[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Nettle Meadow Farm, Cheese and Spirits Pairing, taking place on Saturday, June 18th at Nettle Meadow Farm.

[0:08] For more information, visit Nettle, Meadow, Cheese and Spirits.com. That's N-E-T-T-L-E, Meadowcheeseandspirits.com. I'm Erica White, host of Let's Get Real, the cooking show about finding, preparing, and eating food. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:37] Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Good News, coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every week, Tuesday from roughly 12 to 1245. The Heritage Radio Network here in Bushwick. How you doing? How you doing, Stas? Yeah? Look crazy on the Bushwick today, huh? Do you know why I have to go crazy on the Bushwick because this is one of Jackie Molecules, Jack Ainsley's last weeks here in

[1:01] Bushwick. Next week is last week. Next week's his last week. Next week will be my last in studio live cooking issues for the time being. Forever. Wow. Forever, says Stas. Yeah. Well, can you, where's my, where's the envoy? The what? Where's the awe voice? Oh, I know, right? All I have is this. I like that. Oh, you want to hear some good news? My phone decided it would be funny to erase all of the stuff that I had prepared to talk

[1:29] today. So I'm going to have to have you call up the questions and then I'll make the answers. No, there's that extra question that you got. And then there's one from last week. All of those. because I didn't get to answer any questions last week because we had Jim Lahey on. You couldn't miss it because you were stuck in my Inis. Right. My in is Connecticut for those of you that weren't tuned in last week. Nastasia borrowed a stick shift. 1993 stick shift sob

[1:53] that, for some reason, one of her friends decides it's a good New York City car to have, and the clutch cylinder leaked its oil, its last breath on the way back to New York City, and she was stuck in the beautiful hamlet of

[2:11] Mahenas, part of Greenwich, Connecticut. Do you know, you lived in Grange for a while? Do they, honestly, because my son, Booker, is like, enough with the

[2:20] bathing humor, dad, you and your precious myenus, is what he says, because we passed a sign all the time, did they pronounce it

[2:26] myenus, or did they pronounce it myenus? I never heard anybody say that word. ever. If there's anyone who lives in the British Connecticut area. We got to find someone who lives around there. Maybe someone from the neighboring Coscob who can tell us... How are you gonna look it up? Do you know that if you look up the pronunciation on there? There's people whose only thing that they do in life is make fake pronunciations and put them on the

[2:50] internets to mess things up. There's something called like pronunciation guide that literally is just some guy mispronouncing words on purpose. So, I just don't trust the internet. Well, the internet says it's my anise. My a niece, as in my star, an, no, no, my

[3:10] a niece. Maya niece. What is it, some sort of tropical? Greenwich. Mayonnaise. Mayonnaise. Is it mayonnaise? Is it like some sort of like French mayonnaise alike? Makes no sense. Yeah, we gotta get somebody to call in with that. Yeah, I need someone from Greenwich. Probably preferably a hater, right? Who, who, like, you know, grew up, like, you know, fighting the local, like, Myanus warriors growing up or whatever the name their team is. You know what I'm saying? And just, you know, give it to me straight. Give it to me straight. Uh, okay. So we have some questions, but as I say, they've lost, so Nastasia is finding those, and I'll start with the one that I have here. Dear Dave, Nastasia, Jack, Peter, who's not here because Peters doesn't care,

[3:52] right? Right, Stas? He said he couldn't make it. Yeah, I couldn't make it. Yeah. It's only like, you know, one of Jack's last games. Thanks a lot, Peter. Oh, he knows that. Well, no, I told him. Where are you, Peter? Wow. Wow. And the gang. I've been reading up on British dessert mistake. No, I'm kidding. I kidding. I've been reading up on British desserts, and they use double cream, which has about 48% milk fat. I haven't been able to find this in the USA. Is there any way I could take that heavy cream and either add more milk fat without a

[4:24] homogenizer or remove water to bump the milk fat content from 35 to 48. Thanks for all the great work, Tom Fisher. Well, look, it depends on what you want to do with it. I mean, you can boil cream down to a very, very high fat content. But then the question is, I'm not sure what you want to do with it afterwards, whether that's going to alter the,

[4:44] um, whether that's going to alter the flavor. You can't just melt butter or butter fat and add it in

[4:50] because remember the cream is a fat in water

[4:55] emulsion and butter is the reverse. It's a water in fat emulsion. So we used to do the experiment with Harold McGee at the French culinary where we would take cream, which is fat in water,

[5:11] right? Whenever you're talking about an emulsion. You 1st name the thing that's, you know, formed in pockets, that's not the continuous phase, and then you say what it's in, which is the continuous phase. So it's, you know, fat globules. you hate the word globule? Yeah. Uh, distributed in a water in a water base. you know, water-ish. And so, um, then you beat it, you know, until

[5:35] the fat particles agglomerate, you break the emulsion, and now you have the reverse, you have a

[5:40] water, uh, in water droplet in oil most, which is butter. So, you know, you can't really fortify it, you can mount it and do a revert, like a mounted thing, but it's not going to be the same. But luckily for you, you know, if you get nice fresh cream and it's, you know, it doesn't have any like a high acidity or anything like that, you can boil it down and get pretty much whatever fat content you want. Now, you might be affecting or you will be affecting the taste. and the whipping properties. But I didn't have time to look what the standard recipe for making it is because I'm pretty sure

[6:15] that, you know, it's going to be hard to get 48% fat straight from the cow just rising up on the top unless you really spin

[6:23] it down. Oh, you know what? Like, I could spin it in the centerfusion and get it pretty easily because I can make butter in the centerfuge. I don't know if I can, and I guess I could probably enrich it to that level. But you're getting real close, you know, to like having it just automatically form a dense kind of

[6:36] a butter anyway. You know what else I've never noticed us? The quote unquote butter that you make in the centrifuge when you spin butter in the centrifuge? Um, I wonder whether it's actually butter or just really solidified cream.

[6:51] Like, I wonder whether you've actually broken the emulsion. I think you probably have because you get that thin buttermilk. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, speaking of centrifuge. That was from Tom Fisher, by the way. I wonder, like, should we put an all points bulletin out for people to tell us what they

[7:08] want the centrifuge to be able to do? The new one just so we get more feedback from people before we release what the prototype is

[7:15] going to do so I can test recipes? Like right now, I already know that the centrifuge we're working on can do strawberries, tomato, orange, lime, lemon, um, you know, banana,

[7:27] hustino, dates, uh, I know it can do parsley oil. I know it can do peea butter. I know it can do. Um, I know it can do some kinds of nut milks and stuff like this, but maybe we should try to figure out what people want it to do so I can test the recipes. I don't know. If any of you guys have any things that you are dying to have a centrifuge be able to

[7:45] do. I can test it on my prototype. Send back. What? No, we don't. You're wrong. Nastasia is talking about stuff that you don't have any idea what we're talking about. I might as well I might as well be I might as well be speaking in a language. I might as well be speaking. We have a prototype here. We have a prototype here that I'm going to send back. They're sending us another one, and in fact, we just need to send a rotor of which I have 3 for testing. Nastasia, again, talking about stuff that you out there don't care about or don't know. They love know. Between the 2 of us, who's the one that spent an hour from midnight to one AM talking to them yesterday? Oh, me. Okay. Anyway, so the, um, yes, we had to send some stuff back, but we

[8:25] could still run tests, and I have 4 units in the US four. anyway. Um, little bit of Dave, Dave anger on the, on the, on a Tuesday. Well, it's like a Monday, though. I haven't seen it. It's like, yeah, it's a weird Monday. It's like, yeah, it's like Monday, Monday anger on a Tuesday. There's a lot of anger. There's a lot of like bad traffic on the way here. Weird attitudes. Everybody's confused and hung over. It's New York when it's hot, you know? You know, Nastasia hates it, I think, as much as I do, don't you? Did you go anywhere fun over the weekend? No. The same way that you always do by taking a train or stealing the car that you Nastasia literally just got a car

[9:10] fixed. Just paid to get her buddy's car fixed. Her buddy with this car is in soul. She's like, how would I get out of this? You don't have to, you don't have to sleep over somewhere. You can leave the city. You know, I've done many times. team stars here, though. That's the worst weekend to go places, I think. I'll tell you what. I drove back yesterday, not a big deal. Really? Yeah. Not a big deal. From Connecticut? Yeah. What time? Like three? Okay. Not big deal. In fact, saw some accidents. Still didn't cause too much problems on the traffic on the way back. But, you know, Anastasia wants to be martyr poor. Where would I go? I'm saying you know that I wouldn't go anywhere. would I do? Anyway, so, you know, you know, whatever. You know what the thing is, it's like, it's like, if I were to say, hey, are you gonna be around this weekend? She's like, what do you think? I stay wherever you want me. That's true. You know I'm always in New York. That is not true. always doing something. Constantly. I'm going out to the Hamptons to visit my dirtbag bodies. I'm going to this. Dirtbag, buddy. Dirtbag. Oh my god, Nastasia has some... Do you know Booker has started calling all of Dax's buddies, dirtbag buddies. Yeah, we're going to name a band that too. Dirtbag buddies. yeah And so now my wife, Jan, is like, you have to stop using the word dirtbag because the kids are picking it up.

[10:26] What do you think says? No coming. You think I should stop saying dirt bag? You say a lot of things that they pick up. A lot. Look, A, that's not necessarily... exactly like you. Well, yeah. Oh, speaking of things that they picked up, my kids have picked up. This is not cooking related, so we'll try to get off it quickly, but my kids

[10:45] have, without any actual physical contact, picked up my hatred of geese, of Canadian geese. Because I was like driving by, you know, if you've ever lived in the Northeast and spent in the suburbs and spent, you know, this time of

[10:59] year, and you go to any pond that has a lawn next to it, right? You need a pond with a lawn next to it. It is infested with freaking Canadian geese. And right now, this time of year is when they have their rancid little goslings. And when Canadian geese have their gods. If you want your children to grow up with a healthy hatred of Canadian geese, just throw them on the side of a pond with freaking geese and their

[11:25] goslings because they're the most vicious creatures that, because if you didn't know better, you'd be like, oh, geese, what are they going to do, right? You ever been attacked by goose? It's nuts. Oh, yeah. My little brother was attacked once when he was a kid and then that was it. Yeah, they like start hit. First of all, they start hissing like some sort of like, like creature from a horror show. And then they run at you like snapping and hissing with their, with their wings giving you the, they're giving you this

[11:50] one style. What? What? What? With the wings. You know what I mean? they're running at you. And just do that like once or twice with it. There's a book written by, I forget her name, but she writes about how to poach animals. I'm not advocating for that, but she said, I think it was her who wrote that if you ever want your kids to never be vegetarians and to always support the killing of animals, expose them as often as possible to geese.

[12:13] Did you see the gorilla? I felt so bad about that. I know. But you know what I looked up? I looked up. did he get in there? It's unclear yet how the kid got in there, but here's the, here's the real. So what we're talking about, for those of you that haven't been following the news, is what was it, Cincinnati or something like this? Three-year-old or four, something like this, kid makes it into the gorilla pen, falls 10 feet down into this moat where this like £450

[12:38] silverback, 17-year-old silverback gorilla is. I forget the gorilla's name. And the gorilla is like, what? You know what I mean? It starts like dragging this kid around and the video is like, 0 my god, it's crazy. So they shot the gorilla to death. I looked it up. There's no such thing as a tranquilizer that'll take a gorilla down. Why is there not such a thing as a tranquilizer that could do that? That's my question. I don't know, but 1st thing, you know, you know, my Dax and I were like, what the hell? Why can't they just shoot it with a, you know, a tranquilizer dart? Why do they have to kill the freaking gorilla? It's horrible. It's not the gorilla's fault? You know what I mean? But then, you know, I saw all these scads of things on the internet saying that there's nothing that can take a reliably take a gorilla down in less than about 30 seconds.

[13:25] And, you know, and what you don't want is an enraged pissed off gorilla that's just been trank darted, like taking a kid and smacking it around on a bunch of concrete. But the gorilla didn't look mad at the kid. And the kid didn't look phased. Grill looked like he was kind of taking care of the kid. was weird. Well, I mean, I still, you know, the gorilla, like, you know, what does the gorilla know about how fragile a, you know, a three-year-old human is? You know what I'm saying? It's like, I don't know. The gorilla looked like a lot less intent on damaging that kid than, you know, my dog did eating frogs this weekend. My dog turned into such a frog murderer this weekend. Like, there are frogs everywhere. And he would see a frog and then instantly start foaming at the mouth as if rabbit and jump after the frog and just be like, all right, and my kid's like, daddy's a

[14:11] frog. Then it's a friend. I'm like, the dog's a carnivore. The dog is a freaking carnivore. It's like you're feeding it chummed up chicken and cow and lamb every day out of a

[14:21] can and you're worried about a frog, a frog, an amphibian that doesn't even have a sense of

[14:25] play, and like you're okay, whatever. I'm like, don't get me started. Don't get me started. Okay. So Stas, do you find the other question? There's one other question. There's two. From last week? There's last week. There's the there's the John Oliver one and then there's the other one that came in. It's when you just read it. Hello and thank you for making this a great podcast. First, it seems to me that other than mixers and cheaters, not much advancement was made in the process of making puff pastry and croissants over the years, making it is time consuming, requires much skill and

[14:57] practice. Can you suggest a modern ingredient or method that might help in the process? Preheats keeping the butter from soaking in the dough, melting at room temperature, maybe even, and forgive me for the hearsay. Use less hair. heresy, use less butter and still get separate flaky layers. Second, in order to keep the poke. one a time, two one a time. So, uh, the question is, is it any new tricks for pup pastry? And that he mentioned croissant too, right? Yeah. Well, 1st of all, I have to say, I have, I've only made, you ever, you don't like croissant, right, Stas? No. What's worse, a question or a biscuit? I equal. Really? Well, no, if the croissant has chocolate in it, then it's fine. What about almond? No. What if you had, what if you had a, what if you had chocolate in a biscuit? No no. No, no. But chocolate and croissant, okay. I'm kind of intrigued by the chocolate biscuit idea, Dave. Well, I'm telling you, you heard it here first, people. Cooking issues. Chocolate, chocolate inside of a biscuit. to be easy enough to do. Yeah. I mean, freaking simple. You know what I mean? They bake for roughly the same amount of time as a croissant bake. And they bake it roughly the same temperature that a croissant bakes. So, and they're they're cooked through as much as a croissant is. So I'm going to go ahead and say that you could do a chocolate biscuit. you know, standard baking powder biscuit, buttermilk biscuit. Okay. I made a question all exactly once in my life. It was well over 20 years ago, and it was in the middle of the freaking

[16:27] summer in an un-air conditioned house. So it sucked. And I was like, when I made them, they've tasted fine, but I was like, this

[16:36] crap, in a rare, I was like, this crap is not worth it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm glad I made it once. I never going to do it again. So I don't have a lot of experience with croissant, but I have made a bunch of puff pastry. Uh, and I've never really tried to make it, um, I've never really tried to tech it up. Uh, I looked up the patent literature on this and there are a bunch of people that have um, patents out uh,

[16:59] on, on puff pastry specifically trying to lower the fat content of puff pastry because for some

[17:04] reason, this is the kind of thing that people are uh, interested in

[17:08] doing. I'm not, I mean, not me personally. Like I'd rather just have puff pastries. But what they did was, so when you're making puff pastry, obviously, the idea is you have a laminated dough, you have the dough

[17:17] layers, and you have the fat in between them now. Back when I was uh, paying attention to such things, you would, uh, people always said that it was the water

[17:25] in the butter that was the important part that would blast that, that would steam and blast the layers apart. But now most people say that the water in the dough does the same thing as the water in the butter, although I've never tried making puff pastry with

[17:37] a solid fat that didn't have any water in it at all. And I'm pretty sure that the puff pastry fats that they make specifically for making super light flaky puff pastries, which

[17:47] are, they are a technical marvel, if terrible for you, uh, they are, because they're all trans, although they probably have trans fat free ones now. But, um, Those, like, are awesome, but I think that those are emulsions with water and I'm like a standard margarim, but they're done for puff pastry. Anyways, so you need this separation and you need the dough layers to not stick together so they can, um, puff apart. Um, So there's a fella, I forget his name, because I don't have it in front of me anymore, but who had a patent out on making a uh, thickened starch uh, water uh, along with fat

[18:21] emulsion so that it had the plasticity and laminating characteristics of margarine, but instead of being 82 or 80 to 82% fat was like 40 to 45% fat.

[18:35] And so that would be a significant fat reduction, and according to the patent, it works, but as Nastasia and I both

[18:41] know any idiot can write a patent, even if the stuff doesn't work, and they'll get it. You know what I mean? It's true. A lot of people don't know this, but if you write a patent, It doesn't mean you could literally, if you write a patent, you never have to prove that the sucker works. You just have to make up a good enough story for the patent officer to believe that you come up with,

[18:59] you know, in fact, people have patented things that are physically impossible to do, and they slipped it past, you know, a patent officer who, you know, I don't know, high as a kite

[19:10] or, you know, drunk as a skunk or whatever, wasn't paying any attention. And there are people that forget who collect these kind of absurd patents as kind of little things. Anyway, so let's go on to the 2nd question. Second, in order to keep the potency of rarely used spices. Hello, pink peppercorn. I stored those in the freezer. Assuming I keep count, assuming I keep condensation at check, is there any reason repeated freezing and thawing might hurt

[19:36] them and is the same true for nuts? Nuts. Okay, so to look up my suspicions, Nastasia, you'll enjoy this, I think. I looked up UC Davis's PDF on nut storage and, you know, UC Davis, they know from nuts. They safe, the safe handling of nuts. How awesome is that as a PDF title? The safe, the safe handling of nuts, gently, gently, I

[20:01] believe, is the, anyway, so the point is, is that, uh,

[20:05] and McCormick, if you look at what McCormick tells you, McCormick tells you not to freeze, uh, dry spices just because it's unnecessary, but let's break down what's going on here.

[20:13] There are several things you need to worry about when you're when you're dealing with spices. So, in general, dried spices are those things that have been deemed for millennia in some cases to withstand the rigors of shipment on boats and long storage and still retain

[20:32] potency, and as long as they're kept whole, not ground. Uh, you know, for long, long periods of time. That's why they are the spices that we use because they are items of commerce that can be shipped over long distances.

[20:44] So they tend to store rather well without any sort of like freezing or refrigeration. Now, most, you are going to extend the life of these things, where these things get damaged is, A, yes, they will

[20:57] volatilize their aromas off over time and decrease their potency. Some of them will also probably alter in flavor over time. But you have 2 main things. You have water damage due to condensation, which is obviously enhanced by

[21:10] cycling through different temperatures where you get condensation on it. So that's why repeatedly bringing it in and out of cold, can be problematic unless it's stored under a vacuum.

[21:21] So if it's stored under a vacuum, you can bring something in and out, you're not going to get condensation because there's not any extra vapor in there to have water that can damage it through repeated

[21:31] freeze thaw cycles. But I doubt you're going to get that much of an advantage on that versus just storing it in a vacuum container. Also remember, every time you suck a vacuum, you're sucking volatiles off of it. Now, are you really going to notice? I don't think so. But a good way to do this, if you really, want to do it, is to vacuum these things into smaller packages and keep them back down so you're not repeatedly

[21:51] vacuing and unvacuing them time and time again. So that's in terms of keeping. But the other thing, in this, this is where, you know, the some splices, but also, isn't that, and like seeds and things like that? Yeah. are important is rancidity, right? So, um, your nuts are going to go ranted if you leave them out at room temperature for a long time. And in fact, I just had an interesting uh, a pack of uh, black walnuts, American grown black walnuts. Uh, I'm not I'm not going to get into that joke. Anyway, but like they like, I can't, family show. Uh, much, you know, Jim Lahey, how long did it take us to get that it was a family show. Yeah, that was... was a family show? I think he was surprised it was a family show. And then, like, it's just, you know, it's just not in his nature to turn off

[22:38] the the bleep bombs. You know what I mean? But his Bernie Sanders impression was excellent. Well, that's what, yes. We also had to be like, it's not a political show. Not a political show. Family show. You can listen, I don't care what you're, I mean, within reason. I don't care what your political beliefs are. But, uh, you know, anyway, back to what I was saying, nuts. So they're going to go rancid. In fact, I've got these black walnuts and they had gone rancid in a really kind of interesting way. Still. I said, were you here when we ate with Paul and Don, those, I think Don was here? those ants? Did you eat one? Yeah. Remember how disgusting they were? But like greasy and like, like, but fruity greasy? Well, you know, most of the time when I taste rancid nuts, uh, it's more that cardboard kind of rancidity that you get with oil where you can taste oil and see that it's gone off and it's getting rancid, but these walnuts had that fruity rancidity, it was so

[23:32] weird. Anyway, so they go rancid, very obviously. Um, so you're going to want to store your nuts in uh, a vacuum, if possible, and nuts are good in the freezer, but you also, you want, like I say, if you store it in a vacuum and you can get rid of the, um, the air, you're not going to get condensation even through, you know, a couple of uh,

[23:51] freeze freestaw cycles. But other than that, I would say that airtight storage and buying them whole and buying high quality is the way to

[23:59] go and unless you're cooking professionally. So if you're cooking professionally, you know, people in general, if you, it, it depends on what kind of professional cooking, if you're dealing in a large kind of institutional environment where you're expecting someone to follow

[24:12] measurements like you will use 5 grams of pink peppercorn, right? Then consistency of your pink peppercorn over time is super important. But if you're just cooking or even if you're a real cook in a restaurant and you can adjust on the fly, typically, these kind of spices will just lose potency over time and so you can just jack the quantity.

[24:29] This is why, like, we were talking before when Kenji was in and someone on the internet said that Baileys don't have flavor. Remember that, Jack? I do. Yeah, I'm stars, remember that? And I was like, yeah, yeah, it's wrong. Just use more because you have crappy ones. You know what I'm saying? And so, uh, a lot of times I think you're probably better off just jacking the quantity a little bit. I mean, I know I do that. I mean, most of us use those kinds of things to taste anyhow, right? Okay, so what was the other, we had another question in from Norway, right? You sent it to me last night. Uh, okay. Yeah, well, we're... while we're looking it up. No, but they were in 2 separate emails. I lost any changes I made to my list. Yeah. So anyway, so why don't we go to commercial break? We'll get that question. We'll come back with more cooking issues.

[25:22] And the break song here is called Forks by Slow Roasters. We'll be right back.

[25:32] Nettle Meadow Farm, Cheese and Spirits pairing is a celebration of good food and beverages in the newly restored barn loft event venue at Nettle Meadow Farm in

[25:45] Thurman, New York. On Saturday, June 18th, come sample and savor, then buy your favorite cheeses and beverages to take home. Nettle Meadow cheeses have been praised highly in national media and have won prestigious awards from the American Cheese Society. Taste samples of goat and sheep cheese is paired with an array of local regional wines, beers, and ciders. You'll never forget your 1st sample of rich, creamy Kunik, Nettle Meadows, trademark cheese. In Esquire, our very own Ansacs will be said Kunik. It may very well be the sexiest cheese in the USA. Nettle Meadow Farm is a goat and sheep dairy and cheese company in Thurmond, New York, just below Crane Mountain in the Adirondacks between Gore Mountain, North Creek and Warrensburg. It's owned and operated by Lorraine Limbiase and Sheila Flanagan. Both have a great love of animals, artisan cheese, and the unique challenges of farm life. Nettle Meadow Farm was originally founded in 1990, and it's the home of over 300 goats, dozens of sheep and a variety of farm sanctuary animals. Again, the cheese and spirits pairing is Saturday, June 18th. For more information and tickets. Visit Nettlemeadowcheeseandspirits.com. That's N-E-T-L-E, MeadowCheeseandspirits.com. All right. All right, and we are back. So we had this question in. Oh, by the way, you can call your cooking questions in 2 718-497-2128. That 718-4972128. Uh, this in from uh, Arnie Olsen. Uh, hey, guys, and thanks for great show. I have a question about Lime Quad. Lime Quad. Remember the lime quads? They're like, you know what, though? So lime quat is, I don't know whether it's technically a mix between a kumquat and a

[27:29] line, but there are these little kumquat things, you eat the whole thing like a lemon lime, right? I mean, like, I don't like eating the kumquats, really. What? What are you, going Nastasia on me here? A little bit. I don't know. I don't like eating the rind, you know? But the rind's the best part of the kumquat. Yeah. That's where all the, that's where the, you know, the, the fruit. 1st of all, I happen to freaking love kumquats. Like, I completely denuded Harold McGee's kungquat tree,

[27:54] and which is a gross sounding sentence, I know, but, like, it was, I, it never came back from what I did. I just wiped it out. I was just like, that basically just like sat there and chewed on the whole plant until the

[28:04] kumquads were gone. And then when Nastasia and Harold and I visited Gene Lester's Citrus Farm, we were

[28:10] like bathing in different kinds of kumquats and lime quats and stuff. Remember that? But I think I like the kumquat better than the lime quot. Yeah. I like a good old-fashioned orange colored kumquat. Jack, I feel you need to give the kumquat another chance. Yeah, I'm open to it. I'm not hardline on these things. It's just like the last time I had kumquats, I don't remember like loving them. How did you have them? Well, whole, you know. Do you like sour things? I might have just had a bad batch. It's possible I guess. You know what I don't like about them? is like every once in a while the seeds will tick me off. You know what I mean? I don't know. What do you think about biting into a kumquat seeds does? Not good. Not good? No. But I love, I love it. I don't really cook with them. I just eat them. We've tried to make cocktails out of them. I've never been like, 0 my god, that's the best cocktail I've ever had. I've made garnishes with them, done a bunch of candied them. But I think their best just eaten. You know what I mean? Anyway. You know what? I think the last time I had when it was a garnish. Yeah. And it might have just not been like the highest quality, you know? Yeah. and plus what was it garnishing? Do you remember? I don't. Yeah. I've been, I have a question about lime quad. I've been fermenting all sorts of things lately, and I threw some lime quat wedges in with some chilies and Turkish sour green

[29:30] plums. I'm not gonna try to pronounce the Turkish word here. Yazel, Eric, Tavazi, I guess is what it is. I've actually, if it's the ones I'm thinking of, they're like, they're in season. I forget when exactly their season. when I was in Istanbul's when they were in season, and they're good. And, you know, remember we had, you know, uh... Really? So I was running around now? Okay. But here's here's anyway. The liquid has become a lot more viscous. What do you think about that word? It's okay. Viscous than I've experienced before. And the only differing thing this time were the lime quats, the plums haven't behaved like this before, so I assume it's not them. I've been able to, I haven't been able to find anything online about hydrocolloid properties of lime quat or kumquat. I used a brine of about 4% salt. The change of viscosity happened fast before any significant drop in

[30:18] pH can have occurred after a few hours, and it hasn't changed after a month. Any ideas? Huh? No, that is really weird. Um, I know that uh, Harold McGee has had uh, snotty preserved lemons before. Like, they've gone, like his preserved lemons have gone all snotty on him. Um, uh, but that is probably due to halophilic uh, bacteria that were causing, making some sort of mucilage. So typically like, I wouldn't imagine that the limes, oh, here's an interesting

[30:50] thing, though. The limes are far more acidic than the plums are, right? I mean, the plums are acidic, but the lime quads are more acidic still. Uh, I wonder, I wonder if you, um, I wonder if you, as a test, just took some of the

[31:08] plums and jacked the acidity up a little bit to the same kind of acidity

[31:13] level you had. I wonder whether it's just some sort of weird pectin phenomenon. Like you have solubilized, some pectin, and then when you lower the acidity, it's doing some sort of like pre-gel or set or something like this.

[31:23] Because that my guess is, is that it's not an aspect of the citrus itself. It's an aspect of the acidity, the environment dropping with the addition of the lime cloth. But you know what? You said it wasn't there wasn't a significant drop in pH. That must mean you've been measuring it. And if measuring it, you know what the ph was. So I don't know. I've never heard of any weird hydrocolary property in a lime quat or anything else. But maybe some people in the chat room have a something to say. Now, remember, my lime quad experience is solely based on Nastasia and I eating the hell out of them on Gene Lester's farm.

[32:01] I've never shopped for lime quats, nor have I sourced lime quats, or, you know, the only sort of quat that

[32:07] I have sourced is is kumquats. What was that drink name we're going to make for that kumquat thing that Derek has? I remember his last name. Cranz. Yeah, what was it? anyway, we'll figure it out. We have a kumquat dish, kumquat drink at the bar. And Nastasia came up with an awesome name for it, which is not the name that you can order from at the bar, but it was like something in the

[32:27] cram clots. What was it? It was like... Was it just Derek? Yeah, hysteric, yes. Derek and the cram class? Maybe. Anyways. So the answer is, I don't know. We also had someone writing in and wanted us to look at the John Oliver, what's his show called this week? This week, tonight, this week, tonight, or something like this, tomorrow, yesterday, tonight, this week. He's a funny dude. Anyway, he did something on science that scientific studies and food specifically that someone wanted us to read and look at rather

[33:00] and comment on. And I have to say that I think it was hilarious. Everybody should go to John Oliver's website and look at his 22 or 23 minute, uh, you know, rant, basically, on how crappy

[33:14] most uh, food science studies are and how they're mishandled by the media, um, last week tonight. It is, I think it's pretty much spot on. I'm thinking, like, it's a subject that I plan on going more in depth on, um,

[33:28] if I ever finish or start writing the book that I was supposed to write on. You going to have a chapter on kind of the, what I consider the pyramid of garbage that

[33:37] most of these, a lot of these studies are based on. But I don't want to go into it now because if I go half cocked on it, someone will call me out and tell me that I'm a

[33:49] terrible, uneducated fool, right? As has happened before, as has happened before. Um, okay. So, that's that. Those are the questions that are in. So now I'm going to talk about some stuff I want to do. First of all, Nastasia. I'm going to redo my outdoor cooking situation again, right? Because no matter what I do, I cannot get in a situation where people will be in the same freaking area while I'm cooking. It still is completely anti-social. Like my tandor, is like crammed outside. No one wants to hang out where the tandor is. You know what I mean? Also, like, you know how you know how I'm cheap? Yeah, she's nodding her head up and down. Yeah, cheap. So, uh, everyone, you know, the big thing over the past couple

[34:35] years, people want. They want a fire pit, right? Because people want to hang out in the fireplace. I bet you have a fire pit. I did. So but I bought it the cheap one, right? From the Home Depot. It's called the cowboy grill, but it doubles as a grill, but I'm like, I'm never going to use this thing as a grill. I actually use it as a grill because now I have those benches around the grill. Remember, the chainsaw, the tree fell down, I cut all those benches with the chainsaw, because, you know, I think chainsaw art is like, you know, I

[34:56] like I'm not good at it, but, like, I, like, everybody really likes playing with chainsaws. don't you think? Wouldn't you like playing with a chainsaw? No. You have no desire to play with chainsaws? Jack, you? Yeah, totally. Yeah. My, uh, I used to have a, I used to like not wake up when I was a kid, you know,

[35:11] I'd, like, sleep in and stuff and my grandpa once walked into my room with a chainsaw. Wow. revved it up that did the trick. Wow, where was grandpa from? Sicily. Nice. Nice. So like crazy Sicilian grandpa with a chainsaw. That'll get you up. that'll do it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I like chainsaws. I have never have not yet been severely damaged by one, thank goodness. Anyway, so I had this cowboy grill. Um, and I have to say, uh, you know, I'm a big fan of the vertical grilling

[35:43] in the tandor, but I was like, I'm gonna try to cook something so people can actually hang out with me while I'm cooking. So I have all the benches. So those things actually cook like a monster because they are like, imagine a Weber grill that is like 2.5 feet across or more.

[35:59] How big is this to us? Like 3 feet? It's like 3 feet across. So what you do is the way you use this. And so I'm actually recommending this as a cooking implement strangely, is you take a chimney, you take a chimney starter for charcoal, you fill it full of hardwood

[36:12] charcoal. I use the cowboy brand because it fits with the cowboy grill. Actually, it's just the one I use, the red one. Uh, and you put, actually, it's not cowboy. And it's royal oak. And you pour it into the chimney thing, you put one thing of paper underneath, you light it with the torch, and the coals start after like 20 minutes. We've all used chimney starters, right? Now, a chimney starter is in no way, shape, form,

[36:32] kind, color, enough charcoal to cook on this thing because it's

[36:37] like it would be the equivalent of putting like 2 pieces of charcoal in a weber, right? It's like nothing. So what you do is you dump the chimney down and then you build your teepee

[36:46] of like, you know, how big is that styles across? Mm. 2 inches? All right, you can take like your 2 inch sticks and you layer them like a tepee over the burning

[36:55] coals, and then you take your big pieces of like firewood that you use for

[36:59] fire and you make another tepee around that. And because the coals are so hot, the wood lights in like, in less than like 20 minutes, the wood is already so on fire that you can spread it out over the entire thing. And now you have like a 3 foot circle of instant death that you can put the grill on top

[37:18] of, and it's just a freaking monster. Like, it's such a freaking monster. I did bluefish on it. So like I put them, you know, I have those, I have like infinite kinds of like skewers and baskets for my tandor. So, like, I, you know, I'm doing it, and I was like, man, this sucker, really freaking cranks. So, I would say, if you're a fan of Weber style cooking, go get you a cowboy grill, if you really need to cook for a lot of people, because does anyone like waiting around to like swap stuff off and on the Weber grill?

[37:47] Everybody hates it, right? And so the thing about the cool thing about this is it's got a little swing over, um, grate, that's like a warming grate. It's like a 2nd level above the other one, and you can kind of adjust the height of that, and it's got to swing over for a boil kettle, right? So it swings over. So what you do is, but, you know, like a lot of people, what they want to do in their grilling is they want to switch the height of their grill up and down to adjust the heat. I find that cooking with the tandor, what you want to do is get a uniform kind of like high heat. Although, I don't know I don't know whether it's talking on error or talking later with Jim. I've lowered my I've lowered my super high cooking temperatures pretty much across the board. So now with my tandor, I kind of do a 1st burnout low. Then I put all my breads in, my nans, because I find that my, was I talking about this on Airjack? think so. I was talking about lowering the temperature of the, to bake the nans. I think so. I mean, she wasn't here. Oh, last week. She was in my anus during the whole show. You know? Anyway. I want to repeat it anyway. All right. So in other words, like, normally with a tandor, you get a scorching hot, right? And then you want, and I think this is the same as true with like most pizzas. I think most pizza does and most pizzas, uh, you know, I've been doing super, super hot for a long

[39:04] time and I'm thinking, uh, I like now to reduce the temperatures a little bit. I find I like the interior texture better if the bake time's a little bit longer. And so lower temperature. So what I'll do is for the tandor, is I'll do a relatively long fire to fire it up to like a nice, uh, even temp, do my breads, and then I'll throw another chimney of charcoal in to do my meats,

[39:25] my like shrimp stuff that you want like really fast. Anyway, but I find with the grill, I think most things, and this is another

[39:31] thing I, you know, that I've been thinking a lot about recently is moisture, moisture control and surface effects. I think you can gain a lot when you're grilling by just going off, on, off, on, off, on,

[39:43] off, on, or putting on the worm and just like constantly moving the thing around. So you don't really need to worry, I think, about having a 1000000000 different heat levels as long as you're on top of it. You know what I mean? If you want to be a Jamoke and just throw something on the hot side for a couple seconds to, you know, a couple minutes to make the crust and then throw it on the cold side. I guess you could do that too. But, you know, I find that if you just keep the thing cranking at a pretty

[40:06] hardcore rate, you can just slam the stuff out as long as you're on top of it. Anyway, so Cowboy Grill, I'm definitely pro. The other thing that I'm going to do this summer. Oh, but here's why I brought it up. So then the next day, when we had a bunch of people coming over, right, after I grill the bluefish, my 1st bluefish of the season, delicious, do you like bluefish? don't know. Huh, Jeff, you like bluefish? I love bluefish. Bluefish is now becoming popular because everyone now is liking fish that they didn't used to like. It is around a lot now. Yeah, it's delicious, but it's oily. You know what I mean? And so like if you talk to an old timer, like when I bought it, they were like, when did that fish come in?

[40:41] And the guy's like, today, of course, because what are they going to say? And you're just like, no, no. When was it caught? And he's like, freaking today. Today, freaking today. You know what I mean? And she wouldn't buy it until I bought a piece and she smelled my piece. She's like, okay, I'll take a piece. You know what I mean? I don't know why the guy didn't just offer to let her smell the fish in the 1st place. So I had to be an intermediary at whatever. Uh, and I did the old school. you know that, have I talked about this on here? You know, the old school with bluefish, the old old timers recipe is to put mayonnaise on the bluefish. You know what the old theory, which is garbage, is the oil gets out oil. It doesn't make any freaking sense. But the man... No. No, that's why it doesn't make any freaking sense. But the mayonnaise is good. It forms like a nice crust. So you mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and then only on the on the meat side, not on the skin side. Anyway. So then the next day when a bunch of people came over, they're like, you know what? We don't want to sit with you next to the grill while you're cooking all the food, we're going to sit on the deck. I like, of course, wah, wah. So now I'm going to build, I want to build a deck friendly cooking thing. And here's the thing. When you're cooking outside, what are you missing? Usually. Oh, no. A way to cook things that want to be cooked on ranges, right? So a lot of people will take a walk, and they'll try to put it on their grill, which I think is weak, or they'll do a bunch of other

[41:57] things. They put pans on grills, which I think is problematic. But I'm going to build an outdoor walk burner. So I need some I need some advice from people. I'm either going to get what's called the big kahuna, which is a gas fired 65,000 BTU propane wok burner or buy one of those Thai charcoal stoves that

[42:18] you that you like hold a wok or maybe get both. I don't know. But I'm gonna get a the wok burner. And the other problem is, is that, you know why I don't use my outdoor fryer enough stuff? Because my outdoor fryer is not sealed. I realize this is that if you have to completely drain, clean,

[42:34] dry and store a fryer every time you use it, especially when you're using 6 gallons of

[42:39] oil. You don't do it that often. You know what I mean? Whereas if I could just have my fryer, act like my indoor fryer, like completely seal it from all pests, then I can just, uh, I can just strain it, keep the oil

[42:51] in in, in fine feather, cover it, and then just go back and fry with it. Because honestly, if you're just making like, if you're just making like,

[42:59] like 4 or £5 of tortilla chips or like a couple of chickens, are you really

[43:04] going to sit there and fill an entire fryer with 6 gallons of oil?

[43:08] Then at the end of the night, strain it out, clean it, and drop it in. Whereas back when it was sitting at home, inside, I would just fire up the freaking fryer, do the tortilla chips, let it cool down and cover

[43:17] it, right? So I'm going to work on that. I'll let you know. I'll let you people good people know. Another thing is that I know I said earlier at the beginning of the year, this was going to be the year of starch. I finally started working on it. Right now, my newest thing. I tweeted it out or something with potato starch, big on potato starch. I've been working on the Korean fried chicken, my Korean fried chicken recipe. I'm getting very close to a Korean fried chicken that I like. Jackie, you like Korean fried chicken? Yes. So, I see, like, cream fried chicken? We like better, American fried chicken or cream fried chicken? Really? Interesting. What style of American fraction? your ultimate fried chicken style? Mine's hot chicken, like Nashville style hot chicken. So how is that? Like, I've never been to Nashville. Oh, really? Yeah, which just fried chicken with a shit ton of spice on it. Oops, sorry for the curse. Family show. So is it, is it, is the crust more like uh, more like a KFC original, more like a F Crispy, more like a Popeye, more like a traditional southern soft crust? Yeah, like, no, no, no. crunchy, crunchy crust. Yeah, thick, thick, crunchy crust. See, the interesting thing about the Kentucky fried chicken. Oh, sorry, the Korean fried chicken, obviously, is that it's like super thin. So some people when they do the recipes for it, they do a thin batter, which

[44:26] is, I think, a mistake. And this goes back to what I was saying before about, it's all about moisture control. So obviously everybody who really knows how to how to do this, right? They do multiple frying. And what you're doing during the multiple frying is controlling the controlling the crust, controlling the formation of the skin and the crust, which is why you can get

[44:45] hyper thin, shattering crust on a Korean fried chicken,

[44:50] using fundamentally just the skin. So what I'm working towards, you know, the Koreans use these small chickens and they fry the whole thing whole, right? I want to do a larger American style in the of chicken in using low temp cooking. So I've been testing with low temp cooking 1st and then doing a triple fry on it with potato starch as

[45:08] the as the base for the crust. And I want to do a Blues Brothers, 4 whole fried chickens and dry white toast dinner. Now, the thing is, I haven't figured out, I figured out. I'm pretty close. I'd say I'm 95% of the way there with being able to make 4 whole fried chickens that are delicious all the way through, perfect. But what I've not been able to do yet is make dry white toast that I want to eat by itself.

[45:33] You know what I'm saying? You guys familiar with this movie? No. You've never seen the booze brothers. Yeah, yeah. I've seen it So they walk, they're trying to get McAntar Murphy to leave Aretha Franklin where they're working at this greasy spoon in Chicago and go out on the road with them to form the band because they're on a mission from God, right?

[45:52] Okay. So, uh, what they do is they go in there and Belushi orders 4 whole fried chickens and Dan Ackroyd orders dry white

[46:02] toast and that's how McIntar Murphy knows that the blues where the flues is what they eat, but who the hell eats dry white toast on its own? Don't know. Can you imagine? Can anyone imagine what good dry white toast to eat on its own is? Like, what would it mean to make dry white toast that you would eat on its own? Is Dan Ackroyd just trying to say like, I'm a horrible person? And Belushi is trying to say, I merely am a hedonist, and I want 4 whole fried chickens, and

[46:28] therefore I will leave. And then Dan Akroy is just like, I am, I am, I am just a, a non-entity, even

[46:34] though, like, that's clearly not the case. What do you think, Jack? What do you think about the dry white toast? I don't know. Maybe he had he had to duck out, I guess, but like the dry white toast is not something that I can imagine. I've thought a lot about toast, right? The texture of toast. Like, when you eat toast, what kind of toast do you like? Just white toast. what is the texture like? Oh, crunchy? You like crunchy. So more of a British, more like a Melba toast, like where you break it in half and it shatters into a 1000000 pieces? No, no, no. You need like a good crunch on the outside and then a little bit of chew in the middle, yeah. Right. So you're dealing with another moisture control problem. And this is we talked about this before when that guy came and we did that TV shoot about toast, the guy wasn't even thinking straight about it. When a toaster is done, what do you do? What's the 1st thing you do when the toaster goes with you have a toaster oven, if it's not a pop-up, what do you do? Take the toast out. Open the freaking door to let the moisture come out or it's going to be ruined. What's the worst thing you can do to toast? Take it and put on a plate right away. You're ruining the freaking toast because when you put the toast on the plate. Have you never done this? You take toast right out of the toaster, you put it on the plate, you let it sit there. What happens when you lift the toast? don't know. There's all water and steam and condensed garbage underneath

[47:47] the toast. And the bottom of the toast is ruined. Dax did this to toast over the weekend because I made some seafood salad and we had it, you know, seafood salad sandwiches and he made the

[47:57] toast, and he did that to the toast, and it was all I could do not to like lose it. You don't want steamed. Jack, are you with me on this? Yeah, definitely. Erica's back here. She says you need a toast rack. Yeah. So I have a whole bunch. Erica is totally right. I have a whole bunch of quarter and this is, by the way, something that everyone should buy. Um, and this is another thing, I'm actually talking to my editor about it, is a kitchen organization in general, even though I'm the most disorganized person on

[48:21] earth. I think that actually gives me some reason to be interested in the idea of kitchen organization. I have stacks of quarter racks. And so quarter rack, quarter sheet pan rack, is very useful for moving stuff around, and they're very kind of portable and they stack up. So my toaster, literally on top of my toaster, are stacks of quarter

[48:39] racks that I can just put whatever, pancakes, toast, anything that has a moisture control problem. So the whole kind of thing boils down to everything is moisture control. Fried chicken is a moisture control problem. Toast is a moisture control problem. All of these things, grilling properly to get the crust right before the inside is done is a moisture control problem. And that is, in essence, all I think about all day is getting the outside and the inside at their proper kind of moistures and doneness at the right

[49:09] time. And all the tech that we use, all the low temperature cooking, really, all we're doing is trying to more effectively make the inside be the way we want and the outside be the way we want.

[49:20] So it all comes down to moisture control, cooking issues.

[49:37] 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. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.