[0:00] Today's program was brought to you by eating tools, unique handmade eating and cooking tools for more information visit eatingtools.com. I'm Damon Bolte, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:25] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking. You just coming to you live on Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday around from 12, so 12, 12, 10, 12, 15. Ah, Roberta Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and the Heritage Radio Network. Call your questions to 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. We are joined today not only, as usual, witness dossier the Hammer Lopez. It does. Jack, Jackie Molecules, Insley in the booth. Hey Jack. But we have... From the Museum of Food and Drinks, Sam, say hello. Hey, and straight from Madtown, from the from the underground, the variety of different underground collectives that they have in Madison, Wisconsin, the

[1:09] one the only Johnny Hunter. I have a story to tell. So I have definitive proof that Kim Gordon is a huge fan of cooking issues.

[1:22] Yeah. What? Yep. So last time I was on the show, someone called in and asked who our favorite band

[1:28] is. And I said Sonic Youth. couple months ago, someone text me. Yo, Kim Gordon, is at the butcher shop? It's one of our businesses. I'm like, really? So, I run over there. She had just left. Someone, one of our employees, like, didn't recognize her and told her she couldn't use the bathroom. Oh, but she drove, she was driving across the country, stopped at our shop, took a picture in front of it, put it on

[1:56] Instagram. So I think that like she listens. Why? just knows you guys. No, she knows the show. Why else would she come into the shop? She likes she stopped in like Indiana, Madison, Wisconsin, Fargo. Fargo. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, if I was going to be in Madison, I would definitely stop by your establishment. I mean, I don't think it has anything to do with it. No, she was listening when I said Sonic Youth, and so she stopped by. Really? Yeah. All right. Well, we can verif, this is verifiable. Like, you know, if this ever makes... Yeah, call, yeah, call. Come on anytime. Or, you know, come to the come to the Mofat event. You want to talk about the MoFA event we're doing, Johnny? Yeah, we're doing a event on Thursday, MOFad, looking at the effects of pH on cooking, which is everything pretty much. I don't think there's much that we do that doesn't have a PH effect, but I think there's some specific things that we're doing that will be kind of interesting. I think, especially the base stuff, not a lot of people think about that. Well, I mean, especially everything you do is kind of pH related, not everything, but you do a lot of work with fermentation and preservation, so much of that is. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's doing the, like, salamis and the fermented vegetables and the misos and stuff like that. It's all pH-based. So, you know, I think so, so yeah, we're each going to have 2 or 3 demonstrations. Um, people get to try things, people get. I, I, I hope that um, I think the thing that's cool about the techniques we're showing is that people can take a lot of these things

[3:23] and uh, do them at home and like my big secret reveal is

[3:27] going to be how to make black garlic in 3 days. Which, I think, like, last time you were here, you mentioned it, but we never talked about it, right? So you're going to have to pay. Here's what's going to happen. You have to come pay the museum to listen to it, and then afterwards, maybe we can reveal the secret on the show if we haven't already. But the technique, it's slightly different. The garlic's still black, but a different flavor from the one that is exactly the same. Exactly the same. Not even a little bit different because I thought before you said that it was a little bit different. Not your worst difference. We've dialed it in Oh, yeah? I mean, I think there's some flavor differences, but I think if you were a blind taste test, variations of black garlic, you would not be able to tell ours

[4:11] versus... You wouldn't be able to tell that there was a difference or you wouldn't be able to choose which one was which? You would be able to choose. I think there's so many variations in what black garlic does because the process is 40 days at 140 degrees.

[4:26] There's a lot of things that are going to affect how the flavor develops over that amount of time. That being said, I think our process has some differences just because I've tried it so much, but I don't think anyone could tell the difference. You know, I think I already talked about this on the show, but I was trying to come up with a new technique for this. When you're ready, I have a call. Oh, all right. Well, we'll take the caller 1st and then we'll get to it. her, on the air. Hello? Say that again. I said hi, this is Andrew from Pittsburgh. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing very well, thank you. How are you? All right, all right. Got a got a question? I hope you have some sort of cured meat question because we got Johnny here today. Unfortunately, I wish I had prepared a journey question because this would be the podcast to call in before with these guys here. Exactly. What do you got for us? Um, I have a question for um, flavored simple syrups, specifically herb simple syrups. Okay. Um, and kind of best practices for creating them and then kind of running a random slot I had about them um, Bayou. So, um, right now I'm thinking about doing, um, for things that are really delicate, like,

[5:28] um, basil and cilantro and stuff like that, um, doing, um, like a blanched

[5:33] up. So having uh, a pot of like cold symbol and then, uh, do a quick blanch, like cool symbol surrounded by uh, an ice water bath and then do a pot of boiled water, blanch it real quick, drop the herbs into the uh, cold symbol to kind of blanch them, um, and then,

[5:50] uh, bring it up to uh, maybe like room temp and let them rind for a little bit to try to infuse. Um, instead of like blending it so you can come out with like a translucent, um, simple and not have

[6:00] particular matter in the simple, like if you just blend it, uh, that could go bad and cause off flavors. Yeah, here's the problem. Once you blanch basil, it never tastes like basil again. Like, uh, you should um, go. I mean, like it'll taste like basil, but it won't taste like what you are thinking fresh basil

[6:18] tastes like. Can I give a taste? Yeah, sure, but go back and read. The curious cook has a whole section on, the curious cook, the original book that's not out of print, but you can, I think, look at it online, has a whole thing about McGee, uh,

[6:33] uh, trying to make uh, pesto and his travails in in Blanchard. Johnny, go ahead. So one of the things that we do a lot is the stems from the herbs. And do the cryo blanch centrifuge? Boom, really flavorful. And they stay for a long time? Yeah, yeah. Your oils don't turn at all if you if you are, your oils or your simple syrups don't turn at all. if you blend it when the crowd. Right. What you're trying to, what the whole point here, right, is I didn't know it worked with syrup. I've done it with oil. Yeah, we freeze the syrups too, and they hold really well. I have never done it with a syrup. Here's here's the thing. You have, what you're looking at is, uh, what you're looking at is trying to, uh, shoot the, um, the, uh, polyphenol oxidase enzymes in the head, right? And so you can shoot them in the head temporarily by like freezing with liquid nitrogen, you can do it by dehydrating the herb, right? Which is why like mint tea stays green, right? Or you can, but that also changes the flavor, or freeze frying. You can do it by, um, you can do it by blanching, which alters the flavor, right?

[7:46] Uh, and uh, you can, the problem with freezing it without blanching it is that then when it thaws, if it's exposed to oxygen

[7:54] again, and the enzymes can kick back into high gear because the freezing doesn't actually destroy the enzymes, right?

[7:58] Now, I knew that if you mixed, uh, if you if you took that stuff and blended in with oil and then spun it out, there's no water in the

[8:08] oil. And what happens there is the polyphenol oxidase enzymes can't operate in a complete lack of

[8:13] water, so the oil stays nice and green and doesn't turn brown and getting brown flavors. I knew that, but apparently what I'm being told by Johnny. I think the sugar content, we noticed when the higher sugar contents were there with our simples that they would stay greener and brown when it was. Right. I mean, what I'm just learning now is that apparently, yeah, high sugar concentrations, the enzymes also can't work in a super high sugar

[8:34] concentration, but I would keep it as high as possible, right? Like 66, rich simples, to give it, to give it a shot. Do you have an accent? Do you have access to liquid nitrogen? Oh, I do not, unfortunately, have an active liquid nitrogen at this time, because I mean, normally, if I was going to do that, then I would just, you know, do different nitrogen there too, like a nitro model drink. I'm sorry, I'm a bartender. So I'm trying to figure out ways to do this for the bar. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I would do, um, like, nitro model drinks, like, like, the ones that you have done, but I don't have access to

[9:01] that, so I'm trying to figure out a way to make, like, flavored simple, but are, are self-stable. Um, Okay. If you don't have access, here's what I would try. and I don't know if this is going to work. But if I, if you didn't have access to um, liquid nitrogen or really to a good, uh, like a centrifuge. I would, uh, the problem is you can't really pass freaking, I would, I would make a, a, I would take extremely high proof ethanol, do a quick blend in high proof ethanol, strain it through a cheesecloth, and then, and

[9:37] then, uh, dissolve that stuff into a syrup, like a really high, high, high brick syrup, and it maybe would

[9:43] keep. Like a rich symbol? like super rich, as rich as you can get it before it crystallizes. And then maybe it's going to keep it. The problem is, is that you're not, going to be difficult to get a high quantity of herbs into a recipe like that because you're going through like a multi-step process versus just like freezing and

[10:00] putting it in, especially if you don't have a centrifuge. If you have a centrifuge, then you can just, um, I mean, you could probably, I don't know, you could probably, have you tried blending it directly without the 1st freeze into a super

[10:15] rich simple Johnny and spinning it out? No, but it would worry, especially if it's not the leaves, if you just join the stems. Well, I'll probably do the league. I mean, would you do the stems of the bed? you think that's a better idea or do you do the lead? Depends on the herbs, though. Some herbs, stems don't taste like the freaking... yeah. Yeah, ish. Yeah. You can concentrate it more too. You can just get like bunch in there. You're not spending lot of money. But like the Thai basil stems are like that weird color. Yeah, the purple. Which that turns always. Although, although purple basil, real purple, like fully purple basil, the color is awesome. But I've never tried to keep it, though. But anyway, here's my point. I would try, just try getting the richest, simple you can. Uh, it's just a, it's a pain in the ass, to strain rich, simple. Without a centrifuge. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a real pain in the behind. Yeah, I mean, most of the herb simple syrups that you see in bars are like sitting out on the table and they're like very brown

[11:15] colored. Yeah, here's try this. But they're trying to make it probably some other way. why don't you get a very rich simple. I don't have no idea what this is going to work. Get a rich simple. Blend the herb into it and then let it sit in the freezer for like 3 days. Yeah. And the matter, the matter, the simple syrup, the very rich, simple won't freeze in the freezer. just get real sluggish. And maybe eventually the stuff will settle to the bottom because there's still going to be a liquid. Be like a clarification. Yeah. Although, a really rich simple. I wonder whether it was settled to the bottom or whether this stuff would float. You'll probably get some separation. I don't know Would it work? That's a good I think that's a good method to see how the, I think we can press. Would, um, would a scored the acid help at all with the, the polychenol, um, yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. It slows it down. Like, you know, it's not gonna like, uh, it's not gonna completely stop everything, you know, in the same way that Linus Pauling didn't not die because he took all kind of vitamin C forever. But, you know, it will, yeah, it'll slow down. I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't use, in any of your syrups, any of

[12:22] the uh, sulfur-based antioxidants, because I think, you know, you can smell and taste those in pretty small concentrations if you're not, like, uh, dosing it exactly right. But yeah, scorbic acid's good to, it's always good to add to things. Just a regular .25%. Oh, is that way people use? I just you know what? Ascorbic acid. I just like, I'm just like, poof. I just put it in because it's got such a low flavor profile compared to most acids that

[12:48] like I just, I literally just like, I like old school kitchen it. I like pinch of this. I'm a pinch of kind of a guy. Sorbic acid, yeah, it's definitely pinch. Yeah, pinch, yeah. Um, last question. As I was reading, because I was kind of, I mean, my 1st thought was your 1st

[13:04] thought, I just turned to McGee for this. So I was reading on student cooking. Um, and I was going across, like, what we were talking about, how the actual flavor molecules are transmit, and you said that they're much more, um, easily dissolved with

[13:17] oil, um, and I was thinking maybe yeast. Um, I'm kind of an emulsifier, almost to help buying the oil and bring them out of the

[13:25] herb and I did not spend it, but this is all the herb, I guess, would be suspended in the, in the simple. Do you think that would help with extraction? Uh, well, if you want to make an herb oil. Like, you can make an herb oil, right? And then you just use an emulsifier, like I would use, like, the one that we always use, which is the tickoloid, and, um, which is a mixture of gum Arabic and Xanthan, and then you could put that

[13:48] into, into simple, but I would do that right before. In other words, oil, because it doesn't have water in it, is going to be much more stable on the color and the

[13:57] flavor, then once you then put that back into a liquid base. Although maybe not if it's really rich simple. I don't know, Johnny. I don't know. I mean, not, like, not actually to, like, emulsify and, like, some other oil, but,

[14:09] like, this tiny little flavor molecules out of the herbs. Oh, no, no. In other words, do you think adding an emulsifier to the water when you're making a simple syrup is going to make the herbs taste better? I don't really think that's, no, I don't think it'll. I mean, hey, look it. I've been wrong so many times in my life, like, you know, that, but I, I don't think it will help. But you know what? Run a side by side. Like, just run, choose a couple different emulsifier, do a side by side, and then tweet us back and let us know or call back and let us know what happens. There might be something that we're not thinking about that would work. Yeah, I mean, that's the great thing. But you have another call, and then I'm going to actually shut the phone lines now, because we got a lot to get to. Oh, man, wow, shut the fuck up. Caller, you're on the air. Hi Dave, how's it going? Hey, um, so I just uh, came back from Mexico City with the Knicks

[14:58] dramatic. Oh, nice. It's freaking awesome. Now you call both, you probably, are you, give me like a rundown of like, you know, tips and

[15:07] uh, how you use it. Right. Now you called earlier, right? I did, exactly. Okay, the trick with the Knicks domatic. So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, uh, when you, uh, in fact, we're going to talk about an

[15:19] extimilization at the museum event, uh, in 2 days, uh, Johnny and I. So like, uh, you know, what you do is, is you soak uh, par cook and soak uh, traditionally corn in an alkaline and calcium rich

[15:33] environment, and then it makes the corn somewhat softer. It also turns the outside of the corn into what amounts to a hydrocolloid so that the masa, which is what you make tortillas out of, has the, you know, the characteristic texture, which is why you can make with just corn, you can make awesome, well, and

[15:49] calcium and, you know, you can make awesome tortillas. Problem is, it is extremely difficult to grind

[15:56] nixtimalized corn in a modern kitchen because to use like a Cuisinard

[16:02] Aerobicoup takes too much water. Uh, you know, Indian wet grinders like I've been using recently, which we could talk about later if you want. Uh, you know, they don't handle a dough that's as stiff as masa. Blenders get choked up on it. Um, regular grinders, like, um, uh, sorry, like uh, mills, like flour mills are freaking useless for it. And so it's actually kind of very difficult process to do at home. So there's this thing called the nextomatic, which is, frankly, just a very robo version of the universally detested Colombian made

[16:34] corona corn mill, which is just like a hyper low quality, uh, iron casting, uh, like grind wheel that just, you know, grinds corn, but like, uh, the

[16:46] coronas, I hate them. Do you like them, Johnny? don't use them. Oh, because they're because they're terrible or just because you've never used them? Yeah, I never thought to you. horrible. So the Knicks domatic is like is like about 30 steps up. One because it's got a big robo motor on it, and two, the plates are a little bit better. But the plates on the Nick Stomatic still aren't, uh, let me say, they don't come out of the

[17:08] factory working. You know what I mean? Like, if you look at them like they're, they're really rough. So they're not designed for kind of the American mentality of, I'm going to spend a lot of money on a nice piece of equipment and so it should work. It's more like you have to grind those grind wheels into submission.

[17:28] So like mine, if you look at mine now, it's

[17:32] literally a masa wheel when you look at it. When you're looking at like a normal grindstone, like for a regular Western, like for

[17:39] a weed or dry corner or whatnot, like the grooves that are in the in the grindstone, like

[17:44] the, you know how they go, the grooves in the grindstone should alternate in direction and they form like shears, like scissors that as you go, like shear instead of

[17:52] crushing, shear this stuff, right? And those grooves also act as transport from the stuff to the from the inside to the outside. So, um, here, you want the outside to basically almost not have any grooves left.

[18:05] You want it to be pretty flat because the masa is like partially sheared at the beginning, but really it should be smashed into little pieces because you want it

[18:13] to almost be like a stone matate mano grinding it out. And the clearance needs to be pretty fine because the moss is not supposed to be coarse on the finest

[18:20] setting and it just won't work that way. Because I think if you're looking at your plates, you can see kind of big holes on the outside of

[18:26] the where the 2 grindstones meet. See, it's got to run that sucker and your 1st 3 times 4 times that you make masa. You going to have to run it through 2 and 3 times. This texture's still not going to be right. But keep bearing down on that freaking plate. And then as you go, it's just, you're looking at it, it's going to be smoother and smoother around the periphery of the stones as they true themselves to each other and become kind of better made

[18:48] it, and then your boss is just going to get better and better. Okay, so you're really tightening that. Oh yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. Do you have any, because I kind of, I tried running it through a 2nd time and like it was pretty tough to really get it through. Oh yeah, it is. Um, so you just really bear down on it. Oh yeah. Okay. Here's the thing. Do not run the next to Matt to the point where the wheel stops for more than about 10 seconds.

[19:15] That's what I did like a month ago when I was making nut butter with it 2 months ago and I was making nut butter with it and I like

[19:24] added, I told, I think I told you, I added sugar to the nuts. Yes, yes. Yeah. No sugar, right? Do not know, dude, no ever, never, never add sugar to the nuts when you're, when you're grinding them, it just like totally sees the machine. And I really had a nuclear like puff. Like, you know, like, like, a mushroom cloud of smoke and, like, you know, phenolic, like, insulation smell behind it and it turned off. It came back on. Actually, we're testing it. doing miximalization at the museum thing, you know, and so

[19:54] like, we're going to see like probably tomorrow, we're going to run the test on it to see whether it still has still has its huevos left, whether it still has enough huevos to grind masa. we're hoping it does Have you ever used a meat grinder for Masa? No, but I mean, like, like, what kind of plate would you put it through? Just like the tiniest dye. I don't know. you tried it? yeah we use it. How courses? going to be for more like for tamales. tortillas. We make tortillas with it. We run it to a couple times. works pretty well. Really? Yeah. I mean, it's not like, it's not nearly as good as like a stone grinder, but like, I'm pretty happy with the, especially, I think, if you used it

[20:29] first and then ran it through. You could probably save yourself some time. I've never owned a real meat grinder. I just owned those KitchenAid things, which are monstrosities. Yeah, I mean, a real grippy grinder will put it through fast enough, and the blade will be like the

[20:43] motor's powerful enough to really get like a pretty smooth texture. Yeah, but you're talking about like the, the, the big ones where you soak the plates in the, in the, in oil when you're done for the end of the night. Exactly, yeah. Benchtop ones, at least minimum. Yeah. You know what? dont work? The KitchenAid ones. Worst piece of equipment. You know, what's even worse than that is their flour mill. You ever use that? No. It's a wretched. It's just wretched. Their apostate shooter is pretty terrible as well. You know why? Because it's based on their meat grinder. Yeah. Which is, hey, I love kids, my kitchen aid. I'm not trying to say anything negative about the KitchenAid here. But all plastic pieces for attachments is going to be... Yeah, also, there's just something like, I've used real meat

[21:23] grinders, like, you know, back when I was teaching at the FCI, and like my impression of a real meat grinder is meat wants to go in one end and come out the other.

[21:31] That was not my impression with the KitchenAid. It wants to come back up. Yeah, yeah. It wants to spit back in your face. Which is not what you want me to do. No, and you're raising your temperature way too high. Oh, super high. You think it's because the choke point's too small at the end of the die or just because it's just bad? I think the machinery itself, there's like too much movement and it's not

[21:51] like, it's bending and it's not like, it's not like 2 pieces of metal with a powerful motor. Yeah, I mean, the only luck I've ever had with the KitchenAid one is where you have to really make sure you cut the stuff into strips. Yeah. Like, and then you have to because they have to fit into the in between the auger and the tube assembly without, like, having too much compression, right? And you need to basically parfreeze everything. Which then kind of messes up your texture if it's like a little bit frozen. That's the only way I've been able to use my kitchen egg right now. It's fun to see people who have never used a real meat grinder. You know, you get like the the standing mix, the standing grinder that can do, you know, £300 in like 4 minutes. And they're like, what? Like, this would save us so much time. But what do you, are you, are you grinding tomorrow at the, uh, on Thursday at the, at the event? Yeah. What are you going to use, crappy kitchen egg, right? No, a friend of mine who works at a restaurant. I was like, dude, I can't use a kitchen egg. I gotta borrow yours. let me use it. Nice. Nice. what are you stuffing with a regular £5 vertical guy? Yeah, I think it's a little LEM one. I think it might be a 10 pound, so... The only one I've owned. I remember back in the day when we were teaching at the FCI, they were going to start teaching sausage stuffing. And, like, I turned them on to, like, the, the $80 version of the £5 stuffer that they sell at, like, grizzly. Yeah. Really bad welds on that thing. Stuffed sausage fine though. Yeah, so sauce is fine. Actually, that was the 1st stuffer we had, and someone who used to work for us is getting married this summer. Oh, for a wedding present. Yeah? You're giving them the 8995 grizzly? Yep. yeah. He's pretty stoked. Yeah. Well, it should be. like, you know, here's the thing. My only concern with that is that if you were going to actually use it to get certified, the welds are so shitty that the NSF people,

[23:32] I don't know how the hell they sell it. You know what I mean? it's basically like, you know, it's its own. uh, it's its own backslop because it's always holding some sweet, sweet business from your last time

[23:43] around. You know what I mean? Yeah, the inspectors come in and just, you're gonna kill somebody. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we all got to go sometime. Yeah, yeah. All right. So, uh, caller, I hope I answered some. that even answered a question or do we just talk about next to Mattics? I think you got it. Because he was wanting to know how to prep it. Alright. All right. So, um, now, should we take a quick break and then come back or no? Yeah. All right, take a quick back. and cooking issues. All right, here we go.

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[25:41] every day. For more information, visit eatingtools.com. New Sponsor Jack? Oh, yeah, that is a new sponsor, a new business member. Eating tools, huh? That's what that's what we get called all the time, right? Eating tools. So what's on their website? Like, what do they sell? Are they are they are they just selling other people's eating tools? Yeah, I believe so. You don't have to visit the website. Johnny, are you familiar with these guys? No, they were the 1st sponsor over the 1st tattoo, was that? Really? Sam, are you an eating tool? Are you familiar with the eating tools? I'm not. I have a chat room comment. Two two-part comment. A lot of good stuff happening right now about backslop is the comment. Oh, yeah. And then, um, more more stars was the comment from the channel. I didn't say who it was. I know it's Jordan. All right. Well, from Jordan, a friend of a friend of the program. Actually, you know, actual friend, like, you know, uh, the sheep, uh, like recently wrote Alex Dupak's taco book, which we, I think we discussed that last week. She had a question in a tattoo artist friend of mine uses citrus as a canvas for fine artwork made with a tattoo gun.

[26:57] Oh, mine too. Is this the same lady? No, different friend. Not Amanda? Nope, nope, nope, nope. All right. Wants to think about methods of preserving the work. Since obviously it rots. And, you know, what do you think? Well, here's the thing. Like, I think if you're going to make back in the day, I just would have videotaped it rotting and then just had like sequences of like shots or time

[27:20] lapse. Like, I would have just taken like pictures of it, like as it rotted and then like blowing them up like super big on the wall

[27:26] because remember, like with art, just like multiply, like multiplying things and like, you know, putting big things up on the wall equals awesome.

[27:34] But let's take this problem seriously. Now the issue is with citrus, you can't preserve citrus and alcohol without leaching the color.

[27:45] Like, that's the thing. Like, you'd think you could preserve it like in alcohol. And apparently she wants to eventually do it in resin. The problem with preserving things like fruit and resin is you need to get rid of the water to preserve it in resin. Like all those things that you see that like flowers and resin and stuff, they've all been dehydrated first. And the problem with dehydrating something as large as a piece of citrus is that

[28:08] it has to, you have to get it to shrink slowly. I mean, I have successfully dried whole citrus and you go to the market all the time. You see those dried lemons and dried citrus, but they're small and dark

[28:20] brown. You know what I mean? They're not like, you know, looking like a tattoo, which, yeah, it could be its own thing. But, um, You could also, I mean, you could try replacing a large portion of the water with glycerin, which is how they preserve a lot of flowers. They'll do a glycerine soak, and then as it dehydrates, it doesn't lose as much volume, but I think you're going to have problems. You could preserve it in simple syrup, right? By changing the concentration in simple syrup, but you're still going to get some color bleed. You could do it with old school, you could try formalin, like the way that they do, but that's kind of gross. Here's what I think you should try to do. I think you should freeze dry it. The color's going to look more pastel, but it will retain its exact shape than what you can

[29:02] do. is you could, after you freeze dry it, You can paint it with a, um, like a resin coat on the

[29:09] outside, and that should rebrighten the colors substantially over the kind of weird pastel note that you get on the freeze grind.

[29:18] The problem with freeze drying large things is it's not what food people normally do. You have to go to like a taxidermist specialist who specializes in freeze drying kind of like animals

[29:28] and... She wants to know if you can diet after freeze drying. What do you mean, diet? Like diet. I mean, tattoo it or diet? I would imagine diet, like a color. Oh, man, probably. You could paint something, you could probably spray it or dip it. I mean, it's just a very light porous and you remove the water. Once you remove the water, it's fragile, like it can break, so you're going to want to seal it right away or encase it in something kind of, um, encase it in something so it doesn't kind of crack open. But, I mean, I guess you could dye it. But I mean, I thought the whole point was to preserve it as it was when it was tattooed, in which

[30:01] case we want diet. Right? Am I wrong about this, guys? I'm gonna take a call. We have a caller. All right, call her, you're on the air. Kim Gordon. Come on, it is not. You're making it up. Who do we got, caller? Hi. Hi, this is Chris from the green zone. How you doing? Good, good. Otherwise known as Aladdin saying to Jack. All right, so what do we got? Yeah, so I mentioned to you on, I think, Instagram that I had some Turkish coffee tips for you. Oh, yeah? How's been going with that? I have not, I have not been doing it recently. I need to get back into it. My mocholete is still just a pile of coffee grounds. I haven't cleaned it out, so it's still, I'm still set up to do it, uh,

[30:47] because, uh, I think I mentioned last time I, I, uh, kind of was hand pulverizing it. None of the coffee mills I had were really making a fine enough kind of grind to do the

[30:56] Turkish or Greek, depending on how you think about it. My problem is, I can't get, I can't get a really good foam. I can get it to rise kind of once, but I can't get it to rise again and I've not. I've not had something where I was like, see, here's my, I think I've said this before on the show. My feeling is anything that has a super long pedigree, right? And I've tasted good Turkish coffee, right? Yeah. But I haven't made that cup for myself yet where I'm like, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know, I do know what you mean. I was in Beirut for 3 weeks over Christmas and New Year, and I had nothing to do at home but make Turkish

[31:34] coffee. And I was really craving my favorite cup from Istanbul. So I searched YouTube for some videos and there's actually a video where in Turkish she tells you how he makes it. And his method is quite different to everything else I've seen and I tried it for myself and, you know, amazingly, it works. I basically use way more coffee than you think you need. And then stir it, add a little bit of hot water to it, and stir it really finely to make a taste of the coffee, and then add more hot water, stir it again so it's all as homogenized as you can get it, and then put that on the flame. And since the water's already hot, it starts foaming very, very soon, but it creates this really

[32:11] thick, dense foam. And uh, I can send you the video later, but it really works and it's so counter to every other Turkish coffee that I've seen. I mean, he's using a rapid flame or is he doing like a moderated like either with a plate or with sand? No, no, he's using just an open gas flame. So exactly the opposite of everything that like we're told is what makes it good. Yeah, I mean, nobody nobody in like anywhere in the Middle East really uses the plate of sense seriously. just do that for show. Yeah. All right. Well, look, send us the video because, like, I'm because here's what I want to have happen. I want to make some Turkish coffee and say, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, that's what I want to have happen. Yeah, I think you'll get that. It took me, you know, once I saw how he did it, it took me several times to get it, but now I'm

[32:59] fairly consistent. And so now that you've described it in English, we can put it out on the, put it on the chat room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need like, as long as as I know roughly what's going on, I can kind of watch the hands to figure out everything. Yeah. I think I've said that on the show too before, like, it's like, it's almost sometimes better when you can't understand what a cook is

[33:19] saying as long as you can see what their hands are doing. You know what I mean? So, Dave, we're running kind of tight, but I have to get this MoFAD ad in the show. Can I take 60 seconds here, or less, actually, for this ad? Especially since it has such a nice flow, MoFad ad. Exactly, doesn't it? So let's check this out. Hi, this is Peter Kim, the executive director of Mofad, the Museum of Food and Drink. New York City's 1st food museum with exhibits you can eat. MoFad was founded by Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues here on Heritage Radio Network. We just opened up MoFad Lab, our new gallery space in Brooklyn, where we are currently showing flavor, making it and faking it.

[33:57] Flavor dives into the untold story of the $25 billion flavor industry, raising questions about what natural and artificial really mean. And at MoFad Lab, you can taste and smell the exhibits. Flavor tablets, deliver tastings of vanilla and umami, and the piano like smell synth lets you compose over half a 1000000 different flavors. So come on by and visit Mofad Lab. We're located at 62 Bayard Street, near McCarren, Bargain, Brook. Oh, God damn it. It is a family show. And I knew I could hear him almost laughing. Was Nastasi, were you here trying to make him laugh the whole time? I looked at him the whole time. Oh man. I don't know. A couple weeks ago on the show, Peter was on. And a couple, and like, he tried to make me crack up during the

[34:42] thing, and you just can't do it because I'm not a human being. I don't respond to things like that. You know what I mean? And so Stas, I guess, trying to show her medal as a as a ruiner of his good time. I could hear it about. I didn't know you... I smile. I didn't even know halfway through. I didn't even know Stas was there during the taping. and I could hear his voice change to that pre-laughing Peter voice. But we have to we have to bleep out the FU for the trip. Okay, I'll add a bleep for the podcast. for the podcast. Yeah. Kids aren't listening live. Oh, right. They're not listening live. They should be in school. Yeah, if they're not at school then, you know. Good point. Good point. Now, uh, I can't believe that. Yeah, I heard him laughing. Here's it, like here's some other things, though. Not really piano like the Smilsynth. No. Not a not like a piano, more like Street Fighter. You know? What do you think, Sam? Yeah, I'd say arcade like. Arcade like. What was your favorite? How old are you? 26. Man. So, like, like, arcade games weren't, like, when I was a kid, arcade games were, like, me, like, you know, and you put in like a,

[35:54] like, a quarter and played a game. Is that what it's like when you were a kid? I feel like I'm more of the Mario Kart generation, so our kids were a little...

[36:02] getting go to arcades? I went to a few. I went to arcades. Yeah, I went to arcades. Do they still have arcades? They're making a comeback. There's like pizza places that have arcade games. There's barcade over here in Williamsburg. Is it good? Yeah, it's great. You know, if you like arcade games, you should go to the museum of, uh, what's it called, Museum of Moving Image in Queens? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they have a, like, arcade games are considered a moving image, and so they have a section on arcade games, which is pretty cool. Or the Museum of Food and Drink. To to play on the arcade game like Smelsynth. Yeah. It is the same kind of like as like the Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat. Oh my god. So I brought my kids there this weekend, uh, Booker and Dax, and, uh, And of course, they just walked up to the

[36:51] dam sense and so, try to see if they could push every button at once. And like, I looked over and I just see a wall of light. Like, like every light lighting up. And I was like, yep. Yep, my kids are here. Uh, okay. Let me see. Let's get some of the, we have time to get, we can get some of these questions. Oh yeah, totally. All right. Here's a good one. That's it. I'm not going to be able to get to all the questions, unfortunately, but a welder friend of ours, this is from James. A welder friend of ours in Boston has graciously agreed to build us a fire pit slash pig machine slash grill to take care of our warming and cooking needs.

[37:24] He'll be building it out of scrap metal based on our specs. I wanted to toothpick your minds to give him the proper direction. Below are a few questions. What's a good shape and size? We were thinking 6 foot long, 3 foot wide, and 2 foot deep on legs. And what's the best height for those? We want to have a grilled top attachment and a spit with a shelf that we could mount to a motor. Any amount of motor to? Any recommendations on adding a shelf and are there any models listed online that you could use as a visual reference? I'll just go there right now. I hate almost all commercial, the crappy commercial rotisseries. I'm sure there's a very good actual commercial rotisserie, but whenever I've built rotisseries, I

[38:01] use, um, I use actual like gear motors, like Bodine, brand, like AC, like fractional

[38:08] horsepower, gear motors. The problem with most rotisserie motors is there's there's play in the gears so that when the shaft goes over its dead center point, because you're never going to have your meat on there properly, it goes

[38:22] chunk and moves into the next position where the gears aren't driving anymore. And then over time, that just, it sucks for a rotisserie because it means that if your spit job's not perfect, there's like

[38:33] a, there's like a, force on your meat every time as it spins around and it's just, it's just crap.

[38:39] And then you can see it accelerate up the one side of the curve and fall down the other. I hate it. I hate it. Real gear motor. Uh, is the way to go on the anyway. And lastly, is there a place that you know of where we could purchase a motor? Oh, okay. Just think of all the heartwarming. you have one of those motors. The thing is you want to keep it away from the heat. You know what I mean? You want to like shield it pretty well from the heat, uh, which means uh, either like connect the shaft, make the shaft long and let it bleed off enough heat before it gets to the shaft. If it's getting custom built, then they could put a space where the motor... a little bit farther away from the fire. Yeah. You know, also, I like, you know what I like? I like the uh, I like the flat spade drive on a uh, on a rotisserie thing. So you have like, um, you keep it mainly round. See, if you keep it mainly, the other thing with the rotisserie is like you want it to go in and out really quickly. You don't want to have to futz around with it. So you want very easy to engage on the one side and then you want to drop it basically into its bearing on the other side without having a lot

[39:45] of a lot of messing around. The best ones I've used, I think, are the flat drive ones, like the Italian style ones that Mark has, Mark Ladner. Um, I've always kind of wanted to design one that you could just drop in like sprocket style and have it

[40:00] go. That would be nice. It would be sick. Um, the other thing is, uh, spits, most spits suck. They really most bits just really, really suck pretty hard. Um, but do you have any recommendations on this stuff, Johnny, on the firepit? The thing is, I don't like I don't like doing things that are multiple pieces of equipment, you know? I don't, I like to have, like if I was to have a custom rotisserie built. I would want it to be set up so that it was like really good heat dispersion, not so that I could also grill and smoke on it. So you're the anti-Alton brown. Yeah. You're like, you're like the ultimate unit taskmaster. I mean, for like major pieces of cooking equipment. So Johnny, Johnny, your basic theory is this, listen, go get yourself a warehouse. Go get yourself a warehouse and then fill it with large pieces of single use equipment. I have a warehouse full of. Ah, seems to work. But the one thing I the one thing I will say on on multitasking, because I've converted things to rotisseries before, I've converted like my salamander to a rotisserie. I've built rotisseries. Well, here's another thing, like, are you okay with doing rotisserie over a normal

[41:13] grill? Are you backfired only? I'm okay over normal girl, but I do think the backfire is is like a more even cooking. The thing on a rotisserie is if you're going to do, it all depends on what you're going to do. If you're going to do really, really fast kind of style rotisseries, like very small, almost like kebab style rotisseries, you can go old school and just do the hand turning.

[41:37] So those, they always use flat, spiral round, skewers, and little triangular shaped, uh,

[41:42] V-grooves that they sit in, and then you just, it's not really a rotisserie. turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, 4 turns and done out, right? Or you can have like a faster kind of smaller rotisseries. But the problem with doing a large thing, like a pig in a rotisserie situation on over a fire is

[42:01] that you get a lot of flare ups, and although that can add to flavor, it's kind of hard to regulate, as Johnny says, so

[42:07] the best. You're getting too much fat. drip down and yeah. You have a few time. All right, hold on a sec. So, all right. here's okay, so we can talk more about this next time. Ill get to the herbs next time. The other question is, we'll probably say one thing about MoFat on the way out. But one thing I'll say is here's the problem with trying to create something that big. Most of the time you are going to want to do smaller things for you and your family, like,

[42:29] like, if you're, it's a big difference, cooking for, you're going to want to be able to cook for like 20, 30 people, 40

[42:36] people at a party, great, but it's, it's a lot different when you're only cooking for one or two, especially when you're using

[42:42] natural, uh, like woods and charcoals and stuff like that. Because the amount of wood or charcoal that you're going to have to use to fire your

[42:51] thing up, if it's huge, it's going to be astronomical, the amount of time it's going to take to get a big honking machine up to cooking, because those big machines are built on being like kind of big. And

[43:03] like, yeah, and so like, I would definitely invest at least in a smaller area that can be heated on its

[43:08] own, that you can cook smaller amounts of food for smaller groups of people, and then allow yourself a monster area where you can go completely ape for larger

[43:16] things. What do you think, Johnny? I felt like it was someone who was doing this professionally. Oh. Oh, that's different. Because, like, who gets a custom worlded smoker box just for, you know, parties? I would. Yeah, but like, I don't know. I mean, that's true. I hadn't thought about that Well, right back in, let us know what the intended application is. But I do think your point of having something where you can fire up just a small box and, you know, you know, do like

[43:45] one rotisserie chicken is going to be beneficial. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, not for a restaurant, but yeah. Well, in any case, so Sam, you want to say anything about the museum where they can get tickets to this extravaganza? Yeah, so go to programs.mofat.org. It's on Thursday from 6.30 to 8.30. It looks like there's about 6 tickets left. And John Johnny will stuff your sausage while you're there. Yeah, we sold 9 tickets just now? sweet. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna, I'm probably gonna do my old school trick, which is off the blog. So it's old of Nixtamalized Rye. I got a new technique with using baking soda to do a clear

[44:25] dulce de leche syrup, which is just done with milk and a pressure cooker, which is pretty cool. Uh, and uh, Sam has graciously made the lye eggs, which we haven't made in a long time since the last time we did the McGee course at the FCI, clear,

[44:40] lie pickle. We going to do the inverse Lutfisk. Lute Fisk. All right, that's it for cooking issues. We'll see you soon. 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 store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.