[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Thurman Maple Days. celebrate flowing of sap in the Adirondacks, self-guiding to 7 sites for talks, tours, tastes, and old-fashioned friendliness. For more information, visit Thurman Mapledays.com. I'm Damon Bolty, 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.

[0:29] Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of booking, which is coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday. This time, a little late. Well, you know, whatever, but noon-ish to like, LA, this is your normal time. No, but I feel like it's late because we have a guest today. That's true. On Harry Frito Network, broadcasting from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[0:49] Brooklyn. Joined, as usual, with Nastasia. The Hammer. Lopez, how you doing, Stuff? We got Jackie molecules in the booth. How you doing? I'm great. Just got back from Charleston. Oh yeah, how was it? It was good. Yeah? I got there early and drove through the low country to all those weird little islands. Well, let's talk about that in a second. We have special guest in the studio. The maestro of the food lab, which sold how many 1000000000 copies did you sell lab, Benji? Not quite a 1000000000 yet. We're working on it, working on it. Kenji Lopez, all 1000000000 selling book. New York Times bestseller, though, right? Yeah, yeah, for a little while. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I think it was something like a billion. In fact, we share a publisher and... Well, that's what I meant. Yeah, an editor. Yeah. I don't even, I think of her as like the whole, the kind of, Maria Gordon Shelley, you know,

[1:34] world-renowned editor. Anyway, so like, the success of your book actually got her off my back for a while because she's

[1:42] not wasn't for a while worried about my 2nd book because of the enormous success.

[1:47] You have a 2nd book come in there? Well, yeah, yes. sales also? No, no, not no cocktails. No cocktails, no recipes, I think. Okay. Yeah. Food rants, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Adult color. Adult coloring books. I'd have to have Nastasia do them and then steal her ideas because Nastasia is the Nastasia is the line drawing queen. Oh, yeah. I mean, I could get my wife to do it, but that would be weird. It'd be easier. Like, we could just come out with a book together and I could just say, do this, and Nastasia would do the line drugs. One of the lesser known Nastasia Lopez skills. Yeah, I never would have guessed that. Yeah, no, it's true. Nastasia is a inveterate doodler and you like working in pen, right? Yeah I do. Like not pencil, pen. Pen. Pen. She's a pen worker. likes pens. Although you don't like fancy pens. You don't give a rat's ass about fancy rats behind, rather, family show. About, you're like, you know, any old, any old Bick, any old Bick will do. So, Jack, so now that we've now that we're all here. So tell us about the islands. You went to which islands did you go to? Edistow Island and St. Helena Island. Yeah? Is that where like all the Gulla stuff's happening? Uh-huh, yeah. I got some Frogmore stew. Yeah? What's in Frogmore stew? It's like just shrimp that you have to peel yourself and like boiled potatoes and corn, that kind of thing. Presumably it doesn't taste like the Cape Cod version of that, though. No, well, you know, I can't say that I've ever really spent much time in Cape Cod. What? Yeah, I know. It's weird, right? What's your Cape Cod equivalent? What's your east coast? What's your northeast beach mentality, basically? Well, like I'm from Long Island, you know? All right, so it's the same crap. guess so. It's the same crap. We're on Long Island? I'm from a place called West Babylon, so it's like a South Shore border of Nassau, Suffolk, kind of right in the middle. So you're not really a beach. But you drive out to Montauk. Yeah. And hang out with Billy Joel. Wow. Oh, yeah. You know, I've never been to Montana. I really don't like Bonj actually. You don't like whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Sorry. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stas, you hear that? I heard that. Sorry, Stas. Star is huge Billy Joel fan. I actually, uh, like, how... I was from the West Coast, so it's like... Yeah, but how can you come from Long Island and not like Billy Joel? doesn't make any freaking sense? Because I always hated Long Island, even when I was a kid. Well, I mean, you know, I came from I came from Jersey, you know, back in the day, that's where I went to elementary

[4:09] school. I still like Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. I was going to say, and Bruce, yeah? Yeah. Well, I didn't like Bon Jovi at the time, but with age comes perspective on how kind of perfect. Slippery when wet is like almost like, you know, Moses came down and was like slippery when wet. You know what I mean? It's like, when you think about the perfection of, like, it's like, you know, the childhood fantasy. It's awesome. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't like it at the time. I'm more of a Springsteen fan than Joe Mon Jovi, actually. Yeah, are you from Jersey? No, I'm from New York. Oh, well, yeah. Yeah. So you get to look down on us folks who live in. We're in New York originally? Um, I grew up in Harlem. Oh, yeah, we're like real New York. Yeah, so you're one of those city kids that I hated. Yeah. Now my kids are those city kids. But I think I think I've said this before. I think it's a lot different now because you can be cool and like live in the suburbs now because of the

[5:02] internet. Right, right. You could be cool anywhere these days. Yeah, whereas back in the day, you know, we felt like losers. Like us suburban kids, we felt like losers. What about you and Covinus does? Loser. Loser. Although the internet was around when? When you were in high school, it happened? too late, though, for you. Senior year. Yeah. The internet didn't happen until basically I was done with college. I got email when I was in high school, but it was like internal email in the school. I literally remember when, like, I saw the 1st email I'd ever seen. And by the way, you know, the guy that invented email just died like 2 days ago. Really? Yeah. I forget his name. He died, like he was like 74. he died like 22 days ago. And, uh, you know, he popularized the at symbol, the whole thing, like invented email. I remember in like way before anyone had or cared about email when there was like, you know, like a 100 people with email addresses. I was a junior in high school, this is in like 87, 88, something like that. And this guy was like, I have this thing called Email Watch. And he like typed an email and I was like, this is worthless. I was like, who's ever going to use this crap? This is garbage. Nonsense. Man. Did he send it to you from his Apple Newton? That was early 90s, right? We had 2 E. We had 2 E. It was an Apple 2E, which, of course, you know, I coveted because of the green screen so much better than my

[6:19] radio Shack, TRSAD computer. And, uh, I just remember thinking, this is, this is not going to go anywhere. No, no. This is worthless. Like watching TV on the internet. I forget that dude's name, but I hope he's a billionaire. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Anyway, he deserves it. You know, being an early adopter or something like email, you should win something for that. Yeah, you probably get a cooler email address. Yeah, he's drawn 01 instead of John 387. Yeah, well, this is, you know, obviously this is way pre- there was no WWW that time. Literally, you had to like know exactly where someone was and send them an email.

[6:57] You know what I mean? Ah, dumb. Okay. So you have anything you want to plug about the book, anything specific you want to talk about? you think so? No. I mean, I don't know. buy it if you want to. Don't if you don't. No, anyway. Call your questions to Kenji at 718-497-2128, that's 718-497-2128. All right, so let's let's hit some stuff that we have here. Can I actually like jump the line because I have something that I'm interested in hearing both of you talk about. All right. Is that cool? So there's all these articles about bay leaves lately. that I've been reading. and I'm kind of like challenging the notion that they actually do anything in a big, you know,

[7:35] stotor. What do you mean? They taste like bay. Yeah. Have you seen this, Kenji? Have you seen these argument? I have had people ask me. I actually wrote a, I wrote an article like a couple years ago called what's, it was, it was a question I got from a reader, and the question was, what's the point of bay leaves? They do. Yeah, you can taste it. And of course, like depending on where you get your bay leaves, whether it's like a Turkish bay leaf, which is what generally what you generally find dried versus like a California bay leaf, which you find fresh, like they have different flavors, but

[8:05] yeah, they definitely have flavored dishes. You can tell the difference side by side if you taste. They are merely the most popular of the aromatic leaves, which almost all of

[8:14] the, all of this style of aromatic tree leaf come from the um, the laurel family, right? So you have aromatic avocado leaves, where some aren't, which I believe are the same family as Bay. I think. I don't know that they're all in the same family, but I know Lauriace has, I'm pretty sure. I got to go look it up because I wasn't expecting to talk about it, but like there's a lot of aromatic leaves in that in that kind of family. I don't know whether like Sassafras and Spice Bush are in the same general family, but like a lot of those, you know, that family has these kind of aromatic leaves. And of course they make a difference. Now, the crappier the leaf is, let me give you an example. I have some crappy, you know, spice class. That's a brand of spicy right here. Spice class. So I have like crappy spice class bay leaves. And so I have to use like 4 or 5 times as many of those to get the same flavor. And they're a pain. So I tend to tie them up by the, by the, you know, the stuff. Yeah, and then throw them in in like larger quantities. But perhaps you've heard of the Spice Jack old bay, which is like, like has like a huge hit of ground up bay in it. Bay is... To be clear, I can taste when bay leaves are used. I'm saying that there were a lot of articles posted. A lot of my friends were sharing. It was on the owl. Who wrote it? What's the owl? Yeah, well. Was it some like angry internet person just trying to make angry internet? It was like part of humor, but also serious. It's blog. You know, you know, the one thing about Bay leaves, though, um, and is that, and this is different from most other herbs, is that, um, you know,

[9:45] the, well, similarly to most other, there's a big difference between dried and fresh, but, uh, but the difference in bay leaves is that the dried versions are almost always the Turkish bay leaves and the fresh versions are almost always California bay

[9:55] leaves and they have a very different flavor. Like the California bay leaves have a much stronger sort of eucalyptus. It's not the same plant, right? Yeah, it's not even the same plant yet. Yeah, they're both sold as bay leaf. So a lot of people say, oh, the fresh bay leaves are always better than the dry, but that's not always the case because it adds a flavor that's quite different from a standard bay flavor.

[10:10] So I almost always use dry bay leaves that I store in the freezer. Well, you know, this is a huge misconception. People have about everything in the world that fresh is better than dry. Yeah, it's like they're almost always different. And so anything that is sometimes something is different and worse. sometimes it's just different. Like ginger, like fresh ginger versus dried ginger. Totally different. Dried basil bad. Dried basil bad, dried parsley, dried chives. Not good. I haven't tried really dried, freeze dried drives I've had. You know what? I'm talking if you go and buy a bottle of spice class. Oh, spice class. You know, I got in big trouble with my wife because did I talk about this? Maybe. Because, you know, I've been saying we've been doing the 70s style potato bars recently, you know, where you just make a big

[10:59] ass, big, big potato and then... yeah. It's like taco night. Yeah, it's like taco night, but it's like baked potato night. Because I'm like, you know, whatever, bringing it back. And, um, So my wife was cutting up the chives. And she did like the ultimate chive, like horror show of chopping them long. I kind of like that sometimes, like in a soup or something. They have no flavor when you chop them long. The ch flavor. Yeah, but then they stick in your teeth. I don't know. I'm not a but you know what you shouldn't do? You shouldn't, like, you shouldn't look at the chives that your wife is chopped and

[11:33] be like, what the hell is happening to these chives? Why? Look, on a baked potato. It's better than crushing them, at least. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the 1st like fancy restaurant job I had on my 1st day on my 1st day of service, I was chopping chives for the line, and I had no idea what I was doing then, and the chef, Barbara Lynch was

[11:52] the number 9 part, because the chef, like she walked by my station while I was chopping the chives, and without even looking at me, like just hearing the sound the chives were making as I was traveling, she's like, you're doing those wrong, throw them out because you could hear the kind of crush.

[12:03] Yeah, the crushing noise, the crushing noise. yeah Because I was crushing them instead of slicing them. Yeah, yeah, well. I like, I like thin, small disks, like, like 2 little, tiny... You want them to be sliced thinner than they are wise. That's the best. Although they're a pain to dose out like that because they tend to stick and clump if you do it ahead, but

[12:23] that's life. Big city, especially if you crush it. If you slice it. crush, yeah. If your knife is sharp and you slice well and they stay nice and separate, I think. Now may I ask you this. So Chives, would you ever use, it's not true. So obviously like the application for blended chives is ranch dressing, right? So ranch dressing, dill chides, other stuff. But in general, is chive ever, they're expensive. So is it worthwhile to ever blend? you ever blend it? Where you use a different allium for that? I wouldn't. I mean, you know, I've seen like chive oil, right? Any bunch chives there, but... I never make it, though. Do you ever make that stuff? No, I mean, I did like I did in like, yeah, like the early 2000s

[12:59] in restaurants, chive oil color on the soup. but could you cheat on the chive oil and really use a different allium and scallion tops? Probably, but I mean, scallions taste a little different, don't they? In the oil? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they don't. I think it's just one of those things that people used to do. Maybe maybe chives are a myth. Maybe there's no point in chives. No, Chives, they're good. I like chives. Stas, you Chive fan? Yeah. Chad Stas likes to chive. But anyway, this thing about bay, who's the owl? Who's this blogger? We know them? No, we don't we don't know them. Let's see. Can we call the name? Kelly, Kelly Connaboy. This is like saying, oh, we have, you know, wine. Flavor? You're like, yeah, yeah, wine has a flavor. What are you talking about? Bay leaf. Like, did this person have like a negative experience with Baileys? Do they think it's a scam? Are these like the kind of people that don't like modern art because they think the wool is being pulled over their eyes? It could be someone who has your spice-class bay leaves who use one bay leaf in a soup and don't notice it because it's a shitty bay leaf. That's true. That's the issue. I do think that's the issue. Yeah, then fine. The answer is use more. The good thing about bay is that, um, yeah, most recipes tell you to use a bay leaf or two, and that won't really do much with most of the bay leaves,

[14:13] low quality bay leaves that people have. So I invariably triple the amount that the recipe calls

[14:20] for. And bay leaf is not the kind of thing that rides, unless you go way over, it doesn't really ride over the

[14:28] top. But, like, you can't, like, I never make a stock without Bay. I very rarely make like a super stew or anything like that without baying it. Rarely, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's good. And like the whole point of it is it's an integrated spice. So it's not supposed to, it's not like Nastasia's least favorite cumin, which is like supposed to hit you on the head. You know what I mean? Right. It boosts other flavors. pretty well. Stas, why don't you like human? I don't know. We've gone through it before. don't want to... There was a comment in the chat room. They said, how about getting Kenji to talk about his vegan month just for Nastasia's benefit. All right, but before we do that, Jack, we had a comment in on the Twitter, from a geek girl with a number, which I forget the number. Anyway, she wants to know how to get on the chat rooms because apparently we're not making it like clear how to get under the chat rooms. Oh, it's clear how to get in the chat. Well, tell her how to get on the freaking chat rooms. How do you do? this person emailed this and then said they could figure it out. So you go to the website, you click play. Okay. That's going to pop up with a player. And then... You have to play the chats? They're like a, you have to pull up the live stream first. And then, you know, you just click on the heritage radio logo right there and it pulls up the chat room. There you go. You could also go to mixler.com slash heritage dash radio dash network if you want to go manual with

[15:44] it there. Mixler. Mixler. That's the, yeah. Sounds like the sounds like a Flintstones character. Kind of does. I have a caller if you want to take the call. All right, call her. you're on the air Hi, Dave and Kenji. It's Alex from Santa Barbara. How's it going? And I was wondering, um, several debate for me about the liquid smoke brine versus actually

[16:06] smoking, because it's been coming up a lot that you can get pretty close to there with liquid smoke and a little bit of nitrate in your grind,

[16:13] for, let's say, 48 hours, and then you low temp out for 36 on, let's say, you know,

[16:18] brisket. And it's basically the same. And I don't believe it, but I've never done it side by side. And I want you guys to explain the math to me. Well, who said it was the same? Uh, like chef steps and or close enough to be the same? I've said similar things. Not, um, I, I, I said similar things in a SUV pork, uh, rib recipe. I wrote a couple months ago. I mean, it's not exactly the same. And it's not exactly the same in the same way that anything you cook sous vide is not going to be exactly the same as something you cook via another method, right?

[16:50] Like sous vide brisket is sous vide brisket. It's not exactly the same as barbecue brisket. Not at all the same. Yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't think that means better or worse. But as far as the smoke flavor goes. Um, I mean, you can get smoke flavor from a liquid smoked brine, um, that that will, I mean, that will make people think that it was smoke. Well, you don't get like, you don't get like bark development. like things like that. But it is, it is literally the same stuff that is getting deposited on your meat while you're smoking

[17:18] it. Minus some stuff. minus some stuff. And usually you'll get my question right there. Yeah, because what's the minus stuff that will be success? I could taste the difference. I mean, I know you're going to get different products depending on how you cook it, but just the flavor of the milk. They get rid of a lot of the theoretically cancer causing like polycyclic hydrocarbon stuff, right? Isn't that like I think so, yeah. And then they, they also, you know, the issue is usually you're in an oil phase or a water phase, because most, they're not, so like, presumably some is

[17:49] going to, like, some smoke compounds like would gravitate towards the oil phase versus the water, so you're probably only getting the water phase

[17:56] stuff. But when you're when you're smoking in a smoker, you're mostly getting only water face stuff

[18:02] anyway because the smoke is being transported by the moist air, right? Well, there's this actual particulate matter as well. Right, right, right. You know, and so like, like, you know, I noticed like, you know, when the chefs used to use a smoking gun, Do they use anymore? some people do. Yeah. You had noticed that like the particulate matter would settle out after a couple minutes, but the smoke aroma would stay in the in the thing because there is like a heavy kind of a particulate thing. But, I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that smoking does a number of things besides imparting flavor. Right. So you're being exposed to a particular atmosphere,

[18:37] you're being exposed to a particular temperature, at a particular humidity. And so, you know, like Kenji was saying, like you get the bark. So different things happen from a textual standpoint that are a lot of times difficult to, um, separate

[18:49] from, uh, from just the flavor. lavor element, yeah. especially with things like crust development. It's virtually impossible to separate the, like, the textural difference and the cooking difference from the flavor. It's just not possible. And the other thing to be aware of is that liquid smoke is produced at a very specific temperature for

[19:11] a very specific thing. So you smoking something for real might be different if your temperatures are higher, lower. You're using different, you're going to generate different kinds of compounds because pyrolysis is very, very complicated stuff is happening. The other thing is, I find that like smoke applications, more maybe with powder than with the liquids, it's super easy to overdose on

[19:32] it and it goes like bitter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And people, I think people do often overdose. But I think people often also overdo us on smoke when they're when they're actually smoking things too. Right. Because I always think, I mean, the smoke should

[19:45] be seasoning, like like cumin or bay leaf, whatever. You know, it should be seasoning. It shouldn't be the only thing you taste in there. But I will tell you that, you know, in the testing I've done for, you know, getting smoke flavor into meat through methods that aren't smoking, that brining in a in a brine with liquid smoke, I think is the most effective way to keep it subtle, and to get good penetration without, you know, it's very different to do that than to say, like, add liquid smoke straight

[20:11] to like a barbecue sauce, which you just paint on the surface. Right. Like brining it overnight in a brine wood liquid smoke gets you a much more sort of natural tasting smoke penetration. I'm going to get my behind kicks. like barbecue sauce. Well, what kind of like Kansas City? I know, I just don't like goopy. Yeah, I don't like goopy. Yeah, I'm more of like a, like a, um, you know, vinegar sauce. Yeah, yeah. I don't even consider like, I know that they do, but I consider that like red pepper and vinegar. Like, I don't consider that, like, vinegar, a little sugar, maybe, but yeah. I don't consider that like when someone says barbecue sauce, you're thinking... Kansas City style ketchup and molasses. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of that. I like it on French fries. You know what I mean? Like, I think it's okay as, like, you know, kind of a secondary ketchup. Yeah. But I just not... I'm with you on that too. People love it. I'm happy that you like it, whoever you are, the lifesaver, right? I'm not against it in theory. It's just not my, it's not my cup of tea on on meat. I have another call. Caller, you're on the air. Yeah, Dave, Dan, Seattle. A couple of pressure canner questions. Okay. So 1st of all, I got a very big new all aluminum, uh, pressure cannon for Christmas. Made by American Canter Corp? Yep. Yep. So my 1st question. is can I make the stock in it before I put it in jars? I mean, does the bar aluminum really matter much for stock? Well, depends on what you believe. Like, if you believe that aluminum is bad to cook in, then it matters. If you don't, as I don't, then, you know, it won't bother you. I mean, flavor-wise, I don't think you're going to taste aluminum in your... Not in the stock. Okay. I'm not talking about anything with a ton of lemon juice or vinegar or whatever. I mean, the hard part about, uh, even like small amounts of like, uh, you know, in some classic stocks will be like a couple tomatoes, but it's not

[22:17] going to do anything. You know what I mean? But the, um, I wouldn't use, I guess you can't fit it in the dishwasher

[22:25] anyway because it's so big. I was going to say like, like where you don't want to do on that is like harsh detergents on it because it's, I believe it's

[22:32] cast and so it'll get porous and pitted after a while at the bottom and I cook it. No, they specifically say not to do that. like you said, it wouldn't fit anyway. I mean, it's a monstrously huge thing. Yeah. I mean, the hard part about the pressure canners, if you're using them to do anything other than straight canning is that they are a huge ship to steer.

[22:55] So, uh, you know, on a level of difficulty of getting the right heat input, I'd say it's like twice as difficult as like with a regular pressure cooker to get the

[23:05] heat input correct. Just because of its volume? Yeah, yeah, just because it's so hard to read the slope, right? You know, whereas, like, a normal pressure cooker responds within a minute or two,

[23:17] like this guy could have, like, you know, 4 or 5 minutes of ride up and down, so it takes a while to kind of dial it in. So like what I would do is the 1st couple times you use it, I would kind of keep track of where your settings are based on how much you have in

[23:33] it because that's pretty much, you know, assuming that you use relatively constant loads.

[23:38] Yeah. Also, that thing's pain. You ever use one of those things, Kenji? They're a pain to close all of those screws. I mean, look, yeah, I've seen those. Nothing else can do what they can do. They're huge volume, you know, pressure cooker canners, but do you have the regular canterlit or do you have the sterilization lid for it? Do you have the regular canning lid for it or the sterilization lid with the tube? Uh, the regular. Yeah, yeah. The sterilization lid is it's creepy. How does that work? So if you're going to use it as a sterilizer, which I guess some people do in places, I don't know where, who don't have

[24:13] sterilizers. They're worried that there'll be pockets of gas in it that will cause it to not go through the sterilization procedure at the same

[24:23] way. So they have a, they have a tube that extends down that you have

[24:27] to, like, vent out the tube to get rid of uh, entrained non-steamed gases before you crank the stuff. Remember what a nightmare that was does? And we crushed the tube and we were yelling at each other and screaming and

[24:39] nightmare. nightmare. I use like pretty much exclusively electric pressure cookers, no. Really? Yeah, you know, which one? Right now I'm using the Brevel Pro, which has like full manual. you can I mean, it only goes up to 12 PSI, which most electric cookers do, but you can get anywhere from anywhere from one. 5 to 12 at half PSI increments. Can you hack it, like the Cleason Art? I don't know. I haven't tried. But it also has like automatic altitude adjustment and like an automatic pressure release and

[25:08] stuff, which is pretty nice. Automatic altitude adjustment. So it'll go, so yeah, that's that's not worth it. I was going to say, you could put it into another container jacket, like, to 3 PSI and then hit go, but that's not worth it. not worth it. But so it's actually working on pressure, not on temperature. It has, so it has, it has a pressure gauge, and it also has 2 temperature gauge, like it has a temperature probe at the bottom end at the end at the top. But the pressure gauge is a release or the pressure gauge is a measurement. Um, I'm not sure actually. I'm not sure. I don't know. I should ask them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure how the altitude bit was. Back at much more specific question. I want to make Cuchinita Pabil in a canning jar. Can I just put the banana leaf and the pork? I mean, whatever, like, the toughest piece of pork I can get and the atchiote in there, and is there some overwhelmingly obvious reason that wouldn't work? Huh, I don't know. What do you think, Angie? I think it would work. I mean, what happens if banana leaves and a pressure cooker? They probably break down. I don't know. I've never tried that specifically, but I've, but I've stuck, um, I mean, I've stuck meats and

[26:16] and, like, onions and things, like, you can make, like, you know, you can caramelize onions inside sealed jars in a fresher

[26:22] canter. Right, but they obviously, but onions obviously lose a lot of their onion potency. They get a lot more neutral and a lot sweeter in a pressure cooker than they would in any sort of other normal cook. Sure. Um, But or like, you know, if you were going to do like acid canning where it's just a boilout versus

[26:37] pressure. But I don't, in other words, I don't know whether banana leaves are going to have a different flavor extraction or anything around the,

[26:45] because, you know, there's that layer around the banana leaf that has that particular flavor.

[26:49] Banana leafy flavor. Yeah, which I like. But I don't know what happens at pressure cooker. don't know. I know how you can find out. Yeah, do it. Yeah. there's nothing on the surface of it that seems to think that it won't work. All right, well, I will just give that a shot next time I get around to it. I wound up with way too many banana leaves the last time I made. I made this regularly. I need to get them out of my freezer. All right, well, let us know what happens. Thank you, sir. I got a question from the chat room if you want to take it. Yeah, this is okay, go. to Kenji or Dave. Can you ramenize fresh pasta also instead of doing the baking soda technique, can I just use can sui? I don't know if that's pronounced it. Okay, there you go. But, uh, I don't know that you'd want. I mean, it depends on what you like why you're doing it. He said he used the modernist cuisine recipe for ramen and broke a pasta machine. Because it was too dry or? No, I don't know. Oh, whoa, whoa, wait, so specifically, the question is, is it going to go through his pasta machine? guess so. Can you ramenize fresh pasta? Yes, yes. I mean, obviously, this is how they make ramen. So is he asking, is he asking, can you take, like, can you make fresh Italian style pasta and cook it

[27:58] in, in, in baking soda water and will it taste like possibly? question Can you do yellow alkaline noodles through a regular pasta machine? I mean, I would assume you can. Yeah, well, yeah. But the question is, is like, if you're going to make an Italian shape, I mean, like, look, fundamentally yellow alkaline noodles

[28:18] are is like a fairly normal pasta dough with console in it. Right? Yeah, typically a little bit drier than a, like an Italian style dough, but... Yeah, but I mean,

[28:28] it would be harder to push through a pasta machine, but I don't... Right, but you could up the water, you could still get the yellow, some of the bounce and

[28:35] the concuite flavor. But it'll taste like that. So you're basically just making ramen in a different shape. Yeah, there's, you know, like UG, UG Ramen, he does, he does like a bunch of different pasta shapes with ramen dough. So he makes like ramen, ramen flavored arquette and stuff like that. Right. The key thing, the real baller move, is to do forget, forget making freaking noodles. Make lasagna so that it retains its texture when it's being cooked. I mean, that's the baller thing to do. And then slice it afterwards or just... Yeah, in other words, instead of using like a Italian style pasta for, although, you know, who makes, you don't really want to use fresh for lasagna anyway, unless it's a very specific

[29:17] thing? But you would want like a dried ramenized, but not like fried and pre-cooked

[29:22] ramenized unless you're going to do the thing, but like, what's an application for pasta where you really want that, the texture, the bounce? right? Where a pasta tends to disintegrate. ramen. But that's the reason to ramenize something. Yeah. Chicken, chicken noodle soup that you're going to put in a can. Yeah. He specified, he says when a mask. What I'm asking is to make fresh Italian noodles, then ramen eyes. Oh, so cook, so you, you mean using that hack where you cook it in water, like with baking soda or

[29:48] consui, and it gets a little bit of that ramen, like that ramen flavor? You can get that. That's what exactly. Flavor. I don't think you're gonna get the texture. Well, with dry pasta, you do get you do get the texture is different significantly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I've never tried it with fresh pasta, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with fresh pasta. Let me put it you this way. I would bet it would be more likely to work. If you did the pre-soak and then bring up from cold, then if you did it, because once the

[30:14] protein's cooked, It's cooked. Yeah, I mean, maybe, yeah, maybe with fresh pasta, the problem would be that it doesn't spend enough time in there because it cooks so quickly and it's not absorbing much of the liquid, right? So how much, like, how close to ramen do you get if you're boiling it in water with... If you do like a thin pasta, like spaghetti or cappellini or something and cook it in water with baking soda, like it

[30:35] gets it gets pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. In flavor or in texture? Both, both. Really? Yeah, yeah. It's actually, it's a good trick for if you're making like, if you want to make like a pasta salad that where the pasta doesn't get mushy, you know, because pasta,

[30:48] when you make, I don't know why people make pasta salad anyway, but if you make pasta salad, I don't love it. But it gets it gets mushy as it sits in the dressing. If you cook it in, like, alkanalized water, is that the right word? Alkalized water? Yeah. The pasta stays a lot bouncier even after you cool it and dress it. Let me tell you something about angel hair and all those small pastas. They're supposed to be creamy. They're supposed to be creamy. Yeah, but if you want if you want it to be ramen, then you can't get ramen where you are. So when do I like those things dry? I guess they're anchovy sauces for Christmas Eve where I like those pastas dry-ish. How do you like, how do you like your very fine pasta? I don't like fine pasta. For real? Me neither. Why? Because it's bad. What I hate about people. It's not bad. It's just different. It's not your al dente stuff. It's just a different product. God damn. I mean, gosh darn. Yeah, I also know a good way to find out if you can do this, by the way. Yes, the good old test it and see what happens. Oh, call her, you're on the air. Hey, this is a scooter in Montana. Kenji, you may have just answered a question I asked a couple weeks ago about canning noodles. Um, so, uh, I called and asked about getting noodles that are like the, you know, the, the canned chicken noodles. Yeah, yeah. You think if you add some alkaline to your homemade noodles and put them in

[32:11] the can that they'll hold together? Uh, yeah, I think, well, hold together better, um, but I, I, I would cook the noodles separately in, in, uh, alkalized water and then add them to the soup before you can it. I wouldn't I wouldn't add I wouldn't add baking soda to your chicken noodle soup. But I would cook the noodles separately. Or if you're making, or if you're making homemade noodles, yeah, you can, you could add

[32:32] consuya or bacon soda or something to them. Right. Yeah. Sweet. Thank you. All right. Yeah, cool. Now, Jack, what was the other question you had off of the... So I've got 2 chat room requests. I'm gonna let you choose your own adventure here. They either want a conversation on vegan month, comparing vegan month notes, or revisiting the conversation about weighing cocktail ingredients. Okay. Well, here, hit it on the vegan months. Talk about vegan month. Okay, wait, comparing notes as in whatever. I've only ever done. I did raw vegan for a week. Oh, raw vegan, okay. I know, but you did, what do you do? vegan? I do it every year. Every year for a month. Are you in the middle of that month right now? in the middle of it right now, yeah. So what's up with that? Well, okay. So I started it, you know, mainly. Well, I've always been interested in being like as far as diets go. It's one of the ones that makes sense to me, just sort of from a ethical and environmental

[33:25] standpoint, it's made sense to me. And so I, you know, but the 1st time I did it, I was sort of skeptical and I did it mainly because I wanted to challenge myself and see what would happen. And then it turned out that I actually had a really great month because it made me, you know, made me think about recipes in a different way, think about new ingredients and new

[33:42] techniques. You know, I think from a recipe development standpoint, it's been great because it just, it means like for a month out of the year, I think about a completely different set of things than I normally do. Um, but, um, you know, but these days, you know, when I when I'm not, uh, when I'm not testing recipes or eating for work, um, I'd maintain mostly vegetarians, some fish, but, um,

[34:02] like I don't, I don't really go out for meat anymore. So, you know, in that sense, it's sort of changed the way I eat. So what's your favorite thing you've discovered this vegan month? Uh, I've been working a lot on hummus, um, and, you know, I was actually going to be publishing a recipe, a recipe next week. But then last night I went to John Fraser's new place, Nick's. Have you been there? It's awesome. Awesome. It opened on Monday. It's a vegetarian restaurant, but you know, John Fraser. He is dovetail and our sister, neither one of them vegetarian restaurants. He like, you know, great chef Michelin star guy. Good man, too. Yeah. But he opened a vegetarian restaurant that is amazing. And they have this awesome hummus. And I was talking to him about it, and he uses a completely different technique than I used. So now maybe I'm going to hold off on the recipe and do some more. What do you do? So, okay, so, so, you know, the testing I was doing was mainly about getting the texture

[34:52] right. And so, you know, so doing things like trying to peel it, whether peeling chickpeas really matters. My, you know, my technique now is basically just like cook the crap out of the chickpeas, um, and then, and then puree it all. Um, um, but what he does is he cooks the crap out of the chickpeas, um, but then completely reduces the liquid, um, and purees all the

[35:12] mire pot, every, like basically everything that was in the pot, all the liquid, all the mirepoix, everything that was in there with the chickpeas, purees it all together. Um, and it, and it, and purees it, importantly, purees it while it's hot in a blender, um, as opposed to letting it cool and then doing it in a food

[35:25] processor, because when it's, when it's hot, it's like the texture of like a milkshake, you know, it's like easily done in a blender.

[35:30] And then by the time it cools down to serving temperature, it's the texture of hummus. So you can get it a lot smoother in a blender than you can in a food processor. Because of setback? Uh, yeah, yeah. The, uh, wait, so are you an advocate? Is he an advocate of the appeal after soak, rub the things off after? No. So, I mean, okay, so where I'm coming down and again, this might change if I do some more testing, but where I was coming down and up until I had his last night was

[35:52] that, um, you know, when I when I served it side by side to people, um, people mostly picked the one where they where they were peeled. Um, but the other one was also way better than, you know, the one where you just

[36:04] cook them to crap was way better than, than anything else as well. So it's like you can get you can get like 90% good hummus without peeling the chickpeas if you want that extra

[36:12] 10%. You know what, though, peeling chickpeas is not that big. not that hard. not that hard. Yeah, you do like the with the gold panning method, right? Uh, yeah, also, I just like put my hands and I'm like, ah, yeah, after soaks and then, yeah, and then I, yeah. Yeah, you put them in water, rub them around with your hands and then kind of skim off the skins that float the top. Yeah, I find it strangely cathartic. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, some people don't like doing stuff, stuff like that. The one thing you don't want to use is canned chickpeas. In a pinch, they taste okay. In a pinch, they taste okay. yeah. And again, you know, this is like inside by side taste tests. They don't taste okay but nobody eats things side by side in real life. Do you ever do it with like the smaller like Bengalgram stuff or, you know, only using Italian style? I've been using, yeah, just

[36:53] Italian style. Hummus so hot right now. humus. So hot. So hot right now, hummus. The, uh, okay, so, uh, I did, you know, I don't know if you know this. I had to, this is years ago, I had to do raw vegan for a week and it was a hard show.

[37:06] This is a complete horror show. Well, the raw part is the... I was just an angry... I was an angry monster. when I went back on cooked food, my toilet thanked me. Um, the, I mean, it's just, and by the way, uh, we haven't talked about this, but, uh, you know, Richard

[37:22] Grangam, the guy who wrote, uh, um, uh, how cooking made us

[37:26] human? Uh, nope. Oh, he's awesome. professor at Harvard. Um, and um, Oh, I know that book, yeah. Yeah. The actual titles out of my head. I just have the tagline on fire, I think, or something like that. So he's done a lot of amazing work. on like primates and like how long we would have to sit and eat to get nutrition from raw food

[37:49] diets and things like this. So he's going to come on the show. We're trying to schedule it. We're not sure when, but he's going to come on a show. We're going to talk to him about his book and how it relates to kind of cooking. But yeah, raw. Well, these days a lot of people do have time to sit around and eat a lot, right? Yeah, he reviewed some of the data that was done on people on raw food diets and kind of how much they had to eat. And it's a great way to lose weight just because your body can't absorb a lot of the stuff that you're eating. So it's just a fantastic way to, you know, to lose weight. Two minutes, Dave. Two minutes. All right, so you want to talk about, I have to, I have to read an anti-me rant and then, uh, We can talk about cocktails. Okay, let's do let's do cocktails and then I'll rip through the anti-me rant. Okay, Wayne cocktail. So, yeah, so I think I tweeted once a while back, uh, that, uh, why don't more people weigh their weigh their cocktail ingredients instead of measuring them in jiggers. And then some people said, yes, and then some people rightfully said, no, that's stupid. But I think I think it really comes down to context. Like, if, you know, like, I know I know what drinks I drink at home and it's not a huge,

[38:52] like I maybe make 4 or 5 different drinks at home or like most of the time it's just a Negroni, right? And if I'm making like 3 or 4 of them, I find it's easier just to throw the thing on

[39:00] the scale, pour the stuff in, and I'm done. And I know the ratio, like I don't have to carry. I don't have to care about the density of the things because I know how much I want of each one and it's done and I don't have to mess up a jigger. I just pour it into the glass. No, but you always have to pour into another glass because what if you overpour? Well, just don't overpour. Well, no, like you never pour, you never pour the liquid directly into the batch. It's not like cooking. I pour it directly into my mixing glass. You're freaking savage. You're freaking savage. Like you have no, you have no room for mistakes then. Well, and it's also, if I slightly overpour, I just don't care. Savage. Then why weigh at all? Just do it by eye. That's that's yeah, that's a good question, I guess. Anyway, let's read the anti. The illusion of precision. Yes, yeah. Well, you know, a lot of times that's the case anyway. A lot of this stuff is just making yourself feel good with precision. With cooking? No, like this, I wrote a rant a bit about like recipes that have gram measurements and very, very precise amounts and it's like used 33 grams of onions and stuff and stuff. And that's like, I think, total illusion of precision because it's not like the onion I'm using today is the same as the onion I'm using next week or the one that you're getting in California or whatever, right?

[40:05] It's like, you can use the same exact amount of ingredients and come up with completely different flavors just because ingredients vary a lot. But for some reason, there are some people who like really want this kind of precision in a recipe, even if it's a sort of false precision. How often do you use a thermometer? When you're not testing for writing. So these days, not much because I don't cook meat very much at home, but when I cooked meat, I mean, I always use it for meat. Even when you roast a chicken? You use a thermometer on a chicken? Oh, especially is it for roast chicken? Really? Yeah, yeah. Because, well, because, yeah, roast chicken is one of those things where I think if it gets slightly overcooked, it's not good anymore. Yeah, chicken and turkey. Oh, because you're not a briner. I'm a dry briner, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We need another whole nother show to get into these kind of arguments. Jack, can I read this anti-me rant real quick? Real quick. Jack, thanks to Wonderful Network. I am a big fan and admirer of Dave. That said, this is about the gaps diet. Do you know about the gaps diet, Kenji? No. Yeah. That's it, I have to admit that I'm rather disturbed that Dave got off topic to evaluate the gaps diet for his listeners.

[41:10] I didn't evaluate it, by the way. I just said that I don't have any data on it. I don't know about it, but that things that I saw initially on it set off red flags, but not that I had the data. That was maybe long and didn't actually make the point, but that was what I was trying to

[41:25] say is that flags were being raised about the presentation of the

[41:29] of the diet, but that I have no actual data on the diet. That was my take home, by the way, just so you know, Kenji. All right. I'm going to have to family arise it. Um, I mean, who, I say Justino instead of, instead of Jesus Christ should make it a little more family friendly. Uh, I mean, Justino, where is uh, where in the list of many things he's an expert on is human physiology and healing diets? The question should have been discarded as off topic and never brought to the fore. But it has been, and Dave didn't even know where to begin talking about it, which is kind of what I said. I don't know about this specific diet. I do know about some fad diets, like master clans, slow to horse crap. unless you love it, people, in which case, anyway. Bottom line is that this is a healing diet with a long history of success and a lot of endorsements from qualified medical professionals. So, you know, whatever. Amazingly, address problems with human microbiome before anyone was thinking of the human microbiome. If they will check all those ailments that gap says it cures, all are identified by reports as ailments that are triggered by gut dysbiosis, autism, a bunch of things, more like associated

[42:35] with, you know, most of the data. Anyway, um, Triggered by gut disbiosis gaps fixes those problems and fixes them by just changing diet for a while,

[42:46] gustino, it doesn't really have to be, it doesn't have any products to sell unlike real fad diets, usually do, usually, not always. Mash a cleanse. Anyway, if you would like to have an author of a popular level, Gaps diet book on the air with Dave, I could arrange it. Well, I think he should never comment on food as medicine issues again, since it's really not his area of expertise. I do feel that it owes it to his listeners and gas people to set the record straight as much as possible. The easy way would be to have an established commenter on the diet. Come on. happy to arrange that I'll still listen every week, of course, even if Dave was just packing sugar,

[43:18] honey, and iced tea, when he addressed that topic. Let me know. Thanks. Alan Baliott from Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Y'all have someone on, but I mean, I may, I may, look, we'll see how much I know when the expert comes

[43:29] on, and we'll see whether or not, we'll see what happens. I'm happy to have someone on, and I would love someone to come on and tell me that, you know, the red flags that are

[43:38] raised, when I look at it, are not red flags and that I'm, you know, a bad or a knowledgeable person. You typically don't talk, you typically don't talk about diet and health much. I was asked specifically about it. I avoid it. Not because I don't think about it, but because in general, I think most

[43:54] proscriptive diet plans are horse hockey. unless someone proves to me otherwise. My general idea is because the human body is so freaking

[44:04] complex that most of the data that people rely on. And this is this is not I'm not talking off the top of my head here, this is based on not specifically the gaps diet, because I haven't read about it, but like much, much wading through horse, like scientific horse hockey, on many different diets, like salt, MSG, um, you know,

[44:27] autointoxication. The whole load of horse crap that we've been handed by people over the past 150 years. I am just, I am extremely cautious about people telling people that

[44:39] they, how they can change their lives by manipulating the extraordinarily complex and poorly understood system that is the human body.

[44:45] Right, fair enough. We have to end Dave. Thank you so much, Kenji, for coming on the show. Yeah, thank you. The book is the food lab, better home cooking through science, available everywhere. That's it, Dave. All right, All right.

[45:04] 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.