? It's not like some sort of secret fake trash, like you might have somewhere in the suburbs or something like this. It's like if it goes in the chute, that's it's done. There's no like going out to the curb and trying to resurrect it or anything. You know what I mean? We have an announcement. Jen's going to be on the show. at some point. That's not an announcement if we don't have the point yet. Before the end of this year. We have to say it out loud, then it'll happen maybe, right? Do people actually want my wife to come on? Are they going to call and ask her questions or something? Yeah. Yeah. All right. you know, tweet on in if that's what you want to have happen. Let me know. Uh, also, uh, so, you know, the museum, this has been the 1st week of the museum being open to the public,

[7:56] um, tomorrow will actually be the whole 1st week because we're closed Monday, Tuesday. So we were open from Wednesday to Sunday. And I think it went really well. I stole some stuff to fix, but I think it went really well. And I've been going to Greenpoint more, so I've been going to all the Polish joints. I got to get Lucas, you know, to help me out. I bought. So in Poland, they have this soup, which I think is called Zurek. I think that's how you pronounce it. And it's got in it this stuff called Zur, which I thought was Zur, as in like

[8:25] Zur and the Codan Armada. Are you a last Starfighter fan? Jack, last Starfighter, anyone? Robert Preston's last movie, freaking the great Robert Preston from the Music Man. You're familiar with Robert Preston Styles? What the hell? What the hell is wrong with you people? Seriously, America. You live in it. Learn it. Anyway, the last Starfighter was awesome because it was one of the 1st times when video games were painted in a very kind of good light.

[8:49] This guy did nothing but play this video game called The Last Starfighter, and he lived in a kind of a trailer, not kind of, he lived in a trailer park, and he played it, but he got like the,

[8:56] like, the, a universe wide high score, and it turned out that these video games have been planted all over the universe, which is

[9:03] strange because you'd think that, like, you know, they would have had better technology all over the universe. But no, they were using 1980s video games. So they planted them all over the universe and people who got super high scores were actually sucked up, brought out into space to become

[9:14] starfighters to fight against Zuhr and the Kodan Armada. See what I'm saying? See? Anyways. And so Polish. Anyway, so Zuhr, they didn't tell my favorite part about last time. Well, if anyone cares about last Starfighter, we can have a last Starfighter conversation someday. The best part about that is this guy, this is a life lesson I took. At the end, the codans are smashing into a planet. Like their starship has been destroyed by, you know, the Starfighter guy. They're going in, and the guy who's kind of a wussy is like, man, what? Because it's planes, the thing's crashing. What do we do now? And the guy goes, he has this little eyepiece with a motor on that goes, like a heads up

[9:50] display. And he goes, and he just looks at him and goes, we die. And then the thing goes. But I'm like, that's a baller way to go out. The codans know how to go out. They might have been evil, but they know how to go out. So back to Zur, a.k.a. Zur. It's fermented rye flour. So it's like a sourdough, but real thick, and it uses the base of this sour soup called Zurek, which is really awesome. Lukash said it's like kind of Polish version of miso, but the soup is really good. I need, the short story is, I need to learn a lot more about Polish food because everything I've had so far, even though

[10:21] obviously I don't know how to actually make it. So I'm just guessing based on what I read what the stuff's supposed to taste like, but stuff's straight up delicious. You know, what's really good is sauerkraut and mushroom, like, hacked together and

[10:33] cooked, like, pierogi mix. I think it's from a pierogi mixed band with good stuff. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. So what was I supposed to be talking about today? We have some Twitter questions. All right, let's do a Twitter question, then I'll do a question that came in on the give me a Twitter question. Give it to me. Well, 1st off, do you like the new heart and how they got rid of the

[10:52] star for the faith? Wait, what? The new what? They got rid of the star for favoriting tweets and there's a little tiny heart. I hadn't noticed. I don't know. Do I like it or do I hate it, social media queen? I don't like it. So what's the difference? It's a heart. So they're trying to Instagram it? Is that it? It's trying to be more like Instagram. I like things to be separate. I don't like muddy. like water's muddied. I know, I'm a category kind of a guy. I like categories that say the same. You know how like when you when you go to college and then you come home for the 1st like 10 years. Something changes in the house every time you come home and it pisses you off. It's like that. It's like that. And by the way, the guy who does the video, the guy who did the last series all video, which you should all take a look at the last series all video that Chris did for us, the one where he's like has the secret

[11:39] series all that whispers and stuff. Anyway, he claims to have done this, what we're talking about changing like a well-loved program. He got some serious, serious backlash. Is there a serious backlash on this Twitter thing or no? For sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I have to say, I... I

[11:58] made a persimmon puree, the next day it had a, it has solidified into a very, very firm

[12:04] gel. Any idea why and how to prevent that? Well, I mean, it's full of pectin, but the 1st question I have is, are we talking, what kind of persimmon are we talking? That's all I got. What kind of persimmon? We need to figure out what kind of percent we're talking about. Because you know what's new? I never cooked with. I've always wanted to, is the native persimmon. I saw one growing in Washington, DC once on the mall, and even though I was probably expressly forbidden to. I jumped up, grabbed one, and ate the hell out of it because no one's going to eat it. What do you guys think about this? When you were in a place, right? And, like, obviously, if everybody took a perfume, and they wouldn't be any

[12:35] perfume, but the fact of the matter is that all of them, all of them, everyone is going to hit the ground and rot,

[12:40] right? Every single one. So if you really, really care, like really care. Shouldn't you just eat one, what do you guys think? like at the pair place. Yeah, like at the Brogdale, right? Got to eat them to save them. You gotta eat them to save them. And I'm not even ripping the tree down. It's not like I have to like slice the slice the bark off and like girdle the tree like you

[13:00] do with a pig and you murder it to save it. Like this is, yeah. So, I don't know, what do you guys think? you guys was I wrong to take the persimmon? No way. When I was at Monticello, you know, was I wrong to taste some of the fruit that was clearly going to go to waste because nobody was eating

[13:15] it? No way. Yeah, right? I mean, yeah, I took a rock from the... That's evil. You better not stay on air. You're going to get a blast. Okay, I want you guys to know what Stas is really like. All right, say, say it. From the, what's it called? Parthenon. Yeah, Stas took a freaking rock from the freaking Parthenon, which is just wrong. It's evil. It's like destroying cultural patrimony. It's like, it's evil. under a tree. It's just wrong. It's just wrong. Yeah. Yeah, give me that. give me that again Survey says, yeah, it's not right. Not freaking right. All right. So we got, let me get a question we got, then we'll go back to certain questions. Hey, Jack, just getting into Jack. First, I wanted to thank Dave and Nastasia for answering my writing question back in March when I asked Nastasia about Stanford and how Dave and Nastasia met. Um, this time I have a question for Dave regarding writing cookbooks. This past year, I helped a bioengineering professor teach one of the 1st cooking classes at Stanford that was essentially the science of cooking. He's considering taking his lecture material along with recipes and writing a science of cooking cookbook. So I wanted to ask, what are some of the biggest challenges you faced when writing your book. Also, any advice or suggestions would be great. Best Kevin. All right, well, here's the 1st one, straight up. Don't write somebody else's book. So what you have to do is just look at McGee's book and be like, how is my book going to be different, right? So that's the 1st thing. Like, like, you have to differentiate yourself from Harold McGee's book. You also have to differentiate yourself from the modernist cuisine series. Kenzie's book? Will you let me finish? Yeah, yeah. Kenji's book, which, by the way, apparently is selling like great guns, like selling like crazy. So they're all a little bit different, right? So McGee's book is obviously like the reference book, right? The modernist cuisine book is the book for, um, like the book for kind of new techniques, you know what I mean, in terms of like just an exposition of new techniques and cooking. Kenji's book is kind of like home recipes treated in kind of a scientific fashion and kind of like his

[15:14] blogs, you know, that he wrote, well, his columns for Sirius Eats, if you know that. So, you know, these are kind of like 3 things, and then there's a host of other ones. So like on baking and science, you have like Shirley Corriher and you have like all these other, so it's like your goal is going to be to differentiate yourself, right?

[15:33] Now, if you're just saying you're going to write it as a textbook, and you're going to force people to buy it, and all you care about is like the fact that you're going to force a certain number of students to buy every

[15:41] year that's different. But if you're actually writing a book book, especially in that field where you have some big, big, uh, kind

[15:48] of, uh, things to live up to. Just make sure you're differentiated. And then, you know, obviously if you're dealing with, uh, you know, a bioengineering person, I don't know what the, I don't know what their cooking chops are like, right? So it helps when you're writing a cookbook to really know the

[16:05] subject like really well. So like maybe they have really great cooking shops. I don't know. You know what I mean? But it's helpful. Um, I think it's a lot easier to write a book when, you know, the

[16:17] depth of knowledge you have on the subject is two, three, and 4 times deeper than what you actually write because then everything seems kind of richer and more textured. You know what I'm saying, stuff? Anyway, is this good advice anyway? Is this good advice? don't know. So it's not great. It's okay. Also, test the hell out of your recipes. Just test the hell out of your recipes. If you should test them, but also you should get someone who doesn't

[16:41] know the subject to test them. Also, you should get someone who doesn't know science to read your text because it's almost impossible for a science head to write a science book that actually makes sense to someone who doesn't already know the answers. So, uh, you know, give it to people, to read, who don't understand. Now listen, don't. When the person comes back and tries to change it to something that makes sense to them, almost invariably you will look at what

[17:06] they what they've changed it to and you'll be like, no, that's scientifically wrong now. Now it's wrong. And what that means. That's a note to you in your head that you didn't explain it right the 1st time. So you need to recast the entire thing. And that's why it takes forever to freaking write anything. You know what I'm saying, Stas? Is that better now? Also, if it's thick enough, Nastasia will use it to separate hot and cold foods, but it has to be like 300, 400 pages and like, you know, just

[17:31] that right thickness to make sure that by the time she gets off the subway,

[17:34] can't be too heavy. She can't use his Kenji's book for this. So like, you know, like... Yeah, mine is the perfect thickness to keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold.

[17:44] All right. Let me see. next question. Um, this in from, uh, Pedro Piva. I think it's how you pronounce that? P-A-I-V-A. Bye-bye. Anyway. Hope everything's okay over there. Property already gotten tons of questions regarding this issue, but if not, can we have Dave's point of view on the

[18:06] Red and Processed Meats thing from the World Health Organization? Oh, yeah. That's what they were talking about last week. World. Yeah. Well, the truth of the matter is, uh, oh, I asked, uh, my girlfriend, who is a doctor, and the answer was that almost everything uh, will cause cancer. Uh, if you eat it like there's no tomorrow. Keep up with the good work. Okay, so I didn't have a boat ton of time to look into this. Uh, but I, I will, I went to the uh, the WHO, which is who dot in, right? is their website. And I looked up their Q and A. And so you got to remember is all they've done is they've classified, hoop, they've classified, um... Because in my head, that's how

[18:48] Justino has said, too. You know what I mean? But they, uh, they classified meat as a carcinogen, meaning that they

[18:57] feel, they feel the epidemiological studies are good enough to say that it causes cancer. you know, definitely, you know what I mean? Good epidemiology. But not, that doesn't mean that, that there's a huge increase related to it. First of all, let me just be very clear. As far as I can tell, and someone tweeted and tell me I'm wrong. Please, please. someone tweet didn't tell me I'm wrong. But I don't believe there's any new studies. This is just an aggregation and a decision based on studies that are already out there. So if you already thought the studies that were out there were crap, we're horse hockey, then nothing has changed, right? And here's what they said. Here's what they said. According to, this is how many, question 12, how many cancer cases every year can be attributed to the consumption of processed meat and red

[19:42] meat? You ready for this? This is, this is, according to the most recent estimates by the global burden of disease

[19:51] product. The global burden of disease project, an independent academic research organization, about 34,000 cancer deaths per

[20:01] year, worldwide are attributable to diets, high in processed meats. That seems really weak. 34,000 worldwide, worldwide. How many 1000000000s are we now, guys? Also show me those diets. Yeah, I know. Look, all those studies are horrible. But show me, show me the, show me the, 34,000 out of how many billion? I don't know, many. Anyway. Our attribute are attributable to diets high in processed meat. And here, eating red meat has not yet been established as a cause of cancer. However, if the reported associations were proven to be causal, the global burden of disease project has estimated that

[20:38] diets high in red meat could be responsible for 50,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide. Also, remember, these are diets high in those things, not any consumption of those things, but high in those things. And so we're talking, I believe, for processed meat. What they're talking about is 50 grams a day. So roughly 2 ounces of processed meat every day. Which is more than I, you know, more than I eat. I mean, I wish I ate more, processed meats because I love them. They are delicious. I don't know anyway. So I think pretty weak, but at some point, either someone that I know... Wow. Yeah. Wow. Wow, that's a lot of zeros before the 1st number. Yeah. Anyway, the point being that I wouldn't worry about it overly much. And you know what? Like, if I had to give up, uh, country ham, or like take that 1000000000 percentages of zeros and like, and like add that to my thing, like, I think I take the

[21:37] hand. You know what I mean? Got a caller. Caller, you are on the air. Hey, Dave, I have a question about wine. I've been making a concerted effort to drink more wine and to start appreciating it more.

[21:52] Good man, nice. in in my efforts. I'm wondering when you're sort of profiling the aroma of a wine. Is there any technique or way that you're aware of? And this is good for food in general to, to sort of like reset your, um, your sense of smell, um, because like, I get like 30 seconds into smelling a glass, and then like, get used to the smell, and I can't tell, I

[22:19] can't, uh, sort of latch onto, um, what it, what exactly reminds me of before I can't even smell it anymore. Um, yeah. I say, it's a good problem. So I think everything depends on kind of what, what you're uh, specifically tasting, like what, there are things and I wish I had remembered. Why am I so stupid? Like, uh, the flavorious who do this kind of thing for a living, smell things for a living, they have things that they specifically do to kind of get around this.

[22:44] And he, and Jack, fast tag, the guy who was our consultant in the, uh, in the exhibition. like, yeah, I do. and now it's erased. I remember him saying, yeah, I do, and that's gone. Isn't that crazy? I hate that. But like, it depends. So, like, for instance, like, for palate cleansing, if you're doing country hams, it's apple juice, not cider juice.

[23:02] When you're doing wines. I mean, a lot of times, I mean, if you're eating something, it's relatively easy. I just want to make sure you're eating something that's not going to like rip the wine apart. You know what I mean? Like nothing and as high an acid, uh, you know, too high an acid, um, but also like I just like put it down for a while and do other stuff till

[23:22] I clear out and then kind of pick it up again. But I don't do like constant nosing. Like I'm not, we should ask Jeff. Why don't you text Jeff? have this number. Anyone? Anyone tweeting in what they use? Come on, chat room. Hook me up. But I also find it's really like... Smell your hand. Ooh, let me see. Onions. They say chop onions. You know, if you chop a lot of onions, like, it takes me 2 or 3 days to get the onion smell off my fingertips. That doesn't happen to you, or if you eat a lot of onions, it comes out. Garlic, yeah, that happens to me with garlic. It's the worst, right? Don't you hate like waking up in the morning and like give garlic. You're like, get out, get out. There's actually like research studies and it's so like, I wouldn't mean, man, I don't know, smell your hands. Tell me if they smell like garlic. I don't know. No? What do you cook last night, sis? Eggplant Parm. Ooh, really? For real? I didn't bread it. So in what sense, eggplant parm does? Just some eggplant and sauteed in with tomato sauce and the mozzarella slice on top. Nice. It's not eggplant parm. Phil was over. He didn't want to eat heavy. What? Did you squeeze out all the water? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it good? Yes. Really? Was it stringy? No, I, no. I bought a thin one. And the skin wasn't gross? No. Alright. Alright. Jack, what's your thoughts, and Rebecca, what are your thoughts on the non-fried eggplant Parm? I think it kind of has to be fried. You would like it. I'm sure I like it. Although in the hip pressure cooking book. I haven't tried it, but there is a pressure cooked eggplant Parm style thing. Here's my thing. I'm sure it's delicious. It's not what I consider an eggplant parm. Sure, but what do I call it? I don't know. Was there Parmigano on it? No. I mean, like quite clearly. Quite clearly. No parm. No freaking Parm. Was it made by someone from Parma? No Parm, no Parmigano. Like, you know what I'm saying? Because Bill's not eating much dairy either. What a dilly. It's like, the hell? Just eat a raw eggplant. Just give them a raw freaking eggplant and just chow on it like a goat. You know what I mean? Christ sakes. Did you answer this guy's question? I don't know, did I? Is he still there? I don't know Yeah. I'm good. Thank you. All right, cool. Well, listen, I want people to tweet in the answer because I'm just not good at that stuff. You know what I mean? Anyway, someone will do it. All right. Okay. Let me see. I'm actually gonna get to some of these questions here. Okay. This is from Wade. Taneth. Longtime listener. I want to say thanks for the interesting food ideas. Last week, Chris from the green zone. This is a follow-up. This is a good one, people. Last week, Chris from the green zone called in about his attempt to make a

[26:10] chartreuse like liquor, which precipitated, you know, flocked out after adding the honey. I think you are correct, suggesting it could be an ionic reaction of suspended green particles with cat ions in the honey.

[26:22] One idea occurred to me from an application in the pharmaceutical industry, which uses hydroxypropylcellulose, hydroxypropylcellulose,

[26:32] HBC. To stabilize suspensions of nanoparticles. The HPC is non-ionic and forms a barrier around small particles preventing them from agglomerating.

[26:41] I love that word. I love that word, agglomerating. Don't you like that word it says? Why, you don't like it? Does it sound like sport to you? A little bit. Really? You like aggregate better? I prefer agglomerate. Do you like the word pre-agglomerated? No. Okay. Uh, I do. Agglomerate. It sounds like, it sounds like a space word. agglomerate. It's also unique in that it has excellent solubility in water and ethanol.

[27:06] I think it could help to provide stability for this liqueur. Using sugar instead of honey should help too. My suggestion would be to use 0.3% of, I'm going to spell it,

[27:16] C-E-L-N-Y HPC, which stands for hydroxy purple cellulose, SSL, to stabilize the particles in the liqueur. It is the lowest molecular weight grade of HPC produced. So we'll give some extra bodies slash mouth feel, but not thicken too much. For a liter of liqueur, you would add 3 grams of HPC. Dry mix to 3 grams of HPC with about 50 grams of sugar. Put the liquor in a blender on low, and then add the HPC sugar mixture, blend for 30 seconds. We'll get a little foamy, but will settle to be clear. Full disclosure. Wade works for Aniso, NISSO, which manufactures this product. But anyway, he's playing with it with cocktails for his own fun anyway at home, so I'm

[27:56] going to give it a try. He said he'd send us some. Should we get some and play around it? Yeah, send us some. Wait, the liqueur or the? No, the freaking HPC. Hey, Jack, if they're going to mail samples like this, where should they mail it to? Ooh, that's a good question. I will provide that address in a second. In the meantime, we have a caller. Caller, you were on the air. Hey, Dave, this is Robin New Hampshire. are you? Doing all right. How is New Hampshire doing? That's nice. Beautiful weather. Yeah, you setting off fireworks, living free or dying? Love that place. The way to be in life. Yep, yep. What's up? Hey, uh, quick question. I want to melt a bunch of chocolate in my circulator. So I was just gonna vacuum bag it and throw it in overnight and melt it down. Is that a safety problem? No, no, it's 100% fine. The only issue, and I know people that do this because you can get exactly accurate, so you don't have to do it like up and down, up and down because you can get it so that you never melt out, you know, all of

[28:50] the, all of the good crystals in it. So, yeah, it's great. The only problem is you have to make 5000000000% sure that you don't, um, that you don't get water in it. Right, right. So it's like, So it'll just hease up and be nasty. Yeah, and like, unless you're doing like a lot, because it's not going to be like hyper, like thin, probably, like there's a tendency to kind of lose some to the to the bag. So, like, you know, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you know, dry the hell out of the bag before you're done and then

[29:22] get, like, one of those plastic pastry scrapers, put it, like, down a your thing and shoop and like, you know, get all the stuff out or else you end up losing a lot, especially, I don't know what kind of bag you're using, but if you're using one of those, uh, one of those, um, uh, just tell me, you know,

[29:38] the, with the, with the, with the crisscrosses. You know what I'm talking about? Food saver. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you're using a food saver bag, like, you're going to lose a lot just to those crisscrosses. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, it's totally doable. Is it a is it a problem having it 30 to 45 sk for 12 hours? Does the water activity make that a non-safety issue? Yeah, it's not, there's no, there's like, remember, there's a 0 water activity. Okay. And, and, you know, they're, they're, you know, yeah, I can't imagine anything that's gonna, I can't imagine anything that's gonna happen in that. I mean, look, someone wrote me back and saying, I'm killing people, but I know people that do it. And, um, you know, obviously people store chocolate at that temperature and it's molten state for a long, long time, not in a vacuum, but

[30:23] they'll have a giant vat of it. And then, you know, the stuff at the bottom is not like it's getting a lot of oxygen. So, yeah, no, you're. right I mean, I looked up some numbers and cocoa butter's like .41 to .56 water activity,

[30:39] encouvature is around .3. So nothing lives below .85 or something, right? Yeah, I don't know the exact numbers, but remember, like water is a complete enemy. like water is the complete enemy of chocolate. So I don't think, in other words, like, I don't think anything will grow. You're not killing anything. So if there's anything in there, it, you know, it's not going to kill it. You know what I mean? But I don't think it's there's nothing there for it. There's nothing there for things to grow on. You know what I mean? Right. So you don't have to worry about the botulum box. That's always been my big scare with putting stuff in bags. Yeah, now, look, it's also like got like a pretty hefty dose of sugar in there, which even if there was a little water, you know, would like form such a concentrated syrup that it would be

[31:19] hose, you know, nothing can, I don't think anything can survive in that. awesome. Yep. All right. Have fun. All right, thanks. Oh, so this mailing address. Yeah, so it's 1130, Bedford

[31:35] Ave, box 301. Brooklyn, New York, 11216. You can rewind if you missed that. Let me take the last question that we had in on the email and then maybe Rebecca, you have a couple more for me for Twitter or no? That's a thumbs. Alright, cool. All right. Greetings from Pittsburgh. from Justin. Oh, wait, no, there's just 2 questions. Greeting from Pittsburgh. This is Sarah. I've been making an aging eggnog, raw eggs, cream, maple syrup, nutmeg, cinnamon, a bourbon,

[32:07] rum, and brandy for a few years now, and I think I am narrowing in on the best mix of ingredients and aging.

[32:13] The longest I have let it age is about 13 months, but I usually let it

[32:17] go, but I usually let it go for 11 months. My question to Dave is, how long is too long? Is there a point it will stop mellowing out and begin to be unpleasant, or is it possible it will get even better? Totally possible, Sarah, that it might get better. I don't know what the answer, like, because here's the here's the issue. what you need to do. Like, obviously, duh. what you need to do. I've had eggnog 2 years and 3 years old, I think. Nick Bennett, remember, had some that

[32:42] was... I forget how old the oldest one he had was Nick Bennett, who now is, you know,

[32:45] at porch light, killing it, doing awesomely. Um, I forget how old the oldest one he has, but this question is, is it going to get better? That's going to be a matter of case. And so here's what you need to do. You need to make the same recipe 3 years running. You can make whatever you want, like, as well, but you're gonna make, uh, like, at least enough to save a bottle and have a bottle every year.

[33:08] So you're going to make at least 3 extra bottles, okay? And then, uh, you're going to do that every year. And then year three, or year four, I guess, you'll have

[33:17] a bottle of three-year-old, a bottle of two-year-old, and a bottle of one-year-old, and you'll taste them all side by side. We have some at the lab that's like 3 years old now. In that low boy? Oh my god. Does it have to be refrigerated? Uh, I don't know. I dig it. don't know man. Oh, jeez. All right, Stas and I may or may not, if we ever go back, because we're supposed to not have a lab anymore, but we have a low boy somewhere that apparently has some eggnog in

[33:42] it, and we'll taste it. But we don't know if it's better or worse because we don't know what it tasted like at the get go. Yeah, we did. I don't. Yeah, you had I didn't. You did. You did. You'll make it. Yeah, Stats doesn't pull any punches. She's, you know, it does mean that way. Okay. Um, Justin from Forest Hills right, and I was wondering if Dave had any suggestions for projects or resources to learn soldering and other basic electronic skills.

[34:07] I don't think I'm comfortable animating dead frogs, but I would greatly appreciate any other suggestions. Did I talk about that on the air wants or something? Most likely. Really? Anyway. Uh, yes, I would not start uh, for your 1st soldering project uh, animating uh, dead frogs. But, um, the problem with soldering is like, you gotta remember, like, I'm old, right? So like when I was when I was a kid, we still used wire wrap. You know what I mean? For those of you that are really, really old, and then, like, you know, all of the components that I would solder were all through whole components,

[34:38] meaning, like, you know, you put pins through a board and solder them.

[34:42] Whereas now, like the cool thing to do is like all kind of surface mounted stuff, which is impossible for me to solder because it's so fine pitch.

[34:50] buy a decent soldering iron. First thing is buy a good soldering iron with a very fine tip, get yourself some decent solder. I, someone must make a good lead free solder now, but most of the solders that you buy are really crap at wedding. Uh, and then just go online and choose like a, you know, go on uh, add a fruit or go on uh, Spark Fun and find some sort of like fun cooking thing that you want to do. Like, I want to build them. I don't have time, but I want to build some moisture meters so I can auto water some plants. I'm going to put some citrus up and auto water it. That be pretty cool, right, Styles? Right. So then you get a board with a kit, and you saw it, solder it up, and, you know, practice, and then eventually, you know, in no time, you'll do some microprocessor development, and then you'll be doing your own boards, and then you're going to go, you know, right, you know, nowadays, it's

[35:33] like, it's child's play. You just learn some PCB, which is the board editing software, and, you know, you output, and like 2 days later, someone ships you a board in the mail. It's not even particularly expensive anymore. When I was a kid, if you wanted to make a board, you got out of drill, you got to,

[35:48] you know, you took you to your Xerox machine and you Xeroxed a black and white negative of what you wanted. You painted the, no, not black and white, not reverse. wasn't a negative. the positive. You'd paint a board, a copper board with goop. And then you'd put the paper that you put the clear plastic that you put in the Xerox machine over it. you'd expose it with a light, then you'd wash off the goop that you hadn't cured. I guess it is negative. I don't remember. And then you put that in an acid etching bath, etch it out, and then you'd sit there with a drill and drill the holes so that you could put the resistors and parts in. In other words, it was a royal pain in the behind. And, like, often it didn't work because you didn't etch it right or anything. So the world is a much more fun place for soldering stuff now. Anyway, I don't know. Is that decent situation? I don't know. don't know. Anyway. Rebecca, what do you got for me on the Twit air? Well, we got the persimmon guy to write back and he said it was Fuyu, F-U-Y-U. What the hell did you call me? Anyway, yeah, yeah. So those are the ones that you, yeah, eat. It's Kiskog. It got to be a pectin. It just got to be a pectin issue. Anytime you get like a major setback in something, it's it's usually pectins. I don't know if there's a lot of other things going on. I've never made a persimmon jelly, so I don't know if they're particularly or like paste. So I don't know if they're particularly kind of hard set. I don't know. They feel like they, when you, imagining, are you tasting one in your mouth does? Oh, no. I'm like more of a fan of not the ones that you eat fresh, but the ones that you dry

[37:21] out, let down and like get all soft and gooey and then dry out. Do you like those? Like you buy in the Asian stores? You don't like persimmon? Not really. How about you, Jack? What about you, Rebecca? lukewarm. Lukewarm, man. All right. What, even the dried ones? What's that? Even the dried ones? Yeah. What's up, lukewarm? You guys, no help. Anyway, someone will tweet in the answer. All right, what else we got? Any ideas for egg white replacement in a whiskey sour? My girlfriend and I love egg white drinks, but she's developed an allergy from Joel. Wow. Huh, okay. So what would I do here? Well, you could use a milk syrup, right? So if you made a milk syrup, uh, that would, see, when you're making egg white whiskey sour, the egg white's doing 2 things. It's adding texture to the drink, duh, but it's also, uh, it's

[38:13] also, um, mellowing out a little bit of the woodiness of the of the, um, astringency and woodiness of the of the whiskey. So milk syrup would do kind of the same thing. So you could just do, you know, milk syrup is

[38:28] one to one milk and uh, and sugar in a blender. You blend it till it dissolves. And then for every liter of syrup, you add about an ounce of 15% citric acid solution or like 2 ounces of lemon juice. While it's stirring, that'll precurdle a little bit. If you don't do that, the milk syrup will end up being chalky. That milk syrup will last for a long time in the fridge. It will separate, but you can just shake it to get it back, and it foams fairly well, not as well as a whiskey sour does with an egg white, but it foams pretty well.

[38:59] Another thing you can do is milk wash. So you could milk wash the bourbon just by taking bourbon, adding, adding a, for every liter of bourbon, add a, you know, add a liter of bourbon to 250 milliliters of milk, uh, with stirring,

[39:15] blending a little bit of citric acid till it breaks, strain out the solids in a cloth, and now you have milk wash

[39:21] bourbon. You should use it probably within a, uh, within a week or so it'll lose its foaming ability. Um, we're running a test now at the bar with sodium hexametaposphate to see whether that'll stabilize it because I got a tip from somebody in Florida that that might work. So that'll only increase the foaminess. You could also uh, cheat. You could use Versa Whip or something like that and just make kind of a foam on top and shake, but you still want to add something to the whiskey sour that's going to mellow the whiskey a little

[39:51] bit. Otherwise, it's going to be poquito astringent, in my opinion. Anything else? got anything else? They're going to rip us off the air in a minute. We should say that you're doing a science of cooking next week at MoFAD for people to buy

[40:03] tickets, $30 online. that true? You'll be doing Ikojime. Okay, listen, people. So, Emma Boast, the program director at MoFad is like, she's a Japanophile, right? And so she wanted me to do a bunch of crap that I've done recently. I'm like, uh, and I don't have a lot of time to develop kind of new things. Although I'm doing a lot of interesting, fun, new cooking, but just not like necessarily technical related. Like it's like the Polish food I'm interested in now and a bunch of other stuff. Although, Nastasia, by the way, here's big news. generally, Nastasi and I hate each other. Like, like we're bad, you know, we're like oil and oil and water. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, oil near the smoke point that you boil pour water on, and then it vitalizes and like catches fire in the fire, and then the whole kitchen's burning, like, that's normally kind of how we are. However, uh, Nastasia is coming to my place for Thanksgiving this year. is true. Yeah, that's true. yell at you. Yeah, yeah. You said, I can't, I can't. No, you're not allowed to purposely make me get angry on Thanksgiving. That's the that's the one stipulation. You have to put that in check. No purposely making me upset. No getting me spooled up and making me yell in front of my kids or anything like this. All right? Okay. But we will be doing some fun stuff. Like, for instance, we're gonna, I'm gonna do the turkey in the tandor this year. tandor turkey. So maybe we can get, uh, because I don't think I'm going to get a chance to shoot a turkey in the head because I'm not that good at it and it would be illegal anyway. Maybe we should we get some heritage heritage birth. tweet out about it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. But that wasn't what we were talking about. You said I had to talk about something. Oh, yeah. So, like, I wanted to do something relatively new, and she was like, oh, yeah, the Ikigime in a long

[41:44] time, and I'm actually thinking about Ikigime and slaughtering techniques for my next book as part of my next book. You're going to have the big tub and all that. I don't know exactly how I'm going to do it. I'm going to do clove oil, probably, and we'll do the Ikigime, but, you know, I don't know. We got to see what kind of live fish we can source the demo. We're going to do that. We're going to do some oldies, but goodies, like we're going to do 1000 year old eggs. And we're going to be at the Bass Pro in Bridgeport. Is that for real? Yeah, well, we're still working on getting access. The basketball will be there. Yeah. Well, we'll be there when Bass Pro opens, but Stas wants to do the radio show. Hey, Jack, nice for you to know. We want to do the radio show from the Bass Pro in Bridgeport. I'm totally down to do this. Right? Yeah, when? I don't know. It's the opening and they're giving away a pontoon boat. Stas is making this up. Yeah, that's totally alive. She's making this up. That's just a lie They might be. Look, we love Bass Pro. We might have to do this. We might have remote broad pass from, yeah. No, this is like people, people. I love every little bit as we go in and say like it's years later, but you get a little bit of real stars as we go. This is all wishful thinking on Nastasia's part. She has not yet contacted anyone. There's not even a basketball. I contacted someone about doing the show from there. they said yes? No, they haven't responded. Exactly. But we are going to do the show from there. If it's from your car, we're going to do the show from there. What? Yes. We got it's the opening. It's the big there's going to be famous people and hunters. What famous people going to do? Hunters. famous hunters? Yeah. You, you're the famous person. We're not famous. They're going to get Peter

[43:16] commits you. Peter, uh, Turkey in the head. I'm not allowed to. I don't have a license that allows me to shoot a turkey in the head in the state of Connecticut. And if I did, the only thing I would be allowed to have at the house would be an air rifle and they don't allow hunting, how many times? They don't allow hunting turkeys with air rifles in the state of Connecticut. Hey, guess what? All right, next week, we'll be back with more cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info@heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage radio network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.

[44:11] Thanks for listening.